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CHAPTER III

PROGRESSION QUA INTELLECTION

What is intellective knowing as search? Here we have the key question. Intellective knowing as search is not being in search of an intellection, but a search in which one intellectively knows while searching and by the search itself. This brings up a multitude of problems, because searching is clearly an activity of intellective knowing which should be considered from two points of view. Above all it is an activity, but not just any activity; it is an activity of intellective knowing. As I see it, this activity of intellective knowing qua activity is what should be termed thinking. But one ought to consider as well the activity of intellective knowing in the structure of its intellection. This act of intellection has its own intrinsic structure and constitutes a mode of intellection determined by the activity of thinking. Thus intellective knowing not only has the character of activity, but is also a mode of intellection as such. The activity determines intellection as such, and intellection in turn determines the activity. As a mode of intellection, thinking activity is no longer mere thinking but something different; it is reason. Reason is the intellective character of thinking. Thinking and reason are not the same, but {26} neither are they independent. Rather, they are two aspects of a single act of intellective knowing as search. The activity of intellective knowing qua determined by a mode of intellection has, we may say, intellective character. But qua act which proceeds from an activity qua activity, this I shall term the activity of intellective knowing. That is what I expressed a few lines back when I said that reason is the intellective character of the activity of intellective knowing, i.e., of thinking.

In this manner we have before us two groups of problems which we must confront:

§1. The activity of intellective knowing as search, as activity: thinking.

§2. The intellective character of thinking activity: reason.

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§1

ACTIVITY OF INTELLECTIVE KNOWING QUA ACTIVITY:

THINKING

Seeking, I said, is an activity of intellective knowing. And in order to understand it one must begin by conceptualizing what activity is. Only then can we say in what, properly, the thinking character of this activity consists. These are the two points with which we must occupy ourselves.

1

What is Activity?

I am referring now to the concept of activity in general. To reach the goal it is necessary to refer to notions about which we have been speaking since the beginning of the book.

Activity is a mode of action. But not every action is the action of an activity. Why? Action is always something carried out, and only that, regardless of the connection between the action and the one doing it; this itself is a problem with which we have no reason to become involved here. The carrying out of an act can take on at least two different forms, because action has, qua action carried out, two different aspects. On one hand it is, purely and simply, an action carried out which has "its" corresponding act. And then we say that the doer is simply in action; this is "being here-and-now in action". Thus in the actions of seeing, hearing, walking, eating, intellectively knowing, etc., the corresponding "act" is produced in a formal way. By the fact of producing {28} this action, the doer (animal or man) is acting in the sense of being in action. But something different can happen. It can happen that the doer is in action, but not in any action which yet has its full act or formal content; rather, the doer is in a type of continuing action and continues an action which unfolds in different stages. Then we say not only that "he is here-and-now in action", but that "he is here-and-now in activity". Permit me to explain. Activity is not the carrying out of an action, it is not being in action, but being in the process of carrying out actions; activity is taking action, it is to be here-and-now in the process of action. Activity is not simply an action but an action which, I repeat, consists in being here-and-now taking action in a way more or less continual and continued. Taking action here does not refer to what is carried out—as if taking action meant that the corresponding act is being sustained, etc. Taking action does not refer to what is carried out, but only to the doer of the action. Someone can be acting in a dragged-out manner in a single action. This is not activity. Activity certain has something of action, but such action does not even its act without something more, something which leads to the act, because activity consists in being here-and-now in action. Activity which has something of action is, nonetheless, not by itself action with its act. This taking action, which is at one and the same time more than action from a certain point of view, and less than action from another (since by itself it does not have its complete act), this strange taking action, I say, is precisely activity. In activity one is involved in that action which is not only producing actions but producing them by taking action. All activity involves action (since it leads to actions), although not every action is carried out by a doer in activity. {29}

It is necessary to forcefully reject the idea that the superior form of taking action is activity. On the contrary, activity is only a modality of action, and ultimately is the successor of a full action. The fullness consists, in fact, of having its "act". And activity is activity in the order of achieving this act. Thus, to be living or to be in movement is not activity, but simply action, because in them the doer is only in action. But on the other hand, looking from side to side or being in physical agitation are activities. Thus, being in action and being in activity are not the same. Activity is thus taking action; it is something on the order of that action which is the only thing which the "act" has, act in the double sense of being "the act" and of being its full, formal content. It is this which I term ‘act’ in the strict sense; and therefore I call this character ‘actuity’. Actuity is not the same thing as actuality. I call ‘actuality’ the character of act, whereas actuity consists, as I see it, in the real being present in itself qua real. To know intellectively is not formally actuity but actualization.

Now, searching is the activity of intellective knowing. It is what we term ‘thinking activity’. Let us then ask ourselves, In what does the thinking character of this activity consist?

2

What Is "thinking" activity?

Activity is not pure and simple action, but is taking action in relation to a formal content of its own. And here this content is intellective knowing. The activity of intellective knowing is what we formally term thinking. {30}

Thinking, to be sure, is not just about what things are from a point of view which is, so to speak, theoretical. One does not think only about the reality of what we call "things"; rather, one also thinks for example about what one must do, about what one is going to say, etc. This is true. But even in this order, that about which one thinks is what it might be that he is going to realize, what might that be that he is really going to say. In thinking there is always a moment of reality and therefore a formal moment of intellective knowing. Conversely, this intellective knowing is an intellective knowing in activity, not simple actualization of the real. In order to have simple actualization it is not necessary to have thinking, because the actualization is already, without further ado, intellection. But one thinks just in order to have actualization. This intellective knowing, which by virtue of being so is already actualization, but actualization in progression, in the form of taking, this intellective knowing, I say, is just the activity which we call thinking. In thinking one goes on intellectively knowing, one goes on actualizing the real, but in a thinking manner.

The character of thinking activity is determined by the real which is open in itself qua real. Only because the real is open is it possible and necessary to intellectively know it openly, i.e., in thinking activity. In virtue of this, thinking activity has some moments proper to it which it is essential to point out and conceptualize rigorously.

a) Above all, thinking is an intellective knowing which is open through the real itself, i.e., it is the search for something beyond what I already intellectively know. Thinking is always thinking beyond. If this were not so, there would be neither the possibility nor the necessity of thinking. But it is necessary to stress that this beyond is a beyond in relation to the very character of reality. We are not dealing only with the search for other things—that animals do as well—but with searching for real things. {31} What the animal does not do is to investigate, so to speak, the reality of the real. But we investigate not just to find real things, but also to find in these same real things, already known intellectively before thinking, what they are in reality. And this is a form of the "beyond". Thinking is above all "thinking toward" the "real which lies beyond". Now, three directions for the "toward" spring into view, determined by the progress toward the beyond. The beyond is, in the first place, what is outside the field of reality. Thinking is above all to go on intellectively knowing, according to this direction, what is outside the things we apprehend. Thinking is, in this direction, an activity "toward the outside". In the second place, one could be talking about going to the real as a simple noticing, and go from it toward that which is noted in the real; the beyond is now a "toward what is noted". In the third place, it can go from what is already apprehended as real toward what that real is from the inside as reality; it is a progression from the eidos toward the Idea, as Plato would say. Beyond is here a "toward the inside". The "inside" itself is a mode of the "beyond" along the lines of reality. This is not in any sense a complete catalog of the primary forms of beyond, if for no other reason than that we do not always know toward which "beyond" the real may point and direct us. I have only sought to emphasize certain particular lines of special immediate importance.

b) Thinking, we said, intellectively knows, in activity, the real "beyond". Therefore, in virtue of intellectively knowing in openness, thinking is an inchoate intellection. This is the inchoative character of intellective knowing as thinking. It is not something merely conceptive, but something which concerns the progress of intellective knowing in a very important way. Every case of intellective knowing through thinking, by virtue of being inchoate, opens a path. I shall return to this point and discuss it at length later. For now it {32} suffices to emphasize that there are paths which in fact deviate from the reality of things. And this is because there are paths which do not seem to differ among themselves except very subtly, almost infinitesimally; it would be enough to just lean a bit to one side or the other to go onto one or the other of the paths. And this is just what thinking does. Nonetheless, these diverse paths, which inchoatively are so close, and which therefore can seem equivalent, may lead to quite disparate intellections when extended, intellections which may be absolutely incompatible. That initially slight oscillation can lead to realities and modes of reality which are essentially diverse. And the fact is that thinking is constitutively inchoate. A thought is never just a point at which one arrives, but also intrinsically and constitutively a new point of departure. What is intellectively known through thinking manner is something intellectively known, but inchoatively open beyond itself.

c) Thinking is not only open beyond what is intellectively known and in an inchoate form, but is an intellective knowing activated by reality qua open. How does this happen? Intellective knowing is just actualizing the real. Therefore the real intellectively known is something which is given as reality; it is a datum. What is this datum? The datum is above all a "datum of" reality. This does not mean that the datum is something which some reality beyond the given vouchsafes to us; rather, it means that the datum is the reality itself as given. To be a "datum of" reality is to be the "given reality" qua reality. Rationalism in all its forms (and on this point Kant accepted Leibniz’ ideas) always conceived that to be given is to be "given for" some problem, and therefore a datum given for thinking. This is Cohen’s idea: what is given (das Gegebene) is the subject matter (das Aufgegebene). {33} Intellection would be formally a thinking, and as such just a task. But this is impossible. To be sure, what we intellectively know of the real is a datum for a problem which is posed to us for thinking. But this is not the essential point of the question, either with respect to the idea of the "given" or the idea of the "datum for". Above all, this is because in order to be a "datum for", the given has to start by being a "datum of" reality. The real is, then, a "datum of" reality and a "datum for" thinking. What is this "and", i.e., what is the intrinsic unity of these two forms of datum? It is not a unity which is merely additive; nor is it that the datum is a "datum of" and also a "datum for". Rather, it is a "datum for" precisely and formally because it is a "datum of". Why? Because the datum of reality gives us reality in its intrinsic and formal open character qua real. Therefore it follows that the "datum of" is eo ipso a "datum for" what is beyond the given. And then it is clear that rationalism not only has not taken account of the "datum of", but moreover has a false idea of the "datum for", because it believes that the reference to thinking is that for which the datum is given, and which constitutes it as a "datum for". Now, this is wrong. The "datum for" is a moment of the actuality of the real in its openness "beyond". There is therefore a double error in rationalism: in the first place, it stumbles over the "datum of"; and in the second, in having interpreted the "datum for" as a datum for a problem, whereas in fact the "datum for" is first and foremost a form of actualizing the field in its openness beyond and not the form of intellectively knowing the real. Because the "datum for" is a moment of field reality "beyond", and only because of this, can it be a {34} datum for a problem. The openness of reality qua merely actualized in intellective knowing is the intrinsic and radical unity of the two forms of datum, datum-of and datum-for. Ordinary language expresses this intrinsic unity of being a datum with an expression which is not only fortunate but which, taken rigorously, manifests the unitary structure of the two forms of datum: things give us pause to think.[1] The real is not only given in intellection, but it gives us pause to think. This "giving" is, then, the radical unity of the two forms of datum in the real. And this giving us pause to think is just intellectively knowing in thinking activity. Thinking activity is not only open to the beyond in inchoate form, but is constituted as such an activity by the real itself which was previously known intellectively. From this point of view, thinking activity has some quite essential aspects which it is necessary to stress.

