MARY HELP OF CHRISTIANS MINOR SEMINARY

INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY (THEMATIC)

LECTURE NOTES

LESSON: Metaphysics: The First Philosophy

I. Metaphysics: Beyond the Physical

- It is called meta-physics because it goes beyond the physical or sensible as such,
into the purely intelligible order of reality.
- “Meta” means “beyond”. The name “metaphysics” was eventually given thru a
historical accident, and because it is an apt name.
- Andronicus of Rhodes (c.50 BC) an early editor of Aristotle’s works placed in the
treatises on being after the books dealing with physical things and labeled it
“After the Physics” or “meta- physics.”
II. Metaphysics: Science of Being as being
- If metaphysics is a science of being, what we have to study in metaphysics is the
cause of being.
- We can say then that metaphysics is the science of the principles and causes of
being as being. In metaphysics, we study the highest and ultimate and most
universal principles or causes of everything.
- This is why metaphysics is called “first philosophy”: the whole of reality falls
under its scope.
III. The Object of Metaphysics
1. Material Object – all things
2. Formal Object – the being of all things
IV. Metaphysics studies both the totality and the unity of all things.
- Totality: because being affects absolutely everything. The only thing outside of
“being” is “non-being” or nothing.
- Unity: because what all things have in common, what makes them all one is
being. Things may differ in many ways, but one thing they are exactly the same:
in that they are, they exist.
V. Analogy of Being
 MARY HELP OF CHRISTIANS MINOR SEMINARY
INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY (THEMATIC)
LECTURE NOTES

1. Univocal - When a word is applied to many things always with the same
meaning.
2. Equivocal - If a term has sometimes a meaning and other times a completely
different one.
3. Analogy - from the Greek for “proportion” means that the subjects to which it
applies are equal to one another, but proportionately only.
VI. The Principle of Non-Contradiction
- The supreme principle of metaphysics is the principle of noncontradiction: It is
impossible for something to be and not to be in the same sense and in the
same subject.
VII. The Starting Point of the Metaphysical Road
- Being. In English “being”, grammatically speaking can be a noun, a participle, or
a gerund. (a human being, a being from another planet, the importance of being
earnest).
- In Latin, ens is the noun, and esse is the verb.
- Noun signifies a reality which is stable by itself while the verb designates activity or passivity.
Hence, to designate what is permanent, we have the noun; to designate what is moving,
changing, dynamic, we have the verb.
VIII. Ens vs. Esse
- Ens is the manner of being which has the act of being. It is the essence: it is not
everything, but only this type of being, this essence. The essence is that which the
thing is.
- Esse is the act of being. It is that by which the thing is. It is a metaphysical real
component or constituent part of the singular concrete being. It is not something
that we grasp as a notion itself, because then it would be a noun. It is that by
which any thing is. It is the actuality of things, as distinct from their possibility.
IX. Existence vs. Being
- Existence. “To exist” is not quite the same as “to be.” It comes from the Latin
existere which literally means “to stand out of.” From there comes the Latin
 MARY HELP OF CHRISTIANS MINOR SEMINARY
INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY (THEMATIC)
LECTURE NOTES

existentia and “existence” in English, and it means the fact of being, not the act of
being.
- “Fact” comes from the Latin factum which means “made” or finished. Existence
signifies the fact of being; when something is already there, has come to the act of
being, then it exists, it stands out of, it is no longer a possibility.
- Being is not identical with existence. Existence is the fact of being, “fact” meaning
“what is made.” While esse is a metaphysical principle, “to exist” is the result of
having esse.
- One is the principle, and the other is the result. Esse is a principle because
nothing can be without the act of being. Existere or to exist is the result of having
esse.
X. Division of Being
1. Substance and Accident
A. Substance is defined as what exists or is by itself and in itself. A substance can be
described as:
a. Unity of being in multiplicity: we see, for example, many men, but
discover that each man is one being, with a perfect unity, and we call
this unity in multiplicity substance;
b. Permanence in changes: what does not change under the changes.
c. The subsistence of a nucleus or core of being on which or in which all
other things exist.
B. There are four insights which show the intimate reality of substance:
 that is the subject of holder of the accidents (sub-stare: to stand under”)
 that is what subsists, i.e., what exists by itself, on which everything else is
based. In a being, what subsists is the substance, and all other aspects
(accidents) are based on the substance;
 that it has the act of being in itself, and not in another
 that it is what fully fulfills the notion of ens (what has esse)
MARY HELP OF CHRISTIANS MINOR SEMINARY
INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY (THEMATIC)
LECTURE NOTES

