Towards a Philosophical Method

Charles Nyamiti’s ancestral perspective in theology calls for a metaphysics that conforms to Africa’s concrete, existential, and historical manner of considering man and how he relates to the world.

(Reading time: 14 minutes)

After reading one of Charles Nyamiti’s books¹ — an essay on African family ecclesiology elaborated chiefly in terms of the African conception of ancestor — I was deeply challenged to look into a method of metaphysics that would embrace the African perspective. It is not easy to divide the book into sections. The style is very cyclic – or better still, rather like a helix (going around the same topics but each time gaining deeper insights) – and colloquial, replete with repetitions and additions which make it vivid and fresh.

However, there is a clear theme running through the book. Nyamiti presents the Church as the mystery of the communion of the Triune God not only with men but with the entire universe of beings, and the communion of angels and men (including the physical universe) with God and with one another (communion of saints). Thus, the Church constitutes a family considered in its vertical and horizontal dimensions. In other words, the Trinitarian perichoresis objectifies as the mission of the Son in the Incarnation and the mission of the Spirit in Pentecost and continues in the Church conceived as Koinonia-in-ancestors (communion-in-ancestors) (the Father-Ancestor and the Son-Descendant in us through the Holy Spirit, and we in them). This gives rise to what the author calls a “mutual perichoresis.” All this is examined within the perspective of an African conception of ancestors and a cosmotheandric worldview.

Indeed the African worldview, unlike her Western counterpart, is deeply grounded on the real order of things.  The latter, influenced for years by the “scientism” project, a fruit of the Enlightenment dream, is much too formalistic.  In the Western worldview, for example, man is considered in irritatingly abstract, cold, and conceptual categories as opposed to Africa’s concrete, existential, and historical manner of considering man and how he relates to the world of spirits, humans, and nature.  This is the cosmotheandric intuition: an integrated vision of the seamless fabric of the entire reality.

Nyamiti’s ancestral perspective calls for a metaphysics that conforms to this worldview, a metaphysics that allows for analogy, metaphor, and scriptural typology.  It should be able to explain how the Trinity is the model² of the Church considered as a family (domestici Dei), outlining the similarities and the yet more striking dissimilarities between them.  This metaphysics should show how analogy applies not only to notions in African culture (kinship, ancestor, descendant, descendency, grace, family, affinity) but also to actions (blood-pact ceremony, mutual oblation, pneumatic, doxological and Eucharistic actions, etc.).

Here below, taking a cue from St Thomas Aquinas and some of his best commentators,³ I wish to sketch how we should approach this “African-like” metaphysics. 

Separatio

In his commentary on Boethius’s De Trinitate, Aquinas outlines his conception of the sciences in the context of Aristotle’s theory of abstraction. The degrees of abstraction, differentiated according to how they capture intelligible aspects of reality, allow us to classify the different scientific disciplines. Physical abstraction (i.e., intellectual understanding) captures the aspects of bodies that depend on sensitive matter both in being and in our understanding (e.g., physical parts, sensitive qualities), all aspects linked to movement, that is, to being (ens) in a state of change as it is manifested to human perception. On the other hand, mathematical abstraction conceptualizes quantitative aspects understood without reference to empirical observation even if they do not exist in themselves (platonically) but only in the material world (numbers, geometric forms). The natural sciences, such as physics and biology, work within physical abstraction, while mathematics works within mathematical abstraction. A physical-mathematical science is also possible where the two abstractions are taken together, when bodies are objectified not only qualitatively, but also from a perspective of measurement (time, space, speed, etc.). Finally, the intelligible aspects related to being as such and not to the bodily or quantitative forms of entities, such as substance, act, power, unity, goodness, and being, are considered by metaphysics.

One may say that we capture the ontological aspects of reality (being and essence) by a form of meta-physical abstraction that some Thomists have called the “third degree” of abstraction. However, there is a considerable difference between the “intelligible” in metaphysics and the other two sciences. According to Thomas, in metaphysics, intelligible beings are separable from matter ontologically, as opposed to just mentally, as in mathematical objects. They can also exist or subsist with ontological separation, as happens in God (Aquinas also has in mind the Angels and the spiritual part of man, that is, his νοῦς (a Greek word that we may transliterate as noús)). For this reason, St. Thomas, in a later question of In Boethium, argues that the method of metaphysics is not so much the conceptualization of natures, typical of the sciences and characterized by the operation of abstraction, but a “second operation” that refers to being itself according to its mode of really subsisting and not according to our way of thinking. This operation is called separatio by the Thomistic tradition, as opposed to abstraction. Separatio, therefore, indicates separation in those realities themselves and not just in the mind that considers them; neither does it refer simply to judgment, understood as uniting and dividing concepts in propositions.⁴

We believe that this is the African way of grasping reality. We can access being by a form of metaphysical experience (rather than “intuition”). This is the experience of finding ourselves immersed in a world of existing causes, of beings, which we do our best “to let live”.  We draw the knowledge we need from them and then let them go. We do not force them into mental pigeon-holes and pretend to control them.  By experience, I mean overall cognitive access, i.e., with the involvement of different senses and intellectual ways (perception, memories, interactions, understandings) in an immediate way, the result of a prolonged familiarity with a specific field of reality, as opposed to abstract or reflexive knowledge.

