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COGITO, ERGO SUM IS NOT THE STARTING POINT OF PHILOSOPHY

Paul Gerard Horrigan, Ph.D., 2016.

Theoretical philosophical agnosticism and atheism have their root cause in the adoption

of the epistemological (gnoseological) immanentism of the Cogito as first principle and starting point for doing philosophy, which has as its founder the rationalist philosopher Ren Descartes. When the immanentist position is adopted the obfuscation and eventual discarding of metaphysics (the science of being as being, ens qua ens, the most noble of the purely human sciences) becomes inevitable. Once metaphysics is eliminated, access to a rational effect to cause demonstration of Gods existence is impeded and one either falls into the various forms of agnosticism (e.g., Humean, Kantian, Neo-Positivist) or takes one step further and subscribes to the atheistic position that God is nothing but a projection of man himself (e.g., Feuerbach, Marx, Sartre), a mere idea that in no way corresponds to a real, extra-mental, extra-subjective, transcendent Infinite Supreme Being, the Uncaused Cause, Ipsum Esse Subsistens, Creator of the finite beings (entia) by participation that make up the universe. Modern theoretical agnosticism and atheism have their root cause in the immanentist starting point advocated by Descartes where, instead of thought being subordinated to extra-mental being, being becomes subordinated to thought. The cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) radically changed the way of doing philosophy. In the pre-Cartesian period, philosophy, that is to say the cogito, or rather the cognosco, was subordinate to esse, which was considered prior. To Descartes, however, the esse seemed secondary, and he judged the cogito to be prior. This not only changed the direction of philosophizing, but it marked the decisive abandonment of what philosophy had been hitherto, particularly the philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and namely the philosophy of esse. Previously, everything was interpreted from the perspective of esse and an explanation for everything was sought from the same standpoint. God as fully Self-sufficient Being (Ens subsistens) was believed to be the necessary ground of every ens non subsistens, ens participatum, that is, of all created beings, including man. The cogito, ergo sum marked a departure from that line of thinking. Now the ens cogitans enjoyed priority. After Descartes, philosophy became a science of pure thought: all esse both the created world and the Creator remained within the ambit of the cogito as the content of human consciousness. Philosophy now concerned itself with being qua content of consciousness and not qua existing independently of it.

the very possibility of attaining to God was placed in question. According to the logic

of cogito, ergo sum, God was reduced to an element within human consciousness; no longer could he be considered the ultimate explanation of the human sum. Nor could he remain an Ens subsistens, or Self-sufficient being, as the Creator, the one who gives existence, and least of all as the one who gives himself in the mystery of the Incarnation, the Redemption, and grace. The God of Revelation had ceased to exist as God of the philosophers. All that remained was the idea of God, a topic for free exploration by human thought.

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Man remained alone: alone as creator of his own history and his own civilization; alone as one who decides what is good and what is bad, as one who would exist and operate etsi Deus non daretur, even if there were no God.1

The rationalist systems which flourished after Descartes, as well as the transcendental

idealist system of Kant and the various forms of absolute idealism (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel), and in the twentieth century the phenomenological system of Husserl as well as the existentialist philosophies of Heidegger and Sartre, can be considered to be continuations and expansions of Cartesian positions rooted in the gnoseological immanentism of the cogito as first principle, utilized by Descartes as the point of departure for doing philosophy. Descartes foundational immanentism was ultimately responsible for the subsequent intellectual elites gradual distancing themselves from the acceptance of an extra-mental, transcendent Supreme Being, God, the Ipsum Esse Subsistens, in favor of philosophical agnosticism and, eventually, with the passing of time, theoretical atheism (which would dominate philosophical thought by the second-half of the nineteenth century).

Descartes strove to make subjective consciousness absolute, towards the affirmation of

pure consciousness of an Absolute, which, nevertheless, is but pure thought within human consciousness, not an extra-mental transcendent Absolute who is the Esse Divinum, Ipsum Esse Subsistens, the Creator of every finite, participated being.

The Cartesian immanentist starting point makes human thought prior to extra-mental,

real being, affirming the cogito as first principle and starting point for philosophizing and rejecting realisms extra-mental, sensible real being and affirmation that things are (res sunt) as point of departure.

Descartes Universal Doubt. Descartes doubts our cognitive powers. The senses are not to be trusted and all reality is placed in a state of critical doubt. The first stage of the Cartesian method is the universal methodic doubt: In order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life, to doubt, as far as possible, of all things.2 This doctrine of universal doubt (which does so much violence to the certainties of common sense) means not only the doubting of the extra-mental world that we see around us and the first principles governing it (e.g., the principle of non-contradiction), but even the first principles of his beloved mathematics: We will also doubt of the other things we have before held as most certain, even of the demonstrations of mathematics, and of their principles which we have hitherto deemed self-evident.3

From this radical doubt emerges the certainty of the thinking subject. When all has been

placed in doubt there remains one thing that cannot be doubted, he says, namely, that I am thinking and that it is by thinking that I exist. Hence the famous line of Descartes: I think, therefore I am (cogito, ergo sum). He writes in his Discourse on Method: I noticed that whilst I thus wished to think all things false, it was absolutely essential that the I who thought this should be somewhat, and remarking that this truth I think, therefore I am was so certain and so

1 JOHN PAUL II, Memory and Identity: Conversations at the Dawn of a Millennium, Rizzoli, New York, 2005, pp. 8-10. 2 R. DESCARTES, Principles of Philosophy, I. 3 Ibid.

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assured that all the most extravagant suppositions brought forward by the skeptics were incapable of shaking it, I came to the conclusion that I could receive it without scruple as the first principle of the philosophy for which I was seeking.4 While we thus reject all of which we can entertain the smallest doubt, and even imagine that it is false, we easily indeed suppose that there is neither God, nor sky, nor bodies, and that we ourselves have neither hands nor feet, nor, finally, a body; but we cannot in the same way suppose that we are not while we doubt of the truth of these things; for there is a repugnance in conceiving that what thinks does not exist at the very moment when it thinks. Accordingly, the knowledge, I think, therefore, I am, is the first and most certain that occurs to one who philosophizes orderly.5 This is, undoubtedly, immanentisms making human thought prior to real being. The Cartesian first principle is not a syllogistic conclusion, a product of a demonstrative process; rather, it is an immediate intuition of fact. By intuition Descartes understands not the fluctuating testimony of the senses, nor the misleading judgment that proceeds from the blundering construction of the imagination, but the conception which an unclouded and attentive mind gives us so readily and distinctly that we are wholly freed from doubt about that which we understand, or, what comes to the same thing, intuition is the undoubting conception of an unclouded and attentive mind, and springs from the light of reason alone.6

Descartes universal methodic doubt endeavours to make us doubt of all things: the

whole of the corporeal world, our own body, our sense-perceptions, our internal states of consciousness, the very trustworthiness of our knowing powers (both of sense knowing and intellectual knowing), the first principles of reality (e.g., the principle of non-contradiction), and the very laws of thought founded upon these objective first principles. It is a real, genuine, and not simulated (or faked), doubt, as he himself relates: As I desired to give my attention solely to the search after truth, I thoughtthat I ought to reject as absolutely false all in regard to which I could suppose the least ground for doubt, in order to ascertain whether after that there remained aught in my belief that was wholly indubitable.7 Note the words to reject as absolutely false which refers not just to a suspension of judgment but to a conviction that he must reject them as absolutely false, rejecting everything until he reaches the one indubitable fact: Cogito, ergo sum. Bittle observes that This is more than mere doubt, because a doubt presupposes a suspended judgment due to the absence of all reasons for and against a proposition (negative doubt) or reasons of more or less equal value for and against it (positive doubt). Descartes supposes for a time, that all these opinions are entirely false and imaginary,8 and he will continue always in this track until he shall find something that is certain, or at least, if he can do nothing more, until he shall know with certainty that there is nothing certain.9 He assumes the attitude that all spontaneous convictions and laws of thought are errors.10

From the first certainty (cogito, ergo sum) Descartes then attempts to obtain further

certainties. He attempts proofs for the existence of God starting from an innate idea of an infinite and perfect Being, and not from extra-mental reality (these Cartesian proofs are invalid for they 4 R. DESCARTES, Discourse on Method, IV. 5 Ibid. 6 R. DESCARTES, Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Rule III, 5. 7 Ibid. 8 R. DESCARTES, Meditations, I. 9 R. DESCARTES, Meditations, II. 10 C. BITTLE, Reality and the Mind, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1959, p. 54.

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involve illicit, illegitimate transfers from the logical order to the ontological order of reality).11 Having arrived at what he believes to be certain proofs of the existence of God he then holds that the infinite and perfect God (Creator of man), being absolute veracity, cannot deceive, and thus, He could only have given man trustworthy sense and intellectual knowing faculties. Having proven in this manner that mans knowing powers are trustworthy, man can now engage in the acquisition of true and valid knowledge.

