The True Essence of Modern Philosophy - Part One (1/4)

Aliud est esse rei in seipsa et aliud esse rei in anima

(It is one thing for a thing to exist in itself and another for it to exist in the mind.)

Sum. Theol., I, Q.14, a.1, ad 2m

He who exalts himself will be humbled,

and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

Luke 4:11

What is Meant by "Modern Philosophy"

The Cartesians and their idealist followers, through a very skillful advertising campaign, spread throughout the West for four centuries, have succeeded in persuading all those who believe they know what philosophy is, as well as naive individuals lacking critical insight but who aspire to be critics, and historians of philosophy—often mere collectors of hearsay, limited in philosophical wisdom and repeaters of what the dominant culture says—that Descartes is the founder of modern philosophy. According to them, after the medieval centuries or millennia of naivety, uncertainty, or even darkness, modern philosophy would have revolutionized the way of doing philosophy and discovered for eternity the true philosophy or at least the true method of doing philosophy and therefore finding the truth. Descartes presents his method as one that is accessible to everyone, relying on straightforward and natural reasoning.

But the cost of this success is that Descartes reduces all knowledge to physical-mathematical knowledge, so that metaphysics and theology are no longer fields of speculative inquiry, but are lowered to the level of a few a priori ideas, the so-called "innate ideas", clear and distinct, ordered exclusively to practice and the domination of nature.

This will not prevent the rise in subsequent centuries of the intricate speculations of transcendental idealists, reserved for "philosophers", infinitely above the vulgar common realism and the banal level of physical-mathematical knowledge.

Since then, philosophers victims of this unfounded prejudice have been countless. Providing examples is unnecessary, as the list would be lengthy and never-ending. It is enough to say that the Cartesian concept of modern philosophy is at the basis of the rise of modernism, that of the times of Saint Pius X and that which resurfaced after the Second Vatican Council. It is widely recognized that the Council purposefully engaged with modernity, urging us to thoughtfully discern and critically emphasize its values. However, the conciliar criterion is the opposite of that of the modernists: while the modernists claim to judge the Gospel in the light of modernity, the Council orders to judge modernity in the light of the Gospel. It is then understood why, while for the Council St. Thomas is above Descartes, for the modernists Descartes is above Thomas.

Regarding the meaning of the term "modern," there is a significant misunderstanding that Cartesians and idealists exploit. This word can be understood in two ways: either as "what is current today" or as "what is advanced, progressed, and better than before.”

To this is added the question of the "new".The modern is also the new, but the modern or new isn't always better. In that case, it is better to return to the old, provided it is good. The new or modern is not good in itself. Discernment must be made because in reality in modernity there is good and bad.

One must avoid the mistake of the backwardists (retrogrades or ultra-traditionalists, parentheses mine, Ed.) who reduce modernity to a heap of errors. On the other hand, we must avoid the vice of modernists of making modernity an idol. Hence their characteristic overall rejection of modern thought. Certain traditionalists, however, by "modern thought" mean Cartesian thought. In this sense, they are right to reject modern thought.

On the other hand, it must be remembered that in life what is important is the good. The age of something is of secondary importance. It is generally assumed, however, that progress in knowledge and virtue makes the new superior to the old. Now Cartesian philosophy passes itself off as new, but in reality, as Heidegger noted, it takes up Protagoras' sophistry [1].

As is known, the modernism of the times of Saint Pius X was a very serious phenomenon of a heretical type (the "sum of all heresies") [2], revived and worsened with the immediate post-conciliar period. This led Maritain, who is certainly not a Lefebvrian and is known for the moderation and balance of his judgments, to assert in 1966 that the modernism of the times of Pius X is a "hay fever compared to today's pneumonia" [3]. And since then, the situation has not improved, indeed it has worsened.

