Once, in a philosophy of religion class I took in university, the professor asked if anyone read Aristotle for fun. One hand went up. I still do not believe him.
“Fun” is, of course, the offending word. Pleasurable Aristotle is not, although joyful I contend he is. I explored this distinction in my talk “Pleasure and Joy” about a month ago. The satisfaction that comes with grappling, understanding, and making Aristotle’s ideas your own is of an order different in kind, and more intrinsically valuable, than eating Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Buttons.
Philosophy contains multitudes, and some philosophies sell easier than others. Ethics probably sells the fastest because of its practicality, or at least because it pays to know what rules you can break and which ones will break your career. It still is not “fun,” save for the peculiar pleasure you can derive from crafting a hypothetical scenario to trap your friends into choosing something objectively evil.
Aesthetics may rival ethics, perhaps claiming for itself something of the prestige of the fine arts it surveys. Maybe some people find aesthetics fun, but it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish from snobbery or too easily aligns with subjective preference.
No one thinks Logic is fun, though I and some others might own up to playing logic puzzles now and again. Logic is useful though, and even if it is not enjoyable no one can coherently doubt its value.
Surely the most reviled branch of philosophy, neither fun nor functional, must be metaphysics. So despised is metaphysics that it could not even keep its name to itself - wander into a bookshop and the metaphysics section will be filled with paranormal esoterica written by cosplaying warlocks.
This is not a metaphysician.
METAPHYSICS
Metaphysics is the study of being-qua-being. Aristotle classified everything, and each of his sciences had its proper objects. Ethics focused on living well, logic focused on communication, and so on. All particular subjects shared one thing in common: they existed, or they had being. In metaphysics, what Aristotle called the first philosophy, the focus is “being,” not this or that kind of being, Aristotle applied his reason to the simultaneously deepest and widest possible subject matter. Being is “rock bottom,” and beyond being there is nothing. If that sounds confusing, do not worry. Aristotle’s own investigation betrayed what appears to be a kind of confusion, as it quickly morphed from the study of being-as-such into the study of the highest being, God (aka the Unmoved Mover, or Thought Thinking Thought).
1500 years later, St Thomas Aquinas synthesized the two and added a healthy glug Platonic participation into the mix. God (the highest being, the Unmoved Mover) is Being itself, and everything else participates in the One, Unlimited Act of Existence that is God. Metaphysics is then the exploration of what we can know about being, which applies to Being Itself (in the widest possible sense) and about particular beings (at the most fundamental level of an individual being). These are the transcendentals, that which is not merely true of this particular thing but is simply True, or not merely a particular good but simply Good.1
For Aquinas 800 years ago, God was supremely and infinitely valuable in Himself and justified any and all investigation. Today God is not viewed that way, and is relegated to a niche interest relevant only to the really religious. So the “vertical” element of metaphysics loses out.
At the same time, the level of abstraction required to contemplate the attributes of being-qua-being removes “horizontal” metaphysics too far from the practical world in which we live to be of interest in a hyper-utilitarian culture. And so the discipline languishes, pursued by a tiny few professionals, enthusiasts, and religious zealots like me.
W Norris Clarke’s The One and the Many: A contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics provides a far better account of the discipline than I ever could. He takes an unapologetically Thomist perspective. Yet he begins his investigation with a bold and surprising claim. From the start he grounds the metaphysician’s quest in wonder, and asserts it so confidently that he does not even bother to defend the claim.
I like metaphysics, and even for me it conjures dry notions of an analysis of being with the colour sucked out. Try imagining Being without any particularities - no shape, no sound, no colour. You cannot, though you can conceive it. What is there to wonder about?
Metaphysics is for me a battleground, not a method to feed a sense of wonder. I am interested most in the metaphysical ground on which you stand. Some ground, resting on Thomistic metaphysics, is solid. Everything else is, at best, sandy, shifting, and unable to bear the weight of reality.
A metaphysical argument is my attempt to storm your ground, revealing it to be unstable, and to compel you to recognize that a Thomistic metaphysics is the only safe place to regain your footing and uphold everything you hold dear. In this merciless pursuit of metaphysical conquest, I make devastating and irrefutable points, highlighting for example how a Thomistic metaphysics (or at least an Aristotelian-flavoured one) is the precondition for a philosophy of nature which enables science to be what it is. I am always aggressive, daring and demanding a response until one of us runs out of steam and surrenders. I never surrender.
