Download this text in Microsoft Word 6 format /Copiar este texto como documento MS Word 6

{171}

CHAPTER VI

THE FORMAL STRUCTURE OF KNOWING

Knowledge is intellection in reason. Since the meaning of this formula has already been explained, we see immediately that knowledge not only is not identical to intellection, it is not identical to science either. Science is but one mode of knowledge among others. Therefore, when we ask about the formal structure of knowing, we ask for something much more radical than if we were to ask what science is. We are asking, what is the formal structure of rational intellection of reality "itself"?

How does one know? This is the question which we must now address, viz., the formal structure of knowing.

In the first place, what one wishes to know is something already intellectively known in the field manner. And what we wish to intellectively know is its in-depth reality. Therefore, based upon canonic principles, we situate, so to speak, the field real upon the base of in-depth reality. This "upon the base" is what I shall call the ‘moment of objectuality’. What an object is is not in-depth reality but a field thing. A thing is converted from field reality into an object. In-depth reality is not an object but a ground. But this is {172} inadequate, because in the second place, based upon canonic principles, suggested by the field, we must fix the mode of possible access to the in-depth part of the field real. In depth reality is a ground, but not in a vacuum; rather, it is a very concrete ground in each case. Therefore it is essential to fix the mode in which we may have access to this ground, which is going to the be the ground of the determinate field thing. This manner is just the way of access, i.e., the method. But this too is inadequate, because in the third place, it is necessary that, having advanced by this path, we try to find the ground for which we are searching. This is the moment of rational truth. Objectuality, method, and true encounter: these are the three moments whose unity constitutes the formal structure of knowing.

This structure is not identical to a scientific structure, because it is not necessary that the unity of the three moments of knowing have "scientific" character. Objectuality is not necessarily identical to what a scientist understands by object, viz. a fact. A scientific fact is not the same as objectuality; rather, being a scientific fact is but a mode of objectuality. In the second place, the method is a way of access. It is not something identical to the scientific method. The scientific method is "a" way of access to in-depth reality, but not every way of access is a scientific method. Finally, a true encounter is not the same thing as scientific confirmation, for at least two reasons. First, it is not because it is necessary to understand this presumed scientific confirmation with respect to the true encounter, and not the other way around. And in the second place, it is not because there is no implication that we will in fact actually reach this true encounter; it may perhaps not always be possible. Science is not, as Kant thought, a Faktum, but an {173} effort, not just with respect to its content, but above all with respect to the very possibilities of its existence—something completely different from the conditions of possibility of a science already achieved, such as the science about which Kant spoke. Science in accordance with the three constitutive moments of rational intellection is essentially a problematic knowledge, viz. a knowledge which seeks to take on the form of experimental facts, of a precise method of experimentation, or of the grounding of verifiable truths. This tripartite intention is characteristic of science. And it is on account of this that science is, qua knowledge, a problematic knowledge. And this problem of science is inscribed in the formal structure of knowing as such. This structure has then three moments: objectuality, method, and true encounter. But as stated, they do not go beyond being vague expressions. In what, precisely, do they consist?

{174}

§1

OBJECTUALITY

As I have already indicated, the intellection of a real field thing in its in-depth reality situates that thing upon this in-depth reality as its base.

This in-depth reality is not what is by itself known in the intellection. We are sent "towards" it, and installed in it by field reality itself as reality; in-depth reality, as such, is not what is known. What is known is the real field thing. In order to avoid monotonous repetition of the adjective ‘field’, I shall speak of a real thing or simply of a thing. The in-depth reality is not something intellectively known as if it were some great thing; rather, the mode of this in-depth reality being actualized is, as we have seen, "to be grounding"; it is ground-reality. Therefore in-depth reality is the real ambit of grounding. Now, the first thing that we do in order to know a real thing already given to us is to situate it upon that ambit as base. That which is "in-depth" is, in this case, a "base". And before this base, the real thing, which was among others in a field, leaps out at us as grounded in its in-depth reality. The thing therefore suffers a type of transformation, from being in the field to being upon the base, to being grounded. In this new condition, the real thing qua jumping out at us is what we call ‘object’. The real thing has been transformed into a real object. This is the first moment of rational intellection, viz. objectuality. It is necessary to {175} conceptualize with great care what this objectuality is and in what the transformation of the real thing into real object consists.

 

I

WHAT IS OBJECTUALITY?

To be sure, objectuality is not objectivity. Objectivity is something which concerns an affirmation. But objectuality concerns not an affirmation but the very mode of actualization of a thing. Objectuality is "a" mode of actualization of a thing. An object is not, then, objectivity. But neither is it a mere actualized real thing. Object is not identical to real thing. Not every real thing intellectively known as real is by that alone the object of a possible knowledge. A real thing is an object only when it is actualized "upon the base" of grounded reality. A thing intellectively known in accordance with grounded reality is in reality in the field, and is certainly a real thing, but it is not formally an object. It becomes so only when it is actualized upon the base of grounded reality. Being an object is neither objectivity nor a real thing, but rather has its own structure. And then we may ask ourselves in what this actualization consists, and in what being an object formally consists.

The expression ‘object’ has, like almost all important expressions, different meanings which it is necessary to carefully distinguish.

In the first place, being an object does not consist in being something which we are going to intellectively know. That an object is synonymous with what we are going to intellectively know echoes the classical idea of the {176} formal and material object. And this is wrong. This classical conceptualization nourishes itself ultimately upon the identity of the real thing and of an object, adding perhaps that the real thing is going to be the terminus of an intellection. And this is not the case, because being an object is not, formally, just being the terminus of an intellection. One must add, at the least, in what mode the thing is the terminus of intellection.

Then one might be able to think, in the second place, that an object is that which we propose to ourselves to intellectively know. An object would then be "proposed" reality; it would be "pro-positum". This has a very wide meaning which would take us outside of intellection. Restricting ourselves to intellective pro-posing, object would be what is proposed as something to be intellectively known. It would be the real thing actualized in the form of pro, whose etymological sense is "in front of". As a mode of actualization, object would consist in being present, in being a positum. But put in front of me, i.e. in the form of pro, the real thing would be before me, i.e., a pro-positum. But this is not the case. Above all, because this concept does not conform to the object of rational intellection. There are also, as we have seen, propositional judgements, and in addition predicative judgements, in which a thing is proposed for subsequent determination. Thus, when we affirm that A is B, the A is proposed to be affirmed as B. But it is not for that reason that it is formally an "object". To be sure, every rational intellection involves, or at least can involve, affirmations. But then it is clear that to intellectively know A in its in-depth reality is not the same as to intellectively know A as subject of predication of a field note B. The A on the other hand is actualized in rational intellection not as a pro, but in a different way. Every object is pro-positum, but not every pro-positum is an object. Therefore it is necessary to go one step further. {177}

In rational intellection a thing is not actualized among others in the field, but rather is actualized over the base of in-depth reality. There are, then, two moments: being placed-before and being over a base (the base of the world). In these conditions a real thing is certainly placed, is a positum, but is not so in the form of pro.

When a real thing is projected over the base of in-depth reality, is as if jutting out from this base. Thus the thing acquires something like its own bulk, which we have to intellectively know not as something complete in itself, but as something whose bulk we must keep in order to intellectively know it in-depth. When it so juts out, the thing presents itself as a positum, but as a positum whose outline, so to speak, must be overcome in order to go to its base. This actualization is not actualization in pro, but actualization in ob. The thing is no longer something pro-posed, but something op-posed; it is an ob-positum. And this is to be an object, viz., to be actualized as ob. To be able to be proposed, the object starts by being op-posed. Here ‘opposed’ does not refer to some obstacle; ‘object’ is not ‘objection’. The opposed is not like a mountain which separates and divides; rather, it is like the depth of a port which must be maintained in order to be able to go in the other direction to the beyond. The ob consists in a jutting such that by its own nature, it is sending us to something beyond, to in-depth reality. It is an ob formally sending us "toward". Ob is not a simple being in front of, a being in front as raised, a being opposed between its actualization in a previous intellection and the actuality of grounding, but rather a being raised by sending us formally to this actualization The ground, which is in-depth reality, must keep the presumed {178} sufficiency of the bulk of the thing. In-depth reality is grounding in the form of keeping something which is opposed and is sending; it is actualization in ob.

But this does not yet suffice, because even if the ob is correctly understood, one can still misunderstand what it is to be an object. An object can, in fact, have two meanings. One is that which proceeds from the ob itself; this we have already explained. Another meaning is that which proceeds from the second part of the expression [-ject]. An object would be that which is actualized as ob, but as something which is (under) lying; it would be a jectum. Here the accent is not on the ob but on the jectum. The object would be something which "is here"; it is a keimenon, something lying, as Parmenides said; a hypo-keimenon, a sub- or under-lying, as Aristotle said. The ob-jectum would be the correlate of a sub-jectum. The difference would be between the ob and the sub, but the reality itself would in both cases be a jectum, something lying. This conception of object has run throughout the history of philosophy since Parmenides. It has, for example, its supreme expression in Kant, who conceptualized the object only in terms of natural science. Now, this is impossible. To be sure, there are—or at least it is not excluded that there can be—objects lying about. But there are many realities which are actualized in the form of ob and which are not "lying", which are not a jectum. For example, persons as such, life, society, and history are not something jectum. Their mode of reality is different than being "lying" reality. They have or can have intellective actuality in ob, but they are not jectum. In this sense, then, object would be what we today call ‘thing’. But the actuality in ob is not necessarily actuality of a jectum. Therefore, while the word ‘object’ may be linguistically inevitable, it is fitting that a new word be employed {179} to preclude confusion of the two meanings of ‘object’. This word must express the actuality in ob, but not as a jectum. For this it will be necessary to express simple reality, simple real being, without jectum though possibly using the verb ‘to be’. In Latin the verb esse has as participle sens, which does not survive except in compounds such as prae-sens, the present, ab-sens, the absent, etc. Now, it remains to create a word along similar lines, something like ob-sens, the obsent. Neither in Latin, the Romance languages, nor in English does such a word exist. German has the word Gegenstand, which means the same as our word ‘object’. Gegen expresses the ob, and stand expresses the sens, object along the lines of opposition. This would be perfect if German did not understand stehen as a mere being here, i.e., as a jectum. Thus the Kantian tradition has identified Gegenstand with ob-jectum. It would have been better to say Gegenseiend, because reality can be ob and not be a jectum. Object would thus be not the ob-jectum but the ob-sent. And to lie would be only one mode among others of esse. This is not the time to emphasize the difference between being and reality; however very soon we shall see the importance of this distinction. Here we are only trying to pin down the notion of object a bit more. For this I have gone to the expression ob-sent, not in order to continue using it but only to clarify the ideas we have been discussing. I shall continue, then, using the word object but only in the sense of obsent.