c.1) Above all, regardless of what it is that things may give us pause to think, being an activity is not what is formally constitutive of intellection. In and by itself, intellective knowing is not activity. To be sure, intellective knowing can be found in activity, but it "isn’t" activity, and moreover the activity is subsequent to the intellective knowing. The primary intellection of the real in its double aspect of being "real" and of being "in reality" is not activity. Affirming is not activity but just movement; and not every movement is movement in activity. Affirming is not activity but movement. Movement will only be activity when the primary intellection, in virtue of what is already intellectively known as real, is activated by what is intellectively known itself. And it will be so precisely because what is intellectively known is open reality qua reality. To be in the action or process of intellectively knowing by means of sight is not to be in activity, but it can turn into activity. {35} Thinking, then, is not something primary but is consequent upon the primary intellection. What is primary, and indeed chronologically primary, is the intellection.

c.2) In virtue of this, thinking activity is not only not primary but does not even arise from itself. It has been commonly said (as in Leibniz and Kant) that thinking is a spontaneous activity, in contrast to sensibility, which can be merely receptive; thinking in that case would be spontaneity. But this is false for two reasons.

Above all, it is false because true human sensibility is not just receptive and not just a receiving of affections, but is the physical presentation of what is impressing as real, i.e., otherness, intellective sensibility. But that is not what is important to me now, which is rather to insist on the fact that thinking is not an activity which spontaneously arises out of itself. And it does not do so because the intelligence is constituted in activity only as a result of the datum of open reality. It is things which give us pause to think, and therefore it is they which not only put us into activity, but also determine the active character itself of intellective knowing. We are intellectively active because things activate us to be so. This does not mean that that activity does not have in and by itself a specific character (as we shall see below), which might easily lead to the error of believing that thinking is a spontaneous activity. But the truth is that it is not spontaneous; rather, primary intellection, and therefore the real itself, are what makes us, in a certain way, to be spontaneous. To give us pause to think is, in fact, something given by real things; but what the real things give us is just "to think". In the first respect, thinking is not spontaneous; but it can seem to be so in a certain way, albeit erroneously, by virtue of the second respect. Without {36} things there would be no thinking; but with those things already intellectively known there is a specific activity, "to think". Thought, one might say, proceeds from real things by the "having to think" which these things "give" us pause to think about. This is the radical point which has led to the error of spontaneity.

c.3) Thinking activity is an intellective knowing activated by the things which give us pause to think. And this, as I already indicated, is an intrinsic necessity of our intellection in a field, because the openness of their reality is that by which things give us pause to think. Nonetheless, this is inadequate. It is necessary to add that this openness is not simply the openness of respectivity in the world; rather, it is this same openness qua apprehended in the field manner. If this were not true, there would not be thinking activity. Simple respectivity in the world is the open character of reality itself. If intellective knowing were not sentient, this openness would be intellectively known, as is usually said, by an intuitive intelligence, as just a note of reality. In this case intellective knowing would not be of the thinking type. But the openness is given to us sentiently, i.e., within a field. Thus its intellection is "trans-field", "beyond", i.e., is a progression. And this progression is thus thinking activity. The possibility and necessity of thinking activity are then intrinsically and formally determined by sentient intellection.

In summary, thinking activity is not just a particular case of the activity of a living man; i.e., we are not saying that human reality is activity, and that therefore everything human—including thinking—involves an activity. This is false in two ways. First, not every action of a living man is the {37} result of an activity; as we have seen, action and activity are not the same. Activity is taking action, something different than doing an action. The life of a living man is de suyo action, that action in which the living being realizes and fulfills himself while being in possession of himself. But this action is not therefore activity. It will be so only when the action is activated. Now, this can take place in many different ways, and that is the second reason why the conception of thinking activity as just a particular case of a presumed general activity is false. With regard to what concerns the intelligence, the activator of the activity is the real itself qua real; the real is the what arouses the taking of action, by virtue of being actuality in sentient intellection, and therefore open. And this taking, this activity, is thinking. As I said earlier, in Part I, it is not that life forces me to intellectively know, but rather that intelligence, by virtue of being sentient intellection, forces me to live thinking. Whence thinking activity forms part of the intellection of reality, not just intrinsically but also formally. As intellection is actualization of reality, it follows that thinking is a mode of actualization of reality. One does not think "about" reality but "in" reality, i.e., as already inside it and based upon what, positively, has already been intellectively known of it. Thinking is an intellective knowing which not only intellectively knows the real, but does so searching based on a previous intellection of reality and progressing in and from it. Thinking, as the activity of intellective knowing that it is, formally involves that which activates it, viz. reality. And it is not just that reality activates the intelligence in that form of activity which comprises thinking; but that intellectively knowing reality qua activating is an intrinsic and formal moment of thinking activity itself. {38} In virtue of this, thinking already possesses in itself, actually and physically, the reality in which and in accordance with which one thinks. This is what we are going to see.

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§2

THINKING ACTIVITY QUA INTELLECTIVE: REASON [2]

Thinking activity, thinking, has intellective character. I have already said that I call the internal structure of thinking intellection its ‘intellective character’. Through thinking, thinking activity acquires an intellective character which is determined in its intellection. Now, by virtue of its formally intellective character, thinking constitutes reason. Reason is the intellective character of thinking, and in this sense is the thinking intellection of the real. Thinking and reason are but two aspects of a single activity, but as aspects they are formally distinct: one thinks in accordance with reason, and one intellectively knows in thinking reason. The two aspects are not mutually opposed, as if we were dealing with the fact that some subjective mental activity (such as thinking) managed to reach the real (e.g. by reason) from which it was previously excluded. This is not the case. To be sure, I have a thinking activity which is merely psychical by which I can, for example, turn over my thoughts. But turning over thoughts is not thinking. Thinking is always (and only) thinking in the real and indeed already inside the real. One thinks and one knows intellectively while thinking in accordance with reason. It is this thinking intellection of the real, then, which should be called ‘reason’.

The real as previously known intellectively propels us, then, to know intellectively in another way, viz. to know intellectively while thinking. But that real from which we start is not just a point of departure which we leave behind; rather, it is the positive support for our progression in its search. Thinking intellection, in its {40} intellective character, is reason; it is essentially and constitutively a progression based upon an intrinsic support. It is a support in which we have already intellectively known the real. And in its intellective progress, reason must go on by newly actualizing the real in a cautious manner, i.e., by going over its steps again and again. And it is precisely on account of this that that the activity is called ‘thinking’ or pensare [in Latin], a word closely related etymologically to ‘weighing’ or pesare. Thinking has the intellective character of a repeated weighing of the real "in" reality itself in order to go "toward" the real which is inside of that reality. Thinking is weighing intellectively. One weighs reality; one weighs it over and over. And this intellective weighing of reality is just reasoning, explanation. Thus we speak of "weighty reasons". The reality which reason must achieve is not, then, naked reality—that was already done in primordial apprehension and also in the subsequent field affirmations. The reality which reason must achieve is reality weighed over and over. What then is that previous installation in the real? In order to answer this question, we must confront three serious issues:

1. What is reason?

2. The scope of reason.

3. Reason and reality.

 

I

WHAT IS REASON?

We have just answered the question: it is the thinking intellection of the real. But this is just a generality. To make it precise, it is necessary to clarify that intellection in two of its essential aspects. This intellection, in fact, is mine above all. Of that there is not the slightest doubt. Reason is {41} above all my reason. But on the other hand, it is undeniably a reason about real things themselves. Therefore if we wish to clarify what reason is, we see ourselves constrained to examine successively what is reason as my intellection, and what is reason as the reason or explanation of things; only in this manner will we understand, in a unitary way, just what reason is.

1

Reason as Mine

Naturally, "mine" does not here refer to something subjective. Nor does it mean that reason is just a simple activity of mine, that activity which we call ‘thinking’, because thinking is formally the activity of intellective knowing, whereas reason (including my reason) is an intellective character of intellection itself. It is the formal character of an intellection brought about in thinking intellection. This means, then, that we are referring only to a mode of intellection, and therefore to something which concerns intellection itself as such. To speak of my reason means only that reason is something which modally concerns intellection.

Reason as a mode of intellection has three essential moments: it is in-depth intellection; it is intellection as measuring; and it is intellection as or while searching.

First moment. Thinking intellection is an intellection of something "beyond" the field of reality. I have already pointed out that "beyond" does not formally designate only other things which are "outside" of the field. "Beyond" is also that or those aspects of things within the field, but aspects which are not themselves formally in it. What, specifically, is this "beyond"? That is the essential point. One does not think about the {42} "beyond" in some capricious way, because it is not the case that one intellectively knows things or aspects which are outside of the field "besides" having intellectively known field things. It is not, then, that there is an intellection on this side of the field and "besides" that another "beyond" the field. On the contrary, one thinks about the reality beyond precisely and formally because the things which are in the field are the very same things which "give us pause to think". And this giving us pause to think is, on one hand, a being led to intellectively know what is "beyond", but on the other consists in being led to the beyond by the inexorable force of the intellection of what is on this side, so to speak. And it is in this that the "giving us pause to think" consists. To give pause to think is a sensed intellective necessity, by virtue of which the things in the field direct us to what is beyond. The beyond is above all the "toward" itself as a moment of the impression of reality. But this "toward" is not just an additional moment. The "toward" is, in fact, a mode of sensed reality qua reality. Whence it follows that the real not only directs us to something other, but does so by virtue of being already real in that "toward" which it directs us. That is, the "toward", as a mode of reality acquires, as we saw in Part II, the character of a "through" or "by". Therefore the "beyond" is not something which is just other, but is other "through" being "on this side" what it is. It is not a "deduction" but the very impression of reality in the "toward" as a moment of what is on this side. And this character is the "through" as sensed physically. What is not in the field is intellectively known in order to be able to better know intellectively what is in it. And the "beyond" consists in a positive way in this: in being something to which that "on this side" precisely and formally leads us in order to be able to better know intellectively the "on this side" itself. Thus we have here just the opposite of a simple additional item. And in virtue of that, intellectively knowing the beyond is intellectively knowing what, {43} ultimately, is on this side. That which gives us pause to think is what, ultimately, is intellectively known in the field. This "ultimately" can be the interior of each thing, but it can also be other things external to the field. Nonetheless, in both cases what is intellectively known beyond is always intellectively known precisely and formally as that without which the content of what is "on this side" would not be the reality that it is. This is intellective knowing in the "through". And it is in this "through" that the "in-depth" consists. To go to the beyond is to get to the bottom of real things, to understand them "in depth". And this "in depth" or ultimate nature, intellectively known, is just my explanation of them. Only by intellectively knowing this ultimate nature will I intellectively know the real things of the field. In-depth is thus not a type of indiscernible profundity, but only the intellection of what, ultimately, real things are. Thus, an electromagnetic wave or a photon is what, ultimately, color is. Their intellection is thus intellection in profundity.

