St. Thomas and Epistemology
Louis-Marie Régis, O.P.
Marquette University Press, Aquinas Lecture, 1946In order to understand the problem before us some preliminary remarks are necessary. These remarks will have the advantage of situating our study within definite limits, and they will enable us to dissipate the ambiguities that seem to be native to epistemology. I may add that these remarks will likewise indicate the essential elements of the present problem as well as the reasons which have dictated the plan I have chosen.
Remark 1
The problem that faces us belongs at one and the same time to the domain of history and to the domain of philosophy. That is why it is an ambivalent problem since it urges us in contrary directions. Thus, in considering the epistemological problem, the human mind is at times led to look upon it as an historical phenomenon and process involving the changes and the stages of the development and progress of the human understanding; at Other times, the human mind is led to consider the epistemological problem as a question of pure philosophy free from the conditions of time and place in history. The exclusive cultivation of either the purely speculative or the purely historical approach to the epistemological problem is a falsification of the problem itself, since it remains a fact that philosophical notions are acquired in and through time even when the truths involved are in some sense atemporal and immutable. That is why we must be extremely sensitive to the dual aspect of the epistemological problem, that is to say, to both its philosophical and historical conditions.
Considered philosophically, epistemology obeys the natural law of every sapiential knowledge; it must be a knowledge through the first or highest causes, or to state the same thing in another way, it is the apprehension of order. Now, to see things in and by their first causes, or to apprehend order, is to know a multitude as a unity without the destruction of the multitude; for diversity is just as essential to the existence of order as is the unity which formally constitutes it, and the suppression of either diversity or unity carries with it the elimination of order. From this point of view, epistemology, considered philosophically, arises from the fact that human knowledge is from the beginning and irreducibly many and of many kinds. These knowledges beat with them credentials of objectivity and truth, and yet they seem to be in conflict with one another. The solution of this problem of the multitude of knowledges will -consist in explaining the fact of their diversity by means of the cause or causes that account for the multiplicity and the opposition of these knowledges. It is because epistemology gives such an explanation that it has the dignity of being a part of philosophy, for it is thus the apprehension of order in the domain of human knowing.
Considered historically, epistemology is subject to the laws of birth, change, development and decay which are the inevitable accompaniments of all things human, even the most spiritual. Epistemology saw the light of day when the early Greek philosophers distinguished between sensation and understanding, opinion and truth. It developed rapidly thanks to. the turmoil produced by the Sophists and to the philosophical genius of Plato and Aristotle. Then it took enormous strides of progress under the impetus of the demands of the Christian Revelation which forced European thinkers to probe the nature of knowing in order to establish a proper order between reason and faith. But this intensive effort and progress could not endure indefinitely, nor did it exist without accompanying evils; and the great syntheses of the XIII century were followed by some three hundred years of metaphysical decadence during which a nominalistic dialectic presumed to play the role of supreme judge in the domain of human knowing. During this same period of dialectical imperialism, the physical sciences made great advances thanks to the invention and the discovery of new methods of investigation, and not only did they achieve their autonomy but they also declared a war to the death against a dialectic playing the role of metaphysics. In this confused and violent struggle between science and a decadent scholasticism, the human understanding was blinded, and skepticism, that disease of the intellect, became the sad lot of mankind. It was then that there began to appear thinkers who undertook to practise medicine upon the human intellect, who set themselves the task of restoring to men the metaphysical health that they had lost. To this end they invented an elixir of infallibility, whose name might change from philosopher to philosopher, but whose substance remained the same. This elixir consisted essentially in making philosophy scientific, by forcing it to proceed according to a method which enabled it to control, at all times, the instrument that it was using, namely, human knowledge itself.
From this moment onward, every philosophy which was not preceeded by a critique
of knowledge was destined to be considered naive and dogmatic; it was destined to lose its scientific character and sink to the level of the ordinary man's knowledge which could be identified with common sense. Descartes was the inventor of the gadget to control being by knowledge. Kant perfected the invention; so much so, that in his hand it became an instrument of life and death for the various human knowledges, an instrument of life for logic, physics and mathematics, an instrument of everlasting death for all metaphysics which, having fallen from its queenly dignity, became a transcendental illusion.
The scholastic contemporaries of these epistemological discoveries were quite alarmed by them, all the more so as they cast a threatening shadow upon their long established and long since undiscussed positions. But since their anemic philosophy did not have the strength necessary to carry on a fight, the idealistic inventions made far-reaching gains and conquests. It came about therefore that what originally had appeared as a deadly enemy by degrees took on the markings of an ally and a friend. To cap the climax, during the last hundred years we have witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of a widely accepted Thomism which gradually began to stylize itself according to all the fashions and modes of the fathers of idealism. These idealistic embellishments that Thomism received were presumably merely the unfolding of what already was to be found in the very synthesis of the Angelic Doctor himself. Such is, historically considered, the situation of the epistemological problem at the present moment.
Remark 2
The preceding remark had for its purpose to situate our problem in its doctrinal and historical context. The present remark aims to make precise the purpose of our investigation. That purpose does not consist in discovering any epistemological concordism between Idealism and Thomism, nor does it consist in any effort to justify Thomism by means of the methodological requirements of Idealism; it rather consists in seeing sharply and clearly how from the very beginning these two conceptions of knowledge go in opposite directions. Thomism has been pulled for too long by an idealistic tug-boat. It has even been subjected to the dictatorial pull of this tug-boat to such an extent that it is no more than the shadow of its real self, and brings to mind the monstrous picture of a magnificent mediaeval cathedral modernized in a rococco, style. To repeat, my intention is not to defend but to attack, not to minimize the differences, but to call attention to the oppositions and to stress the irreconcilability between Thomism and Idealism. Collaboration with a natural enemy is just as criminal philosophically as it is politically. Now it is evidently impossible, in the short time at our disposal, to undertake a detailed investigation of the doctrinal opposition between an idealistic epistemology and that of St. Thomas. All I can do is to point to the fundamental principles. In order to make this doctrinal comparison easier to follow, let us consult the map and see the ground over which we are going to travel.
Our plan is very simple, and is a natural development from the title of the lecture. Thus, when we speak of Saint Thomas and epistemology, we can take these words in two ways: first, the historical sense, in which one would show the role which the Angelic Doctor's teaching has played in setting and solving the epistemological problem by modern thinkers; second, the doctrinal sense, which would indicate how Saint Thomas himself poses and solves the problem. From either point of view, of course, Saint Thomas must be the center of the discussion. He is at once accuser and accused. One might think of what is to follow in this paper as a kind of court procedure which unfolds itself majestically around the person of Saint Thomas. In this procedure, there will be accusers—Descartes and Kant, the great leaders of idealism, together with those neo-Thomists who have followed their point of view—who will present their own briefs. There will also be an accused—Saint Thomas—who will defend himself and enter a plea of "not guilty." You will be both judge and jury; while my part in the process will he that of narrator and recorder. In accomplishing my task, I shall try as far as possible to hide behind the great historical figures whose positions I am explaining, in order that your judgment may be objective and unbiased by anything that I say.
I
DESCARTES' ACCUSATIONThe first adversary and accuser of the thomistic doctrine and its Aristotelian sources is René Descartes, a thinker so well known that it is needless to give any detailed account of his life. Here, in brief, are his grievances against the ancients-weighty grievances, to be sure—which he will explain in his own words:
First of all, I accuse all speculation in the West, from Aristotle to the 17th century (excluding theological thought) of having no scientific standing, of being no more than a systematization of common sense, and of meriting, at best, the name of vulgar or man-of-the-street’s philosophy. True philosophy built on solid foundations and on evidence that cannot be impugned, does not exist yet, because no one has made the right approach to it by a proper epistemology. And my reasons for making this serious accusation? Well, to give you these reasons is tantamount to giving you the history of my spirit which coincides with the destruction of scholasticism and the birth of true philosophic thought.
“Scholastic philosophy is vulgar or non-scientific...”
When I came into possession of all those knowledges that a well-bred man should have, I was struck by the remarkable opposition that exists between the so-called philosophic truths of the tradition and the truths of mathematics. The former were born of disputes that have persisted down the ages and are still argued. The latter, by contrast, were admitted from the start and have never been questioned. When I became aware of this fact, I set out at once to discover its cause; and then I made the discovery that the difference between these two sorts of truth resolves itself as follows: That mathematical knowledge has something which philosophic knowledge does not have; that the truths of mathematics are evident, whereas the truths of philosophy are not; and finally, that evidence consists in the clearness and distinction of ideas. I could then conclude that evidence, that is to say, the clearness and distinction of our ideas, is at the bottom of the agreement among minds; that evidence straightway puts an end to all discussion or dispute; and that every time we are faced with the need of discussion or dispute, it is because the idea under analysis is not evident and lacks clearness and distinction.
Moreover, from the fact that an idea is clear and distinct, I remarked that it is also one, and that there is accordingly only one truth in a particular thing; so that anybody
who finds out this truth knows as much about the thing as he can know. In gathering together the fruits of this first reflection, which was inspired by the contrast between mathematical and philosophical knowledges, I came to another conclusion: in order to know the truth of a thing, it is enough to perceive it as one, an impossible achievement, of course, without clearness and distinction of ideas and hence without evidence. Whence it follows that there is truth only where there is evidence; and since there is no knowledge except where there is truth, knowledge is unworthy of the name if it be not evident knowledge.
Now, the special mark of evidence is its incontestableness or its power of making all minds agree, as we see in the mathematical sciences. Wherever disagreement arises, lack of evidence is always at the root of it. Wherever evidence is absent, truth is also absent and the lack of truth means the lack of knowledge. When we have arrived at this state of affairs we are in the region of probability, of verisimilitude, of conjecture; and this is the sort.of thing that the man-of-the-street feeds on. It is allso the domain of scholastic philosophy since the latter is shot through and through with disputes and practically every one of its truths, at one time or another, has undergone the assaults of controversy and refutation.` That's why I am right in maintaining that scholastic philosophy is vulgar, since it is founded on verisimilitudes and not on evidence. For it is admitted on all sides that all science is certain and evident knowledge. If scholastic philosophy, then, is not built on evidence, it has no certitude and so is not science. Hence the accusation that I made at the outset is just: philosophy, as true scientific knowledge, does not exist as yet since scholastic philosophy is not such a knowledge.
"...because it lacks methodology."
In my initial accusation, I reproached scholasticism for being only a vulgar philosophy because it was founded without method or a sane epistemology. I have shown that it was vulgar; and now I want to show why the cause of this vulgarity lies precisely in its lack of method.
If evidence is the criterion of truth, if all philosophy is essentially a knowledge of truth, then before it can be established, it must have a norm which is absolutely infallible; that is to say, it must have an evidence which is at once the measure and the source of all the other truths which it will discover in due order. Now, scholastic philosophy never made a serious effort to uncover this evidence. It took its start from sensible perception; and history proves that all the perceptions of sense have been subject to doubt and debate, from the time of Protagoras down to the skeptics of our own- time. These sensible perceptions, therefore, must be lacking in evidence, since evidence necessarily gives birth to agreement among minds. And because they are wanting in evidence, they are false, since truth is essentially evident. It is not surprising, then, that a philosophy such as the schoolmen profess which takes its origin from the perceptions of sense, should have no solidity and should be a constant source of discord, opening the doors to skepticism.
