Abstract

I begin–because I take the history of philosophy seriously–with the Scholastic distinction between categories and transcendentals. A category is a concept applicable to every being except God. A transcendental is a concept applicable to every being including God. Every being, it was thought, can be said to be one, good, and true–the last word meaning that the being can be known, and, at least by God, is known. Sometimes beauty was added to unity, goodness, and truth; sometimes also power, ability to influence others. I accept all five transcendentals. But I think the Scholastics, like the ancient Greeks, somewhat misconceived the relation of being–also substance–to other fundamental concepts. Being seems to contrast with becoming, which applies to every concrete reality other than God as classically conceived; yet nothing in the five transcendentals explicitly involves becoming, even as a possibility. God was for two millennia defined as immutable perfection; other realities were by comparison imperfect as well as mutable. What in any sense becomes was supposed less than what simply is without becoming–as though the idea of changeable entities was arrived at by subtracting from the idea of immutable perfection!