Man is the ultimate factor in all human endeavour. Even Adam Smith, often perceived as concerned... more Man is the ultimate factor in all human endeavour. Even Adam Smith, often perceived as concerned only with economics and finance, believed that there was a natural order of human relationships stemming from man’s nature. This natural order, according to Smith, is beneficial in itself, and only comes to be distorted by repressive external institutions and political structures.
The very substance of human living lies in interpersonal relationships. Work, the workplace, and people at work are extremely complex. Even careful observers misread them… while others, under the influence of a mistaken perception of human nature, propose incorrect strategies and solutions. Our development economists seem to place too much emphasis on economic and management efficiency, important as it is, with no explicit role given to the most fundamental factor: the nature of man!, that is, the human nature we all share.
Furthermore, our moral reactions tend to have two factors. On one side, they are almost like instincts, comparable to our love for sweet things or our aversion to nauseous substances, or our fear of falling; on the other hand, they seem to involve claims, implicit or explicit, about the nature and status of human beings. From this second side, a moral reaction is an assent to, an affirmation of, a given ontology of the human person.
Adam Smith, who was above all a philosopher, would have agreed that we must assess man’s nature and reason for existence before we can prescribe a nice set of economic rules. What [is] man (identity, essence, nature)? Why man (goal, purpose, reason for existence)? How man (the right choice of means to our end)? Would the answers to these questions hold the key to our perplexity?
These notes attempt to unravel the mystery of man, seeking to understand the very root of his unity of being in all its human manifestations. The human being should be conceived not only as an atomistic individual, but also as a being whose nature implies coexistence, community (intersubjectivity). Being intensely engaged in relationship with another person is one of the greatest joys of being human. It is, perhaps, the most vital manifestation of consciousness and hence of the human problem. The view that sees relationship as fundamental (intersubjectivity or the second-person perspective) has taken centre stage in modern Personalism. Intersubjectivity is characterised by greater appreciation for feeling, emotion and experience, relationships, etc.
The Overlooked Factor is therefore a book about philosophical anthropology. It comprises three main parts. Part I explores human cognition and volition. It examines the sentient dimension of human existence: its characteristics; external and internal senses; and its sensitive tendencies. It probes human intelligence: its nature and object; and its reflexive capacity and it looks at language as a way of articulating thought. The book then tries to fathom the puzzling phenomenon of human willing and its attendant property of freedom.
Part II probes the concept of person and the powerful notion of intersubjectivity. More specifically, it attempts to scrutinise the idea of the person, from both the phenomenological and metaphysical points of view. It then explores the difficult problem of the psychosomatic unity of man as person (the mind-body problem) before moving on to all the existential ramifications of man as person, beginning with his sociability… Thus, Part III is about human praxis (his activity): his culture, his work and technology, his history….
With this book, we do not pretend to say the last word on the human mystery; rather we wish to bring to the attention of everyone that, part of the reason for the dismal performance of the current social, political and economic structures is the failure to recognize the centrality of the human factor.
What is the objective or purpose of business Management? According to the dominant theory of cont... more What is the objective or purpose of business Management? According to the dominant theory of contemporary financial management scholarship, agency theory, business managers are obligated to maximise owner or shareholder value. According to most theories of business ethics, however, some owner-value-maximising actions should not be performed, because they would be unethical. Because business management scholars and business ethics scholars have not resolved this contradiction, students of commerce receive a contradictory education. The twenty-five essays in this interdisciplinary, international volume address the question of the objective or purpose of business management from a wide range of theoretical perspectives. Since some of the writers contradict one another, it is not possible that all of them are correct. Nevertheless, the fact that many of them argue persuasively that business managers should aspire to more than maximisation of a financial variable challenges everyone with...
PREFACE
This book is a discourse on the method of philosophical inquiry. Method, simply put... more PREFACE This book is a discourse on the method of philosophical inquiry. Method, simply put, is how any field of inquiry arrives at its con-clusions. It is therefore about its points of departure and points of arrival, its principles and objectives. In Metaphysics Α.1, Aristotle says that “everyone takes what is called ‘wisdom’ (sophia) to be concerned with the primary causes (aitia) and the starting points (or principles, archai)” (981b28), and it is these causes and principles that he proposes to study in this work. The last five hundred years have witnessed not only a proliferation of schools of thought—Rationalism, Empiricism, Idealism, Dialectical Materialism, Voluntarism, Existentialism, Positivism, Nihilism…—but also a tremendous growth in science and technology. That the latter has given rise to an almost supernatural faith in the power of science is an understatement. Yet there are serious misgivings that such confidence may leave no room for genuine human values like friendship, love and joy. The sounds of a piano masterpiece can be analysed (and described) by a physicist in terms of physical-mathematical formulas. Yet it is obvious to eve-ryone that the central fact—the melody, the actual music—which is beyond the reach of the scientific method has been omitted. And yet the melody is the true reality, having an immanent meaning which can be accessed only by a method which is beyond that of physics. This meaning lies at once within and beyond physical processes. An examination of reality exclusively by the scientific method must necessarily leave out of consideration the ‘mystery’ about being, a mystery that is not exhausted by processes accessi-ble to natural sciences. Where mere utility prevails, meaningfulness perishes. Would this fact explain the proliferation of the schools of thought? Isn’t it an attempt to give an adequate explanation of the issues involved? Wouldn’t these schools of thought—“philosophies”—be but studies of approach in regard to the mys-tery of being? In other words, aren’t viewpoints like Empiricism, Idealism, Existentialism… but methods of philosophy as opposed to the schools of thought they appear to portray? In the Aristotelian-Thomistic perspective, natural science is the second philosophy, but this is so only because there is some-thing more fundamental in the world, something that natural sci-ence—a science of movement—cannot access, the purview of what Aristotle calls ‘first philosophy’ (metaphysics). The title ‘metaphysics’—literally, ‘after the Physics’—very likely indicated the place the topics discussed were intended to occupy in the phil-osophical curriculum. They were to be studied after the treatises dealing with nature (ta phusika). And yet the principles gleaned were supposed to ground the inquires dealing with nature. Doesn’t this suggest that metaphysics is not just a discipline in itself but a method of philosophy? After all do we not hear of ‘Descartes met-aphysics,’ ‘Kantian metaphysics’ and ‘Hegelian metaphysics’… in reference to the schools of thought we have mentioned above? This may hint at a plurality of methods. To be sure, this also suggests varying degrees of success or effectiveness among the methods themselves.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE 9 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 11 INTRODUCTION 13
CHAPTER I: THE METAPHYSICAL METHOD 23 1.1 INTRODUCTION 25 1.1.1 Which method? 25 1.1.2 Metaphysics, science, religion 27 1.2 THE METHOD OF METAPHYSICS IN THE GREAT PHILOSOPHERS 29 1.2.1 The historical path of metaphysics 29 1.2.1 Parmenides 33 1.2.2 Plato and Platonism 38 1.2.2.1 A metaphysics of the absolute intelligible. 38 1.2.2.2 Different forms of Platonism: medieval and modern 40 1.2.3 Aristotle 43 1.2.3.1 A metaphysics of the act 43 1.2.3.2 Thomism and Aristotle 45 a) Metaphysical naturalism 46 b) Metaphysics and its method within the framework of the sciences 47 1.2.4 Thomas Aquinas 49 1.2.4.1 Introduction 49 a) Preliminary phenomenological meanings of “being” 52 b) Logical-grammatical meanings 56 c) The being idealized by thought 57 1.2.4.2 The road of Thomas 58 a) Separatio 58 b) The intellectual way 65 c) Resolutio and compositio 66 d) Being and the transcendentals 69 e) Intensive being and participation 73 1.3 CONCLUDING CONSIDERATIONS ON THE METHOD OF METAPHYSICS 80
CHAPTER II: WHAT IS METAPHYSICS? 85 2.1 INTRODUCTION 87 2.2 THE OBJECT OF METAPHYSICS 88 2.2.1 The role of spontaneous knowledge 88 2.2.2 Esse and the verb ‘to-be’ 95 2.2.3 Esse commune 98 2.2.4 Principle of non-contradiction 99 2.3 METAPHYSICAL ‘ABSTRACTION’ 108 2.3.1 Is the notion of being that is the concern of metaphysics an abstract notion? 108 2.3.2 Is being—object of metaphysics—an a priori notion? 112 2.4 METAPHYSICS IS SAPIENTIAL KNOWLEDGE 114
CHAPTER III: ACT AND POTENCY 117 3.1 REAL COMPOSITION OF ACT AND POTENCY IN THINGS 121 3.1.1 Change, potency and act 121 3.1.2 Four senses of the term potency 123 3.1.3 Aristotle’s “energeia” and “entelecheia” 124 3.1.4 Act implies being 127 3.1.5 Duality between act and potency 128 3.1.6 Metaphysical priority of act 130 3.1.7 Additional considerations of the participation of potency in act 137 3.2 THE MANY LEVELS OF ACT AND POTENCY 140 3.2.1 Form is act thanks to the act of “to be” 148
CHAPTER IV: BEING, SUBSTANCE AND ACCIDENTS 153 4.1 INTRODUCTION 155 4.1.1 Unitary systems 156 4.1.2 Other systems 157 4.1.3 Natural substances 157 4.1.4 Substance in Aristotle’s philosophy 158 4.1.5 Substances and unitary systems 160 4.2 SUBSTANCE, ACCIDENTS AND ACCIDENTAL CHANGE 161 4.2.1 Substance, a cosmological perspective 164 a) Substances are the natural entities in their full meaning 164 b) Substances are the subject of natural dynamism 165 c) The substance is a structural unity 166 4.2.2 Substance in Aristotle and St Thomas 167 4.2.3 Accidents belong to the substance 170 4.2.4 Being (ens) is the whole suppositum 173 4.3 THE ACCIDENTS 175 4.3.1 We find a whole range of accidents 175 4.3.2 Accidents can be grouped 176 4.4 THE ARRANGEMENT OF SUBSTANCES IN NATURE 178 4.4.1 Unity and order in the universe 179 4.4.2 Hierarchy and participation in nature 186
CHAPTER V: THE TRANSCENDENTAL CONFIGURATION OF BEING 191 5.1 BEING IS BY PARTICIPATION 195 5.1.1 An est? Quid Est? 198 5.2 THE REAL DISTINCTION BETWEEN ESSENCE AND ESSE 205 5.2.1 Distinction between participator and the participation 207 5.3 ESSE IS THE ULTIMATE ACT OF BEING (ENS) AND THE BASIS FOR ITS UNITY 213 5.4 ESSE BELONGS TO THE REAL AND SINGULAR SUPPOSIT WHICH IS THE ONE THAT IS (EXISTS) 219 5.4.1 Distinction between essence and substance 224 5.4.2 Nature, suppositum and person 227 5.5 FURTHER COMPARATIVE PRECISION OF THE NOTION OF ACT OF BEING (ESSE) 233 5.5.1 Esse, existence and contingency 236 5.5.2 Esse and the Existentialist ‘presence of the present’ 239 5.5.3 Other consequences of the identification of esse and existence 241
CHAPTER VI: CAUSALITY AND CAUSATION 245 6.1 EXPERIENCE OF CAUSATION 250 6.1.1 Underpinning the principle of causality 252 6.1.2 Formulation of the principle of causality 260 6.1.3 Formulae based on participation 263 6.1.4 Types of causes 265 6.2 INTRINSIC PREDICAMENTAL CAUSATION 267 6.2.1 Material cause 267 6.2.2 Formal cause 269 6.3 EXTRINSIC PREDICAMENTAL CAUSATION 272 6.3.1 Efficient cause 272 6.3.2 Instrumental causation 280 6.3.3 Final cause 282 6.3.4 Form as an end 283 6.3.5 Co-causality 284 6.4 NEED FOR GROUNDING PREDICAMENTAL CAUSATION 287
