Metaphysics and the Pursuit of Truth

Events on the ground occasionally require us to shift focus; the Anglican Catholic Church has a host of very succinct articles on worship and sacramental acts, and so I believe it is more pressing to address a problem of metaphysics beginning in the Middle Ages and continuing up through the Reformation. 

Which is the real chair?

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Museum of Modern Art up in New York City, where I came across an exhibit which immediately became my favorite in the entire museum. The exhibit is entitled “One and Three Chairs,” and as the picture I’ve included demonstrates, it contains a three dimensional chair, a picture of a chair, and the dictionary entry for a chair. The implicit question is, of course, “Which one is actually a chair?”

Now, that may seem like an idiotic sort of thing to ask nowadays. Most people would consider the three dimensional chair – one we could actually sit in – to be the real chair. But for the ancient world – the context in which scripture was first written, interpreted, and canonized – such a question was a very real debate. The two principal positions in our debate were the Nominalists, on the one hand, and the Realists on the other. 

Let us stick with our example of a chair and explore how each of these schools of thought considers the question. A Realist would say that a chair has a Form and a Function, without which we cannot have a chair. The form and the function which constitutes a chair are derived from the universal Idea of a Chair. That is, an idea exists which has the form and function of a chair, and we simply have a word that describes that universal ideal. Put another way, there are lots of different words for chair, and there are lots of different types of chair, but really, when we get right down to it, there’s only one type of chair: an object of a certain shape that is designed for us to sit in it. Each individual chair that exists is really only an attempt to recreate that Idea of a Chair.

 In The Republic of Plato, for example, Socrates relates an earlier conversation with Glaucon: “We are in the habit, I take it, of positing a single idea or form in the case of the various multiplicities to which we give the same name…” “In the present case, then, let us take any multiplicity you please; for example, there are many couches and tables.” “Of course.” “But these utensils imply, I suppose, only two ideas or forms, one of a couch and one of a table.” “Yes.” “And are we not also in the habit of saying that the craftsman who produces either of them fixes his eyes on the idea or form, and so makes in the one case the couches and in the other the tables that we use, and similarly of other things? For surely no craftsman makes the idea itself. How could he?” “By no means.” (Republic 596a-b)

So, where do these ideals exist? Plato's dialogue suggests an alternate realm of reality where the universals do exist – a spiritual plane of existence. Now, that may seem a bit odd to us, but I propose a different solution. I’m hardly the first to do so – you’ll find it in Augustine, who was a thorough-going Realist. Those ideals exist in the mind of God; we, being made in His image, are able to divine only a glimpse of those truest ideals, and so we attempt to create and synthesize chairs and beds and things, however imperfectly, in a way that tries to fashion the Ideal. Without the Idea of a Chair, there could be no chair.

The Nominalist believes a chair is a chair mostly because we’ve gotten together and decided, as a society, what chairs are, and so where that label applies, it applies. A chair is a chair in name – that is, nominally. No abstract ideal exists which helps us understand what chairs are. Now, many will ask, “So, what?” So let us investigate a more practical example.

In, say, a baseball game, a runner slides into the home plate. The umpire cries, “Out!” And he is out. But the Realist and the Nominalist have different understandings of why. The Realist says if a runner is out, he objectively is out, regardless of what the umpire says. Based on the reality of the game, the runner either is out, or is safe, with no in between. The Nominalist says the runner is only out because the umpire observes him to be out – even if in actuality he was not. Objectivity does not matter, so much – only what is perceived, called, labeled, named.

Now, let us consider a moral question. We might ask whether, for example, infanticide is morally wrong. The Realist says that an act is moral or immoral based on whether it comports to the Ideal of Goodness. The Realist, based on his understanding of Goodness, would then reach a conclusion. Now, that conclusion may be correct or incorrect, but infanticide itself is either moral or immoral. Our thoughts, our feelings, our circumstances do not alter its morality. Either an instance of infanticide is a moral act, or it is not.

The Nominalist has a different understanding of the event. He will ask whether the act comports with a given group or party’s understanding of morality, or if it resembles other immoral acts. Based on that conclusion, the nominalist will then decide whether the act is immoral. The trouble with nominalism is, of course, that definitions will shift over time and in differing contexts, and very little exists to prevent this shift from happening and the disastrous results that follow.   

From Plato, writing in the 4th century BC, until Peter Abelard, writing in the 12th century AD, Realism dominated the thoughts of the Greeks, from whom the Diaspora Jews and the Romans acquired it as they came into contact with Hellenistic thought. Realism has endured, as far as I am aware, until the present day with little trouble among Eastern Orthodox.  In Western Christianity, it was the dominant philosophy and mostly uncontested until the 12th century, when Peter Abelard argued in favor of a Nominalist understanding of reality. It’s in the 12th century, therefore, that I will begin tracing this new debate between Realists and Nominalists. I will argue how those debates in no small part influenced the theological tension in that time period which led directly into the Reformation. 

(Edited a bit to provide additional clarity on the bits about Plato's Republic.)