Now, reason or explanation is above all the intellection of the real in depth. Only as an explanation of color is there intellection of electromagnetic waves or photons. The color which gives us pause to think is what leads us to the electromagnetic wave or to the photon. If it were not for this giving us pause to think, there would be no intellection of a beyond whatsoever; there would be at most a succession of intellections "on this side". And I am not referring only to the type of "beyond" discussed above, because the beyond is not just a theoretical concept, as are the wave and the photon. The beyond can also be what forges a novel; we would not create the novel if the real did not give us pause to think. The same could be said of poetry: the poet poetizes because things give him pause to think. And that which he thus thinks of them is his poetry. That what is intellectively known in this manner is a reality which is theoretically conceptualized, a reality in fictional form, or a poetic reality, does not change the essence of intellection as reason. {44} A metaphor is one type of reasoning about things, among others. What is intellectively known of the beyond is purely and simply the intellection of what things "on this side", in being intellectively known, give us pause to think. Therefore the intellection of the beyond is reason or explanation; it is intellection of the real in depth. But reason, explanation, has still other essential constitutive moments.

Second moment. Reason, as I said, is intellection of the real in depth; but this reason is brought to fulfillment in the reality "on this side" which has already been intellectively known. This reality previously known is not a simple "medium" of intellection, but something different. It is the "measure" of intellection. The fact is that every reality is a reality which is constitutively measured qua real. What does this mean?

Everything real is constitutively respective qua real. This respectivity is the world. World is the unity of respectivity of the real as real. Everything real is, then, the world precisely and formally by being real, i.e., by its formality of reality. In virtue of this, that worldly respectivity turns back upon each real thing, so to speak, in a very precise way: each thing is presented to us as a form and a mode of reality determined according to formality in respectivity. This determination is just the measure. Thus reality is not just the constitutive formality of the "in itself", of the de suyo; but rather the measure in accordance with which each real thing is real, is "in its own right", de suyo. Measure is not the unity of relation of real things; on the contrary, measure is, in each thing, consequent upon its respectivity as sich. Only because reality as reality is respective, and only because of this, is its formality a measure of its own reality. The real is reality but measured in its reality by its own formality of reality. So, reason is not just {45} intellection of the real in depth, but rather measuring intellection of the real in depth.

This requires somewhat more detailed analysis. Every measuring is based upon a measurement standard or "metric" with which one measures. What is this metric? What is the intellective measure of the real according to this metric? To answer these questions, it is necessary to recall that thinking intellection, my reason, is an intellection which is based upon what we have previously known intellectively in the field. Only by returning to this point of previous intellection will we be able to investigate the questions A) What is the metric? And B) What is the intellective measure of the real in depth?

A) My thinking intellection, my reason, does not intellectively know reality as a medium but as something already known intellectively, in a positive way, in a prior field intellection. This is an essential difference. If one wishes, reason intellectively knows reality itself not as light (that would be reality as a medium) but as a source of light (i.e., reality as measure). And this is a peculiar intellection, because in it one intellectively knows reality by itself, to be sure, but not as some additional thing. Rather, one knows it as something which I shall term "reality ground"; reality is the grounding of thinking intellection qua grounding. That is what I term a principle. The intellection of formality is reality as a source of light, as a measure; this is the intellection of reality as a principle. Under this aspect reason is intellection as a measuring principle of reality in depth. We shall continue to take a firmer grasp of the concept of reason as a mode of intellection. To clarify it, let us state first of all what it is to be a principle; and secondly, investigate what the principle of thinking intellection or reason is; and thirdly, clarify in a rigorous way the nature of this intellection as principle. {46}

a) What is it to be a principal, and how is the principle given to us? Reality as a principle is clearly reality as ground; and as such, the ground is a "by" or a "through". Now, to be a ground is always and only to be the ground of something else, of the field; it is, I repeat, a "by". This other thing, qua grounded, is something to which the so-called ground is open; it is a "by" as open. And conversely, the ground then has the formal and intrinsic moment of openness. It is on account of this that it grounds; ground is above all foundation.[3] But that is not all, because being a ground is a very precise and determinate mode of grounding; a grounding principle is only one mode of ground-ability. Now, what grounds does so when it grants to what is grounded its own character of reality: a) from itself (i.e., from what is grounding), and b) when upon granting it the grounded reality is realizing itself precisely and formally by and in the reality of the thing doing the grounding. The ground passes fundamentally into the grounded. That which is grounding has not only grounded the real but is doing so intrinsically and formally. That which is grounded is then real in a fundamental way. It is in this that being principle formally consists, as I see it. A principle is not just a beginning, nor is it the mere "from where" (the hothen) as Aristotle thought; rather, it is that which is doing the grounding making itself real from itself, in and by itself, in the real qua real. The principle is so only inasmuch as it is intrinsically "being a principle", i.e., making itself real as a principle.

How is the principle of intellection given to us? When that which is the ground is the very character of reality, i.e., when the ground is in-depth reality, then its intellection is, as I already indicated, {47} very peculiar. Reality is no longer naked formality of reality; that naked formality we have intellectively known in every intellection since the primordial apprehension of reality. Reality is not now naked reality but reality qua grounding. How is this reality qua grounding given? To be sure, it is not reality "itself" as if it were an "object" (let me be permitted to use this word for the sake of clarity). A principle is not some "hidden" thing in what has the principle. If that were the case one would intellectively know this "object" and would "later" add to it a relation, which would therefore be something extrinsic to the object, viz. the relation of grounding another object. But such is not the case, because if one considers just reality "itself", its being grounded is an intrinsic moment, not an added one. Reality "itself", in fact, is here actualized, is here present to us, not like "the" realities, i.e., like an object-reality, but is actualized and present to us in itself and formally as ground-reality, or if one wishes, as the real ground. This is an essential difference. The ground is reality, but reality whose character of reality consists only in really grounding. In the object, the real is "put", but as "against" (ob): opposite or contraposed to the apprehendor himself and to his apprehension. Here, however, the reality is not "put", but is here and now "grounding". Reality is not now actualized either as naked reality or as object-reality, but precisely as grounding. Reality is actualized now as real, but the mode of its actuality is as "grounding", not as "being here-and-now present", either in itself or against, "ob" something other. Therefore I call it ground-reality. This is not, I repeat, a relation added to its character of real, but its intrinsic and formal mode of being real. In the object, the real is actualized in {48} the form of being "against" (ob)—as we shall see forthwith—, whereas here reality is actualized in its own way, that of really grounding. It is, if one wishes, a presenting of the real not as something which "just is there", but as "being there as grounding". This is the reality apprehended precisely as a principle, i.e., principle-reality. Its mode of actualization is to be actualized in the form of a "by", as grounding.

b) Granting this, is reality the fundamental principle of thinking intellection? Definitely it is. Reality, in fact, is apprehended as reality constitutively open qua reality. If reality were not open there would be no thinking intellection because there would be no "beyond". Reality itself would be only real things. But since reality itself is open, it is reality itself, previously known intellectively in sentient fashion, which thrusts us from itself "toward" the beyond in an intellective search; i.e., reality is grounding. But it is grounding which creates a foundation precisely because it is reality already actualized in a previous intellection; and it is in this reality that, formally, the real thing is being newly actualized. Through openness, then, reality is grounding and foundation of thinking intellection; it is its principle. Reality qua open is what gives us pause to think, and this giving is what constitutes reality as the principle of thinking intellection. The "datum-of" is the principle of the "datum-for". This principle is therefore reality. But that must be clarified.

In the first place, we are dealing with reality not as naked reality but as ground-reality. In the second place, reality itself, which comprises this ground-reality, is not the moment of individual reality (qua individual) of each thing. We have already seen in Parts I and II {49} that naked reality is the formality of reality. Formality is the mode of otherness of the de suyo, which has nothing to do with what Scholasticism called a "formal" object or Duns Scotus called ‘formality’. Formality is here the mode of otherness of mere stimulus. This de suyo—let us reiterate even at the risk of being repetitive—does not mean only the fact of existence. Rather, it means that both essence and existence, as in classical philosophy, pertain de suyo to the thing. Reality is not formally synonymous with either essence or existence, although nothing is real without being existent and having essence. This formality of reality has two moments. Above all, it has a moment which, for lack of a better word, I call ‘individual’; this is the formality of reality of each real determinate thing. But when various real things are apprehended, we intellectively know that each of them determines that moment of reality, in accordance with which we say that each thing is in the field of reality. This is the field moment of the formality of reality. The formality of reality is thus not only individual formality but the ambit or scope of reality. It is a transcendental scope which encompasses all sensed or sensible things.

This field, qua physically real, is a medium in the intellection, a medium of intellection. The field of reality as medium is that in which something is intellectively known. This happens, for example, in the case of every affirmation. But it can happen that the reality is what leads to what is grounding, to the reality beyond, to the world of reality itself. Then reality is not a medium but ground-reality; this is the measuring principle of reality in the beyond. The field reality thus intellectively known is now more than a medium of intellection; it does not stop {50} being a medium for the intellection of the beyond, but it is more than a medium because it leads to the measuring principle. It is unnecessary to repeat that this ground-reality is not an object-reality. This reality is that in accordance with which I intellectively know, in a thinking manner, the measure: in this consists its being a principle. Now, it is on account of this that reality as intellectively known as fundament reality is the principle of reason.

