ATENEO PONTIFICIO REGINA APOSTOLORUM

FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY

The Dimensions of the Human Person in William Norris Clarke

Student: Br Otti Alfred Okello, LC

Number: 9810

Director: Dr. Alain Contat

FE 2001: License Dissertation

Place and Date: Rome, 27th May 2013

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INTRODUCTION

This work is ordered to investigate the “dimensions of the human person” in

William Norris Clarke, S. J.

Clarke describes himself as a “Thomistically inspired” metaphysician rather than

simply “Thomistic” because he has not been purely or primarily a historical scholar for

its own sake but rather focused his effort on a “creative retrieval” of the great seminal

ideas of St. Thomas’s metaphysics of being and the philosophy of the person.1

He also admits influence of existential Thomists such as Geiger, Fabro, de

Finance, De Raeymaeker, Gilson, etc. Exposed to systematic Thomistic metaphysics

during his earlier years on the island of Jersey in 1936-39 under the tutelage of Andrè

Marc S. J., Existential Being through existential Thomists during his Master in

Philosophy at Fordham University in 1940, Neoplatonic participation metaphysics

during his doctorate in Louvain (1947-49), Transcendental Thomism through the work

of Joseph Marèchal, S. J., interpersonal dialogue through the suggestion of Auguste

Brunner, S. J., upon which he constructed a personal intellectual journey towards a

proper Thomistic synthesis and articulation identifiable in his 1993 publication of

Person and Being, a book this work has heavily relied on along with the many articles

Clarke wrote of which the most significant according to him were compiled and

published in another book, Explorations in Metaphysics.

It shall be apparent in this exploration of the dimensions of the human person

that the preceding influences upon Clarke’s journey and interpretation of being are

attentively discerned and assimilated. This scientific project has been accomplished in

three parts: the first part of this work deals with the sense of dimension; the second, the

notion of primordial being, and the third, the human dimensions of being, according to

Clarke.

1 CLARKE W. N., Explorations in Metaphysics, ix: Introduction, under “MY OWN WORK AS A

THOMISTICALLY INSPIRED METAPHYSICIAN”

2

In the first instance, the sense of dimension is inquired through a

phenomenological sampling, resolution of the notion of primordial being, and then

concluded in the density of analogicity of being inasmuch as dimension is concerned.

At the second phase, the question of primordial being is systematically

expounded until the point of arrival, that is, personal being.

Lastly, an application of the dynamic notion of being and its dimensions

inasmuch as personal and human applied to the concrete realization of man. A

conclusion lays out the finding and response of Clarke to the theme of investigation.

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PART ONE

THE SENSE OF DIMENSION

What does “dimension” mean according to William Norris Clarke? This chapter

attempts to give a response from his works. The methodology applied shall follow (1) a

phenomenological sampling about dimension, (2) a resolution on the notion of

dimension, and (3) an analogous notion of dimension, according to Clarke.

A. A BRIEF PHENOMENOLOGY ABOUT DIMENSION

This section considers a few contexts in the work of William Norris Clarke

where the word dimension occurs. Then it examines the meaning given to it. Lastly, a

general interpretation of the significance of dimension noted, carried forward, and then

articulated before the analysis of the following parts, sections, and chapters of this

work.

There are articles, books, and philosophical and scientific schools whence the

notion of dimension comes into use in metaphysics by William Norris Clarke. It is the

sense of dimension employed by Clarke that interests us most. Why? There are many

reasons but foremost is the metaphysical use rather than physical or mathematical

significance.

4

Therefore, the first chapter of the first section deals with the contexts about

dimension located in some of Clarke’s articles and books to draw out the notion of

dimension; the second chapter, considers the physical and mathematical use of the word

dimension, and the third, aims at a brief philosophical emergencies of the notion of

dimension.

1. The notion of dimension in Clarke

In the article Person, Being, and St. Thomas, William Norris Clarke declares that

it is clear and explicit in St. Thomas that the innate dynamism of being as overflowing

into self-manifestation, self-communicating action, though not as explicit but clearly

implied that relationality, a corollary inseparable from substantiality, just as action is

from existence, is a primordial dimension of every real being2. In this context dimension

seems to signify the notion of opposition found in being as such.

When dealing with The Metaphysics of St. Thomas Today under the sixth

consideration about substantial potency as a necessary condition of possibility for any

complex whole, Clarke notes that the two main roles of potency for St. Thomas are,

first, that of limitation of some higher perfection, in a situation where no change is

involved—e.g., the limitation of the act of existing by essence, or the limiting

individuation of form by matter—and second, that of potency as the subject of

continuity in change, possessing the real inner aptitude or capacity to take on some new

mode of being and form an intrinsic unity with it. This second note on potency, Clarke

identifies as “the new dimension of potency” not in Aristotle but introduced by Neo-

Platonism and taken over by St. Thomas, which is not a role of potency in a

participation structure either.

This new dimension of potency, Clarke continues, is admittedly elusive and

never directly observable, a mode of being we call “potentiality”, that is, a real aptitude

for some mode of being that is not now actualized but could be. It seems in this element

2 CLARKE, W. N, Explorations in Metaphysics, Page 215-216

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of Clarke’s work, dimension signifies a mode of being and its multiplication like the

application of the one and the many of being3.

Speaking further on substantial potency against the background of human

cognitional theory before any event of substantial change, according to the critique of

his thought by the Marechalian school of Transcendental Thomism, to an awakening of

some kind of opaque residue inaccessible to human intellection by means of forms of

something underlying beyond form indirectly identified as extended-matter-stuff, this

“other-than-form” known only through sensorial contact, a non-formal “something”

could be posited as an ultimate dimension or ingredient of the material world that is

pure non-formal, indeterminate “matter” irreducible to form yet not without form,

Clarke notes, could not be identified as the ultimate subject but a dimension of radical

potentiality or determinability characterizing all lower entities that can be taken over

into large intrinsic unities4. It seems that here dimension is signifying a correlative

ingredient, the opposite of form, “matter” as such.

When dealing with “The Point of Departure of Metaphysics” and analyzing its

implications for the development of metaphysics, Clarke mentions at the fifth point,

about taking the dialoguing “I” as the primary analogate or instance of real being, that a

revelation of being as not merely an object “out there” capable of being comprehended

by abstract conceptual analysis, but more unique and self-aware subject or “I” that has

an inner subjective dimension that transcends all conceptual analysis grasped only

intuitively by immediate lived awareness from within or recognized by connatural

affinity in another subject, a “Thou,” distinct from self is a fundamental and fruitful

point of departure. It seems that dimension points to one of the correlative opposites

intrinsic to being as such and the nature of being in act, an instance of real being.

For the sake of brevity, the last context of dimension in Clarke is taken from his

introduction to the book Person and Being. In recognizing the rich older metaphysical

tradition of the person and comparing it with a more recent phenomenological tradition

3 CLARKE, W. N, Exploration in Metaphysics, page18.

4 Ídem, page 21-22

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that has highly developed the relational aspect of the person but lost its metaphysical

grounding, Clarke endeavors to present a “creative retrieval and completion” of St.

Thomas’ own thought on the metaphysics of the person, in particular the human person,

to bring out the relational dimension of the person that has been left underdeveloped, an

integration by grafting the self-communicative, relational dimension of the person right

onto the Thomistic metaphysics of being as existential, self-communicative act,

showing how it is already implicit therein.

Clarke at last says, “I propose to do this by developing the dynamic, relational

aspect of being itself for St. Thomas, with its indissoluble complementarity of

substantiality, the in-itself dimension of being, and relationality, the toward-others

aspect”5. Dimension, in his own words, comes out as, he says, “a dyadic structure” of

being itself manifested, and the person as the highest. Then the resulting characteristics

of the person become also a consideration of dimensions of the same such as self-

possessing, self-communicative, and self-transcending.

Dimension then is significant of an indissoluble complementarity, a connatural

opposition revealing correlativity and complementarity of primordial being, and

manifesting a dyadic structure essential to and emerging from being as such.

2. The physical and mathematical notion of dimension6

The concept of dimension in physics and mathematics are not only quantitative

but also qualitative, reflective of material forms in many ways. The mathematical notion

of dimension differs from common usage in that it is not necessary to follow common

spatial coordinate systems; even a single coordinate system works, for example, the

polar coordinate system (angle).

5 CLARKE, W. N, Person and Being, page 5.

6 Relevant details taken from internet search and a personal synthesis of views present on the point

about “physical and mathematical dimensions”

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Dimension then is defined in general as spatial extent of an object (physical

being) as measured in some relevant direction. In this sense, dimension is directional

and linear in some way. Another definition of dimension applied to physics and

mathematics is: the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify any point within

it. In this sense, dimension is a specifying numeral. However, in physical terms,

dimension refers to the constituent structure a thing, of both its volume and position in

time. The notion of dimension goes back to Rene Descartes, and needless to speak

about the Cartesian coordinate system.

3. The metaphysical significance of dimension7

In the work of Kant, dimension is an element of space and time. He wrote in

1783 under section 12 of his Prolegomena that everywhere space (which is not itself the

boundary of another space) has three dimensions and that space in general cannot have

more dimensions is based on the proposition that not more than three lines can intersect

at right angles in one point. This proposition cannot at all be shown from concepts, but

rests immediately on intuition and indeed on pure intuition a priori because it is

apodictically (demonstrably) certain.

Simon Newcomb wrote an article for the Bulletin of the American Mathematical

Society in 1898 entitled “The Philosophy of Hyperspace”. Linda Dalrymple Henderson

coined the term Hyperspace philosophy in her 1983 thesis about the fourth dimension in

early-twentieth-century art. It is used to describe those writers that use higher-

dimensions for their metaphysical and philosophical exploration. In this latter

consideration, the character of metaphysical analysis of William Norris Clarke begins to

have light of a variety of philosophical colors and background. Among the Hyperspace

Philosophers include Charles Howard Hinton (the first to use the word tesseract in

1888) and the Russian esotericist P. D. Ouspensky.

7 Idem

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Therefore, the notion of dimension comes into use in metaphysics probably to

signify abstract realities in a manner that is human epistemologically speaking.

B. THE NOTION OF DIMENSION

In this section the notion of dimension in William Norris Clarke is investigated

about his works from the reality it endeavors to identify and express of which five

capital points have been noted about any instance of real being: (1) the reality of

opposition and being, (2) connaturality or correlativity, (3) modality or mode of being,

and (4) the specifying numeral or vector and scalar polarization of being: the dyadic

structure present in synthetic being.

1. About Opposition and Being

The notion of opposition has been termed by dimension in thought of William

Norris Clarke. These dimensions of being point to the relative opposition present in and

among beings8. As he has developed in his works, Clarke explains that the dimension of

being in the sense of opposition emerges from a certain polarity or polarization of being

in and of itself: starting from the primordial state of being, it is observed that being is an

existential act, a fundamental dimension of being for the grounding of all other

dimensions. This existential act of being, the esse, is in itself self-communicative and

not a static inertness of being. It is rather dynamic and active in itself, thus flowing into

self-communication naturally9.

Therefore, Clarke affirms, it is this nature of being communicating itself that is

essential to being itself. This is the essence of being, the essentia, which is an

intelligible act of being as such. The real distinction, he notes, between existential act

and essence of being reveal a polarization of being that is itself a form of a natural

opposition relative to each other within the same being as such.

8 CLARKE W. N, Person and Being, page 5.

9 Idem, page 13.

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These preceding dimensions of being, considered within the problematic of the

one and the many, Clarke examines, compose an existential unity of being that emerges

from existence as a substance yet at the same time polarized and enriched by accidents.

In this vein, the first act is not only substantial but also formally fundamental for a

posterior substantial potency for a complex and unified whole. Therefore, Clarke

affirms, in this way being emerges as act upon which potency is formulated. However,

he notes, substantiality is an in-itself dimension of being polarized by toward-others

dimension of being, relationality. This relationality of being finds its grounding in the

very nature of being as intrinsically dynamic, self-communicative, and active and both

intelligible and self-diffusive in act. Therefore, he affirms, to be boils down to

substance-in-relation.

Inconsequence, Clarke notes, the element of relationality of being introduces all

substances to other substances in a great matrix of existence and essence of being.

Therefore, he adds, in this complex whole, relationality manifests the particularity of

beings and their participation in existence to the extent of their essence. Therefore, the

community of being is made perfect by participation of beings in a complex whole. This

complex whole of creation is polarized and ordered to the Source and Origin of all

being and perfection. In this vein, Clarke affirms, the exitus of being is ratified by the

reditus of all participated beings to the One, a uni-versal movement of being: circulatio

entium. Therefore, transcendentality of being opens personality of being to others.

Indeed, Clarke notes the openness and closeness of being to others follow from

its being poor equally as from its being rich to naturally share and communicate with

others10

. Therefore, he affirms, there is also an innate fecundity which communicates

through generosity and receptivity of being just as a perfective property and attribute of

being as such. Therefore, action, “passions”, and relations are inseparable and linked up

together even in the Aristotelian categories. However, he notes that while all relations

are not generated by action, still action and passion necessarily generate relations11

.

10

CLARKE, W. N, Person and Being, page 10. 11 Idem, page 14.

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2. About Connaturality or Correlativity

There are principles of being identified as connatural or correlative dimensions

of being in William Norris Clarke. To these shall this chapter attempt to excavate and

endeavor to explain according to Clarke.

Firstly, intelligibility of being and goodness of being: the first theme most

fruitful and relevant today according to Clarke is the intrinsic correlativity, or

connaturality, that exists between the two first principles of being, namely intelligibility

and goodness, which constitute a basic matrix of harmony fundamental to the full

meaning of both man and the material universe12

. This existential-meaningfulness of

being as a whole is the source of the close and intimate relation between being and

action.

Secondly, act and potency: Clarke, when dealing with substantial potency as a

necessary condition of possibility for any complex whole, notes that the correlative

opposite pole of act in the act-potency couplet according to the classic Thomistic notion

of potency is the expression of the general structure of any inner metaphysical

composition within a being13

. In agreement with the remarks of Dr. Charles A. Hart at

the regional meeting of the American Catholic Philosophical Association about the Five

Thomistic Ways, Clarke points out that though the centrality of the doctrine of

participation original with St. Thomas radically revised Platonism in Aristotelian

notions of potency and act is an admirably clear and succinct resume of recent trend

among Thomistic scholars, the focal point of investigation is the well-known principle

of the limitation of act by potency, that is, “Actus non limitatur nisi per potentiam.”14

Clarke discovers at last in conclusion the novelty of St. Thomas who remedied and

fused the strength of Platonism and Aristotelianism into a single highly original

synthesis condensed in the formula “Act is not limited except by reception in a distinct

12 CLARKE, W. N, Explorations in Metaphysic, page 2. 13

CLARKE W. N, Explorations in Metaphysics, page 17. 14

AQUINAS T., Compendium Theologiae, lib. 1, ch. 18 co: “Nullus enim actus invenitur finiri nisi per potentiam, quae est vis receptiva: invenimus enim formas limitari secundum potentiam materiae.”