Phenomenologically, we could express this as follows: “We are in the midst of the existing; we are in the world, together with others.” All this is given to us as a permanent situation before each act of speech, a bit like the atmosphere surrounding us and in which we breathe. “We are like this: in the presence of others, in the world; we are ourselves with bodies, and recognizing a world and of other people who co-exist with and paradoxically also are independently of us, of our being and our consciousness.” All this is part of the original and transcendental experience.  I interpret the Thomistic notion of ens (being) as primum cognitum (the first thing known) in this way. Yet I would hasten to add that it is not an ens but a co-ens, in other words, being with all and with everything.

Haven’t we just stated the bottom line of African ontology, where the whole universe of living and non-living things is like a network of relation, almost like that between the various parts of an organism? Prof Tshiamalenga Ntumba, with his philosophy of Bisoïté, expresses it succinctly:

“Bref, l’être-avec tous et tout où la Bisoïté est première par rapport à toutes les relations consacrées par l’histoire et la culture. Cet’ « être-avec » est toujours et originairement un « être-là ». L’un implique l’autre, tandis que l’être-absolu est une abstraction solipsiste et non-bisoïté.”⁵

Yet I would go further: it is not just about “us-ness”; the African conceives being as “co-being”.  The primum cognitum is co-ens! This is what gives meaning to everything. What a nursing baby first grasps of the person in whose arms it is is not just “woman” but “mother”, “my mother”. What a hunter sees in an antelope is not just “this animal”, but “food for my family”. An African world is intensely multi-relational, not just inter-subjective.  The “grasping” of this truth involves all our “knowing” faculties: senses, simple apprehension, judgment, λόγος (transliterated as lógos), noús, etc.

Phenomenologically, this could be expressed as follows: “We are in the midst of the existing, we are in the world, together with others.” All this is given to us as a whole as a “permanent situation” before each act of speech, a bit like the atmosphere that surrounds us and in which we breathe.

The knowledge game is not simply played with the duality concept/judgment (i.e., knowing is not just about concepts and judgments). While all sciences use concepts and judgments, some judgments, such as those of mathematics and logic, are “non-existential”, that is, they are not about entities that exist outside of the mind. Other judgments are evidently existential but often linked to empirical and contingent facts such as “this dog crosses the road”. Though they may be wider or more fundamental, such as “we are”, or “the world exists around me”, they are still contingent. They are “synthetic” rather than “analytical”, according to the terminology of rationalism. Every concept and judgment, after all, implicitly contains an understanding of the principle of non-contradiction as a necessary “law of being”, which we arrive at through separatio.

Thomistic separatio is crucial for the philosophical method we attempt to develop here for two reasons.

Firstly, Thomistic separatio, in our opinion, reveals the task and the method of metaphysics, which involves describing and explaining reality, as it is, in its deep and multi-relational way of being, rather than relying on the abstract methodology commonly used in other sciences which has so long dominated the Western psyche.⁶ Metaphysics studies “totality,” understood not as the quantitative sum of all real things, but as encompassing all of reality because it concerns that which is fundamental to all reality: being. The sciences are partial or “aspectual.” Metaphysics, on the other hand, does not place itself in a partial methodological perspective (facing reality only from a certain point of view), but rather a radical and comprehensive one, although its answers are not exhaustive.

Because of this ambition, metaphysics may paradoxically be more aware of the weakness of its responses —but weakness does not mean uncertainty. What we can know about being and co-being is always very little. In the sciences, the mind can feel more at ease because, in abstraction, the intellect has greater mastery over the mentally processed object. Realist metaphysics, on the other hand, is more directly confronted with a more mysterious reality because it is richer, because it investigates what is transcendent and does not easily let itself be seized by our mind. The mind looks and then lets go, then looks again and lets go again, each time attaining deeper and deeper insights into reality.⁷

This metaphysical confrontation with reality can be seen as a certain experience of being and its ontological aspects, as we have said. We start from the ontological experience common to all (not from a priori elaborations, nor from definitions or pretended personal intuitions) and proceed to thematic reflection on this experience, with a certain more or less systematic organization of the aspects considered. The results naturally translate into linguistic expressions (words, verbs, judgments) whose meaning is rich (as opposed to “flat” and univocal) and must be managed, for example, with analogy. Such is the case with terms like “ancestor”, “descendant”, “kin”, “family”, “ritual oblation”, etc.  I do not mean to say that these terms are exclusively African. They can be found in any culture, yet they seem to strike deeper chords in an African psyche.  They reverberate more profoundly in an African mind and hence allow an African to catch a glimpse at the mystery that is real being and co-being.

