Historically, as is well known, the course of philosophical thought was mostly along the natural line of realism. Knowledge, it seemed obvious, began with external objects which, however one explained it, determined thought. In the foregoing paragraphs we have heard various criticisms of this position. Are these criticisms compelling? Do they render untenable the historically prior ground of realism? If so, we must abandon the habit of thinking that knowledge begins with being, extramental being. In its stead we shall have to adopt the idealist principle that the starting point lies within, in thought alone, as exemplified in the Cogito of Descartes or, most extreme, in the unconditioned positing of the self, advocated by idealism such as Fichte's. Thus the issue is met. Will it be realism or must it be idealism? The validity (or invalidity) of the idealist case will tell.
1. General Appraisal of the Skeptic and Idealist Criticism
Skeptics and idealists allege facts of experience in support
of their criticism against realism. On the whole, realists do
not question their facts, but they do challenge their conclusions.
Accordingly, we shall indicate the general line of
defense against their pleadings.
a) Objections of the skeptics. These, as we have seen, played on the undeniable fact of error. Sometimes we are deceived; we think this but the truth is that. Does it follow that we are always in error, or that the human mind is constitutionally incapable of arriving at truth? Skeptics have said yes; if once deceived, I am always deceived. But is the consequent necessary? or is it not rather an obvious sophism? Besides, error or being deceived could have no meaning unless I knew what is meant by truth or not being deceived. But most of all, if I am always deceived, then why not in the announcement of this belief? So that complete skepticism, as Aristotle had pointed out, is self-devouring. To be consistent the unrelenting doubter must not say a word nor even make the merest sign; which, to speak in Aristotle's vein, equates him with the vegetable. Granted that error visits the mind, we are not thereby enslaved to skepticism. But we are reminded to search out the real nature of truth and its opposite, error, and to find the means for discriminating the one from the other. Error, in short, calls for criteriology; that and nothing more.
b) Immanence of knowledge. It is impossible, the realist is told, that knowledge bring about a union of two things which exist in separation from each other. Knowledge is an immanent activity, immanent to the thinking subject. Hence, what I think must be in my thought, and what is not in thought is unthinkable. These and similar expressions are standard weapons in the idealist arsenal, and as a matter of fact there is a sense in which they are true. The idealist, however, construes them in a way to give a completely false impression of realism. In sound realism there is no question, as idealists imagine, of throwing a bridge between two separate and opposite worlds, between thought and the thing in itself - Ding-an-sich, in the Kantian phrase. The union of thing and thought is a primary datum, something given, not contrived. When a thing is known it is by that very fact present and related to the mind, and in this sense it is quite true that what is not in thought is unthinkable. The problem for the realist, then, is not whether the external object links with the mind but how, or by what agency, it does so.
Idealists object that the alleged union of mind and reality rests upon impossible ground; thought, it is said, would have to emerge from its immanence so as to lay hold of things. To depict the matter thus implies a grossly materialist view of immanence or interiority. Why, in other words, cannot activity be immanent and still point to something transimmanent? To say that the ideas which make up my thinking are anchored in the mind proves nothing; for while this is undoubtedly true, there is also the very real impression that through them I am in touch with an external world, a world exterior to my consciousness. Admittedly, there would be an element of mystery in this commerce between the inner and outer world. But not a little mysterious, also, is that anyone should bar the possibility of it, unexamined or in principle.10
c) Activity of knowledge. Not only in the elaboration of scientific thought but even in its simplest operations the human mind is active, in fact creative. No one denies this. But what follows from it? That the mind all alone produces its object? Or that in its activity it is not at all conditioned by something other than itself? The facts of the matter point the other way. Knowledge, as even rude analysis attests, involves passivity as well as activity. And if, in one respect, the object of knowledge appears to be of the mind's making, it also gives many indications of being just the opposite, something given, not made; in fact, the aspect of givenness is the prime impression.
In any event, the complex of knowledge can stand far closer examination than it sometimes receives, even from philosophers. So, for example, it is by no means self-evident that the mind alone is responsible for the determination, that is, for the structure of the object of knowledge, nor that knowledge is solely activity rather than a concurrence of activity and passivity. To slight one or the other aspect distorts the whole picture. Thus, to say in the Kantian fashion that the understanding is a power of a priori synthesis may have some justification, but it tells us next to nothing of those elements (data, if you will) of the synthesis which present themselves ready-made. Experienced reality is more, and more complex, than is allowed to meet the Kantian mind.