CHAPTER: THE METAPHYSICAL ASCENT FROM CREATURES TO GOD 297 7.1 FROM PREDICAMENTAL CAUSATION TO TRANSCENDENTAL CAUSATION 301 7.1.1 The nature of the transcendental cause 303 7.2 THE UNIQUENESS OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL CAUSE 306 7.3 TRANSCENDENTAL CAUSATION AND PARTICIPATION OF BEING 311 7.3.1 Static and dynamic participation 311 7.4 GOD TRANSCENDS THE WORLD: DIVINE PERFECTION 315 7.5 NATURAL KNOWLEDGE OF GOD IS THE OUTCOME OF A DISCOURSE. SPONTANEOUS KNOWLEDGE AND THE NON-IMMEDIATE EVIDENCE OF HIS EXISTENCE 322 7.5.1 Spontaneous knowledge 323 7.5.2 Philosophical reflection about God 327 7.5.3 Non-immediate evidence of the existence of God 328 7.6 THE METAPHYSICAL ASCENT FROM CREATURES TO GOD AND THE DIFFERENT POINTS OF DEPARTURE: THE WAYS OF ST THOMAS IN S.TH. I, Q. 2, A. 3 329 7.6.1 The Ways of St Thomas 329 7.6.2 General structure and analysis of the five Ways 331 7.6.2.1 Point of Departure 332 7.6.2.2 Application of causality to the point of departure 333 7.6.2.3 Infinite regress discarded 334 7.6.2.4 The Conclusions of the ways 335 7.6.3 Proof by motion or change 336 The critics of the first way 338 7.6.4 The argument via efficient causality 339 The second way’s critics 340 7.6.5 The proof by contingency 342 Critique 343 7.6.6 Degrees of being 347 Critique 349 7.6.7 Finality 350 Critique 350
CHAPTER VIII: ACTION THEORY: THE METAPHYSICS OF THE VOLUNTARY ACT 353 8.1 ACTUS ESSENDI AND NATURE AS PRINCIPLES OF OPERATIONS 356 8.1.1 How ens acts through its esse and according to its nature 357 8.1.2 Operation (action) follows on esse 364 8.2 REAL DISTINCTION BETWEEN ESSE AND ACTION IN CREATURES 367 8.2.1 Distinction between esse and operation 367 8.2.2 Distinction between subject, nature and operation 368 8.2.3 God is His own Action 370 8.3 THE POWERS OF THE SOUL (OPERATIVE POWERS) 371 8.3.1 The powers (operative potencies) as the immediate principles of action 372 8.3.2 In creatures, essence and powers are not identical 374 8.3.3 Powers are natural operative properties 376 8.4 ACTION AND THE PERFECTING OF BEING (ENS) 379 8.4.1 Action as a goal 379 8.4.2 Actions and operations 383 CHAPTER IX: HUMAN NATURE 385 9.1 THE SOUL, THE PRIMAL FORMAL ACT OF LIVING BEINGS 389 9.1.1 Life and the soul 389 9.1.2 The soul is act and motor of a living body 391 9.2 THE SUBSTANTIAL UNION OF BODY AND SOUL 392 9.3 SPIRITUALITY OF THE HUMAN SOUL 396 9.3.1 Emergence of the soul over the body; the spirituality of the human soul 396 9.3.2 Subsistence of the human soul 398 9.3.3 Immortality of the soul 400 9.3.4 Spiritual human soul is ...
Preface
A primary school girl was asked to define what she thought hedonism is. “It is to lose... more Preface
A primary school girl was asked to define what she thought hedonism is. “It is to lose one’s head over material things”. Dead on, the teacher thought to herself… perhaps one of those feminine intuitions… In effect, in the original state of justice, the soul finds itself irremediably drawn towards the infinite, Truth and Good and Beauty… outside it, nothing is of interest; even one’s own being and good are of little worth, uninspiring, ‘boring’… After the fall, the lights that shone on this infinite Good suddenly went out…. God went ‘off-line’! Suddenly, the soul discovers it exists... Thus, plunged in the most depressing and disorienting darkness, the human psyche was left with no option but to turn to the little light offered by the (finite) goods: it found pleasure in external (material) goods; it found pleasure in goods of the body (food and sex); it found some ‘joy’ in the ‘goods’ of the spirit (art, music, self-love, etc). As the human heart was made to enjoy some good, it rested its case here. It went even further: rather than pursue the being, it focused on the idea of it; rather than pursue the good, it turned its attention on ‘pleasure’, just for the fun in it. Man turned in upon himself; man became self-seeking – a lover of fun for the sake of fun irrespective of its source… he was incapable of seeing the person but the (internalized) object of pleasure…”I do not care about the person in herself… all I care for is the fun I derive from her…” This self-seeking turning-in upon oneself (immanentism, hedonism) is the true diagnosis of the modern man’s malaise. There is no more self-control, no more courage, no more justice… Yet aren’t these the objectives that every man sets for himself in every single quest? More importantly, haven’t we just singled out the three axes which provide the background for our moral judgments, intuitions or reactions? These three domains of human agency constitute, as it were, a three-dimensional moral frame orienting one’s moral action. But to speak of orientation is to presuppose a space-time analogue within which one finds one’s way. The three domains are equivalent to a three-dimensional space, which together with the time factor constitute the complete framework of human praxis. A choice of a course of action within this moral space reveals the fundamental moral orientation of the human agent. Tell me what you deem choice-worthy and I will tell you the kind of person you are. Perhaps this is the reason why in most African societies, a combination of age and demonstrated wisdom and integrity were the key determinants of political and administrative leadership. Old age was often associated with accumulated experience and wisdom. It was assumed that decisions made by such men on behalf of the people could not betray the national interest. “In decision-making, seniority was almost as pervasive as kinship and the young were subordinated to the old in the society from the family to the clan, between elders and warriors. Older men were considered ritually more potent due to their closeness to ancestral spirits. Age was therefore a precondition for leadership and brought with it inherent powers”. But besides age, certain qualities were also expected of the office bearer. Some were personal while others were determined by one’s social position at birth. To be a leader in Luoland, for example, one had to be wealthy, generous, intelligent and widely regarded as a man of integrity. One could possess all these qualities and still fail to make the grade. There were inbuilt criteria of exclusion. Those who were excluded from leadership included: illegitimate sons, non-indigenous “settlers”, members of marginal groups, only sons and those whose mothers came from other tribes. In summary the African leadership vision is premised upon gerontocracy (government based on rule by elders) and integrity. Understood in this practice is the following principle: in order to govern one must be ‘far-seeing’, that is to say, wise or prudent. Yet all of the (cardinal) moral virtues are also deemed essential. The central role of justice is obvious. But a leader must also be seen to be temperate and courageous. Thus, justice, courage and temperance: this is what makes for integrity. Yet the primary virtue of the leader (the manager) is prudence. But is this really the case? Aren’t we, once again, letting ourselves be carried away by unfounded quality judgments instead of relying on the rather more cogent quantitative approach? Perhaps the findings of Harvard Business School could shed some light on the matter… What catapults a company from merely good to truly great? A five-year research project searched for the answer to this question, and its discoveries could change the way many people think about leadership. The most powerfully transformative executives possess a paradoxical mixture of personal humility (a moral virtue) and a fierce resolve. They are timid and ferocious; shy and fearless. Would then the right mix of virtues do the trick? Thus, age and integrity; prudence and moral virtue… Yet the big question in everyone’s heart is: can one really learn to become the kind of leader described here? Isn’t prudence just a motivation to action in competition with moral motivation? Isn’t it rather the scheming wiliness – they call it ‘shrewdness’ – which is the mainstay of many a business and political endeavour? How can this ‘prudence’ go hand in hand with integrity? Yet contrary to this view, moral virtue and prudence appear to be closely intertwined. And the link seems to be tailored around the will’s act of choice. Choice, in turn, is the chief act of moral virtue and the principal originator of praxis. It is our objective in this book to show that decision making is inextricably bound up with one’s moral fibre, one’s character. A good man makes a good leader and a good manager. A manager who is a bad man sets the wrong goals and priorities for his firm with an obvious disastrous outcome. But let us go back to our question: can effective leadership be learnt? Yes, it can be learnt, not like a type of knowledge, nor like a skill but like a virtue (a practice). Virtue, like any practice, is acquired by repetition of acts. In the first place, by constantly striving to have one’s eyes trained on the long-term goals (bonum rationis – the just, the bold, the temperate) affectivity is shaped into maintaining an unwavering resolve (the intentional dimension of moral virtue). This guarantees the premises of rational discourse. Second, by constantly striving to think things through, with one’s eyes set on the goals – thus ensuring truth in prudential judgment –, one acquires a sixth sense about optimal decisions; one becomes wise. Finally, by constantly striving to make the right choices in the subject-matters of justice, pleasurable and arduous goods – thus obeying prudential precept –, one develops a sixth sense about making optimal choices (the elective dimension of virtue). Now prudence pre-supposes the intentional dimension of moral virtue while moral virtues’ elective dimension presupposes prudence. Moral virtue and prudence are thus inextricably bound up in growth and exercise. They are in a symbiotic relationship. They grow together and die together. Yet one may interject: this means that moral virtues and prudence are the ideal panacea for good leadership. The answer is no. They are the presuppositions… they are a condition that is necessary but not sufficient. Besides being virtuous, the manager must count on the appropriate technical training (MBAs etc.). In the above quoted article from Harvard Business Review the level 5 leader – the real effective manager – is a puzzling figure. This is precisely because his qualities transcend direct empirical and quantitative analysis. He is, above all, a virtuous man. The most diverse and often seemingly opposed qualities are found to exist in him in a harmonious balance. He can be inflexibly strong while remaining inexpressibly tender. He can be exacting to the last degree and yet appreciative of the last element of good in those he deals with, thus building on their strengths. He is of the most virile fearlessness and yet of a meekness that seems to yield before every storm. There we are: the leader of tomorrow! Is it any wonder then that progress up the ladder of any professional career is almost always equivalent to a promotion to a position of leadership? Isn’t it true that we find it easier to follow those who are deeply knowledgeable and have a genuine concern for us? The Sources of Effective Leadership is therefore, above all, about the principles of virtue ethics… and this is because moral life is a requisite and an advantage for any task of genuine leadership. After an introduction on the general subject of ethics and its relationship with other fields of knowledge, it plunges into the question of the moral agent and his attendant free action. This section of the book examines the human person as author of behaviour and is therefore also an inquiry about the theory of action. Part II is about moral virtues and virtuous life. It first explores the concept of moral virtue as a habit that facilitates optimality in making choices before delving into the more difficult questions of particular moral knowledge, the intrinsece evil acts and the moral judgment of particular acts. The setting of the book is thus that of a manual, gradually introducing the student into the vast field of moral philosophy. Its aim is that of explaining the essence of moral life and providing scientific underpinnings for formulating norms which can serve as guide or criteria of judgment regarding the right decisions that make for personal fulfilment as well as serving the social purpose. The student thus discovers that there is no conflict between freedom and law; between self-inter...
