Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 11.djvu/290

 ONTOLOGY

23B

ONTOLOGY

Q. I, a. 3; de Veritate, Q. XVIII, a. 1.) Again, all our intollcctual thoughts, oven thoso roncorniiiK (iod, arc acconipanicil by s<'iisuous imapcs; tlicy arc ma(l<' of elciiu'uls winch may he apphcil to creatures as well as to God Himself; only in our idea of C!od and of His attributes, these elemenls arc div<'sted of the charac- teristics of imperfection and limit which they have in creatures, and assume the highest possible degree of perfection. In a word, our idea of God is not direct and proper; it is analogical (cf. God; Analogy). This .shows that God is not known by intuition.

The reasons advanced by Ontologists rest on con- fu.sion and false assumptions. The human mind has an idea of the infinite; but this idea may be and in fact is, obtained from the notion of the finite, by the suc- cessive processes of abstraction, elimination, and transcendence. The notion of the finite is the notion of being having a certain perfection in a limited de- gree. By eliminating the element of limitation and conceiving the jjositive perfection as realized in its highest possible degree, we arrive at the notion of the infinite. We form in this way, a negativo-positive concept, as the Schoolmen say, of the infinite. It is true also tliat our ideas ha\e the characteristics of ne- cessity, universality, and eternity; l)ut these are essen- tially ditTcrent from the attributes of God. God ex- ists necessarily, viz., He is absolutely, and cannot not exist; our ideas are necessary in the sense that, when an object is conceived in its essence, independently of the concrete beings in which it is realized, it is a subject of necessary relations: man, if he exists, is necessarily a rational being. God is absolutely uni- versal in the sense that He eminently possesses the actual fulness of all perfections ; our ideas are universal in the sense that they are applicable to an indefinite number of concrete beings. God is eternal in the sense that He exists by Himself and always identical with Himself; our ideas are eternal in the sense that in their state of abstraction they are not determined by any special place in space or moment in time.

It is true that God alone is perfectly intelligible in Himself, since He alone has in Himself the reason of His existence; finite beings are intelligible in the very measure in which they exist. Having an existence distinct from that of God, they have also an intelligi- bility distinct from Him. And it is precisely because they are dependent in their existence that we conclude to the existence of God, the first intelligible. The as- sumption that the order of knowledge must follow the order of things, holds of absolute and perfect knowl- edge, not of all knowledge. It is sufficient for true knowledge that it affirm as real that which is truly real; the order of knowledge may be different from the order of reality. The confusion of certain Ontologists regarding the notion of being opens the way to Pan- theism (q. v.). Neither St. Augustine nor St. Thomas favours Ontologism. It is through a misunderstanding of their theories and of their expression that the Ontol- ogist appeals to them. (Cf. St. August., "De civi- tate Dei", lib. X, XI; "De utilitate credendi", lib. 83, cap. XVI, Q. xlv, etc.; St. Thomas, "Summa Theol.", I, Q. ii, a. 11; Q. lxx.xiv-lxx.xviii; "Qq. disp., de Veritate", Q. xvi, a. 1;Q. xi, "De magistro", a. 3, etc.)

The Condemnation of Ontologism by the Church. — The Council of Vienna (1311-12) had already con- demned the doctrine of the Begards who maintained that we can .see God by our natural intelligence. On 18 September, 1861, seven propositions of the Ontolo- gists, concerning the immediate and the innate knowl- edge of God, being, and t he relation of finite things to God, were declared by the Holy Office liUo tradi non posse (cf. Denzinger-Bannwart, nn. l(j59-65). The same congregation, in 1802, pronounced the same cen- sure against fifteen propositions by Abb6 Branche- reau, subjected to its examination, two of which (xii and xiii) a.sserted the existence of an innate and direct perception of ideas, and the intuition of God by the

human mind. In the \'atican Council, Cardinals I'l-cci and Sl'orza presented a/)o.s7»/((/»»( foran explicit condemnation oft )n1l(igism. ( hi I 1 DecenilxT, 1887, the Holy OHice reprov<Ml, condemned, and jjro.scribed forty propositions extractefl from the works of Kos- mini, in which the principles of Ontologism are con- tained (cf. Denzinger-Bannwarl, nn. 1S91-1930).

LiBERATORE, Trnllali} ilrjhi rn„,isrii,:,i iiilrll, llii:ilr (Home

185o);ZioUARA. D.-;;.; /,«.-, i„l,ll. lt„al, r.l.ll' (inlnl,,,,!-.,,,., (Home' 1874); Lepidi, iVim.vi i,hil. ,:.,,, ,1,,, -..-lln ul,„,,,-i,m ,1, linl,,l„iiismo'; KleuTGEN. Die Philusiiphu il,r \'„r:iil (Iiii]..linnk, 1S7S); Mer- CIER, La Psi/chologie, 111 (LouvaiD, 1S'J9), i, 2-3; Boedder, Natural Theology, I (London, 1902), L

George M. Sauvage.

Ontology ((Si/, 6vtos, being, and \6yos, science, the science or philo.sophy of being). — I. Definition. — ThouKh the term is used in this literal meaning bj' Clau- berK ( lti'J.")-l((i.'')) (|ip., p. 2S1 ), its special application to the first deiiartnieni of incta|ilivsics was made by Christian von Wolff (1079-1754) (Philos. nat., sec. 73). Prior to this time "the science of being" had retained the titles given it by its founder Aristot le :" first philoso- phy", "theology", "wisdom". The term "metaphys- ics" (q. V.) was given a wider extension by Wolff, who divided "real philosophy" into general metaphysics, which he called ontology, and special, under which he included cosmology, psychology, and theodicy. This programme has been adopted with little variation by most Catholic philosophers. The subject-matter of ontology is usually arranged thus: (1) The objective concept of being in its widest range, as embracing the actual and potential, is first analyzed, the problems concerned with essence (nature) and existence, "act" and " potency ' ' are discussed, and the primary prin- ciples — contradiction, identity, etc. — are shown to emerge from the concept of entity. (2) The proper- ties coextensive with being — unity, truth, and good- ness, and their immediately associated concepts, order and beauty — are next explained. (3) The fundamental divisions of being into the finite and the infinite, the contingent and the necessary, etc., and the subdivis- ions of the finite into the categories (q. v.) substance and its accidents (quantity, quality, etc.) follow in turn — the objective — reality of substance, the mean- ing of personality, the relation of accidents (q. v.) to substance being the most prominent topics. (4) The concluding portion of ontology is usually devoted to the concept of cause and its primary divisions — effi- cient and final, material and formal — the objectivity and analytical character of the principle of causality receiving most attention.

Ontology is not a subjective science as Kant de- scribes it (Ub. d. Fortschr. d. Met., 98) nor " an inferen- tial Psychology", as Hamilton regards it (Metaphys- ics, Lect. VII); nor yet a knowledge of the absolute (theology); nor of some ultimate reality, whether conceived as matter or as spirit, which Monists sup- pose to underlie and produce individual real beings and their manifestations. Ontology is a fundamental interpretation of the ultimate constituents of the world of experience. AH these constituents — individ- uals with their attributes — have factors or aspects in common. The atom and the molecule of matter, the plant, the animal, man, and God agree in this that each is a being, has a characteristic essence, an indi- vidual unity, truth, goodness, is a substance and (God excepted) has accidents, and is or may be a cause. All these common attributes demand definition and ex- planation — definition not of their mere names, but analysis of the real object which the mind abstracts and reflectively considers. Ontology is therefore the fundamental science since it studies the basal constit- uents and the principles presupposed by the special sciences. All the other parts of philosophy, cosmol- ogy, psychology, theodicy, ethics, even logic, rest on the foundation laid by ontology. The physical sciences — physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics