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First Philosophy: Metaphysics or Epistemology?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2010

Kenneth Dorter
Kenneth Dorter
Affiliation:
University of Guelph
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Extract

Philosophy, and especially metaphysics, today enjoys less respect and influence than at any time in the last 800 years, since Aristotle was rediscovered by the Medievals. Philosophy once was the realm of the controversies and upheavals that determine man's perspectives and attitudes; today that realm is the sciences and arts. Once “the queen of the sciences”, philosophy is rapidly becoming their handmaiden or stepchild. The very relevance of philosophy for life is seriously being questioned in many quarters. Today's “empiricists” are decreasingly concerned with philosophy in the traditional sense, and increasingly concerned rather with the methodology of certain disciplines, such as science, logic, grammar, etc.—if not with the outright destruction of philosophy itself. And even the speculative metaphysicians of today seem to find literature more conducive than philosophy to the quest and expression of their ideas. Sartre expresses himself philosophically in plays and novels and Heidegger's works become increasingly poetic; he has expressly called philosophy the “bad danger” to thought, as opposed to poetry, the “good danger”.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 1972 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1972

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References

1 Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens, #5.

2 The following analysis of the First Meditation owes a great deal to Richard Kennington.

3 Meditations, Adam and Tannery edition of the Latin text, p. 20. References o t Descartes are to page and line numbers of this text, unless otherwise noted. English translations are either from the Laurence J. Lafleur translation or are my own.

4 He also mentions the psychological irreducibility of colours. This makes colour a useful illustration of his point, but even what is psychologically primary may be derived physiologically from quantitative extension. Thus, in an earlier work Descartes has already argued that colours are in fact reducible to quantitative elements, i.e., shape (Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Rule XII).

5 Thus the title, Meditations on First Philosophy.

6 It is perhaps significant of Descartes' attitude toward metaphysics that the only reference to it in the Meditations is at p. 36: 25, where “metaphysical” is used as synonymous with “tenuous.”

7 By this I do not mean that every post-Cartesian philosopher believed that one had to work out an epistemology before one could turn to metaphysics. Obviously, this is not the case, although it is true in a large number of instances. Rather, I mean that modern metaphysics presupposes that the difference between appearance and reality is an epistemological one, not an ontological one. This will become clearer in what follows.

8 See, for example, WilliamRichardson, S. J. Richardson, S. J., Heidegger: Through Phe-nomenology to Thought, the Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1963, pp. 42–4.Google Scholar

9 The impossibility of a wholly empirical mathematics is attested at least by our acceptance (if only implicitly) of the principle of non-contradiction, a principle that is already presupposed in any empirical learning. Any additional principles that are presupposed by mathematics must also in some sense be a priori, because of the apodictic and universal nature of mathematical reasoning, and our ability to “figure out” mathematics ourselves.

10 Pp. 35: 6–15, 46: 5–8, 53: 9–15. Cf. the crucial role of the “natural light” (e.g., p. 40: 21), whose truth is similarly based on psychological indubit-ability (p. 38: 23 f).

11 Pp. 17–8 (cf. French, Adam and Tanner y edition, p. 13: “anciennes opinions”).

12 The related question, whether this inconsistency was due to an inadvertent conflict of two allegiances, or to a deliberately insincere payment of lip-service to theological dogma in order to escape the fate of Galileo, or to some other cause, need not be considered here.

13 This is, of course, distinct from the question of the existence of the external world, as Kant later showed.

14 Critique of Pure Reason (Kemp Smith translation), A15/B29.

15 It is questionable whether Spinoza's non-interacting parallelism of thought and extension can support the view that the body influences the mind in this way. Nevertheless that is how Spinoza accounts for the mind's failure to perceive reality immediately and necessarily, despite its intrinsic disposition to do so.

16 Being and Time, London: SCM Press, 1962, p. 193.Google Scholar

17 Two exceptions are Hegel and (in places) Russell, both of whom are closer to Plato in this.

18 E.g., Plato, Theaetetus 153d–160b.

19 Cf. Theaetetus 156c–157a.

20 Cf. Phaedo 74b f.

21 E.g., de Memoria 452b8–19, 453a12–14.

22 Metaphysics, A1 and Λ7 (ŏρεξις at 890a21 and 1072a26).

23 Cf. Plato's Theaetetus 161b ff.

24 Thus, in his Battle of the Books, Swift has the Medievals aligned with the Moderns against the Ancients.

25 E.g., Augustine, de Vera Religione, XXXIX, 72; de Libero Arbitrio, Book II, Chapter III f.

26 de Ideis, 2.

27 E.g., de Trinitate, IX ; de Libero Arbitrio I: VIII: 51; II: VIII, 81. The tripartite souls of Plato and Aristotle are divisions of the soul but not of the mind: within them reason—the mind—is uniform.

28 Summa Theologica, Book I, Question 15.

29 Ibid., First Article, Reply Obj. I (Dominican Translation). Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics II 2, 997b6.

30 E.g., Friedländer, Paul, Plato, vol. 1, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958, Chapter XIV;Google Scholar and Heisenberg, Werner, Physics and Philosophy, New York: Harper and Row (Torchbook), 1962, pp. 67–75.Google Scholar