Remarks

In 2012, while working in a postdoctoral position at St. John’s University, I became deeply immersed in Immanuel Kant’s monumental question: whether metaphysics, as the study of reality and existence, is possible as a science. This inquiry led me deep into the history of philosophy, from the early Pythagoreans to the Scholastic thinkers of the Middle Ages.

However, it was Book X (Iota) of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, especially as interpreted and elucidated by St. Thomas Aquinas, that planted the seed of a quite different idea, one that I did not fully comprehend at the time.

Fast forward to 2024. I was again reading Aristotle. When I reached Book X, the original idea returned, but this time accompanied by a distinct insight.

In the Metaphysics, Aristotle develops what he calls a “science of being as being.” By this, he means that while every other science studies some particular kind of being—physics, for instance, studies natural things, and mathematics studies abstract and quantitative objects—metaphysics studies being as such, in its highest generality.

Throughout the Metaphysics, Aristotle treats various properties and principles of being, including substance and accident, form and matter, act and potency, the unmoved mover, and more.

But Book X stands out. It develops, in effect, a theory of the one and the many. While Aristotle refers to unity throughout the Metaphysics, this book is almost independent in its treatment. It is dedicated entirely to oneness: the nature of unity, kinds of unity, the relation between the one and the many, the structure of oppositions (contraries, contradictories, relations, etc.), and so on.

This gives Book X a unique position, not only within the Metaphysics, but across the sciences more broadly. The study of the one and the many is intimately connected to metaphysics, but not reducible to it. It touches on mathematics, insofar as what is “one” is also countable or enumerable; yet the “one” of being is not identical with the “one” of number. It informs logic, insofar as opposites such as contraries and contradictories depend on relations of unity and multiplicity. Yet its study does not properly belong to the the domain of logic.

The insight that struck me arose out of reflection on both that book in conjunction with earlier remarks found in Book IV, where Aristotle first states his thesis (Met IV, 1003a21) that a science of being as being exists, and thereafter adds:

Now although being and unity are the same and are a single nature…they are not the same in the sense that they are expressed by a single concept. (Met. IV, 1003b22-24)

Simply stated, although differing conceptually, to be and to be one coincide in the thing that is. To say that “Solon is a man” and “Solon is one man” is to say the same thing, the latter merely drawing out the implication of indivisibility or unity. In contrast, to say “Solon is a wise man” adds something not contained in the original concept.

This relation between being and unity was later developed by the medieval scholastics into the larger doctrine of transcendentals. Certain concepts are so fundamental that they apply to everything without exception—concepts like being, unity, truth, and goodness. To be (being) is to be undivided (one), intelligible (truth), and desirable (good).

Note: In some cases, beauty is also included as a transcendental term.

Yet despite their importance, the transcendentals have remained largely undeveloped. Their conceptual status as the most general and universal terms seems to place them beyond further analysis. They are treated as primary and indefinable notions. Moreover, their predication is said to be analogical, with their meaning varying across diverse kinds of things and contexts.

This difficulty led German philosopher Martin Heidegger (early 20th century) to declare that the term being, and by extension the transcendental terms, is fundamentally vacuous—a word without content. His Being and Time sought to recover the purportedly forgotten question of the meaning of being by grounding it in concrete human existence (Dasein).

But perhaps Heidegger’s judgment was too hasty? True, within medieval thought, the transcendentals were treated as structural supports of reality, necessary but inaccessible, holding up the edifice of knowledge from behind the scenes. They were invoked, but not fully investigated.

However, what the medievals lacked, and what we possess today, is the ability to model the world using formal logic and mathematics, as well as the tools of information science and AI—possibilities they could scarcely have imagined. In this context, although the transcendental terms do indeed belong to the highest genera of thought, existing beyond the categories themselves, it remains possible that these concepts, along with their mutual relations, may yet lend themselves to further analysis and articulation.

It was precisely in relation to this idea that my own thoughts emerged and began to take shape. If Aristotle is correct to say that being and unity are the same in reality though distinct in concept, then something significant is implied, which historically speaking, has been left as yet unexplored.

What that implication is, I leave unstated for now. In future posts, I will seek to give shape to the overarching idea through practical examples that help illuminate the basic concept and the scope of the problem itself.