{253}

 

CHAPTER VII

SENTIENT LOGOS AND TRUTH

 

When a thing is apprehended as real and intellectively known affirmatively as what it is in reality, when this intellection intellectively knows "really" what the thing is in reality, such as we affirm, then we say that the intellection is true. What is meant by 'truth'? In order to focus correctly on the question, it will be useful to review in summary form what was said about this subject in Part I of the book.

At first glance truth seems to be a quality belonging exclusively to affirmation. But truth is a quality of all intellection and not every intellection is affirmation. Prior to affirmation there is primordial apprehension of reality, which also has its truth. Let us ask ourselves, then, what is truth as such, as a quality of intellection.

Truth involves a host of problems, because a real thing is actualized in intellection in at least two different ways, as we have seen: in primordial apprehension and in dual apprehension. Hence the different possible types of truth. The set of these questions is the problem of "truth and reality". But as affirmation {254} has always been understood in a predicative form, it has been thought that truth would therefore only be a quality of predication; and that what constitutes truth is the "is" of the predication "A is B". Now, since truth concerns intellection as such, and there are intellections of reality which are not intellections of the "is", it follows that reality and being are not identical. This is a third serious problem. So here we have formulated the three questions which we must examine:

 

§1. What is truth.

§2. Truth and reality

§3. Reality and being.

 

Let us now take up these problems from the standpoint of affirmation.

{255}

§1

WHAT IS TRUTH?

 

In precise and formal terms, intellection as such is just actualization of a real thing qua real. We have already seen that this actualization has two aspects. First is the aspect which concerns the real as real: reality is a formality which consists in being de suyo what it is, prior to being present in apprehension. To study the real in this aspect is the immense problem of reality. But intellective actualization has another aspect which concerns not the real thing but the intellection itself. Mere intellective actualization of the real qua intellective is just what we call truth: a thing is really that in accordance with which it is actualized.

Reality and truth are not identical because there are or can be realities which are not actualized nor have any reason to be so. In this sense, not every reality is true. Truth is a quality of actualization, and actualization is a physical moment of the real. Without adding a single note, actualization nonetheless adds truth to the real. Therefore truth and reality are not identical, but neither are they mere correlatives; reality is not just the correlate of truth but its foundation, because all actualization is actualization of reality. Reality is then what gives truth to intellection, what makes the truth or "truthifies" in it.

This excludes from the outset two conceptions of {256} truthful intellection. The first is to understand that reality is a simple correlate of truth-this is basically Kant's thought about the question. But it is impossible, as I have just explained. The other is the most common conception of all, according to which truth and its opposite, error, are two qualities which function ex aequo in intellection. That was Descartes' idea. But this involves serious mistakes, because error is precisely and formally possible only by virtue of truth. Error, in fact, is not a mere "lack" of truth but "privation" of truth. Intellection cannot possess error just the same as truth; rather, because it always involves a moment of reality, intellection is always radically truthful even though in some dimensions it can see itself deprived of this truth. How is that possible? This is the problem of truth and reality, with which we shall now occupy ourselves.

{257}

§2

TRUTH AND REALITY

 

The real is intellectively actualized in different ways, in virtue of which there are different modes of truth. There is above all a simple actualization. Its truth is also simple. But the real can be actualized in field "among" other realities. It is an intellection which I have called 'dual'. Its truth is also dual. They are two types of truth which are very different-something which I already hinted at in Part One. Now I shall repeat that discussion in summary fashion for the reader's benefit.

We shall examine the following:

 

1. Simple or real truth.

2. Dual truth.

3. The unity of truth.

 

1

Simple or real truth

 

The radical mode of presentation of the real in intellection is primordial apprehension of reality. In it the real is just actualized in and by itself. Its formality of reality has two moments, individual and field, but pro indiviso, i.e., in a form which I have called 'compact', which means that a thing is real and the reality in it is "thus". This actualization is truth; it is the primary mode of truth. {258} It is primary because this truth makes no reference to anything outside of what is apprehended. Therefore what this truth "adds" to reality is but its mere actuality; this is what I have termed ratification. As what is ratified is the real itself, it follows that its truth should be called real truth. It is real because in this ratification we have the real itself. It is truth because this ratification is actualizing. In virtue of it this real truth is simple. It is not simple in the sense of not being comprised of many notes; on the contrary, real truth, for example the primordial apprehension of a landscape, possesses a great multitude of notes. Real truth is simple because in this actualization these many notes constitute a single reality, and the intellection does not go outside of them; it does not, for example, go from the real to its concept.

Here one sees that every primordial apprehension of the real is always true, is real truth. Error is not possible in what is apprehended primordially as such. What is thus apprehended is always real even though it may not be so otherwise than in the apprehension itself; but there it is in fact real. Hence it is false to say that what is thus apprehended is a representation of mine. It is not a representation but primarily and primordially a presentation. And this presentation does not formally consist in being presentness but in its being here-and-now present; it is an actuality of the real. Primordial apprehension is therefore an actual presentation of reality. It is of reality, i.e., of what the apprehended is in itself, de suyo. This "being here-and-now" in presence is just actuality, the actuality of pure being here-and-now in presence. This actuality is ratification.

In summary, the primary mode of actualization of the real is to actualize it in and by itself. And this actualization is {259} its real truth. This reality of what is really true is open in the field sense, and thus can be actualized in two intellections: the actuality of the real in and by itself, and the actuality in the field of this real thing "among" other realities. This second actualization of the real is thus real, but its truth is not yet real truth but what I term 'dual truth'. It is the truth proper to the logos, to affirmation. After this summary of what real truth is, we must delve into the analysis of dual truth.

 

2

Dual Truth

The intellection of a real thing "among" others is, as we have seen and analyzed at length, an intellection at a distance, by stepping back. Each real thing in fact is intellectively known in the field of reality as a function of others. Through its field moment, each real thing is included in the field by its own reality, and then the field takes on a functional character and encompasses the rest of the things. Therefore each of them is, with respect to the field, at a distance from the others. Hence, as we have said, to intellectively know a thing among others is to intellectively know it as a function of those others and therefore to intellectively know it at a distance, by stepping back.

But let us not confuse the field aspect of each real thing and the field of reality which it determines. Each real thing refers to others; this is the field aspect of each thing, its own field moment. The field itself is the ambit constituted by this referring; it is the field of referral. The field is thus {260} determined by the real thing. Each real thing refers to another, and in this field of referral what a referring thing is as a function of others is intellectively known. Only then has one intellectively known the concrete nature of the field aspect of each thing, i.e., the concrete nature of the unity of the field aspect and the individual aspect in the reality of each thing. This unity is what the thing is "in reality".

The intellection of each thing thus takes place in the field as a medium in which each one of the things is intellectively known as a function of the rest. This intellection at a distance, by stepping back, is thus a mediated intellection; in the field of reality it is the medium of intellection. This mediated intellection is just affirmation. Affirmation formally refers back to the unity of the field and the individual, a unity intellectively known in the field of reality; i.e., it falls back upon what a real thing is "in reality". Actualization, then, is not actualization of something real in and by itself, but actualization of what something already apprehended as real is "in reality", i.e., among other things. Its intellection is affirmation.

This intellection has its own truth. What is it? Let us repeat what we have been saying: truth is the mere intellective actualization of the real qua intellective. When the actualization is not mediated, its intellection has what we have termed real truth, the formal ratification of the real in and by itself. And this truth, as I said, is simple. But when the actualization is mediated, then the real is made true in affirmation, not as pure and simple reality but rather as being in reality such-and-such among others. It is in this making true of the truth of the real in this mode of differentiating that the other type of truth consists, viz. dual truth. This is mediated truth.

Dual truth has its own character and structure. {261} Above all it has its own character. This intellection, in fact, is intellection at a distance, by stepping back. To intellectively know a thing "among others" is to intellectively know it from these others, and therefore to intellectively know it at a distance, by stepping back. In virtue of that, by being intellection "at a distance", the intellection itself is an intellection that steps back. Therefore there is, so to speak, a duality and not just a distinction between the realm of intelligence and the realm of what is intellectively known in a thing. The realm of intelligence consists in being of dynamic character, i.e. in being an intellection in movement. The realm of the thing is its actuality intellectively known in this movement. As the thing is already actualized in primordial apprehension of reality, it follows that this new actualization is "re-actualization". And since dual truth is constituted in this re-actualization, it follows that this dual truth has by the same token its own character: it is an actualization "in coincidence" of two realms which are formally distinct. Here 'coincidence' does not mean chance or anything like it; rather, it has its etymological meaning, "to be incident with". Dual truth then has the character of intellective coincidence "between" the realms of intelligence (i.e. among the realms of intellective movement) and the realms of reality. The "between" intellectively actualizes the real thing (with respect to what it is in reality) as a "coincidence" of intellection and reality; it is the actuality of the real in coincidence. Such is the character of dual truth, coincidenciality, if I may be permitted the expression. It is the "between" which determines this character of coincidenciality.

This requires some clarification in order to avoid possible confusion. A coinciding actuality is not, formally, truth, but rather the ambit of dual truth. Therefore-to get a little ahead of ourselves-I should say that in this coinciding actuality, in this {262} ambit, error is also constituted. Hence the duality of dual truth does not formally concern truth as opposed to error, but rather the coinciding actuality itself which is the ambit of truth. What is radically and formally dual is the coinciding actuality. We shall see this at greater length later. So for now I will cautiously say the following: (1) Dual truth is constituted in coinciding actuality, and (2) this constitution is an event; in coinciding actuality dual truth happens. And this expression has a very precise meaning, viz. that coinciding actuality is a formally dynamic actuality, as I shall frequently repeat. Here "to happen" is not something opposed to that already done or intellectively known, but the formal and dynamic character of affirmation itself.

This dual truth has not only its own character but also its own structure, the structure of coincidence itself. This structure is extremely complex because coincidence is the character of an intellection which "comes" to coincide just because it "fills up" the distance between the two coincident terms, between affirmative intellection and what the thing already apprehended as real is in reality. Since affirmative intellection is, as we have seen, of a formally dynamic character, it follows that the coincidence itself also has a dynamic structure, as we have just indicated. The coincidental actuality of the real, then, has a formally dynamic structure. It is for this reason that truth "happens" in this actuality without thereby being formally identical with it. And this is the essential point. Real truth either is had or is not had. But one reaches or does not reach dual truth in coincidence. And this "reaching" is just intellective dynamism. Therefore, I stress, dual truth is {263} essentially and constitutively dynamic. What is that dynamic structure? This is key problem.