In summary, being an object formally involves the real thing (whether "lying" or not) being actualized in the form of ob. This ob has two essential characteristics which it is necessary to carefully point out.

A) In the first place, ob is a categorial characteristic. What does this mean? ‘Category’ does not designate a "class" of things. We are dealing not with a class of things but with "modes" (or forms, {180} which here comes to the same thing) of an intellectively known thing. In every intellection one declares the mode in accordance with which the thing is present. To declare in Greek is expressed by kategoreo, and the declaration is called kategoria. Category is, then, as I see it, the mode of a thing’s being present qua declared in intellection.

Now, to be an object, i.e., objectuality, is above all a category of actualization; it is the mode by which reality is actualized as "ob", regardless of its real content. It is the essentially categorial characteristic of the ob. This we have already seen in Part I.

But to be present as "ob" has still a second essential characteristic.

B) In the second place, "ob" has a characteristic of positivity. What does this mean? In intellection the real is present as real regardless of its form of actualization. I can describe this being present as the formal constitutive moment of the intelligible real; it is the actualization of the real. But I can describe the being present as a moment proper to intellection itself. And then I shall say that what is present is actualized in a form such that, by virtue of being mere actualization, its relationship to the intellective act itself is to be "merely" actualized. The real in intellection is actualized and is nothing more than actualized. What is present determines its intellective actualization based on itself, and it is based on itself as it is actualized, and only actualized, in its mere presenting itself. Now, to be "only actualized" in its being present is what comprises being a positum. It is the characteristic of positivity. Positum is what is present insofar as its actualization is, with respect to the presented itself, only a being actualized in its presenting itself. That is, being a positum has three moments: being here-and-now present, being only here-and-now present, and being only here-and-now present in and {181} through its presenting itself. Through the first moment, the positum is something apprehended. By the second moment, the positum is opposed, if I may be permitted the expression, to what may be its interpretation or intellectual elaboration, for example, to the theoretical, to the speculative, etc. Through its third moment, the positum is a simple observable thing in the intellection. We are not trying to go beyond what is present to a thing which is manifested in what is present, but to take what is present in and by itself in its mere presenting itself. It is necessary to take these three moments in their formal and intrinsic purity. In order to comprehend this, it will be useful to position this concept of positivity face to face with two other kindred ideas.

Above all, the fact that the actualized does nothing but be here-and-now present might cause one to think that this being here-and-now present is, qua being, just "being here". This is false. It would be once again to identify just being present with a jectum. The ‘being’ to which we refer does not concern the presented but the presentation. What is present can be what is most opposed to the "being here", what is most opposed to a jectum. The most radical course of a person’s life, or a reality which consisted only in happening, do not for that reason cease to be present, and only present, in an intellection. Positivity does not mean "staticness"—if I may be permitted the expression.

But it is not just that being present does not mean being a jectum—something which, when all is said and done, is easy to comprehend; rather, there is another more subtle dimension in the concept of positivity. One might think, in fact, that being present, being only present, and being so as presenting itself, is the same as saying that what is actualized thus is just what we call a fact. Positivity would be a characteristic identical to "facticity". But this is absolutely wrong.

To see that, let us ask what a fact is. {182} Certainly the fact is a positum. But the converse is not true; not every positum is a fact. And the proof is that, in order to certify that something is a fact, one usually calls it a "positive fact", which indicates that the positivity cannot be understood based upon the facticity, but rather that the facticity, i.e., being a fact, must be understood based upon the positivity. Insofar as it is a positum, the fact is something which is present, which only is present, and which is so in the presenting itself. Although the word affects only the third moment of the positum, for greater clarity we shall call the positum an observable. Therefore positum is a characteristic of the real actualized as observable. But not everything intellectively observable is necessarily a fact. In order to be so it must fulfill a necessary condition, viz., that the positum, besides being observable, must by virtue of its own nature be observable by anyone. And it must be so "by virtue of its own nature". This requires special attention. "Observable by anyone" does not mean that there are various people who have observed it. Even if there were only one person who had done so, this observable would be a fact if what is observed has the nature of being observable by anyone. Thus, it could be that an historical fact might have had but one witness. If an authentic document reaches us to the effect that this fact has occurred, and if what is thus witnessed is by its nature observable by anyone who could have understood it, then what is witnessed by this single observer is a fact, in casu, an historical fact. On the other hand, if what is observed is something which, by virtue of its nature, is not observable by more than one person, then what is observed is certainly something real, it is a positum, but this real thing, despite being real, is not properly speaking a fact. This is the case with some moments of my intimate personal life. It is not just that I observe them, but that {183} no one other than I can observe them. Thus these realities are not, properly speaking, facts. It was just this, as I see it, that was the true reason why Wundt’s nascent experimental psychology did not admit the purely introspective as a fact. I leave aside the fact that expression, on the part of the person, can be considered as a fact; that is a different question, which Wundt’s successors resolved affirmatively. Conversely, there can be positive realities which are perfectly observed by many persons, and yet these positive realities cannot be called ‘facts’ if, by virtue of their own nature, they are not observable by everyone. Thus, for example, we have the apparitions of Christ before the fifty, according to St. Paul’s testimony. Even though Christ may have been seen by the fifty, and even though their testimony be true, these apparitions thus observed would not therefore be a fact, because the presumed reality could not be observed by all other persons who happened to be there, but only by those select fifty. It would be positum, but not a fact. These apparition of Christ, in fact, by virtue of their nature, could not have been observed by just anyone, but only by those graced with them. ‘Fact’, then, is not synonymous with present reality; rather, the real positum, I affirm, is only a fact if by its own nature it can be observed by anyone. Every fact, then, must be positum, but not every positum is a fact.

To be sure, from the very first pages of this book I have repeatedly stated that I wish to attend to the facts, for example the fact that we sentiently apprehend the real. But this does not contradict what I just said, because what is a fact is sentient apprehension; what is apprehended in its real and positum character is not necessarily {184} a fact. The color green sensed is a fact; this does not mean that, without further ado, the color green is a fact. In order to be so it is necessary to add that what is apprehended can be apprehended by anyone. And in this case that is so. The green apprehended is real; it is a positum, but if one says no more it is not a fact; it is only a fact if one says that by its nature it can be apprehended by anyone.

Moreover, not every fact is necessarily what we call a scientific fact. This is a problem which unleashed a spirited discussion at the beginning of this century. A fact is only a type of "posited" reality; the scientific fact is, in turn, only a type of fact. In order for a fact to be a scientific fact, what is observable by anyone has to be, in a certain way, "fixed". A scientific fact, I believe, is a fixed fact. Fixation is always and only the characteristic of a fact not just by virtue of being observable by anyone, but as a fact observed in a special form, viz. as referred to a system of previous concepts. These concepts can be either from natural science, historical documents, etc. Without this fixation, we would have a mere fact, to which the name brute fact was given at the beginning of the century, as opposed to scientific fact, which as I see it is the conceptualized and fixed fact. If we take a bobbin, copper wire, an electrical cell, and an iron bar, we shall see that under certain conditions the bar oscillates and its oscillation can be measured on a suitable scale. In this case the scientific fact is the electrical impedance of the bobbin and wire. But that is not the brute fact. The brute fact would be, for example, the observation of the oscillations of the iron bar. Within an historical tradition it is quite possible that the traditum may perfectly well be a fact, yet there is no documentary fixation. It would not then {185} be a scientific fact. This is the sum total of the difference that there is between what we might call a living tradition and a tradition with documentary continuity. Strictly speaking, the scientific fact is the clarification of reality apprehended as a function of previous concepts. But we shall not now delve into this problem as it would distract us from the matter we have been discussing.

To summarize, positum is the actualization of something in its being present, in its being just present, and in being so in its being present itself. It is not a characteristic of apprehended reality either as jectum, or fact, or as scientific fact.

Now, the "ob" has a characteristic which is not just categorial but also of a positum. To be "ob", objectuality, is positivity. That something is an object, in the sense of objectuality, is not something which is determined by me, but is something determined by the real itself in its being present. I have indeed said that the "ob" is constituted when a real thing is projected upon the base of reality. But this projection does not have its roots in me, but in the very mode of reality’s being presented, i.e., in its "toward". It is not I who projects a real field thing upon the base of reality, but rather it is that reality itself which, when sentiently apprehended, has the moment of a "toward" the in-depth. The real is projected from itself into its own being presented; it is projected, I must stress, and it is not I who projects it. Therefore "ob" is a positum. Once again, the matter in question is not that objectuality is a fact, and still less a scientific fact, but that in its real character is the reality itself which sends us to the in-depth, regardless of the nature of its content.

But it is necessary to avoid another mistake. I have said, in fact, that rational intellection intellectively knows the real as {186} the object of a search, i.e., we are dealing with an inquiring intellection. And searching is not searching for a positum but a quaesitum. This is true; nonetheless, let us think a bit longer about it. What is searched for in rational intellection is the ground of a real field thing. For this reason it comes to that positive projection which we call "ob". But neither in-depth reality as such, i.e., the ambit of grounding, nor the real as real object are the sought-after goals. What is sought after is the ground of the real object in in-depth reality. The "ob" and the "for" are just positum. What is sought is the fundament of the "real-ob" in the "for".

Summarizing, the field real acquires the characteristic of a real object in rational intellection. Its objectuality consists in what I called being ob-sent. And this objectuality has two essential characteristics: categorial character, viz. the "ob" is a category of actualization; and positive character, viz. the "ob" is a positum for the real itself. The categories of actualization are something positum, and every positum is so above all categoriality. In the "ob" the unity of both characteristics is formally given.

But this is leading us to the second point, which is, in what precisely does the transformation of a real thing into a real object consist?

{187}

APPENDIX

THE PROBLEM OF CATEGORIES

‘Category’ does designate a "class" of things, as is usually assumed. The list of categories is not the supreme classification of things. We are not dealing with "classes" of things, but with "modes" of the intellectively known thing. Recalling what has been said already, let us repeat that in every intellection one states the mode in accordance with which a thing is actually present. In Greek, ‘to state’ in this sense is kategoreo, and therefore what is stated is called a category.

