Neo-Scholastic Critique of Nicolai Hartmann

International Phenomenological Society

The Neo-Scholastic Critique of Nicolai HartmannAuthor(s): James CollinsSource: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Sep., 1945), pp. 109-132Published by: International Phenomenological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2102956 .

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THE NEO-SCHOLASTIC CRITIQUE OF NICOLAI HARTMANN

I

A common feature of the many contributions to the Kant centenary of twenty years ago was a noticeable trend in the direction of realism. While he claimed that the phenomenological method must be strictly located this side of the dispute between idealism and realism, still Nicolai Hartmann's views on the nature of cognition and the place of epistemology in philosophy approach the realist position. With Edith Landmann he main- tained the transcendence of knowledge, although he did not share Landmann's entire repudiation of Kant. Others who undertook a renewed study of Kant and who were also influenced by the concern of phenomenology for intentionality, furthered the movement from essence to being. This was notably the case with Martin Heidegger, who considered genuine philosophy to be an inquiry into the meaning of being, culminating in a general metaphysics or fundamental ontology. From the standpoint of infinite openness rather than of finite enclosure, a similar conclusion was reached by Eugen Herrigel in his remarkable book on The Metaphysical Form. In the structural form of being, Herrigel recognized the underlying principle of continuity between the non-given and that which appears in experience. He also sought to guarantee thereby the uniqueness of personality in the face of the sachlich alienation of pure subjectivity as only the means to scientifically rigorous knowledge of things.

Among the followers of Husserl and Scheler were some thinkers whose application of the phenomenological method to speculative and moral problems gradually led them to revindicate the main theses of classical philosophy without relinquishing the more recent insight. While not many phenomenologists have subscribed to the "real ontology" of Hedwig Conrad-Martius, yet the investigations of Edith Stein, Aurel Kolnai, and Dietrich von Hildebrand into psychic, social, and ethical aspects of human life have considerable value for contemporary minds. Stein's comparative study of Thomas Aquinas and Edmund Husserl in the Fest- schrift edited in 1929 upon the occasion of the latter's seventieth birthday opened up a new field for cooperative effort between students of a master of the past and of a master of the present. From the side of Neo-Scho- lasticism this collaboration was prepared by the careful examination and criticism of phenomenological writings by outstanding exponents of Christian philosophy. Elsewhere the bearing of this traditional evaluation upon the direction of thought today has been discussed,' while a chapter

1 Cf. my articles on "Edith Stein and the Advance of Phenomenology," Thought, vol. XVII, 1942; and "The German Neo-Scholastic Approach to Heidegger," The Modern Schoolman, vol. XXI, 1944; also "Catholic Estimates of Scheler's Catholic Period." Thought. vol. XIX. 1944.

109



110 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

has yet to be added from this standpoint to the account of Max Scheler's so-called Catholic period as outlined previously in this journal by Hanna Hafkesbrink.

One striking lacuna in the contemporary American philosophical scene is the absence of that common participation in the search for wisdom by phenomenologists and Scholastics which proved so fruitful for both in Europe during the past three decades. In part this is traceable to the limited general acquaintance many American Scholastics have with other present day positions. Yet this condition is not due merely to a sectarian spirit in philosophy or to the complacent inertia often generated in those who adhere to a comprehensive body of doctrines as perennially true. Much of the work done thus far in our country by phenomenologists has been of an historical, introductory, and expository nature. In the preface to his recent study on The Foundation of Phenomenology, Marvin Farber has announced the preparation of extensive independent treatments of transcendental phenomenology, perception, philosophy of history and culture, and the theory of value, which should be welcomed by Scholastic philosophers and brought into fertile communication with their own views on these questions. The important results that may be expected from this sort of rapprochement, when entered into honestly and fearlessly, can be gathered from the reception accorded by European Scho- lastics to the theories of Nicolai Hartmann.

II

That he himself anticipated this inevitable comparison and criticism is evident from Hartmann's care to determine the relation between the old and new teachings on being as he saw it.2 A good portion of philosophic originality consists in recognizing a new element in old doctrines, a sofid kernel of truth that must be rescued and set forth again in terms of a different intellectual climate. Like Hegel in the preface to the Encyclo- paedia, Hartmann finds in Plato and Aristotle inexhaustible sources of human insight into the nature of reality as exhibited in the problems they raise and the solutions they propose. The temper, direction and ordering of classical speculation are permanent achievements that can be repudiated by us only at the cost of severing our historical roots and distorting the genuinely human attitude. In their scrupulous regard for facing and stating the most serious obstacles in the path of their thinking, the Greeks developed the great art of the aporetic in a magnificent way. Moreover, the natural inclination of their theorizing was in the direction

2 Cf. especially Grundzfige einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, Berlin, 1925, second edition; forewords to 1921 and 1925 editions, introduction, chs. I, XXIII-XXV; Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie, Berlin, 1935, introduction.



NEO-SCHOLASTIC CRITIQUE OF NIcoLAI HARTMANN i11

of objects. They studied things first of all, and only thereafter did they examine their own thinking and their own selves. As a consequence, metaphysics was for Plato and Aristotle the supreme philosophical discipline, the theory of knowledge arising as a subsequent moment in the progression of their thought.