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potency” which can only be styled “Thomism” to a full meaning and rich complexity of

the correlative principles act and potency. Thus potency, and not only act, Clarke

affirms, is an irreducible ingredient or dimension of the real world15

.

Thirdly, the one and many, or unity and multiplicity: Clarke develops this

element calling attention also to the highlight of Leclerc who said that the indispensable

role of potency as a condition of possibility for the existence of any complex whole that

is not a mere aggregate, a point first laid down by Aristotle and elaborated much more

explicitly by St. Thomas who remarked that “out of two entities in act it is impossible to

make a natural or intrinsic unity (an unum per se)”16

. Therefore, according to Clarke, to

form a genuine new being, a per se unity, without which there is no being one in any

meaningful sense of the term, all elements in a composite must have potentiality to be

taken over and unified by a single higher act, an innate “plasticity” or determinability at

the substantial (not merely accidental) level of all lower components for an intrinsic

aptitude to be taken over by a higher principle of unity: without this dimension of

substantial plasticity there can be no adequate metaphysical theory of the unity of

complex beings—the necessity of substantial potency against reductionisms of beings

as complex chemical factories directed by an “engineer”. For the sake of brevity, a last

note from Clarke comes from his of note on being as receptivity, community,

communion: “in virtue of the metaphysics of participation of all finite being in the

perfection emanating from a single [one] ultimate, intelligent Source, all lesser systems

[many] finally become integrated [whole] into a single all-embracing community of all

real being”17

. Therefore, he declares, “To be, it turns out, means to-be-together”18

.

Lastly, spirit and being: the first point about the article on “What is Relevant in

the Metaphysics of Aquinas” Clarke mentions the following:

At the root of the whole Thomistic vision of the universe and its systematic

articulation are the dual principles of the intelligibility and the goodness of

being. This means that spirit—all spirit, and therefore human spirit too in its

15 Idem, page 18. 16

AQUINAS A, De Spiritualibus Creaturis, art 3; SCG I, ch. 18. 17

CLARKE W. N, Person and Being, pages 22-23. 18 Idem.

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modest analogous way—is intrinsically oriented by its very nature toward being,

i.e., has a natural aptitude and drive to know all being (being as intelligible) and

to be fulfilled by it (being as good). It means also that the reciprocal is true:

being itself has a natural intrinsic aptitude to unveil itself to mind, to be brought

into the light of consciousness, and to fulfill the drive of the spirit towards its

self-actualization or self-perfection. This double correlative aptitude, this

connaturality between spirit and being, is the fundamental matrix of harmony

which makes possible the unfolding of the entire intellectual life in all its forms,

including the whole enterprise of science, and the entire practical and moral life

in the human search for happiness. “Being is intelligible” is the first dynamic

principle of the intellectual life, and “The good is to be done and evil avoided” is

the first principle of the moral life, presupposing of course as its implicit

foundation that being itself is good19

.

It is a self-explanatory citation at this point.

3. About Modality or Mode of Being

In his article about “To Be” aiming at a double retrieval of (1) the notion of

substance in ancient and medieval thought as a dynamic, active nature and abiding

center of acting and being acted upon and (2) the notion of relation in later modern and

contemporary thought, as two distinct but inseparable meaning of real being and

intrinsically complementary aspects of to be in the full and proper sense of the term,

Clarke declares that the fundamental polarity within real being are the “in itself” and

the “toward others” or the self-immanence and the self-transcendence of being, which

collapses into one pole of pure relatedness to others in the final analysis, and express

real modes of being to a triadic aspect: being from another, being in itself, and being

toward others, in the luminous terseness of the Latin, esse ab, esse in, and esse ad.

Therefore, substance and relation are primordial modes of being such that to be is to be

substance-in-relation, an intrinsic structure of all being in an irreducibly dyadic mode20

.

According to Aquinas’s central metaphysical doctrine of the real distinction

between essence (or nature) and the act of existing, Clarke explains that St. Thomas was

able to give a more elegant and precise explication of the distinction between person

19

CLARKE W. N, Explorations in Metaphysics, pages 3-4. 20 CLARKE W. N, Explorations in Metaphysics, page113.

13

and nature than other scholastic thinkers who recurred to more complicated and dubious

meaning in terms of special modes, negations, etc. : to be a person is not only sufficient

to possess a complete individual intellectual nature (an essential requisite) but also

necessary to possess or “own” its own act of existence (esse)21

. In his article on Person,

Being, and St. Thomas, Clarke, in applying the dynamic notion of being to the person,

affirms that the person is the fullest realization of what it means to be22

and therefore,

rooted in the act of existence of a dynamic relational notion of being as active, the

person is brought into the clear intrinsically relational character of being as the highest

mode of being such and that person and being are, in a sense, paradigms of each other23

.

The immutability of God and his relation to the world raises crucial debates from

radical challenges from process philosophy (its metaphysics of reality) and existential

religious consciousness (its personal creature-Creator relationship), Clarke affirms, that

relatio rationis24

of God to the created world is better put as “a relation of personal

consciousness” for the dimension of person and being in the light of the dimension of

perfection and immutability.

4. About Dyadic Structure of Being

Retrieving the classical notion of substance as active and self-communicative,

Clarke affirms, not only as a corrective of the principle distortions of substance endemic

to modern thinkers but also evaluative of the relational dimension of being, which is

intrinsically complementary to the substance-relation couplet upon which to be real is

to be a dyadic synthesis of substance and relation25

. Clarke also affirms that this dyadic

synthesis is true both of God and of all other beings, though in analogously different

ways: the dyadic synthesis belongs to the very nature of being itself, both in its supreme

instance and in all the finite images thereof26

.

21 CLARKE W. N, Person and Being, pages 26-27. 22 Idem, Explorations in Metaphysics, page 227. 23 Idem, page 212. 24

Idem, page 184. 25

CLARKE, W. N, Explorations in Metaphysics, page 104. 26 Idem.

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The dyadic structure when applied to being at its highest mode, that is, the

person, results in characteristics of the person as self-possessing, self-communicative,

and self-transcending27

.

C. ANALOGICITY OF DIMENSION

This section aims at resolving the problem of dimension in William Norris

Clarke with his doctrine of analogy. Accordingly, a presentation of the analogicity of

dimension shall follow (1) a treatment on analogy, (2) relational kind of analogy

between physical and metaphysical realities, and (3) affirmation of analogous concept

of dimension.

The doctrine of analogy, as Clarke affirms, should help render language, even

about God, meaningful. However, as “an attentive Thomist”, Clarke notes and affirms

that three main reasons accrue to the obscurity around Thomistic theory of analogy,

which are relevant to keep account of as well: first, historically, St. Thomas did not pin

one consistent terminology or structural analysis of the logical form of analogy; second,

doctrinally, he omits formal analyses of analogy, the indispensable metaphysical

underpinning that alone justifies application when one of the terms is not known

directly in itself; thirdly, judgment, in that analogy lies not so much in any formal

structure of concepts other than in the actual lived usage of only so-called analogous

concepts used in judgments of meaningful analogous language.

Therefore, the notion of dimension, according to the developments of Clarke, is

to strictly deal a response to the problem of analogy. In presenting objections to the

doctrine of analogy proceeding from Professor Nielsen against explanations of

Copleston and Ross, Clarke questions the rootedness, extensiveness, and

meaningfulness of analogy from experience (not only empirical) to God : is the

27 CLARKE W. N, Person and Being, page 5.

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rootedness of similarity upon some “common property” or attribute relative to all

application such that univocity is included in the doctrine of analogy? Clarke points out

that the objection against Thomistic analogy by Dun Scotus and William of Ockham

drive exactly as Professor Nielsen if the common core of meaning is univocal in

similarity of the analogous similar-in-difference, or diversely similar. Clarke affirms

that this is simply the demand of deductive reasoning and the logical functioning of

concepts.

The Thomistic analysis of analogy, Clarke affirms, is geared much more to the

lived usage of the concept in a judgment, interpreted as an intentional act of referring

its synthesis of subject-predicate to real order, as it is in reality: abstract meaning of

concept intends to signify (intendit significare) in the concrete which measures the

content of the concept. Therefore, he notes, the difference lies not only between the

relation of concept and the concrete but also between the relation of concept and

judgment: the point of unity lies in the being of a subjective intention and being of

concrete objective for a proportionate intrinsic similarity28

.

The bond of subjective and objective being through intentionality is made real

by causation, Clarke affirms, and therefore a real relation between God and the World,

knower and the known29

. Here intentionality according to Clarke is that property of

something by which it tends dynamically and relationally toward something else

(intendere). Though it is not mentioned explicitly in Clarke, intentionality of something

is a property of its intrinsic being somewhat like the “passions” of being expressed by

its dimensional inclinations, desire, motion/movement etc., as indispensable ingredients

of being-itself. This order of intentionality, Clarke declares, is dual: ontological

intentionality and cognitive intentionality. Clarke affirms that the projected similitude is

an esse intentionale received in the knower according to the mode of the knower and

recognized by the knower as a natural similitude, image, or sign of its source to refer it

by an intending relation through the referential act of judgment.30

28

CLARKE, W. N, Explorations in Metaphysics, page 124-127. 29

Idem, page 57. 30 Idem.

16

Clarke clarifies his point noting that the similitude dealt with in analogy here is

not the physical or natural being of agent (be it a subject or object of knowledge) termed

esse naturale, which remains intact in itself (mysterious), but rather a projected

similitude (analogical ens) of an esse intentionale, which points back to the source from

which it came and of which it is a projected self-image by the whole dynamism of

relational being inasmuch as self-communicating, and eventually self-transcending too.

Therefore, similarity-in-difference comes across a range of different kinds of subjects

(and objects) in a qualitatively different way such that a whole similar property is itself

more or less profoundly and intrinsically modified in a qualitatively different way

tantamount to suppositional differentiation and distinction of the act of “presencing”.

The analogicity of being, and therefore intentional being also, becomes in Clarke

the foundation for expressing intelligibility of being and meaningfulness of existence

through terms and concepts by ex-tension of intellectual knowing and all-pervasive

transcendental properties of being beyond the range of physical-chemical experience

and sense knowledge to a metaphysical application, even unto God. In other words,

Clarke affirms the intentional giving of self-image (and therefore, or ultimately, the self

also) to the other through the intrinsic relational dimension of being inasmuch as self-

communicative and self-transcending. Therefore, Clarke affirms, a purification of

meaning-content to extend the range of analogous concept into enough indetermination

for a new application raise the traditional distinctions res significata (objective

meaning) and modus significandi (subjective conceptual-linguistic modes of expressing

a property) to the distinction of the meaning-content, the way of discovering the

meaning, the purified more indeterminate analogous meaning itself from one another

and from both modes of expressing and modes of realization of the reality referred to

come into metaphysical application under three conditions for actual extension of

analogous language to some new entity: (1) actually is, (2) objectively similar, and (3)

meaningful and legitimate aptitude to entity.

The dictum that every effect must in some way resemble its cause, Clarke

explains, gives experience an intrinsically analogical intelligibility-being and a real

ground of causal participation which generates at once ipso facto an analogous

similarity, that is, a spectrum of objective similarity extending from known effect as far

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as the cause, and most especially the absolute and relative transcendental properties of

being.

Therefore, it is implicit that Clarke would affirm that the many “dyad structural

expressions” of the “dialectical” dynamism and communism of act in the nature of

“synthetic” being is a basic dimensional analysis of a “triadic” unity from one whole

source of relational polarization and causal participation of existential act itself.

At this point, the term dimension should be clearly noted as used by Clarke in an

analogous manner, though without explicit detail of type because of aforementioned

historical and doctrinal questions about the doctrine of analogy in the works of St.

Thomas, as outlined in principle in his (Clarke) work on an article about Analogy and

the Meaningfulness of Language about God. Therefore, it is noteworthy that Clarke

employs analogy in the full sense: an all-embracing analogy of “attribution, proportion,

and reference” without discrimination in the moment of application.

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PART TWO

THE NOTION OF PRIMORDIAL BEING

The notion of being in Clarke follows Thomistic existentialism moderately. In

an article about what is most and least relevant in the metaphysics of St. Thomas today

Clarke points out his notion of being: being is connaturally intelligible and good,

existential in that actual existence is conceived as an inner act and immanent source of

all perfection, one and many, substantially dynamic, causal, relative, potentially

substantial, and highest in mode as person31

.

This chapter aims at the notion of primordial being and whatever it means in the

thought of William Norris Clarke.

A. INTRODUCTORY NOTE

This section is dedicated to an introductory note about investigating the notion

of being with respect to act and its primordial dimensions according to the interpretation

of being in the metaphysics of Aquinas by William Norris Clarke.

The intellectual context of Clarke’s meaning of being inasmuch as act and in act

is conditioned by a confrontation of ancient and medieval metaphysics of being with the

critics of some modern and contemporary philosophers and scientists and an attempt to

31 CLARKE, W. N, Explorations in Metaphysics, page 2 and 3.

19

integrate respective historical metaphysical reflections and developments into its due

but implicit exposition in the metaphysics of being of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Therefore, the notion of being presented here is fundamentally Thomas’

metaphysics of being inasmuch as the notion of act and action and with due respect to

William Norris Clarke without any claim to an exhaustive analysis of their intellectual

journey.

The notion of being as a dynamic act shall be followed by a presentation of the

primordial dimensions excavated from Clarke’s works especially the two books he

respectively wrote and compiled: 1. Person and Being, an “Aquinas Lecture” given at

the Marquette University in honor of St. Thomas Aquinas on February 28, 1993, and 2.

Explorations in Metaphysics, a compilation of what Clarke describes as “most

significant of my philosophical essays”32

and needless to say expressive of his position

in the metaphysics of being within a personal journey about Being, God, and Person.

Therefore, the arguments for the notion of being inasmuch as act and in act shall

be limited to Clarke’s reflections and descriptions on being and the foundations taken

up from the thoughts and works of St. Thomas Aquinas. Clarke elaborates not only his

meaning of being but also demonstrates epistemological application (tenets) that are

fundamental to his notion of being and realism in understanding33

just as it has been

noted under the analysis of the analogicity of dimension.

B. THE NOTION OF BEING

Clarke points out that existential being (esse) as a dynamic act is the apt

fundamental signification of the foundation and fountain of primordial and

consequent dimensions of being. Through a “creative retrieval” (in a Heideggerian

32

CLARKE W. N, Explorations in Metaphysics, ix: see the introductory note to the book. 33

CLARKE W. N, Explorations in Metaphysics, pages 52-58:see proposition under “IV. ACTION AS THE KEY TO A REALISTIC EPISTEMOLOGY”

20

sense) and “completion” of St. Thomas’ metaphysics of being, Clarke endeavors to

bring to consciousness of contemporary philosophers perennial metaphysical

heritage for the future of metaphysics34

. However, as we have noted earlier, Clarke

declares that any authentic Thomistic metaphysics according to common agreement

embodies a realistic epistemology: the intellect is made for being, has a natural

affinity for being, of which the prime analogate is actually existing being, being in

act (ens in actu) and the root of intelligibility located in the act of existing (esse)35

.

