Participation: A Descending Road of the Metaphysical Cognition of Being

When we see in the world the fact that there are many beings, and we indicate that the particular beings exist in a compositional way, we face the task of learning about a new problem: how can we define and determine the relations between beings and between the elements within a being? Although the theory of participation has roots that go back to Plato, and so to a philosophy in which the pluralism of being was rejected and which accepted an identity-based conception of being, participation finds its ontological rational justification only (and ultimately) in the pluralistic and compositional conception of being. With the description of participation as a “descending road” in the cognition of being, we are restricting ourselves to the presentation of how participation is understood in realistic metaphysics (while we shall leave aside the history of the question). We will show the aspects of participation that provide a foundation for wisdom-oriented cognition, and we will show the specific character of participation-oriented cognition as a “descending road.”