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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?

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§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?

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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 for" has, then, a complex structure in virtue of the distinction between its two moments: the moment of the "what" and the moment of the "for". Therefore, when one affirms that the object of knowledge is the "what for", one states something not univocal but ambiguous. This has given rise to philosophical conceptualizations which as I see it are inadequate, if not completely false. That is what I now wish to explain summarily.

B) The experienced "what for?" as object of knowledge. To know something, we said, is to have an intellection of {236} what something is for, i.e., why it is what it is and how it is. What is this "what for"? We answered the question some pages back. But if we return to formulate the question again, it is because philosophy has conceptualized the "what for?", the object of knowledge, in a way which as I see it is incorrect, and which has had profound repercussions. In order to clarify what I think on this subject, it will suffice to recall quickly what has been explained here in order to contrast it with these other conceptualizations.

For Aristotle, the "what for?" or why of something is its cause. To know something, he tells us, is to know its cause or causes. The "what for?" is, then, formally causality. Cause is all that which exercises a productive or originating influence of the so-called ‘effect’, not only efficient but also material, formal, and final; or viewed from the standpoint of the effect, it is a characteristic in accordance with which the effect is something really produced by its cause. Causality is, then, originating production. This causal order is, for Aristotle, something given in our sensorial apprehensions. The object of knowledge would then consist in going back from given causes to higher causes via a reasoning process.

With Hume, modern philosophy initiated a thoroughgoing critique of this conception. Causality, Hume tells us, is never given to us; neither is the influence by which the pulling of the rope produces the ringing of the bell. Causality is not given; only mere succession of events. Therefore any attempt to achieve strict knowledge moves in a vacuum. That, as Kant would say, is skepticism. Kant accepts this critique, but contrasts it with the Faktum of science, which lives on causes. And as causality is not given, it follows that for Kant, causality is only our mode of constituting an object as the terminus of universal and necessary judgements. {237} Causality is not something given, but something produced by the understanding in the order of knowing, in order for us to know. Causality is not a mode of producing things, but a mode of judging objectively about them. This is the dawn of all transcendental idealism.

But as I see it, this entire discussion rests upon two fundamental ideas, to wit, that the "what for" or "why" is causality, and that causality is not given in our sentient apprehensions. Now, both of these ideas are ultimately false.

Above all, the "what for" or "why" is not causality; it is functionality. And functionality, as we have already seen, is not dependence of one thing upon another, but the very structure of the field of reality. The "what for" is not an originating or productive influence; it is only the mode by which something is really what it is. At most, causality would be a mode of functionality; that is not our problem. But it is not the only mode, nor even the primary one, because functionality is not causal dependence. If I say that in a gas, the product of the volume and pressure equals the temperature multiplied by a constant, this does not mean that volume, pressure, and temperature are linked as causes. What, in this case, would the causes be? The question does not make sense. The only thing affirmed here is the functionality of the three terms. And this functionality includes the three at once. We are not dealing with a case of one term dependent upon another, but functionality as field structure. And physical laws are primarily laws of functionality. In the example cited, we have Gay-Lussac’s law. Science does not have causes as its object but functional "what for"s or "why"s. The "what for?" or "why?" is not, then, necessarily causality. {238} It is formally worldly functionality, i.e., the functionality of the real qua real. As I see it, in this problem it is necessary to replace the notion of cause by the more general notion of functionality of the real qua real.

This is all the more so given that the Aristotelian notion of cause is somewhat restricted. Permit me to explain. Aristotle understood by ‘cause’ that which produces a distinct entity. When he wishes to explain the causality of a cause he introduces the now classic distinction of the four causes: efficient, final, material, and formal. Now if, from this point of view, we consider as an example the counsel which one person gives another, it is not clear into which of these four types of cause this case falls. It seems clear to us that a shove, however modest, falls under efficient causality. But on the other hand, if we try to apply the idea of the four causes to an act of advising a friend, we are struck by grave doubts about the possible type of causality of the advice. This points up the fact that Aristotle’s celebrated theory of causality is strictly formed around "natural" realities. Aristotle’s causality is a theory of natural causality. As I see it, one must rigorously introduce a theory of personal causality, next to Aristotle’s natural causality. I emphasized this point most recently in my course given at the Gregorian University in 1973. Personal causality is of a very different kind than natural causality. Thus the two type of causality are not univocal but at best analogous. In virtue of this it is necessary to introduce a theory of causality which is both natural and personal, within a broader conception, that of the functionality of the real qua real. Because of this I pointed out in {239} Part II that one cannot metaphysically refute occasionalism, but I left aside the question of human actions. The fact of the matter is that the personal type of causality, even though very in-depth, does not enter into natural causality. The distinction between agent, actor, and author of human actions does not figure in the Aristotelian theory of causality. To be the author of an action is not just to produce it, and no more. It is more, much, much more than some occasionalist functionality. But it is not, on account of this, a strict cause in the Aristotelian sense; it is, strictly speaking, something quite above all Aristotelian causality.

Moreover, is it true that the "what for" or "why" is not given in this sensible apprehension? This is the second of the two fundamental ideas which it is necessary to examine in this problem. Since Aristotle, philosophy has understood that sensing, as a mode of apprehension of things, is comprised of impressions in which what is apprehended is only the so-called ‘sensible qualities’. Now, as I see it, this is not correct. The senses sense qualities, but they sense them as real, and therefore as functional in the impression of reality.

Granting this, the conceptions of Hume and Kant turn out to be false from the start.

Hume thinks that the "what for" or "why" is causality, and that causality is never given in sensible apprehension. But this is quite ambiguous, because sensible apprehension is not just apprehension of quality but apprehension of a mode of reality, of formality, i.e., it is an act of sentient intellection. And one of the modes given in impression is the mode of reality as "toward". Now, in this mode we are given, as we have seen, functionality. In virtue of this, the functionality of the field real is given in intellective sensing. The "succession" to which Hume appeals is not {240} the succession of two impressions, but an impression of successive reality. Therefore the succession is already a mode of functionality. Now, functionality in its worldly "toward" is just the "for". The "for" is then something given. What is never given, and which must be sought—almost invariably with little success—is the "what" of that by which the field and its contents is as it is. But the "for" as such is given in human sensing, in the impression of reality. All of Hume’s critique, I repeat, is based upon the idea of sensing as mere apprehension of qualities. And this is wrong: sensing is "also" impression of reality. In virtue of this, there is no sensing "and" intelligence, but only sentient intelligence. Therefore Hume’s critique is radically false, as false as Aristotle’s conception of the matter. Aristotelian causality is not given; neither is any originating influence. But what is given, and formally so, is the functionality of the real qua real. To summarize: (1) The object of knowledge is not causes but "what for"s or "why"s; (2) They are "what for"s insofar as they are "for"; and (3) this "for" does not concern knowledge but sensed reality qua actualized in sentient intellection.

This same idea comprises the introduction to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Causality, he tells us, is not given in any sensorial impression; in virtue of this, it is above all a synthesis of impressions. But it is a synthesis whose function is to make objective knowledge possible, i.e., the universal and necessary judgement, and in this sense causality constitutes an a priori of knowing. It is, as Kant says, a synthetic a priori judgement. Now, this is untenable for the same reason as Hume’s critique: at bottom there is the absence of the idea of sentient intelligence. What is sensed is never a mere sensible quality, but the sensible quality {241} in its reality in impression; and to this impression of reality there pertains, intrinsically and formally, its functionality. One of those modes of impression of reality is the "toward". The "toward" is a sensed mode. This mode is not, therefore, a synthesis, but rather pertains to the very structure of the formality of reality in impression. It is a moment of sensing itself, in each quality. In virtue of it functionality is a sensed moment and one given in each impression. Each real sensed quality is sensed in and by itself as something functional. Sensed functionality is not synthesis but the structural respectivity of each quality by virtue of being real. Hence functionality is not something which primarily concerns objective judgement; rather, it pertains to sensing itself, to the impression of reality. As such, it is not something a priori of the logical apprehension of objects, but a moment given in the sentient impression of reality. Causality is not the formal object of knowledge, only functionality is so. And as such, it is not a synthetic a priori judgement, because it is not a judgement at all (rather it is the sensed "toward"); nor is it synthetic (the "toward" is not synthesis but a mode of reality); nor is it a priori (but something "given" in the impression of reality). It is the functionality of the real, qua real, given in the impression of reality.

In summary, the object of knowledge is the "what for" or "why" experienced as "for", i.e., worldly functionality. And this "for" is something given sentiently in the impression of reality qua "for". What is sought is the "what" of the "for". And this is just the problem of science. Science does not comprise a system of judgements but is the experience of the worldly "what" as such.

We have then examined what experience is, and what is the {242} corresponding experienced object. Let us now investigate the third question which I enuntiated: the modes of experience.

C) Modes of experience. We have seen that experience is not mere sensing, either as sensible perception or as empeiria; rather, it is that same sensing but insofar as in it the testing of the freely constructed "could be" is brought about. It is ultimately the testing of a "could be" in a "for". And this experience, thus conceived, is what may have different modes; they are modes of testing. We are not now trying to determine what these modes are, but to conceptualize in what this modalization as such consists.

Now, experience is the terminal moment of method. Method, as we saw, has three phases: establishment of a system of reference, sketching of possibilities, and experience. This experience has different modes, i.e., there are different modes of physical testing of reality. And as testing is always a function of the system of reference and of the possibilities of the "could be" which we are sketching out, it follows that the modes of experience, as modes of testing, comprise the diversity of methods as such. Therefore I shall treat of the modes of experience as modalizations of method, i.e., as modalizations of the way of access from field reality qua reality to in-depth reality.

The first moment of the method is the establishment of the system of reference. This system of reference is the field of reality. And this field, as we have already seen, is not just a field of real perceived qualities, but of perceived realities in all of their fullness, whether or not they are elemental qualities. These realities are of different categorial natures as much for what concerns the categories of reality {243} as for what concerns the categories of their intellective actualization. Field intellection not only intellectively knows reality actualized "in" sentient intellection, but also the "re"-actualization in the form of a judgement. For its part, the actualized real in these two forms has its own categories of reality. As I said, the categories of thing, person, life, societal living, historical unfolding, etc., are not the same. The categorial nature of the field of reality is quite rich. It is not constituted by a unique category but by a great categorial diversity within its actualization as well as its reality. And in accordance with each category, things are present in all of their great variety.

Reality, actualized categorially according to an "in" and according to a "re-", is projected upon the base of the worldly ground, and then acquires the character of an "ob". The "ob" is not separation but rather a pointing to the ground. And as the categories of reality of field things are quite varied, it follows that the formal character of the "ob" is equally quite varied. The objectuality of a thing is not the same as the objectuality of a person, of a life, etc. There are many modes of being an object because there are many modes of actualization of the real in an "ob". Hence, wherever one looks, the field of reality is multiform. And as this field is just the system of reference of what is actualized in the "ob", it follows that by its own nature the system of reference is not univocal but constitutively plural. The system of reference is determined ultimately by the nature of the "ob", by the mode in which the field real is object. And this mode is what makes of field reality a canonical principle. The determination of a canonic principle is constitutively modal. Hence the {244} establishment of the system of reference is inexorably modalized. Each type of reality and of actualization constitutes a possible mode of referential system. In its very root, then, method is formally modalized. And these different modalities constitute an ambit of free choice. Depending on whether one adopts one or another reference system, the road embarked upon, the meta of the methodos, will always be a "way", an opening of a path, but of a different "mode". And this is essential. It is not the same to have "things" as a system of reference as to have "persons", or other types of field reality. The knowledge of the whole field as a worldly moment will be completely different in the two cases. Ultimately, each type of knowledge, as we have already said, has its own categories and its own ways. This diversity of modes of actualization, I say, is the terminus of free choice. Only by a free choice do some field things take on the character of canonic principle. The modalization of objectuality grounds, by free choice, the modalization of the canonic principle constituting the system of reference.

But modalization also affects the other two moments of method, the sketching of possibilities, and the physical testing of reality.

The second moment of method, in fact, is the sketching of possibilities. A sketch is, as we have already seen, the conversion of the field of the real into a system of reference in order to intellectively know sentiently and actively the "could be" of the ground of the field. Clearly, every sketch is based upon sentient intellection of possibility, i.e., is based upon a suggestion. But a suggestion is a sketch only when it is the suggestion of activity of sentient intellection. And this activity of sketching is the free construction of real possibilities, {245} of the "could be". Only as a system of possibilities sketched out based upon a system of reference can we intellectively know the field real as a moment of the world. Now, the system of reference is just that: a system of reference. The sketch constructed upon this reference, by being a free construction, can therefore have quite different modal characteristics. Above all it can be a sketch of possibilities in conformity with what is already determined in field intellection by its own representative content. For example, it may be a system of bodies linked by the laws of Newtonian mechanics, or a system of vital forces, or a system of personal agents, etc. But it is not necessary that this always be the character of the sketch. I can, in fact, sketch a system of possibilities not in conformity with field reality but in fact contrary to it, e.g. a system of particles which are mechanically indeterminate, or a system of persons that is "fatally" determined. Then the sketch has not the character of conformity, but a character of contrariety with respect to the system of reference. Between the two modes one finds the extremely rich gamut of sketches which are not contrary to field reality, but merely diverse with respect to it. This diversity in turn can have the character of mere difference within the plane of possibilities offered in the system of reference, as for example when it was initially thought that in wave mechanics one was dealing with a classical wave equation. But the diversity can also have the character of going beyond the possibilities of the system of reference, for example when Einstein defined his law by means of the proportionality of Ricci’s tensor and of mass-energy, which went beyond the difference between classical gravity and inertia. Ultimately, this is what takes place in {246} quantum mechanics, whose equations go beyond the difference between wave and particle. Whether one deals with conformity, contrarity, or diversity (differential or a going beyond), the sketch has thereby acquired an essentially modal character. The modalization of objectualization inexorably implies this modalization of the sketch of possibilities. Each mode of objectualization opens different modalities of sketching. And as the objectualization is in itself something modal, it follows that the method acquires, in its second phase, a modalization of second degree, so to speak.