This principle is not a judgement. The conversion of the principle into a fundamental judgement is one of the most seriously flawed reincarnations in the history of philosophy. Aristotle called the intellectively known thing the principle of noein; thus, he tell us, the principle of trigonometry is the triangle. But shortly thereafter this principle is transformed into a primary judgement, in large measure by Aristotle himself, who made the judgement called the ‘principle of contradiction’ the principle or the arkhe of his metaphysics. And thus we find it in modern philosophy, above all in Leibniz and Kant, who take for ‘principles’ one or several primary judgements. They are primary because they announce something upon which every subsequent intellection is grounded. In place of the triangle we now have a fundamental judgement. With this, the function of the principle becomes that of a primary rule or norm of every intellection. This is what has sent philosophy along the paths of mere logic. But it is unacceptable. A principle is reality itself previously known intellectively in field actuality, but now intellectively known as the ground-reality of every subsequent intellection. It is necessary to return to the original meaning of ‘principle’: it is not a judgement but a prior intellection of reality itself. Naturally—and I shall return to this shortly—we are not concerned with this prior intellection qua intellection, but with what is intellectively known or actualized in it, to wit, reality itself. {51} What Kant claims is false, viz. that reason is reason or explanation not of things but only of my knowledge of them.

This principle which is not judgement, I assert, is reality in its field moment: the de suyo of things within the field is what, in them, gives us pause to think. Thus the reality which reason intellectively knows is not naked reality, i.e., not reality such as it is intellectively known merely as formality of what is apprehended in sentient intellection, but is this same sentient formality in its field or ambient moment, apprehended in itself as ground-reality.

Therefore, though the content of the reality beyond is grounded upon the content of the reality on this side (perhaps as distinct from it), with respect to what concerns the character of reality, this character is physically identical on this side and in the beyond. Consequently the character of the reality of the beyond is not grounded in re (as a Scholastic would say) in the thing on this side, but is physically the same thing as that res on this side. The world of reality is the same as that of field reality qua reality. It is not the sameness of an objective concept but the physical and numerical identity of the scope or ambient of the real. The only thing grounded in re is perhaps its own content, but not its character as reality. The possible ground in re does not concern reality itself, only its content.

Field reality is reality "itself" in the field, reality itself in its structure on this side; reality "itself" of the world is that same reality in its structure beyond. The two structures are not independent. Their dependence is manifested in their same character. Field respectivity is the same as respectivity in the world, but, in a certain way, it is so qua sensed. And by virtue of this sameness field reality qua reality propels us to worldly reality. {52} Then reality in the world is formally the ground of field reality; it is ground-reality. We shall see this in greater detail below. These structures are always extremely concrete; therefore they consist not only in an empty respectivity, but also in a content, however problematic it may be, which intrinsically pertains to the respectivity itself.

c) Let us clarify this idea a bit more. The ground-reality is that in accordance with which the thinking intellection measures; it is just what constitutes the being of a "principle". In this respect, reason is intellection as a principle. To be sure, the principle which constitutes reason as a principle is what we can call the ultimate principle. Permit me to explain. Every thinking intellection is based upon something, and this something is by itself a principle of intellection. Thus, returning to the example of Aristotle, the triangle is the principle of trigonometric intellection. But this does not mean that in its turn, the triangle cannot be something whose own intellection is based upon the intellection of, for example, perpendiculars and angles. Then these latter are the principles of intellection of the triangle. This means that a principle can have its being as a principle only provisionally. But what is it that constitutes the being of the principle of reason itself qua reason? We are not dealing only with trigonometric or some other type of reason, but rather with reason qua reason. Now, the principle of all the limited principles of reason is "reality", reality in its physical and identical character. And in this sense, I say that reality is the ultimate principle, ultimate in the sense that its intellection is what constitutes the principle of reason as such. This is the ultimate nature of being a principle. It does not refer to an ultimate nature which is recurrent in the sense of a causal series or to anything of that nature. What then is reality itself as the principle of reason? {53}

To be sure, the principle is not "being" nor therefore "entity", because reality is something in principle prior to being and all entity. And this is not some triviality, as if we were dealing only with a change of words. Being, as I see it, is always and only actuality of the real it its respectivity qua real, i.e., actuality of the real in the world. On the other hand, reality is formality of the real as real, i.e., the real as something de suyo. Reality and being are not the same. The proof is in the fact that being has its own modes, which are not formally modes of reality; an example, as I see it, is temporality. Moreover, being is grounded upon reality and has its explanation there. There is no esse reale but only realitas in essendo. The principle of reason as such is, then, not being but reality. Therefore it is strictly false to think that being is the ultimate instance of things—that rather is "reality". I shall return to this problem at greater length.

This principle is not an objective, analogical, or univocal concept. And this is because we are not dealing with the case of reason finding itself compelled to intellectively know the real as something which the objective concept of reality makes effective, a concept which would be found to be at variance with the diverse categories of things or predicated univocally of them. Reality is not an objective concept, but the intellective actuality of a physical moment of the real, of its own formality of field reality. The field moment of reality is physically real. Insofar as it pertains to the field, it is a sensed moment; but qua real it is already an intellectively known moment. Reason is not thrust upon real things by the concept of reality; rather, physical apprehension of reality itself makes one intellectively know, physically, "the" reality in reason. And this is the principle of reason. Therefore reality as {54} principle is in reason not only objectively, but really. It is not something which needs to be achieved by reason, as if we were dealing with some passing from a concept of reality to the real part of things; rather, the fact is that reality as physical field is that which intrinsically and formally pertains to the intellection of the real in reason. This intellection, this reason, is already physically in that field. Whence a principle is not that concept into which all others are resolved; rather it is already physical reality itself in its field moment. This reality as grounding principle of reason can also be called ‘reason’, but not by virtue of being a mode of intellection, only in virtue of being a real principle of this mode of intellection. In place of an objective concept we have, then, the physical reality of what pertains to the field. Reality qua field reality is, in a certain way, the explanation or reason of reason itself. Therefore this intellection, I repeat, does not consist in intellectively knowing how something realizes the objective concept of reality, but rather in intellectively knowing how the physically real field is, qua reality, something determinate in each real physical thing; it is the intellection of the real itself measured by physical reality in its own nature as a field. Each real thing, as real, is a mode and form of reality as in the world, i.e., it is real as a formal individual moment in the field of reality. Therefore to intellectively know something as real in the field sense is not to intellectively know it "under" the objective concept of reality, but to intellectively know something "within" the physical ambit of reality, within the field moment qua formality of reality. Reality is thus a principle not only of the intellection of everything real in the most profound sense, but the principle of reason itself; it is the reality of what pertains to the field, not as such but as being the principle measuring of the real. In this respect—which is {55} certainly the most radical—reason is intellection precisely as the principle of the real. Hence the usual concept of reason, to wit, "faculty of principles", is for me false because the plural "principles" has no meaning unless one understands by ‘principle’ something like "fundamental judgement". And this, as we saw, is wrong. A principle is not a fundamental judgement, and therefore there is only a single principle: reality. And because of this, reason is not the faculty of principles but in-depth intellection of the real through principles.

The real, I said, is constitutively measured qua real. And it is because of this that reality has the character of principle, viz. that of being its own measure. The real is that which is measured in the field sense in its own formality of reality.

With what is this measuring brought about? With a canon. The intellection of the real in reason is not only via principles but also constitutively canonic, i.e., possessing a canon.

B) Canonic character of intellection via principles. We have intellectively known the principle, we have obtained it, in a prior field intellection of the real as real. This might seem poor, because the reality which we have intellectively known in the field manner is itself apparently poor and provisional. This is a question to which I shall immediately return. But it is in light of what we have learned about the principle that we are going to measure the real in the most profound sense, both in respect of its content as well as its mode of reality.

Consider some examples to clarify what I just said. In the most elemental field of reality we have intellectively apprehended that the material things in it are what we term ‘bodies’. In the progression beyond the field it has been thought for many centuries that the things "beyond" are also bodies—of another class, {56} to be sure, but still bodies. It required the commotion generated by quantum physics to introduce in a difficult but undeniably successful way the idea that the real beyond is not always a body. Elementary particles, in fact, are not corpuscles (neither are they waves in the classical sense, be we leave aside this aspect of them) but another class of material things. Borne along by the field intellection of things, we were disposed to intellectively know the things beyond the field as bodies, different perhaps, but when all was said and done, still bodies. The measure of the real was undertaken with a determinate metric: "body". Now, the progress toward reality has opened up to us other real material things which are not bodies.

But this is not all. In the process of intellection of real things within the field there has been decanted into intellection not just the intellection that the real things are bodies, but also and above all the intellection that to be real is to be a "thing", in the sense that this word has when one speaks, for example, of "thingness". That was the measure of reality: progression beyond the field was brought about by thinking that the measuring reality is a "thing". An intellection much more difficult than that of quantum physics was needed in order to understand that the real can be real and still not be a thing. Such, for example, is the case of person. Then not only was the field of the real broadened, but that which we might term ‘the modes of reality’ was also broadened. Being a thing is only one of those modes; being a person is another. Thus not only has the catalog of real things been changed, i.e., not only has a reality beyond the field been discovered, but the character of reality itself as a measure has changed, because a person is something different from a stone or a tree not just by virtue of his {57} properties, but by his mode of reality; the mode of reality of a person is different from the mode of reality of a stone or a tree: the measure of reality is not that of being a thing.

I have adduced these examples because they clearly show that progression is a search not just for new things but also for new forms and new modes of reality. Upon intellectively knowing the real in the field sense, we have not just intellectively known this or that thing, but also just what it is that we call ‘real’. These two dimensions are not independent. Their intrinsic unity is that with which the real is measured in thinking activity. The intellective part of this activity consists first and foremost of thinking in accordance with an intellective measure. That reality which is already known intellectively is not a medium but a measure, both with respect to what concerns what is real and what concerns that which we call form and mode of reality. Now, that which is measuring is always reality in the profound sense. But the measurement is always brought about by some particular metric. Reality as the measuring principle is what I term canon of reality. Here I take the word ‘canon’ in its etymological sense. The Greek word kanon is formed from another Greek word kanna which is of Semitic origin (Akhadian qana, Hebrew qaneh) meaning a cane, which served among other things as a standard of measure. Reason, the intellectus quaerens, bears this canon in its intellection, and with it measures the reality which it seeks, at one and the same time as real thing and as mode of reality.

This canon is not a system of norms for measuring the intellection of the real. The concept of canon entered philosophy with Epicurus and was revived by Kant. For all of this philosophy, the canon was a group of norms (logical or of some other order). The canon would thus be a system of judgements which regulate {58} the intellective measurement of the real. But this, as I see it, is unacceptable, because it makes affirmative predication the very essence of intellection. And that is wrong. A canon is not a system of normative judgements but is, as the etymology of the word expresses precisely, a "metric"; it is not a judgement nor a system of judgements which regulate affirmative measurement. This "metric" is just what was previously known intellectively as real in its form and in its mode of reality. The thinking intellection goes off in search of the real beyond what was previously intellectively known, based upon the canon of reality already known. It is essential to reiterate the main point: a canon is not the canonic of Epicurus and Kant, but what the word meant when spoken in Greece, for example the canon of Polycletus.

