PART I           -           THE DYNAMICS OF THE EXPLANATION

 

 

            Metaphysics is the science of being in as much as it is (ens qua ens). In general, the goal of metaphysics is similar to all the other sciences: to explain being. However, while the diverse sciences explain being under this or that point of view, metaphysics explains being in as much as it is. In other words, it explains being in terms of its totality, not only just an aspect of it.

 

What we will do here first is to investigate the scheme of the explanation. Then we will show how to articulate the diverse types of sciences. And finally, we will conclude with discovering the specific character of metaphysics as science.

 

I.          The Principle of Reason.

 

            The principle of reason grounds the scheme of the explanation. We will first show what is the meaning of this principle. Then, we will look for the spiritual roots. Finally, from there we will delimit its proper capacity.

 

A.         The Fundamental Propositions.

 

            The scheme of explanation emerges from the disproportion between sensibility and understanding.

 

            1.    Sensibilities and Understanding.

 

            The sense seems not to attain or access the object in itself, but in its presentation outside itself. The senses, in fact, encounter the object according to a definite point of view, from a particular angle of the body. The senses know the object as phenomenon or as it appears. Such phenomenon appears according to the conforming characteristic proper to the sense that receives it. That is why, the senses know being imperfectly, because they grasp them according to the norm of sensibility, and of its proper sensible forms.

 

However, human knowledge demands to objectively know that which is, not only the appearance. It sees being which consists itself, but it is always influenced or determined by the proper subjective disposition. So there is a need to overcome these subjective dispositions so that knowledge would be guaranteed. The universality and necessity, norms of intelligibility - they invite the spirit to overcome the limits of its subjectivity or subjective dispositions.

 

            The sensible object will not be known if it could not become the matter of intellectual activity, thus, obtaining a new objectivity. The sensible is available to become an intelligible. Now, the sensible consists its particular unity, while the intelligible has the sense for the constitutive relations of being. Understanding grasps the sensible in a web of abstract relations, thus recognizing its intelligibility. The dynamism of the explaination goes from the sensible to the intelligible, and from the intelligible it arrives at the being considered in its particularity and unity. Recognizing the relations among sensible facts, the spirit manifests and transcends the particular sensibles by connecting one to the others. This shows that the spirit (mind)  is the faculty of the universal. Constructing the form of the intelligibility of being, the spirit puts in operation a principle not based on its facts. This shows that the spirit is the faculty of the necessary.

 

            2.   Universality and Necessity.

 

            “Universal” can be understood in several sense. The universal characterizes, first of all, that which is common to a totality of considered individuals under a certain point of view. In this sense, every formed concept by the understanding during the abstractive process, is universal. In this process, in fact, the spirit considers the sensed under a particular point of view so that several of the sensed, actual and possible, can be united under a concept. This is the abstracted universal.

 

            Being is universal and a unity. As universal, being is understood as that which is common. And as a unity, because being unites in itself the diversity of its intelligible notes. The abstracted universals give access to the intelligibility. Our point of view on beings is always partial, not complete. But being unites them objectively in itself, in its proper unity. Here, the universal is concrete.

 

            “Necessity” is understood in several sense. In general, it is necessary that one cannot but be. This necessity can be categorical (unconditioned) or hypothetical (conditioned). Let us consider the unconditioned necessity in our activity of affirmation. A proposition, which the contradictory would be itself contradictory in front of the activity of affirmation, is categorically necessary. For example, the proposition” There are true propositions” is necessary categorically, because to contradict that would establish a contradiction between the explicitly enunciated and the implicit act exercised in the affirmation, that demands to be true. The categorical necessity concerns the necessity of effective spiritual act, of its form.

 

            The hypothetical necessity concerns the sensible experience. It is hypothetically necessary that which cannot follow its conditions when these are given. The exercise of knowledge is, under the point of view of its content, always hypothetical. In fact, it is conditioned by the subjective possibility of the reception of being, if it is not categorically necessary, as we have seen in the preceding paragraph.

