Aquinas & Neoplatonism Part I w/ John Vervaeke
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- Опубликовано: 21 окт 2022
- In this mind bender of a conversation, John Vervaeke and I discuss a book by W. Norris Clarke on Aquinas. We try to drill down on the problem of emanation, and especially on whether Aquinas can answer better than Plotinus did.
It wasn't easy, so we'll have to do a follow up 😅
Clarke's book: www.amazon.com/One-Many-Conte...
John's channel: / johnvervaeke
I could listen to these brilliant gentlemen all day every day. I had a thought recently that perhaps the fully integrated state of shared identity seeks individuation, while the fully individuated and isolated state of being seeks shared identity. In poetic language, authentic love pursues freedom while authentic freedom pursues love. This seems like a pretty good organizing principle to me. Hope you see this and it inspires you in some way. Cheers!
Thanks for the support Dave, and thanks for sharing your thoughts
I love your observations about the in-practice, almost unsuspecting convergence to the union of emanation and emergence - even in cases that propositionally shut out the possibility. Very helpful to keep that door open in my own thinking!
Very excited for this! I've been relistening to all your previous conversations with John recently and have found your collaboration to be very eye opening. Thanks for your work and your kind spirit JP.
Thank you, I hope you find this one valuable as well.
See chapter 10 of that book wherein Clarke writes:
"Form/Matter I. This new composition, nested within the above essence-existence one, is located precisely within the essence component."
Thanks Mark
I have to think that Aquinas defining God as unlimited esse (NB: that's John moving his hands toward the camera) has to be an important part of his ontology.
It's like God is both 1. making all the emanation at the bottom of the ladder and 2. constraining it from the top down. Simultaneously pushing up and down.
Anyway, great convo fellas. The One and the Many was my Metaphysics textbook, many moons ago.
Thanks for watching and taking the time to comment Eric
More than anything, the manner and respect with which this dialogue took place is the vital factor here. Thank you both 🙏
Thank you
@@j.p.marceau5146 Hey JO I would just like to say that I admire in these conversations how you question, learn, question and keep learning. Much respect 🙏
These videos are approximately 70% above what I can grasp or understand but I feel you both pulling me higher with each one. Thank you.
Thanks Kyle
I'm happy to read that people still enjoyed this discussion, I found it hard to understand myself 😅
"The symbolon is the presencing of the interpenetration of the emergence and the emanation. That's why it's imaginal."
What an amazing conversation! Wow. I feel inspired, enlightened, and confused.
haha thanks Demetrius
I'm happy to read that people are enjoying the conversation; I found it hard to understand myself 😅
@@j.p.marceau5146 it's the good kind of confusion. Lol. Please just keep doing your thing!
Keep up the good work JP and JV!
Thanks Andrew
This is difficult, I'm busy researching whilst making notes whilst trying to figure this out or simplify it 😅 whilst trying to participate in this conversation 🤔 whilst actively listening and trying to Interpret in a way that makes sense, whilst remaining open , I love this conversation by the way, I feel that more time needs to be spent on it, I find it to be relevant in some way , or worth pursuing, it is incredibly interesting. Can't wait for after Socrates.
Thanks John and J.P.!
Thanks Lee, I hope you've been well
Thanks Lee.
4:20
and so... eidos, as i understand it here, is not an abstract ideation (?) but always dwells in particularity. it always discloses itself as form, and never really remains formless.
Nice follow up convo. Thank you gentlemen.
Thanks Derek
@@j.p.marceau5146 I'm not going to lie, I connected more strongly with the last convo. I didn't track so well with this one :/
@@DerekJFiedler haha I expected this when posting it. I'm even surprised by the generally positive reception.
This discussion was so technical I was barely following myself 😅
@@j.p.marceau5146 haha! It is a wild ride. Glad you guys shared the exchange, talking at the cusp of your conceptions.
Thank you for THIS
Thanks for watching Neri
35:40
condensation / concentration
...this is to say, probly, that particularities are richer than their abstract ideas.
Amazing. Is there a part 2? I can’t find it.
Thanks.
We have not recorded it.
6:33 - wanting a compare/contrast of eidos and logos, or maybe their love story
Awesome! Subscribed.
thanks!
Happy that people are enjoying the conversation; I found it hard to understand myself 😅
JP & John - What do you think about the “first act of condensation,” which you discuss at minute 40:00, being an image of the Trinity.
God, eternally, subsists:
The Father - He who initiates (can’t think of a more precise word) the Condensation.
The Son - the point of the condensation.