Hence it follows that the third moment of method, the physical testing of reality, i.e., the experience of the "for", is essentially modal. It is a modalization of third degree. We are not dealing with different ways of making experiences within the categorial, but the different modes of experiential intellection of the real in its sketch. These modes depend upon the two modalities which we have examined: the modalization of objectuality (the different modes of the "ob") and the modalization of the sketch itself (the different modes of the "could be").

The physical testing of reality, i.e., experience, is very different in the modal sense. There are sketches of possibilities which in a certain way come to mind. And at that point, the physical testing of reality has a quite precise modal character. Every method is the "way" [via] from the field in "ob" toward what, in the worldly sense, "could be". Now, when we say that this "could be" comes to mind, it is something which we encounter when we objectualize the field in "ob"; this is the ob-vious. Many of the great rational intellections have been accomplished with this modal character of being obvious. Thus, it was obvious that field reality was worldly and obeyed Newton’s laws. {247} ‘Obvious’ means something that jumps out at us. Therefore it does not lose its character of obviousness. It was so obvious that atoms were regulated by Newtonian mechanics that no one was able to think otherwise about it. It would only have appeared as something ‘obvious’ had someone cast doubt upon it. And until the third decade of this century, no one did. Only at that moment did it seem that this fact was obvious, but nothing more than obvious.

Obviousness is a mode of experientiation. But there are other quite different modalities. All of them have the common characteristic of not being obvious. The "ob" does not always simply lead us to the terminus of the path [vía]; rather, it generally only opens to us a difficult road toward it. The "ob" is presented as something successively more difficult to pass; it is not the obvious but the difficult. The difficult is not obvious, it is just viable. And precisely in order to probe this viability, we resort to an experience, a physical testing of a rich and complex reality. The viability is, with respect to the obviousness, the second great modal difference of experience.

This experience of the viable can assume different modes in turn:

a) Above all, the field real can be physically tested in a way which consists in forcing it to show its in-depth nature to the one experiencing. The physical testing of reality then consists in what we call an experiment. Not every experience is an experiment, but experiment is always the first mode (first in my exposition) of experience. What is an experiment? An experiment rests in principle upon the whole of the field real. This field reality comprises not only "things" (in the inanimate sense), but also living beings (regardless of their real nature), and even men. I can experiment with {248} everything in the field, i.e., I can force everything in the field to show me its reality. The experiment has three essential moments. It is in the first place a provocation of reality. In the second, it is a provocation from a sketch of possibilities. And finally, it is a sketched out provocation, but as a mode of intellection. However natural this third moment seems, it is necessary to stress it because the first two moments might lead one to think that an experiment consists in a manipulation of reality. This manipulation exists, but experiment does not consist in that. The experiment consists in intellectively knowing, in a manipulative way, the real. This intellection is not added to the manipulation; rather, the manipulation itself is a mode of intellection. Hence the concepts elaborated in this intellection are, as I have already said, formally experimental concepts or formally conceptual experiments. Therefore experimentation does not formally consist in a manipulation, but in a mode of intellectively knowing the real in a manipulative way. It is intellection in manipulation, not intellection of what is manipulated. Hence the discontinuity between observation and experimentation, which is so often stressed, disappears. To be sure, I cannot manipulate the stars, but I can study them experientially from a sketch of intellection possibilities. And in this formally intellective sense, every observation is an experiment. The observation is not a passive registering of events. Therefore—and in this merely intellective sense—what is experimented upon in an experiment is something "made intelligible". It is a thing "made" or factum in a double sense: in the participial sense (of being something which is the terminus of a making or doing) and in the nominal sense (of being a fact as actuation of the real). The formal object of this element is therefore a "fact". {249} There is no experimental fact which is disconnected from the intervention of the experimenter; every experiment is a provocation of the real. What happens is that this intervention can assume different modal characteristics in turn. It can be an intervention which forces reality to show itself such as it is with complete independence from our intervention: this is the "fact" of classical physics. But it can happen that the very intervention of the experimenter pertains to the content of the fact. In such case the fact is real, there is no doubt of it, but it is not totally independent of the experiment itself; this is the case, for example, with the experiments of quantum mechanics. We are not dealing with intervention of a knowing subject (qua knowing) into known reality, as Heisenberg thought, but with an intervention of the experimental "manipulation" in the content of what is experimented; it is a manipulating intervention. The fact is actualized in sentient intellection although it may not be independent of the manipulation. In any case, the experiment is an experience of reality as fact in the sense already explained. And these facts can be not just physical but also biological or human; I can experiment with men or with living beings.

b) There is another mode of experience which consists, not in making a thing show us its own nature by some provocation of ours, but in the attempt to be present, so to speak, at the vision of the real achieved based on its own interiority. To be sure, the merely material reality of an atom or molecule is not viable in this form; but it is something possible and real when dealing with living realities and above all human realities. This being present is grounded upon an installation of the one experiencing in {250} the experiential; it is what I call compenetration. Life in general, and above all human life, is subject to the physical testing of reality, not just as an experimental fact, but as reality in compenetration. Naturally we are not dealing with some physical penetration, but of being compenetrated with what makes one experience. It is what is expressed upon saying, for example, that someone sees through the eyes of another. It is a type of perikhoresis, not of reality but of the modes of actuating, and of conducting oneself. It is a difficult operation; one always runs the risk of projecting the nature of the one experiencing upon what is experienced. But be that as it may, this is an authentic mode of rational intellection, an authentic mode of physical testing of reality. Compenetration is a rigorous mode of experience. To be sure it is not experiment; but without excluding experiment, compenetration actualizes, in a worldly way, the real in the intellection of the one experiencing. There is no better knowledge of a person than that which is achieved by being compenetrated with him. And this extends to all of the dimensions of human life. Moreover, it extends to merely animal life and up to a certain point, to vegetable life as well. When all is said and done, we describe the life of an animal by realizing with some difficulty the experience of compenetrating with it given the limits of its biological constitution. I said that this extends to all dimensions of human life. Thus, for example, leaving aside the problem of its truth, there is, as a mode of physical testing of reality, a strict historical experience. For an Israelite of the first century before Christ, everything which happened to his people was but a series of episodes of an historical experience of Yahweh's alliance with Israel, to the point that, as is well known, it was the unique way which led Israel to the idea of Yahweh as creator of the world. {251} This is the Pentateuch. Compenetration here adopts the form of a great historical experience. In it, to be sure, one does not experience Yahweh in Himself, but one knows what Yahweh is in His people by being compenetrated with Him. Israel is not only the people in whose history the prodigious actions of Yahweh have taken place, but a people whose whole history, even in the commonest happenings and day-to-day events, formally consists in being the historical experience of Yahweh. The same can be said, mutatis mutandis, of sociological knowledge.

c) There is still another type of physical testing of reality. There are, in fact, postulated realities. These realities have not been postulated by some simple occurrence, but by the suggestion of field reality. Mathematical reality is not a part or moment of field reality; it has nothing to do with this latter by virtue of its content. But this new reality, qua reality, would not be postulated if reason did not already move in field reality qua reality. It is this physical reality qua reality which constitutes that about which the content is postulated. Therefore what is postulated is not postulated about truth, but about the content of reality in postulation. Here, field reality qua reality is a system of reference by which reality itself has a content independent of its field content. And this independence is just a referential mode, the mode of my referring to field reality "independently". This independence compels us to sketch a free system of postulates or axioms (I need not now discuss the difference between them). These postulates are then the postulated determination of the content of reality, a reality numerically identical with field reality qua reality. They constitute, by postulation, the {252} sketch of the content of the new reality. We are not talking about truths which I state freely, but of real characteristics which I sketch freely. Postulation is a mode of realization of content, not a mode of affirmation. In virtue of this, when I logically deduce necessary consequences (including necessary and sufficient consequences) from these postulates, the conclusion has two essentially different moments. To be sure, they are inseparable up to a certain point (I shall forthwith tell what that point is), but they are never formally identical. The first moment is the only one which is generally designated clearly because it is of greater apparent relief; this is the moment by which the affirmation is a necessary conclusion from the axioms, from what has been postulated. But it is not the only moment; there is another. And it is essential to point out that other moment forcefully. When I say, in the conclusion of an argument, that A is B, I do not simply pronounce the truth of my affirmation, but a real property of the mathematical object. If one wishes to speak of "seeing", I see in the conclusion not only that I have to necessarily affirm that A is B, but that I see that A "is really" B with necessity. This moment is not simply a moment of truthful intellection, but of apprehensive intellection of mathematical reality as such. What happens is that I see this reality as something which necessarily must be seen as such. It is the physical necessity which leads me to see reality in its logical necessity; but the logical necessity in and by itself is not reality. If an intelligence were to intellectively know, in an exhaustive way, the law of gravitation, it would not be limited to seeing in the movement of a body something which must occur thus in truth; besides this necessity, and just on account of it, it would see the real movement of the body. And this same thing happens with {253} mathematical reality. I do not just succeed in deductively determining what is understood as A must be B, but also in seeing that the very reality of A is necessarily being B. If this were not the case, mathematics would be a pure logic of truths. And that is impossible because mathematics is a science of reality. So much so, indeed, that Gödel demonstrated (as I have often remarked) that what is postulated has properties which are not deducible from the postulates nor can they be logically refuted by them. The fact is, as I see it, that they are real properties of mathematical reality, and their apprehension independent of the postulates is a point in which the apprehension of reality does not coincide with logical intellection. In every mathematical method there is, then, a double moment: the moment of necessary truth of an affirmation, and the moment of apprehension of reality. One’s necessarily affirming that reality is thus is not opposed to the fact that the moment of reality is formally distinct from the logical necessity of my affirmation. To be sure, they are two moments of a single, unique act; but as moments they are different. And in them the moment of logical necessity is not primary because the postulates in turn do not consist in logical affirmations but in postulations of the content of reality. It is reality, then, which has the first and last word in all mathematical intellection.

These two moments, the moment of truth and the moment of apprehension of reality, nonetheless have an intrinsic unity. It is what I call testing-together [com-probar] or verifying. As I see it, verification does not consist in verifying if my affirmation is verified; that does not need to be verified in mathematics. What is verified is not the truth of my affirmation but the very presence of reality {254} apprehended through a way of logical deduction. It is the testing or verifying of reality through the "together" of truth. Truth is not verified, but rather reality in its truth; we apprehend "reality in truth". This might make it seem that the method has consisted of a reasoning process. But this is not true because all reasoning processes depend upon something prior to the reasoning itself, upon the postulation of the content of reality. Method is a path into postulated reality, an oriented path in accordance with logical rigor. But if this demonstrative rigor, by being impossible, did not lead us to apprehend the reality of A as "being" B, we would not have mathematics. The unity of the two moments of the intellection of postulated reality is, then, what we call ‘verification’. The physical testing [probación] of reality is now verification [com-probación]. Here we have the essence of what, paradoxically, but very exactly, should be called the ‘experience of the mathematical’. The mathematical is the terminus of a physical testing of reality, of experience.

To be sure, there are postulated realities which are not mathematical; they constitute the ambit of the reality of fiction. But I need not insist upon them because however they are seen, they have the two moments of internal coherence of the feigned, and of apprehension of its reality in fiction. They are, in this sense, the terminus of verification, in explicit form.

Every postulated reality has, then, a mode of experience its own, verification.

d) But there is still another mode of experience, the mode which concerns the nature of my experiencing my own reality. It is the experience of myself.

Above all, What does ‘experience of myself’ mean here? To be sure, we are not dealing with the mere apprehension of my reality; that happens, as we have already seen, due to sentient intellection {255} of a general sense of corporeal existence. Nor are we dealing with a mere affirmation of what I am or am not in reality, i.e., with a mere judgement of field intellection. To say that what I really am in the field of my violent reactions, perhaps being a timid person, is not a rational intellection of what I am as wordly reality. We are dealing, then, not with a mere apprehension of my reality, nor with a judgement of what I am in reality, but with an intellection of what my reality is as a form of reality, i.e., with a rational intellection, with knowledge. This form of reality has the two moments of being a mode of reality proper qua reality; it is the moment through which I intellectively know that I am a person. But there is a second moment which constitutes not so much a mode of reality as a modulation, a mode of that mode of reality; it is what I call ‘personality’, as opposed to merely being a person, which I call ‘personeity’. Thus, for example, I can say that a person is a good or bad person, because he really has this or that set of qualities which modalize his personality. To intellectively know this it does not suffice to point out that now he acted well, or that now he does not give in to temptations. It is necessary to transcend the order of actions and even temptations, in order to go to the mode by which he is, ultimately, this person.

This is something which I need to investigate. As St. Augustine said, quaestio mihi factus sum, I have become a question for myself. For this knowledge I need a method, a way that in the reality in which I already am, I am led to my own formal in-depth reality in a physical probing of my own reality. We are dealing with a way by which I achieve, in myself, the discernment of some {256} modalities of reality as opposed to others. This is achieved in the physical probing of my own reality, in an experience of myself. As the probing that it is, this experience consists in an insertion, into my own reality, of a sketch of possibilities (perhaps of something unreal) of what I am. The experience of myself is a knowledge of myself.