But what is more surprising still is that the great minds of ancient and mediaeval times should have let themselves in for this mistake—first defining philosophy as a body of certain and evident knowledge and then attempting to base it on a mass of confusions and contradictions. Our astonishment disappears, however, when we begin to examine their logic or method which is not a method of discovering but of arguing truth. At best, such a method can be good only for the teaching of truths that have already been brought to light. The logic of these philosophers, then, is a process of composition or synthesis when it ought to have been a process of analysis—the method of the ancient mathematicians who employed it with extraordinary fruitfulness, and which has enabled me to unify the science of numbers and the science of figures. But since the philosophers of whom I am speaking did not practise this method of analysis, they were unable to discover what I call "first evidence" which is the source of all other evidences that appear to the mind. Moreover, their dialectic methods threw into shadow the only two natural operations of reason: intuition and deduction.
Thus, without knowing it, they became the victims of the prejudices of their childhood; and their extreme haste to admit as evident, truths that were not really so, caused them to create a physic of substances, of substantial forms, and of sensible qualities from which they built up a metaphysic of being as being and a natural theology which was not really a theology at all.
The failure of the schoolmen, then, is the result of their lack of method, that is to say, of an analysis of ideas which makes use of the universal doubt as a means of getting rid of the habit of bad thinking and finally leads us to.think properly by bringing us to the only first evidence which cannot be doubted and which even the skeptic is unable to deny: "I think: therefore, I am."
Let me sum up my case against scholastic philosophy, then, by putting the essential points in the form of an argument:
All philosophy worthy of the name is certain and evident knowledge, that is, knowledge which cannot be questioned since the evidence that supports it shows us the unity and truth of things and compels the assent of all minds. But the story of scholastic philosophy is a story of disagreements among thinkers from Aristotle's day down to our own. Such a philosophy, therefore, cannot be certain and evident knowledge. At best, it is floundering on the margins of the probable and is vulgar or pre-scientific. Its character of probability arises from its lack of analytic method which prevent it from formulating a critique of the perceptions of sense, by subjecting them to the methodical doubt, just as it prevents it from arriving at the first and most fundamental piece of metaphysical evidence: cogito ergo sum: which enabled me to construct a metaphysic within everybody's range and immune to the onslaughts of skepticism.
An "argumentum ad hominem" from St. Thomas
Saint Thomas, of course, has been f ollowing the argument of Descartes very carefully. Now he rises to put an objection: you have just summed up your grievances against scholastic philosophy, stating that any philosophy worthy of the name must be certain and evident knowledge, a knowledge which is incontestable, since it necessarily brings agreement among minds. But the three evidences that make up your metaphysics-self, God, and the world-have not only been contested but actually refuted by your own disciples as well as by your enemies.
First, the names of Locke, De la Mettrie and Du Marsais are symbols of the very opposite of your human spiritualism. In fact, these men have made little more than a pure automaton of your so-called "thinking substance."
Second, Spinoza, Leibnitz and Malebranche have identified your God with the whole universe and have completely destroyed the notion of causality in the latter.
Third, your evidence for the existence of the physical world has entirely disappeared after Malebranche, Berkeley and Hume subjected it to the laws of your analytical method.
I am forced, therefore, to conclude (a) either your philosophy is not one whit more evident than mine since the whole thing has been controverted and rejected, thus forcing me to think that the science of philosophy does not exist as yet and we shall have to start all over; (b) or, even philosophies that are founded on evidence are still open to discussion and dispute; in which case, your argument against the schoolmen proves nothing since it rests on a fallacious point of departure.
So, take your choice, Monsieur Descartes: (a) either scholastic philosophy has not been touched by your accusations and is truly a philosophy; (b) or it is not a scientific philosophy but merely a series of vulgar conjectures, in which case your own philosophy would be its running mate in the field of conjecture, and metaphysics simply does not exist.
II
KANT'S ACCUSATIONSThe last words of Saint Thomas filled the heart of Descartes with anguish. But at this moment, Emmanuel Kant took the stand and began to speak:
Your last conclusion, Brother Thomas, is good. Metaphysics still waits to be born. Not only has it never existed but it never will exist, because it's impossible. My critique of knowledge has proved in most conclusive fashion the impossibility of metaphysics as a science of the real.
The problem of the existence and nature of metaphysical knowledge follows, for me as well as for Descartes, on an established historical fact: that metaphysics has been subject to the whims of every sort of contradiction, swinging back and forth between the extremes of an absolute dogmatism and a thorough-going skepticism. Such, indeed, has been its history for more than twenty centuries.
Pure mathematics, on the contrary, and physics too since Newton, have rallied together the best minds and have made an almost unbelievable progress in explaining the real world; and all this, without the benefit of those everlasting antinomies that appear to be the lot of the metaphysician. How now comes this failure and this success? Descartes tried to make the problem a matter of objective evidence; but the complete checkmating of his system in all its departments shows us that he did not find the real source of truth. For, in reflecting on the problem of knowledge, one thing becomes apparent at once to the mind: that the problem rests between two terms: object and subject; reality and our principles for laying hold of this reality. Now, of these two terms, one was entirely neglected while the other was getting all the attention. "Being" hypnotized the philosophers, while the “knowing subject”—the essential element in the apprehension of being—was left in the shade. The lack of success among my predecessors, then, is accounted for perfectly by their neglect of one of the data of the problem; and it is this datum which I searched out most closely.
