The Concept in Thomism

John Frederick Peifer

• Publisher: Barakaldo Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781839743641
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Of all the problems, or rather mysteries, with which philosophy deals, those concerned with the nature and objectivity of human knowledge hold a privileged position.In The Concept in Thomism this problem, stemming from Descartes, is clearly and forcefully stated. Thus, from the very beginning, the reader is made aware of the central difficulty faced by any theory of knowledge.The Cartesian and Kantian phases in the development of a satisfactory theory are briefly but adequately described. Then, John Peifer sets forth the reconciliation of both the immanence and transcendence of knowledge as explained by the realistic traditions originating with Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.The differences between mere physical and psychic changes and the conditions required for knowing are explained in detail. The often misunderstood doctrine of the species, its nature and necessity, is wonderfully developed and shown to be a cognitional necessity.The most important part of this work, however, is concerned with the role of the concept in knowledge. The correct notion of the objective concept, so long neglected, is shown to be the key for a realistic philosophical doctrine. This study alone makes The Concept in Thomism a work of exceeding importance for future philosophers and thinkers.

Chapter I—STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

A. The Problem

THE answer given to the problem of human knowledge serves as a key to any philosophical synthesis. Through his resolution of this problem, a philosopher either opens wide the door of his thought upon the whole of reality or locks himself within the prison of his own mind. If human thought is independent of objective reality and is itself productive of the content of thought, then the door is closed to realism and the barren isolation of idealism is invited. If human knowledge is set within the confines of sense knowledge, then all strictly intelligible realities, such as causes, substances, souls, God, are simply ruled out of existence. If human intellectual thought so transcends sense experience that it is completely independent of that inferior sort of knowledge, then the thinker is partially locked within himself and is confronted with a host of false and foolish problems—such as, how is one to demonstrate the reality of sensible material things. It is only when those realities are unreasonably reasoned out of existence that they need to be unreasonably reasoned back into existence.

Even a slight error in the answer given to any of the several questions involved in the problem of knowledge inevitably assumes enormous proportions according as its implications are more and more unfolded. An error lurking in the roots of a system of thought does not become a truth simply by being evolved. It remains an error; and if thought is consistent, that consistency can mean only a more intricate enmeshing in error. Usually it requires a mistake in logic to produce correct conclusions from false premises, but false conclusions can be drawn from false premises with strict logical accuracy. In this way, integral and elaborate systems of thought can be unravelled in which the rules of logical procedure are rigidly adhered to, and yet the entire system can be invalidated by an error at its base. Hence, the demand for cautious and careful thinking in dealing with this fundamental problem is pressing.

In his valuable study, The Unity of Philosophical Experience, Professor Gilson proves an extremely interesting point in this connection. He remarks that any attempt on the part of a philosopher to avoid the logical conclusions of his position is destined to failure. “What he himself declines to say will be said by his disciples, if he has any; if he has none, it may remain eternally unsaid, but it is there, and anybody going back to the same principles, be it several centuries later, will have to face the same conclusions.”{3}

Caution is further suggested by the difficulty of the problem. Cajetan shows his awareness of the difficulty when he writes “of this difficult and laborious (arduus) foundation of a great part of metaphysics and natural philosophy.”{4} The danger of failure to grasp the true complexity of human knowledge and to over-simplify it is always present. The reduction of human knowledge to the dimensions of sensation quickly and easily disposes of a complex problem. The realization that sense knowledge is true knowledge, but that its function in distinctly human knowledge is ministerial only to a superior intellectual assimilation of reality, enormously complicates the matter. A discussion of sense knowledge, however thorough, must be a partial discussion in any consideration of human knowledge. A treatise on human intellectual knowledge which ignores sense knowledge must likewise be a partial treatment. The difficulties and complexities involved in the study counsel careful treatment; an easy, simple answer solves only a single feature of a complex problem.

The difference between things and the knowledge of things, between those capable of knowledge and those who are incapable of it, is an extremely real difference. The diversity is not like that which obtains between one physical being and another physical being. The difference between a stone and a plant is great and significant, but it is as no difference at all when compared with that which is present between a non-knowing being and a knowing being. The utmost diligence must be employed towards grasping this latter difference, not only because of the subtilty of it, but likewise “since the conclusions of many questions depend upon it. How foolish have they been, who treating of sense and sensible, of the intellect and the intelligible, and of intellection and sensation, judge of them as of other things. And you learn to elevate your thought, and to enter another order of things.”{5}

Numerous mistakes concerning knowledge have found their way into modern and contemporary thought. That there is something gravely amiss is obvious to anyone who is acquainted with the multiple particular species of philosophical thought, which fall under the general labels of realism and idealism, empiricism and rationalism. Since they contradict one another, all certainly cannot be true.

One would be sanguine indeed, and certainly overly ambitious, should he aspire to a mending of all differences and to drawing of all warring contenders to unanimity. In view of the persistent need for concord among serious thinkers, if for no other reason than that of economy of time and effort, endeavors towards agreement are not, however, without their merits. The present work aims first to bring into relief the basic antithesis which obtains between the Thomist tradition and what may be called the Cartesian tradition, and secondly to show the reasonable realism of the Thomist tradition.

The radical point of divergence is simply this: do we in knowing, by means of what is in thought, attain to things, to realities which enjoy an independence in physical existence outside of thought, or do we by knowing attain only to what is in thought? Does the immanence of thought merely serve the thinker in his grasp upon objective reality, or is the immanence of thought such as to remove all transcendence, all objectivity of thought? The question then concerns the object of human thought and principally of intellectual thought. Is that object reality or thought? Does thinking terminate in things, or in thought? Obviously the whole problem of human knowledge is involved. It matters immensely whether one is considering in knowledge a transcendent, objective reality, or an immanent, subjective thought.

