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INTRODUCTION
On the following pages we are going to be dealing with The Fundamental Problems of Western Metaphysics.
The title may seem obvious, however, it is not quite so. Because of this, nothing would be better in order to delimit the problem than to comment on the four terms involved: “problems”, “fundamental”, “metaphysics”, and “Western”. What do we understand by “Western”? What do we understand by “metaphysics”? What do we understand by “fundamental”? And what are those fundamental “problems”, to which our reflections are going to be dedicated for the rest of this entire exposition?
I. East and West
In the first place, what is the Western?
The Western, for geographic reasons obviously, is the opposite of Eastern. And we may ask —quite reasonably— to what kind of “Eastern” are we referring when talking about Western metaphysics.
1) In the first place, of course, we refer to what is opposed to Eastern in the sense of the Asiatic east, primarily India.
{12} We are not going to be concerned with Indian metaphysics for quite a fundamental reason. Not because of my lack of interest concerning issues of Indian thought, but because there is always some kind of equivocation when discussing “Indian metaphysics”. The same happens when books are written about the History of Religions. Reference is made to the “mysteries” of Eleusis, to the Orphic “mysteries”, etc., and writers load on those mysteries, for example, the vocabulary of Christianity. Then, it is quite easy to say that those mysteries included initiation, and that they had sacraments. Yes, of course, but only if we apply these concepts to the exposition of those religions, because “at night all cats seem black”.
Something similar to this occurs with the “Philosophy of India”. Certainly, there are many thoughts in the Philosophy of India —a large number of them— that we could reasonably call metaphysical. This is quite true. But, are they metaphysical for them? Did the Hindus have a somewhat precise and rigorous concept, although different from ours, of what we call “metaphysics”? We may reasonably wonder about this. It is not the case —I repeat— that there may not be numerous metaphysical ideas in the Upanishads themselves. If not the oldest —like the Chandogya or the Brihadâranyaka—, the more recent Upanishads have a great number of ideas that for us would be metaphysical. Needless to say, the commentators of the Vedanta like Shankara and Ramanuja have a great quantity of philosophical developments. All this is quite true, but is it rigorously and formally speaking what we call “metaphysical”? That would be worthy of a separate study.
If we are not going to be involved with Indian metaphysics it is precisely for that reason, because in itself that would be a separate question, subject to lengthy disquisitions in order to know what is understood by Indian metaphysics. {13} We would have to avoid the conclusion that Indian metaphysics is to make with Indian ideas what we understand by metaphysics. This is a serious mistake that is often made. I shall illustrate with an example different from metaphysics. There is a famous book on the Theology of St. Paul[1]; reading its Index we can see it is a program on Theology. The book is simply concerned with the replies of St. Paul to this program, instead of addressing the question of what is the program St. Paul had in mind, which is clearly what we are most interested in.
2) Nevertheless, inside Europe there is —or there can be— a difference between Western and Eastern. Greece, in this respect, is the Eastern end of Europe. And the Western is precisely what happens in Europe after Greece.
But now the matter becomes more complex with a completely different dimension than the one we observed with respect to Indian thought. The fact is that Greece is not something that remains outside the Western, just the opposite. Here complications begin. Greece does not remain outside Western European thought the way all Europe remains outside India. It does not remain outside, not at all, Greece indeed continues to belong in one form or another to the intrinsic cultural tradition of Western metaphysics, of the metaphysics of the European West. In what way?
A) Above all, as a point of departure.
We shall not argue the point usually made —and to my way of thinking, not quite true— that metaphysics {14} began with Parmenides. Probably it began earlier with Anaximander, but let us put this question aside. At any rate, as a point of departure the metaphysics of the Greek is undeniably the point of departure and the start of Western metaphysics. Nevertheless, this is not quite so simple, because the starting point, the point of departure, is something completely extrinsic to the internal structure of a thought.
B) The fact is that Greek thought belongs to Western thought in a manner much more profound than by being the starting point of some speculations that have lasted for centuries. Greece belongs to us in a more fundamental manner, because it permanently and even today constitutes the very possibility of Western philosophy.
a) Certainly the Greek have passed away and do not exist today. In this sense, Greece belongs to a past that no longer is. But where there is historical continuity, a curious phenomenon is noted. That which disappears does not fall into a vacuum, and leaves those who follow in a special situation. A situation that is defined by the possibilities given to them by something that no longer exists, and these possibilities handed out to posterity do constitute and define the situation of the successors.
In this sense history is dis-realization in the sense that what is past no longer exists, that what was a reality in the past, however, continues being the primary possibility from which the successors emerge. And in this sense, Greece belongs to the internal possibilities of Western philosophy.
b) The dialectic of these possibilities is very complex. Western philosophy has received the Greek into its own self. But, what is it that has been received? It is easy to assume {15} it is a case of continuation: Anaximander, Permenides, Plato, Aristotle, etc. have dealt with a series of issues, and these issues are going to continue being discussed in the Western world. This, viewed from the outside, is relatively true. Only relatively, but let us admit for the time being that it is true. However, this is not a case of reception, the most we could say about it is that it is a mixture, a kind of cocktail of the past and the present. It is not a true reception; the reception precisely consists in the fact that the ideas of the Greek world, the list of concepts that the Greek world has left us as intellectual possibilities, is going to be used to resolve completely alien problems to the Greek mentality.
Then the matter becomes much more complicated. Christianity —the one that has definitely constituted Western Europe— has primarily contributed more than just concrete ideas, and with respect to philosophy, a new idea of the world and of man.
The problems this new idea presents are precisely the problems Western thinkers are going to try to resolve, or at least to study, with the list of concepts received from the Greek world. Greece is the intellectual organon with which the West understood its own problems. This is the origin of the radical ambivalence of Western philosophy. On the one hand, it has its own situation. But on the other, its thinking is mostly Greek. The Greek in one form or another provided almost all of the concepts that as concepts constitute the cultural tradition of Western metaphysics. There are exceptions. It is curious that the Greek world never had the term or the corresponding notion of what a person is. It is curious that the Greek world never had a concept or a term that would correspond to what we {16} understand by existence; strange though it may be, the abstract of existence, existentialitas, appeared in the IV century at the time of Marius Victorinus and was coined by him. With some exceptions, Western thought definitely lives from the list of concepts received from the Greek world in order to deal with its own problems, problems that are completely alien to the Greek world. This is the source of a problem, first, of referring to Greece and second, of discovering the essential modifications, which Greek concepts suffer in their new Western version.
II. What is metaphysics?
Having thus delimited the concept of Western metaphysics with respect to Eastern Asia and with our own Eastern Europe, we have to explain what is understood by the second term Western “metaphysics”.
As I was saying, with respect to the world of India, we have to distinguish between the “ideas” the Hindu had —which appear to us metaphysical— and a “strict and rigorous concept” of what metaphysics is. Our “ideas” are in good measure Greek ideas, but our metaphysics has little to do with Greece.
Then, what do we understand by “metaphysics”?
1) Although this may appear to be an exaggeration —I shall explain right away—, metaphysics is materially identical to what we understand by philosophy. And I insist on the term “materially”. It can be said that metaphysics is part of philosophy, besides logic, ethics, philosophy of nature. Certainly, but all this in the end is metaphysics; logic is the metaphysics of knowledge, just as ethics is the metaphysics of life, and philosophy of nature {17} the metaphysics of nature. In this sense, metaphysics is not “part” of philosophy, but is materially identical to philosophy itself. “Philosophy”, its term and its concept were born in the “Socratic circle”, and perhaps a little earlier in the Pythagorean world, to designate the attitude of men searching for supreme wisdom, i.e., for the ultimate and radical wisdom of life and things. This precisely defines what philosophy is.
2) But metaphysics —what metaphysics is— is something more. It is there to provide the precise characteristics of that in which the radical ultimateness philosophy searches for consists. That is why, although there is a material identity between metaphysics and philosophy there is no formal identity. In other words, metaphysics is the “real” definition of what philosophy is in general terms. Metaphysics is the “formal” definition of philosophy.
3) Of course, provided we now proceed to explain what is meant by the term “metaphysics”.
Metaphysics, I was saying, is the real and actual definition of what philosophy is; it will then have to show us what is this radical ultimateness philosophy is aiming for. The term “metaphysics” has two components: “metá” and “physics”.
A) With respect to what the first part of the term refers, “metá” means that metaphysics aims towards something that is “beyond”. It searches for a radical ultimateness in the sense of being beyond. And, if we wish to use a term, that obviously I am not going to justify now because we are going to use it in a more or less general way, we shall say that “metá” means to transcend, to be beyond. This beyond is what metaphysics is searching for in what it has of “metá”, of transcending. And now we have an obligation to say in what this “beyond” consists.
In the first place, “beyond” may signify and means the following. When man encounters things and addresses {18} them, in a certain way they confront him; they come to meet him. There is this bottle, this glass; we are all here, etc. These are the things that are there. It is to them that we spontaneously refer, and they are the ones that come to meet us. In Latin, coming to meet us is obviam ire, they appear on our way. And precisely because of this, things, taken this way, constitute the domain of the “obvious”. The obvious is not that which is understood without further ado, but what one encounters on the way towards something. The things that come to meet us on the way are the obvious ones. Therefore, to explain the term “beyond” consists in explaining the “obvious”, beyond which, as we have seen, metaphysics reaches for. What do we understand by the obvious? What is the obvious?
A) Set on our way by what we have just said, the reply is relatively clear. What is obvious is the list of things man encounters, and to proceed beyond is to proceed to other things that are not obvious, i.e., that do not appear on our way, do not come to meet us. There is no need here to think of great transcendent mysteries. Let us take an electron, no one has ever seen an electron, and besides, an electron, by its own physical nature —at least from what we know of it— is invisible. One does not encounter an electron. And, in this sense, to proceed beyond the obvious would mean to proceed beyond the things man encounters and come to meet him in the direct contact with reality. It would mean to proceed to other things that are not obvious, i.e., that do not come to meet us, and that man has searched for, such as in science or in other human activities. In this sense, beyond has a precise meaning, it is that which is ultra. Beyond would be the ultra-obvious, that which is there further than the obvious, that which refers to things that are not obvious in this sense. This is a perfectly acceptable meaning.
{19} B) Nevertheless, is this the meaning that defines the “metá” of metaphysics? No, because there is a much deeper meaning. There are things we do not perceive, not because they may be ultra, beyond the things we encounter directly, but precisely because of the opposite, because they are something that is in every perception and in each thing. We do not perceive it precisely because it is constitutively inscribed in the obvious; we do not perceive it, not because it may be ultra, but because it lacks that minimum opacity necessary so that man may encounter it. That lack of opacity is what the term diaphanous expresses. The diaphanous is precisely not obvious, not because it may not be in things, but because it is too obvious; so obvious that in its very diaphaneity we do not perceive it. It is now necessary to insist on this point of view. To be beyond for metaphysics does not mean to go after things that may be ultra, but to go after the diaphanous, to that which because of its diaphaneity is inscribed in everything obvious that man encounters in his elemental acts. In this sense we say —I shall explain it immediately— that the diaphanous is “transcendental”. It is transcendental, not in the sense that it may be something very important, but in the sense that it transcends in one form or another those things that are obvious, however, without being outside the obvious things. The radical difficulty of mataphysics rests precisely on this, in being the science of the diaphanous; consequently, in performing that difficult operation, which the violent vision of the diaphanous is. Therefore, we shall have to explain, first, what do we understand by diaphaneity; and second, in what does the violence of this vision consist?
i) Diaphaneity, on the one hand, means that it is something like a glass through which we see the object on the other side of the diaphanous. In this sense, diaphanous involves the moment of “through this”, transparent.