My quest was filled with surprises. Whereas the traditional philosophy offered me, as object, stable things, substances, an objective space and time, enduring qualities and quantities, a world filled with objective causality which would make me see God as the first cause of all, the pure sciences, on the other hand, present, as object, only phenomena, systems of spatial and temporal relations which are applied to empirical data that are entirely relative and changeable with the aim of classifying and unifying such data.
So I asked myself: how does it happen that the rigid framework of the pure sciences is able to explain successfully an empirical datum which is by its very nature diversified and contingent? What are the relations of these subjective schemata to the datum of sense? The answer to these questions roused me once and for all from my dogmatic slumbers and showed me the secret of both the success of the pure sciences and the failure of metaphysics. That secret can be reduced to a single word: the notion of object.
Object means, not the exterior reality, nor the concept, but the synthesis of the two, and all critique consists in distinguishing in the object, the thing received from the outside, the datum, and what is imposed by our powers of knowledge, their immanent and necessary activity, the concept. If then, by means of an evident and incontestable criterion, I am successful in isolating the characteristics of the datum and those of the concept which is the fruit of the dynamism of my faculties, I shall know exactly what is real and what is subjective in the object; and from this point on there will be no possibility of my confusing the two elements of all knowledge. I shall indeed have critique of human knowledge that will be satisfactory for any field in which it is used.
Having reached this conclusion after several years of research and groping in the dark, I set to work to develop it. The only material that could not be called in question was that of the pure sciences; mathematics and physics. Now, in these sciences it is evident that the datum is supplied to us by sensation and that this datum is empirical and so contingent, changeable and relative. It is also evident that this is the only intuitive datum that we have since intellectual intuition is not proper to man, all our knowledge beginning with the sense even though it does not stop there. Furthermore, if the datum is marked by changeableness—diversity making its entrance within us by sensation—the concept of the pure sciences which contains the datum of sense is marked, by way of contrast, by necessity and-unity, as the consciousness of our knowledge shows us. This necessity and this unity cannot arise from the sensible datum; hence it must have only one other source; the subject. So I distinguished these conditions of necessity and unity in the object and I named them a priori because they went before the datum, imposing their laws on it and permitting us to grasp it. I then concluded that everything in our knowledge which had these marks of necessity and unity was dependent upon the a priori conditions of sensibility and understanding and therefore should never be projected into the real, to become a condition of reality, under penalty of giving us a false purview of that reality. I knew at last when, why, and how scientific knowledge was necessary, although occupying itself entirely with a datum whose existence was changeable, diverse, and contingent.
Only one more step was left: to study the metaphysical concept and to see its relation, if any, to the datum and the a priori. Now imagine my astonishment when I found that there neither was nor could be any datum in the metaphysical concept, since such concepts are wholly above the sensible or the empirical; and to have a datum that could fit them, one would have to have the gift of intellectual intuition—a thing we don't enjoy. I could draw just one conclusion: metaphysical concepts are empty, because they cannot receive a datum from an intellectual intuition. Moreover, these metaphysical concepts are the a priori law of our pure reason and are therefore absolutely necessary and inevitable. Our notions of substance, of causality, of a Supreme Being, which are central to our metaphysical knowledge, are essentially concepts without content, empty forms: they are transcendent and the source of transcendental illusions. Metaphysics, as a science, then is a Utopia. And this is the final word of the critique which I made with the strictest honesty and scrupulousness: "Lord, let the science of metaphysics rest in peace."
A question by St. Thomas
You allow that substances exist because the phenomenon, which is essentially relative, make them a necessity. You also allow that God and causality exist and that they too are necessary postulates. You say, however, that these three realities—substance, God, causality—are unintelligible because they cannot be rationally explained. But is your own reason capable of explanation? Can you give an account of your a priori? Can you explain the unity of a consciousness which is made up essentially of sensibility and understanding? Don't you think that your critique of pure reason is not a critique of pure reason, but a critique of reason measured by physical reality and conditioned by the physics of Newton and the geometry of Euclid? What value does your critique have when confronted with a world conditioned by the relativity of Einstein and atomic physics? Answer these questions and we shall then join the chorus of your requiem for the repose of the soul of metaphysics, as a science.
III
PLEA OF THE NEO-THOMISTSWith the Neo-Thomists there are friends of St. Thomas who have affectionately reproached him for not hiving built his philosophy on a critique. These men would like fill the need of such a critique so that the teaching of their master may not be despised by the Idealists and called childish and naive. Among the Neo-Thomists, some pretend that there can be no metaphysics without the cogito of Descartes, others hold that this cogito is not enough unless we take it as criticized by Kant. Msgr. Noël, of the Louvain School, is the representative of the Cartesian method. The Dominican Père Rolland-Gosselin is the representative of Kant's criticism. As for the Jesuit Père Maréchal, he admits that there is a double critique and that Thomism is a critique in its fashion, although its critique is not a transcendental one and that Thomism does not possess a treatise on epistemology. It makes little difference whether or not one adopts the cogito of Descartes or that of Kant, in view of what the Neo-Thomists find fault with in Saint Thomas and how they would round out his synthesis.
"Thomism is not a critique."
According to Msgr. Noël: “The mentality of the Middle Ages was entirely foreign to the idea of a critique... One simply never thought of going out every hour to see if the foundations of the building were firmly rooted in the soil. Hence the complete contrast with the methodic way of which Descartes was the first to apprehend the real nature and of which we still feel the need today.” For, there is no sound metaphysics without critique as an introduction; and Kant, and before him, Descartes, once and for all taught philosophy something that meant a real progress for human thought. It is necessary that the point of departure of an enduring philosophy be a reflection wherein the mind lays hold of itself as an object—a fundamental pathway along which one must pass—semel in vita—at least once in a lifetime. Thought, then, for a systematic philosophy, is not simply one possible point of departure among others. To me, it seems that it is the only lawful point of departure... and without it philosophy reposes on a postulate or on a realism of common sense which makes it dogmatic or naive. It is certain that the ancients never made the cogito the starting point of their philosophy; and if it's only by beginning this way that philosophy is made critical, we must conclude that Thomism is based by its nature on a postulate and the data of common sense and that it is therefore dogmatic and naive.
