 I'm very pleased to introduce our gardener professor for 2023, Jean-Luc Marion, a member of the Académie Française, one of Laisie Montel, as they call him. He is also, en passant, chevalier de la légende en mer, officier des palmes académiques, commandant des lourdes de Saint-Groix-de-Brandes, among other titles. I'll say first a few words about the gardener professorship itself. The gardener chair honors Hans Georg Gadeberg, born 1900 and died 2002, the distinguished German philosopher and practitioner of hermeneutics and student of Heidegger and others, who was professor at Frankfurt and Heidelberg and who came here to Boston College after his retirement in 1974 and taught here annually until 1980 on the invitation of Professor Fred Lawrence, who's in the front row here today. Boston College has hosted a number of outstanding European scholars over the years, including Jacques Taminot, Richard Carney, who is now a colleague, Rudolf Bernet, Axel Hauneth, Jean Grèche, and then after the title became the official gardener professorship, we have Gunter Figal, Geoffrey Barrache, Francoise Dastur, Vémy Braque, Alessandro Ferrara, Danza Javi, Emmanuel Falk, Poit-Moyer, Marcia Cavalcante-Schubach, and Claude Rabromano in 2020. We were then disrupted by the pandemic, so I'm most happy that we are able to be back in person today with our speaker Jean-Luc Marion. So now I'd like to say a few words about Professor Marion. He was born in Moudon, a suburb of Paris, and studied first at the lycée condensée, and then at the École Normale Supérieure, where he completed his aggregation, and then his doctorate de troisième siècle, cible, with Ferdinand Arquillet at the University of Paris 4. His dissertation was on the regulaire of Descartes. He then completed his second doctorate, the doctorate d'État, also on Descartes, at the Sorbonne in 1980. He moved them to Poitiers from 1981 to 1988, Paris-Dies-Nonterre from 1988 to 1995, and then the Sorbonne until his retirement in 2011. He has also been a professor at the Institut Catholique, and he is currently a emeritus professor from the Sorbonne. He has been the holder of many distinguished chairs, including the chair-card de Mercier of the Catholic University of Leuven, the la chair of the métaphysique Etienne Juleson of the Institut Catholique, and visiting professor at La Sapienza University in Rome. He has delivered the Gifford Lectures at the University of Glasgow in 2014, and for many years, following Paul Riccaire, he has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago, where he was Andrew Thomas Greedy and Grace McNichols Greedy Professor of Catholic Studies, and a professor of philosophy of militiamen theology. He won the Prix Charles Lambert for his L'Idole de la Distance in 1978. Jean-Luc Marion has a justified international reputation as a formidable Descartes scholar, as a phenomenologist of the theological term, and as a Catholic theologian and a Prologist. His first book in 1975 was L'Ancologie Grise de Descartes, where the grey ontology refers to Descartes' use of scholasticism lying beneath the self-certain science of the regular. His many publications on Descartes subsequently included the metaphysical prism of Descartes, the Constitution and Limits of Ontrotheology in Cartesian thought, and other questions Cartesian and many other books. But he has also a second stream of interest in namely the phenomenological critique of metaphysics, about which we will probably hear more tonight. And here are the guiding figures for Marion, our Augustine Descartes, Bussera and Heidegger. Marion belongs to or has been described to what is called the theological term in French phenomenology, which includes people like Jean-François Coutin, Jean-Louis Prétien, Michel-Henri, Nathalie De Pras and others. He has maintained that the original claim of phenomenology to giveness, Donation, became Heidegger, has neglected or ignored forms of giveness that exceed objectivity. And he has been famous for his introduction of the notion of the saturated phenomenon. He is also interested in the old metaphysical theme of God without being, or the theme of negative theology, which he has written about in books including D'Euss Orlet, or text translated as God without being, and also in other recent books. When a groundbreaking book for us was L'Idole et la Distance published in 1977, The Idle and the Distance, which has only recently appeared in translations and in which Marion carried out a critique of ontotheology. Indeed, I first met Professor Marion through my friend and colleague Richard Carney, who's here tonight, when he and another young Irish graduate student, Joseph O'Leary, organized a colloque Irlandais français with a groundbreaking seminar on Heidegger et la question de Dieu at the College des Irlandais in Paris in 1979. The proceedings were later published, edited by Richard Carney, but in that book, along with Ricard, Beaufret, François, Fadier and others, is the work of Jean-Louis Barriot. Most recently, or more recently, I should say, Professor Marion has been working on the notions of grace, love, and the meaning of revelation. His major works here include L'Oeuf Thénomène d'Hérothique, which he published in 2003, Promo-Gun, Promo-Common à la chapitée 1986, and then the most recent work, Daillet et la révélation, besides the revelation or on the other hand the revelation or something like that. He has been visiting Professor at Boston College on two previous occasions, first in 2001 and again in 2003, and indeed our colleague, who's also here tonight, Jeffrey Blocko, has included Marion in a work published in 2000 entitled The Face of the Other and the Trace of God, Essays on the Thought of Emmanuel Edinas, who's another figure in this pantheon of phenomenologists involved in the theological term. I think I've said enough to introduce, who is perhaps one of the greatest living figures in French philosophy today, so I'd like to say personally welcome to you, Professor Marion, and we look forward to hearing your talk tonight. Thank you very much. I'm very proud and honored to be invited to give another lecture, and to be back again in BC, which remains seen from the other side of your show, a central place for real philosophy and strong and orthodox theology, so it's a place where I cannot not to find myself very pleased to be. I would allow me to say I shall give another lecture in Havard, I think in May 1st. In fact, the two lectures are connected. Today I want to explain