PART 4 - The Cartesian cogito and Kant's Copernican revolution - At the origins of modernism

Later, Aristotle noticed the same deception and warned us:

"Not because we think you are white, you are truly white, but because you are white, we, who affirm this, are in the truth" [1].

Being depends on divine thought, not human thought. Attempting to govern the truth of things by our ideas is akin to trying to replace God. It is only God who has the power to make the existence of things depend on His thinking or imagining them, but only because He is their creator. We are not the creators of things, but we find them already existing before and independently of us! Otherwise, it would be enough for us to think we are Napoleon to be Napoleon.

Unfortunately, Kant's project, taking up Cartesian cogito, goes in this direction. Like Descartes, Kant proposes a "change of method" [2]:

“Traditionally, it has been upheld that our knowledge is to be guided by objects. However, every endeavor to establish something a priori about these objects through concepts—thus extending our knowledge—proved futile when based on such a presupposition. Let us finally try to see if we will be luckier in the problems of metaphysics by hypothesizing that objects must be governed by our knowledge, which better suits the desired possibility of an a priori knowledge that establishes something about objects before they are given to us" [3].

Kant does not ask: by whom are objects, that is, things, the reality that surrounds us, given to us? How can it be possible that we have true and certain knowledge of them before they are given to us? How can we desire such knowledge? If we had made the objects ourselves, it is logical that we must have practical knowledge of them before they exist. But if we find them in front of us and around us without having made them ourselves, how can we have knowledge of them before we have contacted them and seen them?

But Kant insists:

"If intuition must adhere to the nature of objects, I fail to see how one could possess any a priori knowledge [4]; however, if the object, as perceived by the senses, is influenced by the nature of our intuitive faculty, I can readily comprehend this possibility." [5].

Kant is mistaken here: a priori knowledge, as certain and scientific, precisely depends on regulating our thought and judgment on the object or thing. Now this is possible because we have had experience of the thing. I cannot know the sensible thing if I have not experienced it first.

Knowledge, therefore, as it presupposes the experience of the thing, is at the same time a posteriori, with the implication that experience, although it comes after or is a knowing inferior to the intellectual one (a posteriori), however, it chronologically enters in function before the intellect's involvement, which in turn is chronologically subsequent, a posteriori.

Kant then reiterates his "hypothesis," namely that "objects or, what is the same, experience, are governed by a priori concepts" and therefore insists on affirming that I must presuppose in myself the rule of the intellect "before objects are given to me and therefore a priori; and this rule is expressed in a priori concepts, with which all the objects of experience must necessarily conform and with which they must agree." Hence the conclusion: "we do not know anything a priori about things except what we put into them" [6].

It is worth noting that here Kant does not speak of things in general or of reality in general, but of things of experience, that is, material things. The world of the spirit, of intellect, of consciousness, of ideas, of concepts, of judgments, of reason, of will, of duty, of moral law, and even of knowing, thinking, and understanding undoubtedly exists for him and is the object of the "I think," of Cartesian cogito.

Kant's Recognition of Spiritual Existence

For Kant, it makes no sense to want to demonstrate the existence of the spirit or the human soul or God starting from the experience of things or phenomena because, according to him, the principle of causality only applies to explaining phenomena, and the same notion of substance or thing or reality concerns only phenomena and not spirit.

On the other hand, that spirit exists for Kant is evident from Cartesian cogito. It does not need to be proven, but one is aware of it a priori. At the same time, Kant does not have a notion of being such that by abstracting from sensibility, becoming, and quantity, one can conceive being without these attributes, so as to ask what its cause is. For this reason, he does not conceive of God as the first Being in a personal sense, as the Lord, the first cause and provident creator of the world, but only as the supreme Idea of reason.

Moreover, already Descartes does not arrive at God starting from sensible effects, as the Bible teaches (Wis 5:13; Rom 1:20), given his doubt about the truthfulness of the senses, so for the solution to this problem, he does not start from a realistic epistemology that admits the existence of external reality. Although he starts from the idea of God, he concludes that God exists as the cause of the notice of God.

Kant, more consistent than Descartes himself at the beginning of cogito, admits as external reality only the thing-in-itself, which is the material reality indicated by the phenomenon. But Kant knows that God is spirit. For this reason, God in Kant appears as the content of the cogito internal to the "I think.” He concurs with Descartes that God is an a priori idea, yet he pauses at this point and, in adherence to the idealistic principle, he does not admit, like Descartes, a personal God outside and beyond reason. Hence his concept of God as the supreme Idea of reason. We are already in that Immanentism that will be denounced by Pascendi by St. Pius X.