"Thomism can become a critique."
I But if the doctrine of Saint Thomas is not critical, it can become such since it has all the elements of a Cartesian critique. It has its cogito which the Angelic Doctor calls reflexio, it has its universal doubt, and thanks to these two tools, it can manifest the realism of its metaphysics; that is to say, it can justify the substantial realism of the knowledge of common sense which serves as its foundation. To turn Thomism into a critique, one merely has to make it explicit or to recognize the ensemble of epistemological elements that are concealed here and there in the synthesis of Aquinas. Thus when Saint Thomas asks us to reflect on our intellectual achievements and to take stock of the truth that we find within us, he does not think that this reflection must necessarily precede all philosophic certitude. The question would be to know if it is possible and opportune to transport the reflection to which he invites us to the door-steps of philosophy. And the same would be true in the case of the dubitatio universalis de veritate of which he speaks at the beginning of metaphysics. Following these lines, we should have an epistemology all built up which would establish once and for all, against Descartes and Kant, the realism of human knowledge. In conclusion, let us say that if Thomism does not have an organized epistemology, this latter is nevertheless there in implicit form; and one can, remaining in line with the thought of the master, make it explicit, thus giving to the “perennial philosophy” those critical foundations which modern thought cannot do without.
IV
PLEA OF ST. THOMASAt this point Saint Thomas rises to state his case and to plead “not guilty.” He gives two proofs of his innocence: (1) first he shows that all the accusations that have been brought against him by Descartes, Kant and the Neo-Thomists are untrue and based on false pieces of identification; (2) second, he gives positive proof of his innocence by establishing the eminently epistemological character of his synthesis.
Proof 1
The case which my beloved disciples have made out for my philosophy is a touching one and I know that it is motivated by friendship and by their desire of preventing my doctrines from appearing as naked and forlorn in the midst of the modern philosophic milieu which seems so well equipped with critical devices. But the case does not do justice to the intelligence of my followers. For, what is this Thomism which they have made over into a critical philosophy? To me it seems very much like the work of an architect who destroys the house which was built by another and reconstructs it on a different plan. Is it right to say that the second house is the work of the first builder just because the materials that go into it are those of the house which the first builder made? It's still a house, to be sure, but it's not the original house. In the same way, if one reorganizes my doctrinal synthesis on the plan of a. Cartesian philosophy, he can call this new thing a philosophic synthesis but it will not be a Thomistic synthesis. Let us not play with words. If it is necessary to destroy Thomism in order to make it critical (even though the resulting synthesis is made up of things that I myself taught), then let us call this freshly born fruit of the brain, a philosophy. Let us, if we are so minded, call it the philosophy. But let us not call it Thomistic philosophy. I could not honestly claim what belongs to another.
But is it fair, this attempt at all costs to make me critical in the Cartesian or Kantian meaning of the term? Have Descartes and Kant really made out a case against Thomism? Or is it not something else that they are battling, a phantom created by their profound ignorance of true metaphysics and of the historical texts Which have carried this true metaphysics down through the ages? If instead of thinking that Thomism is in danger (a sign of an inferiority complex and a failure to see clearly the inner richness of its teaching), if, instead of being always on the defense, one were to carry the attack to the enemy in order to test out the strength and value of his arms, one would get a real surprise.
How, you ask, can this best be done? The answer is not hard. Descartes and Kant were so eager to defend science, certitude, and evidence precisely because they wanted to overthrow the skepticism which had undermined human thought in their day. To organize their defense, they tried to find a terrain where evidence and certitude exist without doubt. They were looking for the laws of evidence and certitude. Now up to this point we can find no fault with them. But this is not all. Pushed by the desire of truth and the need of necessary or scientific evidence, Descartes denied to vulgar knowledge the title of science, and relegated it to the domain of the probable or of what has a resemblance to truth. Here again we find no fault. Who would think of attributing the properties of science to the knowledge of the man-on-the-street? When we look at.Aristotle's logic, we see that it is divided into two parts: the logic of scientific knowledge which is demonstration; and the logic of probable knowledge which is dialectics. Now the dialectical argument starts from common sense as a criterion; whereas demonstration starts from something that is "per se notum" or from a vision of the intrinsic causes of reality. Descartes, then, did nothing more in his method than apply the needs of internal necessity-a necessity that my whole synthesis demands for scientific knowledge. And when he refused to admit this characteristic of necessity in vulgar knowledge, he was merely making a return to the notion of probability as Aristotle explained it.
So why, beloved disciples, do you go to such pains to establish the validity of the knowledge of common sense? Is it because you would admit with Descartes that Scholastic philosophy and vulgar knowledge are one and the same? Because once you make this admission you will then be obliged to defend common sense against the whole world if you want to keep philosophy a philosophy. For a building is only as strong as its foundations; and if common sense is not made scientific, then it cannot supply the basis for scientific knowledge, much less for philosophic knowledge; but in that case it no longer remains vulgar knowledge but becomes metaphysics. This means that it is impossible for a knowledge to be at one and the same time vulgar and the foundation of a philosophy. It also means that no philosophy can be built on common sense, despite the thousands of pages that have been written to prove otherwise, from the ingenious theories of Reid to the volume of Garrigou-Lagrange on "Common Sense and the Philosophy of Being." Thomism is based on the evidence of being as being which is the proper object of metaphysical knowledge; and so far as I know, I've never taught that being as being and "ens primum cognitum," which is the domain of pre-philosophic knowledge, are one and the same notion. Indeed, if they were not distinct, then the habit of wisdom, for all practical purposes, would he innate, which I do not admit, even though I do admit that understanding, in seizing on "ens primum cognitum" in its concrete and sensible existence, is innate after a fashion.