In the first place, intellective movement takes place in a medium. Dual truth, by virtue of being truth in coincidence, is a mediated truth. Its foundation is, therefore, the medium. In this aspect the medium is "mediation" for the coincidence, and therefore is a dynamic mediator (not an intermediary) of dual truth. In what does the essence of this mediation consist? This is the problem of the dynamic mediating structure of coincidence, and therefore of dual truth. The total structure of dual truth is "mediating dynamic".

In the second place, this movement takes place in the medium, but is not univocally determined in it. It is not certainly in its point of departure; but that is not what is important to us here. What is now important to us is that this movement does not have a univocally determined direction in the medium. Therefore the fact that the movement goes toward a determinate thing which is going to be intellectively known does not necessarily mean that the direction of this movement automatically leads to a dual truth. As we shall see it may not lead there. How is this possible? That is the problem of the dynamic directional structure of coincidence, of dual truth.

In the third place, the movement has not only medium and direction, but also, as we have seen, different phases. Hence it follows that coincidence is not the same with respect to all phases of the movement which bridges the gap between the real and what the thing is in reality. In virtue of that, dual truth, by being truth in coincidence, has different forms. What are these forms? This is the problem of the formal dynamic structure of dual truth.

In summary, the problem of the structure of dual truth is the problem of the structurally mediating dynamic {264} and directional character of the coincidence between affirmative intellection and what a thing is in reality.

The conceptualization of this structure unfolds in three questions:

A) The mediated dynamic structure of coincidence.

B) The directional dynamic structure of coincidence in the medium.

C) The formal dynamic structure of truth in mediatedl coincidence.

1. Mediating dynamic structure of coincidence. This is a "fundamental" structure. Here I understand by "foundation" the structure of that which intrinsically constitutes the fact that intellection "between" is coincidence. I say "intrinsically", i.e. I do not refer to what originates the coincidence, but to that moment which intrinsically and formally pertains to coincidence itself, i.e. to the constituting moment of its own character. This intrinsic and formal foundation is the medium. The fundamental nature of the medium is thus, at one and the same time what is affirmed qua affirmed and the formal character of the affirmation itself as intellection. This "at one and the same time" is just coincidence. The medium is therefore a medium of dynamic coincidence. It is in this that its mediation consists. How?

A) Some pages ago we saw how the medium is constituted: it is constituted in and by the primordial apprehension of reality. Let us repeat the ideas already expounded in order to improve rigor and clarity. The real qua real is something which, in itself, is open to all other reality qua reality. This "in" is, as we already have seen in Part I, an intrinsic and formal moment of reality qua reality; it is its transcendental character, which here takes on more concretely the character of being in a field. The real in and by itself is {265} real in a way which is transcendentally in a field. The actuality of the real then autonomously actualizes the field as transcendental ambit. Being is a field is a moment of the primordial apprehension of reality; that it can function with autonomy with respect to the individual moment does not mean that it is independent of primordial apprehension. This moment is given to us there where the real itself is given to us: in the impression of reality. The impression of reality is, then, primordial sentient apprehension of the real in its individual formality and in a field; it is transcendental impression. Now, this impression has the structural unity of all the modes of reality impressively given. One of them, as I have been stressing throughout this book, is the "toward". The "toward" is a mode of giving ourselves reality in impression. When one considers it as transcendentally open, then the "toward" is "toward the rest of the realities"; it is not only a mode of reality but the very mode of the differential actuality of reality. In virtue of this, the transcendental nature of the field moment takes on the character of a field which encompasses concrete real things. The field is thus constituted in a "medium". So it is then clear that the medium is precisely and formally a medium because there are real things apprehended in the impression of reality. The real things, naturally, do not remain "outside" the medium, but neither are they merely "inside" it even though it encompasses them; rather, they "are" the concrete reality of the field moment itself of every real thing. Conversely, the medium as such is the field of every real thing insofar as it is in mediated fashion constituting, in each thing, the intellective unity of some things with others. The medium is the foundation of the intellective unity of things, but it is a foundation which is only mediated, {266} i.e., by being intrinsically the actuality which is intellectively in the field of every real thing. To be sure, the medium, insofar as it is within the field, is not purely and simply identified with the individual part of each thing's formality of reality; but this reality is actualized in the field manner in the medium. Hence it follows that the medium is, I repeat, but a moment of the actuality itself of the real qua real. The medium is but the real truth of the field. The medium, then, has on one side a grounded character; it is grounded on the individual realities; but it is on the other hand the foundation of that differentiating unity which we call "between". The "transcendental ambit", the field, thus acquires the character of "medium". Now, the medium is grounding just because it has in itself, formally, the actuality of each real thing. This cyclic unity is characteristic of the medium.

B) The medium thus constituted has the function of mediation of coincidence between affirmation and what a thing is in reality. In fact, affirmation is an intellection at a distance, by stepping back. Therefore the confidence of both terms has to be grounded in something in which it is established. But, What is the nature of this something?

a) We are not dealing with some third term which "produces" coincidence. That was the absurd idea nourished in large part by the subjectivist philosophy of the late 19th century; it was the celebrated idea of the "bridge" between consciousness and reality. We leave aside that fact that we are not dealing with consciousness but with intellection. The idea in question started from the supposition that one had to encounter a third term which would reestablish the unity of the intelligence and reality, the two terms which were thought to be found "outside" of each other. Yet all this is simply absurd, in a very radical way. It is not absurd because of what the nature of this "bridge" might be (e.g., {267} some type of causal reasoning); rather, what is absurd is thinking about the necessity of the bridge, because what does not exist is the "exteriority", so to speak, of intelligence and the real. The difference between the two terms is a "stepping back", but not a "separation", which means that what establishes the coincidence is not a third thing different than the other two, but a moment which is intrinsic to them. This moment is just the medium. The medium is not some "bridge", i.e., it is not an "intermediary", but rather is that in which the two terms "already are". There is no bridge but only a medium. And this medium is easy to describe: it is just the medium in which stepping back (i.e., distance) itself has been established, to wit, "the" reality. It is therein that stepping back has been established, a stepping back, but not a rupture. It is already in the real; stepping back is not stepping back from reality but stepping back in reality. Hence coincidence is not recomposition, but only an overcoming of of distance "in" reality itself.

In fact, what judgement affirms is not reality pure and simple, but what a thing already apprehended as real is in reality. And in turn, what a thing is in reality is just the unity of its individual and field moments, i.e., the concrete unity of each thing with all others in "the" reality. Stepping back, then, in "the" reality is how the intelligence is situated with respect to a thing. That is, the medium is just the moment of "the" reality. Conversely, coincidence is the unity of intelligence and the thing in that medium which is "the" reality. Truth as coincidence is above all coincidence of affirmation and of a thing "in" reality. And this reality is then the "in" itself, i.e., it is the medium; therefore it is something which is intrinsic to intelligence and the thing.

b) Nonetheless we are not dealing with just any coincidence, {268} because it has to be a coincidence along the lines of intellection itself, i.e., along the lines of intellective actuality of the real at a distance. For this it is necessary that the medium be not only an intrinsic moment of affirmative intellection and of the real, but that it also be something whose mediated truth as truth constitutes the coincidence between affirmation and the real. Only then will the medium have the function of mediation, of intellective mediation. The medium has to be a true mediator of coincidence, i.e., of truth. And so it is in fact.

Let us recall that the real apprehended in primary actualization, in the primordial apprehension of reality, has in this actualization what I have called real truth. And to this real truth corresponds the truth of a thing in its field moment. In virtue of this, we say, real truth is a truth which is incipiently open, open to intellection within a field in coincidence, an intellection in which we affirm what a thing is in reality. The same thing, then, as I have already said, is apprehended twice: once, in and by itself as real; secondly, as affirmed of what that thing is in reality. Now, the primordial apprehension of the real pertains formally to affirmation itself; it is precisely that of which one judges. In turn, the medium itself is the physical actuality of the field moment of that real thing, of the primordial apprehension; i.e., it has its own real truth. This real truth of the medium is but the expansion of the real truth of the field moment of a thing apprehended as real, in order to be able to judge its reality. Hence it follows, as I have already said, that the medium is real truth; it is the real truth of "the" reality of the field of "the" reality. And it is in this real truth where, in mediated fashion, that coincidence between affirmation and the real thing is established. The real truth {269} of the medium is the intrinsic and formal mediator of what is actualized in affirmation. In contrast to what is so often said, one must realize that affirming does not consist in affirming reality, nor for that matter in affirming truth, but in affirming something "in reality", in affirming something "in truth". Reality and truth are the mediated and intrinsic supposition of all affirmation as such. The coincidence between intelligence and the real is a coincidence which is established in "the" reality in which both terms are true reality, in the real truth of the medium. The real truth of the medium is thus the medium of coincidence.

This is a moment which formally and intrinsically pertains to affirmation in order to be able to be what affirmation seeks to be. A judgement does not affirm either reality or truth but presupposes them; it affirms what a real thing is in "reality of truth". And this truth is just the real truth. Mediation consists formally in being the real truth as a medium of judgement.

c) But this is not all, because coincidence, which the medium as real truth establishes, has a precise structure, viz. movement. There is a profound difference between intellectively knowing something with truth and intellectively knowing it in mediated fashion in truth. When all is said and done, in primordial apprehension of reality we already have reality with truth. But there is an essential difference with affirmative intellection, because the reality of primordial apprehension of reality is actuality of a thing in and by itself in its direct immediateness. But now, affirmative intellection of reality is intellection of reality in truth by stepping back. And distance is something to which real truth is incipiently open, and which has to be gone through. Therefore real truth is not just something in which intellective coincidence "is", {270} nor is it only something which makes that possible; rather it is something which pertains to affirmation itself because the medium is not something in which real things are submerged. It is indeed the actuality of the field moment of each real thing. Hence stepping back is only the mode of intellectively knowing in the medium. That is, the medium is a dynamic mediator. It is the mediated dynamism of the real truth of the medium. The medium is not only something which "permits" coinciding with the real, but also is constitutively something which pertains to the coincidence with the real.

Here we have the mediated structure of coincidence. It is coincidence in the medium of "the" reality, intellective coincidence in its real truth, and dynamic coincidence in stepping back.

In summary, the mediated structure of affirmative intellection consists in the intellective movement in which we intellectively know what a real thing is "in reality of truth", i.e., in the medium of the real truth. The real truth is incipiently open to being actualization of the real in coincidence, i.e., in reality of truth, and constitutes the intrinsic and formal medium of this last actualization.

But this coincidental dynamism does not have only mediated character. It also has a directional character. That is what we are going to see.