On all these counts Hartmann announces his agreement, yet he does not wish the repristination of the Greek outlook to entail any negation of the intervening philosophical experience. A critical metaphysics aims to unite the orientation of the Greek mind to being with the modern reflection upon the structure, grounds, and process of knowing. Here a certain ambiguity creeps into the discussion, since Hartmann fails to distinguish clearly between Aristotelian Scholasticism and the rationalist metaphysics of Wolff. Most of the defects he attributes to the pre- Kantian theory of being are found only in eighteenth century rationalist metaphysics, leaving untouched the older tradition. The systematic rather than historical treatment of the problem of antecedents illustrates in a pointed way the shortcomings that Hartmann himself decries in other systematic reconstructions.

Since the problem of knowledge and all other genuine philosophical problems are at bottom metaphysical, their investigation supposes the aporetic awareness of their ontic content that can be supplied only by a critical ontology. Recognizing the constant presence of the irrational in that aspect of being which is unknown and unknowable to us, this metaphysics of problems avoids all uncritically neat divisions of the various fields of philosophy as well as all purely speculative standpoints. Metaphysics as the minimally rational priming-point of philosophizing is confronted with an irreducible residuum which is unanalyzable, since fundamentally inconceivable. Here Hartmann intends to repudiate the rationalist attitude which he unfortunately couples with the Scholastic. For Wolffian apriorism being is immediately and completely transferable into thought, since the ideating structure is projected into the real order as an inference from essence to existence. No room is allowed for the irrational in such a system of hypostasized essences. In sharp conflict with this dogmatic construction is the Kantian critical analytic of pure reason, which has the advantage of subjecting logic itself to critical examination and of admitting the unknowable at least as a limiting concept.

Critical ontology, as Hartmann conceives it, is the third and final stage in the movement from natural realism through the idealist standpoint to a new vision of being that admits its limitations without despairing of attaining real as well as ideal being. There is an actually existent entity beyond consciousness and the bounds of reason which can be partially understood through a knowledge of the object, even though the cognitive




representation is neither adequate to nor like that which is. The natural attitude is correct in its thesis concerning the independence of reality from any knowing subject and in the objective direction of its inquiry, but the contention that the image we form of the thing adequately represents it must be rejected in the light of Kantian criticism. From the older ontology must be removed the identity of the ideal and real forms, the equation of form with reality and the correlative depreciation of matter, the exclusive reliance upon the deductive method to derive an entire theory of being from a few first principles, and the perfect coincidence established between the ideal structure of being and thought. Only a partial identity can be admitted today between real being, ideal being, and thought, for while these three spheres overlap, one cannot be completely superscribed upon the other. A critical ontology must discriminate between thought and ideal objects, yet a phenomenological discipline limited to the con- sideration of essences is only a half-way house that must eventually lead to a comprehensive ontology of real and ideal being.3

The object of first philosophy remains for Hartmann what it was for Aristotle being as such, being in its generality and inclusiveness. Because it embraces both the ideal and the real manifestations of being, ontology transcends the alternative between idealism and realism by including both the subject and the object within a wider ontic context in which they are imbedded. While the Kantian teaching on the thing-in-itself effectively distinguishes the new ontology from the old in its emphasis upon the unknowable in a negative sense, Hartmann seeks to orientate philosophy to the transobjective factor in the object of knowledge.4 For the reality of a thing is not exhausted by its entering into relation with a mind as an object of knowledge, although to become an object is to permit a certain acquaintance with the structure of that thing. The possibility of infinite progress in reducing the limits of the unknown dismisses a superficial rationalism, but idealism itself must finally be overcome by the principle of transcendence. While the object is not exalted at the expense of the subject, it is to be admitted both that the intentio recta of cognition is toward the object and that being itself is transobjective. Hence the boundaries of the real cannot be determined a priori, nor is man capable of more than a partial apprehension of being.

III In his general conception of the nature of philosophical thinking and

disciplines as well as in the particular content of his own teaching, Hartmann

3M. Landmann, "Nicolai Hartmann and Phenomenology," Philosophy and Phenom- enological Research, vol. III, no. 4, 1943.

4For a Neo-Scholastic report on Hartmann's Diesseits von Idealismus und Realis- mus, cf. E. Przywara, Ringen der Gegenwart, Augsburg, 1929, 2 vols., vol. II, pp. 771-778.