The idea that experience of myself as a mode of reality consists simply in a type of report or examination of myself is chimerical. By intrinsic necessity, every examination of myself is oriented and inscribed in a system of reference. When one speaks of a confession of himself, the concept of confession is not necessarily univocal. What St. Augustine understood by confession is not the same as what Rousseau understood by it. For St. Augustine, to confess to oneself is to know, to have an experience of what I am in my in-depth reality with respect to a very precise system of reference, viz. the reference to what God has realized in me and I in God. On the other hand for Rousseau, confession is the knowledge of what I am "naturally"; the system of reference is now nature. God and nature are here two systems of reference among many others, without which there could never be any confession.

This system of reference leads to a sketch of what I ultimately am. For example, it might be the sketch of a certain vocation: Do I or do I not have that vocation?

For this I need to probe the insertion of this sketch (in the foregoing example, of this vocation) into my own reality. Ultimately there is no more than a single physical probing of this insertion, viz. trying to conduct myself by intimately appropriating what has been sketched. That insertion can be positive or {257} negative. The insertion is then an attempt at appropriating to myself something along the lines of the sketch of possibilities which I have wrought. Self-appropriating is the radical mode of experience of oneself, the radical physical probing of my own reality. To know oneself is to probe oneself in self-appropriation. There is no abstract "know thyself"; I can only know myself along the lines of this or that sketch of my own possibilities. Only the sketch of what I "might be" inserted into me as self-appropriation, only this constitutes the form of knowing oneself. Clearly, it is a appropriation in the order of actualization of my own reality. This discernment of oneself is a difficult operation; it is discernment in probing and self-appropriation.

In summary, then, there are four fundamental modes of experience: experimentation, compenetration, verification, and appropriation. They are not methods like the

physical, psychological, sociological, historical, and other "methods"; rather, they are modes of methodic intellection, i.e. modes by which we intellectively know, by means of a way, the real, regardless of what the "methods" may be in the usual sense of the word. Every "method" can imply various of these "modes". The unity of the modes is not, then, the unity of "a" method, but something more radical and fundamental, viz. the unity of experience. In virtue of it we say that men have much or little experience, i.e., that they have realized, to a different degree, the physical probing of what reality ultimately is.

With this we have examined the two primary moments of the structure of knowing: objectualization and method. It is now necessary to tackle the more important theme relating to our problem: the truth of our knowledge of the depths of the real.

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§3

RATIONAL TRUTH

Rational intellection, i.e., knowledge, is a search going beyond the field to its ground, that is, toward what "could be" as worldly reality. In this search the field takes on the character of object, and the search itself is a way, an opening of a way to discovering the ground, a method which is based upon the field reality as a system of reference with respect to which the intelligence sketches a system of possibilities that ultimately one tries to subject to a physical probing of reality in that intellective moment which constitutes experience. In this experience, rational intellection finds that reality coincides or does not coincide with the sketch of possibilities. This encounter is the truth of rational intellection; the opposite is error. In what follows, unless the contrary is indicated, I shall only speak of truth; error can only be understood with respect to truth. And truth as encounter is the essential part of rational intellection. What is this truth, i.e., what is the truth of reason? We need to determine, then, the essence of the encounter. And that will lead us to discover the major characteristic of the intrinsic structure of knowing. The problem of the truth of reason thus unfolds in three successive steps:

1. What is the truth of reason as encounter?

2. What is its formal essence?

3. What is its intrinsic structural moment?

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I

THE TRUTH OF REASON

Let us take a few steps back, to the beginning of our investigation. Intellection, I said, is the mere actualization of the real in intelligence. This reality can be considered under two aspects. I can consider reality as a formality proper to a thing itself; this is the problem of reality. But I can also consider reality qua actualized in intellection. Then the actualized real is just truth. Truth is, then, the real itself qua actualized in intellection. It is the real itself which confers its truth upon intellection. I have called this giving of truth truth-making. And this truth-making has, as we have seen, different modalities. Above all, reality (unless otherwise indicated, I shall employ ‘reality’ and ‘real’ as equivalent in our problem) can be actualized in and by itself in its naked reality. The real makes truth in accordance with its own otherness of reality. Throughout this study, I have called that mode of actualization real truth. It is the radical, primary, and essential form of truth as such, the mere being actually present of the real in intellection.

But there are other forms of truth-making. The real, in fact, is not actualized only in and by itself; it is actualized as real but with respect to other real things. The real, then, makes truth, but it gives truth not only to the intellection of the real itself but to that intellection in which one intellectively knows the real thing among other things of field reality. Real truth is a simple truth, not in the sense of uncomplicated or elemental, but in the sense that {260} there is simply "one" reality, however complicated it may be, yet one which is intellectively known in and by itself indivisibly. The other form of truth-making constitutes dual truth, because there is the real thing and some other respect in which the real thing is intellectively known. The intellective actualization of the real thing is now dual. In it the two moments of the intellection of the real should coincide unitarily in the unity of actualization of the thing. The real thing makes truth, but in coincidental form. All dual truth is essentially a coincidental truth, a coincidence between real truth of a thing and the intellection of this thing "from others".

This coincidental truth can in turn have three essential characteristics. In the first place, it can be a coincidence of the real and of a simple apprehension. Then we say that the real is authentically this or that; for example, that it is authentic wine, because there is a coincidence between the liquid which I am really apprehending and the simple apprehension of the wine. The real makes truth here in that form of giving dual truth which is authentication.

But in the second place, it can deal with a coincidence between the real and the mode in which the real must be understood with respect to the field, i.e., a coincidence between the field real and its affirmative intellection. The real now makes truth like something which dictates or pronounces its truth. Its truthifying is veridical. Intellection is then a conformity more or less adequate of what is affirmed and the field real.

But there is still a third form of coincidental truth not usually distinguished from the previous ones. In it, the field real is formally actualized not in an act (either apprehensive or affirmative, but in an activity of worldly searching. The coincidence is then an {261} encounter or finding in the field real of that which is sought in the world, to wit, of its ground. Coincidental truth is now truth in finding. The real is actualized and makes truth in the form of a finding. To be sure, this truth contains authenticity and veridictance, just as veridictance contains authenticity. But this intellection in finding is not just authenticity or veridictance; rather, it formally consists in being authenticity and veridical in finding. And this finding is an irreducible mode of truth because it is not a moment extrinsic to intellection; rather, it pertains to it intrinsically and formally. All truth of affirmation in fact has an intrinsically and formally dynamic character, as we saw. But the third type of truth which we are studying is not simple dynamism; rather, this dynamism has its own character, that of dynamism of inquiry, or in progression. The inquiry, and therefore the finding, then pertain intrinsically and formally to truth in encounter. St. Augustine tells us (De Trin., IX,1): "Let us seek like those who have not yet found, and we shall find like those who have yet to seek, because when a man has finished something, he has but begun." Now, this expresses not only a limitation which in fact human knowledge possesses. It also expresses something much more serious, viz. the formal character of knowing proper to it. The limitation of knowledge is certainly real, but this limitation is something derived from the intrinsic and formal nature of rational intellection, from knowing as such, since it is inquiring intellection. Only because rational intellection is formally inquiring, only because of this must one always seek more and, finding what was sought, have it become the principle of the next search. {262} Knowledge is limited by being knowledge. An exhaustive knowledge of the real would not be knowledge; it would be intellection of the real without necessity of knowledge. Knowledge is only intellection in search. Not having recognized the intrinsic and formal character of rational intellection as inquiry is what led to straying with respect to this third form of truth, and to subsuming all truth under the truth of affirmation. That is not the case; inquiry is a mode of intellection, the mode of rational intellection; and truth is not only conformity but also encounter. It is not the same thing to affirm something about what is in the field as to encounter what this which is in the field is in the worldly sense. It is not the same to intellectively know what something is "in reality" as to know what something is in reality "itself". The difference is that between conformity and encounter. And as what is encountered is or is not what is sought, it follows that the real now has a mode of making truth which is its own, its own mode of actualization; this is verification. Verification is the proper and exclusive form of the truth of rational intellection.

Authentication, the veridical, and verification: these are the three forms of dual truth, of coincidental truth. The truth of reason, and only it, is verification.

He we have the first step of our investigation, that of determining in what the truth of reason, the truth of encounter, consists: the truth of reason is verification. But this leads to a second step, i.e., to asking ourselves in more detail what the formal essence of encounter is, what the formal essence of verification is. As this encounter takes place in experience, the formal essence of verification is but the problem of the truth of experience.

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II

THE ESSENCE OF TRUTH IN ENCOUNTER

The truth of reason consists, then, in the real making truth in the form of verification. The truth of reason is encounter, but not a haphazard type of encounter such as a collision with reality or a stumbling upon it. Rather, it is the encounter with something which is sought. This search is not some flailing about in a vacuum, so to speak, but the search for something which has already been intellectively mapped out. The encounter as such is verification. In order to determine that in what, essentially, truth in encounter consists, we must pose three questions: What is verification? What is the formal structure of verification? And In what does the order of rational truth consist?

1st Question. What is verification? Verification is clearly encountering or finding something which one is already seeking. To understand what verification is, let us proceed, as in so many other problems, step by step.

Above all, let us recall what it is which is sought, and that is the ground of the field real as a moment of the world, i.e., of the respectivity of the real qua real. This fundament is intellectively known in a sketch of possibilities of what the real "could be" in the worldly sense. What one seeks is then, formally what has been sketched out as real.

This encounter takes place in the real by submitting it to a physical testing of reality, to experience. As what is sought is something sketched, it is clear that the encounter consists not in being a mere manifestation, but in being the fulfillment of what was sketched out. Encounter is fulfillment of a sketch. We are not dealing with some mere conformity, {264} more or less adequate, with the real; rather, we are dealing with the intellection of the real as realization of a sketch. This is the fulfillment of what "could be" in what "really is". Fulfillment is the mode proper to inquiring intellection.

Fulfillment is the mode in which the real makes truth in intellection, viz. fulfilling what has been sketched out. And it is because of this that the fulfillment has verification for its own essence. Verification is a "making true", verum facere. And this requires a special reflection.

In the first place, what is this facere, this making or doing? The facere is not, here, a poiesis, nor is it a praxis, or an agere, because what the facere designates here is not an actuation but an actualization. We are dealing, in fact, with a facere proper to a ground. Now, a ground, as we saw, is what grounds the real with respect to itself, passing formally into what is grounded. We are not dealing with a temporal passing, but one of a merely actual nature. It therefore consists in constituting the real thing itself, in actuality, i.e., it is the intrinsic and formal constitution of the actuality of the thing itself. It is a formally grounding passing. It is here a moment of intellective actuality of the real. Intellectively knowing itself is now activity, and ultimately, intellective activity is the actuality of the moment constitutive of the real qua actualized from the depths of itself.

In the second place, what is made in this making is the verum in fulfillment. What is made is the intellective actuality of the fulfillment itself. It is not, I repeat, a making in the sense of producing or anything like that; rather, it is a making of actuality. And this actuality has its own character—let us say so once again—, that of being actuality in fulfillment. If this were not so, we would have simple {265} conformity. And conformity is not, formally, something sought after, but fulfillment is so by virtue of its essence. The real not only "is" actualized, but is actualized as something "grounding".

In the third place, this facere of the verum not only concerns what is intellectively known, but also the intellection itself qua rational. The verum facere, verification, is a "co-happening" in actuality, a "co-happening" of the constitution of the grounded real and of intellection as the ground. And this "co-" is just the modality of coincidence in rational intellection. Coincidentiality is now "co-happening" or "co-constitution". Intellection itself is then grounded qua intellection, which is not only in conformity with the real but also is a conformity grounded qua intellection. Rational intellection has grounded truth.

In the fourth place, it is a coincidence determined by the real itself. Coincidence is a mode of actuality, and as such is actuality of the real. The intellective aspect is, then, grounded upon the real formality of a thing itself. And this unity of actuality, grounded upon the real, is what constitutes the fact that things give us ratio or explanation. The form in which the real makes truth is that facere which consists in giving ratio or explanation. Fulfillment, verification, consists formally in giving ratio. Whence knowledge consists in being the intellection of things insofar as they give us ratio. That formula appeared early in this study of reason; but now we see in what, radically, this giving of ratio consists. Knowledge, and especially scientific knowledge, is not a system of propositions, but an intellective activity in which the real makes truth in its ground; it consists in things giving us ratio or explanation. And {266} science itself as a system is the more or less necessary system of the "giving ratio" of the things which it investigates. In experience, the real is giving us (or taking away from us, which comes to the same thing) ratio. Experience has as an intrinsic and formal moment, that of making truth; and verification is but the giving of ratio, i.e., is the intellective constitution of the ground as such.

How does the real verify the ratio? A difficult problem. This is the second question which we have posed with respect to verification, viz. the structure of verification.

2nd Question: The formal structure of verification. Verification has a complex character. To analyze it, let us recall what has already been explained.

Above all, verification always has the character of necessity. It is necessary that the real be or not be grounded in something which "could be". Necessity is a character of verification because it constitutes the character of its own emergence. Then one might be tempted to think that this necessity is independent of experience, because experience only shows us facts. But this, as we have already seen, is false. Experience is inscribed in the impression of reality. And the impression of reality has as a structural moment that of the "toward". Intellective knowing as "toward" is, then, an intellective necessity, the necessity in accordance with which the real is itself bearing us from the field to the world. It is a datum of the real itself qua real. The necessity of grounding, then, takes place in the necessity of the intellectively known real; it is not just a fact. And this surely leaves open the question of whether this necessity leads to a final positive terminus; this we shall see soon see. But neither is that necessity a merely logical one. We are not dealing with the stating of {267} some proposition, for example, the principle of causality or of sufficient reason, and trying to make clear that these propositions are evident and hence "must be applied" to the field real. This is, as I see it, untenable, above all because no one has ever been able to state those presumed principles with a univocal formula. So it is not surprising that no one adduces rigorous proofs that they are evident. Hence we are not dealing with application of these principles to field reality. The necessity of going to what is in the world is not a piece of evidence but is given in the intellection of the field real as real. And this functionality, projected upon that to which it impels us in the "toward", is the very actuality of the "for"; it is a datum and not a necessary judgement. It is a moment of a sentient reason.

But verification does not just have that moment of radical necessity. Verification, by virtue of its nature, must be something possible in principle; this is its character of possibility. This has at times seemed clear. Nonetheless, it is not something clear even with regard to those conceptions for which grounding is a logical necessity, because the fact that it may be necessary to go toward a ground does not mean that, without further ado, it must but possible to find it in either a positive or negative sense. It is necessary, then, to determine the precise point in which the said principle takes place in the real. And that is the question. As I see it, this point is none other than one in which the field real has thrust us from the field to the world; it is just the real and physical identity of the moment of reality in the field and in the world. In virtue of this, if I intellectively know field reality, not as sensed in the field manner, but according to the formality of reality of a field thing, then I am already in the moment of reality which constitutes the {268} world itself. The necessity with which the field real thrusts us "toward" the world is just what makes it possible to find the world in what is sensed; this is the possibility of verification. To verify is to bring the world to the field. And this is possible thanks to the fact that the moment of reality is numerically and physically identical in the field and in the world. What makes the progression from the field to the world is, then, what makes possible the return from the world to the field. And in this consists verification. The world is not necessarily a zone of real things beyond the zone of the real things of the field; rather, it is only the fullness of the formality of reality qua respectivity. Hence, verification not only has a moment of initial necessity, but also an intrinsic and formal character of possibility.

As necessary and possible, in what does verification consist in itself, i.e., in the intellection of the worldly in the field? The "for" is an open ambit. How is it filled? This is the third character, or rather, the third group of characters of verification.

Above all, one must make an essential distinction. We have already seen it, but now it is necessary to set it down because it is here that it acquires its full meaning. The "for" is a "what for" or "why". And the "what for" or "why" has two moments. One is the moment of the "for" itself. And this is a datum of the impression of reality. The other is the moment of the "what": that which we force to be the worldly "what" of the field. The first moment does not require verification; only the second does so. How is it verified, how does one find, in the experience of the world, the worldly "what" which we have sketched out? This is the question exactly.

Let us say at the outset that the question which we have just formulated does not have, nor can it have, a univocal answer. {269} Verification is a dynamic moment of rational intellection. Hence it is not a quality which the sketch has or does not have, but the quality of a progression which takes us to a verification. Verification is an essentially dynamic quality; it is always and only to go verifying. And this "to go verifying" is what constitutes experience. It is not the manifestation of a fact. The dynamic character is, together with necessity and possibility, the third great characteristic of verification.

This characteristic has many of its own modes.

In the first place, what is sketched has to be sufficient for grounding what in the field. This is the moment of sufficiency. It is what, from a merely logical point of view, was encapsulated in the idea of sufficient reason—something impossible, as we have seen.

This sufficiency has in turn complex characteristics.

a) Verification consists in what was sketched out having at least confirmable consequences in the field. The sketched-out "what" is not verified in and by itself, but only in its consequences. Immediate verification, if it exists, is quite exceptional. If the consequences are not verified in the field, the sketched-out "what" would not be true. On the other hand, if the qualities of the field are the same as those of what is sketched out, we may say that what is sketched out has verification. I shall forthwith pose a matter for reflection with respect this.

b) There are times when what is sketched out is not something whose consequences are strictly necessary in the field. It might happen that there is at least a concordance between the sketch and the field reality. This is a verification, but of another order than that of the consequences.

c) It might happen that in the process of going to verify, the "could {270} be" can show different aspects, each of which taken by itself is not sufficient in any of the two senses explained; but if there are many different aspects, the unity of all of them is nonetheless convergent with respect to the outcome. Then there is a verification by convergence. Although it may seem strange, almost all of our rational intellections, even those most solidly established, have this character of verification by convergence; the more the convergence, the better the verification. This is an essential form of verification. The convergence is not a type of substitute for verification; it is verification in convergence.

Consequence, concordance, and convergence are the three modalities of what I have called ‘sufficiency’. Without sufficiency there is no verification.

But in the second place, verification has another line which is not simply identified with that of sufficiency. The world, in fact, is the respectivity of the real qua real. On the other hand, the field is just what is sensed of the world. Hence reality qua worldly is something much richer than field reality; the world strictly exceeds with respect to the field, and does not just exceed the field with respect to the real things sensed in it. Now, exceeding is a possible line of verification; it is the moment of exceeding of verification, because the sketch of the worldly "what", in virtue of being worldly, exceeds what is of the field. This means that, in principle, the sketch contains more properties of the real in the field itself than those which are strictly sensed in its mere field intellection. Hence the sketch contains "new" properties of the real. In general, only a rational intellection which leads to the discovery of {271} new verifiable properties has strict scientific value. Thus the electromagnetic theory of light led to the discovery of new properties of light; the relativistic and ondulatory theory of the electron led to the discovery of the first form of antimatter, the positron, etc. Rational intellection does not ground what is of the field except by exceeding it. This is the line of exceeding proper to rational verification.

To be sure, neither the line of sufficiency nor the line of excedence is absolute verification, but only a progression toward a verification off in the distance. No moment of it, by itself, has absolute value; it is rather a provisional verification. Here ‘provisional’ does not mean that it is going to be rejected or absorbed, because neither rejection nor absorption are formal characteristics of the verifying progression. The strictly formal character of verification does not consist in being opposed to error. The formal character which is of interest to us here is quite precise: it is adequacy. Provisionality consists in but partial inadequacy. The possible rejection or superceding or diversification in verification is formally inscribed in the compass of adequation. It is a characteristic which is intrinsically and necessarily inherent in verification, both with respect to sufficiency and with respect to exceeding. Verification is a "going verifying". It is not a quality which something has or does not have; but a quality which consists in becoming more adequate to the real. It is the dialectic of adequation. Adequation as limit of dynamism has appeared already in the problem of the truth of judgement. However here we are not dealing with mere dynamism, but with that special dynamism which consists in progression. And then the dynamic intellection takes on, in the progression constituting reason or explanation, its own characteristic: verification in scrutiny. This should not seem strange to us. {272} Human reason is sentient reason. It senses that its progression takes place in reality. And here is the terra firme of that intellective progression. But it senses the different states of this progression just like so many other scrutinies. And scrutiny, as we have already seen, is a mode of intellection of the real: the scrutiny of reality gives us reality itself qua "scrutinized-reality"; i.e., reality in the mode of the scrutinizable. Sentient reason is, ultimately, reason which moves in scrutiny, and what it scrutinizes is, formally, the adequacy of verification. The dialectic of adequation is progressive scrutiny of verification.

Having reached this point (sufficiency, excedence, scrutiny), it is necessary to focus our reflection upon these three aspects of verification thus understood.

a) In the first place, the verification of reason has two aspects which must be very carefully distinguished. This is the point to which I alluded previously, and about which I said some reflection is needed. Because, what is it that is verified? What was sketched out is what is verified, something which bears us from the world to the field; it is precisely in this that verification consists. This verification is experience, something quite different, as we said, from sensible perception as from experiment. But then the fact that what has been sketched discharges two functions comes to our attention. On the one hand, reason leads to an affirmation about the field real, an affirmation which can be verified both along the diverse lines of sufficiency as well as along the line of exceeding. Thus, I can verify that the wave "reason" or "explanation" of light leads to interference, which is to be sure verified in experience; and I can verify that the gravitational "reason" or "explanation" of masses leads to certain movements of the stars, something also verified observationally. {273} But what is it which is verified? What is verified is the reality of the interference and the reality of the movements recorded in celestial mechanics. But the question does not end here, because these same phenomena may be grounded upon principles different than those of the wave theory of light, or the gravitational laws of Newton. And this is, in fact, the case. The photonic theory of light also gives a complete explanation of interference, and the relativistic theory of gravitation likewise gives a complete explanation of celestial movements. Thus it follows that it is one thing to verify, in experience, the fulfillment of what has been sketched, and something quite different to verify that the explanation or reason adduced is the unique and true one. One thing is the verification of what has been predicted or explained, something else the verification of the explanation itself. Now, this latter is not verifiable. One can verify the truth of what is explained or predicted, but one cannot verify the explanation itself which is advanced. If it were possible to verify both in a single experiment, we would have some type of critical experiment, an experimentum crucis. But such experiments practically do not exist. One can demonstrate that quantum mechanics does not contain nor admit hidden parameters, but one cannot demonstrate that only quantum mechanics can give a physical explanation of elementary particles. It is one thing to verify the truth to which reason leads, and something else to verify the explanation itself which leads to these truths. And this latter is not verifiable. There are only two possible exceptions to what I have just said. The first is that the explanation chosen is such that by its own nature it is the only possible one; then the verification of the truth of the explanation would be, at one and the same time, the verification of the explanation of the truth. There is another exception, in a certain way more attainable. It is the case in which the sketch to be verified consists only in the affirmation of the reality of {274} something unknown. That is what happens when reason sketches out, for example, the existence of a nerve cell. The verification (microscopic image) of the reality of this cell verifies the two directions of the explanation. But in general verifying the sketches of reason does not mean verifying the explanation of their truth.

b) In the second place, the immense majority of rational intellections are not absolutely verifiable even in first of the two senses which I just described. Precisely because it is progressive, verification always admits of degrees. In what situation do these gradual verifications arise, i.e., what is the physical testing of reality in the immense majority of cases, not to say in nearly all of our rational intellections? To understand this, it is necessary to point out a very precise character of verification. Verification, as I said, is not necessarily adequate, but adding now that verification is never totally excluded because verification is not a quality which something has or does not have; rather, there is only the ongoing process of verification. Hence the inadequacy does not entail complete abolition of verification. What has been sketched out, precisely because it is more or less adequate, can be more or less verified. This is expressed in a very precise distinction. Adequate verification is verification which in a certain way is total. There is no doubt that then the inquiring intellection encounters the real as the complete fulfillment of what has been sketched out; the real then is, with respect to what has been sketched out, something strictly rational. The way or path which has led us to the real is just the way of the rational. Experience is here experience of the real as rational. But when verification is inadequate, the sketch is not complete. Experience is {275} only the fulfillment of some aspects or moments of what has been sketched out. It is not that what has been sketched out has parts, but that the totality of what has been sketched is more or less firm in the physical testing of the real. And in this sense, what has been sketched is not composed of parts, but of partialities. Of them, some are fulfilled and others not. This partiality is a mode of verification; it is not full verification, but just partial. And this partiality shows that what has been sketched is not the "way" or via of the real, but is something in some way "viable". Now, rational intellection of the viable, the inadequate fulfillment of what has been sketched in the physical testing of reality, is just what constitutes the reasonable. The reasonable is a mode of the rational; it is not the strict rational, but the viable rational. The reasonable is strictly and formally the viable. There are verifications which are more or less viable than others, more or less reasonable than others. The intellective progression in worldly reality, which in its dynamic phases scrutinizes the real, is in general a progression or experience of the reasonable. Insofar as something is being verified reasonably, it tends constitutively to the strict rational. In the limit of this constitution the explanation or reason of truth and the truth of reason or explanation would coincide. When there is but approximation to this limit these two are only reasonably coincident.

c) Finally, it is necessary to emphasize an essential possibility: that not every sketch is verifiable. To be sure, the progression of reason always takes place in physical reality, whether field reality or worldly reality. But what has been sketched out in this progression may not be verifiable. The "what" of the "what for?" is then like an empty space. What is unverifiable shows reality as empty. The unverifiable has two essentially different aspects. A sketch can be {276} unverifiable in the sense that in the physical testing of reality the real expressly excludes what has been sketched. Then the unverifiable has the sense of refutable. We are not dealing with a logical refutation, but with a negative experience. But there is a second degree of irrefutability, so to speak, and that is what is neither refutable nor irrefutable; this is a suspended experience. What, then, more precisely, is unverifiability? To be sure, negative experience fully enters into the line of verification; it is a strict verification of non-truth. Negative experience is a crucial experience of falsehood. And it is because of this, rigorously speaking that there are no strict negative experiences. The problem thus centers around suspended experience: What is its unverifiability? One might think that it is a suspension originating in the absence of verification. But this is not the case. It is necessary that there be not absence but impossibility of verification. Mere absence would give us the sketch as unverified, but not as unverifiable. The unverifiable is what, by its own nature, is taken away from verification, i.e., from a physical testing of reality. For this the experience of the unverifiability itself is necessary; that is, we need the verification of unverifiability, because the experience in question is not the suspension of experience but a suspended experience. Now, the sketch which we are trying to deal with is not a simple occurrence; it is a sketch articulated in a suggestion. The sketch is born from mere suggestion; it is not identified with mere suggestion but is always positively or negatively articulated in a suggestion. Hence the suspended experience of a sketch means a reduction of the sketch to what has suggested it, a reduction of the sketch to suggestion. But then it is clear that the suspended experience cannot consist in {277} not sketching what has been suggested, but in taking the suggestion itself as the source of a new sketch. Then the unverifiable does not close us off from intellection; rather, what it does is to open up for us other possible types of verification, a new intellection, a progression of a new type. This is the most radical form of the dialectic of reason: the dialectic of verification as such.

Verification is dialectic not only by virtue of its moment of progressive adequacy, but also and more radically by its intrinsic characteristic: it is a progression from the verifiable and the unverifiable toward new sketches. This is the dialectic "suggestion-sketch". Rational intellection is a process of sketching in and from a suggestion, and returning from the sketch to the suggestion for new sketches. It is dialectic of sentient reason. It is not a psychological process but an intrinsic and formal moment of rational intellection as such. Indeed it is the very mode of intellective knowing, intellective knowing in the dialectical progression of "suggestion-sketch".