 

            The necessity of the sensible is hypothetical. The condition of this necessity constitutes its cause. The being that springs and dies is not permanent by itself in being, but it develops itself and disappears according to the causes that affect it. The law of efficient causality expresses the hypothetical necessity.  It connects in dual relation two events, which do not pertain to the nature of one to the other. It would be “If A, then B” (consequent hypothetical necessity), it is “B” because “A” (subsequent hypothetical necessity). The laws of efficient causality, puts together two particulars, it expresses the work of the spirit, which transcends the facts by uniting them in a rational law, according to the universal law.

 

            The cause according to what the spirit tries to explain the real sensible must be universal and necessary. It reunites all the particulars under its law. Assuming the universal as necessary, it gives reason to the particular fact. The search for the universal tends towards unification always more complete of the real under a form of law, which integrates absolutely all. So, the spirit tends to know the ultimate reason of things.

 

            3          -           Explanation and Reason.

 

            Universality and necessity are not complete without the spirit. The universal is known in the concrete particular. It is the particular that sustains the universal. This implies an overcoming of its simple particularity. The broadening of the particular, hereafter its individuality in the universal, is a necessity of the particular because this would be knowable. Nothing would be knowable if it is not present to the knower. The experience of knowledge from the very start supposes an openness of the object towards the subject, and inversely. The first relation of knowledge is not abstract, but concrete. The universal is put in operation from the beginning, in an experience where the sensed and the sensing are necessarily present, one to the other. This condition is unconditioned. It does not depend on the causal efficiency.

 

            The principle of reason conjoins being and the spirit. It expresses the dual movement of the spirit dynamically tied up towards the object and of being which presents itself intelligibly to the spirit. In short, the movement of the spirit is tendential while the object is presentational. This dual movement is necessary. Every knowledge is intentional. A skeptical knowledge dies away in silence, or falls in the exercise of contradiction. To admit not knowing anything, it places itself to the origin of a dynamism that goes towards the recognition of the entire vanity of its strength, vanity but worth knowing. The skeptical negation demands being objective and necessary. To know not to know is necessarily knowing. Similarly, if beings are not intelligible, the dynamism of the spirit is contradictorily vane. To deny that the objectivity is intelligible means to deny intelligibility of this negation, hence demanding intelligibility. Therefore, it is necessary that the spirit tends towards objectivity, and that this would be intelligible.

 

            There are objectivity and intelligibility necessarily without conditions; but we do not know which thing is objective and intelligible, if there are no forms used in the dialogue with the object. In fact, this ultimate concession shows sufficiency that knowledge can be objective and intelligible, and that it knows it reflectively.

 

            The principle of reason conjoins reflectively the objectivity of the act of knowledge with the intelligibility of the known being. The word “reason” signifies that through which a being is intelligible, that is its objective reason, and subjective reason, the faculty that has all its “reason”. The objective norm constitutes a whole with the subjective faculty, and inversely. “Reason” refers one to the other the intelligibility of being and the objectivity of the intellective mode of grasping. Then, this principle is first. It is not possible to deduce it from another principle, because it establishes without condition the intelligibility in the objectivity, and inversely.

 

B.         The Spiritual Roots.

 

          The spirit is the faculty of the universal. It carries in itself, a priori, the capacity of grouping beings into concept. This shows its transcendence on the sensible. The universal, which is formulated in the concept, integrates the diverse beings. It is abstract and extensive. Knowledge overcomes the proper capacity of abstraction. It agrees to the concrete and comprehensive universal of the particular being, reaching into its proper universality. The unity of the object is understood when the thought proclaims the reality itself, having overcome the immediate sensation and its abstract fragmentation. Thus, the spirit opens itself to the more universal. It unifies first the objects in their universality according to their mutual relations, and then in their concrete necessity. This spiritual work, which is task of universalization, is not only developed by and at the level of understanding. It is already operative at the initial level of knowledge, which is perception, more than sensation.