Inconsistencies and Errors of the Cartesian Method. There are many glaring

inconsistencies and errors in the Cartesian method. Is Descartes universal doubt in fact possible? No, for there are certain gnoseological points which are indubitable, from which we cannot escape even if we are determined to doubt everything: Anyone who affirms that absolutely everything must be doubted is already making a judgment which represents his own thesis and which, therefore, is an exception to what he is affirming: since if everything is to be doubted, nothing can be affirmed, not even the thesis which maintains that everything must be doubted. Nor can one have recourse to maintaining the thesis as merely probable, because even 11 Descartes Erroneous Ontological Argument. Descartes utilized the ontological argument throughout his works. His argument runs like this: When one says that something is contained in the nature or concept of a thing, thereby affirms that this something belongs in truth to that thing, is true of it. But the necessary existence of God is contained in the idea of God. Therefore, it is true to say of God that necessary existence is in Him, that is, that He exists. This is an invalid proof that does not conclude to Gods real existence, for the argument involves an illegitimate transfer from the logical order to the order of reality. From the mere analysis of a concept of an essence, we can never argue to the actual existence of a being, no matter how perfect, no matter how necessary. Criticizing Descartes erroneous ontological argument for the existence of God, Gilson writes: The second proof of the existence of God proposed by Descartes in his fifth Metaphysical Meditation is a reinterpretation of the argument of Saint Anselm. Thomas Aquinas would have raised against it the same objections. It is all a question of philosophical method. The method advocated by Descartes derives its inspiration from mathematics. Accordingly, Descartes attributes to the objects of thought all the properties that necessarily belong to their ideas. In the present case, he considers that existence belongs to God as necessarily as it belongs to the triangle that the sum of its angles should be equal to two right angles. What is typical of the attitude of Thomas Aquinas is that, while agreeing to attribute to the notion of an object whatever necessarily follows from its definition, he absolutely refuses to include existence among the properties attributable to any object on the strength of its definition. This is essential to the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas. Actual existence can be either experienced or inferred from another actually given existence, it cannot be deduced from any definition. Thomas would answer to Descartes as follows. If God exists, then His existence belongs to His essence much more necessarily than the properties of the triangle belong to it in virtue of its definition. For if there is a God, He cannot not be, whereas, if there were no God, there would be nothing else. But the problem precisely is to know if there is a God, and the only way to answer it is to proceed by way of demonstration(E. GILSON, Elements of Christian Philosophy, Mentor-Omega, New York, 1963, pp. 51-52). Descartes Erroneous Effect to Cause Proof for the Existence of God Starting from an Innate Idea of an Infinite and Most Perfect Being. Descartes has an effect (the idea of an infinite, most perfect Being) to cause (God the infinite, most perfect Being, Cause of that idea that we have) argument for Gods existence in his Third Meditation. Descartes proof starts from an innate idea of an infinite and perfect Being (and not from extra-mental reality), and, like his ontological argument, is also invalid since it involves an illicit, illegitimate transfer from the logical order to the real order of being. Descartes effect to cause proof for the existence of God starting from an innate idea of an infinite and most perfect being does not prove anything: St. Thomas had already rejected this kind of argument saying that from an idea one cannot prove the existence of anything in reality; in order to do this, one has to start from reality itself, not from an idea in the mind. Many philosophers after Descartes rejected his argument for the existence of God, while fully accepting his subjective starting point and ending up either in agnosticism or in downright atheism(J. DE TORRE, Christian Philosophy, Sinag-Tala, Manila, 1980, p. 290). In contrast to Descartes, St. Thomass a posteriori quia effect to cause demonstrations of the existence of God in Summa Theologiae, I, q. 2, a. 3, c. have correct starting points in the sensible beings (entia) of extra-mental reality.

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probability has to have some sort of foundation in certainty. And, it is meaningless to affirm that it is doubtful that everything is doubtful, since this affirmation, and all others which are added to it in indefinite regress in order to increase doubt, simply become so many more exceptions to the universality of doubt. He who says he is in doubt already knows something: he knows that he doubts; if he did not know it, how could he possibly affirm it? The awareness of doubt is itself certain knowledge.12

Descartes attempts to prove the trustworthiness of our sense and reasoning powers by the

following path: the universal doubt, the first certainty (cogito, ergo sum), the existence and infinite perfection of God departing from the innate idea of Him, Gods absolute veracity, mans creation by God, Gods veracity as the guarantor of the trustworthiness of the faculties of human knowing, and finally, the truth and validity of all the spontaneous convictions of mans mind which are clear and distinct. What is the problem with this procedure? He presupposes the validity, not only of the first principles (e.g., the principle of non-contradiction), but also of his reasoning powers (in the establishent of Cogito, ergo sum as first certainty, in the establishment of the certainty of the idea that he has of an infinite and perfect God, in his proofs for Gods existence, in the establishment of God as infinite perfection, in the establishment of God as Creator of man, and in the establishent of Gods veracity based on His infinite perfection), before he has proven their validity and trustworthiness, as he has cast them all in doubt in the first place at the beginning with his universal doubt. The Cartesian method assumes beforehand what it intends to prove afterwards. Bittle writes: When he (Descartes) proposed to approach the problem in an attitude of universal real doubt, discarding even the capability of the human mind to know truth and refusing to accept such essential principles as the principle of non-contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason, he made the solution of the problem impossible for himself. Here are a few considerations which compel us to reject his system: Descartes began his inquiry by doubting all knowledge without exception; he was even willing to accept it as entirely false. But what about the idea of God as an all-perfect Being, since he admits that he discovered this idea in his own mind? According to his own principle of universal doubt, he simply cannot know whether this idea of God is correct or incorrect; as a matter of fact, according to this principle, he should consider it as entirely false, until proved otherwise. But if his idea of God as an all-perfect Being may be incorrect, he cannot logically deduce from this idea Gods existence and veracity. Since the very idea of God is doubtful, these other things must remain doubtful, and the trustworthiness of mans faculties must also remain doubtful. Descartes cannot escape his own real doubt.

Irrespective of the intrinsic value of the proofs with which Descartes attempts to

demonstrate Gods existence, we must not overlook the fact that he uses a process of reasoning to make this demonstration. Since his very reason and the process of reasoning is as yet of doubtful validity, how can he validly demonstrate Gods existence and veracity? The trustworthiness of Descartes reasoning powers is supposed to flow as a necessary consequence from the infinite perfection of God; and Gods infinite perfection is made certain to him by means of a proof developed by these very reasoning powers, before he has proved that these reasoning powers are valid and trustworthy: he thereby gratuitously assumes the very thing beforehand which he intends to prove afterwards. He unconsciously accepts the trustworthiness

12 A. MILLAN PUELLES, Fundamentos de filosofa, Rialp, Madrid, 1976, p. 464. Cf. A. MILLAN PUELLES, Economa y libertad, Fondo para la Investigacin Econmica y Social, Madrid, 1974, pp. 162-163.

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of his faculties in attempting to demonstrate the existence and infinite perfection of God, and that is an illegitimate procedure; because a doubtfully valid faculty can produce only a doubtfully valid argument, and a doubtfully valid argument can only lead to a doubtfully valid conclusion. The whole argument for Gods existence and veracity is thus nullified by his doubtful reason and reasoning process; and, since he proves the reliability of his reason and reasoning process by means of Gods veracity, which (according to his supposition) must be doubtful, the proof of the trustworthiness of his own powers is nullified and can never be established beyond doubt. His attempt, therefore, to vindicate the validity of human knowledge failed essentially, because, by rejecting the reliability of his own powers to discover and know truth, he made it impossible for himself to extricate himself from the net of his own universal doubt.13

Descartes, Bittle observes, claims to reject everything, even the principle of non-

contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason. But he does not. He surreptitiously assumes the truth of these principles and uses them continually. As obvious a fact as the Cogito, ergo sum is really based on the validity and truth of the principle of non-contradiction. This principle asserts that it is impossible for something to be and not to be at the same time. Descartes becomes certain of his own existence by the very fact of his thinking or doubting. True. But why? Because he perceives clearly that it is impossible to think and not think, to exist and not exist at the same time. If Descartes were consistent and really doubted the principle of non-contradiction, he would have to affirm that it could be possible for a being to think and not think, to exist and not exist at the same time. But then, according to his own supposition, he could not be sure after all that the ultimate fact of his existence is certain, and his famous Cogito, ergo sum has no real objective value. Only by granting the validity and truth of the principle of non-contradiction beforehand, can his existence be established as an objective fact; and that is exactly, though inconsistently, what Descartes does.

The same line of reasoning applies to his proofs for Gods existence and infinite

perfection. Notwithstanding his proofs, his rejection of the principle of non-contradiction will forever invalidate his arguments, because, as long as this principle is not established and accepted, he could never be sure whether it would not be possible for God to exist and not exist, to be infinitely perfect and not infinitely perfect at the same time. Similarly, he would always be compelled to remain in doubt whether God could not be veracious and not veracious, deceiving and not deceiving, unless the principle of non-contradiction were taken as granted before he begins to prove Gods existence. Unwittingly Descartes does accept this principle of non-contradiction throughout his demonstrations, but that is an inexcusable inconsistency.

So too, Descartes conducts his inquiry under the supposition that he has doubted the

principle of sufficient reason and the principle of causality. But he does not hesitate to use these principles before he has established their validity. Consider this a posteriori argument for the existence and infinite perfection of God. He contends that the idea of God as an all-perfect Being could not have originated in our mind, because such an idea would exceed the causality of the human mind, the latter being less perfect than the contents of the idea itself; consequently, this idea had to be produced in us by God Himself (and this proves that God exists as an infinitely perfect Being), otherwise there would be no sufficient reason for the presence of such an idea in our mind. This line of reasoning shows plainly that Descartes uses the principles of sufficient 13 C. BITTLE, op. cit., pp. 56-58.