Therefore, Clarke concludes, the objects which do not themselves exist in

actuality are knowable through some connection with something existing, as

possible in their causes, abstractions, hypotheses, etc., in the real act of the mind

which thinks them up and sustains them in thought. Clarke develops this

epistemological realism in the light of Aquinas’ doctrine of being. To evidence the

dynamic and relational notion of existential being in the thought of Aquinas, Clarke

employs ad litteram some fundamental, seminal, great, and central themes of

Thomistic metaphysics: the notion of real being, i.e., actually existing being, as

intrinsically active and self-communicating, Clarke affirms, is one of the central

themes in the thought of Aquinas, such as:

Nam ex hoc ipso quo aliquid actu est, activum est36

Potentia activa sequitur ens in actu: unumquodque enim ex hoc agit quod

est actu37

Quod natura cuiuslibet actus est, quod seipsum communicet quantum

possibile est. Unde unumquodque agens agit secundum quod in actu est38

Clarke adds that St. Thomas’s interpretation of the immanent constitutive structure of

real being is precisely the synthesis of essence, understood as a determining mode, and

the act of existence (esse, the “to be” of a thing), understood as the central core of

34 Idem, Person and Being: see first leaf of introductory note 35 Idem, Explorations in Metaphysics, page 10: “…the whole of Thomistic epistemology as resting on this one principle: “All knowledge of real being is an interpretation of action”…” 36

AQUINAS, T., Summa Contra Gentiles I, ch. 43, ad 2 37

Idem, SCG II, ch. 7, ad 3 38 Idem, QD De Potentia, q. 2, art. 1

21

perfection in every being and the bond of similarity linking into community every other

being in the universe.

Therefore, what is distinctively new in St. Thomas’s conception of being,

according to Clarke, is the prominence of the act of existence as ultimate immanent or

intrinsic principle of perfection in every being, including God. This existential notion of

being, in Clarke’s analysis of the notion of being in the thought of Aquinas, is densified

in Thomas’s words when he says “ens dicitur ab actu essendi”39

, that is, being receives

its name and meaning from the act of existence.

Outside this resolute emphasis on existential fundamentality and primacy and

the ultimate originality of perfection in existential act of being in the thought of

Aquinas, Clarke notes, analysis of positive perfection of being and its intelligibility

almost exclusively in terms of form and essence, the what-it-is of a being, tend to treat

actual existence, or actual presence, of things as a kind of indispensable but

intellectually opaque fact impervious to any intrinsic analysis, or extrinsic analytic point

of view of a knower before a fact or fact outside its cause(s) or God who of its own

essence is uncaused. As opposed to formalistic or essentialist conceptions of being,

Clarke affirms that there are two main advantages of Thomas’s distinctive existential

interpretation of being and which seem significant today:

Firstly, penetrating beyond mere fact into the inner act of existence within, the

objective ground of affirmation, provides a far more intrinsic analysis of being itself.

Accordingly, the notion of existential being in Aquinas as immanent and formal act and

perfection of the technically integral constitutive structure of being unveils the root of

all ontological and intelligible perfection within a being. Therefore esse appears as the

very light of existence itself shining through the manifold prism of essences recognized

as diverse modes of active presence. Therefore, it is just and legitimate to insist on the

unique concrete individuality of every real thing, especially persons, says Clarke, as

some Personalists and existentialist movements. The inclusion of formality and

essentiality to interiority of existential being, according to Clarke on Thomas’s notion

39 Idem, . De Veritate, q. 1, art. 1, ad 3; Expositio in Libros Metaphysicorum, IV, lect. 2, n. 6

22

of being, as modes of determination of the act of existence, hence also intrinsically

constitutive of the real excludes sharp dichotomy between essence as principle of

intelligibility, on the one hand, and existence as an irrational brute fact, on the other, so

manifold in many forms of existentialism. Therefore, according to Clarke, Thomas has

succeeded in analyzing the constitution of real being from form and essence to actual

existence as inner act without diminution of intelligibility of being. In sum, existence

itself of any being is a direct participation in God’s own essential perfection, the root of

intelligibility itself, given to finite intelligences through the spectrum of finite forms.

Secondly, discovering the act of existence or esse as supra-formal, supra-

essential factor and root of all perfection and all-pervasive bond of unity in any and all

real beings, St. Thomas, Clarke affirms, has made it possible to include the entire range

of reality under one completely positive view point without constriction of the mystery

of divine Infinity into categorical concepts by the notion of God as pure Subsistent Act

of Existence, transcending all limited forms and essential modes and ipso facto clearly

understood as beyond limited and direct categorical conceptual representations without

breaking the bond of similarity between the divine Being as Source and all finite beings

as diverse participations in the one all-pervasive perfection of existence. This position

of Aquinas on the foundation of perfection with his notion of esse as a positive supra-

formal perfection, giving positive knowledge of God and an accompanying negative

corrective, Clarke declares, allows God to remain at once radical Mystery but yet not

“Wholly Other,” as opposed to the forced characterization of the divine as the

Transcendent “Beyond Being”, “Non-Being”, “Void”, “Goal of all longing”, by the so-

called “negative theology.”

It is the scope of this section to examine the roots of these pro arguments of

existential being. I shall make more use of what Clarke himself considers “the most

significant of my philosophical essays” brought together in a book Explorations in

Metaphysics and made explicit in another Person and Being, “which should be taken

together […] to adequately express where I have arrived at present on my philosophical

“journey” than others elsewhere.” Clarke, besides most contemporary Thomists such as

Etienne Gilson, Anton Pegis, Joseph de Finance, Cornelio Fabro, L. B. Geiger, De

Raeymaeker, etc., inspired by the great metaphysical insight of St. Thomas, sees being

23

(esse) as existential act, the “to be” or act of existing of real beings, as the ground and

central core of all positive qualities or “perfection” of all real things.

Therefore, all being and perfection owe to God as the pure Subsistent Act of

Existence, uncontracted by any limiting essence, in opposition to distinct

“participations” or imperfect images of the infinite perfection of God, through a

metaphysical composition of existence with a limiting essence, their ultimate Source.

This approach to Thomistic metaphysics, Clarke notes, is recognized commonly as

“existential Thomism” or by some as “Thomistic existentialism” though such a

historically conditioned term as “existentialism” implies dangers of misunderstanding in

using. To clarify his position on “existential Thomism”, Clarke focuses on three main

points on the notion of primordial being.

1. Real Being in Existential Act

Clarke clarifies real being according to understanding as rooted in existential act,

with the act of existence (esse) constituting the central core of all positive perfection,

composed with limiting essence in all beings but God. Clarke explains that one of the

points that render St. Thomas’s conception of being distinctive in the history of

metaphysics and also highly relevant today is its uncompromising existential character

which has given rise to the term “existential Thomism”40

. Therefore, for Clarke, the

notion of being, whether possible being, must be grounded on, centered in, and

projected out of an existential act, the act of existence, without which there is nothing, a

sinking of all beings into the abyss of nothingness: esse is the supreme act, he declares,

and, the higher and more intense the act of existence in a being, the more it is connatural

to it to pour out and express its perfection more richly and generously, both within itself

and to others.

The analysis of being as act according to Clarke reveal that being is act primarily

as an existential act, and this is esse. Clarke utilizes a text from Thomas that something

40

CLARKE W. N, Explorations in Metaphysics, page 5: II. THE EXISTENTIAL ANALYSIS OF BEING, first paragraph.

24

existing in act is active from that very fact: “nam ex hoc ipso quo aliquid actu est,

activum est”.41

Clarke affirms this existential character of being in the thought of

Aquinas in line with the analysis of Etienne Gilson42

. Therefore, Clarke would affirm

that the “first act” of being is an existential act. However, the existential act of being is

an act of “some” being: an existential act that communicates “some” and “other” act, a

“second” act, which is it, a thing. This self-revelatory nature of the act of being

inasmuch as act, he affirms, is essential to being, and being as such. Therefore, the

second primary act of being is natural to being, essential to being: it is an intrinsic

nature of being as act. Therefore, the “second act” of being is an essential act, a

communicative act of being. On this point, Clarke points to the communicative nature

of actuality presented by Aquinas in disputed questions: “quod natura cuiuslibet actus

est, quod seipsum communicet quantum possibile est. Unde unumquodque agens agit

secundum quod in actu est.”43

Therefore, Clarke forcefully declares, being is dynamic,

active and self-communicative. Clarke utilizes some of the many texts of Thomas to

demonstrate this point about active and dynamic being.

What is communicated by this act of being is not existence, but is rooted and

stems from an existential act and this is the essence of the act of being existential.

Therefore, essence of being is the “second act” of being as act. It is of the very nature of

being as act to diffuse itself, and this argument is riveted by Clarke citing Aquinas on

the nature of actuality itself: “omne agens, inquantum est actu et perfectum, facit sibi

simile. Unde et hoc pertinet ad rationem voluntatis, ut bonum quod quis habet, aliis

communicet, secundum quod possibile est”44

. This “duality” of act primary to being is

being as act not only existentially first but also essentially “it-self.” Therefore being as

act is and is responsible to both “is it” and “it is” being-it-self. This point, according to

the dimensional analysis of being in Clarke, is the original and primordial polarization

and relation of being in-itself before being toward-others.

41 AQUINAS, A., SCG I, ch. 43, n. 2 42

GILSON, E., Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, chapter I: “Existence and Reality” 43

AQUINAS, T., QD De Potentia, q. 2, art. 1. 44 Idem, STh I, q. 19, art. 2

25

Therefore, the notion of being as act in Clarke brings out a duality of act

intrinsic to being as act and these acts are distinct, existential act and an essential or

self-communicative act. The act of existence of any being, that is, its “to be” or esse, is

its “first act,” Clarke explains, as its abiding inner act, which tends naturally, by the

very innate dynamism of the act of existence itself, to overflow into a “second act”

which is called action or activity, a self-communicative dynamism. In sum, every first

act, points forward to its natural self-expression in the second act.

Therefore, the doctrine of existence is followed by that of essence as a limiting

correlative of existential act expressive of both participation45

and the self-

communicative nature of existential being through action. This synthesis by Thomas

according to assimilation and adaptation of Neoplatonic metaphysics of participation is

the framework for the doctrine of limitation of existence by essence, form by matter.

Clarke affirms that St. Thomas’s metaphysical system is a rich complexity of an

original synthesis of the strong points of both Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism under a

particular influence of Pseudo-Dionysius. Therefore, possible being, implying nothing

or consequent nothingness, belongs primarily to effected, and so participated, being

than the ultimate Source of all being and real things.

2. The Central Role of Action

Clarke affirms that action in the widest sense is not only closely linked with

being and naturally flows from any actually existing being but also a necessary and

sufficient criterion for distinguishing real from merely mental or possible being. This

notion of action, Clarke notes, stems from the oft-repeated refrain: agere sequitur

esse.46

Therefore, Clarke affirms that the essential richness of existential being

expresses itself in action as the natural overflow of the act of existence in all real beings:

all existential being is intrinsically self-communicative and self-expressing, self-

45

CLARKE, W. N., Explorations in Metaphysics, page 97: “The Meaning of Participation in St. Thomas” 46 Idem, page 46: I. ACTION AS THE NATURAL OVERFLOW OF BEING

26

manifesting and self-revealing, through action. Therefore, according to Clarke, the

notion of being signifies a highly dynamic and relational existence, reality, constituting

a density of an inter-relative common and communicative being. One of the

characteristic texts of Aquinas cited by Clarke is this: “potentia activa sequitur ens in

actu: unumquodque enim ex hoc agit quod est actu”.47

Clarke, after substantiating his position, delineates some other relevant notions

of being in Aquinas. The richness of being, Clarke explains, is summed up in the two

first principles of being and constitutes a basic matrix of harmony within which man

and the material universe take on meaning and destiny: intelligibility of being and

goodness of being, their intrinsic correlativity or connaturality.48

Therefore, Clarke

points out that the discovery of being with existential meaning conceives actual

existence as an inner act and immanent source of all perfection in any being, an act

diversified in different beings by modes of essence, upon which being and action flow

as a natural self-manifestation of real being, as opposed to mental or merely possible

being. Accordingly, he continues, all finite beings participate in the act of existence as a

central unifying perfection derived from a single ultimate Source, which is pure

unlimited plenitude of existence. Therefore, he affirms, relation to God, the ultimate

Source and Goal of all being, is the keystone of unity of being, intelligibility, and

goodness.

Every second act of a being, Clarke follows up, points back toward its first act as

to its ground and source, in turn. Clarke develops this notion of action or activity in line

with Joseph De Finance: action or activity may be (1) immanent, which terminates

within the agent itself, as in the case of knowledge or love, or (2) transient, which

terminates outside the agent by exercising some influence on another, as a cause on an

effect, thus manifesting itself to another other than itself49

. The second act, which is

transient in nature, Clarke affirms, is the condition of possibility of knowledge, one

being to another, in the universe of distinct non-creative beings. In other words, without

the reality of causality, there would not be participation in being from being itself,

47

AQUINAS, T., SCG II, ch. 7, n. 3 48

CLARKE, W. N., Explorations in Metaphysics, page 2. 49 De FINANCE, J., Etre et agir, ch. VII, sec. 3: L’acte second.

27

through agency, to analogical knowledge of the same, as it has been more or less

explicitly examined in consequens.

How is the natural connection between being and its overflow into action?

Clarke responds: “There is no logical or other way of deducing this property of being

from anything else more fundamental”50

. Only a constant observation of an inductive

examination at all cases and levels and of being and a reflexive “metaphysical

insight”—otherwise unintelligible, inaccessible, dark, isolated, ambiguous, incomplete,

empty of evidential grounding, nothing—that this property of being belongs to the very

nature of existential being as such can or is able to arrive at the notion of how a natural

connection to and overflow of being in-to act as a second act, action is a first act,

existential act, being itself, “to be”, esse. Therefore, the mode of action presents being

to others positively as active presence such that to be is to be actively co-present to the

community of existents of other active presences, without which, being slips into

unreachable darkness of the totally unmanifest, concealed, unrevealed, indistinguishable

from nothingness, perhaps even to itself, to other beings.

However, by a self-communicative act of being, Clarke refers not only to the

notion of being as act inasmuch as act without the consideration of existence but also a

self-expressive act, an unveiling-act of act-itself and therefore, act not only inasmuch as

self-ostensive-act but also as self-manifestive: a self-communicative act of being. This

act, Clarke argues, reveals being not that it is but rather that it is it-self-and-not-other.

This distinctive act of being presents the essence of being in a way natural to it.

