Chapter 2.
Rosmini's Philosophical Teaching
The problem of knowledge (1)
Reflection
ROSMINI had begun his philosophical journey in a spirit of optimism, but by 1826 realised that there was no hope of progress in the various divisions of philosophy until its source of unity had been thoroughly investigated. In his eyes the dignity of philosophy had been seriously compromised by the basically sceptical work of his immediate predecessors in Germany (Kant, Hegel, Fichte and Schelling), and by British empiricism (represented in particular by Locke, Hume and Reid). At the same time, Rosmini was glad to concede that the problems raised in the 18th century had been of great assistance in concentrating the mind on the fundamental difficulties connected with the theory of knowledge.
Rosmini takes a fact of observation for his starting point in considering the problem of knowledge: human beings can and do reflect on what they know. Reflection, the characteristic activity that separates humans from all other beings in the world, enables us to seek reasons for things and events. We want to know why things happen. But the reasons we immediately discover lead us to more universal explanations as we pass from one stage of enquiry to another. What we know at one level is included in the next level that we attain. Our knowledge, says Rosmini, is like a pyramid:
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Its base is huge, and formed of the innumerable, particular truths we know. These truths are the stones at the bottom of the pyramid. Above them runs another level of more universal truths, fewer in number but embracing all that will be developed at the lowest level. We go up from level to level ... until we arrive at the top of the pyramid where the multiplicity of stones merges in the unity of a single block which extends potentially to all that lies beneath it (2). |
Philosophy begins when we sense the need to ascend with our reflection to the highest, most universal level of reflection where we can discover the ultimate reasons of human knowledge.
The difficulties of the ascent are acknowledged by Rosmini who foresees that it can be undertaken satisfactorily only by those courageous enough to 'dare philosophically' for the love of truth, and to abandon dispassionately, but perhaps not without pain, every private or historical opinion that contradicts the truth they come to know on their journey.
Philosophy does not end, however, when the summit of knowledge has been attained. The search for the tranquillity and quiet of mind provided by the unifying factor in knowledge is replaced by a desire to see how new knowledge derives from the potentiality of fundamental knowledge, and how new problems take their place within the broad spectrum of what is known.
Thus the value of philosophy according to Rosmini depends upon respect for reason as a means for attaining the truth. He rejects any understanding of philosophy which reduces it to a simple analysis of language (positivism), to a subjective search for unattainable truth (scepticism), or to the expression of an individual existence caught up in some unforeseeable journey towards annihilation (existentialism).
The origin of ideas
Reflection, the very heart of philosophy, depends upon judgments, and judgments depend upon uniting a predicate to a subject. We say, for example, 'This stone is white.' But the characteristic of a predicate is that it always contains an element of universality. I cannot say: 'This stone is white' without first knowing what 'whiteness' is. But whiteness is universal: it can be used, and is used, to enable me to affirm that an innumerable series of things are white. The problem that other philosophers saw, but did not succeed in resolving, is concerned with the origin of the universality implicit in every predicate: how does this universality arrive in the mind?
Critical philosophy - the German school dependent upon Kant - saw that universality could not be explained by dependence upon sense. But these philosophers, in establishing forms or categories of the mind as the source of the universal content of idea, admitted more than was necessary on the one hand, and on the other prepared the ground for total scepticism. Some innate element was necessary to the mind, but not categories or subjective forms.
British empiricism took a totally different path by denying the existence of any idea; the inability to distinguish clearly between sense and judgment, and the refusal to grant anything to the intellect other than the sensations on which the mind draws for knowledge, led to a complete impasse in the face of the difficulty raised by the passage from particulars to universals. The almost inevitable result was the rejection of universals and the propagation of materialism.
Both Critical philosophy and British empiricism, however, had concentrated their attention on the nature of the human, intellective faculty. Rosmini saw that another approach was needed. An indisputable fact of knowledge, not an interpretation of the working intellect, was to be the basis on which progress could be made.
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I begin with a simple, very obvious fact ... we think of being in a general way. This fact, no matter how we explain it, cannot be called into doubt ...To deny that we can direct our attention to being as common to all things while ignoring or rather abstracting from all their other qualities, contradicts what is attested by ordinary observation of our own actions; it would mean contradicting common sense and violating ordinary speech. ... This fact is so obvious that to mention it would be sufficient, if it were not for the doubt prevalent in modern thinking. Yet it is the foundation of the origin of ideas (3) |
.In other words, the least that we can say of anything while maintaining it as an object of thought is: 'This (whatever it may be) is something'.
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To think being in a general way means that we have the idea of being in general, or at least presupposes that we have it; without the idea of being, we cannot think being. Our task, therefore, is to identify the origin of this idea. But if we are to discover its source, we must first examine its nature and character (4). |
Rosmini's analysis of the idea of being indicates the presence in it of the following characteristics: possibility, because this idea provides the possibility of all thought; objectivity, because it is immune to change by the thinking subject; simplicity, because it lacks extension; unity, because it is the intelligibility of all that is; universality, because every other idea must be in some way a qualification of the idea of being; necessity, because it cannot be thought of as not being; indetermination, because it stands as the basis of all ideas and cannot therefore be determined in any way.
