Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 1 (of 2) — John Shaqi
Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 1 (of 2)Balmes, Jaime Luciano
Philosophy
Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Balmes, Jaime Luciano
Philosophy, Spanish
When criticizing the errors of others, the distinguished author
reasons as an ontologist, but when developing his own system, he is
almost a psychologist. His ontology is usually sound, indeed, and
his conclusions are for the most part just, but not always logically
obtained. He recognizes no philosophical formula which embraces the
whole subject-matter of philosophy, and does not appear to be aware
that the _primum philosophicum_ is and must be a synthesis; and hence
he falls into what we may call, not eclecticism, but syncretism.
This is owing to the fact that his genius is critical rather than
constructive, and more apt to demolish than to build up.
What I regard as the chief error of the illustrious Spaniard, is his
not recognizing that conceptions without intuitions are, as Kant justly
maintains, empty, purely subjective, the mind itself; and hence, while
denying that we have intuition of the infinite, contending that we
have a real and objectively valid conception of it. Throughout his
book the reader will find him maintaining that the human mind may, by
discursion, attain to valid conceptions of a reality which transcends
intuition. This I regard as an error. Discursion is an act of
reflection, and though there is always less there can never be more in
reflection than in intuition. If we have no intuition of the infinite,
we have and can have no proper conception of it, and what is taken
to be a conception of it is simply the human mind itself, and of no
objective application or validity.
The excellent author is misled on this point, by supposing that in
intuition of the intelligible the mind is the actor and not simply the
spectator, and that an intuition of the infinite implies an infinite
intuition. In both cases he is mistaken. In intuition we are simply
spectators, and the object affirms itself to us. In intuition of the
infinite, it is not we who perceive and affirm the infinite, by our
own intellectual act, but the infinite that reveals and affirms itself
to our intellect. In apprehending the infinite as thus revealed and
affirmed, we of course apprehend it in a finite, not in an infinite
manner. That which is intuitively apprehended is infinite, but the
subjective apprehension is finite. The limitation is on the part of the
subject, not on the part of the object.
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