Distinguish to Unite or, Degrees of Knowledge

494 Pages·1959·20.358 MB·English

by  Jacques Maritain

DISTINGUISH TO UNITE
OR
The
Degrees of Knowledge
by JACQUES MARITAIN
Newly translated
from the fourth French edition
under the supervision
of
GERALD B. PHELAN
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
NEW YORK
BY JACQUES MARITAIN
Reflections on America
On The Philosophy of History
A Preface to Metaphysics
Existence and the Existent
Ransoming the Time
The Range of Reason
Approaches to God
True Humanism
Freedom in the Modern World
Christianity and Democracy
The Rights of Man and Natural Law
The Person and the Common Good
Man and the State
Education at the Crossroads
Art and Scholasticism
Art and Poetry
Art and Faith
Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry
Prayer and Intelligence
(in collaboration with Raissa Maritain)
The Situation of Poetry
(in collaboration with Raissa Maritain)
The Social and Political Philosophy of Jacques Maritain
(edited by Joseph W. Evans and Leo R. Ward)
Copyright © 1959 Jacques Maritain
This book published simultaneously in the
United States of America and in Canada-
Copyright under the Berne Convention
All rights reserved. No part of this book
may be reproduced in any form without the
permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons.
C-6.63[q]
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 59-12892
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface to the Original French Edition ix
Foreword xvii
I The Majesty and Poverty of Metaphysics i
First Part: The Degrees of Rational Knowledge: Philosophy
and Experimental Science
II Philosophy and Experimental Science 21
i The Object of This Chapter
Science in General
Necessity and Contingency
A Digression on “Determinism in Nature”
Another Digression. How Do We Attain Essences?
Sciences of. Explanation (In the Full Sense of the Word) and
Sciences of Observation
n The Degrees of Abstraction
Table of the Sciences
m Science and Philosophy
Classifications on the Notion of Fact
The Structures and Methods of the Principal Kinds of Know¬
ledge
The Proper Conditions for Philosophy. Its Relation to Facts
Knowledge of the Physico-Mathematical Type and Philosophy
Knowledge of a Biological and Psychological Kind
Conclusion
Speculative Philosophy
III Critical Realism 71
1 “Critical Realism”
Scio aliquid esse
n Realism and Common Sense
Truth
Thing and Object
Digression on Phenomenology and the Cartesian Meditations
Concerning Idealism
m Concerning Knowledge Itself
The Concept
Idealistic Positions and Attempts at Reaction
The Universe of Existence and the Universe of Intelligibility
Being of Reason
v
VI CONTENTS
IV Knowledge of Sensible Nature
i The Main Types of Knowing
Modern Physics Considered in its General Epistemological Type
Real Being and Being of Reason in Physico-Mathematical
Knowledge
Ontological Explanation and Empiriological Explanation and
Some Recastings of the Notion of Causality
The New Physics
A Digression on the Question of “Real Space”
n The Philosophy of Nature
Complementary Elucidations
ui Mechanism
Dangerous Liaisons
Ontology and Empiriology in the Study of the Living Organism
The Anti-Mechanist Reaction in Biology
Concerning the True and the False Philosophy of the Progress
of the Sciences in Modern Times
V Metaphysical Knowledge
i Dianoetic Intellection and Perinoetic Intellection
Scholastic Digression
The Human Intelligence and Corporeal Natures
n The Metaphysical Intelligible
The Metaphysical Transintelligible and Ananoetic Intellection
in The Divine Names
The Name of Person
The Way of Knowing and the Way of Non-Knowing
The Superanalogy of Faith
Second Part: The Degrees of Suprarational Knowledge
VI Mystical Experience and Philosophy
i The Three Wisdoms
n Sanctifying Grace
The Indwelling of the Divine Persons in the Soul
The Gifts of the Holy Ghost
Knowledge by Connaturality
Fides Illustrata Donis
hi Transition to a Few Problems
Is There an Authentic Mystical Experience in the Natural
Order?
First Objection
Second Objection
Third Objection
Does Metaphysics of Itself Demand Mystical Experience?
Natural Analogies of Mystical Experience
Connections Between Metaphysics and Mysticism
CONTENTS Vll
VII Augustinian Wisdom 291
A Typical Problem
The Gift of Wisdom Making Use of Discourse
Platonic Reason and the Gifts of the Holy Ghost
The Character of Augustine’s Doctrine
Augustinism and Technical Differentiations Within Christian
Thought
Thomas Aquinas, Augustine’s Heir
Thomism and Augustinism
VIII St. John of the Cross, Practitioner of Contemplation 310
1 Communicable Knowledge and Incommunicable Knowledge
n The Speculative Order and the Practical Order
Practically Practical Science
The Practical Science of Contemplation
m The Meaning of Human Life
Theological Faith
rv The “Practicality” of St. John of the Cross’ Vocabulary
The Doctrine of the Void
v Mystical Contemplation
Contemplative Purity and Poverty of Spirit
IX Todo Y Nada y 352
Appendixes
Appendix I: The Concept 3^7
Appendix II: On Analogy 4*8
Appendix III: “What God Is” 422
Appendix IV: On the Notion of Subsistence 430
Further Elucidations (1954)
Appendix V: On a Work of Father Gardeil 445
Appendix VI: Some Clarifications 451
Appendix VII: “Speculative” and “Practical 45^
1 On the Proper Mode of Moral Philosophy
n General Remarks About the Speculative and the
Practical
Appendix VIII: “Le Amara Tanto Como es Amada” 465
Appendix IX: The “Cautelas” of St. John of the Cross 468
Index 471
PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL FRENCH EDITION
The title of this work1 suffices to declare its plan and purpose. To scatter
and to confuse are both equally inimical to the nature of the mind. “No
one, says Tauler, understands true distinction better than they who have
entered into unity. ’ So, too, no one truly knows unity who does not also
know distinction. Every attempt at metaphysical synthesis, especially when
it deals with the complex riches of knowledge and of the mind, must dis-
tinguish in order to unite. What is thus incumbent upon a reflexive and
critical philosophy is above all to discriminate and discern the degrees of
knowing, its organization and its internal differentiations.
