Essence and Levels of Intelligibility

For logic to work, everyday communication to succeed, and language to disclose reality at a basic level, we don’t have to know in a deeper sense the whole essence of, say, apples – a child can do it – but merely enough to know the boundary between the set of apples referred to by the term and all else. The distinction between essence and accident applies to this. But that is not the same as 'knowing what an apple is' in the deeper sense I discussed earlier. Thus the term 'essence ' has always confused me: what x is vs. enough to make the reference to the set of x clear - not the same.

 

There are thus two levels. 1) the operational or classificatory grasp; this is what is needed for logic and ordinary language to function. You don’t need to be a deep thinker or poet to pick out apples reliably, distinguish apples from pears, stones, or oranges, and apply the term “apple” correctly in most cases. This requires criteria of application, or what Wittgenstein might call mastery of a language-game. It gives us a boundary around a set. But this level does not require deep knowledge of what an apple is in itself. 2) The deeper ontological understanding (essence in the strong sense). This would be something like what it is to be an apple; its inner nature, structure, intelligibility; its place in the order of being (biological, metaphysical, perhaps even teleological). This is much closer to what Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas mean by essence. The same word – essence – gets used for both levels. They are not the same. In everyday or logical use, “essence” often collapses into “what counts as an x.” In classical metaphysics, “essence” means “what x is” in a deep explanatory sense. It is common sense that knowing how to apply the term “apple” does not entail knowing the essence of an apple (in the deeper sense, which would also include science). Logic and language require discriminative competence (the ability to sort things correctly) whereas metaphysical understanding requires intelligible insight

(an understanding of why the thing is what it is). And these can come apart.

A child can correctly identify apples and use the word perfectly well but have no grasp of plant biology, form and matter, or any deeper account of what an apple is.

    This connects directly with my earlier reflections on knowing vs. understanding vs. interpreting metaphysics as translation of reality into thought. At the basic level, language works because we share practices, recognize patterns (analogy), and agree (often tacitly) on applications. But this is still a kind of surface alignment with reality, not yet a deep interpretation or understanding of it.

     Synthesizing different philosophers, we could distinguish three layers: 1) extension (set-membership) or what falls under the term “apple”; 2) criteria (rules of use), how we decide what counts as an apple; essence (in the strong sense) i.e. what an apple is, such that it can be understood as it is. The point I am making now is that (1) and (2) are sufficient for logic and language, but (3) goes beyond them. Aquinas would say that we do have some grasp of essence even at the basic level but it is confused, partial, implicit, i.e. not  a full, articulated understanding. So he might resist a strict separation and say that our ability to classify already presupposes a dim grasp of essence, just not a fully realized one.

    Thus the word essence can mean either “what allows correct reference”

or “what the thing truly is. Logic needs the first; philosophy seeks the second.

. . .

 

This is why I am also not content with Wittgenstein's meaning as use to the exclusion of metaphysics philosophy. “Meaning as use” shows something indispensable: words neither get their meaning from private mental images

nor from abstract definitions detached from life, but rather from shared practices, forms of life, criteria of application, etc. Thus to understand “apple” is to know how to use the word, to participate in the practice of identifying, sorting, responding, etc. This guards against empty metaphysical speculation and pseudo-problems generated by language detached from use, which was one of his main purposes. It accounts for extension and criteria of use.

     But if meaning is only use, then language never reaches beyond correct application. That would imply that we can sort apples correctly but we never understand what an apple is in any deeper sense. That doesn’t seem to “save the phenomena” since science deepens our understanding, philosophy can uncover levels of intelligibility (not just correct usage, which can always be expanded or deepened), and poetry discloses reality in ways that exceed rules of application. All that is undeniable, I assert. So the question arises whether language is only a tool for sorting, or also a medium of disclosure.

Use gives us access to reality but not yet understanding of reality. There is a difference between knowing how to go on (Wittgenstein) and seeing what something is (metaphysics). I affirm metaphysics, if rightly understood. We do not only want to classify beings but to understand their being.

    You could try to read Wittgenstein not as denying metaphysics, but as disciplining its starting point. Ok, I could live with that. He reminds us that you cannot begin with essences floating free of use. You must begin with how words actually function. Fine. But that does not yet settle whether use is the end of the story or the beginning of a deeper inquiry. I think it is the beginning. Meaning as use explains how language is grounded but not how language can be true of reality in a deeper sense. In other words, use determines correct application, but not full intelligibility. Therefore, metaphysics is not an illusion. It is the attempt to move from correct use to true understanding.