With this, we have summarily analyzed the formal structure of verification. Verification has the character of necessity, of possibility, and of dynamism. In itself, verification has a moment of sufficiency (consequence, concordance, convergence) and a moment of exceeding. In both moments it is a verifying process which is more or less adequate, recognizing that verifying the truth of reason or explanation is not the same as reason or explanation of truth, and that verification can adopt the form of the strictly rational or of the reasonable, or even of the unverifiable, as a dialectical moment of intellection. Rational intellection has the dialectical structure of sentient reason. Naturally, in this distinction, what has already been verified constitutes an essential moment, that of progress. {278}

Let us return to the point of departure for this analysis. Verification is the mode by which the real makes truth in the thinking intellection. The truth of this intellection is rational truth. This truth is the truth of the field real as worldly reality; rational truth is truth which is formally worldly. Hence, rational truth not only is truthful but also constitutes the truth of a world; it is—please excuse the expression—an order. Here ‘order’ is not ordering but a zone or region. What is the order of rational truth? Here we have the third of the three questions which we posed to ourselves in the study of the essence of truth in encounter. The first was, what is verification? The second was, what is the formal structure of verification? Now we pose the third question: in what does the order of rational truth consist?

3rd Question: The "order" of rational truth. Rational truths constitute an order, the order of reason, because reason is the intellection which, in its progression, intellectively knows the field real as a moment of the world. Now, the world is the real as such, and therefore its unity is essentially and formally respective; the world is the respectivity of the real as real. Therefore, every rational truth, by virtue of being worldly, is formally respective. This is the order of reason. If we wish to conceptualize with some rigor what this order is, we must confront at least two serious problems: in the first place, what is the characteristic of this order as "rational"? And in the second, in what does this order as "order" consist?

1. The characteristic of truth qua "rational". The truth of rational intellection qua rational is distinguished, as we have seen, from the truth of field intellection. {279} The latter concerns real things in the field of reality, whereas rational truth concerns the very world of the real. And it is necessary to carefully pin down the character of this difference, especially since its mere mention can suggest the difference—classical since Leibniz’ time—between truths of fact and truths of reason.

For Leibniz, a truth of reason is formally and constitutively necessary; it cannot be other than it is, and it is impossible to think the opposite of it. Therefore the truth of reason would be eternal truth. On the other hand, a truth of fact is a truth about something which can be otherwise; its opposite is possible. Therefore it is contingent truth.

But this conception is, as I see it, untenable, even leaving aside the fact that an eternal truth requires an eternal intelligence, which the human intelligence certainly is not. But I repeat, even leaving aside this point, the radical difference is not that between fact and necessity, but between reality in a field and reality in the world, which is something quite different. For Leibniz, truth is always a question of being objective, i.e., of objective concepts; and its being is intellectively known in that form of affirmation which is identity. Truth is always mediated or immediate identity of concepts. Now, this is wrong. Truth is not a question of objective concepts but of reality. And reality is always something primarily and radically given, something merely actualized in intellection. Hence Leibniz’ distinction between truths of fact and truths of reason, between necessary truths and contingent truths, is false.

In the first place, let us consider the so-called ‘truths of fact’. Above all, Leibniz (and on this point, all philosophical tradition {280} before him) fails to distinguish the two types of truth in what he vaguely calls ‘truth of fact’. And this is because there are truths of fact such as, for example, the truth that this book occupies such-and-such space on my table; but there are also truths of fact which concern the structure of cosmic reality, for example, the truth of gravitation. The first are factical truths; the second are what I call factual truths. The cosmos is not a fact but rather a theater, the fact of facts, that in which every fact exists. Certainly it is not something absolutely necessary, but neither is it something properly contingent. Moreover, without delving further into the subject, what is decisive is that both the factic as well as the factual are, for the effects of my intellection, something intellectively known sentiently in the field of reality. The essential point is not that they are contingent (that would be a problem of reality), but that their intellection is of the field. Now, field reality, regardless of how much it may be of the field, and of how much it is sensed, is "reality". Therefore the so-called ‘truth of fact’ is the truth of field "reality". Thus reality is intellectively sensed, and what is sensed is so in the formality of reality. We are not, then, dealing with truths of fact but truths of field reality. In what is of the field, reality is given. It is not a question of concepts but of reality. Reality, even if of fact, is not synonymous with contingency; rather, it is the formality of what is apprehended. In virtue of this, reality is not a "mere" fact, but a constitutively necessary formality. In turn, the most necessary truth of the world is in some mode and some form the truth of something sensed in the field manner. Therefore what is sensed does not therefore cease to be intellectively known in necessity.

In the second place, are the presumed truths of reason {281} eternal truths in Leibniz’ sense? Clearly not. Leibniz cites as truths of reason the supreme logical principles (identity, non-contradiction, excluded middle), and mathematical truths. But are these truths grounded in nothing other than our mind? No, they are not. They are grounded intrinsically in "given" reality. Mathematical truths are certainly necessary, but their necessity depends upon postulates, and hence upon reality given in and by postulates. Ultimately mathematical truths are anchored in something given. And therefore they could perfectly well be another way. The postulates are, in fact, freely chosen. It would suffice for me to change the postulates, and mathematical truth would be different.

The same thing happens with the supreme logical principles. These principles, in fact, are structural principles of affirmation. And what logic does is to intellectively know affirmation as such. But here a serious error comes up not just in Leibniz but in almost all of philosophy, culminating in Hegel. Indeed, How do I intellectively know the principles of every affirmation? It is usually said, for example, that the principle of non-contradiction regulates the very intellection of every affirmation; that is, that it is the principle not only of affirmation qua something affirmed, but also of intellection itself as an act of affirmation. And this is, as I see it, incorrect. When I intellectively know affirmations as such-and-such affirmations, these affirmations are the thing intellectively known; and these things certainly have a character of non-contradictory necessity, i.e., they have non-contradiction as their structural character. But the question does not end here, because these affirmations, with all their structures including non-contradiction, must be intellectively known by me in a distinct act; otherwise we would have logos, {282} but not logic. Logic is grounded in the intellection of the logos as something intellectively known. Now, it is easy to think that this intellection of an affirmation is in turn an affirmative intellection. If this were true, there would be an infinite regress: the principle of non-contradiction of intellectively known affirmations would also be the structural principle of their intellection, and so on ad infinitum. And here, as I see it, is the mistake. The intellection of my affirmation is not, in turn, an affirmative intellection; rather, it is a primordial apprehension, therefore anterior to all affirmation. In more general terms, intellective access to the logos is not in turn a logical access. Hence, for the effects of intellection, the necessity of the principles of affirmation is not in the concepts but in the intellectual reality of my affirmations. This reality is, then, something given and not something conceived. Logical truths are not necessities of concepts but characteristics of given reality. If one cannot think the opposite of them, it is not because their truth is eternal, but because intellectively known reality itself as reality, i.e., affirmation qua affirmed, is what cannot be any other way.

Granting this, the essence of the so-called "truth of reason" is not to be the truth "of reason" but "rational" truth, which is something different. And it is rational truth because it concerns the world of reality (including therein affirmative intellections as acts). Every rational truth is a truth of reality, because it is a truth of worldly reality. And I am including in worldly reality the cosmic itself. To be sure, the world and the cosmos are not identical. The world is the respective unity of the real qua real; the cosmos is the particular respectivity of the worldly real. But for the effects of intellection; cosmos and {283} world coincide; they are that "toward" which field reality directs us. In this "beyond" world and cosmos coincide. Because of this I have here spoken simply of "worldly reality". One might say that the cosmos as such is not necessary. But that is just what I am saying, that rational truth does not consist in being truth of reason but in being worldly and cosmic truth of the field real. The worldly is not just the cosmos, but the cosmic is formally worldly; it is a particular kind of world. And the field real as a simply worldly moment or as a cosmic moment (i.e., as something factual) is always the terminus of rational truth. Necessity and contingency are not characteristics of truth, but of reality.

Therefore it is not the case that two types of truth exist, viz. truths of reason and truths of fact. Every truth is always just a "truth of reality". What happens is that this reality is either reality sensed as of the field, or worldly and cosmic reality. But in both cases we are dealing with one and the same reality qua reality. Field reality impels us from itself, in its mode of "toward", to the worldly; and the worldly is intellectively known in the field real as the finding and fulfilling of a sketch. And this finding is rational truth. It has nothing to do with the idea that the order of rational truths is an order of absolute necessity. My sketch is always a freely constructed sketch. When I seek its verification, it might be that we find it to be unverifiable, and not always because the sketch was false, but because it is not necessarily true that everything real is rationally verifiable. The real might rest upon itself. And then the real enters into the zone of reason but in order not to constitute itself as real there in reason. But this does not invalidate what {284} we have said, because the field real is what leads us to the worldly. And that is good enough. We are not dealing with the case that all of the real qua real is necessarily of rational structure; it suffices that something real, to wit, the field real, has this structure. To think that everything real necessarily has its "explanation" not only is an hypothesis, but moreover a falsehood. Thinking about what Leibniz thought about, to wit, the reality of God, what must be said is that God is above all reason and explanation; to affirm, as is usually done, that God is the explanation of Himself constitutes an empty logification of divine reality. God is absolute reality; but even in the worldly sense, it is not certain that every reality has a rational explanation. A free act does not; rather, freedom is what puts reason or explanation into what is going to happen. But freedom itself is beyond explanation. It is, if one wishes, the explanation of the unexplainable. The truth of rational intellection then essentially overcomes the duality of fact and reason.

One might say that metaphysical truths are necessary. We shall not here seek to define what the metaphysical is; it suffices to indicate that the metaphysical is the order of the real qua real, i.e., the order of the transcendental. Now, the transcendental is not something conclusive and a priori; it is something given in impression (the impression of reality), and it is something open, and dynamically open. Metaphysical truths are only stages of the intellective progression toward the truth of reality.

In summary, then, the duality of truths of fact and truths of reason does not exist, only the duality of field truths and worldly or rational truths. Both are true not of concepts but of reality, i.e., of a formality actualized in {285} intellection. Rational truth is simply worldly truth.

But these rational truths constitute an "order". It is not, to be sure, the order of absolute necessity of conceptive essences, in Leibniz’ sense; but it is a strict order. In what does it consist?

2. The order of rational truths qua "order". Rational truths, I say, constitute an order. That I indicated earlier. Rational truth, in fact, is the truth of the real as a form of reality. Each thing is not just real, but constitutes "a" form of being real, i.e., one form among others because reality is constitutively respective, and this respectivity is the world. Therefore a real thing as a moment of the world is "a form" of reality, it is "its" form of reality. It does not matter, in this problem, that the respectivity in question is cosmic in addition to worldly. The cosmic, as we have already said, is the suchness of the world, a particular kind of world, the suchness or particularity of worldly respectivity; therefore, ultimately, what is decisive is the respectivity itself of the world. In virtue of this, all worldly reality, when it is multiple, sends us back, in its own character of reality, to other forms of reality, because no form is self-contained, but only respectively to another. And therefore all truth about a worldly reality, i.e., all rational truth, sends us back qua truth to other rational truths. Therefore rational truths constitute an order, the order of the rational. This order has two essential characteristics.

In the first place, the rational is not just the explanation or reason of what is of the field. Explanation is primarily and radically explanation of field reality. Without this, and without being for this, {286} there would be neither reason nor explanation, nor rational truth. This has never been emphasized enough. The rational is constituted as the terminus of a progression in which, impelled by the field real, we go in search "toward" the world, i.e., toward the form of reality which has that field thing as a moment of the world, in reality. Reason or explanation, then, is primarily and radically reason or explanation of what is of the field. It has a precise origin; it does not rest upon itself, and this origin is, as we have seen, in what is of the field. But this means that the rational has two faces: one, which opens onto the field thing of which it is the explanation. But since this reason or explanation is worldly respectivity, it follows that reason has a second face: that which opens onto other forms of reality, i.e., other explanations. By being the reason or explanation of a field thing, reason is, in a certain way, going beyond itself. Therefore the order of reason has a characteristic of exceeding with respect to the field of which it is the reason or explanation.

This characteristic appeared before when we dealt with verification, and still earlier, when we dealt with the field of the real. Therefore in order to pin down our ideas, let us once again quickly review what exceeding is. To exceed does not mean that that to which it is applied is a contraction of what is exceeding, but that, on the contrary, exceeding is an expansion of the characteristic of reality. It is an expansive constitution, and not a contractive one, of the character of reality. This expansion has two fundamental moments. Above all, it is an expansion of the character of reality of each real thing as primordially apprehended; it is a character which befits everything real thus apprehended. It is the exceeding by which each real thing determines a field, the field of the real. This is the field exceeding. But there is a second moment, that by which the whole field of the real leads us toward the world; the field real is {287} now intellectively known as a form of reality in the world. This is worldly exceeding. In turn, this worldly expansion, this expansion of the field in the world, has two aspects. One is that aspect by which intellection as a form of reality, i.e., rational intellection, upon being the explanation of a field thing, discovers (or can discover) in the field real more properties than those which, in the field manner, we have so far intellectively known. It is an exceeding with respect to properties. But the worldly exceeding has, together with the first aspect, a second one: the expansion of each explanation to other explanations. And this second aspect of worldly expansion is what is now of interest to us. Through the first aspect, worldly exceeding is an exceeding of explanation with respect to the field; this exceeding is therefore entirely contained in the respect which reason or explanation shows to what is of the field. But the exceeding of which we now speak is an exceeding within the rational itself, within the world of reality. It is impossible to discover the explanation of a real thing by itself, because if it is an explanation it is so of more than that one thing; it is an explanation within the worldly unity of other explanations. By virtue of its own essence, explanation of the real is exceeding in the worldly sense.