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reason and causality in demonstrating Gods existence, although he doubts their validity. Now, if he lets these principles stand as doubtful, his entire demonstration is vitiated and nullified by doubt; and if he accepts them as valid prior to establishing their validity, he acts contrary to his fundamental doubt and is inconsistent: in either case he makes the demonstration of Gods existence impossible. His actual procedure in all the arguments he makes is such, however, that he presupposes the validity of these laws of thought; and that is for him a glaring inconsistency, since his universal methodic doubt will not permit him to accept their validity before he has proved the existence and veracity of God. Descartes universal methodic doubt leads logically to universal skepticism. No certitude can ever be attained in a system where the very foundations of human reason are completely destroyed. When he rejects as doubtful and even as absolutely false all in regard to which he could imagine the least ground for doubt he saws off the very limb upon which he is seated. If the nature of his mind and the laws of thought are called into real doubt (not to speak of considering them to be absolutely false), then all acts and facts of consciousness, all ideas, judgments and inferences, can no longer be trusted. But how can the mind attempt to validate its own trustworthiness except by means of these things? If Descartes mistrusts the simple judgments 2 + 3 = 5 and A square has four sides, how can he trust his faculties in making the far more complicated arguments with which he tries to prove Gods existence and infinite perfections?Descartes, if he has been consistent, should have embraced universal skepticism, because his universal doubt left him no other choice: he had no way of retracing his courseit is in reality only a variation of universal skepticism.14

A philosophical critique which has become a classic in its field, documenting the genesis,

rise and consolidation of the immanentist position throughout the history of modern and contemporary philosophy, is Cornelio Fabros monumental God in Exile: Modern Atheism From Its Roots in the Cartesian Cogito to the Present Day,15 a work of more than a thousand pages which I recommend for the serious intellectual. A number of thinkers believe that the rise of modern atheism is due primarily to affluence, to the consumerism of the creature-comfort, materialistic West, while others are of the opinion that the prevalence of naturalism is mainly to blame. Fabro, instead, holds that speculative or theoretical atheisms roots lie in the epistemological (gnoseological) revolution produced by the subjectivist Cartesian cogito, which has rendered man incapable of gnoseological and ontological transcendence. While crass consumerism, horizontalist and monistic naturalism are all weighty factors that go into the making of the atheistic and nihilistic Zeitgeist that characterizes much of contemporary life, I believe that the predominance of philosophical immanentism among the intellectual elite (who are its ideological purveyors) over the centuries after Descartes, is the central factor, and that the solution for exiting from the mess that we find ourselves in lies in the refutation of the immanentist philosophical position by means of an authentic methodical, metaphysical realism open to real being (ens reale) and ultimately to the act of being (esse as actus essendi), act of all acts and perfection of all perfections.

Interpreting Fabros analysis of the foundation of theoretical agnosticism and atheism in

immanentism beginning with the subjectivist starting point in the Cartesian cogito, Arthur

14 C. BITTLE, op. cit., pp. 58-61. 15 C. FABRO, God in Exile: Modern Atheism From Its Roots in the Cartesian Cogito to the Present Day, Newman Press, Westminster, Maryland, 1968. This is the English translation by Arthur Gibson from the original Italian entitled: Introduzione allateismo moderno, 2 vols., Studium, Rome, 1964.

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Gibson, the English translator of Fabros Introduzione allateismo moderno, explains that the Cartesian cogito represents a qualitatively novel germ already containing in embryo the numerous subsequent stages of the evolution of modern atheismDescartes effecteda swervefrom the external world to the interior of mans mind. There Descartes located the fountainhead of meaningfulness and the criterion of certitude. The former was the cogito, the act of thinking pivoted on and manifested as the individual thinker who in turn no longer recognizes any distinction between this act and his very being: he identifies himself by a first person singular indicative verb form, cogitoThe latter are the clear and distinct ideas, those new surrogates or created objectswhich for Descartes are the focal point of meaningful realityproducedby the creative act of the human mind.

Fabro explains, writes Gibson, that the cogito principle involves, in the first instance, a

swerving of the fundamental ontological axis to the creative constitutive act of the human mind. Henceforth the quintessence of meaningfulness is sought in the mental dimension: the criterion of certitude for the human thinker is his own primordial product, clear and distinct ideas, indivisible from the thinking act that constitutes them, even as this act itself is indivisible from the very being of the thinkerThe cogito approach is structurally and constitutively atheistic, however it be articulated, however developed. The principle itself is polyvalent and hence contains in germ and explains in fact the zigzag tergiversations of subsequent modern thought, founded upon it.

