[318]

[343]

ARTICLE III

ESSENCE AND REALITY

Strictly speaking, we have, in the course of the present study, already said, fundamentally, all that there is to be said on this point. We have, however, said it in a line of reflection which, step by step, has laid bare to us the different aspects of essence. For this reason it is now right to begin from the essence so conceived and, taking our stand on it, construct, in a unitary way, the concept of essence as the essential moment of the substantive reality. Since this undertaking involves a synthetic vision of essence, the concepts obtained earlier will necessarily re-appear, not in another order, but indeed in another perspective, within which alone they will achieve their final metaphysical precision.

The guiding thread of this entire investigation has been the idea that essence is a physical moment of the substantivity. Substantivity is not substantiality. Substantivity, in a word, has the formal character of a system of notes and not of a subject of notes. It is a character of the unity of the notes among themselves, but is not a hidden [319] subject beneath or beyond them. It is not the "perseitas" of the substance, but, rather, sufficiency in the order of system. Therefore, essence, as a moment of the substantivity, is the moment of a system and not the determination of a subject. This is what we have been expressing when we said that the essence is, in the substantivity, the sub-system or fundamental system.

This character of essence leaves us engulfed in serious problems: [344] before all, in the problem of how to, apprehend and to express essence conceptually; while essence is considered as the determination of a subject, the natural organon for apprehending essence would be the predicative logos. When that concept is abandoned, the problem confronts us anew: what is the logos of essence? However, in addition, we find ourselves obliged to ask ourselves about the essence itself from this other point of view. Now, every reality is, from antiquity, capable of being considered from a double point of view. In the essence of each real thing, there can be seen, on the one hand, that which the thing is in its content, so to say; that is, that according to which it is "such" a thing and not another "such". On the other hand, however, the essence can be seen as that according to which the thing is real. The first constitutes the order of "suchness"; the second is the "transcendental" order. Therefore, the problem "essence and reality" leaves us planted amid three questions:

1. Essence and logos.

2. Essence and "suchness".

3. Essence and transcendentality.

It is hoped that the reader will indulge, not only the re-appearance of concepts which have already been explicated, but also the wearisome repetition of the explications themselves.

[345]

SECTION ONE

ESSENCE AND LOGOS

As reality, we have repeated many times, the essence is not the objective correlate of a definition, but rather the physical structuring [320] moment of the real, a moment formally individual qua essence. On the other hand, the essence as physical reality is, as we have just recalled to mind, a fundamental system of notes, that is, a mode of unity which the notes, of which the essence is found to be formed, possess directly and among themselves. Since this is the case, in our effort to understand essence metaphysically, we find at our disposition the two classical resources: substance and definition. Therefore, we have found ourselves obliged to forge a conceptual organon adequate to the demands of the case.

In order to achieve this we appeal, naturally, to language. And this, not only, nor even principally (as did the Greeks) because language is "significative", fwn¿ shmantikž, but because it signifies by "expressing". And between every expression, whether it be linguistic or not, and the mind itself there is an intrinsic unity, both profound and radical: the forma mentis. This unity, that is to say, this mind "conformed" in this way, is what we call, precisely and formally, "mentality": mentality is forma mentis. This is the reason why the to say, the lžgein, is not only to say "something", but is also to say it "in a certain way", that is, with certain modulations proper to a determined mentality. Let us set aside, for the moment, the social character and the modifications of every mentality and of what is [346] enunciated in it; that is not our present theme. We must be content with affirming that the structure of language always permits there to shine through, in one way or another, certain conceptual structures which are proper to the mentality. Let us explain ourselves further.

First of all, language permits certain conceptual structures to shine through or appear. This affirmation is not to be confused with four other affirmations which are completely different from it, namely: first, the affirmation that the function of language is primarily to express concepts; second, the affirmation that language is the locus where conceptual structures are expressed primo et per se; third, the affirmation that the primary function of intellection is to forge concepts of things; fourth, the affirmation that every structural moment of intellection has its formal expression in language. On the contrary, I have limited myself to affirming that in every linguistic structure a conceptual structure shows through in some way. The four affirmations cited above are, furthermore, in formal rigor, false, [321] while what we have here affirmed is an undeniable fact which is easily testable. Let us say, nevertheless, that in spite of being false, those four affirmations enunciate four serious problems, which, when joined to what we have affirmed here, constitute five fundamental aspects which must be clarified if one wishes to stay afloat in the problem of "logos and reality". But this, too, is not our theme. Here we limit ourselves to taking language as the mere index of conceptual structures.

These structures then, I have said, are in great measure proper to a determined mentality. It is not the case that these concepts are "subjective", but rather that, even while being true and fecund, they are always so only in an intrinsically limited way. And in this sense, every logos always leaves open the problem of its basic adequacy to conceive the real.

[347] Classical philosophy rested on a perfectly determined logos: the predicative logos. On it is mounted the whole of "logic" as the primary organon for the apprehension of the real. The predicative logos involves a subject and certain predicative determinations, predicated of that subject by way of the verb to be. That subject is looked upon, in the first instance, as a substantial subject, and the logos par excellence is that which expresses its intrinsic mode of being, the definition. Now this fundamental rank of the predicative logos has, for the results of our problem, at least three limitations: the identification of the essential logos with the definition, the identification of the logos with the predicative logos, and the identification of the subject of the logos with a subjectual reality.

Let us consider first the identification of the essential logos with the definition. For Aristotle, the definition (ÓrismÕj) is always and only the logos of a quiddity (tØ t‹ Án eŠnai) since, for Aristotle, every reality has a specific essence. Every essential proposition would then be a definition. The rest may be, as the manuals of Logic say, "descriptions", but not definitions. (We may set aside what are usually called historical definitions, genetic definitions, etc., for these, strictly speaking, are not such at all, but mere characterizations, more or less univocal, of their objects.) This distinction between definition and description rests entirely on the existence of the quiddity and its identification with the essence. That difference will consist simply in the fact that when we cannot arrive, or we have [322] not yet arrived, at the quiddity, this latter escapes us, remains hidden; therefore, we cannot define it and we must content ourselves with describing more or less "inessentially" the real thing. The description is formally "inessential", while the definition is formally "essential". (The so-called nominal definition is more properly called [348] a description.) In both cases, however, it is presupposed that the essence of the thing is identified with the quiddity.

This position is not accurate precisely because the essence of the real thing is not identified with its quiddity. This identification of the essence with the tØ t‹ Án eŠnai is, fundamentally, the most serious correction which must be made in Aristotle's system on this point: the constitutive essence is not the same as the quidditive essence. Consequently, since essence and quiddity are not identical, neither are essential proposition and definition to be identified. A proposition which enunciates all and only the constitutive characteristics which a thing possesses kaq' aÛtÕ and without the subject entering into what is predicated, would be a strictly and formally essential proposition, since it would enunciate the quid of the thing in question, its constitutive essence. Such is the case of the proposition which will state that the electron is an elementary particle of electronic mass 1, of negative charge 1, and of spin 1/2. Nevertheless, this proposition is not formally a definition since the quid, the constitutive essence, forms a "class", but not a "species"; it is not a quiddity, a tØ t‹ Án eŠnai; effectively, "elementary particle" is not a genus in re; it is only the designation of a natural class. Neither, however, is this proposition a mere external description, as though the quiddity lay hidden behind it, because in this case the quiddity does not exist, despite the fact that the notes expressed by the said proposition belong to the constitutive essence of the thing. This is the case of every non-quiddifiable constitutive essence. Hence it is that, in addition to non-essential descriptions and definitions, there are essential propositions which are not definitions. Every proposition is essential which enunciates all or some of the formally constitutive notes of the substantive reality; that is, the proposition which expresses the [349] notes of the constitutive essence, whether or not it is quiddifiable. The definition is only one of the possible types of essential proposition, the proposition which falls back on those constitutive notes which form the essential quidditive moment (when such exists) of [323] the constitutive essence of the reality. In order that an essential proposition be a definition, two conditions must be met, conditions which must be understood with complete formal rigor. First, it must be a proposition which enunciates notes which, in themselves, belong materially to the quiddity of the thing. Second, it must be a proposition such that the materially quidditative notes are exactly and formally articulated in the form of proximate genus and ultimate difference. The lack of either of these conditions would diminish, in the essential proposition, its character as definition. This is evident with regard to the first condition; if the proposition expresses constitutive characteristics which are neither quidditative nor quiddifiable, this proposition would express the constitutive essence and not the quidditive, and there would be no definition, but rather a simple essential proposition. However, it is necessary to insist especially on the fact that neither is there a definition if, the first condition having been fulfilled, the second is not fulfilled. In a word, I can state the quiddifiable constitutive notes, that is, the quidditive notes, taken, however, in their simple physical reality, one after the other and in a certain order. This proposition would not be a definition, because the notes are not formally and expressly articulated in that proposition as "metaphysical" moments (genus and difference as such", but rather only successively enumerated as "physical" realities. Let us take, as an example, the classical formula according to which man is a rational animal. This proposition can be understood in two ways. One, merely enumerative: man is rational "and" animal. In this sense, animality and rationality are two physical notes which [350] belong to the constitutive essence of each man, and which, because they are quiddifiable, also belong to the quiddity. They belong to it, however, only materially. For this reason, the proposition, understood in this way, is an essential proposition, but it is not formally a definition. In order that it should be, it is necessary to understand it in another way: taking the notes not as physical notes, but as metaphysical moments endowed with a precise articulation: animality as genus, and rationality as difference. The formula then does not say that man is rational "and" animal, but that he is a "rational-animal", a unity metaphysically determined by two moments. Only then do we formally express a quiddity and only then is the proposition formally quidditive, a definition. Without genus and difference there is no [324] definition. For this reason, Aristotle called the genera "principles of definition" (¦rca‹ d¡ tª gžnh tñn Órismñn eŠsˆn).

Based on the example which we have just cited, the manuals of Logic have been accustomed to distinguish two classes of definitions, the "physical" definition and the "metaphysical" definition. The first would be that which states the physical and separable principles or parts of the essence, as if I were to say "man is a composite of organic body and rational soul". That definition would be metaphysical which states the metaphysical parts of the essence, its genus and difference, as when I were to say, "man is a rational animal". It would seem, then, that what I have called the "essential proposition" is precisely the physical definition. This, however, is not the case. For the distinction of the two definitions presupposes the identity of essence and quiddity; whence it results that these "two" definitions are in reality nothing but modes or ways, one material and the other formal, of stating one same definition, the definition of the quiddity. The example of man shows us this clearly enough. It is [351] supposed that the physical essence is purely and simply the merely numerical and singular realization of the metaphysical essence, of the quiddity and, for this reason, that by means of which it is possible to define the essence from two points of view; what is defined, however, is always one and the same. By contrast, we have in this study distinguished the constitutive essence and the quidditive essence. The first not only is something more than the mere singularity of the second, but can be and is given sometimes without that other; there are, in a word, non-quiddifiable essences. Whence it follows that the proposition which states the constitutive essence is not another way of defining the quiddity but is, rather, something completely different. The difference leaps to view, because in these same manuals the metaphysical definition is called a "perfect" definition, a fact which clearly indicates that, in those words, the distinction of the two definitions is relative, is merely a difference of point of view. By contrast, by distinguishing the constitutive and the quidditive essence, the propositions which state them prove really distinct. As, traditionally that which states the quiddity is accustomed to be called definition, I reserve this name for that use and I call, by contrast, that which states the constitutive essence, essential proposition. Hence it is that what I have said on this point earlier must [325] be completed in the following form: an essential proposition is a proposition which enunciates notes formally constitutive, whether or not they are quiddifiable, providing always that they be stated, if they are quiddifiable, in a non-quidditive form.

These essential propositions, which are not definitions, have one pecularity: they are not necessarily "completed" or perfect. The definition, with its proximate genus and ultimate difference, is, in principle, a proposition which expresses the essence of what is defined in an exhaustive manner. An essential proposition, however, which is not a definition, since it contains no more than a "series" of constitutive notes of the substantive reality, always leaves the door open to further predicates. It is not, and does not pretend to be, conelusive: it is an "open" proposition.

[352] Hence it is that the effort to understand what is essential in the reality need not be an effort to define it. As a matter of fact, only of man-we have already seen why-a strict definition has been given, one which is open to question, hardly free from opposition, perhaps, but a strict definition nevertheless; no other reality has been univocally apprehended in proximate genus and ultimate difference. By contrast, of all realities, including the human, constitutive notes have continuously been discovered, that is, essential notes of those realities. Differently from what happens in the case of the definition, this knowledge of the constitutive essence is progressive. First, because we are never certain that we have encountered all the constitutive notes of any thing; no one has ever defended such a chimera; second, only on the most rare occasion are we certain of having given a note which is truly constitutive, because almost always the note might prove to be only a constitutional note and the constitutive note might lie at a profounder level. For this reason, the apprehension of a constitutive essence is inexorably progressive and problematical. The goal of essential knowledge is neither to intuit nor to define, but rather to apprehend the necessary and sufficient constitutive notes which would insure that a substantive reality would possess all the rest of its notes. For this reason (we note this in passing, without entering into the question) we do have essential propositions about an individual reality: those which state its constitutive notes when these are not specifiable. It is not true that only the universal can be known. What happens is that only the universal is [326] definable, something very different, because essential knowledge is not of necessity a definition. The problem of intellectual knowledge of the individual is not a problem of definition. This mere allusion to this question must suffice at this point.

[353] To conclude: an essential proposition is not identical with a definition. The essential logos is not of necessity a defining logos. To have identified these two things is the first limitation of the traditional concept of the essential logos.

However, there is an even deeper limitation in this concept: that of thinking that the predication itself is the first and primary function of affirming the real qua real, in such wise that names (nouns) would be only "simple apprehensions", that is, mere designations of concepts, wholly alien to affirmation. This, however, is not accurate. The primary form of affirmative apprehension of the real is the nominal form. And this is so not only because, as we shall see later, there are nominal phrases, but also because the simple noun fulfills at times the function of affirmatively designating the reality of some thing, without the intervention of the verb "to be". Before the division of the logos into simple apprehension (simple aprehensión) and predicative affirmation, there is a previous logos which is, without differentiation, what I have been accustomed to call "simple apprehension", which is at the same time and simply, an affirmative denomination of the real. It is a pre-predicative logos, the "nominal logos". Therefore, the logos cannot be identified with the predicative logos.

This nominal logos can take on different forms, according to which the nominal forms themselves may be. Classical logic has subscribed to one of them, namely, to that one according to which the reality is composed of simple substance-things. And this is the third limitation of classical logic: the identification of the real correlate of the noun (name) with a substantive thing. There is a nominal logos with a different formal structure.

In a word, "things" (in the widest sense of the term) taken in themselves are expressed in all languages by "nouns". Taken in their mutual connections, however, things are expressed nominally in [354] different ways. They are expressed in the first place, by way of a nominal "inflection". This morphological structure allows there to become apparent the conceptualization of a very determined aspect of the reality. The inflection, in fact, affects each noun intrinsically; [327] that is, in the inflected noun there is expressed the connection of one thing with another, not as a mere "connection", but as a "modification" of the absolute reality, and, therefore, the thing is expressed as a subjectual reality endowed with intrinsic modifications. However, it is always a matter of a thing and its name, although with a different shading in each (grammatical) "case". For this reason, the connections, more than connections, are modes or states of being, precisely ptñseij, "inflections of the real thing "in the absolute". Hence it is that the declined (inflected) noun can occupy, in principle, any position in the phrase: it has, in itself, the expression of its proper inflective moment.

At other times the connections are expressed by way of "prepositions" which are added to the name. That is, the connections are conceived, not as intrinsic modifications, but precisely the reverse, as such and such connections of things. Things are, therefore, primarily independent from one another and one adds them to this reality according to a "net" of more or less extrinsic "relations" which link them. Here the connection is "relation".

However, there are times when language expresses things connected by nouns morphologically constructed one upon another, in such a way that the connection is expressed by way of the prosodic, phonetic, and semantic unity of two or more different nouns. This is the "constructed state". By reason of it the nouns in the constructed state occupy a perfectly defined place in the phrase, without being able to be separated from the name in the absolute state. In this third morphological resource, a new and original aspect of the reality shows through in conceptual form. Both in the nominal inflection and in the prepositional arrangement the accent is placed on each [355] thing in and by itself, either modifying it intrinsically or relating it extrinsically. In the constructed state the real is conceived as a unitary system of things, which are, therefore, constructed one after the other, forming a whole among themselves. Here the primary thing is not the things, but the unity of the system. The connection, then, is neither inflection nor relation, but intrinsic system.

These are three different conceptualizations of the reality, each one of which corresponds to a different aspect of that reality. For this reason, they are not mutually exclusive, but, rather, languages employ one or the other resource in different form or measure. The [328] Indo-European languages employ only the nominal inflection and the prepositional arrangement. Other languages, the romanic, for example, employ only prepositions. Of the Semitic languages, some employ both inflection and prepositions and the constructed state, while others have lost the nominal inflection and employ only the last two resources. What is important for us here, however, is not the nominal morphology, but the conception of reality which appears in or through it. The constructed state, as a morphological resource arising from a peculiar mentality, has discovered to us the conceptualization of a structure of the reality, according to which the reality itself is then primo et per se a unity of system (systematic unity). With this, the expression "constructed state" does not now designate here a mere morphological resource, but rather a real physical structure. In this real sense, and only in this sense, have I employed and will I employ the expression in what follows. We have here, then, the adequate conceptual organon which we were seeking for our problem: the nominal constructed logos. The essence cannot be conceptualized either in function of the substance or absolute subject nor in function of the definition, nor in any relational function, but only in function of the intrinsic "constructivity". The constitutive [356] essence, in a word, is a system of notes and this system is not additive or inflectional concatenation of notes, but rather an intrinsically constructed system of notes.

This intrinsic constructivity of the essence as system is expressed in two moments: the essence has some notes in the constructed state, that is, as "notes-of" and these notes have a unity which is the absolute moment "in" them. The absolute terminus of the essence, then, is not each note according to its proper content, but precisely the reverse, the unity itself. This unity is formally a primary coherential unity, in such wise that the essence, as reality in system, is a reality intrinsically constructed according to two moments: the "of" of the notes and the "in" of the unity. They are not two merely correlative moments, but the coherential primacy of the "in" is what gives the notes their "of"; that is, their essential character. The "of" is constructed according to the "in": here we have the intrinsic constructivity of the essential reality. For this reason and this reason alone essential reality has its peculiar character; the essence in itself is not simple actual reality, but rather, reality actualized from [329] its own actual and intrinsic exigency. This character is the implication of the two moments of the constructed system, insofar as it is constructed in the order of actuality. The essence in itself is not, then, either substance or substantial determination. First, because the reality is not formally substance, but rather substantivity; and second, because this substantivity has the formal character of system. Its essence, then, is a system intrinsically constructed of notes. Such is the metaphysical character of the integral physical reality of the constitutive essence.

This constructed reality of the essence, however, can be considered from two points of view which corespond to two aspects of the essential reality: "suchness" and transcendentality.

[357]

SECTION TWO

ESSENCE AND SUCHNESS

The essence is the primary coherential unity of certain very exactly characterized notes, with a characterization which is not merely specific, but formally individual (whether singular or not) in itself qua essence. We must never lose sight of the fact that we are treating of the constitutive physical essence. The essence of the real thing "determines" (I shall presently explain the term) all the characters which a thing possesses; and, therefore, it is a reality in itself, as momentual as one may wish, but a reality which is perfectly characterized: it is this one and no other. Here we have the first and most obvious aspect of the essence in its integral physical reality: the essence is what makes the real thing "such" as it is. To ascertain "what kind" this essence might be, that is to say, of what kind this "such" might be, is the task of positive knowledge or science. To metaphysics, however, formally belongs the conceptualization of this "suchness" itself. The essence, then, is essence, before all else, in the order of suchness. This "such" is not the same as that which appears in the expression "reality as such" and other similar expressions. For in these cases, "such" is an abbreviated way of saying "in as much [330] as", for example, reality in as much as it is reality, essence in as far as it is essence, etc. Here, instead, "such" means "such as it is. I believe that it is superfluous to insist further on this point, because the context itself allows of no confusion.