C. Accident
 Accidents are secondary manners of being, existing in the substance, because
they cannot be “primary”: as soon as we perceive them, we realize that there
must be something that holds them. They can be described as:
a. determinations of ens which appear multiplied in a subject, ex., in a
subject such as a dog, we find many secondary determinations,
such as size, weight, color, etc.
b. changeable determinations of a permanent subject;
c. derived or secondary determinations of a primary and principal
subject
D. Substance and Accident
 §The manner of being of accidents is secondary because they need a
substance in order to be. They can be called beings of being (entis in Latin). A
substance is simply called being (ens).
 §The accidents are beings of being (entia entis). It belongs to them to be in
another and not in themselves; and they are really distinct from their subject.
 Relation of Substance and Accidents
o substance is the subject of the accidents, “subject” meaning the holder
or bearer what underlies, and it indicates the metaphysical dependence
of accidents on substance;
o substance is to accident what potency is to act, because the accidents
perfect the substance;
o substance is to accident what cause is to effect: the accidents come into
being because of the substance.

E. Knowledge of the Substance

 Substance as such cannot be perceived by our senses: we cannot see it, touch
it, imagine it. Our senses do indeed perceive beings which are substances, but
 MARY HELP OF CHRISTIANS MINOR SEMINARY
INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY (THEMATIC)
LECTURE NOTES

it is the color, the taste, the shape of the thing which is known by our senses,
not its being or its substance.
 The existence of substance is known only by an insight of the intellect, which
sees that behind the becoming of sense phenomena there exists the being
which is the subject of the change.
XI. Act and Potency
- The moment we look at things in the material sensible world, we see change and
motion. This experience of change and motion implies the truth of the principle
of non-contradiction because if to be here means the same as to be there, then
there is no motion.
- Potency is that which can be something but is not yet; and we call act that
which is already. The passage from the potency to the corresponding act is
called motion or change.
- Aristotle defined motion as the act of a being in potency in so far as it is still in
potency. St. Thomas explains the definition of change as follows: A thing may be
in any one of the three situations --- in act only, in potency only, or somewhere
between act and potency.
- Change then is the state of being in between being-in-act and being-in-potency.
- Motion is an act because it is a reality and every reality is an act, something that
is there. However, it is not a perfect act, because if it were perfect, it would no
longer be motion.
- Thus, motion is more perfect than potency, but less perfect than act: it can always
become better.
A. Motion may be understood in two ways:
 a change from one subject to another: a change of substance, a substance
becoming another substance that is generated, as another is corrupted;
 a change from a subject in a certain stage to the same subject in another stage:
B. Motion/Change
 MARY HELP OF CHRISTIANS MINOR SEMINARY
INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY (THEMATIC)
LECTURE NOTES

 If this happens with regard to place, it is called local motion.

 If with regard to quantity, it is called increase or decrease.
 If with regard to quality, the name is alteration.
- Act and potency divide created being because every finite being is really
composed of potency and act. This is the fundamental composition of finite
being: potency and act.
- All finite beings are perfectible: they can become always better, because as long
as they still have potency, they can actualize it. We can always increase our
being, if not materially, immaterially, by knowing, and here there is no limit. By
knowing, willing and doing we can increase our being indefinitely with new
actualities.
XII. Essence
- Literally. “essence” comes from esse: if esse is “to be,” essence is a “manner of
being”. More precisely, it is what a thing is, or that whereby a thing is what it is.
A. Essence as Nature
B. Essence as Metaphysical Determination

XIII. Activity of Created Beings

XIV. Transcendental Properties of Being