Idealism usually chooses a particular order of sciences as the univocal
type of the world of knowing and constructs its whole philosophy of knowing
with reference to that chosen type. Not only does it thus systematically
neglect vast areas of knowledge but it also tends to reduce the diversities
of the life of the mind to a noetic monism, more sterile, no doubt, and less
excusable than the ontological monism of the first philosophers. (For, after
all, the mind knows itself; and what excuse can idealism offer when it deceives
itself about the very structures of thought?)
In retaliation, many realists seem disposed to abandon the problems proper
to the mind as the price they pay for the possession of things. And we are
witnessing today a new cultural” dogmatic identifying the anti-idealism of
which it makes profession with dialectical materialism.
We hope to show in this book that Thomistic realism, in preserving,
according to a truly critical method, the value of the knowledge of things,
opens the way to an exploration of the world of reflection in its very inward¬
ness and to the establishment of its metaphysical topology, so to speak;
thus, philosophy of being” is at once, and par excellence, “philosophy of
mind.”
The mind, even more so than the physical world and bodily organisms,
possesses its own dimensions, its structure and internal hierarchy of causalities
and values—immaterial though they be. Contemporary idealism, in the last
analysis, refuses to recognize that mind has any nature or any structure. It
sees it only as a pure movement, a pure freedom. Hence, it never really gets
beyond spreading it out, whole and entire, upon a single plane of intellection,
like a two-dimensional world, infinitely flat. One is, however, justified in
thinking that the four dimensions of which St. Paul speaks “quae sit latitudo,
1 The French title of this book is: Distinguer pour unir, ou Les degrfa du savoir (tr.).
ix
* PREFACE
et longitudo et sublimitas et profundum,”1 belong not only to the sphere (or super¬
sphere) of the contemplation of the saint, but, generally, to the fundamental
organization and structure of the things of the mind, both in the natural and
in the supernatural order.
From the noetic point of view which we have adopted, let us say that
“length” symbolizes for us the manner in which the formal light that char¬
acterizes a particular type of knowing falls upon things and defines in them
a certain line of intelligibility: to “breadth” corresponds the ever-increasing
number of objects thus known; to “height” corresponds the difference of level
created among different sorts of knowing by the degrees of intelligibility and
immateriality of the object and from which there follows for each difference
of level an original and typical mode of procedure; as to the fourth dimen¬
sion, “depth,” it represents, in our view, those more hidden diversities which
depend upon the manner in which the mind, in its freedom, still further
diversifies its objects and its ways of conforming to the real,’according to its
own proper finalities. The difference between speculative and practical
philosophy offers the simplest example of such diversities, but it is not the
only one.
However, it is important to bring to light not only the structure, but also
the movement and elan of the mind, as well as that admirable law of unsatis¬
factoriness, even in the security of acquired certitudes, in virtue of which the
mind, starting with sense experience, enlarges, heightens and transforms its
own life step by step by involving itself in diverse worlds of knowledge,
heterogeneous, indeed, yet solidary, and by bearing witness that to tend
towards infinite amplitude is, for an immaterial life, to tend towards an
infinite object, an infinite reality which it must needs, in some way, possess.
We have endeavoured to point out in this book the principal reasons and
modalities of this movement and of those phases through which it passes.
It is easy to see why this work must explore the most varied domains. After
a sort of general introduction dealing with the question of the Grandeur and
Misery of Metaphysics, the first problems to be treated will be those of the
experimental sciences, and the degree of knowing which they represent.
Before pressing on, it is necessary to turn our attention to knowledge itself
and as such, and to establish (Ch. Ill) the principles of a philosophy of the
intellect; there we shall cross the threshold of critical metaphysics and thence¬
forth keep to that point of view. The two following chapters will deal with
the philosophy of nature considered notably in its relations with the sciences,
particularly physics, and with metaphysical knowledge, especially in its
noetic structure and in its relations to negative theology. When we come to
knowledge by faith and the “superanalogy” proper to it, we shall rise to the
super-rational degrees of knowing, whose highest form is mystical experience.