Therefore, being is in itself self-communicative. Therefore, being as act and inasmuch as

a self-communicative act is an essential act to be and be as such, not only to itself but

also in opposition to others in a relative way; being is itself active-presence51

.

Therefore, the dual nature of act in being inasmuch act is poor and rich at once both in

self-relation and other-relation. It is not clear whether Clarke considers the existential

act as esse existentiae and essential act as esse essentiae established by the position of

50 CLARKE, W. N., Communio, “Action as the Self-Revelation of Being: A Central Theme in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas” (1982) 51

CLARE, W. N., Explorations in Metaphysics, page 47: where Clarke explains that “…active presence, that which presents itself positively to others through some mode of action.”

28

Henry of Ghent and the Avicinnean tradition of Aristotelianism though certainly a trace

of formalization or essentialization of existence is noticeable as far as Aristotelian

substance, ausia.

As observed, the notion of being according to Clarke is fundamentally active and

active in a communicative way. Therefore, being is active and self-communicative

inasmuch as act and this is a notion of being as a dynamic act. The notion of dynamism

presents a powerful nature to the notion of being as act but this “active power of

activity” or “activity of power” is not yet clear inasmuch as a consideration of potential

being and potency though the dual Aristotelian notion of power is present as being-at-

work. Self-communication of being, Clarke explains, is an implication of the natural

overflow of action following upon existential being.

It is, he notes, in self-communication of being that the full significance of the

link, connection, copula between being and action begins to emerge, even according to

St. Thomas: Every being, Aquinas says, insofar as it is in act, tends naturally to

overflow into action, and this action is a self-communication, a self-giving in some way.

This nature of act, or action, Clarke says, recurs over and again in many contexts of St.

Thomas, to mention a few: (1). “It is the nature of every actuality to communicate itself

insofar as it is possible. Hence every agent acts according as it exists in actuality” (cf.

De Potentia, q. 2, art. 1)., (2). “To bring forth an actuality is, of itself, proper to the

being in act: for every agent acts according as it is in act. Therefore, every being in act

is by nature apt to bring forth something in act. But God is a being in act…Therefore, it

is proper to Him to bring forth some being in act, to which He is the cause of being.”

(cf. SCG II, ch. 6)., (3). “It follows upon the superabundance proper to perfection as

such that the perfection which something has it can communicate to another.” (cf. SCG

III, ch. 69)., (4). “Communication follows upon the very intelligibility (ratio) of

actuality. Hence every form is of itself communicable.”(cf. Expositio in Libros

Sententiarum I, dist. 4, q. 1, art. 1)., (5). “For natural things have a natural inclination

not only toward their own proper good, to acquire it, if not possessed, and, if possessed,

to rest therein; but also to diffuse their own goodness among others as far as possible.

Hence, we see that every agent, insofar as it exists in act and possesses some perfection,

produces something similar to it. It pertains, therefore, to the nature of the will to

29

communicate to others as far as possible the good possessed; and especially does this

pertain to the divine will, from which all perfection is derived in some kind of likeness.

Hence, if natural things, insofar as they are perfect, communicate their goodness to

others, much more does it pertain to the divine will to communicate by likeness its own

goodness to others as far as possible” (cf. ST I, q. 19, art. 2)., etc….

According to Clarke, it is in contextual locations such as these where St. Thomas

manifests his thoughts on the fundamental dimensions, nature, and dynamism of being

itself and that his notion of being as such is made touchable, participabile to us.

Therefore, according to the mind of St. Thomas, Clarke explains, not only does every

being tend, by the inner dynamism of its act of existence, to overflow into action, but

this action is both a self-manifestation and a self-communication, as a self-sharing, of

being’s own inner ontological perfection, with others.

In other words, being naturally makes itself touchable, share-able, participable

for its own inner auto-perfection (immanence) towards others and hetero-perfection

(transience) towards itself is fundamental to Clarke’s notion of self-transcendence as the

final synthetic dimension of personal communion of being. Hence, Clarke concludes,

this natural tendency to self-giving is a revelation of the natural fecundity or

“generosity” of being rooted in its very nature, the nature of act and action. It is

clarified, Clarke affirms, in the nature of being as act, esse ut actus, and therefore also,

in the nature of being in act, esse in actus, according to the ancient Platonic tradition, on

the notion and nature of the Good, of the self-diffusiveness of the good about its

foundation. So did the Latins put it: bonum est diffusivum sui.

Therefore, Clarke affirms, St. Thomas incorporated the whole of Platonic

tradition, grounding reality ultimately on Good according to the diffusive nature of

whatever is good, into his philosophy of being by identifying this generous-receptive

notion of act, action, rooted in the act of being or existential act of being, and therefore,

30

being as such, with the good, the good of being, hence a property of being itself, one

inseparable aspect of being itself, a transcendental property of being. 52

As opposed to Platonism, especially Neo-Platonism, who locate being itself to

an only lesser dimension, on the finite level, of the primal self-diffusiveness or self-

communication of the Good, Clarke explains that, for St. Thomas, the good is a

derivative property of existential being itself, expressing more explicitly the primal

dynamism of self-expansiveness and self-giving inherent in the very nature of being as

act of existence.

The primacy always lies with existence for St. Thomas: nothing can be good

unless it first actually is; and from the very fact that it is, it naturally follows that it is

good, since the act of existence is the root of all perfection in any domain, “the actuality

of all acts, and the perfection of all perfections” (cf. De Potentia, q. 7, art. 2, ad 9).

In consequence, Clarke declares, the very roots of being itself, to the primal

spring of its activity, without which there would be no universe (uni-versum)53

, have

been penetrated; there is something mysterious, ultimate, and undeductible but reached

by intuition, insight, through induction, the nature of causal participation and analogy,

about this inherent self-diffusive dynamism of all being, as about all primary things, to

see not only that the fact is about all known beings but also must be so if there is to be a

universe, an intercommunicating community of co-existents, at all.

Therefore, Clarke affirms forcefully, the self-manifesting and self-

communicating act of being is the dynamo—dunamis—making the whole world go

round, and in its highest form, the persona, of altruistic love, the Many emerges from

the One, without which sheer gratuitous emanation would deny Many and end in One

without uni-versum. Like Neo-Platonic participation universe in which self-

52 cf. PEGHAIRE J., “L’axiome bonum est diffusivum sui dans le neoplatonisme et le thomisme,” Revue de l’Universite d’Ottawa, 2 (1932), 5-32; M. J. Nicolas, “Bonum est diffusivum sui,” Revue Thomiste, 55 (1955), 363-376; Joseph de Finance, Etre et agir, ch. II: “Le dynamism de l’acte.” 53

CLARKE W. N., Explorations in Metaphysics, page 45: “For without it (being and action) no universe, properly speaking, could exist, that is, the multiplicity of beings would not be “turned toward each other to form a unity” (universum), i.e., a real order or system unified by existential bonds between beings.”

31

diffusiveness of all finite participated beings is traced to and rooted in the primal source,

the infinite, Clarke points out that St. Thomas’ infinite source of goodness is located in

the goodness of God himself, a pure Subsistent Act of Existence (Ipsum Esse

Subsistens), who is Love itself.

However, the dim imitation by the rest of the universe of the infinite fullness of

good being still remains a mysterious inner process of self-communication pertinent to

the very nature of being, the Supreme Being, pure Subsistent Act of Existence: an un-

free natural self-manifestation and self-communication of being belonging to the very

nature of the act of being. This interior necessity of self-communication of being

according to the intrinsic diffusive nature of act, and therefore, action, upon being,

Clarke notes, lies a principal difference between St. Thomas and Neoplatonic tradition,

through which the latter presented the process of emanation—absolutely—at all levels

of being including the highest, supreme source, the One or the Good, insisting on the

active overflow like a natural law or an exigency of the very nature of the good while

the former, more cautious than St. Bonaventure and other Christian Neo-Platonists who

remain closer to Neoplatonic doctrine without denying freedom of creation by an appeal

to a spiritual exigency of love according to which not sharing freely one’s goodness

with others would be for a loving person “out of character”, above all God, tones down

the meaning of the adage, bonum est diffusivum sui, with respect to the goodness of

being according to the good in the order of final causality—absolutely—and not

efficient necessarily—relatively—notwithstanding the aptitude or capacity for it through

a free determination, whether generative or creative.

Clarke rebukes and modifies St. Thomas’s “over” cautious position, because it

seems inconsistent, by restriction of the law of self-diffusiveness of the good to the

order of final causality, with his notion of being in act as self-communicative through

action, according to observance of the stronger meaning of the principle and caring for

freedom of creation with other qualifications ((1) appeal to revealed doctrine of the not

free but of the very nature of divine being, and therefore, a necessary law of self-

communication of the good, infinitely and perfectly fulfilled in the inner procession of

the Son and the Holy Spirit of the Three Persons in the Trinity; (2) holding, like some

Christian philosophers, impossibility of a necessary deduction of any one finite universe

32

flowing from the existence of an infinite Source) against the threat of Arabic necessary-

emanation theories of the universe and their implied reduction of divine freedom in

creation.

In other words, the goodness of being is primarily, necessarily, and therefore,

absolutely a self-manifesting existential act and secondarily, not-necessarily, and

therefore, relatively a self-communicating diffusive act. Why being is self-expansive

love, Clarke affirms, ends in the silence of the Mystery: The Ultimate Fact that Being is

identically Love precludes all further explanatory moves and serves itself as the ultimate

explanatory reason for the entire dynamic nature of the universe, the Logos of Being

Itself. Therefore, action is the natural overflow and self-communicative dynamism of

existential being.

3. Esse Intentionale et Naturale

The epistemological groundwork proposed by Clarke has a tone of

transcendental Thomism carefully attended to while his metaphysical reflections

balances and sometimes oscillates between an existential grounding and formal

emergence at particular points of a Personalist and Thomist position. Clarke sets out

with some of Aquinas’s basic thoughts to elaborate his understanding and position,

which is the foundation for a systematic doctrine of analogy.

When dealing with the theme of human understanding and its relevance to

reflections on the meaning of being he cites some of the dense lines found in the works

of Thomas Aquinas. Speaking of human apprehension, Clarke goes to the part of

Thomas’s work that deals with man’s last end in relation to law where Thomas says that

“That which falls under the apprehension (of the human intellect) is being, the

understanding of which is included in anything whatever that one grasps intellectually”.

At this particular point, Thomas treats of being as basic to all other understanding just

as good is to all action:

33

In his autem quae in apprehensione omnium cadunt, quidam ordo

invenitur. Nam illud quod primo cadit in apprehensione, est ens, cuius intellectus

includitur in omnibus quaecumque quis apprehendit. Et ideo primum principium

indemonstrabile est quod non est simul affirmare et negare, quod fundatur supra

rationem entis et non entis, et super hoc principio omnia alia fundantur, ut dicitur

in IV Metaphys. Sicut autem ens est primum quod cadit in apprehensione

simpliciter, ita bonum est primum quod cadit in apprehensione practicae rationis,

quae ordinatur ad opus, omne enim agens agit propter finem, qui habet rationem

boni. Et ideo primum principium in ratione practica est quod fundatur supra

rationem boni, quae est, bonum est quod omnia appetunt. Hoc est ergo primum

praeceptum legis, quod bonum est faciendum et prosequendum, et malum

vitandum. Et super hoc fundantur omnia alia praecepta legis naturae, ut scilicet

omnia illa facienda vel vitanda pertineant ad praecepta legis naturae, quae ratio

practica naturaliter apprehendit esse bona humana.54

This should be understood as referring to a cognitum before the consideration of being

as such.

However, as we shall see further on, proceeding according to Clarke, the notion

of being inasmuch as understood is not simply formal but also existential and that this

existential dimension of being is knowable and not some opaque and unintelligible

ground of being real. Therefore, Clarke’s understanding of being (esse) is full of

intelligibility as opposed to, he himself affirms, some currents of existentialism and

therefore open to know-ability of the human intellect through participation.

According to Clarke, being is all together penetrated with intelligibility and

understanding up to its very roots and grounding. This interpretation of Aquinas’s

metaphysics of being and the notion of being-conceived is according to Clarke in line

with his thoughts as he, St. Thomas, notes: “Unde secundum hunc solum modum est

cognoscibile: nam unumquodque, quantum habet de esse, tantum habet de

cognoscibilitate”55

. This esse cognitum is apparently clear in Clarke’s doctrine of

analogy: esse intentionale. He explains thus:

This similitude, which is a self-expression of the agent projected through its

form, leaving the being’s matter and actual existence behind, is not the physical or

54

See AQUINAS, Summa Theologiae I-II, Q. 94, art. 2 55 See AQUINAS, Summa Contra Gentiles I, cap. 71 ad 16

34

natural being (esse naturale) of the agent, which remains within itself, but a

projected similitude, (an esse intentionale) received in the knower according to the

mode of the knower, and, when recognized as a natural similitude, image, or sign of

its source, points back by the whole dynamism of its relational being to the source

from which it came and of which it is the projected self-image56

.

Therefore, Clarke concludes, it is not only at the first moment but also analogical

in the process of intellection of being qua being towards a diffusive richness. Therefore,

anything whatsoever has just as much of know-ability as it has of esse so that whatever

is known is at least existential and intelligible and not merely vaporized into infinite

possibilities or solidified in a mysterious opaqueness of “existential” act of being.

Clarke’s position grounds intelligibility in existential being as opposed to opaqueness of

privation and a certain sense of potentiality: he notes that besides privation, potentiality

presents also another intellectual problem worth metaphysical reflection and in this

vein, the notion of act and action rooted in existential being becomes crucial to the

interpretation of Aquinas, except by a rather more profound investigation and revision

of the notion of potency57

.

It emerges in Clarke that being is an existential being (esse) analogously related

or participated in an established order of being: Clarke affirms that St. Thomas Aquinas

distinguishes esse intentionale, esse cognitum, esse volitum from esse naturale, esse in

re, or in rerum natura such that “knowledge is of a real order as present in the knower

in the mode of a self-effacing cognitive duplicate or intentional representation of the

real other.”58

Therefore, cognitive being is a significant referential analogy of real being

outside the knower through a cognitive presence of the object in a subject as intentional

being: the only being of an object of knowledge is its being-known.

56

CLARKE W. N, Explorations in Metaphysics, page 57. 57

AQUINAS T, Quodlibet III, q. 8, a. 20: “Omnis enim substantia creata est composita ex potentia et actu. Manifestum est enim quod solus Deus est suum esse, quasi essentialiter existens, in quantum scilicet suum esse est eius substantia. Quod de nullo alio dici potest: esse enim subsistens non potest esse nisi unum, sicut nec albedo subsistens non potest esse nisi unum. Oportet ergo quod quaelibet alia res sit ens participative, ita quod aliud sit in eo substantia participans esse, et aliud ipsum esse participatum. Omne autem participans se habet ad participatum, sicut potentia ad actum; unde substantia cuiuslibet rei creatae se habet ad suum esse, sicut potentia ad actum. Sic ergo omnis substantia creata est composita ex potentia et actu, id est ex eo quod est et esse, ut Boetius dicit in Lib. de Hebd.” 58 CLARKE, W. N, Explorations in Metaphysics, page 191-192.