NEO-SCHOLASTIC CRITIQUE OF NICOLAi HARTMANN 113

is admittedly indebted on many points to the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition without ceasing to maintain an independent and critical attitude toward natural realism. His doctrine has been examined by contemporary Scholastics as well as by phemomenologists and Neo-Kantians, thus providing a valuable analysis and critique in the light of one of the main sources he draws upon and claims to surpass. In an important essay appearing in Hochland,5 Peter Wust hailed the publication of Hartmann's The Metaphysics of Knowledge as a sign of the resurrection of metaphysics, a return to the object after the unsatisfactory experiment of basing speculation upon the empirical or transcendental subject. Man is given a new stability and a new freedom when his capacity to explore the realm of being is recognized and exercised in a scientific way. A similar opinion was expressed fifteen years later in the same journal by Heinrich Getzeny,6 reviewing the writings of Hartmann to date. The rejection of the claim of the Marburg leader, Hermann Cohen, to produce the object and the world of objects is justified in view of the receptive, progressive, and fallibly limited notes of human understanding and emotional experience. In the reintegration of perception and knowledge into the totality of emotional life, Getzeny recognizes the strength of the new ontology. Yet the weakness of The Problem of Spiritual Being lies precisely in its under- estimation of death and anguish, and in its failure to admit freedom as the power to choose evil as well as good. In principle this latter defect rests upon the postulatory atheism of the Ethics, which seeks to preserve the responsibility of the moral agent at the expense of divine providence. The foresight of God and the- liberty of man are both required to give meaning, personal dignity and direction to our activities in the world of values. Thus Hartmann's early teaching that there is a fundamental antagonism between value and being has not been appreciably altered by assigning value a place in the order of ideal being. Between the ontological and the axiological there is an unending conflict, with man as the midpoint where these two spheres meet in tragic self-consciousness.

Since Hartmann's theories on ethics, history, and cultural development arise from his ontological presuppositions, the Scholastic Auseinander- setzung has been concerned chiefly with the theory of being and knowing as proposed in The Metaphysics of Knowledge and Toward the Foundation of Ontology. Several stimulating studies on the former work have contributed to the appreciation and evaluation of these views, including a comparison by Georg Koepgen between critical ontology and the Christian

5 "Die Rtickkehr der Philosophie zum Objekt," Hochland, vol. XIX, no. 2, 1922. 6 "Vom Wesen zum Sein: Der Weg der deutschen Philosophie der Gegenwart,"

Hochland, vol. 34, no. 2, 1937.




philosophy of religion.7 Noting their affinity on the distinction between the task of the particular sciences and the philosophical inquiry into the eidetic structure of being and its grades, Koepgen observes that the ground for the primacy of metaphysics can be expressed in Scholastic terms as an affirmation of the non-mutual character of the cognitive relation. While the subject is intentionally modified in knowing its object, the thing known undergoes no real change in becoming an object for the mind. That there is an unsounded depth of ontic richness beyond what is directly given was the conviction that led the Scholastics to make their well-known distinction between objectum and res,8 and to formulate the problem of knowledge as that of the objectification of the thing rather than of thought. The partial but not complete identity between the ontological principles of the subject and object permits, indeed, an escape from the Kantian dilemma of an exclusive determination of subject by object or of object by subject. Yet Hartmann's insistence upon homogeneity in being not only overlooks the differences and only analogical sameness but also fails to explain the peculiar noetic relation established by knowledge. Here the traditional teaching on the intentional oneness of mind and thing must be introduced. In so far as it is known, the object is present according to the manner of the knower without being distorted thereby, for to as- similate in a psychic way is not the same as to construct or reconstruct. Thus, natural realism permits endless progress in our approximation to the thing known, corresponding on the natural level to the theological concept of mystery as partially known truth that may always be grasped more fully in an asymptotic approach to comprehension. Hartmann need not have turned to idealism for a counterpart of the transcendence thesis.

This equivocal significance of Hartmann's theory of knowledge led the medieval scholar, Max Horten, to term it a modern version of Plato- nism.9 The content of logical, mathematical, and axiological knowledge is considered as constituting an ideal sphere, a realm of ideal Ansichsein having a kind of existence proper to itself and distinct from that of real things. But in order to maintain the reality of the universal objects of science, it is not necessary to accord them an existence of their own apart from the world of individual things by an hypostasization of concepts

7 "Die Gegenstandstheorie und ihre religionsphilosophische Anwendung," Philoso- phisches Jahrbuch, vol. XXXVII, 1924.

8 Among modern treatments, cf. J. Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge, London, 1937, pp. 110-122; G. Phelan, "Verum sequitur Esse Rerum," Medieval Studies, vol. I, 1939, p. 15.

9 "Zu jtingsten Erkenntnistheorien: Eine kritische Betrachtung der Aufstellungen von Scheler und N. Hartmann," Philosophisches Jahrbuch, vol. XL, 1927.



NEO-SCHOLASTIC CRITIQUE OF NIcOmmI HARTMANN 115

or metaphysical essences. In spite of the repudiation of extreme realism as well as of nominalism, the notion of ideal existence remains for the Neo-Scholastics an unsatisfactory and ambiguous substitute for the mod- er?te realism of abstraction. A further difficulty has been mentioned by J. Kl6sters, in his acute interpretation of The Metaphysics of Knowl- edge.'0 In proof of the uniqueness of the ideal sphere is adduced the impossibility of an immediate knowledge of its objects. Why that which has being in itself should lose this property when brought into direct relation to consciousness is not clear, nor is the situation improved by drawing a subtle distinction between being for itself and being in itself. Irreal or ideal notions have only a relative or referential being; they are only essences and do not possess existence in their own right. While the foundation of ideal being in the real thing allows us to consider the essence apart, the latter cannot stand by itself in any existential order.

