Introduction

Review. To be a real being means to be actively present

to the community of other existent real beings.

Self-communicating, self-expressive action is therefore,

the first transcendental property of real being.

Transcendental property of being meant an attribute that can be truly predicated of every real being, precisely insofar as it is real existent.

Activity is the outer face of being, the way it expresses

itself.

 We look more deeply into the inner structure of every

being to see what constitutes it as such, so that without it nothing can qualify as real. What first reveals itself to our reflection is the property of unity.
Every being to be a being, must be internally one, must

cohere together to form an undivided whole.

The Meaning of Unity as a Property of Being

Unity Is not numerical unity, but something intrinsic within every being, called ontological unity Ontological unity as a property of being signifies the inner cohesion of something by which it constitutes an undivided whole.

 St. Thomass definition: One=that which is

undivided in itself and divided from every other.

It coheres together within itself as a single undivided

whole, But is distinct in its being from every other being.

This means it is itself, but is not any other being.

 How the concept is discovered explicitly.

1.
2. 3. 4. 5.

We know this being. Then that being. Then this being is not that being is separate or divided from that one. Then, each one though divided off from every other, remains undivided in itself. Thus, every real being is undivided in it and divided from each other.

 To be is to cohere internally as an undivided whole,

distinct or divided from every other.

Undivided does not mean indivisible. It means that at present it is actually undivided, though it may be potentially divisible.

Every Being Insofar as It is a Being is One

Argument: Unity is so primary and fundamental a property so we have to resort to an indirect or negative form of proof by showing that the opposite is simply unintelligible or incoherent. (This is a proof by a negative thoughtexperiment.)

thought-experiment

Think of some real being that is not in fact internally united, not an undivided whole, made up of parts that are divided off from each other, not cohering together as a unity

 In such a case, there is no longer any objective ground

for calling it this being, an it, but only a multitude of thises and thats. There is no something that exists in the singular. Furthermore, if we examine each of these parts in turn and if to be this part does not require it to be one, then each part immediately breaks down into a multiplicity of further parts, of thises and thats.

 Each of these I turn breaks down into many parts, and

so on in an endless regress; there is no way of stopping the disintegration until we reach an infinite dust, so to speak, of pure multiplicity, where nothing holds together to be a distinct something at all. But pure multiplicity with no inner cohesion at all is indistinguishable from pure nothingness, no-thingness(?).

 Conclusion: wherever we find a real being, it must

cohere internally as a unity, an undivided whole, or else it will crumble into an endlessly fragmenting dust or pure multiplicity. To be real is to be one. The same rule holds even for the world of thought:
Nothing can be thought at all unless it is somehow

unified to form a single unit of thought.

Unity as an Analogous Attribute

Since unity as a transcendental property of every being must extend across the vast spectrum of different levels and kinds of beings, its meaning must be analogous in each application, as in the case of being itself. It must include all forms of unity.
New Challenge. Identifying unity as an analogous property raises a new problem from the general theory of analogy. In the chapter on analogy it was concluded that every properly analogous concept expresses some activity common to the various subject it is predicated of, but performed differently by each according to its specific nature.

 How can unity be understood as an activity?

Unity reveals itself as, like being itself, a

positive energy by which each being actively coheres within itself holding its parts together if it has anyin a dynamic, self-unifying act. To be one is not a static state or given, but an active doing, an active ongoing achievement of each real being, carried on by each according to its own distinctive mode of being.

 Modern science has helped us to see how this is true at

every level of material being.

Unity of the atom is not a static given but is held

together by a very powerful energythe strong force so powerful that if it is broken apart by splitting the atom an enormous amount of energy is released.

Example. The energy powering the atomic bomb

 In every living organism the unifying central

form actively holds together the various cells and chemicals, organizing and controlling them to work together for the good of the whole organism.
When this central controlling energy grows weaker, the parts breaks away, returns to their own autonomy of being and action, and death resultsthe disintegration of living being as a unified whole, as a being.

 In spiritual being with no physical parts,

its unity is not static but a self-cohering activity through self-embracing love.

Triune God of Christian revelation, the

Holy Spirit is the active divine energy of love that is the bond of unity between Father and Son.

 This dynamic act of self-cohesion will be expressed

proportionallysimilarly but diversely, according to the nature and level of each subject exercising the unifying power of being as act of existence.

Practical Application: the Integration of Human Personality. General law of all being: to be anything real it is necessary to be one, integrated. Our basic ontological unity as a soul-body whole is a gift to us at birth. Psychological unity is not given us readymade.
It is something we must work at and achieve by our

own conscious action. No one can be a genuine person unless s/he is an integrated person.

 How does one develop such an integrated

personality?
The unity of any ongoing operation lies in

the form of the goal or end the agent is seeking to achieve. Hence, to become a truly integrated (unified) personality, we must deliberately

Unify our multiple actions under integrating goals or ends-in-view for each set of activities.

Set up our own scale of priority of goals and values to organize all these projects and subordinate lower goals to a higher, more important ones, And finally, integrate our whole life under one great dominant goal.

St. Thomas advises it should be one great love.

