The True Essence of Modern Philosophy - Part Three (3/4)

Kant's Refoundation of Metaphysics

It was a common saying among the pre-conciliar scholastics that Kant would be the underminer of metaphysics due to his prohibition for the intellect to transcend with pure concepts the realm of the experiential. Now the object of metaphysics goes well beyond the merely experiential. Therefore Kant destroys metaphysics. But if we read Kant carefully, we will notice that his intent, far from denying the value of metaphysics as a vulgar empiricist like Hume or Comte would, is to give it a secure foundation.

Now it is true that Kant is the underminer of realistic metaphysics, which is the true one. However, he is convinced that he has founded true metaphysics. For this reason, when critiquing Kant, it is insufficient to state that he dismantles metaphysics merely. One must prove that his metaphysics is rooted in idealism and demonstrate that only realistic metaphysics is valid.

The object of Kantian metaphysics is the Cartesian self-consciousness explicit in the critique of pure reason. It seems like an echo of Augustine's axiom exteriora materialia, interiora spiritualia if it were not for the fact that Augustine does not deny the truthfulness of the senses at all, from which he rises for the knowledge of ideas.

Does Kant conceive metaphysics as Cartesian did, who indeed titled his doctrine of cogito "Meditations on Metaphysics"? It is evident that with this doctrine Descartes believes engaging in metaphysical inquiry, and indeed a metaphysics better than the realistic one, which is based on the knowledge of external sensible things, of the quidditas rei materialis (quiddity of material things). And Kant does the same. He indeed admits, against Descartes, with the realists and every sensible man, that the existence of things outside of us is evident, so it is useless and foolish to try to demonstrate their existence when our knowledge starts precisely from contact with things.

And yet – and this is the unsettling aspect that brought him renown – he asserts that we cannot know them as they are in themselves. Here Kant takes up Cartesian idealism, which ultimately says the same thing when we affirm that the senses deceive us and that therefore we are wrong when we believe that the idea or sensation of an external thing corresponds to that thing.

And it is noteworthy that Descartes does not overcome doubt with a simple experimental verification, because by principle he doubts or does not believe in the truthfulness of the senses, so doubt or skepticism remains and only a divine revelation assures him that if I have the sensation of red, it means that the apple is truly red.

For this reason, Cartesian doubt differs from the methodical doubt seen in Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas. Instead, it is a systematic doubt that necessitates abandoning sensory experience in favor of seeking another foundational principle—the cogito. In doing so, Descartes, followed by Kant, reverts to the ancient sophistic principle: esse non est quod est, sed quod videtur (to be is not what is, but what appears).

Descartes' method of interpreting sensible truth as a form of divine revelation aligns with Lutheran fideism, which holds that truth is found not in reason but in faith. One might say: but how? If there is a rationalist, that is precisely Descartes! Yes, but this is precisely the paradox of Cartesian rationalism: not to truly recognize the functioning of rational knowledge, which is drawn from the truth of the senses, but to resolve the activity of reason in self-consciousness (cogito).

From this arises the consequence that truth is no longer the effect of rational discourse, but of divine revelation in consciousness. This concept of truth is already present in Luther and reappears in Heidegger. Hegel envisions truth as a revelation by substituting reason for faith.

Kant, for his part, in the question of truth has a fine distinction between Escheinung (phenomenon) and Schein (appearance or semblance), in itself correct. But if he tells us that we do not know the thing as it is, how can we have the criterion to recognize that we only know its appearance and not the thing-in-itself, without comparing it to the thing-in-itself? Otherwise, we lack one of the two terms of comparison. We can say that a given thing is unknown to us because we compare it with others that are known. But how can we say that the thing itself, which is the object of intellect, is unknown to us?

If the intellect has as its object the thing, the res, the entity, the real, whatever you want to call it, how can we say that it does not know them? Will it be necessary to find a substitute, a counterpart? But why is there a need? Based on what principle? A duplicate of the object? This is the tragedy of idealism, that in it the object of knowledge negates itself and ends up in nihilism and absurdity. Those who want to be too intelligent end up in foolishness. God blinds the proud and enlightens the humble.

In other words, how does Kant know that we only understand the appearance and not the being, if he does not know that being by which he becomes aware of the appearance? There is indeed a difference between seeming and appearing. But if we cannot compare them with being-in-itself, we can no longer distinguish appearance from false appearance. And therefore, the entire Kantian doctrine contradicts itself and collapses.

