Certainty

Foreword

Translated from vol. 3 of Nuovo Saggio sull' Origine delle Idee, Sixth edition, Intra 1876

Beauty and audacity, taken singly, are rare and striking qualities. Taken together, they become a force to which we must either surrender totally or oppose ourselves with every ounce of energy we possess. This is true at every level of existence, but especially when we find ourselves face to face with philosophical beauty and daring.

The problem becomes acute as we try to familiarise ourselves with the views indicated for us by Rosmini. In his moral works, for example, he reduces every ethical obligation to the simple imperative: `Acknowledge what you know for what you know it to be'. The universality and profundity of this statement of final, all-embracing moral duty is beautiful in the extreme; and it is doubly impressive when propounded with unhesitating courage. But is it true? Do I surrender to it and make it my own, or do I dismiss it as nonsense?

The same kind of questions arises from even a cursory reading of Certainty, the final volume of Rosmini's treatise on the origin and nature of thought. Having presented a history of philosophical development in the field of epistemology, and offered his own theory of knowledge in which the `light of being' forms the central core of understanding, he draws a number of corollaries in Certainty about outstanding features of the human intellect and will.

First amongst these corollaries is the conclusion that certainty is `a firm and reasonable persuasion that conforms to the truth'. Because persuasion in Rosmini's sense depends upon the will, it becomes immediately obvious that his definition places certainty where it really belongs, that is, amongst human acts. It is a human quality, not an attribute of truth. But it is connected with truth in such a way that it cannot be unrelated to it. Persuasion as the foundation of certainty must conform to truth; it cannot, according to Rosmini, be accorded to formal error and retain its capacity to serve as a basis for certainty.

A second corollary concludes that error, as it exists formally in the human spirit, is not essentially an act of the intellect, but of will, and therefore avoidable. In the last analysis, it is that act by which we refuse to acknowledge what we know for what we know it to be, and as such takes on the quality of immorality.

A third corollary shows that the logical principles are not the outcome of empirical understanding, but the most general application of the light of being, truth itself, to the things we understand. Consequently, while enabling us to judge the validity of thought in so far as it expresses what is possible and what is impossible (contradictory), they tell us nothing about the existence of finite things. They can, however, draw our attention to the necessity of an infinite existence, the supreme Being, as the only final explanation of the existence of the logical principles themselves.

Each of these great corollaries is challenging in its beauty and audacity, and each of them drives the reader back to the principle of unity on which the whole of Rosmini's theory of knowledge rests. The great call of Certainty, as a whole and in its parts, is to provoke final surrender to, or rejection of, the `light of being'.

DENIS CLEARY
TERENCE WATSON

Durham, January 1992.

Note

Square brackets [ ] indicate an editor's note or addition.
[ . . . ] indicates an omission from the text.
References to this and other works of Rosmini are given by paragraph number
unless otherwise stated.
Abbreviations used for Rosmini's quoted works are:
 AMS: Anthropology as an Aid to Moral Science
 PE: Principles of Ethics
 OT: The Origin of Thought
 NS: Nuovo Saggio sull' Origine delle Idee