In objectively directed knowledge the essence as well as the existence of the thing can be known to some extent and made the proper object of philosophical study, while even the intentio obliqua reaches reflectively to the nature of the subject and not merely to its factual existence. Yet the arrival at an ontological object and subject does not entirely justify Hartmann's (and Heidegger's) reduction of consciousness and the process of conceptual formation merely to a mode of being. Such a simplification fails to account adequately for the phenomenon of knowledge, which is not explained as a unique factor in this real relation. The apprehension of an independent object and the recognition that it lies outside the sphere of consciousness forbid our considering cognition in a purely static ontic way. With the note of intentionality comes also the conviction of the dynamic trait in knowing. Here something transobjective is rendered rational by an active determination based upon the logical requirements of evidential insight and not solely upon the initial affinity and correlation between subject and object in the order of being. This Hartmann admits in his teaching on the function of thought as one of completion, of achieving the full perfection of reality in a specific way through conscious intention and meaningful explication of images.

Approaching the notion of a projective ontology from still another angle, Kl6sters is not satisfied with Hartmann's explanation of the process of intellectual discovery and certitude. Is it possible to derive certain knowledge of what was previously an irrational region by extending the lines of convergence of two or more consciously given relational factors to the same transobjective thing where they tend to intersect? To be performed legitimately, this projection requires both that the related categories

10 "Nicolai Hartmanns kritische Ontologie," ibid., vols. XLI-XLII, 1928-1929.




be valid and that their applicability to an identical thing be somehow assured. Since for Hartmann the categories are never ontologically isolated but imply and depend upon each other, they are all correlated and involved in a dialectical system as the foundation for their validity. Apart from this system, the categories have merely hypothetical value, demanding incorporation in the system as contradictionless correlates to assure their truth. But this criterion of coherence supplies a purely formal determination, one that scarcely avoids the idealism Hartmann seeks to re- place. The will to systematic thinking can never provide the sufficient basis for applying categories to real structures, nor is there any way out of the dialectical dilemma apart from a recognition of intrinsic objective evidence as the ultimate criterion of truth. Because of his teaching on the radical irrationality of being, however, this alternative is not congenial to Hartmann, who appeals to the dual instance and prefers to guarantee the openness of knowledge by the theory of Erkenntnisponderanz.

This latter notion has been made the subject of a comparison with Joseph Mar6chal's theory of cognitional dynamism by A. Guggenberger." Our initial and direct contact with reality, according to Hartmann, is effected through our emotional experiences rather than through some formally cognitive medium. Consequent upon these emotional acts are the mental representations of the determinations and relations they manifest to us. Inasmuch as these images are formed within the immanent zone of consciousness, some assurance must be given that they bear upon the actual nature of the real. That the representative function is not limited to consciousness appears from the discrepancy constantly experienced between the image and its object, between the aspects that are and can be conceptualized and those that remain impervious to knowledge. The latter insert an element of obscurity and difficulty into our systematic constructions, which are revealed through this awareness of problems to be discoveries rather than decreed creations. While the real always presents an opaque aspect that is not knowable, along other avenues some progress can be made in correcting errors and in removing relative ignorance. These factors in cognition-problems, errors, and progress-indicate that what is known does not owe its origin in the first place to the productive activity of the subject, that it is only one relation into which the real can enter, and that beyond the circumscribed portion of the known extends a vast stretch which partially admits of apprehension without even being completely assimilated to the rational. The knowing act is attracted as by weight or center of gravity to the infinite content of

11 "Zwei Wege zum Realismus: Ein Vergleich zwischen Nicolai Hartmanns 'Er- kenntnisponderanz' und J. Mar6chal's 'Erkenntnisdynamismus,"' Revue nko-scolas- tique, vol. XLI. 1938.



NEO-SCHOLASTIC CRITIQUE OF NIcOLAI HARTMANN 117

being. What is felt and what is known are finally one in the influence they exert -upon the cognitive subject.

In the fifth volume of his study on the point of departure of metaphysics- Thomism and Critical Philosophy-Mar6chal is faced with a similar problem of rejoining the real in terms of the Scholastic theory of knowledge. When the intelligible species or idea is treated statically in epistemic isolation from the actual tendencies of the knower, it fails to take us beyond the limits of conscious immanence to that which simply is. Only when this formal principle of knowledge is reinserted in the total bent of the human subject does it transcend the realm of ideal constructs. For the intellect contains a dynamic orientation which propels it naturally toward being. Intellect is "the faculty of being," a power that can only be defined in terms of the real it intends to grasp. But it is capable of understanding being only because it is first capable of understanding the absolute being. This latter entity plays a r6le in Mar6chal's thought somewhat similar to the infinite transobjective in the system of Hartmann. Both are finalizing forces that attract and specify the mind by drawing it beyond its own limits in order to receive its full perfection in a reality given but never exhausted. For both thinkers the inadequacy of thought and its disproportion with the thing compel us to locate the point of contact where knowing is reimbedded in being somewhere beyond and independent of consciousness itself. For Guggenberger this involves the danger of treat- ing consciousness as a mere epiphenomenon, an incidental and largely irrelevant moment in the dialectic of being which only brings to light a junction made elsewhere and by other means. What must be supplied is a justification of the realist bearing of thought in a way that assures the direct access of knowing as such to being through some cognitive principle. It is only stating the problem when both thinkers agree that the concept is not the direct object of knowledge but rather the medium quo pointing beyond itself.