That said, it is essential to remember what the modernists' instance was for the sake of justice because it was more than just. It was indeed to rejuvenate and modernize Christian thought and the life of the Church, taking on all the progress that philosophy and theology had made from the time of Saint Thomas to the present. This instance was collected and satisfied by the Second Vatican Council.

Especially modernists understood that one of the greatest achievements of modern thought from the reflected Flemish mysticism of the 15th century and that of the Spanish of the 16th century, as well as from Luther and Descartes, was the deepening of the meaning and value of conscience.

This made it possible to clarify the difference between the subjective and the objective, that is, between what one believes to be true in conscience and what is objectively and effectively true, two things that do not always coincide. From this comes the consequence that if I in good faith believe a given thing to be true, regardless of how the thing is in itself, what I think (here is Descartes) becomes the rule of my thinking instead of the thing itself, which I do not know. And at this point, everyone feels the presence of Kant.

However, there is a caution to follow here, which idealists and modernists do not take into account: that, to be in the truth without error, it is still necessary and always above all to remember that one must not take the function of conscience as a pretext to refuse to regulate it on the thing itself, which is not essentially unknowable but only accidentally so. For this reason, the medieval realist principle that truth takes precedence over conscience, and being over the thought, remains eternally valid.

What then was the mistake of the modernists? Saint Pius X summarizes it with a single expression: an evolutionistic conception of truth. Today what was false yesterday is true, and today what was true yesterday is false: historicism. Hence the mutability of dogma. Historicism arises from idealistic subjectivism: if truth is not given by what is, but by the mind of each thinker, then the fact that today I have a different idea of God than what Saint Thomas had means that the idea of God is not immutable, but changes throughout history. Dogmatic progress for the modernist doesn’t mean knowing the same truths better and better, but the fact that thought continuously changes its contents over time.

Michele Federico Sciacca's

[Michele Federico Sciacca (1908 – 1975) was a historian of philosophy, and a scholar deeply knowledgeable about the thought of Blessed Antonio Rosmini. His scientific activities and cultural initiatives were extraordinarily broad and fruitful. Starting in 1947, he intensified his lecturing activities significantly, both in Italy and abroad (especially in Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, Germany, and South America). He also published annotated editions of works by Plato, St. Augustine, Rosmini, Søren Kierkegaard, Gottfried W. Leibniz, Antonio Gioberti, Giovanni M. Bertini, Aristotle, Maurice Blondel, Giovanni Vailati, and Giambattista Vico.

Sciacca's path and works are grounded in the constructive critique of absolute humanisms and immanentisms, rationalisms and irrationalisms, optimisms and pessimisms. His radical secularism forms a philosophy of history in which objective interiority constitutes the backbone of the historical responsibility of philosophy, structured therefore as anti-traditionalist and anti-revolutionary. From this standpoint comes his comprehensive diagnosis of the degeneration of the West into Westernism, or the 'system of stupidity,' which must continually be confronted most constructively through the 'philosophy of integrality.'

( Cf. Pier Paolo Ottonello: https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/michele-federico-sciacca_(Dizionario-Biografico)/) Ed.]

judgment of modern philosophy about the work of Blessed Antonio Rosmini is interesting. ( Indeed, his comprehensive critique of modern philosophy concerning the works of Blessed Antonio Rosmini remains profoundly insightful. Ed)

He says:

"Rosmini is the most modern of the moderns, in the sense that he understood the merit and the demerit of modern philosophy, namely, the merit, in having developed Augustine's concept of the interiority of truth and the conception of philosophy as deepening of spiritual life, and the demerit, on the other hand, in having suppressed, against the deepest needs of man, the transcende et teipsum." [4]

I agree with the judgment on modern philosophy. However, Sciacca does not take into account the fact that Rosmini assumed the Kantian a priori form of intellect (Bold Mine, Ed.)without realizing that it presupposes the Kantian principle according to which it is not the subject that regulates itself on the object, but it is the object that is regulated by the subject.