how we can understand the meaning of metaphysics, and in Havard I shall try to explain how it is possible to overcome this understanding of metaphysics. So it is a twofold exposition. In fact, the second advice is that the first is very boring. I have to tell you that it will be very boring and very long. So the question is this. There is a question a lot of discussion today in philosophy about whether you support or deconstruct the concept of metaphysics. And many philosophers are divided about this issue. Indeed, in that discussion both parts share the same failure. That is, the concept of metaphysics is not clearly defined. And all of them, I myself included, are in the situation of Kant, who said in the first critique of pure reason at the end, I had to conflict, we shall always return to metaphysics as to a beloved lady with one we have broken, which is exactly our situation. We love metaphysics and we are not living with metaphysics, we are broken with metaphysics and we are a nostalgia. And another symptom of this very strange situation can be borrowed from the famous polemic between Karnab and Heidegger. As you know, Heidegger in 1927 gave a very famous lecture, what is metaphysics? And two, the year after, just published only in 31, Rudolf Karnab answered with a very famous lecture too, overcoming metaphysics through the logical use of language against Heidegger. And so the simple picture is that on one side there was Heidegger trying to restore metaphysics and on the other side the father of the logical positivism to come, Rudolf Karnab, was destroying metaphysics, not too fast, because in fact we know that Heidegger, 15 years later, wrote another essay, Überwindum der Metaphysics. So he was, he has upset his position about metaphysics, so there is a, I could explain this in detail, the evolution of Heidegger, first he tried to restore the old ontology with a fundamental ontology and then to restore metaphysics in a more radical way by saying that the Tarzai itself is a difficult example. But on the other side, Karnab, when he came to Chicago to initiate logical positivism as a comprehensive system of philosophy, had some achievement and some followers, and among those followers we all know George Bergham, who published in 1954 the metaphysics of logical positivism. Here, again, there was a complete reverse of the initial situation. I could give a lot of other examples of this instability of the concept of metaphysics in many situations. This can be shown even in the Catholic tradition among neo-thomists, and the disagree about the meaning of metaphysics. Between Jilson and Maritain, between Leuven and Rome, there is more disagreement about metaphysics than any agreement according to the so-called Thomistic ontology. So let us start by this symptom. We have no clear understanding of metaphysics. Why? I think that you can discuss metaphysics from a purely theoretical and speculative point of view. This is not the right way to have a clear insight on it. Why? Because metaphysics was not the first name of philosophy. There is a birth date of metaphysics, and there is perhaps for the same reason a death date of metaphysics. And as philosophy did not start, using the word metaphysics, it can well be foreseen that philosophy may survive the end of it. So I want to give a sketch today of a possible historical definition of metaphysics, when did metaphysics start, when did and why did metaphysics start? The first paradox is this. We have no real use of the word metaphysics before 14th century, before that is called. And it is question as metaphysical as a beginning of 14th century. I shall come back to this point. So before earlier, we speak of the metaphysics of Aristotle as all students know, every student know, Aristotle himself has never used the word metaphysics. I quote here Suarez, which is the 16th century, the name of metaphysics known was used either by Aristotle, nor by his commentators. This is a disputation as metaphysical, first disputation of polynomial. We know that the name of metaphysics is only a name for classification. This is the liberal interpretation, that is, the collection of the essays by Aristotle, which were classified after those classified about physics. And this by his first editor, Andronikos Ofroad, who was the first to use the formulation metaphysical. So it was a real discussion whether it was only classification or perhaps something more conceptual, but the discussion is still running and the majority of the scholars admit that it is first of all the classification. So the most obvious understanding of metaphysics is to say what comes after the physics, the observational physics. And it is in that way that, for instance, Thomas Aquinas, after Albert the Great, has understood metaphysics as transphysica ciancia, the science which is beyond through physics. And this formulation was repeated and kept through the old medieval ages, through up to Thurus, at the end of the second school of metaphysics, but also by Kant. Kant himself says that, I quote here a course of metaphysics collected by Einstein. Kant says that I read, for the name of metaphysics, we should not believe that it was chosen by chance. It is fitting exactly the science in question. Therefore, because, however, this fuses mean nothing but nature. And as we cannot have access to nature but through experience, the science which comes after this first science of nature through experience is called metaphysics, metatransphysica. It is a science which is beyond or outside the field of physics and it's why it is metaphysics. So this definition was kept up to Kant. So let us admit that there is a deep historical indetermination of the process of metaphysics. So this is a fact of they. Is there a good reason to have this indetermination of the Latin metaphysics, during from Aristotle up to Thomas Aquinas? No. There are many reasons why during that period it was quite impossible to unify metaphysics in a real concept. The first of those reasons is obvious. It is well known by all the readers of Aristotle. We know and this comes from a discussion initiated by Valent Jaeger at the beginning of the 19th century about the two central gravity points of the so-called metaphysics by Aristotle. That is, there is two sciences there competing. The science of Toa on Aon, Hans in Quentin Hans, being as being in book Gabba, and another science of the first philosophy, which is the divine. And this first philosophy is discussed in