Comments on: Is All We Need LOVE? A prolegomena to future discussions on Love and Being.

By: Scott

Scott — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 12:44:51 +0000

I remember being taught that in certain texts Plato puts the ‘Good’ on top of the other separated immaterial Forms, and in other texts puts the ‘One’ in that place. If this is true, then, as with other teachings of Plato, it might better to say, in ‘X text, Plato asserts A; in Y text, Plato asserts B’. Anyways….

Dan: When Von B. discusses the order of the transcendentals, do you think he is making an epistemological ordering, an ontological ordering, or just both at once? What is, perhaps, to be discussed with this is divine simplicity. Since Aquinas has a fairly strong acct. of divine simplicity, a distinction btwn. divine attributes (perfections) would be one that is ‘according to reason on the part of the thing’ (secundum rationum a parte rei)—as opposed to ‘according to reason from how humans understand’.

Besides the ordering question, there’s another one which is a textual question of sorts, namely, whether what Aquinas says about the transcendentals applies straightforwardly to what he says about divine attributes? Do he explain being, unity, etc. when talking about divine attributes, or is that discussion of transcendentals first about creation, and then somehow mapped onto God. This, I believe, is Jan Aertsen’s reading (_Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: The Case for Thomas Aquinas_).

By: Janet Leslie Blumberg

Janet Leslie Blumberg — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 23:32:42 +0000

Sort of off the point, but still, just to be clear, to the best of my knowledge, Plato doesn’t actually ground the so-called transcendentals in the One. If there is anything that grounds all the other major Forms, it is “the Good” that is said to be “beyond being” in the Republic (and that is criticized a bit by Aristotle in the Metaphysics — how can any one formal entity be beyond the others?).
But I sort of think the Good for Plato is very like Aristotle’s realization or actualization of the formal potentiality of things, each thing striving to be perfectly good in its own kind or participating in that ideal. Something is Good because it is the most beautiful and the most true state of any kind of thing to be what it “formally” is to the very fullest. If we have a universe like that, a universe impelled by desire (love, need) of the Good, then we have a fundamentally good universe, in Plato’s view, in spite of darkness and error. That light of the sun, remember, in the parable of the Cave, is specifically designated as the Good!
Heidegger talks about Plato’s “the good beyond being” somewhere, really excitingly. Is it in What is Metaphysics?

By: DWM

DWM — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 15:11:13 +0000

Aron, that’s a good question and highlights that I probably tried to explore too many aspects of the article in conjunction with my reflection on the film.
Simply put, in the section you bring up, Balthasar is not asserting anything about God’s nature qua nature. He is rather exploring the relationship, or symmetry of the divine attributes - their relation to each other. So, in the classical construction, truth (verum) comes before the good (bonum) and beauty (pulchrum). In Balthasar’s scheme, he doesn’t necessarily deny this linear projection, but also wants to highlight the reciprocal action between the three. hence the long quote about goodness as the appearance of the beauty, etc…

By: A.D.

A.D. — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 15:00:42 +0000

I’m a little confused: does Balthasar want to argue with Thomas’ positing of intellect over will? Does Balthasar want to argue with Plato’s grounding of the True, Beautiful and Good in the One? Where does Love fit into all this? It seems that Balthasar spends a lot of energy drawing Beauty and Love quite closely together. . . is Love like the One, grounding the other transcendentals?