BEING AND INTELLIGIBILITY (Wipf & Stock October 3, 2017)
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 argues that all rational experience is of objects which are at root a unity (ground) of relations (predicates) which include sequence, magnitude, and proportionality. The central thesis of Being and Intelligibility is that the beingness of beings (“Being”) and intelligibility are strictly self-same and that, because nothingness (i.e., absolute not-Being) entails the absence of the rules of its own conception, it is self-contradictory and unintelligible, with the result that Being is logically necessary.
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.
Being and Intelligibility is available for purchase on Amazaon in all three formats by clicking on this link.
THE SPECULATOR’S EDGE (John Wiley & Sons, April 25, 1989)
The Speculator’s Edge is a comprehensive guide to speculation in all markets. The central thesis of the book is that in order for speculators to be successful in the markets in which they engage, they must play their useful economic function which is to take into their inventory goods when they are in greatest supply and to sell that inventory when it is in greatest demand. The chapters of the book are:
- Charlie Makes A Bundle in Silver
- Econ 101 – Economics for Poets and Speculators
- Hard Work Will Get You Nowhere If You Don’t Know What Your Job Is
- For Every Solution There Is A Problem
- If The Markets Really Walked Randomly, How Would They Ever Get Where They Are Going?
- Contrary Thinking About Contrary Thinking
- Marsha’s $12,000 Raincoat
- Money, The Only Commodity Than Counts
- A Previously Overlooked Use For Shirt Cardboard
- Never Play Poker With Cannibals
- Listen To Your Aunt Gertrude
- Buying The Apocalypse, Now
- Monday Is A Bad Day
- Dinosarus Versus Cockroaches
- Cliff Diving In Acapulco
- The Great Attractoer
- You Can Skin A Cat Or The Cat Can Skin You
- A Crash Of Principles
The Speculator's Edge is available in hardcover at amazon.com by clicking on this link.