2) Dynamic directional structure of coincidence in the medium. Intellective movement takes place in the medium, but is not univocally determined there. This movement is a movement in which we are going to intellectively know what a thing is in reality as a function of others. That is, we are going "toward" that thing, but "from" the rest. The dynamism of intellection not only takes place in a medium, {271} but is "from-toward". This is the dynamic directional structure of coincidence. Intellection in movement is affirmation. Therefore affirmation itself is dynamic not only in mediated fashion but also directionally. This direction of affirmation has a complex structure, because both the "toward" and the "from" are fixed: the "toward" is what a thing which one desires to intellectively know is in reality, and the "from" is things as a function of which one is going to intellectively know the thing in an affirmative way. I shall lump all things in a single term, viz. that thing from which one affirms what something is in reality. Now, even with these terms fixed, affirmative movement does not have a univocally determined direction. Given the same "toward" and "from", the intellective movement can and does follow quite different trajectories. That is, the direction and orientation of the movement can vary. And with that variance, coincidence itself arises within the power of the intelligence, i.e., of the intellective movement of what the real thing is in reality, and the real has a directional character. This obliges us to linger on some essential points, especially these three: A) what is, more precisely, the "direction" of affirmation; B) what is the directional part of coincidence as such; and C) in what does this bundle of directions consist which we may term the "polivalence" of affirmation with respect to the nature of coincidence.

A) Above all, what is the "direction" of affirmation?. Let us recall that affirmation is a dual intellection which consists in the thing "toward" which one goes being intellectively known "from" the light emanating from something else. The thing "from" which one goes is present in the thing "toward", in a certain way as the light of the intellective affirmation of this latter. The first thing this light {272} determines is a "stopping" to consider what the thing can be which is going to be intellectively known in this light. This stopping is a stepping back, i.e., what I have called "retraction". It is not a retraction "from" reality but retraction "in" reality.

It is a retraction which is formally intellective. What one intellectively knows in this retraction is what a thing would be as a function of the light of another. This intellection is what constitutes simple apprehension in its triple form of percept, fictional item, and concept. But simple apprehension, as we saw, does not consist in prescinding from the moment of reality. On the contrary, every simple apprehension is formally constituted in the medium of reality. And the way in which reality corresponds to what is simply apprehended is that mode of reality which we call "might be". What is simply apprehended is what a thing "might be" in reality. The "might be" is not something which concerns the content of a simple apprehension as something possible in it; rather, it is the unreal mode by which the content of a simple apprehension concerns the real thing.

Even when simple apprehensions are freely created, the thing which "might be" in the form of a percept, fictional item, or concept is always mentally denoted.

Now, direction is the formality of the "might be" of simple apprehension. Therefore simple apprehension consists formally in direction. Here we have the concept of direction, which we were seeking. Intellection through stepping back is above all, as we have seen, retraction; but it is an intellective retraction in reality. This "in reality" is the "might be", i.e., the direction. Therefore direction, I repeat, is but the intellective formality of retraction.

In virtue of this, simple apprehension is not just a {273} representation of some content, but a directional focus of what a real thing "might be" in reality. Furthermore, as I just said, this directional formality is what formally constitutes simple apprehension. In primordial apprehension there is no direction but rather immediate actuality. On the other hand, simple apprehension is a moment of distanced intellection, and its formal character is "direction". Simple apprehension, I repeat, is formally intellective direction toward what the thing intellectively known by stepping back "might be" in reality.

To summarize, in this intellective movement which is affirmation, one comes to intellectively know what a thing is in reality as a function of others which reveal the possibilities of what it directionally might be.

Granting this, In what does the directional structure of the coincidence consist?

B) Directionality of coincidence. Every affirmation is a movement, and as such has direction. Toward what? We have already given the answer on several occasions: toward what a thing, intellectively known affirmatively, is in reality. This "in reality", as we also saw, is the unity of the individual moment and the field moment of the real thing which is intellectively known.

This intellection is a movement which takes place in mediated fashion. And in this taking place, what the intellection, so to speak, does is to "go" to that unity. This "going" is but a returning from the retraction to the thing itself, i.e., going "in" the field "toward" the thing. Hence it follows that, qua intellectively known affirmatively, the unity in question is intellectively known as "unification". The direction, then, is direction toward unification; it is the "might be" of the unification. In this direction the intellection seeks to reach the thing. But not as something which just is there, quiescent, {274} but as intellectively known already as real in primordial apprehension. In virtue of this, the thing which directionally we seek to reach is the thing which already has real truth, but which is incipiently open, and which therefore is dynamically unfolded as making a demand; it is the real thing as "making a demand" or "making a claim". We have already met the concept of demand when treating the subject of evidence, where it was a vision called forth by a thing from itself, from its own reality. In the present problem this same demand has the directional function of intellection. Making a demand is always one of the aspects of the force of imposition of the real apprehended in the impression of reality.

The "might be" is direction; and what a thing "is" in reality is present to us as making a demand. Therefore the coincidence between intellective movement and a thing is a coincidence of formally dynamic character; it is the coincidence between a direction and a demand. And this coincidence between a direction and a demand is the step from "might be" to the "is" in which affirmation consists. It is, I repeat, a formally dynamic and directional moment of the mediated actuality of the real in affirmation. It is the coincidence between a simple apprehension freely created by me, and the positive or negative demand which the real has before it.

This actualization, by virtue of being dynamically directional, confers a precise structure upon affirmation. This coincidence, in fact, is not something which consists in "carrying" us to the actualization but rather is a moment of the actualization itself in its intrinsic and formal dynamic nature. This intrinsic and formal character of actuality in directional coincidence has that moment which is rectitude. Coincidence as "coincidence of direction and of demand" has the {275} formal moment of rectitude. This is, as I see it, the strict concept of rectitude.

This coincidence, then, is not a quiescent but a dynamic one. It is above all a mediated dynamic coincidence, viz. a thing actualized in the medium of reality, i.e. actualized in the reality of truth; but it is also a directional dynamic coincidence, viz. a thing actualized in the rectitude of affirmative movement. The medium and the direction are not just conditions of affirmation, but intrinsic and formally constitutive moments of it, not just as an act of intellection but as actualization of the thing which is intellectively known. Qua actualized in intellective movement, a thing has a mediated and directional actuality; it is actuality in reality and actuality in rectitude.

Rectitude is perhaps what most clearly delineates the dynamic structure of affirmation. When all is said and done, one might think that the "medium" is just that in which affirmation resides, not affirmation itself. Rather, "rectitude" would clearly denote that one is dealing with a formally dynamic moment. Nonetheless, this dynamic character is not unique to rectitude but also applies to the medium itself, because we are not dealing with a medium in which one affirms, but rather with the mediated character of affirmation. It is the affirming itself which is mediated. Affirmation is a happening and its mediality is an intrinsic and formal moment of what is affirmed qua affirmed. A thing is intellectively known in affirmation; and as this intellection is at a distance, mediality is the intrinsic and formal character of the reality itself qua intellectively known. The medium is dynamic mediation and rectitude is-to speak pleonastically-dynamic rectitude. As I see it, one can never sufficiently insist on truth as a {276} dynamic coincidence, i.e., upon affirmation as intellective movement.

But this only puts us face-to-face with a serious problem. It is necessary, in fact, to conceptualize in what, "formally", this coincidence between direction and demand consists. Because the directionality of affirmation is polivalent, and therefore its coincidence also is so. In what does this polivalence consist?

C) Directional polyvalence. Naturally there is in every affirmation a plurality of directions for going "toward" what is affirmed starting "from" something else. What is affirmed, in fact, has many notes and many aspects, which means that starting "from" some thing I can go "toward" what is affirmed in many ways. "Really" the thing "from" which one intellectively knows opens to us not a direction but a bundle of directions "toward" the thing intellectively known. Once the "from" and "toward" are fixed, there is still a plurality of possible directions. I can go toward a thing intellectively known in order to intellectively know the color it has in reality, but I can also direct myself toward the thing itself in order to intellectively know any other of its notes. In order to intellectively know what a man is in reality, I can start from his zoological relatives; but here is where the multitude of directions opens up: I can go in the direction of speech, but I can also go in the direction of upright walking, or of forming groups. In the first case the man will be in reality a speaking animal, in the second a bipedal animal (the one par excellence), and in the third a social animal, etc. Within this bundle of directions, I move in one of them according to an option of mine, anchored securely in the richness of what is intellectively known, but in a direction determined only by an {277} option of mine. This plurality of directions is, nonetheless, not what I term directional polyvalence. Valence is the quality of coincidence in the order of truth. Polyvalence consists in those qualities, those valences, being able to be diverse within each direction. It does not then refer to various directions, but to various valences within each direction with respect to the truth intended to be in them.

And this is because, as we have said repeatedly, in contrast to real truth which one "has" or does not have, dual truth is "arrived at" or not arrived at, or is arrived at by different means in the intellective movement of affirmation. Now, in each case we have a strict coincidence between the direction and the demand of the real thing. Since in this coincidence the real is actualized, and therefore its intellective valences are diversified, it follows that directional valence has two aspects which must be conceptualized successively, viz. the aspect which concerns the very root of all valence, i.e. the aspect which concerns the actuality of the real in affirmation, and the aspect which concerns the polyvalence of this affirmation in the order of its truth.

a) Above all, there is the root of all valence, which ultimately is the root of all polyvalence. A real thing is, as we saw, the terminus of two apprehensions. One, its primordial apprehension as a real thing about which one judges. But this same thing, without ceasing to be apprehended as real, is the terminus of what, provisionally, we shall call second actuality: actuality in affirmation. Of these two actualizations, the second presupposes the first: affirmation presupposes the primary actuality of a thing and returns to actualize it in affirmation. Therefore, we said, affirmation is formally "re-actualization". What is this "re"? That is the question. {278}

The "re" is not some repetition or reiteration of the first actualization. In the first place, this is because of the formal explanation of the term 'to actualize': in the first actualization we have a "real" thing, but in the second we have the thing "in reality". We have reality, then, twice, but with different aspects. In the reactualization we have the real, but actualized "in reality". The same reality is thus actualized in two different aspects. Insofar as the second aspect is grounded in the first, we shall say that that second contribution is "re-actualization". Here, "to reactualize" is to actualize what something, already real, is in reality.

But this is not the most fundamental characteristic of the "re", because upon actualizing what an already real thing is "in reality", this actualization is not an actualization only of a second aspect of the same thing, but is another mode of actualization or of actuality of the thing. Upon being intellectively known according to what it is "in reality", a real thing is actualized at a distance, i.e., by stepping back, and in the direction of demand. Therefore, in affirmative intellection the real acquires not only another actuality, but above all a new mode of actuality. The primary actuality is "reality" pure and simple. The actuality in affirmation is an actuality through stepping back, and demanded with respect to a fixed direction. We are, then, dealing not with a repetition but with a new mode of strict and rigorous actuality. Now, the demanding actuality of the real in a fixed direction is what formally constitutes seeming. Affirmation is affirmation of actuality in coincidence, and the actual in this coincidence is seeming. This is, as I see it, the formal concept of seeming. The "re" of reactualization is, then, actualization of the real in seeming. Here we have the essential point. It was necessary to give a strict and rigorous concept of what seeming is. {279} It is not enough to make use of the term as something which does not require conceptualization.