I refuse, therefore, to identify my philosophy with common sense. I also refuse to make common sense the foundation of my philosophy. In doing this, I realize, beloved disciples, that I make entirely useless the epistemology of vulgar knowledge which you reckon to be necessary as an introduction to philosophic thought under penalty of seeing the latter condemned to rest on a postulate and to remain naive. If the knowledge of common sense has to be critical, it will be so by a wisdom which takes account of the realistic instinct of this knowledge, of which wisdom will make manifest the part that is true. But this truth, once criticized, will not change its nature. It will still be a pre-scientific truth. The only thing that will change is my vision of the value of this truth. I shall know, in the full meaning of the word---science,- that the content of such a truth has no more than a probable value and that it can never be used as the basis of philosophic speculation. The critique of common sense, then, far from making it a suitable foundation of philosophy, can only widen the breach that separates the two forms of knowledge. All the accusations of Descartes, all the fears of my disciples, are rooted in the erroneous belief: that my philosophy is identical with vulgar knowledge. I refuse to admit this identification; and so all their proofs prove nothing. They have attacked and defended a pseudo-Thomism!
Proof II
I shall now sketch out briefly the major lines of a true Thomistic epistemology—an epistemology which is not merely implicit but, whose existence is complete and workable for anyone who takes the trouble to probe to the bottom of my philosophy, who has no idealistic prejudices, and who is not too much preoccupied with the problem of historical concordances. This exposé, short and to the point, will show you at once the strength of my doctrines and the weakness of the so-called idealistic critique.
Position of the Epistemological Problem
Everybody agrees in making the epistemological problem a problem of philosophy, whether one places it at the start, in the middle or at the end. Now the major, or should I say, the unique problem of philosophy is the existence of "the many"; and the whole story of philosophic speculation is one long and continuous effort of the human intelligence to explain this fact which is so repugnant to our reason. For, "the many," as such, is unintelligible, a huge disorder, a profound irrationality. Philosophy is simply an effort to reduce "the many" to "one," to get rid of disorder and replace it with order: whence that penetrating description of the philosopher, given by Aristotle:—It is the part of the wise man to set things in order. Why are Parmenides, Heraclitus, the Greek cosmologists, Plato, Aristotle, all called philosophers? Because they tried to reconcile unity, and multiplicity in both the real and our knowledge of the real. We call metaphysics that part of philosophy which unifies the masses upon masses of beings by the oneness of their cause. In the same way, we call epistemology that part of philosophy which reconciles the multitude of our knowledges, binding them together in a unity.
The epistemological problem, therefore, concerns itself essentially with the opposition that exists between several knowledges, and the science of epistemology is the solution of this problem—or the attempt to solve it. Now the destroying of this opposition of knowledges can be accomplished in two ways: (1) first, by denying that there is any multiplicity; in which case, knowledge is explained by reference to a single univocal type of evidence and truth, and everything that is not measured by this model is cast out from the domain of knowledge as error, or verisimilitude, or conjecture, and not true knowledge; (2) second, by reconciling unity with multiplicity, by accepting all cognitive experience; in which case several different types of knowledge are admitted as opposed to one another but a higher and superior knowledge is created in order to bring unity out of diversity.
The first of these two courses would give rise to epistemological monism, the second to epistemological pluralism.
There is, however, a third hypothesis which might be advanced; that our knowledges are multiple but that they are juxtaposed, one with another, without any unification. Here we have two widely differing groups of men to deal with: a) The skeptics, who have attempted a unification but haven't succeeded in achieving one and who admit the antinomies, all the while deploring them. This, of course, is no epistemology. b) The general run of mankind who, without any reflection, and either on the evidence of their senses or on the credence they give to the pronouncement of the scientists and the philosophers, admit truths that are obviously contradictory without their being aware of such contradictions. This is merely vulgar knowledge, and also no epistemology.
The existence of a multitude of knowledge which present themselves as true and yet opposed to each other-such is the epistemological problem at its roots, a fact immanent and conscious, of which every man who reflects can be aware. This fact, moreover, is the starting point of many other questions or problems of an epistemological nature, all of which we can sum up in the following manner: (1) are the knowledges that present themselves as true, really true? (2) if they are true, how is this multitude of truths to be explained? (3) if they are multiple, how is their multiplicity to be reduced to unity? Such are the three great epistemological problems which have posed themselves since the start of philosophic speculation. Their solution is the proper subject matter of epistemology as I conceive it.
Solution of the Epistemological Problem:
"Truth is really multiple."If you were to ask Descartes and Kant: is there a multiplicity of immediate truths of a disparate nature, that is to say, truths whose content is not comparable, they would reply with one voice: no! And if you object that your experience and theirs and that of the whole human race presents this multiplicity to consciousness, they would say: its an illusion; an illusion of the senses for Descartes whose epistemology rests upon an intellectual intuition; an illusion of intelligence for Kant whose epistemology rests on a sensible intuition. The role of epistemology is precisely to put us on our guard against such an illusion and make us admit the truth only where it is found. But where is it found? The Cartesian epistemology says: in your search for truth don't trust the senses because they are essentially deceitful and you can't rely on them. The Kantian epistemology says: don't trust your reason because it is essentially deceitful, furnishing you with concepts without content and so without truth. The net result of the epistemology of Descartes and Kant is this: neither man explains the multiplicity of truths of which the human mind is conscious. On the contrary each explains such multiplicity as an illusion, the one, of the senses; the other, of reason: Their epistemology is monistic.