The absolutely fundamental characteristic of the cogito principle and the cogito

approach consists in a subjection of being to thought. In its extrapolation to God on the part of the professedly theistic Descartes, it imposes on the Creator the radically restrictive parameters of human logical operation

Gibson also writes: Descartes ratiocination Cogito ergo sum, contends Fabro, ultimately

reveals itself as making being dependent on thinking and finite thinking at that. If I choose to proceed in the Cartesian fashion, if I choose to make my thinking act the anterior terminal and fountainhead of meaningfulness and ultimately of reality itself, then I shall indeed conclude eventually, driven to this extreme by the very internal dynamic of the principle I have chosen, to a sort of sum, to the I-am-in-the-world of brute facticity, to the Sein-zum-Tode of radical terminal mortality, to the spine-chilling fact of total aloneness in a universe depersonalized at its coreThe choice therefore is between the cogito of atheistic nihilism and the Sum that is the Name of God.16

The solution to the problem of immanentism lies in a vigorous and healthy philosophical

realism open to gnoseological and ontological transcendence. But what exactly is immanentism and what exactly do we mean by realism and transcendence? In philosophical usage, the term immanentism is derived from the concept immanence, which means to remain within oneself, which is opposed to transcendence, which means to go beyond oneself. In immanentism, what man knows in the first instance is that which remains enclosed within the sphere of human consciousness (e.g., ideas), and not the extra-mental real thing, which is either only mediately

16 A GIBSON, Translators Introduction, in C. Fabro, God in Exile: Modern Atheism From Its Roots in the Cartesian Cogito to the Present Day, Newman Press, Westminster, Maryland, 1968, pp. xvi, xvii-xviii, xxii-xxiii, xxxix.

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known (Descartes mediate realism, a pseudo-realism, unsuccessful in its attempts at reclaiming reality) or is simply unknowable (Humean and Kantian phenomenalism). Realism, on the other hand, retains that what is known in the first instance is the extra-mental thing which really exists (e.g., that real pine tree to the right of me, or that particular brown cat in front of me). For the immanentist, who is incarcerated within the cell of his mind, unable to escape to a knowledge of noumenal reality, thought is prior to being. Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am), that famous Cartesian dictum, is the name of the immanentist state penitentiary. Realism, instead, maintains that being is prior to thought. The actual dog that exists in reality is prior to the universal concept dog that exists in the mind in an intentional manner. Dobermans and dachshunds are out there in reality and will continue to exist there whether we think of them or not. What is known in the first instance is the real dog and not the idea dog. What is known in the first instance is the extra-mental sensible thing itself really existing in the world. For the immanentist, then, thought is the starting point of philosophical investigation, whereas for the realist it is real sensible being, leading to the affirmation res sunt (things are).

In his book Methodical Realism, the great twentieth century philosopher-historian

tienne Gilson explains that when St. Thomas tells us that the intellect reaches objects, things, no one can misunderstand what he means by that: Could we not say that the res St. Thomas talks about, and which the judgment should conform to, although something objective and independent, is nevertheless in the mind? Anyone who thought that would be thoroughly wrong. If St. Thomas does not feel it necessary to be explicit on the subject, it is probably because he never dreamed that anyone could misunderstand him. For him, the thing is plainly the real thing posited as an entity existing in its own right and outside human consciousness.17

Exactly so, and it could not be better put. But if that is the way things are, how can one

maintain that in Thomism one can start from a something apprehended prescinding from its reality? Whatever object I apprehend, the first thing I apprehend is its being: ens est quod primum cadit in intellectu.18 But this being which is the first object of the intellect ens est proprium objectum intellectus, et sic est proprium intelligibile

19 is, in virtue of what has just been said, something entirely different from an apprehended without the reality; it is reality itself, given by means of an act of apprehension no doubt, but not at all as simply apprehended. In short, one could say that if the block which experience offers us for analysis needs to be dissected according to its natural articulations, it is still an apprehended reality which it delivers us, and unless we are going to alter the structure of reality, no method authorizes us to present it merely as a reality apprehended(italics added).

Besides, one only has to reread the text of St. Thomas to realize that the order he follows

is not an accidental one, or something one can modify simply as a temporary expedient. The order lies at the heart of the teaching. For an intellect like ours which is not its own essence, as Gods would be, and whose essence is not its natural object, as with the finite pure spirits, that object must necessarily be something extrinsic. That is why the object which the intellect apprehends must be something extrinsic as such. The first thing it grasps is a nature inhabiting an

17 L. NOL, Notes dpistmologie thomiste, p. 33. 18 Being (ens) is what first strikes the intellect. 19 Being (ens) is the proper object of the intellect, and thus it is specifically intelligible. Summa Theologiae, I, q. 5, a. 2, resp.

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existence which is not its own, the ens of a material nature. That is its proper object: etideo id quod primo cognoscitur ab intellectu humano est hujusmodi objectum.20 It is only secondarily that it knows the actual act by which it knows the object; et secundario cognoscitur ipse actus, quo cognoscitur objectum.21 And finally it is the act that the intellect itself is known: et per actum cognoscitur ipse intellectus.2223

Gilson also writes that, for St. Thomas Aquinas, all existence is individual and singular.