If we can say that we know an appearance or a semblance, it is because we know that being, which allows us to make the comparison. Otherwise, we mistake the appearance for the being, because the intellect has being as its object and not appearance. We want to know things and not just their appearance.

Thus, Kant’s assertion that no metaphysics existed as a science before his time is, in fact, entirely misguided. He, who claims to provide a definitive assessment of the power of reason, demonstrates a lamentable ignorance of Aristotelian philosophy—the foundational source of logic, epistemology, and metaphysics

For this reason, the task he undertakes to finally give metaphysics a scientific status based on Descartes' cogito, only repeats the deception of Cartesian cogito: the claim to derive the first foundation and the initial certainty of knowledge not from contact with external things, but from self-consciousness, which in wanting to be not the effect of direct knowledge, but its condition of possibility, and therefore without having been previously filled with the experience of the external world, is empty of content.

Modes and Matters of Knowing

Kant fundamentally distinguishes between the manner of knowing and the object of knowledge; however, when he elaborates on this manner and this content, he demonstrates that he confuses them, because he applies two categories entirely unsuitable, namely the distinction between matter and form, which do not serve to define knowing, but material substance.

Thus Kant assimilates the manner of knowing to form and the content to matter, so he affirms the existence of "a matter, which comes from the senses and a certain form to order it, coming from the inner source of pure intuition and thought."[1] In this way, he falls into a materialistic conception of knowing by comparing the cognitive act to that of the sculptor who gives marble the form of a statue.

Kant confuses cosmological matter with logical matter, the cosmological object – the sinolo [a word derived from the Greek word "σύν ολον" (synolon), meaning "whole" or "totality."(Ed.)] – with the logical object (objectum). The concept of matter in a logical sense [2] differs from cosmological matter, which is shaped by form, akin to how a sculptor shapes marble. Logical matter is simply the object of knowledge, much like how we refer to a specific topic as the subject of study.

For this reason, the content of knowing does not only come from the senses, but it is also the essence or intelligible form of the thing, which can also be spiritual even God, and not just the sensible thing or the phenomenon. Sensible matter is the subject of sensory knowledge, which we share with animals. There’s no form of knowing like how wood shapes a baseball bat or flour becomes bread, though the 'form' in knowing differs from the 'form' in material shaping.

Knowing is not an empty form to be filled with content that comes from outside. The intellect is not a kind of glass that must be filled with wine, but it is a power of the soul through which the soul intentionally acquires the form of the glass and the wine. "The soul, as Aristotle says, is in some way all things" through knowledge. It does not give form to things but is intentionally the form of things.

Therefore, not only the content of the thing but also its form comes from outside, i.e., from the thing itself, and together they compose the essence of the thing, which is the object of knowing, whether it is a material thing (matter and form) or a spiritual thing (pure form).

Certainly, knowledge has a form, and there are different forms of knowledge. But then it is a matter of the manner of knowing, not of the object. As for the object or content, it also has a form. This is the form (species impressa) that informs the intellect, which then expresses in a concept (species expressa) what it has understood of the object and the thing. The intellect forms the concept of the thing, which becomes an inner object, the object of reflection and logic (intentio intellecta). It does not give meaning to the thing, as Husserl believes, but grasps the meaning of the thing. It is God who gives meaning to things because He creates them.

Knowledge indeed has an active aspect and a receptive aspect. The intellect resembles a receptacle with a given form, comparable to a chalice, which, by receiving the wine, causes it to take on the form of the chalice. However, there is a difference, namely that in the case of knowledge, the object or thing has a form of its own, so the intellect does not give form to the object based on its form but assumes the form of the object, not only the matter but also the form.

The comparison with the chalice applies instead to the manner of knowing. In this sense, it can and must be said that the intellect has an a priori form, which determines not the object but the way of apprehending the object. And what is this manner? It is the active part of knowing: the formation or production of the concept, the image of the thing through which the intellect knows the thing.

In the end, it can be said that knowledge involves both matter and form. However, it's important to clarify that the matter—the object—already has its inherent form, so the intellect does not impose it. The form of knowing, on the other hand, refers to how we know, determined by the intellect's form. By its nature, the intellect a priori produces concepts (conceptus formalis), which shape an internal representation or object (conceptus obiectivus)—an image of the thing. This representation allows us to grasp the essence of the object.