The Encyclical Pascendi, regarding modernist epistemology, does not speak of idealism but uses five categories: agnosticism, phenomenism, immanentism, sentiment, and subconsciousness. However, it is not difficult to recognize idealism behind those categories: idealism is a phenomenism at the level of science, see Kant; it is an immanentism, as God is immanent and not transcendent, see again Kant; it starts from sentiment, and not from contact with external reality, see Schleiermacher; it is an agnosticism, since the thing-in-itself is unknowable, see Kant; but at the same time, it is a Gnosticism, as Hegel says, the real is the rational; it is based on the subconscious, in the sense that the cogito precedes the conceptualization of things and therefore the consciousness of knowing them.

Sentiment and the subconscious will reappear in Karl Rahner's "pre-conceptual transcendental experience." It is conscious, indeed self-consciousness, as it is the cogito; but it is unconscious, as in the cogito (a priori) there is not yet the conceptual and categorical consciousness of things (a posteriori).

A typical example of Cartesian modernist fanaticism is that of Bontadini, who goes so far as to say:

"The assertion that philosophy makes on its own behalf is precisely about subjectivity and augmentation. Cogito ergo sum: indubitable, the first undeniable, I as thought, I as an individual through thought; ... the true I-thought, the criterion of certainty and truth, that criterion which is posited as absolute is the principle of immanentism, it is that by which the Cartesian I and its non-I are all indubitable, it is thought and experience as such: mentality, pure self-awareness. ... So it can truly be said that before Descartes thought was nothing, nothing as thought, that is, as novelty, because all its content was already in the object itself, identified in a certain way, the way of reflection. It was recognized so much when, starting from it as from the first indubitable, one saw those facts and modes enter its concept, as its essential content, which previously stood together with it, before and above it, now below: thus thought in its novelty, in its value, becomes everything from nothing." [5]

Bontadini means that with Descartes all the reality that was previously considered external, before or above thought, if has been incorporated into thought, has entered thought, subject to thought. There is no longer a res extra animam, created by God, but every res is in anima, created by me. With Descartes, humanity began to think.

A very interesting example, which could apply to all and which shows the influence of this modernist prejudice in the minds of even high-level Catholic theologians, is that of the famous Jesuit Joseph Maréchal, founder of the so-called "transcendental Thomism," a very clever trick with which the learned Jesuit managed to surreptitiously introduce Kantian idealism into Catholic philosophy, apparently without evading the severe warning of Pius X - the famous Pascendi, which preceded his main work by 15 years, which is from 1926, [6] - to follow Saint Thomas, against the errors of the modernists.

Maréchal assumes the distinction between "Ancients and Moderns" [7], a concept typical among Cartesians. Here, "Ancients" refers to Aristotelian-Thomist philosophy, while "Moderns" refers to Cartesian-Kantian philosophy. Maréchal treats these as two distinct philosophies or implies that the latter is more advanced than the former.

In reality, the first type of philosophizing, realistic, is the right one, while the second, idealistic, is wrong. And this is what the realists have been demonstrating since Cartesianism arose. But certain incisive, seductive, and engaging ideas, which touch the depths of the soul, become so deeply rooted in history, and despite the truth being refuted, remain attached in the minds of men for centuries and millennia.

Think of the errors of Muhammad or Luther or Hinduism. So it is with Cartesianism. This is typical of philosophical, religious, and spiritual errors (Bold Mine, Ed.). It is the power of the spirit, both good and bad: once it has conquered a man's mind, it is very difficult for it to be dispelled, no matter how much this man has the opportunity to know the truth, nothing can be done: instead, it is passed down from father to son, and from generation to generation. From the Cartesian setting, it follows that Jesus Christ Himself belongs to a past in which the light of truth had not yet appeared.

Yet, despite the opposing idealistic and modernist prejudice, it must be said and reiterated in clear terms - and the facts prove it - that the transition from ancient to modern philosophy was not a transition from error to truth [8], but a journey in truth, by which knowledge of truth increases from ancient to modern. Nor does Maréchal's thesis hold, that Thomistic realism could be "transposed" in Kantian terms, because they are not two different languages, but two contrary contents.

Maréchal, with a colossal work in five volumes, managed to circumvent the condemnation of modernism by pretending to be a Thomist and founding the so-called "transcendental Thomism," without giving unsuspecting readers, with the display of colossal erudition, any suspicion of betraying Aquinas. Yet, upon careful examination, it is a form of false Thomism tainted with Kantianism, which inaugurated a true school, despite "scholasticism," naturally with great success in Germany (the Maréchal-Schule (Maréchal-School)), which has produced a host of false Thomists, whose most famous epigone is Karl Rahner, among others less audacious like Przywara, Lortz, Coreth, and Lonergan.

With the advent of the Second Vatican Council, which urges a critical embrace of modernity, the crypto-modernists, who even after Pius X had continued to conspire clandestinely, seemed delighted to finally take advantage of this official exhortation of the Church, for which it seemed that the Church itself had become modernist [9], to return to the scene since the immediate post-council in a grand style, boldly and with a completely self-assured tone, certain of impunity, in the certainty that this time they would be accepted. And indeed, this is what happened, to the extent that today we are invaded.

Thus, they cunningly presented themselves as heralds, interpreters, and protagonists of the Council, which they falsified in a modernist sense, and while unfortunately the papacy and the episcopate, taken by surprise, found themselves nearly powerless against this relentless tsunami that continues to rage unabated today.

However, it cannot be denied that the Council has modernized a certain philosophical realism, which had too polemically opposed modern thought, seeing nothing but errors and heresies in it. The Council has taught us to distinguish in modern philosophy the good from the bad, specifically all the good that has been added up to now since the time of Saint Thomas, whom the Council continues to recommend as a model philosopher and theologian.

The Council therefore presents us Thomistic realists with the problem of idealism and modernism, offering us a new method, more evangelical, more attentive to the good aspects of these doctrines or doctrinal complexes, without thereby renouncing the condemnation of errors.

In particular, it is a matter of assessing the attempts made over the past century to find points of contact between realism and idealism, between Thomas, Descartes, and Kant, not to mention other modern thinkers. We must be modern, but not modernists. This is the essence of the Council's teaching. Unfortunately, a false Thomism has spread today, which instead of highlighting the points of contact between Thomas and the idealists, distorts Thomas in an idealistic sense or mixes Thomism and idealism.

Cartesian work

Descartes claimed to replace idealism with realism by presenting his philosophy as something new, unheard of, unprecedented, and definitive, while in reality, it finds precedents in ancient Greek sophistry ancient skepticism, and Parmenidism, not to mention ancient Indian philosophies. It is surprising how many people believed in him from then until now.

According to Descartes' supposition and declaration, in his time there existed, in terms of philosophy, a great contrast of opinions, uncertainty, doubt, darkness, captious and futile questions, skepticism, abstruseness, confusion, false shreds of evidence, illusions, vain scholastic disputes, subjectivisms, dogmatisms, superstitions, a search without finding, theses that nullified each other, groping procedures, lack of rationality and scientific seriousness, critical acumen, and logical rigor, lack of foundations, unjustified presuppositions, unverified theories, not reality but the appearance of reality.

Descartes found himself living in a historical moment of widespread skepticism and speculative discouragement, true, and this was due to the terrible Thirty Years' War between Catholics and Protestants. But it is evident that Descartes exaggerates, because in his own time, albeit stirred by heated theological disputes, there were great theological schools, such as those of the Jesuits and the Dominicans.

For Cartesians, with Descartes, the light, the truth, the value of ideas, the true nature of knowledge and reality, the correct method and starting point of philosophizing, clarity, and distinction, the first and fundamental certainty, reason, freedom, spirit, true thinking, self-awareness, the true concept of God, the true demonstration of His existence, the true dignity of man, and true morality have all appeared to humanity for the first time.

The Cartesian firmly believes that before Descartes, in the teachings of all preceding philosophers, theologians, and religions, including Christianity, there existed no certainty, evidence, foundation, or incontrovertibility; rather, everything was subject to discussion and contradiction.

Descartes claimed to establish a safe and easy method for attaining truth in all sciences, in order, as he asserts and promises, to "make man master and lord of the forces of nature."

The change in philosophizing introduced by Descartes, as summarized by Rahner with the expression 'turn to the subject,' marks a significant shift. Traditionally, the mind oriented itself towards external reality, including God as the creator. However, Descartes' philosophy redirected focus inward through self-awareness, towards the knowing subject and its ideas. This shift diminished interest in external reality and God, elevating the human mind to a position akin to God's. German idealism, notably recognized as the logical development of Descartes' cogito (Bold Mine, Ed.), further solidified this shift. In German idealism, the human mind no longer attributes its existence to God but places itself in that supreme position. Kant's philosophy underscores that God is now seen not as the creator of reason but as the supreme idea within reason itself.

Descartes' philosophy presents several distinct views: firstly, that our intellect doesn't start by perceiving external things, which then give rise to ideas, but rather begins with ideas in the mind and then applies them to understand external reality. Secondly, Descartes blurs the distinction between the knowable (the thing in itself) and the known (how we perceive the thing). He suggests that we can know the real essence of things before considering how they are known or perceived. Finally, Descartes posits that the intellect does not progress from potentiality to actuality; rather, through the cogito, it inherently exists in a state of actual knowledge. We have in self-awareness the idea of things before knowing them through the senses. This is the meaning of cogito. But this way of knowing belongs only to God, the creator and maker of things, not to us, who learn to know reality only by beginning to contact it with our senses.

We must be careful, however, that the self-awareness of Descartes and idealists, for example, Schelling, is not exactly the self-knowledge of realism. The idealist denies that the subject can be objectified, that is, known through a reflective act that presupposes direct contact with external reality. Cartesian self-awareness does not result from the intellect returning to itself after starting from things. Still, it is a primary and immediate act that does not presuppose a prior departure. It is itself the starting point of knowledge.

For the idealist, either the subject is identical to the object or is so separate that it cannot be objectified, and neither become an object of knowledge. It is identical because thinking is being. But at the same time, it is separate because subject and object are the two poles of knowing. The self of the idealist is not a self that presupposes an other, but rather a self or an 'I' that constitutes, foundationally, the other.

One must not confuse Augustine's enlightenment with Cartesian idealism. Both speak of "ideas.” Cartesian ideas are merely human, whereas Augustine's ideas, discussed by Plato, are divine. These divine ideas serve as models and archetypes of things, providing criteria for judging and evaluating moral conduct.

Thus, while for Augustine divine ideas illuminate the mind already instructed by the senses, elevating it beyond the senses, in Descartes God performs the function of guaranteeing the truthfulness of the senses, which would otherwise be doubtful, blind, or deceitful.

Divine revelation is humbled from revealing supernatural mysteries to ensuring that the apple we perceive (percipere) as red is (esse) indeed red, thereby guaranteeing the correctness of our perception."

Hence we understand where all the apparent interiority that the idealist seems to flaunt ends up. The idealist who starts from himself, when he looks within himself, sees only the products of his ego, but the ego remains unknown to him. The realist, who starts from external experience, producing concepts, sees himself through reflection as a spiritual reality (the soul) producing concepts.

As Hegel says, with idealism, the subject replaces substance. Hegel intends to reject the ontological concept of substance, which he mistakes for material substance, while the "subject" would be the Cartesian cogito. However, it must be observed that if substance, in the truth of things, is the soul and the subject is Cartesian self-awareness, the soul can no longer know itself, because the knowing subject loses its spirituality and is no longer a real thinker, but a thought thinker.

