Marcel has been concerned with the question of how we know God from the time of his earliest writings. At the beginning of his Metaphysical Journal, he expresses Kantian thoughts which, with some modification, persist throughout his later works. At this point he is concerned to show that since God does not exist in space-time, he cannot be known as an object of the world is known. Consequently, he makes the typical existentialist statement that God “ is” but does not “ exist.” “ God does not exist,” he asserts; “ He is infinitely above existence.”
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Marcel argued ...that one cannot validly think of God as an existing object independent of ourselves, because this mode of thought would place him within the ambit of the world. When we think God as an object, we fail to distinguish him from the world or from ourselves. An objective God reflects a Kantian conception of existence as limited only to space-time relations. Marcel expresses this in the following terms: When we suppose we are positing (in existence or still only objectively) the absolute independence of God, we are really on the contrary only binding up God with immediate consciousness.
He does not give a coherent account of the difference between existence and being. I have never heard a coherent account of this difference, which is probably because to say that anything is is logically equivalent to saying that it exists (in whatever sense of 'existence' we might be using). — Janus
The problem, then, is how are we to think and talk about God? I am reminded of the early Wittgentstein's
That whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent.
Boy, Christians would not like that. — Mitchell
What do you think of the following claim?
“Metaphysical disquiet.—It seems to me that a metaphysical system is nothing if not the act by which a disquiet is defined and succeeds partially—as well as mysteriously—if not abolishing, at least in transposing or transmitting, itself into an expression of self that, so far from paralyzing the superior life of the spirit, on the contrary, strengthens and maintains.”
Gabriel Marcel, Metaphysical Journal — Mitchell
He does not give a coherent account of the difference between existence and being. I have never heard a coherent account of this difference, which is probably because to say that anything is is logically equivalent to saying that it exists (in whatever sense of 'existence' we might be using). — Janus
Well, that is why I make the point of the nature of the difference between numbers and objects.
Objects ...demonstrably exist. They come into existence, they are composed of parts, and they cease to exist..
Whereas, numbers are not like that. Numbers don't come into, or go out of, existence...
So, I make the argument that numbers are real, but not existent in the same sense that phenomena are existent. — Wayfarer
Obviously, in the case of the nature of 'the supreme being', then it's another matter altogether and I'm not trying to compare God to numbers. However, I think in the Augustinian tradition of metaphysics it is understood that there are different degrees or levels of reality, of which the above is one example. — Wayfarer
Anything that exists materially, changes continuously, however minutely, it always becoming. — Janus
What Aristotle demonstrated is that "continuous change" is incompatible with the logical principles of what is and what is not, being and not being. — Metaphysician Undercover
Between two contiguous determinate states of being of any entity there is a seamless transition which does not consist in a determinate state of being (it does not because if it did this would lead to infinite regress). — Janus
There is either nothing at all between two determinate states of being of any entity or else there are other determinate states of being. If there are other determinate states of being between two determinate states of being of any entity then those two states of being are not contiguous.
A "seamless transition" cannot consist of determinate entities, but must that mean it is "nothing at all"?
Whatever the case may be the change from one determinate state to another is a becoming, so becoming is either nothing at all (or in other words it is merely formal) or it is 'something' real (a seamless transition) which does not consist of determinate entities. — Janus
Where does Aristotle do this? — Mitchell
The problem with this perspective is that the two determinate states cannot be contiguous, because change occurs between one and the other, and change takes time. — Metaphysician Undercover
We can't saying that X ceases to be, and then Y begins being, because that implies a point of nothing, so this would not be seamless. On the other hand, X cannot overlap Y temporally or this would be contradiction. — Metaphysician Undercover
So I think that in its early development the category of "existing" was produced as a wider category which could include both the categories of "being/not-being" and "becoming". Both of these categories, which are inherently inconsistent, are allowed to be real under the category of existing, which is therefore the more general category. — Metaphysician Undercover
The scholastics though, then produced a dichotomy between existence and essence, and in this way they re-introduce the incompatibility. "Essence", is now the category of what is, and what is not (1), while "existence" is relegated to the material realm of becoming (2). — Metaphysician Undercover
What Aristotle demonstrated is that "continuous change" is incompatible with the logical principles of what is and what is not, being and not being. — Metaphysician Undercover
What if change from one state to another is instantaneous? Do you have an argument for why it could not be so? — Janus
Then we can just say instead "It is X, and then it is Y". 'Transition' is the wrong word then, and there is no "process of change" between the two states. The change then is nothing other than the difference between the two states. — Janus
But then scholasticism buggered this up because of the need to bolster Christian dualism. Existence became about material/effective cause alone - the world experienced through the senses. The world of material accidents. And essence - the formal/final cause of being - became split off and associated with the separate realm of mind, spirit, nous, the ideal. The world known through the human intellect. And then ultimately through beatific vision. Men could know God just as directly and surely as they knew the world. — apokrisis
So that anti-becoming is happening continuously while actual change is failing to take place. — apokrisis
Then, as you say change is nothing. There is one state, then the next state. This is not change. — Metaphysician Undercover
If the two states are not exactly the same, then there is, by definition, change, I would say. — Janus
Maybe the two what you term "incompatible" ways of looking at things, in terms of either states or processes; are logically incompatible, and cannot be combined in one view. But it would seem, nonetheless, that we need both to understand how things are in the world. If this is so, then it would seem to be a dialectic with thesis and antithesis, but lacking a unitary synthesis. Perhaps the synthesis consists in holding in one's mind two in seemingly compatible views, and valuing each for their own unique insights, while refraining form demanding that either one or the other must be absolutely the case. — Janus
The real problem is that being and becoming are so fundamentally incompatible, that it was a mistake to attempt to put them in the same category under the name existence, in the first place. — Metaphysician Undercover
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