Aquinas at 800, Part 12: Metaphysics, Being, and the Transcendentals

Episode Topic: Metaphysics, Being, and the Transcendentals

Eight centuries later, this session reveals that Thomas’s metaphysical architecture remains the essential map for reality. By interrogating divine attributes and the generative power of peace, modern scholars demonstrate how 13th-century wisdom provides the ontological integrity needed to navigate 2024’s most profound questions of existence. Join us as we explore the foundations of truth and goodness.

Featured Speakers:

• Dominic LaMantia '24 M.A., '25 Ph.D., The Society of Jesus in the United States, Canada and Haiti
• Fr. Philip-Neri Reese, O.P., '22 Ph.D., Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas
• Joshua P. Hochschild '01 Ph.D., Mount St. Mary's University

Read this episode's recap over on the University of Notre Dame's open online learning community platform, ThinkND: https://go.nd.edu/57ec60.

This podcast is a part of the ThinkND Series titled Aquinas at 800.

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Transcript

Speaker Introduction

Speaker 10 0:10

I wanna introduce, uh, uh, first, our first speaker, uh, Dominic Laia. He's a PhD student at the University of Notre Dame. His dissertation focuses on the formal distinction in SCOTUS and what comes to be called the virtual distinction in Aquinas. He also has an interest in post medieval scholasticism and philosophy of religion. This paper this morning is entitled Aquinas on the Distinction in Rcio.

Inconsistent Triad Problem

What Is Wisdom Alone

Speaker 2 0:50

Okay. Hello everybody. yes, I'm gonna be talking about the distinction in Rcio today. This is a, a kind of distinction that Aquinas invokes between the divine attributes and the metaphysical grades of the porphyria tree. So rationality and ity in Socrates. and I don't have enough time to do it, and so I thought, well, I could either talk, uh, inadequately about one view, or I could talk very inadequately about four different views. And so I'm gonna do that. Um, so I'm gonna give a, a kind of lay of the land of some of the, uh, medieval disputes on this, because I think there are basically four families of views in the scholastic tradition. I'm gonna race through three of them and then, talk about Aquinas, uh, at the end. So, so one way to introduce this is via an inconsistent triad, which is on the handout that's coming out. One thing that's interesting about this inconsistent triad is that there's, sort of a, a contemporary version of the inconsistent triad and many of the moves that are made, by the scholastics to, uh, or moves they would make to resolve this inconsistent triad are there are very closely analogous moves that people in contemporary analytic philosophy make to resolve, this other inconsistent triad. that said, I'm gonna not talk about the analytics anymore. so here's the inconsistent triad. God's will is such that he wills buy it and God's intellect is not such that he wills, buy it. God's will is God's intellect. And then if A and B are identical, then if A is f, b as f, okay. Inconsistent triad, the first premise can be derived via an matic argument. God wills by his will. God does not will by his intellect. Therefore, God's will is such that he wills by it and God's intellect is not such that he wills by it. Okay. Where do we go from here? Well, as I say, there are four different, families of views, that I've found in the, in this scholastic period. the first two, they are semantic solutions. So the, they rely on semantics to do the heavy lifting for their, to escape this inconsistent triad. most of these people are nominal and what they rely on is their theory of connotation. So medieval, nominal, think that, there are terms that signify something and then they have a secondary sign that's called a connotation. So you can see ccam in quote one here, a connote of names that which signifies something primarily and something else secondarily. So the idea is, the, a term will signify and, refer to one object, but it will cause something else to mind, and that's the connotation. So, remedy Gregory of Rimini gives an example of this in, In the second quote here, he says, mercy and justice in no way signify distinct things or entities in God, but only the same essence of God. Nevertheless, both of these connote something beyond the essence or give a further understanding as justice connotes the merits of a creature and the effect of God concerning those merits. Where from is the distribution of prizes and punishments? Similarly, mercy gives an understanding of miserable creatures and of the liberation of God who frees them from misery. Okay? These terms, justice and mercy, both just refer to the same thing. They refer to God's, God's justice and God's, God's mercy and God's justice both just refer to God. They have distinct connotations. how so? Now there are two groups about, about how you employ these connotations. So one is, uh, a group I call the, the hardliners. And, the hard liners are people like Adam Emm, Gregory of Rimini, Pierre Da, Rodrigo Ariaga, and Thao Gonzalez, who were celebrating his 400th birthday this year. So. Gonzalez at 400. and so they, they think, so what they do is they deny, they would deny and, and explicitly deny, five star God does not will by his intellect. God does will by his intellect. Now, why'cause his in his intellect just is his will. Similarly, God, God punishes by his mercy and he forgives sins by his justice. Why? Because they're just the same thing. These, these all sound like they're false, but that's only because of the connotation isn't aligned. But strictly speaking, they're true. So you can see in quote three, Adam, modem by deity itself. God understands and wills and he understands by will, and wills by intellect. Here's gr justice is true to say that the divine intellect understands. Thus, it is true that his will understands and justice his will, wills so to his intellect, wills. Okay? So that's, so that's the hardliner strategy. Second strategy, is a group I'm calling the chemists. And this involves, William Ockham, Gabriel Beal, St. Bonaventure, interestingly. and they think they differ from the hardliners, because they think the connotation of a term actually enters into the truth conditions for proposition, proposition propositions that involve it. So, you can see, uh, quote four from Ccam here. uh, some terms can mean the same thing principally and connote distinct things because of which distinct connotations something can be truly, truly predicated of one and truly denied of the other. That's him denying three. Okay. and there, here he goes. God is not said to understand through his will. So he, he thinks, m and, and Bonaventure and be think that the, the connotations of terms actually enter into the truth condition. So, uh, it's gonna be false that God does not will by his intellect, or sorry. It's gonna be true that God does not will by his intellect. and that's the reason for it is semantic, though. now an AKA also says, look, if you, if we like instituted a new term, we like got rid of the connotation, then he'd take the same approach as the hardliners. But in fact, our terms do connote what they, what they connote. So, that's how it goes, and that, that's what he says. he says something, uh, yeah, here's a bunch of quotes about that. Okay. Third group is, the scotus. And in this, I include SCOTUS himself, some like proto Scotus like Peter, John Vy, other, and then, John of Reba and, the later SCOTUS tradition. The scotus. they also deny, three in the inconsistent triad, but they do it, via a metaphysical story, not a semantic story. So, and, and they do it through the formal scotus famous formal distinction. So quote six, therefore there is a distinction preceding the intellect in every way. And it is this, that wisdom is in the thing. Rei and goodness is in the thing, rei, but wisdom in the thing is not formally goodness in the thing. So they think, SCOTUS think, look, there's a formal distinction between God's will and God's intellect. And because of the formal distinction, something can be truly predicated of one which is denied of the other. And there's a complicated story about how that all works and what's going on there. But, we're gonna leave that aside for SCO for another 40 years when we can have SCOTUS set 700, So, um, that's the basic story. Okay. Now, Aquinas, this, the Mistic, the broadly Mistic camp, which I'm gonna argue includes Aquinas, Henry of T, and then some of the Thomas, like Thomas of Sutton and, and Suarez. Of course, not all of these people are strictly speaking Tous, but on this issue, they're in the, the broad family of, of, uh, istic solutions. And I think, so Aquinas also, denies three, but he doesn't do it with a semantic story. He doesn't, really do it with a metaphysical story a little bit, but it, puts a lot of weight on his cognition theory two, to deny three. And he denies it by saying that there's multiple razi in God in this. He agrees with SCOTUS and, and, disagrees with the hardliners and chemists. In fact, the hardliners and chemists critique. Aquinas is God for being too complicated.'cause there are multiple razi in it. They think there's just one razi in God. but Aquinas wants to say there's multiple. So what is, how, what is it forio to be present in, in reality? you can see in, in quote seven, uh, Aquinas says, AIO has said to be in reality in so far as there is something in reality beyond the soul, which corresponds to the conception of the soul as the thing signified and corresponds to the sign for that which the intellect conceives is a similitude of the thing existing outside the soul. Okay? So the idea is, look, there are CIOs like in the mind. those are like concepts or definitions or quantitative concepts we have of things. what AIO can said to be in reality insofar as there's something corresponding to it, a similitude of the, of the concept in the mind, similitude in the world of it. Okay? Is important because, this, this is a, this is a bit of a controversial point here, but, for Aquinas, all knowledge, all cognition is, uh, partly grounded in, in simul. So, he says there's quotes about this all over his corpus. So here's, here's two of them from in, in, uh, quotations eight here. All knowledge is brought about by a similitude of a thing known being present in the knower. what is understood is not in the intellect according to itself, but according to its similitude. So over and over again, he talks about how there needs to be a similitude of the thing known to be cog. In other words, a thing is cog only insofar as the concept is a similitude of the thing cog. further Aquinas thinks, reference and, names, names, refer and signify via concepts. So this is Aquinas disagrees with, SCOTUS and Aman friends here'cause they think terms just refer directly to objects. But, Aquinas thinks terms refer via the mediation of concepts. And so here's quote nine. Here's a representative quote for this. It should be said that according to the philosopher words are signs of understandings and understandings are solitudes of things. And thus it's clear that words are referred to the things signified by the mediating con conception of the understanding. Therefore, according to which something can be cog by our intellect, it can thus be named by us. Okay, so here's what I wanna say. we name things insofar as we cog them and we cog them insofar as there's a similitude. So, we name them insofar as there's a similitude. Now, here's the other thing. We have distinct udin as in the mind of the one divine perfection. There's no contras cotus, there's no distinction in God ex into Regi between the various divine attributes. But, nevertheless, we do have distinct concepts which are distinct similitudes of the one divine perfection. And because they're distinct similitudes, they're distinct cognitions and distinct, reference. I think. So, let's look here at quote, 10 here. Since God is in every way perfect, according to one in the same reality by one conception, our intellect cannot integral integrally, apprehend his perfection. And as a consequence, neither can our intellect name his perfection integrally. And thus it's necessary that our intellect has diverse conceptions of it, which are the diverse ess. And it is necessary that our intellect imposes diverse names, signifying those ess. Once those names are not synonyms, insofar as they signify diverse Zi. Okay? So we can't fully comprehend, we can't fully, grasp and cog God in his entire perfection. God's perfection is too much for our intellects to grasp. And so, instead we grasp him now by one, now by one ude now by another. So quote 11 here, if our intellect were to see God through himself, it could impose one name on that rcio. And thus the last chapter of the book of Zacharia, verse nine says that on that day, the Lord will be one and his name will be one. But that one name would not signify his goodness alone nor his wisdom alone, something of this kind. But it would include the things by all of them. So at in this veil of tears, What do our, what do our, our, what do our, uh, terms, goodness and wisdom, do they signify God's goodness alone and God's wisdom alone right now? and why is that welt? Because they're diverse. Milin, we can only cog insofar as they're similar to God. We can only refer to them insofar as they're similar to God. So even though God is one and simple, because he can be, has diverse similarity relations to creatures, we can actually cog one aspect or part, or, yeah, there's not really good words to put it. One, one sort of portion of God's whole perfection, which is really one our, our intellect, cognizing now one part of it. Now another with via our different concepts and via our different terms. and QAs gives, uh. One, one sort of explanation about how this takes place at, I dunno how much of an explanation it's, but he says something like this, in Deante as well. so this is the long quote, 12. Here the word body can be taken in many ways. Body according as it is in the genus substance, is so called from the fact that it has a nature such that three dimensions can be designated in it. Now it happens in things that what has one perfection may also attain to further perfection. This is clear, for example, in man who has a sensitive nature and further an intellectual nature. Similarly, another perfection such as life or some other such perfection can be added to the perfection of having a form such that three dimensions can be designated in it. The word body therefore can signify some real thing, which has a form from which follows the possibility of designated it in three dimensions and signify this with precision that is in such a way that no further perfection may follow from that form. In a way such that if anything be added, it is outside the signification of body. The word body can also be taken in another way, namely to signify a thing which has a form such that the three dimensions can be designated in it no matter what sort of form. It's whether some further perfection can come from it or not. Okay. So there are two ways to take body here. One is what's body signifying? Well, it's signifying all the bodily things as a whole. So Socrates, Brunel, doesn't matter what sort of form they have, doesn't matter what sort of species signifies all the bodily things, but there's another way, of, of that body can signify and that's with precision. And when it's signifying with precision, it doesn't signify the hole that is Socrates or Brunel. It signifies the perfection of having three dimensions, of, of possibly being three dimensional. With precision that is without any further perfections added on, it refers to the perfection of bodis as such. Alright, this is, he goes on. Same thing. We can do the same thing with animal and such, likewise is the relation of animal demand for if animal were to name only that thing which has a perfection, such should a consent and be moved by a principle within itself, and name this thing with the precision of another perfection, then any further perfection would be related to animal as a part and not as implicitly contained in the notion of animal. Okay. So animal in one way can signify for all of the animals in another way. It can sign, it can signify the, the perfection of the sensitive, the sensitive perfection. As such, without the rational perfection, without the, the abundance of daring that a lion has without all of the different, perfections that the various species add on to animality just. Just as such as being signified. And I think something similar here is going on with regards to the divine attributes or concepts and terms of the divine attributes. They, can signify merely the perfection of God's goodness as such without the perfection of God's wisdom, descending from any further perfection that can be added to it, even though they're really the same thing in God. And that's because God's really great and our concepts are kind of sucky. Okay, now you might not be asking, okay, well what, what is the thing that's being cog then? There's only one thing that to cog. So what is it? What is this goodness alone? Where is that? that's a good question. I think there are two different, two different things that one can say about this. one, one thing you, we could, we could, and this is me trying to, this. Draw out Aquinas's view here about how we could explain it, right? So one is we could say, well, what is divine wisdom? What is divine wisdom alone? It's something that's identical to God's sim. Simple perfection, right? But its from the other perfections. So there's only one thing there. They're all identical. But, it's, there's this divine wisdom and it persists from the others. It's identical to God's whole perfection, but is in some sense distinct from it. Distinct in Rcio. Right? another way we could think about it is, what is this thing that we're cognizing? Well, it's God's entire simple perfection qua, similar to our concept of wisdom. Okay? And that qua here is gonna have to be a, a reduplicate, a specific qua, not a red duplicative qua for the qua experts in the room. But, in, in the end, I think we get a picture, kind of like this little, this little drawing I have on the, on the handout here, where. The hardliners. And for the chemists, we have all these different terms and concepts. They all just pick out the one blob, which is God's entire perfection as a whole. That's it. That's all you can do. for Scotus, there are these, these lines, there are ex to array e distinctions in God despite a real identity. And so of course there are just distinct things there. So of course we can refer to them and think about them separately. For Aquinas, we have these little dotted lines because they're kind of there, they're kind of not. This distinction is partly grounded in God's perfection, partly grounded in our sucky concepts. Without our sucky concepts, it wouldn't be there. It's just one God in his simple perfection. But, because of our, of our, the diverse udin as he has to our concepts, we can pick out one part of God and now another. And, um, this I think is what's going on when Aquinas gives, explicit denials of three. From our inconsistent triad. So there are a bunch of examples of this. Here are two in quote 13, as the philosopher says, nothing prevents contradictory being predicated of that, which is the same thing, differing only by rcio. Again, a contradiction of rcio suffices also for affirmation and negation of the same, since any distinction as was said, includes an affirmation and negation. So, that's the story. I think Aquinas would also deny three in our inconsistent triad, but he'd do it via this, this, cognition story rather than the metaphysical or semantic story that are given by the other three camps. Alright, thank you.

Speaker 10 19:52

So, uh, we have about 10 minutes per questions. Um, I'll let Dominic call his own questions.

Speaker 2 19:58

Michael,

Speaker 4 19:59

thank you very much. Just make it clear for me why, and this is not meant to be reductio views. Yeah. Why, how is Aquinas's position different from AKA on this? So Aquinas's cognitive theory is driving it for aka seman theory, but like, they don't seem as different to me as I feel like I'm supposed to be. Thank you.

Speaker 2 20:23

Yeah. the difference I think is that for oum, we're cognizing God's entire perfection whenever we cog God, because that's the only thing there to cog. But Aquinas is like, look, God's too perfect. We can't have one concept that grasps his entire perfection. So what are we grasping? We're grasping wisdom alone for Ocom. We can't, we can never grasp wisdom alone from goodness because it just is goodness.