Yet Guggenberger sees an essential difference between the attitudes of Hartmann and Mar6chal. For while the former finally chooses a realism of the emotional order that cannot in principle be prolonged into a realism of the intelligence, Marechal does allow for such an extention of his position. For the Neo-Scholastic admits an understanding of being that is strictly excluded by Hartmann's theory of the unknowableness of being. Mar6chal does offer a metaphysic of knowledge that cannot find a counterpart in the naturalistic and perhaps even materialistic conception Hart- mann has of the relation of subject and object. Emotional realism, as G. Sohngen has observed,'2 supplies the basis for an ontology entirely

12 "Die NeubegrUndung der Metaphysik und die Gotteserkenntnis," in Probleme der Gotteserkenntnis, by A. Dyroff, etc., Minster, i.W., 1928.




different from the traditional notion of that science. Since Kant, there has been a constant struggle for an irrationalistic concept of metaphysics. Yet we must not confuse the irrational metaphysics of the philosophy of life with Hartmann's strictly scientific metaphysics of the irrational. For the former doctrine maintains that being can be known in an irrational manner, whereas Hartmann is chiefly concerned with the irrationality of being as the object of philosophical investigation. Except for its indispensable function as immediately confronting the real, emotion is subordinated here to the systematic exposition of the heterogeneity of the ontic and noetic categories. At least in method, the critical ontology comes close to the traditional affirmation of the primacy of speculation in philosophy.

IV

In his study on Being and Object,"3 Sohngen examines the respective ontologies of Thomas Aquinas and Nicolai Hartmann in the light of the Scholastic axiom that being and truth are convertible. Both teachers maintain that the mutuality of being and truth demands a theory of being as the foundation of every epistemology. Yet in order to overcome Kant's treatment of the irrational as a limiting concept, Hartmann not only accords it value as a limit and as an indication of the receptive nature of thought, but also identifies it simply with the real. Unless there is a bridge of being between the rational and irrational, however, the latter will figure merely as that which is beyond thought. For Aquinas prime matter as such is the transintelligible precisely because of its purely po- tential nature, its tenuous reality and precarious grasp upon being. In proportion as being is determined in content and actuality, however, it is likewise capable of being understood by the intellect. This view of the correspondence between actuality and intelligibility is "from above," whereas Hartmann's approach is "from below." What the old ontology admits only on the lowest level of reality is extended as the universal trait of all being by the new ontology. S6hngen's further appraisal is made in terms of the three major theses of The Metaphysics of Knowledge.

(1) The Gnoseological Transcendence of Our Knowledge. Since our knowledge involves the ordination of a subject to the object, it has the essential character of a relation between the knower and that which is known as an object in itself. What Hartmann terms the gnoseological relation has been further specified by Aquinas in his analysis of the phenomenon of knowing. Being informed by the likeness of the object,

13 Sein und Gegenstand: Das scholastische Axiom ens et verum convertuntur als Fundament metaphysischer und theologischer Speculation, Minster i.W., 1930.



NEO-SCHOLASTIC CRITIQUE OF NICOLAI HARTMANN 119

the mind receives this determination according to its receptive capacity. By a spontaneous inner reaction it exercises the activity of intellection, forming in a productive way a concept within itself that represents objectively the thing known. That the object is grasped rather than produced and that its being is not conferred upon it by the mind are convictions common to both men. To Hartmann's doctrine on receptivity toward the object and spontaneity toward the image may be compared the Tho- mistic teaching on impressed and expressed notions. Unfortunately, spontaneity is understood Kantianwise as a form of production rather than as an immanent activity. Receptivity alone cannot adequately safeguard the objectivity of thought, for it is the ontic basis and preparation for the act of apprehension, rather than this act itself. The epistemological question is precisely whether the object as received by the mind has been formed by our thought or whether it has been accepted in a genuinely cognitive way leading to the spontaneous immanent operation that grasps the thing in its own nature. That our knowledge is directed to the thing itself rather than to the object as known is called by Hart- mann the transcendence character of knowledge. The direct tendency of the mind is to understand the thing in its real being and not merely as an intentional entity. Something similar to this is found in the Contra Gentiles of Aquinas, where it is taught that the similitude of the thing in the intellect is not the thing itself but a way to grasp the thing. Hence to know the thing is not the same as to know its representation; only by reflection upon its own medium and activity does the intellect advert to the intentio intellect.

