Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T03:25:45.143Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Immanent Transcendence1

(Variations on a Logical Theme)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Leslie Stevenson
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Logic and Metaphysics, University of St. Andrews

Extract

The form of this paper is unconventional. Just as composers sometimes want a change from the traditional sonata form and write a movement in the form of theme and variations, so I would like to depart from the orthodox form of philosophical paper, which contains a closely reasoned discussion of some particular problem, by stating a theme which will be a principle of pure logic, then sketching a number of applications of it in different areas of philosophy. But the variations on my theme will not be entirely disconnected with each other, for I suspect that it is a theme which could have especially important applications in philosophical theology. So my later variations on it will be increasingly oriented to concepts of God, and I will close with a coda which will consist of some controversial remarks about the controversial concept of transcendence.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1970

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 89 note 2 A delightful example used by Professor P. T. Geach.

page 91 note 1 It is one of the great advantages of the modem logic of quantifiers (invented by Frege) over the traditional logic of Aristotle, that it makes this distinction.

page 92 note 1 Further development is done by Kirwan, C., in Mind, October 1968.Google Scholar

page 92 note 2 Variations on this thought are to be found in Leibniz, , e.g. Philosophical Writings (Everyman Edition), p. 53, 67–8Google Scholar, 148; and also in Pascal, , Pensées (Penguin edition), p. 91.Google Scholar

page 93 note 1 Locke, , Essay Concerning Human Understanding, III. 3. 15ff. and III. 6. 1ff.Google Scholar

page 93 note 2 One of the unclarities is how truths can be individuated and counted.

page 93 note 3 Aquinas, St Thomas, Summa Theologica, I–IGoogle Scholar, Q.2, Art.3.

page 94 note 1 This conception of science has been attractively propounded by R. Harré.

page 95 note 1 This is one of the main themes in the section of The Critique of Pure Reason entitled ‘Transcendental Dialectic’, e.g. B365, B671ff.

page 95 note 2 The Bounds of Sense, p. 36 and p. 159.

page 95 note 3 Aquinas, , Summa Theologica, I–IGoogle Scholar, Q. 2, Art. 3; Descartes, , Meditations on the First Philosophy, Meditation III.Google Scholar

page 95 note 4 Aristotle, , Nichomachean Ethics, Bk. I, Ch. IGoogle Scholar; Aquinas, , op. cit., I–II, Q. 1, Art. 4–7, I–I, Q. 2, Art. 3.Google Scholar

page 96 note 1 This argument can be found in Pascal, , Pensées, p. 75 (Penguin edition)Google Scholar and in a modern catechism for adults recently produced by the Dutch Roman Catholics (A New Catechism; p. 12–13, 237–8).

page 96 note 2 Strawson, , The Bounds of Sense, p. 37 and p. 222.Google Scholar

page 97 note 1 I am, obviously, assuming this philosophical rejection of transcendence, rather than arguing for it here.