book Epsilon, in book Lambda. And the question how to unify those two first considerations of philosophy, starting either with a universal science or with a divine science. The science of the divine is very simple. All the commentators of Aristotle were divided about that. It is a classical question. And we have a solution. There is a formal solution. This is the conclusion of chapter one of book Epsilon of metaphysics, where Aristotle says that the science of the divine is universal as the science of being equivalent because it is the first. Catalu, Uthos, Otit, Pote. It is very clear that this means nothing. It is a formulation of the difficulty. It is universal because it is first. Precisely also the point to explain how universal, the first science focusing on the exceptional case of the divine nature could be the truth of the science of the universal common being. And it is not explained just by the substitution of the universality of the problem. So the first reason is very clear. There is no unity between the two possible primordial sciences in the books of metaphysics. And this is a very good for all interpretation of Aristotle up to now. And there is no here subject to that problem. The last you have tried to find a new solution was to find the ring, right? But even the ring is not complete by its own side. But there is much more important as I would say an indetermination in the figure of the so-called metaphysics. It is the fact that this science, whatever it may have been, never included the consideration of God. It is very surprising for us, because for us, fortunately, metaphysics is the part of philosophy which deals with God. This was not the case. I refer, I could refer to Madison, to Dascote, to Albert the Great. Let us focus just on Thomas Aquinas in his commentary on the dignity of voice use in question 5, the first article answer. When he says that there is two theologies, two theologies. The theologies of the Sacra d'Octrina, revelation Bible, where God is included. Because it is a world of God, so God is included in his own world of revelation. But there is another theology, which is the theology of the philosopher. And strangely enough, this second theology, duplex theology, the second theology is called metaphysics. But the theology of the philosophers, which is based on the question of being, cannot include the question of God, because God is not one among the beings. For Thomas Aquinas, as you know well, God is not one of the beings, not even the first. It is the act of being. So, the fact to know a concept of being gives you no access to the essay, the act to say Sunday. So, there is no connection between the act to say Sunday and the essay. So, very clearly for Thomas Aquinas, the Christian God is not included in the possible object of metaphysics, if any, and if it could be, for instance, the consideration of being. So, there is many other process of an agreement with Thomas Aquinas on that thing. So, strangely enough, there was no God included in metaphysics before precisely the use of metaphysics. And there is a third objection about the insufficiency of the metaphysics, the so-called metaphysics, which is a great objection and more decisive objection raised by Tyler to serve it up briefly. It is to say, philosophy is supposed to be the science, the knowledge of being. But being in Greek, toon, is only the particip present of the verb a-nag. Being is the variation of to be. And you can understand to be a being in two ways, either as a verb, that is, the process of being. Or you can understand it as the result of the process of being, that is, this or that being. A being, the same being. So, in the case it is toon as well. So, toon can be understood verbally or as a name, a substance here. What was the choice of Greek philosophy, that is, first of all, Aristotle? It was to say, and we all know that, it is the beginning of the book of Ganna of the so-called metaphysics, that there is a science which tries to study to be toon and on, which is translated being for being. Question for us, is this a verb or a substance here? The thing or the process of being answered, it is, I follow the position of the text, to consider, theory, the science, who, theory, toon and on, toon, este, this and usia. That is to say, what it is, the usia. The usia, which one says that either by essence or substance, is what in the thing remains strongly identical to itself, which is enduring in presence. This is the usia. The answer of what Aristotle understood toon and on is very clearly, this is a noun, a substantive, a substantia, an essenceia, an usia. Which means that here the question of being is completely obscured. The question of being is no more the question of how things come to be, the process of being, the act of being, the verb, but is only the consideration or the result of the process. That is, the thing itself. And so Eleus says, in fact, in philosophy, starting with the Greeks, which are not the solution but the origin of the difficulty, that the main apparel is that the question of to be was reduced to the question of what is a being. To be, the verb, was completely put aside because it was much more difficult to think about that. And the attention was focused on what is more easy to understand, that is the result of the process which you keep under your eyes, which is standing usia, the standing substance. That is, there is no question of to be in the question of being. That is, the beings have overruled the question of to be. And so, you can say that starting with Arisoto, the question of being was closed, was distorted into the being, the study of the beings, against the consideration of the process to be. For those three reasons, we understand far better why there was an anonymity of metaphysics up to Thomas Aquinas. The central text for that can be found in the first prologue of the commentary by Thomas Aquinas of the so-called 12 books of Arisoto metaphysics, a very famous text. And in this commentary, Thomas makes a distinction between three possible sciences which can claim to be the first philosophical discipline. And those three sciences, so competing with Arisoto, there is the first philosophy, the metaphysics, and the scientia divina. The scientia divina is the science of the divine as such. That is the most perfect beings for being. The metaphysics is the scientia of being quality. With those two, we see clearly that he is referring to Arisoto. The scientia divina, it is the book