It is, however, necessary to sharpen the outlines of the concept of "suchness" with greater precision. Scholastic philosophy has spoken of the entity in the "categorial order", that is, in the order of [358] generic, differential, specific, and individual entitative determinations of the entity (these latter would be extra-essential for scholasticism) determinations which are distributed among the different "categories of entities". The categorial order is, then, the order of determination and, reciprocally, all determination belongs necessarily to one category or other. This observation might lead one to think that what we have called "suchness" coincides exactly with catergorial determination. Nevertheless, this is not the case, neither with regard to what refers to the categorial nor with respect to what refers to the determination. A grave ambiguity is contained in the Aristotelean and scholastic idea of "category", even when that idea is taken "ontologically". We shall concern ourselves with that ambiguity later. Let us employ, consequently, only the idea of "determination". It would be an error to believe that suchness and determination are synonyms. All suchness is certainly determination, but not all determination is suchness. The fact is that Aristotelean philosophy and scholastic philosophy have always conceptualized determination in function of substance and definition; as a result, what we have called suchness becomes eo ipso determination like all the others. Suchness, however, is not a determination in this sense, because it cannot be conceived in function of substance or definition, but only in function of the constructivity of a system. Naturally, this does not prevent the possibility that outside this precise problem, we might employ the terms "to determine" and "determination" in their wide usual acceptance, since all suchness is, in some sense, determination. What is it then to be "such"?

Let us begin with the essential notes. The essential notes are not formally essential by reason of their content, but by reason of their constructed state, that is, by reason of the "of". Only by being "notes-of" do they formally have essential reality. This does not [359] mean, however, that their content is alien or indifferent to the [331] essence. Quite the contrary. Precisely because the essential notes are physically, intrinsically, and formally "notes-of", its very content is "of" the systematic unity. In saying that the essential notes are essential, not by reason of their content, but by reason of their "of", what we are affirming is, not that the content does not form part of the essence, but that the content belongs to the essence only in virtue of the "of" (de). To be a "note-of" is, then, also to be "content-of", And the "content-of" is precisely the suchness of the notes. If the pure "of" constitutes the formal reason of the essential reality of the notes, the "content-of", is what makes the essence "such" essence. As a consequence, the essence is not "such" because it "has" these and no other determined notes, but rather because of the peculiar and precise way in which it has them. This mode is not the differential determination of a genus, but rather the constructivity of the physical notes, that is, to be "notes-of". Hence, in the order of suchness, the notes have, constructively, a precise function: "to suchify", "to make such and such". In this order the constructed state of the notes means formally to be a "suchifying" reality. To suchify is not to determine a subject by a note, but rather it is to confer such content upon a system by being "notes-of". And this does not belong to every note of a substantive reality. The merely constitutional notes and the adventitious notes are "determinants" of the substantive reality, but they do not make it "such" reality, they are not "notes-of" because they do not belong to the substantive system directly, by and of themselves, but rather in function of the essential system. "To be such", to "suchify", is formally a character or exclusive function of the "notes-of". The remaining notes presuppose that the reality is already such, they presuppose reality already "as such" (talificada) and they confer ulterior determinations on its suchness. This supplies us with a first conception of essence from the point of view of the "suchness" of its notes. We have seen, in a word, that the essence is the group of notes necessary and sufficient [360] to form a system by themselves. Now we can give this concept a final precision. This group is the group of all and only the "notes-of". And, since to be "note-of" is to be "suchifying", it follows that, in the last analysis, the essence is, from this point of view, the group of notes necessary and sufficient to compose a reality which would be "such" in the exact sense of the concept which we have just [332] explicated. It is, if I may be permitted the expression, suchifying auto-sufficiency.

But "suchifying" of what? Precisely of the other term of the constructed state of the absolute term, that is to say, of the unity itself. Not only the notes, but also the essential unity itself, is "such" in such wise that the essential suchness is a character of the physical essence in its integral reality. What is this suchness of the essential unity as unity?

It is a suchness conferred by the notes. In the order of suchness, then, it is the essential notes which "suchify" the unity. Nevertheless, this does not mean that in this order the essential unity ceases to be primary and coherential. Quite the contrary. And this is precisely what will make it possible to understand the suchness of the unity better.

The unity, in a word, is found "in" each note as an intrinsic exigency of the whole. This exigency is what confers on each note its character as "note-of". It is this character which makes the notes "suchifying". As a consequence, thanks to the primarity of the essential unity, and thanks only to it, do the notes enter the essence by "suchifying" the unity; so that, in the last analysis, it is the unity itself which is, in this respect, the primary reason of its proper suchness. The essential unity, I have said, consists in essentiating the notes. In this order, then, to essentiate means to actualize the suchness as an essential moment; to actualize the notes is to "make [361] them" suchifying. The actual content of this suchness depends on the notes; this fact, however, that this content should be "content-of", that is, that by way of it the essence is "such", depends on the unity itself. Presently I shall clarify this assertion by an example. As a consequence, the primacy of the essential unity appears in the fact that the essential unity is "auto-suchness". The essential unity is not an empty and undifferentiated unity, which would do no more than make the notes something unitary, but rather, is a unity intrinsically and formally "such" qua unity. To be dog or to be man is, before all else, in this order, to be precisely "such" unity. Even more, this suchness of the unity, just like the suchness of the notes, is formally individual qua suchness. If the essence is only singular its suchness, too, is only singular. If, however, it is what we have called strictly and formally individual, then it is necessary to say [333] that not only to be dog or to be man, but also to be this dog or this man is to be "such" unity precisely and formally individual. Each such thing has its proper and irreducible essential individual suchness. Therefore, in speaking of "such" unity, I am referring always to this individual unity of the essence qua essence. The essence of a substantive reality is not only the system of constitutive notes, but also the fact that it is a moment by reason of which the individual physical suchness of each note is in a certain way exigentially "demanding" the rest.

By this I am not referring to what I said earlier, in a more general way, namely, that each note does not have nor can have physical reality save in unity with the rest of the notes. Here I am referring precisely and formally to the suchness of the notes itself, that is to say, to the fact that the character of each note in its full and concrete content is not what it is, except by implicating the particular character of the rest of the notes, also in their full and [362] concrete peculiar content. For example, in any higher animal whatsoever, its biological chemism, taken in its fullness, is a chemism which is such as it is in its character as chemism, implicating, for example, optic sensibility and, in the case of man, implicating rationality. To implicate, not in the sense that in case rationality were to prove to be a chemical phenomenon, or in the reverse situation, that rationality might intervene in the atomic mechanism of chemistry-an absurd supposition if there ever was one-but implicating in the constructed sense, that is, in the sense that the very structure of the chemism is intrinsically constituted solely by being exigentically "of" rationality. And in order to understand this well, I might add that I am referring to the notes in the "fullness" of their suchness; that is to say, I am not referring to the simple chemical mechanism, but to chemism understood as a series of processes in dynamic and reversible equilibrium, that is, to chemism in what it can and must give of itself chemically in the order of biological stability, in the line of the conservation of the substantivity. The chemism of an organism, in a word, can be considered from two points of view. First, (it can be viewed) as a chemism in and by itself; second, as a note of an organism. Only in this second sense is it rigorously "such" a chemism, that is, a chemism by reason of which the organism is "such" an organism, chemically constituted [334] in this fashion. It is true that in the first sense, it is also customary to speak of the chemism "such" as it is. Then, however, we are considering the chemism in question independently of the fact that it is a note of this organism, and in doing so what we actually do is confer on it mentally a substantivity of its own, and in that case, the chemism is, in the strictest sense, "such" a chemism, because its properties are "notes-of" this chemical edifice and, therefore, are, rigorously speaking, "such". In forming part of an organism, however, this same chemism has lost its primitive substantivity and with it [363] has also lost its primitive "suchness"; it conserves only its substantiality and its determining content. In being converted into a moment of the new substantivity, it also acquires a new "suchness". Only by recalling its prior "suchness" are we able to continue speaking then of "such" a chemism as it is in itself independently of the organism. Neither outside the organism nor as forming part of it, are the "determining" character and its character as "such" identified in the chemism. And insofar as it has this character of "such", the chemism is constituted in a form "such" that it demands exigentially the "suchness" of the other notes. The same must be said of every other note. That is to say, if we were able to see in this its ultimate and full reality any note whatsoever of a living being, we would see that this note is not "such" as it is, except in and by its exigential unity with the others, that is to say, as demanding them, and that this "demand" is a moment of the complete intrinsic constitution of the note in question.

This entitative structure shows itself clearly in a thousand ways in the operative order; for example, in what, so many times in my courses, even distant ones, I have called "exigetive displacement" of certain functions by others in living beings. In the activity of living beings, there comes a moment in which a function cannot be or continue to be what it itself is unless there enter into action other types of function. For example, there comes a moment in which the chemism of a higher animal, such as a dog, cannot continue in its "normal" chemical functioning unless the dog optically perceives certain stimuli; in a word, only by these perceptions can it give an adequate chemical response, that is to say, carry out the chemism in the line of the stable biological equilibrium, in which normalcy resides and in function of which the chemism of the dog is "such" [335] [364] in the sense explained. It is not only that the chemism opens the door to "another" function by itself, to optical perception by itself, but rather that, on the contrary, it brings perception into play by the effects of the chemism "itself". The same thing happens with rationality in man. There comes a moment at which man cannot maintain his "normal" biochemical functioning except by involving himself in the situation as reality. The biochemical activity has thus disengaged the perceptive activity in the higher animal and the intellective activity in man. It is a "disengagement" because the intellective activity is not biochemical in itself; however, it is a strictly "exigetive" disengagement and intrinsic in the order of suchness, because the biochemical activity cannot, in certain cases, continue being "such" as it is chemically, if it does not demand from itself the perceptive activity or the intellective activity or both at the same time. It is not a question of both activities being rooted in the same subject, but rather that the one, so to say, prolongs itself exigetively in the other. This disengagement has unitarily, in the unity of suchness, two aspects. The new disengaged function stabilizes the disengaging function; however, at the same time the latter has "liberated" the superior function. For example, insofar as it is disengaged by the biochemical activity, the first function of the intelligence is to insure the biochemical stability; that is to say, it is a biological function. In performing this function, however, it has not only achieved the stabilization "of" the functions in question, but it has also released the intelligent function "by the service of" trans-chemical necessities, including trans-biological ones. The unity of both aspects is found, in its turn, in the fact that this "superior" function not only has been demanded by the "inferior", but also that it is sustained by it, precisely by that very thing which in this inferior function (and in order to be what it is) demands the superior function; this [365] is what I have been accustomed to call "dynamic subtension" of some functions by others. Exigetive disengagement, dynamic subtension, and liberation, are three moments of the unity of suchness in the living being: the plenary actuation of each function "demands", in one form or another, appeal to the others.

These phenomena are all of the operative order. I have, however, insisted at great length on them in order to make the idea of exigetive unity in the order of activity more comprehensible, with the purpose [336] of carrying it over into the entitative order. This unity in activity is not, properly speaking, "constructed" because what is constructed concerns only the entitative order. It is, however, a strict exigential unity. The exigetive element, then, of the activity is a disengagement, precisely because the entitative structure is exigentially "constructed". What we call being "such" is not to possess a unitary cadre of notes, but a primary exigency: constructivity in the order of suchness. In this sense, and only in this sense, to be "such" is anterior and superior to having such and such notes. For example, it is not only that man, in order to stabilize his chemism, does not make use of his intelligence simply because he possesses it or has it as a resource, but rather that he has to recur to it because what he "is" as vegetative and as sensitive he is in entitative exigency (I emphasize the word) of his intelligence. If this were not the case, what would give its impulse to the intelligence so that it would enter into action? By contrast, the matter is clearer if the chemism is already entitatively in exigential unity with the intelligence. The essence of man, in his individual essence qua essence, is not "such" because "it has" chemism, sensitivity, and intelligence, but rather because his chemism qua chemism "is" constructively sensitive and because his sensitivity qua sensitivity "is" constructively intellective. It is not a question of [366] a synthesis nor of a unity which would consist in the fact that the three notes are notes of one substance (this is a question alien to that of essence", but of the primary unity of suchness in the "constructed" reality of man. In this order, the "of" (de) is constructed according to the "in", that is to say, the note is constructed as "such" note-of, because it demands such other notes.

Of what kind of others? We have already indicated this a number of times: of all. Up to this point we have explained what the primary unity in the order of suchness in general is. It is now necessary to say something of this character of "all" in this order. Only in that way will we have completely characterized the essence as suchness.

The exigential unity qua exigential leaves the notes in this formal unity which we have called "coherency". Therefore, the problem of what the "whole" might be in the order of suchness is nothing other than the problem of what might be the form of coherence that the exigency of "suchness" imposes on the notes. This form has two moments.

[337] In the first place, as we have just seen, each note is not "such" as it is, except by reason of that which impresses on it the exigency for all the others. Then, however, this whole cannot be unlimited, for, if it were, no note would be able to be "such" as it is, for its ultimate characterization would remain always incomplete, indefinitely. Some scholastics and Leibnitz thought, on the contrary, that every individual has infinite notes. This, however, is impossible. What happened is that they have confused the physical notes with the objective predicates. Of one individual reality there are always infinite possible predicates because, apart from other reasons, the points of view from which, in principle, the single individual reality can be considered are infinite. There is no reason, however, why these objective predicates should be physical notes. One same physical individual [367] note can be considered from infinite points of view, to which correspond infinite objective predicates; nevertheless, it is physically only one individual note. The essence is a unity of physical notes and not a unity, whether analytical or synthetical, of objective predicates. As a unity of physical notes, the essence is a totality limited in its notes. This limitation of notes impresses a concrete form on their suchness: each one is what it is by way of a mutual "colimitation" of the notes in its suchness. And this "co-limitation" of the suchness is this form of coherence which we call clausura, closure. Closure does not mean that there are not more notes (a negative moment); rather, it means positively that each note is "such" a reality in a complete and full way only because the determination of the "suchness" is limited. Clausura, closure, is, then, the suchlike (talitativa) form of the primary coherential unity. We have already come across this concept when we were speaking of substantivity as system. There, however, the closure was not primary. For this reason, only the essence should be called closed, because it alone is enclosed by itself. The essence is "constructed" in its notes according to "such (tatitativa) closure".

In virtue of this moment, the essence is completely characterized. This characterization must, however, be understood correctly. Because it is a question of considering a limiting (Órˆzein) as the reason (razón) of a determination, it might be thought that the characterization is precisely a "definition" (ÓrismÕj), that is, the determination of a genus by a difference. Even setting aside, however, the [338] general distinction, which we have expressed so many times during the course of this treatment, between essence and the real correlate of a definition, there are two grounds of distinction which refer very closely to our present theme. First, because we are talking about physical notes; the genus and the difference, however, are not physical notes, but "conceptive" moments of the entire reality. And second, [368] because they are not correlatives; the genus does not determine the difference, but only is that which is determinable by it; only the latter determines the former. By contrast, in treating of physical notes, their closure is that in virtue of which each note not only determines the others, but also that each note is also determined by them. Closure is rigorous "co-determination". And this brings us to the second constitutive moment of the "whole" of the notes in the order of suchness (talidad).

The first (moment) was clausura, closure. The second is the moment to which we have just alluded. It is that, what we call closure, might constitute a reality in many different ways. One way would be, for example, "enclosure". If we take the physical notes of an essence in series (so to say", their unity of closure might be conceived like that character by reason of which this series has a first element and a last element. This would be a "lineal" closure: A is such by B, B by C... to N, which would be such by the penultimate note M. This, however, is not the present case, because if it were so, N would determine all the notes, but would not be determined by any other. This, however, is impossible, as we have said. Therefore, if one wishes to maintain the idea of a "series" of notes, it would have to be a series in which the last note, N, would be determined by the suchness of the first, of A. In that case, no note would be in an absolute sense (en absoluto) either primary or ultimate: it is a "cyclical" enclosure. Taken stricto sensu, this denomination is merely symbolic, because the essential notes do not constitute a series of any kind. What is meant is that in the constructivity of the essential notes "such" as they are, all the notes "co-determine" each other mutually and, therefore, if we could "see" (let us say it once more) the integral physical suchness of any note whatsoever, it would show us constructively in its breast not only "other" notes, but all the others. We [369] said this earlier, but here we touch on the proper reason (razón) of this structure. It is not only that the chemism of man is sentient [339] and that his sensitivity is intellective, but, in addition, that his intellect is sentient and his sensitivity is vegetative, etc. It is not a question of each note resting on the prior (this is the idea of the lineal series", but that each note in its mode of being "such" is intrinsically of all the others, in a positive way, exigentially. With this explanation, there is no difficulty in retaining the word "cyclical" because it continues to prove expressive. We will say, then, that the coherential whole of the notes in the order of suchness is cyclical closure.

Hence, it follows that the suchness of each note is, in a certain way, only a moment of a unique or single suchness; by reason of its cyclically enclosed unity, the notes are constituted in a single suchness. We have seen, in a word, that the content of "such" a note depends solely on the note; its "suchness", however, in itself, as suchness, depends on the unity as a primary moment of the essence. Therefore, the suchness which the unity confers on each note it confers as a mere "point of application" (if I may be permitted this expression) of the primary suchness, enclosed and cyclical, in which the essential unity consists. Because it is enclosed and cyclical, the essential unity is "such" all at once, so to say. And only by reason of this fact can each one of the notes be "such". The essential unity, as unity, is a primary unity of suchness. For this reason, to pass from one essence to another, is not a question of adding or of subtracting notes, but rather of remaking ab initio and ab intrinseco, that is, originatively, the very cycle itself of the primary unity; the content of one "same" note in its full suchness is "different" in two different essences. These coherent cyclical unities are the unities of suchness. Here we encounter the constructivity of the suchness of the essence.

[370] No essence is an exception to this structure. To be sure, all intramundane essences have this character of cyclical closure in the unity of suchness. Since, however, this character is strictly metaphysical, it follows that the cyclical closure admits of grades of coherence which confer a different "such" (talitativo) character on the essence itself. There are conceivable realities, for example, in which the notes are cyclical to the point of being non-dissociable. The cyclical closure (in this case) would be strict simplicity. We can, however, descend still further, and conceive notes each one of which [340] would concentrate, by elevation, what in lower metaphysical strata is found dispersed in notes which are actually and formally different. By this route we arrive, finally, at the point of conceiving an essence which would be but a single "note" (sit venia verbo). This would not be uniqueness born of poverty (that of having but one note", but a unity of eminent richness, to be whole in a single note. The cycle would have come to be concentrated in a single point. It would be the greatest and the absolute simplicity. This here, however, goes no further than being something of which it is possible to conceive; its reality is not intramundane.

This idea of the unity of suchness provides us with a second concept of essence. From the point of view of the notes, we have seen that in the order of suchness (talidad) the essence is that group of notes necessary and sufficient to constitute a reality which would be such. We may add here that, from the point of view of the essential unity, the essence is the primary enclosed and cyclical unity which brings it about that the real is precisely "a such". These two concepts correspond to the two moments of that which the essence is in its integral physical reality. The essence is that by reason of which the real is "such" as it is, and not in any other way. It is "such" because the notes which comprise it are such and because the unity which constitutes them as essential is "such". This is the way in which the essence is "constructed" in the order of suchness. The essence is, therefore, a quid tale.

[371] This suchness is formally individual qua essence, that is to say, insofar as it is an essential quid, something essential; it is constitutive essence, that which constitutes the real in its being "such". This is clear; it might happen that the essence, in addition to being closed and cyclical, is closed and cyclically constructed according to a schema. The coherential unity has, in such a case, a third moment: the moment of schema. Then we have the quiddifiable essence: it is a closed, cyclical, and schematic unity. The consequence is that it is not that the essence, "in addition" to being specific, is individual, but just the contrary: the essence, "in addition" to being individual, is specific. The essence, in addition to being "such individual" of the reality, is "such individual" of a species in contrast to others of the same species. And this manner of being "such" confers on its quid tale that triple character of unity with itself: communicated unity [341] and communicable unity, that we have expounded in the proper place. This triple character is formally and exclusively proper to certain essences alone, those we call schematizable. It concerns only the order of suchness, and within it, the individual only insofar as the individual is counter-distinguished from the rest of the members of the same species. The constitutive essence, by contrast, qua constitutive, lacks this triple unity of suchness.

Here we encounter the physical reality of the essence in the order of suchness: it is that according to which the thing is "this" and not the "other", that is to say, it is the manner in which the real thing is "constructed" as "such".

[372]

SECTION THREE

ESSENCE AND TRANSCENDENTALITY

This, however, is not the unique, nor the most radical, aspect of essence. For essence is not only that according to which the thing is "such" a reality, but also that according to which the thing is "real". In this sense, the essence does not belong to the order of suchness, but rather to a superior order: the order of reality as reality. This character-let us call it this for the time; earlier I called it formality and I will return to it later-of reality stands above suchness, as much if we understand it in the exact sense which we have just explained, as if we understand it in the usual sense of determination in general. And it is above suchness, not because this character was a supreme "such" note (we have already seen that Aristotle showed once and for all that this is impossible", but rather in the sense of being a character in which all the things and all the notes formally converge; even all the ultimate differences of all things, whatever their suchness may be, that is to say, independently of that suchness. This peculiar way of being above any suchness whatsoever in the sense of being related to all without being one further suchness, is what scholasticism called "to transcend". It is the transcendentality of the real. The order of reality as reality is a [342] transcendental order, in contrast to the order of reality as "such" reality, which is the order of suchness. As a consequence, the essence, insofar as it is that according to which the thing is real, belongs to the transcendental order.