Secondly, Thomistic separatio, as we have seen, aims at the transcendence of being, which is immaterial or supra-sensitive, a spiritual reality, that is to say, a reality that leads beyond matter and the world of bodies. (Precisely for this reason, separatio is the method of “meta-physics”.)⁸

Separatio, in its transcendent side, indicates the fundamental task of metaphysics as understood by Aquinas and the whole classical tradition (Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine). Some modern metaphysics, such as that of Heidegger or Jaspers, investigate being but fail to leap to transcendence. Yet the metaphysical search for the being of the world and of man, being finite, contingent, sensitive, complex, in becoming, leads in one way or another to a transcendent principle on which man and the world depend: God conceived as the Cause, eternal, one, intelligent, simple, one, absolute goodness, absolute truth, pure being without limits, perennial life, subsistent love.

As for the method of metaphysics, the question is: how to get to God with our rational resources (apart from divine revelation, even if then metaphysics and the theology of revelation can converge and enrich each other)? The Aristotelian-Thomist way investigates the multi-relational being of the experience of the world and, thanks to a special need for a cause, arrives at the affirmation Deus est. The Platonic way, taken up by some ancient and modern philosophers (Anselm, Malebranche, Rosmini, transcendental neo-scholasticism), affirms God rather as a requirement of idealizing human thought, though not in a constructivist sense but a realistic one (that is, not in the sense that God would be a human idealization). We must, however, recognize that the infinite scope of our thought also has some role in the metaphysical path of Thomas because God would not be conceivable as pure intelligence, absolute perfection, etc. if we were not capable of thinking in some way about such perfections, which are not found in this world or ourselves as existing bodies.

The intellectual nature of metaphysics

In the In Boethium de Trinitate, q. VI, a. 1, Aquinas discusses the different ways in which the three great speculative sciences operate. The natural sciences work rationabiliter, in a “rational” way. Mathematics develops disciplinabiliter, which could be translated as "in a logical and deductive way". Metaphysics considers its object intellectualiter, i.e., it mainly uses the intellect. Thomas, like Boethius in this case, believes that physics and mathematics mainly use reason, while metaphysics mainly uses intellect.

The background here is the classical distinction between λόγος (lógos) and νοῦς (noús). The λόγος (lógos) is the rational movement between principles and consequences, principles that can be logical (duality between premises and conclusions) or natural (duality between causes and effects), while the νοῦς (noús) is the immediate or “intuitive” understanding of the unproven principles, concretely the understanding of being, the transcendentals of being (truth, goodness, unity), and ontological principles or first principles (principle of non-contradiction and others).

Aquinas, following Aristotle in this point, sees the particular sciences as methodologically engaged in a rational approach that is strongly demonstrative.⁹ Metaphysics, on the other hand, although obviously rational, must develop more intensely the “intellectual vision inclusive” of what is essential, because it works in close proximity to the ontological principles,¹⁰ which are not grasped by demonstrations, since they are the presuppositions of the different rational paths of science and every rational practice of man. Therefore, the scientific method outlined by Aristotle in the Second Analytics (demonstrative method according to the causes) does not apply to metaphysics, which must approach precisely the first causes, that is, the first principles. This is the meaning of the intellectual or noetic method of metaphysics.

Conclusion

All in all, here we cannot develop all the metaphysics of the being (or co-being), since our purpose is to consider its methodology. However, we would like to point out that the thesis presented contains innumerable “advantages”, if we can say so, for the African worldview:

a)     It allows us to embrace the whole universe around the analogical notion and the reality of co-being, respecting the differences between the ways of being. If the universe were to be brought back to matter, mind, consciousness, or will, rather than being, there would be numerous negative metaphysical consequences (materialism, idealism, etc.) – the reductionist perspective!¹¹

b)    It makes it possible to distinguish God well from creatures in the cosmotheandric outlook since it explains the condition of being-created as that in which being is not the essence, while in God there is an absolute identity between being and essence. This avoids monism, but also irreducible pluralism, since the “element of communication” between God, angels, humans, and the world is, so to speak, being.

c)     It lies at the beginning of the precise knowledge of creation, because only once we see being as the ultimate (but finite) perfection of the things of the world can we understand the necessity of creation (free donation of being involved in an essence) and, therefore, know God as Creator, as “giver” of being in absolute freedom.  It also allows us to understand the supernatural intervention of God in the universe and that grace is something analogous to being.