{20} But it has a second moment; through this is not simply that it is through it, but that in one form or another, precisely because it is diaphanous, not only allows to see, but makes it possible to see whatever is there on the other side. It is not simply the case of a kind of passing through without obstacles of a ray of light, but of actually making possible the visualization of whatever is there on the other side. The glass not only presents no impediment to seeing what is on the other side, but precisely because of its diaphaneity makes it possible to see whatever is there on the other side.
In a third moment, the diaphanous is not only that through which we are able to see, not only what makes us see, but in one form or another it is that which constitutes whatever is seen. This may seem to be a paradox, but it is true. It constitutes whatever is seen in the sense that the diaphanous is a very moment of things. If things were not accessible to diaphaneity and if diaphaneity were not to put them precisely within our view, it would not be possible to see them. Because of this, the idea of the diaphanous is enormously complex. In that complexity rests one of the radical difficulties of every metaphysical thought. Metaphysics is the science of the most diaphanous, and yet, it is a difficult investigation. Why?
In view of the considerations I have just indicated, the term diaphanous has a first meaning. Diaphanous would immediately suggest that which is “evident”. Someone working on the demostration of a mathematical theorem, which turns out to be quite simple, will say it is diaphanous, that it is evident.
Nevertheless, evidence is not diaphaneity. Diaphaneity is located beyond evidence making it possible. Evidence is the fact that things make us see what they are. But this presupposes the moment of diaphaneity. It follows that evidence —a term invented by Cicero to translate the Greek enargés— remits to something more fundamental, which is closer to the diaphanous. {21} One would think, then, that diaphaneity consists at least in lucidity or clear vision as fountain of evidence.
But this, also, is not completely right. It is not the case that it may not be true that diaphaneity may produce lucidity and be the fountain of evidences. What has not been said is that metaphysics may be something lucid, because in fact, it is not the case of lucidity, and it is not the case of clear vision, but of something much more difficult, of having a vision of clarity. It is not lucidity or clear vision, but the visibility of clarity. This is precisely what constitutes the difficulty of metaphysics, the visibility of clarity as such. The diaphanous is, in this somewhat constitutive sense of things, the very clarity, which things have. In what kind of dimension? We shall have to find this out.
This moment of clarity is transcendental. Transcendental in two dimensions. In the first place, because it is beyond obvious things. Not beyond as if going to “another thing”, but precisely because it is something immersed in things and permitting us to see them. Precisely because of its diaphaneity it appears to us as imperceptible. It is transcendental in this dimension. But there is a second dimension, because the diaphaneity proper to a thing is not different from the diaphaneity proper to others. Therefore, what is diaphanous in one thing, in its own way involves all the rest. It is transcendental in this second way. Taken at one and the same time, as transcendental in each thing and as involving all of them, the diaphanous is constitutively and formally transcendental. Día-pháneia, diaphaneity, is precisely transcendentality.
Therefore, to reach for the diaphanous is what the stepping march of philosophy is, a stepping march towards the transcendental in the sense we have indicated. That is what metaphysics is. I had mentioned above that metaphysics is the definition of philosophy. Now we say that transcendentality is the definition {22} of metaphysics. These are the three concepts we have, philosophy, metaphysics and transcendentality; each one defines the previous one and holds it tightly.
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[1] Zubiri refers to Ferdinand Prat (1857-1938), La théologie de Saint Paul, I, Paris, 1908 (231942); II, Paris, 1912 (281941) (there is a translation in Spanish, Mexico, 1947). [Tr. note: There is also an English translation, The Theology of St. Paul, Burns, Oates and Washbourne, Ltd., London, 1926-1927, 2 vol.]^