Yet it would be a superficial report that did not also signalize profound differences between the old and the new view of cognitive transcendence. This notion is stressed much more by Hartmann than by the Scholastics, for the latter never set being over against knowledge and intelligibility in so absolute a fashion as does The Metaphysics of Knowledge. While there is agreement about the phenomenon, its metaphysical and epistemological significance is construed differently by Aquinas and Hartmann. In all knowledge, the subject knows an object distinct from itself and, in knowing that which is apart from itself, the subject goes beyond or transcends itself. This thesis is inexceptionable in the case of knowing the world about us, but difficulties creep in when duality is viewed from the standpoint of self-knowledge. Here the subject remains within itself and understands itself in its own personal identity. Reflection is centered upon an object cognitively but not entitatively distinct from the knowing mind. It is not sufficient to observe the objective note attaching to the self in this regard, for objectivity is not the same as being an object. But even here the thing is apprehended as it is in itself




rather than as known, requiring us to modify the notion of transcendence. While the object known is in both instances distinct from the similitude whereby it is known, it is entitatively distinct from the knowing subject only in the knowledge of things other than the self.

From this comparison we can conclude with Aquinas that there are degrees in knowing corresponding to the increasing intimacy of the cognitive operation as a process of immanent union between the mind and its object. The Thomistic doctrine on knowledge stands midway between the idealistic immanence of being in thought and Hartmann's theory of the immanence of thought in being. Actions that result in an increase of perfection for the agent itself rather than for some other and extrinsic end are properly termed immanent operations, constituting the minimal basis common to all living things. . If life be considered the power of di- recting all activities and their objects from a central referent and in view of the agent's own good, then the enhancement of this power will follow on a heightened mode of existence. Aquinas remarked a constant proportion between the ability to select and appropriate suitable factors from the environment and the disinterestedness of this appropriation. Here it is that the pragmatic and vitalist accounts of knowledge break down for lack of suppleness in dealing with various and graded sorts of life. Sensory acquaintance with things is superior to mere contact by ingestive union, since it shows a greater respect for the integrity of its objects. But both the range and the depth of insight are increased and elevated to a new order of vital operation when the mind grasps the essence itself in an intentional way without destroying or impairing the physical constitution of the thing known. Here the union between the agent and term is so intimate that the former can reflect upon his cognitive possession of the object. In so doing, he realizes that what is known need not always be something other than himself, and even that a perfect cognitive act can completely transcend the opposition between the knower and a distinct known thing.

To know another and to know oneself as other do not belong to the essence of knowledge, but only comprise two of its varieties on the human and lower levels of cognition. In itself, knowledge is constituted by the union of mind and its object, a union that need not always be prefaced by a unification of two distinct or opposed terms. Because the oneness of knower and known approaches sameness parn pass with the more perfect immanence of the cognitive act, an indication is furnished that knowledge in a purely actual being would involve identity of mind with its object as well as with its knowing operation. Hence duality of epistemic subject and object as proposed by Neo-Platonism and revived by IHartmann is no sufficient objection to the Aristotelian description of




divine knowledge as noesis noeseos. While the distance is partially removed in human self-knowledge, the identity between knower and thing known and likeness is complete where activity is most perfect and hence most perfectly immanent. Since God is rather than has His own being and operation, He knows Himself and other things in Himself comprehensively in a single simple act where being and knowing and being known are the same. Thus, the Scholastic teaching on the analogy of being is required in order to distinguish between essential and accidental features in the transcendence of knowledge.

In line with this doctrine is the concept of truth as an agreement between knowledge and thing, a definition that recalls the Scholastic formula: veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus. Hartmann agrees with the Aris- totelian rather than with the Platonic tradition in locating truth more properly in the mind than in things. However, he unduly simplifies the problem by overlooking the ontological aspect of truth. Thought not only agrees with being; being also agrees with thought. To sustain this mutual conception of truth apart from the Kantian view of cognitive productivity or the particular case of human making, however, it is necessary to admit the divine intellect as the primary measure of all things. Since this would also entail the ultimate correlation of being and intelligibility, Hartmann is led to assert a metaphysical atheism as the support of his irrationalistic realism.

(2) The Ontological Immanence of Our Knowledge, and (3) The Meta- physical Irrationality of Being are examined together by Sdhngen, since the force of the former thesis is its imbedding of the rational in the irrational at both poles of cognition. At the core of this theory is a recognition of the indubitable inadequacy or incommensurability of thought and being in human experience. There is only a partial agreement between what we know concerning the thing and the total reality of that thing. A gnoseological distinction may be drawn between the known, the not yet known and the unknowable. These three levels are not, Hartmann warns, grades of being or of the object, but limits of the objectivity of our knowledge. The irrational is not the non-rationally apprehensible but that which cannot be known, that which offers a limit to thought as something foreign and incompatible.