of lambda or the book of epsilon of metaphysics. The metaphysics, it is the book of the book of gamma. And there is the science of the first course, the science of the first course, the first book of the metaphysics. And those three possible first are taken together under one common science to comment on the books of Arisoto. So we could expect, as a naive reader, that Thomas would choose a name to unify the three. There is no name. He says, alexiansia. This science, this science can be related to the three I've quoted. And never else, there is no text where he says under which name we can unify the three possible meanings of the first part of philosophy. So Thomas himself has kept the anonymity of metaphysics. He does not even use the word metaphysics which has a very narrow meaning in this case, that is the science of being or being. Only one of the three. So the anonymity is, in fact, appears when for the first time the word metaphysics starts to be used. Because after Thomas, it will be used on a regular basis and more and more. But for Thomas, we have the index of dosa which is a computerized index of Thomas. We have all the items of metaphysics. Most of the time, if not always, it is a nickname for the books of Arisoto. It is not the science or something which is a part of the domestic system. So how the word metaphysics imposes itself. It is a long story, story starting with Tanskotus, beginning of 14th century, up to Suarez, the end of 16th century. The main term, and it is absolutely central in the history of philosophy, was the discovery of the conceptus antis, the concept of being. Previously, there was no concept of being. And this corresponds to the reasons why there was no unification of the so-called metaphysics. What does that mean and why it is so crucial to consider a concept of being? A concept is the act of conceiving by his mind. So is it possible to conceive being? If it would be possible, in that case, we could unify being, although being has many forms, many degrees, many specifications among all the different kinds of being we experience, would we be able to conceive a concept of being, it would fit all of them. It's like the gap fits inside. The concept of being would fit all beings. And this was done. There is a first concept, the first thing, which is not a thing, which we can conceive. How is that possible? That's a paradox. And look, I explain to you all the texts by the Scythianism and mostly by Suarez. If you want, you can just read the three first, among other three, the Scythianism and the Scythianism by Suarez. And about the conceptus antis. The conceptus antis has an object, at least one thing, which is represented and grasped by the concept. This object is universal. Precisely the word. It can be used for any possible case. But to be universal, it has to be without distinctions. Because if he would be too specialized, too complex, too highly defined, it would not fit every case. So to fit every case of being, it should be universal, that is abstract. They say universalistimus, abstractistimus and in fact empty, without any content. That is the content of the concept of being is precisely the fact it has no precise content. This is the condition for its ability to be applied to any case in the experience. So we have a concept of being, previous to any special knowledge of the kind of being. This concept of being is infinite and because he has no predetermination, no limitation, it can be used in all cases, including that of God. It's why the first distinction, the first determination will be to draw a line between the conceptus infinitus and the conceptus finitus. The first distinction is that there is an infinite meaning of the concept of being, which is used only in the case of God. But you see, there is the same concept before God and anything else. To the point that Suarez, Suarez it is three centuries later, we'll say, frankly, he's not always clear and he's always speaking with the dog in the cheek, not frankly, to be in agreement with everyone. But there is a case where he is very bold and very honest, that is not always clear, because he claimed to be a tourist in no way a tourist, but he says that I would, we ask to make a choice between the analogy of being between God and phallic beings, on one side and on the other side. The university of the concept of being, we should definitely prefer to keep the university of the concept of being because this university is much more intelligible than the analogian case, which is absolutely true. The question is whether in the case of God we should and could expect to have a very easy case of knowledge. What does that mean? That the case of God could be easy to understand. That case for us it could be. It would not be the case of God anymore. That's why the question is beyond the mind of outside the mind of Suarez. Anyway, so this concept of being to some extent includes God because in Christ the thing, that's the paradox. And let us pay a bit more attention to this concept of being. Suarez makes a distinction between the concept, the objective concept of being and the formal concept of being. What does that mean? Suarez is very rational and insightful mind. He admits that this concept of an object which should be universal, abstract, empty and without a definition is a bit of a contradiction. It does not stand stably by itself. And this was in fact the difficulty of the concept and to the concept of being. So he tried to give the reason why we can admit this very strange content of being answered. What makes the unity of this concept is not the content of the concept. It is the object of the conceptus, objectivus. It is the origin, the act of producing this conception. That is the act of the mind, the conceptus formalis. And he says, he says that the unity of this concept comes from the fact that it is produced by our mind. Our mind can produce its first concept and the first concept we produce is the most abstract, the most universal, the most empty. And we have to start with that. So the content of being is not a determination of being. It is unification by the act of the mind. So the paradox of this metaphysics, which it produced itself proudly as the science of being, is that its concept of being not only contains strictly speaking nothing, it's why it is universal. But it is the produce of the mind itself. That is what in common language, which I did not mean. And we have many arguments to give, to get confirmation of this