The problem of the categories goes back to Aristotle, who was in turn inspired by Plato. For Plato and Aristotle, to intellectively know is to declare or affirm that what is intellectively known "is". That is Parmenides’ old thesis. Intellection is logos of being, logos ousias. In the logos one states the modes in accordance with which what is intellectively known "is", i.e., one states the modes of being. How? The logos is a complexion or weaving (symploke) of the thing about which one is affirming (the on), and of what one is affirming or predicating of it. The characteristics of being, stated in this predicative weaving, are the categories. For Aristotle, then, the categories are the supreme modes of entity as such. (I need not stress that here I take the word ‘mode’ in its most general meaning and not as something different from a form of reality). Thus, strictly speaking, it would be false to say that "green" is a quality. Green is a note just like sonorous, heavy, warm, etc. But the manner in which green determines this paper consists in making of it a "which". Quality is not the green itself, but the way in which the green determines the being of this paper. {188} As this determination is declared in predication, i.e. in the predicate, it follows that the predication, this mode of being which we predicate as a quality of the modes of being, is stated in the predication itself. Now, the different types of statements of the modes of being in predicates are just the categories. A quality is not a note but a category. To be sure, they are but supreme genera of what can be predicated of being. They are not predicates, in the sense of notes, nor are they predicable, nor would they be what the medieval philosophers called predicamenta. And this was decisive: the categories, we are told, are grounded upon the structure of the logos; they constitute its formal (logical) structure and are the base of all our grammar (noun, adjective, preposition, etc.). This conception has run throughout European philosophy (Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, etc.).

If one studies it carefully, however, this concept starts from two presuppositions: that intellection is affirmation, is logos; and that what is intellectively known is being. That is what I termed "logification of intellection", and "entification of reality". To intellectively know is to affirm, and what is intellectively known is entity. The unitary convergence of these two presuppostions has in large measure determined, as I said, the character of European philosophy.

But these two presuppositions are, in my view, untenable.

A) It is thought that what is intellectively known is "being". But that is not the case; what is intellectively known is not being but "reality". We have already seen that before; being is an actuality of the real (in the world), an ulterior actuality (to reality itself), an ulterior but oblique actuality. Being is ulterior and oblique actuality of the real as reality. It is necessary to repeat these ideas at this time.

B) The logos, affirmation, is but a mode of intellection, {189} not to be sure the only or most radical one. Indeed, the predicative logos itself is not the only type of logos; first there is the positional logos and the propositional logos. Only then is there a predicative logos. Classical philosophy has logified intellection, so that the theory of intellection has been converted into Logic. But that leaves out the essence of the logos, which consists just in being a mode of intellection, i.e., a mode of actualization. One cannot "logify" intellection, but on the contrary must "intelligize" the logos. All of this has been previously explained.

Hence the categories are neither predicates, nor predicables, nor predicamenta of being, but the modes of a real thing as merely actualized in intellection qua modes stated about it. The categories are primarily and radically modes of a real thing stated about its mere actualization, in its mere intellection; they are not modes of real things qua affirmed in some logos. They are categories neither of entity nor predication; rather they are categories of reality which is merely actualized in intellection. This is a concept of category which differs from the classical one.

But the real actualized in intellection has two aspects. One is the aspect given to the actualized real qua real; the other is the aspect given to the actualized real qua actualized. Hence, what is stated in intellection is on one hand the modes of reality, and on the other the very modes of actualization. By the first aspect, the categories will be modes of reality actualized qua reality. By the second aspect, the categories would be modes of reality actualized qua actualized. In contrast to classical philosophy, it is necessary to introduce two systems of categories: {190} categories of reality and categories of actualization. These two systems of categories, naturally, are not independent but have an intrinsic and radical unity. Let us quickly examine the following three points: 1. Categories of reality; 2. Categories of actualization; 3. The intrinsic and radical unity of the categories.

1. Categories of Reality. Following the thread of the logos, Aristotle views the categories as manners of determination of the subject; ultimately this is therefore a vision which goes from outside to inside. The essence of what is not a subject would be in fact to inhere, or as Aristotle says, to be an accident. The same happens with Kant and even Hegel. The only difference lies in the fact that for Aristotle the logos does nothing but declare an already determined subject, whereas for Kant and Hegel (albeit in a different form, we prescind from the matter), what the logos does is to constitute the subject affirmatively. But always one deals with a vision from outside to inside. Now, the real is not a subject but a system. It is a construct system: each note, by virtue of being a "note of", involves the system as a whole of which it is a note, and therefore consists in the actuality of the system in said note. The essence of a note is not "to inhere" but to "cohere". In virtue of this, the system is a unity which is actually present in each note, making of it a "note of". This is the essential point.

Now, this unity of the system is an "in". The real is an intus. The notes are only that in which the system is projected from itself, from the intus. The intus thus also has a moment of "ex"; it is just the "from itself". Whence it follows that the real is not only intus but also an ektos, an extra. This is a vision from inside to out. And then what has traditionally been called ‘categories’ is not the way in which a subject is determined {191} by the notes predicated of it, but the formal respects by which the "in" is projected onto an "ex". And it is this formal respect which I call dimension. The categories are not the pronouncement of the characteristics of being in the logos, but the pronouncement of the real in intellection. I call them ‘dimensions’ because in each one is, in a certain way, the system in a proper formal respect, i.e., its reality qua reality is measured. These dimensions are not only numerically different (as happens, for instance, in geometry), but also qualitatively different. Moreover, they mutually imply each other. This is an essential observation. By being formal respects of actualization, these dimensions are inscribed, so to speak, in a formal, primary respect, the respect by which things are de suyo in apprehension. The dimensions are thus inscribed in that primary formality which is "reality".

But this actualization of the real takes place in intellection.

II. The categories of actualization. There reality has modes of actualization which are not identified with the characteristics of reality, i.e., with its dimensions. Therefore one ought to speak of categories of actualization or of intellection. The name matters little; the essential point is not to confuse these categories with those other categories which are the dimensions of reality. Now, qua intellective actualization the categories are neither predicates nor predicables nor predicamenta; they are simply modes of actualization of the real declaimed in intellection.

What are these categories of actualization? They are, as we have been seeing, five, because there are five modes {192} by which reality is actualized in intellection.

A) Intellection is, above all, nothing but the mere actualization of the real in the intelligence. It is the radical category of actualization, the category of the "in".

B) There is another mode of being present, of the real being actualized intellectively. It is not the case that the real ceases to be actualized "in", but that it is reactualized in affirmative intellection. Something already intellectively known as real is in addition intellectively known as real based on other things; this is affirmation. It is therefore a reduplicative actualization. The A already actualized as real becomes intellectively known as being really B. This is the category of the "re", of "re-duplication." This category is, in a certain way, general because there are different forms and modes of "re".

a) A real thing is intellectively known based upon others "among" which it is. The real thing is then actualized in the intellection of these other things. We have already seen this: the "among" has, among other aspects, an aspect proper to a thing actualized as such. It is a "re" but "among". This is the category of "among".

b) One intellectively knows in this "among" that the thing is actualized, but as a function of other things. In this functionality, the real thing is actualized in that mode which we call "by". "By" is the functionality of the real qua real. It is a "re" but "by". This is the category of the "by".

c) Finally there is another mode of actualizing what is intellectively known as "among" and as "by", and which consists in the thing being present "among" and "by", but now not with respect to other things, but as the projection of the real only as a moment of the world. This projection actualizes the real in the form of "ob". The "ob" is a category.

"In", "re", and in turn "re" as "among", as "by", {193} and as "ob", gives us the five categories, the five modes of intellective actualization of the real qua intellectively known.

Since these categories are modes of presentation, they apply both to the field as well as to the world, although in different forms. But the "among" in the field is not identical to the "among" in the world, nor is the "by" in the field identical to the "by"in the world. But that is another question.

Each one of these categories comprises different categorial modifications. Thus, actualization as "in" comprises all the modes by which what is sensed is present to us. We already saw, in Part I, that the essential difference of the senses is not in the qualities which are sensed, but in the very mode by which the sensed qualities are present to us as real. Similarly, the "re", as a mode of "among", comprises different forms: the modes of intentionality of the "re", etc. Finally "by" and "ob" can assume different forms. These five categories of actualization are not independent of the categories of reality; they constitute the categorial unity of the intellection of the real.

III. Unity of the categories of reality and of actualization. This unity has two aspects.

A) Above all, both the categories of reality as well as the categories of actualization constitute a "system", the system of the categories. This is obvious with respect to the categories of reality. The categories of reality constitute a system. But it is less obvious that the categories of actualization also constitute a system. Hence it must be clearly stressed. Every "re" actualization is essentially based upon an "in" actualization; otherwise it would not be re-actualization. Only as "in" can something be actualized among others. In turn, this unity of the "in" and of the "re" is what {194} points to reality as a "by". Finally, by just projecting the "in" and the "re" upon in-depth reality, the real is actualized as "ob". Here the systematic character of the categories of actualization is apparent.

B) But taken together, the categories of actualization and the categories of reality reveal an intrinsic and radical unity, the unity of actualization. We are not dealing with actuity, but with actualization. This unity, by virtue of being of actuality, is determined by reality because every actuality is always and only actuality of reality. The modes of actualization, then, are determined intellectively by the real itself. To be sure, intelligence has its own nature. But we have already seen that this nature is actualized in and by the actuality of a real thing, intellectively actualized. Therefore this actuality is certainly common to the real thing and to the intellection itself, but this commonality is modally determined by the real itself; in virtue of this, the actualization is not only a common actuality for the real and for intellection, but in addition this commonality has an intrinsic and formal character; it is a commonality in which the real itself grounds it. It consists in being a commonality determined by the real of which it is the actuality. Intellection is certainly an actuality; but qua intellection it is just actuality "of" the real. And therefore the actuality common to a real thing and its intellection is determined by the mode in which the "of" is present to the intelligence. And as the real qua real is transcendental, it follows that the common actuality of intellection and of what is intellectively known is a commonality of transcendental nature. Kant said that the very structure of the understanding confers transcendental content (transzendental Inhalt) to what is understood. {195} That is not true. Transcendentality is not a characteristic of the understanding but of intellection as determined by the real itself in common actuality by the real. This actuality is, then, not only common but transcendental. It is, if one wishes, common transcendental actuality. That is to say, the actuality is something common in which intellection is respectively open to the intellectively known real. And it is for this reason that intellection itself is transcendental. This commonality of actuality is not transcendental as a conceptual moment, but neither is it transcendental because it constitutes the real as object. It is transcendental, above all, because by being common, the intellection is open to reality in the same openness by which the real is open to its actuality in intellection. Therefore there is transcendental commonality. In virtue of this, transcendentality as respective openness of the reality of the real is determinant by virtue of the respective openness of intellection as such. And it is for this reason that intellection itself is transcendental. Intellection is transcendentally open to other intellections. The diverse intellections do not constitute an "edifice" by virtue of being lumped together, i.e., because to one intellection others are "added" which outline, organize, or amplify it; but on the contrary all of this takes place, and does so necessarily, by virtue of the transcendentally open nature of each intellection. Transcendentality as respective openness of intellection is the radical foundation of every "logic" of intellection.

