Thought for the Evening: Guised Being
Everything that we consider, we consider under the aspect of being. This can include either actual being or potential being or merely possible being; such a thing is traditionally known as ens realis, or real being, because they can actually exist as something. However, we also often consider things that cannot exist as something; for instance, I can consider a hole in a wall, which is not an existing thing. Yet when I consider it, I consider 'on the model of' (in Latin: instar) or 'along the lines of' an existing thing. Such a thing is known as ens rationis, or rational being. Ens rationis is not necesarily fictitious or illusory -- it is not a fiction or an illusion that there is a hole in the wall; rather, it is something that actually is there, but not as a something that has a being of its own. Likewise, to say that evil is a privation is to say that it is an ens rationis; it is not to say that there is no evil.
In any case, this notion of 'on the model of' is interesting, and I've come to think that there are other ways besides ens rationis in which it plays an important role. A significant case is when we consider one ens realis on the model of another being (either ens realis or ens rationis). Let's call this 'guised being', since we are considering one being under the guise of another.
Consider a painting. This obviously is an ens realis. Taken entirely on its own it is canvas stretched over a frame, with pigmented gunk in various shapes and textures and layerings on it. As a painting, however, it is not 'entirely on its own'; for instance, it is a sign, and has a relationality to that of which it is a painting. But it is possible to go beyond this. Someone could, for instance, talk to the painting as if it were the person painted. In such a case, the painting has guised being as the person painted. The Baroque scholastic philosopher Caramuel held that signs occur when they undergo moral transubstantiation, and become for practical purposes (in will, hence the 'moral') the things for which they stand. (Moral transubstantiation, of course, is not physical or natural transubstantiation, which would take divine power; rather, the natural thing in being considered by us also has moral being, in this case as a painted canvas, and becomes in the realm of the will the person painted, while remaining painted canvas in the realm of nature.) For a very great many reasons this cannot be an adequate or correct account of most signs. Nonetheless, I think Caramuel discovered, without adequately capturing the nuances, guised being, in which we think of one being not merely as like another, nor merely as related to another, but as another.
Guised being is not only found in art. It plays a significant role in modern science. Physicists are always considering physical systems (ens realis) in terms of idealized models (ens rationis) -- i.e., they think of something that is not a model on the model of a model, so to speak. The fact that people are able to do this is important for understanding how the model can explain the actual thing in ways that (for instance) a mere metaphor doesn't; we posit ens rationis because it allows us to make true judgments and more adequate explanations, and we guise a being as an idealized model for exactly the same reason.
Every guised being involves (1) that which is guised, (2) that which guises, and (3) a conflation for a purpose, such that the purpose structures (4) the domain of the guising. A child playing at being a knight might take a stick (the guised) and for the purpose of pretending to be a knight guise it as a sword (the guising); the stick is then a knight's sword within the context of the play-pretend. This guising then lets us analogically predicate of the stick things that are true of swords, again within the context of the play-pretend.
Various Links of Interest
* Matthew Minerd, The Political Implications of Acquired Moral Virtue -- Even Amid the Life of Grace, at "A Thomist"
* Mark Zachary Taylor, The Most Controversial Nobel Prize in Recent Memory
* Ilana Raburn, Intrinsic Kinds in Internal Medicine (PDF)
* Chiara Palazzolo, It's Not Just the Music: The Ethics of Musical Interpretation (PDF) -- a very nice discussion, good both for those interested in philosophy of music and for those interested in the virtue of prudence.
* Sympawnies by Noam Oxman, which are pictures of pets in musical notation that can actually be played.
* Ben Orlin, Proof as a form of literature, at "Math with Bad Drawings"
* Kenneth L. Woodward interviews Denys Turner on Dante's Purgatorio, at "Commonweal"
* The Pillar had a nice interview recently with the chief foreign minister of the Knights of Malta.
* David Landy, Shepherd's Claim that Sensations Are Too Fleeting to Stand in Causal Relations with Other Sensations (PDF)
* Ryan Holston, Straw Men and the Possibility of Community in Modernity, at "The Front Porch Republic"
Currently Reading
Heinrich von dem Turlin, The Crown
Thomas Aquinas, Quodlibetal Questions
Edward Feser, Immortal Souls
Lydia McGrew, Hidden in Plain View
Donald A. Norman, The Design of Everyday Things
In Audiobook
Stephen R. Lawhead, The Spirit Well
Kenneth W. Harl, Empires of the Steppes