Kant also equivocates on the meaning of the term "object." He confuses the object as ob-jectum, "that-which-is-in-front-of-me," that is, as the term of power or faculty, for example, the "object" of the senses or the intellect, with what we call a "thing." Now the objectum is a term-concept of logic, not of metaphysics, as things or beings can be.

The object properly is not a real entity but of reason, a mental entity that we form to express what is the term of a power of an action or movement. Confusing the thing with the object [7] means confusing thought with being, and idea with reality, which is the typical vice of idealism. The object of the intellect is not the object, but the thing, the entity, the real.

It is a peculiar matter that philosophers aspiring to establish metaphysics, of the caliber of Descartes and Kant, do not proceed to address the fundamental object of metaphysics, which is being as being. Instead, they dither, as Descartes does, focusing on the themes of ideas and consciousness, and as Kant does, on the theme of reason.

How Kant Understands Metaphysics as Science

It is necessary to point out, however, that when Kant speaks of the impossibility of speculative reason to go beyond the given experience, he does not mean to reject metaphysics tout court, but Aristotelian and realistic metaphysics, which maintains the possibility and necessity of intellect to rise to the notion of being as such and the first and supreme being starting from the sensible and mobile being of physical experience by applying the principle of causality. In this way, in the last years of his life, after the tormented research of the Critique, Kant finally arrived at determining his vision of an idealistic metaphysics in the Prolegomena to any future metaphysics that will present itself as science, defining it in these terms:

"the core and essence of metaphysics, that is, the application of reason only to itself, meditating on its concepts, knowledge of objects that presumably derives immediately from it, without needing the mediation of experience and without generally being able to arrive at it through it" [8].

In this little work, Kant indicates the program and advantages of the metaphysics established by him through the critique of reason:

For metaphysics, as a science, to claim not to persuade fallaciously with words but to teach and convince through a critique of reason, it must present in a complete system all the supply of a priori concepts, their subdivision according to their different origin (sensibility, intellect, reason), a comprehensive table of them, and their analysis with all that can be deduced from them, but above all the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge through the deduction of these concepts, the principles of their use, and finally their limits. The critique, therefore, contains within itself the entire well-examined and sifted plan—and also all the means of execution by which metaphysics can be constituted as a science; by other means and with different approaches, it is impossible. ...

This is certain: whoever has tasted Critique once forever despises all the dogmatic nonsense he was content with before out of necessity because his reason needed something and found nothing better for its sustenance. The Critique stands to the traditional scholastic metaphysics as chemistry stands to alchemy and astronomy to astrology." [9].

We might wonder who's Kant upset with. He speaks in riddles. In any case, he assumes the tone, like Descartes, of someone who has at last delved into metaphysics and the status of science. However, Kant, like Descartes, believing in establishing metaphysics, not only does not establish any science but establishes metaphysics on a false principle, namely cogito, a principle that, if explicit and applied in all its virtuality, leads to pantheism and atheism.

However, Kant partially recovers, compared to Descartes, realism. He accepts it only regarding the admission of the thing-in-itself external to the intellect, which provides the intellect with sensible matter derived from experience for forming the object, which is the phenomenon. But, like Descartes, he fails to see the very elementary truth that, as Saint Thomas says [10], "nos per similitudines rerum, quae in nobis sunt, agnoscimus res in seipsis existentes (we recognize things existing in themselves through the likenesses of things that are in us.)"

Kant accepts idealism, understood as the doctrine of knowledge that privileges the idea over sensible reality, focusing on the inner life, and reminding us of the importance of the ideal of consciousness over the external phenomenal data coming from the thing. However, the defect of idealism lies in priority to thought over being, while Saint Thomas warns us: "Non est verum quod intelligere sit nobilius quam esse; sed determinatur ab esse; immo sic esse eo est nobilius (It is not true that understanding is nobler than being; but it is determined by being; indeed, being is nobler than understanding)" [11].

However, Kant, like Descartes, seems to be, in line with the Augustinian interiority of noli foras ire, in te ipsum redi, in interiore homine habitat veritas, referring to the Augustinian interiora spiritualia, exteriora materialia (pair of the spiritual interior, material exterior). But in reality, Augustine would not reject the distinction made by Thomas with another language between res extra animam, namely, the material and spiritual external reality, and res in anima, which are concepts. Even for Augustine, God is transcendent, and likewise for Thomas, the spirit is worth more than the body.

We add that how Kant approaches the question of truth and metaphysics is similar to that of Descartes. Kant also believes that until his time, metaphysics had failed to establish itself as a science. He paints a discouraging and false picture of the philosophers who preceded him.

