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What is Education?: Re‐reading metaphysics in search of foundations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Angus Brook*
Affiliation:
Dean of the School of Philosophy & Theology, University of Notre Dame Australia, Sydney
*
Telephone: 02 8204–4182. E-mail: angus.brook@nd.edu.au

Abstract

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Type
Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 The Author. New Blackfriars © 2012 The Dominican Council

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References

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4 Aristotle, ‘Metaphysics’, 1003a32–34

5 Translating oυσια as substance can be quite misleading as in English we often mean by substance stuff or material which is certainly not what Aristotle meant by oυσια. oυσια is an abstract noun derived from the verb ‘ɛιναι’–‘to be’. For Aristotle, substance is the technical term for something that exists in its own right as a unified whole with a particular identity. This is why scholars will sometimes translate oυσια as subsistence.

6 Aristotle, ‘Metaphysics’, 1028a31–32

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31 There are a number of levels of meaning to the phrase ‘particular horizon of common existence’. At one level this simply indicates a conceptual ‘common existence’; ‘ens commune’– everything that is, shares in common being. However, the phrase also signifies the necessity of a ‘universal community’ or universe as the horizon or space in which any act may take place. More specifically, the phrase also signifies how something like a planet forms a ‘worldly community’; a horizon in which there are various contexts of common existence, whether it be plate tectonics, particular ecosystems or habitats, or with regard to humans; particular societies or communities.

32 Francis J. Caponi, ‘Karl Rahner and the Metaphysics of Participation’, Thomist, 2003, 67

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34 It is important to note at this point that this mutual interdependence of individual entities applies just as much to rocks, humans, planets, and everything that exists in a similar or analogous way to the example of the Morton Bay Fig.

35 I am using reason, rationality, and reasoning in the more traditional metaphysical sense. As such, reasoning involves both the passive capacity for the intuition (νoυς) of being, as well as active reasoning (λoγoς) which includes: discourse, the use of principles to determine action, understanding of causes, self‐awareness, and so on…

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