Let us explain this concept at greater length. Above all, seeming is an actuality of a real thing; it is the real thing in its own reality, which is actualized as seeming. It is not to seem reality, but reality in seeming. But in the second place, it is actuality in "direction"; otherwise the real thing would not have any seeming. Something seems to be or not to be only if it seems to be or not be what it "might be". That is, seeming is an actuality but in a certain direction, since as we have seen, "might be" is formally direction. But this is not yet sufficient, because the "might be" is always and only a determined "might be". Something seems to be or not to be not what it might be without further ado, but what such and such a determinate thing might be. The determination of the "might be" is essential to seeming. Seeming, then, is not directional actuality but actuality in a "determinate" direction. In the third place, it is an actuality of a real thing insofar as this thing calls forth, in its actuality, inclusively as well as exclusively, determinate "might be's". Only then is there seeming. Without this third moment the "might be" would certainly be determined but would not go beyond being a directional moment of a simple apprehension. There is only seeming when this determinate "might be" is determined by a real thing in making a demand. Uniting these three moments into a single formula, I say that seeming is the demanding actuality of the real in a determinate direction. It is the actuality of the coincident qua coincident.

Now, what is actualized in intellective movement has its own exclusive content; it is not the purely and simply real, but what a real thing is "in reality", i.e., the unification of the individual and the {280} field moment of the thing. Therefore this actuality, which is seeming, is formally actuality of what a thing is "in reality". The content of seeming is always and only that which the real thing is in reality. In other words, seeming is always and only seeming what something real is in reality. The actuality of the "in reality" is seeming, and conversely seeming is intellective actuality qua intellective of what the thing is "in reality".

It is precisely on account of this that seeming constitutes a proper and exclusive mode of actuality of a thing in affirmative intellection. Primordial apprehension of reality is not and cannot be seeming; it is purely and simply reality. All idealisms, whether empiricist or rationalist, take for granted that what is apprehended (i.e., what I call primordial apprehension of reality), is merely seeming, and that only to reason does it fall to determine what reality is. But this is absurd, because the immediate and direct part of the real, apprehended primordially, excludes a limine the very possibility of all seeming. Every idealism speaks of seeming, but none has taken care to give a strict concept of this mode of actuality. What is apprehended in primordial apprehension of reality has that intrinsic compaction in virtue of which it is but real. The compaction consists in not having, nor being able to have, the moment of seeming. It is real and only is real. Therein consists, as we saw, all of its inexhaustible greatness and its possible poverty. On the other hand, in the real apprehended not primordially but differentially, there is always a radical uncompacting; uncompacting is the difference between reality and seeming.

It is fitting now to explain the concept of seeming not just saying what it is, but also saying-and very forcefully-what it is not. {281} When we say that something "seems", we do not intend to say more than that it "only seems". But this is absurd. Seeming is not being an "appearance"; it is a mode of actuality of the real itself, and therefore the real actualized in an affirmation-as we shall see forthwith-is real and at the same time seems to be so. Seeming is not the opposite either formally or in fact, of being real. The real intellectively known by stepping back is real and seems to be so; at least it is not excluded that it may be so. Seeming as such is not something the opposite of the real, but a mode of actuality of the real itself. If one wishes, it is "appearing". And in fact, what is purely and simply real has its own real truth, which as we saw is incipiently open. To what? We said that it is open to another actualization. Now, we should say that that to which the real truth, i.e. what is purely and simply real, is primarily open is to seeming to be so in an intellection in movement.

Now, this actualization in movement is just affirmation, judgement. From this arises the most strict and formal concept of judgement. Judgement, I said, is intellection through stepping backing from what a real thing is in reality; it is then intellection in coincidence. Now, in this stepping back and coinciding, intellection is the actuality of a thing as "seeming"; so it follows that the formal terminus of judgement is seeming. Judgement is, so to speak, the formal organon of seeming. And here we have the essential point: judging is always and only intellectively knowing the real in its seeming. Correctly understood, "seeming" here has the meaning explained above. A mind of the kind we usually call "purely intuitive" (let us not again discuss the concept of intuition as a moment of the primordial apprehension of reality) would not have "seeming" but only reality. And therefore it would not have judgements {282} but only primordial apprehensions of reality. The absence of judgement would be grounded upon the absence of seeming, and in turn the absence of seeming would be grounded upon the compaction of the apprehended real in and by itself.

And this brings us not only to conceptualize judgement but also to give precise formal rigor to a concept which has been appearing throughout our study, viz. the concept of stepping back or distance. Negatively, as I have said on numerous occasions, 'distance' in this context does not mean spatial distance. Distance, I said, is that stepping back in which each thing is situated with respect to others when it is apprehended "among" them; it is the distance of the "reality-among", the "between two" of the real. I said in chapter IV that this distance is the unity of the unfolding between the individual moment and the field moment of each real thing, i.e. the unity of the unfolding between being "real" and being "in reality". This unfolding is distance because one must review the distinction, and because the reviewing is a dynamic form of the unity itself. But there is besides another unfolding. When surveyed, in fact, this unity is in turn a unity between reality and seeming. By stepping back, and so being at a distance, being "in reality" is thus unfolded in turn into its "in reality" and into its "seeming". Then the distance which formally is unity of unfolding between the individual moment and the field moment inexorably grounds the unity of unfolding of the field moment itself, the unity of unfolding between "being in reality" and "seeming". It is a modality of stepping back or distance, affirmative distance; it is a distance proper to every differential actualization and only to it, proper only to movement within a field as such. Let us not confuse the unfolding of "real" and "in reality" with the unfolding of reality and seeming. {283} This second unfolding is proper only to the "in reality" of the first unfolding.

As this actualization is the very essence of judgement, it follows that the duality of being real and of seeming (in the actuality of each real thing thus intellectively known) confers upon affirmation an essential quality in the order of truth: a valence. Valence, we may now say, is the quality of coincidence between seeming and being. A valence can be diverse; this is polyvalence. It is a polyvalence with respect to dual truth. This is what must now be considered in greater detail.

b) Affirmation as affirmation, is in fact an intellective movement in which a simple apprehension of mine freely forged confronts the reality of something already apprehended as real. In order for there to be affirmation there must be an intention of coincidence between the direction constituting the "might be" of my simple apprehension and the demand for rejection or admission-let us call it that-of a real thing with respect to that simple apprehension. To be sure, we are not dealing with a rejection or admission as an actuating moment of the real thing, but only of that physical moment of it which is its physical actuality. It is this actuality which, when we confront it in the direction in which my simple apprehension consists, is actualized in the form of a demand. But this is something which is exceedingly complex.

Above all, I can freely elect simple apprehension, and the direction in which I am going to confront a real thing. This option of mine is what is responsible for the fact that among the many directions which a thing opens to me when I apprehend it, only one of them acquires the character of being the direction embarked upon. The direction then turns into a path instead of an option, {284} the path of affirmation. Affirmation is not only a direction but a path, the path upon which I embark in order to intellectively know the real affirmatively. This option is discernment, the krinein, and therefore is that by which every affirmation is constitutively a krisis, i.e., judgement. Affirmation is judgement precisely and formally by taking place in a path with choices.

But this necessary discernment is not sufficient for intellective movement to be affirmation. Affirmation is not just an utterance, but a positive intellection of the real. For this not only is the discernment of a path necessary, but it is also necessary that this path lead to a coincidence, i.e. that the affirmation possess rectitude and lead to the real. Now this second moment is not at all obvious, because with what has been said, rather than an affirmation we would have only an intent of affirmation. In order for there to be an affirmation it is necessary for there to be coincidence, convergence, and rectitude between simple apprehension and the real thing.

This affirmative intellection in its own coincidence has different valences, different qualities in the order of truth. Every affirmation has in some way this diversity of valences. I say, "in some way", because this is just what we have to examine now.

aa) Every affirmation has in the order of truth an essential radical quality; it is what I call parity. In every affirmation there is the actualization of that about which one affirms and the simple apprehension on which is based what one affirms. In every affirmation there are, then, two poles. But it is necessary that each of them not go off "on its own", so to speak. This quality is parity. Permit me to explain. If I ask myself how many wings this canary has in reality, and if I answer "yellow", that response is not an affirmative coincidence but just the opposite, because what is real about {285} the question asked is along the lines of quantity (number of wings), and the given response expressed the real along the lines of quality. There is no coincidence and therefore no rectitude. The two directions are "disparate"; this is the dis-parity, disparity or absurdity [in Spanish]. To say that the number of wings of this canary is yellow is not a falsehood, but something more radical, viz. the incongruence or disparity between two lines of intellection. In order for there to be affirmation there must be "parity" between the direction of simple apprehension and the demands of the real. Only when there is parity is there coincidence and therefore rectitude. The disparity is formally and constitutively "uttered without parity". Rectitude therefore is not synonymous with truth in even the slightest way, but is essentially pure and simple parity. What is parity? Every simple apprehension is a "might be". Hence every simple apprehension directs us to the real not only by the mere fact of being a "might be", but moreover in this direction a directional line of the actuality of the real qua real is pointed out. What is pointed out is a mode of directing myself to the real as quality (please excuse the expression) of a line of the might be is acknowledged, in which the real as real is actualized. Yellow points out the line of that mode of being directed to the real which is its actualization; it is actualization as quality. Number points out in its mode of directing itself to reality another aspect of actualization of the real, viz. as quantity. Along these lines, then, the real as real is directionally actualized. Pointing out, in Greek, is called kategoria. Every "might be" points out a line of actualization of the real qua real, and it is in this the category consists, viz. directional actualization of the real qua real. It is in this directional focus that, in my opinion, the problem of the categories of the real must be conceptualized. The categories are not supreme genera of "being" (cf. Aristotle); they are not forms of judgement (cf. Kant); {286} but rather they are the directional lines of actualization of the real qua real along various dimensions. We shall see later the problem of the categories in all of its fullness. Returning to parity, we see that parity is parity of categorial line. Disparity is categorial disparity. So here we have the first qualitative moment, the first valence in the order of truth: parity. Its opposite is disparity. The opposition between "with-parity" and "dis-parity" is the first directional polyvalence of affirmation.

bb) But there is a second quality with a valence. It is not enough that an affirmation be not a disparate one; it is necessary that, even if not so, it make sense. "Making sense" or "being meaningful" is the second moment of valence. Making sense is not parity. Within something which is not disparate or absurd one can pronounce an affirmation whose direction does not fall back upon the possible demands of the object about which one is affirming. In such a case the direction of the simple apprehension veers toward emptiness. Direction toward emptiness is not the same thing as disparate.