 

            1          -           Perception.

 

            The spirit brings in itself the urgency of the universal and of necessity. This urgency does not originate from the sensible. The sensible is always subjected to the variations in time. But, the initial stage of knowledge cannot ignore the universality and necessity. The scientific intelligence progresses in its explaination, without creating it progressively. The sensible experience exercises a pre-reflection and a spontaneous pre-comprehension, which is the foundation of the efficacy of the scientific explanation. Of course, the end to which the scientific intelligence approaches is obscured in the intelligence, impinged in the experience of the sensible, but this experience must be filled of that which the analysis will develop. The scientific intelligence relies on that which comes from a substratum, which fuels it, in a continuous mode, without interruptions. This substratum is the sensible experience, which possesses the universality and the spiritual necessity ultimately. Because the experience of the sensible is not only punctual, passive sensation, but also perception which is active.

 

            Perception is opened a priori to the universal. Every perception structures the perceived. Clear examples of this are the optical illusions. To demand that the sense of the perceived comes from its association with other perceptions, constitutes a vicious circle or a path to the infinite, because, in this hypothesis, the non-sense would obtain sense leaving non-sense. In the same way, to demand the sense of the perceived would be constructed freely to the record of similar experiences. It moves itself in the same circle. There is the need to conclude then that the actually perceived would be sensed departing itself. Thus, perception is not pure passive sensation, but it perceives the unity of an original totality, passing immediately the susceptible elements of abstracted beings in the particular sensation, finally reuniting them in a unity, which these elements imply through being sensed effectively.

 

            The experience of the vision conjoins therefore the abstracted universal to the concrete universal. It can be seen as concrete object concentrating my attention on it. However, this narrowness of the visual field on the particular point, the context of the object is always present, or in confused mode. The effective presence of another confused world is necessary because the particular object can be perceived in its proper unity. My lamp on the table has a face turn towards the wall. But I perceived it as a unity on my table, entirely a unity in front of me, origin of multiple relations, some of which originate actually from me, but they are offered in a unitary mode to the penetration of my perception. Therefore, the concrete universality is not constructed by means of a progressive and continuous amplification of the point of view, but it is present, exercised simply in every sensible act.

 

            Therefore, the spirit in its temporal progression does not construct the universality and necessity. They emerge implicitly first of the sensible experience. Universality and Necessity are therefore available through a thematic recognition.

 

            2.         Apprehension and Comprehension.

 

            Perception truly performs a spiritual character, which do not belong explicitly to the intelligence only. Any of these aspects concerns a particular moment of the relation of being to the spirit. The abstracted universality, which the spirit establishes among beings under a particular point of view, derives from its particular relation to the beings which no being can exhaust. The concrete universality is seen in this encounter. It comes from the alliance that the spirit recognizes between itself and being. It is received effectively from being which gathers the diverse points of view without being limited by one or by the other of these. The hypothetical necessity originates from one spiritual exigency, which cannot be contented of the passing; it grounds the demand of the universal. The categorical necessity is necessity proper. It is experimented in the abstract form by the judgment and it is being vindicated by being, which is that which is, in its irreducible unity. The exercise of perception defines that which is called “simple apprehension”, that is the act through which comes the fact, to its proposition, no reflective judgment. This apprehension is said simple because the elements possibly can be disintegrated are united concretely in one being. The same act of simple apprehension can be analyzed through that which is complex fact, determined by a multiplicity of elements unified but originally in being and in act. Simple apprehension is entirely sensed. It exercises the universality and spiritual necessity. It is characteristic of “direct” judgment.

 

            The spiritual activity put in exercise in the simple apprehension is developed in explicit mode by reflective judgment. This implies awareness and knowledge. In such mode, simple apprehension becomes surpassed in comprehension. That which sensibility experiments becomes object of an explicit position, object of comprehension.