The categories of reality and of actualization have, then, an intrinsic unity with respect to two characteristics: systematic unity, and unity of transcendental commonality.

IV. Special consideration of the category of the "ob". The "ob" has a formally categorial characteristic. To be object {196} is a categorial mode of actuality. Let us prolong our reflection on this idea of object which is essential for the problem of knowing.

Above all it is necessary to avoid the mistake of confusing object and objectuality. The categorial aspect of actualization is the being actualized "as object"; it is not the character by which what is present as object can constitute one or several objects. Object and objectuality are not the same.

Kant’s celebrated categories are modes of being of objects, the diverse moments which constitute that which we call "an object". Therefore they are, like Aristotle’s categories, categories of content, very different than the categories of actuality. Since Kant was, like Aristotle, oriented toward the predicative logos, he takes up the idea of categories as modes of unity of predicate with subject. Kant’s novelty is in affirming that this unity is not an affirmative unity consequent upon the object, but on the contrary the unity of predicate and subject is what makes the intelligible have its own unity in virtue of which it is an object. The object is constituted as this or that object by a function identical to that by which affirmation itself is constituted, which is then the ground of objectual unity. And it is in this that, for Kant, the categories consist: they are modes in which the diversity of intuition is unified as objects of intellection. The categories would thus be transcendental modes of representation. But this is untenable for a variety of reasons. In the first place, intellective knowing, and especially rational intellective knowing, is not representing. The radical function of reason is not to be representative but to be grounding. To be sure, this intellection will involve representations, or at least can involve them in most cases; but the formal function {197} of reason is not to represent but to present. The categories are not modes of representing but modes of presenting. And in the second place, it is clear that Kant’s idea of what is represented would figure in the different categories of the "re". And this is not sufficient to constitute the "ob".

Kant has posed for himself the problem of the constitution of objects, but he stumbled over the problem of objectuality as such, over the "being-ob". And the fact is that by ‘object’ Kant understands the content of objects. It doesn’t matter for this problem that such content is merely formal; one is always dealing with a content. Now, objectuality is not a content but a mode of actualization of a content. One is not dealing with "an object" but with "objectuality".

And on this point, Kant is in agreement with Aristotle; he takes the problem of the categories along the lines of the categories of the content of reality. They have a different meaning for categories of reality, but they agree upon some characteristics which for both of them constitute the system of categories of reality, viz. Being a prior, closed, and universal. For Aristotle and Kant—above all Kant—the categories of reality constitute the a priori warp and weft of what is categorized. This is not the place to discuss that important problem in detail. But from here on I want to let it be settled that the categories of content are not an a priori system, but the modes of what has usually been called the ‘transcendental function of suchness’, of the real considered as suchness. Hence they depend upon the real and are not a priori conditions of the real. In the second place, the categories of reality are not closed systems, because the transcendental function is in itself an essentially open function. The real can be constituting not just other real things, {198} i.e., not only a diversity of suchness, but can also go on constituting other modes of reality qua reality. For this reason the transcendental order is an order which is open dynamically. And finally, in the third place, the system of content categories is not universal. Aristotle determined his categories as modes of substance, but above all along the lines of sensible substance. Kant molded his categories upon the things which constitute the object of Newton’s physics. And this is manifestly unilateral, both in the case of Aristotle and that of Kant. One cannot extend the content categories of physical things, whether substances or sensible objects, to all other types of reality. Therefore the universality of the content categories is not achieved by changing the concept of reality, for example by saying that the reality of things, which are here, form the order of some cosmic movement. The fact is that in any case whatsoever, and regardless of how rich our chain of concepts is, the system of the con-

tent categories is not, as I see it, universal. Each type of knowledge has its own content categories. It is impossible to reduce the categories of the historical and the personal to the natural, etc.

 

II

TRANSFORMATION OF A FIELD THING INTO A REAL OBJECT

In view of the foregoing, this point will be dealt with briefly. The object, i.e. the objectual reality, is not an interpretation or anything of the sort; it is the terminus of apprehension. {199} A real thing is a positum, but upon the base of in-depth reality; therefore the real thing acquires a character of "ob". That transformation is, then, of categorial order, of categories of actualization. We are not trying to elaborate a representation but to actualize another mode of presentation. For this reason, I repeat, the transformation of a real thing into a real object is categorial. The real field thing, actualized now as real "in" primordial apprehension, and "re"-actualized in the field manner "among" others and "by" others in the form of affirmation, is now projected upon the base of in-depth reality, upon an ambit actualized in turn as "by", i.e., upon an ambit with the nature of a ground. The "field" of the real thing is open to a "world" in which it is grounded. Then and only then does the real field thing acquire the character of real object. The "ob" is but the actualization of a field thing as a world thing. Only in this actualization is there an "object", i.e., in the rational intellection, in knowledge. That which is intellectively known in primordial apprehension, and that which is intellectively known affirmatively, are not, formally, objects. Only what is intellectively known rationally is an object. This openness of field to world is an openness which leads not to what a field thing already intellectively known "toward" others of the field is, but rather to whatever that intellectively known field thing now is "toward" grounding reality itself.

In virtue of this, the transformation of a real thing into objectual reality has precise characteristics:

a) It is a transformation not in the mode of representing the real, but in its mode of being present. Objectuality is the terminus of a transformation only of categorial actuality. {200}

b) It is a transformation along the lines of the "toward"; the field "toward" is transformed into a "toward" the in-depth.

c) This transformation is determined by the real itself, because the "toward" is a mode of reality. The field real in its "toward" is what presents to us that real in its "toward" the in-depth.

What is the character of this transformation? The transformation concerns, at one and the same time, intellection and the real thing. With respect to intellection, the transformation does not consist in a change in the act of intellection qua act. It is a transformation which determines, in intellection, something which is less than an act but more than mere capacity. This modalization is just what constitutes actuity. An object is not the terminus of a representation but the terminus of anintellective attitude. The transformation consists, then, intellectively, in the change of act into attitude. The "ob" is intellectively constituted as a terminus of an attitude.

This transference also concerns the real. The "ob" refers. The "ob" is a mode of actuality, and therefore, like every actuality, it is always just actuality of the real. The categorial "ob" presents us not "an" object, but a res objecta, a res in "ob". In virtue of this, that which is actualized in this new attitude, i.e. what is going to be intellectively known rationally, is not the res objecta as objecta, but the res objecta as res. The "ob" only has the character of referring, and it refers to the reality of which it is actuality. In the intellective attitude the real itself is actualized in "ob"; but it is always an actualization of the real. The transformation, then, falls back upon the actualization in an attitude. Knowledge, I repeat, is not a representation of things, but an actualization of them in that new attitude of the "toward". {201}

In this attitude, the real is objectually projected onto the in-depth base, i.e., it is actualized as worldly reality. This projection, and therefore the knowledge itself, can be of quite varied nature. That I said before. Knowledge is not just science, nor is it principally science. There are other modes of knowledge, for example poetic knowledge, religious knowledge, etc., just as there are also other known realities which are not things, for example one’s own or someone else’s personal reality. Now, knowledge is not principally theoretic; it is not because it is not radically theoretic. The radical aspect of knowledge is in the attitude of the "toward" determined by the real itself, an attitude in which the real is actualized in an "ob". The rest is but modalizations of this radical structure.

Here then is what objectuality is, and what the attitude which determines the transformation of the real thing into real object is.

This objectuality is only a categorial correlate of an attitude, in which the real is actualized in an "ob" by projecting it—and only projecting it—upon the world as an ambit of grounding. This real was previously actualized as "in" and "re". Therefore its projection upon the ambit of grounding leaves open the intellection of the ground of that objectual reality as a moment of the world. That is to say, knowledge is always intrinsically and formally an open problem. It is not sufficient that the field real is actualized for us as object. It is actualized for us as object precisely in order for us to intellectively search for its in-

depth nature. For that it is necessary that this nature be accessible to intellection. How? That is the second point of the formal structure of knowing: after the constitution of objectuality, the access to the ground of the real.

{202}

§2

THE METHOD

It is by projecting the field real onto the base of in-depth reality, onto the world, that we seek the rational intellection of field things, i.e., their knowledge. Knowledge is search. Let me reiterate that we are not dealing with the search for some intellection, but rather with an intellection which qua intellection is inquiring, which is inquiring itself as a mode of intellection. Since to be an intellection is to be a mere actualization of the real, it follows that the search is an actualization brought to completion in that mode of actualizing which is inquiry. Even though I have said all this before, I repeat it here because it is something essential for the subject which we are about to examine.

Where does one search for that actualization? We have already seen where: in the world. World is the respectivity of the real qua real. And it is in this sense that it is something beyond the field. The field is respectivity, but it is just sensed respectivity, the sensed world. To go beyond the field is to go from "field" to "world". This world is not, formally, something sought, but something given. The world is given not as something which is there "facing" me; rather, it is given in that mode of reality which is the "toward". It is for this reason that the world is formally something "beyond" the field. In the world thus actualized is where one seeks that which we wish to rationally know intellectively, that which we wish to know.

What is it that one seeks in the world? One seeks the real considered with respect to the world. Worldly reality is {203} actualized precisely as a "to be grounding". The world is thus the ambit of grounding. And it is just on account of this that the world, that which is beyond the field, is in-depth reality. In-depthness does not consist in any kind of mysterious root, but in being the "for" of the field itself qua worldly. Therefore that which one seeks in this progression from the field toward the worldly is the ground of the field. Ground, as I have already said many times, is not necessarily a cause, but the mode in which that which is grounding grounds, from itself, the grounded and formally passes into what is grounded. Cause is only a mode of ground. The ground is therefore, ultimately, the world in a real thing. What one seeks is, then, this ground. One does not seek the world, but the ground of the real in the world, transforming the field reality into objectual reality. Neither does one seek an object. World and object are not what is problematic. What is problematic is always just objectual reality qua reality in the world. This problematic business is what one seeks, viz. the ground of this determinate field thing.

