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Have a Great and Reflective Summer!

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What I’m Watching: Jacob Berman and Dr. Robert M. Price on the Parousia

(2/2) What I’m Watching: Jacob Berman and Dr. Robert M. Price on the Parousia

Most Adults’ Beliefs about Humanity and the Supernatural Stray from Biblical Teaching

What I’m Watching: Jacob Berman and Dr. Robert M. Price on Christian Writers Rewriting the Old Testament to Create Stories About Jesus

Happy Secular 4th of July to my American Friends!

AND NOW, THE CONCLUSION:

Aristotle talks about apophantic relations to the world, “taking something AS something else.” For example, I may hear a living thing at my feet in the forest only to look down and see I mis-took rustling dead leaves in the wind AS a living thing. When the process breaks down it dis-closes what is really already going on inconspicuously. Hegel gives the example of the tearing of the sock dis-closing the hidden category of unity AS a lost unity. So, Aristotle notes Being is analogical, which we secretly assume as we are constantly employing examples and analogies, counter examples and counter analogies as the vehicles through which discuss and analyze reality, a context that is really manifested when someone employs a poor example or poor analogy.

We’re pointing to a deep continuity running from Aristotle through Hegel (and implicitly into Heidegger) about how we encounter and disclose reality. The “as” structure is central.  Aristotle’s Apophantic “As:”  In De Interpretatione and the Metaphysics, Aristotle describes the apophantic logos (assertoric speech) as involving the structure of taking something as something. This is not just linguistic; it’s how our understanding relates to the world. Our forest example is perfect:

• You hear rustling → you immediately take it as a living animal (a pre-reflective interpretation).
• When you look down and see dead leaves in the wind, the interpretation breaks down.
• In that moment of breakdown, the true character of what is happening (and what was already inconspicuously going on) is dis-closed.

This “as” structure reveals that our access to Being is always interpretive and mediated. We never encounter raw sense data; we encounter things as this or that.

Hegel’s Dialectical Disclosure: Hegel takes this further with his example of the torn sock. The sock only reveals its unity (as a category and as a practical whole) precisely when that unity is broken. The tear makes the previously inconspicuous unity present as lost. This is classic Hegelian dialectic: negation and contradiction are not mere failures — they are the way hidden determinations and categories come into explicit view. The breakdown is productive.

Connection to Analogy of Being: This is why our earlier observation about our constant use of examples, analogies, counter-examples, and counter-analogies is so sharp. We do this because:

• Being is analogical (pros hen equivocity). We navigate reality by relating things to focal meanings through proportional similarities.
• Analogies are extended “as” structures: “School is as a sports team” or “School is as a garden.”
• When the analogy works well, it lets us see certain aspects of the thing clearly while keeping other aspects in the background (inconspicuous, ready-to-hand).
• When someone offers a poor analogy, it breaks down in revealing ways — exactly like the rustling leaves or the torn sock. The failure discloses the limits of that particular focal meaning or frame. It forces us to adjust our “as” structure.

This process is so natural we rarely notice we’re doing it. We argue by constantly proposing, testing, and refining interpretive “as” relations. Good thinkers are especially sensitive to when an analogy starts to tear.

Ties to Later Thinkers:

• Heidegger radicalizes this: The hammer is normally inconspicuous (ready-to-hand). Only when it breaks do we see it explicitly as a tool with properties (present-at-hand). The fourfold is his attempt to describe the richer, non-reductive “as” structure in which things can gather world.
• Lakoff’s frames are a cognitive-scientific descendant: Frames are habitual “as” structures. A bad political analogy fails because it activates the wrong deep frame, producing a jarring mismatch (like mistaking leaves for an animal).

In the school uniform debate, when one person says “It’s like a team jersey” and another counters “No, it’s like forcing all plants into identical pots,” both are offering interpretive “as” structures. The back-and-forth of examples and counter-analogies is the dialectical process by which we try to disclose what schooling really is — not as a bare substance, but in its analogical, relational, world-gathering reality.