 

            In the first phase universality and necessity are used according to their proper fecundity. To comprehend consist in “taking with”. Perception exercises already such a comprehension in apprehension. Through reflective comprehension we understand the intellectual activity, which exercises its potency of the immediate and sensible experience. The universality and the necessity come in concepts through the mediation of their exercise, comprehension is then called complex apprehension.  It is apprehension because it imposes itself of the object.  It is complex because it is constructed with the help of a diverse point of view, universals and necessary.  Thus, begin Physics and Mathematics.

 

            The last step, the spirit interrogates in itself.  The universal and necessity put first in exercise in the sensible contact and in scientific judgment.  The spirit applies itself to reflect the first principles of sensible and scientific knowledge.  To this last level, the principles of universality and necessity become objects of specific investigation.  Thus, begins metaphysics.

 

C.        The Scope of the Principle of Reason.

 

            1.         Intelligibility and Causality.

 

            The principle of reason concerns the universality and the necessity as one is related to the other. On the part of the abstract universal the order of the concept in its convenient system is the formal cause of its intelligibility. On the part of the concrete universal, the causal relation is the font of intelligibility. The connection between these two types of explanation, intrinsic through the concept, extrinsic through the cause, constitutes the principle of reason. The intrinsic reason gives mode of knowing a concept according to its definition. Reason, here, is abstract and universal. In as much as it is formal, it reveals the universal principle, which allows in rendering account the intelligible nature of the concept. Extrinsic reason accounts by means of the causes, the facticity of things, in their contingent particularity.

 

            The principle of reason is enunciated in two principal modes: “every being is intelligible” and “every being has its cause.” The first formula demands some universal intelligibility accessible to the spirit, and the second a particular cause of being. Between being and the spirit, intelligibility and the cause are mediations united in the principle of reason, in such mode that the cause of being would be intelligible, and that intelligibility has a grasp on the reality. The reciprocity of this mediation is shattered by empiricism and idealism.

 

            Empiricism blocks the principle of reason in its factual, contingent direction. “Nothing is without a cause”; it reduces “reason” to its objective dimension. It forgets that “reason” evokes a work of subjective intelligence, through which the intelligibility of being is recognized as connected to the cause. Then, the principle becomes mundane only. Such reduction of the principle of reason to the principle of causality does not correspond to the spiritual demand of universal reason. Of the rest, it cannot legitimize more the same principle of causality, outside of a psychological consideration.

 

            Idealism restricts the principle of reason to abstract intelligibility. It considers that no judgment would be valid without a formal principle, through which it is so and not otherwise. In this perspective, the reason of judgment remains in the subject of this judgment, from which the predicted, which here is content of right, must be deduced by being rational. Then, the principle of reason is reduced here to one aspect, that of intelligibility, which on the other hand is immanent only in the spirit.

 

            2.         Empiricism.

 

            Reason is the cause by which being emerges, in such a way that it could be other than that which is. The principle of causality, understood by empiricism as efficient causality only puts a relation between A & B. If B begins to be, it necessarily must have cause A. The cause is relation. Empiricism circumscribes this relation in two directions: the impression of B is always related to that of A. And the order of the impressions is not reversible. A precedes always B. The succession in the temporal contiguity and the constancy of this conjunction characterize the efficient cause.

 

            However, these characters are not enough to render an account of the conjunction so exposed. The conjunction is a relation. Then, it makes part of the field of intelligibility and of the real. It cannot know why, if the relation necessary, if not knowing first what is constitutive of the relation as relation, that is intelligibility. The interpretation of the principle of causality depends then from the interpretation, which gives itself of the same intelligence.