In virtue of this a question arises: How does one seek that which is sought, that is, the ground of the world? This "how" is strictly and formally an intellective mode. Now, the "how" of the search for the fundament in the world is what constitutes method. A method is how one forges a way, a way toward the ground. A method is therefore the way of knowing as such. The necessity and nature of the method is not just a type of human necessity. It is that, but this necessity is grounded upon an essential moment of reality, upon the constitutive openness of the real, merely in its respectivity. As ambit of respectivity, the world is open; {204} therefore, as a moment of respectivity of each real thing, reality is open in each thing. And the "how" of the search for the ground is set in this very openness; it is that which transforms the intellective movement into a progression among the real. Method is a way. Neither the world nor the real object is a problem, as I said; the problem is the way from the real object to its ground.

Thus it is necessary to ask ourselves: what, precisely, is a method? And what is its intrinsic and formal structure? These are the two points which we must examine.

Here we ask ourselves in what method consists. We are not interested in what a particular method is; that we shall see later. What we are now interested in is what comprises a method as a moment of rational intellection, i.e., what comprises the methodic moment of reason.

 

I

WHAT IS METHOD?

‘Method’ is not synonymous with what is usually called the ‘scientific method’. To be scientific is but a possible modalization of what it is to be a method. Method is something more radical; it is the way of access. The concept of "way" or "path", hodos, was probably introduced into philosophy by Parmenides. But for method, just being a way or a path is not sufficient. It is necessary that the path be "among and through" the forms of reality. The path must be a path which is meta [after]. Only then will we have that which constitutes the method. Method is a problem because it is not univocally determined. And not being so is precisely why there is a meta, i.e., a forging of a way. {205}

What is this method qua intellective? That is the essential question. The matter is not resolved just by saying that method is a way of access. It is necessary to clarify the intellective character of the method itself.

For this let us recall, once more, that it is a forging of a way, that is how intelligence opens in order to go from a real field thing to its worldly ground. The path is traced between two points: the real field thing and its worldly ground. Clearly one is dealing with the real thing and with its real ground, real but intellectively known, actualized, in intellection. Therefore the method is the way of access from one actualization of the real to another. As we said, knowledge is intellection seeking itself. And what is sought is a new intellective actualization of the same real field thing. It is quite possible that the content of the ground may be something which in some way is numerically distinct from the field thing; but it is always just intellectively known as a ground of the field thing. Therefore we are dealing, strictly speaking, with a new actualization of the field thing; it is actualized not as in a field but as in the world. That it is actualized as worldly is not the same as that it is actualized as being here-and-now in the world. This last would be "being" in the traditional sense. Here we are dealing just with reality qua respective in that respectivity which constitutes the world. And since all actualization is so of reality, it follows that ultimately what is done is to intellectively know the real more profoundly or more in-depth. That is, method is a way into reality. The moment of reality is decisive. To be sure, we are dealing with actualized reality, but actualized as reality. Method is a forging of a way into reality itself towards a more profound reality. Here, ‘intellection’ is taken in its most radical sense, its primary sense, as the mere {206} actualization of the real. Therefore, we are not dealing with any special actualization, as for example that of judgement, but of mere actualization regardless of its mode. Mere actualization does not exclude any special actualization, but neither can it be identified with any. Method is the way from an actualization of the real (the field actualization) to another actualization of it, actualization in the world; and it formally consists in going from one to the other by actualizing the real from its first actualization towards the second. And this process is inquiring intellection qua intellection; it is a going by intellective knowing. Anticipating an idea which I shall expound forthwith, I will say that knowledge starts from an actualization of the real in primordial sentient apprehension, and terminates in an actualization in a physical trial or test, i.e., a sentient trial or test of reality. The road which runs from the first to the second is just that of inquiring reason, and qua road, it is method. Method, I repeat, is an inquiring actualization of reality.

Despite the inconvenience, it was essential to repeat this because the idea of method lends itself to serious confusion. Generally one understands by ‘method’ the path which leads from one truth to another, understanding by ‘truth’ a true judgement; therefore the method would be a reasoning process which goes from one true judgement to another. But to me this is untenable for three reasons.

a) In the first place, method is not the way from one truth to another but from an intellectively known, actualized reality to another actualization of it. Method is not the way of truth, but the way of reality. To be sure, we are dealing with actualized reality; but it is always reality. Therefore method as path is a path not in the truth of knowledge, but in reality. {207}

b) In the second place, the intellection which comes into play here is not a judgement. To be sure, actualized reality is a truth. But it is not the truth of a judgement. The intellection in which method consists is the intellection of the real as real truth, not as logical truth. In method there are judgements, clearly; but it is not judgement but real truth which determines the methodic character of intellection.

c) In the third place, the way, the method itself, does not consist in being a reasoning process. It is not the access of a true judgement to another true judgement, because what is sought is not another judgement but another actualization. The identification of method with reasoning—which has run throughout the last centuries in all works on logic—is in my view untenable. People have fallen into this trap on account of what at various times in this study I have called the "logification of intellection". But it is impossible. To be sure, method is a way, and moreover is a way which must be followed; it is something to be pondered or reflected upon. But it is so in the etymological sense; it is a "pondering" and not a logical "discourse". Logical discourse, the discourse of reasoning, is but a type of "pondering". Moreover, reasoning as such is not method. Reason has its own laws, just as does the structure of judgement. But these structural laws are not method. Method, to be sure, must conform with the structural laws of logical intellection. But this conformity neither is nor can be a method which leads to knowledge, i.e., to a new actualization of the real. The laws of logic, logic as a whole, is the organon of knowledge, but it is not a method. And in order to understand this, it suffices to cite two cases in which normal logic is accustomed to identify method and reasoning, viz. deduction and induction. {208}

Deduction, we are told, is the method of some sciences, for example, mathematics. But in my view, this is untenable, and not just because there is a special type of reasoning called "mathematical induction", [1] but because deduction concerns the logical structure of mathematical thinking, but not the actualization of the mathematical real. For this, rigorous deductions are not enough; rather, it is necessary "to make" the deduction by operating, transforming, constructing, etc., "within mathematical reality". Only this is mathematical method; logical deduction is not. Therefore deduction by itself is not method but logical structure, and furthermore is not the method of the mathematical. There is no deductive method; there are only deductive structures of judgements, in the present case, of mathematical judgements. Mathematical reasoning, deduction, is a logical structure, but not a mathematical method.

The other instance where there typically is confusion of method and reasoning is the reverse of the previous one. It consists in making induction into an inductive reasoning process. And this is impossible, not just in principle but also in fact. Never has construction of an inductive reasoning process been carried out. To do so, the first requirement is to devise what is usually called the ‘principle of induction’. And this, in fact, has never been done satisfactorily, not even by invoking probability theory to exclude random experimental errors. Therefore in fact no inductive reasoning process exists. On the other hand, induction exists as a strict and rigorous method. One starts from the real as actualized in facts and goes by repetition (in accordance with the Law of Large Numbers) from the experimental results to a general statement. This statement pronounces {209} the actualization of the ground. I leave aside whether the statement is or is not true. We shall consider that problem later. The only thing I wish to stress here is that the inductive method is a method, but not a reasoning process.

In mathematics we have a deductive type of reasoning which by itself is not a method; in induction we have a method which by itself is not a reasoning process.

This does not mean that in rational intellection there are no reasoning processes. There are and there must be necessarily, just as there are judgements. To pretend that the opposite is true would be, rather than an impossibility, something just stupid. But neither judgements nor reasoning processes are what formally constitute method. A reasoning process is a logical structure which method has to respect. But that is a question of logic. And logic by itself is never, nor does it pretend to be, the font of truth. On the other hand, method is essentially—or at least pretends to be so—the font of truth, given that it moves in reality. Therefore a philosophy of intelligence is not a logical tract. Only logic is occupied with reasoning. The philosophy of intelligence is not, but is instead essentially occupied with method.

Method as a way is an intrinsic and formal moment of rational intellection. As such, it is always and only a way into reality, whether given reality or postulated reality.

With this we have clarified in some fashion our first point, viz. to be method is to be inquiring actualization qua inquiring; it is actualization as a way, a way of the ground of the field real. It is an intellective progression into reality, not a logical progression into truth. What is the structure of this method? That is the second point which I set forth.

{210}

II

STRUCTURE OF THE METHOD

We will not discuss a particular method but rather study the structure of the methodic moment of rational intellection. This methodic moment is comprised of three essential steps.

1

System of Reference

Above all, in order for there to be knowledge it is not enough that there be a real object which one is going to know and someone to intellectively know it. No knowledge would be possible with just this. It is absolutely necessary that the intellection be brought to fruition by intellectively knowing the real object as a function of other real things which were previously intellectively known in the field, i.e., by referring that object to these real things. It is absolutely essential to understand this because it is a point which is usually passed over. No knowledge exists if one is not intellectively knowing through a system of reference. And with this we have the first step of all method: the establishment of a system of reference. It is necessary not just in fact, but as being something formally constitutive of method.

We already encountered something similar when we studied field intellection. To intellectively know what a real thing is in reality is something which cannot be done except by intellectively knowing the real thing "from" other things of the field. But the field "from" is not {211} identical to what I have here called ‘system of reference’. In both cases one deals with a "toward", to be sure. And herein consists the similarity of the two "froms". But their respective characters are radically different. In field intellection the "toward" is a "toward" between the things of the field, and therefore we intellectively know what one of those real things is in reality from or with respect to others in the field. In field intellection one intellectively knows what something "is in reality"; therefore it is ultimately an intellection of verification or substantiation. The "from" is a chain of substantiations of what the real thing "could be". And if there is construction, it is always a construction of what would be substantiatable. On the other hand, in rational intellection one does not intellectively know what something "is in reality", but that "by which something is really in reality itself, in the world". Thus the things from which one intellectively knows this "by" are not a chain of substantiatable "could be’s" but just a system of reference from which one goes to what "could be". The double meaning of the "toward" thus establishes a double mode of intellection: the intellection of what something is in field reality and the intellection of that by which something is real in the world, of what something is in universal reality itself. The first we intellectively know "from" a chain of substantiatable things; the second "from a mere system of reference".