"Reason - says Kant [12] - is in great trouble in it ... It must countless times retrace its steps because it finds that the path already followed does not lead to the goal ... It is so far from having achieved agreement among its worshippers, that it is rather a battlefield, which seems destined to exercise antagonistic forces in which not even a champion has ever been able to seize the smallest part of the ground and found on his victory a lasting possession. There is therefore no doubt that its procedure so far has been a mere groping and, worse, among simple concepts" [13].

Two things are clear here: first, Kant knows nothing about the centuries-old Thomistic school; second, the Cartesian reform does not suit him, otherwise he would have celebrated Descartes as the beacon of modern philosophy, which he does not do because indeed Kant is critical of Descartes on two points: first, he considers the existence of external things evident [14].

And here Kant jumps Descartes backward to take up Aristotelian realism again; for this reason, Kant has no problem recognizing with Aristotle that the knowledge of phenomena is derived from the experience of external things. And, secondly, Kant approves of idealist epistemology, as it focuses on the idea rather than on being; however, he reproaches Descartes for establishing a problematic idealism rather than a transcendental one like his own—a subtle insight of Kant, who realizes that cogito is not an "I am certain of knowing" but "I am certain of doubting," which does not serve at all to overcome skepticism, with the aggravating factor of elevating doubt to a principle of certainty.

Kant is not against metaphysics, as many realists believe, as it is even more evident that Descartes is not; on the contrary, both believe that by resorting to idealism, they are giving it the true and solid foundation that, in their opinion, realism has failed to provide.

Thus, Kant's famous Copernican revolution is essentially a repetition of Descartes' method of regulating knowledge not on external sensible data, which Descartes finds unreliable, but on the self-awareness of the thinking self. Similarly, although Kant does not suffer from Cartesian skepticism regarding the senses, he shifts the intention of the intellect from focusing on the object, the thing, or the entity, to emphasizing the subject, the "I think," which Kant, like Descartes, equates with reason.

Similarly, the aim of both is to overcome skepticism to give knowledge an unassailable foundation of certainty, to oppose sensationalism and atheism, and to affirm the existence of God. Descartes attempts to prove this based on cogito. Kant proposes the famous moral proof drawn from the conscience of duty.

However, both retain an idealistic conception of God, which lends itself to Feuerbach's criticism of God as a consolatory and alienating creation of the imagination of unhappy and oppressed humanity, preparing the way for Marx's atheism. However, accusing Descartes of atheism, as the learned Jesuit Jean Hardouin did, is excessive. This accusation led to his rebuke by the Holy Office in 1739. [15].

Descartes openly professed the Catholic faith. However, it remains true, as Father Fabro demonstrated, that the Cartesian "sum," when fully articulated in its true meaning, leads to the divinization of human self-awareness and consequently to atheism.

Knowing in Realism and Kant

Knowledge involves four elements: the act of knowing, which is intellectual understanding, the object of knowledge, which is the thing, the mode of knowing, which is the immateriality of the known object following the abstraction process, and the means of knowing, which is the concept. Knowing is not a doing, as Kant believes, but an intentional becoming of the other as another (fieri intentionaliter aliud in quantum aliud). In the act of knowing, intellectus in actu est intellectum in actu (the intellect in act is the thing understood in the act): this is the point of convergence between realism and idealism. But for the idealist, they are also ontologically identical because he confuses thinking with being.

We observe that the act of knowing, the self, the mode of knowing, the concept, the idea, and the means of knowledge are on the side of the subject; the other, the phenomenon, the something, the thing, the entity, and the real are on the side of the object. Truth concerns both the subject (adaequatio intellectus et rei) and the object: ontological truth, being as true.

Kant confuses the mode and the means of knowing with the object or content of knowing; he confuses the form or essence of knowing with the matter of knowing, which is the thing or the entity, which can be either pure form, the spiritual substance, or a compound of matter and form, the material substance. He confuses the form or essence of the thing with the form of the phenomenon, which is the sensible appearance of the thing to the intellect.

According to Kant, it's not the external thing but the phenomenon, the object of knowledge, that is composed of matter and form, receiving its form from the a priori form "already lying ready" in the intellect, while the intellect does not receive the form of the phenomenon but gives it because it already possesses it a priori, before experience. The intellect instead receives the matter of the phenomenon through sensory experience, from the thing. The external thing is thought (noumenon) but not knowable. It is not a categorical object but "transcendental."

Kant is mistaken in his assertion that knowledge is a compound of matter and form [16]. The intellect certainly produces the concept, but it does not give form to the object; the object already has it on its own. The intellect does not possess a priori the categories or forms of things, but a posteriori, derived from the experience of things.