Descartes does not lack the perception of the existence of the self as an individual, as a person. For this reason, Descartes has nourished the existentialism of the 20th century, and in particular the phenomenological egology of Husserl [10], which, however, despite all its conscientious analysis and description of the "lived," remains a victim of the idealist prejudice, which replaces thought existence (cogitatum) with real existence put "in brackets." Husserl's "pure ego" recalls Plato's scruple to free the soul from the impurity of matter.

In the end, there is greater interiority in the realist's 'self-awareness,' to borrow Saint Catherine of Siena's phrase, than in the aprioristic idealist self-awareness. In the latter, the self remains unknown because the object of knowledge is not the subject but rather an object constructed by the subject—or, in other words, the subject is already identical to the object and thus cannot become an object or be objectified.

It is necessary to distinguish Cartesian idealism from Platonic idealism. The idea in Descartes is my idea, an idea of the subject, while in Plato the idea is objective and transcendent, independent of me, and indeed it is my idea that depends on the Idea, which is the model and rule of my notion, which is simply participation and image of the Idea. The Platonic idea represents the epitome of the perfect being."("to pantelos on").

Hence, Platonic idealism affirms the precedence of being over thought—specifically, the res extra animam, the Platonic Idea, over the res in anima, the human idea. This concept is utilized by St. Augustine and the Church Fathers [11], enabling the acknowledgment that the res extra animam, namely the world, is created by God.

Instead, in Cartesian idealism, which is the idealism I am talking about in this article, the existence of the res extra animam is not given to me independently of my ideas, it is not presupposed to them; it is deduced from my ideas, so it seems to reduce to my ideas, as Fichte and especially Gentile will explain.

But if there is no res extra animam (the 'thing in itself'), if there is no being outside of thought, it becomes evident that their creator cannot exist either. According to Husserl, my empirical self and the existence of things, which are mere cogitations (cogitata), are simply explained by the logical 'constitutive' activity of my 'transcendental' or 'pure ego.' Therefore, it is clear that this form of idealism is incompatible with Christian thought because it directly negates or falsifies it.

Descartes achieved remarkable success in Western modernity, a phenomenon worth noting. The impact of Cartesian idealism, while separate in the East with its pantheistic themes, finds resonance in 19th-century German developments. Descartes' influence spans diverse and sometimes contradictory modern currents. His ideas immediately influenced Catholicism, seen in figures like Malebranche, and continued through 19th-century ontologism and French spiritualists, extending into the early 20th century with modernists, Rahner, and the 'transcendental Thomists'.

In addition to his intellectual successors such as Leibniz, Spinoza, and Wolff, who further developed his ideas, Descartes influenced the entire trajectory of German idealism up to Hegel. It's also important to note that Marxist and the so-called socialist realism trace their origins back to Hegel (bold Mine, Ed.). Descartes' impact extended to English empiricism, influencing Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, who, despite appearing distant from Cartesian apriorism, ultimately begin with the cogito.

Enlightenment Masonic rationalism presupposes the cogito. (Bold Mine, Ed.) The same eighteenth-century mechanistic anthropology up to the modern informatics anthropology of our days presupposes Cartesian self-awareness. Comte's positivism up to the Vienna Circle's scientism in the early 20th century starts from cogito

(If the reader allows me a personal note—my apologies—I would confidently add that these sentences, which I honestly cannot decide between, resemble gold nuggets in the mine of this discussion. If possible, I would frame and display them on a wall. At this point, I am certain that a translator must pause briefly, resisting the urge to break, to emphasize the clarity, richness, and profound 'heart-bursting' insight and serenity found in such contemplation.)

