Albert Pacelli

In "Being and Intelligibility," Albert Peter Pacelli embarks on an ambitious philosophical journey to resurrect metaphysics and offer a compelling alternative to the prevailing material reductionism of our time. Pacelli's central thesis, that Being and intelligibility are identical and arise from a supreme principle, the Logos, is a bold and thought-provoking proposition.
Pacelli masterfully critiques Cartesian dualism, arguing that it has led metaphysics astray. His articulation of "transcendent realism" is a fresh perspective that challenges the reader to reconsider the relationship between existence and understanding. The book's exploration of the nature of the human being (Dasein) as fundamentally moral and guided by the Logos offers a refreshing counterpoint to existentialist views.

While some arguments could benefit from further development and support, Pacelli's critiques of Brentano, Husserl, and Heidegger are insightful and well-articulated. His ontological argument for the existence of God, based on the logical impossibility of nothingness, is a unique and intriguing approach. The concept of Agape as the source of moral obligation provides a compelling ethical framework that resonates with many traditions.

"Being and Intelligibility" is not a light read. It requires careful attention and a willingness to engage with complex philosophical concepts. However, for those seeking a rigorous and intellectually stimulating exploration of metaphysics, this book is a rewarding endeavor. Pacelli's work is a testament to the enduring power of philosophical inquiry and a valuable contribution to the ongoing dialogue about the nature of reality, knowledge, and human existence.

... The speculator's edge: Strategies for profit in the futures markets. Post a Comment. CONTRIBUTORS: Author: Pacelli, Albert Peter. PUBLISHER: Wiley (New York). SERIES TITLE: YEAR: 1989. PUB TYPE: Book (ISBN 0471503606 ). VOLUME/EDITION: ...

... The speculator's edge: Strategies for profit in the futures markets. Post a Comment. CONTRIBUTORS: Author: Pacelli, Albert Peter. PUBLISHER: Wiley (New York). SERIES TITLE: YEAR: 1989. PUB TYPE: Book (ISBN 0471503606 ). VOLUME/EDITION: ...

Transcendent realism is a theistic philosophical system which holds that reality comprises physical and metaphysical entities, including morally conscious souls and God, as the creative and sustaining explanation of the being of beings ("Being") and moral obligation. The three central theses of the philosophy are that (1) Being and the intelligibility of Being are self-same, reducible to logic, and logically necessary, (2) absolute nothingness is incoherent because it entails the absence of the rules of its own conception, and (3) human rational experience is not materially reducible and includes direct and inferential experience of metaphysical Being. Some of the ideas developed in this summary are: (A) that the presuppositions of objective reason include a self-transcendent, knowing soul and the logicality of Being; (B) humankind is a self-concerned, substantive, psychosomatic unity whose Being is being-toward-God, whose soul exists not in, but alongside, the external world, and whose body is the physical manifestation of the soul's relation to the external world; (C) the logicality of Being implies the existence of the one and only God as its Supreme Principle and as Agape (unqualified good will), the definitionally good, self-intending source of the moral obligation of self-transcending souls; and (D) humankind's fundamental obligation, as the agent of God's self-intending good will and the being who brings morality into the world, is to act with agape to all.