 

            According to the empiricists, the intelligence does not truly touch the things, but only their mental representations. In this situation, the conjunction is not at all necessary. In fact, it can itself always conceive or imagine a change of nature, a breakage of the efficient relations. The constancy of the inference of B towards A is provisionary, and it does not legitimize, the deduction of B from A. Without the other, the principle of causality is useful in practice. In fact, it functions well; if therefrom it sees not the necessary foundation. Then, the principle of causality is subjective. Empiricism becomes in such away as a particular form of subjectivism. It considers the foundation of the principle of causality as psychological. The multiplicity of the experiences of connections gives origin to the arbitrary idea, and rumbles of their necessity so fixing a simple mental tendency of thinking A when B presents itself. According to the mode of seeing of Empiricism, the necessity of connection is only practical, founded on sentiments and on habit.

 

            In fact, such intelligence of the principle of causality does not reach the theoretical presupposition of the sciences, through which the regularity among facts is essentially objective and cannot be measured by effective resonance. Certainly, contemporary sciences tend to become statistical. But, doing so, they limit themselves with respect to the conditions of their work, to the internal of an exigency which rigor cannot be restricted to statistical measurement as its norm.

 

            3.         Idealism.

 

            Idealism refers the principle of causality to subjectivity in the level of receiving the abstract universal, recognizing some necessary identity of the cause to the effect, since the effect follows necessarily its cause, and not the other. However, the identity can be completed since the relation cause-effect is irreversible. The cause is first, the effect comes after. Thus, the effect is characterized by its contingent rationality. It depends on a reason. The cause, instead, has an intrinsic and universal rationality. Idealism tends to explain the rationality of the contingent by the immanence of its cause, of which it is an aspect.

 

            So, idealism reduces the extrinsic reason of being to the intrinsic reason of being, the extrinsic reason of being is demanded when the effect does not have in itself its reason. Thus, the things of the contingent would come to existence because they derive from a cause. The intrinsic reason of being is not in the same being. The principle of reason is often confused with the principle of identity, “that which is, it is as it is.” and of non-contradiction: “Nothing can be and not be under the same point of view.” The reason of a being is its nature that is that which is from itself. So, every predicated particular manifests an aspect of the subject. It has its real cause in the subject. It must be noted that the identity can concern abstract beings, conventional and, to a limit, arbitrary, provided that, however, they can enter in one definition. So it loses the alterity of the effect confronted with its cause.  Idealism misunderstands the extrinsic reason of being.

 

            4.         The Dialectics of the Principle of Reason.

 

            The principle of reason cannot be restricted neither to the real causality, nor to the ideal identity.. In it, these two principles intersect and participate one to the other, in some other aspect. So, in the dominion of concepts and of logic, supported by the principle of identity and of contradiction, the genus is the cause of the specie, because it precedes it. Equally, in the dominion of the real, supported by the principle of efficient causality, the cause gives intelligibility to the effect, penetrating it.

 

            Therefore, it suits to confront a principle with the other against the mediation of the principle of reason, considering the principle of efficient causality confronting the ordained real things, and the principle of identity according to the analytical rigor of conceptual intelligibility. In any case, they distinguished themselves the point of view of intelligibility, and of the real objective being.

 

 

	EFFICIENT CAUSALITY	LOGICAL IDENTITY
	Synthesis of Real Elements	Analysis of Conceptual Subject.
Intelligibility	1.      Identity between two existents under the relation of causality; the cause and the effect are identical under the same point of view.	3.   Identity of the thing in       any of the intelligible        elements: the same       thing can be and not       be under the same       point of view.
Real	2. The beings are multiple       and inaccessible if not     as phenomenon.	4.   The beings are       determined by their       essential definition       which precedes them.

     

            It can try to develop an explanation based itself only on an aspect of these four possibilities, but such investigation would be certainly limited, or really abstract.

 

            Considered in this way, the principle of reason is not reducible to that which therefrom makes rationalism. The reason of being is that which is and its intelligibility, when intelligibility and being are dialectically united. The measure of comprehension, then, is neither subjective nor objective. The dialectical given or the reciprocity of being to intelligibility realizes itself in judgment. Because our reflection will analyze the scientific judgments which try to explain being.