Before entering on a transcendental consideration of essence, however, it is necessary to make this idea of the transcendental order a little more precise.

[373]

SUBSECTION ONE

The Idea of the Transcendental Order

In order to make this idea more precise, we will turn our attention, in the first place, to modem philosophy and to classical philosophy. Thus, we will achieve a focus which will permit us thereafter to enter positively into the theme.

1. Transcendentality in Modern Philosophy and in Classical Philosophy

Modern philosophy, from Kant to Husserl, has been in good measure a "transcendental idealism". The name itself seems to suggest that what, in this philosophy, is understood by transcendental is precisely the contrary of what mediaeval philosophy understood by transcendental. At the risk of admitting that we are treating here of a term which is strictly equivocal, it will be necessary then to make precise what is the transcendental order, beginning with modern philosophy.

This philosophy not only has a content which is more or less new, but also, with Descartes, inaugurates a new idea of what philosophy itself is: a meditation on reality, resting on the only unshakable reality: the reality of the I. This unity between the I and reality is precisely what is meant by truth: that is real which is as I think it is. Therefore, the order of reality, as transcendental order, would be the order of truth. And this order is constituted in the I as first reality. This primarity of the I would make of it the transcendental as such. In this line of thought, then, transcendentality is a character of the I. Its conceptual clarification is reached by way of two fundamental counterpositions.

[343] [374] (1) On the one hand, the "I" is the reality of "each one" (to be each one is not the same as to be a person) with its peculiar psychic and psychophysical vicissitudes and states in counterdistinction to the "I's" of others. It is the empirical "I", intrinsically diverse. On the other hand, however, "I" am the I which mediates over all things; it is not the I insofar as it is different or distinct from all the other I's, but insofar as it is different from all that is not I; it is a "pure I", pure of all vicissitude and, therefore, intrinsically the (lo) same in all. Then, what we call "things", whether ideal, fantastic, or real, have, for the moment, a negative character: not to be I; they are the "non-I". However, since what the I does is confront them, this negative character turns into a positive character: the things are ob-iectum, objects. Thing is object. Reciprocally, this pure I is not only what confronts objects, but it also consists formally in going to them, in issuing out of itself, in "transcending": it is a "transcendental" I. It is a secondary matter, for our inquiry, how the pure I may be conceived: as a knowing I (Kant);, a conscious I (Husserl), etc. The decisive point is that the pure I stands above the empirical I, and that transcendence toward objects constitutes the compass of its possible truth, that is, the transcendental order. The concept of the transcendental is thus obtained by a first counterposition: the counterposition "pure-empirical". This, however, is not enough.

What then is this transcendence toward objects? It is not that the I already has an object before it and goes toward it in order to secure a representation of it, but rather, on the contrary, that it is its very going which brings it about that that toward which it goes becomes an object. To transcend is not a "seeing", but a "doing", a going toward the "non-I" by "making" of it the object. That is to say, the object is not apprehended, but "posited"; only then can a [375] representation of it take place. For object does not mean here each one of the objects, but only that in which all objects converge and have to converge, namely, in being objects; what I will call "objectuality". The posited is objectuality as such. To be is objectuality. And this character is, for this reason, strictly transcendental. The I is transcendental not only because it transcends of itself toward the non-I, but also because, in transcending, it "posits" the transcendental character of objects, that is to say, because its positing is

[344] transcendental. And since this is an action of the I, it depends on the structure of the I; the structure of the I is the a priori condition for the possibility of every and all objects as such. The manner in which this structure is conceived matters little: whether as a system of conceptual forms (Kant) or as a constituting intentionality (Husserl) or any other different way. It will always be the case that the I determines a priori the objectuality as such. And with it truth as transcendental truth, that is, as capacity to know an object truthfully, does not consist in the capacity of the understanding to conform itself to objects, but precisely the reverse; it consists in the capacity of the understanding to conform to objects according to its own transcendental structure: it is transcendental idealism. This is what Kant called his "Copernican revolution". Transcendental idealism means an idealism which affects only the transcendentality, that is, the objectual character of all that there is that can be known by the understanding truthfully.

And at this point there appears the second fundamental counterposition which defines the transcendental. The transcendental is objectuality; objectuality, however, as I have already indicated, is not a determined object. Hence, the distinction between objectual meaning of transcendentality and its use as the effective determination of an object. It appears that this use might be achieved in two [376] ways. One way would consist in the fact that transcendental position (or positing) rests upon something given (impressions of the senses, elemental data of consciousness, etc.). The (lo) given is not an object, but only a chaos of elements; and what the transcendental I then does is give these elements the form of an object, that is to say, objectuality. Then we have not only objectuality, but a determined object. The set of objects determined in this fashion is what transcendental idealism calls "experience. If the other way is tried, however, namely, to determine an object with no given, with only the a priori conditions of objectuality, overflowing, therefore, the limits of the given and of that which can be given, then this use determines, not an object of experience, but a "transcendent" object, one that lies beyond all experience. For idealism this is chimerical because the I can never convert objectuality itself into an object, nor be, therefore, the source of the representation of it; at most, it succeeds in conceiving a possible object, or, to state it better, a not-impossible [345] object, but nothing more. In order that there be a real object, something given is necessary. The transcendental, then, is "positing", but only as the elevation of the given to a determined object; it is the objectual character of the objects of experience. The transcendental I is the I which objectualizes experience. The counterposition "transcendence-experience" succeeds in outlining thus the concept of the transcendental in idealism.

This philosophy has placed the accent on the moment of ideality and all of its effort seems to have consisted in reaching transcendentality within ideality. With this it seems that the terms have been inverted with regard to mediaeval philosophy, for which the transcendental order is the order of being as being. For this reason, [377] "transcendentalism" is always a term which has for modem ears clear and strong idealistic resonances.

Nevertheless, is it really this way? Here we are apparently assisting at an inversion of the concept of the transcendental. Only apparently, however. The concept of the transcendental I has, as a matter of fact, two moments: the I is transcendental because it is pure, that is, because it consists formally in transcending itself toward the non-I and because it consists terminatively in positing or constituting the transcendentality of the non-I. Now these two moments are, indeed, transcendental, but in the classical sense. Before all, with regard to what refers to the formal character of the I: to be pure I. Idealism reaches this concept from a point of departure in the empirical I. Idealism makes us see without effort that the pure I and the empirical I, although they are not two numerically distinct I's, are not identical. It has never, however, made clear in what its internal articulation consists. And this is, nevertheless, what is essential. In reflecting on it, we immediately become aware that "empirical", is precisely the suchness of the I, that is, that man as a reality is an I whose suchness is all its vicissitudes and psychic and psychophysical states. Only by taking its point of departure here and not abandoning it, does idealism reach its concept of the pure I: it takes the empirical I, the I as reality, and that of which it purifies it is not its reality, but its determined suchness. With that, what remains in the I is "pure reality". This and nothing else is the pure I. And precisely this and nothing else is also the transcendental I. The pure I is not transcendental by opposition to every other object, [346] but by opposition to every object. And the totality of objects is the non-I. As a consequence, that to which the I goes immediately is a "non", although the I itself does not "posit" it. The I would be the only thing which "is" simpliciter in and by itself; the I-ness is the "non" of the non-I, the non "not-I", that is to say, the yes of reality [378] as reality. And this is precisely what constitutes transcendentality in traditional philosophy. Even though formally the I might consist in going toward the non-I, this aspect is not its primary aspect; the primary aspect is that the I is a reality, which can consist in going toward the non-I, but which begins by being a reality. The aspect of going toward the non-I is inscribed, so to say, within the character of reality, and not the reverse. Quite the contrary, that is to say, if the pure I were a reality only because it goes toward the non-I, the pure I would be reality because it is posited by my knowledge of myself, by my self-consciousness; that is to say, it would be something posited by a second pure I and so on ad infinitum. But this is impossible. The pure I is the I as pure reality and this is the reason why the reality of the I, as reality, is a transcendental aspect of the I: the transcendentality of the I in the sense of a going toward the non-I is based on its character as pure reality. The empirical I and the pure I are nothing but the reality of one same I considered either as "such" an I or as a "real" I, specifically as real. Empirical and pure are, then, the suchness and the transcendentality of the reality of the I. The I remains, consequently, withdrawn from the idealist inversion. As a consequence, the sole innovation of idealism, on this point, is to be found in the manner in which it conceives the transcendental reality of the I, that is, as a going toward the non-I; however, it is not determined in what this character of "going" might be, posited as antecedent to its character as reality. To say "I" is nothing but the idealist way of conceiving the reality of the subject as pure reality. The concept of the transcendental itself, however, issues unscathed from this operation.

The same must be said of the second moment, the terminative moment of the transcendental I, namely, that the transcendental dimension of things consists in being posited by the pure I. Here the inversion of the concept of the transcendental appears more undeniable. Kant himself called transcendental idealism "a Copernican revolution" which is as much as to say "revolution in the [347] transcendental". In what, however, does the revolution consist? Not, to be sure, in transcendentality. Idealism calls transcendental the I or consciousness insofar as these are a priori determinations of objects as such; that is to say, of their objectuality. But this is equivocal. This determination, in a word, is not transcendental by reason of being posited by the I, but rather by reason of the fact that what is posited is, independently of the fact that it is posited, the a priori determination of that in which all objects must converge not by reason of being such and such, but rather by reason of being objects. This a priori might be subjective as idealism claims; it is not this subjectivity, however, which constitutes the transcendentality, but the being something common to every object insofar as it is an object. And, once more, this is the classical conception of transcendentality. What is peculiar to idealism and its revolution does not lie in the concept of the transcendental but rather in its root and in the character of its terminus. In its root: in being posited by the I. In the character of its terminus: in being objectuality. And these two innovations are essentially connected: nothing can be an object without being posited (in one way or another: this is a question which idealism solves too rapidly) by an I and, reciprocally, the pure I, when it confronts things, makes objects of them. This, however, is an idealist conception of reality, not a new conception of the transcendental as such. Hence it follows that "transcendental idealism", in the question which concerns us, is a false expression. For transcendentality is not inscribed within idealism but, quite the reverse, idealism falls within the transcendentality of the real. Metaphysically, there is no "transcendental idealism", but, if the expression is valid, an "idealistic transcendentalism".

[380] The transcendental has not changed. We cannot, however, be satisfied with saying this, because, in addition, the very idealist conception of reality is inadmissible. And it is necessary at least to have indicated it in order to outline with greater exactness the idea of the transcendental order as the order of reality as such.

In the first place, idealism, like many other philosophies which are not idealist, conceives the reality of the subject as an "I" and an "I" which, in its transcendental purity, consists formally in "going toward" the non-I. This, however, is impossible. For "I" is not the reality of the subject, but quite the reverse: it is the reality [348] of the subject which has being an I as a property, to phrase it this way. To be "I" is a moment, and neither the unique nor the primary moment-of the reality of the subject in actu secundo, operatively; it is not an entitative moment. The reality of the subject lies beyond the "I". Further, even though we restrict ourselves to the operative order, this pure "I", despite the fact that "it goes toward" the object, nevertheless, does not formally consist in this going toward it, but consists rather in actualizing it, in giving it mere actuality in the intelligence. These two things not only are not the same, but the second can and is given, even though the first may not be given. And this is the case whether we conceive the real subject as knowing, as conscious, or in any other manner whatsoever. Consciousness, for example, not only is not reality proper in the first act (acto primero) but neither is it such in acto segundo, because consciousness is not an act, but only a property of some acts, of conscious acts. "I" is not the reality of the subject, whether in the order of suchness, or in the transcendental order, no matter what concept of the subject may be entertained (knowing, conscious, vital, etc.). In the operative order of actus secundus, the "I" appears to me, then, as a character [381] of a reality properly anterior to it; it is impossible, therefore, to take the "I", whether empirical or pure, as the reality of the subject, no matter how problematic this reality might be; nevertheless, the character of the "I", precisely because it is "I", consists formally in referring itself back to that reality. The "I" resides within the order of the real.

In the second place, philosophy, with Descartes, has inscribed the order of the real within the order of the true: that will be real which is really such as I think it. This, however, is equivocal. If what this means is that my true knowledge expresses the real, then it is not to be denied. This does not permit us, however, to invert the terms and to say that to be real consists formally in being the terminal moment of truth. This is impossible; we have already seen as much in making our analysis of truth. The moment of reality presents itself in intellection not only as independent of the intellective act, but also as anterior to it, as a prius relative to the presentation of its independence: it is independent because it is real, and not the reverse, in such wise that it is indifferent to reality to have truth or not to have truth. If it were not so, the very truth would not be [349] able to be considered as real, but only as the terminus of another truth and so forth ad infinitum. The "radical" pole of reality does not consist in being an "I" nor does its "terminal" pole reside in being truth. The order of reality as transcendental order is not the order of truth; that is, the transcendental order is not the order of reality as truth, but rather it is the order of reality as reality.

In the third place, and finally, that toward which the pure "I" moves has, for idealism, the character of object. With this, metaphysics, which up to Kant had been what Clauberg was the first to call "ontology", with Kant changed into that which we might [382] call "objectology". And this, too, is impossible. For that toward which the pure "I" moves, and even more, that which is actualized in the intellection as a previous or anterior reality, does not have the formal character of object. It would have that character if the "I" were to consist formally in a "going-toward" the non-I; then and only then this non-I would spring up before us upon "encounter" and would be, therefore, ob-jectum, object. The I, however, consists only in actualizing the non-I, and then this non-I is not an object for two reasons. First, because not the whole of the intelligible is formally objectual. In saying this, I am not referring to the fact that my way of engaging myself with things is not always (neither as phenomenon nor as vital act) a confrontation with them as objects; rather, I am referring to something much more profound and radical, which affects intellection itself as such. However, since this is not our present theme I may content myself with leaving this fact firmly indicated. Second, because even in the case of intellecting (estar inteligiendo) an object, res objecta, what I formally know intellectively is not the res insofar as it is object, but insofar as it is res. Once again, even in the very case of objects, the moment of reality presents itself to me, in the intellection itself, as a prius, not only with respect to its truth, but also with respect to its objectuality. Contrary to what idealism affirms as something obvious, thing is not object. Just as substantivity is not subjectuality so, too, reality is not objectuality. The order of reality, as reality, is not the order of objectuality, but the order of reality simply as reality.

To sum up, this rapid discussion with transcendental idealism has made three points clear to us:

[350] 1. That transcendentality is beyond all possible ideality, that is, that the transcendental is the order of the real.

2. That the order of the real is not grounded on the order of [383] the true, but is rather anterior to the latter whether we consider the subjective pole of the "I" or consider the terminal pole of intellection; that is, that the transcendental order is not the order of the real as true, but rather the order of the real as real.

3. That this reality as reality is not objectuality, but simple reality.

Thus we approach the concept of the transcendental order as the order of reality as simple "reality". Because the phrase does not lend itself to confusion, I will, in what follows, drop the adjective "simple", and limit myself to saying that the transcendental is reality as reality.

This is, formalistically at least, the classical concept. I say "formalistically", that is, so long as real and reality do no more than oppose themselves to idealism in a sense which has been explained. However, insofar as we would wish to take these concepts in and by themselves, we see ourselves forced to open discussion with classical philosophy. How then does scholastic philosophy conceive the transcendental order?

We have already answered this question a number of times: that character is transcendental which belongs formally to all things, notes, and differences, whatever might be their "suchness", by the mere fact of being (things, notes, or differences). And here begins what is peculiar to scholasticism. For scholasticism, what the intelligence conceives primarily and that to which, in the last analysis, all of its concepts are reduced, is "being"; every thing, we are told in effect, is intellected to the degree that I understand that it "is" this or the other; and the thing considered in this way, the thing insofar as it "is", is precisely what is called "a being". Hence it is that that in which all things coincide is to be. What, however, is to be understood here by to be? This is the question.

Esse, to be, may before all else be considered as that which the [384] "is" of the copula expresses: it is copulative or logical being. In this sense, we say that everything about which we can form a proposition, "is". Its to be is concipi a to be which, as such, is given in and by [351] the conceptive act of intellection, an esse in anima. This latter esse is of two types. There is an esse which, in addition to being in anima, is also extra animam; it is the being which something has independent of all conceptions, real being, esse reale, substantive being. To it is opposed that which only has esse in anima, the ens rationis, but which in re neither has nor can have esse. The chimera, privation, certain relations, etc., do not have being in themselves, they are non-being; however, I conceive them "as though they were", and for this reason they are indeed ens but ens rationis. By contrast, things which have being extra animam have existence, are ens reale. Here, esse means to exist and, therefore, to actuate by producing effects, something which is not given in the ens rationis, in the unreal being. The subject of this verb to be, in the sense of existing, is ens.. This subject, however, like every subject of a verbal action, can be understood in its turn in two ways. It can mean the subject which effectively is enacting (in actu exercito) the verbal action; then, ens is a participial substantive, the being which actually exists, and for this reason involves, as does any participle, a temporal connection. However, ens can be taken as the merely possible subject of the action designated by the verb in its substantivated infinitive. Then ens is not a participle, but rather a simple name which signifies, not what is effectively existing, but rather that which, by its own character, is a possible subject of the verbal action, that is to say, what is apt for to be, what has existence only aptitudinally; this is the being considered nominally. This, however, needs some clarification. In the first place, aptitude here does not mean lack of existence; because [385] what we would then have would be being in potency, potential being. This is not the question here. Here, aptitude does not mean lack, but rather precisivity, that is, that being is that which is apt to have existence, prescinding from whether and not denying that it actually has it or does not have it. In both cases it has aptitude, even though, in the first case, it would be an actual being and in the second case a potential being. Therefore, in both cases it is being in the nominal sense, and in both cases for the same reason: because it is the possible subject of the substantivated infinitive "to exist". In the second place, this subject of the infinitive is taken solely and formally in as far as it is the subject of that infinitive. For this reason that which is endowed with this esse is also ens, in a sense, however, [352] different from the participial being; the thing, in as far as it is apt for having this infinitive esse, is called essential essence. The essence is not the mere quid-this would be, according to the scholastics, the abstract essence-but rather the quid insofar as it connotes aptitudinally the act of existing. Hence being, considered nominally, is mere essentia; it is, however, realis not because it exists as a matter of fact, but rather because it is apt for existence extra animam, and as such is something real and not something merely of reason. The esse of nominal ens, that is to say, esse according to which something is formally essential is called esse essentiae; as a consequence, it became necessary to call the act of actually existing, the esse of the participle, esse existentiae. These are not two classes of esse, but rather there is one same concept formed with greater or lesser precision; that is, esse "immediately" has this double meaning. A nominal esse is precisely what is expressed in the copula because, although the copula can at times signify existence, the only thing which the copula as copula expresses of itself (de suyo) is that which is conceived as esse nominate, and it is in this that esse logicum consists. The same thing happens, in the last analysis, in every being of reason. And as these three moments of the esse (the esse [386] existentiae, the esse essentiae, and the esse logicum) enter in some manner or other into every intellective act, it becomes comprehensible why post-classical scholasticism ended up by affirming that the intelligence is the faculty of to be.

Abstracting from the singular position of Duns Scotus, for the whole of scholasticism, esse reale, considered nominally, and it alone, is transcendental. Nevertheless, not all things, in a word, exist as a matter of fact; therefore, participial being is not transcendental being. All things, however, both those which exist and those which do not yet exist, and even those which we consider "as though they were", coincide in their aptitude, real or conceived as real, to exist, independently of what their suchness might be. And this is true when it is a question not only of complete or partial beings, but also when it is a question of ultimate differences. "Independently" means "whatever" might be the suchness, and not that the suchness remains outside the being as such. To be sure, the suchness, considered in its determination, does not enter formally into the concept of the being: if that were the case, the concept of being would be formally [353] contradictory. The different suchnesses, however, do enter into the concept in question, either confusedly (Cajetan) or indeterminately (Suárez, etc.); that is, they are formally beings. And this does not mean that "being" must be only that in which they coincide, and in such manner that the differences qua differences excluded the suchnesses; that is to say, it is not that "being" is that in which they coincide and suchness that in which they differ. It means, on the contrary, that the suchnesses, precisely insofar as they are different, are also beings, that is, that the differences, qua differences, are also formally beings; on the contrary supposition, they would be "non-beings", a nothing, and would therefore not even be differences. For this reason, speaking strictly, it is not true that the supreme genera differ among [387] themselves (for to differ is to be compounded of a common moment and a differential moment", but rather that, entitatively, they are primary diversity, they are primo diversa. Nevertheless, "they are", they are beings, and their presumed differences are not differences, but rather immediate modes of being. This is the reason why the concept of being is not universal: it is transcendental. There remains unresolved, however, the problem of the more precise structure of the concept of being and of the manner in which it represents "the" beings, its inferiors. This, however, is not our theme. Here it is enough to have expounded in a summary manner what the being and the transcendental order are for scholasticism: the transcendental order is the order of real being nominally considered, the order of being apt for existing, the ordo entis ut sic.

Nevertheless, this does not mean that the "being" as such, is entirely empty. Quite the contrary. It is true that the suchness is not formally and determinatively included in the concept of being; the supreme genera of being are only special modes of being. It is also true, however, that being as such can be considered from two points of view; and what is offered to me from each of the different points of view is the same ens qua ens, though in different general modes of being; that is, in modes of being which follow on the sole fact of being ens. In a word, when being is considered in itself, it has, as we have said, a positive content proper to itself, the quid, in virtue of which scholasticism calls the being from this point of view res, "ratified" (rato) being, ratified in order to exist; and this same content, negatively considered, is undivided, that is, is one. The being [354] can, however, be viewed from another point of view, the being with respect to other things. Negatively, each one is not the other, it is a quid; a quid aliud, however, that is to say, an aliquid, a something. From this point of view, the respect of a being, as being, to another [388] being is negative, and cannot have a positive character unless this other being should be such that, by reason of its own proper character, it would be able to coincide with every being as such. This being is, according to Aristotle, the yuc¿, the soul, which can coincide with all or everything which has a reason of being, either by knowing it or by appetizing it, by the mere fact of being a being. Therefore, the being as such, considered in its coincidence with the intellective soul, has, as being, this respect which is verum; and considered in its coincidence with the appetitive soul, has, as being, another respect: the bonum. These respects are positive, but extrinsic. Thus, we have the six classical transcendentals: ens, res, unum, aliquid, verum, bonum. This is the transcendental order according to scholastic philosophy.

This conception, if it expresses that which is opposed to transcendental idealism, is unassailable; we have already seen this. If, however, it expresses what is to be formally and exactly conceived concerning the transcendental order, then it stands in need of further discussion, both with regard to that which concerns the general idea of the transcendental and with regard to that which touches on the general modes of being, that is, the transcendental order, as order. To abbreviate the exposition, the discussion will be, at the same time, the positive exposition of what we might want to say about these two points.

[389]

2. The Idea of the Transcendental

To be sure, that is transcendental in which each and all agree independently of their suchness. This idea is unalterable. One must, however, carefully distinguish the transcendental itself from that which primo et per se has transcendental character. For idealism, the transcendental is the position (positing) of the pure I: it inscribes ideality, therefore, within transcendentality and, by that fact, the transcendental order is the order of reality insofar as it is object. For scholasticism, what is transcendental is the to be; it therefore [355] inscribes the to be within transcendentality, and by that fact the transcendental order is the order of reality as being (ente). Nevertheless, if one examines the matter closely, in the expression of this idea three concepts always appear as intertwined: to be, reality, existence. These concepts are employed, despite all efforts to the contrary, somewhat promiscuously. This contributes considerably to the confounding of these ideas, despite the energy which scholasticism expends in affirming, in each case, that reality and existence are synonyms, or that to be means the same as existence. Hence the necessity of asking ourselves again, though in laconic fashion, what reality, existence, and to be really mean. We shall examine the question in two steps.

a) Reality and Existence. Without concentrating for the moment on the word esse, we may ask ourselves what scholasticism understood by reality, what esse reale is. The question is justified because what is understood by reality is not something as obvious as it might seem, but rather, a question which inevitably rests upon the primary and fundamental way in which things present themselves to us when we engage them intellectually. Consider, for example, the fact that the whole of transcendental idealism rests on the intellective confrontation of things as objects. For scholasticism, this confrontation, that is to say, the proper and formal act of the intelligence, is "to conceive"; it suffices to recall, in a word, that a beginning is made by saying that the first thing which the intelligence "conceives" and that into which all its "concepts" are resolved, is being. Since the primary way of apprehending things intellectually [390] is fixed in this way, according to scholasticism, it is thence that it derives its idea of reality. A rapid inspection makes clear to us three moments in that idea which it is useful to disengage and separate: (1) Reality is, in the first instance, everything which, on being conceived, presents itself to me as not receiving its being from the conception itself, but is rather, extra animam, where anima is taken only in the sense of the conceiving act of the intellect. If the expression be permitted me, reality is "extra-animity". (2) This "extra-animity" is, to be sure, a moment extrinsic to the reality; however, it is its ratio cognoscendi, that procures for us a more exact concept of reality. Reality, in a word, is not something which can be defined, but is, however, something which can be explicated by [356] counter-position. For scholasticism, however, that to which the real is counterposed primo et per se, in its status as "extra-animic", is precisely the "intra-animic", which is the unreal. The "intra-animic" is unreal because it is nowhere to be found, is fictitious, chimerical, merely thought, etc.; it is the non-existent. The real, by contrast, as opposed to the unreal, is the existent. "Extra-animity" is existence. (3) The existent, by reason of being such, produces real effects independently of whether it is conceived or not; a real chair, a real rock, etc., act on things and are counterposed to an unreal chair or rock, which exercise no action, but which are mere "spectres" of reality. It is the moment of  rgon, of wirken, etc. I can conceive the effects of what is only conceived; a conceived effect, however, is not an effectuated effect. By contrast, the existent has effectuated effects on things. And these three moments taken together inexorably yield the equation: reality = existence.

It is not the case that this is not true simpliciter: it would be absurd to pretend that it is not. None of these three moments, however, is primary or univocal, precisely because they rest on [391] the idea that the proper and formal act of the intelligence is to conceive. This, however, is not the truth; to conceive is not the primary and fundamental way in which we confront or engage things intellectively. We saw this when speaking of the essentiated reality. Here it will be enough to repeat that statement in summary fashion.

Man has different ways of apprehending things. One is by sensing them; in this man shares univocally the condition of any animal whatsoever. To sense is not a selecting of concrete things (material and formal", in the apprehension, but rather, is, before all else, a way of holding these things as apprehended. To this mode there corresponds in the things sensed a formality proper to them according to which they are sensed. What is sensed as such, then, is, if one wishes, "thing", a stimulating thing, however, qua stimulating; the sensed as such has the formal character of a stimulus, or, as one is wont to say, stimulus is the proper and constitutive formality of pure sensing and of the purely sensed as such. Man, however, has another way of apprehending things: apprehending them as reality. This is intellective apprehension. The proper formality of what is intellected qua intellected is reality. Stimulus and reality, I repeat once more, [357] are the two formalities of the apprehended as such. They are not merely juxtaposed. Something can, to be sure, be present as pure stimulus and not be present as reality. Nevertheless, what is present as reality may be a stimulus; the only reservation must be that it is not then "pure" stimulus, but "stimulating reality, and its mode of apprehension is not "pure sensing", but rather "intellective sensing", or, what amounts to the same thing, "sentient intellection". There is no need to enter into details on this last point; it is enough to leave it underscored. The important thing is that the first thing which man intellects is "stimulant reality," stimulating, but reality. The proper and formal act of the intelligence is not "to conceive", but to apprehend the thing itself, not in its formality as "stimulating", [392] but in its "real" formality. Conceiving is a further operation founded on this first mode of confronting things. When this is established, if we wish to explicate what reality is, we shall have to center our reflection, not on the concepts, but rather on this duality of formalities, because the thing itself, as we have just indicated, has different characters according to these formalities.

(1) Reality is not "extra-animity". Or better, the idea of "extra-animity", is not sufficiently clear and univocal, but is weighed down, rather, by a trying imprecision. What is really understood by extra animam? Extra animam is the opposite of intra animam. This opposition is established by considering the conceiving function of the intelligence. Intra animam would be that which has only an esse object in the concept; by the same token, extra animam would be everything which has a being independent of this esse objectivum: "extra-animity" is extra-objectivity. And this extra-objective is what would be the real. Here, however, is where the inexactness lies. For things are present, not only in the concepts, but in sensation as well. If the thing present in pure sensation were sensed as real, there would be no question. But this is not the case. What is sensed in pure sensation is not reality, but stimulus; that is, the thing itself, in pure sensation, lacks the formality of reality. What is present in the stimulus, the stimulus-thing, is more than esse objectivum; it is something strictly extra-objective; therefore, according to the conception which we are discussing, it is extra animam. Nevertheless, as we have just said, the stimulus-thing does not have the formal character of reality. Therefore, if by "extra animam" is understood [358] all that is extra-objective, it is clear that extra-animity is not, without qualification, the synonym of reality. All that is real is extra animam, is extra-objective; but not all that is extra-objective or [393] extra animam has the character of reality. Between the esse objectivum, which is only intra animam, and the real esse extra animam, there is the esse of the stimulus-thing qua stimulus which is extra-objective and extra animam and which, nevertheless, does not have .the formality of the real. Reality, then, is not the synonym of extra-animity. As a consequence, the decisive dualism on this point is not the "objective-extra-objective" dualism, but the dualism "stimulus-reality". The first refers to the merely conceiving function of the intelligence, while the second refers to its primary function: it is the dualism "pure sensation-sentient intelligence". Here, and not in conceptual extra-objectivity, in extra-animity, must the problem of reality be incardinated.

(2) To be sure, the mode of apprehension is always-whether we are dealing with pure sensation or with intellection-a moment extrinsic to what is apprehended extra animam. The proper character of the mode of apprehension, however, is a manifestation of the very character of things. Things, in a word (I never tire of repeating this", have different characters according to these two formalities. If we compare what we have called "reality" with the pure stimulus, the first thing to be seen is that the "stimulus-thing" is not something unreal (chimerical, fictitious, purely thought, etc.); neither, however, is it something formally real: it is simply a-real. That to which the real is to be counterposed, in the first instance, in order to explicate its character as reality, is not the unreal, but the a-real. Insofar as it is constituted as pure stimulus, the thing is present in an "affecting" form. The animal, to be sure, moves among "things" which are present to it, more things according as its status in the zoological scale is the more elevated. However, these things are present to it always and only in an affecting form; they are always and only complex unities of stimulation. Their perceptive unity and relative [394] stability are due to what I have been accustomed to call "formalization". It is not necessary here to enter into this problem, because the sole thing which is of importance now is the formal character of stimulus. In what does the a-reality of the stimulus consist? To put it simply, in the fact that the "stimulus-thing" is exhausted in [359] the stimulation (actual, retarded, reproduced, or signifying); that is, it is present, but as mere suscitation of certain psycho-biological responses. By contrast, the same thing, intellectively apprehended, is present to me, but in a formally different fashion: not only is it present to me, but is so formally as a prius to its very presentation. Entirely the contrary (is the case of) of the "thing-stimulus" which is constituted and exhausted in its pure presence as stimulus. The priority is what permits and forces one to pass from the mere extrinsic moment of "being apprehended" to the inner character of the thing such as it is anteriorly to its apprehension. This priority does not mean mere "independence". That what is present is something independent of the apprehender and of his apprehension is something common to the pure stimulus and to the reality. The animal behaves (and therefore responds", to a considerable degree, as orientated in his state of being stimulated to the independence of the stimulus with regard to his biological state. The moment of independence brings us, at most, to a "correlation" between sensation and what is sensed in their reciprocal independence of variations. The prius, however, is something absolutely different: it is the positive and formal "reference" (remisión) to what the thing is before the presentation. As I have been accustomed to say for so very many years, the thing is present to me as something "of its own" (de suyo). A-reality consists formally in not involving this moment of the "of its own" (de suyo", but rather, at most, the moment of independence. Independence is nothing more than mere extra-animity. The reality, by contrast, is the thing as something "of its own" (de suyo). The thing is actualized in the intelligence, presents itself to us intellectively, as being "of its own" (de suyo) before being present to us. And this is illustrated [395] even historically; more than twenty years ago I wrote that the primary form according to which pre-Socratic philosophy conceived (here we are speaking of concepts) real things, as real, was by conceiving of them as something "of their own" (de suyo). This it was which by difficult comparisons later and only later led to the conception of fÝsij,of nature. I repeat, however, it is not, in the first place, a matter of conceiving things in this way, but rather of confronting them in apprehension according to the formality of reality. Reality is this "of their own" (de suyo) of things. This is not, clearly, a [360] definition; it is, however, an explication. All explication places the thing explicated in a certain line or order. In the case of reality, it has been customary to place it in the order of concepts. Here, by contrast, we place reality in the order of immediate confrontation with things. And in this order, the reality is the "of its own", (de suyo). Let us try to make this character more precise.

First of all, reality is not formally "nature"; that is, to be "of its own" (de suyo) does not consist in having internal operative principles. Nature is only a moment founded on the reality of the thing; formally, reality is always and only the "of its own" (de suyo). A thing may be "of its own) (de suyo) in many different ways. All involve, as an intrinsic moment, nature. In the first place, however, not every way of being "of its own" (de suyo) consists in being only nature; there are things which are "of their own" (de suyo) not only by having nature, but further, by having other moments (personeity, etc.) articulated in union with the nature, in such a way that they are "of their own" (de suyo) only in this unity. Therefore, nature is only a moment of being "of its own" (de suyo", but nothing more. In the second place, even in those things which are "of their own" (de suyo) only by having nature, nature is not the synonym of reality, of the "of its own" (de suyo). Nature is always and only the manner [396] in which something is "of its own" (de suyo", but it is not, primarily and formally, the "of its own" (de suyo) itself. Nature, in a word, is not only an internal system of operative principles of the thing. On the contrary, only when these principles are intrinsic in the sense of belonging to the thing "of its own" (de suyo) are the principles in question nature. That is to say, the "of its own" (de suyo) is anterior to nature and is its ground.

Neither does the "of its own" (de suyo) coincide formally with existence; that is to say, to have reality is not formally to exist in contradistinction to being non-existent. The idea of reality remains centered for scholasticism in two theses: first, the real is the existent as existent; second, the real is essentia insofar as essence connotes existence aptitudinally. Taken as formal concepts, neither of these two theses is formally exact.

Let us start with the first. To be sure, everything non-existent is unreal and everything unreal is non-existent. This cannot be denied; it is not, however, sufficient, because what we are seeking here is the [361] formal reason (razón) of reality. That the formal reason (razón) of reality is not simple existence is something which is already deduced from what scholasticism itself counterposed to ens reale, that is to say, ens rationis. The ens rationis is not formally the non-existent, but rather the non-existent conceived or imagined "as though it were", existent. Scholasticism saw this clearly. This, however, is equivalent to saying that the ens rationis has, "in its way", a certain existence. This already indicates to us that the formal ratio (razón) of reality and of unreality is to be found in the mode, so to say, of existence rather than in mere existing. And this is, in fact, the case. To exist "only" intra animam is that mode of existence which consists in having only objective existence in and by intellection. Then to exist "really" is the mode of existing which consists in having existence [397] "of itself" (de suyo). And this is to be seen even more clearly if we turn our attention to another type of "things" which are not formally entia rationis and which, nevertheless, are not real. For the Greeks, their gods appeared among men in different forms; for example, Jupiter as charioteer. What kind of reality does Jupiter-charioteer have? To be sure, Jupiter-charioteer does not exist really; Jupiter is not really a charioteer. For the Greeks, however, this figure of the charioteer is not a subjective illusion; this view is nothing more than a theory held by certain intellectuals. If men see Jupiter-charioteer it is because Jupiter has this figure and with it walks upon the earth, even though no one actually sees him. This figure, then, has, in its own way, a certain existence. Nevertheless, Jupiter-charioteer does not exist really. Why? Precisely because this figure or image does not belong to Jupiter "as his own" (de suyo). In order for Jupiter really to be a charioteer it is not enough that he exist in a certain way in this figure, but it would be necessary that the existence of this figure (his existence in this figure) should belong to him as an existence "as his own" (de suyo). Only then would Jupiter-charioteer really exist. But this is not the case. The real Jupiter has an existence "proper" to him; that which he has "of his own" (de suyo), and which is not that of a charioteer. This proves that existence is not, without qualification, formally the ratio (razón) of reality. More than existence, what formally constitutes reality is the mode of existence: existence "of his own" (de suyo). This type or mode of existence which is not "of his own" (de suyo) is what [362] constitutes metaphysically the "to appear", "appearance". Jupiter is not really a charioteer; he does, however, appear as a charioteer, wears the form of a charioteer. This is the metaphysical dualism between appearance and reality. It is a metaphysical dualism and not a logical or psychical dualism. The appearance is more than ens rationis and more than something merely "logical", as for example, the Schein of Hegel. The appearance is also something more than subjective illusion; at least it is not necessary to interpret it as subjective [398] illusion, even if one adds that this illusion is grounded in re. And, still, it is not reality. Neither is the apparent figure, taken formally in and by itself, reality, because as appearance it has no existence "of its own" (de suyo), but rather a reality "supported", so to say, by the reality of which it is the appearance. Nothing can be "pure" appearance. Hence it is that, on the one hand, it seems to be reality, precisely because it rests on something which does have existence in its own right (de suyo); on the other hand, however, it is, taken formally in and by itself, perfectly unreal. This ambivalency of the apparent figure is what we call "spectre" of reality. "Spectre" is a strictly metaphysical concept.

This metaphysical articulation between reality and appearance is what, to my way of thinking, provides us with the key necessary to understanding the "Hymn" of Parmenides correctly. The things that we see, "opinion" (dÕxa), is not simple sensible illusion; neither, however, is it the "true being" (×n), but is rather the mere figure (morf¿) as it "appears", that which Parmenides and all the Greeks after him called being (×n), which alone truly "is", precisely, I would say, because "of its own" (de suyo), the ×n, is to be and nothing other than to be.

Thus, if things had, as we said earlier, principles which did not belong to them "of their own" (de suyo), they would have neither nature nor real essence. This is the case with many "things" in the primitive mind; the things would be mere "places" (loci) of the presence and action of the gods or other realities. Correlatively, the existence of things as mere figure or appearance would make of them something unreal. This is also the case with many "things" in the primitive mentality which are nothing, but "spectre" of the gods or of other realities. A world whose things would be nothing, but "apparition" of the divinity would have in itself no real existence; it [363] [399] would be a spectral world. Therefore, only when the two moments of essence and existence belong to the thing "of its own" (de suyo) do we formally have "reality". The "of its own", "in its own right" (de suyo) is, then, anterior to essence and existence. We will say in passing that this is, to my way of thinking, what makes it possible to understand certain metaphysical speculations of India correctly.

Here the "of itself", "in its own right" (de suyo) is confused neither with the a se nor with the per se. A se is to have existence from oneself; per se is the capacity of existence without the necessity of a subject. "Of itself" (de suyo), however, is to have existence in a certain way ex se, when the existent thing is taken hic et nunc, that is to say, whatever may be the ground of what exists, which is a different question (asunto). Thus, then, so far as existence is concerned, reality consists formally in the moment of the "of its own", "in its own right" (de suyo); reality is, in some manner-we shall see which-anterior to existence itself.

First, however, let us consider the second thesis: the real would be, for scholasticism, essential insofar as it connotes aptitude for existence. Of this connotation, however, we may ask: is it what formally constitutes the essence, that is to say, does the essentiality of essence reside in it? When I say of anything that it is dog or man, here primo et per se I do not mean the aptitudinal character of dog or of man for existence, but rather something "prior", namely, that the thing is "really", dog or man. And here "really" means that "dogness" or humanity is what the thing is "of itself", "in its own right" (de suyo). The thing is not really a dog or a man because "dogness" or humanity are not something chimerical, nor because they connote existence, but because they are something that the thing is "of itself" (de suyo); the conjunction of notes which constitute dog or man belong "of right" (de suyo) to this thing. Here, then, "of itself," "in its own right" (de suyo), is opposed to the merely stimulating; man, for example, is not what stimulates the animal in the form of master or in any other stimulating form whatsoever, but rather something which "of itself", "in its own right" (de suyo), is man.

In a word, both existence and essence presuppose the reality. What is this anteriority? Obviously, it is a matter neither of causal nor of natural anteriority; it is not the case that "reality" is a cause [364] nor that the thing should first be real and only after that be existent and endowed with essence. It is anteriority only in the sense in which a formal ratio (razón) is anterior to that of which it is the formal ratio (razón) without existence and essence there would be no reality; what formally constitutes the reality, however, is this mode of "of itself," "in its own right" (de suyo) according to which the thing is existent and is essentiated. Neither is it a question of "reality" being a term "superior" to existence and essence. This is not true, whatever may be the concepts one may have of these two moments. If one considers existence to be the act of the essence considered as physical potency of existence, that is to say, if one thinks that these two moments are really and physically distinct in re, it would be absurd to think of a term higher than both, because there is nothing superior to act and potency; the former is the very actuality of the latter, and this actuality is the thing itself in its unity. If it is thought, contrariwise, that existence and essence are only two different conceptualizations of one and the same thing, then the ens reale has both meanings "immediately", and again no superior term is possible. All this is true. It is true, however, when one takes one's point of departure in the fact that the thing has already been conceived according to these two, essential and existential, moments; when this distinction is presupposed, there is no higher term, because reality is then always and only existence, whether actual, or potential, or aptitudinal. The fact is, however, that in the beginning of metaphysics there is no need to take one's point of departure in different conceptualizations of the moments of the real thing; quite the reverse, [401] we take our point of departure in the real thing qua real. Thereafter, I can consider the real thing existentially or I can consider it essentially; in both cases, however, and before this, I apprehend and consider the thing really, that is to say, under the aspect of what it is "in its own right", "of itself" (de suyo). This prior consideration is not a confused apprehension; that is to say, it is not the case that "reality" is essence or existence in a confused state, in such wise that the explicit concept of the thing would involve these two moments; even less is it the case that "reality" is something which prescinds from these two moments, a case in which there would be neither essence nor existence; rather both moments are included in the "reality", not confusedly, however, but indistinctly; the reality [365] is as much essence as existence. Every real thing, in a word, because it is something "in its own right", "of itself" (de suyo), is, qua real, formally limited with regard to all other things, including among them the intelligent subject and its proper intellection. The reality of any thing extends as far as its "in its own right", "of itself " (de suyo) extends, and it ends where this "in its own right" (de suyo) terminates. And in this "in its own right" (de suyo) is included, indistinctly, what, in a further distinction, will be existence and essence, the existential moment and the essential moment. Reality is formally the "of itself", the "in its own right" (de suyo); formally it is not "to exist" whether actually, potentially, or aptitudinally; it is rather indistinctly at the same time essence and existence, because this is the formality according to which the thing is "in its own right" (de suyo). Only as grounded on this formality, that is, in the reality qua reality, will we be able to discover its two moments of essence and existence.

(3) Reality, to be sure, possesses this character of  rgon, a character which, if I may be permitted the expression, I would call "ergic"; that is, it acts on other things, realizing determined operations. This "ergic", character is considered a character of what is real. [402] This is completely justified. Only it is nothing univocal. The ergic character, in a word, is nothing but a ratio cognoscendi; it presupposes, therefore, that one already has a concept of the ratio essendi of the real. When reality is conceived as mere existence, it is understood that a real effect is an existent effect. At this point the difficulties begin. The effects of a real chair are real; of this there is not the least doubt. The chair, however, qua chair, is not real, because "chair" is not a character which belongs to it "of itself" (de suyo). It is a "meaning-thing", not a "reality-thing". This does not proceed from the fact that the chair is artificial; a cave is not artificial; nevertheless, the fact that it is "habitation" makes of it a "meaning-thing". For this reason, the effects which the chair produces are not real if the chair is considered qua chair; the chair does not act upon other things qua chair, but rather acts upon them, for example, qua wood, or by reason of the form which it possesses. This is to say, the "ergic" character presupposes the reality. And that only is  rgon which something produces by reason of what it is really; that is, by reason of the notes which it possesses "of itself" (de suyo).

[366] All this brings us back to the point of departure of this discussion. The chair and its effects qua chair are extra animam; nevertheless, they are not, for this reason, real. Extra-animity is not reality, because something can be extra animam and be either stimulus-thing or meaning-thing. In neither of these two cases is it reality-thing. Reality is not "extra-animity" and nothing more, not even as extrinsic predicate, but is rather being "of itself", "in its own right" (de suyo).

To sum up: no matter from which point the question is approached, whether in the first way in which the real presents itself, or in its proper ratio (razón) (that is, reality qua reality) or, finally, in its ergic character, reality is not mere existence, but is, rather, something primary and irreducible which can be explained by saying that it is the "of itself", "in its own right" (de suyo). It is clear that [403] one might then think that reality is taken as a synonym of what we call "to be". This is not the case either. Reality is not formally existence; neither, however, is it formally "to be".

b) Reality and Being. Scholasticism, I said at the beginning of this discussion, has intermingled the concepts of to be and of reality. On the one hand, it speaks of esse reale as of an existence (actual or aptitudinal). This equation, however, despite appearances, is not maintained in an inflexible manner, but rather the esse, as esse, takes on a meaning peculiar to itself. In a word, when it was sought to refine further the entitative character of essence and of existence, we have seen that scholasticism has felt itself obliged to speak of an esse essentiæ and an esse existentiæ. As a result, it has inevitably left an esse floating above essence and existence. It matters not at all that it is said that esse is not a common notion, but rather one which has these two meanings "immediately"; for it will always be the case that it is a question of an esse reale, but esse, and this is the decisive point, no matter how great the shadow in which the meaning of this esse may remain. Even more, scholasticism has spoken of the copulative or logical esse. Again it does not matter in what form the copula involves an esse; it involves it and is not identical with the esse reale, and this is enough for us. With this there is underlined the inevitable tendency to consider the esse, the to be, as something which embraces existence, the essence, and the copula, without formally signifying any of these three moments. Nevertheless, [367] scholasticism did not take this path. It has never admitted that esse is subdivided into three esse's which would be esse ex æquo, but rather, on the contrary, it energetically maintains the prerogative of the esse reale as existence in the order of to be, in such wise that the rest of the "esse's" (the esse of the essence and the esse of the copula) would be esse as an analogical expansion of the esse existentiæ as esse. We [404] have already seen that both, esse essentiæ and existentiæ, constitute esse reale. As a consequence, by making use of this concept of esse reale we will say that the scholastic conception of esse entails two affirmations, not explicitly formulated, but nevertheless undeniably implied: (1) that the esse of the copula is based on a primary and fundamental esse, on the esse of the real as esse; (2) that the esse reale itself is primary as esse, that is, that "reality" is a "determination" (again I employ a very inexact term in order to simplify the exposition) of "to be"; whence it follows that reality is one type-no matter how primary and excellent one would wish to conceive it, still one type-of to be. That is to say, not all to be is reality; reality, however, is reduced to to be: "reality" would be the primary form of "to be". However, neither of these two theses is formally and rigorously exact. Let us examine them separately.

First of all, the thesis that copulative to be is grounded on a primary type of "to be". That copulative to be does not rest on itself, but that it is founded either proximately or remotely on something that is real, is not only not to be denied, but is precisely what we are seeking to affirm. What happens is that we are told that the real here is an esse reale, substantive to be. And here the question lies, namely, in ascertaining whether that on which copulative to be is founded, is formally and directly "reality" without qualification, or rather a "to be", however substantive one might wish, but still a "to be". So as not to linger too long on this question, we may abstract for the moment from all express allusion to scholasticism, and enter directly in medias res. Leaving to the second thesis the examination of the idea of substantive to be or esse reale in itself, what we ask, then, is the following: Is the copulative to be founded on a substantive to be qua to be? Naturally, we do not have to concern ourselves with the copulative in all its extension; that is, embracing those affirmations which fall back on mere beings of reason (entia rationis); the only thing important for us here is the copula of those affirmations [368] which refer to real objects, as when I say "this man, Peter, is white". We restrict ourselves, then, to this last type of affirmation. In them-and in this they coincide with all the rest-the "is" is something which concerns the objective meaning of my affirmative intellection. It is not exhausted, however, in this objective meaning, but rather it reaches to that of which I affirm that it "is", to the res objecta, to the objectual. Objectivity (truth) is not to be confused with objectuality.

In the affirmations in which we are interested, the res qua objecta is based on the previous presentation of the real thing as real. This reality of the thing is what, in the first instance, belongs in an intnnsic manner to the integrity of the intellection; it is, in a word, its immediate ground and its direct formal term. My affirmative intention, and with it the copulative to be, are grounded directly on the reality and not on a presumptive substantive "to be"; that is, they are not grounded on the "to be Peter" or "to be white", but on "white Peter". The interpretation, which we are now discussing, thinks quite the contrary. We have, on the one hand, "to be Peter", and, on the other, "to be white". Formally, these two beings have nothing to do with each other: to be Peter is not to be white, and vice versa. The copula, however, would be a species of "autonomization", of the moment "to be", common to the two terms and would express (according to these interpretations) that the "to be" Peter is found to be affected by the "to be" white, or that "to be white" consists in "to be Peter". The to be of each terminus would be modified by the to be of the other, by which "to be" takes on a certain autonomy. The result is that the substantive to be of Peter and that of white are converted into the complex of substantive to be's or, better, into the "to be" of the complex: the sumplak¿ or complex of "to be Peter" and "to be white". Such would be the copula: a "to be" based on substantive "to be". Such, however, is not the case. The copula [406] directly expresses a complex, but not a complex of to be's, but rather, of real moments of the real as real, and not the real as "to be". This is to say, it expresses "white Peter" and not the "to be white" of "to be Peter". The reality, and not the substantive to be, is the previous ground, the prius of the objectivity of the affirmations and of the copulative to be. The real complex which the copula directly expresses is not a complex of to be's, but a real complex or structure [369] qua real. There is, to be sure, a complex in the affirmation, but the affirmation itself is not complex. The judgment consists formally only in the affirmative intention; the complex is that to which the judgment refers. This real complex is ordinarily intellected in a direct manner, and is expressed by the verbs in all their voices and aspects. Only when the real is excessively complex does it turn into res objecta and my intellection then unfolds itself into the presentation of the real complex and into the affirmative intention, into "it is". To express this new "to be" recourse is had to some verbs of reality; then, however, these verbs have lost their meaning of reality and take on a merely copulative meaning. The copula arises, then, directly from a "de-realization" unfolding in the intellection of the reality, and not from a presumptive "to be" which would seem to be hidden in every verb, as though, for example, "to walk" would be "to be walking"; this would be a pseudo-logical artifice. When I say "Peter walks", to walk is a real element in Peter. The copula proceeds, then, from an unfolding of the reality and not from a complex of two "to be's", the "to be" of Peter and the "to be" of to walk, nor from the analogical expansion of these beings. This is the reason why the copula terminates in the reality, even though, for this reason, I have had to make a res objecta of the real. The reality is the prius of the copulative to be and not the reverse, as though reality were a type of to be, namely, real to be.

[407] Let us say as an illustration-and nothing more than an illustration-of this philosophical interpretation, that historical comparative linguistics shows us that this is the origin of the copula in our Indo.European languages. In Greek, for example, some verbs, such as mžnein, Ûp§rcein, pžlein, gˆgnesqai, fÝein, etc., are verbs of reality; they come, however, to acquire a copulative sense which before they did not have. These verbs, in a word, employed by themselves with a subject, formally mean a moment of the real. When, however, it was necessary to designate the reality of the subject with some important additional note, that is, with a further noun, the moment of reality remained centered in the nominal complex, and the verb lowered its meaning of reality to express the simple affirmation of the unity of the signified complex. Such was the historical origin of the copula. The same thing happened with the proper verb asmi, ahmi, eŠnai, esse. Originally, it was only a verb of reality which signified, not to [370] be, but existence. By the same process, it was converted by small stages (this should be underlined) into a copula, into "to be". However, eŠnai, esse, has no more relation with to be than, for example, had pžlein as a verb of reality with pžleinas copula: the copulative value of esse is an acquisition and not something which lay hidden in the "to exist". What happens is that by a super-position of both meanings, there was produced that "mirrorism" which consisted in thinking that "to exist" was a meaning of "to be", as if "to exist" was "to be existent". This was the origin of the expression esse existentiæ and of other similar expressions.

That this is a "mirrorism", that is to say, that the direct intellection of the real is not a "specialization" of the meaning of "to be", becomes clear from another linguistic fact that still persists in our languages, namely, the nominal phrase. As is known, primitively (as [408] can be seen, for example, in the Vedic and in the Avestic) the nominal phrase is not the elipsis of a "to be" which is read between the lines, but is rather an original and an originative type of strictly "a-verbal" phrase; only in the more advanced stages of some languages, for example in Sanskrit, will it be possible to speak of elipsis. The nominal phrase expresses the real complex directly and without copulative verb. It is true that it is found limited to decisions, identifications, etc.; these cases, however, are precisely those in which the purpose is to express the nude reality in all its force. And precisely then it is expressed without the verb "to be", merely by the nominal complex.

The affirmative intellection, then, involves three moments together: the reality, the copulative "to be" or affirmative affirmation, and the truth. Of these, however, the reality is the primary and grounding moment, not only of the truth, but of the copulative "to be" as well. The copulative "to be" is not grounded on a "to be" of the real, upon a substantive "to be", but rather on the substantivity itself, on the reality as such. The copulative "to be", then, is one thing, and the reality, another. Their possible unity, we have seen, does not reside in a "to be" masked in the "reality", but rather in the unity of unfolding in the intellection. At least, naturally, if one were to say that "reality" is simply the esse reale. But this is inexact. It is the second of the two theses that we have to examine.

[371] The expression esse reale comprises two terms: esse and reale. In what relation are they found in the unity of what they signify? On the one hand, esse seems to add nothing to reale. As Aristotle already says, ©nqrwpoj, and ín ©nqrwpoj, (Meta. 1003b 28) are the same tautÕn. On the other hand, the two terms esse and reale seem undeniably necessary to designate what they signify; otherwise, it would have been enough to speak only of to be or only of reality. The esse belongs to ©nqrwpoj, not only insofar as ín (participle), but also nominally, as simple eŠnai. This indicates that esse [409] possesses a certain nuance proper to itself. As I said above, it is not necessary, in this case, to say that it is a term which "immediately" has these two meanings. The esse reale as esse involves this apparent antinomy of adding nothing to reale and of possessing, nevertheless, something which, without going further, we may call, a nuance proper to itself. What then is the esse reale, the substantive "to be" as being?

One might think what is usually said, to wit, that reality is the eminent mode of "to be". But let us examine this way of thinking a bit more attentively. For example, what is it to be iron? To be iron means, on the one hand, that the thing has such and such qualities. But these notes are not "to be" iron, but are "iron" alone; therefore nothing which makes any allusion to "to be". And the same happens if what one wants to say is that the iron exists. We have already seen it: essence and existence are simple distinct moments of something indistinctly or undifferentiatedly previous, the reality. The reality is previous to the duality "essence-existence", because both the one and the other are exactly moments of the real. Hence it is that the essence is not to be understood in the first place by way of its aptitudinal "relation" to existence, but rather, must be understood in a different perspective, namely, as something in and by itself as reality. And this reality of the iron, or better, the "real" iron, is not the "to be" of the iron. The real, qua real, is not included in the esse. And this is not to be changed. However, the expression "to be iron" can be understood in another sense, not in the sense that it is iron, but in the sense that the iron is. We need insist only in passing on the fact that here "to be" does not mean that in which the reality consists, but rather that I take the word in its complete amplitude: the mere "to be" which embraces each and all of the moments of the [372] real. This "to be" is not the formal moment of the iron reality, but [410] rather something like an "affirmation" (sit venia verbo) of the iron reality in its particular iron reality; therefore, something in one or another form, grounded on this reality. Naturally, it is not an affirmation in the intellection. "To be" is something independent of the intellection; the things themselves "are". Therefore, "to be" is a moment of the real; it is an actuality of the real, which belongs to it by itself, even if there should be no intellection of it. As actuality of the real, however, it is a "further" actuality of it; that is to say, it is the actuality of something which is "anterior" as reality. The reality is the "of its own" (de suyo); and only because the thing is "of itself" (de suyo) can it re-actualize this its reality "of itself" (de suyo). And this re-actualization is the "to be". Then the thing, already "of itself" (de suyo), also "is". And this is true, not only for what concerns the iron, but also for what concerns the intellection of the iron; to apprehend something as "to be" in re, presupposes the presentation of the thing as reality. Before intellecting the thing as actually being, and in order to be able to intellect it as being, the intelligence apprehends the thing as something real. No matter where you take up the question (whether from the side of things themselves or from the side of the intellecting of them) the reality is anterior to the "to be", and the "to be" is an actuality of the already real in and by itself. Supposing then that the iron, already real, also "is"; then the iron itself as naked reality, remains affected by this its ulterior actuality which is "to be". This naked reality which we call iron, insofar as it is enveloped in this second actuality of it, which is "to be", takes on the character of something which "is iron"; the real iron is now "to be" iron. Therefore, by the very fact that the iron "is", the iron itself turns out "to be" iron. Here we have the origin of the substantive "to be". Hence flow two fundamental consequences: (a) Reality is [411] not the "to be" par excellence, as though reality were inscribed in the first place "within" "to be"; rather that the reality as already real is the ground of the "to be"; it is the "to be" which is inscribed "within" the reality without being identified formally with it. It will be asked what is this that I call "further actuality". We will see it in summary manner immediately; for the moment, it is enough to have indicated it by saying that it is like an affirmation or re-affirmation of the reality in its reality. There is no esse reale, real being, but rather [373] what I would call realitas in essendo, the reality in its "to be", or better still, the reality "in to be". Ultimately, there is no substantive "to be", but rather naked substantivity. Things are, in the first instance, reality and not "to be". The real, however, insofar as it "is", is precisely what is called "being" (ente). Therefore, the real, as real, is not "being" (ente), but simply "reality".

In having said that "to be" is a further act of the real, but that it belongs formally to the real itself, it also remains said that although "reality" is not "to be", nevertheless, what we call "to be" is not to be diluted into a series of presumed connotations, but rather, possesses a "nuance" proper to itself which is strictly unitary. The antinomy which, at the beginning of this discussion, I stated about "to be", now is resolved by maintaining the two terms, but on distinct or different planes. On the primary plane, that is, on the plane of reality, "to be" adds nothing to the real; there is not "to be", but rather unencumbered reality. On the plane of an ulterior act, however, not only is there "to be", but this "to be" also has a proper unitary character. Scholasticism, in its effort to reduce the reality to "to be", has diluted, as Aristotle did, what we call "to be" into different types of "to be". By having distinguished here in a certain manner (we will see what manner) "to be" and reality, "to be" takes on a strict unity proper to itself. "To be" is not the same as reality, but "to be" is something proper and unitary.

This unity of the "to be" might lead us to think that the transcendental is then the "to be" itself. This is Heidegger's thesis. We shall concern ourselves with it after we have spoken of being in a positive manner. For the moment, it is enough to repeat that the "to be", is a "further" act of the real, as already real; "to be", is grounded on the reality. And, therefore, the transcendental is not the "to be", but rather the "reality".

Let us sum up the path over which we have come. Copulative "to be" is not a primary, and primarily, an expression of the "to be" of the reality, but of the reality itself. In its turn, the substantive "to be" is not something primary, but something grounded on the reality. As a consequence, there does not exist a unity of "to be" which will embrace, analogically, copulative "to be", the "to be" of the essence and the "to be" of existence, but rather, there is no more unity than the unity of the reality, the unity of the "of itself", which actualizes [374] itself further in two formally independent ways, which are alien to each other: substantive "to be" (a moment of the reality as a further act of it) and the copulative "to be", the affirmative intention (moment of the complex intellection). In even more complex forms of intellection, the copulative "to be" may also express substantive "to be". This, however, does not stand in opposition to what we are saying, first, because here I have referred only to the primary structure of intellection and, second, because, if the copula can express, and sometimes does express, the substantive "to be", this is precisely because it expresses the reality in the first place; and since this reality involves the "to be" as its ulterior act, it follows that the affirmative intention at times can and must also express the "to be". It is not necessary here to enter into further detail concerning the precise articulation between the copulative "to be", the reality, and its "to be". What has been said suffices.

This discussion with scholasticism about the idea of the transcendental leads to a decisive conclusion, namely that it is necessary to distinguish not only between being (ente) and "to be", but also [413] between reality, being (ente) and "to be" (ser). "Reality" is not a type of "to be", but rather is the thing as an "of itself" (de suyo); it is simply the real thing. "To be" is a "further" act of that which is already real in re. "Being" is that which is already real insofar as it "is". As a consequence, the transcendental order is not the order of objectuality; neither is it the order of the entity (ordo entis ut sic); neither is it the order of "to be", but rather it is the order of reality, ordo realitatis ut sic. This does not hinder us, when it is not. a question of employing these terms in their most formal acceptation, from continuing to use the words being, entitative, etc.; this is what we have been doing all through this study. It should, however, be clearly understood that, speaking formally, they are only further moments of the real. Once this has been understood, nothing prevents us from looking at the structure of our languages, in which those terms or words are many times unavoidable.

To sum up, reality is the "character" (we have to express ourselves in some manner) of things as "of themselves" (de suyo). This character is primary in things and, consequently, first in intellection.

(a) It is primary in things. It is, in a word, that according to which things are things; reality is what formally constitutes that [375] which we call things. Things begin and end where the "of itself" (el "de suyo") begins and ends.

(b) It is primary in intellection. Man is open to things by way of his sensibility; that is, he has access to things, in the first instance, by sensing them. Every theory of the intelligence necessarily comes equipped with a theory of sensibility. Pure sensation opens us to things, and presents them to us as mere stimuli independent of the act of sensing; they are stimuli-things. The formality of things, insofar as they are purely sensed, is "stimulativity". This pure sensibility is what the animal has; but man also has it. Man is not only that which distinguishes him from the animal, but also that which he [414] shares with the animal. Man, however, senses things not only as stimuli, but also as realities; the stimulus itself is ordinarily sensed as a stimulating reality, that is, as a "real" stimulus. The opening to things, as realities, is what formally constitutes intelligence. The particular formality of intelligence is "reality". Now this formality is not something primarily "conceived", but rather something "sensed"; man not only conceives that what he has sensed is real; he senses the very reality of the thing. Hence it is that this mode of sensing things is an intrinsically intellective mode. And just as sensibility is not then pure, but intellective, for the same reason, its intellection is not pure, but sentient. "To intellect" and "to sense" are essentially distinct and irreducible; they do, however, constitute a metaphysical structural unity, sentient intelligence, which we shall not try to elucidate here. This expression does not mean that the intelligence does not intellect anything except the things which the senses offer to it; neither does it mean that the things sensed are a sensible "knowledge", an "information", which even the animal possesses (in this sense even Aristotle himself sometimes attributed noetic characteristics to the aŠsqhsij); it means that sensibility and intelligence constitute, in their irreducible difference, a structure of apprehension which is metaphysically one, in virtue of which the act of apprehension is one and unique: the sentient apprehension of the real.

In order to understand the inner character of this sentient apprehension of the real correctly, it is necessary to fix our ideas, even though only rapidly. In modern philosophy it is customary to call what is sensed (for example, colors, sounds, etc.) "sensible impressions". This expression, however, suffers from a serious equivocation, [376] because it immediately suggests the idea that these "qualities" are no more than subjective impressions. But this idea is false. These [415] qualities in themselves are not impressions, but the thing sensed in the impression. Impression is not the designation of a sensed object, but rather is the designation of the mode in which something is sensed. Impression not only is not something subjective, that is, something which does not have any other character nor any other term than that of the subject, but rather that, on the contrary, impression is the way of being open to something which is not subjective, to what is sensed itself. In the impression there is present to me "impressively" something which in itself in not impression. Let this be presupposed; in pure sensation, that which is sensed, qua sensed, is sensed in the formality "stimulus"; and the mode according to which the stimulus-thing is present to the sentient (subject) is impression. In sentient intellection (or intellective sensing), because it is sentient, that which is apprehended is apprehended also, in the first instance, in the mode of impression. The only difference is that what makes the impression is not only stimulating qualities, but "real" stimulating qualities. Which means that in sentient intellection, the impression has two moments: one, the moment of sensed quality; the other, the moment of its real formality. Both moments belong to the thing which is sentiently present to me; and the mode in which they are present to me is, for both moments, impression. This is to say that in sentient intellection there is sensed, in the mode of impression, not only its qualitative content, but also its proper formality, "reality". This formality, insofar as it is sensed in impression, is what I have, for many years in my courses, called "impression of reality"; an impression which not only is not subjective, but which also presents us with the formality "reality" as something belonging to the thing sensed. It is not a second impression numerically added to the impression of the sensed qualities, but the impression of the proper formality of the qualities sensed. If I call it impression of reality I do so to distinguish this moment of impression of the sentient intellection from what is usually called sensible impressions, which are nothing but qualities; that is, that [416] the reality qua reality is originatively sensed, given in the form of impression. By reason of its quality, what is sensed is constitutively specific; this is the reason why pure sensation opens on stimuli-things [377] and remains situated in a limited order of things. By contrast, the impression of reality, as I have always said, is unspecified. This negative term now takes on a positive meaning: the impression of reality is constitutively transcendental. When a subject intellectively senses any stimulating quality whatsoever, the intelligence is open to the reality-things and, therefore, is situated not only among specifically determined things, but in reality, that is, beyond all specificity, in the dimension of the transcendental; open, therefore, not to limited things, but to any thing whatsoever. For this reason, the first intelligible, primum cognitum, in primarily of adequation (primitate adequationis) is the sensed real. And in it, the primum cognitum in primarity of origin (primitate originis) is the reality in impression (impression of reality). Only afterwards, the intelligence forms concepts, not only of the sensed qualities, but also of the sensed reality qua real, that is, the concept of reality. I repeat, however, that it is not the case that the senses sense only things, and that the intelligence afterwards conceives them to be real, but rather that in sentient intellection the thing is already sensed as real, and the conceiving intelligence conceives as real that which the sentient intelligence has already formally sensed as real. The transcendental is already given in the impression of reality. That which is first and formally intellected sentiently and that in which all of the concepts of the intelligence are resolved, is not being, but reality. Contrary to what scholasticism, in its post-classical phase, has been saying for more than half a century, the intelligence is not the "faculty of being", but the "faculty of reality".

[417] This does not mean, I must again insist, that the formality "reality" consists in the way in which things are present to the intelligence. Quite the contrary: we have just said that "reality" is, before all else, the primary element of things in and by themselves. And this is not a mere assertion. Because in the sentient intellection, in the impression of reality we have the real present to us, not only as something independent of the act (this happens also with the stimulus), but the real is present to us as something whose presence is consequent on that which it already is "in and of itself" (de suyo). It is what I have expressed by saying that the real is present to us, but as something which is prius to its presentation itself; it is the very mode of being presented, which means the [378] primarity of the intellection of the real in its reality is based on the primariness of the reality as something "in and of itself" (de suyo).

With these remarks I have made clear, rapidly and with large strokes, what I understand by "transcendental" qua transcendental. The transcendental, however, is an "order". What, then, is the transcendental order, not qua transcendental, but qua order? It is this second aspect of the question which we must discuss with scholasticism.

3. The Idea of a Transcendental Structure

Let us clarify, before all else, what we understand by order. Order does not mean here the dominion, the line or direction according to which we consider reality, that is, transcendental consideration in contrast to mere consideration. of suchness (consideración talitativa). By order I understand, rather, the very structure of reality in its transcendentality, which it possesses by reason of its [418] transcendentality. Order means, therefore, internal structure. It is in this precise sense that we ask whether scholasticism describes a strict order in the transcendental and in what this order may consist.

Scholasticism has called this order "general modes of to be"; that is to say, those modes which belong to every being by reason of its status as being alone. These modes are the six classical transcendentals: ens, res, unum, aliquid, verum, bonum. This is not a matter of mere enumeration; rather, among these entitative moments there exists an internal grounding. Scholasticism, then, undeniably admits a strict transcendental order. The problem resides in how it understands this order.

The transcendentals are customarily divided into two groups; for the purposes of the present discussion, however, it is better to divide them into three groups. First of all: ens and res. Strictly speaking, these are not two transcendental properties or attributes; rather, for scholasticism, they are only two "expressions" of a single thing, the being. Ens means that the thing "is", and res means "that" which the thing is; that is to say, its ordination to esse. Without this aptitudinal ordination to esse the thing would be "nothing". Therefore, ens and res are perfectly synonymous and express, with two words, not a transcendental property, but the transcendental itself. After this, there comes a second group: the unum and the aliquid. For [379] scholasticism these are, formally, nothing but negations. Aliquid is nothing but the quid insofar as it is not another quid. Unum, in itself, is nothing but the negation of division. To be sure, for many this is nothing but the formal ratio (razón) of the transcendentality of the one and they, therefore, add that the one connotes or positively includes the particular undivided entity of the ens; however that may be, the fact remains that the formal ratio (razón) of the unity [419] is indivision. There remains, finally, the third group, verum and bonum; these are formally positive, but extrinsic moments of the entity, that is, those moments according to which the entity as entity is capable of being intellected and appetitized by an intelligent and willing entity. Hence it results that, properly speaking, the transcendental "order" qua order cannot be positively anything save truth and goodness. The negative moments, precisely because they are negative, posit nothing in re. And since ens and res are synonyms, it follows, as we have just said, that in re there is only ens with two properties or attributes (we shall not enter upon this important discussion because it would lead us too far afield at this point), truth and goodness. At most, insofar as the unum connotes the particular undivided entity of the ens, it might seem a transcendental property. And then, granting this concession, the ens as ens would have the following three properties or attributes: unum, verum, bonum. These three notes are not merely juxtaposed, but are found intrinsically based each on the preceding: every bonum is based on a verum and every verum is based on an unum. To the degree that the entity has these three notes intrinsically established among themselves, in this manner, the transcendental is, in the scholastic view, a strict order or structure in the sense already given of these terms.

All this is, indeed, fundamental truth; truth, however, which demands further discussion. What we are asking, in a word, is not whether this order, as it has been described, is given effectively, but whether this order, without qualification, responds sufficiently to the idea of a transcendental structure, that is, a structure of the real qua real. This is the question. Let us examine it step by step, in order to enter directly upon the development of the theme.

First of all, ens and res. We are told that these are absolutely synonymous. Is this exact? The reply depends on the idea which one holds of "to be". If "to be" is reality and reality is existence, then [380] the formal identity between ens and res is evident. We have, however, already seen, first, that reality is not existence whether actual or aptitudinal, but is, formally, the "in and of itself" (de suyo); and second, that reality and "to be" are not the same, for "to be" is an "ulterior" act of the real. With the reservation that I will later give an explanation in positive terms of this point, I have distinguished reality, "to be", and being. As a consequence, though synonyms in the scholastic sense, I believe, nevertheless, that, effectively, they are not synonyms, but that "to be" is grounded on "reality".

In the second place, the negative notes: unum and aliquid. We are told that they are mere negativity. Is this, however, exact? A negation is something which is given only in the mode in which the being is considered, in its objective concept, but not in itself. It will be said, however, that the transcendentals are, in re, nothing, but the thing itself. Granting all this, their distinction has a ground in re. What is this ground? This is the question, and scholasticism itself has perceived the difficulty of the problem both with respect to the unum and with respect to the aliquid.

What is, effectively, the unum for scholasticism? Its formal ratio (razón), we are told, is mere indivision; since, however, this proves insufficient from any point of view, it is added that this negation "connotes" or "includes" something positive, the positive undivided entity of the ens. Is it, then, a question of a mere connotation? That is to say, what is understood here by connotation and inclusion? This question is not a mere dialectical subtlety. For, in a word, if it is indeed true that, as a transcendental property of the being, the unity of "indivision" is something formally negative, it is no less true that this "in-division" is the metaphysical consequence of the positive entity, which is positively "one", of the ens, and that, for this reason, this positive entity, although it may not be the "property", the unum itself, nevertheless, fulfills a true transcendental "function", since it [421] is what determines the unity as "property". We reach the same conclusion, if it be admitted that the unum is not formally only a negation, but includes or signifies the undivided "entity" of the being. For, in the first place, there remains unshaken that which tells us what this "inclusion" itself is; and above all, because it always turns out that what is included is the entity of the being insofar as it is "undivided", that is to say, a negation. The positive character of the [381] intrinsic indivision of the being is what fulfills a transcendental function ordered to the unity. What that inclusion may be will be clarified only on the basis of this function. What is this function? This question should have been posited by itself; it is not enough to say that the unity, as transcendental property, "connotes" or "includes" the positive entity of the being. The negativity of the unum is not, then, transcendentally sufficient.

The case with the aliquid is the same. The aliud, the otherness of the quid, is, consequently, something negative. On what, however, does this alterity fall back? Scholasticism itself lacked a precise conception on this point. It was customary to say, at times, that the aliud opposed the quid, set the quid over against, nothingness; that is to say, that aliquid is non-nihil. But this is a mere verbal conceptualization: the nothing, precisely because it is nothing, is not even a term to which reality can be opposed or which can be distinguished from reality. To do so would be to make nothing "something". For this reason, others have thought that the aliud is another quid; and in that case the "aliquidity" would be the mere consequence of the unum: the division from all the rest. Then, however, it would not, in the strict sense, be a transcendental property in the scholastic sense, because the aliquid understood in this way rests on the multitude of beings, a multitude which, in some manner, belongs to the formal ratio of the being. The transcendentality of the aliquid is, then, extremely problematical. The decisive point, however, [422] to my way of seeing the matter, is not this difficulty, but rather the metaphysical necessity of this multitude which-equally with the positive entity in the case of the unum-if indeed it does not belong to the being as a transcendental "property", nevertheless, fulfills a transcendental "function". Within the multiple, in a word, the alterity of the aliquid is given only in a previously determined line, the line of being. In this line, there is the precise moment of the alter being referred to the unum precisely in order to be able to be alter. And this "reference" (let us call it this for the moment) is a strict "transcendental function", since it is the possibility of a transcendental property.

As a consequence, the negativity of the unum and of the aliquid involve, transcendentally, what we have called "function". It is the insufficiency of the negative in the transcendental order.

[382] There remains the third group: verum and bonum. Save for some isolated scholastics, for whom these properties are merely negative, practically the whole of scholasticism understands that we have here positive moments of the being (el ente). Since, however, nothing can be added positively to the being (since it formally transcends all its modes and differences), it follows that these two moments are positive solely because they are two extrinsic relations of the being as such, to a determined being, to the yuc¿, the intelligent and volitional soul. Here, however, two serious questions arise. Scholasticism itself stated the first of them. There is nothing in the being as being which includes in its formal ratio (razón) the existence of an intelligent and volitional entity. As a consequence, if the relation to this being is extrinsic, it is not possible to see how truth and goodness could be transcendental properties of the being; since that intelligent and volitional being does not exist, the being as such would have no reason (razón) either of truth or of goodness; nevertheless, it would [423] have a reason (razón) of entity. St. Thomas himself recognizes this to be the case, even when he is making reference to the intelligence and the will of the Creator: if, per impossible, he tells us, the Creator were not intelligent and volitive, the creature would have indeed a ratio (razón) of being, but no similar principle of truth or goodness. The transcendentality of truth and goodness, consequently, in scholasticism itself, is obscure and full of difficulties. Many are of the opinion, effectively, that only on the basis of the proof of the existence of creation, that is, only on the supposition of the "transcendental relation" of the finite being to an infinite intelligent and volitive being, would it be possible to speak of the verum and the bonum as transcendental "properties". Others, and with good reason, think that even should the relationship to an intelligence and a will be extrinsic, nevertheless the verum and the bonum belong intrinsically to the being as such. Since the intelligence and the will of which one is speaking here are not an actual intelligence and will, but merely possible, what is being said is that if this intelligence and this will did exist, there would be truth and goodness because, whether or not there are intelligences and wills, the being, as such, is intrinsically intelligible and appetible; the intelligibility and the appetibility are the entity itself as such. All this is certain; however, both in the first and in the second conception, these transcendental [383] properties involve an extrinsic relation to an intelligence and a will (whether as transcendental relation or as possible relation). And in the measure in which this relation is extrinsic, the character of transcendental "property" of truth and goodness remain obscured. Nevertheless, not this, but a second question, is decisive.

This second question is the following: the intelligence and the [424] will of the intelligent and volitive being are not formally attributes or characteristics of its entity as such; that is, intelligence and will are not transcendental moments of the intelligent and volitional entity, but moments of its special mode of "to be", moments of its "suchness". Hence, they are not transcendental "properties". Nevertheless, they have a strict transcendental "function" (both the transcendental relation and the possible relation are nothing else than this), since it is only with regard to the intelligence and the will that the being, as such, has the transcendental properties of truth and goodness. Once more, as with regard to the negative transcendental properties, there appears here, in the case of the positive properties, the same problem of the transcendental "function", a function by which, and only by which, the being, as such, possesses transcendental "properties". This problem of the transcendental function merits being stated in and by itself.

To sum up, a close inspection of the transcendentals of scholasticism has made us see that in the transcendental order qua order we encounter, on the one hand, the transcendental itself, the res (not the ens) and, on the other, a transcendental structure of reality, a structure which consists, not only in certain transcendental "properties", but also in certain transcendental "functions". Only by bringing the question to a focus in this way will we be able to know what that is which we call "to be", and leave the problem of the transcendental character of essence, which is the objective toward which this entire discussion is directed, formulated in a precise manner.

What, then, is the transcendental order, qua order? Every real thing can be considered from two points of view. On the one hand, each thing is "such and such" a determined thing; on the other hand, however, it is a "real" thing; that is, it is something "in and of itself" (de suyo). The first aspect of the thing is the order of "suchness"; the second is the "transcendental" order. These two orders are different, but they are not juxtaposed orders, since "reality" is [384] a character which transcends all moments, modes, and differences of the "suchness" of the real. They are not, however, absolutely independent. Precisely because "reality" is a merely transcendental character, not only is it implied in every moment of "suchness", but also, reciprocally, the suchness "determines" (let us put it this way) in re the properties of the real as real; that is, its transcendental properties. And since these properties are not identical, without qualification, with suchness, it follows that the suchness itself can be considered under two aspects: according to what it is in itself, and according to that which it determines transcendentally. And this latter is what I call, thematically, "transcendental function". This function is not necessarily found limited to the reality of the thing which is "such"; there are, in a word, "suchnesses", intelligence and will, for example, which fulfill a transcendental function, not only with regard to the intelligent and willing reality, as reality, but also with respect to all reality as reality. A transcendental function is, then, the function by which a suchness constitutes the transcendental properties of the reality. In virtue of this function, the reality, as reality, not only possesses certain transcendental properties "materially", so to say, but is also "formally a true transcendental structure.

Its description in not a question of simple speculation or of a dialectical combination of mere concepts. Quite the contrary: since the transcendental structure is determined by the transcendental function of the suchness, it is to the concrete analysis of the latter that one must turn one's gaze in order to discover this structure. It is not my undertaking or purpose to expound the transcendental [426] structure in a complete manner, but I am going to limit myself to those concepts which are necessary for the transcendental consideration of essence.

Things, such as they are in reality, are, before all else, things, each one real in itself and by itself; further, however, these things are found really linked among themselves in one form or another. Both these moments of "suchness" have a transcendental function; it does not matter-as I have already indicated in our earlier discussion and as we are going to see presently with greater exactness- that the multitude does not belong to the formal concept of reality. This double moment lays bare to us two aspects of [385] the transcendental structure. One is the transcendental structure of each real thing, in and by itself; the other, the transcendental structure determined by the linking of each thing with the rest. We shall postpone until later the consideration of the first structural aspect because it is precisely the problem of "essence and reality". We shall now say something, and only something, about the second.

Real things, I say, are linked with one another; stated in another way, they form a totality. This totality is not an extrinsic addition of real things, but an intrinsic totality, what the Greeks called sÝsthma. This totality does not have the character of mere connection or order; that is, a vinculation of the things such that the active or passive operations of each thing are found in interdependence with the operations of the rest. This is true, but it is not the primary truth. The primary factor resides in the fact that this operative connection is found to be based in the very constitution of things, a constitution according to which each thing is formally what it is in reality in function of the constitution of the rest of things, other things. It is not a question, then, of an "operative" connection, but of a "constitutive characteristic". (Here I take constitution and constitutive in their usual sense and not in the exact acceptation in which I have been employing these terms in this study.) [427] This character is not consequential to each thing; rather it belongs intrinsically to its formal reality, in such wise that each piece of a watch is by its constitution something the reality of which is formally a function of the constitution of the other pieces, or the rest of the pieces. This intrinsic and formal moment of the constitution of a real thing, according to which this thing is a "function" of the rest, is what I have been in the habit of calling "respectivity". Respectivity is not, properly speaking, a "relation". And this for two reasons. First, because every relation is based on what the related things already are; respectivity, by contrast, determines the very constitution of the related things, not, to be sure, in their character of reality pure and simple, but in their mutual connection; respectivity is antecedent to relation. Second, because respectivity is not, in re, something different from each real thing, but rather is identified with it, without, however, the latter ceasing, for this reason, to be respective.

[386] On this basis, the respectivity is a character which concerns "that which" things are in reality, their "suchness": each thing is as it is, but "respectively". This "respectivity" at the level of "suchness" is what I have formally called kÕsmoj, cosmos. This cosmic respectivity, however, possesses a precise "function": it determines, in real things, a way of being real qua real. Respectivity, then, not in the order of "suchness", but in the order of reality as such, is what I have called world. World is not the simple totality of real things (the cosmos is also this), but the totality of real things by reason of their character of reality, that is, as real: respectivity as mode or character of reality. World and cosmos are not identical either formally or materially. They are not formally identical because even if the cosmos were of a character different from that which it actually is, the world, nevertheless, would be the same as it is now. Neither are they [428] materially identical, because in principle there might be "cosmoi" which were cosmically independent among themselves, but all would coincide in being real and therefore would constitute, in a certain way (we will not at this point enter on the problem how) one single world.