None of these things can be explained by Locke's abstraction and reflection, or by Kant's immanent forms and categories. The only 'ideology' corresponding to the inescapable fact of the understanding of being as common to every human intellect is the innate presence to the human intelligence of the idea of being. This idea is the form of the intelligence because it provides the first act rendering the human being intelligent; it is innate, but a presence which is not confused with ourselves; it is intuited as a light of the mind. It is not an immanent, subjective form; it is a transcendent, objective form. Like a light, it illuminates without becoming the eyes of the beholder; it is not the seer, but what is seen; it is the known object which enlightens the knowing subject.
But the subject furnished with this objective, indeterminate form of being also knows various modes of being as a result of its sense experience. Rosmini does not neglect this equally obvious fact in human existence. For him, sensation provides the determinations which in their turn are beheld within the light emanating from the idea of being. Thus the determinations are something, although they do not alter the light itself in which they are seen.
All this takes place within the unity of the human subject, the meeting-place of the two elements, idea and sense-experience. Rosmini appeals
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to the unity of the human being, to the simplicity of the human spirit. `Myself', the principle which knows that something is a being, is the same principle which experiences action within itself, because feeling is an action of being (5). |
This capacity for uniting being and feeling, the ideal and the real, in an act of knowledge is what Rosmini calls 'reason'. The first act with which the mind reasons is intellective perception or apprehension, the basic judgment in which all others are grounded.
At this point, it becomes necessary for Rosmini to analyse the material part of knowledge and uncover its origin. Observation leads us to two kinds of feeling: internal and external. Internal feelings are characterised by total lack of extension - my pains and pleasures, for example, have no shape or external content whatsoever, and cannot be experienced except by the one who perceives them; external feelings have some content (shape, colour, smell, etc.) which can be experienced by many people, although never in exactly the same way. Internal feelings are dependent upon the perception of my body - they lack extension because I first feel this body of mine as a whole, without the limits caused by the presence of other bodies, or even of my own body acting upon itself in the way any other body would; external feelings depend upon the perception of other bodies, including that of my own when it acts as a foreign body. 'Body' is energy exerted by one element of the animal upon 'anima' , the other constituent of animal; it produces a basic 'fundamental feeling' of which all other feelings are modifications. Internal sensations (subjective feelings) are direct modifications of the fundamental feeling; external sensations (extrasubjective feelings) are modifications of the fundamental feeling produced by the indirect action of bodies, including the subject's own. All sensations constitute the material part of our knowledge.
Every idea, therefore, except the idea of being, is composed of a formal and a material element. The formal element is the idea of being itself, the light which illumines every human being, without itself suffering any action from that which it illumines; the material element is given by `body', a force which acts on a principle suitable for perceiving it. The union of these two elements is found in the human being, and explains the problem of the origin and nature of ideas without sacrificing the intelligibility of being (the sceptical defect inherent in Hume's philosophy) or the real existence of the world (the idealistic defect of Berkeley's system).
Certainty
We are well placed now to deal with the problem of certainty. It is not a difficulty associated with the objective world of knowledge, but with the human subject's reaction to what it knows. Being is being: nothing more can be said about knowledge in the last analysis than that. We can, however, either allow ourselves to be persuaded by what we know, or refuse to posit the energy of spirit that produces persuasion. When we do unfold this energy consistently and firmly in accord with what we know we are said to be certain. 'Certainty', says Rosmini, 'is a firm and reasonable persuasion that conforms to the truth'. In other words, we not only know something to be true, to be what it is, but we are also firmly persuaded that it is what we know it to be, and have a reason for our persuasion. The criterion is always the idea of being, which precedes every judgment and all reasoning and is therefore inviolate. As the criterion it is the truth of things because in it they are pres ented to us as they are. Error is present in our spirit when we declare something to be what it is not or deny that something is what it is. And precisely because error alters the being of things, formal error will not be found rooted in the intellect nor in the senses nor in involuntary reflection. Such error begins with the will, the only human faculty capable of drawing the reason to invent what it does not see, or to deny what it sees. Under pressure from the will, the reason will falsely affirm that being is not, or deny that being is.
Notes
(1). Cf. especially NS (in English, OT and Certainty); Logica [1853], CrE, Stresa 1984; Rinnovamento della filosofia in Italia [1836],EN, Milan 1941; Introduzione alla filosofia [1850], CrE, Stresa 1979.
(2). IF, no. 8.
(3). OT, no. 398.
(4). Ibid. no. 399
(5). Psicologia [1846-1848], no. 264, CrE, Stresa 1988.