'Virtually Intelligible' (Etienne Gilson)

 “In order to account for the possibility of abstract knowledge, Aristotle and St. Thomas had conceived. an elaborate scheme, according to which things them- selves were credited with virtually intelligible forms, which the human soul was supposed to abstract from things by its active intellect, and to know by its possible intellect.” (Etienne Gilson: The Unity of Philosophical Experience pub. 1937)

There I go again getting fixated on a word or phrase that is replete with creative ambiguity.  ‘Virtually intelligible’ is such a locution.  I see virtually here meaning originating out of its own power, its own virtue.  Of course it is intelligible to the perceiver as an instance of a universal but this nature is inherent.  ‘Virtually’ taken in the usual sense refers away from itself towards the root instance, the central example so to speak.  ‘She lived for most of the year by herself in Mallorca and they were, as husband and wife, virtually separated’. The common expression ‘virtually identical’ captures this reference to another  central example of something.  

S.O.D.     Virtual: Possessed of certain physical virtues or capacities effective in respect of inherent natural qualities  or powers; capable of exerting influence by means of such qualities. (now rare)

Curious that the usual sense of ‘virtually’ has moved away from inherance to an almost opposing sense.                

Bernard Lonergan's Difficulty

 

Why is Bernard Lonergan’s ‘Insight’ so hard to read? Simple, it is irredeemably abstract and he tends to offer congeries of ‘places’ eg. in the 26th place.  When you offer a generalised Empirical Method anything as a good Aristotelian/Thomist that which is generalised must have been abstracted from a number of instances.  No actual instances are offered, you have to bring your own.  This is not mnemonic, indeed it has a stultifying effect. Just saying, but I will continue to dip in here and there and get back to you.

I image Etienne Gilson, that master of clarity had trouble with him on the matter of Realism.  The Critical Realism that seems to start with the mind was a bete noir of his:

“There is an empirical consciousness characteristic  of sensing, perceiving, imagining.  As the content of these acts is merely presented or represented, so the awareness immanent in the acts is the mere givenness of the acts”. (322-324 Insight)

‘Presented’ or ‘represented’ seems hedging or imprecision at best. ‘Content of the acts’ contrasted with the ‘mere givenness of the acts’.  How is that done?

I am, it is: Mystical Conjugation

 

What is this thing called Being mentioned so frequently in philosophy?  Philosophers ascribe to it a power that is there but somehow cannot be separated out, but we are at the same time immersed in it.  How?  So powerful is it that Nisargadatta Maharaj achieved enlightenment but continually keeping before his mind ‘I am’.  Etienne Gilson reflects on the power of the self-definition of God,” I am that I am”.

“There is then a resemblance between Being and beings.  It is written inGenesis 1:26 Let us make man in our image and likeness.There is at least one sense in which this is true, and this first sense is presupposed by all the others:to beimplies necessarily a certain likeness to HE WHO IS.”  (The Elements of Christian Philosophy)

When I first heard that response to Moses in Exodus 3:13-14: I AM WHO AM at the age of 15 it gave me a most uncanny feeling , a premonitory saltation to the age of 27 when at the instantaneous recognition of the reality of God, that name came into my head.

What is the deep reality for the  philosopher who espouses a realist ontology behind the apparently simple recognition in experience of something - it is and it is this.  How is that propaedeutic to the mystical immersion in pure being.  Let me affirm that being mistaken is founded on the default nature of the unity of being.  A mistake is a take.

The very first chapter of Nisargadatta’s teaching (‘I AM THAT) is called ‘The Sense of ‘I am’.  I’ll have a look at that next and then at that exceptionally lucid book of Etienne Gilson’s ‘Methodical Realism’.

Anon.

Etienne Gilson's Realism

 I’m reading a lot of Etienne Gilson at the moment, dropping in and out of his books on Realism and Neo-Thomism.  He rightly scorns the idea that Cartesian methodic doubt can lead anywhere. Idealism has burned the bridge to anywhere and yet it fascinates by its apparent lucidity.  It establishes the problem field and keeps us stuck there with the endless toing and froing of the external and the internal world that act like the two ends of a seesaw.  

He writes of a Fr. Noel:

“Here we have finally come full circle, but the reader will be excused if he wonders why so much effort was expended creating the sensation of movement when in reality we have gone nowhere. First, we were told that we had to carry out an exhaustive, methodic doubt, but, since we were not permitted to doubt either thought or the fact of the existence of sensible reality, what did we actually doubt? Descartes’ doubt at least doubts something, but Monsignor Noel’s doubts nothing.”

It has been a notion of mine that Idealism is catching because it is easy to understand and modern psychology offers a specious basis.  Realism as offered by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas is a difficult complex philosophy which starts out in the difficult terrain of ontology going from being to the real and knowledge of it.  Descartes as Gilson holds begins with epistemology and tries to catch hold of the real with Deus as the deus ex machina.  

Another point that Gilson controverts elsewhere is the doctrine of Jacques Maritain’s that an intuition of being is essential for a true comprehension of metaphysics.  He seems to me to have a strong argument.  I shall have to go back to ‘Degrees of Knowledge’ to try and comprehend the different levels of abstraction involved in the intuition of being.  I have this idea that Maritain may be conflating Aristotle and the Cartesian critical method moving from the initial judgement or apprehension i.e. it is and it is this, what is called an intuition.  Gilson maintains that the true Thomistic realism goes from Being to the Real.  

 

The analogies between this way of thinking and the Advaitic Realism are many.  Gilson’s clarity and explanatory power is excellent.  More anon.