As one can see, after reading this volume in the series Studies in African Christian Theology, I found myself somewhat carried away. Already after reading the first volume, I have been toiling with the idea of creating an “African metaphysics” which would provide a rational underpinning for Nyamiti’s research and for all those who will follow his approach.  This is my first attempt.

1. Cf. Nyamiti, Charles, STUDIES IN AFRICAN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY Vol. 4: Christ’s Ancestral Mediation through the Church understood as God’s Family: An Essay on African Ecclesiology; CUEA Publications, P.O. Box 62157, 00200 Nairobi, Kenya; First Edition, 2010; 392 pages, ISBN 9966-909-97-4 (pbk).

2. “Model” in the sense of “primary analogue” or “anti-type”, in more technical terms, or what we may loosely call a “paradigm”.

3. Here I am drawing especially from an unpublished article of Juan José Sanguineti,  Il Metodo della metafisica: dall’oggetività all’essere, Studio basato su un confronto con la filosofia di Leonardo Polo, (cf. ars+).

4. In the Aristotelian-Thomistic perspective judgment is the second operation of the mind, the first being simple apprehension and the third, reasoning.  While in judgment one brings together concepts (fruit of simple apprehension) to form statements, in reasoning statements are compared with each other.

5. “In short, being-with-all and everything, where Bisoïté is primary in relation to all the relations established by history and culture. This "being-with" is always and originally a "being-there". The one implies the other, whereas being-absolute, being tout court, is a solipsistic abstraction and a non-bisoïté.”See Tshiamalenga Ntumba, "Langage et Socialite: Primat de la “Bisoite” sur L'inter-subjectivite", in Recherches Philosophiques Africaines, vol. II. Faculte de Thbologie Catholique, Kinshasa 1985, p. 83, quoted in Joseph M. Nyasani, The Ontological Significance of “I” and “We” in African Philosophy, https://books.google.co.ke/books?id=KiLp6EpeU4EC&pg=PA14&lpg=PA14&dq=Bisoite&source=bl&ots=BVBieUjhGq&sig=ACfU3U1m2ekoFnOsOU-biMpULJT1gYgqtg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiElovfx_7fAhUFXxoKHZzIAUQQ6AEwAHoECAQQAQ#v=onepage&q=Bisoite&f=false, Accessed on 14 February 2019.

6. For example, the physical sciences can be satisfied with a model. Metaphysics, however, does not make models but reaches for knowledge “beyond” our abstract ways of thinking (if this is ever possible). The mathematician can think of numbers, but it is up to the metaphysicist to elucidate in what sense numbers or, at least, their foundation exists in reality, and to explain how (to say that numbers are only creations of thought and nothing else is already a metaphysical thesis). Moreover, unlike the physical sciences, metaphysics cannot work with hypotheses and is more aware of the weakness of its responses.

7. Of course, this point applies only to realist metaphysics, not to rationalist metaphysics.

8. In his work In Boethium de Trinitate, as in other places, Thomas points out, following Aristotle, that “intelligibles” in metaphysics (being, one, goodness, beauty, etc.) are aspects of material realities but are also existentially independent of matter, and not simply conceivable without matter. Otherwise, they would be abstractions, like mathematical ideas. This point is not proven and does not depend on a simple conceptual analysis. It is assumed, in my opinion, that not everything is corporeal and, indeed, that the world of bodies demands an incorporeal transcendent principle. Plato did the same with his ascent from the sensitive world to the pure intelligible world of Ideas, as did Aristotle with his passage from the material world to God as the first intelligent Cause of the physical cosmos.

Kant, on the other hand, denies the possibility that metaphysical concepts can be thought of as realized outside the field of sensitive experience and, on the contrary, conceives such concepts not as expressions of real acts or perfections, but only as noetic elements capable of executing syntheses of sensitive intuition. Categories are thought of, no longer understood as "ways of being", but only as a priori ways of thinking experience.

9. This is true both in the field of mathematical intelligibility, where the demonstration is all in some way, because we work in a sphere of pure abstraction, of pure and abstract objectivity, with requirements of non-contradictoriness or analytical coherence; and in the field of nature, where what matters is the search for natural or physical causal principles, based on the need for physical causality (the “why” of the physicist always points to natural causes, more or less related to sensitive experience, as evidenced by the importance of empirical control of theories).

10. One such principle is the principle of non-contradiction, namely, that no being can both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect.

11. This seems to be the case with some of the reductionist conceptions of the Church considered only in its material and “this-worldly” terms.