The Concept in Thomism

By John Frederick Peifer

Of all the problems, or rather mysteries, with which philosophy deals, those concerned with the nature and objectivity of human knowledge hold a privileged position.

In The Concept in Thomism this problem, stemming from Descartes, is clearly and forcefully stated. Thus, from the very beginning, the reader is made aware of the central difficulty faced by any theory of knowledge.

The Cartesian and Kantian phases in the development of a satisfactory theory are briefly but adequately described. Then, John Peifer sets forth the reconciliation of both the immanence and transcendence of knowledge as explained by the realistic traditions originating with Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.

The differences between mere physical and psychic changes and the conditions required for knowing are explained in detail. The often misunderstood doctrine of the species, its nature and necessity, is wonderfully developed and shown to be a cognitional necessity.

The most important part of this work, however, is concerned with the role of the concept in knowledge. The correct notion of the objective concept, so long neglected, is shown to be the key for a realistic philosophical doctrine. This study alone makes The Concept in Thomism a work of exceeding importance for future philosophers and thinkers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barakaldo Books
• Release date: Apr 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781839743641

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THE CONCEPT IN THOMISM

BY

JOHN FREDERICK PEIFER, PH.L., S.T.L.

DEDICATION

TO

MY MOTHER

AND TO THE MEMORY OF

MY FATHER

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The writer wishes to express his deep appreciation and gratitude to His Excellency, the Most Reverend Moses E. Kiley, S.T.D., Archbishop of Milwaukee, for the opportunity of graduate study in philosophy at the Pontifical Faculty of St. Thomas Aquinas in River Forest, Illinois. He wishes to thank the Very Reverend Gerard Joubert, O.P., B.S.T., Ph.D., under whose direction this study was written, for his scholarly guidance, untiring interest, and enthusiastic encouragement. The writer is deeply grateful also to the Very Reverend John Marr, O.P., S.T.D., B.S.T., to the Very Reverend Raphael Gillis, O.P.S.T.D., B.S.T., to the Reverend Anthony Norton, O.P., S.T.Lr., Ph.D., and to the Reverend Bertrand Mahoney, O.P., S.T.Lr., Ph.D., for reading this work, and also for their careful corrections and valuable suggestions. He is also deeply indebted to the Reverend James C. Ruetz, MA., to Sister M. Fredericus, O.P., and to Mrs. M. J. Clarey for their help in preparing the manuscript, for publication.

PREFACE

The importance of the theory of knowledge in any philosophical system is sufficient justification in itself for a thorough examination of the main theories of knowledge advanced by serious thinkers. Yet the words of Pope Pius XII in his recent encyclical, Humani Generis, serve both as an encouragement and a guide in this work. The Holy Father said:

Now Catholic theologians and philosophers, whose grave duty it is to defend natural and supernatural truth and instill it into the hearts of men, cannot afford to ignore or neglect these more or less erroneous opinions. Rather they must come to understand these same theories well, both because diseases are not properly treated unless they are rightly diagnosed, and because sometimes even in these false theories a certain amount of truth is contained, and finally because these theories provoke more subtle discussion and evaluation of philosophic truth.{1}

And after having commended the perennial philosophy as expressed in the method, order, and principles of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Pontiff said:

For this philosophy, acknowledged and accepted by the Church, safeguards the genuine validity of human knowledge, the unshakable metaphysical principles of sufficient reason, causality, and finality, and finally the mind’s ability to attain certain and unchangeable truth.{2}

Chapter I—STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

A. The Problem

THE answer given to the problem of human knowledge serves as a key to any philosophical synthesis. Through his resolution of this problem, a philosopher either opens wide the door of his thought upon the whole of reality or locks himself within the prison of his own mind. If human thought is independent of objective reality and is itself productive of the content of thought, then the door is closed to realism and the barren isolation of idealism is invited. If human knowledge is set within the confines of sense knowledge, then all strictly intelligible realities, such as causes, substances, souls, God, are simply ruled out of existence. If human intellectual thought so transcends sense experience that it is completely independent of that inferior sort of knowledge, then the thinker is partially locked within himself and is confronted with a host of false and foolish problems—such as, how is one to demonstrate the reality of sensible material things. It is only when those realities are unreasonably reasoned out of existence that they need to be unreasonably reasoned back into existence.

