International Catholic University
In distinguishing the subject of metaphysics from that of natural science and mathematics, A says these latter cut off a part of being, whereas metaphysics studies being as being. That is, their subjects are more particular or specific than the subject of metaphysics.
Objection: but this seems to suggest that generality is to be preferred to specificity. Are we to imagine that to know a bird as a being is preferable to knowing that it is a robin?
The ordo determinandi -- at the outset of natural philosophy, in the opening chapters of the Physics, Aristotle notes that it is peculiar to the human mind to begin with the very general and confused and progressively to win through to specificity and distinctness . . . far from being an achievement, then, generality seems to be the unavoidable starting point . . .
Thomas in ST I.85.3 asks the question: Is the most universal first in our intellectual knowledge?
Our intellectual knowledge takes its rise from sense knowledge which bears on particulars, so globally speaking human knowledge begins with singulars
But out intellectual knowledge of them commences with generality
Being would seem to be just such a totum universale vis-a-vis the subjects of natural philosophy and mathematics
Is all this being abrogated in the case of Metaphysics?
Metaphysics is a wisdom, a divine science, not glittering generalities.
"Thus we must advance from generalities to particulars; for it is a whole that is best known to sense-perception, and a generality is a kind of whole . . . " -- Aristotle
De trinitate q. 5
A. 1 . . . science: necessary -- immobility
Intellect -- immateriality
The object of intellection then is marked by removal from matter and motion
Physics? We study the kind, the type -- common matter . . . bones and flesh not these bones and this flesh
Mathematics -- all sensible matter
Metaphysics . . . all matter
Abstractio et separatio
Abstractio totius
Abstractio formae
Separatio
It is because there is reason to think that some things exist apart from matter and motion that metaphysics is a separatio and not merely an abstractio
"Both are concerned with things which are separate from matter and motion secundum esse [separatio], but differently due to the fact that something can be separate from matter secundum esse in two ways
A. such that it is of its very definition that it be separate from matter and thus can never exist in matter and motion, e.g. God and the angels
B. such that it is not of their definition that they be in matter and motion, although they can be: being, potency, act, substance . . .
"There are then two kinds of divine science, one, in which divine things are not considered as the subject of the science, but as principles of the subject, which philosophers pursue and which is known as metaphysics, and another, which considers divine things themselves as the subject of the science, and this is the theology which is handed down in Sacred Scripture." -- Thomas Aquinas
It is the wise man's part to order; most intelligent, he must grasp what is most intelligible . . . and what is that? The most intelligible can be gauged in three ways
Ex ordine intelligendi
The things which cause certitude: causes, so first causes
Ex comparatione intellectus ad sensus
Universal to particular: the most universal things
Ex ipsa cognitione intellectus
Separation from matter: the most immaterial, divine things
These considerations do not yield three sciences but one and the same:
"For the separate substances mentioned are the first and universal causes of being. It falls to the same science to consider the proper causes of a genus and the genus, as the natural philosopher considers the principles of natural body. So it falls to the same science to consider separate substances and common being, which is the genus of which the aforesaid substances are the common and universal causes."
This science does not consider these three things as its subject, but only common being.
The subject of a science is that whose causes and properties we seek, not the causes themselves of the genus
Knowledge of causes is the end
Three names of the science
Theology studies divine substances
Metaphysics comes after physics
First philosophy -- first causes of all things
"A common conception of the soul is a statement accepted as soon as one hears it. These are of two kinds. One is common to all men, for example, were you to say, 'Equals taken from equals leave equals,' no one hearing this would deny it. The other is of the learned alone, although it arises from the first, for example, 'Incorporeal things are in no place,' etc. to which the learned but not the crowd assent." -- Boethius
In discussing the second criterion of the most intelligible, Thomas makes it clear that he means universally most common,
"such as being and the things which follow on being, like one and many, potency and act and the like. Such things ought not to be left wholly undetermined, since without them complete knowledge of what is proper to a genus and species cannot be had. Nor should they be treated in any particular science, because knowledge of each kind of being needs them, and by parity of reasoning they would have to be considered in all the particular sciences. It follows that they should be treated in a common science, which, since it is most intellectual, is regulative of the others."
The principle of non-contradiction
elenchic proof -- refutation . . . reductio ad absurdum
* Plato and Aristotle on sophistry