Speaker 4 20:49

But it's just a weird fact that when we talk, we are talking about wisdom alone.

Speaker 2 20:53

Well for, for ccam. So when we talk, we're not talking about wisdom alone, right? The, the, the, the reference is just God

Speaker 4 21:04

No, but connotative,

Speaker 2 21:04

but Yeah. But, but connotatively it calls to mind different things.

Speaker 4 21:08

Yeah.

Speaker 2 21:08

And those enter into the truth conditions of propositions.

Speaker 4 21:11

Yeah.

Speaker 2 21:12

Yeah.

Speaker 4 21:12

E even though, like cognitively, we're focusing on the whole but the connotations.

Speaker 2 21:19

That's right.

Speaker 4 21:19

Oh, that's some weird news. Okay.

Speaker 3 21:23

That's awful. It's kind of a nice view. Yes.

Speaker 5 21:31

Oh yeah. So thank you so much for that talk. I'm also interested in these issues, but coming from a very different background, I speak to he philosophy, language, so I was just thinking, I, the way I understood Aquinas, again, not the expert, to be naming a distinction between, um. How we problemize the wisdom and goodness centering God is that, that the different ways that God's perfection can be imitated by creatures or the different ways that God is sort of an exemplar cause of these, perfections and creatures. So I'm just wondering where that would come into.

Speaker 2 22:09

Yes, good. So the, the, the causation thing is not, uh, I think that's, that's not what he wants to say because he attacks Maimonides for, for saying this, that, God, we, God has denominated good as the source of good things. And, he says, that's not what we wanna say. God's good intrinsically, not merely as a, as the source of, of good things. Now, the simi, the, the similitudes, I think, I think that's, that's close to some of the stuff I was saying. I, I think the picture is, look, God has one perfection in himself. It's just the fullness of perfection now, because of the distinct ude that he has to creatures, we, can start separating out one perfection from another right. And start cognizing God partially, and referring to him one aspect of his perfection without the others. and that's because of, that's because of the weakness of our intellects and the, and the fact that God can be the one simple perfection of God can be diversely, imitated, by our concepts and by creatures. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Speaker 6 23:24

First two we're talking about that is he's God.

Speaker 2 23:28

Well, some, I, I, it can refer to like Deus just refers to God, but I think we can refer to. The perfection of God's wisdom alone. And that's because we can't, uh, that's because our cognition can be just of God's wisdom alone because we can't fully co God's entire perfection at once. Yeah. Andreas,

Speaker 7 23:52

yeah. Question about what these parts or aspects are.

Speaker 2 23:55

Yeah.

Speaker 7 23:55

Uh, and when I look at one and two here on your handout, one feels to me like either skepticism or eco garris, right? Like it just so's this. There's a stench of prediction to one, two seems more promising, maybe. what, do you think that these are equivalent or are these like different approaches? Maybe you could say something about are these different, different tastes on you or,

Speaker 2 24:25

yeah. These are me trying to make sense of what these parts or aspects are. What is this wisdom alone? And these are two different ways you could think about it. I think that Aquinas texts are under determined how we're supposed to think about it. and, yeah, I'm part of the reason I gave both is because I wanted to hear what people thought about that. So, uh, I'll put you down as a vote for number two. yeah, thanks. Uh, yeah.

Speaker 8 24:50

So Dominic, can I, kind of, piggyback on the, the earlier question. So,'cause the, the reference language is throwing you off a little bit. Yeah. So, is the claim this, that, on the, on the Thomas view, that our word CIA right, has a res significant in God that sins from, like the res sign Miata of like almighty or something like that? Or, or is the view that. Wisdom and, and, you know, omnipotence sup for different things.

Speaker 2 25:29

Well, when you have abstract terms, the signification and the supposition, what's signified and what's sted for are gonna be the same thing. so,

Speaker 9 25:39

I think not for the mod, which I take it aquinas's, one of,

Speaker 2 25:46

I, we might have to talk offline about this.'cause my, my understanding is that for abstract terms, like ani or wisdom, what is signified and what is deposit for the same day, but we'll, we'll

Speaker 3 25:57

talk, yeah. Let's, okay. Song.

Speaker 2 25:58

Yeah.

Speaker 3 26:06

Andreas.

Speaker 7 26:07

another thought about my, my favorite number too.

Speaker 3 26:10

Yeah. So is the always not the

Speaker 7 26:13

best way

Speaker 3 26:13

to phrase

Speaker 7 26:17

is the, is it something like, actually our, our concepts don't take objects as their, as their, as their, as. There's their ment I that like maybe make the, the right analysis of our concepts. Is that what they think are objects?

Speaker 3 26:33

Yeah.

Speaker 7 26:33

What they think are like objects.

Speaker 3 26:36

You

Next Talk Transcendentals

Speaker 2 26:39

That's right. Yeah. I've, I've, I've played around with a couple different ways of, of doing, of doing this. So yeah, you, you, you could think what the object is, is a, is a object or you could think our cognition, there's a, when we co god, we, we cog it. So in, if we were to write that out on logic, there'd be a Cooper, So we cog God that kind of function like an adverb. We cog God, qua like wisdom Lee. Yeah. these are two other ways that you could model it. Again, string, string a bit from of course, from, uh, how Aquinas would put it. But yeah, I, I think that is, that is one way to put it. I mean, it is striking on some of these quotes, he, there, there are multiple ways you could read them, but at some point he, sometimes he does say the, the, the, the, the thing co cog is the similitude, the intellect, what this is quote seven, that which the intellect conceives is a similitude and, a similitude of the thing existing outside the soul. So that looks kind of coy. or again, maybe it's a, maybe it's a cognition with a cooperator. It COEs it similarly to this, right? yeah. So if you like that suggestion too, that's another way I could. I can go. Thank you.

Speaker 10 28:05

Our next speaker is Father Philip Neri Reese. He's a Dominican friar and professor of philosophy at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelica in Rome. His research focuses on metaphysics and its methodology, especially in Aquinas and the Mistic tradition. The title of his talk today is How Convertible Are Aquinas's Transcendentals.

Toward The Second Premise

Speaker 8 28:29

So, a few we framing words. So first, this talk is an exercise in what we might think of as systematic tomism. So I am starting with things, about which I have a very high degree of exegetical confidence, and then I am working out. So what, what ought we as mistic, meta physicians now today say, I'm extremely uncomfortable with, how iconoclastic the conclusion is. So, um, if you guys can walk me back from the ledge, I would greatly appreciate it. so I will try to speak only for 15 minutes. We'll see if I can succeed that, succeed in that and so as to open up a lot of time for q and a because I anticipate, uh, there will be some disgruntled mistic metas in the room. So here's why I'm so, unsettled. The conclusion that I have reached in this paper is that we, to mystic meta physicians have to pick between three dissatisfying choices. There are no other options. So either we have to say, that transcendentality is metaphysically insignificant, in which case we get all of the canonical transcendentals from day very tate one, one counting as transcendentals. And we do not need to impose any kind of restriction on divine omnipotence. So specifically the god's power to create. But we only get those two things, all of the canonical transcendentals counting as transcendentals and no restriction on God's power to create. We only get those if we're willing to accept that transcendentality is metaphysically insignificant. That's not appealing. So here's another option, right? We can have metaphysically significant. Transcendentality and not impose any kind of restriction on God's power. But then we have to say that three of the canonical transcendentals from Dave Tate one, one are not transcendentals name. And, and they're bad ones, right? It's not just that we can get rid of like res and uh, and quid, right? We have to get rid of quid, we have to get rid of verum and we have to get rid of bone. that seems unappealing. So what's our third option? Our third option is this. We can maintain that transcendentality is a metaly significant concept, and we can maintain all of the canonical transcendentals from day ate one, one at the cost of imposing an ex, what I take to be an extreme restriction on God's creative power. In particular, the restriction is this. If you want all of your transcendentals and you want transcendentality to be, to be metaphysically significant, then you need to say that it is impossible for God to create a world that has exactly one non-intelligent, non being. You have to say that God can't do that. Not it's unfitting, not there are better ways to do it, right? You have to say, we have to say God cannot create a world with exactly one being that is non-intellectual and non oli. and that seems unappealing. so here's how we get to that trilemma. It's actually a very simple argument, and you've got it, at the beginning of the handout. So premise one, if Transcendentality is to be metaphysically significant. Then it has to mean what I've called transcendent the fourth sense of transcendentality, but premise two, if transcendentality means the fourth sense of transcendentality, then we have to either exclude some of the canonical transcendentals, namely Ali, quid, veri and bonum, or we have to in introduce a strong restriction on God's creative capacity. Therefore, if both of those premises are true, it follows that if transcendentality is to be meta physically significant, then we must either exclude some of the canonical transcendentals or introduce a strong restriction on God's creative capacity. And that conditional is equivalent to the trilemma that I gave you earlier. So, what I do in the paper is just, there are just two main sections, and so section one proves the first premise, and section two proves the second premise. My proof for the first premise that if transcendentality is to be metaphysically significant, then it must be the fourth sense of transcendentality is an inductive proof. So I'm just here. Let's think about things that we could mean and, and that some people have meant in the past by transcendental. Here's the, the weakest and most sort of liberal one. So what we mean by transcendental is just aio not limited to a single category, right? So you might be inclined like SCOTUS to say that wisdom is transcendental because it's predicated both in the category of quality and of God who is not in the category of quality, right? So its predicate, its range of predication is beyond a single category of being. And I've given you a bunch of examples of things that will count as transcendentals, if that's what we mean by transcendentality. And the, the one that's especially interesting there is accident will count as transcendental there because it's predictable of nine of the 10 categories of being. but if we don't like that, we can have a stronger sense of transcendentality and many scholastics have. so you, we could think second that transcendentality means a rcio found in every category of being. And in that case, we have almost as many things counting as transcendentals. but accident no longer will count as a transcendental. But here's something that will multiple, here's another one contingent, right? So contingent is aio found in every category. Multiple is aio found in every category Potential is aio found in every category. and so could be transcendental in this second sense, but. Most Thomas want to be more restrictive than that. so we could mean three aio found in everything, in every category, and that's gonna get rid of all of those, second members of disjunctive pairs, right? So that's gonna get rid of potency. It's gonna get rid of multiplicity, it's gonna get rid of contingency, it's gonna get rid of particularity, right? nevertheless, we still have a pretty serious problem with this third sense of transcendentality because this is going to allow to count as transcendentals things that I think we can helpfully refer to as contingent convertibles. So the third sense of transcendentality is aio founding everything in every category, right? So not just in every category, but in everything in every category. But contingent convertibles are, thi include things like this, right? So, Despite my narcissism, right. I think it's not metaphysically significant that everything in every category is somehow causally connected to me. That's true. Right? So every actual being is actually causally connected to me. Every potential being is potentially causally connected to me. Every quantity is, in some way causally connected to me. that does not reveal the nature of being right. That's, that shouldn't, a meta physician shouldn't be especially interested in that contingent convertible. Why? Well, because I am contingent. Right. God didn't have to make me right. And if God had chosen not to make me, then not everything in every category would be in some way causally connected to me. There are, a number of others I gave you, not more than 10 to the 53rd kilograms. So we are told by people who seem to know that the total mass of the universe is 10 to the 53rd kilograms, which means that literally everything in every category of being is not more than that, right? So some things in some categories are not more than that because they don't have any mass, right? So the Archangel Gabriel, the time yesterday, the position upside down have no mass, and so are not more than 10 to the 53rd kilograms, right? Some things have mass and just have a lower mass, right? but it should be obvious to us that there's no metaphysical weight, forgive the pun, to the fact that everything in every category is not more than 10 to the 53rd kilograms. So this ushers in the fourth sense of transcendental that most invoke, Aio necessarily found in everything, in every category that I think now we're in the field we're in, we're in the neighborhood of metaphysical significance, right? I think there's really good reason to think that something that is necessarily found in everything, in every category is going to be somehow revelatory of the nature of being. and many istic meta physicians hold this view somehow insist on an even stronger notion of transcendentality. This is transcendental the sense five, right? So aio necessarily found in everything, in every category, and grounded immediately in the rcio of being. So if you're somebody who stays up at night thinking about whether beauty is a transcendental, the difference between meaning four and meaning five, is the locus of the debate. Right. so people like Jan Tson argue that beauty is not a transcendental because it is immediately grounded in the rcio of goodness and also in the rcio of truth. and therefore doesn't count for our purposes. We don't need to decide between meaning four and meaning five. All we need to recognize is that the bare minimum moment where we've moved into the realm of metaphysical significance is at least meaning four, right Meanings one, two, and three, all will count as transcendentals, contingent convertibles. Contingent convertibles are not metaphysically significant. So nothing is going to be no transcendental. One, two, or three is going to be metaphysically significant in virtue of being transcendental one, two, or three. so if transcendentality is to be metaly significant, it has to be, either transcendentality, the fourth sense. Or some stronger sense. and in fact, like Joseph Owens has a transcendental six, right? Where,'cause he wants to exclude res, from the, the real transcendentals. But the reason and the reason why, right? everybody gets, gets worried about four, five and then potentially stronger things is because I take it that everyone involved in talking about the transcendentals wants to be able to identify the transcendentals with the properties of being. And so when Thomas take themselves to be talking about the transcendentals as metaphysically significant and as revelatory of being, they do it precisely in the context of identifying transcendentality with the, the properties of being. So if I'm right, then I've just proven inductively, right? Just by give, showing you right. I've proven the first premise to prove the second premise. I use a nasty, gigantic argument. so, the argument, I'll just read through it very briefly. I'm not gonna pause for a really long time on things. Um, and then I'll just make some structural comments about the argument. Here's the argument. Every real analog is either a creature to God analog, so something that's analogically predicated of God and creatures. So verti vertical, or it's a creature to creature analog. It's horizontally analogous, a across and ends kae, no creature to God. Analog is necessarily convertible with ends. Kae. Why? Well, because I just said that creature to God, analogs are predictable of ends, kae, and God, right? So. That just means by definition they're not convertible with ends kaune, but ends kae is the subject of metaphysics from two and three. You get no creature to God. Analog is necessarily convertible with the subject of metaphysics, but every property of the subject of a science is necessarily convertible with the subject of that science. Therefore, from three and five, every property of the subject of metaphysics is necessarily convertible with ens kae. And from four and five, you get no creature to God. Analog is a property of the subject of metaphysics. Now, there are creature to God analogs for quid, vera and bona, right? We can predicate something of God and of creatures. We can predicate some, true of God and of creatures. We can predicate good of God and of creatures and precisely according to that vertical. That in, Dave ate two 11. Aquinas characterizes it as, as excluding any kind of determinate distance between the analogs. so those analogs exist, but from seven and eight we get no creature to God. Analogs for Ali quid, veri and bonum are properties of the subject of metaphysics. Now, there are also creature to God anana, analog, creature to creature analogs for something. Vera and Bonum. We can call a substance in an accident, both something we can call a substance in an accident. Both good. We can call a substance in an accident, both true. Therefore, from six and 10, the creature to creature analogs for quid vera and bonum will be properties of the subject of metaphysics, if and only if they are necessarily convertible with sune now. 12 and 13 are the, the big premises that we should care about. So, 12 follows from Aquinas's characterization of quid Riman Bonum in Dave Verte one, one where he derives the transcendentals. So premise 12 says this, if God can create a world with just one non-intellectual, non being, then no creature to creature analog for quid Vera and Bonum is necessarily convertible with ens. Why? Because in that hypothetical scenario where God creates exactly one substance and it's non-intellectual, non volitional, then in the sphere of Enz Kae, there is no other being in virtue of which the being would be something. There is no. Created intellect in virtue of which it would be creature to creature. True. And there is no created will in virtue of which it would be creature to creature. Good. Yes, there's the divine intellect. Yes, there's the divine will. Yes, there's the divine being. And so the creature, that solitary, lonely creature would be something true and good by a creature to God analog, but not by a creature to creature analog. And premise 12 is about creature to creature analogy. which again, in Dave ate two 11 Aquinas characterizes as not excluding determinate distance between the analog. so these are different analogies of being the horizontal and the vertical. Premise 13 is the key one. It just says, but God can create a world with just one non-intellectual, non-IT being therefore. From 12 and 13, no creature to creature analogs for quid, vem and bonum are necessarily convertible with sune. Therefore, no creature to creature analogs for quid. Vem and bonum are properties of the subject of metaphysics. And now you get move in for the kill. So premise one, premise nine, and premise 15 give you this. Every real analog is either creature to God or creature to creature. No creature to God. Analog for quid vera and bonum is a property of the subject of metaphysics, but no creature to creature. Analog for quid Vera and bonum is a property of the subject of metaphysics. Therefore, no real analog for quid vermin. Bonum is a property of the subject of metaphysics, and if the transcendentals are supposed to be the properties of being the subject of metaphysics, then the conclusion of this, of this argument is that quid vermin, bonum are excluded from the transcendentals. Now I take it the premises one, two, and we can talk about this if you want, but, premises one, two, and five are both per se, NoDa, at least to the wise and uncontested held by St. Thomas. Premises. Three, eight and 10 are not per se, NoDa, but are uncontested held by St. Thomas. which means if we want to deny a premise and in this argument and not deny something uncontested held by St. Thomas, then we have to deny premise 13. We have to say no. God could not create a world with just one non-intellectual being. And now we've got premise two of the overarching argument, right? You have if meta, if transcendentality is going to mean properties of being right is, and so at least transcendental sub four, then we have to pick between either accepting the conclusion. And so excluding three of the canonical transcendentals or denying premise 13, which means restricting putting a pretty heavy restriction on God's creative capacity. and, since both of those premises are true, then we have to accept the