As he said again and again, when we grasp the singular as such it is the work of our sense faculty: id quod cognoscit sensus materialiter et concrete, quod est cognoscere singulare directe; similitudo quae est in sensu, abstrahitur a re ut ab objecto cognoscibili, et ideo res

ipsa per illam similitudinem directe cognoscitur.24 Unquestioningly the intellect does more and better, since it grasps what is abstractly intelligible, but it has another function: universale est dum intelligitur, singulare dum sentitur.25 But the singular is the concretely real. So one must consign the task of solving the problem to viribus sensitivis quae circa particularia versantur.2627

Against immanentism, realism holds that epistemology (gnoseology) is founded upon the

metaphysics of being; being is prior to thought, and thought is dependent upon being. The act of being (esse as actus essendi) is the radical act of a being (ens); it is, in every being (ens), the internal principle of its reality and of its knowability, and therefore, the foundation of the act of knowledge.

In philosophical immanentism, transcendence (first gnoseological, then ontological) is

first emarginalized, then debilitated, and in the end, eliminated. In realism, on the other hand, both gnoseological and ontological transcendence is respected. There is a difference between gnoseological transcendence and ontological transcendence. The former regards the possibility of knowing realities distinct from consciousness and its representations; transcendence here is intended as extra-subjective. Ontological transcendence, on the other hand, regards the existence of realities that surpass the factual data of empirical experience, the most eminent of these realities being God, the absolutely transcendent Supreme Being. The history of modern philosophy, beginning with Cartesian rationalism, has shown that the refusal of a gnoseological transcendence (though not always in a direct and immediate way, as was precisely the case with the mediate realism of Descartes) impedes recognition of an authentic ontological transcendence.

20 And therefore what the human intellect knows first is an object of this kind 21 And what is known secondarily is the act itself by which the object is known 22 And through the act, the intellect itself is knownSumma Theologiae, I, q. 87, a. 3, resp. 23 . GILSON, Methodical Realism, Christendom Press, Front Royal, VA, 1990, pp. 74-76. 24 What the sense faculty knows materially and concretely, it knows directly as singular; the likeness which is in the senses is abstracted from the thing as from a knowable object, and therefore the thing itself is directly known through that likeness. 25 The universal is grasped while things are being understood, the singular while they are being sensed. 26 to the powers of sense which relate to particular objects. Summa Theologiae, I, q. 86, a. 1, ad 4; De Veritate, q. 2, a. 6, resp., et q. 10, a. 6, sed contra and resp. 27 . GILSON, op. cit., pp. 78-79.

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The starting point of philosophy is not the Cartesian I think, therefore I am (Cogito, ergo sum), but rather: things are (res sunt). That I think is surely evidence, but it is not the first evidence. It is not the point of departure for doing philosophy. That things are, that things exist, on the other hand, is the first in the order of all evidence. This is the correct starting point. Realism accepts reality in toto and measures our knowledge by the rule of reality. Nothing that is validly known would be so if its object did not first existThe first thing offered us is the concept of a being thought about by the intellect, and given us in a sensory intuition. If the being, in so far as it can be conceived, is the first object of the intellect, that is because it is directly perceived: res sunt, ergo cogito (things are, therefore, I think). We start by perceiving an existence which is given us in itself and not first of all in relation to ourselves. Later, on inquiring into the conditions which make such a fact possible, we realize that the birth of the concept presupposes the fertilization of the intellect by the reality which it apprehends. Before truth comes the thing that is true; before judgment and reality are brought into accord, there is a living accord of the intellect with reality28

Gilson defended methodical realism against the immanentism underlying much of

modern philosophy in many of his works, such as Thomist Realism and the Critique of Knowledge

29 and Methodical Realism.30 In Methodical Realism he points out that it was in the thought of Descartes, and not Kant, where the Copernican Revolution took place for the first time: Critical idealism was born the day Descartes decided that the mathematical method must henceforth be the method for metaphysics. Reversing the method of Aristotle and the medieval tradition, Descartes decided that it is valid to infer being from knowing, to which he added that this was indeed the only valid type of inference, so that in his philosophy, whatever can be clearly and distinctly attributed to the idea of the thing is true of the thing itself: when we say of anything that it is contained in the nature or concept of a particular thing, it is the same as if we

were to say it is true of that thing, or could be affirmed of itIndeed, all idealism derives from Descartes, or from Kant, or from both together, and whatever other distinguishing features a system may have, it is idealist to the extent that, either in itself, or as far as we are concerned, it makes knowing the condition of beingWith Descartes the Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) turns into Cogito ergo res sunt (I think, therefore, things are)31 Once trapped within the immanent sphere of ones thoughts, initially doubting the extra-mental reality perceived by the senses, and commencing from the cogito as the first certainty, we become unable to recuperate reality itself. All we will be able to do with the immanentist method is to conjure up a thought of reality, all the while remaining locked up within the prison of our minds. From mere mental representations we cannot reach the thing-in-itself which is doubted at the outset by the Cartesian universal doubt. If you have a hat stand painted on a wall, the only thing you will ever be able to hang on it is a hat likewise painted on a wall. Neither the principle of causality nor belief or assertion can get us out of the immanentist domain of the mind once we have initially doubted the existence of reality, and then commence from the cogito as the primal certitude.