      Coming back to my attempt to distinguish between knowing, understanding, interpreting. The idea is that reality is not exhausted by our practices, even though we approach it through them. If Wittgenstein is taken denying the possibility of metaphysics because it violates how language works, then he collapses truth into practice, thus losing the sense that reality can exceed our current grasp. I want to defend the possibility, indeed actually, of depth, intelligibility, and the possibility that reality calls for understanding beyond use. True, without use, language floats free of reality.

But without metaphysics, language never penetrates reality. That tension needs to be maintained.

 

. . .

 

And our grasp of – stick with the apple example – apples reveal who/what we are, our being. We are not passive mirrors.  This is different from projecting the subjective human psyche onto the blank screen or the radically different reality of reality. This is often lost when the discussion is framed only as “object vs. subject.”

     When we grasp something as an apple, we are not merely registering an external object (as a passive mirror would) but neither are we projecting meanings onto a blank reality. Rather, in grasping the apple, something about our own being is also disclosed. So the act of knowing is not passive, not merely “subjective.” It is a kind of participation in being/intelligibility. I resist the modern prejudice that reality is just neutral, meaningless “stuff” and mind the meaning-giver such that knowledge is nothing but projection or imposition. The apple is already intelligible (it can be recognized, named, understood). Our mind is responsive to that intelligibility, not inventing it arbitrarily. Thus we do not create the meaning. Yet we must be the kind of beings who can receive it.

    This is not passive mirroring. Knowledge is not just a copy of what is “out there.” To recognize something as an apple already involves conceptual activity. And more deeply, it involves being a creature for whom such recognition matters. Knowing is an act. Aquinas would say that the knower becomes the known (in an immaterial way). Heidegger would say that our being is such that beings can show up for us. Both reject pure projection, pure mirroring. When you encounter an apple, you do not just see “colored matter.” You see something as something. And in doing so you show yourself to be a being who lives in a world of meanings, can distinguish kinds, and can orient toward things as edible, beautiful, useful, etc.The apple does not just reveal itself; it reveals the kind of being for whom apples can appear as apples.

    This avoids the dilemma of subjectivism i.e. meaning comes from us, reality is an indifferent blank screen; and naïve reality/mirroring, i.e.  meaning is simply “out there” and mind just copies. My position (not only mine) is that meaning arises in the encounter between an intelligible world and a responsive kind of being. In knowing apples, we do not merely register objects or impose meanings; we participate in a field of intelligibility that reveals both the world and ourselves.

   

. . .

 

What about myth and poetry? Surely these are anthropomorphic projections? No. When we move from “apple” in ordinary classification to

“apple” in myth, poetry, or story, we are not leaving reality behind. The same reality is being disclosed at a different depth. So the apple is no longer only a fruit, a member of a biological kind. It is also something like temptation, gift, discord, knowledge, beauty, loss. Think of the apple in the story of the Fall (knowledge, temptation), the golden apple of discord (conflict, vanity), or the apple in fairy tales (enchantment, danger, transformation). In each case the apple is still recognizably an apple. Its meaning is thickened, not replaced. It might be said that these meanings are just imposed by human imagination. But not every object could carry these meanings in the same way.The apple has features that make it apt for such disclosure: attractiveness, edibility, sweetness that can conceal danger, everyday familiarity, etc. Thus the symbolic use is not arbitrary; it grows out of the thing’s intelligible character.

   Now the point about disclosing reality becoming a two-way street becomes clearer. When we understand the apple in myth or poetry, we are showing ourselves to be beings who perceive significance, respond to meanings, and indeed live in a world where things can mean more than themselves. The poetic apple reveals not only the world, but the depth of the human mode of understanding. The extension to myth and poetry is not an addition from the outside, but a deepening of the same structure you have been describing.

   When we grasp an apple in ordinary life we identify it, we can eat it, we can classify it, etc. This is the level where logic works and language functions. But the very same “apple” can also appear in, myth, poetry, philosophy, and religious imagination, where something more is disclosed. The apple becomes a bearer of meaning that was already latent in our encounter with it. The same being is now seen under a richer aspect of intelligibility, revealing something about our own being.