Taxology: First Part

Description

Taxology is the logic of order. ‘Order’ is used in many legitimate senses: in the sciences, in the arts, in politics, and generally in philosophy: speculative and moral. Nevertheless, these are merely orders among beings, or between parts, principles, habits, and actions of beings. From these examples, one could conclude that order is just a perfection arising out of limitation, the mere mortar joining the genuine bricks of reality. For not one of these examples ascends to the question of that order belonging to being as such, which is indeed the subject of this investigation. To state the present question exactly: Is order coextensive with the real? Again, this is not a question of an order among parts or principles, but of something still more fundamental: Does being, precisely in its absolute simplicity and pure act, exhibit order? Indeed, it does.

Taxology is a new organon, a theory of predicaments extending beyond that of Aristotle into what were later termed the ‘transcendentals’ and ‘pure perfections’. Onto these taxological categories have been mapped the principles of traditional metaphysics, disclosing by this assignation the inherent possibilities of existing things. The taxology of being thus lends itself to a taxonomy of beings. Taxonomy starts from the Blessed Trinity, the Source of all order, and descends through the created order.