This concept of world is the primary and fundamental concept. The other concepts of world presuppose this one. Contemporary philosophy (Heidegger) customarily understands by world that in which and from which human existence understands itself and encounters (by understanding) the rest of things; that is, what we call "our world" or "my world". The world, however, in this sense, is grounded on the world as respectivity of the real qua real. For this "our" and this "my" express, not the originative character of the world, but the world as the horizon of the system of possibilities of man; they express the appropriation of the world in "sketch" (bosquejo, Entwarf), but not the world itself. Only because man is a reality constituted qua reality in respectivity to the rest of things, that is, only because man is already "mundane", as reality, can he make the world "his own", in the existential and vital sense, as "sketch" (bosquejo). Worldliness, mundanity, is nothing else than the respectivity of the real as real; it has nothing to do with man. Finally, we have to note that, if respectivity does not formally concern the character of reality, what we will have is either merely biological respectivity, the "medium" of living things, or the mere cosmic [387] "environment" as a field of action and reaction. Neither medium nor environment are, however, formally world; world, I repeat, is the respectivity of the real in its formality of reality.

We have here the transcendental "function", of the cosmos (suchness) in the order of reality as such: to determine a world. What is the character of this function? Mundanity is a moment or [429] note of the reality of every thing as real. It is not something strictly "added" to the reality of each thing, but is identical in re with its reality; and nevertheless, it is strictly a property or note of the real qua real: it is its pure respectivity in the order of reality as reality. Therefore, world is a transcendental character of reality as such and the "function" of the cosmos is, as a consequence, a strictly transcendental function. But this must be clarified.

First of all, the function of the cosmos is strictly transcendental. The fact that the cosmos is always and only of a determined "suchness" is no obstacle to this notion, because this same circumstance is found in the intelligent and volitional being, and, nevertheless, its function is strictly transcendental. The possible multitude of the "cosmoi" offers no obstacle to the transcendental unity of the world, just as the multitude-including the essential multitude-of intelligences and wills offers no obstacle to the transcendental unity of the verum and the bonum.

On this supposition, we say, the respectivity called world is transcendental; even more, it is the first transcendental "complex" of reality as reality. Let us begin with this last point. I call "complex" those transcendentals which formally belong to each real thing by the mere fact of its being real, but which, however, express what follows from the pure character of reality in order to the multiplicity of real things. By contrast, those are "simple" transcendentals which express, without addition, the reality in and by itself. And I say that world is the first complex transcendental, the grounding transcendental of all the other complex transcendentals: aliquid, verum, bonum. All three are complex; they express, in a word, what the character of reality of each thing, as referrable to the rest of things, really is. And this reference is nothing other than the respectivity of [430] the real qua real, that is, the world. Only because a res as res is respective to the rest, can it be and is an aliud with respect to them. The same thing happens with the verum and the bonum; they [388] involve a respectivity of the intelligent and volitional reality to reality as intelligible and willed. Only because the intelligent and volitional real thing is in the world of other real things, only for this reason is it possible that there should be intellection and volition and, therefore, transcendental verum and bonum.

To be sure, the first point, the strictly transcendental character of the world, still remains. It is, apparently, the most difficult, since it will be said that not every real thing qua real, is respective. There can be real things, including the cosmos, which have no relation to each other, nothing in common; above all, there is a reality, God, which is formally extramundane. Under these conditions it does not seem possible to say that respectivity, the world, could be a transcendental character of reality. Nevertheless, let us reflect on it more closely. We appeal precisely to the reality of God. It is true that, so long as the existence of God has not been proven, it is not possible to find support in it and, in the beginning of metaphysics, the existence of the divine reality has not as yet been proven. But, even though this reality has not been proven at the beginning of metaphysics, neither is it excluded and, therefore, it is licit to treat it as a presumption in the theory of the transcendentals. To be sure, God could have created realities which would be wholly unrelated among themselves; I do not like these considerations of the potentia Dei absoluta, but in this case let us admit them. These realities would have no relationship among themselves "cosmically", but they would all coincide in being real; and this, which would seem to be no more than a simple coincidence, is something more than that, because in being the effect of a single creative reality, essentially existent, eo ipso those created realities, although by their suchness they have no relation among themselves, are, nevertheless, in respectivity with reference to their character of reality. If one wishes, God has created them in this form of respectivity, which is to have no relation among [431] themselves cosmically. Still, these things which are without cosmic unity are respective insofar as their character of reality is concerned; that is to say, they have unity as a world. That difficulty would seem more serious which refers to the divine reality itself: the world is respective to God, but God is not respective to the world. God is "irrespective", is extra-mundane, because He is a reality which exists essentially. Nevertheless, this has to be understood. "World" can have [389] two meanings. One is the meaning which I would call "formal"; that is, the character of a zone of reality. In that sense, it is not, strictly speaking, a transcendental, because there is another reality, that of God, which does not lie within this zone of reality, but outside of it. "World", however, may be the designation of a "disjoined" (disyunto) characteristic; it is not a division of real things, but rather that character according to which the reality as such is necessarily and, by reason of its reality, either respective (mundane) or irrespective (extra-mundane). And this disjunctive necessity qua necessity is what belongs to reality as such; if we call it "world" it is because, in this case, we qualify the disjunction by its clearest term, and, quoad nos, the only one which is immediately undeniable. Appropriating an expression which Scotus forged for other properties (Scotus never thought that "world" was a transcendental) I would say that "world" is a complex transcendental, but a "disjoined" transcendental. A complete disjunction which concerns the real as such is eo ipso a transcendental disjunction. The necessity to which I alluded before becomes convertible, disjunctively, with reality as such. I have already indicated, however, that since only the formally mundane [432] term is primarily accessible to us at the beginning of metaphysics, we can and must say that, for these cosmic realities, the world is a transcendental. This is exactly what, some pages earlier, I wanted to express by calling "intramundane" philosophy the consideration of reality qua reality, but only in the mundane term of the transcendental disjunction.

To sum up, the transcendental order is the order of real things as real, that is, as things "in and of themselves" (de suyo). These things are "in and of themselves" (de suyo), in and by themselves; they are the simple transcendentals (res and unum). And they are also respective "in and of themselves" (de suyo); they are the complex transcendentals, whether disjoined (world) or conjoined (aliquid, verum, bonum), the latter of which are founded on the disjoined. This is the transcendental structure of reality, a structure determined by the suchness in transcendental "function". This transcendental structure rests, then, on two primary transcendentals: reality and world; the former, a simple transcendental, the latter, a complex transcendental.

[390] I have already remarked that it was not my purpose to develop this theme completely. However, while setting aside other points of the question, it is, nevertheless, necessary to complete what has been said with a decisive conclusion which follows from it concerning the transcendental structure. This consequence is that, in virtue of what has been stated, the reality of a thing must be considered according to two moments which are transcendentally different from each other. In the first place, the primary and radical moment is the thing in its own proper reality, the thing as actually real in itself. In the second place, however, and resting on this primary actuality, there is the actuality of the real thing as a moment of the world: this is the "mundane" actuality of the real thing, that is, the respectivity of real [433] things by reason of their reality. The actuality of the real thing as a moment of the world is not formally identical with the actuality of the real in itself, but does presuppose the latter and rests on it. The actuality of the real thing in the world is what is formally "to be" (ser). Here "to be" does not mean to exist, nor is it the mere quid of the existent, but rather "to be" falls back on the "reality" without qualification, on the "in and of itself" (de suyo) which is, indifferently, something essential and existential and antecedent to this distinction. This "reality", already actually in and by itself, has an "ulterior" actuality, beyond its simple reality: it is its actuality in the world. That a thing, iron, for example, "is" does not mean that the iron exists or that the existent is iron. Because existing iron and existence as iron are not "to be iron", but "iron" simply. "To be means a kind of re-actualization of the reality as iron; and this "re-" is the actuality of the real iron as a moment of the world. Only respectively to the rest of real things can and must it be said that the iron "is". This distinction between "to be" and reality, with the anteriority of the latter, is clear even in language. For example, if we want to say that anything succeeds in attaining reality, we can express this fact from two points of view: first of all, from the point of view of the reality as such, that succeeds in becoming real which was not real before. In this sense, we speak of generation (gˆgnesqai) blossoming or birth (fÝein),etc. I can, however, also express this same point paying attention, not to the root of reality, but rather, in a certain way, to its respective term ad quem, to its actuality in the world. Then this becoming is not formally generation, but a [391] "coming into the world". The first is to reach reality, the second is to reach "to be". This last is what is always expressed in the metaphor of fñj, of light. The becoming of a living thing as coming into mundane respectivity is, for this reason, "enlightenment", an [434] e‡j fñj parižnai, as Plutarch says; to live is to see the light of day, e‡j tØ fñj Órªn (Sophocles). The world is like the light. Therefore, to come to be (ser), to come to be (estar) in respectivity with the rest of things, is a faˆnesqai, is an e‡j fñj faˆnesqai (Sophocles), a prØj fñj ©gein (Plato). To be (estar) in respectivity with the rest of real things qua real, this is what, to my way of viewing the matter, constitutes "to be" (ser). "To be" is neither faˆnesqai, nor fainÕmenon; fainÕmenon is nothing, but the condition in which reality remains (queda) by reason of the fact of "to be" (ser); but "to be" itself (ser) is the actuality of the real thing as a moment of the world. Only because it "is" is the thing "phenomenon".

"To be", therefore, is not formally identical with reality, but presupposes reality. Reality is an absolute formality, while "to be" is a respective character. Only respectively does it make sense to speak of "issue into the light", "come out into the light", "bring to light", "come into the world", etc. By contrast, genesis and birth concern the real qua real in an absolute sense.

Hence it follows that a reality which is constitutively irrespective would have reality in an eminent sense, but would not, for this very reason, have "to be". God is essentially existent reality; therefore, irrespective, extra-mundane. For this reason, it cannot properly be said of God that he "is", he is not ×n; rather it must be said that, just as his reality is extra-mundane, so he stands beyond "to be". He is the "above-to be"; pro-Õn, as with great exactness the first neoplatonizing theologians called him.

"To be", then, is the mundane actuality of the real. This respectivity, however, as we have already said, is identical in re with the real thing itself. Hence it also follows that this actuality, which we call "to be", is, in the thing itself, its intrinsic real re-actualization; and this is precisely what we call "substantive to be". Substantive "to be" is not formally identical with reality, but is distinguished from the latter at least by a distinction of reason, a distinction of reason, however, founded in re. This foundation is transcendental respectivity. This is the reason why, to my way of seeing the matter, "substantive [392] to be" does not say that the substantivity is a type of "to be", "the" type of "to be" par excellence, but signifies, on the contrary, the "to be" of the substantive; this is to say, that substantivity is anterior to "to be". It is not esse reale, but realitas in essendo; it is substantivity "in to be". Precisely for this reason, "to be" is an "ulterior" act of reality; its further respective actuality. In this sense, and only in this sense, is it necessary to say that "to be" is always the "to be" of the reality. And the reality, insofar as it "is" ulteriorly, is, for this reason, ulteriorly "being" (ente). Being (ente) is not formally the synonym of reality. So true is this that God, as we have said, is reality essentially existing, but is not a being, ×n, but pro-Õn. Being is only the real thing qua actual in respectivity, in the world. In sum, world is the first complex transcendental and the property which the real thing possesses according to this complex transcendental is "to be" (ser).

This distinction between reality and "to be" is the root of an important difference in the consideration of the real. According to these two actualities, the real thing has different proper modalities. In a word, the real thing qua real, in its first and primary actuality, can have a causal connection with other real things; the real thing, in its grounding respect to other realities has what, a few pages earlier, we called "condition": it is potential, actual, necessary, probable, contingent, free, etc. This connection or causal respect, however, is not transcendental respectivity and, therefore, these modalities and conditions do not formally concern "to be", but the reality in and by itself. By contrast, when the real thing is considered as actual in the world, that is, considered as actual in its transcendental respectivity, the real thing has "to be" (ser). This "to be", then, this actuality of the real as a moment of the world, has, among others, a modality [436] proper to itself: this is time. Time is purely and simply a "mode" of "to be". It is clear that, just as world is the transcendental property determined by the cosmos in transcendental "function", so also "time", is the mundane actuality, "to be" (ser) as respective moment, determined by the change of the real thing in transcendental function. "To be" is constitutively "flexive". Time is not a falling from "to be" (dejar de ser); (that would be annihilation), but is always to be "other". To say that time is a mode of "to be", might seem to be a formula equal to that found in other philosophies; it might be such [393] materially, but what I am saying formally is different, because the idea of "to be" is also profoundly different. "To be" is the respective actuality of the real. And the modes of this actuality are "was, is, will be" (past, present, future): these express the modes according to which the real thing "is" respectively to other real things. An extra-mundane reality is an extra-being, and, for this reason, essentially extra-temporal: it is "eternal".

In its difference from reality, "to be" (ser) has, then, a unitary character proper to itself. It is, however, a unity which is merely respective. This is to say, "to be" is not a kind of supreme enveloping character, embracing the real completely and every being of reason; if this were the case the transcendental order would be the order of "to be". This is a gigantic and fictive substantivization of "to be". "To be", and, correlatively, "non-to be", have a merely respective character; real things "are", but "the" "to be" has no substantivity. The same thing happens with space. It is customary to say that things are "in" space. This is false: things are spatial, but they are not in space. Space is merely respective; it is the space which things leave (dejan) between one another; it is not a receptacle of things. The same must be said of time. And, in another order of problems, modern philosophy, since Descartes, has given substantive status to consciousness. Consciousness, however, has no substantivity [437] whatsoever; and this, not because it is only an act, but because it is not even an act, but only a character of some acts, of conscious acts. And there is nothing of chance about the fact that these three substantivizations came about all at once: that of consciousness (Descartes), that of time-space (Newton-Kant), that of "to be" (Hegel).

Reality, world, to be: here we have, insofar as it has reference to our problem, the structure of the transcendental.

Now, it will not be too much to confront, in summary fashion, this conception of "to be" with other, more usual conceptions of it in philosophy. And, first of all, those philosophies which do not distinguish, but rather identify "to be" and reality. In the first place: the idea of esse reale, this is the scholastic thesis, in contrast to which we have defined our own position. Taking our point of departure in this identification as expressed in esse reale, an idealist criticism of reality has transformed eo ipso the idea of "to be" (ser) itself. Making of reality a mere sensible impression (giving the term [394] impression a subjective meaning) the result will be that esse is percipi; this is the thesis of empirical idealism. Making of reality a result of thought, it follows that esse is concipi; this is the thesis of logical idealism. To be, however, is neither one nor the other; in the first place, because thought moves in a formality already prior to it (to be): the formality of the real; and, second, because this formality, in the act of sentient intelligence, presents itself as a prius to its own presentation. Idealism, in its two forms, empirical and logical, is then, unsustainable, and, as a consequence, so too are its two formulas concerning "to be" unsustainable. However, as can be seen, the radical error resides in having identified "to be" and reality, and of this identification both the two forms of idealism and the idea of esse reale are guilty.

Reality and "to be", then, can be distinguished. Hence: one of two things: either reality is made one type of "to be" among others, or, on the contrary, "to be" is considered as an ulterior act of the [438] real. Taking the first alternative, it might in its turn be conceived that what we call "to be" is a position of thought; not that reality itself should be a position of thought, but that its "to be" is such; "to be" would then be objectuality. Then esse is poni; this is the position of transcendental idealism (Sein ist Setzung, Kant affirmed). However, in contrast to this thesis of idealism about "to be", there stands another, according to which reality would certainly be one type of "to be" among others; but "to be" itself would not be a position, but, quite the contrary; it would be the character under which the whole of reality presents itself in a "permitting-that" (a sein-lassen-von) the present (lo presente) would be showing itself to us in and of itself; this would be "to be". This is Heidegger's thesis. To be sure, for Heidegger, this "permitting-that" (dejar que) is not an act of thought; this, however, does not change his thesis about "to be". Before both theses, which make of reality a type of "to be", we have energetically maintained the thesis that "to be" is an ulterior act of the real, the actuality of the real as a moment of the world, independently of whether there are or are not men. We have already seen our attitude with respect to transcendental idealism. Because of the importance of the theme, we may reflect for a time about Heidegger's thesis, despite the summary character of his positive expressions about "to be".

[395] For Heidegger, man is the being to whose "to be" belongs the "comprehension of the to be" of himself and of what is not himself. However, both in treating of himself and treating of any other thing whatsoever, "to be" cannot be confused with being.

1. Things, comprehended as such things, are beings, and something "ontic". (Heidegger does not speak of things, but of beings; at times, however, to simplify the exposition, I will employ these two words; it is enough to know that, for Heidegger, thing is formally "being".

2. To be (ser), however, is different; its domain is the "ontological". It is the "ontological difference". It is not a conceptual difference, but is a differentiating (acontecer diferenciante), an ascentional happening, which carries us from the comprehension of the being to the comprehension of "to be" and maintains us in the latter. Because it refers to being, this ascension carries us beyond the totality of beings; it is, therefore, the happening (acontecer) of the Nought in a special state of mind (estado de ánimo): anguish. The Nought naughts (anonada) the being in our comprehension of it; however, by the same token, it makes to appear (patentiza) in it the other extreme of the ascension: pure to be. The Nought of being, in a word, leaves us in "to be" (ser), but in a certain way: with nothing that is, without "being"; this is precisely pure "to be". To be "is" only in and by the happening of the ontological difference, that is, in the happening of the Nought: ex nihilo omne ens qua ens (that is, the "to be" of the being) fit.

3. What is this "to be" (ser)?

(a) "To be" is not a being, but rather always and only the "to be" of the being.

(b) The being is something which may be there or may be there without comprehension, while there is no "to be" save in the comprehension of "to be". As comprehension of "to be" belongs to the "to be" of man, it follows that his "to be" is the presence itself of "to be". His "to be" consists in the fact that "to be" (Sein) "is here" (Da); that is to say, the "to be" of man is Da-sein. This expression does not mean that man is existence, in the current acceptation of this term, but that man is the Da itself, the presence of Sein, of "to be". The Da is the comprehension itself as the presence of "to be". Therefore, there is "to be" only to the degree that there is Da-sein and according to the manner in which there is Da-sein. It is not a [396] question of a presence as term or object of comprehension, but rather that, as the comprehension of "to be" belongs to the very "to be" of Da-sein, it follows that presence, that is to say, the Da-sein, is, if one wishes, the very passage (trascurso) of pure "to be"; it is the [440] "to be" of the "to be". The Da-sein is the presence, in a certain sense "ontic-ontological" of "to be" itself in its purity, in contrast to, and differently from, every being. Hence, for Heidegger, the fundamental prerogative of Da-sein in ontology.

(c) The mode of "to be", the meaning of the "to be" of Da-sein, is "temporeity" (Zeitlichkeit). The comprehension of "to be", the Da, is temporeal (temporea) comprehension, that is, the Da itself is temporeal. Da-sein is temporeal, not because it is "in time", but because it is the originative time itself, that is to say, not time as something which courses through a before (was, fue), a now (is, es), and an after (will be, será), but as something which consists in not being anything, but an exstatic "opening", in three articulated dimensions, in the exact and special unity of the "instant". By temporeity we are "as we are" and we are, therefore, in being, but "beyond", all being. Only in this exstatic beyond, do we comprehend the being "in its to be", because this exstasis consists positively in "leaving" (dejar) the being as being, that is to say, in leaving the being "actually being" (siendo); therefore, in this "exstasis" we comprehend, in one or another manner, the "to be". Temporeity is "at once" the meaning of the "to be" of Da-sein and the "to be" itself as meaning. In other words, as temporeity is originative historicity itself, it follows that the Da-sein is the historicity of "to be and reciprocally, " to be " is the historicity of Da-sein. Hence it follows that it cannot be asked what "to be" is (as I ask what beings are), but I can only ask and must only ask myself what its "meaning" may be. The meaning of "to be" is "to be" as meaning.

(d) This does not mean that "to be" is anything subjective. On the contrary. This presence of "to be" in comprehension, in the Dasein, is the truth of "to be". The comprehension is the truth or patentcy (patencia) of "to be". The Da is that patency itself. This truth is, then, the "to be" of Da-sein. Therefore, to say that there [441] is only "to be" in and by the Da-sein means that "to be" is not, save in that patency itself, in the truth, and that, therefore, the "to be" of truth is nothing other than the truth of "to be". Reverting to [397] the expression with which Aristotle expounds the action of noãj poihtikÕj, namely, that it is illumination, o�on tØ fñj, Heidegger will tell us that the presence of "to be" in the Da-sein is like light. In the truth which is the "to be" of Da-sein, "to be" is not present as a thing-this would be to make a being of "to be"-but that "to be is the luminosity (luminosidad) itself". "To be" is the luminosity (luminosidad) of every being and what constitutes the very essence of man. Hence, not only is it not subjective, but "to be is the transcendent itself". For this reason, the comprehension of "to be", is a transcendental comprehension.