And here a second essential characteristic of the order of rational truth shines through, because the aforementioned exceeding is not simply a numerical addition to reason or explanation, but an exceeding which is constitutive of and essential to all reason. It is not that "one" explanation leads us to "others", but that each explanation is so only "in and by" that which leads us to others. That is to say, explanation by its exceeding constitutes not an additive order but a formal and constitutive one; it is a system. Explanation is formally and constitutively systematic. Rational truths as such constitute a system. This means, {288} first of all, that every explanation is sketched based on others. In field intellection we see that each thing is intellectively known based on others. Now, in rational intellection, each explanation is intellectively known based on others. Conversely, every explanation leads, in and by itself, to others, and is only an explanation in unity with them. Therefore every rational intellection leads intrinsically and formally to its own superceding in others. And then, this makes something decisive clear to us. Explanation, as we saw, is an intellective sketch of what a real thing "could" be as a form or moment of the world. Each explanation is a "could"; if I may be permitted a risky expression (which I previously purged to preclude confusion) I can say that each explanation is a "possible". Now, the systematic unity of explanations is then a unity of "co-possibles". The whole world of the rationally intellectively known is the unique and true explanation of field reality. The sketch, we say, is drawn based on a system of reference. This system of reference is the field of the real. Now, what is sketched, the adequate explanation of the field real, is the unity of the world. The field is the system of the sensed real, and the world is the system of the real as a form of reality. The "could be" is the ground of the real. Therefore the system of the world is just the ground of the unity of what is of the field.

And here it is necessary to avoid four errors which may readily come to mind.

The first concerns the "could be". The "could be" is something possible. But I have just indicated that this latter is a risky expression because it is ambiguous. The order of possibles can be understood as the order of the essences which eternally rest upon each other. Reality would then be a derivative of these possibles; that was Leibniz’ idea. But it is wrong. The possibility of the "could be" is not the essence of {289} the real, anterior to the real itself, but the field reality itself which, as physically real, is a "reality", but "toward" the world. Be the world as it may, it is always just a structure of reality given in the field manner. Therefore the rational is not the possible, but the real in its intrinsic and physical emergence from itself; hence it is a moment within the real itself. It is not a question of whether the possible is real, but the real itself as realization of its form of reality. This is not something anterior to the real, but an intrinsic constitutive moment of it. The possible is the real’s intrinsic nature of being possible. Ultimately, the possible is a moment reduced from the real itself. Only the real is a ground of the possible. Having inverted these terms is the first mistake which I have sought to avoid.

The second mistake concerns that moment of unity of the rational through which every explanation is an explanation based upon others. It is here that the systemic character of the rational is most readily apparent. But this "based upon", and therefore the system itself, isn’t that "based upon" which from time immemorial has been called the "reasoning process". The system of the rational is not, formally, a reasoning process. Leibniz said that pure reason is the "linking of truths", the linking of reasoning processes. And Wolf expresses the same thing when he says that "the" reason is the faculty of perceiving the nexus of universal truths. Universality here expresses the character of a reasoning process. But as I see it, we are not concerned with that. The system is the unity of respectivity of the world. Therefore, the fact that every explanation is understood based upon others does not mean that it is deduced from them. It means rather that every explanation refers to others, regardless of what the mode of referral may be. The referral itself is the systematic character of the world, and not the other way around. The reasoning process is grounded upon {290} the respective character of the world, the respective character of reality rationally known intellectively. Only because the world is systematic unity, and only because of this, can there be, in some cases, a reasoning process. The essential unity of the world is not, then, reasoning; it is the real unity of respectivity.

And this brings us to the third mistake. As each rational truth intrinsically and formally refers to another, one might think that the order of rational truth is the totality of rational truths. That was Kant’s idea: reason, for Kant, is the organization of experience, but in and by itself it is the logical totality of the truths of the understanding, what he called ‘Idea’. The object of reason, for Kant, is not things but the truths which I have understood about things. But this is untenable. Reasoning is based upon truths already known, and this is possible thanks to the fact that truths have a unity which is conferred upon them by being truths of the world. The unity of the world, as I just said, is the foundation of reasoning. And this unity is not, therefore, the total system of truths but the principial unity of respectivity. The order of rational truths does not have the character of totality but of respectivity. And respectivity is not necessarily totality; a constitutively open respectivity cannot be totality. The unity of respectivity is the intrinsic and formal principle of all rational order. This order is not, then, totality even as Idea.

This puts us face to face with a final mistake, the fourth, which it is essential to dispel. One might think, in fact, that the order of rational truth is the unity of true reality as such. Then the order of rational truth would not be "totality" as Kant thought, but the order of a primary unity of the real as such; it would be {291} the order of the "ab-solute". And this order would be but the development or unfolding of the absolute. The absolute would then be reality unfolding or developing itself, i.e., the reality which not only is in itself, but is in itself and for itself; the absolute would be spirit. That was Hegel’s idea. But such is not the case. Even leaving aside the subject of the identity of reason and reality in Hegel—that is not our topic at the moment—it is necessary to point out that the unity of the rational order is not the unity of the absolute. A real thing, intellectively known rationally, is a thing as a form of reality. Now, it is certain that the transcendental order is an order which is open dynamically. But this does not mean either that the constitution of each real thing in the world is a movement, or that the transcendental dynamism is an unfolding. ‘Movement’ is not synonymous with unfolding; there is only unfolding or development when the movement consists in actualizing something which, previously, was virtually in what is moved. But in the constitution of forms of reality, we are not dealing with something which is being configured, but with the fact that each thing is being configured as a form of reality. It is not that the absolute is configured or configures itself, but that what is configured is each real thing. Thus there is no unfolding. And furthermore, there is no unity of the absolute. The different forms of reality have no other unity than that of respectivity. Therefore the order of the rational is not the order of the absolute but the order of the world. Reality qua reality is not the same thing as absolute reality. Each real thing is not a moment of a great thing, of the absolute, but only a moment respective to other realities. The order of the rational is neither a Kantian totality nor a Hegelian absolute; it is simply a world.

With this we have completed our second step to {292} conceptualizing truth as an encounter or finding. The first step was analyzing what truth is as an encounter; this was "verification". The second has been to determine the formal essence of this mode of truth. That we have done by confronting three questions: What is verification? What is the formal structure of verification? And In what does the order of reason or explanation consist? We must now take a third and final step: determining what we might call the intrinsic character of truth as an encounter, i.e., the intrinsic character of rational truth, of the truth of knowledge.

 

III

THE INTRINSIC CHARACTER OF RATIONAL TRUTH

It is first of all necessary to pin down the meaning of the question we wish to answer. We have seen that rational truth is verification. It is a mode of truth-making with a special character, a mode by which the real, already apprehended as real, gives its truth to the thinking activity; i.e., it is a mode by which the real gives us reason or explanation. We have seen what the formal essence of verification is. Verification is the truth-making of the real in an inquiring intellection, i.e., it is in a sketch. To verify is to find the real; it is a fulfillment of how we have sketched what the real could be. In this finding and in this fulfillment the real is made actual (facere) in intellection (verum). And in this consists "veri-fication". And it is in this truth-making that rational truth consists. Now, that verification in a sketch intrinsically involves two aspects: finding and fulfillment. Up to now we have been made to see the character of rational truth {293} as a truth which has those two moments: finding and fulfillment. But those two moments are different, and each imposes its own stamp upon truth. Hence their unity is what constitutes the intrinsic nature of rational truth. What, ultimately, is this intrinsic character of rational truth, i.e., the intrinsic unity of finding and fulfillment? This is the question now facing us.

To answer this question it is above all necessary to focus on each one of the two moments of verification, that of finding and that of fulfilling. Let us repeat, then, what has already been said but in a more systematic way. Only then will we be able to confront the question of the internal unity of these two moments, i.e., the intrinsic character of rational truth.

To do this with some degree of clarity, it is necessary to repeat certain ideas expounded earlier at greater length.

1. Verification as finding. Truth consists, formally, in the mere actualization of the real in intellection; and this actualization is truth. The actualized real, then, makes truth. We have seen that there are two essential forms of truth: real or simple truth, also referred to as elemental truth, and dual truth, that which consists in the coincidence of the aspects of dual actualization. There is dual truth when those two moments coincide; it is what I have repeatedly called ‘coincidental truth’. And this coincidental truth in turn assumes three forms: authentication, veridictance, and verification. Now, we are not dealing with a simple classification of truths, but with a unitary structure, i.e., each form of truth presupposes the previous one and is grounded upon it. Every coincidental truth of authentication is grounded upon real truth, and involves {294} in an authentication sense real truth itself. Every truth of veridictance is grounded upon the truth of authentication, and involves in a veridictance sense the truth of authentication, and therefore real truth. Every truth of verification is grounded upon the truth of veridictance and formally contains this truth in a veridictant way; hence it involves veridictance in a verifying way, as well as authentication and real truth. I shall later return to this subject at length. But it was necessary to sketch it here with regard to rational truth, since every rational truth is grounded upon a truth of veridictance, i.e., formally contains one or several affirmations, and with them, a real truth. Now, here is where one finds the irreducible novelty of rational truth with respect to the truth of veridictance. Since rational truth formally involves affirmations, one might think that rational truth consisted in that fact that when my affirmations about the real meet the real, they conform to it. Rational truth would thus be simple truth of veridictance. This is the idea behind all of classical philosophy. But rational truth is not that. To be sure, rational truth formally involves affirmations, but does not consist in "being" in conformity with the real. Certainly without that conformity, there would not be rational truth. But rational truth is not mere conformity. Rational truth is the "finding" of conformity; but the finding in itself is not conformity but something which involves conformity, albeit in a new way, viz. confirmation. The rational truth of affirmation does not consist in conformity of what is affirmed with the real, but in the confirmation of what is affirmed by the real. Every rational truth is sought, and is the inquiry for something which has been sketched out. And the finding is not simple conformity with the affirmation sketched with the real, but the "confirmation" of the sketch by {295} the real. If there were no sketch, there would be no finding, nor for that matter rational intellection. It is on account of this that finding is something different than simple agreement or simple conformity.

But let us understand this correctly. The word ‘confirmation’ can have two meanings. It can mean a type of ratification of a true affirmation: one already has a secure truth, and seeks to ratify this truth by another route. Confirmation would then be ratification of a truth already affirmed as true. But finding is not confirmation in this sense, for a very simple reason: prior to the finding, what is affirmed is not affirmed as true, but as a simple sketch of truth. Then ‘confirmation’ means something more radical than ratification; it means giving the character of secure truth to what has been sketched as true. What has been sketched out is secure "with" the found real. This is the "with" of confirmation. It is not ratification of a truth but the very constitution of truth. Confirmation is finding insofar as it gives security. Finding is not a chance stumbling upon what is sought, but rather constitutive confirmation, constitution of the security of what has been sketched in and by the real. It is not ratifying confirmation.

Now, the real is actualized in confirmation. Simple "af-firmation" becomes "con-firmation". Here we have rational truth as finding. Veridictance "is manifested" in conformity; verification "confirms" in finding. Reason not only affirms but confirms in finding. Reason is not formally reason because it affirms, but rather affirmation is formally rational because it constitutes the truth of an encounter or finding in constitutive confirmation. The sketch is the affirmation of what "could be". Rational intellection is the confirmation of the "could {296} be" in and by what it is. The finding is a moment of inquiring intellection of what the real "could be" in the world. And because of this it is intellection of a real thing in its ground; it is grounding intellection. This ground is what constitutes in-depth reality, where in depth formally consists in establishment in the world. Rational intellection is in-depth intellection of the real actualized in its ground. All of these formulae are identical. And their intrinsic formal identity is just the essence of rational intellection as finding in constitutive confirmation.

This is verification as finding.

It is not easy to choose an adequate designation for this finding which is constitutive of rational truth. Nevertheless, it is necessary or at least extremely convenient to have one, for greater clarity in what I am now going to expound. For it, let us consider that every confirmation involves affirmations. And the affirmations have always been considered as proper to the logos. Then one might be able to call rational truth ‘truth of a logos’, i.e., logical truth. This is extremely risky because it might easily lead one to maintain the idea that the rational part of truth is the subject of logic; rational truth would then be a truth which is logically grounded. And that would be a serious error, one which I have repeatedly pointed out in the course of this book. The fact is that the expression ‘logical truth’ has two meanings. It can mean that the truth of the logos is logical in the sense that the essence of the logos consists in predicative affirmation. Now in this sense, to say that rational truth is logical truth is a great falsehood. It is what, since the very beginning of the book, I have called logification of intelligence. Rather, one must {297} follow the opposite path, viz. seeing in the logos the mode of intellective actualization of the real. The logos must be understood with respect to intellection; this is the intelligization of the logos. In such case, ‘logical truth’ means truth of the real actualized in the logos. Then, clearly, rational truth is logical truth because verification is a mode of truth-making in a twofold way which involves the logos. Naked reality is not actualized in intellection as logos. Rational truth, on the other hand, is not actualized formally as logos, but involves logos. Now, it is in this sense, and only in this precise and exclusive sense —I insist upon these adjectives—that I say that by being dual actualization in confirmation, rational truth is logical truth in the sense of truth of a reality which in one of its aspects makes truth in logos. This is not the best expression, but lacking a better one I shall employ it in the final pages of this chapter to designate not "the" rational intellection but only an aspect of it, that aspect by which rational intellection involves affirmations, i.e., involves logos. This is truth as finding.

But here is where the second moment of verification appears. Truth is finding of something which is sought through sketching. Then verification is not just confirmative finding but fulfillment of what has been sketched. And this is the essential point.

2. Verification as fulfillment. Fulfillment of what? Of what has been sketched out. But, what is it, formally, that has been sketched out? In what does the fulfillment consist, and what is then the character of truth as fulfillment?

a) What the sketched out is formally. Although we have already dealt with this question, let us here recall the ideas that are essential for the subject at hand. Rational intellection is {298} actuality of the real not in an act of intellection but in intellective activity. It is intellective activity "toward" the grounding real, in a "toward" determined by the real itself apprehended as real already, and which is what we now seek to understand in its ground. It is in this moment of the "toward" that one intellectively knows the real in thinking actuality; and therefore reality is intellectively known then as reality. But the real itself, intellectively known as worldly reality, is formally given by that mode of the real that is the unreal. The unreal is then entirely inscribed within reality. This inscribing has two moments, or if one wishes, two aspects. On one hand we say that reality is actualized in an intellection, though not in an intellection which is necessarily empty, but in one which concretely consists in what, without reservation, I have called (as we commonly say), "my ideas". Through this actualization of reality in "my ideas", their content is intellectively realized as mere content of the idea in reality. These two moments taken together constitute the unreal. In themselves, the ideas are "a-real". They are realized through the actualization of reality in them. Therefore the unreal, by reason of the ideas, is a free creation of mine; and in virtue of that, I say that creating does not consist in giving reality to my ideas but in giving my ideas to reality. The unreal is inscribed, then, entirely within reality by those two moments of actualization and realization. For the purposes of our problem, this inscribing can have two modes. One consists in the fact that the unreal is what the real "could be". It is, as we saw, an intellection of the real in drawing back. The "could be" is inscribed in reality in a very precise way, in the unreal mode (not in the grammatical sense but in the sense which I just explained). But the unreal can be inscribed in the real in another form, viz. the unreal as {299} reality of what the real "could be". This "could be" is not a mere abstract possibility, but something different and much more positive: it is intellection in potential mode (I repeat the same thing here I said with respect to the unreal mode). The "could be" is not, in itself, "possible", but "possibilant", making possible. Therefore this "could be" is not intellectively known in a movement of drawing back, but in a sketching out of a progression toward the ground of the real. What is formally sketched out is, then, the possibilitation of the real qua possibilitant. And this possibilitant or making possible is an internal system of fundamental moments, i.e. their intellection is a "construction" of possibilitation. To facilitate this expression, let us here employ the word ‘possibilities’, in plural, as opposed to what is merely "possible".

Let us now ask ourselves what it is that these possibilities possibilitate. The sketch, as I said, is above all a construction of what the real "could be" in its in-depth reality. Therefore the possibilities possibilitate, above all, the real in its worldly reality. The actualization of the world in intellective activity is actualization of possibilities of a ground. It is not that these possibilities come before the real, but that they are the very ground by which the real is a moment of the world.

But these possibilities are not limited to being possibilities of the real, because this system of possibilities is freely sketched out, freely constructed. In virtue of this, the sketching activity is appropriation of the possibilities in a free option. This is the essence of the sketch as intellection. With it, the possibilities are not only what possibilitates the real, but also what possibilitates, at one and the same time, the real and my thinking intellection of the real. In this aspect they are my possibilities; what possibilitates the real {300} is constituted in possibility from my thinking. Upon being appropriated by me, the possibilities which possibilitate the real in the world possibilitate at one and the same time my rational intellection. Neither primordial apprehension of reality, authentication, nor veridictance are the terminus of appropriation. Verification, on the other hand, is formally the terminus of appropriation. One appropriates, I repeat, the possibilities of the real in intellection. Now, just on account of this, rational intellection is not just sketching; it is fulfillment of what is appropriated.

b) What is fulfillment? My rational intellection is, then, first and foremost actualization of the real in accordance with my sketched out possibilities. And this actualization is just the essence of fulfillment. Neither authentication nor veridictance are, formally, fulfillment. But verification is formally fulfillment, because we are not dealing with the fact that what is fulfilled may be the outcome of an intellection which is sought. This search, qua search of an intellective act, can be common to every intellection whatsoever regardless of its formal nature. But verification, as I have already said, is not the search of intellection, but intellection which is formally inquiring, intellection in the process of searching. Inquiry pertains to the formal content of the intellection itself. And this is exclusive to rational intellection. Neither authentication nor veridictance are intellection in inquiry. Neither of these two intellections consists in appropriation of sketched out possibilities. But verification does. The fulfillment of what has been appropriated is not a characteristic either of act or of activity, but the actuality of what has been intellectively known in that activity qua possibility of its own actualization. Intellection is actualization of the real in intelligence. And when the intellection is rational, then the real is actualized in {301} the form of a fulfillment of a sketch. This fulfillment itself consists in realizing the possibilities sketched out and appropriated. Therefore this actualization is what, with complete semantic and etymological rigor, should be called fulfilled actualization.

Now, intellective actuality is strictly common to what is intellectively known and to intellection itself. That we have already seen. Insofar as it is actuality of the real intellectively known in the fulfilled way, it comprises the very essence of rational truth. Therefore rational truth qua truth is the fulfillment in the real of what has been appropriately sketched out by intellection itself. This is the essential difference between conformity and confirmation. The fulfillment, and only the fulfillment, is confirmation. And conversely, confirmation is fulfilled actuality. And because of this rational truth qua fulfillment has its own intrinsic character.

c) Character of truth as fulfillment. We have seen that as finding, rational truth has a logical character in a very precise sense, which I have already explained, in the sense of actualization in a logos. In this respect rational truth is logical truth. Now, as fulfillment, rational truth has a different character, inseparable from the former but different from it. In fact, rational truth as fulfillment is the realization of possibilities. And every actualization of possibilitant possibilities, whether intellective or not, has a very precise character. On one hand, it is realized actualization by a potency (let us call it that) of things, and by a potency of mine, the intellective potency. In this sense that realization is a fact. But on the other hand, when the sketch of a possibilitant possibility mediates between a simple potency and actualization, the realization is more than a fact, it is a happening. {302} The realization is at one and the same time fact and happening; but being a happening is not formally the same as being a fact. While every happening is a fact, not every fact is a happening. The fact is actuation; the happening is actualization. The fact is actuation of "potencies"; the happening is realized actualization of possibilities. As it is in the realization of possibilities that the essence of the historical consists, it follows that the character of rational truth qua happening is what formally constitutes the very essence of the historical part of this truth.

Now, rational intellection, by being fulfillment, is formally historical, since fulfillment is realization of possibilities. Rational truth has this character of historicity. Historicity is an intrinsic character of rational intellection, of rational truth. But as we had to clarify in what the character of rational truth consists as finding, to avoid serious errors, so we must now clarify the fact that rational truth is historical.

That rational truth is historical does not mean in any way whatsoever that rational truth pertains to history. That is to say, it does not mean that rational truth has history. Clearly it does so, and to affirm that is a triviality. But "to be" history is not to be "historical". Neither does it mean that rational truth, besides having history, is historically conditioned. It is obvious that this is so, as we see in science, for example. Not in just any epoch can the same experiments be sketched out, etc. But here we are not dealing with that; we are not dealing with the fact that rational truth has history nor with the fact that it is historically conditioned; rather, we are dealing with the fact that rational truth is formally historical in itself inasmuch as it is truth. That means, first of all, that its {303} historicity is an intrinsic and formal character of rational truth qua truth.

But even with all this, it is necessary to clarify concepts still more. On the one hand, one must shun thinking that rational truth qua truth is true of something historical. This, as is obvious, is radically false, because the real qua real does not have to be historical. Some galaxies, a star, or a mathematical object are not historical realities qua realities. Therefore when the real is historical, rational truth is doubly historical: it is historical because the real in this case is something historical; moreover, it is historical by virtue of being a rational actualization. Only this latter is what is proper to rational truth qua truth. That rational truth is historical does not, then, consist in its being true of something historical. But neither does it consist in being a truth which, qua truth, depends upon intellective knowing itself qua act of mine. And this is so for two reasons. In the first place, intellection is not necessarily historical, and even if it were, this historicity of my act does not pertain to the formal content of the rational truth. In the second place, the historicity of intellection does not consist in the vital unity of intellective action and of all the vital structures, regardless of the mode in which this vital unity and its concretion may be understood. However much one stresses this vital aspect of the historicity of the intellective act, it is still an extrinsic aspect to the truth of what is intellectively known as true, since it is an historicity of intellective actions qua actions. All of this pertains to the order of activity. The historicity with which we are now dealing is on the other hand a formal characteristic of rational truth qua truth, and pertains to the order of actuality. And it does not consist in thinking that what is {304} actualized is always historical reality, nor in thinking that the very mode of intellective action is historical. That rational truth is historical qua truth consists in the actualization of the real in intellection being fulfilled actualization. Historicity is here a mode of actuality. It is not a mode of activity.

But this is not all, because in turn this formal and intrinsic historicity does not consist in being merely a dynamic characteristic. To be sure, every truth of veridictance is, as we saw, a dynamism of conformity toward adequation. But rational truth is not just a movement of a phase of conformity of truth to another phase; rather, it is the fulfillment, in each of these phases, of its progression. Intellective progression is a sketch of possibilitant possibilities; its actualization is fulfilled intellective actuality. And it is in this that rational truth formally consists. It is an actualization of possibilities, an actualization of the "could be". And the historicity of rational truth does not, therefore, consist in movement, either temporary or temporal, of an actuality; rather, it consists in a mode of constitution of the actuality of the real, in being actuality made possible, a fulfilled actuality. In this respect rational truth is formally and intrinsically historical truth.

Therefore: (1) Historicity here is a mode of actualization, not a mode of action or actuity; (2) this mode is fulfillment, not dynamic conformity. That is the meaning of the expression, "historicity is actualization, fulfilled actuality; rational truth is fulfilled truth".

In summary, rational truth has on the one hand a character of finding; it is logical truth. On the other, it has a character of fulfillment; it is fulfilled truth, {305} historical truth. What is the unity of these two characteristics? That is the last question which I posed.

3. The unity of rational truth. This unity is essential. To see that, we must recall once more that the truth of rational intellection is a truth of inquiring intellection. But this, while necessary, is not sufficient; we must pin down the intrinsically unitary nature of rational truth in this intellection. Only by occupying ourselves with these two questions will the unity of rational truth be clarified.

A) Rational truth, truth of an inquiring intellection. Rational truth is, as we have seen, logical and historical. But this "and" can give rise to a fatal error, because one might think that rational truth is at once logical and historical. In such case, the "and" would be a copulative "and". This is not completely wrong, but it is not correct, either, because rational truth is not at once logical and historical; rather, it is indivisibly, i.e., at once logical truth and historical truth. Logicity and historicity are two aspects which are not just indivisible, but mutually co-determining of the unity of rational truth. The "and" then means intrinsic indivisible unity.

a) To see what this means, let us recall the outcome of our previous analysis. As truth of inquiring intellection, rational truth is truth as sketched out. And the truth of a sketch is verification, i.e., consists in the real truth-making, in the real giving of truth, in a sketching intellection. This verification is finding and fulfillment, not along the lines of a copulative "and", but in a radical way in each of those two moments. The real as sketched out is found in fulfilling, and is fulfilled by finding. Finding is confirmation, and fulfillment is {306} making possible. Therefore something is confirmed by making possible and is made possible by confirming. The real makes truth in a possibilitant confirmation and in confirming possibilitation. The unity of rational truth consists in the identity of both of these formulae. Each of the two (historicity and logicity) intrinsically and formally involves the other indivisibly. That is, rational truth is historically logical (fulfilling), and is logically historical (finding). Such is the intrinsic and formal unity of rational truth. The logical portion of rational truth consists in historical fulfillment; and the historical portion of rational truth consists in logical finding. This is the radical and formal identity of the logical and the historical in every rational intellection. It is an identity which shines through in the sketching character of rational intellection as such, i.e., in inquiring intellection as such. Sketching is the manner of intellective knowing in the inquiring sense. The unity of the logical and of the historical in rational truth shines through, I repeat, in the inquiring character of this intellection. Each form and mode of reality has its own rational truth. ‘Rational’ does not mean something proper to conceptualization or to some theory, but is purely and simply the found real as confirming its intrinsic possibilitation.

b) But, In what, positively, does this unity which thus "shines through" consist? We have already answered: in being actuality. Verification is a mode of actualization, i.e., a mode of truth-making. The unity of the logical and of the historical in rational intellection is found, then, in the moment of actuality. What actuality are we talking about? The actuality of the truth-making of the real in thinking activity. Now, this is the formal definition of reason. The identity of the logical and the historical which shines through in the sketch is {307} the very essence of reason. The logical and the historical are "one" indivisibly because they are indivisible moments of that mode of intellection which is reason. It is reason itself which, intrinsically and formally is logico-historical or historico-logical. Now, reason is sentient intelligence activated by the real itself. In sentient intellection one senses reality in the field manner in its diverse modes; therefore one senses, in the field manner, the real in that mode which is the "toward". And this "toward" has an "intra-field" aspect, through which the intellection takes on a dynamic character. But this "toward" also has a "trans-field" aspect; this is the "toward" of the whole field of reality toward reality simpliciter, i.e., toward the world. The field is the sensed world. There are not two independent "toward’s". The worldly "toward" is the actuality of the field real, but as "pro-blem". Worldly reality is the problem of field reality. The actuality of the world has the concrete form of "pro-blem". A problem is not a "question" but a mode of actualization; it is the actuality of the real as hurled into the intellection (from the Greek ballo, to hurl). And this hurling has a very precise structure: it is the trans-field "toward" of intra-field reality. A problem is just the mode of actualization of the reality of the world. It is not that worldly reality itself is a problem, but the mode in which this reality is given to us as real in actuality.