28 . GILSON, op. cit., pp. 120-121. 29 . GILSON, Ralisme thomiste et critique de la connaissance, Vrin, Paris, 1939. English: Thomist Realism and the Critique of Knowledge, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1986. 30 . GILSON, Le ralisme mthodique, Tqui, Paris, 1935. English: Methodical Realism, first published in English in 1990 by Christendom Press and now available in the edition published by Ignatius Press of San Francisco. 31 . GILSON, Methodical Realism, Christendom Press, Front Royal, VA, 1990, pp. 18-19.

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Gilson describes for us the futility of those pseudo-realists who make their starting point of knowledge the cogito and then attempt a recuperation of reality by means of the principle of causality: He who begins as an idealist ends as an idealist; one cannot safely make a concession or two to idealism here and there. One might have suspected as much, since history is there to teach us on this point. Cogito ergo res sunt is pure Cartesianism; that is to say, the exact antithesis of what is thought of as scholastic realism and the cause of its ruin. Nobody has tried as hard as Descartes to build a bridge from thought to reality, by relying on the principle of causality. He was also the first to make the attempt, and he did so because he was forced to by having set the starting point for knowledge in the intuition of thought. It is, therefore, strictly true that every scholastic who thinks himself a realist, because he accepts this way of stating the problem, is in fact a Cartesian If the being I grasp is only through and in my thought, how by this means shall I ever succeed in grasping a being which is anything other than that of thought? Descartes believed that it was possible, but even apart from a direct critique of the proof he attempted to give, history is there to show us that his attempt ends in failure. He who begins with Descartes, cannot avoid ending up with Berkeley or with KantIt wont do to stop at the man who took the first step on the road to idealism because we shall then be forced to go the whole of the rest of the road with his successors. The Cartesian experiment was an admirable metaphysical enterprise bearing the stamp of sheer genius. We owe it a great deal, even if it is only for having brilliantly proved that every undertaking of this kind is condemned in advance to fail. However, it is the extreme of navet to begin it all over again in the hope of obtaining the opposite results to those which it has always given, because it is of its nature to give them.32

The absolute being that the Cogito immediately delivers to me can only be my own and

no other. In consequence, whether the operation by which I apprehend the object as distinct from myself be a process of induction and therefore mediate, or an immediate grasp, the problem remains the same. If ones starting point is a percipi, the only esse one will ever reach will be that of the percipiCan we, or can we not arrive at things if we make our standpoint that of the Cogito? No, we cant, and if the fate of realism depends on this question, its fate is settled; it is impossible to extract from any kind of Cogito whatsoever a justification for the realism of St. Thomas Aquinas.33

The way for us to promote an authentic methodical realism in philosophy (and in doing

so be once again in a position to validly demonstrate Gods existence, departing from the things that we see in the world, an a posteriori, quia effect to cause demonstration) is to free ourselves from the obsession with epistemology as the necessary pre-condition for philosophy. The philosopher as such has only one duty: to put himself in accord with himself and other things. He has no reason whatever to assume a priori that his thought is the condition of being, and, consequently, he has no a priori obligation to make what he has to say about being depend on what he knows about his own thoughtI think therefore I am is a truth, but it is not a starting pointThe Cogito is manifestly disastrous as a foundation for philosophy when one considers its terminal point. With a sure instinct as to what was the right way, the Greeks firmly entered on the realist path and the scholastics stayed on it because it led somewhere. Descartes tried the other path, and when he set out on it there was no obvious reason not to do so. But we realize today that it leads nowhere, and that is why it is our duty to abandon it. So there was nothing

32 . GILSON, op. cit., pp. 21-23. 33 . GILSON, op. cit., pp. 27-28.

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nave about scholastic realism; it was the realism of the traveler with a destination in view who, seeing that he is approaching it, feels confident he is on the right road. And the realism we are proposing will be even less nave since it is based on the same evidence as the old realism, and is further justified by the study of three centuries of idealism and the balance sheet of their results. The only alternatives I can see today are either renouncing metaphysics altogether or returning to a pre-critical realism. This does not at all mean that we have to do without a theory of knowledge. What is necessary is that epistemology, instead of being the pre-condition for ontology, should grow in it and with it, being at the same time a means and an object of explanation, helping to uphold, and itself upheld by, ontology, as the parts of any true philosophy mutually will sustain each other.34

34 . GILSON, op. cit., pp. 34-35.