To sum up, because he is the being to whose "to be" there belongs the comprehension of "to be", it follows that he is the being which consists in "to be", the "domicile" and the "shepherd" of "to be".

I have said of the philosophy of Heidegger more than strictly concerns the point which we are treating; however, I wanted to handle the matter in this way in order to provide an adequate frame of reference for the meaning of his affirmations concerning "to be". Heidegger has the unquestionable merit, not precisely of having distinguished "to be" and being (as we have seen, this distinction, in more or less turgid manner, is already to be found at the basis of scholasticism and even of Kant), but the merit of having posited the question of "to be" itself apart from that of being.

However, how does to be become a question? This is the decisive point.

Heidegger places the problem of "to be" in the line or order of comprehension. Stated in this way, without qualification, it is unobjectionable. In a word, only by showing itself to itself and from itself in comprehension is it possible to speak of "to be", just as we can only speak of colors by seeing them in themselves. If Heidegger were content with saying that there is a comprehension of "to be" and with undertaking to explicate it in its irreducible originality, there [442] would be not the least objection in principle to oppose to him. This, however, prejudges nothing concerning "to be" itself. What would have been reached by this route would not have been an ontology, but a theory of ontological knowledge, so to call it. Nevertheless, Heidegger is in search of an ontology. To this end he conceives the comprehension of "to be" in a manner which is, in its own turn, ontological: he considers the comprehension of "to be", not only [398] as the act in which "to be" shows itself to itself and from itself, but as a mode of to be, that is to say, as a mode of the very same thing which is showing itself, of "to be". Then the possibility of the comprehension of "to be" is not, at bottom, anything other than the possibility of "to be" itself. This is what Heidegger has before his eyes when he takes his point of departure in the assertion that "to be is given in the comprehension of to be".

When the question is brought to focus in this way, the analysis of the thought of Heidegger is seen to embrace three successive steps:

(a) The self-giving of to be in comprehension is not the self-manifestation of anything which in itself would be alien to its self-manifestation (this is what happens in the case of beings), but is a strict "self-giving"; it is, to express it in this way, an actually being (estar siendo) that which it, "to be", is. The self-giving of "to be" is the "to be" there (ser-Da), is Da-sein, is the time-passage of the "to be" in its ontological purity, in contrast to being.

(b) To be itself, in this its purity is given and is only in the Da-sein, in the comprehension of "to be". "To be" is only being Da, giving itself in comprehension.

(c) The comprehension of "to be", in which "to be" gives itself and actually is (está siendo), belongs to the very "to be" of Da-sein; in such wise that then the Da-sein is the "to be" of "to be", is a primary ontic-ontological unity; the Da-sein is, in a certain way, the being which consists solely in "to be", a kind of substantivization of "to be".

We note, however, that Heidegger's theses are neither subjectivism nor idealism of any kind whatsoever. That anything "should be" only in comprehension does not mean that it is "by" [443] comprehension, or that it is only a moment of comprehension. In Heidegger's conception, "to be is not a product of man, is not something that man makes. "To be" is given, is not produced; "to be" has its own proper truth. The analysis of temporeity is precisely the "exposition" of this character of "to be". Once this is said, however, it is necessary to add that none of these three theses, which we have analytically stated, can be sustained without qualification.

(aa) The givenness of "to be" is, to be sure, something more than to be mere term of comprehension, if by term is meant only [399] that upon which the act of comprehension falls. Under this aspect, the term would be a term which is, in a certain way, extrinsic to the act, as act. In every act of apprehension, however, what is apprehended fulfills a more profound function than that of being the term upon which the act falls: what is apprehended is not only the term of the act, but also what confers on this act its intrinsic concrete actuality. Actuality, in a word, does not mean only that the act is in the state of being actually (estar siendo) executed, but also that what is executed has intrinsic determined actuality, which would formally be the act of apprehending this thing and not another. The act is actual, then, in two senses: as an act which is executed and as an act of determined intrinsic quality. And this quality, that is to say, this actuality, is perfectly concrete: it is the quality of apprehending this sound and no other, this color and no other, this square and no other, nor any other different figure, etc. As a consequence, to apprehend is not merely to seize from without, but rather to be as what is apprehended. As Aristotle already said, tØ d> aÜtÕ �stin ½ kat> �nžrgeian �pist¿mh tñ pr§gmati (knowledge in act is identical with the thing known, De anima 430 a, 20); ½ toã a‡sqhtoã �nžrgeia kai tÅj a‡sq¿sewj ½ aÜtÂmen �sti ka‹ mˆa (the act of what is subject to sense and the act of sensing are one and the same, Ibid. 425 h, 25). When something is making a noise [444] and I am hearing, the audition does not consist only in an act which seizes the sound, just as the vision of a color is not only the act which seizes this color, because then difference between seeing and hearing would be merely terminal and extrinsic to the act. On the contrary, hearing consists in the fact that the act is intrinsically auditive and vision is intrinsically seeing; that is, "soundness" (so to call it) is, in one form or another, a moment, an intrinsic and formal quality of the act of hearing, qua act. When, then, I am hearing a sound, the sound of anything and the intrinsic auditive quality of my act of hearing are perfectly identical qua actuality. And the same happens with any act of noãj. Stated in other, more rigorous, terms: in apprehension, the actuality of what is apprehended, as apprehended, and that of the act of apprehending as apprehensor, are one and the same act; if one wishes, there is only one act, which is common to the mind and to the thing. As a consequence, the mind takes on the formal quality of the thing. For this [400] reason, some medievals thought that the unity between the intelligence and that which is intellected by the intelligence is superior and more intimate than even the unity between matter and form. Therefore, to be apprehended is not "to show oneself to", but a true "self-giving" and a self-giving such that in it the senses and the intelligence "are" in act the same as what is sensed and what is intellected. It is clear, however, that this does not mean that this sameness or identity of actuality is a sameness of "to be". Aristotle himself adds: tØ d> e‡nai oÜ tØ aÜtØ aÜtaŽj,the "to be" of what is sensed and that of the act of sensing is not the same (De anima 425 b, 26). In a word, I am able not to be hearing a sound despite the fact that the bell is ringing; and, on the other hand, the sameness is able not to have a character properly "physical" as happens in sensing (we may set this question aside), but can be a sameness of a different character, as happens in the pure intellect; and this is one of the [445] differences between sensing and pure "to intellect". In conceiving a square, I am not "physically" a square, but I am such in a non-physical manner. This manner of "to be" is what scholasticism, with good reason, calls "intentional". Intentionality does not mean, then, what it later comes to mean in phenomenology: the "intending" character of the act and the character of mere "intended" correlate of the object. Intentionality is not correlation "in intention", but is a mode of "to be". First of all, it is a mode of "to be" of that which is intellected qua intellected; and it is this mode of "to be" which is the same as the "to be" of the act of intellection as intellection of this particular thing or of that other. And this non-physical mode of "to be" is the intentional. In other words, the actuality of any thing is double: actuality in the sense of the belonging to the thing, is one thing; actuality in the sense of being in the state of giving itself (estar dándose) to the intelligence and of being in the state of making the intelligence intentionally what the thing is, is another. These are two perfectly distinct and different actualities, of which the second is grounded (in one form or another) on the first.

It was absolutely necessary to turn back to these old ideas. If Heidegger tells us that "to be" not only shows itself, but that it gives itself, he not only says something which is true, but also must complete the idea by saying that it is a self-giving which brings it about that the intelligence is the same as that which is intellected, [401] in casu, the same as the "to be". And reciprocally, in the apprehension of anything, this anything not only is showing itself, but also actually is (está siendo). As can be seen, however, this is not exclusive of "to be"; it happens with all things and all real notes. The pecularity of "to be" has nothing to do with the self-giving, but must be sought in the character of what is given. At least, naturally, that this character consists exactly in the fact that, while in the being its reality is distinct from its actuality, in the act of giving itself, [446] when we treat of "to be", we find that its character is nothing other than its pure self-giving. And this is what Heidegger thinks. Can it be sustained? This is the second point of our question.

(bb) For Heidegger, "to be" is the "element" in which every act of comprehension moves. To comprehend a chair is to comprehend it as "being" (siendo) a chair; to apprehend a pure number is to apprehend it as "being" (siendo), etc.; even what we call reality would be nothing other than a type of "to be". "To be", would be the special light in which and according to which we have access to things. While we leave them in themselves, they inundate us correlatively, with the light of their "to be", they give us their "to be". Differently from the being, "to be" not only actually is (está siendo) in its selfgiving, but, even more, "is" only in this, its self-giving. Still more, it is "to be" which "gives", it is that giving itself; that is to say, there is no "to be" save in the Da-sein. This position cannot, however, be upheld.

In the first place, the "self-giving" of anything does not involve the moment of "to be" more than if that something were already given as reality. To something which is present as pure stimulus, we can never "leave" (dejar) that it "be" (sea) that or that other. Only that is "left" in this way which already presents itself as something "in and of itself" (de suyo). The stimulus, however, is not present as something "in and of itself" (de suyo), but only as something independent of the senser. The "independent" cannot be "left to be", but rather, the senser adapts himself to it, or, to speak anthropomorphically, only takes account of it. By contrast, the thing present as reality involves intrinsically in its presentation, not only the character of reality as a character "independent" of me, but also involves it in a very precise and distinct form, namely, as reality which certainly is present independently of me, but which, moreover, possesses this [402] character (of independence) as something "in and of itself" (de suyo) before its presentation and as the ground of that presentation. Reality is present not only as something which "is" (está) present here, but present as a prius to its presentation itself. And it is in this moment of [447] priority that it is grounded, as something inexorable, that we call "leaving" the thing in its reality. To leave is to take account of the thing as reality; and this taking account of is grounded, as something necessary, in the presentation of the reality as a prius. This taking account of is not an arbitrary possibility to which man puts his hand ad libitum, but is something necessary; it is a "having to" take account of, precisely because the thing is present as the reality that it is, prius to its presentation. Even more: if man has temporeity, it is precisely because, in apprehending a real determined thing, he not only "is" (está) in this thing, but also "co-exists" (co-está) in "the" reality, in the transcendental; and for this reason, because the character of reality is transcendental, man as reality which perdures and transpires in time, takes on, by transcendentality, time as his condition; and the time that is thus re-assumed is temporeity. The "leaving that" is grounded, not in temporeity, but rather, on the presentation of something as a prius of reality. I do nothing here but state the idea; its development here would take us too far afield. If to be "actually is", in its self-giving in "allowing-that" the thing "be", it follows that the "to be" is grounded in the prior presentation of reality. Reality is not, therefore, a type of "to be", but quite the contrary, "to be" is something founded in reality: "to be" is given in the leaving of the real thing in its reality, but is not the reality itself.

On this basis, everything depends on our stating concretely why, in this leaving (dejar) understood in this way, what is actually exercising being is precisely the "to be". At this point Heidegger appeals to light: o�on tØ fñj.What is this fñj? It is simply "clarity" or, as Heidegger tells us, "luminosity" (luminosidad) itself. This luminosity is what "to be" is; the "leaving" is a letting in of light, that is, the "leaving" would show us the "to be" of each thing because, basically, every thing "is" only in the light of "to be". Let us not [448] abandon this metaphor, but continue it and it will show us that "to be" is not what Heidegger suggests. In a word, let us return to the question what this fñj is. It is lux, that is to say, clarity. But what, [403] in turn, is clarity? It is something that is based on a luminary, a lumen, fžggoj. This luminary has an intrinsic quality, which the Latins called splendor, fulgor, etc.; or, if one wishes, brilliance, effulgence. The Greek language, as is well known, lacks a word to express this quality. This splendor is something which the luminary has "in and of itself" (de suyo); it is the moment of its own proper reality and nothing more. But what we call clarity, lux, extends to its environment (alrededor). Considering this "environment", and only considering it, does that brilliance take on the character of light, of clarity. That is to say: (1) Light, clarity, is possible only when grounded in the splendor or effulgence of a lumen; light is, originatively, a moment of the luminary. (2) Light or clarity is nothing other than effulgence itself in its illuminating function, in function of the luminous environment. (3) Thus, every thing has a double "lumenic" actuality (so to call it): one, actuality as effulgent "in and of itself" (de suyo) and, without losing this actuality, it has another, that of being visible "in the clarity of the light". And since this clarity proceeds from the thing itself, it follows that this ultimate clarity is, as it were, a re-actualization of the first: it is the effulgence seen in the light which flows from it.

And this is precisely what furnishes us the key to our problem. For, what is this environment (entorno)? Environment, in its widest sense, is that which surrounds something; the reason why a thing exercises this function of environment (production of light) it does, is because something is respective. Surrounding is "respectivity" and light is the effulgence of respectivity. Every thing is real as an "in and of itself" (de suyo). This moment, however, of reality includes [449] transcendentally all other realities. That means, then, that reality is not only the "in and by itself" (el de suyo) of each thing, but reality in transcendental respectivity. And this respectivity is exactly the world in the transcendental sense of that term. The world is the effulgence in function of the luminous environment, of clarity, of light. And the actuality of the real thing in the world qua world is the actuality of a real thing in clarity of light: it is the "to be". Reality as "of and by itself" (de suyo), effulgence (brillo), is the ground of the reality as illuminatory (light); and the actuality of a real thing in this light, in the world, is "to be". World is reality in respective function, and the actuality of the reality in this world is "to be". [404] Reality is clarifying "in and by itself" (de suyo), it is respective "in and by itself", (de suyo): such is the unity of the two moments of reality and of "to be". It is otiose to add that this idea of light is simply metaphor; nevertheless, it is necessary to fix its meaning exactly with relationship to the use which Heidegger makes of it. But "to be" itself is not clarity, but is the supposition of all clarity: actuality in respectivity.

Hence, it follows that "to be" is not something which "is" only in the Da of comprehension, in the Da of the self-giving, but is also a moment of reality even if there were neither comprehension nor Da. To be sure, "to be" is not something ontic, that is to say, it is neither a thing nor the note of a thing. However, something may be neither thing nor note of a thing and nevertheless be a transcendental moment of the thing itself: such is "to be". The light is a moment of the luminaries and nevertheless has, in a certain way, a unity apart from their effulgence (brillo); it is not for this reason, however, a kind of greater luminary, nor, therefore, is "to be", as the actuality of the real in its respectivity, one more real note. Neither, for this reason, does it follow that "to be" is something which is only in giving itself in a Da. What happens is that in the case of the real there is a special respectivity, the respectivity to this intelligent "thing" which is the noãj; and for this reason the actuality in this respectivity is also "to be". However, as the real thing apprehended [450] is already in itself respective to all the rest, it follows that, on apprehending its reality, eo ipso we apprehend its "to be". "To be", then, intervenes twice: once as a moment of what is apprehended as reality; another, as a moment of what is apprehended qua apprehended. These, however, are not two "to be's", but the second is, as it were, only a ratification of the first: it is exactly to be, not simpliciter, but "insofar as it is to be". What is constituted in the Da, and what would not be there without the Da, is not the "to be", but the "insofar as" of "to be". This "insofar as" is not conceptual in character. It is not a question of the apprehension and the Da being a "conceiving", but rather that in the apprehension and in the Da the reality of the things and the "to be", which they have before being apprehended, is "re-actualized". Conception is always a further function. The Da is nothing, but a "respect" between n "respects" of the thing. The difference between reality and "to be" is a more than [405] conceptual difference; it is not, however, a happening in the Da. It is a difference between two moments of the actuality of every thing: the actuality as an "in and by itself" (de suyo), and the actuality as a moment of respectivity. And as this second actuality, which is "to be", is based on the first, it follows that it is not true that "to be" ex nihilo fit, but rather that, on the contrary, ex realitate fit.

To sum up:

1. "to be" is based on reality; reality is not a kind of "to be";

2. "to be" is the moment of the actuality of the real in this respectivity which transcendentally constitutes the world; therefore, "to be", has nothing to do with the Da-sein. "To be" is given but not as thing or note; rather it has another way of being given: as respective actuality;

3. "to be" is always "to be" of the real thing, not because "to be" is actual (esté siendo) only in its self-giving, but because, as act of the real thing, it is a "further" act, beyond its primary reality "in and by itself" (de suyo); it is a further act of the reality qua reality.

[451] (cc) The fact is that Heidegger takes his point of departure in the supposition that man is the being to whose "to be" there belongs the comprehension of "to be", in such wise that man is then the dwelling-place and the pastor of "to be". But this position cannot be maintained. To be sure, man moves ever in "to be"; the "element", however, in which man moves primarily and constitutively is not "to be", but reality. Man moves in "to be", but because "to be" is a moment, an act, of that which is already real, and not because "to be" is that which primarily and formally characterizes human intellection. The actuality of "to be" in the Da of comprehension is grounded on the previous actuality of "to be" in reality. As a consequence, what formally characterizes man is not the comprehension of "to be", but the manner of apprehending things. In saying this I am not making reference to apprehension as an act of a "faculty", that is to say, I am not once more incardinating, as Heidegger would say, the problem of "to be" in "subjectivity", because here I take "apprehension" not katª dÝnamin, but kaq' �nžrgeian. If man had no more than a stimulative (estimúlica) apprehension, it would not be possible to speak of "to be". As we have said, it is possible to speak of "to be" only in the degree or measure in which there is apprehension and presentation of things as real. Therefore, what [406] formally belongs to the "to be" of man is not the "comprehension of to be", but the "apprehension of reality". What is the inner character of this apprehension? We have already indicated it. In pure sensation, things are apprehended and are found present only as stimuli; and this pure sensation is what formally constitutes animality. Pure intellection, however, consists in apprehending and in the fact that things are present as reality. Man does not originatively [452] apprehend things as pure reality, but as stimulating reality or real stimulus. Man does not intellect reality purely, but senses reality itself, senses its formal character of reality. Hence it follows that human sensation is not pure sensation, and that the primary and fundamental human intellection is not pure intellection, but that sensation (because it is sensation of reality) is intellective and intellection (because reality is something sensed) is sentient intellection; both expressions say the same thing. As a consequence, what formally belongs to the human reality is sentient intellection. Man moves in "to be" not because "to be" is Da-sein, but because Da-sein is sentiently open to real things, which, as real, "already" are on their own account (de sí). The primum cognitum, the first intelligible, as we saw earlier, is not "to be", but reality, and sensed reality in the impression of reality. Openness is not compression, but impression. As sensation constitutes animality and intelligence is what presents real things as real, it follows that to say that man is sentient intelligence is the same as to say that he is the animal of realities. Man is not the "comprehender of to be", he is not the dwelling-place and pastor of "to be", but he is the "animal of realities". And, I repeat once again, I take the expression kaq' �nžrgeian.

Fundamentally, the entire philosophy of Heidegger is a commentary on this idea that man is the "comprehender of to be". There is nothing strange about this. Heidegger took his point of departure in phenomenology and, despite the profound and radical transformations which he introduces into it, he remains, nevertheless, within the orbit of phenomenology. For phenomenology, what is primary and grounding is always and only consciousness as a being within which, and only within which, things are given for what they really and truly are. Heidegger overcomes the idea of consciousness by way of the idea of comprehension, and he overcomes the idea [453] of the "self-giving" of things by means of the idea of faˆnesqai, of appearing in the sense of showing oneself. This self-manifestation is self-manifestation as "actually being" (siendo). "To be", then, is the possibility that things show themselves and that man comprehends them. With this, the radical character of man becomes the comprehension of "to be". This, however, cannot be upheld, first, because the primary function of man is not to comprehend "to be", but to confront the reality of things sentiently and, second, because "to be" lacks the note of substantivity; "to be" is only "respectively"; and this respectivity is not respectivity to man, but to the reality of all, the whole. Therefore, it is reality and only reality that has substantivity.

Let us sum up. We proposed to ascertain in a summary fashion what the transcendental order is as a strict transcendental structure. We have seen that this structure includes, on the one hand, the reality as something "in and by itself" (de suyo); reality is the transcendental itself or simple transcendental. But this reality has a second transcendental moment, which is complex: respectivity or the world. And the actuality, that which is already real in itself, as moment of the world, is "to be". Reality and "to be" are two different and distinct moments of the real, not, however, because reality is a type of "to be", as Kant and Heidegger aver, but quite the reverse, because being is a "further" moment or actuality of the real, a moment which has nothing to do with intellection.

With this we have made the idea of the transcendental order precise, to the degree it was necessary for our problem. We have made it exact, in the first place, in as far as it is transcendental and, in the second, insofar as it is order. The transcendental order as transcendental is not the order of objectuality, nor the order of entity, nor the order of "to be", but the order of reality as reality. In this order, reality possesses certain determined properties (let us [454] call them so) by reason of the suchness of the real. This determination is a transcendental function, and the properties determined in this way constitute a strict transcendental structure. This is the transcendental order. And in this order, fixed in this way, must we now seek out essence.