Man is the ultimate factor in all human endeavour. Even Adam Smith, often perceived as concerned... more Man is the ultimate factor in all human endeavour. Even Adam Smith, often perceived as concerned only with economics and finance, believed that there was a natural order of human relationships stemming from man’s nature. This natural order, according to Smith, is beneficial in itself, and only comes to be distorted by repressive external institutions and political structures.
The very substance of human living lies in interpersonal relationships. Work, the workplace, and people at work are extremely complex. Even careful observers misread them… while others, under the influence of a mistaken perception of human nature, propose incorrect strategies and solutions. Our development economists seem to place too much emphasis on economic and management efficiency, important as it is, with no explicit role given to the most fundamental factor: the nature of man!, that is, the human nature we all share.
Furthermore, our moral reactions tend to have two factors. On one side, they are almost like instincts, comparable to our love for sweet things or our aversion to nauseous substances, or our fear of falling; on the other hand, they seem to involve claims, implicit or explicit, about the nature and status of human beings. From this second side, a moral reaction is an assent to, an affirmation of, a given ontology of the human person.
Adam Smith, who was above all a philosopher, would have agreed that we must assess man’s nature and reason for existence before we can prescribe a nice set of economic rules. What [is] man (identity, essence, nature)? Why man (goal, purpose, reason for existence)? How man (the right choice of means to our end)? Would the answers to these questions hold the key to our perplexity?
These notes attempt to unravel the mystery of man, seeking to understand the very root of his unity of being in all its human manifestations. The human being should be conceived not only as an atomistic individual, but also as a being whose nature implies coexistence, community (intersubjectivity). Being intensely engaged in relationship with another person is one of the greatest joys of being human. It is, perhaps, the most vital manifestation of consciousness and hence of the human problem. The view that sees relationship as fundamental (intersubjectivity or the second-person perspective) has taken centre stage in modern Personalism. Intersubjectivity is characterised by greater appreciation for feeling, emotion and experience, relationships, etc.
The Overlooked Factor is therefore a book about philosophical anthropology. It comprises three main parts. Part I explores human cognition and volition. It examines the sentient dimension of human existence: its characteristics; external and internal senses; and its sensitive tendencies. It probes human intelligence: its nature and object; and its reflexive capacity and it looks at language as a way of articulating thought. The book then tries to fathom the puzzling phenomenon of human willing and its attendant property of freedom.
Part II probes the concept of person and the powerful notion of intersubjectivity. More specifically, it attempts to scrutinise the idea of the person, from both the phenomenological and metaphysical points of view. It then explores the difficult problem of the psychosomatic unity of man as person (the mind-body problem) before moving on to all the existential ramifications of man as person, beginning with his sociability… Thus, Part III is about human praxis (his activity): his culture, his work and technology, his history….
With this book, we do not pretend to say the last word on the human mystery; rather we wish to bring to the attention of everyone that, part of the reason for the dismal performance of the current social, political and economic structures is the failure to recognize the centrality of the human factor.
What is the objective or purpose of business Management? According to the dominant theory of cont... more What is the objective or purpose of business Management? According to the dominant theory of contemporary financial management scholarship, agency theory, business managers are obligated to maximise owner or shareholder value. According to most theories of business ethics, however, some owner-value-maximising actions should not be performed, because they would be unethical. Because business management scholars and business ethics scholars have not resolved this contradiction, students of commerce receive a contradictory education. The twenty-five essays in this interdisciplinary, international volume address the question of the objective or purpose of business management from a wide range of theoretical perspectives. Since some of the writers contradict one another, it is not possible that all of them are correct. Nevertheless, the fact that many of them argue persuasively that business managers should aspire to more than maximisation of a financial variable challenges everyone with...
PREFACE
This book is a discourse on the method of philosophical inquiry. Method, simply put... more PREFACE This book is a discourse on the method of philosophical inquiry. Method, simply put, is how any field of inquiry arrives at its con-clusions. It is therefore about its points of departure and points of arrival, its principles and objectives. In Metaphysics Α.1, Aristotle says that “everyone takes what is called ‘wisdom’ (sophia) to be concerned with the primary causes (aitia) and the starting points (or principles, archai)” (981b28), and it is these causes and principles that he proposes to study in this work. The last five hundred years have witnessed not only a proliferation of schools of thought—Rationalism, Empiricism, Idealism, Dialectical Materialism, Voluntarism, Existentialism, Positivism, Nihilism…—but also a tremendous growth in science and technology. That the latter has given rise to an almost supernatural faith in the power of science is an understatement. Yet there are serious misgivings that such confidence may leave no room for genuine human values like friendship, love and joy. The sounds of a piano masterpiece can be analysed (and described) by a physicist in terms of physical-mathematical formulas. Yet it is obvious to eve-ryone that the central fact—the melody, the actual music—which is beyond the reach of the scientific method has been omitted. And yet the melody is the true reality, having an immanent meaning which can be accessed only by a method which is beyond that of physics. This meaning lies at once within and beyond physical processes. An examination of reality exclusively by the scientific method must necessarily leave out of consideration the ‘mystery’ about being, a mystery that is not exhausted by processes accessi-ble to natural sciences. Where mere utility prevails, meaningfulness perishes. Would this fact explain the proliferation of the schools of thought? Isn’t it an attempt to give an adequate explanation of the issues involved? Wouldn’t these schools of thought—“philosophies”—be but studies of approach in regard to the mys-tery of being? In other words, aren’t viewpoints like Empiricism, Idealism, Existentialism… but methods of philosophy as opposed to the schools of thought they appear to portray? In the Aristotelian-Thomistic perspective, natural science is the second philosophy, but this is so only because there is some-thing more fundamental in the world, something that natural sci-ence—a science of movement—cannot access, the purview of what Aristotle calls ‘first philosophy’ (metaphysics). The title ‘metaphysics’—literally, ‘after the Physics’—very likely indicated the place the topics discussed were intended to occupy in the phil-osophical curriculum. They were to be studied after the treatises dealing with nature (ta phusika). And yet the principles gleaned were supposed to ground the inquires dealing with nature. Doesn’t this suggest that metaphysics is not just a discipline in itself but a method of philosophy? After all do we not hear of ‘Descartes met-aphysics,’ ‘Kantian metaphysics’ and ‘Hegelian metaphysics’… in reference to the schools of thought we have mentioned above? This may hint at a plurality of methods. To be sure, this also suggests varying degrees of success or effectiveness among the methods themselves.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE 9 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 11 INTRODUCTION 13
CHAPTER I: THE METAPHYSICAL METHOD 23 1.1 INTRODUCTION 25 1.1.1 Which method? 25 1.1.2 Metaphysics, science, religion 27 1.2 THE METHOD OF METAPHYSICS IN THE GREAT PHILOSOPHERS 29 1.2.1 The historical path of metaphysics 29 1.2.1 Parmenides 33 1.2.2 Plato and Platonism 38 1.2.2.1 A metaphysics of the absolute intelligible. 38 1.2.2.2 Different forms of Platonism: medieval and modern 40 1.2.3 Aristotle 43 1.2.3.1 A metaphysics of the act 43 1.2.3.2 Thomism and Aristotle 45 a) Metaphysical naturalism 46 b) Metaphysics and its method within the framework of the sciences 47 1.2.4 Thomas Aquinas 49 1.2.4.1 Introduction 49 a) Preliminary phenomenological meanings of “being” 52 b) Logical-grammatical meanings 56 c) The being idealized by thought 57 1.2.4.2 The road of Thomas 58 a) Separatio 58 b) The intellectual way 65 c) Resolutio and compositio 66 d) Being and the transcendentals 69 e) Intensive being and participation 73 1.3 CONCLUDING CONSIDERATIONS ON THE METHOD OF METAPHYSICS 80
CHAPTER II: WHAT IS METAPHYSICS? 85 2.1 INTRODUCTION 87 2.2 THE OBJECT OF METAPHYSICS 88 2.2.1 The role of spontaneous knowledge 88 2.2.2 Esse and the verb ‘to-be’ 95 2.2.3 Esse commune 98 2.2.4 Principle of non-contradiction 99 2.3 METAPHYSICAL ‘ABSTRACTION’ 108 2.3.1 Is the notion of being that is the concern of metaphysics an abstract notion? 108 2.3.2 Is being—object of metaphysics—an a priori notion? 112 2.4 METAPHYSICS IS SAPIENTIAL KNOWLEDGE 114
CHAPTER III: ACT AND POTENCY 117 3.1 REAL COMPOSITION OF ACT AND POTENCY IN THINGS 121 3.1.1 Change, potency and act 121 3.1.2 Four senses of the term potency 123 3.1.3 Aristotle’s “energeia” and “entelecheia” 124 3.1.4 Act implies being 127 3.1.5 Duality between act and potency 128 3.1.6 Metaphysical priority of act 130 3.1.7 Additional considerations of the participation of potency in act 137 3.2 THE MANY LEVELS OF ACT AND POTENCY 140 3.2.1 Form is act thanks to the act of “to be” 148
CHAPTER IV: BEING, SUBSTANCE AND ACCIDENTS 153 4.1 INTRODUCTION 155 4.1.1 Unitary systems 156 4.1.2 Other systems 157 4.1.3 Natural substances 157 4.1.4 Substance in Aristotle’s philosophy 158 4.1.5 Substances and unitary systems 160 4.2 SUBSTANCE, ACCIDENTS AND ACCIDENTAL CHANGE 161 4.2.1 Substance, a cosmological perspective 164 a) Substances are the natural entities in their full meaning 164 b) Substances are the subject of natural dynamism 165 c) The substance is a structural unity 166 4.2.2 Substance in Aristotle and St Thomas 167 4.2.3 Accidents belong to the substance 170 4.2.4 Being (ens) is the whole suppositum 173 4.3 THE ACCIDENTS 175 4.3.1 We find a whole range of accidents 175 4.3.2 Accidents can be grouped 176 4.4 THE ARRANGEMENT OF SUBSTANCES IN NATURE 178 4.4.1 Unity and order in the universe 179 4.4.2 Hierarchy and participation in nature 186
CHAPTER V: THE TRANSCENDENTAL CONFIGURATION OF BEING 191 5.1 BEING IS BY PARTICIPATION 195 5.1.1 An est? Quid Est? 198 5.2 THE REAL DISTINCTION BETWEEN ESSENCE AND ESSE 205 5.2.1 Distinction between participator and the participation 207 5.3 ESSE IS THE ULTIMATE ACT OF BEING (ENS) AND THE BASIS FOR ITS UNITY 213 5.4 ESSE BELONGS TO THE REAL AND SINGULAR SUPPOSIT WHICH IS THE ONE THAT IS (EXISTS) 219 5.4.1 Distinction between essence and substance 224 5.4.2 Nature, suppositum and person 227 5.5 FURTHER COMPARATIVE PRECISION OF THE NOTION OF ACT OF BEING (ESSE) 233 5.5.1 Esse, existence and contingency 236 5.5.2 Esse and the Existentialist ‘presence of the present’ 239 5.5.3 Other consequences of the identification of esse and existence 241
CHAPTER VI: CAUSALITY AND CAUSATION 245 6.1 EXPERIENCE OF CAUSATION 250 6.1.1 Underpinning the principle of causality 252 6.1.2 Formulation of the principle of causality 260 6.1.3 Formulae based on participation 263 6.1.4 Types of causes 265 6.2 INTRINSIC PREDICAMENTAL CAUSATION 267 6.2.1 Material cause 267 6.2.2 Formal cause 269 6.3 EXTRINSIC PREDICAMENTAL CAUSATION 272 6.3.1 Efficient cause 272 6.3.2 Instrumental causation 280 6.3.3 Final cause 282 6.3.4 Form as an end 283 6.3.5 Co-causality 284 6.4 NEED FOR GROUNDING PREDICAMENTAL CAUSATION 287