Even a slight error in the answer given to any of the several questions involved in the problem of knowledge inevitably assumes enormous proportions according as its implications are more and more unfolded. An error lurking in the roots of a system of thought does not become a truth simply by being evolved. It remains an error; and if thought is consistent, that consistency can mean only a more intricate enmeshing in error. Usually it requires a mistake in logic to produce correct conclusions from false premises, but false conclusions can be drawn from false premises with strict logical accuracy. In this way, integral and elaborate systems of thought can be unravelled in which the rules of logical procedure are rigidly adhered to, and yet the entire system can be invalidated by an error at its base. Hence, the demand for cautious and careful thinking in dealing with this fundamental problem is pressing.

In his valuable study, The Unity of Philosophical Experience, Professor Gilson proves an extremely interesting point in this connection. He remarks that any attempt on the part of a philosopher to avoid the logical conclusions of his position is destined to failure. What he himself declines to say will be said by his disciples, if he has any; if he has none, it may remain eternally unsaid, but it is there, and anybody going back to the same principles, be it several centuries later, will have to face the same conclusions.{3}

Caution is further suggested by the difficulty of the problem. Cajetan shows his awareness of the difficulty when he writes "of this difficult and laborious (arduus) foundation of a great part of metaphysics and natural philosophy."{4} The danger of failure to grasp the true complexity of human knowledge and to over-simplify it is always present. The reduction of human knowledge to the dimensions of sensation quickly and easily disposes of a complex problem. The realization that sense knowledge is true knowledge, but that its function in distinctly human knowledge is ministerial only to a superior intellectual assimilation of reality, enormously complicates the matter. A discussion of sense knowledge, however thorough, must be a partial discussion in any consideration of human knowledge. A treatise on human intellectual knowledge which ignores sense knowledge must likewise be a partial treatment. The difficulties and complexities involved in the study counsel careful treatment; an easy, simple answer solves only a single feature of a complex problem.

The difference between things and the knowledge of things, between those capable of knowledge and those who are incapable of it, is an extremely real difference. The diversity is not like that which obtains between one physical being and another physical being. The difference between a stone and a plant is great and significant, but it is as no difference at all when compared with that which is present between a non-knowing being and a knowing being. The utmost diligence must be employed towards grasping this latter difference, not only because of the subtilty of it, but likewise since the conclusions of many questions depend upon it. How foolish have they been, who treating of sense and sensible, of the intellect and the intelligible, and of intellection and sensation, judge of them as of other things. And you learn to elevate your thought, and to enter another order of things.{5}

Numerous mistakes concerning knowledge have found their way into modern and contemporary thought. That there is something gravely amiss is obvious to anyone who is acquainted with the multiple particular species of philosophical thought, which fall under the general labels of realism and idealism, empiricism and rationalism. Since they contradict one another, all certainly cannot be true.

One would be sanguine indeed, and certainly overly ambitious, should he aspire to a mending of all differences and to drawing of all warring contenders to unanimity. In view of the persistent need for concord among serious thinkers, if for no other reason than that of economy of time and effort, endeavors towards agreement are not, however, without their merits. The present work aims first to bring into relief the basic antithesis which obtains between the Thomist tradition and what may be called the Cartesian tradition, and secondly to show the reasonable realism of the Thomist tradition.

The radical point of divergence is simply this: do we in knowing, by means of what is in thought, attain to things, to realities which enjoy an independence in physical existence outside of thought, or do we by knowing attain only to what is in thought? Does the immanence of thought merely serve the thinker in his grasp upon objective reality, or is the immanence of thought such as to remove all transcendence, all objectivity of thought? The question then concerns the object of human thought and principally of intellectual thought. Is that object reality or thought? Does thinking terminate in things, or in thought? Obviously the whole problem of human knowledge is involved. It matters immensely whether one is considering in knowledge a transcendent, objective reality, or an immanent, subjective thought.

The problem will seem a futile one to the non-professional philosopher. The non-professional is a confirmed realist. He is a born realist, and remaining close to natural convictions, he continues a realist. Subjectivists are made, they are not born. The non-professional readily grasps purposes; he sees no particular difficulty in the statements that knowing powers are for knowing, and that knowing is an assimilation of the real, of what is outside of thought. In fact, he is so taken up with the objectivity of knowledge and the immediate evidence of the real, physical existents distinct from thought that he does not spontaneously advert to the intermediaries of knowledge which are in thought. If anything, he is an extreme realist; he is so deeply impressed with the objectivity of thought and so naturally certain that thought attains an other than thought, that he is inclined to overlook almost entirely the immanence of thought and scarcely adverts to the fact that thought is in the thinker and that things are known only in so far as they are in some way in the knower. He is, in a word, naturally more given to the direct object of knowledge, which is other than thought, the thing, than he is to the indirect, reflex object of knowledge, which is the thought of the thing. Direct knowledge is first historically and psychologically, and direct knowledge lays hold on things; reflex knowledge, in which the mind turns itself back upon what is in knowledge and perceives the thoughts of things, is secondary and subsequent upon direct knowledge. The non-professional philosopher directly attends to things, and it is only with some effort that he reflects and attends to the thoughts of things.

This unpremeditated natural realism of man is not without significance. Anyone who is content to take man as he is, that is to say, anyone who is a realist in his analysis of man, will hesitate to scorn this natural certitude. Perhaps that spontaneous, improvised realism is the correct point of departure for all subsequent speculation. Possibly it is itself a first item of certain knowledge which must be maintained at all costs, not to be lost sight of nor left out of consideration in the search for a complete explanation of knowledge. This much is certainly true, the proper study of a nature ought not to spurn what that nature itself teaches. Among the natural convictions of man there is hardly any so strong as the realism of knowledge. The initial certainty that knowledge represents the real is surely naive and uncritical; but it is, none the less, a certainty. It is not unlike the certainty one has that it is cold when he is exposed to a temperature of thirty below.

B. The Cartesian Tradition and Its Development

Modern philosophic thought, stemming from Descartes, calls this natural certitude of realism into question. Since Descartes the predominant philosophical position has been an exaggerated subjectivism in which the immanence of thought restrains the thinker within the region of his own thought. What is subjectively in the knower is not an intermediary leading directly to a knowledge of things but is itself the direct object of thought. Modern subjectivism commences with reflection upon what is in knowledge and ends by losing hold upon what is outside of knowledge. In its more extreme developments it entirely relinquishes the other, the thing outside of thought. The other than thought becomes contradictory, for what is attained in thought is thought, and that alone. The natural certitude of realism, which modern subjectivism rejects, readily perceives that thought attains things. That thought, while being immanent, does not know things, does not attain the real is not evident. What is evident is that it does!

Philosophers who embrace subjectivism do not do so in virtue of a natural conviction. They ignore the initial impetus towards realism given by nature, or regard it as a primitive inclination that falls away under critical analysis. Actually the history of modern thought reveals very clearly the fact that the tradition of subjectivism has not been preserved and continued through constant appeal to what is naturally known and spontaneously adhered to by the human mind, but by reason of a prejudgment, that is to say, a judgment that is accepted uncritically from a predecessor. Descartes wrongly considered thought to be the object of thought, and almost every philosopher outside the scholastic tradition has accepted what he affirmed as though it were a demonstrated truth. Descartes was the originator of what has become a deep-seated and definite prejudice in favor of subjectivism.

1. Cartesian Phase

There was some excuse for Descartes’ falling into this radical error. Montaigne before him had cast the pall of doubt over the validity of external sense knowledge, which is the foundation stone, the solid rock upon which realism is constructed. External sense knowledge is entirely dependent upon the real, upon what is outside of knowledge; it clearly does not produce its object, it receives its object from outside. Descartes was unable to defend the validity of sense knowledge and the mathematical bent of his mind made that defense hardly worth the bother. Descartes was historically first a mathematician; he approached philosophy through mathematics and an unsound, mechanistic theory of physical nature. The peculiarity of mathematical reasoning is such as to readily give the impression to an unwary student that it is concerned with purely mental constructs, and not with reality. Mathematical reasoning is preoccupied either with possible being or beings of reason and terminates in phantasms of the imagination; it is indifferent to really existing actual beings. Because of this preoccupation, the mathematician can easily slip into the persuasion that he is not thinking about beings, but simply about thoughts. The doubt of the infallibility of external sense knowledge, and the mathematical interest of Descartes are the two parent notions of all modern subjectivism.

Looking at objective reality as though it were exclusively mathematical, Descartes was led to an assumption which has been accepted as a canonized point of departure by almost all subsequent non-scholastic philosophers: Man in his thinking attains directly only his own thoughts, his ideas and concepts. Descartes admitted an immediate awareness of himself as thinking, but he assumed that he possessed merely representative images or pictures of things other than his own mind. Moreover, he felt that he had these images in complete independence of an objective order. He says:

As regards the ideas which represent to me other men or animals, or angels, I can easily conceive that they might be formed by an admixture of other ideas which I have of myself, of corporeal things, and of God, even though there were apart from me neither men nor animals nor angels in all the world...And in regard to the ideas of corporeal objects, I do not recognize in them anything so great or so excellent that they might not possibly proceed from myself...To these it is certainly not necessary that I should attribute any author than myself.{6}

This unwarranted and entirely dogmatic assumption, which is the seed from which have developed all the various forms of modern and contemporary subjectivism, has been entitled the Principle of Immanence. On this principle chiefly rests Descartes’ claim to be the Father of Modern Philosophy.

Descartes had some perception of the immateriality of knowledge, but he failed to grasp the equally important feature of dependence of human knowledge upon things, and the consequent objectivity of that knowledge. For if human knowledge is not derived from things, it will not attain things in knowing. Demanding mathematical certitude as the only certitude, and casting a disastrous distrust over the validity of sense knowledge, it was easy for Descartes to bid a hasty, if speculative, adieu to the real existence of the sensible material world—even of his own body. At the peak of his methodic doubt, he could assert with confidence that he saw no reason why he might not have all of the ideas or images he had, even if there be no extramental reality. Of the great body of ideas of whose presence he was aware, he could say, These I derive from my own nature as a thinking being.{7} There remains only the idea of God.{8} That idea he could not explain; and it was fortunate for him that he could not, for that idea, and it alone, saved him from complete solipsism. The veracity of God becomes for him the guarantee that what is clearly and distinctly thought by him has an objective counterpart. Taking the immanence of thought and the autonomy of the thinking subject as the point of departure for subsequent thinking, he must prove the transcendence of thought, its objectivity. His explanation is the first of numerous futile attempts, which his followers will make, to proceed from immanence to transcendence, from the interiority of thought to its objectivity.

The English mentality of John Locke, wedded as it was to the concrete and the individual, rebelled against the abstract fancies of Descartes. Locke had no taste for innatism, and while he strenuously refuted that doctrine, he unquestioningly accepted the spirit that begot it—the so-called Principle of Immanence. Moreover, Locke wiped out the dear-cut, traditional distinction between intellection and sensation, between concepts and phantasms, and set down all of the principles of sensism. What occurred was a repetition of the case of an extreme begetting an extreme. While Descartes made man an angel, or a ghost in a machine, Locke made him a glorified animal. But both of them accept the Principle of Immanence and both of them regard ideas as objects immediately known. Thus Locke writes in the introduction to the Essay Concerning Human Understanding:

I must here at the entrance beg pardon of my reader for the frequent use of the word ‘idea’ which he will find in the following treatise. It being the term which, I think, best serves to stand for whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks. I have used it to express whatever is meant by phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it is which the mind of man can be employed about in thinking.{9}

In the fourth book of the Essay, Locke comes face to face with the problem of the objectivity of knowledge.

Since the mind, in all of its thoughts and reasonings, hath no other immediate object but its own ideas, which it alone does and can contemplate, it is evident that our knowledge is only conversant about them.{10}

Our knowledge is real only in so far as there is a conformity between our ideas and the reality of things. But what shall here be the criterion? How shall the mind, since it perceives nothing but its own ideas, know that they agree with things themselves? Though this seems not to want difficulty, yet I think there are two sorts of ideas that we may be assured agree with things.{11}

He proceeds to defend a curious objectivity for certain sensible qualities, the qualities perceived by more than one sense, as figure and size are truly and formally as they are represented, but the proper sensibles, like color and sound are causally objective only. That is to say, things possess the power to cause these sensations even though there is in them nothing like that which is sensed. He is extremely hazy on the reality of substance; he eagerly wants it, but his sensist principles leave him no defense of it. The complex ideas of modes and relations exist only in thought; they have no objective counterpart. This is particularly significant, for the ideas of cause and effect are ideas of relation.

Complex ideas...being archtypes of the mind’s own making, not intended to be copies of anything, not referred to the existence of anything as to their originals, cannot want any conformity necessary to real knowledge. For that which is not designed to represent anything but itself can never be capable of wrong representation.{12}

Thus relations are simply combinations of ideas which the mind by its free choice puts together without considering any connection they have in nature.{13} This is intellectual subjectivism, a thoroughly logical outcome of the prejudgment Locke accepted from Descartes.

Berkeley was more consistent than Descartes and Locke. Accepting the principle of immanence, he reduced Descartes’ rationalism and Locke’s sensism to a complete acosmistic idealism. The thread of agreement with Descartes and Locke is present in the assumption that man directly attains only to his own ideas. Berkeley agrees that certain so-called sensible qualities exist only in thought, but then, why strive to defend the objectivity of any sensible qualities? Why cannot the initial creation by God mean the production of minds and ideas? Nothing will be lost in discarding matter save a ready tool for the atheists and the enemies of religion. Why bother defending the objectivity of the ideas of supposed things of the material universe; their esse is percipi.

It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers and in a word all sensible objects have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding. But with how great an assurance and acquiescence soever this principle may be entertained in the world, yet whoever shall find in his heart to call it in question may, if I mistake not, perceive it to involve a manifest contradiction. For what are the forementioned objects but the things we perceive by sense? And what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? And is it not plainly repugnant that any of these, or any combination of them, should exist unperceived?{14}

"Their esse is percipi, nor is it possible they should have any existence out of the minds or thinking things which perceive them."{15} Here is subjectivism of an extreme sort, but it is still not the thorough-going idealism of post-kantian philosophy. The thinking subject is still not wholly autonomous, he is dependent, not upon sensible realities, but upon a Spirit superior to his spirit and a will superior to his will. Ideas imprinted upon them (i.e. the sense) are not creatures of my will. There is therefore some other will or spirit that produces them.{16} Berkeley was a young man and impressionable when he read Descartes’ dictum; I can have all the ideas I have even though there be no extramental reality.{17} With all the impetuosity of youth, he took the words literally.

David Hume accepted the sensist principles of Locke wholeheartedly. The sole and exclusive contact which human knowledge has with the extramental world is through external sensation. Man has no distinct intellectual capacity for abstracting the intelligible in what the senses perceive. Ideas are merely faint copies of impressions, different not in kind, but in degree from the original impressions, to which the ideas are really inferior. Unable to discover a sense impression of which the ideas of substance, cause and effect, necessity and contingency, are faint copies, Hume reduced them either to figments of the mind, or Ideas of a purely subjective origin and value.{18} The ideas of cause and effect he regarded as copies of impressions of reflection, i.e. resultant upon a subjective habit or custom begotten in the subject upon the observation of a number of instances of objects related only by contiguity and succession. The enemy of religion whom Berkeley feared if the material world was not entirely removed was not slow in raising his ugly head. Hume attacked the fundaments of all religious belief, for if the idea of substance has ideal value only and exists only in thought, then the proofs of human survival collapse, for there is nothing to survive. If the ideas of cause and effect have no objective validity, then no rational proofs can be given for the existence of God. In fact, all scientific knowledge, which depends upon the reality of the cause and effect relation, is deprived of meaning and significance. Hume developed the sensism of Locke to its logical term, and thus rendered the service of indicating where such principles lead.

Mâlebranche and Leibniz were more true to Cartesian rationalism. Like Descartes they tried to proceed from the immanence of thought to transcendence, to an other outside of thought. Their attempts were no more successful than that of their predecessor. Mâlebranche must have recourse to the Bible.

God reveals the existence of His creations in two ways, by the authority of the sacred writings and by means of the senses. Given the first authority (and we cannot reject it) we can give a strict demonstration of the existence of objects...The second authority is by no means infallible...But the Revelation can never lead directly to error, for God cannot wish to deceive us.{19}

Leibniz’ position is no less vulnerable. His entire thought rests on his optimism. The psychic monad is equipped with all of the ideas it will ever have from its origin; these are present initially as slumbering notions and pass into actual concepts through the inherent evolution of the psychic monad in complete independence of any extrinsic efficacy.{20} Assurance of a corresponding evolution of the physical monads outside of thought is drawn from his view of the pre-established harmony in this best possible world.{21}

Such in brief was the earliest development of the subjectivism of Descartes. Human thought is encompassed within itself; it can attain directly only to its own ideas. Descartes was unable to perceive how the sensible material things of the world could, by means of the senses, be the determining causes of our ideas of them. His view of natural bodily things as merely matter and motion was of little aid to him in the analysis of this important problem. He could not see how the senses could collaborate with the intellect and submit to the intellect the potentially intelligible factors latent in sense data. In the last analysis, his most serious failure was his inability to appreciate the substantial unity of man. What he lost for himself and for those content to accept him as master was an understanding of the nature of man, of the marvellous union in that nature of matter and spirit.