This emptiness can occur in at least two ways. It can be that the sense of my simple apprehension remains outside of the demands of the real object about which affirmation is made. Then the affirmation is nonsense or meaningless. But it can happen that in the affirmation the sense of the simple apprehension destroys the positive demands of that about which one affirms; this is counter-sense or contra-meaning. And this is not some subtlety but something which has come to carry out an essential role in science and philosophy.

For example, if I consider an electron situated exactly at a precise point in space, and wish to intellectively know what its dynamic state is in reality, i.e. its momentum, there is not and cannot be any answer. To attribute to it {287} a momentum is, in itself, not something disparate but meaningless (because of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle). An electron precisely localized in space cannot have any precise momentum. The "might be" of the momentum is a determinate direction, but it does not make sense to realize it in a localized electron. In virtue of this there is no directional coincidence, nor for that matter the actuality which is seeming. To fall into the void is just "not-seeming". All the variables which physics calls 'dynamically conjugate' are found in this example from atomic physics. I have not cited them except by way of example. That is a problem of atomic physics which we cannot discuss further here.

The counter-sense or contra-meaning is, if one wishes, the more serious problem. It is not a falsehood, nor even a contradiction, but a destroyer of the possibility of any meaning. Thus Husserl thinks that to say that a priori truths are grounded upon contingent facts is not something which is just false or contradictory, but is contra-meaning. The meaning of the demands of the concept of "a priori" truth are annulled by the meaning of "empirical fact". For Husserl the contra-meaning is the supreme form of not being true. But personally I think that there is something more serious than the contra-meaning, and that is disparity or absurdity. In disparity or absurdity, I repeat, the demands of that about which one judges have nothing to do with the direction of the simple apprehension. To intellectively know them unitarily in an object is the disparity or absurdity. On the other hand in contra-meaning there is no disparity or absurdity; what happens is that the direction of the simple apprehension does not find where to realize itself in the object.

The second valence in the order of truth is meaning. Polyvalence adopts the form of "with meaning" and "without meaning" and "contra-meaning". {288}

cc) But there is a third quality of the coincidence in the order of truth.

Coincidence, I repeat, is dynamic coincidence between intellective direction and the direction of the demands of the actuality of the real. In this direction one is going to intellectively know not the real as real (that would be primordial apprehension of reality), but what this real is in reality. That is, a real thing in dynamic coincidence acquires a new actuality, a reactualization of the real in the order of what it is in reality. This actuality of the real in directional coincidence is, we said, what constitutes seeming, viz. the demanding actuality of the real in a determinate direction. Therefore affirmative intellection, what a thing already apprehended as real is in reality, is the coincidence of what it seems to be and what the real thing is in reality. Or stated more succinctly, it is the coincidence between seeming and being real (where it is understood that we are dealing with being "in reality"). This coincidental actuality is exceedingly complex. How are they "one", i.e., in what are the two terms coincident? The coincidence is actuality as coinciding; therefore that in which real being and "seeming" are "one" is in being actuality. But these two terms are not independent, i.e., are not juxtaposed; rather, seeming and being real are mutually grounded the one upon the other. There is always actuality in coincidence, but the coincidence can have two different foundations; i.e., there are two possibilities of coincidence. First, what a real thing is in reality grounds what it seems to be; and second, what it seems to be grounds what the real thing is in reality. In both cases-and I repeat this over and over because it is essential-there is coinciding actuality. But the quality of this intellective coincidence is in the two cases essentially different. {289} In the first, we say that affirmative intellection, in its actuality in coincidence, has that quality which we call truth. In the second case, there is also actuality in coincidence, but its quality is what we call error. Each one of the two possibilities of actuality in coincidence is what constitutes that which we have previously termed 'path'. Path is not only a direction upon which one embarks, but a direction along the lines of one or the other of the two possibilities. The first is the path of truth. The second is the path of error. The path or way of truth is that in which it is the real which grounds the seeming or appearance. The way of error is that in which it is seeming or appearance which grounds reality; reality would be what appears to us. Here we have the radical complexity of every affirmation in its directional structure; it is the third valence of coincidence.

To understand it better, we must first of all clarify what each of the two paths is. So let us begin with the path of truth. Judgement, I have stated, is the formal organ of seeming or appearance as such. Now, its truth consists formally in that appearance is grounded upon what a thing is in reality. It consists, then, in what determines the actuality in coincidence of an appearance being what the thing is in reality. This is the path of truth. It is not something extrinsic to truth, nor is it the path to arrive at truth; rather it is an intrinsic and formal moment of truth itself as such; it is "truth-path". It is the "path-like" character of affirmation about the real. Only in a derivative sense can one speak of a truth as a quality of what is affirmed. Primarily truth is a dynamic directional characteristic of affirmation; it is the direction by which "appearance" is determined by "real" being. Truth itself is this directional determination. It is the path in which one is intellectively knowing what something seems to be in reality {290} by making the intellection converge toward what the thing really is. This convergence of the path is truth itself. Only in and by this dynamic and directional truth is it that we can have truth in what is affirmed. We shall see this below.

But there is another path, the path of error. Error is also primarily a path. It is the path by which the actuality in coincidence of appearance is what grounds and constitutes what a thing is in reality. Error is above all a path, the erroneous path. It is possible that what is affirmed by this path turns out to be truthful, but it would be so only accidentally, just as the conclusion of a chain of reasoning can be accidentally true even though the premises were false. This does not prevent the way from being an erroneous one, of course. This path is an error, but with respect to what? With respect to the path which leads to an actuality in coincidence in which appearance is bounded in real being. To follow the contrary path-it is in this that error consists. Every error, and therefore all error, is a constitutive deviation, deviation from the path [via] of truth. In error there can also be actuality in coincidence-this must be emphasized-but it is an actuality in a deviate path. Therefore this actuality has in its very actualization its own character, viz. falsehood. Falsehood is actuality in coincidence along a deviate path. Even when accidentally its content turns out to be truthful, nonetheless this presumed truth would be a falsehood with respect to its intellective quality. Falsehood consists formally only in being a characteristic of actuality. It is a false actuality insofar as it is actuality. It is truly actuality but a not true actuality. The path of error is the path of a falsified actuality; it is the falsification which consists in taking my appearance (in its being appearance) as reality. Only derivatively {291} can one speak of falsity in what is affirmed. What is radical and primary is falsehood in the affirmation itself. Falsehood, I claim, is actuality in deviation, in error. Error is a dynamic and directional characteristic of affirmation itself prior to being a characteristic of what is affirmed.

Truth and error-here we have the two valences of coincidence in the order of truth. This statement may come across as confused because in it the word 'truth' and the concept of truth appear twice: truth as valence opposed to error, and truth as that in the order of which valence is constituted. But there is no such confusion; we shall see this forthwith. Before though let us speak of truth and error as valences. Truth is the coincidence between seeming and reality when it is reality which determines seeming, and error in the opposite case.

In contemporary philosophy there has been an effort to introduce other valences besides truth and error; there might be in fact an infinite number of them. Classical logic has always been bivalent (truth and error), but in the logics to which I allude there would be a polyvalence in the order of truth which is different from these two; this is polyvalent logic. I shall allude only to a trivalent logic because of its special importance. Besides the valences of truth and error, an affirmation can have a third valence, uncertainty or indeterminism. This does not refer to my not knowing what is real in a determinate way, but to whether an affirmation about the real is, in the order of truth, something formally uncertain or indeterminate. We shall return to the example I explained when speaking of the "meaning" of affirmation. We saw that in virtue of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle the statement that an electron which is precisely localized in space has a precise momentum would be one which makes no sense physically. Now, in trivalent logic {292} we are not dealing with the fact that such a statement has no meaning, because it does. The fact is that it would be a statement which is neither true nor false, but indeterminate in the order of truth. Thus we have three valences: truth, error, uncertainty or indetermination.

I am not going to delve into this problem; it is a topic of the logic of physics. Here I am not doing a study of logic but of the philosophy of intelligence. And from this point of view the question changes its aspect. And this is what dispels the confusion surrounding the concept of truth to which I earlier alluded.

In fact, as possibilities truth and error in affirmation are co-possible just because they are paths of actuality in coincidence grounded in real truth. This does not mean that truth and error can apply to an affirmation indiscriminately, because error is always deviation. Hence error is not just an absence of truth; if it were-and in fact it has been assumed to be in most of modern philosophy-truth would be just the absence of error. It would be as if would say that having sight is the absence of blindness. And this is not true because error, falsehood, is "deviation"; therefore it is not an absence but a privation of truth. Only with respect to dual truth is error possible. Both are co-possible, but this copossibility does not mean equality; rather it means the copossibility of effective possession and privation. Therefore the Hegelian idea that error is finite truth is unacceptable. Error certainly can be given in finitude, but the fact is that dual truth also can only be given in finitude. Dual truth is not less finite than error because both are grounded in the dual stepping back from reality primordially apprehended as compact. But error is finite also by virtue of being privation. {293} Error is then doubly finite: by being, like truth, grounded in a stepping back based upon real truth, and also because this basis or foundation is privational. Truth is in some form (as we shall see) prior to error.

If we consider the presumed third valence, indetermination or uncertainty, we find ourselves again with a priority of truth with respect to it. Because with respect to what would a given affirmation be uncertain or indeterminate? Clearly it is an uncertainty in the order of truth. Without being in some way in the truth, there is no uncertainty or indetermination. Truth is, as in the case of error, prior in some form to uncertainty or indetermination. And this is essential in any philosophy of intelligence.

And this makes plain to us the confusion in the concept of truth to which I have alluded on several occasions. Valence is, let us reiterate, the quality of coincidence in the order of truth. What is this order of truth? Here "truth" is coincidence between seeming and being, prior to which this coincidence is grounded in one or the other of the two terms. This coincidence is constituted in the medium of intellection through stepping back, that is, in the field. The field is a real moment. Now, the real truth of the field is truth as ambit, as ambit of coincidence. It is the mediated truth of every affirmation. The valence of every affirmation is the quality of this affirmation in the order of truth as ambit: truth as coincidence is the foundation of valence. Error is also grounded in this truth as ambit; error is not truthful affirmation, but is truly affirmation. The valence of every affirmation is so in the order of truth as ambit; mediated truth is the foundation of truth itself as valence. There is then {294} a difference between truth as ambit and truth as valence. As valence it is opposed to error, but as ambit it is the mediated foundation of truth and of error insofar as they are valences. Thus a true judgement is doubly true: it is truly a judgement and also it is a true judgement. A true judgement involves truth as ambit and as valence.