paradox. So let me list some of those arguments. The first is that after Suarez, that is in the modern philosophy, starting with the card, the follower of the card, they kept to some extent the concept of metaphysics. It was an academic tradition. People were speaking of metaphysics. But what did they understand under that name? After the theory coined, I would say coined and seeded for centuries by Suarez, which was so influential, up to ego. They understood, and here I go to take out, in a very famous text, because it is a French, as a preface to the French translation of the principle of philosophy. I quote, the true philosophy of which the first part is metaphysics, which contains the principle of knowledge. The principle of knowledge. You find the same thing in Malagranche. By metaphysics, I understand not abstract consideration about the imaginary properties of science, but the general truth which can be used as the principle of particular sciences. And like this, I acknowledge that the true metaphysics is not very different from the true logic. This is exactly Karda or Russell. Which means that from metaphysics, nothing is left, from the question of being in metaphysics, nothing is left, but the principle of knowledge, which is consistent with the position of Suarez, where the basis of the metaphysics is precisely the conceptus formalis, the act of conceiving the first knowledge. And we have a very central text about that. And it is not only Kant who says in the first critique, at the end of the first critique, metaphysics is the science of the first principle of human knowledge, the information that it make up. Fischer, which is to some extent the first real and bold successor of Kant says, and this is in a letter to Scheming from 1799, according to my language, the formulation doctrine of science, Vincent Schaft Lerert, which is the title of many of his essays, does not refer at all to logic, but to transcendental philosophy, that is to metaphysics itself. So Vincent Schaft Lerert, this very famous formulation, which will be used to some extent by Hegel in the Vincent Schaft Lerert. The Vincent Schaft Lerert is the Fischtheon German idealist word for metaphysics. And this is very consistent with Suarez, nothing is left of the question of being in metaphysics, but the condition of human knowledge. And we have an additional upsetting argument to support this reduction of metaphysics to the principle of knowledge. This disappearing of the question of being in metaphysics in another new religion, neo-logism. There is a rule in history of philosophy, not only in history of philosophy, that when a new word comes to be used, the thing referred to by this new word starts to disappear. That is, metaphysics started to disappear when the word of metaphysics came in use. You can say, we have some suspicions about theology, because theology was used for the first time in criticism by Bernhard by Abelard at the end of the 12th century. And so you can say that the 12th century of Christian theology were worked out by guys who have never used the term theology. And the inflation of theology in the two last centuries is perhaps not a very optimistic symptom about the evolution of this science. Same thing for ontology. Ontology was never used before 17th century. It was a neo-logism which was first used by Kantist philosophers in St. Gallen, Lorardus, 1603, and after that Gottlieb Neuss was called 1630. And it was imposed for the first time by a very strong supporter of Catholicism, Carmel, who in the third edition of his ontosophila, published in Amsterdam in 1664, imposed the word of ontologia, that is the logos, discourse about being, which is quite surprising that is a Calvinist and Cartesian tradition, they imposed the use of ontology, completely unknown from the time of Thomas Aquinas. But most surprising is the definition of what ontology is speaking about. So it is the first page of the ontologia. I submit that. Question, what do we understand under the name of being taught? We could say, first possibility, we say, following Aristotle, that Tito on, Tito, this and this. That is if we are following what is being, the answer is the essence of substance. I say, yes, this is the solitude of Aristotle, we have to lead to that. But unfortunately, many things are which are not the essence, mostly the accident. The accidents are for a short time or a long time, they are by themselves or not by themselves, they are subsistence or not subsistence, but they are. So it is a too narrow definition of being. Let us shift to another definition, which is borrowed from Stoicism, that is, it is something adequate, tea adequate. So anytime there is something adequate, there is being. Yes, it is better, but there is an objection to that. That when there is no adequate, when there is nothing, nevertheless we can speak about it. For instance, when there is the logical inconsistency and empirical impossibility, the nonsense we can very well discuss the case, make a distinction whether it is a nonsense or a contradiction or whether it is only an empirical impossibility. This is well known since both I know, Brent I know, the theory of the objective, why not? Thank you very much. This was discussed at the end by Russell, so there is no question. We can discuss about non-existing things, and we have an evidence of that. At the end of the first part of the first critique, Kant has a table of nothingness. So for Kant, there are four meanings of nothingness, you can discuss that. So there is no question. We can think about nothingness, so nothingness has something real in it. So is there a name for this quasi-being of nothingness? Yes, says Kauber. Being at the end is everything which can be thought, cogitabile, everything which can be thought. Which is completely consistent with SRS and the concept of being is the first thing that can be thought. So when Heidegger said that metaphysics lead to nihilism, he says an obvious and openly undisputable truth. Metaphysics leads the question of being to nihilism because the last possible definition of being means cogitabile, which has no need to be in the traditional meaning of the word, to be a part of being. This looks as a paradox, but this paradox was obviously documented by philosophy. After Kant, we have to keep in mind the opening pages of the first part of the research of the logistic design, which says, explains that the concept of being is equal to the concept of nothingness. There are the same