Given my martial metaphysics, I have realized to my horror while rereading The One and the Many that I have committed the gravest philosophical sin. In classical philosophy, something done for its own sake is always higher and more noble than something done for the sake of another. The art of bridle making for example is lesser than the art of riding, because bridles are for riding. This works in human activities as well. Commerce is subservient to economics, which is in turn subservient to politics, which orders the whole towards the common good. The wider and, to the ancient and medieval mind, higher the scope of your investigation the more noble it is. Anthropology falls within a philosophy of nature, which itself falls within metaphysics.
Ultimately metaphysics is the highest science, the first philosophy, because it serves nothing. There’s nothing left to serve, whether you try to look further down or further out. Being simply is, and non-being is not. It can only be done for its own sake. Yet by my aggression I subject metaphysics to victory, to persuasion, to conversion, or whatever my actual goal may be.
I have reduced metaphysics to a blunt cudgel to beat my friends with, and left it the gnarled husk its detractors perceive it to be. I have forgotten the sheer wonder of existence, the creative tension between the one and the many, and the incredible privilege to be able to contemplate some vast whole while being a tiny part.
Clarke’s use of the word “wonder” injects life back into the subject of metaphysics. To wonder is point-less; it is its own good. It is to recognize reality for the strange, wonderful gift that it is. It is to re-place metaphysics in its seat of honour. I can think of nothing so grossly countercultural as that.
THE CULT OF SELF-IMPROVEMENT
I remember a time when home served as a shelter from social pressures, but with the explosion of the Internet and the ubiquity and perniciously addictive quality of smart phones that shelter has collapsed. You can hold that wall up, but it takes its own act of will and can be exhausting.
Social media enables you, even makes you feel expected to plug in, to see and to be seen. Engaging in social media at all is an inherently self-conscious act: I respond in a way knowing that others, perhaps many others, will see and judge it. This builds the immense pressure to control how others perceive you, always comparing yourself to others. Just look at the way Instagram harms the mental health of teenage girls.
Algorithms respond to things you have watched or searched in order to show you more of the things likely to hold your eyeballs, always feeding you more sources for comparison. Targeted ads foster insecurities and desires to try and turn you into a customer. Try searching for “work out plans for (insert whatever you want)” a few times and see how many implausibly muscular figures begin appearing on website sidebars shilling workout routines or supplements.
We see all the time now presentations of people who are trying to make us watch and give them money. But the short-form nature of the internet discourages pausing and contemplating, and so we scroll on and on. We flit from one video to the next, or click from one page to the next, seeing people as they want to be seen and assuming that is how they are.
People want to be seen as perfect, and so that is how we assume they are. We see people who go to the gym, read a book, and cook a healthy breakfast before 6:00 am, or people who have cosy routines in perfect homes, or who abstain from a mid-morning coffee because you cannot be a self-made millionaire if you spend money. These people always succeed, always look clean and fresh and energetic, and only struggle in a noble, driven way. They are the prophets of the Cult of Self-Improvement, the you-can-do-it-too success stories to sell that workout supplement or whatever. Just use this study method and you will learn everything you need to know in fifteen minutes so you can go hustle and make money.
Naturally we cannot make it work ourselves, at least not in the way presented in the sales pitch. While I can try to edit my appearance to others and present myself however I like, I cannot hide the reality from myself.
None of the life-hacks that allegedly shave whole minutes off basic household tasks transform me into the uncannily efficient, wealthy, and handsome image of myself I purchase from the Prophets.
I know that I often skip the gym, or eat fast food, or buy a mid-morning coffee with a sausage roll to boot.
Sausage rolls are delicious, and it usually takes hours before the guilt sets in.
I will always know my flaws intimately, no matter how close I get to the goals that I have chosen for myself. Even when (not if) I buy into the cult, I will never receive the promised reward of the completed self-image the Prophets pitched to me. There will always be something sub-optimal, something I don’t like, some opening for the cult of self-improvement to wriggle its way in with a new hack to squeeze out whichever imperfections linger, or, better, whichever imperfections prevented me from achieving what the last trick promised. If I somehow did manage to complete a goal I would not be free. The cult will always have something new to offer, generating some new desire in me in order to keep my eyeballs on the screen and the ad money rolling.