In virtue of this, intellection takes on the character of progression. This "toward" is what I have called "giving one pause to think". Therefore inquiring intellection is sentient intellection in action. That is, reason is a modulation of sentient intellection and therefore is constitutively sentient reason. By virtue of being so, reason is inquiring and sketching. And in virtue of this, it is a logico-historical reason {308} (or historico-logical) because it is intellective actuality of reality in the form of a problem. The unity of the logical and the historical in rational truth is then but the very unity of sentient reason. Only a sentient reason intellectively knows worldly reality as a problem, because reality as a problem is but reality sensed in a worldly "toward". And it is because of this that there is and must be inquiry and hence sketching. In virtue of that, rational intellection is intrinsically logical and historical, precisely and formally because it is intellection of sentient reason, i.e. because it is the actuality of worldly reality as a problem. The unity, I repeat, of the logical and the historical in rational truth—and only there—is but the unity of sentient reason. And this unity consists in being sentient intellection activated by the real. This intellection is measuring. Reason is the intellection of measure of the reality of things. And therefore sentient reason is a measuring intellection of the reality of what is of the field in the world. And in this intrinsic and formal unity of sentient intellection, activated in measuring intellection, consists intellection as sketching; and therefore in it consists the intrinsic and formal unity of the logical and of the historical in rational truth. Rational truth is historical and logical, because it is the actuality of the real as a problem, a problem which activates sentient intelligence, making of it sentient reason.

We asked ourselves what the actuality of the real in rational intellection is. It is the thinking actuality of the real; it is actuality in sentient reason, i.e., it is formally actuality of the real as "pro-blem". It is in this moment of thinking actuality of the real in sentient reason, in the actuality of the real as "pro-blem", {309} that the unity of rational truth consists. The identity of the logical and the historical consists in the actuality of reality as a problem. An intellection of the real as problem is essentially and constitutively an inquiring sketch of the measure of the real in the world of reality and is therefore logico-historical.

c) But it is necessary to go one step further. Reason is an activity of sentient intellection activated by the real itself intellectively known in that intellection. And the actuality of the real in this intellective activity is just reason, as I have said. Therefore, as I said, the actuality of the real in reason, i.e., the actuality of reality as a problem, is a modulation of the actuality of the real in sentient intelligence. And as the proper part of sentient intellection is to give us an impression of reality, it follows that the actuality of the real in sentient reason is but a modulation of the impression of reality. What is this modulation?

In sentient intellection of primordial apprehension, we formally apprehend the real, and we impressively have the real itself as real. Therefore as this intellection is activated by the sensed real in a "toward", the thinking intellective activity, reason, is already in the real. The real is not something which must be achieved by reason; reason already moves, formally and radically, in reality. Therefore I say once again, reason does not consist in going to reality, but in going from field reality toward worldly reality, in going toward field reality in depth. And this "in depth" consists in ground-reality. Reason is identically in-depth intellection and grounded intellection. This grounded "in depth" is apprehended in the form of a "toward" from sensed reality itself in sentient intellection. Therefore sentient intellection, as we already saw when dealing with the origin {310} of reason, gives us the moment of reality in impression in three modes. The primary and radical mode is reality as mere otherness of what is sensed as something de suyo. It is reality as formality. But this reality has, intrinsically and formally, the moment of the field "toward". Thanks to it, reality is the medium in which dynamically we intellectively know what is of the field. It is the impression of reality not as simple formality, but as mediality. But the "toward" sends us toward what is trans-field, toward the worldly. And in this other aspect, reality is not just a medium of intellection but the in-depth ground which mediates the simple reality of the real. This is the impression of reality not as formality and mediality, but as measure. That modulation is just reason. In this intellection, things already apprehended as real give us the measure of their reality. Such is the very essence of reason, viz. to intellectively know the measure of the reality of real things. Reality given in impression of reality is formality, mediality, and measure. These are not, as I already said, three uses of the impression of reality, but three modes of a single impression of reality. Reason is a modulation of the impression of reality, and therefore it moves, radically, in reality and is determined by it not just by the demand for evidence (that would be proper only to mediality), but by what I have called the coercive force of the real.

And here is the radical and formal unity of the logical and the historical in rational truth: it is, I repeat, the actuality of the real as "pro-blem". This unity is what constitutes sentient reason. In fact, reason consists in measuring the reality of things; in it real things give us the measure of their reality. But reason measures reality in accordance with {311} canonic principles which are sensed in the field manner. As canonic and measuring, the principle is logical. In and of itself, the canonic principle is not just intellectively known, but also sensed. Only a sentient reason is, formally, a measuring of the real. And because of this, measurement itself takes place sentiently in fulfillment of something found, also sentiently. The sensed measure is therefore a sketched measure, and hence is intrinsically logico-historical. Reason is formally sentient; it is sentient intellection of the measure of the reality of things. And it is on account of this that its truth is logico-historical and is verification of measure. The sentient facere of veri-fication makes verum something formally logico-historical. Because of this, that unity is but the precipitate of a sentient reason. Sentient reason is the measuring modulation of the impression of reality. And by being so, it is at once logical and historical, because it is at once inquiring intellection of the measure of reality in an impression of reality. The activation of sentient intelligence by the real, in fact, is an inquiring activity of the measure of the reality of things. Therefore the truth of this intellection, i.e., verification, is formally logico-historical. Sentient reason is a measuring (i.e., logico-historical) modulation of sentient intellection.

What is the nature of this rational intellection qua intellection?

B) The nature of rational intellection. Truth, as I have been constantly repeating, is the truth-making of the real in intellection. This truth-making takes place in diverse ways, as we have seen. These diverse ways constitute so many modes of sentient intellection. Each of them is a modulation of the previous one, because each mode of {312} truth is a modulation of the impression of reality. When the real makes truth in a measuring sketch of reality, i.e., in sentient reason, we have that modulation of the impression of reality which is the measure. The mode of making the real true by this modulation is verification. Verification is truth as sketched. And the intellection of the real as verification is what constitutes reason. But that is a conception of rational truth along the lines of the intellectively known real. Now, just as the mode of making the real true in sentient reason is a modulation of the impression of reality, so also this mode of making the real true modulates intellection itself qua intellection. Intellection, in fact, is mere actuality of the real. Therefore the modulation of actuality is eo ipso modulation of sentient intellection. What is this modulation of intellection qua intellection? Here we have our last question in this problem.

Now, intellection of the real as sketched, in verification, is just what constitutes knowledge. To know is to intellectively know what something is in reality as a moment of the world. It is the mode of intellection of the measure of reality of a real thing; it is to intellectively know what something is in reality. Knowledge is that modulation of sentient intellection which intellectively knows the measure of the reality of what is sensed, and is the intellection which consists in intellectively knowing rationally. Now, as rational truth is intrinsically and formally logico-historical, it follows that every knowledge as such is intrinsically and formally logico-historical.

It is so in the strict sense which we explained when dealing with rational truth. Therefore to affirm that all knowledge is logico-historical intellection is not in any sense whatsoever that which is usually called historicism. Historicism consists {313} in conceptualizing knowledge and its truth as a more or less relative moment, as a truth more or less relative to history understood as movement. Therefore it consists in affirming that the truth of knowledge is relative to a moment of history. And this is unacceptable, because the historicity of knowledge is not a movement but an intrinsic and formal characteristic of intellection itself qua logically true. That we have already explained. Knowledge is truth as sketched and is therefore intellection fulfilled in finding. Hence, if indeed it is true that knowledge "has" a history, it does so only because knowledge "is" formally true in fulfillment. Therefore the unity of the logical and the historical in rational intellection is what formally constitutes knowledge.

a) This brings us to stress the very idea of knowledge. Up to now we have arrived at three ideas of knowledge; and these three I have employed indiscriminately. But to finish the discussion, it is now fitting to examine the radical unity of these three ideas. We said that knowledge is in-depth inquiring intellection; it is intellection of the ground, and it is intellection in reason. Now, these three ideas are identical; each just makes the previous one explicit. Knowledge is in in-depth inquiring intellection. This means that activity by the real itself—apprehension in sentient intellection—goes from the field real to the worldly real. And herein consists profundity: it is the worldly base of the sensed real. This base is formally reality, since the world is reality simpliciter. But it is not something which "is there"; rather, the mode of being there is to ground: reality qua worldly {314} is "ground-reality". The base is nothing but grounding reality. Knowledge as in-depth intellection is grounding intellection. Therefore to say that knowledge is grounding intellection is but to make explicit the formula by which knowledge is in-depth intellection. In-depthness is just the nature of the grounding. And what is this grounding? It consists in the sensed real as a moment of the world, as a moment of reality simpliciter. And then ground-reality is just the measure of the reality of the real. And this measure is just what we call ‘reason’. Therefore knowledge is intellection in reason, in measure. And this just makes explicit the character of the ground and hence of profundity. The three formulae, then, are not three expressions of a fundamental identity; each, in fact, just makes the previous one explicit. Hence we can always use the third as a summary of the first two: knowledge is intellection in reason. And the identity of these three formulae is precisely knowledge, inquiring intellection.

b) I say "intellection ‘in’ reason", and not "intellection ‘with’ reason" because reason is but a mode of intellection, i.e., a mode of mere actuality of the real in sentient intellection. Reason is not something added to intellection (that is what the "with" would express), but a modulation of intellection (just what the "in" expresses). Hence the essence of knowledge is found in the modulation of making the real true. Consequently, knowledge is not a judgement or a system of judgements, but formally a mode of actuality of the real in intellection. The idea of knowledge must be conceptualized as a mode of truthifying, as a mode of actuality, of that mode of actuality of the real which is the "pro-blem". {315} I repeat, a problem is not an intellectual question but a mode of actuality of the real. Only because reality is actualized as a problem, only because of that can there be and must there be questions. It would be a serious error to conceptualize reason in the mode of logos, and above all in the mode of predicative logos. That would be a logification of knowledge. On the contrary, the logos itself (in all of its forms, including the predicative), is but a mode of the intellective actuality of the real. Therefore one must conceptualize knowledge as a mode of truth-making, to wit, a truth-making of the real in the actuality of a "pro-blem", and not as a judgement or system of judgements, which has been the great error of all of modern philosophy, above all Kant.

c) To know is then a mode of actuality of the real, a mode of truth-making. Therefore it is, as I said, a modulation of sentient intellection. Hence all that knowledge has of intellection, and therefore of truth, it owes to being a modulation of a previous intellection, ultimately to being a modulation of the primordial apprehension of reality. From this latter it receives all of its possibility and all of its scope as truth. Primordial apprehension is not a rudimentary knowledge; rather, knowledge is intellection subsequent to primordial apprehension. Knowledge is born from an insufficient intellection and terminates in an ulterior intellection. Thus, from the point of view of the content of what is intellectively known, the content of knowledge can be at times—though not always—richer than the primary intellection, and richer than the primordial apprehension. But the entire scope of knowledge, what makes knowledge be knowledge, is the moment of reality of what is known. Now, this moment is not produced by knowledge itself, but is given to it {316} in and by primordial apprehension, by primary sentient intellection. It then follows that knowledge is not only grounded in intellection, but is also subordinated to it. Knowledge is, then, as I just said, merely subsequent to the intellection of primordial apprehension. An intellection, a complete primordial apprehension, will never give rise to knowledge, nor will it require any knowledge whatsoever. Knowledge as a mode of intellection, i.e., of mere actuality of the real, is essentially inferior to primary intellection, to the primordial apprehension of the real. Knowledge is, as I said, a modulation of this intellection. And this intellection is, as I have just reiterated, mere actuality of the real; and therefore knowledge is a modulation in a problem of the actuality of the real. And this actuality thus modulated is unitarily, intrinsically, and formally, logico-historical actuality. Hence it follows that far from being the supreme form of intellection, knowledge is (by being rational actuality of the real, of a logico-historical nature) an intellection which is inferior to the mere intellection of primordial apprehension.

Knowledge is, I repeat, the successor to primordial apprehension, and this character of successor consists precisely and formally in being a logico-historical actualization of reality actualized as a problem.

 

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Here, then, we have the intrinsic character of rational truth. Rational truth is an intrinsic and formal thinking actuality of the real as a problem. It is then a

truth of logico-historical nature. This actualization is reason. Reason consists in the intellection of the sentient measure of {317} the reality of real things. And this mode of intellection is what constitutes knowledge. It is because of this that rational truth is logico-historical truth. And as such it is a modulation subsequent to an intellection; hence the unity of truth. The primary form of truth is real truth. When it is distended in the field, reality is actualized in a dual fashion. This dual actuality is actualization in the form of authentication and veridictance. Authentication and veridictance are real truth itself actualized in the field manner, i.e., distended. Finally, as the duality is also trans-field, real truth itself is actualized in the form of verification. Each form of truth formally includes the previous ones, and therefore always formally includes real truth.

Intellection begins in primordial apprehension, and grounded therein is activated in cognizant reason, whose rational truth formally consists in reversion to that primordial apprehension, from which indeed it never left. Reason is sentient reason; it is a modulation of constitutively sentient intellection. From this it is born, therein it moves, and therein it concludes.

In the same case it is, as we saw, logos by virtue of being sentient. This already manifests how much inquiring reason, like the field intellection of the logos and the primordial apprehension of reality, despite their essential intrinsic differences, still constitute a profound unity, the unity of sentient intellection. In this way, the analysis of the modulation of intellection puts before our eyes the profound unity of that intellection. From it we started. Therefore at the end of our analysis it would be good to return to the unity of intellection as the general conclusion of the entire study. {318}

 

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NOTES

[1] [Mathematical induction is, in fact, a strictly deductive method of reasoning.—trans.]).^

[2] [Spanish for 'gate'.— trans.]).^

 

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