characteristics, that is, they have no characteristics at all. They share this in common, it's why philosophy can be said, metaphysics can be said either as the science of nothingness or the science of being. And when Nietzsche says in the Twilight of the Eidol, that being is the last perfume of a vanishing reality, he says exactly the same thing. So the very long and documented demonstration by Heidegger that metaphysics lead to the extension of the science of agate and traditional meaning, that is to me reason, is simply from an historical point of view obvious. So my question is, is there another possible meaning of metaphysics? After all, you can end very often this question was raised in conferences which I attended or it was an objection made to my analysis. The objection was, yes, this is the historical meaning of metaphysics. We may admit your argument, it's led to nihilism. Nevertheless, we can perhaps try to make metaphysics in another way and avoid this final catastrophe. And there are great examples of that. The first was Useless. Useless is very clear about that when he says that, let me see, it is at the end of the Cartesian Meditation, Section 64. He says that we shall try not to reject the metaphysics but only the old style of metaphysics and build up a new one, will be concrete and not abstract and so on. And there are many other discussions. The objection is that, in fact, in this attempt what was reached by the middle position of Useless in the EDM-1 in 1913 was, in fact, a new version of the transcendental philosophy in the system back to court. You can use the same argument with Heidegger himself. Heidegger, as I said in the beginning, started with the idea that the ontology, the castigal ontology, that of Suarez and so on, led to the conceptus abstractus universalis, Useless is an empty of being. And we should have more fundamental ontology instead. So in being in time, he made the attempt to build up a fundamental ontology. And in the Kanbuh, Kanbuh, that's probably their metaphysics, the conclusion of the last paragraph is to say not only the Dasein can start a new metaphysics, but the Dasein itself is a metaphysics. The Dasein is the transition, the meta between common being and the third being. But Heidegger himself, he has taken him 20 years, has given up this project to renew, make something under the name of pedagogical ontology. Because he said that the question of being was asked from the beginning wrongly by Aristotle and that we have to reformulate the question of being and we cannot do that using the same words. Because if you restore metaphysics to improve it, you will be trapped as a rest in the limitations of the beginning. So we have to shift out of metaphysics and even out of the question of being. Being has to vanish, as he said in the last text, in what he called Erasmus, which is commonly translated as Erasmus. So, same thing with Elinas. At the beginning Elinas was using metaphysics to support the primacy of ethics against totality and against the old concept of being in metaphysics. He started like that and at the end he has given up any re-used renewal of the word metaphysics. I know perfectly well that there are some distinguished French philosophers starting with Stanislaw Brotto, who in fact in Europe, this tradition, those European have developed this in North America. Stanislaw Brotto in 1981 suggests to keep not metaphysics but what he called the function meta, the operation meta. And in what is metaphysics it is the act to go beyond the meaning of meta, to go beyond, trans, trans as such. And this was taken over by publicer in 1993 in the review of metaphysics and morality, the paper for de la metaphysics à la morale. And followed by Jean Grèche, who was the former data director in 1996, la fonction meta dans l'espace contemporain du concept. He had that. Anytime there is a transgression when you go beyond, there is a renewal of metaphysics. It is too easy to be taken seriously for two reasons. Although I have great consideration for Stanislaw Brotto and we are frightened for a year. But the point is not there. You cannot use meta, which is a position, without the same across. You cannot go beyond if you don't know beyond what and if you don't know toward what. And this indeterminacy far from re-qualifying metaphysics is a repetition of the original indeterminacy of metaphysics, of the so-called metaphysics. And it just, we are back to the beginning. That is the first thing. Second is that trans as such, you can say metaphysics is the way to go beyond. The question is, is it possible to go beyond without knowing what you live and what you may get or reach? The whole question is not whether we are ready to go beyond. It is to see the goal, the region beyond, of that beyond. What is the new region? What is the new continent? So to this question, I have to confess that I have a possible answer, which is directly connected to the evolution of phenomenology. Phenomenology we observe was first the science of the object. Objectivity, objectivity, the objectivity science, based on the fact that we can constitute the phenomena into objects. This can be called better than objectivity, which is only a result. It can be called objectity, the fact to be constituted as an object. This is quite a serial determination, which can be expanded beyond the limits of physical science. This was done by Husser. Heidegger came and showed that there are phenomena which are not objects. They cannot become objects. For example, anxiety is a phenomenon crucial for the design and it is not an object. The phenomena which we can use cannot be described as an object. And so he said the final determination of the object is an entity designed as a way of being. This is as a being that the phenomenon can be described not always as an object. Levinas came and said, well, there are some phenomena which are not neither objects nor beings. All the phenomena related to the experience of the otherness of the other man. The otherness of the other man is to oversimplify, is ethical. Ethical phenomena are irreducible to the two first impressions of the phenomena. There is a last possible view, which can be traced back time to time in the background, not first view, in Husser when he says that the phenomena are given, they given, that the presence is given, given less. Or to Heidegger when he says that more radical than being in time, is the, it gives, it has gift. And in another way, in Levinas will use as