Since the Scholastic theory of knowledge is not a crude doctrine of mirroring or copying of the object, the limits and imperfections of ab- stractive knowledge are a common theme. Just as other things are known by their likenesses rather than through their own essence, so the human intellect knows itself by means of a similitude that is consequent upon the apprehension of other objects. There is no immediate actual intuition of the self. Nor is any direct insight into the essence of things admitted




for the human mind, which reaches essential understanding through the various properties. We can know the essence, but not the essence through the essence, as Scheler averred. Similarly, the judgments and reasoning processes required in order to grasp truths not immediately apparent, are subject to uncertainty and error. The formal demonstration of God's existence and nature, for instance, is beset with many pitfalls represented by the conflicting opinions on this problem that abound in the history of thought. Yet this admission of limitation need not lead to metaphysical irrationalism or skepticism, even though it does serve to discredit the extreme claims of idealism. By distinguishing between the entitative and intentional modes of the essence, Aristotle laid the foundation for an ontological as well as logical theory of the categories The ideal essence or second substance is grounded referentially in the individual real thing or first substance, permitting us to know something of the intelligible constitution of the concrete thing without making any exorbitant claim to comprehension. When it is known, the essence is freed from its proper way of existence and yet is known as it is in itself because of the analogy between the modus cognoscendi and the modus essendi of that essence. The basis in reality assures the conformity of thought with the thing, which is knowable in itself and to a perfect mind without being entirely accessible to us.

As an index of the inadequacy of thought, Hartmann advances the fact of antinomies, the location of which he is hesitant to determine. An antinomy need not be in the reason or in the thing, but rather in the objective relation we establish. Granting that there can be a contradiction in the phenomenon, he holds that there may also be a contradiction in the being. This conception is far removed from the Stagirite's method of the aporetic, where the difficulty in the way of philosophical progress lies in our thought rather than in the thing being investigated. The problems posed at the beginning of the Metaphysics are fundamentally soluble and provide the starting-point for a fruitful study, rather than an evidence of the irrational nature of the real as the final word of first philosophy. The very word contra-diction indicates that the antinomy is logical rather than ontological. When we speak of the contrast between matter and form in the constitution of the material world, we refer to the contrasting relations of factors of the thing itself. Contradiction only enters in when the mind considers these aspects in exactly the same way. But the contradiction is present in our way of thinking, which is thereby shown to be false. To solve an antinomy means to remove an apparent contradiction rather than to violate the principle of contradiction either in thought or in being. Hartmann's favorite example is the antinomy of consciousness, which must go beyond itself in order to know a thing and yet which cannot go beyond itself in so far as it can grasp only its



NEO-SCHOLASTIC CRITIQUE OF NIcoLAI HARTMANN 123

own conscious content. For its resolution, we need not have recourse to the theory of representative knowledge. Consciousness in its entitative reality does not, of course, go beyond itself, but it does so in its intentional reference to the thing known. Although consciousness understands the objective content of its concepts, these latter are known reflectively rather than as the immediate and direct terminal of thought.

The consequences of this critique are felt when Sbhngen evaluates the Hartmannian conception of metaphysics. Because of the unknowable character of the irrational, it cannot be positively determined but only approached negatively as unknowable. A critical metaphysic is thus the limiting extreme of reason and can be nothing other than a metaphysic of problems. Not the content of these problems but their status as problematic and radically insoluble is considered by this new version of first philosophy. For Aristotle and the Scholastics, on the contrary, the primary goal and purpose of metaphysics is to understand being in itself. Only in a secondary way does the critical problem of the truth or falsity of being as present in the mind arise. What is problematic is the thought about being, and not being itself. Being is metaproblematic, to employ the term of Gabriel Marcel, and by the same token genuine metaphysics must break through the arbitrary negative boundaries assigned to it by Hartmann and must acquire a positive appreciation of the real. Only as a second intention does the metaphysician also fulfill a critical function in reflecting upon his actual metaphysical activity. The Aristotelian concept of this primary discipline cannot be confused with the Wolffian and so dismissed as a mere Gebietsmetaphysik. Metaphysics is not merely one field among others, one surface area cut out of the whole region of being. As the study of being as being, it is unique both in its universal scope and in its formal approach to all reality. Although cosmology and rational psychology find no room in the classical notion of metaphysics, there is place for natural theology precisely because of the supremely causal character of this science and because of the rational requirements of being as contingent. When Hartmann replaces this with his theory of a minimum of metaphysics, he is in turn assuming a particular standpoint. The view that the weight of our awareness of problems must drive us to posit an irrational zone of being independent of thought will seem to many Neo-Kantians an excessive maximum of metaphysics. Likewise, the postulation of an actual infinity of things in themselves would appear to modern Scholastics a removal at the start of the distinction between the finite and the infinite in a way reminiscent of Hegelian monism. Neither a maximum nor a minimum of metaphysics must be sought, but only the metaphysical mean or mesotes that embraces the common characteristics of phenomena, essences, and existence.

In view of the Scholastic insistence upon the inadequacy of human




thought, Hartmann's charge that the so-called Aristotelian ontology is only a logic of ideal being based upon the twofold identity thesis cannot be sustained. Hartmann himself has reacted from the idealist extreme of identifying thought and being by advancing the equally untenable proposition that thought and being are contrasted as antinomies. Neither identity nor contradiction accounts for cognition. Aquinas declares that only the weakest form of opposition, relation, can characterize this act at the human level. Here thought and being are two members of a relation inadequately related to each other as measured to measure. Such a relation is real only on the side of the mind, being logical from the standpoint of the existent thing. Thus knowing is a non-mutual relation in which the cognitive act refers, to the thing known as that to which it is ordered and by which it is measured. One member does not supplant the other, but is ordered to it in a complete or incomplete way. Human thought can apprehend only a portion of real being, but this portion is known in its own entity. While the cognitive representation is not adequate to the thing known, Hartmann speaks equivocally when he adds that neither is it in any way like the real. When the object known is material, there is doubtless a difference between its natural and its mental mode. But there is at least an objective or intentional identity between that which actually exists and the content of the inesse intentionalis.