This article claims that the generally-recognized, ongoing failure of modern philosophy is occurring under the operation of three major, but remediable, errors (the article calls " Grand Errors "), which naturally developed together in the working out of the philosophy of the subject. The first Grand Error is made by Rene Descartes at the outset of modern philosophy in initiating the philosophy of the subject without firmly establishing its substantial existence, which his flawed methodology of universal doubt precludes. Descartes's Cogito constitutes a radical turn away from scholasticism which, in the hands of St. Thomas Aquinas, represents a complete philosophical system that includes a theory of the unified and objective intentionality of individual consciousness, which, although no longer considered viable, addresses all its requisite elements. Although Descartes's motivation is to rescue Christianity from the Scientific Revolution, his abandonment of scholasticism is premature, and it starts philosophy down a dead-end road from which it has not yet returned. Immanuel Kant formalizes Descartes's failure to securely ground the self of cognition by characterizing it as the " I-think " , which for Kant is a mere " form of representation of thought " and " unity of apperception ". Kant then commits the second Grand Error by privileging the categories of understanding (which Kant asserts the mind brings to bear in the act and as a condition of cognition) over the logic embedded in them. Kant's intent is to limit knowledge to empirical objectivities and to allow for faith as an implication from the freedom that moral obligation presupposes. But Kant's ring-fencing of reason fails upon its own terms because logic is embedded not just in the categories but throughout the cognitive structure, including Kant's " I-think " and reason's intuitions of time and space and also its internal representations, and, therefore, logic cannot be a mere inference from the categories. Taken together, the effects of Descartes's and Kant's Grand Errors are to completely unground human rational experience, both on the side of the cognizing-I and on the side of its objects, and to render metaphysics impossible. Martin Heidegger radicalizes the first two Grand Errors by asserting that the " authentic-I " of Dasein is neither Cartesian " I-substance " nor Kantian " I-think " but merely subsists as part of the care structure of Dasein's Being-in-the-world and by making the third Grand Error, which is to privilege the being of beings (" Being ") over the logic (which the article shows) is co-determinant with it. Taken together, the effects of the three Grand Errors are to unground Being altogether and to render nothingness and non-Being (both of which are illogical and incoherent) meaningful and possible. The three Grand Errors clarify the path to restoration of metaphysics as a viable enterprise. The reestablishment of metaphysics depends first upon securing the two grounds of objective reason upon which all philosophy is based, namely, a persistent and self-transcending cognizing-I and the inherent logicality of Being.

Being and Intelligibility is a philosophical treatise on the meaning of being in its two senses. The book explores the most originary ontological question, namely, " what do we mean when we say that something is? " , and also the most originary existential question, namely, " what is the meaning of human experience? " , in each case, by reference to a fundamental principle of being and intelligibility, which, following the pre-Socratics, is called the " Logos ". The book posits that all rational experience is of objects which are at root a unity (ground) of relations (predicates) which include sequence, magnitude, and proportionality and hence are called " logical objects ". From this simple premise, the book develops its three central theses. The first is that the beingness of beings (called " Being ") and the intelligibility of Being are strictly self-same. The second is that, because nothingness (i.e., absolute not-Being) entails the absence of the rules of its own conception, it is self-contradictory and unintelligible and, therefore, Being is logically necessary. The third is that the fullness of human rational experience cannot be explained in materially reducible terms and requires recognition of the existence of transcendent reality. The book identifies the confused state of modern mainstream metaphysics as resulting from two fundamental errors. The first, which is laid at the feet of René Descartes, is the deconstruction of the unity of the human being into mind and body, which set modern philosophy down the parallel but ill-fated paths of rationalism and empiricism. The former imploded at its Hegelian end of " thought thinking about itself " and the latter expired upon the declaration of A.J. Ayer that metaphysical statements are meaningless because they are not verifiable. The second error, which is attributed initially to Immanuel Kant and is repeated by Martin Heidegger, is the failure to recognize the essential logicality of Being. In the case of Kant, who characterizes logic as a contentless abstraction from empirical categories of understanding, the scope of logic is limited to empirical experience and metaphysics is relegated to faith. In the case of Heidegger, Being holds privileged status over logic, with the results that Heidegger grants coherency to the possibility of nothingness, determines Being to ground all beings but itself to be ungrounded, and denies the necessity of Being. Being and Intelligibility investigates the implications of the essential logicality of Being, which resound throughout the full range of human rational experience. The book shows how logically conceived Being underpins the possibility of objective knowledge of an inherently ordered universe, the homogeneity of logic and mathematics, and the necessary existence of God, as the Supreme Principle of Being and Intelligibility and the ground of all Being including God itself. The book also shows how, from this epistemological and metaphysical context, human Being shows itself to itself from within itself as a substantive, persistent, morally obligated unity among the ordered manifold of its life experiences, whose essential Being is orientation towards God. In connecting Being and logic, Being and Intelligibility restores metaphysics to its proper place at the pinnacle of human understanding, which is precisely where reason, which (as Leibniz tells us) demands that the reasons for all that there is be rendered to it, insists that it must be.