METAPHYSICS AS THE SCIENCE OF BEING QUA BEING

Transcendental Properties of Being, First Principles, Pure Perfections, Categories and Modes of Being

By: Josef Maria Seifert

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

The object of Metaphysics, being qua being (Aristotle: to on he on), can be understood in four ways:

1. As the most universal properties and principles that refer to all beings whatsoever such as the ontological principle of contradiction: it is absolutely impossible that both two contradictory states of affairs can obtain (timelessly or at the same time). This principle cannot be reduced to a mere law of human thinking but applies to any appearance and thing in itself, in the real and in any possible world. Nor can the ontological principle of contradiction be reduced to the logical principle that of two contradictory propositions not both can be true. The principles of identity, of excluded middle, and of sufficient reason are likewise absolute laws of all being.

In the present work, the great contribution of Duns Scotus to the metaphysics of treanscendentals will be devoped further:: The essential point of them is not that they are found in everything that is but rather that they do not have any intrinsic limitation (and therefore, unlike limited and mixed perfections like animal and human nature), they can also, and must even, be attributed in the primary sense, to God).

Besides seven “transcendental properties” found in all things, there are other transcendentals: pure perfections that are found only in some beings (life, wisdom , etc.), but are not restricted to limited spheres of being but are fully themselves only when they are infinite, which is the core of their “transcendentality”. Still others are exclusively divine attributes. Of all of them holds true: A pure perfection (a transcendental) is whatever is absolutely and without qualification better than anything incompatible with it.
The present work analyzes in depth seven striking essential marks of transcendentals and pure perfections that are evident to pure philosophical reason and an eighth one that is only knowable from a trinitarian Christian vision of God (Faith). Many evidences and proofs are offered for the existence or pure perfections and it is shown that any denial of their existence is self-contradictory.
In chapter 2 the transcendentals ens et bonum are analyzed ,more in depth.
2. The third chapter that leads already to the topic of volume 3 of Being and Person deals with the fundamentally different categories of being, that is, not with what is common to all entities but what costitutes their most fundamental divisions,
In the Third volume of being and Person “Being qua Being” will be understood as the most fundamental differences (Categories, Distinctions and Divisions within being) that are decisive to understand “being as such”, such as substance versus accidents.
3. Finally the most decisive metaphysical question about “being qua being” is raised: What is being in the most eminent and truest sense? It is answered in Chapter 2 of the third volume of Being and Person: not substance (proposed by Aristotle and shown to be an incomplete truth in Chapter 8) but only ’Person’ is being in the most authentic and truest sense.
4. In Volume 4 of Being and Person, God as Truest Person, “being qua being” will be understood and explained in the fourth sense as the absolute divine being. Its exploration in Aristotle's Metaphysics leads him to call metaphysics "divine science".