As for that other side of the question, the idealist's dedication to the autonomous self, his prepossession with the freedom or emancipation which he regards as the very sustenance of the mind, - all this can be given its proper place without having to deny in principle every dependence of this selfsame mind. There may be a mind or self which enjoys perfect autonomy, but there is no indication that it must be ours. On the contrary, the self we experience tells, not of clear and uninhibited autonomy, but of much involvement with what is or seems non-self.
All in all, skeptics and idealists have case enough to command a hearing. Truth and error, immanence and transcendence, activity and passivity: these are questions for any theory of knowledge. But the particulars adduced by skeptics and idealists do not compel us to abandon realism in principle, as though to be ruled out even as a possibility; nor do they prove that being is reducible to thought. In short, realism does not thereby stand convicted; after the arguments heard above, its possibility (to say no more) as a starting point for knowledge still survives. Indeed, the tables may be turned to ask whether any other possibility exists. And this brings us to the next heading, a review of how some recent Thomists would resolve the problem of knowledge.
2. Some Attempts Toward a Critical Thomist Realism
Within recent decades a number of Thomist philosophers
have bent their efforts to a critical theory of knowledge which, while expected to culminate in realism, would
not postulate it at the outset. Initially, a sort of neutral
ground is proposed on which both realists and idealists could
agree, in the hope they might still find themselves at one at
the end of their respective roads.
Obviously, the mutually acceptable point of departure could not be in external reality; it must therefore be in the realm of the mind, a mental experience that is absolutely first in the order of reflective thinking. Such is the Cogito of Descartes, but with a proviso. For, according to these Thomists the Cogito admits of a preliminary moment which prescinds from the question whether (as idealists maintain) it commits the mind to an interiority from which there is no escape or whether (as the same Thomists anticipate) it can unlock for the mind the door to external reality. I think (so the Cogito), and it is impossible to doubt that I think when I am actually thinking. At this point, however, I do not know, rather do not care to know, what my thinking ultimately implies - possibly an external world. This I shall know only later, after the analyses which will tell me the import of thinking, its eventual referent. Briefly, the starting point is the fact of thought pure and simple; then by reflection I inquire after the meaning, the full implication, of the act of thinking.
One of the more earnest efforts in this direction comes from the much-respected Roland-Gosselin, who states his initial position as follows: "From the standpoint of critical reflection the study of the mind rests squarely on the fact that the act of thinking can grasp itself immediately in self-consciousness. In the act of reflection there is perfect homogeneity, that is, identity of knower and known, and the identity is immediately evident, so that no subsequent reflection upon this first reflection can throw it into doubt or obscurity. Here, then, in the initial act of reflection revealing the identity of knower and known, is an absolute point of departure because it is first an absolute point of return, the ultimate turn-back of the mind upon itself." " Thereby, it is believed, is established the sought-for initial contact with idealism, without as yet any commitment as to the outcome of the stand agreed upon. "Like idealism," to quote him further, "we shall begin by considering first of all the operation of the mind, specifically the judgment, and simply as a factual relation between a subject and object. . . . And why begin thus? Because there is no reason that we should obligingly abandon to idealists the advantage of a solid position, of an unassailable base of operation." 12
But is it unassailable? Or, perhaps more to the immediate purpose, does it have any support in St. Thomas, who regularly develops his thought from the supposition of realism? But at least on one occasion, we are told, he cleared the way to the kind of philosophical reflection that would base everything on the awareness we have of our intellectual activity. A passage in De Veritate has often been so interpreted, one which Msgr. Noel 13 does not hesitate to match with portions both of Descartes' Regulae and Kant's First Preface to his Critique of Pure Reason, namely, where these philosophers urge a general critique, styled on the reflective (introspective) method, of our faculties of knowledge. The passage in question is this: Truth . . . is in the intellect as a consequence of the act of the intellect and as known by the intellect. Truth follows the operation of the intellect inasmuch as it belongs to the intellect to judge about a thing as it is. And truth is known by the intellect in view of the fact that the intellect reflects upon its act - not merely as knowing its own act, but as knowing the proportion of its act to the thing.14
St. Thomas goes on to specify that this proportion cannot be known without knowing the nature of the act, nor the nature of the act without knowing the nature of its principle, the intellect, "of whose nature it is to be conformed to things." 15 Then follows the (reputedly) crucial conclusion, namely, that it is by an act of reflective knowledge that the intellect attains truth.