1 Eph. hi. 18.
PREFACE XI
Chapter VI is devoted to problems concerning mystical experience and
Chapters VII and VIII consider two eminent cases involving what we have
called above the “depth” of the things of the mind. Therein we shall inquire
first, what is the nature of Augustinian wisdom?—and then, what are the
distinctive features and the proper perspective of the “practico-practical”
science of contemplation such as it is found in a St. John of the Cross? The
last chapter forms the conclusion of the whole work. It deals with the doctrine
of the “All and Nothing,” expounded by the same mystical Doctor, St. John
of the Cross, and with the highest degree of knowledge and wisdom accessible
to man in this life.
We have purposely run through so vast a range of problems and sketched
a synthesis (starting with the experience of the physicist and ending with the
experience of the contemplative), the philosophical stability of which is
guaranteed by the rational certitudes of metaphysics and critique. Only thus
could we show the organic diversity and the essential compatibility of those
zones of knowledge through which the mind passes in its great movement in
quest of being, to which each one of us can contribute only tiny fragments,
and that at the risk of misunderstanding the activity of comrades devoted to
other enterprises equally fragmentary, the total unity of which, however,
reconciles in the mind of the philosopher, almost in spite of themselves,
brothers-in-arms who knew not one another. From this point of view it may
also be said that the work which metaphysics is called upon to do today is to
put an end to that kind of incompatibility of temper which the humanism of
the classical age had created between science and wisdom.
Some there are who will reproach us, no doubt, for not remaining through¬
out on the plane of pure philosophy and for having taken into account, in
the second part of the present book, certitudes that depend upon lights of
another order. We shall do nothing to turn aside that sort of reproach since
we are convinced, in fact, that when a philosopher adopts as the object of his
study, something which impinges upon the existential conditions of man and
his activity as a free person—and that is just what happens when he studies
those degrees of knowledge which are themselves beyond philosophy and
imply, in their very essence, a personal relation of the knowing subject with
his final end—he can proceed scientifically only if he respects the integrity
of his object and, consequently, the integrity of those realities of the super¬
natural order which are, as a matter of fact, implied in it. We have explained
our views on this point in an essay on the notion of Christian philosophy.1
No philosophical pretension can do away with the fact that man does not
exist in the state of pure nature but in the state of fallen and redeemed nature.
The first obligation of the philosopher is to recognize what is. And if, in some
cases, he can only do so by adhering by faith to the First Truth—which,
1 Revue PUo-Scholastique de philosophie, Louvain, May 1932, pp. 178-180. See our De la
philosophie critienne (Paris, 1933). As I have pointed out in an appendix to this little book,
moral philosophy adequately understood is necessarily subordinate to theology.
Xll PREFACE
though it be reasonable to do so, is nevertheless due to a grace which tran¬
scends reason—he is still a philosopher (though not purely a philosopher)
when he uses this very adherence to discern and examine the essential char¬
acteristics and the explicative reasons of what lies before his eyes. Then,
although he borrows higher lights which he combines with those of reason,
he carries through according to his own proper mode of procedure—not as
a theologian but as a philosopher—analysing his data in order to rise to their
ontological principles and integrating within his investigation of causes,
points of information which he gets from the theologian, just as, on other
occasions, he likewise integrates points of information that he gets from the
biologist or the physicist.
Whenever an unbeliever who reads these pages finds that he cannot grant
the truth of the principles of solution which we have assumed, he can at least
understand the methodological reasons which make it necessary to have
recourse to those principles, and can judge from the outside, as it were, the
logical structure of the whole which is presented to him. Moreover, many
parts of this whole—to wit, all that deals with the degrees of rational knowing
—rely on reason alone. And the doctrines of science which are here proposed,
notably those which concern the physico-mathematical knowledge of nature,
the philosophy of nature, the divine names and the rational knowledge of
God, although they do not constitute the loftiest parts of that edifice, are yet
its central parts, just as the doctrine of critical realism is its foundation.
Let it be added that this work has not been conceived as a didactic treatise
but rather as a meditation on certain themes linked together in a continuous
movement. That is why certain degrees of knowing of major importance in
themselves, such as mathematical knowledge and theological knowledge,
have not been made the object of a special ^hapter, although we have not,
therefore, refrained from considering and characterizing them. A special
study, alien to the philosophical purpose we aim to pursue in this work,
would be required for each of them. As far as the foundations of mathematics
in particular are concerned, we are of the opinion that many preliminary
studies are needed before Thomistic philosophy is in a position to propose
a systematic interpretation in which all the critical problems raised by modem
developments of the mathematical sciences may find solution. Nevertheless,
we have tried on several occasions (Chs. II, IV, V) to give precision in this
connection to a certain number of doctrinal points which appear to us to be
of particular importance and which already indicate quite definitely, in what
spirit, it seems to us, a philosophy of mathematics should be elaborated.
Those who agree to read these pages attentively will, perhaps, notice
that while we rigorously maintain the formal line of Thomistic metaphysics,
rejecting any sort of compromise or watering-down designed to render
Thomism acceptable to irrational prejudices, we have tried to clear the ground
on several points and to push back the frontiers of the Thomistic synthesis.