Speaker 9 47:47

conclusion which gives us the trilemma. Thanks.

Speaker 3 47:59

Excellent. And then question.

Speaker 4 48:01

Yeah. So I wanna, ask you a little bit more about how you understand Oli Liquid bar and mm-hmm. if they mean there is another thing mm-hmm. And something is known mm-hmm. Something is desired, then this has a lot of traction. But if they mean there could be another thing.

Speaker 3 48:21

Yeah. Good.

Speaker 4 48:22

Alright. And I don't see why so 13 says God can create a world with just one non-intellectual, non-viable being. Well, maybe you need to talk more also about the, um, identity conditions on worlds. I don't see why God could create such a world and then at least potentially add to that world another being, which would solve all of your problem.

Speaker 3 48:45

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4 48:45

So there's partly just a question of whether you understood, stand these trends that led us to mean actually something's going on, or just potentially and also the identity.

Speaker 8 48:54

Yeah. Great. So, um, thank you. So, the, uh, in the paper, I consider three possible moves that we might make to try to, like under re-understand transcendentality and, and the transcendentals. To kind of get out of it. so I mentioned one which most people do, which is appeal to the divine. but that's not gonna help because that's just gonna establish a, a god to creature analog. so let me just read you the, the very second one, which is the one you anticipated. So can we avoid the conclusion by appealing to potentiality rather than actuality, such that the solitary creature in our imagined scenario would not actually be quid vermin bonum, but it would potentially be quid vermin bonum. No. First, because to grant that in such a scenario there would be a being that was not actually quid vermin. Bonum is simply to deny that quid vermin bonum aren't necessarily convertible with ska, right? So if, if there's an instance where they're not actually those things, then so, then the second thing that you might wanna do is, is a kind of like a. A counterfactual reinterpretation. So no, no, no. I'm not saying that they're just potentially, I'm saying, I'm saying something like this. No. What it is to be quid, is to be, so a being, a being would be quid just in case it would be, other than some being if God created a multiplicity, right? Um, and it, something will count as, as verum if it would be true, right? Like if God created, a, you know, or would be knowable if God created an intellect, et cetera, et cetera. and I was really excited about this kind of, counterfactual move, until I realized that, that exact move can be used to make necessary all of the contingent convertibles. So, being, being somehow causally connected to me, um. Now becomes necessarily true of every being in every category because, it, because every being in every category is necessarily such that it would be causally connected to me if God created me. and so, so to make that move is just to put the transcendentals in precise parallel with things that we've already recognized are metaphysically insignificant. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 7 51:14

So then why not just move to Transnet five and say, well, look, yeah, sure. it's true that necessarily everything is such that if fun filter theory existed much, but, but that's not the example be these are the ones, is that

Speaker 8 51:35

Yeah, ex Uh, except if, so, if you move to anything stronger than four, then you're going to exclude more things, not less things. and we've already seen that at the level of transcendental sub four, you are already excluding quid vera and bonum, which I take it most people don't wanna do. so you can, right, so, so transcendental sub five, if, if you think that's what transcendental means, so it's necessarily, you know, necessarily found in everything in every category and immediately grounded on being, that doesn't help you, that doesn't get you back quid verman bono.

Speaker 7 52:09

Yeah, it does. If I do this kind of actual, because I'm saying, look, here's something which is necessarily found in every category, so grounded immediately upon azi B that the thing is, you know, possibly intelligible to, uh, to really intelligence or possibly lovable, I agree with, or, or possibly, possibly distinct from another, because those are.

Speaker 8 52:33

so, so good. So, so let me just, this, this may be a deeply dissatisfying response, but I'm not aware of any Thomas meta physician ever who has, taken him or herself to mean that by transcendental, not even like the most rigorous, like Owens and, and like McCart, so that might, I'll think about it, that might be like a place in logical space where you could go, um, but at minimum, it's still possible to say this, right? if that is a viable move. then everyone ever in the history of domestic metaphysics who has taken transcendentals to be metaphysically significant, still false prey to the Trina because that's not what they mean.

Speaker 7 53:21

I was just, I was just, yeah. Being, John St. Thomas.

Speaker 8 53:23

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 7 53:24

And, I think he, I think he takes this, this position because he says, it wouldn't be enough for their, for, for things to not be true. Mm-hmm. Or not be good. It wouldn't, yeah. It's not enough to imagine a scenario where there aren't creatures. you have to imagine this area where other creatures are impossible.

Speaker 8 53:42

So se yes. Yeah. So, so send me the text. I'd be, I'd be interested to look at it. I, I would just, one little point is, just to note that that's not actually the same thing as doing the counterfactual move. but we can talk about it more later. Ja.

Speaker 7 54:03

So just a question on the static. So I took Michael to be suggesting that you reinterpret sense or in this kind of factual way, you say you were excited about me. Until you realize started, let's back in two many things. She,

Speaker 3 54:17

yeah.

Speaker 7 54:18

And then Andreas was suggesting, yeah, but if you had a grounding thing that might bring it back down to, of the face. But I was thinking if you were excited about the counterfactual one initially, then it does seem like a good strategy would to find some further conditions that that de further reduced it.

Speaker 3 54:32

Mm-hmm. Yes. Uh,

Speaker 8 54:38

right. Well, so I, so I think, I think there are basically two moves. So, so either we go where Nooma has gone before, right? So new, new frontier, or we participate in kind of the, the tradition that has existed up until now, and then we pick one of the three options.

Speaker 7 54:59

But then just, so then maybe the, the question to that, suppose that, you has not seen this problem, let's counteract one and thought your bone with that. Wouldn't you already be going more, Dr. Must have done.

Creature God Convertibility

Speaker 8 55:13

Yes. And so I, and so I could, I mean, so, so a, a, a third response to that particular objection is just, this, this looks like it's, it's moving pretty far beyond the actual conversation of, of historical ISTs, and what Thomistic meta take themselves to be doing today. But I thought I didn't need to do that because I thought I had a better response. Yeah. But I could do that one more. Yeah. Sam,

Speaker 7 55:39

think just revealing myself, not as wise, but, uh, on section three, premise two, I, I have difficulty seeing why that's the case. So no creepy guy logging, necessarily verbal with Moon A. It does seem like fair on a bone. You could tell some story where God's, you know, to be true is to be mad by God's intellect. To be good is to be ed by God's will. Those seem necessarily convertible against Monet? I guess I just don't see why, why that would be problematic.

Speaker 8 56:09

Sorry, give it to me again. So premise two says, no creature to God. Analog, right? So a creature to God, analog is by definition, aio that is analogically, predicable of God and creatures. Yeah. Yeah. So that can't, that by definition can't be convertible with ens because God isn't in sune. Oh.

Speaker 7 56:31

So the the thing part today

Speaker 8 56:35

de right, so for Aquinas, right, Enz kae is caused by God, right? And does not contain God. Right? So this is, this is like a really important thing that distinguishes his metaphysics from Scotus metaphysics. Ava is metaphysics and suarez's metaphysics, right? That God does not fall under s kae. rather the, he's the principle of ens kae. So any, any rcio that's predictable of God and une. Is by definition predictable of more than ens, at which means it's not convertible because what is convertibility? Just by definition it's the bi. Okay, cool. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you all very much.

Speaker 10 57:20

Yeah. Our last paper this morning, uh, is from, Dr. Joshua Ho Shield. Josh is a professor of philosophy at Mount St. Mary's University. He is the author of, the Semantics of Analogy, rereading Cajetan's Danum, an Logia, and co-editor of Metaphysics through Semantics, the Philosophical Recovery of the Medieval Mind Essays in honor of Klima. The title of his paper today is Peace, A Case Study of Transcendentals Divine, and. That's going around. I'm sorry that I didn't have enough. but actually about half an hour ago, I just put online you go to tiny url.com piece handout.

Speaker 3 58:09

You'll get the handout. tiny url.com piece handout. I see if I can fit my computer up here. is that

Objections and New Proposals

Speaker 10 58:21

is alright. in the introduction, I think you heard that the, um, the title of my talk changed Since I initially proposed something. I thought I would do something a little more metaphysical and even, kind of reflecting on Thomas's, spiritual reflections on peace, this turned into something that actually fits better with the panel. This has become the transcendentals, panel. so I'm hoping to get some help. I feel outta my depth. I, I don't understand the scholarship on the transcendentals. 25 plus years ago when I started writing on analogy, I sort of explicitly set aside the question of the transcendentals. so I'm, I'm dipping my, it's nothing against the transcendental. Some of my best friends are transcendentalists. but I'm, I'm sort of wad into something and, and trying to make, sense of it. So what I'm gonna do today is, make some observations about, what Aquinas does with pseudo text on peace in chapter 11 of On the Divine Names. then I'm going to, review some recent scholarship that has engaged Aquinas on peace and questions raised by, on the divine names. Then I'm gonna object to some of those because, you know, you can't have a talk about peace without stirring up a little turmoil. and I'm not gonna resolve it, but I'm gonna make some sort of proposals or hypotheses at the end. if you don't have the handout and, and can't see it online, it, there's, there's one primary text on it, one secondary text, and then just the names of some of the other scholars. So you're not even missing all that much if you don't, if you don't have it. so the first thing that I think, people who would be new to Aquinas might be surprised or new to, new to the philosophical tradition might be surprised, is how, obviously it is that peace is a positive presence in, in DiUS and in Aquinas. I mean that, that's surprising because we might be inclined to think of peace as a negation or a privation, right? conflict, war discord. Those are seem to be the, the things that we notice and then we want them to go away. but, but peace. Peace is, peace is the being and the absence of peace is the privation. It's so much real that DiUS and Aquinas describe it as causal and generative. Right? It's, it's an, it's an efficient cause, it's a final cause. It's an exemplar cause, but it's specifically generative. And the language reminds me of Dima speech about love and beauty in the symposium. that, that it, it's, the piece seeks a kind of productive unity. that's a, that's a major theme of, uh, DiUS in the divine names and, and certainly Aquinas, in his, in his exposition of it. the second thing to note about what DiUS does, and Aquinas following him, is that peace extends to all beings. the reflection starts with what we might call the, the, the version of peace most known to us, which I take to be the political sense of, peace as concord among human beings among. Um, embodied rational agents. Uh, but then it extends actually kind of in three directions. It extends inward to Concord within the rational being, right? So you can have a kind of interior piece. it extends up to other rational beings, angels and including God. so God is the exemplar of peace. Um, and it extends down to non-rational beings, that have a, a, a kind of peace that the, the term that's used is by co naturality. but, but that, that seems to be saying it's not just a metaphor that non-rational things can be at peace. They really are at peace in the way appropriate for the kind of beings that they are. They're not rational beings, but they're real. And so they, they, they have a share of participation in peace. So, so the point here is that peace starts maybe with what we would think of as the political center, but then it extends inward up and down. In that extension of the notion of peace, reflection on the rato of peace keeps developing and changing. So, there are a lot of different words that are used to describe what is included in peace. Uh, some of them emphasize unity and union and DiUS. And Aquinas seemed to be playing with different ways to assert, union and unity. And whether, whether it, those ways imply that there was a diversity that had to be resolved. there are words that describe, concord or agreement, especially, with, with a connotation of, rational creatures coming to agreement. But then, uh, extending that to, to something that doesn't necessarily imply, rational agreement like rest or tranquility. So a lot of the words that we associate with peace, just naturally in English, you know, are come out as expounding the rato of peace. for DiUS and for St. Thomas. and the fourth thing that I wanna note about the reflections there is that, it's kind of hard to avoid that peace ends up sounding like a transcendental. In chapter 11 of, of the, divine names and coin, it says, commentary on it. and the quote, I, I won't read the whole thing, but, but the, quotation from, uh, Francis McMahon on the handout. this is an article from 1939, an early issue of theist. I think spells this out really well, that, following DiUS and St. Thomas there, peace is, convertible with being anything that is insofar as it is, is participating in peace and can be said to be at peace. I'm, so, I'm not reading either the Aquinas or the, McMahon quotations for the sake of time, but I, that's why I provided them for you. so now some recent scholarship on, peace in Aquinas, Gregory Berg, published in 2020, something that he probably wrote about five years earlier for a lecture, as best I can tell, an essay about peace in Aquinas, which raises the question of whether peace is said properly of God. And Berg in that essay finds philosophical reasons to say that peace is not properly said of God, that it's only said relationally. not absolutely, but in terms of his, of, of God's relation to creatures. So here's a, a, a short quotation from Berg. He says, God's being is such that no obstacles can stand in the way of his fulfillment. He's been emphasizing divine simplicity. Hence, none need be removed, nor is there any diversity in God's nature that can be brought into unity. He's purely and simply one. And for this reason, it would seem that peace can be said of his being not formally, but only in relation to creatures. Reich is kind of tentative about that. He thinks that that's kind of a philosophical conclusion and he's willing to allow that there might be theological that is revealed. Theological reasons to think that peace is properly said of God, but only insofar as there is division or diversity in God. In, uh, as, as revealed in the doctrine of the Trinity. John Minet, in 2019, so a year before, reg's, essay, was published, but Berg might not have known the essay since he wrote his lecture earlier. apparently independently, raises the question of whether peace is a transcendental. he argues that it is a transcendental of the good, unfolding the desirability. Sort of spelling out precisely what it is that's being desired, in the desirability of goodness on the question of whether peace is said properly of God, he comes to the similar conclusion as rei, that God's absolute unity, precludes peace from being a proper divine name, except in light of the Trinity. So here's quotation from minor in 2019, without Revelation of the Trinity. One could not say there is distinction or multitude in God, both of which are required to properly predicate the positive rat of peace. now Minor published a book this year on Peace. and he comes back to this question and it's, and it's developed a little bit. he continues to argue that peace is a transcendental of the good, and he, again addresses the question of how peace is a divine name. And now here, cognizant of and somewhat as an alternative to Reich Berg's suggestion, he defends the view that peace like unity can be predicated, affirmatively, absolutely and properly of God. That's as opposed to negatively, affirmatively, but relatively or affirmatively, absolutely, but metaphorically. But he argues Aquinas can only do this because of a subtle shift in his articulation of the rato of peace from including union and order, which on his interpretation implies multitude or distinction to including only unity. So it's not union or ordering, but simply unity. That's it. Minor argues that in doing so, Aquinas is speaking philosophically, emphasizing divine simplicity, and that without revelation of the Trinity, one could not say that there is distinction or alterity in God, both of which are required. I'm quoting him again to properly predicate the positive rato of peace. In the strictest sense of implying union and order. So the bottom line between both Reich and Minor is that peace may be a transcendental, but it doesn't really stand on its own. It's a transcendental of the good in the sense that it, is sort of reducible to the good or it can only be understood as unfolding something that's already contained in the good. And that even as such, even as kind of a transcendental in the way that some people argue about beauty, right? And that's, that's part of the background of this argument. Even as such, it is only properly known as, as applying to God by revelation, not by reason. They seem to be in agreement about that. So now, briefly my objections to that position. Um. Rei and Minet seem to look first for a rat of peace and then consider whether that rat is predictable of God. Minet in his, in both his book and his paper, but it's even more clear in his book, considers the question of the transcendentality of peace before the question of it being a divine name. And the, and the question of the transcendentality of peace rests on the question of what is the rat of peace that makes sense if you think of it on its own. But the movement of dyes and Aquinas reflections in chapter 11 and, and the exposition seems to go in the other direction. They both trust that God must be an exemplar of peace. Whatever peace turns out to be God must have it preeminently and then they look for a rat that would allow them to apply it coherently both to God and creatures. It's just totally different direction. Second objection for DiUS and Aquinas. This movement, their movement from divine name to considering transcendentality instead of the other way, is clearly a philosophical movement. God is peace and peace extends to all creation, and that can be known by natural real. It's specifically discovered through natural theology the divine names Aquinas considers. Although, although it brings in the light of Christian faith, the, the main arguments are un unfolding. What can be known about God by natural reason and peace is one of the divine names. the third objection is that if peace, if peace needs to be subsumed, subsumed under one of the more common transcendentals, it's not obvious to me why it has to be subsumed under goodness. the quotation that I have on the handout from, McMahon. Emphasizes how easily it would be to subsume it under unity. And actually the reasoning of minor, uh, I think better supports subsuming it under unity rather than goodness. But for that matter, I think it could be subsumed under truth, because it is wisdom that orders and when Aquinas in the Summa talks about, peace, one of the places he talks about it is under the virtue of, wisdom. and I think it could be subsumed directly under being insofar as rest or remaining what it is or fully fulfilling its nature as the kind of thing it is. You know, it doesn't have to come under good or unity. That could be, that could just be directly anyway, this practice of looking for, a, a, a place for the transcendental, under another transcendental, it doesn't obviously lead, to goodness. I mean, peace is desirable, so goodness makes sense, but not at the exclusion of the others. My conclusion is really sort of pointing out some problems or raising, some questions. But, but even before that, I will say that I think my, what I'm noticing in Chapter 11 of the Divine Names confirms, Brian Carl's recent argument about how we should understand the relationship between the transcendentals and the divine name. So he makes, he, he, he spells out in great detail, how he thinks. It's, it's a, a, a mistaken move to assume that you can only get to divine names after you straighten out the transcendentals and then know, know how to move from transcendentals to divine names. He, he finds, uh, that it actually, often works in the other direction. a proposal. I think it's important to make a distinction when we're talking about divine naming and Aquinas between. We need to make a distinction between thinking of divine names, right, as describing God. That's an exercise of natural theology, from thinking about, divine naming as more of a semantic question that comes up saying question 13 of the summa, right? So you, you actually use divine names and talk about divine names and unpack what the divine name to mean long before you talk about how the divine names do that for you. Right? and I don't always find that distinction, carefully made, another proposal. and well, it seems to me that we need to distinguish between different senses that we talk about the rato, of a concept. the rato could be the concept itself, and then you can be using it before you have an articulation of what it means. we start talking about peace before we thought about how to define it. but the rato can also, in these conversations, it often seems to mean not what concept do you have in your head, but how would you spell that out in terms of other concepts? and it's fine to use Rato in both of those cases, but it seems to me we just need to do a better job of keeping straight, whether we're talking about a concept that we can use without even knowing how it's gonna be defined. and an articulation, of, of Raio. And this is especially important to keep in mind when talking about the transcendentals because presumably the transcendentals technically don't even have definitions. So they can be spelled out or articulated in terms of other concepts that are useful to us, but we're not defining them. and that suggests that also maybe transcendentals don't have to have one definitive, uh, articulation. That it's okay if in different contexts of talking about the transcendentals, we spell it out in different, in different ways. This brings me finally to a, a a couple of the things that continue to bother me about, the, the transcendentals and, um, father Philip near can confirm that I did come up with this, uh, independently, although it confirms what his, what his talk was about. I don't think it makes sense to talk about transcendental properties of being, the transcendentals are convertible with being, it's not like being is there and then we have to, I dunno where that started. I dunno who talked about Father Philip Ne can tell us who started that. I dunno where it started, but I don't think it makes sense to talk Scotus fault again. so I don't think it makes sense to talk about transcendental properties of being, I, I don't understand why there has to be a normative list of transcendentals. Uh, maybe there does, but I just, I don't understand why. I know why some of them like get talked about more than others. It seems to me mostly for anthropological reasons, right? So we in ourselves distinguish between intellect and will. So after being we add truth and goodness. but, it seems to me that, that if there's any intelligible way to describe, being then, then it can be a transcendental and I don't know why it has to be. you know, then we have to argue over whether it's canonical or not, or what, whether there's a, where the, whether there's a final number, and if there is a normative list or not. it doesn't seem to me that it, new transcendentals that we consider have to always be subsumed under one or another, right? As I was describing for peace, it seems to me that it can be, it can be, described in any, under any of the, more common transcendentals. The last thing I'll just propose as a kind of reflection is that it seems to me. That a lot of what DiUS does with peace and, and Aquinas seems to draw out of him, connects in very uncanny ways with what Aristotle does, with the notion of actuality. and if you, if you remember in the metaphysics, Aristotle has two words for actuality in, in Greek. One of them is ina, one of them is intel. and there's a very awkward but philosophically interesting translation of Aristotle use of those terms by Joseph Sachs. And Joseph Sachs translates ege as being at work as the agon in it, but he translates inte as being at work remaining itself, active in such a way, not that it's changing, but that it is keeping itself to, to remain. Right. That sounds a lot like peace. and it seems to me that some of the transcendentals that we, that, that we discover, they might not be like. Obvious everyday terms and, and things first known to us. But once we reflect on them, they might actually reveal something deeper about the divine nature. and about all creatures, that would even suggest that they should be more privileged than the, than the common ones of say being truth, goodness. So thank you very much. Seven minutes. 10 minutes. Good. Every one of our speakers stated 20 minutes on the mark. I don't know that it's ever happened, so thank you. Congratulations,

Speaker 3 1:17:00

Josh. Oh, Andrea, sorry.

Speaker 7 1:17:04

One thought about the, the canonical list.

Speaker 3 1:17:06

Yeah.

Speaker 7 1:17:06

I think I, I kind of share your dissatisfaction with the whole, obsession with it. What canonical is for one reason that you might have for. But it's, it's important. She is, uh, there's, right, there's this text in, uh, the Dave Botenia in where he, he's kind of worked out very carefully how you get the idea of unity. and he kind of, because there's this worry about conceptual circle there, and he kind of does some very careful work to explain, oh no, first you say you have being, and then you negate it. So then you can say, this being is not that being, so then you have distinction. Then you have multiplicity you the

Speaker 11 1:17:41

deny

Speaker 7 1:17:42

complicated story. Right. But the, the, the point is that, one of the things that the s are supposed to be is these like, interesting, interesting ways of explicating, the medium being, but the other thing that they're supposed to mean is they're supposed to be kind of epistemically first. Right? That these are the of the first conceptions of your mind. These are the ultimate items of resolution. And then you don't want a kind of, you know, if you, if you have a, a multitude without any kind of hierarchy of order to done, and that's kind of chaotic. So you wanna, you wanna have some kind. Hierarchical order of these first conceptions that you can kind of explore them in a, in the order. So these are, these are the kinds of thoughts I think that people get worried about where exactly you put something like peace because you want to have an order of these first conception.

Speaker 10 1:18:30

That, that makes perfect sense to me. And if we just wanna say, look, the canonical list is the, the, those that are convertible with being, that Aristotle talked about in the metaphysics, I'm fine with that, right? We got there, we get unity, we get truth, we get goodness. fine. but then when we discover that there's something else that's also convertible with being, and that maybe outside of the, scope of, metaphysics, strictly speaking as a science or not outside of it, I don't know if it, if it seems to inform our understanding of creatures and of God and it, and it's convertible with being. I don't know why we have to say. Yeah. It's not first known to us. It's discovered. There, there are, there might be transcendentals that we just start with as sort of basic, but then we could discover others. why don't they also deserve to be considered as transcendental? We, we can have, we can have different lists, but there, there should be lists

Speaker 7 1:19:21

of,

Speaker 10 1:19:22

can I, can I just jump in on this? Yeah. I polish something about 20 years ago, those which, which argue something very slightness. there are lists of the transcendentals that we can find. Probably the, the most canonical one is Dave ate one One, right. But in Dave ate one, one. What Aquinas is doing is trying to define truth and, uh, transcendentals that he enumerates there. It's sort of a roadmap to getting to truth and it's a nice system, systematization of the transcendentals, but, but it, but it's not meant to be a systematization of the transcendentals. And I think that in the later tradition it's become that and, and, and there's a rigidity there. which is, which is, which is, I don't think it's an Aquinas. and I think it's good to undo that rigidity.

Speaker 7 1:20:09

That sounds, that sounds great.

Speaker 12 1:20:14

Please. Thank you very much. Just a, a question of, clarification because I didn't read the article of, divine Names and Trusted, and I'm sure, I'm not sure what exactly the point, if you can explain again.

Speaker 10 1:20:25

well, he does a lot more than what I'm summarizing, and it's, it's a, it's a long article. but I, I think for me, the most useful point, and it is a central point, is, that it had, it, it it's common for ISTs to approach divine names through the question of transcendentals. And, and this is confirmed for me by exactly what Minor and and REI were doing. That there's good reason to think that that's not how we should understand the relationship. You don't have, I don't, I don't think Brian says this, but I would say there's something kind of Cartesian about that. Like, we gotta get our concepts straight and then we can do philosophy with it, or something like that. Um, he finds many cases where the divine names, discussion of divine naming can take place independently of or before the discussion of the transcendentality of the names that are being used.

Speaker 3 1:21:19

Okay. Thanks.

Speaker 12 1:21:23

I'm, I'm thinking about

Speaker 11 1:21:25

what diocese is taking, if anything for pro that corresponds to peace in his language and seeing the language of, of his Yes. And the overflow. I'm wondering if, peace might, might really be, um, something with the effect of self-sufficiency that comes from. Something that, especially in the, the try to remain tube mono. Yeah. Sophist faith, the reality of like being a high enough type of being. In this case we're talking about the highest ultimately, but that might be such that there's a becomes that over blows.

Speaker 7 1:22:02

Yeah.

Speaker 11 1:22:03

I'm just thinking about what might be the heritage of that.

Final Q&A and Augustine

Speaker 10 1:22:06

It's a great question. I would love to explore that more. It's, it's obviously a, a rich resource for Christian theologians who then use it, to describe not just how, God's peace overflows, but even how human peace can overflow. And so, so the peaceful person is also a peacemaker. Right. and actually the second reading yesterday from, from James, I I, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna remember it exactly, but it. It lists things that follow from each other and pieces at the beginning of the list and how things flow from peace. So, the one, the one thing that I'm sympathetic to in, in, or a thing that I'm sympathetic to in, in Berg and Arts Reflections, it is very clear that that, peace helps articulate certain reveal of Christian truths, right? That, that Christ brings peace, that, that, and it makes sense that peace would be appropriated to one or another of the persons of the Trinity, right? That the dove as the Holy Spirit is a symbol of peace, but also, Christ brings peace. God as governor overseeing the universe, he's, that's ultimate, ultimately his peace, the Father. so it's not only appropriated to one, but it can be appropriated to each of the three persons of the Trinity. And it describes something about what a state of, of healthy human affairs is. It's, it's peaceful and, and one of the signs of its peacefulness is that it's spreads peace to others. But that's all, that's all Christian theological. And I, and, and it's all rooted in a, a neoplatonic idea that of the fecundity of peace arrived at without Christian revelation. I just think that's fascinating.

Speaker 3 1:23:44

Agree.

Speaker 13 1:23:45

Yeah. Uh, can you explain to me what is the problem of the expression? Uh, incidental properties of PA and my understanding being is the first incidental, the basic incidental and other incidental are. Then in that case, aspects are, different ways in which MJ can be expressed. So the limited being is

Speaker 10 1:24:15

be I, I, I have no problem with, I have no problem with being, being central. it's the word properties. Why not just say transcendentals of being like, what, what, what, what work is the word properties doing? If you add, we can talk about transcendentals of being, or the transcendental properties of being

Speaker 13 1:24:32

property is not the main, you can, you can revisit it aspect or something like that.

Speaker 10 1:24:38

I, that, that reduces it somewhat to me. But it does, it makes it sound as if it, it, it's too easy to forget that what we're talking about is convertibility. That when you're talking about one, you're always talking about the other. Anytime you're talking about being, you're talking about goodness. Anytime you're talking about goodness, you're talking about being, they are convertible with each other to use properties or attributes, makes it sound like you've got, a core thing. And then other stuff that attach, I, I, I'm, I'm over, I'm exaggerating the imagination behind it, but I, especially the word property, especially in, in, you know, Anglo American philosophy. Suggest to me all kinds of baggage that I would like to get away from. And

Speaker 13 1:25:21

first on being and other residents are after being this.

Speaker 10 1:25:27

And that's, that's fine. And we probably don't really disagree about what we're talking about, but I do, I do have this strong opinion about what, which language is more appropriate. And I was happy to, I didn't know this, but I did, I hear you say last night that Aquinas never says transcendental properties of being.

Speaker 14 1:25:42

So, so there are things that Aquinas and his corpus calls Peris, Peris and propria. They're never the, the canonical transcendentals of David Verte one one. And they're always dis, almost always destructive pairs. So there are, there are a few other things.

Speaker 15 1:26:00

Yeah. Yeah. One is one of the cia.

Speaker 14 1:26:03

No, it's, the only time gets, it's only one end many. And, uh, there's one place where he calls true and false differe entities, which actually isn't the same thing Ascentis, but

Speaker 7 1:26:15

yeah. Got everybody know about.

Speaker 10 1:26:19

I know. We just, we actually just hit our time. If, if there's one more question. Yeah, yeah. There's one more in the back. Yeah.

Speaker 16 1:26:25

So those a beautiful and a peaceful talk I have to won. Um, but, uh, I didn't hear Gusan in all this, and I, I just kept thinking, my goodness, I mean of peace, you know, and tranquil, tranquil, um, tranquility ordinance, you know? Yeah. And the whole, whole study written on this, you know, and um, so I was wondering whether, um, Augustine plays into Thomas' Understanding Peace as much as, uh, pseudo DiUS. That's the kind of first question. But what I thought most beautiful about your talk was how you show, I think, and this is a, kind of seemed for reflection, how peace goes all the way up. And all the way down in, in the sense that, you know, there is really no mnt frame. It's not that the world is just a kind of a, a closed system of things in the state of some state of actuality, but the inte ect use of things, if, if we read them the way you do that, the, that the end of things, which is to say the peace of all things is given in all things. And so God, as the end of all things is actually failing all things. and so that's, I thought you showed both that peace goes all the way up again in some ways, that the tranquility of order is at the bottom of everything, you know, the god of order that in all, in all things. And that, that's somehow a key to Augustine too.

Speaker 10 1:27:45

I, I agree. And I, I only alluded to Augustine by using words like tranquility in order. Aquinas is obviously aware of that. I, I didn't talk about him mainly because he is not central to to, to the text from the divine names. When Aquinas and, and minor's book is, is excellent on this, on the, the different sources of, of the notion of peace for Aquinas when Aquinas is, is theorizing peace. He's drawing on pseudo pseudo, which has the, the theological, frame he draws on Augustine, who starts with the political right, tranquility of order, conceived of as something important for social beings. But, but Augustine also extends it beyond that. he's drawing some on the, early fathers and spiritual tradition of interior piece. And of course, he's drawing on scripture drawing. So drawing, he's always looking for ways to, to, uh, not just interpret scripture through those other three sources, but use scripture to shed light on the notion of peace. Thank you very much.