35

Clarke employs what St. Thomas says in the SCG IV, chapter 11: esse eius

consistit in ipso intelligi (it’s to-be is its to-be-thought-about). It’s worth a read of the

whole chapter to capture the context and the density of investigation on this point.

Clarke clarifies the notion of intentional being by adding that it projects from object to a

subject or from a subject to an object in distinct manners of intentionality. It is not clear

how the configuration of intentional being within a subject is distinguished in the

metaphysics of being though epistemologically valid other than what Clarke declares

about the doctrine of participation: “… one basic analogical perfection of esse, and the

whole applied with a consummate sense of analogy to the different orders both of

reality and of ideas—such is the highly original synthesis that is Thomistic

participation.” A citation from St. Thomas is below:

Oportet ergo quod quaelibet alia res sit ens participative, ita quod aliud sit in

eo substantia participans esse, et aliud ipsum esse participatum. Omne autem

participans se habet ad participatum, sicut potentia ad actum; unde substantia

cuiuslibet rei creatae se habet ad suum esse, sicut potentia ad actum.59

Keeping with the Aristotelian tradition, Clarke elaborates the meaningful notion

of act and action as opposed to mere activism from a thomistic prism present in his

work on the human soul and its knowledge of itself in communion with a body of which

it is a form: knowledge is primarily an act. For St. Thomas refers to Aristotle saying that

“Anything whatever is knowable according as it is in act and not according as it is in

potency, as is said in Met. IX. So something is being and true (intelligible), as falling

under knowledge, according as it is in act” and this position is taken up by Clarke in

developing the metaphysical-epistemological revelation and communication of being.

Clarke declares this element according to what has been said and in the Summa thus:

unumquodque cognoscibile est secundum quod est in actu, et non secundum

quod est in potentia, ut dicitur in IX Metaphys., sic enim aliquid est ens et verum,

quod sub cognitione cadit, prout actu est.60

59

Idem, page 98; See footnote preceeding foot note. 60 See AQUINAS, Summa Theologiae I, Q. 87, art. 1

36

Therefore, the form of bodies, that is, the substantial form, is a general giving of

knowledge made perfect through accidental forms in act (esse in actu) before the human

mind such that, according to Clarke, the proportionate or connatural object of human

knowing in particular, within the wider horizon of being itself, is the nature of material

beings—quidditas rei materialis—that is, form-in-matter. In this manner, the

knowledge of reality by the human intellect is not only actually real but also actually

meaningful. Clarke reinforces this point in an already referred to article on Analogy and

the Meaningfulness of Language about God when he states explicitly that “the whole

concrete act of knowing… is the judgment”61

and therefore, judgment revealing an act

of knowing, intelligibility, being. The question about the act of knowledge, Clarke

underpins, lies buried in its reality and relevance where there is a meeting point of the

act of a subjective knower and the act of a knowable object and a communication of

being: he considers causality as the bond of similarity between a subject and an object

in act of knowledge and the nature of this act, that is, whether it is an existential or self-

communicating act.

Clarke clarifies his position on the nature of judgment by analysis of how exactly

contact with real being for further philosophical development is attained; like

Transcendental Thomists, he insists on starting with judgments containing the copula

“is” in alternation to Gilsonian “immediate realism”, modern and Louvainian “critical

realism”, Dominican and Aristotelian “passage to Prime Mover”, and the unbounded

existential Thomism of “ordinary experience of being”, which is more fecund in view of

secure realism and further metaphysical development against anything like a Cartesian

cogito, ideal Kantian Colossus of a priori categories of human thought, and the traits of

an essentially intact Copernican revolution in contemporary a priories.62

To further this point concerning the fecundity of judgment as an act of fusion of

distinct beings in some way, Clarke points out thereafter that one privileged type of

experience, central to all human living, a must experience by any philosopher, a stare in

the face every day, unaccountable to anti-realist Kantian variety epistemology, a blind

spot in all classical modern epistemologies from Descartes onwards, inexplicit and not

61

See CLARKE, W. N, Explorations in Metaphysics, p. 129. 62 Idem, page 32-33.

37

thematized part of Thomistic realism, is interpersonal dialogue: without interpersonal

dialogue, Clarke affirms, none of us could be truly human, there would be no knowing

of human beings as equally real with ourselves and inability to engage in meaningful

dialogue with each other. This call of Clarke to interpersonal dialogue as the starting

point of metaphysics, and therefore all scientific projects between subjects and objects,

not only touches the nucleus of his metaphysics but also diffuses its presence in the self-

fulfillment of being through act and action.63

In sum, Clarke declares, we are, we are

like each other, we can engage in meaningful communication with each other,64

interpersonal dialogue is all too evident from day to day, time to time. Clarke argues for

the experience of interpersonal dialogue pointing out that it only takes entering in,

living experientially, and then reflecting on, to perceive the revelatory power of it.

Therefore, it cannot be deduced a priori from cogito or a purely solitary

experience. It is rather a happening to us without which the question of realism or

epistemological position, which is always an affirmation to someone, an affirmation we

are prepared to explain and defend, is impossible.65

After the epistemological

groundwork, the metaphysical reflections and ontological relevance of being as such

inasmuch as act and action gains its ground also. The analysis of being as act and action

to a self-communicating nature of act not only, according to Clarke, reveal being as it

truly is but also opens it to a whole journey towards self-fulfillment in act.

4. Being as Dynamic Act

The metaphysical notion of act and action in William Norris Clarke flows from

his notion of being. The notion of being thus far presented by Clarke’s thought may

well be captured by the notion of “dynamic act”. In his own words, Clarke articulates

being, esse, that is to be by the meaning of a dense notion, the notion of being as

substance-in-relation. This notion of being in Clarke has been distilled through a long

process of a personal journey and confrontation of St. Thomas Aquinas’s metaphysics

of being with modern and contemporary revolutionary and critical analysis of the 63

Ibidem 64

Ibidem 65 Ibidem

38

significance of the notion of being. Therefore, an understanding of the notion of being

according to Clarke and its primordial dimensions should lead to an ever deeper

interpretation of his metaphysical notion of action. He declares what action is, action:

the self-revelation of being. The resolution of being to act, Clarke affirms, is an

experience of being active. This notion of being as active is presented by Clarke from

Thomas’ work when dealing with God and infinity, especially in relation to actuality:

“… nam ex hoc ipso quo aliquid actu est, activum est”66

.

Following somewhat an Aristotelian notion of substance, Clarke explains that

being active of any existential act flows from the nature of act and potency, and here

potency means more strictly active potency such that active power follows upon being

in act. Therefore, the notion of act in Clarke is both existential and powerful. This active

nature of being is developed by Clarke along the line of thought of Aquinas when

dealing with arguments between God and potency: “potentia activa sequitur ens in

actu: unumquodque enim ex hoc agit quod est actu”67

. It should be added that Clarke in

his analysis of the nature of act not only is it existential and powerful but also of its own

nature dynamic, that is, self-communicative.

He draws this notion of act of being and action from the thoughts of Aquinas.

While investigating potentia generativa in the divine, Aquinas notes in his analysis that

actuality is of a communicative nature and tends to do so as far as possible such that

agency flows from actual existence: “natura cuiuslibet actus est, quod seipsum

communicet quantum possibile est. Unde unumquodque agens agit secundum quod in

actu est”.68

This notion of act and action rooted in existence permeated by intelligibility

establishes, Clarke affirms, not only the ground for dynamic and active being but also

raison d’être of communicability, relationality, receptivity, and community of being.

Clarke then affirms that “there is an immense innate dynamism in the very nature of

actual beings as such” following the rediscovery of the centrality and dynamism of the

act of existence in contemporary Thomism by Etienne Gilson.

66

See AQUINAS, Summa Contra Gentiles I, 43. n. 2 67

See AQUINAS, Summa Contra Gentiles II, 7, n. 3 68 See AQUINAS, QD De Potentia, q. 2, art. 1 co.

39

The analysis of being as act according to Clarke reveal that being is act primarily

as an existential act, and this is esse. Given the preceding metaphysical systems and

traditions before Aquinas, Clarke affirms that the synthesis of Thomism on the notion of

act and its limiting principle is not only simple and yet extremely rich, but also complex

as to the nature of being inasmuch as act through the notion of participation. Therefore,

the “first act” of being is an existential act. However, the existential act of being is an

act of “some” being: an existential act communicates “some” and “other” act, a

“second” act, which is it, a thing. This self-revelatory nature of being as act is essential

to being, and being as such. Therefore, the second primary act of being is natural to

being, essential to being: it is an intrinsic nature of being as act. Therefore, the “second

act” of being is an essential act, a communicative act of being. What is communicated

by this act of being is not existence, but is rooted and stems from an existential act and

this is essence of the act of being existential. Therefore, essence of being is the “second

act” of being as act. This duality of act primary to being is being as act not only

existentially first but also essentially “it-self.” Therefore being as act is and is

responsible to both “is it” and “it is” being-it-self. Therefore, the notion of being as act

in Clarke brings out a duality of act intrinsic to being as act and these acts are distinct,

existential act and essential act.

Being is primarily an existential act: there is “something”. There is, expresses

well existence of something. Without existence, there is “nothing”. Therefore, is

primarily expresses actual reality, and that there-is, is a judgment of a subject about the

really real and the copula of objective and subjective reality expresses a common

reality, which is and this reality means at first insight existence, and then existence of

but an existence of an actual other or another reality. Therefore, actual reality, the

really real, is and not only is it but also it is. Therefore, being is means primarily an act

and this act has an intrinsic nature, a prioritized.

By existential act Clarke endeavors to express the notion of being signified by

esse in latin language. This notion of being according to Clarke expresses his position

on being as act signified by actus essendi. The ground of Clarke’s interpretation of the

notion of being as act in this respect is grounded in the metaphysics of being of St.

Thomas Aquinas yet also expresses a certain modification to the notion of being to

40

respond to the critics and developments of non-scholastic and non-thomistic

philosophical interpretations and most especially the contemporary philosophical

schools.

Being as an existential act is the grounding of all other “perfections” of being.

Without this existential act of being, there would be no common “standing” and original

“fountain” of being in whatever sense apart from “nothing” or an abyss of “emptiness.”

Therefore, without existential act, being “floats” in the air without “density” or

foundational “weight”. To say it in another way: without the existential act, being and

whatever “sinks” endlessly into the abyss of nothingness because there is neither

foundation nor grounding for being-itself. In consideration of being in its aspect of

existential act according to the thought of Clarke the position of St. Thomas on the

primacy of esse is reaffirmed and the grounding of all other metaphysical speculations

interpreted. Therefore, being as an existential act prepares the “out flow” of being in

other and any other manner whether possible or operative dimension of being.

C. PRIMORDIAL DIMENSIONS OF BEING

After all the preceding analysis of the notion of being in Clarke, some points

have been identified as significant of dimensions of primordial being. This section will

deal with each point briefly before their application to man in the third part of this work.

It shall be of great interest to present what Clarke himself develops about each point.

The following are the basic categorization of the dimensions of primordial being in

William Norris Clarke.

Clarke notes that at the root of the whole Thomistic vision of the universe and its

systematic articulation are the dual principles of the intelligibility and the goodness of

being. It is not clear how spirit and intelligibility relate just as being and goodness in the

affirmations of Clarke except the natural correlativity of spirit and being like

intelligibility and goodness of being. However, he affirms that this correlativity is the

41

fundamental matrix for the possibility of the unfolding of the entire intellectual life in

all its forms and practical and moral life in human search for happiness.69

This position explains, Clarke notes, the secret dynamo of the thought of

Aquinas: “Being is the formal object of the intellect,” and “Truth (i.e., ontological truth,

or intrinsic intelligibility) is a transcendental property of all being,” etc. It therefore

emerges, according to Clarke, that the notion of person and being (spirit and being),

besides connaturality and correlativity, there is priority in the Metaphysic of Aquinas:

first the person, then being or first spirit, then being, as that “secret dynamo of

thought”70

.

This notion, Clarke argues, is methodological but not a problematic of a

theologian using presupposed metaphysics but philosophically: the doctrine of creation

of all things by God as Logos. Therefore, being is intelligible because the Source of all

being is identically both the fullness of being and the fullness of intelligence proceeding

from a free creative act of intelligence and love: the person is the primary model of

being.71

This analytical dynamism of conception of reality posits a problem on the

priority of the one and many just as the relation between oneness, unity, and multiplicity

or plurality.

In a moderate agreement to Father Johannes Metz’s “thought-form” (Denkform)

thesis of personal thought of St. Thomas, Clarke notes not only that an adequate

vocabulary of expression is needed but also that the notion of the person in Aquinas is

not a peculiar mode of being added on from the outside to a non-personal mode of being

but rather a person is being itself above certain limitation, which disperses its act of

presence into parts external to each other like emanation of photos of light (matter), to a

level of perfection (spirit) in which its act of presence is luminous and transparent to

itself as not only a presence to and for itself (self-consciousness) but also master of its

own actions (freedom).

69 Idem, page 3-4. 70

AQUINAS, De Veritate, art. 1. 71

CLARKE W. N., Explorations in Metaphysic, page 15: see the part headed thus : IV. THE PERSON AS THE PRIMARY MODEL OF BEING

42

Accordingly, Clarke declares that the fullness of being as an act of presence is of

its very nature personal (an active self-possessing presence to itself and to others (even

to the whole world if its act of presence is intense enough). In this manner, there is

agreement, Clarke cites, with the signification of the person St. Thomas tells: “The

person is that which is the most perfect in all nature.”72

Therefore, according to the

notion of the act of existence as root of all perfection, the person is the highest mode

and perfection of both existential act (esse) and self-communicative act (essentia) of

being qua being: to be is be substance-in-relation, a primarily intense conception of

being and secondarily extensive.

Therefore, the human person becomes for us the central datum of reference or

analogue for basic metaphysical concepts such as unity, activity, efficient causality, act

and potency, etc., for the sheer reason that these concepts are known to us even from

within and meaningfully applicable above (God and angels) and below (animals, plants,

earth, etc.). From this view point, the primordial dimensions of being and its rich

polarization is developed by Clarke to which this section is dedicated, and obviously,

starting with the human personal being: interpersonal dialogue, a starting point of

metaphysics.

According to Clarke, as we have just noted, beginning with the human being,

being inasmuch as being from the view and starting point of personal being within the

“We are” of interpersonal dialogue and manifestation is “the most fruitful” full-

dimensional-analysis of what it means “to be”.73

Therefore, not only the person

becomes the primary model of being but also—and more concretely—the human person

communion of existents.

Turning to the human personal being, the dimensions of being as such are

discerned. It is clear, according to Clarke, that the notion of substance is not only the

principle of per-during self-identity of a being throughout the succession of its changes

72

AQUINA, ST I, q. 29, art. 3 73 CLARKE W. N., Explorations in Metaphysics, page 42: see CONCLUSION

43

but also a center of dynamic activity and receptivity. As far as human knowledge is

concerned, every finite substance is intrinsically relational, set in the matrix of the

world-system as a whole (an integral). Therefore, Clarke affirms this freely:

“Here substance is conceived precisely as the integrating center of a

being’s activity, a center which is constantly pouring over into self-expression

through its characteristic actions and at the same time constantly integrating or

actively assimilating all that it receives from the action of other substances on

it.”74

Clarke, however, qualifies this notion of substance adding that the changes of a

self-identified being are accidental or non-essential: substance and accident are

metaphysical co-principles and ontologically interpenetrate each other, each affecting

the other more or less profoundly, as the case may be. In line with Whitehead, Clarke

affirms that reality is “through and through togetherness”. This is the expression of the

active act of substantiality as a primordial dimension of being and no less personal

being.

The passive act of integral being, Clarke affirms, is the notion of substantial

potency as a necessary condition of possibility for any complex whole: plasticity of

substantial potency as the subject of continuity in change. The notion of potency here,

he explains, is of an irreducible ingredient of the real world in line with St. Thomas:

“out of two entities in act, it is impossible to make a natural or intrinsic unity (unum per

se)”75

, a combination amounting to aggregation, a society, with unity of order perhaps

but not coalescing to form a genuine new being. Clarke investigates this potency not in

the sense of traditional Aristotelian-Thomistic term of “pure potency” or “prime matter”

since it is neither without forming yet irreducible to it either.

Relationality through communication (partiality and communicability) and

causation (efficient and final causality) after the actuality and determinability of being

as such, according to Clarke, conducts the unity of being by a higher act through the

74

CLARKE W. N., Explorations in Metaphysics, page 16-17. 75 AQUINAS T., SCG I, ch. 18

44

ingredient of substantial plasticity to the nature of God as Pure Subsistent Act of

Existence in order to form a per se unity of complex wholes of one being from the One.

In Clarke, the act of existence is the central unifying perfection from a single ultimate

Source which is pure unlimited plenitude of existence.76

Clarke affirms that the multiplicity of beings would not be “turned toward each

other to form a unity” (universum), i.e., a real order or system unified by existential

bonds between beings without action and activity following naturally from being and its

self-communicative nature to form a dynamic unity of order among beings, drawn

together in an intentional unity through knowledge and love, where the whole is

recreated consciously in every personal member: the process of self-communication and

self-revelation manifests itself as the supreme perfection and self-realization of every

being, the final raison d’être of being itself.77

The notion of being developed at the core is constituted by its (esse) or act of

existence, according to Clarke, conceived not as form or whatness or essence but as

active presence or power-filled real being present (virtus essendi) of substantial being in

relation through being-at-work: the intrinsic structure of all being is irreducibly dyadic,

substance-in-relation. Therefore, the human person, a reality closest and most

significant in the concrete, is a polarity of active substance and relation, of in-self

interiority and self-transcending outreach toward others. The basic frame work of causal

similitude from the central origin of the axes of being enable us effectively identify the

dimensions of being just as the attributes which can be applied to God such as unity,

activity, goodness, and power (absolutely transcendental properties of being) and

knowledge, love, joy, freedom, and personality (relatively transcendental properties of

being). In other words, being through essence participate in the act of existence:

composition with diverse limiting modes of essence.78

76

CLARKE W. N., Explorations in Metaphysics, page 3: see point 3. 77

Idem, page 63. 78 Idem.

45

PART THREE

HUMAN DIMENSIONS OF PERSONAL BEING

In this part the notion of person as the highest mode of being shall be developed

in view of the expressions of the human dimensions following (1) a recapitulation of the

human, and (2) the emergent acts of primordial being, according to Clarke.

The discovery of nature and person inasmuch as human shall reveal the

constitutive dimensions of personal being according to Clarke: (1) self-possessing made

possible through self-consciousness and self-determination, (2) self-communicating

through the intrinsic aptitude and nature of act that culminates fully in a dialectical

synthesis, a (3) self-transcending flowing from a dynamic act of a substantial-relational

being and action.

A. A RECAPITUALTION OF THE HUMAN

Clarke affirms that St. Thomas, after the doctrine of the real distinction between

essence and the act of existence, was able to precise the distinction between person and

nature than any other scholastic thinkers who ended in special modes and negative

explanations.

1. Nature

The interest here is the nature of the human person according to Clarke in the

prospect of personal being. The first affirmation is that the human person is a personal

46

being, possessing an intellectual nature, as dealt with earlier. However, Clarkes notes, it

is joined in a natural unity with a material body.

The sense of unity, Clarke explains, is that of Aristotle’s definition of man: man

as a rational animal.79

This, he affirms, is accepted by Thomas too.80

Clarke affirms that

a profounder and more exact description of man according to a total vision of man in

line with St. Thomas’s doctrine would be embodied spirit.81

The spirit, Clarke affirms,

is the deepest level, inasmuch man, of human nature. The nature of the human person is

recapitulated, according to Clarke, as follows, under five points:

Firstly, a natural and complementary unity of a body and an intellectual soul:

the soul of spiritual acts possessing its own existence and transcending the body, Clarke

affirms, communicates existence by drawing the body into participation in it to a higher

mode of being as the necessary instrument of journey of self-realization forming a

single unified existing nature.82

The spiritual act of existence owned by the human soul

is not only a form of a body, Clarke affirms, but also a spirit and a form intrinsically

separable yet oriented towards the body83

. Secondly, human will: the spiritual faculty of

action flowing from an intellectual nature, Clarke defines the human will, likewise the

following elements, and, inasmuch as spirit, he notes, is ordered to nothing less than the

infinite good upon which its freedom is built before finite goods. This is congruous with

St. Thomas’s notion of creation and freedom, even for the other points:

sicut in artibus est quod illa quae considerat finem, imperat et movet artes

considerantes ea quae sunt ad finem, sicut medicus imperat pigmentario, ut supra

dictum est, ita etiam est in potentiis animae. Voluntas enim, quia considerat finem,

movet alias omnes potentias quae ordinantur ad finem et imperat eis actus suos.84

Omne enim agens habet aliquam intentionem et desiderium finis. Omne

autem desiderium finis praecedit aliqua cognitio praestituens finem, et dirigens in

79 CLARKE W. N., Person and Being, page 32: “Aristotle defined this unity called “man” as “a rational animal.” 80 Ibidem. 81 Ibidem. 82

Idem, page 35 83

Idem. 84 AQUINAS T., Super Sent., lib. 1, d. 3, q. 4, art. 1 ad 8.

47

finem ea quae sunt ad finem. Sed in quibusdam ista cognitio non est conjuncta

tendenti in finem; unde oportet quod dirigatur per aliquod prius agens, sicut sagitta

tendit in determinatum locum per determinationem sagittantis; et ita est in omnibus

quae agunt per necessitatem naturae; quia horum operatio est determinata per

intellectum aliquem instituentem naturam; unde, philosophus dicit, quod opus

naturae est opus intelligentiae.85

Cuius enim est velle finem principaliter, eius est velle ea quae sunt ad finem

ratione finis. Est autem ipse Deus ultimus rerum finis, ut ex praedictis aliquatenus

patet.86

Deus autem, sicut uno actu omnia in essentia sua intelligit, ita uno actu vult

omnia in sua bonitate. Unde, sicut in Deo intelligere causam non est causa

intelligendi effectus, sed ipse intelligit effectus in causa; ita velle finem non est ei

causa volendi ea quae sunt ad finem, sed tamen vult ea quae sunt ad finem, ordinari

in finem. Vult ergo hoc esse propter hoc, sed non propter hoc vult hoc.87

quod voluntas quandoque dicitur ipsa potentia qua volumus; quandoque

autem ipse voluntatis actus. Si ergo loquamur de voluntate secundum quod nominat

potentiam, sic se extendit et ad finem, et ad ea quae sunt ad finem. Ad ea enim se

extendit unaquaeque potentia, in quibus inveniri potest quocumque modo ratio sui

obiecti, sicut visus se extendit ad omnia quaecumque participant quocumque modo

colorem.88

Libertas enim arbitrii proprie ad electionem se extendit, electio autem est

eorum quae sunt ad finem, ultimus autem finis naturaliter appetitur ab unoquoque:

unde omnes homines ex hoc quod sunt intellectuales, appetunt naturaliter felicitatem

tanquam ultimum finem, et adeo immobiliter, quod nullus potest velle fieri miser.

Nec hoc libertati repugnat arbitrii, quae non se extendit nisi ad ea quae sunt ad

finem. Quod autem in hoc particulari hic homo ultimam suam felicitatem, ille autem

in illo ponat, non convenit huic aut illi inquantum est homo, cum in tali aestimatione

et appetitu homines differant, sed unicuique hoc competit secundum quod est in se

aliqualis.89

Thirdly, human intellect: a capacity for being (capax entis) ordered to being as

such and being in its highest mode and perfection, which is the whole of being as

intelligible ultimately in God, the infinite source and fullness of all being (capax entis,

ergo capax Dei). Fourthly, a synthesis of the whole universe: both material and spiritual

85 Idem, d. 35, q. 1, art. 1 co. 86 AQUINAS T., SCG I, ch. 75, n. 2 87

Idem., ST I, q. 19, art. 5, co. 88

Idem., I-II, q. 8. art. 2, co. 89 Compendium Theologiae, lib. 1, ch. 174, co.

48

being find itself united in the human person as embodied spirit. Fifthly, social

dynamism: the human person, being finite, is insufficient for and to itself and needs

others human and personal beings for his natural perfection and both mutual

dependence and complement. In consequence, Clarke affirms that the dynamic notion

of both nature and substance ordered towards self-expression through action introduces

the historical dimension of the human person for an integral conception.90

The end of

man as human person capable of an indirect analogous knowledge and direct love of

Transcendent Spiritual Source, “led by the hand by material things”, inasmuch as an

embodied spirit, in a journey qualifies him as a homo viator. The dynamism of the

intellectual nature of the human person orients him to nothing less than the Infinite

Intelligibility-Goodness: the human person’s journey is through and beyond matter.

This indeed puts man, Clarke concludes, as a human person in perspective of freedom

and ability to make his own history as he journeys through time. Therefore, the human

person, Clarke affirms, is a being whose nature is to possess creative freedom.

2. Person

The historical genesis of the notion of person and its distinction is long. This

investigation seeks the ontological meaning of person in the thought of St. Thomas

according to Clarke.

Clarke affirms that according to St. Thomas, when he continues the tradition that

the person is “that which is most perfect in all of nature” understood as fullness of being

itself, is really nothing but existence fully its nature: being being-fully-itself, Clarke

affirms, turns into a luminous self-presence and self-possession called person, personal

being. Clarke affirms that for Thomas to be a person both an intellectual nature

(essentia) and possession of act of existence (esse) are requisite: “Therefore, it is the

nature’s own proportionate act of existence, actualizing it as an existent, which formally

constitutes that nature a person.”91

90

CLARKE W. N., Person and Being, page 41. 91 CLARKE W. N., Person and Being, page 27.

49

Therefore, Clarke explains the position of St. Thomas, the person is the concrete

whole resulting from this union (intellectual essence and own act of existence)

expressed by the term “I”. Ordinary languages, Clarke notes, distinguish persons by

“who” and natures by “what” questions. In other words, Clarke explains, for St. Thomas

the person could be defined as “an intellectual nature possessing its own act of

existence, so that it can be the self-conscious, responsible source of its own actions.” In

this sense, Clarke continues, personal being is imbued with a double dimension for self-

possession: self-consciousness in the order of knowledge and self-determination in the

order of action. A person is descriptively dominus sui: master of itself, or self-

possessing (in the order of knowledge by self-consciousness; in the order of will and

action by self-determination or free will).92

In this line, Clarke adds that a more adequate definition of person for St. Thomas

might be this: a person is an actual existent, distinct from all others, possessing an

intellectual nature, so that it can be the self-conscious, responsible source of its own

actions. Therefore, with this analysis, Clarke defines the human person according to an

interpretation of Thomas as an actual existent, distinct from all others, possessing only a

human intellectual nature (i.e., as embodied spirit), which he notes as close to one of

92

AQUINAS T., Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 6, art. 2 ad 2: “secundum hoc quod actus humani sunt

voluntarii, homo dicitur esse dominus suorum actuum”; II-II, q. 64, art. 5, ad 3: “Ad tertium dicendum

quod homo constituitur dominus sui ipsius per liberum arbitrium. Et ideo licite potest homo de seipso

disponere quantum ad ea quae pertinent ad hanc vitam, quae hominis libero arbitrio regitur. Sed transitus

de hac vita ad aliam feliciorem non subiacet libero arbitrio hominis, sed potestati divinae. Et ideo non

licet homini seipsum interficere ut ad feliciorem transeat vitam. Similiter etiam nec ut miserias quaslibet praesentis vitae evadat. Quia ultimum malorum huius vitae et maxime terribile est mors, ut patet per

philosophum, in III Ethic. Et ita inferre sibi mortem ad alias huius vitae miserias evadendas est maius

malum assumere ad minoris mali vitationem. Similiter etiam non licet seipsum occidere propter aliquod

peccatum commissum. Tum quia in hoc sibi maxime nocet quod sibi adimit necessarium poenitentiae

tempus. Tum etiam quia malefactorem occidere non licet nisi per iudicium publicae potestatis. Similiter

etiam non licet mulieri seipsam occidere ne ab alio corrumpatur. Quia non debet in se committere crimen

maximum, quod est sui ipsius occisio, ut vitet minus crimen alienum (non enim est crimen mulieris per

violentiam violatae, si consensus non adsit, quia non inquinatur corpus nisi de consensu mentis, ut Lucia

dixit). Constat autem minus esse peccatum fornicationem vel adulterium quam homicidium, et praecipue

sui ipsius, quod est gravissimum, quia sibi ipsi nocet, cui maximam dilectionem debet. Est etiam

periculosissimum, quia non restat tempus ut per poenitentiam expietur. Similiter etiam nulli licet seipsum occidere ob timorem ne consentiat in peccatum. Quia non sunt facienda mala ut veniant bona, vel ut

vitentur mala, praesertim minora et minus certa. Incertum enim est an aliquis in futurum consentiat in

peccatum, potens est enim Deus hominem, quacumque tentatione superveniente, liberare a peccato.”; De

Veritate q. 5, art. 10: “quod ad huius quaestionis evidentiam, oportet scire qui dicantur actus humani.

Dicuntur enim proprie illi actus humani quorum ipse homo est dominus; est autem homo dominus suorum

actuum per voluntatem sive per liberum arbitrium; unde circa actus voluntatis et liberi arbitrii quaestio

ista versatur.”