This canon, in my opinion, has very precise characteristics which it is necessary to point out.

Above all, the canon is always concrete; it has the character of concretness in an essential way. We have intellectively known the canon previously upon intellectively knowing the real in the field of reality. And already in that case, as I have said, we have intellectively known not just what each real thing is among others, but also—perhaps without realizing it—what it is to be real. Now to be sure, I intellectively know, in real things of the field, what in them is their being real. That is, this is an intellection which is essentially concrete. And this is just the canon of reality. We are not, then, dealing with the fact that in the field we have intellectively known in what being real consists in the abstract and in all of its generality; rather, we are dealing with the concrete mode in which what we intellectively know in the field is real. The canon of reality is what, through reality, we have intellectively known within the field. And this is an essential character of the canon. But it has still others.

In the second place, in fact, the canon does not have {59} a definite form of being a canon. On the contrary, there are many different modes of being a canon; there are different modes of measuring. When speaking of a canon, we tend to think that it consists formally in being conceptualized reality, perhaps concrete and limited, but always conceptualized. But this is not the case. The canon can be conceptualized reality, but it is not necessary for it to be so. It can be, in fact, an emotional measure, for example, or a metaphorical measure, etc. The metaphor is not only so in its content, but above all concerns its own mode—metaphorical—of measuring the real. The canon is not formally any of these natures; it is canon qua measure, regardless of the mode of measuring.

But this is not all. In the third place, the canon is essentially an open canon. Inasmuch as we continue to intellectively know more real things, the canon measuring reality continues to change as well. And this happens in two ways. The canon continues to change above all because what constitutes the field measure of reality has been changing. For example, what the canon is after having intellectively known "persons" is not the same as it was when we intellectively knew only "things". The measuring reality, in its concrete condition and within a determinate mode of measure, continues to expand or contract, but always goes on changing. But there is another sense to this variation, because the canon does not only consist in being a concrete metric of measurement; rather, things, when they are measured, turn out to be of greater or lesser reality with respect to reality itself as principle. Whence the canon itself remains open not just on account of real things, but also by virtue of the character of reality. {60}

In summary, the measure of the real in the intellection of reason has an open character which is rooted in principles and canonic. It is rooted in principles because it deals with reality as a principle; it is canonic because it deals with reality as a canon. The two aspects are inseparable: the principle is such for a canon, and the canon is always a canon according to a principle. Their intrinsic unity is a measuring moment of reason. In order to simplify, I shall call it a ‘canonic principle’. Reason has a first moment, that of being intellection in depth. It has a second moment, that of being the canonic intellection of this depth. But it has in addition a third moment, since reason is formally and constitutively reason, by virtue of being intellection in its quest mode.

Third moment. Reason progresses in measured fashion towards an in-depth intellection. Therefore it has this moment of being a quest for that which is going to be intellectively known. This moment of quest can lead to a mistake which it is necessary to root out. I have already hinted at it before. The fact is that we are not dealing with the quest for an intellection which we still do not possess; we are rather dealing with a proper mode of intellection, viz. the quest itself, quest or search as a mode of intellection. Reason is formally intellectus quaerens, i.e., inquiring intellection. It is inquiring itself as a mode of intellection. Reason is only a mode of intellection; it is not intellection pure and simple. Reason is formally and structurally a quest or search, because reason is intellection of the real insofar as the real gives us pause to think. Now, to intellectively know what gives us pause to think and is giving us pause to think, is the very essence of the search. Reason, then, is formally and structurally a "search". Thus to reason there pertains essentially not just the moment of depth and the moment of measuring, but also {61} its inquiring character. On this point philosophers have usually gone astray. What is this formal mode of intellectively knowing in the inquiring sense? I shall begin responding to this question by pointing out some essential aspects of the intellective search.

A) Above all, reason is dynamic. The matter is clear: reason is progression, and while not all movement is progression, nonetheless all progression is movement. Therefore reason has a formally dynamic structure. And it is essential to emphasize this. Reason is not just a system which is articulated in the nature of a principle and a canon, as for example in the demonstration of a theorem. This type of demonstrative system is, as we shall see, the result of reason, but not what formally comprises reason. Reason is a progression; and the principle and canon of reason are the principle and canon of searching, of the search for reality in depth. If reality were totally and completely apprehended in primordial apprehension, there would be no need to speak of reason. Intellection is not inquiring reason because reality is intrinsically articulated in a fundamental form, but because this fundamental articulation, precisely by virtue of finding itself only in depth, must be an articulation which is sought after. It is not enough for us to move within the field of reality; rather, we must progress in depth beyond the field. The difference between what is on this side of the field and its ultimate nature is the difference which makes the dynamic moment a progression of reason. It is this progression which has a canonic principle.

B) This canonic principle is not proper to just any progression, but only to one which is formally intellective; it is an inquiring progress, and the canonic principle is the principle of inquiry. The canonic principle is {62} formally a canonic principle of intellective search. Therefore this principle is not the canonic representation of the real. The canon does not measure the real in such a way that anything falling outside the scope of what the canon presents is declared non-real. The canon does not measure the real as representation, but on the contrary as a "direction" of search. Therefore it can happen, and in fact does happen—perhaps most of the time, as in the examples previously cited—that the real actually encountered is not like real things intellectively known in the field sense and presented in the canon. Nonetheless, the canon does not cease to function as a canon, since it is precisely by being directed by that representation that the thinking intellection is able to find diverse realities in it. The canon is directional. Only by going to seek bodies is it that reason has been able to intellectively know something "material" which is not "corpuscular". Reason is the directionality of a progression. To be sure, there would be no direction without representation; without intellection of bodies there would be no direction for searching beyond the field. But this representation does not consist in being the norm or measure of what, in fact, is real; but rather in being the direction of an in-depth search. All searching has a precise direction determined by a previous representation. To search is to go while opening for oneself a path in the light of the direction which has been marked out for us by what has already been presented. Reason is not a quiescent system of articulated strata, but a system of inquiry; it is directional reason. Reason is above all the direction of an in-depth search.

C) Reason as search is not just directional; by virtue of being so it is constitutively provisional. This is the provisionality of reason. Reason is always subject to possible canonic "readjustments" or "renovations", which by virtue of being so {63} are rational readjustments or renovations. Such readjustment clearly concerns the content of what is presented in the canon, regardless of the nature of this presentation, which may not necessarily be a visual image. But when all is said and done, the essential part of the matter is that the readjustment not only remakes the content of what is presented as real, but also the very direction of all subsequent search, of all subsequent reason; hence it is that the direction of reason is always provisional. Provisional does not mean that it is false; that is another question with which we shall deal later. Rather, it means that even if true, it is a truth which by its very nature will be not necessarily derogated, but superceded. The nature of this superceding depends upon the individual case. But it will always be the case that what is superceded, precisely because of its nature, is formally provisional.

Dynamic, directional, and provisional is how reason is formally inquiring. This inquiring character, as I have already said, is a moment of the proper mode of the intellection of reason.

Now, intellection is actualization of the real. Therefore if reason is inquiring, this inquiring is determined by the mode of actualization of the real. What is this mode by which it affects the inquiry? That is the question upon which it is necessary to focus after having analyzed some characteristics of inquiry.

We have already seen that reason is intellection thrust "toward" what is beyond the field, i.e., in depth. This thrusting does not happen in a negative way; i.e., we are not dealing with a case of the field expelling us to some realm outside the field. On the contrary, the field thrusts us from the field, to be sure, but within and not outside of the real itself qua real. That is, {64} the thrusting "toward" is a positive actualization of the reality beyond the field aspect of reality. The essential point of the question is this positive actualization. The field throws the intelligence in front of a real, but outside-the-field, reality. And this thrusting before itself, actualizing that toward which we are thrust, is just what the word pro-blem (from the Greek, pro-ballo, to throw something "in front of") means in its etymological sense. In a problem there is already an actualization, i.e., there is an intellection of reality; but this actualization is at the same time still not fully actual. This being-now-actual in a certain way without being so, or rather without being so fully, is the nature of the problematic. The problematic is not primarily the character of my progression, but is primarily the character of the actualization of the real. The real gives one pause to think. And this giving is precisely the problematic, something given by the real. Reality in the "toward" hurls me to a peculiar actuality of the real, to a problematic actuality. And this actuality of the real as a mode of actualization is what formally constitutes a problem. It is on account of this that problems are not created, but discovered or found. Only because the real is problematically actualized, and only because of this, intellection is—and must be—inquiring by intrinsic necessity. Inquiring is the mode of intellectively knowing problematic reality qua problematic. And this is inexorable. It is quite possible that, hurled by the real as problematic, we might retreat and not continue the intellection. There are millions of problems to which everyone can give a wide berth. But what is necessary is that we either stop before the problem or we give it a wide berth. And this necessity is just inquiring. Giving it a wide berth is a form of inquiring. The problematic determines an inquiring intellection as such. This {65} inquiring can have the negative aspect of giving something a wide berth, or the positive aspect of our taking up the problematic. This taking up can in turn have different modalities. Inquiry can be take up and resolve the problem. But this is not the general case, because there are perhaps radical problems which the strict intellection of reason cannot resolve. Then "taking up" means only treating the problem. The "treatment" of the problematic is already an incipient solution. But this solution can be something toward which the incipient treatment only directs us in a convergent manner; it is a convergence which most of the time would be only "asymptotic". In every case what is formally essential to inquiring reason is to be a "treatment" of the problem.

In summary, reason is a mode of intellection which has three proper moments. It is above all an intellection in depth. In the second place, it is a measuring intellection, i.e., an intellection of the real precisely as principle and canonic. Finally, it is an intellection with an inquiring character. The intrinsic unity of these three moments constitutes reason as a mode of intellection. If we wish to reduce it to a formula, we might say that reason is intellection in which in-depth reality is actualized in a problematic way, and which therefore compels us to inquire through principles and a canon about the real in-depth. Let us not take this expression as a definition in the usual sense of the word, but as a descriptive expression of what reason is, and it is something toto caelo different from what is usually understood by ‘reason’. It would not be superfluous to pin down further the nature of this difference.