Far be it from us to discount the significance of this passage, which (whatever else be said of it) states very exactly how the intellect arrives at awareness of the truth value of its act. To see it, however, as inviting a reflective epistemology, such as now under view, that would seem to be overdoing the sense of it. Actually, those who stand on immediate realism without first resorting to a critique of the mind's activity could also claim support from the passage. The fact of the matter is, however, that when writing these words St. Thomas was not thinking of the kind of epistemological issue on which he is here summoned to testify.
All that aside, the question remains whether it is possible, without prejudice to the genius of Thomism, to institute a reflective critique of knowledge that would imply neither idealism or realism. Decidedly not, says Professor Gilson. Like others but with the brilliance that has become his hallmark, he has made it clear he wants no part of "critical realism." 16 The very words should stick in one's throat; a "criticalist" can never, never be a realist. Professor Gilson is no doubt correct if the word "critique" is taken in the Kantian sense, which in effect rules out realism from the start. Others however, Maritain for one, do not believe that "critical" philosophy should simply be defaulted to the idealists - if the term be freed of every subjectivist (idealist) presupposition.
But to get on with the more substantive matter of Professor Gilson's argument: Philosophical systems, he avers, have an inner logic which controls their development. If we begin with the doubt and the Cogito of Descartes, or with the transcendentalism of Kant, we have barred all access to reality and must necessarily land in idealism, with no hope of escape. Or, if your initial step is knowledge in isolation from reality, you will never find a way to reality. This does not mean, however, that our only recourse against the idealist position is to fall back on the native propensity of man to be or act as a realist. Indeed not; for Thomistic realism is a reasoned or reflective realism, one which I am perfectly aware of the reasons for holding. It rests, not on some obscure instinct, but on the evidence I have that my knowledge relates to and depends on a real object. However, even with this initial datum in hand, there still remains, from the standpoint of epistemology, a considerable task to perform. For, while the fact of being related to an external object is immediately evident, not so the manner and means by which the relation comes about. In addition, there must be a critical search into the various forms and phases of knowledge to determine the exact role of each and the relation of one form or phase to another. Through this extensive labor of reflection and analysis the realism which is natural develops into a realism which is truly philosophic or methodic, yet so as not to entertain at any time the supposition that my thinking may possibly be all subjective. Thus Professor Gilson.
But which side to choose? Those who maintain that the critical study of knowledge must from its inception give assent to realism under pain of idealism? Or those of the opinion that this assent (if it comes) can come later, whose preference then is to begin with the bare fact of knowledge, nothing said or assumed as to its transsubjective validity? The answer, we believe, depends on what one makes of yet another question, whether it is possible to conceive of knowledge without implying its relation to reality. To the purpose is a Thornist distinction of knowledge, that of sensations and simple apprehensions on the one hand, and judgments. The distinction is important as regards the perception of truth, or the conformity of thought with thing. Formally, or as known and recognized, truth occurs only in judgment. In sensation proper and in simple apprehensions the mind does not yet know if it has truth, because it has not yet reflected on itself nor, in consequence, adverted to its standing relative to the object it knows.
This relation of thought or the thinking subject to the external object is not revealed except in judgment. Accordingly, it must be admitted that there is a moment in knowledge when the object does not appear in clear distinction from the subject. We should hasten to add, however, that at this stage, when the formation of thought is still in course and incomplete, knowledge itself has not yet entered the focus of awareness; it is as though the subject were wholly absorbed in the object, and not in itself. But the moment I reflect, as is normal, on my act of knowledge I become expressly conscious of my thought; in the same breath subject and object are seen clearly distinct, and my knowledge seen to be true.
The point to be made here is that the reflective work of the mind together with the discoveries that accrue from it presupposes that I have advanced from simple apprehension to judgment. Knowledge, then, may mean more than simple apprehension; it may mean that an object has been not merely presented (as in apprehension), but clearly opposed to a subject and, still more, that there has been a perception of the underlying relation of conformity between them. In this larger sense there can be no knowledge without judgment. And here, in judgment, occurs the critical stage of knowledge, the point where the problem of the real, or of the connection between thought and being comes up. But is it not at the same time cleared up? To isolate the judgment from its realist content seems impossible. Such is the conclusion we shall be defending. What we are saying is that in its reflection upon the relation between subject and object of knowledge the mind is naturally apprised of the realist character of its knowl- edge. To suggest, then, that in the reflective phase of the act of knowledge the mind should still prescind from realism, this would be a purely factitious state of affairs. The natural mind does not have it so. The moment I reflect upon my thought I am one that judges. So that to know, for a human intelligence, is at the same time to judge; and to judge, as we shall have occasion to repeat, is to apprehend that which is - really is. Consequently, if critical philosophy (criteriology) is to start off with the fact of knowledge, it has also to start off with realism. In the main, then, Professor Gilson's position seems the right one. But much needs still to be said by way of clarifying the realism we propose.