What is this system of reference? And What is its character?

Above all, the first question must be answered. We saw that rational intellection is based upon what was previously intellectively known, and this support is just the canonic principle of intellection. Now, this canonic principle is what constitutes the system of reference.

Naturally, this canonic principle is not, by itself, univocally determined. But it always has to {212} have something, and something determined by the field. And this is now the essential point. The principle can be and is quite varied; that we shall see forthwith. But its being a principle has a precise formal character, that of being determined in accordance with the field. Therefore it is ultimately the field itself, in its field totality, that constitutes the system of reference for intellection of the world. Now, the field is a principle by virtue of its moment of reality. The field reality is the system of reference for worldly reality insofar as that field reality is reality. And this is obvious, because field and world are not two strata numerically independent—the field, as I said, is the sensed world. Now the field, what is sensed of the world, is the system of reference for the active intellection of the world. Therefore all the "naivete" of reason always reduces to the same thing: to thinking that the world is formally identical to what is sensed of it, to the field. The field would then be the formal structure of the world. And it is on this that naivete depends. The field is not by itself the structure of the world, but merely a system of reference. And it is so because the field is real. What happens is that it is only real in the field sense. And it is on account of its moment of reality that this field reality constitutes a principle of rational intellection. This field, as a system of reference, then has a moment upon which I wish to again insist. We are not dealing, in fact, with the field real giving us just an "idea" of what reality is. It does give us that, to be sure; but that is secondary (because it is derivative) for our problem. Nor are we dealing only with a "concept" of reality, because the field as a system of reference is not formally a concept of reality; rather it is the field "reality" itself in its own {213} physical nature of reality. It is the physical reality of the field which, qua physical, constitutes the system of reference for the intellection of that same reality, intellectively known in the worldly sense. That intellection is therefore an activity which intellectively moves in reality itself.

Granting this, what is the character of this system of reference? To be sure, it does not have representative character. It certainly involves a system of representations, because field things are already "present" and it is based upon them that we seek to present the ground. In this respect, and only in this one, they are a "re-presentation" of this ground. But its formal function qua system of reference is not representative, because these representations do not present the ground by being representation; rather, they present it only "by" grounding the sensed thing, even if to do so they destroy all the content of the representation. The representation thus has a double function: representative and directional. Only this latter makes it a system of representation. The system of reference supplies representations, but the reference itself is not in the nature of a representative. This directional function has a very precise nature. It is what I previously called ‘grounding function’. The grounding function, the function of the "by", has directional character, and moreover has nothing but directional character. The representations in fact can lead to a "by" which revokes the representation or even leaves all possible representative content in suspense. Knowing is never representing.

What is this directionality? And what is its cognitive status?

a) Rational intellection is, as we saw, an {214} activity, activated by the real, but nonetheless activity. Therefore the "toward" of rational intellection is an active "toward", which actively goes toward the in-depth. The system of reference consists only in the tracing out of the concrete direction of the "toward" of activity. Before I called what has been previously intellectively known ‘support’; now we see that support consists in being directional reference. Directionality is concreteness of the worldly "toward" of activity.

And this is essential. Knowledge is, above all, precision and exactitude, but it is a directional line. We are not dealing formally with precision and exactitude along the lines of concepts and expressions. It is quite possible that with concepts and expressions which are not univocally realized representatively, we still mark out a very precise direction. In such a case, those concepts and expressions are only partial indications of the in-depth reality, but according to a direction which is very precise in itself. That happens, for example, in quantum physics. The concepts of particle and wave are but partial representations of some aspect of the in-depth real. Their function lies in the fact that this partiality is inscribed in a precise direction which goes beyond it. Not just "complementarity", as Bohr thought, it is "superceeding". The same could be said of other types of knowledge, for example the knowledge of personal realities and of living realities in general. The concepts and expressions of which we make use are but aspects within a direction which is very precisely determined not just toward what we seek to intellectively know, but includes the direction of what we already intellectively know.

b) Whence the cognitive state, so to speak, of rational intellection. Knowledge is not a system of {215} concepts, propositions, and expressions. That would be an absurd type of conceptualism, or rather logicism, which is ultimately just formal. Moreover it would be field intellection but not knowledge. Knowledge is not just what we know and what we say, but also, and in the first place, what we want to say. Language itself is not, for the effects of intellection, something merely representative. And I am not referring to the fact that language has another dimension than that by which it is the expression of what is intellectively known. This is obvious, and a triviality. What I am now saying is that precisely as expression of rational intellection, and within this intellection, language has, besides a possible representative function, a function which differs from the merely representative. Therefore the cognitive status of the system of reference is not to serve as an explicit intellection, but something different. Anticipating some ideas that will be expounded below, I will say that in rational intellection and its expression, we are not trying to make explicit the realization of representations, but to experience a direction, to know if the direction taken is or is not of suitable precision. What the system of reference determines is not a making something explicit, but an experience. If that were not true, knowledge would never have its most valued characteristic: to be a discoverer, a creator.

Hence the error which, as I see it, most radically vitiates logical positivism.

In the first place, knowledge, i.e., rational intellection, is not a system of logically determined propositions. That would be at most—and not always—the structure of field intellection, but in no way the structure of rational intellection. Rational intellection, knowledge, is not formally field intellection but {216} worldly intellection. Positivism is only a conceptualization—and an incomplete one—of field intellection, but it is blind to worldly intellection, whose essential structural character is directionality. Knowledge is an intellection directed to the world from a system of reference. The formal structure of knowledge does not reduce to the formal structure of the logoi, but involves the essential moment of a directional reference. Statements with univocal meaning are not enough. Let us leave aside, for now, what logical positivism understands by ‘verifiable’.

In the second place, this direction is the direction of a progression. Inquiry pertains to the essence of knowledge. We are not dealing with a progression toward knowledge but with the fact that knowledge itself is intellective progression; the progression is just its own mode of intellection. Positivism limits itself to the logical statements of this intellection. But those statements are only its logical expression; they do not constitute the formal structure of the knowledge which is intellective progression.

In the third place, this progression is creative. Logical positivism is blind to this third, creative dimension of knowledge, because creating is not stating new propositions but discovering new directions of intellective progression. It is for this reason that the cognitive status of rational intellection is not to be a "univocal" manifestation but a "fertile" direction toward the worldly real. This fertility is not a consequence of rational intellection but a formally structural moment of it.

To be sure, I believe that today philosophy, perhaps more than ever, must have conceptual precision and formal rigor. Modern philosophy is in this regard the source of a great deal of confusion which gives rise to erroneous {217} interpretations. I have strongly emphasized this: the reconquest of exactitude and precision in concepts and expressions is necessary. But this does not in any sense mean that such analysis, which is the function of logic, is the structure of knowledge, because the world does not have a logical structure but rather a real respectivity. And only because of this is knowledge what it is: the progression toward the system of reality.

The inquiring activity of rational thinking makes its second essential step within this system or reality.

 

2

Formal Terminus of the Methodical Activity

What is the formal terminus of this methodical activity? We have already seen the answer: it is what a field thing "could be" in the world. The formal terminus of cognitive activity is the ground of the real as possibility. For the effects of rational intellection, the ambit of grounding, the world, is in the first place the ambit of the possibilities of the ground. The world is certainly reality, the respectivity itself of the real as real. But this reality, for the effects of knowledge, is only the ambit of intellection of the ground. And as intellection is actualization, it follows that the actuality of the world in intellection is actualization of all the possibilities of the ground. But this requires further clarification.

Consider the matter of possibilities. They are real possibilities, i.e., possibilities which are comprised as such in the intellection of the real world (not a redundancy). What are these real possibilities? Above all, they are {218} possibilities in the sense that they are that which the real perhaps "could be" in the worldly sense. That we have already seen. We are not dealing with a mere "might be" but with a "could be", i.e., with a positive mode of the making possible of the real. The real is not just what it is, but is something modally real constituted from its own ground, based on its own, intrinsic, and formally real possibilities. As possibilities, they are in themselves something unreal; but the unreal, realized as a ground of reality, is the very possibility of the real, what intrinsically and formally is making it possible. The real is something essentially possibilitated. It is not that possibility is prior to reality, but that the mode of reality of the worldly is to be possibilitated real; possibility is only a mode of reality. Why? Because of its own insertion into the world. In this sense, possibility is not prior to the real, but a modal moment of its worldly respectivity. It is because of this that I speak of possibilitation rather than possibility.

But this possibilitation also has another essential aspect. Every intellective actualization is so of reality, but at the same time is intellective. Now, with respect to a rational intellection, the intellection itself is activity. Hence it follows that the possibility of the "could be" is at one and the same time the possibility of the "could be" of the real thing and the "could be" of the intellection. This intellection is an inquiring activity. Therefore, in this second aspect, the possibilities take on the character of what we call the ‘possibilities of my activity’, something completely different from my potencies and faculties. The system of reference, I said, is the concrete outline of the "toward". Activity provisionally appropriates to itself some possibilities as possibilities of what a thing could be; and upon doing so, accepts a {219} concrete outline of its inquiring progression as a moment of its own activity. In the course of history, man not only has discovered what things are and could be in the worldly sense; but also the possibilities based upon which my intellection can take on a new form of rational intellection. We have intellective possibilities which the Greeks did not have. It is not just that they did not know many of the things we know, but that they were not able to know them as we can and in fact do know them. The two moments are different. With some intellections we intellectively know different possible grounds of a real thing. Conversely, there are possible grounds which cannot be intellectively known other than by illumination of new possibilities of intellection. The possible, as a formal moment of rational intellection, of knowledge, is at one and the same time what a thing could be (what its own ground is), and what my possibility of knowing is, not in the sense of being the terminus of an activity, but in the sense of being possibilities which this action formally has in itself as action. Possible is unitarily "the possible" and "the possibilities".