Matter and form can and must be spoken of not for knowledge but for logic, which is not the science of the real, but the science of the concept and reasoning. Not knowledge, but logic has a form and matter, where the form is the coherence, correctness, and regularity of reasoning (conceptus formalis), while the matter is the content of the concept and reasoning (objective concept). Formal logic teaches how to reason, and material logic about what it is possible to reason about [3].

Husserl does not distinguish clearly between formal logic, which he links to Aristotle, and 'transcendental' logic for two reasons. First, Aristotle's framework also includes a material logic. Second, the concept of transcendental logic itself is problematic.

The transcendental qualifies metaphysics, not logic. Logic considers the transcendental as one of its objects, alongside the categorical. What qualifies it is not the transcendental aspect, but the ens rationis logicum, which can be syllogistic (formal logic) or demonstrative (material logic).

The manner or form of knowing is subjective and a priori, and here Kant is right; the content or matter of knowing, as an objective concept or content of the concept formed by the intellect, is objective and a posteriori, in the sense that it follows the existence of the intellect; and here Kant is still correct; but the object of knowing, as a thing, is also a priori form, in the sense that it exists before the cognitive act of the intellect. And this is what Kant does not see. This is why Kant concludes that we do not know the thing itself, but only its concept or 'phenomenon.' Hegel later explicitly argues that the thing is merely its concept, encapsulated in the idea that 'the rational is the real.' This represents a common flaw in idealism: the conflation of being with thought.

It is also necessary to remember that the matter or the content or the object of knowing is the entity, whether it is material (composed of matter and form) or spiritual (pure form). Therefore, in knowing, not only does the material object (ob-jectum) stand before us, but also a spiritual object, even God, can be before us. Therefore, by "object," we should not only understand material reality or phenomenon but also spiritual reality, including God. God is not a physical object, certainly. But this does not mean that He is not a logical or formal object, that is, an object of knowledge.

We might ask what Kant means by the term "form." He never stops to clarify the meanings of the term, and from here arises the confusion into which he falls and which is the origin of idealism. It can be seen that Kant confuses form as form, the absolute, pure, and immaterial form, with the form of matter, the form that shapes matter. He confuses intellectual or cognitive form with cosmological form, that is, the substantial form of the physical compound of matter and form.

The A Priori Foundations of Idealism

The form, in itself and in general, is the act of the entity as it is something determined, it is this entity (aliquid) or this (hoc) entity. It can be inherent or subsisting. It is inherent if it gives substantial form (for example, the soul) or accidental form (being red) to matter. It is subsisting if it is capable of subsisting by itself separately and independently of matter (human soul, angel, God). It can subsist in thought, and then we have the logical form (ens rationis), or it can subsist in reality, and then we have the ontological form (ens reale).

The matter is what in the entity is the potential to be formed by the form or is formed by the form, as the subject (sub-jectum) of the form. In the compound of matter and form (including man), the subsistent is the same compound. The term "matter" can have both logical and ontological implications, similar to "form." For instance, there is a distinction between matter as a school subject, which pertains to the logical or conceptual content being studied, and matter as the material of wood, which refers to the physical substance in an ontological sense.

When we talk about the "matter" of knowledge we mean logical matter since knowledge is notoriously an immaterial fact. Therefore, this matter should not be shaped by a form, as Kant believed, as if it were a cosmological matter because by this term "matter," when it comes to knowledge, we mean the object of knowledge, an object which, if material, is composed of matter and form or can be a pure immaterial, ideal, logical, or spiritual form.

The form of the real or ideal entity is the object of knowledge. It can be a pure form (spiritual substance) or a form of matter (for example, the human soul). It can be an exemplary form, the idea, transcendent to the thing, or an inherent form, or immanent to the thing. The exemplary form is the principle and rule of knowledge. The first and highest exemplary form is the divine idea.

The second form is the essence. If the entity is a pure form (for example, the angel), the form coincides with the essence. The angel does not have an essence but is an essence. If, instead, the entity is composed of matter and form (for example, man), the form (i.e., the soul) is a part of the essence. Descartes and Kant, who do not admit the soul as a substantial form, make the soul a pure form ("pure ego") as if it were a pure spirit.

