SECTION SIX

THE CRITERION OF CERTAINTY

1040. What has been said has, I think, fulfilled the promise made when I undertook my task. I noted and indicated the central problem (cf. vol. 1, 41–45), outlined the history of its development (cf. vol. 1, 46–384) and presented my own theory (cf. vol. 2, 398–1039). I found that our intelligent spirit is indeed made intelligent by something co-created with it. And I showed that this innate or co-created element, a truth constantly affirmed and denied, was simpler than the finest thinkers had thought or suspected. Many other philosophers, unable to observe and note such an element, had categorically denied its existence, but I found, on examining this very difficult question, that the extremely simple element must be, and is, an idea constituting the UNIQUE FORM(1) of human intellect and reason. At this point, I could have finished the book, but I felt unable to do so before deducing certain obvious and much needed corollaries from the theory.

1041. Today we are more than ever preoccupied and burdened by questions of supreme import for human knowledge and dignity. Such questions are the basis of all noble thinking, of all human destinies and hopes. The most important of them concerns the criterion of certainty. This question is so closely tied to the problem of the origin of ideas that its solution is the natural consequence of the theory of the idea of being. This first and principal corollary, therefore, is discussed in this book, in which I intend to do two things: 1. determine the nature of the criterion of certainty, and 2. show how it is applied, that is, makes human knowledge certain. In this way, the value of human knowledge will be seen as intrinsic and effective, not simply conventional or even false, as the sceptics and the apathetic believe. I shall therefore first present the different kinds of knowledge possible for human beings, and then, in order to justify human knowledge and show that it is true and objective (not an empty figment of the imagination), prove my assumption relative to each part.

1042. We have seen that there is in the human being: 1. sensation,(2) 2. the idea of being, and 3. a unique power (the feeling and intelligent subject) which unites the felt element and the idea of being , and forms the intellective perception of things.
Our spirit, reflecting on these intellective perceptions, performs various actions with which it extracts ideas, and by means of these actions, unites and breaks down ideas and perceptions by continually forming judgments and reasonings.
All human knowledge has its origin in these few sources.
Simple sensation cannot be called knowledge; it is only the matter of knowledge.
Human knowledge, therefore, is divided into that which is purely formal (also called pure) and that which is a mixture of matter and form.

1043. Consequently, I intend showing that neither formal knowledge nor materiated knowledge are essentially illusory and subjective, as sophists have claimed throughout history, but offer human beings objective, absolute truth.

I will begin by showing this relative first to formal knowledge, and then to materiated knowledge, because the form of the intellect is essentially intellective, and all knowledge takes its existence from it. Only by examining this form can we discover the supreme, universal principle of certainty. Finally, I will speak about the errors to which human knowledge is subject. But first we must define certainty and premise some general considerations concerning it. Thus, the work will be divided into the following five parts:

Notes

(1) It is absurd to affirm, as Kant does, that the primitive forms of the intellect are many, because, as St. Thomas says, Impossibile est simul multa PRIMO et PER SE intelligere: una enim operatio non potest simul multis terminis terminari [It is impossible simultaneously to understand the many as that which is FIRST and PER SE; a single action cannot simultaneously terminate in many terms] (C. Gentes, I, q. 48).

(2) In sensations I include images and the fundamental feeling. Images are reactivated, previously experienced sensations; the fundamental feeling is a kind of universal, permanent sensation of ourselves.