How is this possible actualized? The unity of the two aspects is actualized in that structural moment of intellective activity which is the sketch or outline. Rational intellection intellectively knows what is possible (in its two aspects), referred to the system of reference. And this reference is what constitutes the sketch. To put it more radically, ‘sketch’ is the conversion of the field into a system of reference for the intellection of the possibility of the ground. The sensed possibility, qua sensed, is, as we saw, suggestion. The sensed possibility as system of reference is sketch. Naturally, every sketch is grounded upon a suggestion. Nonetheless, suggestion and sketch are not identical. {220} Sentient intellection as such suggests. But sketch is suggested only if sentient intellection is in a state of activity. It is the moment of activity which distinguishes sketch from suggestion. Only a sentient intelligence knows by sketch; the sketch is only for knowledge. Conversely, a sentient intelligence can only know by sketching. In our problem, sketching is an act which is purely and formally intellective, and this activity is a mode of intellection; it is intellection activated by the real itself. Consequently, we are not here dealing with a human activity "applied" to intellection, or anything like it. Activity is intellection activated by the real, and the sketch, as an act of this activity, is something formally intellective—indeed, it is the very intellection of the possible ground. The ground is only knowable to us by sketching, because the sketch is the concrete form of illumination of possibilities (real ones and of intellection). An activity that sketches is the only place where one can actualize reality as a possibility both real and of intellection. Sketching is a form of intellective knowing.

How does one sketch the actuality of the real in its possibility? The possibilities are not sketched other than by confronting the field real in intellective activity, i.e., intellectively knowing the field as real worldly object. The confronting is what on the one hand converts the real into something that can be grounded, i.e., it is what constitutes the real upon the base of its possibility. But there is something more. Possibility thus illuminated has its own content. This content qua possibility is always something constructed; it is construction. (I am not speaking of construction in the sense of group theory). The sketch of possibilities is always just a constructed sketch. No intellective possibility {221} as such is purely and simply given. It may be received if entrusted to us; that is the problem of history as transmission. But that is another question. What is here important to us is that what is entrusted is a construction. It could likewise be that the construction consists only in accepting as possibility the real which is encountered. But even in this case, clearly what is encountered is converted into a possibility, i.e., is something constructed; immediate construction if one wishes, but still construction. In this construction, each of its moments is a possibility. Therefore the construction is properly construction of a system of possibilities. The system of reference is for the construction of a system of possibilities. Each possibility is only making possible within a system together with the rest. We already saw this when dealing with possibility as formal terminus of rational intellection. The possibilities are not added together but rather "co-possibilitate". And this "co-" is the system. Therefore every alteration of a possibility implies in principle, if not the alteration, then the reconsideration of the all the rest. The crisis of a possibility puts the entire system in crisis.

This system of possibilities is not univocally determined. Therefore its constitution is a free construction. All of its intrinsic limitations follow from this, limitations with respect to its capacity to lead to the sought-after ground. That capacity is "fecundity". The system of possibilities, by virtue of being freely constructed, is of limited fecundity. But it has still another limitation: it is a system selected from among others. In virtue of this, the system is of limited "amplitude". When the ground for a system of possibilities is known, this knowledge is limited in fecundity and amplitude. Hence its constitutive openness. {222} All knowledge, by virtue of being an intellection with a system of possibilities freely constructed from a system of reference, is an open knowledge, not just in fact and because of human, social, and historical limitations. Rather, it is open qua knowledge through intrinsic necessity, to wit, by being intellection as sketch. And this is a moment which is formally constitutive of rational intellection as such.

The second step of the method is the sketch of this system of possibilities from a system selected as the reference. But the method as a way seeks to lead to an end, viz. intellection of the ground of the real. This is the third step of method, the final step. The first is the establishment of a system of reference; the second is the sketching of possibilities; and the third is the intellection of the possibilitating ground of the real.

 

3

Method As Experience

How does one intellectively know the possibilitating ground of the real as worldly reality? When one intellectively knows this ground, the knowledge has reached its terminus. This is the problem of the access to what one seeks to know. Method is nothing if it does not lead to a real and effective access. Now, with the proviso that I shall explain myself further below, let me say that access is, formally, experience. Knowing begins with a system of reference from which one sketches a system of possibilities which permit one to experience what a thing is as worldly reality. To clarify this we need to conceptualize what experience is, what {223} one finds in experience (i.e., the experienced), and what is the mode of finding it. That is, we seek the concept of experience, the object of experience, and mode of experience.

A) What is experience? Experience is not a univocal concept. When we speak of experience, generally we think in terms of what is called ‘sensible experience’. And this is extremely ambiguous, because the expression has different meanings, all completely acceptable for a language, but not identical in conceptualization either to "sensible" or to "experience", as we shall see. What do we understand by ‘sensible’? And above all, What do we understand by ‘experience’?

A first meaning for ‘experience’, and one which is very general, is perception, aísthesis, i.e., sensing, and hence the sensed qualities. In this sense experience is opposed to what would be intellective apprehension. The so-called ‘sensualism’ thus philosophically understands that experience is perception (external or internal, it matters little). To have an experience of something would be to perceive it. But this is absolutely unacceptable. If I may be permitted the expression, to experience is not to sense. And this is true in a very radical sense. In the first place, sensing does not only sense qualities but also that these qualities are real. We have not only an impression of green (strictly speaking it is impossible to only have the impression of green), but also the impression of green as real. Sensualism has seriously gone astray with respect to this matter. What is sensed in experience is not only a quality but also its formality of reality. Therefore human sensing is intellective, since apprehending something as real is the formally constitutive part of intellection. Moreover, in the second place, not even understanding sensing as intellective sensing is it acceptable to identify {224} experiencing and sensing. To be sure, without sensing there is no experience; but to sense is not formally to experience. In sensing, what is sensed is something fundamentally given. Now, what is experienced is not something given but something achieved—achieved certainly by sensing, but still achieved. The sensible is just the experienciable, but is not formally experienced. The moment of achievement is essential to experience. What does this moment mean?

One might think that experience consists in the experience of "one thing", and not simply of some quality. It might be that this thing is a quality, but be that as it may, it might be the terminus of an experience only insofar as that quality is considered as a thing. Now, anything real, considered as a thing, even in the most stable of cases, is something variable and fleeting. Experience would not be just sensing, but that habitude of sensing something as fixed and stable. Sensing senses quality (I add, real quality), but experience might be a mode of sensing something "itself". This is the concept of experience which Aristotle crafted and which he called empeiría. Aristotle thought that the constitutive moment of experience is the mnéme, retention; thus the reiteration of perception, the retained perception, would be experience. But this is inadequate. Experience is not necessarily that which Aristotle called empeiría, because what is perceived and retained is not only the quality but, as I keep repeating, the formality of reality. Aristotle definitively separated the sensible and the intelligible, and therefore never conceptualized that intellective sensing whose formal moment I have called ‘impression of reality’. Experience is not just empirical sameness. The empeiría is only {225} a mode of experience. And the proof is the fact that we speak of people who have much or little experience of a thing or situation. The sameness in question is hence not a mere empirical retention of qualities nor of a real quality; rather, what is retained must be just a real thing intellectively known (retentively if one wishes) as real, not in each of its perceptive phases, but as real in the worldly sense. The experiential moment is not, then, empirical retentiveness, but something different. What? That is the third concept of experience.

When we speak of not having experience or of having much or little experience of something, we are not referring to the diversity of perceptive acts of a thing, even if perceived as real; rather, we refer to that mode of apprehending it (including perceptively) which consists in intellectively knowing it in depth. The achievement which constitutes experience is an achievement of reaching this depth, not the moment of retentive sameness. By reaching this depth, the thing is actualized as worldly reality. Therefore, in order to know what experience is, we must say what reaching this depth is as a mode of intellective actualization.

So we are dealing with an actualization, but not as mere actualization. That would be just sentient intellection, not experience. Something more than naked reality is needed; it is the real which actualizes what "really" is. Therefore, we actualize its reality as referred to other things which open an ambit within which the thing takes on its possible respect to these other things. And in order to intellectively know what we seek to intellectively know, the indicated things are those which outline, in intellection, the characteristics of that real thing. As such, this outline is thus something unreal in itself. Now, this unreal thing has to be {226} intellectively known as inserted in the real thing; only thus will it be the outline of it. And this insertion can have two different modalities.

a) The unreal can be inserted into the real by being actualized in the real as a realization. This is the realization of the unreal in the real. Intellection then consists in intellectively knowing what the real thing is in reality. To realize is to intellectively know the reality of the "could be". It is in this realization that being a manifestation consists. It is the intellection of the real in the field sense.

b) But the unreal can be inserted and actualized in the real in a different way, by testing if it is inserted. This is not manifestation, i.e., it is not mere realization, but testing. We then intellectively know by testing what the real thing is in depth. What is this testing? It is not, formally, just an assay or experiment. It is something else.

In the first place, it is testing of reality. This reality is not naked reality nor a realization, but the reality of the thing as a moment of the world. Reality here is not of the field but of the world. It is not the realization of a "might be" but of a "could be". Because of this, as we shall see, such realization is testing. Testing rests upon the "beyond". It is something essentially different from a manifestation. What is in reality is manifested; what could be is tested.

In the second place, this is a physical testing. We are not dealing with a thought experiment, or anything of that nature. We are dealing with a "physical" testing. It is something not thought but carried out. It is "to do" the testing. And this exercise has an essential character. It is something carried out, but the carrying out itself is a mode of intellection of the real in its worldly character. Qua exercised, it is something physical, and qua intellective it is intellection in a process of forging a way by carrying out the testing. This forging {227} of a way is that intellective moment which we call discernment. Physical testing is, then, a discerning exercise.

In the third place, physically and of reality, testing is just that: testing. The real thing has been converted into a real object, has been actualized in an "ob". That is, it is something like an obstacle raised up along the road toward the world. Method consists in traversing that road and going through the "ob". And this is testing, viz. Going through the "ob" in order to open onto the world itself, upon the worldly reality of the real object. The "ob" is like a gate which must be cleared, and once cleared, situates us in the proper worldly orientation. Going through in Greek is denoted by peirao, and in Latin perior (which exists only in compounds). Whence derives the Spanish word puerto.[2] This going through the gate, in which testing consists, is therefore ex-perior, or "ex-perience". As that which is gone through is the "ob" of something in the field, i.e. the "ob" of something originally sensed, it follows that the testing itself as such is radically a sentient discerning exercise. Only a sentient reason can do this testing.

This moment of experience gathers together the two moments which we have described previously: the moment of resting upon the in-depth real, and the moment of being something physical. In virtue of this I shall say that experience is physical testing of reality. Experience is not just sensing the real but sensing the real toward the in-depth. Experience is not just empeiria, nor is it a mere retentive fixing of sameness, but an outlining and physical fixing of in-depth reality. Experience as testing is the insertion of an outline or sketch into in-depth reality.