There are three proximate causes which make resistance extremely difficult. The first is that most of what the cult sells is some kind of short-cut. The algorithm has known for a long time that I like books, and at some point a few years ago I started seeing advertisements for something called “Blinkist.” On this company’s website, it states:
Get the key ideas from the top books, podcasts, and experts in 15 minutes with the Blinkist app.
As an avid reader I found this horrifically insulting. But it expresses the Cult of Self-Improvement concisely. “Don’t waste your time reading books. Books use many words to communicate simple bullet-points of information. We’ll just give you those so you can get the undiluted Self-Improvement Insight immediately.” Skip the journey with its pleasures and challenges straight to the end.
The second reason is that the Cult of Self-Improvement deliberately confuses means and ends. Do A so that you can do B, except B is for the sake of C, which is for the sake of D, and so on. It becomes a treadmill and you run in place when you find that neither A, nor B, nor C actually made you happy because the onslaught of new justifications simply overwhelms you.
Optimize your nutrient intake by replacing meals with green juice or some dodgy powdered shake. Once you’re no longer wasting time cooking and eating a meal, you can work out in the gym longer. By working out in the gym longer, you’ll develop the body and look you want. Once you achieve the look you want, people will perceive you the way you want them to perceive you. Once people perceive you the way you want them to perceive you, you will…
David Graeber, one of my favourite authors, wrote somewhere that children’s play is often the sheer delight at being a cause. The Cult of Self-Improvement rejects this and offers no terminus, only an endless series of means.
The third most pernicious reason is that the Cult of Self-Improvement subjugates the language of the transcendent. The endless means for other means presented are cloaked in the language of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful but actually are designed to address ordinary, earthly desires.
There is nothing wrong with ordinary, earthly desires (unless they are bad desires, but that is a separate question), but if you think you will touch the transcendent then the gap between expectation and reality can only lead to disappointment, frustration, and anxiety. While all of that is going on, the same base motive is hiding behind the curtain. The good, the true, and the beautiful are not ends in themselves but servants to profit.
I too have done this, chaining metaphysics to apologetics and dragging the transcendentals down to earth. I make the Good, the true, and the Beautiful my servants. I too become a prophet of the Cult, though I don’t even get any money from it.
THE PARADOX OF WONDER
Everything in our culture needs a purpose and demands a justification. That is why the Cult of Self-Improvement is so alluring. It sells means as ends, and when it fails to satisfy always has another means ready to take its place. What we need are ends, things worthy of our love and our labour.
Metaphysics unchained does not need a purpose or a justification. All it needs is wonder. Wonder at the strangeness of being, how its both so obvious we rarely think about it and incredibly difficult to think about when you try. It serves no purpose in itself, since there is no where else to go - outside of Being there is nothing. Any attempted justification distorts metaphysics into apologetics or worse, and is thus something else drawing you back to the treadmill of means. Metaphysics must be totally useless, and can therefore tap into the deepest part of our minds.
Funnily enough, to do that - to inquire into metaphysics with no justification, just for the joy (not necessarily pleasure!) of it - might also be the most useful thing we can do in this culture. The pressure a hyper-utilitarian culture exerts can grow unbearable - the expectation to spend your whole life in pursuit of another goal, optimization, wealth, or whatever sucks not only the pleasure but the joy out of life.
When there is no escape from the perpetual demand to justify every choice you make, and a magic rectangle in your pocket offering you effortless access to new Prophets promising new means to dead ends, you need a hard brake to resist the pull. Metaphysics is totally useless and therefore the hardest brake you can pull. It focuses on the awe of mere thisness, that existence simply is, for no other reason than to enjoy the feeling imposed on you by the splendour of being’s self-communication. That hard brake might just be the first tonic we need to step off the endless means treadmill the Cult of Self-Improvement sells and to begin discovering the ends which are in themselves worthy of our labour and our love.2
To be perfectly clear, Aquinas does not - contrary to some modern claims - assert that metaphysics leads you to the Revealed God, to the Father, Son, or Holy Spirit or anything like that. Metaphysics relies on philosophical investigation, not on revelation, which is why Plato and Aristotle were able to reach the Good and the Unmoved Mover. Certainly, Aquinas does think that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the Unmoved Mover (or the Uncaused Cause, etc), but metaphysics by itself does not link the two. Aquinas was more than happy to do one thing at a time and proceed step by step.
No, Robbie, I will not stop trying to convince you.