Metaphysics, 982b.
33. See Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, 89–90 [349–50].
34. Cf. Whitehead, Process and Reality, 219–20.
35. See Dewey, Common Faith, 32–33, 50–53.
36. Cf. Luke 15:12: “The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property [tēs ousias] that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property [ton bion] between them.” Marion, God Without Being, 95–96: “This question leads us to . . . the parable of the prodigal son, in Luke 15:12–32. This text ineluctably demands our attention, since it offers the only usage in all of the New Testament of the philosophical term par excellence, ousia (Luke 15:12–13): ‘A man had two sons. And the younger of the two said to his father: “Father, give me the share of ousia that is coming to me.”’ . . . But ousia also admits, first of a prephilosophical acceptation that shares with its properly philosophical turn the indication of a present disposability: ousia indicates that which, here, and now, remains to be useful for . . . , in short, disposable goods; this trait common to the two acceptations of ousia, which Heidegger underscored in his course at Marburg, has to do with the disposability of a ‘possession’ (Besitz) which thus assures a ‘power’ (Vermögen).” See also 97–102.
37. As one might, say, a June bug tied by the leg to a long thread.
38. Thomas Aquinas, Nature and Grace, 76 [1.13.5]: “But when we apply the same name [ordinarily applied to a human being] to God . . . it leaves what it signifies uncomprehended, and beyond its power to denote.”
39. See Jaeger, In Search of the Divine Centre, 256–57. Parmenides, of course, most thoroughly and beautifully sublimates this notion.
40. See especially the last four books of The Odyssey: “Odysseus Strings His Bow,” “Slaughter in the Hall,” “The Great Rooted Bed,” and “Peace.”
41. The whole of the Apology could be cited and much more (certainly including the interchange at the end of the Symposium between Socrates and Alcibiades), but this little passage from the Apology, 28d–e (33–34) is perhaps illustrative: “This is the truth of the matter, gentlemen of the jury: wherever a man has taken a position that he believes to be best, or has been placed by his commander, there he must I think remain and face danger, without a thought for death or anything else, rather than disgrace. It would have been a dreadful way to behave, gentlemen of the jury, if, at Potidaea, Amphipolis, and Delium, I had, at the risk of death, like anyone else, remained at my post where those you had elected to command had ordered me, and then, when the god ordered me, as I thought and believed, to live the life of a philosopher, to examine myself and others, I had abandoned my post for fear of death or anything else. That would have been a dreadful thing, and then I might truly have justly been brought here for not believing that there are gods, disobeying the oracle, fearing death, and thinking I was wise when I was not.” Jaeger, In Search of the Divine Centre, 173: “[Socrates’] death is a sort of apotheosis, and he leaves his pupils with calm cheerfulness, like a truly free man. There knowledge is described as the soul’s collecting itself—one of the immortal psychological images invented by Plato: it ‘concentrates’ itself from among the dispersed senses, all pressing outwards to the sensory world, and bends to its own proper inward activity.”
42. For example, Plato, Republic, 469a–71e.
43. See Jaeger, In Search of the Divine Centre, 145–46, 173.
44. Plato, Symposium 221b.
45. See Plato, Timaeus 90c, and Liddell et al., Greek-English Lexicon, 792–93.
46. See Plato, Theatetus 176b; Republic 613a–b; Phaedrus 248a, 249c; and Timaeus 47c.
47. See Ritschl, Three Essays, 244, 255–56. Cf. Tillich, Systematic Theology, 1:267; 3:191–93.
48. See Plato, Laws 716c–717a; and Jaeger, In Search of the Divine Centre, 285–88.
49. Plato, Laws, 885b; cf. Republic, 364b–365e.
50. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 269 [10.8:1179a]: “For if the gods have any care for human affairs, as they are thought to have, it would be reasonable both that they should delight in that which was best and most akin to them (i.e., reason) and that they should reward those who love and honour this most, as caring for the things that are dear to them and acting both rightly and nobly. And that all these attributes belong most of all to the philosopher is manifest. He, therefore, is the dearest to the gods. And he who is that will presumably be also the happiest; so that in this way too the philosopher will more than any other be happy.” See also 16–17 [1.8:1099a–1099b].
51. Members of the church who take on this divinely humane intellectual task are set to work. In their aspiration to the Goodness, Truth, and Beauty to whom they pray, they must specify—more diligently than did Plato or the Stoics—the way their God is to be conceived ontologically. God, they may say—without forsaking Plato or the Stoics—is (a word that may perhaps be used only in passing) “the Supreme Being,” “the ground of being,” “the cause of being,” “being itself”—perhaps even “beyond being” (a less ambiguously ontological assertion than it may seem). It is to this God who is that they then pray and in so doing look to obtain integrity themselves.
52. Perhaps it could signify “after,” as in “to pursue.”
53. Claiborne, Roots of English, 9. A “physician” in this sense would be one who served the cause of one’s “being,” swearing, e.g., to do no harm.
54. I admit that I am thinking of Heidegger’s most self-consciously “German” account of physis here. See, e.g., Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, 14–19, 147–48, 167–72, 188–92, and passim.
55. As would their heirs, Hegel, Whitehead, and Heidegger, by the way.
56. See Plato, Theatetus 149a–152c, and Apology 29e–30b.
57. Integrity also signifies definiteness.