Here we have the essence of the methodic encounter with real: experience. It is paradoxical result. We started, {228} in fact, from the field which is the sensed world, sensed respectivity. And now we end up with a physical testing of reality, i.e., with an act of sentient reason. What is sensed, is it world or field? The question constitutes the paradox to which I earlier alluded. Now, as it deals with a discerning intellection, the question cannot be thus formulated. The field is not the formal structure of the world; that would be "naivete". In rational intellection the world takes on the character of grounding the formal structure of the field. And this is just the opposite of naivete. The field is the world as sensed. Now, what we have achieved thus far is the sensed as world. In this initial progression we have gone from the field to the world. In the final direction we have come back from the world to the field once again. For this we have taken the roundabout route via the unreal as sketch. This is the essence of experience: to intellectively know what is sensed as a moment of the world through the sketched "could be".

What is it that we formally experience in experience?

B) What is experienced as such. Experience is based upon a real thing in accordance with its "could be", and what is experienced is then what I have provisionally called ‘insertion’ or ‘realization’ of the "could be", i.e., of something unreal, in the field real. This insertion has a precise cognitive character, because we are not dealing only with experience as a testing activity of mine, but above all—and in the first place—with the fact that in this insertion the real is actualized. Now, what is actualized of the real is just the "could be" as its ground. And the "could be" as ground of the real is only a form of what we call ‘for’ or ‘by’. And this ‘for’ in the form of "what for" is the formal object of knowledge. We already said that {229} this formal terminus is the "could be". But to state it now with greater precision, the formal object of knowledge is the "could be" inserted or realized in the real, i.e., the "could be" as inserted into a "for". This is what, rigorously, constitutes the terminus of experience; it is the experienced as such. In order to rigorously conceptualize it, we must clarify two points: what the "for" is in itself, and how the "for" is experienced. I already expounded all this at the beginning of Part II of the book; let us review some of those ideas.

a) What is the "for"? To properly conceptualize it, let us recall once again that rational intellection is referentially grounded in the real as intellectively known in the field manner. And the field real is what sends us beyond itself. This sending is what, together certainly with correctness, but with greater rigor, we call "giving us pause to think". We have already seen that the real not only is "given" as real in sentient intellection, but that this "given from" the real is given to us together with the "given for" thinking; the intrinsic unity of these two "givings" is just the "giving us pause to think". The real, by being real, is what gives us pause to think. And it gives us pause to think, as we said, because reality is intrinsically open, i.e., it gives us pause to think, it sends us because it is open. Therefore it is necessary, above all, to conceptualize in what that moment of openness of the real consists, understood in the field manner, in accordance with which the real is inexorably giving us to think. What is it in the real, intellectively known in the field manner, which formally gives us to think?

When the real is apprehended sentiently in a field, it is among other real things of this field. And in this apprehension we apprehend what each of them is from others. To be "in reality", we said, is the {230} intrinsic and formal unity of the individual moment and of the field moment of the formality of the real. Now, this unity constitutes what I have called functionality of the real. Its expression is the "for". Fieldness is not some summation of field things, but the fact that the field itself is formally functional rather than additive. A thing is certainly real in and by itself, but it is "in reality" what it is only as a function of others. Naturally I am not thereby referring to the notes which the real has, but to its reality. The real, by virtue of being field reality, is only real as a function of the other field things. Here the term ‘functionality’ is taken in its widest sense, and therefore with no allusion to the many diverse types of functionality which may emerge.

Every real thing actualizes its reality in the field manner as a function of other real things. Nothing is actualized in the field manner in a way which is so to speak monolithic; it is actualized only together with other things, after them, outside of them, on the periphery of the field, etc. And all of these determinations constitute so many modes of functionality. That the thing is in a field is, then, a radical characteristic of its functionality. Conversely, functionality is formally a mode of inclusion in fieldness. Now, it is not a functionality which is primarily concerned with the content of the notes of the real, but their proper actualization as real. It is the functionality of the field real qua real. Functionality is fieldness itself as a determining moment of the individual part of each reality. "Among" is the expression of fieldness. This fieldness, by virtue of its exceeding, encompasses various real things; but prior to this and for it the field includes each one of them, {231} so that one has an aspect of constitutive functionality. For determining a field, the real determining thing itself, upon determining the field, is included in it. Functionality is then fieldness itself not as encompassing but as including.

Therefore functionality does not consist in one thing depending upon others, but is rather the structure of the whole field precisely and formally because it is a structural moment of each of the things in it. In virtue of this, functionality does not consist in A depending upon B; rather, what is functional is the field unity of A and B as reality. The field reality itself is with respect to A reality of functional character.

This functional field actualization is given in the unity of all the modes of sensed reality. But said functionality is only intellectively known in and by itself in that field moment which is the "toward". Functionality by itself is actualized as a "toward", i.e., is actualized in each thing in its "toward" reality. Field things are functional in the "toward". The actualization of this functional aspect is what I call "for".

b) This "for" is strictly experiential. To see this it suffices to recall some points from what has already been said.

aa) Human sensing is an intellective sensing, and therefore what we men sense are all sensible qualities, but in their formality of reality. Sensing, for the purposes of a philosophy of intelligence, is above all impression of reality. Reality, then, is not something conceived or inferred, etc., but something impressively given in strict formality; it is the de suyo, the given. And it is given "physically". Every subsequent intellection which is physically given moves physically in this physical reality. {232}

bb) Now, when this reality is actualized in the field manner, the real presents that moment which is functionality. Functionality, I repeat, does not consist in a real thing referencing another; it is rather an intrinsic moment of the impression of reality. Functionality, in fact, is the inclusion of the real in its field, impressively determined. And this field is "its own" [suyo], i.e., it belongs to the real de suyo in its own formality. Functionality is thus a field moment given in the impression of reality. This datum is given just as a formal moment of it. We are not, then, dealing with an inference or anything of the sort (as I already pointed out); rather, it is an immediate datum and one formally given in the very impression of reality.

cc) To this impression of reality there corresponds that mode of presence of the real which is the "toward". The "toward" is not a relation but a mode of presenting the real as real. The impression of reality is an impression of reality in all its modes, therefore including the mode of the "toward". Hence intellection of something in the "toward" is not a judgement, be it analytical (Leibniz) or synthetic (Hume, Kant), because the "toward" is not a conceptual moment but a sensed "toward". It is a structural moment of the very impression of reality. Now, the "for" is the formal structure of fieldness and corresponds to the field (as I have already said), not by reason of the content of things which it encompasses, but precisely on account of the formality of reality, viz. the structure of the field of reality qua reality. Whence the "for" points not only toward other field things, but toward reality itself qua reality, i.e., it points to the world. Its pointing to the world is thus something given in the impression of reality in its mode of "toward". {233}

To preclude a possible erroneous interpretation I should add a few words. I said that the "toward" is above all a mode of the intra-field real, but that at the same time it is a mode of the whole field qua field. One might think that this second mode consists in every impression pointing to something which produces it. But this is quite far from what I have been saying, because that presumed pointing is not a pointing toward something which produces the impression, but is rather the formal moment of otherness which is intrinsically constituent of the impression itself as such. And it is this otherness which is intrinsically and formally an intra-field otherness and a worldly otherness. The world is not sensed as the cause of my impressions, but as worldliness of the impressive otherness of the real as real.

dd) Now, the functionality in the "toward", as I said, is precisely and formally the "for". The "for" as such is something formally sensed. It is not, as I said immediately and quickly returned to, a judgement, but something prior to any judgement. Moreover, every judgement about the real in the "toward" is only possible by being inscribed in the "toward" itself.

This apprehension of the "for" is not a reasoning process, be it formal or transcendental. It is merely analysis of sentient intellection itself. In virtue of that, we said, the "for" is experientially accessible because it is formally the impressive way of the "toward".

ee) What happens is that sensing by itself is not experience. What is sensed is by its own nature experientiable. In what does the experiential of the "for", already sensed, consist? The "for" is sensed; in other words, it is not only accessible but is already physically accepted in intellection. But this "for" has a complex structure. {234} That the "for" is formally sensed does not mean that its diverse structural moments are sensed equally. The "for", in fact, is a determination of that which is real in the field manner. The field real is a sensed "what" which sends us beyond the field, i.e., beyond its own field "what", toward a worldly "what". There are, then, two "what"s: the "what" of the real field thing, and the worldly "what" in itself. The first "what" is sensed in the field manner; but the second "what" is not sensed, so to speak, but is a "what" created in a free construction, a "what", therefore, which is sought in what "could be". These two "what"s have an intrinsic unity: the unity of the "for". The second "what" is that by which the first is what it is, i.e., is its "what for?" The expression "what for?" has an internal ambiguity. It is on the one hand something toward which we are sent by the field "what"; it is on the other that by which the field "what" is what it is. It is owing to this second aspect alone that the "what for?" should apply. Hence the "for" is something inexorably given in its "toward" form. On the other hand it is a "for" which inexorably moves in worldly reality. Born of reality qua field, the rational "what for?" is determined, with respect to "for", by the coercive force of in-depth reality. Reality coercively imposes that there be a "for", whose worldly or in-depth terminus, the worldly "what", is freely intellectively known. The actualization of this force of imposition in freedom is just what I have called so many times the ‘insertion of the unreal, of the "could be", into the real. The "for" bears us from field reality to worldly reality, and makes us revert toward field reality in a free "what"; this is just "experience". The "what" is sensed, but not {235} by virtue of this is the "what" itself experiential; the worldly "what" is not sensed; but as it points us coercively toward the sensed, it is experienced. This pointing is the testing of the worldly "what for?" in the field "what". The testing consists in trying to make of the world something formally sensed, i.e., in intellectively knowing the world as sensed. The necessity of a "what for" or "why" is something sensed: it is the "for". But the "what" is in that "what for" something created. The coercive reversion from in-depth reality toward field reality is experience, testing.

Hence it is that the "what for?" is strictly experientiable. The worldly "what" arises from the sensed "for", and is inscribed in that sense along the lines of the "for". What is not given is what this "what for?" is. That there should be a "what for?" is by no means a logical necessity; rather, it is something real, given sentiently. And in this given "for", the free creation of rational intellection in the form of experience, of physical testing of reality, comes into play. It is, as I said, the experience of the insertion of the worldly "what" into the "for". Testing is to test how the world fits into the field. It is testing of field reality from the standpoint of in-depth or worldly reality.

This experience of the "what