But before we dive into the question of our ontological status, let us consider why
we should care to dip into these waters at all. The short answer is that there are
interesting connections between normative and evaluative status and ontological
status. These connections will be sketched in the next section. In the remaining
sections of this chapter, we’ll focus on whether we are fully real and on various routes
towards establishing our full reality.
6.2 Being and Value
A certain evaluative conception of ourselves and our place in reality presupposes that
we are fully real, and to the extent that our ontological status is dubitable so too is this
evaluative conception. I doubt that this evaluative conception can be lightly surren-
dered. But let’s begin byfirst describing it and then assessing how this self-conception
is connected to other normative and evaluative judgments.
We take ourselves to be beings that matter. We are persons, and personscount.
Among other things, this implies that personsare to be counted. If we are beings by
courtesy, a more objective ontological scheme would not countenance us. Funda-
mentally, we would not be counted. We would not count.
I do not think that this line of reasoning simply equivocates on what“are to be
counted”means but rather captures that a necessary condition for persons mattering
in the way that we take them to matter is that they are really to be counted, that is,
they are fully real.
To see this, let’s put a theological spin on the issue. Whether God cognizes beings
of reason is a thorny theological question unsurprisingly addressed by Suárez in his
comprehensiveMetaphysical Disputations.^1 On the one hand, we have knowledge of
beings of reason, and God is omniscient, so God must have knowledge of what we
have knowledge of.^2 Knowledge of a thing requires cognition of a thing, and so God
must cognize beings of reason. On the other hand, cognition of beings of reason is no
perfection, but rather manifests imperfection and weakness. As I noted in the
previous chapter, the explanation of why we think in terms of beings of reason (or,
as I would prefer to put it, why we think in terms of beings by courtesy) ultimately
rests on our essentialfinitude. God is essentially infinite and perfect, and hence God
does not cognize beings of reason. Suárez sides with the latter opinion: God cognizes
us as we are—finite, weak, imperfect—and this suffices for God to be attributed
knowledge of beings of reason even though God does not cognize beings of reason.
But God does not think in terms of beings of reason. They are beneath God’s
(^1) Specifically, Disputation 54, section 2, subsections 19–24 (Suárez 2005: 79–84).
(^2) Recall that beings of reason were extensively discussed in sections 5.4 and 5.5. Since I take beings of
reason to be a subspecies of beings by courtesy, I should at least note that I see the theological
considerations pondered by Suárez as being sufficiently general to cover all beings by courtesy rather
than a mere subset of them.