D) Philosophy has customarily limited itself to a conceptualization of intelligence as affirmation: to know intellectively would be to affirm something of something—what many pages ago I termed {66} the logification of intellection. This idea runs parallel to another according to which reality and entity are identified, viz. the entification of reality. Both identifications are unacceptable; but what is now important to us, to clarify the problem of reason, is to concentrate on the logification of intellection. This logification has led to some concepts of reason which are vitiated at their very root. As we have already seen, according to these concepts, one understands by ‘reason’ the "faculty of principles", i.e., the faculty of fundamental judgements. And this is false because a principle is not a judgement based on principle, but mere sentient actualization of reality as ground-reality. A principle has to be understood not in a concipient intellection but in a sentient intellection. Judgement is only one mode among others of this actualization, and therefore is something derived from it. In virtue of this, a principle is "reality" itself. And therefore reason is not the faculty of principles but intellection as principle. And that logification of intellection, I repeat, is what has led to certain concepts of reason which are, as I see it, unacceptable. Without pretending to be exhaustive, we can reduce these concepts to three.

Above all, there is the concept that reason is logical rigor. This concept, in a definitive way, has led to understanding reason as a reasoning process. Thus the process of reasoning would be the supreme form of logical rigor. This logical rigor caused reason to be conceived as something absolute. The idea, in various forms, has been circulating since Parmenides, Plato, and even Aristotle, and in modern philosophy culminates in Leibniz. The rigor of the reasoning process would be grounded upon various kinds of rigorous evidence from the so-called principles of reason, i.e., in primary conceptual evidence, which for Leibniz were reduced to identities. Reason would be the organ of absolute conceptual evidence. {67} Hence, over and above sensibility, the absolute conceptualization of reason would float. Reason would be the canonic principle of the real, because a canonic principle would be a judgement of absolute conceptual evidence. If we go beyond what is apprehended sentiently, it would of necessity be by means of rigorous logic. Now, all of this is unacceptable not only as an idea, but even as a description of the fact of intellection, because to know intellectively is not to conceive and judge, but to sentiently apprehend the real as real; it is not "logical" but "sentient" intellection. And what carries us beyond the sentient apprehension of the real is not logical necessity, but the sentient actualization of the real in the "toward"; it is the real "toward", and not some logical necessity. The principle of reason is not concepts and primary judgements, but reality physically apprehended in the "toward". Reason is not the organ of absolute evidence, but the organ of the progression of intellection in depth of the real already intellectively known sentiently.

According to a second concept, reason is not logical rigor but dialectical necessity; the logos logifies reason in the form of dialectic. This is Hegel’s idea. For Hegel, logical rigor consists but in seeing the real in the mirror or speculum of reason "itself". Reality does not go beyond the "mirrored" or "specular" image of reason. Hence reason is speculative reason. The principles of reason are not a type of absolute conceptual evidence, but the unfolding of the speculative structure of reason. Reason is the unfolding of concepts. And the principle of this unfolding is not evidence but the intrinsic inconsistency of the concept. Reason cannot stop at a concept without seeing it dissolve into its opposite; then the original concept is recuped by incorporating into it this opposite, synthesizing a new concept from both, and so on ad infinitum. {68} The only consistent thing is then reason in its movement. Reason is movement, this movement is dialectical, and it consists in the turning of reason in upon itself; such would be the principle of reason under this concept. Reason would be speculative conceptual dialectic, in itself the very concept of the concept, i.e., Idea in the Hegelian sense.

But this is impossible. Reason is not movement within a concept; nor is it movement "in itself"; rather, it is a progression "toward the other", intellection of the beyond. Reason is not a movement of concepts but a search within reality. Reason is inquiring, reason progresses. And this progression is not, to be sure, the result of some evidence, as Leibniz maintained; but neither is it the internal mobility of concepts. Reality is not the mirrored or specular image of reason. It is not the case that concepts are in themselves inconsistent; rather, it is reality itself which is intellectively actualized in problematic form. What moves reason is not the inconsistency of concepts, but the problematicism of reality. And it is on account of this that intellection, whether inconsistent or not, is still of an inquiring nature. Inquiring is the intellection of the problematic as such. The progression of inquiring is, then, nothing but the progressive actualization of the real.

According to a third concept, reason is neither rigor of absolute evidence nor dialectical necessity. Reason would simply be organization of experience. This was Kant’s idea. The primary judgements of reason are not judgements about reality, but judgements about my intellection of experience. Regardless of how one interprets Kant’s philosophy (psychological, logical, or transcendental organization), reason must be the organization of these intellections. Such organization would have a precise {69} character, viz. totalization. The content of reason would not be the totality of the real but the logical totality of my intellections. Kant called these totalities (world, soul, God) Ideas. Reason is not the organ of absolute evidence nor the dialectic of the internal inconsistency of thinking; rather, it is purely and simply logical totalization. But this is unacceptable. And it is so for at least two reasons. In the first place, it is clear that reason is based upon what I have termed ‘prior intellection’. But these intellections upon which reason is based and to which I here refer are not intellections qua intellections, but the reality intellectively known in them. And since this intellection is sentient, it follows that reason is not the reason of intellections, but the reason of reality intellectively known in sentient fashion. In the second place, with regard to this sensed reality, reason does not organize its totalization, but its measure as open and in-depth. The presumed organization of experience is not the construction of a logically closed totality, because reality is in itself open qua reality. Reason is not organization but simply measuring as the principle and canon of the character of reality in depth.

The logification of intellection has led to three ideas of reason: organ of absolute evidence of being, organ of speculative dialectic, and organ of the total organization of experience. These conceptions are unacceptable at their root, because intellective knowing is not judging but sentiently actualizing the real. Whence it is that reason does not rest upon itself, but is always just a mode of intellection. Reasoning, speculating, and organizing are three ways—among the many possible—of intellectively progressing in depth toward the beyond. And this progression is by its own formal nature grounded {70} upon a previous intellection, a sentient intellection.

With this we have examined with some care what reason is as a mode of intellection, i.e., what is my reason. But this is not enough to conceptualize what reason is, because the fact that the reason is mine is just an aspect of reason. In an essential way, reason has another aspect: reason is reason or explanation of things. What is this reason or explanation of things? That is what we must now examine.

 

2

Reason as Reason or Explanation of Things

On this point I will be much briefer, because the subject really belongs to the intellection of reality, to metaphysics; and here we are only dealing with intelligence. It is only with respect to intelligence that one can speak formally of reason, because reason is always a mode of intellection. But if this is true, what sense is there in speaking of the reason or explanation of things? We must address two questions: A) Reason as something about things, and B) the meaning of this reason or explanation.

A) Reason or explanation is about things. Let us return to the point of departure for this investigation. Intellection of the outside-the-field real is an intellection in progression toward reality itself as such, because reality as reality is formally open. This progression is an intellective activity. Qua activity, the progression constitutes thinking. Qua intellective, this activity is reason. Thinking is the activity of the intelligence, i.e., the activity determined by the actuality of reality qua open. It is, then, an activated activity; it is, in fact, {71} real things which give us pause to think. Reason is the intellective aspect of this thinking activity. That is, reason intellectively knows in things that by which they give us pause to think. In this intellection, real things do not just give us pause to think; they give something more: they give reason or explanation. It is of minor importance that sometimes, perhaps most of the time, they deprive us of reason or explanation. But we encompass both directions of giving and depriving in that which a potiori we call "giving a reason or explanation". In intellective progression, real things begin by giving us pause to think, and end up by giving a reason or explanation. These are two different senses of "to give". But their unity is the "giving" as such. And it is in this giving that the reason or explanation of things consists. To be sure, reason is only a mode of intellection. But as this mode is determined by real things themselves, it follows that qua determined by things, reason or explanation is about them. Reason, then, is given by them both in its initial moment as well as in its terminal moment. In virtue of this, a given reason or explanation qua given pertains to them; it is the reason or explanation of things themselves. The "of" does not mean that my reason is about things only in the sense that by being a mode of intellection it falls back upon them. This characteristic applies to all intellection and not just to reason. Nor are we dealing with an "of" which is genitive in the sense of propriety or pertinence, whose subject would be intellection itself. We are dealing with the fact that reason pertains to things themselves. The "of" is a genitive of propriety or pertinence but whose subject is real things themselves. It is they which "give"; and since what they give is "reason" or explanation, it pertains to things. Otherwise they would not give it. Reason or explanation is something given. This is essential; reason is not something which one "has", but something which is "given" to us. Reason is intellection measuring reality. Now, things give us the measure of their reality; it is just in this that {72} reason or explanation consists. And this "given" is at one and the same time my reason and the explanation of things. It is at one and the same time the open character of the reality of the real. In this openness, the real gives us pause to think and gives reason or explanation, because only the open can "give", and only in the open can one search and find. To be sure, the question here arises as to what this finding is. But we shall speak of that later. Reason or explanation, in summary, is something belonging to things.

B) But, in what form is reality something which gives? Reality is the de suyo of things. And this de suyo sets limits for the "giving". To give reasons or explanation is then a moment of the de suyo; reality as canonic principle of the in-depth inquiring intellection is a de suyo. But this is not sufficient for the question at hand. Reality, in fact, is something which de suyo "gives", and it gives because it is open. Now this openness of the real has different forms.

Above all, the real is open qua reality, and it is therefore constitutively and formally respective. But reality is also open to real things qua grounding them. And we have previously explained what grounding is. Here openness is not just openness but an openness qualified as the ground itself, grounding openness.

But there is a third form of openness. Reality can be open not only by being respective, and not only by being grounded, but also by being intellective actuality. The intellectively known real is, as real, something de suyo, open therefore to being in intellective actuality. This intellective actuality can be at times just the primordial actuality of the real as real; this is primordial apprehension. But it can happen that intellective openness has the character of a principle, i.e., is an actuality in thinking intellection. {73} Now, I repeat, the intellective openness of the real as a principle is just reasons or explanation. And this opennes is the basis for saying that reason or explantion is of things. Reality is not open to being reason or explanation by virtue of being naked reality, nor by merely being actualized in intellection; rather, it is open to being reason or explanation by being intellectively actualized in form as a principle, and therefore ultimately by being actualized in sentient intellection. It is important to elaborate on this point, not just repeating it in different words, by discussing it from the point of view of the explanation of things.

a) In the first place, there is the very idea of the reason or explanation of things. Philosophy has distinguished reason or explanation as explanation of being from reason considered as the reason associated with knowing. But this distinction does not touch upon what, as I see it, comprises the fundamental aspect of reason. Reason is always reason or explanation of real things. Therefore in order to be able to speak of reason associated with knowing, it is necessary that a real thing be already present in its own character of reality. Now, that which is present is not naked reality but actualized reality. Between ratio essendi and ratio cognoscendi there is, as I see it, the ratio actualitatis. And it is from this that reason is formally extracted, i.e., reason is extracted from actuality. Naked reality is but a "what"; it is that in which the real consists. This "what" can be actualized in different ways. When it is actualized in thinking intellection, the "what"—that in which a thing consists—has actuality in a problematic mode; it is a "what" which problematically retains its full actuality, its full "what", that full "what" toward which the real thing itself qua real has directed us. This full "what" is, then, its what "for", its "because".[4] Reality actualized in the field manner, as reality, directs us as reality to {74} that which must be its full actuality, to its "what-for" or "why", as direction. The "toward" itself is reality in the form of "for". The "for" is the very openness of the "toward". Reason is always intellection of a "what", and therefore is intellection of a "what-for" or "why". Later I shall explain the structure of this which we call "what-for". It is not so easy to conceptualize.

