1267. Bracken evidently assumes . . .

SCANNED PDF

Bracken evidently assumes that the concept/term "activity" allows for a distinction between "particular activities" (77), or "specific forms of activity" that go with specific entities (such as the specific form of activity of "a Creator God active in the world" [89]), and "an underlying activity" (e.g., 82, 88), or "a foundational activity" (e.g., 88, 89), that is, in fact, "the most fundamental activity of all, the activity of be-ing or existing" (76). 

Not surprisingly, Bracken quite commonly speaks of "activity" in the second sense, not simply as "an underlying activity," but as "an underlying ontological activity" (e.g., 75, 78, 80, 82; d. 84, 92; italics added). Thus, while he does not appear to make explicit use of the other term of Heidegger's distinction between the "ontological" and the "ontic," Bracken in effect distinguishes between the many ontic activities inseparable from particular entities (cf. 84, 89) and the one ontological activity that is "constitutive of the existence and interrelated activity of the various kinds of entities in the world" (91; cf. 84, where he speaks of "activity as such," or "pure activity," which "escapes the power of perception" and is "only perceived when it is instantiated in something which is active or someone who is active"). 

But now what is it to speak thus of "an ontological activity" if it is not to commit the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, which consists in tacitly allowing to the ultimate that as such is and must be merely abstract-—indeed, the abstraction of abstractions (="the universal of universals characterizing ultimate matter of fact")—and, therefore, can be actual only in its accidents, an eminent actuality other than that belonging solely to the accidents themselves? 

If such speaking is not to be thus fallacious, this can only be because one makes clear again and again that there neither is nor can be any such thing as "an ontological activity," since anything properly said to be "ontological" can only be extremely abstract, while the only "activities" there can be are concrete and, therefore, properly, "ontic," not "ontological." In other words, one would need to make clear that all talk of "an ontological activity" is, at best, an improper and misleading way of speaking of what is properly referred to as "the internal principle of existence and activity for everything that is" (78, 85). A "principle of existence and activity," which, incidentally, could not be the "principle" of either without being the "principle" of both, since "entity" (or "existent") and "activity" belong together (according to "the ontological principle"!), is, on the face of it, something more or less abstract, while "an activity," even an "underlying," "foundational," or "most fundamental" activity, is and must be something concrete. Consequently, all that one could possibly mean by speaking improperly and misleadingly of "an ontological activity" is an extremely abstract aspect of any and all ontic activities, which may indeed be said to be real and even necessary and, in this sense, properly a "principle" of all existence and activity, but which itself can be said to be "an activity" only by tacitly committing the fallacy of treating a mere abstraction as though it were something concrete.

But far from making clear that his language is thus improper and misleading, Bracken is evidently completely innocent that it is. In fact, he has trouble consistently making even the distinctions that he himself introduces as important—as is clear when he allows himself to speak of "the Infinite" not only as "the unchanging ground or ultimate source of all the multiple activities of entities in the world" (89), but also as "their ultimate cause raison d'etre" (91), thereby ignoring what he himself characterizes as the "key distinction between cause and ground" and his insistence elsewhere that, although "the Infinite" can be said to be the "ground" of "the finite," it cannot be said to be its "cause" (147, n. 30; cf. 21, 32, 146, n. 12).

25 September 1995