SUAREZIAN EXTRA-MENTAL THEMES AS GROUNDWORK FOR MODERN PHILOSOPHY

1. Omniconceptualism

2. Intra-mental criteria for extra-mental reality 3. Criteria for certainty

4. Elimination of demonic deception 5. Innate ideas

V. SUAREZIAN EXTRA-MENTAL THEMES AS GROUNDWORK FOR MODERN PHILOSOPHY 1. Types of distinction

2. Substance and modes

3. Disproportion between matter and spirit 4. Individuation

5. Optimal universe

INTRODUCTION

We now leave the relatively tranquil waters of Scholasticism and sail, with the Uncommon Doctor as pilot, into the stormy sea of modern

philosophy. In the Prologue, at the end of Chapter 3 and elsewhere, we suggested that Suárez, in a manner previously unknown to the Scholastics, had made the ascertainment of the truth of extra-men-tal reality—and indeed the most fundamenextra-men-tal truth, that of being it-self—dependent on an intra-mental concept: because, he said, the lat-ter was more accessible to us than the former since it was more known to us (nobis notius); indeed it was produced by us and in us (a nobis et in nobis). Some time later, the “disciple of the disciples of Suárez ” was to infer (ergo) the truth of an indubitable extra-mental reality “I am” (sum), from the better-known (notior), indeed self-evident, intra-mental consciousness, expressed as “I think” (cogito). [Somewhat later the outstanding philosopher of the 18^th century, IMMANUEL KANT (1724-1804), contended that consciousness was the very beginning of all speculative philosophy.] Thus it appears that the little word no-tior/notius was “the minuscule spark that was to ignite the immense conflagration of modern philosophy.” This conflagration gutted the Scholastic theory of knowledge (that had kept reason and sensation in balance) and replaced it with a dichotomy of Rationalism and Em-piricism, the two doctrines synthesized in the 18^th century by Kant.

But let us start with the cause of this conflagration, the Uncommon Doctor, Suárez.

Suárez made the fatal move of establishing a subjective state of mind (the formal concept) as the criterion for ascertaining the objective na-ture of the most basic of metaphysical problems, the problem of “be-ing” (referred to in the objective concept). This decision established, though in one instance only, the preeminence of subjectivity (the intra-mental) over objectivity (extra-mental reality). In addition, it focused on the fact (mentioned above) that in general we know intra-mental concepts better than we do extra-mental reality, the subjective better than the objective, an added reason for concentrating on the subjective in place of the objective. The formal concept of being, which is intra-mental, was elegantly simple, indivisible and unique. Contrariwise the objective concept of being, which is mainly extra-mental, had a het-erogeneous, indeed even seemingly confused, character: its reference could be negative (to states like blindness), purely notional (chimera), individual (a man, Peter) and universal (humanity). Later thinkers were not resigned to the heterogeneity of the objective concept; they sought to uniformize its content under the simple rubric of, say, the

“knowable”; some of them are known as the

“supertranscendental-ists” (see Chapter 6, below). For the realist Suárez, however, what was known was not the concept itself, but (through the concept) objective reality. The Eximius does not appear to have been aware of the danger of making this move toward subjectivism, a move which, through the unwelcome anamorphosis of his thought, was fated to lead to the col-lapse of metaphysics, in three stages, each with a greater infusion of the subjective than the previous—Cartesian, Kantian and Hegelian.

The following is a summary of the process.

DESCARTES (1596-1650) definitively secured the preeminence of the subjective (the intra-mental) over the objective (extra-mental re-ality). Indeed, he rooted objectivity in subjectivity, turning objective content into a mere modus cogitandi. Objective realities that had im-memorially existed by themselves now survived only in relation to self-conscious thought. Now the object of our knowledge was not objective reality (through the concept); it was the concept itself. Self-conscious thought, immune to doubt, became the certain foundation of meta-physics. The thought content could be doubted, but the thinking that occasioned the doubt could not.

By the time of KANT (1724-1804) the preeminence of subjectivity over objectivity was undisputed. Subjectivity now was the basis of the objectivation (through the pure concepts, or categories) of the cha-otic sensible data given to the human consciousness in time and space.

Subjectivity was now the establisher of objectivity, but not of the ob-jectively real (the notorious and inaccessible thing-in-itself ), but only of the objectively apparent phenomena. Finite human subjectivity was the principle of the objectivation of the multiple sense data, but what were objectivized were not the things in themselves, but only as they appeared to the senses.

HEgEL (1770-1831) was the creator of the last comprehensive Western metaphysical system. Subjectivity was totally identified with objectivity. This identity was the Absolute, infinite Reason, self-think-ing Thought, a substance encompassself-think-ing all its modes. It was the whole reality, evolving through a process of self-reflection. The Kantian finite subjectivity was replaced by the Hegelian absolute subjectivity, remov-ing the obstacle to the knowledge of the thremov-ing-itself and to the in-timate essence of things.

Hegelianism’s collapse was not followed by the creation of rival metaphysical systems, but what may be called anti-metaphysical phi-losophies, two of which, the philosophies of Schopenhauer and

Niet-zsche, still retained some of the comprehensiveness of their displaced rival. The basic category of SCHOPENHAUER (1788-1860) was a com-prehensive will, but a will devoid of conscience, antipodal to Hegelian Reason, a blind driving force no less. So Schopenhauer’s thought can be described as a perversion of metaphysics. NIETZSCHE (1844-1900) questioned the very rationale of metaphysics, and found that it could only be justified by being based on man, the lone being for whom metaphysics had been, so to speak, invented. Nietzsche’s thought can thus be described as the inversion of metaphysics.¹ Be that as it may, the thought of these men, starting with Descartes, and ending with Niet-zsche, was in one way or another, affected by that of Suárez.