An infinity of act

Jump to Comments

Having read much lately around the web concerning presuppositionalism, scripturalism, evidentialism, justified true belief, Gettier problems, undefeatbility, and so on, I thought I’d take a moment to hearken back to the priority of ontology vis-a-vis epistemology.

St. Thomas, following Aristotle, teaches that the intelligible being, the intelligible reality, existing in sense objects is the first object of the first act of our intellect, i. e.: that apprehension which precedes the act of judging. Listen to his words: “The intellect’s first act is to know being, reality, because an object is knowable only in the degree in which it is actual. Hence being, entity, reality, is the first and proper object of understanding, just as sound is the first object of hearing.” (‘Primo in conceptione intellectus cadit ens; quia secundum hoc unumquodque cognoscibile est in quantum est actu; unde ens est proprium objectum intellectus et sic est primum intelligibile, sicut sonus est primum audibile.’ Ia, q. 5, a. 2. Cf. also Ia, q. 85, a3; Ia IIae, q. 94, a. 2; Cont. Gent.: II, 83; De veritate, q. 1, a. I.)

-Reginald Garrigou-LaGrange, Reality: a Synthesis of Thomistic Thought, ch. 4

Our thoughts about truth are thoughts about objects of truth. That is, they are about objective reality. Reality, of course, is that which exists; that which is most or most truly real is that which exists in actuality and not in potentiality. So, the most real is that about which (Whom, actually) it cannot be stated that A) it is in some way not (about which, more, presently), B) it is in some way in potentiality, C) it is in some way contingent, and D) it is in some way terminable.

We think, which is action. Our thoughts are thus real, because they happen; they do not reside in some “potentiality.” I am not sure when people first started proposing or believing (also actions, of course) that thought was less real, not real, or the like. I don’t think it’s debatable that angelic forces are the impetus for such proto-gnosticism. We contend with principalities and powers (Eph. 6:12) who, as we also read in chapter 23 of Garrigou-LaGrange’s book, are described thus: ”The nature of his ideas, at once universal and concrete, make the angel’s knowledge intuitive, not in any way successive and discursive. He sees at a glance the particular in the universal, the conclusion in the principle, the means in the end.”

For the same reason his act of judging does not proceed by comparing and separating different ideas.  By his purely intuitive apprehension of the essence of a thing, he sees at once all characteristics of that essence, for example, he simultaneously sees all man’s human and created characteristics, for instance, that man’s essence is not man’s existence, then man’s existence is necessarily given and preserved by divine causality.

Why this immense distance between angel and man? Because, seeing intuitively, the angel sees without medium, as in clearest midday, an immensely higher object, sees the intelligible world of spirits, whereas man’s intellect, the most feeble of all intellects, having as object the lowest order of intelligibility, must be satisfied with twilight glances into the faint mirror of the sense world.

A further consequence is that the angel’s intuitive vision is also infallible. But while he can make no mistake in his natural knowledge, he can deceive himself in the supernatural order, on the question, for example, whether this or that individual man is in the state of grace. Likewise he may deceive himself in forecasting the contingent future, above all in attempting to know the future free acts of men, or the immanent secrets of man’s heart, secrets which are in no way necessarily linked with the nature of our soul or with external physical realities. The secrets of the heart are not fragments of the material world, they do not result from the interplay of physical forces.

 

4 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized