The Unity of Being
Part II Section 5A
[92]
PART II. THE ARGUMENT.
Section 5A
Prefatory Word to Sections 6-9.
The rise of the problems of unity in connection with the Categories of Being, Individuality or Uniqueness, Quality, and Relation may be indicated in the following manner. The pluralist and the monist alike might readily agree, — certainly the pluralist and the monist in so far as we would wish to defend him, — might agree to the truth of the statement — “There are many things” or “Many things or entities exist or have being.” The Monist however immediately proceeds to argue, thus: —
In the first place, you say that many things “are” or “exist” or “have being.” Or, of each thing you say, There “is” such a thing. In any mode of expression, you manifestly predicate one and the sane isness, areness, existence or being, of all the things, objects, or realities alike. The isness or whatever it be called, cannot be regarded as simply different in the case of each thing — any more than redness can be quite different in each red object. “Are” in “the things which there are” or “existence” in “things which exist” or “reality” in “things which are real” is indubitably some sort of a factor which is common to each and every thing — unless such a word as “is” is to [93] mean something totally different in each case, which is one with saying that it has no meaning at all. And in any case each of the many meanings of “is” must itself be, and we have the problem over again and may as well admit the ultimate identity of meaning conveyed by the word “being” at. Whatever this meaning may be it is clearly fundamental to all things, since the idea that anything might be if there were no such thing as to be is plainly enough nonsense.
In the second place, the Monist points out, if “There are zany things,” then each and all of the things must resemble every other in so far as each and all must share in the common status or quality of being a “thing.” Whatever it is to be a thing, everything must be that — it must have thinghood, uniqueness, or individuality.
In the third place, continues the arraignment of our apparently harmless purely pluralistic thesis, the letter “s” in the word “things” calls for inquiry. For, in spite of the fact that each thing is a thing, as much as any other, yet “thing” in one case and “thing” in another are to mean differently. Thing must somehow always have the same meaning — or mean the same thing — since otherwise we should have no right to employ the same word. If “entity” is preferred to “thing” well and good, then it becomes the something in every something in virtue of which it is a something or distinct entity.
On the other hand, though entity somehow means the same thing in every case, yet every thing is somehow to be [94] different or distinct; in order that there may be not merely “thing” but “things.” We have here an implication of difference in some sense. Perhaps mere numerical difference is all that is demanded, but no doubt the pluralist is willing to admit difference of nature or quality. But here we have a new something-in-all-things — namely, quality. And, since things must have not merely quality but different qualities, the problem of difference or plurality breaks out at a new level.
Every quality is “quality” no less than any other. If there are to be differences of quality, then either one quality differs from another only numerically — as quality is the same as others, but in respect to number only is different — or else one quality differs from another according must to its nature or quality. The qualities must have different qualities or natures in order to be different qualities. Thus an inquiry is initiated that seems to lead to a regress and in any case confronts us with the problem, how with reference to “quality” which is always and everywhere the same something or meaning — namely that indicated by the word quality — things are nonetheless to be rendered or considered as different.
In the fourth place and finally, we may consider the last unmolested word in our sentence, the word “Many.” This word appears to be predicated of “things.” Now many-ness cannot belong to things as “red” belongs to “roses.” No one of the “many things” can be described as [95] many. If the latter word be taken to characterize all of the things, even we must add that it yet characterizes none of them, and that we mean that it characterizes all taken together or as a sum, collection, or totality, “The things” when taken together or added to each other somehow become something which is many. This something, and not any one nor each and every one of the many things, possesses many-ness.
We have here the problem of whole and part and of the relation of “togetherness” or “addition” or collectedness or what-not. The various things, through an “additive relation,” are rendered also a many or whole. This whole is an “a” or one or individual, and it also possesses a manyness which its parts do not apparently have. Thus we have the paradox of an “individuality” or “oneness” which is essentially the opposite of plurality — in the case of each of the parts — and of a “one” which is essentially manyness or diversity. This extraordinary one-many reality is the product of the mere ones plus a relation of “and.” In other words, the ones with one more of themselves — a relation, become something equally one and many at once. Since the relation is thus a member of the many of all entities including relations, it must stand related by itself to other things, as other things are related by it to each other.
Thus we have two paradoxes — that of a unity or singleness which is equally compatible with the absence or the presence of its opposite, namely diversity, [96] and of a relation which must stand as its own object, and which must by virtue of its relating of the ones, create thereby an entirely new one — which however is not this relating function itself, but somehow its product. Thus the ones by virtue of the further items of the relatednesses of each, suddenly become quite another one. In short, the ones taken together with their properties of being related, form a whole. But this drives us to a new relatedness. The ones taken together with their relatednesses leads to: the ones as related by an additive relation to their properties of being — related by the additive relation. And then we see that the whole involves really; the ones together with or as additively related to their being related by an additive relation to their properties of being — related by the additive relation.
Here, then, in the idea of relation in reference to whole and part, we come to a fourth paradox in the pluralistic formula. The four paradoxes when followed out in detail develop into the four arguments we have grouped under the categories of Being, Individuality, Quality, and Relation. The first three present universals without which no entity is, or is in any way different from mere nothing. Therefore they seem all to be involved in each and everything as essential to its nature, as part of what it irreducibly is. And moreover not only is everything alike possessed of these somethings in every aspect of its nature (all alike are, are distinct or individual, and [97] possess quality) but only with reference to them can things differ. Only by a different form of one and the same “quality” or “nature” — can one thing have different quality from others. For the difference again is in terms of quality.
Thus quality, or likewise uniqueness or individuality, appear to be omnipresent and of their own natures or resources to differentiate objects. The suggested conclusion, which we shall try to justify in some detail, is that such universals are all modes of predicating one concrete universal — which we may call “being” as well as anything else. For clearly being is never to be found or thought except as determinate being — even being “as such” is thereby distinguished as a unique entity — is always, that is, individual, and obviously it must represent quality in itself and is absolutely nothing without quality. A “bare that” is not a possible conception but only an attempt to escape from one aspect of things which, if once wholly banished from view must carry all significant thought away with it. The “being of a thing” is used indifferently by language to indicate its having being, its membership in the totality of what is, and its particular nature.
Being, determination or distinction, and quality are then clearly not concepts posed by the mind in mere separation from each other — but are interpenetrating ideas, not an aggregate of distinct entities but modes of viewing substantially the same object or feature of reality. This feature — determinate being — is of fundamental and universal [98] importance — that it must in fact be a concrete universal or real unitary principle embracing things we shall try to prove in the first three of the sections following. Each section thus deals with the same problem,1 substantially, in our view, but yet with surface differences rendering possible the display of a perhaps interesting versatility achieved by the Monistic Argument.
The Section on Relations will have its own approach, also to the same problem in the end. For, aside from Professors Bradley and Taylor, all might perhaps agree that “to be” involves “to be related” (to being, to the things own nature, etc.) and hence that “being” really involves relation together with uniqueness and quality, as part of its most essential meaning. And in this section, too, the concrete universal or embracing principle, as that which relates2 will appear to be the only self-consistent theory.
We herewith end these anticipatory remarks and proceed to Section 6.
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Endnotes
1. Although the argument does not in each or any case assume this.
2. A function which the relations themselves are quite incapable of performing, since they are themselves the performance.