CHAPTER: THE METAPHYSICAL ASCENT FROM CREATURES TO GOD 297 7.1 FROM PREDICAMENTAL CAUSATION TO TRANSCENDENTAL CAUSATION 301 7.1.1 The nature of the transcendental cause 303 7.2 THE UNIQUENESS OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL CAUSE 306 7.3 TRANSCENDENTAL CAUSATION AND PARTICIPATION OF BEING 311 7.3.1 Static and dynamic participation 311 7.4 GOD TRANSCENDS THE WORLD: DIVINE PERFECTION 315 7.5 NATURAL KNOWLEDGE OF GOD IS THE OUTCOME OF A DISCOURSE. SPONTANEOUS KNOWLEDGE AND THE NON-IMMEDIATE EVIDENCE OF HIS EXISTENCE 322 7.5.1 Spontaneous knowledge 323 7.5.2 Philosophical reflection about God 327 7.5.3 Non-immediate evidence of the existence of God 328 7.6 THE METAPHYSICAL ASCENT FROM CREATURES TO GOD AND THE DIFFERENT POINTS OF DEPARTURE: THE WAYS OF ST THOMAS IN S.TH. I, Q. 2, A. 3 329 7.6.1 The Ways of St Thomas 329 7.6.2 General structure and analysis of the five Ways 331 7.6.2.1 Point of Departure 332 7.6.2.2 Application of causality to the point of departure 333 7.6.2.3 Infinite regress discarded 334 7.6.2.4 The Conclusions of the ways 335 7.6.3 Proof by motion or change 336 The critics of the first way 338 7.6.4 The argument via efficient causality 339 The second way’s critics 340 7.6.5 The proof by contingency 342 Critique 343 7.6.6 Degrees of being 347 Critique 349 7.6.7 Finality 350 Critique 350
CHAPTER VIII: ACTION THEORY: THE METAPHYSICS OF THE VOLUNTARY ACT 353 8.1 ACTUS ESSENDI AND NATURE AS PRINCIPLES OF OPERATIONS 356 8.1.1 How ens acts through its esse and according to its nature 357 8.1.2 Operation (action) follows on esse 364 8.2 REAL DISTINCTION BETWEEN ESSE AND ACTION IN CREATURES 367 8.2.1 Distinction between esse and operation 367 8.2.2 Distinction between subject, nature and operation 368 8.2.3 God is His own Action 370 8.3 THE POWERS OF THE SOUL (OPERATIVE POWERS) 371 8.3.1 The powers (operative potencies) as the immediate principles of action 372 8.3.2 In creatures, essence and powers are not identical 374 8.3.3 Powers are natural operative properties 376 8.4 ACTION AND THE PERFECTING OF BEING (ENS) 379 8.4.1 Action as a goal 379 8.4.2 Actions and operations 383 CHAPTER IX: HUMAN NATURE 385 9.1 THE SOUL, THE PRIMAL FORMAL ACT OF LIVING BEINGS 389 9.1.1 Life and the soul 389 9.1.2 The soul is act and motor of a living body 391 9.2 THE SUBSTANTIAL UNION OF BODY AND SOUL 392 9.3 SPIRITUALITY OF THE HUMAN SOUL 396 9.3.1 Emergence of the soul over the body; the spirituality of the human soul 396 9.3.2 Subsistence of the human soul 398 9.3.3 Immortality of the soul 400 9.3.4 Spiritual human soul is ...
Preface
A primary school girl was asked to define what she thought hedonism is. “It is to lose... more Preface
A primary school girl was asked to define what she thought hedonism is. “It is to lose one’s head over material things”. Dead on, the teacher thought to herself… perhaps one of those feminine intuitions… In effect, in the original state of justice, the soul finds itself irremediably drawn towards the infinite, Truth and Good and Beauty… outside it, nothing is of interest; even one’s own being and good are of little worth, uninspiring, ‘boring’… After the fall, the lights that shone on this infinite Good suddenly went out…. God went ‘off-line’! Suddenly, the soul discovers it exists... Thus, plunged in the most depressing and disorienting darkness, the human psyche was left with no option but to turn to the little light offered by the (finite) goods: it found pleasure in external (material) goods; it found pleasure in goods of the body (food and sex); it found some ‘joy’ in the ‘goods’ of the spirit (art, music, self-love, etc). As the human heart was made to enjoy some good, it rested its case here. It went even further: rather than pursue the being, it focused on the idea of it; rather than pursue the good, it turned its attention on ‘pleasure’, just for the fun in it. Man turned in upon himself; man became self-seeking – a lover of fun for the sake of fun irrespective of its source… he was incapable of seeing the person but the (internalized) object of pleasure…”I do not care about the person in herself… all I care for is the fun I derive from her…” This self-seeking turning-in upon oneself (immanentism, hedonism) is the true diagnosis of the modern man’s malaise. There is no more self-control, no more courage, no more justice… Yet aren’t these the objectives that every man sets for himself in every single quest? More importantly, haven’t we just singled out the three axes which provide the background for our moral judgments, intuitions or reactions? These three domains of human agency constitute, as it were, a three-dimensional moral frame orienting one’s moral action. But to speak of orientation is to presuppose a space-time analogue within which one finds one’s way. The three domains are equivalent to a three-dimensional space, which together with the time factor constitute the complete framework of human praxis. A choice of a course of action within this moral space reveals the fundamental moral orientation of the human agent. Tell me what you deem choice-worthy and I will tell you the kind of person you are. Perhaps this is the reason why in most African societies, a combination of age and demonstrated wisdom and integrity were the key determinants of political and administrative leadership. Old age was often associated with accumulated experience and wisdom. It was assumed that decisions made by such men on behalf of the people could not betray the national interest. “In decision-making, seniority was almost as pervasive as kinship and the young were subordinated to the old in the society from the family to the clan, between elders and warriors. Older men were considered ritually more potent due to their closeness to ancestral spirits. Age was therefore a precondition for leadership and brought with it inherent powers”. But besides age, certain qualities were also expected of the office bearer. Some were personal while others were determined by one’s social position at birth. To be a leader in Luoland, for example, one had to be wealthy, generous, intelligent and widely regarded as a man of integrity. One could possess all these qualities and still fail to make the grade. There were inbuilt criteria of exclusion. Those who were excluded from leadership included: illegitimate sons, non-indigenous “settlers”, members of marginal groups, only sons and those whose mothers came from other tribes. In summary the African leadership vision is premised upon gerontocracy (government based on rule by elders) and integrity. Understood in this practice is the following principle: in order to govern one must be ‘far-seeing’, that is to say, wise or prudent. Yet all of the (cardinal) moral virtues are also deemed essential. The central role of justice is obvious. But a leader must also be seen to be temperate and courageous. Thus, justice, courage and temperance: this is what makes for integrity. Yet the primary virtue of the leader (the manager) is prudence. But is this really the case? Aren’t we, once again, letting ourselves be carried away by unfounded quality judgments instead of relying on the rather more cogent quantitative approach? Perhaps the findings of Harvard Business School could shed some light on the matter… What catapults a company from merely good to truly great? A five-year research project searched for the answer to this question, and its discoveries could change the way many people think about leadership. The most powerfully transformative executives possess a paradoxical mixture of personal humility (a moral virtue) and a fierce resolve. They are timid and ferocious; shy and fearless. Would then the right mix of virtues do the trick? Thus, age and integrity; prudence and moral virtue… Yet the big question in everyone’s heart is: can one really learn to become the kind of leader described here? Isn’t prudence just a motivation to action in competition with moral motivation? Isn’t it rather the scheming wiliness – they call it ‘shrewdness’ – which is the mainstay of many a business and political endeavour? How can this ‘prudence’ go hand in hand with integrity? Yet contrary to this view, moral virtue and prudence appear to be closely intertwined. And the link seems to be tailored around the will’s act of choice. Choice, in turn, is the chief act of moral virtue and the principal originator of praxis. It is our objective in this book to show that decision making is inextricably bound up with one’s moral fibre, one’s character. A good man makes a good leader and a good manager. A manager who is a bad man sets the wrong goals and priorities for his firm with an obvious disastrous outcome. But let us go back to our question: can effective leadership be learnt? Yes, it can be learnt, not like a type of knowledge, nor like a skill but like a virtue (a practice). Virtue, like any practice, is acquired by repetition of acts. In the first place, by constantly striving to have one’s eyes trained on the long-term goals (bonum rationis – the just, the bold, the temperate) affectivity is shaped into maintaining an unwavering resolve (the intentional dimension of moral virtue). This guarantees the premises of rational discourse. Second, by constantly striving to think things through, with one’s eyes set on the goals – thus ensuring truth in prudential judgment –, one acquires a sixth sense about optimal decisions; one becomes wise. Finally, by constantly striving to make the right choices in the subject-matters of justice, pleasurable and arduous goods – thus obeying prudential precept –, one develops a sixth sense about making optimal choices (the elective dimension of virtue). Now prudence pre-supposes the intentional dimension of moral virtue while moral virtues’ elective dimension presupposes prudence. Moral virtue and prudence are thus inextricably bound up in growth and exercise. They are in a symbiotic relationship. They grow together and die together. Yet one may interject: this means that moral virtues and prudence are the ideal panacea for good leadership. The answer is no. They are the presuppositions… they are a condition that is necessary but not sufficient. Besides being virtuous, the manager must count on the appropriate technical training (MBAs etc.). In the above quoted article from Harvard Business Review the level 5 leader – the real effective manager – is a puzzling figure. This is precisely because his qualities transcend direct empirical and quantitative analysis. He is, above all, a virtuous man. The most diverse and often seemingly opposed qualities are found to exist in him in a harmonious balance. He can be inflexibly strong while remaining inexpressibly tender. He can be exacting to the last degree and yet appreciative of the last element of good in those he deals with, thus building on their strengths. He is of the most virile fearlessness and yet of a meekness that seems to yield before every storm. There we are: the leader of tomorrow! Is it any wonder then that progress up the ladder of any professional career is almost always equivalent to a promotion to a position of leadership? Isn’t it true that we find it easier to follow those who are deeply knowledgeable and have a genuine concern for us? The Sources of Effective Leadership is therefore, above all, about the principles of virtue ethics… and this is because moral life is a requisite and an advantage for any task of genuine leadership. After an introduction on the general subject of ethics and its relationship with other fields of knowledge, it plunges into the question of the moral agent and his attendant free action. This section of the book examines the human person as author of behaviour and is therefore also an inquiry about the theory of action. Part II is about moral virtues and virtuous life. It first explores the concept of moral virtue as a habit that facilitates optimality in making choices before delving into the more difficult questions of particular moral knowledge, the intrinsece evil acts and the moral judgment of particular acts. The setting of the book is thus that of a manual, gradually introducing the student into the vast field of moral philosophy. Its aim is that of explaining the essence of moral life and providing scientific underpinnings for formulating norms which can serve as guide or criteria of judgment regarding the right decisions that make for personal fulfilment as well as serving the social purpose. The student thus discovers that there is no conflict between freedom and law; between self-inter...
Uploads
Papers by Paul Mimbi
The very substance of human living lies in interpersonal relationships. Work, the workplace, and people at work are extremely complex. Even careful observers misread them… while others, under the influence of a mistaken perception of human nature, propose incorrect strategies and solutions. Our development economists seem to place too much emphasis on economic and management efficiency, important as it is, with no explicit role given to the most fundamental factor: the nature of man!, that is, the human nature we all share.
Furthermore, our moral reactions tend to have two factors. On one side, they are almost like instincts, comparable to our love for sweet things or our aversion to nauseous substances, or our fear of falling; on the other hand, they seem to involve claims, implicit or explicit, about the nature and status of human beings. From this second side, a moral reaction is an assent to, an affirmation of, a given ontology of the human person.
Adam Smith, who was above all a philosopher, would have agreed that we must assess man’s nature and reason for existence before we can prescribe a nice set of economic rules. What [is] man (identity, essence, nature)? Why man (goal, purpose, reason for existence)? How man (the right choice of means to our end)? Would the answers to these questions hold the key to our perplexity?
These notes attempt to unravel the mystery of man, seeking to understand the very root of his unity of being in all its human manifestations. The human being should be conceived not only as an atomistic individual, but also as a being whose nature implies coexistence, community (intersubjectivity). Being intensely engaged in relationship with another person is one of the greatest joys of being human. It is, perhaps, the most vital manifestation of consciousness and hence of the human problem. The view that sees relationship as fundamental (intersubjectivity or the second-person perspective) has taken centre stage in modern Personalism. Intersubjectivity is characterised by greater appreciation for feeling, emotion and experience, relationships, etc.
The Overlooked Factor is therefore a book about philosophical anthropology. It comprises three main parts. Part I explores human cognition and volition. It examines the sentient dimension of human existence: its characteristics; external and internal senses; and its sensitive tendencies. It probes human intelligence: its nature and object; and its reflexive capacity and it looks at language as a way of articulating thought. The book then tries to fathom the puzzling phenomenon of human willing and its attendant property of freedom.
Part II probes the concept of person and the powerful notion of intersubjectivity. More specifically, it attempts to scrutinise the idea of the person, from both the phenomenological and metaphysical points of view. It then explores the difficult problem of the psychosomatic unity of man as person (the mind-body problem) before moving on to all the existential ramifications of man as person, beginning with his sociability… Thus, Part III is about human praxis (his activity): his culture, his work and technology, his history….
With this book, we do not pretend to say the last word on the human mystery; rather we wish to bring to the attention of everyone that, part of the reason for the dismal performance of the current social, political and economic structures is the failure to recognize the centrality of the human factor.
Books by Paul Mimbi
This book is a discourse on the method of philosophical inquiry. Method, simply put, is how any field of inquiry arrives at its con-clusions. It is therefore about its points of departure and points of arrival, its principles and objectives. In Metaphysics Α.1, Aristotle says that “everyone takes what is called ‘wisdom’ (sophia) to be concerned with the primary causes (aitia) and the starting points (or principles, archai)” (981b28), and it is these causes and principles that he proposes to study in this work.
The last five hundred years have witnessed not only a proliferation of schools of thought—Rationalism, Empiricism, Idealism, Dialectical Materialism, Voluntarism, Existentialism, Positivism, Nihilism…—but also a tremendous growth in science and technology. That the latter has given rise to an almost supernatural faith in the power of science is an understatement. Yet there are serious misgivings that such confidence may leave no room for genuine human values like friendship, love and joy. The sounds of a piano masterpiece can be analysed (and described) by a physicist in terms of physical-mathematical formulas. Yet it is obvious to eve-ryone that the central fact—the melody, the actual music—which is beyond the reach of the scientific method has been omitted. And yet the melody is the true reality, having an immanent meaning which can be accessed only by a method which is beyond that of physics. This meaning lies at once within and beyond physical processes. An examination of reality exclusively by the scientific method must necessarily leave out of consideration the ‘mystery’ about being, a mystery that is not exhausted by processes accessi-ble to natural sciences. Where mere utility prevails, meaningfulness perishes. Would this fact explain the proliferation of the schools of thought? Isn’t it an attempt to give an adequate explanation of the issues involved? Wouldn’t these schools of thought—“philosophies”—be but studies of approach in regard to the mys-tery of being? In other words, aren’t viewpoints like Empiricism, Idealism, Existentialism… but methods of philosophy as opposed to the schools of thought they appear to portray?
In the Aristotelian-Thomistic perspective, natural science is the second philosophy, but this is so only because there is some-thing more fundamental in the world, something that natural sci-ence—a science of movement—cannot access, the purview of what Aristotle calls ‘first philosophy’ (metaphysics). The title ‘metaphysics’—literally, ‘after the Physics’—very likely indicated the place the topics discussed were intended to occupy in the phil-osophical curriculum. They were to be studied after the treatises dealing with nature (ta phusika). And yet the principles gleaned were supposed to ground the inquires dealing with nature. Doesn’t this suggest that metaphysics is not just a discipline in itself but a method of philosophy? After all do we not hear of ‘Descartes met-aphysics,’ ‘Kantian metaphysics’ and ‘Hegelian metaphysics’… in reference to the schools of thought we have mentioned above? This may hint at a plurality of methods. To be sure, this also suggests varying degrees of success or effectiveness among the methods themselves.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE 9
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 11
INTRODUCTION 13
CHAPTER I: THE METAPHYSICAL METHOD 23
1.1 INTRODUCTION 25
1.1.1 Which method? 25
1.1.2 Metaphysics, science, religion 27
1.2 THE METHOD OF METAPHYSICS IN THE GREAT PHILOSOPHERS 29
1.2.1 The historical path of metaphysics 29
1.2.1 Parmenides 33
1.2.2 Plato and Platonism 38
1.2.2.1 A metaphysics of the absolute intelligible. 38
1.2.2.2 Different forms of Platonism: medieval and modern 40
1.2.3 Aristotle 43
1.2.3.1 A metaphysics of the act 43
1.2.3.2 Thomism and Aristotle 45
a) Metaphysical naturalism 46
b) Metaphysics and its method within the framework of the sciences 47
1.2.4 Thomas Aquinas 49
1.2.4.1 Introduction 49
a) Preliminary phenomenological meanings of “being” 52
b) Logical-grammatical meanings 56
c) The being idealized by thought 57
1.2.4.2 The road of Thomas 58
a) Separatio 58
b) The intellectual way 65
c) Resolutio and compositio 66
d) Being and the transcendentals 69
e) Intensive being and participation 73
1.3 CONCLUDING CONSIDERATIONS ON THE METHOD OF METAPHYSICS 80
CHAPTER II: WHAT IS METAPHYSICS? 85
2.1 INTRODUCTION 87
2.2 THE OBJECT OF METAPHYSICS 88
2.2.1 The role of spontaneous knowledge 88
2.2.2 Esse and the verb ‘to-be’ 95
2.2.3 Esse commune 98
2.2.4 Principle of non-contradiction 99
2.3 METAPHYSICAL ‘ABSTRACTION’ 108
2.3.1 Is the notion of being that is the concern of metaphysics an abstract notion? 108
2.3.2 Is being—object of metaphysics—an a priori notion? 112
2.4 METAPHYSICS IS SAPIENTIAL KNOWLEDGE 114
CHAPTER III: ACT AND POTENCY 117
3.1 REAL COMPOSITION OF ACT AND POTENCY IN THINGS 121
3.1.1 Change, potency and act 121
3.1.2 Four senses of the term potency 123
3.1.3 Aristotle’s “energeia” and “entelecheia” 124
3.1.4 Act implies being 127
3.1.5 Duality between act and potency 128
3.1.6 Metaphysical priority of act 130
3.1.7 Additional considerations of the participation of potency in act 137
3.2 THE MANY LEVELS OF ACT AND POTENCY 140
3.2.1 Form is act thanks to the act of “to be” 148
CHAPTER IV: BEING, SUBSTANCE AND ACCIDENTS 153
4.1 INTRODUCTION 155
4.1.1 Unitary systems 156
4.1.2 Other systems 157
4.1.3 Natural substances 157
4.1.4 Substance in Aristotle’s philosophy 158
4.1.5 Substances and unitary systems 160
4.2 SUBSTANCE, ACCIDENTS AND ACCIDENTAL CHANGE 161
4.2.1 Substance, a cosmological perspective 164
a) Substances are the natural entities in their full meaning 164
b) Substances are the subject of natural dynamism 165
c) The substance is a structural unity 166
4.2.2 Substance in Aristotle and St Thomas 167
4.2.3 Accidents belong to the substance 170
4.2.4 Being (ens) is the whole suppositum 173
4.3 THE ACCIDENTS 175
4.3.1 We find a whole range of accidents 175
4.3.2 Accidents can be grouped 176
4.4 THE ARRANGEMENT OF SUBSTANCES IN NATURE 178
4.4.1 Unity and order in the universe 179
4.4.2 Hierarchy and participation in nature 186
CHAPTER V: THE TRANSCENDENTAL CONFIGURATION
OF BEING 191
5.1 BEING IS BY PARTICIPATION 195
5.1.1 An est? Quid Est? 198
5.2 THE REAL DISTINCTION BETWEEN ESSENCE AND ESSE 205
5.2.1 Distinction between participator and the participation 207
5.3 ESSE IS THE ULTIMATE ACT OF BEING (ENS) AND THE BASIS FOR ITS UNITY 213
5.4 ESSE BELONGS TO THE REAL AND SINGULAR SUPPOSIT WHICH IS THE ONE THAT IS (EXISTS) 219
5.4.1 Distinction between essence and substance 224
5.4.2 Nature, suppositum and person 227
5.5 FURTHER COMPARATIVE PRECISION OF THE NOTION OF ACT OF BEING (ESSE) 233
5.5.1 Esse, existence and contingency 236
5.5.2 Esse and the Existentialist ‘presence of the present’ 239
5.5.3 Other consequences of the identification of esse and existence 241
CHAPTER VI: CAUSALITY AND CAUSATION 245
6.1 EXPERIENCE OF CAUSATION 250
6.1.1 Underpinning the principle of causality 252
6.1.2 Formulation of the principle of causality 260
6.1.3 Formulae based on participation 263
6.1.4 Types of causes 265
6.2 INTRINSIC PREDICAMENTAL CAUSATION 267
6.2.1 Material cause 267
6.2.2 Formal cause 269
6.3 EXTRINSIC PREDICAMENTAL CAUSATION 272
6.3.1 Efficient cause 272
6.3.2 Instrumental causation 280
6.3.3 Final cause 282
6.3.4 Form as an end 283
6.3.5 Co-causality 284
6.4 NEED FOR GROUNDING PREDICAMENTAL CAUSATION 287
CHAPTER: THE METAPHYSICAL ASCENT FROM
CREATURES TO GOD 297
7.1 FROM PREDICAMENTAL CAUSATION TO TRANSCENDENTAL CAUSATION 301
7.1.1 The nature of the transcendental cause 303
7.2 THE UNIQUENESS OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL CAUSE 306
7.3 TRANSCENDENTAL CAUSATION AND PARTICIPATION OF BEING 311
7.3.1 Static and dynamic participation 311
7.4 GOD TRANSCENDS THE WORLD: DIVINE PERFECTION 315
7.5 NATURAL KNOWLEDGE OF GOD IS THE OUTCOME OF A DISCOURSE. SPONTANEOUS KNOWLEDGE AND THE NON-IMMEDIATE EVIDENCE OF HIS EXISTENCE 322
7.5.1 Spontaneous knowledge 323
7.5.2 Philosophical reflection about God 327
7.5.3 Non-immediate evidence of the existence of God 328
7.6 THE METAPHYSICAL ASCENT FROM CREATURES TO GOD AND THE DIFFERENT POINTS OF DEPARTURE: THE WAYS OF ST THOMAS IN S.TH. I, Q. 2, A. 3 329
7.6.1 The Ways of St Thomas 329
7.6.2 General structure and analysis of the five Ways 331
7.6.2.1 Point of Departure 332
7.6.2.2 Application of causality to the point of departure 333
7.6.2.3 Infinite regress discarded 334
7.6.2.4 The Conclusions of the ways 335
7.6.3 Proof by motion or change 336
The critics of the first way 338
7.6.4 The argument via efficient causality 339
The second way’s critics 340
7.6.5 The proof by contingency 342
Critique 343
7.6.6 Degrees of being 347
Critique 349
7.6.7 Finality 350
Critique 350
CHAPTER VIII: ACTION THEORY: THE METAPHYSICS
OF THE VOLUNTARY ACT 353
8.1 ACTUS ESSENDI AND NATURE AS PRINCIPLES OF OPERATIONS 356
8.1.1 How ens acts through its esse and according to its nature 357
8.1.2 Operation (action) follows on esse 364
8.2 REAL DISTINCTION BETWEEN ESSE AND ACTION IN CREATURES 367
8.2.1 Distinction between esse and operation 367
8.2.2 Distinction between subject, nature and operation 368
8.2.3 God is His own Action 370
8.3 THE POWERS OF THE SOUL (OPERATIVE POWERS) 371
8.3.1 The powers (operative potencies) as the immediate principles of action 372
8.3.2 In creatures, essence and powers are not identical 374
8.3.3 Powers are natural operative properties 376
8.4 ACTION AND THE PERFECTING OF BEING (ENS) 379
8.4.1 Action as a goal 379
8.4.2 Actions and operations 383
CHAPTER IX: HUMAN NATURE 385
9.1 THE SOUL, THE PRIMAL FORMAL ACT OF LIVING BEINGS 389
9.1.1 Life and the soul 389
9.1.2 The soul is act and motor of a living body 391
9.2 THE SUBSTANTIAL UNION OF BODY AND SOUL 392
9.3 SPIRITUALITY OF THE HUMAN SOUL 396
9.3.1 Emergence of the soul over the body; the spirituality of the human soul 396
9.3.2 Subsistence of the human soul 398
9.3.3 Immortality of the soul 400
9.3.4 Spiritual human soul is ...
A primary school girl was asked to define what she thought hedonism is. “It is to lose one’s head over material things”. Dead on, the teacher thought to herself… perhaps one of those feminine intuitions…
In effect, in the original state of justice, the soul finds itself irremediably drawn towards the infinite, Truth and Good and Beauty… outside it, nothing is of interest; even one’s own being and good are of little worth, uninspiring, ‘boring’… After the fall, the lights that shone on this infinite Good suddenly went out…. God went ‘off-line’! Suddenly, the soul discovers it exists...
Thus, plunged in the most depressing and disorienting darkness, the human psyche was left with no option but to turn to the little light offered by the (finite) goods: it found pleasure in external (material) goods; it found pleasure in goods of the body (food and sex); it found some ‘joy’ in the ‘goods’ of the spirit (art, music, self-love, etc). As the human heart was made to enjoy some good, it rested its case here.
It went even further: rather than pursue the being, it focused on the idea of it; rather than pursue the good, it turned its attention on ‘pleasure’, just for the fun in it. Man turned in upon himself; man became self-seeking – a lover of fun for the sake of fun irrespective of its source… he was incapable of seeing the person but the (internalized) object of pleasure…”I do not care about the person in herself… all I care for is the fun I derive from her…”
This self-seeking turning-in upon oneself (immanentism, hedonism) is the true diagnosis of the modern man’s malaise. There is no more self-control, no more courage, no more justice… Yet aren’t these the objectives that every man sets for himself in every single quest? More importantly, haven’t we just singled out the three axes which provide the background for our moral judgments, intuitions or reactions?
These three domains of human agency constitute, as it were, a three-dimensional moral frame orienting one’s moral action. But to speak of orientation is to presuppose a space-time analogue within which one finds one’s way. The three domains are equivalent to a three-dimensional space, which together with the time factor constitute the complete framework of human praxis. A choice of a course of action within this moral space reveals the fundamental moral orientation of the human agent. Tell me what you deem choice-worthy and I will tell you the kind of person you are.
Perhaps this is the reason why in most African societies, a combination of age and demonstrated wisdom and integrity were the key determinants of political and administrative leadership. Old age was often associated with accumulated experience and wisdom. It was assumed that decisions made by such men on behalf of the people could not betray the national interest.
“In decision-making, seniority was almost as pervasive as kinship and the young were subordinated to the old in the society from the family to the clan, between elders and warriors. Older men were considered ritually more potent due to their closeness to ancestral spirits. Age was therefore a precondition for leadership and brought with it inherent powers”.
But besides age, certain qualities were also expected of the office bearer. Some were personal while others were determined by one’s social position at birth. To be a leader in Luoland, for example, one had to be wealthy, generous, intelligent and widely regarded as a man of integrity. One could possess all these qualities and still fail to make the grade. There were inbuilt criteria of exclusion. Those who were excluded from leadership included: illegitimate sons, non-indigenous “settlers”, members of marginal groups, only sons and those whose mothers came from other tribes.
In summary the African leadership vision is premised upon gerontocracy (government based on rule by elders) and integrity. Understood in this practice is the following principle: in order to govern one must be ‘far-seeing’, that is to say, wise or prudent. Yet all of the (cardinal) moral virtues are also deemed essential. The central role of justice is obvious. But a leader must also be seen to be temperate and courageous. Thus, justice, courage and temperance: this is what makes for integrity. Yet the primary virtue of the leader (the manager) is prudence. But is this really the case? Aren’t we, once again, letting ourselves be carried away by unfounded quality judgments instead of relying on the rather more cogent quantitative approach? Perhaps the findings of Harvard Business School could shed some light on the matter…
What catapults a company from merely good to truly great? A five-year research project searched for the answer to this question, and its discoveries could change the way many people think about leadership. The most powerfully transformative executives possess a paradoxical mixture of personal humility (a moral virtue) and a fierce resolve. They are timid and ferocious; shy and fearless. Would then the right mix of virtues do the trick?
Thus, age and integrity; prudence and moral virtue… Yet the big question in everyone’s heart is: can one really learn to become the kind of leader described here? Isn’t prudence just a motivation to action in competition with moral motivation? Isn’t it rather the scheming wiliness – they call it ‘shrewdness’ – which is the mainstay of many a business and political endeavour? How can this ‘prudence’ go hand in hand with integrity? Yet contrary to this view, moral virtue and prudence appear to be closely intertwined. And the link seems to be tailored around the will’s act of choice. Choice, in turn, is the chief act of moral virtue and the principal originator of praxis. It is our objective in this book to show that decision making is inextricably bound up with one’s moral fibre, one’s character. A good man makes a good leader and a good manager. A manager who is a bad man sets the wrong goals and priorities for his firm with an obvious disastrous outcome.
But let us go back to our question: can effective leadership be learnt? Yes, it can be learnt, not like a type of knowledge, nor like a skill but like a virtue (a practice). Virtue, like any practice, is acquired by repetition of acts. In the first place, by constantly striving to have one’s eyes trained on the long-term goals (bonum rationis – the just, the bold, the temperate) affectivity is shaped into maintaining an unwavering resolve (the intentional dimension of moral virtue). This guarantees the premises of rational discourse. Second, by constantly striving to think things through, with one’s eyes set on the goals – thus ensuring truth in prudential judgment –, one acquires a sixth sense about optimal decisions; one becomes wise. Finally, by constantly striving to make the right choices in the subject-matters of justice, pleasurable and arduous goods – thus obeying prudential precept –, one develops a sixth sense about making optimal choices (the elective dimension of virtue).
Now prudence pre-supposes the intentional dimension of moral virtue while moral virtues’ elective dimension presupposes prudence. Moral virtue and prudence are thus inextricably bound up in growth and exercise. They are in a symbiotic relationship. They grow together and die together. Yet one may interject: this means that moral virtues and prudence are the ideal panacea for good leadership. The answer is no. They are the presuppositions… they are a condition that is necessary but not sufficient. Besides being virtuous, the manager must count on the appropriate technical training (MBAs etc.).
In the above quoted article from Harvard Business Review the level 5 leader – the real effective manager – is a puzzling figure. This is precisely because his qualities transcend direct empirical and quantitative analysis. He is, above all, a virtuous man. The most diverse and often seemingly opposed qualities are found to exist in him in a harmonious balance. He can be inflexibly strong while remaining inexpressibly tender. He can be exacting to the last degree and yet appreciative of the last element of good in those he deals with, thus building on their strengths. He is of the most virile fearlessness and yet of a meekness that seems to yield before every storm. There we are: the leader of tomorrow! Is it any wonder then that progress up the ladder of any professional career is almost always equivalent to a promotion to a position of leadership? Isn’t it true that we find it easier to follow those who are deeply knowledgeable and have a genuine concern for us?
The Sources of Effective Leadership is therefore, above all, about the principles of virtue ethics… and this is because moral life is a requisite and an advantage for any task of genuine leadership. After an introduction on the general subject of ethics and its relationship with other fields of knowledge, it plunges into the question of the moral agent and his attendant free action. This section of the book examines the human person as author of behaviour and is therefore also an inquiry about the theory of action. Part II is about moral virtues and virtuous life. It first explores the concept of moral virtue as a habit that facilitates optimality in making choices before delving into the more difficult questions of particular moral knowledge, the intrinsece evil acts and the moral judgment of particular acts. The setting of the book is thus that of a manual, gradually introducing the student into the vast field of moral philosophy. Its aim is that of explaining the essence of moral life and providing scientific underpinnings for formulating norms which can serve as guide or criteria of judgment regarding the right decisions that make for personal fulfilment as well as serving the social purpose. The student thus discovers that there is no conflict between freedom and law; between self-inter...
The very substance of human living lies in interpersonal relationships. Work, the workplace, and people at work are extremely complex. Even careful observers misread them… while others, under the influence of a mistaken perception of human nature, propose incorrect strategies and solutions. Our development economists seem to place too much emphasis on economic and management efficiency, important as it is, with no explicit role given to the most fundamental factor: the nature of man!, that is, the human nature we all share.
Furthermore, our moral reactions tend to have two factors. On one side, they are almost like instincts, comparable to our love for sweet things or our aversion to nauseous substances, or our fear of falling; on the other hand, they seem to involve claims, implicit or explicit, about the nature and status of human beings. From this second side, a moral reaction is an assent to, an affirmation of, a given ontology of the human person.
Adam Smith, who was above all a philosopher, would have agreed that we must assess man’s nature and reason for existence before we can prescribe a nice set of economic rules. What [is] man (identity, essence, nature)? Why man (goal, purpose, reason for existence)? How man (the right choice of means to our end)? Would the answers to these questions hold the key to our perplexity?
These notes attempt to unravel the mystery of man, seeking to understand the very root of his unity of being in all its human manifestations. The human being should be conceived not only as an atomistic individual, but also as a being whose nature implies coexistence, community (intersubjectivity). Being intensely engaged in relationship with another person is one of the greatest joys of being human. It is, perhaps, the most vital manifestation of consciousness and hence of the human problem. The view that sees relationship as fundamental (intersubjectivity or the second-person perspective) has taken centre stage in modern Personalism. Intersubjectivity is characterised by greater appreciation for feeling, emotion and experience, relationships, etc.
The Overlooked Factor is therefore a book about philosophical anthropology. It comprises three main parts. Part I explores human cognition and volition. It examines the sentient dimension of human existence: its characteristics; external and internal senses; and its sensitive tendencies. It probes human intelligence: its nature and object; and its reflexive capacity and it looks at language as a way of articulating thought. The book then tries to fathom the puzzling phenomenon of human willing and its attendant property of freedom.
Part II probes the concept of person and the powerful notion of intersubjectivity. More specifically, it attempts to scrutinise the idea of the person, from both the phenomenological and metaphysical points of view. It then explores the difficult problem of the psychosomatic unity of man as person (the mind-body problem) before moving on to all the existential ramifications of man as person, beginning with his sociability… Thus, Part III is about human praxis (his activity): his culture, his work and technology, his history….
With this book, we do not pretend to say the last word on the human mystery; rather we wish to bring to the attention of everyone that, part of the reason for the dismal performance of the current social, political and economic structures is the failure to recognize the centrality of the human factor.
This book is a discourse on the method of philosophical inquiry. Method, simply put, is how any field of inquiry arrives at its con-clusions. It is therefore about its points of departure and points of arrival, its principles and objectives. In Metaphysics Α.1, Aristotle says that “everyone takes what is called ‘wisdom’ (sophia) to be concerned with the primary causes (aitia) and the starting points (or principles, archai)” (981b28), and it is these causes and principles that he proposes to study in this work.
The last five hundred years have witnessed not only a proliferation of schools of thought—Rationalism, Empiricism, Idealism, Dialectical Materialism, Voluntarism, Existentialism, Positivism, Nihilism…—but also a tremendous growth in science and technology. That the latter has given rise to an almost supernatural faith in the power of science is an understatement. Yet there are serious misgivings that such confidence may leave no room for genuine human values like friendship, love and joy. The sounds of a piano masterpiece can be analysed (and described) by a physicist in terms of physical-mathematical formulas. Yet it is obvious to eve-ryone that the central fact—the melody, the actual music—which is beyond the reach of the scientific method has been omitted. And yet the melody is the true reality, having an immanent meaning which can be accessed only by a method which is beyond that of physics. This meaning lies at once within and beyond physical processes. An examination of reality exclusively by the scientific method must necessarily leave out of consideration the ‘mystery’ about being, a mystery that is not exhausted by processes accessi-ble to natural sciences. Where mere utility prevails, meaningfulness perishes. Would this fact explain the proliferation of the schools of thought? Isn’t it an attempt to give an adequate explanation of the issues involved? Wouldn’t these schools of thought—“philosophies”—be but studies of approach in regard to the mys-tery of being? In other words, aren’t viewpoints like Empiricism, Idealism, Existentialism… but methods of philosophy as opposed to the schools of thought they appear to portray?
In the Aristotelian-Thomistic perspective, natural science is the second philosophy, but this is so only because there is some-thing more fundamental in the world, something that natural sci-ence—a science of movement—cannot access, the purview of what Aristotle calls ‘first philosophy’ (metaphysics). The title ‘metaphysics’—literally, ‘after the Physics’—very likely indicated the place the topics discussed were intended to occupy in the phil-osophical curriculum. They were to be studied after the treatises dealing with nature (ta phusika). And yet the principles gleaned were supposed to ground the inquires dealing with nature. Doesn’t this suggest that metaphysics is not just a discipline in itself but a method of philosophy? After all do we not hear of ‘Descartes met-aphysics,’ ‘Kantian metaphysics’ and ‘Hegelian metaphysics’… in reference to the schools of thought we have mentioned above? This may hint at a plurality of methods. To be sure, this also suggests varying degrees of success or effectiveness among the methods themselves.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE 9
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 11
INTRODUCTION 13
CHAPTER I: THE METAPHYSICAL METHOD 23
1.1 INTRODUCTION 25
1.1.1 Which method? 25
1.1.2 Metaphysics, science, religion 27
1.2 THE METHOD OF METAPHYSICS IN THE GREAT PHILOSOPHERS 29
1.2.1 The historical path of metaphysics 29
1.2.1 Parmenides 33
1.2.2 Plato and Platonism 38
1.2.2.1 A metaphysics of the absolute intelligible. 38
1.2.2.2 Different forms of Platonism: medieval and modern 40
1.2.3 Aristotle 43
1.2.3.1 A metaphysics of the act 43
1.2.3.2 Thomism and Aristotle 45
a) Metaphysical naturalism 46
b) Metaphysics and its method within the framework of the sciences 47
1.2.4 Thomas Aquinas 49
1.2.4.1 Introduction 49
a) Preliminary phenomenological meanings of “being” 52
b) Logical-grammatical meanings 56
c) The being idealized by thought 57
1.2.4.2 The road of Thomas 58
a) Separatio 58
b) The intellectual way 65
c) Resolutio and compositio 66
d) Being and the transcendentals 69
e) Intensive being and participation 73
1.3 CONCLUDING CONSIDERATIONS ON THE METHOD OF METAPHYSICS 80
CHAPTER II: WHAT IS METAPHYSICS? 85
2.1 INTRODUCTION 87
2.2 THE OBJECT OF METAPHYSICS 88
2.2.1 The role of spontaneous knowledge 88
2.2.2 Esse and the verb ‘to-be’ 95
2.2.3 Esse commune 98
2.2.4 Principle of non-contradiction 99
2.3 METAPHYSICAL ‘ABSTRACTION’ 108
2.3.1 Is the notion of being that is the concern of metaphysics an abstract notion? 108
2.3.2 Is being—object of metaphysics—an a priori notion? 112
2.4 METAPHYSICS IS SAPIENTIAL KNOWLEDGE 114
CHAPTER III: ACT AND POTENCY 117
3.1 REAL COMPOSITION OF ACT AND POTENCY IN THINGS 121
3.1.1 Change, potency and act 121
3.1.2 Four senses of the term potency 123
3.1.3 Aristotle’s “energeia” and “entelecheia” 124
3.1.4 Act implies being 127
3.1.5 Duality between act and potency 128
3.1.6 Metaphysical priority of act 130
3.1.7 Additional considerations of the participation of potency in act 137
3.2 THE MANY LEVELS OF ACT AND POTENCY 140
3.2.1 Form is act thanks to the act of “to be” 148
CHAPTER IV: BEING, SUBSTANCE AND ACCIDENTS 153
4.1 INTRODUCTION 155
4.1.1 Unitary systems 156
4.1.2 Other systems 157
4.1.3 Natural substances 157
4.1.4 Substance in Aristotle’s philosophy 158
4.1.5 Substances and unitary systems 160
4.2 SUBSTANCE, ACCIDENTS AND ACCIDENTAL CHANGE 161
4.2.1 Substance, a cosmological perspective 164
a) Substances are the natural entities in their full meaning 164
b) Substances are the subject of natural dynamism 165
c) The substance is a structural unity 166
4.2.2 Substance in Aristotle and St Thomas 167
4.2.3 Accidents belong to the substance 170
4.2.4 Being (ens) is the whole suppositum 173
4.3 THE ACCIDENTS 175
4.3.1 We find a whole range of accidents 175
4.3.2 Accidents can be grouped 176
4.4 THE ARRANGEMENT OF SUBSTANCES IN NATURE 178
4.4.1 Unity and order in the universe 179
4.4.2 Hierarchy and participation in nature 186
CHAPTER V: THE TRANSCENDENTAL CONFIGURATION
OF BEING 191
5.1 BEING IS BY PARTICIPATION 195
5.1.1 An est? Quid Est? 198
5.2 THE REAL DISTINCTION BETWEEN ESSENCE AND ESSE 205
5.2.1 Distinction between participator and the participation 207
5.3 ESSE IS THE ULTIMATE ACT OF BEING (ENS) AND THE BASIS FOR ITS UNITY 213
5.4 ESSE BELONGS TO THE REAL AND SINGULAR SUPPOSIT WHICH IS THE ONE THAT IS (EXISTS) 219
5.4.1 Distinction between essence and substance 224
5.4.2 Nature, suppositum and person 227
5.5 FURTHER COMPARATIVE PRECISION OF THE NOTION OF ACT OF BEING (ESSE) 233
5.5.1 Esse, existence and contingency 236
5.5.2 Esse and the Existentialist ‘presence of the present’ 239
5.5.3 Other consequences of the identification of esse and existence 241
CHAPTER VI: CAUSALITY AND CAUSATION 245
6.1 EXPERIENCE OF CAUSATION 250
6.1.1 Underpinning the principle of causality 252
6.1.2 Formulation of the principle of causality 260
6.1.3 Formulae based on participation 263
6.1.4 Types of causes 265
6.2 INTRINSIC PREDICAMENTAL CAUSATION 267
6.2.1 Material cause 267
6.2.2 Formal cause 269
6.3 EXTRINSIC PREDICAMENTAL CAUSATION 272
6.3.1 Efficient cause 272
6.3.2 Instrumental causation 280
6.3.3 Final cause 282
6.3.4 Form as an end 283
6.3.5 Co-causality 284
6.4 NEED FOR GROUNDING PREDICAMENTAL CAUSATION 287
CHAPTER: THE METAPHYSICAL ASCENT FROM
CREATURES TO GOD 297
7.1 FROM PREDICAMENTAL CAUSATION TO TRANSCENDENTAL CAUSATION 301