Enough has already been said, however, to give a more complete answer to a question raised earlier: why and where to conduct the "critique" of knowledge, within or without the framework of metaphysics. Epistemologists with a "criticalist" leaning, such as alluded to some paragraphs back, were naturally led to separate the two disciplines. Criteriology became a sort of introduction to metaphysics, or at least an indispensable instrument of verification designed to authenticate its findings. Not that they denied all validity to a metaphysics based, as heretofore, on realism without benefit of prior critique; but to be thoroughly scientific we should begin, it was argued, by putting man's instruments of knowledge to the critical test, admitting no preconceptions for or against.
Our answer is this. There may, or may not, be some practical advantage - where (say) one's purpose is primarily apologetical - in assembling under one head those various matters which have to do with the validation of knowledge or the various kinds of knowledge. But no or yes to that, we are absolutely convinced that to divorce the criteriological enterprise from the metaphysical one is open to grave objection; for it dissociates in an artificial and precarious manner, two functions of the mind which are intimately, in fact indivisibly conjoined in the fully developed act of knowledge, the judgment. Every judgment is by nature reflective or, if one prefers, "critical." And since metaphysics builds especially on judgments, and this in the authoritative manner that distinguishes it, to be reflective and critical is of the essence of this science. Fully aware of what he affirms, the metaphysician is also the one to know why he affirms it, and that it is true. Whether in the same instant the properly psychological appurtenances to his knowledge are also clear - that is immaterial. What is to the point for the metaphysician is what he finds as regards the object itself. Now, what he finds there is absolutely true; critique, preceding or concurrent, cannot change it one particle. Metaphysics itself, indeed philosophy as such, is reflective or critical; either that, or just a frolic of the mind. 'Which comes to saying, as we have said before, that for us there is but one sovereign wisdom of the natural order, namely metaphysics, itself the critique pre-eminent. 3. Basic Reasons for the Attitude of Criticalists and Idealists. Error, like infection, is never finally met and overcome until we have probed its seat and traced the hidden processes. Tendencies as strong as those which, from antiquity, have lured so many minds to skepticism, idealism, or criticalism cannot be without all foundation. What, then, lurks in these philosophies?
Certainty of human knowledge rests ultimately on sense perception. Both because of the nature of its object and the complexity of the sensory apparatus, this perception is attended by considerable obscurity, hence by no small susceptibility to error. This, in part, explains the doubts and misgivings which have led many to skepticism, all the more that they lacked that larger view of the matter which shows truth to be compossible with error. By an understandable reaction Plato and Descartes, among the more eminent, thought the mind could be reassured by placing the evidence for truth in an intelligible realm completely removed from the world of sense. By this stroke the obscurity that haunts the knowledge of this world of ours was supposedly overcome, or at least circumvented; for the clear and distinct idea which Descartes, for example, made so much of was apparently won.
But all was not gain, to say the least. Sense knowledge and intellectual knowledge, now sundered, stood as opposing realms, and bringing them together again would not be easy. Various forms of parallelism were proposed, facile solutions which shed little light on the integration of all the factors of human knowledge. Mostly, however, philosophers yielded to the temptation to ignore one side of knowledge in favor of the other. Some, that is, as the British Empiricists, tamely submitted to sensism; others, perhaps more numerous, discarded the sensible to espouse the pure idea, from which it was but a step to declare ideas the only true existents. Excessive dissociation of sensory knowledge from intellectual knowledge is, without a doubt, the first and most pregnant source of idealist philosophies. If the dissociation is carried to the point where the mind becomes the determinative factor in the development of the object, supplying instead of receiving its content, then the stage is set for constructionist idealism, as witness Kant. If on top of that comes the discernment - a correct one, besides - that the most perfect thought is that which has itself for its object, then a flight of the imagination, if bold enough, can quite persuade an idealist mind that his is this perfect thought, or at least a participation in it. Such is idealism's denouement; philosophy is confounded with God's own knowledge. Hegel, like Fichte and Schelling before him, are there to prove it.
In this entire movement there is a kind of logic which compels the successive developments. Underlying it all is, as remarked, this divorce of mind and material nature, of sensation and intellection against which Aristotle already protested most vigorously. Human knowledge, he insisted and must be joined in insisting, is in conformity with experience, is in consequence both sensory and intellective, indissolubly so. No realism is solidly grounded if not on this first fundamental.