The fact that breakdowns (bad examples, strained analogies) are so illuminating confirms Aristotle’s insight: we are always already moving within the analogy of Being, even when we don’t thematize it.  This feels like one of the deepest reasons why philosophical (and everyday) dialogue works the way it does.

Reason is going to play an important part in how beings appear to us (the “AS” structure in apophansis). As the principle of reason notes, beings are going to appear proportional from vague to perfectio (complete) depending on the person’s level of reason in relation to the beings. As Heidegger notes, in Leibniz’s sense, a ratio sufficiens, a sufficient reason, isn’t at all a ground capable of supporting a being so that it doesn’t straightaway fall into nothing. A sufficient reason is one that reaches and offers to beings that which puts them in the position of fulfilling their full essence, that is, perfectio. So, a right angle triangle is going to appear very differently to a child who has not yet learned her shapes vs a teenager in geometry class vs a geometry professor researching the Pythagorean theorem. Similarly, degrees of practical reason dictate the appearing of moral phenomena. A crocodile or certain mentally challenged people may not be morally responsible for their actions like normal humans, vs a young child who has a limited sense of altruism and responsibility, vs an ethics professor researching the holocaust. Schelling says only humans have evil as a possibility, that they can fall beneath animals in terms of depravity.

This is a rich and coherent extension.  We are highlighting how reason itself modulates the “as” structure in apophansis — how beings show up for us. The appearing of a being is not uniform or objective in a flat sense; it is proportional to the level of reason (theoretical and practical) brought to it by the perceiver. This creates a graded disclosure: from vague and partial to more complete (perfectio).

Heidegger on Leibniz’s Principle of Sufficient Reason:

Heidegger’s reading in The Principle of Reason is pivotal here. Leibniz’s principium rationis sufficientis (“nothing is without reason”) is usually taken as a demand for causal explanation or grounding. Heidegger reinterprets it more primordially:

A sufficient reason is not merely a ground that prevents a being from falling into nothing. Rather, it is that which lets the being be what it is in its full essence — its perfectio.

Reason, in this deeper sense, is what brings beings into their proper fulfillment and allows them to appear more fully. The “as” structure is therefore not static. A being appears as more (or less) of itself depending on the richness of reason that meets it.

Our Examples Illuminated The Triangle:

• To the young child: It appears vaguely as “a pointy shape” or something to color.
• To the geometry student: It appears as a figure with specific properties, angles summing to 180°, subject to proofs.
• To the advanced geometer: It appears as part of a deeper network — perhaps linked to Pythagorean theorem, non-Euclidean spaces, or even philosophical questions about mathematical ontology.

The being (the triangle) doesn’t change, but its disclosure deepens proportionally with the observer’s reason.

Moral Phenomena:

This scaling is even more striking in the practical realm:

• A crocodile acts according to instinct; it has no moral “as” structure available to it.
• A young child has a nascent sense of fairness or kindness but limited responsibility and foresight.
• A reflective adult (or especially an ethics scholar confronting the Holocaust) experiences moral phenomena with far greater depth — seeing choices, systemic evil, radical responsibility, the banality or banality-defying nature of evil, etc.

The same action (harm, help, indifference) appears with radically different moral weight and texture depending on the level of practical reason.

Schelling’s Radical Insight:

Schelling complements this powerfully in On the Essence of Human Freedom (1809). Only the human being, because of its unique position at the junction of nature and spirit (or ground and existence), has the capacity for evil proper — not mere instinctual aggression (like animals), but a deliberate inversion of the proper order of ground and existence. Humans alone can fall below animals in depravity precisely because they can rise so much higher. This is why moral evil has a specifically human depth. A sufficiently developed reason opens not only greater good but also the real possibility of its privation or perversion.

