A Philosophical Happy Hour on why we should care about angelic beings and seek understanding of their existence.
Nearly every culture in human history has voiced belief in supernatural beings—forces beyond our reckoning that possess powers to shape and change the world. Indeed, any honest inquiry into the world, the cosmos, shows us wonders beyond our comprehension. But today, in our age of unfounded suspicion, many might ask: “Why care about angels? Isn’t that a silly belief for children, like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny?”
Even if they were taken as serious beings, many might protest: what good is this knowledge? What can I do with it? Can I even know whether they exist, let alone what they are? Does it make any difference to me?
Yet angels were taken with the utmost seriousness by the scholastic thinkers—not as a matter of decadent logical or dialectical exercise, nor even as a purely theological matter (though certainly theological in origin)—but as a reality worth knowing (inasmuch as we can) for they were understood to be just as much a part of the cosmos as are plants and planets, and in themselves a more important one. “He who has not meditated on the angels”, wrote Jacques Maritain, “will never be a perfect metaphysician.”[1]
Imagining Unimaginable Experience
“How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” We have all likely heard this expression before—as one of disdain for scholastic metaphysics. Yet it is a dismissal which shows its very own ignorance. To quote John Deely, himself quoting another:[2]
My learned British friend Christopher Martin tells me convincingly that this form of the question is misstated, for the head of a pin already occupies space. The correct form of the question concerns the point of a pin, inasmuch as a point as such, ideally, is precisely distinguished by having no parts whatever outside of parts, that is to say, no quantification at all. “You might as well ask how many angels can dance in a football field as on the head of a pin,” Martin insists.
But, despite the need to rephrase the question—and to squash the lazy dismissal—it remains difficult for us, as human beings, to comprehend any being which has a mode of existence in no way reliant upon instantiation in place. Even though we are spiritual beings ourselves, our spiritual mode of existence—realized in the intellectual dimension of our life—exists inseparably from the enmattered dimension. Put otherwise, all our experience of knowledge and communication occurs necessarily together with the experience of sensation. Even our most abstract notions require some image—a sound, a texture, a vague feeling—in order for us to grasp their meaning.
How then can we conceive an existence, a life, without such sensory connection? Let us therefore ask:
- What are angels? Why are they called “separate substances”? How can we know them?
- How do angels have experience? What kinds of experience do they have?
- What should be made of our imagined representations of angels? What purpose do these serve?
- How many “kinds” of angels are there? Why does their hierarchy matter?
- Why does any of this matter for us human beings? Do we understand ourselves better by a study of the angels?
Looking Heavenwards
Join us this Wednesday (1 October 2025, from 5:45-7:15+ pm ET)—situated in the Catholic liturgical calendar between the Feasts of the Archangels (September 29) and of the Guardian Angels (October 2) as we look to elevate our minds to the least consideration of some of the highest things in all creation.
And if anyone wishes to get a crash course introduction to angelology, this series by the Aquinas Institute is wonderful!
[1] Maritain 1959: Degrees of Knowledge, 4th edition, translated by Gerald Phelan, 221.
[2] 2002: “The Semiosis of Angels”, 223-24.