well the gift. That is, the phenomena in last determination are always given. Given less is perhaps the last horizon. So, would we try to go beyond? It would be to go beyond back, back beyond objectivity, to be, and back beyond beingness to givenness. This may be a new starting moment. But as you guess, this is a working progress. I thank you for your attention. Thank you, Professor Mario. I think we've heard a masterly tour through the meanings of ontology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of the concept and the gradual emptying out of the concept of being onto the became the concept of nothingness and that became in later modern philosophy the account of the principles of knowledge instead of the account of the nature of all things. Professor Mario began by talking about the enhancement of the end of metaphysics in both Heidegger and Karna and then went on to talk in manner that I recognize very well that the Thomistic position on being was more diverse among the Thomists than among anybody else. And my own professor, later Cardinal Cano, Desmond Cano, reserved most of his iron for Gilson and Marie-Charles, the transcendental Thomists. But he had more time for Gallicule, Lagrange, and some of the other old realistic fullness. But anyway, this internal fight was really just part of a larger debate about the meaning of being, which continues to this day. I think it was Etienne Jean-Saint who said that philosophy tends to bury its undertakers. So almost everyone who has predicted the end of philosophy and the end of metaphysics has seen a new rebirth in a different form. And so it is today that we heard that we have moved to the recognition that perhaps the meta or the trans is really the return to giveness to the one thing that cannot be erased. Namely, the donation or the presence of meaning and giveness in our experience. I think we have time for some questions. Perhaps people put their hands up and stand up and I'll try and catch them. Yes, Father Vasile, who is a canty. This is a bad start, but thank you very much for your lecture. It wasn't boring at all, it was very exciting. So I had the impression that you focused your analysis of the historical understanding of metaphysics on the theorizing meaning of metaphysics. So metaphysics has a good thing of the object of speculation, speculative metaphysics. What about, speaking of the count, what about the attempt to develop a metaphysics as moral, for instance, or a metaphysics as a statics, beauty, line. Metaphysics has hermeneutics in miastras. We attempt to define metaphysics as transcendence. This transcendence that is not transcendence to an object, not activity, but to the transcending towards the source itself, the same capacity, that is something indefinable by itself. Would you like to talk about that? Indeed, I am aware of the attempt made by Kant to add to the speculative metaphysics the metaphysics is written. You can do that. You can call metaphysics many of the fields but it is not precise because when metaphysics was first used in this sort of philosophy it was about the question of being, theory. It was a name coined to identify the science remain anonymous in the gamma of Aristotle, the science of Thor, Leon, and gotoomans. And it developed on that field, question of being. So indeed there is no, nothing is forbidden and you can say I make, I attempt to make a metaphysics of art, a metaphysics of morals and so on but it is a metaphor. What you can say, for example, is the deletion of Levinas. I say that the first philosophy is not the question of being, it is the question of the other. That ethics is the first philosophy. This has perfect meaning but the name of metaphysics is confusing. So you can say that hermeneutics is the first philosophy. I think it is not true. It cannot be the first philosophy because it is the consequence of the analytic design. That's another problem but it makes sense to claim to do that. But any extended and losing use of metaphysics is confusing. So I would discourage this, this is a neo-logism. We have no need of neo-logism. It is confusing. There was another point about termism. What is very interesting in termism is that what I said, this was said in fact to some extent by G. So himself in Letra d'Escence. How was Letra d'Escence translated in English? Yes. It is a story told in that book. That is the classical, the metaphysical interpretation of Thomas by Neo-Thomist led to neo-nilism is very clear about that. And why Thomas himself has escaped this disaster? It's because there is no concept to sense this in Thomas Aquinas. There is the Ants-Commune which is not a concept to us or not the same as the other. And God is not submitted to the Ants-Commune. God is the Actus Estandini completely transcendent and different from the Ants-Commune. The Actus Estandini is not submitted to a concept by definition and remains completely unknowable. So Thomas is not involved in this titanic navigation. Thank you so much for your talk. I really appreciate it. It's a lot. I just have a question about this, whether it is that there is a concept of being in Thomas. In the beginning of de Veritate, de Veritate 1-1, there is this claim to say that just like there is a first in the order of judgment, the principle of contradiction, so too there is a first in the order of concepts, this is called the End Spring of Cognitum, which to say being as first known. I'm wondering in what respect, how exactly you understand this, given the claim that there is no concept of being in Thomas. I know this is not stressed specifically by readers like Josson and etc., but it has been stressed by different branches of Thomas. This is true because Thomas used to say that the End Spring is the first thing which comes to the intellect or to the imagination. But it is not a concept in so far as there is no grasp of the special content. The End Spring is our first move to access to anything. But it is not the rule for all the things which cannot be used for God, for instance. But it is crucial is that the conceptus and this, deus comprende the two in conceptum and this, according to Suarez. And God is not comprehended in the end spring. Though the text referred to is not without some ambiguity. But I would say this ambiguity strikes us all the more because we can reach this text back from the doctrine of the conceptus and this to come. It is an ambiguity for a modern reader, but not perhaps an ambiguity for Thomas as a contemporary reader