The "what-for" or "why" is not a question which I formulate more or less arbitrarily about the actualized real; rather the question at hand is inexorably determined by the mode in accordance with which a real thing is actualized. This mode of actuality of the real is reason or explanation. As a questin, the "what-for" or "why" is the intellection of a mode of actuality of the real; it is the concrete positive aspect of the problematic. To be problematic is to be a "what" in the "what-for" or "why".

b) But this is not all, because that problematic actuality is eo ipso intellectively known by searching. And this means that the actuality in "what-for" or "why" is actuality which, by being a search, turns out to be ordered to being found. The actuality of the real in "what-for" or "why" is always and only something found.

The "what-for" or "why" is not just something toward which I am thrust in my inquiring; rather, as a mode of actuality in the "toward", it is something formally encountered in a search. This moment of the "being encountered" is a moment of actuality having positive character. This positive moment of the "what-for" qua encountered is what, precisely and formally, constitutes the "giving". That things give us reason or explanation means that their actuality is actuality found in them themselves, because we are not dealing with the case of finding by chance, by stumbling upon it, but with the formal character of something sought, i.e. of something found in a search. This positive character is therefore {75} formally constituent of the reason or explanation of things; it is just their "giving". We shall see shortly with greater precision in what this giving and this finding consists. But we can already say that they are moments of actuality.

c) But since it is actuality in that mode of "what-for", there arises the question of what is the character of the "what-for" qua encountered.

Above all, the actuality in question is not an actuality of the real in the world, i.e., the actuality to which we now refer is not being. The "what-for" is not a "why is it" something or other. To be sure, it is impossible to refrain from expressing ourselves in the language which has already been created and therefore it is impossible to refrain from saying that the "what-for" or "why" is always just a "why something is". But this is an ambiguous mode of expression. It could mean that the real "is thus in its reality". And this is something which is extremely precise. But it might also mean that the real "is" thus in reality. And this is false as an idea of reason. Reason qua reason or explanation is not reason or explanation of being. Reason or explanation is always so of reality. Reason deals with reality and not being. Reason as principle of things is not "reason or explanation of being" but on the contrary "reason or explanation of this being". Being is something which requires a principle and this principle is reality; reality is the reason or explanation of being. Reason is not the unfolding of being, as Hegel conjectured, but intellection of reality as a principle actualized in a thinking manner as reality.

The actuality in "what-for" or "why" is not, then, actuality as being in the world, but intellective actuality of reality. It is not just actuality of the real—that is proper to all intellection. We are, rather, dealing with an actuality in its mode of "what-for" or "why". And insofar as something is actualized as real in "what-for", we say that its reality is a ground. The actuality of the real in "what-for" is the grounding. {76} Reason or explanation is of things because it is their grounding actuality. Qua searched for, actuality is found in "what-for" or "why", and as such, this actuality is the ground.

Reason is, then, reason or explanation of a thing qua actuality in the "what-for", found as a ground.

We have thus seen what reason is as a mode of my intellection and as explanation of things. But both aspects of reason have an essential unity. It is necessary to attend to this unitary aspect of reason.

3

The Unity of Reason

All reality known intellectively by thinking, i.e., all reality intellectively known in reason, is reality whose actuality is grounded on and by reality itself as principle and canon. The essence of reason is to be thinking actuality of the real. It is by being thinking actuality that reason is "mine". By being thinking actuality it is essentially, like all actuality, actuality of the real, i.e., "of things". The unity of reason as mine and as explanation of things is, then, in the fact that reason is thinking actuality of the real. Let us clarify the nature of this unity.

In Leibniz this unity is a unity which we might say is one of indiscrimination. For Leibniz, reason is always reason or explanation of being. And this explanation of being is indiscriminately explanation of what a thing is and that it is intellectively known. This unity is what the celebrated principle of sufficient reason expresses: everything which is has a reason why it is rather (potius quam) than is not. It is ultimately more than {77} indiscrimination; it is an identity. Whence every logical reason or explanation always has some metaphysical ramifications. Now, this is quite impossible. Ultimately, the principle of sufficient reason is insufficient. First, because it concerns a reason or explanation of being; but reason is not reason or explanation "of" being, but reason or explanation of "this" being. And Leibniz did not see the explanation of this being: reality itself. Secondly, it is inadequate because the presumed identity between reason or explanation of being and reason or explanation of things is quite capable of being rejected, not just as a theory but by the mere analysis of the facts of intellection. It virtue of this, logical explanation is not, purely and simply, real and metaphysical explanation. The reason of intellection is one thing, and the reason or explanation of real things quite another.

It was necessary to establish, then, some "discrimination" where Leibniz has not discriminated. And etymologically, ‘discrimination’ means "critique". Hence the necessity for a critique of reason alone. That of course was Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. The reason to which Kant refers is reason as Leibniz’ indiscriminate reason. Therefore the title of Kant’s book Kritik der reinen Vernunft should be translated not as Critique of Pure Reason but Critique of Reason Only. It is the critique of the purely logical ground of metaphysics, the critique of Leibniz’ logico-real unity. Kant’s critique as discrimination is perfectly justified; intellective reason is not the same as reason or explanation of reality. But does this mean that we are dealing with two reasons, split apart and separated as reason? That was Kant’s thesis. In contrast to the unity of reason, Kant set forth the simple duality of two reasons, incommunicado as reasons. But this, in turn, is impossible, because it is to pose the problem of reason along the lines of naked reality. Now, that is wrong. The reality upon which reason touches is not naked reality but actualized reality. And if it is indeed true that {78} reason as a mode of intellection is not the reason of naked reality (on this point, as I said, Kant is justified), still, when dealing with actualized reality, the question changes its aspect. Actualized reality does not cease to be real because it is actualized, even though its ambit of reality is immensely smaller than the ambit of naked reality, i.e., than the world. And as it is actualized in my intellection, it follows that the two reasons are not identical, as Leibniz claimed; but neither are they radically separated, as Kant claimed. The unity of reason is unity as intellective actuality of the real. And it is this which is the subject of the celebrated principle of sufficient reason. As I see it one should express the principle as: every reality, intellectively known in reason, is a reality whose actuality is grounded in and by reality itself. Actuality is, ultimately, actuality in sentient intellection, and reason is what the actualization of the real in sentient intellection gives us in the form of "by". It is sentient reason. Conversely, as this unity is a unity which is only radical, the two reasons, though not split, still follow separate paths. The real can be intellectively known as real, but this intellection will never be a mere logical unfolding of an intellection. We shall see this in the next chapter.

In summary, reason is the actuality of the real in a thinking search. As what is actualized is formally real, it follows that the real thus actualized is formally in actuality of reason. In this sense one ought to say that everything real is rational. But it is necessary to understand this statement correctly.

In the first place, we are dealing with the fact that the actualized real is inexorably found in the ambit of reason. ‘Rational’ {79} means, first of all, to be in the ambit of reason. In this sense everything real actualized in intelligence is finally but ultimately incorporated into the ambit of reason. What happens is that not everything real "has" a reason or explanation: it could be based upon itself without being actualized.

In the second place, ‘rational’ does not mean that the actualized real has the internal structure of something conceptual. ‘Rational’ is not synonymous with ‘conceptual’; that was Hegel’s mistake. For Hegel, everything real is rational, and for him ‘rational’ means that everything has the structure of speculative reason, i.e., the structure of a concept. But that is chimerical, because ‘rational’ does not mean ‘conceptual’ but rather to be intellectively known in thinking actuality. And this intellection is not necessarily the logical intellection of the concept. Reason can actualize the real in a thinking manner in forms which are not conceptive. Moreover, it can actualize the real as being superior to every rational intellection.

In the third place, the rational is not just what is actualized in thinking intellection, but is rational because what is thus actualized enters by itself into the ambit of reason. Here ‘by itself’ means that we are not dealing only with an arbitrary operation of human intellection, but rather that the real is actualized as real in the form of "what-for" or "why", i.e., it is already, by itself, actualized in the ambit of reason. We are not dealing with the question of whether reality in it is own internal structure, i.e., as naked reality, can be intellectively known by reason. And this is because we are not dealing with the nakedly real but with the actualized real. Moreover, within the realm of the actualized real itself, its content can be completely opaque to rational intellection. It is one thing for the real to be actualized in a "what-for" or "why", another for its content to be able to assume different forms in what is actualized. And it does assume them. One is the {80} form of transparency; the real in reason can be transparent to reason. But it can also happen that the real is not transparent but opaque. Opacity and transparency are two modes in accordance with which the actualized is intellectively known as a "for-what" or "why". Now, ‘rational’ here means only that the actualized real is by itself, i.e., by its very mode of actualization, the terminus of rational intellection. It does not mean that by being the terminus of rational intellection, that which is intellectively known necessarily has a character which is transparent to reason. Reason can intellectively know the real as opaque. In this sense the real, though rational in the sense of being by itself ensconced in the ambit of reason, can still have in its own structure moments which are not transparently knowable intellectively by reason. That is, the real can be, by itself, opaque. This is what, in common parlance, is termed irrational. The irrational is a characteristic of the real as intellectively known by reason itself. The irrational is not what "is not rational" but in a positive sense, what "is non-rational". Irrationality is a positive characteristic of what is intellectively known in reason. In this sense, the irrational is eo ipso rational. The real, in itself, as naked reality, is neither rational nor irrational; it is purely and simply real. It is only one or the other when it falls into the ambit of reason, i.e., when it is reality actualized in thinking. Now, as the real qua actualized falls in the ambit of reason for itself, it follows that the real is real in a "what-for" or "why". And only then can the answer to this question, the "for" or "because", be irrational. Irrationality is reason giving the actualized real in reason; or rather, it is one of the modes which things have of giving reason or explanation of themselves. It is a type of reason or explanation given by things. The real is immersed by itself in reason, both by being about things {81} as well as by being one of my modes of intellection. And in this sense, and only in this one, everything real is rational.

