Eric D. Perl. Thinking Being: Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition.

Leiden: Brill, 2014. 215 pp. $141.

All teachers and serious students of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Aquinas and of

metaphysics and epistemology in general should read Perl’s study, which rightfully challenges

the commonplace readings of these philosophers which set them at odds with each other and

reduce their thoughts to curious museum pieces in the history of philosophy. By contrast, for

Perl the classical understanding of being is the cure for ontotheology (that God is the primary

instance of being) and for the modern divide between subject and object. Perl argues that if mind

and being are separated into subject and object, existing completely independently of each other,

than being becomes unintelligible and thought unmoored from reality. Modern philosophy

denied that we are capable of thinking being and the result is contemporary nihilism.

Contrariwise, we find in classical metaphysics the central insight of phenomenology, that

thought by its very nature is intentional and being by its very nature is intelligible, such that

thought and being are inseparable and exist for each other. This insight was first expressed

enigmatically by Parmenides, “For the same is for thinking and for being (τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν

ἔστιν τε καὶ εἶναι)” (13), and was then richly developed by Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and

Aquinas, whose metaphysics are presented by Perl as complementary variations on this theme.

In seeking the causes of the existence and intelligibility of sensible reality, they argued that

sensible reality is in fact dependent upon and the image of incorporeal paradigms in which

thinking and being are perfectly united. This paradigmatic union of thought and being is the

ground of human cognitive ability. Whether the ground of all reality is Divine Mind or beyond

being and thought is the main difference between Aristotle and the other philosophers.
 Perl presents a sympathetic, unitarian (Plato presents the same basic doctrine throughout

his works), and stimulating reading of Plato. Recognizing that Parmenides had rendered being

unintelligible by excluding all differentiation from it, Plato saved Parmenides’ insight that being

and mind are “yoked together” (54) by equating being with form. The Forms are not another

world separate from the sensible one; rather the sensible world exists and is intelligible simply

because the Forms are present in it. Plato’s Parmenides warns us not to understand the Forms as

if they were temporal and spatial objects, rather the Forms are the eternal and incorporeal

paradigms of sensible things. Likewise, the Sophist ridicules the idea that the Forms are “inert,

lifeless objects” (65), but insists that the Forms are alive and active (Plato’s κίνησις equals

Aristotle’s ἐνέργεια). The Forms are “the contents of living intelligence, of thought itself” (64),

which in the Timaeus is identified as the Maker (Demiurge) of the universe. Enabling Form and

Mind to exist is the Good, which is the ultimate cause of goodness and unity for all.

According to Perl, most self-styled Aristotelians read their own anti-Platonic prejudices

into Aristotle. In reality, Aristotle identifies nature as form in Physics II, and identifies form as

the efficient and final cause of a being. Metaphysics VII identifies form by itself as the primary

reality (οὐσία), and form in a material substance as the cause of its being. Form, not the

particular sensible individual, is what is most real for Aristotle. In fact, the identification of

reality, form, divinity, and thought is explicit in Aristotle’s account of the Unmoved Mover.

Aristotle’s God is knowledge itself, and since knowledge is form, “he just is the formal,

intelligible content of the world without matter” (96). Like Plato’s Demiurge, Aristotle’s God’s

thoughts are the paradigmatic causes of the universe. Aristotle’s De anima more clearly explains

how thinking and being are together for us in sensation and intellection.
 The mutual implication of thought and being are explained most thoroughly in Plotinus’

account of Divine Mind (Nous). For Plotinus, “truth just is the togetherness of being and

thought” (111), and truth is possible because at the paradigmatic level of Nous, thinking and

being are the same (ταὐτὸν τὸ εἶναι καὶ τὸ νοεῐν εῖναι). Plotinus’s account of beauty as form

shows the kinship of mind and intelligibility, for mind is delighted by the apprehension of being.

Plotinus and Aquinas clearly move beyond Aristotle’s question of what is being to why

are there beings? Perl presents a nuanced account of the One beyond being as the cause of

being, which he argues is essentially the same as Aquinas’s account of God as creator. To make

something one is to make it distinct from all other things by giving it a determinate form,

therefore the One is directly responsible not just for the being, but for the differentiation and

intelligibility of all as well. Concepts of causality based upon causal relations among beings do

not apply to the One. The One does not stand apart from and in relation to beings. Rather, the

One is the production of all things and all beings are “a differentiated presentation, a showing

forth of the One” (125), while the One is neither one of them nor their sum. To say that the One

is maker or cause or creator is to emphasize “the relation of dependence of all things on the One

as a condition for being” (124). Through paradox and sometimes hyperbole (as when Perl

reduces “God or the One to nothing but the fact that beings exist” and says that we should “fall

prostrate in silenced adoration . . . at this very fact” [172]), Perl seeks to teach us to rethink God

as not Being but beyond being, and thus more transcendent and more immanent that we can

conceive. For Perl, Aquinas’s understandings of being, thought, beauty, and God simply are

Neoplatonic.

Despite my general agreement with Perl, I must note two lacunas and a concern. First,

Perl never explicitly acknowledges that for Aristotle, Plotinus, and Aquinas, one meaning of “to
be and to think is the same” is that something is insofar as it thinks, such that separate intellects

are the primary substances. Second, Perl underestimates the function of essence in Aquinas as

what limits existence (esse) into a being (ens), and thereby seems to underestimate Aquinas’s

intention to present God as unlimited and absolutely simple being contemplating Himself

without duality. God is beyond and unintelligible to all beings (entia), but is completely

intelligible in and to Himself. My one concern is that Perl may sometimes elide explaining the

thought of these philosophers with presenting his own version of Neoplatonism, thereby

presenting as interpretation what is actually a constructive correction. In my judgment, which I

worry may be more that of a philologist rather than a philosopher, Perl sometimes gives

reductive readings of the philosophers (denying the existence of matter for Plato and Plotinus

and denying that Plotinus teaches instrumental creation), papers over serious differences between

them (Plato and Aristotle on separate substances, Aquinas and Plotinus on God’s free choice),

and neglects themes important to them (how diversity comes from a unity for Plotinus, the axiom

the perfect communicates itself for Plotinus and Aquinas, the immortality of the soul).

Still, I highly recommend Perl’s retrieval of classical metaphysics, which challenges us to

rethink the standard readings of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Aquinas and realize that they offer

us a cure for the metaphysical sickness endemic to modern and contemporary philosophy.

Brandon Zimmerman

Good Shepherd Seminary

Papua New Guinea