It is in this truth as ambit where every valence is constituted, not just the valence of truth. Affirmation has, in the order of mediated truth as ambit, different valences. The parity is clearly a valence apprehended in the ambit of mediated truth. Only because we move intellectively in mediated truth can we affirm with parity or with disparity. There could not be parity except as modality of truth as ambit. The same should be said of meaning: we apprehend it in mediated truth. Finally, the valence "truth" is apprehended in mediated truth. It is in the light of truth modally known intellectively that we intellectively know the light of each of the three valences: parity, meaning, and truth, and of all their respective polyvalences.

 

* * *

 

With this we have seen the dynamic directional structure of affirmation in its different valences. Each of them is a quality of a movement in which we go from something simply apprehended toward a real thing about which we seek to intellectively know what it might be in reality. Now this movement "from-toward" takes place in the medium, but is a movement having different phases. In each of them the actuality in coincidence is not only mediated and characterized by valence, but also has its own formal character: the dynamic structure of affirmation. This is what we must now examine.

{295}

3) Formal dynamic structure of mediated coincidence. Let us repeat some ideas. Affirmation is an intellection at a distance which is going to the real in the medium of and by the mediation of "the" reality. This movement has a precise direction, viz. the direction toward the real as actualized in a coincidence. The actuality in coincidence of the real in a determinate direction is appearance. Therefore judgement is the formal organ of the appearance of the real. Coincidence is thus the actuality of the real in appearance, regardless of the determinant of this coincidence. Judgement is thus of a directional dynamic nature.

But this does not suffice, because in that intellective movement we have considered the real up to now only insofar as it is that toward which an affirmation moves. But now it is necessary to consider the real itself precisely and formally "qua affirmed". In our problem, what is affirmed does not float on its own, but is real though only "qua affirmed". In this sense we can say that what is affirmed qua affirmed is the precipitate of the real in affirmation. This precipitate is the valence truth-error. Truth and error as formal structure of what is affirmed qua affirmed are the precipitate of the real along the path of truth or of error. That is what I indicated earlier when I said that truth and error as moments of the real qua affirmed are structures which are only derivative with respect to the paths of truth and error. Therefore truth and error as structural moments, as formal moments of what is affirmed qua affirmed, also have a formally dynamic structure.

In virtue of this, dual truth and error are of a formally dynamic nature in three respects:

1. Because they are characteristics or moments of an {296} act of affirmation, which is an intellective movement which takes place in a medium.

2. Because the affirmation is affirmation along some direction, along a path of coincidence of seeming and real being: the path of truth or of error of what is affirmed.

3. Because what is affirmed "qua affirmed" has a formal dynamic structure according to which what is affirmed is truth or error as dynamic precipitate.

What is this formal dynamic structure of truth and error? That is the problem.

To judge, I have indicated, is to intellectively know at a distance what a thing, already apprehended as real, is in reality. Insofar as it is distanced, i.e, through stepping back, this affirmative intellection is directed toward the real thing from a simple apprehension. To judge is ultimately the intellection of the actuality of the realization of a simple apprehension in the thing about which one is judging.

What is this realization? Naturally we are not dealing with a physical realization in the sense of a real process of notes, but of a realization along the lines of intellective actuality; it is the affirmation of realization as a moment of actuality. This realization is then known intellectively and formally as dynamic. A real thing, qua intellectively known, is intellectively known as "realizing" therein a simple apprehension. This gerund expresses the dynamic moment of what is affirmed qua affirmed, viz. the actuality of what is intellectively known is realizing actuality along the lines of actuality as such.

This dynamic respectivity has a very precise dynamic character. Affirmative intellection is a movement in different phases; it is a phased dynamism, because the two moments of intellection through stepping back are a retraction with respect to what a real thing is in reality, and an affirmative intention of what it is. And these two moments are {297} only phases of a single movement, the movement of intellection at a distance. It is therein where the intellective actuality of what a thing is in reality happens. As I have said, we are not dealing just with the fact that there are two phases of a movement which "drives" to an affirmation, but that they are two phases of a movement in which the intellective actualization of what a thing is in reality "goes on happening". Hence this actualization itself is of a phased character. The realization which a judgement intentionally affirms is then phased. In this actualization the coincidence between seeming and real being happens, and likewise truth and error as structures of what is actualized also happen. Truth and error, then, are not just paths but are also as a consequence dynamic moments that are structurally phases of what is affirmed qua affirmed.

To clarify this thesis, we must understand this structure in three stages: a) In what, more precisely, does the character of the phases of dual truth consist? b) What is the nature of each of these phases? c) What is the unity of these phases of dual truth?

a) The character of the phases of truth. If I speak only of truth it is for two reasons. First, so that I do not have to repeat monotonously the phrase "and error" when referring to truth. And second, because error is a privation of truth; therefore the explication of what error itself is can only brought to fruition by explaining what truth is.

In order to understand precisely the character of the phases of truth, let us take the most trivial of examples: "This paper is white". The classical conceptualization of truth is as a phase. For philosophy in general, the content affirmed is "this white paper", and as an affirmation it means that in this paper is found "the white" which is affirmed in the predicate, {298} or that "the white" is in this paper. Now, all that is correct but is not sufficient, because we are not here speaking of the white paper. If we were speaking, in fact, only of the fact that the white is in this paper, the usual interpretation would be correct. However, we are not dealing with this, but with the affirmative intellection that this paper is white. And then the question does not concern the fact that physically this paper "has" whiteness, but how it becomes true, i.e., how the intellective actuality of the whiteness in this paper comes to "happen". Therefore the truth "isn't here", but is something which constitutively "happens". The white is had by this paper, but truth is not so had; rather it is the intellective happening itself of the white in this paper. Truth happens in the intellective actuality of what a real thing is in reality; it is the happening of the actuality in coincidence that this paper is really white. The "is" expresses the actuality as a happening. To be sure, I do not here take the verb 'to happen' as something completely distinct from 'fact' (this distinction is the subject of another discussion, that of the difference between happening and fact). 'To happen' expresses the dynamic character of every realization as actualization. Truth is given in the actuality in coincidence of the real in intellective movement. In this coincidence the real, upon being actualized, gives its truth to intellection. This "giving of truth" is what I shall call 'making true' or 'truthing'. Formally, what is thereby constituted in actuality in coincidence is appearance. And dual truth consists in what the real is making true as appearance. Now, the making true is, in dual intellection, the happening of truth qua truth of what is affirmed; and conversely, happening is the making true of the real. This happening is, then, the happening of the actuality of the real as appearance. {299}

Now, this happening is much more complex than one might think, because it has its own different phases. These phases are not just "aspects" which are intellectively known in accordance with the point of view one adopts, but rather are constituent "phases" of the actuality of what is affirmed as such; i.e., they are phases of the dual truth itself. In fact, when affirming "this paper is white", I do not make one affirmation but two, because that affirmation consists in the intellection of the real realization of the white in this paper. And this involves two moments. One, that the quality by which this paper is intellectively actualized to me is that quality which consists in "white". The other, that this quality is realized in this paper, and therefore is real in it. When affirming "this paper is white", I have uttered not one affirmation but two: the realization of the white, and the realization that this paper is white. One might then think that in this judgement there are not two affirmations but three, given that besides saying that the quality is "white", and that this quality is realized in the paper, I also say that this of which I am judging is "paper". True, but there are still not three affirmations. First, because this does not happen in every judgement but only in propositional judgment and predicative judgement; it does not happen in positional judgment. When I open the window and yell, "Fire!", I make two affirmations: that I see fire, and that I see it in the street or wherever. Moreover, even in the positional or propositional judgements, the subject is not affirmed but is purely and simply that of which one judges, and as such is not affirmed but presupposed and only indicated. In every affirmation there are then two moments, and only two moments. These moments are in phases; they are the phases of the intellective realization of the predicate in the real thing, for example the realization of the white in this paper. In fact, "the white" {300} intellectively known in itself in retraction is only a simple apprehension of what this paper or some other thing "might be". Intellectively knowing that this "might be" is now real is an affirmation; intellectively knowing that this reality is established as real in this piece of paper is another affirmation. Only by virtue of the first affirmation is the second possible. There is then a rigorous ordering which grounds these two moments in intellective movement. The intellective movement and the truth actualized in it structurally involve two "phases". We are not dealing with two "aspects" but with two moments which are strictly "phases" of what is affirmed qua affirmed. In this two-phased movement is where the truth of an affirmation happens. The affirmation then has two phases, each of which is true for each phase. We shall see later what the unity of these phases is. Now we must clarify each of these phases in and by itself.

b) The phases of truth. The phases of dual truth, i.e. of the coinciding unity, are of intrinsically different character. Dual truth, as I said, happens in the actuality in coincidence of the real in the intelligence. Actuality in coincidence means not the coincidence of two actualities, but an actuality which is strictly "one" in coincidence. This actuality consists, on the one hand, in being so along a fixed direction, in accordance with a fixed simple apprehension; here actuality in coincidence is "seeming". But this same actuality is, on the other hand, intellective actuality of the real as real; it is what we call being "in reality". The coinciding unity of seeming and of being real in the field is that in which truth, in phases, happens, and there are two phases.

The first phase of this happening consists in that which is affirmed of a subject being in itself what {301} realizes in it a fixed simple apprehension, for example "white". White is a simple apprehension; its actuality in this role, independently of what the role might be, is the realization of this simple apprehension. Therefore when I affirm that this paper is white, the white itself is really actual, corresponding to the simple apprehension of the white. Here there is an actuality in coincidence which consists in the actual corresponding to my simple apprehension. And when this coincidence of the actual real with my simple apprehension conforms to it, the coincidence comprises authenticity. This is the first phase of truth. And as such, authenticity is "truth" in a certain phase. Authenticity is the actuality in coincidence as conformity of the real with my simple apprehension.

This requires some clarification. To accomplish this let us change examples and say, "This liquid is wine". The authenticity of the "wine" is above all a characteristic, not of the wine as reality, but of its intellective actuality. The liquid as real is what it is and nothing more; only its intellective actuality can be authentic. In the second place, this characteristic of the intellective actuality is constitutively and essentially respective. The actuality of the wine can only be authentic if its actuality corresponds to the simple apprehension of the wine, or stated more crudely, to the idea which we have of wine. Without this respectivity to simple apprehension, the intellective actuality of the wine would not be authenticity; it would be a quality apprehended as real in and by itself, for example in the primordial apprehension of reality. In the third place, it is not necessary that this simple apprehension, with respect to which I affirm that this wine is authentically wine, be a "concept" of the wine. A few lines back I employed the common expression 'idea' just to leave open the {302} character of the simple apprehension with respect to which this is wine. It can be, certainly, a concept; the liquid which realizes the concept of wine will be authentic. But this is not necessary; simple apprehension can be not a strict concept but a fictional item or even a percept. Thus one can speak rigorously of an authentic or non-authentic character in a literary work. One might even speak of authenticity with respect to a percept when one understands that this percept presents reality to us completely and without distortion. That wine-and only that wine-will be authentic which realizes fixed characteristics which my simple apprehension of the wine intellectively knows.