The problem will seem a futile one to the non-professional philosopher. The non-professional is a confirmed realist. He is a born realist, and remaining close to natural convictions, he continues a realist. Subjectivists are made, they are not born. The non-professional readily grasps purposes; he sees no particular difficulty in the statements that knowing powers are for knowing, and that knowing is an assimilation of the real, of what is outside of thought. In fact, he is so taken up with the objectivity of knowledge and the immediate evidence of the real, physical existents distinct from thought that he does not spontaneously advert to the intermediaries of knowledge which are in thought. If anything, he is an extreme realist; he is so deeply impressed with the objectivity of thought and so naturally certain that thought attains an other than thought, that he is inclined to overlook almost entirely the immanence of thought and scarcely adverts to the fact that thought is in the thinker and that things are known only in so far as they are in some way in the knower. He is, in a word, naturally more given to the direct object of knowledge, which is other than thought, the thing, than he is to the indirect, reflex object of knowledge, which is the thought of the thing. Direct knowledge is first historically and psychologically, and direct knowledge lays hold on things; reflex knowledge, in which the mind turns itself back upon what is in knowledge and perceives the thoughts of things, is secondary and subsequent upon direct knowledge. The non-professional philosopher directly attends to things, and it is only with some effort that he reflects and attends to the thoughts of things.

This unpremeditated natural realism of man is not without significance. Anyone who is content to take man as he is, that is to say, anyone who is a realist in his analysis of man, will hesitate to scorn this natural certitude. Perhaps that spontaneous, improvised realism is the correct point of departure for all subsequent speculation. Possibly it is itself a first item of certain knowledge which must be maintained at all costs, not to be lost sight of nor left out of consideration in the search for a complete explanation of knowledge. This much is certainly true, the proper study of a nature ought not to spurn what that nature itself teaches. Among the natural convictions of man there is hardly any so strong as the realism of knowledge. The initial certainty that knowledge represents the real is surely naive and uncritical; but it is, none the less, a certainty. It is not unlike the certainty one has that it is cold when he is exposed to a temperature of thirty below.

B. The Cartesian Tradition and Its Development

Modern philosophic thought, stemming from Descartes, calls this natural certitude of realism into question. Since Descartes the predominant philosophical position has been an exaggerated subjectivism in which the immanence of thought restrains the thinker within the region of his own thought. What is subjectively in the knower is not an intermediary leading directly to a knowledge of things but is itself the direct object of thought. Modern subjectivism commences with reflection upon what is in knowledge and ends by losing hold upon what is outside of knowledge. In its more extreme developments it entirely relinquishes the other, the thing outside of thought. The other than thought becomes contradictory, for what is attained in thought is thought, and that alone. The natural certitude of realism, which modern subjectivism rejects, readily perceives that thought attains things. That thought, while being immanent, does not know things, does not attain the real is not evident. What is evident is that it does!

Philosophers who embrace subjectivism do not do so in virtue of a natural conviction. They ignore the initial impetus towards realism given by nature, or regard it as a primitive inclination that falls away under critical analysis. Actually the history of modern thought reveals very clearly the fact that the tradition of subjectivism has not been preserved and continued through constant appeal to what is naturally known and spontaneously adhered to by the human mind, but by reason of a prejudgment, that is to say, a judgment that is accepted uncritically from a predecessor. Descartes wrongly considered thought to be the object of thought, and almost every philosopher outside the scholastic tradition has accepted what he affirmed as though it were a demonstrated truth. Descartes was the originator of what has become a deep-seated and definite prejudice in favor of subjectivism.

1. Cartesian Phase

There was some excuse for Descartes’ falling into this radical error. Montaigne before him had cast the pall of doubt over the validity of external sense knowledge, which is the foundation stone, the solid rock upon which realism is constructed. External sense knowledge is entirely dependent upon the real, upon what is outside of knowledge; it clearly does not produce its object, it receives its object from outside. Descartes was unable to defend the validity of sense knowledge and the mathematical bent of his mind made that defense hardly worth the bother. Descartes was historically first a mathematician; he approached philosophy through mathematics and an unsound, mechanistic theory of physical nature. The peculiarity of mathematical reasoning is such as to readily give the impression to an unwary student that it is concerned with purely mental constructs, and not with reality. Mathematical reasoning is preoccupied either with possible being or beings of reason and terminates in phantasms of the imagination; it is indifferent to really existing actual beings. Because of this preoccupation, the mathematician can easily slip into the persuasion that he is not thinking about beings, but simply about thoughts. The doubt of the infallibility of external sense knowledge, and the mathematical interest of Descartes are the two parent notions of all modern subjectivism.

Looking at objective reality as though it were exclusively mathematical, Descartes was led to an assumption which has been accepted ...

Table of contents

• Title page
• DEDICATION
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• PREFACE
• Chapter I-STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
• Chapter II-THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE IN GENERAL
• Chapter III-THE NATURE AND FUNCTION OF IMPRESSED SPECIES
• Chapter IV-THE GENESIS OF IMPRESSED INTELLIGIBLE SPECIES
• Chapter V-NATURE AND FUNCTION OF THE FORMAL CONCEPT
• Chapter VI-THE OBJECTIVE CONCEPT
• Chapter VII-CONCLUSION
• BIBLIOGRAPHY