EBOOK
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Being and Necessity presents a reformulation of classical metaphysics for the scientific age. Modern philosophy has struggled with causality, modality, and necessity. Hume reduced causality to habit, denying rational access to necessary connections, while Kant viewed universality and necessity as features of human cognition rather than reality. Quine disrupted the analytic-synthetic distinction, and contemporary philosophy fractured into various accounts of modality, semantics, and scientific explanation. A more basic question underlies these debates: Are universality and necessity rooted in the structure of thought, or in being itself?
This volume argues that the classical tradition, especially Aristotle and Aquinas, offers the resources to recover necessity as a property of reality, not just the mind. Beginning with experience, the analysis moves from sensation to the grasp of being, defending the first principles of intelligibility-identity, non-contradiction, and causality-as universal and necessary features of existence. Being and Necessity shows how these principles ground a realism that supports logic, science, and theology without collapsing into skepticism or subjectivism.
Building upon The First Cause, the first work in this series that established the metaphysical foundation for a renewed synthetic a priori, Being and Necessity addresses the divide between sensibility and intelligibility. It demonstrates that the mind's capacity to know the world arises from its orientation to being.
Part I revisits Hume's critique of causality, showing that necessary connection is a real dependence revealed through experience and reason. Part II reformulates Kant's insight while removing its idealist limits, recovering universality and necessity in being, not just cognition. Part III engages modern analytic thought, examining modal semantics, propositions, and explanation, drawing on Frege, Quine, Kripke, and others. The work integrates classical metaphysics with contemporary philosophy and science, offering a unified account of necessity, causality, and the structure of reality.
Written for philosophers, theologians, scientists, and advanced readers, Being and Necessity offers a realist framework that addresses longstanding debates about modality, causation, and intelligibility. It continues the classical tradition and proposes how metaphysics can engage with clarity in the modern intellectual landscape.
This volume argues that the classical tradition, especially Aristotle and Aquinas, offers the resources to recover necessity as a property of reality, not just the mind. Beginning with experience, the analysis moves from sensation to the grasp of being, defending the first principles of intelligibility-identity, non-contradiction, and causality-as universal and necessary features of existence. Being and Necessity shows how these principles ground a realism that supports logic, science, and theology without collapsing into skepticism or subjectivism.
Building upon The First Cause, the first work in this series that established the metaphysical foundation for a renewed synthetic a priori, Being and Necessity addresses the divide between sensibility and intelligibility. It demonstrates that the mind's capacity to know the world arises from its orientation to being.
Part I revisits Hume's critique of causality, showing that necessary connection is a real dependence revealed through experience and reason. Part II reformulates Kant's insight while removing its idealist limits, recovering universality and necessity in being, not just cognition. Part III engages modern analytic thought, examining modal semantics, propositions, and explanation, drawing on Frege, Quine, Kripke, and others. The work integrates classical metaphysics with contemporary philosophy and science, offering a unified account of necessity, causality, and the structure of reality.
Written for philosophers, theologians, scientists, and advanced readers, Being and Necessity offers a realist framework that addresses longstanding debates about modality, causation, and intelligibility. It continues the classical tradition and proposes how metaphysics can engage with clarity in the modern intellectual landscape.