Classical philosophy grazed-no more than grazed-this entire problem when it referred created things to God, to the Divine Intelligence. For this philosophy, the respectivity to the intelligence of the creator is what comprises what is called 'metaphysical truth'. But this is wrong on three counts. First, because every truth is metaphysical. What classical philosophy calls metaphysical truth should have been called "theological truth". In the second place, this is not authenticity, because every created reality is conformable to the Divine Intelligence, including that reality which is non-authentic wine. For God there is no authenticity; authenticity is not theological truth but human intellective truth. And in the third place, this truth does not refer to the naked reality of things but only to their intellective actuality; it is not a characteristic of naked reality but of the actuality of the real. It is just on account of this that I call it authenticity. Only in a human intelligence can authenticity happen. And even so, it does not necessarily happen there. The wine in question may not be authentic but false. That is, truth as authenticity can happen {303} in the actuality in coincidence of what I call "wine", but it may also not happen. The privation of actuality is falsity; we could be dealing with false wine. This obliges us to state with greater rigor what authenticity is as truth, and what the false is as error.

We say of something that it is authentic wine when, in its intellective actuality, it realizes all the characteristics bundled in the simple apprehension of wine, in the "idea" of the wine. The actuality in coincidence is then a conformity of what is actualized with its simple apprehension. And in this consists formally that mode of truth which is authenticity. In authenticity there is a "seeming", but it is a seeming grounded in the reality of what is actualized; this seems to be wine and it is so; it seems to be wine because it is. It is in this coincidence of seeming and of real being, grounded in actual reality, that the "conformity" of wine with its simple apprehension consists. It is in this that authenticity consists. It is not simple actuality in coincidence but an actuality in coincidence which consists in conformity.

But something different can occur, because there is the possibility that we might take as wine something which only seems to be so. And because in this seeming as such I can consider only some characteristics of simple apprehension which are determinant of seeming, it may occur that the actuality of the real is not just seeming, but "seeming" only. To take as wine what is only so in appearance is exactly what constitutes the falsum of the wine. Correctly understood-and I must emphasize this-it is a falsum only along the lines of respective actuality. This which we call wine is not, in its naked reality, either true or false. Only the false is the opposite of the authentic. The authentic is what is conformable with {304} what seems to be in the actuality of the real; the false is what only has the appearance of conformity and does not in fact have conformity with respect to simple apprehension. It is not just a lack, but a privation of authenticity.

Here, then, truth is authenticity and error is falsehood. I have given the example of wine. Now it should be clear that the same must be said of any predicate whatever, for example, of "white". If white were not authentically white, my judgement (that this paper is white) would be erroneous by virtue of the inauthenticity or falsity of the predicate.

However, this is but a phase of the truth of my affirmation. Although it is necessary that white be authentically white, it is also necessary that this authentic white, that this authentic wine, be that which authentically is realized "in" this paper or "in" this liquid. For that, conformity of the predicate with simple apprehension is not enough.

Second phase. In it we intellectively know, as I just said, that a real thing (this liquid, this paper) is authentically what we apprehend the predicate to be (authentic white, authentic wine). Here the coincidence is, as in the case of authenticity, a "conformity", but a conformity of a different stripe. In both phases there is a conformity of intellection and reality. But in authenticity one deals with a conformity of a real thing with the simple apprehension by which we intellectively know the thing. On the other hand, in affirmation (this paper is white, this liquid is wine) what formally is known intellectively is the conformity of affirmative intellection with a real thing. They are, then, two conformities of different stripe. In authenticity one deals with a realization in what is intellectively known measured by the intellection itself; on account of this, what is authentic is the wine or the white. On the other hand, if I affirm that {305} this liquid is wine or that this paper is white, I am dealing with a realization measured not by intellection but by the real itself. It is affirmative judgement which is conformable with reality. In authenticity it is the wine or the white which is measured by the idea of the wine or the white, i.e., the real in its "seeming" is measured by the idea; whereas in affirmative intellection the "seeming" is supposed to be measured by reality. In order not to generate neologisms, I shall call affirmations of the type, "This paper is white," or "This liquid is wine," affirmative intention or judgement. To be sure, authenticity is also affirmation, judgement. But as there is no expression which is the homologue of authenticity, for the time being I shall refer to this the second type of conformity as conformity of affirmative intention or conformity of judgement. I shall forthwith return to put things in strict order. This conformity of affirmative intention, this conformity of judgement with the real, is what is called truth in contrast to authenticity. I insist that authenticity is also truth, but we shall now hold to the common use of language.

This requires some further clarification. In the first place, What is that real thing with which truth is conformable? Certainly it is the real itself; there is not the slightest doubt. But equally certain is the fact that it is not the real in its naked reality, so to speak, but the real actualized in coincidence in intellection. We are not dealing, then, with a conformity between an intellection "of mine" and a thing which "on its own account" wanders through the cosmos. That would be to give rise to a "material" coincidence, one which is extremely random. Rather, the conformity with which we are here occupying ourselves is a constitutive and formal coincidence. Now, a thing in its naked reality is foreign to this intellective coincidence; {306} and the same is true of intellection itself. Coincidence is not given formally other than in the intellective actuality of the real. And this actuality not only is not foreign to the real, but includes it. Intellective actuality is of no importance to the real, but intellective actuality formally includes the real. It is for this reason that there can be a conformity with the real.

In the second place, With what conformity are we dealing? It is not a conformity such as the coincidence of physical notes or properties. The intelligence has no note in common with white paper or with this specimen of wine. As physical notes, the two things, intelligence and reality in actuality, are formally irreducible. We are dealing with a conformity of a kind which is merely intentional; that which intellection knows intellectively in its affirmative intention it knows as realized in the real actualized thing. This is a conformity between what is actualized as actualized and the very actuality of the real. But it is still necessary to correctly understand this realization, because we are not dealing with the case of affirming, "This paper is white" and that in fact the paper is white. Rather we are dealing with something more, the fact that formally and expressly what I affirm is the realization itself. If we were dealing with only the former, truth as conformity would be merely the conformity of a statement and a real thing (even though just actualized). But in the latter case, we are not dealing with the conformity of a statement but with the conformity of the affirmation itself as affirming a realization, with the realization itself as actualized in that affirmation.

Every judgement, then, affirms the realization of the predicate in the thing which is judged. This realization is in the first place a realization along the lines of actuality. And in the second place, {307} it is a formally affirmed realization, the affirmation of a realization. When the realization affirmed as such is intentionally conformable with the realization of the real in its actuality, then and only then is there truth in the sense of truth of a judgement.

Anticipating some ideas which belong to Part Three of this study, I may say that this intentional conformity can have different modalities. One is the conformity as something which in fact is given. That is what I just explained. But it can happen that that conformity is something more than what is just "given"; it can be that it is something which has been intellectively "sought". In this case the conformity is not just conformity but fulfillment, conformable to what has been sought and how it has been sought. Truth is not only authenticity and judgmental conformity; it is also conformity with fulfillment. It is a different type of truth, truth as fulfillment, the third phase of truth. But let us leave aside this essential problem for now, and limit ourselves to the first two phases.

When there is this intentional conformity of judgement with the actualized real, we say that the judgement is truthful. Truth is a conformity of seeming with a real thing. When there is a lack of conformity, the judgment is erroneous; this is lack of conformity between seeming and real being. That form of error is quite different than the form of error which is opposite to authenticity. As opposite to authenticity, the error judges seeming according to "appearances". On the other hand, as opposed to the truth of judgement, error is a lack of conformity, or rather a "deformity". Appearance and deformation are both privations. They do not rest upon themselves but upon the presumed truth of authenticity and conformity. In truth, whether of authenticity or conformity, seeming {308} is grounded in the real; in error of appearance and deformity, the real is grounded in mere seeming. Correctly understood, this refers to intentional foundations. But seeming is always and only an seeming of the real. And it is precisely on account of this that there can be error. Therefore, to take seeming as real in and by itself is to falsify the seeming at its root, to deprive it of what constitutes its raison d'etre as seeming of the real. Now, judgement is the formal organ of seeming. Therefore the falsification of seeming is eo ipso a falsity of judgement; it is error, a privation. This also requires more detailed consideration.

Above all, truth and error are not forms of objectivity but forms of reality.

Affirmative intentionality is not objective, but is much more than objective, because it falls back upon reality itself. Ultimately, an objective error doesn't cease to be an error because it is objective, and it is always called to be rectified at the proper time not in its objectivity but in the reality of what is affirmed. But as truth and error are forms of intellection, they inevitably pose two questions. First, How can we intellectively examine what truth and error of intellection are? Andnd second, On what can we base ourselves to discern the error of truth?

First, let us consider the possibility of examining if something is true or erroneous. If it were a question of examining what I affirm of "external" reality, so to speak, with an affirmation of mine, I should be trapped in a circle from which there is no escape. And this is because such an examination would examine a judgement about another judgement, which would not further us in any way with respect to truth or error, because these two are what they are not as conformity of some judgements with others, but as conformity of a judgement with the real. If the real were not in a {309} judgement there would be no possibility of speaking of truth and error. But the fact is that the reality which judgement affirms is, as we have seen, not a naked reality but a reality which is intellectively actualized. Now, this intellective actuality has two moments. One, which I have already mentioned, is the real "being here-and-now" [estar] from itself by the mere fact of being real. But this intellective actuality-let us not forget-has another decisive moment. I have already indicated it in the Part I of the book. It is that being real in intellection consists in a real thing being present to us as being de suyo what is presented; this is the moment which I called the moment of prius, which is formally constitutive of all intellection as such from its first, radical intellective act, the impression of reality. This moment is what "in the intellection" submerges it in reality. We shall see forthwith what this prius or prior thing concretely is in affirmative intellection. But for now let us note that the actuality which a judgement intellectively knows in coinciding is the actuality of the real in its two moments of being here-and-now present and of prius. Now, the actualized "real" and the "intellective" actualization of the real are the same actuality. Seeming and being real are given in the same intellective actuality. Hence the possibility of comparing not just one judgement with another, but of comparing a judgement with the real. This is but the possibility of comparing seeming and being real in the same coinciding actuality.