I proposed to do a study of reason. And I have centered my reflections upon three questions: What is reason? What is the scope of reason? And in what, concretely, does the unity of reason and reality consist? We have already seen what reason is (both as a mode of my intellection and as a mode of reason or explanation of things, and in their essential unity, i.e., as actuality of the real in thinking intellection). Reason is, in all its dimensions, a mode of intellection. But not every intellection is, of itself, reason. Therefore it is necessary to inquire about the origin of this mode of intellection. That is what I have termed the ‘rise of reason’.

 

II

THE RISE OF REASON

As was inevitable, when examining what reason is we spoke at length about the rise of reason, covering the essential points. But it is fitting to recall in a systematic way all the things said on this topic, while at the same time covering certain points in more detail.

Reason does not rest upon itself, but has an origin. Here I understand by ‘origin’ or ‘rise’ that structural moment of reason by which it is, qua reason, something originated. We are not dealing with the genetic origin of reason, either in an individual or the species; rather, we are concerned only with the radically structural origin of it. Where does reason have its structural origin and what is its mode of origination? This is the question. In order to deal with it, let us proceed, as in so many other questions, step-by-step. {82}

1) Above all, reason is an activity, but an activity which does not arise out of itself. Modern philosophy has always conceptualized reason as an activity which arises out of itself, i.e., spontaneously. But this is impossible. Reason, in fact, is the intellective moment of thinking activity. Now, thinking is not a spontaneous activity. Thinking is certainly activity, but activity activated by real things. It is they which give us pause to think. Therefore reason, by virtue of being an intellective moment of an activated activity, is reason grounded upon something given. And by this I am not referring to the fact that reason intellectively knows what is given as an object about which to think; i.e., I am not dealing with the fact that reason is an intellection which has an object that it did not "put" there. Rather, I am referring to the fact that reason, as a mode of intellection, is a mode determined by things and therefore is a mode of intellection imposed by them. Things not only give us that about which we think, but also the very rational mode of intellectively knowing them; the impose it, because upon giving us pause to think, they eo ipso determine this mode of intellective knowing which is reason. Reason, then, is not a spontaneous activity but an intellective mode given by things. It has its rise, its origination, above all in real things inasmuch as their reality is what gives us to think, and what determines intellection in the form of reason. But that is not all. The origination has a root which is still deeper.

2) What is it that gives us to think? Real things, in their reality, give us pause to think. To do this, these real things have to be already present to us as real. Now, the mere intellective actuality of the real as real is intellection. Things give us to think because previously they were already intellectively known as real. Therefore reason {83} as a mode of intellection of what things give us pause to think is a mode of previous intellection of the real. In virtue of this, reason formally arises precisely from this previous intellection. Reason has its origin in things, but in things previously intellectively known as real. This is a deeper moment of the origin of reason. On account of it reason is not, as we shall see, a mode of intellection superior to naked intellection; rather, reason is reason by virtue of being grounded upon intellection and being a mode of it. Reason, by being intellection of what things give us pause to think in mere intellection, is an intellective progression determined by the inadequacy of this mere intellection. Only insofar as mere intellection does not intellectively know things adequately, only in this respect do things give us pause to think. And this thinking intellectively knows the reason of this "giving". Reason is always subordinate to primary intellection. But its origination has a yet deeper root.

3) What is it in the naked intellectual apprehension of real things which gives us to think? To think is to intellectively know reality beyond the field, in depth. Therefore it is because real things are intellectively known in the field manner as real that they give us to think. Reason, by being a mode of intellection in depth, is formally reason of the field, i.e., reason determined in the field sense to be reason. The origin of reason does not lie only in the fact that the real previously known intellectively gives us pause to think; it has an origin which in a certain respect is still deeper: the field-nature of the previous intellection of the real. The field is a physical moment of the real, the sensed moment of the world, of the respectivity of the real qua real. Therefore the field is eo ipso a physical moment of the {84} intellectively known real in its primordial apprehension, in its naked intellection. The field is not just a concept but is, I repeat, a physical moment of the real; and it is so precisely because respectivity within the world is a moment of reality itself as reality. That physical sense does not consist in being a "thing"—the field is not a thing which is intellectively known—but that in which and through which one intellectively knows one thing among others. Finally, this physical moment is not a "relation" but "respectivity", formally constitutive of the real qua real. In this "fieldness", the real is apprehended in a "toward", within the field and beyond the field. And this intellection of the real in the field manner "toward" what is beyond is what constitutes reason as intellection in search of something. Reason is reason that is originally field reason. Reason has its origin not just by being something given by real things and not just by being a mode of some previous intellection; rather, it has an origin because it consists in being field intellection in search of something. But its origin has a yet deeper root.

4) The field, in effect, is the sensed world as world, the sensed respectivity in the "toward". Now, to sense something as real is just sentient intellection. Sentient intellection is the intellection of which field reason is a mode. Sentient does not mean (as we have already seen) that its own object, primary and adequate, is sensible. If it were no more than that, the unity of intellection and sensing would be merely objective, and in such a case intellection would be "sensible". We are concerned with something much more significant, that intellection properly so-called is "sentient". We are not concerned then with sensible intellection, but with sentient intellection. So, the intellection of the real within a field in {85} the "toward" as depth is reason; and as this intellection is sentient, it follows that reason is formally sentient reason. Reason senses reality in the "toward", reality itself giving us pause to think. Its progression is a progression within a "toward" sensed, a sentient progression in the nature of the field real. Only because intellection is sentient, only because of that is it necessary to know intellectively, in the field manner, in reason; that is, reason is sentient. Reason has its origin not only by being something given by things, not only by being a mode of previous understanding, not only by being reason or explanation of what is in the field, but it has its origin primarily and radically by being a mode of sentient intellection, that is by being sentient reason. But it is necessary to clarify more the character of this origin, asking ourselves in what the formally sentient moment of reason consists.

5) The question cannot be justified further, because to say that reason is "sentient" seems to mean that what reason intellectively knows is something like the qualities sensed in a sensible perception. And that would be absurd. We are not dealing with anything like it at all. Reason is a mode of sentient intellection; therefore it is to sentient intellection itself that we must direct our attention in order to understand the idea in question. In what, formally, does the fact that intellection is sentient consist? What is the formally intellective part of sensing? To be sure, it is not in the nature of the sensed quality, i.e., not in the content of sensing; but rather in the type of its formality of otherness, in the formality of reality. The formally intellective part of human sensing is not in its content but in being an impression of reality. Intellection is one with sensing precisely and formally in the moment of otherness, in the moment of formality of sensing. The formal unity of sentient intellection is found in that the formal part (not just of the {86} intellectively known but of intellective knowing itself) is identically and physically the formal moment or formality itself of sensing, of impression. Therefore intellective knowing is sentient intellective knowing, and human sensing is intellective sensing. This unity is the impression of reality, which by being of reality is intellective and by being impression is sensed. The content of sensing is sensed reality only by being the content of an impression of reality. Now, reason is the mode of sentient intellection. And sensing the return to the world is how every impression of reality is transcendentally open. This openness, as we have already seen, is dynamic in two ways. First, in the form of dynamism toward other sensed things (the field), and second in the form of a search (the world). Every impression of reality is qua formality an open impression, not only in the dynamism of distance but also in the dynamism of searching. To see the color green as something de suyo is to be inchoatively seeing it toward other colors, and toward other realities. To apprehend something sentiently de suyo is a first step toward the world, a first primordial sketch of the search for the real in reality. As such, human sensing is already a primordial type of reason, and every form of reason is radically and primordially a mode of sensing reality. It is sentient reason.

Therefore reason as a search for the world in the field is not a question of concepts, nor even one of being, but a question of the impression of reality not qua impression of such-and-such a reality, but qua impression of mere reality, of pure and simple reality. Reason is a search for the world, an inquiring impression of reality. And now it is clear that the sentient part of reason does not refer to its own content, but to the impressive {87} character of that reality which reason intellectively knows in a particular way by progressing impressively in it; it is an impression of reality in progression. A transfinite number, an abstract concept, are not sensed qualities. But they are intellectively known as something real, and as such are constituted in the impression of reality as such. That reason is sentient means, then, that reason qua intellection is an intellective modulation of the very impression of reality. Intellection is mere actuality of the real in sentient intelligence; it is formally the impression of reality. And reason as a mode of intellective actuality is a mode of the impression of reality. Which mode?

In primordial apprehension or naked sentient intellection, sentient intelligence senses reality in itself and by itself in an impression as the formality of what is sensed. In the field intellection of the real which culminates in affirmation, the intelligence has the impression of reality of one thing among others, and the sensed formality then acquires the character of a field as the medium of intellection. But in reason, the intelligence has the impression of reality, of formality, as a measure of the real beyond the field in depth. Therefore strictly speaking reason not only moves "in" reality, but rationally "senses" the reality in which it moves, and senses rationally that it is moving therein. Reason does not search for reality but really searches for and dives into reality, precisely because it senses this reality and its own motion therein. The reality constitutive of reason is just reality in impression. Therefore reason is not primarily something merely logical, but rather it intellectively knows reality with that coercive force proper to the reality in which it is, i.e., with the force of sensing reality. In its inquiring, reason senses reality inquiringly. {88} In the primordial impression of reality, intelligence senses reality as naked formality; in affirmation, intelligence senses the impression of reality as a medium of intellection of the real; in reason, the intelligence senses the impression of reality as a measure or ground of the reality beyond the field. They are three modes or forms of the impression of reality.

Now, the impression of reality has a physical unity in accordance with which it is the impression of reality formally, medially, and by measuring. These are not three "uses" of the impression of reality, but three intrinsically necessary "modes" by virtue of being modes of a single sentient intellection—by virtue of being, that is, three "dimensions" of the actualization of the real in sentient intellection. These three modes are not constituted owing to the impression of reality, but "in" the impression of reality; they are that in which the very impression of reality unitarily consists. They are not derived from the impression of reality, but are the three dimensions constitutive of the primordial impression of reality. Conversely, these three dimensions of intellection (primodial apprehension, affirmation, reason) are distinguished only in being modes of sentient intellection. Of these three dimensions, the first, to wit, the impression of naked formality, can be given without the other two, but the converse is not true. And this is because the second, affirmation, is something essentially grounded upon the primordial impression of reality, and in turn reason essentially involves affirmative intellection. The unity of the impression of reality in these latter two dimensions is, ultimately, the "toward" of the naked impression o