Knowledge, to use a scholastic formula, is a habere ex parte intellectus formam rei extra animam intentionaliter in statu immaterialitatis ( to have, in part, the form of a thing outside the soul intentionally in a state of immateriality.) The knower does not give form but receives the form of the object. It is not about filling a form with content but about receiving content under a given form.

Knowledge is to shape within (Latin: informare) the intellect by the form of the object, which shapes it (species impressa). Stimulated by this form, the intellect in turn forms an inner reproduction or representation of this form (species expressa), the concept, in which it sees the form of the external thing. It is not the act of knowing but the known object that is composed of matter and form, not the act of knowing itself. Kant confuses the mode of knowing with the object of knowing.

The Problem of the Thing-in-Itself in Kant

In the Critique of Pure Reason, there is a peculiar fact, namely that there are many passages of Kant where he talks calmly about the "knowledge of things," and there are just as many where he declares that the "thing-in-itself is unknowable" without explaining why. But Kant also never explains what he means by "thing." Furthermore, the expression "thing-in-itself" should correspond to "thing-for-me." But Kant never talks to us about the thing-for-me.

This would seem to be the phenomenon; however, Kant understands the phenomenon as a modification of our self and as a simple representation. But then what about the objectivity and truth of knowledge? How can he speak of knowledge of things? He admits the existence of the noumenon, the thought, the intellectum, very well; but then what is the object of this thought? The thing? But then why is the thing unknowable? Is it thought without being known? But if, as Kant says, the thing exists, is real, and is outside of us, how does he know this if the thing is unknowable? How to form a concept of the thing if the thing is unknowable? Do we know that it exists and do not know what it is? But then how do we form concepts of things?

How do we talk about it? How can we understand each other if we do not know what we are talking about? If we do not know things, what do we know? Phantoms? Dreams? Fantasies? Our ideas? Ideas do not serve to know things. Can we know ideas without knowing things? But then what are ideas ideas of? How did Kant form the idea of the thing, if he cannot tell us what the thing is, if we cannot know its essence?

Kant's concept of phenomenon is not bad: it would be the thing as it appears to our senses. Kant is keen to clarify that the phenomenon is not an appearance (Schein), which can be illusory, but a true appearance, a showing of the thing, that is, the truth (Erscheinung). And this is very good. The concept of phenomenon is now commonly used in the experimental sciences. However, a problem arises: when Kant speaks of "things," does he only mean material ones? Indeed, he never says that the spirit or reason or intellect or consciousness or God are "things."

End of Part Four (4/5)

Fr. Giovanni Cavalcoli OP

Fontanellato, April 8, 2024

Source:

https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/il-cogito-di-cartesio-e-la-rivoluzione_60.html

[1] Metaphysics, Book IX (Theta), Chapter 10, Luigi Loffredo Publisher, Naples, 1968, vol. II, p. 59.

[2] Kant 20

[3] Critique, op. cit., pp. 20-21.

[4] Kant uses these two Latin expressions a priori (from what comes first) and a posteriori (from what comes after) in an ambiguous way, confusing their ontological-axiological meaning with the epistemological one. Indeed, from the first point of view, there is no doubt that the intelligible comes first, that is, it is more important, the object of scientific certainty, than the sensible, the object of the senses. But from the epistemological-temporal point of view, it must be said that metaphysical knowledge is not a priori, but a posteriori, that is, the intellect does not start from the knowledge of the spiritual self (self-consciousness), but from the experience of what is axiologically worth less, namely material things. Thus, Kant ultimately believes that it is possible to construct an a priori metaphysics, that is, scientific and certain, based on a priori concepts, not derived from experience. In this way, he does not realize that he is falling back into the apriorism of which he had accused Aristotelian metaphysics, but which could instead be referred to the essentialist and Cartesian metaphysics of Wolff.

[5] Critique, op. cit., p. 21.

[6] Critique of Pure Reason, Laterza, Bari, 1963, p. 22.

[7] See on this the paragraph Chose et objet in Les degrés du savoir by Maritain, Desclée de Brouwer, Bruges 1959, pp. 176-195.

[8] Publisher Carabba, Lanciano 1924.

[9] Ibid., p. 137.

[10] Summa Theologiae, I, q. 20, a. 2, 2m.

[11] Quaestio disputata de veritate (Disputed Question on Truth), q. 22, a. 8, ad 1m, Marietti Editions, Rome-Turin 1964.

[12] Critique, op. cit., 19-20.

[13] Ibid., p. 20.

[14] Ibid., p. 35.

[15] Information taken from the entry HARDOUIN, Jean in the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique.

[16] Maritain shows well how Kant, despite his idealism, materializes the work of knowledge. See Reflections on Intelligence, Massimo Publisher, Milan. 1987, c. ii.