 In a word, to be fully developed, integrated

personality ones life must take the form of a journey, unified by a final destination or a goal. To be a good story, a meaningful story, it must be a unified story.

 Conclusion. At every level of being, from lowest to the

highest, the law of unity holds: whatever truly is must be on.

Intrinsic Unity
It is a unity within the very being of a single real being, such that
It exists (is actively present) with a single act of

existence And acts as a unit, controlling its actions from a single center of action. This is the strong meaning of unity, the ontological unity that is proper to every real being, constitutive of its very being, making it truly a single being both in existence and in action.

 Every such being, if composed of parts,

is not just the sum of its parts, but exists

and acts as a distinctive whole, Manifesting characteristic properties belonging to the whole as such, that is not merely the sum of the properties of the parts by themselves.

 Ex. Hydrogen and oxygen by themselves are highly flammable, but eh new composite being formed out of themthe molecule of waterhas the opposite property of not being flammable at all.

 The only examples of being with intrinsic unities are natural beings (beings formed by nature).
We cannot create new ones; we can only bring together beings already existing in nature which by their own innate active properties have the power to combine under the right conditions to constitute new natural unities, new types of real beings.

Extrinsic (per accidens) Unity

is a unity not within the very being of a single real being but rather between two or more distinct real beings, each with its own distinctive act of existence and center of action, but joined together by bound of relations.

Examples of unifying relations:

Relations of common purpose or end-in-view to be

attained by collaboration of the members, e.g., army, a football team, a college relations of common location relations of common time

 artifacts, created principally by human beings,

and also by animals, are collections of simpler beings joined together to serve a common purpose imposed by an outside agent for its own end, but possessing no intrinsic unity of their own as existing and acting wholes.

 Artifacts
possess no intrinsic unity of their own in either

existence or action no characteristic active properties of the whole in itself apart from the purposes we have imposed on them from without.
Whereas, in a living organism:

There is a single center of action which controls their various activities from within, so these acts are acts of the whole

 In artifacts, there is no such controlling center,

no such activity as a whole.

Ex. The wood in a ship does its own thing, the metal its own thing, the engine with its own motions.

The only unity is the unity of order imposed by

us on all these independent entities so that the sum of their various actions ends up with a result that serves our independent purposes.

Ex. There is no action of the chair as such, as a unity, but only its combined actions which serve my purpose, as something to sit and support me.

Criteria for Distinguishing Intrinsic from extrinsic Unity.

Basic criterion: it manifests by its

action that it acts as a unit, from a single controlling center of action.

Not easy to discern this.

 Test: if parts are removed from the whole

being examined, do these continue to act in the same way, exhibit the same properties outside the whole as they did inside?
If yes, unity is extrinsic. If no, it is intrinsic.

 Stones. Chip off pieces and they continue to

exhibit the same chemical properties by themselves. Once you reach the level of molecules and try to break them into atoms, active properties of these parts dramatically change. This is a sign that the highest level of intrinsic unities within the extrinsic unity of the stone is reached.

 Is the universe an intrinsic unity

(=pantheism or monism)?

 No. if it is, all moral responsibility would be destroyed, since all actions would be controlled by a single higher center of action, and we could no longer control them by our own individual wills, i.e., be free, or have any individual moral responsibilitywe could not be persons then.

Materialist Reduction
One serious consequence of

ignoring or denying this crucial distinction is the temptation to Reductionism.

Reductionism is the doctrine that all the so-called higher levels of being are nothing but more or less complex collections or systems of the lowest level material elements, i.e., atoms, or whatever else science discovers as more fundamental.

I, Carl Sagan, am nothing but a collection of atoms, bearing the name.

 Ontological status of all is

the same: all so called beings are nothing but collections, aggregates, of the lowest elements which are material. All the qualitative levels of beings, the traditional hierarchy of being are collapsed into the lowest.

Response. Fundamental flaw in this metaphysical view: it does not do justice to one fundamental type of evidence which is the basic ground for affirming different qualitative levels of being, namely,

 Appearance under appropriate conditions of

new compositions of simpler elements which have irreducibly new properties and characteristic activities that are more than the sum of the properties of its simpler components. A new whole has appeared, which now has new properties proper to the whole as such,

 This new whole exercises its own specific causal

influence on its parts, organizing them, and controlling them to produce new effects not possible to them by themselves or as mere sum of simpler properties. All intrinsically immaterial activities of the human intellect and will transcend the powers of any nature whose parts are materially extended in space and tied down to it. So too for the activities so of the living compared to non-living entities.

 Characteristic unified action flows from the

nature of every real being, and is the only reliable manifestation of it to us.
Any philosophical theory that denies, ignores

condemns itself as a fatally flawed philosophical explanation.

Basic recurring problem in the relations between philosophy and science.

A need to balance these two perspectives in

analyzing a complex being that has an intrinsic unity and yet includes a diversity of parts:
A. Whole-to-part type of analysis. The unity of

the whole must be recognized that dominates and organizes the activities of the parts exercising a positive causal influence downward to its parts.

B. Part-to-whole type analysis. The real

distinctness and diversity of the part with the resultant upwards causal influence of the parts to the whole must also be recognized

The tension between these two-way

flow of causality must be held in balance.