However, the intelligible and understood form of the thing, the concept, belongs to the intellect, in the sense that it is immanent to the intellect, as the ob-jectum, the content of the concept, but not in the sense that it belongs to the essence of the intellect, as Kant believes. Instead, it is the form of the understood thing.

However, Kant is right in saying that the idea is a principle of knowledge. This is a truth contained in Idealism, which it shares with Realism. His mistake is that he believes that this form is not external to thought, does not belong to the thing itself, but is a thought form, a pure "idea of reason." Regarding our understanding of material existence, we must acknowledge that we perceive its matter indirectly, through its form.

Kant's concept of the phenomenon is useful for defining the epistemological status of experimental sciences, which we all now call, in homage to Kant, "sciences of phenomena." Certainly, not the sense but the intellect grasps the form of the entity or thing. The sense, however, grasps sensible qualities. Therefore, Kant, who admitted, contrary to Descartes, the realistic value of experience, rightly said that the science of phenomena is objective, universal, and necessary.

On the other hand, it is undeniable that the intellect has a form; indeed, it is a pure and subsisting form, a spiritual form. This, Kant understood. But the intellect does not possess by nature or a priori the form of its object - and here Kant failed - because the object, namely the thing, already has its form created by God, namely its essence; and the intellect must do nothing but intentionally grasp the form or essence of the thing.

Kant conflates the role of the intellect in the process of knowing—a role that is indeed a priori, as it is intrinsic to the intellect itself—with the form of the object, which constitutes the content of knowing. Instead, the form and content of knowing should be distinguished not by the criterion that the former is a priori and the latter is "given" (given by whom?), but rather by recognizing that the subjective form of the intellect, which is produced by the intellect, is the a priori form through which the intellect knows (i.e., the mode and means of knowing). In contrast, the form of the object, or the thing that is the object of knowing, is a separate entity.

The intellect shapes the concept of the thing, not the object of knowing, which is the thing itself. The intellect receives both the sensible and intelligible aspects of phenomena and objects, not through its own doing, but as gifts from God, the creator of reality. This is where Kant, and all idealists, fundamentally go astray.

Human cognition indeed intellectually grasps or comprehends the form or essence of the thing internally, abstractly, and immaterially, without its matter, although the subject knows very well that it concerns a material substance.

It is surprising that an epistemology like that of idealism, which claims to be the work of the spirit and consciousness, does not understand its peculiar and proper activity, intentional and representative, confusing the formation of the concept with the formation of reality.

Kant carefully avoids claiming that the intellect gives shape to the thing itself, and instead asserts that it shapes the inner object or concept. In this respect, he is entirely correct. However, this caution is excessive, as it separates the thing from the intellect, rendering it inaccessible and leading to skepticism, despite his efforts to establish the objectivity of knowledge.

True objectivity does not reside merely in producing logical objects, no matter how ingenious or surprising, nor in generating ideas alone. Rather, it lies in ensuring that ideas accurately reflect external things and in verifying whether these ideas conform to reality. Indeed, idealists are very fertile in producing ideas and writing books, but ultimately ineffective with these ideas in bringing us into contact with reality.

To put it in everyday language, they're not discussing anything real; they're just "talking to a brick wall." They do not want to draw attention to reality, but to themselves. They do not make us know reality, but what they think of it. They do not discover but invent. They confuse philosophy with poetry. With words, they do not signify the thing, but another word. They are not true reasoners but sophists. They do not provide true certainties but lead to skepticism. They do not make us see but make themselves seen.

They seem to elevate to the heights of the spirit, but in reality, they are masters of pride and vanity. The ultimate aspiration of their disciples is not to deepen the reality that the master has discovered but to repeat the formulas of the master. The irony is that they pride themselves on excluding dogmatism. At the same time, maintaining the Cartesian method of starting all over again, each of them presents their thought as revolutionary, as the true foundation of philosophy.

Thus, always remaining idealistic, Kant supplanted Descartes, Fichte supplanted Kant, Hegel supplanted Fichte, Gentile supplanted Hegel, Heidegger supplanted Gentile, Severino supplanted Heidegger. We await the next one. We have exactly the application of Hegelian dialectics: identity in contradiction.

Why should I lose sleep over what Hegel, Fichte, or Severino think, if their musings don't shed any light on the real world for me? Why should I be bothered about who Descartes, Kant, or Rahner think God is? What I want to know is who God is in Himself, as He truly is (1 John 3:2). If we can't grasp the thing in itself, then we sure won't get a handle on God in Himself either.

For there to be genuine knowledge and truth, we must accept that the form of the thing itself aligns with the form of the concept found in the intellect. The thing has an essence or form, without which the thing cannot exist. On the other hand, if knowledge is not knowledge of the essence or form of the thing, knowledge cannot exist. If we say of a thing that we do not know what it is, we mean that we do not know it.

If we say we know a phenomenon or the nature of a phenomenon, that phenomenon is the thing we know. While we can accept that the phenomenon represents the vicar of the essence of the thing, which is not directly accessible to us, we cannot concede that the essence remains entirely unknown, since it is through the phenomenon that we gain insight into it.

If the intellect does not know the thing, knowledge does not exist. This is why Kant is wrong in claiming that we do not know the thing, but the object, which he calls a "phenomenon," which is an inner object, half coming from the subject and half coming from the thing. But I cannot admit that half of the thing comes from me or that I put it there. I want to know the whole thing, not just half of it.

By what right should I add an extra half to a part of the object? Where does this extra half come from—did I just invent it? I can't claim to know this added half because knowing is about receiving, not creating. Am I supposed to have half of the thing already embedded in my understanding? How could this half be inside me before I've even encountered the thing? Did I end up creating half of it myself? This is the kind of muddle Kant’s theory of knowledge leads to.

From Descartes' Innate Idea to Kant's A Priori Form

Kant transforms Descartes' innate ideas into his so-called "forms" or a priori categories of the intellect. Certainly, Kant was right to reject Descartes' theory of innate ideas, as if their emergence should correspond to the biological act of our birth. However, he remained enthralled by the Cartesian concept of the intellect, which excludes potentiality, so that for Descartes our spirit is not a res quae potest cogitare, but is a res cogitans in act. Thinking is not an accident proper to our spirit, but it is the essence of our spirit.

For this reason, for Descartes, an ignorant intellect or one that does not think is inconceivable, but for him, the intellect, like the divine intellect, is essentially knowing in act. But in reality, only God thinks by essence. Only God is a res cogitans. Even the angelic intellect, which is also pure intellect, passes from potency to act.

Now, however, we must say that it is true that our intellect has its essence or form before it knows anything. There is no doubt, however, that our intellect is an ontological a priori, more important than the a posteriori of the senses. Yet human intellect begins to know a posteriori, starting from sensory experience, and then gradually, often erringly, rises to the perception of the a priori, that is, of the spirit.

Kant's a priori form is so named by him because it is a spiritual form, a form of the intellect that has a primacy not temporal but ontological over the a posteriori form, derived from experience. Temporally, as for the realists, experience precedes intellection; however, Kantian a priori is not the result of an abstract activity, as for the realist, but a condition of possibility of experience, that is, of a posteriori knowledge.

For many of us, sensory certainty is irrefutable and it would be insane to deny it, while the existence of the spirit is doubtful. Kant has no doubts about the truthfulness of the senses, to which he attributes the communication of what comes from the thing in itself (the "matter" of knowledge). It's just that he still stands with Descartes in upholding the principle of cogito.

Kant acknowledges, against Descartes, that our knowledge begins with sensory experience, but then he lets himself be misled by Descartes when he must explain the origin of a priori knowledge, that is, scientific and philosophical knowledge. Here Kant forgets the preparatory function of the senses and falls back into Cartesian cogito, which he calls "I think" or "transcendental apperception." This will later be the pure Ego of Fichte and all subsequent idealists up to Husserl.

Moreover, it is not true at all, as Descartes says, that knowledge of the spirit is easier than that of bodies. It is certainly more secure, but the fallibility of our reason, resulting from original sin, has led us to be materialists [4] and to confuse the spirit with the world of our ideas, as happens precisely to the idealists.

At birth, our intellect is purely potential, which means that it knows nothing at all. It has no a priori knowledge, that is, spiritual, before knowing a posteriori, that is, knowing external material things through the senses. Only under these conditions, educated by a good upbringing, does it conceive categories or predicaments, as well as transcendentals, and come to know the spirit, self-consciousness, moral values, and God.

Now Kant is right to admit that knowing has a productive aspect and a receptive aspect. It's just that he confuses the object of knowledge as an object with the object as a thing. Since he argues that we do not know things, but only phenomena of things, and must affirm that knowledge has an object, instead of speaking of "thing," he substitutes the term with "object," so that instead of speaking of knowledge of things, he speaks of knowledge of objects.

But this leads to the regrettable consequence that the object of knowledge is the object. But this is precisely idealism because that means mistaking the object for the thing. This indeed corresponds exactly to the Cartesian conception, according to which we originally and initially know a priori ideas and not sensible things. Indeed, the object is nothing other than the thing as it stands before (ob-jectum) our intellect.

One thing is the thing in itself and another thing is the thing represented to us by the concept of the thing. One thing is the thing and another thing is what I understand of the thing in my concept of the thing. But the fact that I produce this inner object, distinct from the thing outside of me, does not mean that I cannot know, albeit imperfectly, the essence of the thing in my concept of the thing.

The object of knowledge is indeed both the terminus of the cognitive act, coinciding here with the thing itself, and also the thing objectified by me in my concept of the thing, the thing as conceived and thought by me. If I reduce my knowledge to the inner object produced by me, namely the concept or idea of the thing, I exchange the thing with my idea of the thing. And here lies the error of idealism, initiated by Descartes and continued by Kant, although he, against Descartes, judged the existence of the thing in itself external to thought to be obvious.

In this way, Kant understands transcendental knowledge not as knowledge of the properties of the being, that is, of the thing, whether it be material or spiritual since it is evident that when he speaks of "thing," he means the sensible material thing, but, since he confuses the object of knowledge with the mode of knowing, we have his famous definition of transcendental knowledge as that which does not deal with objects, but with the mode of knowing them a prior.

Kant's Transcendental and the Question of Categories

In the famous quote where Kant declares what he means by "transcendental," he changes the sense of the word as it was previously understood. That is, for him, the transcendental is no longer a property of the being or, as is improperly expressed, of the "object," but of the knowing subject: the transcendental becomes the thinking, the cogito, the ego cogito of Descartes.

Why this change in the meaning of the word? Because Kant has falsified the concept of the transcendental, removing its ontological-realist meaning, referring to the thing in itself, to the res, to give it an idealist sense, that is, to refer it to the thinking subject as thinking, to Descartes's res cogitans or, more radically, to the same cogito or ego cogito of Descartes.

Kant also shows disdain for the transcendental predicates of the being established by Aristotle: unum, res, aliquid, verum, bonum, pulchrum. Kant has indeed misunderstood Aristotle's doctrine of the transcendentals, which are the predicates of the being, mistaking them for "logical demands,"[5] "criteria of thought," [6] "criteria of the possibility of the concept."[7] This misunderstanding of the true meaning of the transcendentals prepares his idealistic conception of the transcendental, in which the transcendental is no longer a way of being of the being, but a way of knowing of the knower, which, however, contributes a priori to the production of the object of knowledge. And since the knower is one, the transcendentals, from five, become one.

In reality, the transcendental is not a singular concept as idealists might claim. Instead, there is a plurality of transcendentals, as St. Thomas Aquinas rigorously demonstrates. He distinguishes between absolute transcendentals—such as being, something, and unity (res, aliquid, unum), which arise from the essence of being itself—and relational transcendentals—such as truth, goodness, and beauty (verum, bonum, pulchrum), which depend on the relationship with the knowing, loving, and appreciative mind.

Kant distinguishes the transcendental from the categorical with the realists, but while the former is limited to the horizon of self-consciousness, the latter is restricted only to phenomena or empirical data. It follows that, while the transcendental becomes the horizon of thought of idealistic philosophy, which indeed, following Kant, calls it "transcendental," [8] the field of the categorical is left to the empirical sciences, whose realism remains convenient for the idealist for their everyday needs.

In the realistic view, the transcendental is distinguished from the categorical based respectively on the predicates of the being and of material substance. Transcendental predicates encompass the entire range of being and represent modes of being as such. They, considering being in an absolute sense, are the one (unum), the thing (res), and the something (aliquid). Considering instead being as it manifests itself to the spirit, we have the true (verum) that appears to the intellect, the good (bonum) concerning the will, and the beautiful (pulchrum) that appears to the intellect insofar as it pleases the will [9].

The categorical predicates or predicaments are instead the highest genera of the accident of material substance. Kant sought to replace Aristotle's table of categories with his own, convinced that his approach was more rigorous and exhaustive, while Aristotle's was haphazard and incomplete. Kant indeed says:

"Aristotle, having no principle, hastily collected fundamental concepts as they presented themselves. But his table always remained defective." [10]

On the other hand, Kant boasts of having found "all the pure concepts of the intellect," which would correspond to "the logical functions found in all possible judgments, which functions completely exhaust the intellect and measure all its power." [11]

These would be

"pure concepts that the intellect contains a priori, and only by means of which is it also pure intellect: only through them can something be understood in the manifold of intuition, that is, thinking an object of it. This division is systematically derived from a common principle, namely the faculty of judgment, which is equivalent to the faculty of thought," [12] that is, therefore, Descartes' cogito.

If we then look at what these vaunted categories would be, we see that Kant mixes transcendentals (one, many, all, reality, existence) with logical categories (possible, negation, impossible, necessary, contingent) and with true categoricals (inherence, subsistence, relation, action, passion, causality).

Kant neglects to list among the transcendentals the res, the thing or reality, the ens reale (real being). The res is the being as real, endowed with essence and existence, as noted by St. Thomas [13]. Kant indeed mentions the famous "thing in itself," distinct from the intellect and external to the intellect; but the thing in itself for him is simply the "object of sense," that is, the material thing. It is thinkable ("noumenon"), but it is what appears as a "phenomenon," the object of experimental science. Instead, in reality, the res as transcendental can be material as well as spiritual. They are the visibilia et invisibilia (visible and invisible) of the Christian Faith Symbol.

Instead, the object of philosophy for Kant is the "I think," Cartesian self-consciousness, the subject of reason and will, we could say of the spirit, which Kant calls with an ancient German term, Gemüt, which means "emotional mind." From this, it is understood that judgment, for Kant, before being theoretical and moral judgment, is the aesthetic judgment or, as he puts it, "of taste."

For this reason, he titles his aesthetics "Critique of Judgment." The object of knowledge, therefore, for Kant, ultimately is not so much the ens or res, but the pulchrum, which is bonum (good) to look at, or, as Thomas says, quod visum placet. Kant, beyond his rationalism, is a precursor of romantic "feeling" (Gefühl). Von Balthasar's gnoseology follows this line (emphasis mine).

Furthermore, the category of substance is missing among Kantian categories. Kant indeed admits subsistence; but it is distinct from substance because, in reality, it is the act of substance. Why this difference with Aristotle? Because Kantian categories do not arise, as in Aristotle, from the notion of being, but are the categorical predicates of the phenomenon, which for him is the "object of the senses" instead of material substance. Therefore, the phenomenon is for Kant the subsisting.

The Kantian phenomenon has subsistence, but it is not a substance because, for him, the substance is only a chemical substance, namely that which is sensible and material, and he does not think to apply this category to spiritual substance, namely the soul, the angel, and God. After all, Kant does not consider being and therefore substance in an analogical sense. For him, substance can only be predicated on chemical or empirical substance.

Instead, Aristotle is interested in the possible categories of being as such. For this reason, he realizes that being can be a substance or accident, from which arise the famous ten categories: substance, quality, quantity, habit, relation, action, passion, where, place, and when.

Furthermore, Aristotle is well-known for his analogical view of being. Consequently, his concept of substance has an analogical meaning. This allows Aristotle to speak of both material and spiritual substances. In contrast, Kant’s framework does not accommodate this distinction. For Kant, if substance is discussed at all, it can only be considered as "phenomenal substance."Therefore, while Aristotelian categoriality is analogical and applies to bodies and spirits, Kantian categoriality applies only to phenomena, and the transcendental is reserved for the spirit, namely for the cogito, which is the transcendental expansion of Cartesian cogito, the so-called "transcendental ego."

Moreover, Kant neglects when (time), where (place), and situation (site) because instead of recognizing them as accidents of substance, he makes them the "a priori forms of sensibility," mistaking the object of sense, namely the sensible quality of the material thing, for how the sense perceives it, just as he confuses the object of the intellect, the intelligible or essence of being, with how the intellect knows things.