But this does not go beyond being a possibility. Let us then ask ourselves in the second place in what does the foundation consist upon which this possible discernment between seeming and being rests? It is a discernment which ultimately is between truth and error. To be sure it is a moment of actuality itself. But in an actuality, as I just said, the real is there {310} like a prius with respect to that actuality itself. Therefore in the "coinciding" actuality the real is present precisely in that very moment of prius. Now, the actuality in coincidence of the real is a coincidence between seeming and being real in the same actuality. Insofar as this actuality is coinciding actuality of the prius as such, the actual in this actuality has that formal moment of being remitted in coincidence from the seeming to what is real in that actuality. Now, this moment of remission, this moment of coincidental actuality in which the prius consists, is just what formally constitutes that which, a few pages back, I called demand. Demand is, precisely and formally, the coinciding actuality of the prius as such; it is coinciding actuality of the de suyo as suyo; it is the coinciding prius of the suyo. It is in this that, intellectively, demand consists. In virtue of this, demand appearing formally and expressly, leads to the real which "seems" in it. There is a seeming and a being real in the same actuality. And in it the real is being a prius of the seeming. This formal nature of the demand of the real with respect to seeming, this prius of the real with respect to seeming in the same intellective actuality is what not only permits but inexorably compels examination of the foundation of the coinciding of seeming and of being real. This does not refer to the fact that the seeming leads by itself to the real as something beyond the seeming itself; rather, it refers to the fact that seeming leads to the real as something real which is now actualized in the same actuality as the seeming. Here we have the foundation of the discernibility of error and truth: the coincidental actuality of the prius as such.

Since this demand is precisely evidence, it follows that in the coinciding actuality of the prius as such {311} the intrinsic unity of evidence and truth is constituted. It is a dynamic unity, because this unity is a unitary foundation, but one which is only of a principle. The intellective unfolding of this unity is therefore somewhat problematical; it comprises the whole problem of intellectual work, as we shall see in Part Three. This unity does not rest upon the unity of some first judgements which are self-evident with a first "immediate" truth in them. This, which has been so monotonously repeated in philosophy during the course of the last several centuries, is in reality once again to denaturalize the unity of evidence and truth. We are not dealing with a unity of judgements among themselves or of their constituent parts among themselves, but of the unity of every judgement as such with the real as such actualized in accordance with a coinciding prius in a single actuality. The so-called first judgements receive their truth from the same thing where all others receive it, viz. the coincidental actuality of the prius, from the priority of the real with respect to seeming in a single intellective actuality. To be sure, this does not mean that that unity of evidence and of truth does not have different modalities. But as I see it, that modalization of evident truth has nothing to do with what, traditionally, has been understood by types of truth. Let us briefly examine the matter.

Traditionally, the types of truth have usually been conceptualized as a function of the connection of the predicate with the subject. There are, we are told, truths which are immediately evident, those in which the predicate pertains to the subject with an evidence which is grounded in simple inspection by the mind, simplex mentis inspectio. In the other cases one deals with truths of mediated evidence, where the connection of the predicate with the subject is grounded in a third, different term. This third term could be rational unity; {312} and evident mediated truth is then what is usually called a truth of reason. There are cases in which the third term is not reason but experience; these are the truths of fact or matters of fact. But I think that this whole conceptualization is completely wrong, because while it is true that every judgement has a predicate and what may be termed a subject, not every judgement is a "connection" of these two. But even leaving this serious problem aside, the conceptualization which is proposed is still unacceptable.

Beginning with the last point, the division of mediated truths into two types (truths of reason and truths of fact) is inadequate. Their difference is supposed to be grounded in the necessity of the mediated connection of the predicate and the subject. Furthermore, these two terms and their connection are conceptualized as moments of reality. It is reality itself which is either necessary or merely matter-of-fact. But to me, this difference is not adequate, even along the lines of the moments of reality. There are truths which are not of reason but which nevertheless are more than truths of fact. For example, if one says that the necessity for every effect to have a cause is a truth of reason (we won't discuss the propriety of this example; it is just one which is commonly adduced), then it will be a truth of fact, for example, that this paper is white. Nonetheless I think that there are truths which are not necessarily of reason (let us call them truths of absolute necessity), and which are still more than truths of fact because they are truths which deal with that structural moment of the real by which it is necessary that the real have notes of fact. Thus, for example, we have the properties of the cosmos and the properties of history. The cosmos and history are not absolute necessities of the real, {313} but nonetheless are more than just facts; they are that in which every factual reality is a fact. Every fact is necessarily produced in the cosmos and in history. The cosmos and history are thus like the necessary fact of all facts. Therefore, if I call the truths of fact factical truths, I may term these other truths-in order to give them some name-factual truths. The proper constitutive essence of every reality is a factual moment of it. Therefore, from this point of view there are not just two types of truths, but three. There are truths of reason (I retain the name, though it is inadequate); they are necessary truths of the real qua real, which does not in any sense mean that this necessity is a priori, nor strictly speaking absolute either. There are factical truths; they are truths of fact. I include among them every factical reality, with its laws; the laws are necessities "in" the factical. But there are factual truths which concern the necessity that in the real there be facticity. They are therefore truths which are prior to every factical truth. I just said that the factical comprises laws. But these laws are, as I said, necessities "in" the factical. On the other hand, the necessity "of" the factical is prior to every fact and to every law; it is just the factual, the necessity of the factical. The truths about the cosmos and history as such pertain to this type of truth.

But with all of the foregoing, the difference between these three types of truths (truths of reason, factual truths, factical truths) as truths is completely wrong if we deal with them formally as truths. And the reason is that this difference does not concern truth, but only the reality which is truthful. Now, truth is formally a moment, not of naked reality, but of the intellective actuality of the real. And as such, truth has an evidence {314} which is always necessary. It may be that this paper is white only in fact, and that it might not be so. But supposing that I have this white paper in my apprehension, it is just as evident and necessary to intellectively know that this paper is white as to intellectively know that every effect has a cause, or that every fact has to be given in a cosmos and every event in a history. The difference between these three types, then, is not a difference of truth but of reality. And therefore to appeal to it is, with respect to the problem at hand, simply to step outside the question, because what we are here seeking is a difference of truths qua truths. The truth of fact is as truth just as necessary as the truth of reason qua truth. Nonetheless, there are different types of truth qua truth.

And from this very point of view, the conception which we are criticizing has even more serious effects. In the first place, it speaks to us of truths of immediate evidence and mediated evidence. But this difference is unacceptable. Usually one understands by "immediate evidence" that whose truth is grounded in the simple inspection of the predicate and the subject. But this is not the case. From the moment that intellection is a stepping back, its presumed connection is essentially and constitutively a connection which is given in a medium of intellection. The presumed simple inspection, however simple it may be, is always inspection in a medium, the medium of "the" reality. The fact that there is no intermediary does not mean that the connection is not evident in a medium. The immediateness refers to the lack of a third term which establishes the connection; but there is a medium and a mediation in which this connection is established. Having confused immediateness with immediacy is a cardinal error.

But in the second place, the usual conceptualization understands {315} that evident truth consists in a mode of connection, wherein the content of the predicate is linked to the content of the subject. But in fact, nothing could be further from the truth, because affirmation as such, as we have seen, does not fall back upon these two contents and their connection, but upon the reality of the content of the subject and the realization in it of the content of the predicate. Therefore evident truth is not a conformity between two objective representations, but something essentially different, viz. the intentional conformity of my affirmation with the realization of the real. The constitutive prius of evidential demand is the prius of the real with respect to its coincidental actuality as real. That is, those instances of presumed immediate evidence are not immediate nor even evidences (they lack the moment of demand), which once again leaves the problem of the different types of evident truth qua truth as posed but not answered.

In the intellective actuality of the real, it is the real itself which "gives truth", which makes truth or "truthifies". Now, the real has different modes of making truth, and these different modes are just the different types of truth qua truth. The forms of reality (of reason, factual, factical) are truths which differ according to their different form of coinciding actualization as such. There is a mode by which the real gives authenticity to what is affirmed in affirmation. In virtue of that I would say that the real makes truth as authentification. There is another mode according to which the real itself is what, so to speak, dictates to us what we must affirm of it. Let us recall the as early as Heraclitus the logos was something which the sophos, the wise man, had to "listen to". In this regard it has for many, many years been the custom to interpret Heraclitus' logos as the voice of things. Affirmation is a "verdict", just what the word 'judgement' expresses. There is no word which is adequate {316} to express what I call "speaking [dictar] the truth". If, for the sake of symmetry, and without any motive of employing the word outside of this context, I may be permitted to coin a new word, it should be the verb "to veridict", to mean that the real has that mode of making truth in the judgement which I call veridictant. Finally, in truth as fulfillment-and I shall deal with it at length in Part Three-the real verifies the search for truth. The real then has that mode of making truth which is verification. In summary, authentication, veridictance, and verification are the three types of truth qua truth, i.e., the three modes by which the real is a prius in coincidental actuality.

Prescinding for the time being from the third mode, we may say that authenticity and what I have called conformity (which is veridictance) are two phases of truth, two forms of making truth. And for this very reason they are phases of a single movement in which, dynamically, the truth is formally constituted on an on-going basis. Therefore after having summarily examined each one of the phases in and by itself, it is necessary to confront the question of their unity; this is the problem of the unity of the phases of dual truth.

c) Unity of the phases of dual truth. Let us return to repeat some ideas. Every intellection is just intellective actuality of the real. When this actuality is the actuality of something real in and by itself, the intellection is primordial apprehension of the real. As such that intellection has its real truth. When a thing is intellectively known which has already been apprehended as real, but "among" others, then the intellection is an intellection at a distance through stepping back; it is affirmative intellection or judgement. There one does not apprehend the real as real (that was already apprehended in the primordial apprehension of reality); rather, one intellectively knows what this real thing is {317} in reality. In that intellection we do not leave aside the intellectively known actuality of primordial apprehension; on the contrary, the intellection through stepping back takes place formally within this apprehension, but with its own character, movement. In this movement the real thing already apprehended in primordial apprehension acquires a second actuality, viz. coinciding actuality. It is an actuality which happens in a movement. In this coinciding actuality the real acquires the character of seeming. As this movement is given within the primordial apprehension of reality, i.e., within the radical intellective actuality of the real in and by itself, it follows that seeming and being real, forged in the coincident actuality, are given in the same actuality of the real already apprehended as such. Actuality in coincidence, as coincidence of seeming grounded in real being, is dual truth. Therefore dual truth is something which "is not present" in a statement but which "happens" in an affirmative coincidental movement, because it is there that the coincidental actualization of the real happens. Hence it is that dual truth "happens". The predicative verb "is", when it exists, expresses the happening not of the real as such (that is a different problem), but the happening of the real actualized in coincidental actuality. There, then, seeming and being real coincide. And the possibility of intellectively knowing this unity is the moment of the prius of every intellective actuality. In coincidental actuality this prius acquires that formal character which is demand. Demand, as I said, is coincidental actuality of the prius as such.

This actuality, and therefore this truth, is formally dynamic. They happen-let us r