because the strength of the conceptus and this was not yet here. Richard Carly. Thank you for the terrific talk. I just like to pick you up on what you said frequently about Don Skotis. And it's around the idea of the univocity of being as conceptual as maybe ultimately empty as a metaphysical concept. But then there is in Skotis the idea that the univocity of being which goes away from the divine to the human to the animal to the digital and manifests itself in some contrapuntal way with the hegeitas of each particular being which has huge concept. It's singular, it's unique, it's irreducible. It's got actually many of the phenomenological qualities that Levinas, Busser and you describe as the givenness of the gift. So that sort of paradox that the love can become unique in its unicity sort of redeems a notion of metaphysics that does give content and does give life and does give givenness to each particular thing. Yes, I know there is a double orientation of Skotis, mostly. We have the first access through the concept of conceptualities to everything. But none of those things is known as such according to the conceptualities. Instead, there is the hegeitas. Well, the difficulty of the hegeitas is that it remains unknown. We cannot, we have no access to the hegeitas. It's why the hegeitas could turn in the mere position of the minimalism. That's the point. And we have access to the hegeitas, to the irreducible identity with no equal example anywhere. Where are we at in Hopkins poetry? Others, but so it is beyond the grasp of intelligibility because it is beyond the usia. So it is a pure act and it is very difficult to say anything about an act. So I know there is another trick in Skotis is that the fact that at the end charity is beyond everything. But do we have a speculative doctrine of love and charity built enough in Skotis? This is the discussion I have had many times with the current specialist of Skotis. We disagree with that from the beginning and from his dissertation. Another question is a question to you. What is the development of hegeitas after Skotis in theory? Not that much as far as I know. That's why duns comes from duns. Uncomprehensible, incomprehensible, but you're right, it was Hopkins that mixed it up. But since Hopkins I think there is a new life. I'm going to the woman at the back here. Hi, thank you so much for your talk. Spell winding. I was wondering your treatment of the unity of being as perception emphasized the activity of perception. But I was just wondering, I know it also, the verb also has the sense to catch. It also has a passive sense as well. And what do you think of that in the unity? The concept has the meaning of what the griff grasping, what she's also saying catching, which is more passive. So can you not understand the concept of being in a passive sense? Is that a problem? Well, it is not about the passivity of activity. It is about the limitation of being by the fact of its reception. You can take the example of Skot to understand something. You have the griff, which is the active mastering grasping. And you have the passivity of intuition. But the passivity of intuition is finite. And so in both cases there is a delimitation, a reduction of the experience to the limits of freedom. So the passivity and activity is real difference, but it is not the core of the difficulty. It is the fact that being is reducible to what we can understand. And perhaps precisely as in Shakespeare there is more things under the sky than what philosophy can grasp. Perhaps this is true. In philosophy, in understanding, in culture, there is more things than what we can grasp. It is precisely why we have to try to grasp it. Featured is not always unborn. The claim to respect the future of knowledge is only in appearance, time to time, an indication of humility, of intellectual humility. The real intellectual humility is that we have to try to make sense of phenomena which are broader than we can imagine. James. I'm wondering if you could return to the distinction that you made between infinity and magnitude. Specifically, I'm wondering if, by your likes, moving forward with some conception of metaphysics, what if any role does infinity play? This is a very broad question. What is the exact meaning of infinity in the history of philosophy and the history of metaphysics? Very good question. If you understand infinity according to the divide of the conceptus and this by Skotus, infinity is included in metaphysics. But there is another tradition of infinity where the infinite, how to say that, makes the system of metaphysics explode. Because it is an exception. The best example of that is Descartes with the idea of infinity. And there was a lot of study about the two possible sources of the concept of infinity by Descartes. One coming from spiritual theology and the other coming from Skotus. In Descartes, the idea of infinity is that it is the only idea which cannot be produced by the sinking eye. Which is involved in itself to the sinking eye. So coming from the outside, that's why it makes it explode any closed system in Descartes. What is very striking is that this paradoxical understanding of infinity in Descartes was taken over explicitly by Lévinas. Lévinas explained that Descartes is a jesus. He has seen that there are phenomena where our noesis cannot reach the content of his thought with Lévinas. This is the ethical relation to the other. So the first of the other is our experience, not a mental experience, but an ethical experience of infinity. So in that case, we have the exteriority of this idea of infinity. How far between Lévinas and Descartes, there are other examples of infinity? This question, at least for this evening, will remain, if you don't mind, open. I think, thank you, Professor Marion. I know there is more time for questions, but perhaps it's time when we spoke a little bit about a reception. But we will have one now, where we can have a drink and so on. I'm reminded of one thing I cannot meet without mentioning Gadamer. Gadamer records in his philosophical lair yara, the philosophical apprenticeships, that Musserl was once asked after a long lecture, can you give an example? And Musserl's answer was, yes, consider an object in general. So we've seen where this concept has led to, and I think at this point we want to thank Professor Marion for adjourning to the reception, which is somewhere nearby. I'm not sure in general where somebody can go and find it. Report back.