The Holy Spirit - the process of the condensation itself, and the referencing back of the Son to the Father.
This could then make the bottom half of the hourglass shape John was drawing the created universe
I like it 👍
What Dr Vervaeke seems to miss (and I don`t blame him, it`s not clear in Clarke) is that each being in Aquinas has its own existence, each time you use the word "its existence" pointing to a thing you mean a different thing and it`s not just a matter of its essence. If it was really ONE existence and many essences then it would be a kind of pantheism although it would create problems with the potency inherent in the first cause: if the first cause is capable of realizing itself, constraining itself, it would have an inherent potency and would demand a more primary casue which would be pure act. That`s why Aquinas insists on the separation of God and reality, because change, multiplcity and coming to be requires an inherent potency, an essence allowing a thing not to exist. But God is pure act, incapable of not existing, if He changed he would require yet another cause and wouldn`t be God. If He came to be at some time it would mean he wasn`t God, because coming to be requires an actualization of potential essence.
That`s also why in 21:00 John says that esse works bottom-up. Trouble with distinguishing act and potency, also ascribing causal power to potency. But potency is causally active only accidentally, only if it is act wrt to something else. But when it plasy the role of potency its receptive and Aquinas thinks of matter as receptive, not giving existence. Of course the matter we see is secondary matter which already was actualized. And for this reason it can act on other beings. But only after being actualized by form. Aquinas does not invert the scheme. God is pure act, one thing, pure form. But His form is unrestricted. He gives things their particular existence (their particular esse), this esse actualizes a potential essence, makes its existence determined. Regarding your troubles with distinguishing essence with forms: essence is neccesarily a form and sometimes a form additionally particularized in matter). For Aquinas the essence of a particular being involves matter if it`s required for its particularity. There are "general" essences but these exist only in thought, they are abstracted from particular beings. Sometime we talk of "the essence ofanimality" but ths is an abstract, the real metaphysical principle at work is particular essences of particular animals and these are differentiated by virtue of their secondary matter. Although they have a form common to their species, the same causal powers, that`s why general scientific laws can work, because they describe the causal powers of forms common to many things. Sometimes essences don`t require further differentation by matter, that`s the case for angels.
Obviously we know that actualization of potency is simultaneous on all these levels of a being and it`s not like essences exist before coming to be actualized. My thomist professor says in regard to neoplatonism that Aquinas takes the structure of the neoplatonic world and puts it in inside a being.
And it could be intresting to Dr Vervaeke, because it provides yet another phenomenological distinction. If what Aquinas talks about is particular esse then in a particular being, there is an aspect of actual existence - factuality and the second, intelligible aspect - of what exists and these are causally related as act to potency. John would say that the whole reality works like this, Aquinas talks about a particular being. The point is pure existence (God) doesn`t differentiate into particular beings. It creates other beings which are particular by virtue of their essences.
Also there`s an incredible moment Dr Vearveke says in 23:45 that it is unclear to him "what is the one of THE esse". And it is sooo revealing aboout how he thinks of esse. As one, universal thing, in a kind of pantheistic way. But the metaphysical language of Aquinas is analogical. He doesn`t always mean one thing one he says "form", "essence" or "existence". These are roles played withing a being. According to Aquinas there are different existences, different beings with different esse. But there is one esse which is unrestricted, whose essence is "to be". This is the principle of God`s oneness, He`s the only pure act.
But overall I`m really impressed that Dr Vervaeke takes the analysis so far and notices problems with his reading which are real problems. You were right in 44:30 that it all comes doen to an equivocation between the senses of existence and this is really the hardest problem of metaphysics. Aquinas does address thes issues in Summa Contra Gentiles, in De Veritate, De Potentia Dei most of all in a short treatise De Ente et Potentia (the most important work of him).
I happen to struggle with the same problem right now - what is the essence - through my course on medieval philosophy. It looks like Aquinas says there is a principle of individuation and a principle of common nature in both form and matter that would participate simultaneously - top down and down up - in emanation and emergence process... But I may be putting too much Duns Scott into Aquinas..? This is from Question 75 in La Somme Théologique (sorry, I have it in French ) :
"...certains philosophes ont admis que la forme seule appartenait à l’espèce, la matière étant une partie de l’individu et non de l’espèce. Mais cela ne peut être vrai, puisque tout ce que désigne la définition appartient à l’espèce. Et la définition des êtres physiques ne désigne pas uniquement la forme*, mais la matière*. Aussi, dans ces êtres, la matière est- elle une partie de l’espèce, non pas la matière qui a une quantité déterminée, et qui est le principe de l’individuation*, mais la matière commune. Par exemple, il est de l’essence de cet homme particulier qu’il soit constitué par cette âme, cette chair et ces os, tandis qu’il est de l’essence de l’homme en général d’avoir une âme, de la chair et des os. Car tout ce qui est commun par essence à tous les individus contenus dans une espèce appartient forcément à la substance de l’espèce."
Not sure if that helps but thanks anyway to both of you, your discussion helps me to think about the problem differently. And I'm reassured that I'm not the only one who doesn't get it right away!
Thanks JF, useful quote
@@j.p.marceau5146 Merci à toi JP, you guys are one of the reason I got back to university and it was a very good decision!
I would love to see this conversation in dialogue with Buddhist scholars. It seems to me that this is all attempting to figure out the bits of Dependent Origination that goes- consciousness- volition- nama rupa. The recursive nature of the DO gives a sense of emanation and emergence as one process. I’d love to see you guys speaking with Ajahn Brahmali or Bhikku Bodhi who are deep scholars of this view.
Thanks for the recommendation Alexandra, I'll have to check that out.
I'm wondering, what's at the end of the emanatory top down chain?
Which end? The top or the bottom? Within creation, the top end is forms, and the bottom end is matter. Outside of Creation, the origin and end is God, both bottom-up and top-down.
Thank you for having the honesty to acknowledge that the Trinity is an invention of the historical need to maintain polytheistic ideas, not something you can claim is somehow logically consistent or rationally defensible. If you want to believe it is a mystery or a tradition or even taught in the Bible, you are free to do that. What is absolutely unconscionable is the insistence that people kowtow to your mystical, traditional or exegetical theology in discussions of rational theology by pretending the Trinity is in any way rational. This completely destroys the idea of dialogue with anyone who is not a Trinitarian.
@@brianortiz809 Not explicitly. But I think it was pretty evident.
We could see the Trinity as the first incarnation of the paradox that gives the One and the many, or the existence and non-existence of categories to name a few of a very long list. It is a paradox only from our perspective because the limits of our reason are constrained by the law of non-contradiction, which makes look like a mystery anything that violates that principle. But this principle is only an absolute from our earthly perspective as third included logic or quantum physics show (again, to name a few...).
JP - what seems to have happened in practice in Christianity is that people identified the nous or the logos with the ground of being or the one. Even these kind of debates died out pretty early. There were so many controversies within the first few centuries of Christianity about the nature of Christ and trinitarian disputes that made it that people stopped speculating about exactly how to map the trinity to different parts of the Neoplatonic system that it became too risky to even talk about.
JV- it did, it did. But that’s because of the unacknowledged but indisputable fact that any interpretation of the trinity other than the statement of the trinity has been declared a heresy.
This is exactly right
Where does tripartite metaphysics originate?
@@danielbooth5718 Middle Platonism / Neoplatonism. Though arguably you can take it back to the doctrines of Pythagoras who viewed number itself as divine. So all this stuff about 1 or 3 or 4 being of metaphysical significance has roots in that worldview.
@@samuelglenn123 sounds about right to me
@@samuelglenn123 You think the Trinity is ultimately rooted in Pythagoras? And since when does the statement that "this stuff about 1 or 3 being of metaphysical significance" correctly characterize the Trinity?
I agree 100% with Vervaeke that the historical commitments of Christian orthodoxy to the doctrine of the trinity is an impediment to this sort of dialogue
Untrue. Read von Balthasar on this topic
At the same time, I really wonder if it's on purpose. Like John had to postulate a non-logical identity between emergence and emanation, the Church postulated a non-logical identity between Father and Son. If we don't do that we get problems...
I'll of course keep trying, but I'm skeptical that we can somehow get to some higher tribunal to argue for the identity in a more positive way.
Form, ens, esse, essence and actus essendi, existence are different for Saint Thomas Aquinas, John is not making those distinctions mainly because he doesn't accept spiritual intelligent, rational and conscious beings that have the capacity to participate and affect the world causally, he doesn't believe in angels, or thrones, archangels, etc. so he won't make the distinction between composed essence (material and formal) and spiritual essence (simply formal). A book is different from another because of its material, formal, final and efficient causes, they are all intellegible characteristics but to understand how they are intellegible you must enter into the way reality is presented in our intellect, John is taking the short route of changing the metaphysics to fit his anthropology instead of changing his anthropology to truly fit the correct metaphysics.