Tying It Together:

This graded, proportional appearing fits naturally with:

• Aristotle’s analogy of being (pros hen): Beings show up in relation to a focal sense, but that relation itself varies in clarity and depth.
• The apophantic “as”: Breakdowns and refinements in our “taking-as” are how we ascend (or descend) the scale of disclosure.
• Heidegger’s fourfold: A thing gathers world more richly when met with attuned, poetic reason rather than calculative enframing.
• Even Lakoff’s frames: Deeper, more developed frames allow richer metaphorical mappings and better analogical reasoning.

In all these traditions, reason is not a detached calculator but the very medium through which beings unfold their essence to us, and through which we are capable of participating more fully in reality.

Our point also carries an ethical implication: cultivating reason (theoretical, practical, and perhaps meditative) is not just intellectual self-improvement — it is a way of letting beings appear more completely and responding to them more adequately.

“Appearing As” is fundamental. A mansion might appear as houseness incarnate, houseness being merely present in the average house, or deficient in the dilapidated shack. However, to the next person the mansion may appear gawdy or the shack quaint/rustic. This does not mean the form of houseness is an actual entity appearing through the various buildings in various degrees (parousia), but rather this “appearing” is what the encounter “is like.” Similarly, Niagara Falls may appear as a wonder of the world to the tourist, as background scenery to the regular commuter, and as noise pollution to the local resident nearby. On the other hand, the resident next door may experience the falls as enchanting.

This is a very nuanced and important clarification.  “Appearing As” is indeed fundamental, and our examples illustrate the delicate balance beautifully. We’re occupying a sophisticated middle position: acknowledging a kind of graded participation or analogy in how things show up, while firmly rejecting a crude Platonic realism (where the Form of Houseness would be an actual entity literally present to varying degrees in different buildings).

The Structure We’re Describing

• The mansion can appear as “houseness incarnate” — a fuller, more exemplary realization of what a house can be (grandeur, order, shelter, beauty).
• The average house appears with houseness more ordinarily present.
• The dilapidated shack appears as deficient in houseness.

Yet this appearing is not the parousia (full presence) of an independent Form shining through matter in measurable degrees. Instead, it is how the encounter unfolds for a particular perceiver with their current level of reason, attention, mood, history, and concerns.  Our Niagara Falls examples drive this home even more clearly:

• Tourist → Wonder of the world (sublime, extraordinary).
• Daily commuter → Background scenery (taken for granted, ready-to-hand).
• Nearby resident (one case) → Noise pollution (intrusive, annoying).
• Nearby resident (another case) → Enchanting (daily source of awe or calm).

The same entity can legitimately appear in dramatically different ways without any of the appearances being simply “wrong.” The variability comes from the relational meeting between the being and the perceiver’s disposition, reason, and horizon.

Philosophical Placement.  This view sits comfortably between several poles:

• It retains something of Aristotle’s pros hen analogy and apophantic “as” — things appear with reference to a focal sense (houseness, sublimity, utility), but that reference is always mediated and perspectival.
• It echoes Heidegger’s insight that beings disclose themselves differently depending on our mode of engagement (poetic vs. technological, attentive vs. distracted).
• It avoids strong Platonic metaphysics (no independent Forms with literal presence) while still allowing for normative grading — some appearances can be richer, more adequate, or more revelatory than others.
• It aligns with the proportional appearing we discussed earlier: the depth and quality of the “as” depends on the perceiver’s cultivated reason and openness.

This also explains why analogies and examples in debate are so powerful yet contested. When we say “School uniforms are like team jerseys,” we are proposing a particular “appearing as.” Someone else may counter that they appear as stifling conformity. Both can be genuine disclosures depending on the angle of vision, and the debate becomes a negotiation over which “as” better fulfills the essence (perfectio) of education in a given context.

The key insight we’re pressing is that appearing is relational through and through, but not arbitrarily subjective. There remains room for better and worse seeings — for reason to help beings appear more fully or authentically.  This feels like a mature synthesis. It preserves wonder and variability without falling into relativism.