But a monistic epistemology cannot be philosophic! For we have just seen that philosophy is by its nature a vision of order and order implies multiplicity since it is the form` of the latter, the relation of one the other. Take away "the many" nothing to set in order and so neither a problem nor a solution. But if a monistic epistemology cannot be philosophic, it is necessarily “scientific” in the strict meaning of this term, that is to say, it does not start from all the evidences in building itself up, but only from one, such as that which characterizes a science chosen as the science. For, scientific evidence, by its very definition, is unique, that is, it is always realized according to the same type or schema, a type or schema which excludes all other types of evidence since every science is characterized by its formal object and since every formal object of a habit excludes the formal objects of other habits. But to do this is to reduce the formal object of a power to that of a habit, thereby making a habit of the power, which is just what Descartes did, or to make of the power, not a principle of knowledge, but an a priori form of a matter to be known, which is. exactly what Kant did.
If, then, the idealistic epistemologies have discovered only one type of truth because their point of departure, instead of being the ensemble of several human evidences, was merely one particular evidence which they set up as the rule of all evidence; if, moreover, the point of departure of an epistemology is the fact of human knowledge in all its integrity, then let us start from this fact: that there exists in human consciousness, truths of all sorts, immediate and mediate, intellectual and sensible, universal and particular; and since no one has yet proved that these truths are illusions without avowing that such illusions are natural and inevitable, let us try to show their reality and to explain their multiplicity.
"A multitude of truths is possible."
The very errors to which Idealism has given rise, teach us a lesson: the first and last word of any epistemology is not of an epistemological order but is pronounced by metaphysics or by a pseudo-metaphysics. Let us look at the nature of truth. It is essentially an accord between that which is known and that which is. This means that it is a relation. More specifically, it is a relation of measure and thing measured, the act of knowledge being the thing measured and the reality the measure. In a relation of this sort, the measure is the formal element; the thing measured is the material element. Both together constitute the whole of the relation and without each other are unintelligible; so much so that if you change the measure element you change the relation. Now what are the elements in the present case? They are: reality, on the one side; and human knowledge, on the other, the latter being measured by the former.
The point of departure of every epistemology, therefore, will be the acceptance of a measure of knowledge, that is to say, a certain conception of reality. If reality is conceived as being one, then all knowledges will be necessarily measured by this unity. If, on the other hand, reality is conceived as diverse or multiple, then the measures will be multiple and there is the possibility of several diverse knowledges. Now, in Idealism, it is a pseudo-metaphysics which defines the measure or the reality. Moreover, it is either mathematics or physics which plays this role; and since each is a particular science, then Idealism excludes the diversity of the real. Its epistemology, having such a point of departure, can come to nothing except unity. But if it is metaphysics which gives to epistemology its point of departure or its measure of knowledge, then, since this measure is diversity, epistemology can arrive at a plurality of truths. That is why I said a moment ago that the first word of any epistemology is uttered by metaphysics or by a pseudo-metaphysics.
But it is not only the point of departure of an epistemology which comes from metaphysics; its point of arrival is also from the same source. This point of arrival is the knowing subject, since it is the subject that is measured by being; and since it is a question of explaining the manifoldness of truth, if the diversity of measures makes this manifoldness possible, then the diversity of things measured, actualizes this possibility, explains it, takes account of it in a definite way. Here let us go back to Idealism to illustrate the point. Why did Descartes admit only intellectual knowledge? Because man is spirit, because reason is the only power of knowledge measurable by the real. Hence all his ideas are intellectual, and include the passions, the sufferings, the images, and so on, that are caused by the body.
Kant, on the other hand, admitted the subjective possibility of a multitude of truths because he distinguished between reason and sensibility, in such wise that if there were a possibility of reason's entering in contact with an intelligible measure, there would he metaphysical truths.
To explain, therefore, the multitude of human truths, it is necessary not only that the measure be diverse but that the things measured be different too. In other words, it is necessary that there be multiple principles and multiple acts of knowledge. Now what science will explain for us the possibility of a multitude of principles and acts of knowledge? Metaphysics, of course, when it defines man. Metaphysics, then, has the last word to say in any epistemology. It is the alpha and omega of epistemological science.
Now let us compare the pseudo-metaphysical conception of man with the truly metaphysical notion of him. Cartesian idealism makes him a thinking substance, with a body thrown in as a kind of useless appendage. Kantian idealism makes him a pure reason chained by sensibility, which it informs without knowing the why, or how, and of which it is, in truth, a prisoner. Real metaphysics, by contrast, sees in man a creature, therefore, a being essentially directed towards an end by his Creator Who is at the same time the source and perfection of everything he is. Placed on the confines of two orders, he is related to spirits and to bodies without being one or the other exclusively. He is a substantial composite of flesh and spirit, a hylomorphic creature, which means that his oneness is not the oneness of simplicity but of composition. Now, every created nature is predestined to an end since it is by nature made up of being and non-being; and every nature that is plunged in time is a reality on the road to a perfection which it will attain only by degrees. To reach the goal of excellence which was set up for it by another, created natures make use of movements that come from themselves as secondary causes, but which have been given to them by the first cause precisely so that they may attain the destiny for which they were made. A movement of this kind is called natural; and in substances capable of knowing, it is called knowledge. Further, the word "immanent" is used to designate such movements of knowledge and in this way they are distinguished from purely physical movements.