50

Thomas’s favorite definitions of person: subsistens distinctum in natura rationali.93

Clarke explains that the above “thomistic” perspective is incomplete and that he

(Clarke) combines metaphysical and anthropological perspectives for completion.

Indeed, Clarke declares, the notion of person is an analogous one, and in this manner,

extendable to God. Therefore, the person is somewhat existence and essence identified

in some way, and this is most fully in God as philosophically attributable as personal. In

this sense, Clarke affirms that to be fully, without “restrictions”, is to be personal. The

notion of the human person, Clarke cites, has been spelled out well by his companion; a

summary of Karl Rahner on the notion of person:

Being a person, then, means the self-possession of a subject as such in

conscious and free relationship to the totality of itself. This relationship is the

condition of possibility and antecedent horizon for the fact that in his individual

sciences man has to do with himself as one and as a whole. Because man’s having

responsibility for the totality of himself is the condition for his empirical experience

of self, it cannot be derived completely from this experience and its objectivities.

Even when man would want to shift all responsibility for himself away from himself

as someone totally determined from without, and thus would want to explain

himself away, he is the one who does this and does it knowingly and willingly. He is

the one who encompasses the sum of all the possible elements of such an

explanation, and thus he is the one who shows himself to be something other than

the subsequent product of such individual element94

B. EMERGENT ACTS OF PERSONAL BEING

The preceding parts and sections have availed the dynamic and self-

communicative notion of being according to the thought of William Norris Clarke. This

chapter treats some of the emergent acts of personal being applicable analogously to all

persons. However, Clarke notes that the metaphysical insight embodied in the

preceding, accurate, expression of St. Thomas’s thought come to light fully in his rich

and original doctrine of existence as the central act and core of all perfection in real

93

AQUINAS T., Super Sent., lib. 1, d. 23, q. 1, art. 4 co. 94

CLARKE W. N., Person and Being, page 63: quoting Karl Rahner’s own summary of what it means to be a human person:

51

being: Clarke affirms that the act of existence is not external but rather the whole

positive core and content of all the perfection actualized in essence.

Therefore, he continues, essence emerges from existential act itself as a

particular limiting mode of existence itself, which constricts the all-embracing fullness

of perfection down to some determinate, limited participation: indeed, all finite being is

really a limited act of existence, existing now as a new whole distinct from all other real

beings. Therefore, personal being is a subject of existing, a whole of existing essence or

nature.

It is from the very notion of being as dynamic and communicable act that Clarke

develops the dimensions of being which are fully manifest in personal being, the highest

order and mode of being. Therefore, the emergent acts of personal being are no less the

very acts of dynamic and relational being except those acts which formally constitute

personal being. Clarke affirms that the first emergent act of personal being as a

synthesis of all the suppositional dimensions of being as such is self-possessing, the

second is self-communicating and the third is self-transcending, the synthesis of

interiority and exteriority of being personal. The distinctive emergent act of personal

being, Clarke affirms, upon which all others presuppose, is the first act, the self-

possessing because it follows from an essential (intellectual nature) owning of being

itself.

The second and third acts, Clarke continues, follow from the innate diffusiveness

of being, and in this case, that is, personal being, in an analogical and higher dimension

of goodness; therefore, Clarke concludes, the second and third emergent acts are

formally intelligible and voluntary diffusion of richness and goodness of being. These

emergent acts, Clarke affirms, are not only significant of the nature of personal being

but also analogously expresses the real notion of the ultimate act of existence and its

significant dynamic primordial acts: the “nature” of ultimate Reality. Therefore, the

human person, he affirms, is a privileged being in sharing this image of its Ultimate

Source and Original Being not only as an existential act but also as a self-

communicative personal being and act. In sum, what follows are, according to Clarke,

52

“the main ways in which the human person manifests or gives expression in actual

living to the inner structure of its personalized being.”95

1. Self-Possessing

According to Clarke, rooted in the act of existence constitutive of the person and

adjusted appropriately to human nature which possesses it as its own, speaking of the

person as realized in a human nature, the dyadic structure of all real being presents all

real being in-itself and toward-others: to be is to be substance-in-relation, that is, real

being standing on its own as a unity-identity-whole in the midst of a community of

existents. Here is it in his word:

Self-possession is the manifestation on the level of conscious experience of

one of the two complementary poles of the underlying ontological structure of the

person, namely, its in-itselfness or substantiality, by which it stands out as a distinct,

autonomous, self-governing moral subject in the community of other persons and of

all beings. It is here that the unique inner depth of privacy and interiority of the

personal self resides, irreducible to any of its outward-facing relations, and without

which the latter lose their own grounding in being96

This standing not as part of any other being is not the same as being unrelated to

others; rather, it pours itself out into active self-communication with other real beings,

generating relations, community, etc. 97

The human person, Clarke argues, in the order

of being as personal being (spiritual being) is a luminous self-presence, according to the

in-itself dimension of every real being, termed self-consciousness.98

Therefore, Clarke notes, the first dimension of personal being that constitutes its

self-possessing is self-consciousness, which is an awareness of oneself both as present

and as source of one’s actions. This self-awareness, Clarke affirms, follows from an

95 CLARKE W. N., Person and Being, page 41. 96

Idem, page 57. 97

Idem, page 42. 98 Idem, page 43.

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intense order of knowledge that is both active and present to itself, a spiritual act of

being, and the mode of being personal. This reality of being emerges from existent

being inasmuch as esse per se in natura intelletuali99

that is not only its esse naturale

(existence) but also esse intentionale (essence) identified.

The second dimension, Clarke explains, that is connatural to self-awareness for a

self-possessing is the owning of act that naturally flows in action according to the

following of the principles of intelligibility or goodness of being in a communicative

act, and this is termed self-determination100

: in the order of action, he continues, it is

freedom of the will as opposed to awareness of self, in the order of knowledge. The

polarization of self-possession into self-awareness and responsibility constitute,

according to Clarke, an adequate notion of St. Thomas’s wonderfully terse description

of the human being as dominus sui (master of itself):

quod ex hoc contingit quod homo est dominus sui actus, quod habet

deliberationem de suis actibus, ex hoc enim quod ratio deliberans se habet ad

opposita, voluntas in utrumque potest. Sed secundum hoc voluntarium non est in

brutis animalibus, ut dictum est101

The following is a deeper look into the elements of self-possessing:

a. Self-Consciousness

Clarke endeavors to explain more about self-consciousness saying that this self-

presence enables a personal being to be aware of itself as a subject present to itself from

within and source of its own actions to meaningfully say “I” but not as object, distinct

from or “out in front of itself”. This notion of self-consciousness, Clarke declares, is a

unique logic and own prerogative of personal being. It is this same reason why animals

are not persons:

99

AQUINAS T., Super Sent., lib. 1 d. 23 q. 1 a. 2 co 100

CLARKE W. N., Person and Being, page 43. 101 AQUINAS T., Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 6 a. 2 ad 2.

54

“Although they [Animals] are aware of the outside world through the senses,

they are locked into extraverted focusing on objects of their senses and cannot make

that “full return of the soul to itself,” as St. Thomas puts it, which would enable

them to be self-present as well as present to others, in a word, to be self-

conscious.”102

This inner principle of identity of knower (existential) and known (essential),

Clarke notes, is one of the evidences brought forward by St. Thomas, together with

many later thinkers, for asserting that the source of such act and action must be spiritual

soul.103

Therefore, Clarke affirms, the activity of identity of subject and object

transcending material mode of being without opposing it points to a more intense and

concentrated level of self-presence called “spiritual being.”104

Therefore, in the higher ranges of personal being (God and angels), Clarke adds,

this self-presence is immediate, totally transparent, and complete: having no bodies (yet

not absolutely opposed to it inasmuch as lower mode of being), they have no submerged

unconscious dimension and no slow education process spread over time. This is not the

case with the human person: having material and personal mode of being, the human

person is an embodied spirit naturally uniting both the created dimension of the

corporeal and spiritual soul.

The intellectual consciousness, Clarke argues, starts off in the dark of potential,

the sense of faculty, to be activated from without not only by a movement outward to

the material world but also by stimulus of sense knowledge towards a response

spreading over several years of time. This process of awakening, Clarke affirms

according to the works of John Macmurray, such as Persons in Relation, can only be

done by another human person reaching and treating one as itself that calls into I-Thou

relation. The discovery of “who I am” is the fuller conscious possession of unique

102 CLARKE W. N., Person and Being, page 44. 103 Idem; AQUINAS T., SCG II, ch. 66: Thomas explains arguments for the difference between sense and intellectual knowledge saying, “Nullus sensus seipsum cognoscit, nec suam operationem: visus enim non videt seipsum, nec videt se videre, sed hoc superioris potentiae est, ut probatur in libro de anima. Intellectus autem cognoscit seipsum, et cognoscit se intelligere” 104 Idem, page 44-45.

55

personality that is distinctive among others in the world: man is a traveler in his self-

knowledge in all the aspects of his being.

b. Self-Determination

Self-determination explains Clarke, is the second mode of self-possession proper

to personal being in the order of action: mastery over proper actions by freedom of the

will in a priority of responsibility and self-governing. It is rooted in the very nature of

existential act of personal being qualifying any person analogously in charge of its own

life. The initiation of self-determination in self-responding and its consummation in

self-governing, Clarke notes, is located not only the true dignity and profound worth of

every personal being but also deep implications.105

The individual and social moral

responsibility and mastery is here interwoven and resolved by personal mode of being

and self-possessing beings.

The termination of responsibility in governance, Clarke articulates, capacitates

personal being to exercise not only providence (pertinent to the order of intelligence, the

basic need for science, wisdom, justice, prudence, etc.) and service (pertinent to

observance or conservation of the order of love, volition, or free will, the basic need for

I-Thou for strength, family, community, support etc.) tantamount to man exercising

“intelligent free self-government” in an image of the all-comprehensive Providence of

God.

In this sense, morality is not primarily of obedience to law in the sense of

obedience to particular precepts imposed explicitly from without (like the ethics of

William of Ockham and Nominalist tradition) but rather a morality, Clarke explains

here the distinctive aspect of St. Thomas’s ethics, of the free self-governing person

responsibly guided towards God as final goal according to the flexible inner law, the

natural law expressive of personal being. Clarke rivets this point citing St. Thomas

thus:

105 CLARKE W. N., Person and Being, page 49.

56

quod subditus, non habet iudicare de praecepto praelati, sed de

impletione praecepti, quae ad ipsum spectat. Unusquisque enim tenetur actus

suos examinare ad scientiam quam a Deo habet, sive sit naturalis, sive acquisita,

sive infusa: omnis enim homo debet secundum rationem agere106

It is therefore implicative that self-determination expresses being inasmuch as

personal in-itself and toward-others: Clarke declares that act determines not only itself

but also being as it is in the case of personal being bring forth identity and value to light

according to stand. Therefore, Clarke notes, self-possession “adds a distinctive overtone

of seriousness and personal involvement to the whole moral enterprise”107

.

2. Self-Communicating

The generosity and receptivity of being as such not only expresses the

“introverted” but also synthetically expresses the “extraverted” dimension of being.

Clarke affirms that “all being is caught up in this unending dialectic of the within and

the without, the in-itself and the toward-others, the inward facing act of existential

presence in itself and the outward facing act of self-expression and self-manifestation

to others, by which it enters into a web of relationship with them.”108

The person, Clarke affirms, is a living synthesis of substantiality and

relationality. This polarized dimensional reality of being is equally important, and most

especially, to the human person: human consciousness does not start of in full, luminous

self-presence, like angels. Therefore, human consciousness emerges from an

interpersonal social matrix of “I-Thou-We”. This communicative dimension of personal

edification is according to Clarke natural and spontaneous as St. Thomas also remarks:

106

AQUINAS T., QD De Veritate, q. 17, art. 5, ad. 4. 107

CLARKE W. N., Person and Being, page 56. 108 Idem, page 64.

57

Videtur quod huiusmodi amicitia non sit pars iustitiae. Ad iustitiam enim

pertinet reddere debitum alteri. Sed hoc non pertinet ad hanc virtutem, sed solum

delectabiliter aliis convivere. Ergo huiusmodi virtus non est pars iustitiae.109

This aspect of friendship, Clarke affirms, was left to the contemporary

existential Phenomenologists and Personalists to develop in a more rich, indispensable,

and unique characteristic of personal being. This social nature of the human person,

Clarke argues, develops and unfolds from an ever growing matrix of relations of active

dialogue. It also explains, Clarke notes, the defining of the person in relational terms in

the world of psychology and psychotherapy. However, he notes that the deepest and

permanent level of defining the being and self-identity of the human person is located in

its relation to God as the latter’s created image, the Source of all being. With a

modification of the words of Josef Pieper to express his point, Clarke affirms that

personal being is both highly and deeply more related and comprehensive of intrinsic

existence not only by dwelling most intensely within itself but also by its being capax

universi.110

This reality, Clarke continues, is rooted in the metaphysical notion of

personal being as ultimately an act of existence (esse) of a highest mode in a nature.

Personalized being, inconsequence, Clarke affirms, must realize the basic dyadic

ontological structure of all being in the highest and deepest mode of presence in itself

and presence to others: to be a person is to be intrinsically expansive, ordered toward

self-manifestation and self-communication.111

This, Clarke judges, is the decisive

advance over Aristotelian substance restricted to nature and form ordered to itself rather

than sharing with others: there was no deep metaphysical grounding of the other pole.

The Neoplatonic dynamism of the self-diffusiveness of the good, taken by St. Thomas,

Clarke affirms, was necessary to “recuperate” the other-centered pole to the self-

centered pole of Aristotelian substance, except partially in his ethical and political

inquiry. In the case of the human person, Clarke notes, the receptive pole dominates at

the early stages before the generative in the sense of freely initiated active self-

communication.

109

AQUINAS T., ST II-II, q. 114, art. 2, ad 1 110

CLARKE W. N., Person and Being, page 69. 111 Idem, page 71.

58

Clarke affirms that giving and receiving, therefore, constitutes the “breathing of

being”112

. In sum, the self-communicative act proper to embodied spirits is wisdom,

love, the joy of togetherness, and many ways of its creative expressions. This expansive

drive is the root of community according to Clarke. In line with St. Thomas, Clarke

affirms the analogical doctrine of communion whose ultimate goal and perfection is

literally the communion between persons. The texts of St. Thomas Aquinas along these

lines are the following two:

Inter alias vero intellectuales substantias humanae animae infimum

gradum habent: quia, sicut supra dictum est, in prima sui institutione

cognitionem ordinis providentiae divinae in sola quadam universali cognitione

suscipiunt; ad perfectam vero ordinis secundum singula cognitionem, oportet

quod ex ipsis rebus, in quibus ordo divinae providentiae iam particulariter

institutus est, perducatur. Unde oportuit quod haberet organa corporea, per quae

a rebus corporalibus cognitionem hauriret. Ex quibus tamen, propter debilitatem

intellectualis luminis, perfectam notitiam eorum quae ad hominem spectant,

adipisci non valent nisi per superiores spiritus adiuventur, hoc exigente divina

dispositione, ut inferiores per superiores spiritus perfectionem acquirant, ut supra

ostensum est. Quia tamen aliquid homo de lumine intellectuali participat, ei

secundum providentiae divinae ordinem subduntur animalia bruta, quae

intellectu nullo modo participant.113

Respondeo dicendum quod Origenes posuit quod creatura corporalis non

est facta ex prima Dei intentione, sed ad poenam creaturae spiritualis peccantis.

Posuit enim quod Deus a principio creaturas spirituales solas fecit, et omnes

aequales. Quarum, cum essent liberi arbitrii, quaedam conversae sunt in Deum,

et secundum quantitatem conversionis sortitae sunt maiorem vel minorem

gradum, in sua simplicitate remanentes. Quaedam vero, aversae a Deo, alligatae

sunt corporibus diversis, secundum modum aversionis a Deo. Quae quidem

positio erronea est. Primo quidem, quia contrariatur Scripturae, quae, enarrata

productione cuiuslibet speciei creaturae corporalis subiungit, vidit Deus quia hoc

esset bonum; quasi diceret quod unumquodque ideo factum est, quia bonum est

ipsum esse. Secundum autem opinionem Origenis, creatura corporalis facta est,

non quia bonum est eam esse, sed ut malum alterius puniretur. Secundo, quia

sequeretur quod mundi corporalis dispositio quae nunc est, esset a casu. Si enim

ideo corpus solis tale factum est, ut congrueret alicui peccato spiritualis

creaturae puniendo; si plures creaturae spirituales similiter peccassent sicut illa

propter cuius peccatum puniendum ponit solem creatum, sequeretur quod essent

plures soles in mundo. Et idem esset de aliis. Haec autem sunt omnino

inconvenientia. Unde haec positione remota tanquam erronea, considerandum

est quod ex omnibus creaturis constituitur totum universum sicut totum ex

partibus. Si autem alicuius totius et partium eius velimus finem assignare,

112

Idem, page 74: see last paragraph of the same page. 113 AQUINAS T., SCG III, ch. 81 ad 1

59

inveniemus primo quidem, quod singulae partes sunt propter suos actus; sicut

oculus ad videndum. Secundo vero, quod pars ignobilior est propter nobiliorem;

sicut sensus propter intellectum, et pulmo propter cor. Tertio vero, omnes partes

sunt propter perfectionem totius, sicut et materia propter formam, partes enim

sunt quasi materia totius. Ulterius autem, totus homo est propter aliquem finem

extrinsecum, puta ut fruatur Deo. Sic igitur et in partibus universi, unaquaeque

creatura est propter suum proprium actum et perfectionem. Secundo autem,

creaturae ignobiliores sunt propter nobiliores sicut creaturae quae sunt infra

hominem, sunt propter hominem. Ulterius autem, singulae creaturae sunt propter

perfectionem totius universi. Ulterius autem, totum universum, cum singulis suis

partibus, ordinatur in Deum sicut in finem, inquantum in eis per quandam

imitationem divina bonitas repraesentatur ad gloriam Dei, quamvis creaturae

rationales speciali quodam modo supra hoc habeant finem Deum, quem attingere

possunt sua operatione, cognoscendo et amando. Et sic patet quod divina bonitas

est finis omnium corporalium.114

In the final analysis, Clarke affirms, to be is to be-in-communion115

. However,

though generosity of being through communication is a perfection of being, receptivity

has not found explicit development at all as a positive perfection of being in the

metaphysics of St. Thomas and Thomism in general, Clarke identifies. Clarke affirms,

aware of other distortions with the notion of potency, passivity, inferiority, etc., that

receptivity is a positive perfection in the light of an active, welcoming of act to act

rather than act to potency that is apparent in nature and relation of personal love. This

notion of receptive relation and communication, Clarke affirms, is implicit in St.

Thomas as an inseparable dynamic pole of the process of being itself inasmuch as the

notion of primal expansive act and perfection of esse.

3. Self-Transcending

After the preceding analysis of the personal phases of a human being, the third

emergent moment is the consideration of person inasmuch as self-transcending.

Drawing from the thoughts of St. Thomas, Clarke develops this aspect of personal being

in an analogical conception and in the sense of leaving behind self-centeredness in place

of other-centeredness, a forgetfulness of self to remembrance of other so to speak. In

114

Idem, ST I, q. 65, art. 2 115 CLARKE W. N., Person and Being, page 82: see beginning of second paragraph.

60

this sense, authentic friendship and love of benevolence is a self-transcending act. This

sense, Clarke affirms, is paradoxical. Philosophical resolution of this sense of

transcendence, Clarke notes, is difficult and that St. Thomas develops his solution along

the lines of the doctrine of participation and similitude in the order of nature, existence,

and same original Source.

The other solution of St. Thomas, Clarke affirms, is that of the notion of

perfection than imperfection that is diffusive: that to be is to be a lover. This notion of

being as love of transcending self not only in the horizontal dimension but also in the

vertical dimension has its metaphysical grounding in the doctrine of diffusive

perfection. This is only possible in circulatio entium expressed in created movement of

exitus and reditus analogically significant of a primordial nature of being and its

emergent dimensions. Clarke notes this point in St. Thomas:

quod in exitu creaturarum a primo principio attenditur quaedam circulatio

vel regiratio, eo quod omnia revertuntur sicut in finem in id a quo sicut a principio

prodierunt. Et ideo oportet ut per eadem quibus est exitus a principio, et reditus in

finem attendatur. Sicut igitur dictum est, dist. 13, quaest. 1, art. 1, quod processio

personarum est ratio productionis creaturarum a primo principio, ita etiam est eadem

processio ratio redeundi in finem, quia per filium et spiritum sanctum sicut et

conditi sumus, ita etiam et fini ultimo conjungimur; ut patet ex verbis Augustini

positis in 3 dist., ubi dicit: principium ad quod recurrimus, scilicet patrem, et

formam quam sequitur, scilicet filium, et gratiam qua reconciliamur. Et Hilarius

dicit infra 31 dist.: ad unum initiabile omnium initium per filium universa referimus.

Secundum hoc ergo processio divinarum personarum in creaturas potest considerari

dupliciter. Aut inquantum est ratio exeundi a principio; et sic talis processio

attenditur secundum dona naturalia, in quibus subsistimus, sicut dicitur a Dionysio

divina sapientia vel bonitas in creaturas procedere. Sed de tali processione non

loquimur hic. Potest etiam attendi inquantum est ratio redeundi in finem, et est

secundum illa dona tantum quae proxime conjungunt nos fini ultimo, scilicet Deo,

quae sunt gratia gratum faciens et gloria, et de ista processione loquimur hic. Sicut

enim in generatione naturali generatum non conjungitur generanti in similitudine

speciei nisi in ultimo generationis, ita etiam in participationibus divinae bonitatis

non est immediata conjunctio ad Deum per primos effectus quibus in esse naturae

subsistimus, sed per ultimos quibus fini adhaeremus; et ideo concedimus, spiritum

sanctum non dari nisi secundum dona gratum facientia.116

116 AQUINAS T., Super Sent., lib. 1, d. 14, q. 2, art. 2 co

61

This decentering process of being from self to transcendence is a paradoxical

and perfective according to Clarke and emerges fruitful as St. Thomas notes about the

creative acts of personal being. It is a process, Clarke affirms, that is necessary on the

conscious level; therefore, self-transcending emerges from the aspect of self-possession

that extracts the centrality of the self consciously and determinately in order to elevate

self-possession to higher and deeper possession (consciousness and determination) of

the other as such to effectuate a decisive and grateful appreciation and communication,

a somewhat exchange of self-gifts or gifts of self, which is love, but in a more radical

manner, towards fullness of being and goodness as such: a process of beings, proper to

personal beings, inasmuch as intellectual spirits, to fuse into inseparable and indivisible

unity of a new being through a dynamic spiral of a conscious self-decentering exchange

of self with other-self to an in-terminate relational communion of fruitful love.

This exchange of gifts is horizontal inasmuch as it exists between proportionate

personal beings and vertical inasmuch ordered to the Infinite Source and exemplar of

primordial being. Therefore, Clarke affirms at last that “to be a human person fully

means to self-transcend toward the Infinite”117

. In sum, as mentioned earlier under the

notion of opposition, Clarke returns to the same point:

The openness and closeness of being to others follow from its being poor

equally as from its being rich to naturally share and communicate with others118

.

Therefore, there is also an innate fecundity which communicates through

generosity and receptivity of being just as a perfective property and attribute of

being as such. Therefore, action, “passions”, and relations are inseparable and

linked up together even in the Aristotelian categories. However, while all

relations are not generated by action, still action and passion necessarily

generate relations119

.

Therefore, being is a dynamic existential act of a communicative and expansive

circular relation.

117

CLARKE W. N., Person and Being, page 108 118

CLARKE, W. N, Person and Being, page 10. 119 Idem, page 14.

62

CONCLUSION

The notion of dimension according to William Norris Clarke is a dense

analogical application of meaningful linguistic concepts of a metaphysical range that are

meaningful even about ultimate reality. The notion of being according to Clarke

emerges as a dense activity of an alternating rhythm flowing from polarization,

dimensional analysis, and dialectical synthesis of relative opposition in being. The

human being inasmuch being is fundamentally an existential act (esse)120

moderately

self-communicating121

, and ultimately a dyadic synthesis of dynamic substance-in-

relation (esse122

ut actus, ens in actu123

) to be fully (esse in actu) towards communion:

to be is to be substance-in-relation124

.

The notion of intentional being sheds light upon the gratuity of created and

participated being. It also underpins the doctrine of analogicity of being and elaborates

it through a relational dimension. The notion of primordial being according to Clarke is

both existentially essential and essentially existential, flowing into dynamic act,

communicative activity, and participial circulation of beings: “natura cuiuslibet actus

est, quod seipsum communicet quantum posibile est”125

. The human person, according

to Clarke, becomes a central point and paradigmatic reference of being embodying all

orders and dimensions of being-itself: the vegetative, sensitive, rational, and spiritual

dimensions.

Therefore, the human person126

is a synthesis or image of being itself to the

utmost participation open to created beings. Though wonderfully investigated and

analyzed, the dimensions of the human person according to Clarke needs more

120 AQUINAS T., SCG II, ch. 54 121 Idem, n. 5 122 Idem, n. 6 123 Idem, ST I, q. 77, art. 6, co. 124

CLARKE W. N., Explorations in Metaphysics, page 104. 125

cf. QD DP, q. 2, art. 1 co. ; Summa Theologiae I, q. 19, art. 2 126 Cf. Summa Theologiae, I, q. 29, art. 3: “persona est ens perfectissimum”

63

development and concrete application of the really communicative acts apart from pure

activism, and the relation of act to perfection in the constitution of its social dynamism

within political and transcendental participations in an analogous whole in accordance

with the adage agere sequitur esse and bonum est diffusivum sui. Without employment

of all dimensions examined from the notion of primordial being, a synthetic

condensation and precipitation of the human dimensions of personal being in William

Norris Clarke are chiefly three, namely, self-possessing, self-communicating, and self-

transcending as a corporeal, animal, and spiritual unity apart from other personal

beings.

64

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, Compendium Theologiae

_____________Scriptum Super Libros Sententiarum

____________ Questiones Disputatae De Potentia

_______________________________De Spiritualibus Creaturis

_______________________________De Veritate

_____________Summa Contra Gentiles

_____________Summa Theologiae

CLARKE, W. N., Explorations in Metaphysics

_______________Person and Being

_______________“The limitation of Act by Potency: Aristotelianism or

Neoplatonism?” New Scholasticism, 26 (1952), 167-94.

______________“The Meaning of Participation in St. Thomas”, Proceedings of The

American Catholic Philosophical Association 26 (1952), 147-57.

______________“What is Most and Least Relevant in St. Thomas’ Metaphysics today”,

International Philosophical Quarterly, 14 (1974), 411-34.

______________“Analogy and the Meaningfulness of Language about God: Reply to

Kai Nielsen”, Thomist, 40 (1976), 61-95.

_____________“Person, Being, and St. Thomas”, Communio 19 (1992), 601-18.

______________“To Be Is to Be Substance-In-Relation”, 1992, reprinted in ch. 8 of the

book of the One and the Many.

______________“God and the Community of Existents: Whitehead and St. Thomas”,

International Philosophical Quarterly, 40 (2000), 265-87.

______________“The Good as Self Diffusive in Thomas Aquinas”, Angelicum, 79

(2002), 803-37.

_____________“The Integration of Person and Being in 20th

Century Thomism”,

Communio, 31 (2004), 434-44.

DE FINANCE. J., Etre et agir

GILSON, E., Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas

NICOLAS M. J., “Bonum est diffusivum sui,” Revue Thomiste, 55 (1955), 363-376.

PEGHAIRE J., “L’axiome bonum est diffusivum sui dans le neoplatonisme et le

thomisme,” Revue de l’Universite d’Ottawa, 2 (1932), 5-32.

65

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION………………………………………………….……………………1

PART ONE

THE SENSE OF DIMENSION

A. A BRIEF PHENOMENOLOGY ABOUT DIMENSION……….…..……….…..3

1. The notion of dimension in Clarke ………………….………………………4

2. The physical and mathematical notion of dimension ……………….……....6

3. The metaphysical significance of dimension ……….……………………….7

B. THE NOTION OF DIMENSION…………………….……………….…………8

1. About Opposition and Being ……………………….……………………….8

2. About Connaturality or Correlativity …………….……………………...…10

3. About Modality or Mode of Being ……………………………….……..…12

4. About Dyadic Structure of Being ………………………….………………13

C. ANALOGICITY OF DIMENSION…………………………………...………14

PART TWO

THE NOTION OF PRIMORDIAL BEING

A. INTRODUCTORY NOTE…………………….…………….………………....18

B. THE NOTION OF BEING……………………………………………………..19

66

1. Real Being in Existential Act ………………………………………..…..…23

2. The Central Role of Action ……………………………….……….……….25

3. Esse Intentionale et Naturale ……………………………….……………...32

4. Being as Dynamic Act ………………………….………………………….37

C. PRIMORDIAL DIMENSIONS OF BEING……………………...……………40

PART THREE

HUMAN DIMENSIONS OF PERSONAL BEING

A. A RECAPITULATION OF THE HUMAN…………………………..….……...45

1. Nature …………………………………………..………………………..…45

2. Person …………………………………………..………………………..…48

B. EMERGENT ACTS OF PERSONAL BEING………………….…….………..50

1. Self-Possessing ………………………………….…………………………52

a. Self-Consciousness ……………………………….……………………53

b. Self-Determination ………………………………..……………………55

2. Self-Communicating …………………………………………….…………56

3. Self-Transcending …………………………………………….……………59

CONCLUSION………………………………….……………………………………..62

BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………….……………………………………..64

TABLE OF CONTENTS