Etienne Gilson on Thoughts and Things

 As realists we abide in things not thoughts.  The thing comes first not the thought about the thing.  What you have in Descartes is certainty but its a dead certainty.  Nothing living can come from it.  It cuts us off from things and leaves us the world as a true hallucination as Taine put it.  

Etienne Gilson in his brilliantly clear ‘Methodical Realism’ which would be an offence to summarise has an essay of 30 paragraphs on the superiority of Realism to Idealism.  Realism is the true because what we do would be impossible if Idealism were the case.  Section 5 in the series is an example of his wit:

The knowledge the realist is talking about is the lived and experienced unity of an intellect with an apprehended reality. This is why a realist philosophy has to do with the thing itself that is apprehended, and without which there would be no knowledge. Idealist philosophers, on the other hand, since they start from thought, quickly reach the point of choosing science or philosophy as their object. When an idealist genuinely thinks as an idealist, he perfectly embodies the essence of a “professor of philosophy”, whereas the realist, when he genuinely thinks as a realist, conforms himself to the authentic essence of a philosopher; for a philosopher talks about things, while a professor of philosophy talks about philosophy.