For, "operatio sequitur esse." This metaphysical law of causality is the key to the knowledge which the subject produces. If the knowing subject is a hylomorphic substance, the operation which springs from it will also be hylomorphic; and the term of this operation, its measure, will be hylomorphic in the same way, so that human knowledge will be multiform by its very nature and the epistemology which explains this knowledge will be by its very nature pluralistic.
The plurality of truth, point of departure of all philosophic epistemology, is made possible and understandable, then, only when metaphysics has defined being as multiform and man as possessing a diversity of cognitive principles. What, then, is the center of an epistemological study of this multitude? It is the notion of object, and we must thank Kant for having stressed the importance of this notion and for having made it the central part of all epistemology. The object is not external reality taken in the absolute, but external reality in so far as it bears a relation to the knowing subject, in so far as it exists in the soul. For since the soul is endowed with sensibility and intelligence, it has two possible existences of things in it, two objects of knowledge specifically distinct: sensible objects and intelligible objects; whence arises the two major categories of truth: sensible truths which are essentially contingent and changeable; and intelligible truths which are necessary and unchangeable. The confusion of these two kinds of truth leads to skepticism; the denial of one or the other leads to idealism; but the acceptance of both, while their distinction is still maintained, is the very essence of the Thomistic epistemology, its basic realism, and the only realism that truthfully takes account of the complexity of human knowledge.
"A multitude of truths can be unified."
A philosophic epistemology ought to begin with the fact of the plurality of truths and explain this plurality. But above all, it ought to set in order and unify these diverse truths since it is proper to philosophic knowledge to reconcile unity and multiplicity. Now how does philosophy unify the many? By causality, to be sure! This it is that explains how the two definitions of philosophy—one, by order, the other as knowledge of things in their causes—are just two expressions of the same reality: philosophic knowledge. There are four causes to which all diverse truths are related and by which they are unified:
1. The material cause is intelligence, the only possible subject of true knowledge, since truth, with its demands of duality and of synthesis, can be found only in the judgment of the intellectual power. Intelligence, therefore, is the sole reservoir of all our truths, whatever be their nature.
2. The formal cause is being, the total object of our knowledge. All that we know as true, whether it be sensible or intelligible, we know as being. For the object of a power and of its activity, is precisely the form of the object. This form is analogical, it embraces realities utterly diverse, such as first matter and God, as it mounts on the ladder of being whose rungs are the ascendant gradients of reality. All this is the very life of intelligence as it apprehends things under the aspect of being. There, indeed, is the mystery of knowledge which rationalism cannot explain and of which only the intuition that characterizes every intelligence can give account.
3. The efficient cause is man. And by "man" I mean not the soul alone nor any single power which causes knowledge and makes us conscious of truth, but man whole and entire, his body and his soul. For it is only man who exists and is the subject of his actions, according to the dictum: "actiones sunt suppositorum." To hypostasize the powers of man is to make the unity of diverse truths unintelligible, since each of our cognitive powers—sensible as well as intellectual—has its role to perform and its contribution to make; and only the ensemble of all our powers can give an account of truth in all its fullness? Only this continual co-operation of diverse powers of knowledge with diverse functions to perform, brought together in the unity of a substantial subject, which is the unique source of all these multiform activities-only this co-operation, to repeat, can explain the actual unity of the multitude of truths that we know.
4. The final cause is what we may call, without irreverence, a divine mimicry, a kind of sharing in the infinite perfection of God by adding to our own being all the excellences that we find in beings outside of ourselves. Everything that is, is the realization of a divine idea and possesses an ontological truth. And formal truth consists in the immanent enjoyment of all these divine ideas which God has projected into the world, and thus in a gradual building up of our being which makes us draw closer and closer to our divine model. Using these truths as the rungs on the ladder of being, we shall ascend slowly toward beatific truth whose possession will be our eternal happiness. And it is here that wisdom intervenes to make a hierarchy of all the truths that man possesses, to distinguish between the fallible and infallible sources of truth, to judge of the richness of the evidence and certitude of each truth, to join the proper object of human intelligence, which is material being, to its final object which is God.
Such is the unity of a real science of epistemology which starts with the unity of the source of all human operations and explains them, in the end, by the final unity of all truths, however diverse, in the oneness of God Who is possessed by intelligence as the truth.
CONCLUSION
At the beginning of his Metaphysics Aristotle explains the social character of the acquisition of truth and says: “It is just that we should be grateful not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for those also contributed something, by developing, before us, the powers of thought.” And Saint Thomas adds: "These men who disagreed with each other compel us to discuss things more strictly and to seek for a more limpid vision of truth." I am sure that the idealist epistemologies have done a great deal to attract the attention of philosophers to the particular difficulty that the knowledge-problem presents. They have forced us to re-read texts of the Angelic Doctor more carefully in order to discover the wonderful synthesis that it contains. But I feel I haven't done justice in this lecture either to the Idealists and Neo-Thomists, on the one hand, or to Saint Thomas, on the other.
But if you leave here with the idea that the epistemological problem is one of the hardest in all philosophy, if you go away with the intent of searching further into this problem and of trying to get a clear picture of it, my work won't be without fruit and I shall be satisfied. But most of all, I shall be happy if you carry away with you the conviction that only the philosophy of Saint Thomas has the principles for the solution of the problem, that his philosophy has nothing to borrow from the Idealist epistemologies, that it has, in fact, the remedy for all the errors that flow from those epistemologies. For then, you will agree that Saint Thomas' philosophy is the philosophy, that it possesses the vitality which, as Mr. Gilson humorously puts it, "buries all its undertakers." The doctrines of Descartes and Kant have passed away, the teaching of the Angelic Doctor remains. I hope it will be, for all of us, not merely an ancient text with an historical value, but a reality and a part of the very life of our minds.