Metaphysics — Epistemology
Philosophy, as was stated before, is distinguished from all other sciences by its focus on the highest causes. It is therefore the queen of all natural sciences. As a result of its speculative nature, it is easier to attain certain conclusions in philosophy than in other sciences, where the attainment of knowledge is restricted by the quality and quantity of data, as well as the randomness and complexity of the natural world. But first, how do we know whether our philosophical conclusions are true, or whether we can attain philosophical knowledge at all? That is the subject of the field of Metaphysics which is called Epistemology — or Criticism.
Truth
What is a true or truthful word? A word which expresses, as it really is, the speaker’s thought; a word in conformity in that thought. What, then, is a true thought? A though which represents, as it really is, the thing to which it refers; a though in conformity with that thing. We therefore conclude that truth in the mind consists in its conformity with the thing. (ItP)
There are some, the sceptics, who, seeing the multitude of philosophical errors committed by men, doubt that truth can be attained at all. They either doubt our reasoning capacity or the power of our senses to observe reality. Both propositions are self-contradictory, for if our reason is defunct, we cannot reason whether our reason is defunct or not; and, if our senses were unreliable, there would be no basis to assert that proposition, since all data for reasoning comes from the senses.
Despite this, it is not good to overestimate the capabilities of the intellect. This would be the error that Aristotle and St Thomas Aquinas would oppose, and which Maritain opposes, called rationalism. This error, typical of enlightenment thinkers, as well as today’s New Atheists, supposes that truth is easy to acquire, and therefore man’s mind ought to be freed to discover truth. Maritain says that they tend in three distinct directions: subjectivism, which where every man considers himself his own criterion of truth, “not the object to be known, a position which is the dissolution of knowledge.” (ItP); individualism, which is similar to subjectivism, and “calls upon each philosopher to work out a philosophy entirely on his own, and create an original and novel view of the universe (Weltanschauung).” (ItP); and finally naturalism, “which claims to attain to a perfect wisdom by the unassisted powers of nature, and rejects all divine teaching.” (ItP)
It is interesting to focus on all the types of rationalism, for today they are often taken together as the striking marks of a scientific atheist (or, in some strains of thought, “scientific pantheist”) worldview. First, naturalism is taken as a starting point. According to these “scientists”, God does not exist, or at least His existence is unknowable, and they adhere to a view of the physical universe that ranges from a determinist clock (the New Atheists, most leftists) to a newer view Heraclitus’s universe full of raging spirits (e.g the “Bronze Age Pervert”, aka Dr. Costin Alameriu from Yale University — this view is more right-winged that the other). The left and the right wing elements of this Atheism also differ in that the left tends to prefer subjectivism, which is to say that all individuals’ truths are equally valid, and, as a corollary, society needs to be organized to allow people to act out their truths; the right, exemplified in the person of Alameriu, borrows from the manly and aristocratic Ancient Greek society in saying that many people are not suited for the finding of truth, and that only a select few can pursue it. This individualism, where those suited create their own Weltschauung, pursuing the ultimate truth, pursuing “Will” in the Nietzchean sense. For Alameriu, the Will almost seems to be the ultimate reality, which, as the Physicists held, animates everything. Man, and Nature, are just manifestations of this Will, which Alameriu believes is manifest in the sublime complexity of the natural world, the beauty of its creatures, and the mystery which it presents.
Both these philosophies, however, have a similar eschatology, deeply tied to a political vision of the world. The former, the left-winged one, regards Nature as the ultimate obstacle to be conquered by technology. This is a natural consequence of subjectivism, since, no matter the insanities that some may grow in their heads, Nature denies them with a hard no. While the moral law of God is written in man’s heart, it can be ignored, seemingly safely (at least for a little while), due to God’s immeasurable Mercy. However, the laws of Nature are hard limits. Good luck trying to get around the fact that like charges attract, or that water forms hydrogen bonds with other water molecules, or, more crucially, that biological differences exist between human individuals and groups. However, technology can conquer nature, and, if the 20th and 21st centuries have shown anything at all, is that technology can seemingly conquer biology, our own human nature. The hope, then, is that all differences, that all natural hierarchy (they denied the supernatural one) be conquered, so that everyone can live happily ever after in a future best expressed as “fully automated luxury space communism”.
The rationalism of Alameriu adores Nature as a manifestation of the “Will” which, according to him, is present in everything. For him the “Will’s” action in nature must be helped along by a program of breeding in order to improve the quality of the human race — eugenics. The “Will’s” only law is vitality and Nature — in effect its only law is itself, since it is identified with Nature. However, as Alameriu himself admits, both Nature and human civilizations go through peaks and troughs; Ancient Greece and the Renaissance being peaks, and contemporary “civilization”, which he declares to be dedicated to the multiplication of inferior biological types (not untrue), being a deep trough. If Nature, and, by extension, the “Will” allows for such deep troughs, why is it assumed that the “Will” desires the greatest biological type? If the “Will” is the “Will to Power” why is it assumed, as Alameriu does, that history, despite rises and falls, tends to produce greater and greater biological types in order to actuate this “Will” rather than produce these great biological types to make them suffer, as a way of holding power over itself.
One possibility is that the “Will” is erratic and violent, like, to paraphrase him, the personality of the Greek man who always desired to rule, completely and pettily, over the polity. Then there is no guarantee that the “Will’s” will will not become some sort of immolation, as described above. Another option is that the “Will” is not one, but that there are two or more “Will’s” fighting for power over matter in a violent way. This is absurd, because it is unclear how matter would be transferred from the control of one “Will” to another, it is unclear what exactly the goals of the “Wills” would be, and, given how matter, as observed by Heraclitus, changes from one form to another, moves easily, and is in a state of overall flux, it is impossible to see how the “Wills”, which are identified with matter, could attack each other in such a state of interconnection.
The Object of the Intellect
A second question in Epistemology is with regards to the object of the intellect — when the intellect perceives truth, or an idea, what exactly is it perceiving?
To answer this question it is sufficient to ask oneself whether there does not exist an object which is always present to the mind when the intellect functions? Such an object does exist. Whatever I know by my intellect, there is always some being or mode of being present to my mind. There is, however, nothing else except being which is always present in this way. If, for example, I think of a quality, a magnitude, or a substance, in all these cases alike I think of some being or mode of being; but there is nothing except being which is common to these three objects of thought, and therefore present in all three alike. We therefore conclude that being is the formal object of intellect, that is to say, the object which it apprehends primarily and in itself (per se primo) and in function of which it apprehends everything else. (ItP)
This is a tremendous result — the being is the object which the intellect perceives. The argument is that everything that is present to the mind is something which possesses being — it either exists, or is one of being’s potential states (which is to say it could exist). If we suppose that we think of an idea that possesses no being, we are really thinking about nothing at all. Hence, being is the object of intellect.
Maritain discusses objections to this theory: how do we think about ideas like blindness, or of a hole? These ideas are defined by an absence of being. However, they are interpreted as absences of being within another structure of being. Blindness lacks the being of the capacity to see; holes lack being compared to the surrounding space.
Next, we will look at a brief overview of Aristotelian metaphysics.