The ontologists are influenced by idealism. Rosmini was Kantian without realizing it, even though he wanted to refute Hegel. Darwin and Teilhard de Chardin's scientific method presupposes the cogito. Existentialists come from Descartes; Nietzsche is Descartes's child. Freud presupposes a sexualized Descartes. Bergson starts from Cartesian intuitionism; as for Gentile, Heidegger, Husserl, and Severino, let's not even mention them. Bontadini is a victim of Parmenides. The only ones who have not bowed their heads to the Cartesian idol are the Thomists, together with the doctrinal framework of the Church's Magisterium.

Regarding the Cartesian method, one must bear in mind the role of the will in thinking. Thinking precedes the will, but it is also the effect of the will. Original thinking, i.e., the perception of external things and the first principles of speculative reason, is not the effect of the will, but in it, the intellect is necessitated and specified by the truth. Instead, the exercise of thinking, being voluntary, is subject to the duty of clarity and honesty.

The Gospel is very explicit: "Let your 'Yes' mean 'Yes,' and your 'No' mean 'No'" and "You cannot serve both God and mammon." It is, therefore, a condemnation of cunning, duplicity, and lies. In thinking, we must be as prudent as serpents but also as innocent as doves. Men mature in judgment but also innocent in malice (cf. I Cor 14:20). Critical acumen removes foolishness but not naivety. The kingdom of God is for the innocent, not for the cunning.

In thinking and reasoning, we must be consistent, respect the rules of logic, and avoid deliberately deceiving ourselves. In speaking, we must avoid making what is false appear true and vice versa, and deceiving others with ambiguous and double-edged speeches. The ancient Greeks already knew skepticism and sophistry. Even more so, the Catholic philosopher must be honest in thinking and speaking. Certainly, we must also avoid the dogmatism of those who want to assert as certain what is not.

End of Part One (1/4)

Fr. Giovanni Cavalcoli OP

Fontanellato, September 6, 2022

Source:

https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/la-vera-essenza-della-filosofia-moderna.html

NOTES

[1] Heidegger says: "Descartes's thesis is continually associated with the saying of Protagoras, and in the latter, we see the anticipation of Descartes's modern metaphysics; indeed, in both cases, the primacy of man is almost tangibly expressed." Nietzsche, Adelphi Editions 1994, p.646.

[2] Claude Tresmontant, La crise moderniste (The Modernist Crisis), Editions du Seuil, Paris 1979.

[3] Le paysan de la Garonne (The Peasant of the Garonne), Desclée de Brouwer, Paris 1966, p.16 (my translation- of the Author (Ed.)).

[4] From Interpretazioni rosminiane (Rosminian Interpretations), Milan, Marzorati 1957, pp.66-67, cited by Franco Percivale, From Tommaso a Rosmini (Thomas to Rosmini), Marsilio, Venice 2003, p.95.

[5] Studi sull’idealismo (Studies on Idealism), Vita e Pensiero, Milan 1995, p.135.

[6] Le point de départ de la Métaphysique (The Starting Point of Metaphysics), Museunm Lessianum-Alcan, Paris 1926.

[7] A bit like today we distinguish between ancient and modern medicine or ancient and modern physics.

[8] Heidegger, with a modesty similar to that of Descartes, once said that the history of Western philosophy, after Parmenides, the discoverer of being, has been a "history of error," until he rediscovered in Parmenides the truth of being buried for 2600 years. Severino says the same thing with the same modesty and accuses Christianity of "nihilism." See his book Essenza del nichilismo (The Essence of Nihilism), Adelphi Editions, Milan 1995.

[9] The modernist Ernesto Buonaiuti, from the time of Pius X, declared that the task of the modernists was to persuade Rome itself to become modernist. When the Council happened, they thought the moment had come. Hence the audacity with which they began to spread their ideas.

[10] Formal and Transcendental Logic, Laterza Publishers, Bari 1966.

[11] Jean Daniélou, Messaggio evangelico e cultura ellenistica (Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture), Il Mulino, Bologna 1975; Endre Von Ivanka, Platonismo cristiano (Christian Platonism), Vita e Pensiero, Milan 1992.