The category of habit (exis) is also missing among Kantian categories, so the possibility of founding the doctrine of habits and virtues as stable practical acquired dispositions disappear. In fact, in Kantian gnoseology and morality, it seems that the intellect and the will act not by their respective intellectual and moral virtues but a priori, by their essence, as might occur in divine intellect and will.

Habit, on the other hand, is necessary to determine a faculty or power that is not determined in itself but open to various possibilities, such as human intellect and will, which initially provide the potential for any act. Now, Kant does speak of faculties, but only the word remains because, with his systematic a prioriism, he effectively disregards the role of the a posteriori, that is, the gradual process of formation and realistic development of the activity of the intellect and the will based on experience, and therefore, the a posterior.

It seems that for Kant, all human mental activity boils down to the self-conscious application of a priori laws, much like a computer booting up and running its operating system. He indeed admits free will, but even this seems to guarantee sufficient moral honesty from the mere execution of an a priori duty not based on knowledge of the thing in itself and the divine will but on the simple reflected will of practical reason. It is clear that under these conditions, the habit of virtue is no longer necessary since the spirit already operates a priori according to the laws and forms that it has imposed on itself and possesses within itself.

Regarding sensible knowledge and sensation, Kant is in line with Cartesian subjectivism: sensations do not make us aware of objective qualities belonging to the thing but are mere modifications of sensibility. The difference between Kant and Descartes lies in their treatment of extension and temporality. Descartes acknowledges these as properties of bodies. In contrast, Kant, with his view of knowledge as shaping matter, takes a different approach. Kant recognizes the existence of the sensible thing in itself. However, he attributes what belongs to the sensible object—namely, its sensible form—to sensibility. This means that Kant ends up viewing space and time not as properties of material things, but as properties of sense. Essentially, Kant suggests that sense shapes the object, rather than merely taking on the object's form intentionally.

Now it's true that the senses have their natural and a priori mode of functioning, but we're still there: Kant confuses this modal a priori with a nonexistent content-based a priori, attributing to the senses the creation of those properties of the sensible, which is not up to the senses to determine, but only to God, the creator of sensibility and the object of sense [14].

In this way, what the idealists hail as the pinnacle of categories—the transcendental—has turned into something of a magic word or a catch-all gimmick. It's as if they use it to hide their unresolved issues behind a smoke screen or to dazzle the reader with a term that sounds both solemn and grandiose.

So with Kant here, we do not have at all the transition, as the idealists and modernists would have us believe, from the ancient transcendental to the "modern" transcendental, as if to be modern and critical, and not naive, we needed to adopt Kantian transcendentalism and reject Thomistic transcendentalism.

Instead, we’ve swapped the open-minded exploration of the vast and varied modalities of being for a retreat into the confines of our ego, which has become like a magician’s hat, pulling out wonders for those who don’t know the trick.

End of Part Three (3/4)

Fr. Giovanni Cavalcoli OP

Fontanellato, September 6, 2022

Source:

https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/la-vera-essenza-della-filosofia-moderna_21.html

[1] Critique of Pure Reason, loc. cit., p. 27.

[2] Just as one says the subject matter or the topic of discussion.

[3] Josephus Gredt, Elementa philosophiae aristotelico-thomisticae (Elements of Aristotelian-Thomistic Philosophy), Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1937, vol. I.

[4] "Carnal men," as Saint Paul would say.

[5] Critique of Pure Reason, loc. cit., p. 124.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid., p. 125.

[8] See, for example, Schelling, Sistema dell’idealismo transcendentale (System of Transcendental Idealism), Laterza Publishers, Bari 1990; or Various Authors, Studi di filosofia trascendentale (Studies in Transcendental Philosophy), Vita e Pensiero, Milan 1993.

[9] Disputed Question on Truth, q. 1, a. 1.

[10] Critique of Pure Reason, Laterza Editions, Bari 1965, p. 119.

[11] Ibid., p. 118.

[12] Ibid., p. 119.

[13] Disputed Question on Truth, q., a. 1.

[14] La fenomenologia della percezione (The Phenomenology of Perception), Morcelliana, Brescia 1961.