7.1.1 The nature of the transcendental cause 303
7.2 THE UNIQUENESS OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL CAUSE 306
7.3 TRANSCENDENTAL CAUSATION AND PARTICIPATION OF BEING 311
7.3.1 Static and dynamic participation 311
7.4 GOD TRANSCENDS THE WORLD: DIVINE PERFECTION 315
7.5 NATURAL KNOWLEDGE OF GOD IS THE OUTCOME OF A DISCOURSE. SPONTANEOUS KNOWLEDGE AND THE NON-IMMEDIATE EVIDENCE OF HIS EXISTENCE 322
7.5.1 Spontaneous knowledge 323
7.5.2 Philosophical reflection about God 327
7.5.3 Non-immediate evidence of the existence of God 328
7.6 THE METAPHYSICAL ASCENT FROM CREATURES TO GOD AND THE DIFFERENT POINTS OF DEPARTURE: THE WAYS OF ST THOMAS IN S.TH. I, Q. 2, A. 3 329
7.6.1 The Ways of St Thomas 329
7.6.2 General structure and analysis of the five Ways 331
7.6.2.1 Point of Departure 332
7.6.2.2 Application of causality to the point of departure 333
7.6.2.3 Infinite regress discarded 334
7.6.2.4 The Conclusions of the ways 335
7.6.3 Proof by motion or change 336
The critics of the first way 338
7.6.4 The argument via efficient causality 339
The second way’s critics 340
7.6.5 The proof by contingency 342
Critique 343
7.6.6 Degrees of being 347
Critique 349
7.6.7 Finality 350
Critique 350
CHAPTER VIII: ACTION THEORY: THE METAPHYSICS
OF THE VOLUNTARY ACT 353
8.1 ACTUS ESSENDI AND NATURE AS PRINCIPLES OF OPERATIONS 356
8.1.1 How ens acts through its esse and according to its nature 357
8.1.2 Operation (action) follows on esse 364
8.2 REAL DISTINCTION BETWEEN ESSE AND ACTION IN CREATURES 367
8.2.1 Distinction between esse and operation 367
8.2.2 Distinction between subject, nature and operation 368
8.2.3 God is His own Action 370
8.3 THE POWERS OF THE SOUL (OPERATIVE POWERS) 371
8.3.1 The powers (operative potencies) as the immediate principles of action 372
8.3.2 In creatures, essence and powers are not identical 374
8.3.3 Powers are natural operative properties 376
8.4 ACTION AND THE PERFECTING OF BEING (ENS) 379
8.4.1 Action as a goal 379
8.4.2 Actions and operations 383
CHAPTER IX: HUMAN NATURE 385
9.1 THE SOUL, THE PRIMAL FORMAL ACT OF LIVING BEINGS 389
9.1.1 Life and the soul 389
9.1.2 The soul is act and motor of a living body 391
9.2 THE SUBSTANTIAL UNION OF BODY AND SOUL 392
9.3 SPIRITUALITY OF THE HUMAN SOUL 396
9.3.1 Emergence of the soul over the body; the spirituality of the human soul 396
9.3.2 Subsistence of the human soul 398
9.3.3 Immortality of the soul 400
9.3.4 Spiritual human soul is ...
A primary school girl was asked to define what she thought hedonism is. “It is to lose one’s head over material things”. Dead on, the teacher thought to herself… perhaps one of those feminine intuitions…
In effect, in the original state of justice, the soul finds itself irremediably drawn towards the infinite, Truth and Good and Beauty… outside it, nothing is of interest; even one’s own being and good are of little worth, uninspiring, ‘boring’… After the fall, the lights that shone on this infinite Good suddenly went out…. God went ‘off-line’! Suddenly, the soul discovers it exists...
Thus, plunged in the most depressing and disorienting darkness, the human psyche was left with no option but to turn to the little light offered by the (finite) goods: it found pleasure in external (material) goods; it found pleasure in goods of the body (food and sex); it found some ‘joy’ in the ‘goods’ of the spirit (art, music, self-love, etc). As the human heart was made to enjoy some good, it rested its case here.
It went even further: rather than pursue the being, it focused on the idea of it; rather than pursue the good, it turned its attention on ‘pleasure’, just for the fun in it. Man turned in upon himself; man became self-seeking – a lover of fun for the sake of fun irrespective of its source… he was incapable of seeing the person but the (internalized) object of pleasure…”I do not care about the person in herself… all I care for is the fun I derive from her…”
This self-seeking turning-in upon oneself (immanentism, hedonism) is the true diagnosis of the modern man’s malaise. There is no more self-control, no more courage, no more justice… Yet aren’t these the objectives that every man sets for himself in every single quest? More importantly, haven’t we just singled out the three axes which provide the background for our moral judgments, intuitions or reactions?
These three domains of human agency constitute, as it were, a three-dimensional moral frame orienting one’s moral action. But to speak of orientation is to presuppose a space-time analogue within which one finds one’s way. The three domains are equivalent to a three-dimensional space, which together with the time factor constitute the complete framework of human praxis. A choice of a course of action within this moral space reveals the fundamental moral orientation of the human agent. Tell me what you deem choice-worthy and I will tell you the kind of person you are.
Perhaps this is the reason why in most African societies, a combination of age and demonstrated wisdom and integrity were the key determinants of political and administrative leadership. Old age was often associated with accumulated experience and wisdom. It was assumed that decisions made by such men on behalf of the people could not betray the national interest.
“In decision-making, seniority was almost as pervasive as kinship and the young were subordinated to the old in the society from the family to the clan, between elders and warriors. Older men were considered ritually more potent due to their closeness to ancestral spirits. Age was therefore a precondition for leadership and brought with it inherent powers”.
But besides age, certain qualities were also expected of the office bearer. Some were personal while others were determined by one’s social position at birth. To be a leader in Luoland, for example, one had to be wealthy, generous, intelligent and widely regarded as a man of integrity. One could possess all these qualities and still fail to make the grade. There were inbuilt criteria of exclusion. Those who were excluded from leadership included: illegitimate sons, non-indigenous “settlers”, members of marginal groups, only sons and those whose mothers came from other tribes.
In summary the African leadership vision is premised upon gerontocracy (government based on rule by elders) and integrity. Understood in this practice is the following principle: in order to govern one must be ‘far-seeing’, that is to say, wise or prudent. Yet all of the (cardinal) moral virtues are also deemed essential. The central role of justice is obvious. But a leader must also be seen to be temperate and courageous. Thus, justice, courage and temperance: this is what makes for integrity. Yet the primary virtue of the leader (the manager) is prudence. But is this really the case? Aren’t we, once again, letting ourselves be carried away by unfounded quality judgments instead of relying on the rather more cogent quantitative approach? Perhaps the findings of Harvard Business School could shed some light on the matter…
What catapults a company from merely good to truly great? A five-year research project searched for the answer to this question, and its discoveries could change the way many people think about leadership. The most powerfully transformative executives possess a paradoxical mixture of personal humility (a moral virtue) and a fierce resolve. They are timid and ferocious; shy and fearless. Would then the right mix of virtues do the trick?
Thus, age and integrity; prudence and moral virtue… Yet the big question in everyone’s heart is: can one really learn to become the kind of leader described here? Isn’t prudence just a motivation to action in competition with moral motivation? Isn’t it rather the scheming wiliness – they call it ‘shrewdness’ – which is the mainstay of many a business and political endeavour? How can this ‘prudence’ go hand in hand with integrity? Yet contrary to this view, moral virtue and prudence appear to be closely intertwined. And the link seems to be tailored around the will’s act of choice. Choice, in turn, is the chief act of moral virtue and the principal originator of praxis. It is our objective in this book to show that decision making is inextricably bound up with one’s moral fibre, one’s character. A good man makes a good leader and a good manager. A manager who is a bad man sets the wrong goals and priorities for his firm with an obvious disastrous outcome.
But let us go back to our question: can effective leadership be learnt? Yes, it can be learnt, not like a type of knowledge, nor like a skill but like a virtue (a practice). Virtue, like any practice, is acquired by repetition of acts. In the first place, by constantly striving to have one’s eyes trained on the long-term goals (bonum rationis – the just, the bold, the temperate) affectivity is shaped into maintaining an unwavering resolve (the intentional dimension of moral virtue). This guarantees the premises of rational discourse. Second, by constantly striving to think things through, with one’s eyes set on the goals – thus ensuring truth in prudential judgment –, one acquires a sixth sense about optimal decisions; one becomes wise. Finally, by constantly striving to make the right choices in the subject-matters of justice, pleasurable and arduous goods – thus obeying prudential precept –, one develops a sixth sense about making optimal choices (the elective dimension of virtue).
Now prudence pre-supposes the intentional dimension of moral virtue while moral virtues’ elective dimension presupposes prudence. Moral virtue and prudence are thus inextricably bound up in growth and exercise. They are in a symbiotic relationship. They grow together and die together. Yet one may interject: this means that moral virtues and prudence are the ideal panacea for good leadership. The answer is no. They are the presuppositions… they are a condition that is necessary but not sufficient. Besides being virtuous, the manager must count on the appropriate technical training (MBAs etc.).
In the above quoted article from Harvard Business Review the level 5 leader – the real effective manager – is a puzzling figure. This is precisely because his qualities transcend direct empirical and quantitative analysis. He is, above all, a virtuous man. The most diverse and often seemingly opposed qualities are found to exist in him in a harmonious balance. He can be inflexibly strong while remaining inexpressibly tender. He can be exacting to the last degree and yet appreciative of the last element of good in those he deals with, thus building on their strengths. He is of the most virile fearlessness and yet of a meekness that seems to yield before every storm. There we are: the leader of tomorrow! Is it any wonder then that progress up the ladder of any professional career is almost always equivalent to a promotion to a position of leadership? Isn’t it true that we find it easier to follow those who are deeply knowledgeable and have a genuine concern for us?
The Sources of Effective Leadership is therefore, above all, about the principles of virtue ethics… and this is because moral life is a requisite and an advantage for any task of genuine leadership. After an introduction on the general subject of ethics and its relationship with other fields of knowledge, it plunges into the question of the moral agent and his attendant free action. This section of the book examines the human person as author of behaviour and is therefore also an inquiry about the theory of action. Part II is about moral virtues and virtuous life. It first explores the concept of moral virtue as a habit that facilitates optimality in making choices before delving into the more difficult questions of particular moral knowledge, the intrinsece evil acts and the moral judgment of particular acts. The setting of the book is thus that of a manual, gradually introducing the student into the vast field of moral philosophy. Its aim is that of explaining the essence of moral life and providing scientific underpinnings for formulating norms which can serve as guide or criteria of judgment regarding the right decisions that make for personal fulfilment as well as serving the social purpose. The student thus discovers that there is no conflict between freedom and law; between self-inter...