When the relation between the thing and the knowing mind is established and recognized, truth is then present. In view of the axiom that truth and being are convertible, the Scholastics teach not only the determination of thought by being, but also the determination of being by thought. A twofold meaning of subjectivity and objectivity emerges from the conception of truth as acknowledged conformity. Natural things stand midway between two sorts of intellect, divine and human. They are measured bv the divine intellect, which is their ground and measuring norm, and in turn they measure the human speculative intellect by their aptitude to communicate a true likeness of themselves to the mind. While man's theoretical knowledge is thus determined by the things known, his practical intellect provides the pattern to the likeness of which arti- ficial products are constructed. Traditional ontology has a wider range and a more complex account of truth and being than that offered by Hart- mann.

V

From Scholastic quarters the most important study devoted to Hart- mann's Toward the Foundation of Ontology was contributed by J. Geyser,"4

14 "Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie: Ausffihrungen zu dem jtlngsten Buche von Nicolai Hartmann-" Philosophisches Jahrbuch, vols. XLIX-L, 1936-1937.



NEO-SCHOLASTIC CRITIQUE OF NICOLAi HARTMANN 125

tNho has also written extensively upon phenomenology, philosophy of religion, epistemology, and ontology. Commenting upon the renewed interest in metaphysical problems as well as the justness of according to the problem of the universals a central position, Geyser observes in a preliminary way that for Hartmann a critical ontology involves the partial repudiation of Aristotle and Wolff in the light of the Kantian Wendung. A service is rendered in returning first philosophy from Wolff's abstract supramundane region of a priori speculation to the actual world dealt with by the particular sciences. Like the Stagirite, Hartmann recognizes the close cooperation required between the factual sciences, the lesser philosophical disciplines, and ontology, although new problems must be faced that were not considered by Aristotle.

In remarking that the being of a thing does not consist in its being known, that its objective status is something secondary and resting upon its independent reality, Hartmann teaches correctly that what appears in appearance is the being itself, for otherwise the phenomenon would be an empty deception without the referential import that alone gives it meaning. Without closing our eyes to the critical problem as it has been presented to philosophical consciousness since Kant, we must nevertheless recognize in the background the metaphysical question as decisive. This follows from the designation of the cognitive relation as an ontic one, at which point Hartmann touches at some points upon one of the central theses of Scholasticism. Yet ambiguity is present in his rooting of knowing in being, unless we admit at once the many senses being can have. Certainly, no physical assimilation is meant here, since it is not according to its natural being but rather according to its intentional mode that the. thing is present to the knowing subject. Hartmann himself holds that no existent is essentially an object of consciousness, but effects a modification of the subject through the formation of some representation. Whether it is possible for the thing itself to be known by the subject becomes problematic when the mediation of an image is always demanded, even leading to an infinite regress should we advert to the reflective knowledge we can have of these likenesses.

Not only here but also in his conception of first philosophy, Hartmann has not completely overcome his Marburg antecedents. The view of metaphysics as the sum of all questions that are unavoidable but also unanswerable is far removed from the Peripatetic teaching. On this reckoning metaphysics has no single formal object; it is not a unified distinct science, but merely the meeting ground for a manifold of various ultimate problems arising in the particular philosophical fields, problems that can be gathered under one heading only because of their common insolubility and the unknowability of their objects. Yet the reason why




a systematic investigation of the metaphysical problems underlying the particular sciences is undertaken lies in the affirmation that ontological difficulties are fundamental in all scientific inquiries. Only by recalling the common feature of all sciences as a search after the principles of things can we provide an adequate basis of distinction between the particular sciences and philosophy, for the latter study is most directly concerned with causal knowledge and with knowing the ultimate causes of all things. Because it can be intelligibly formulated and distinguished from all others, a metaphysical problem is not entirely irrational. The thing about which the difficulty is proposed can be known to that extent at least, although it may never be comprehended to the extent of removing its aporetic aspect entirely. As knowable, such problems fall within the scope of ontology defined in Hartmann's sense, thus forcing his distinction between metaphysics and ontology to break down.

The contrast between the old and new ontologies cannot be presented as simply an alternative choice of philosophia prima or philosophia ultima. For Aristotle went beyond the rationalists in admitting the inavoidable necessity of appealing to experience in every sort of human science, including the metaphysical. Thus the universally valid concepts of act and potency have their immediate origin in an attempt to explain the meaning and implications of the becoming and change observable in the sense world. Metaphysical notions and principles are not derived by purely deductive methods, nor is Aristotle forced to make the Hartmannian assumption that the world as a given totality is a preliminary certitude. It is scarcely possible to avoid circular reasoning when ontology is treated as only the culminating moment in the development of the particular sciences. While ontological problems and concepts are said to arise only upon the basis of results obtained from the particular sciences, the latter cannot make scientific advancement apart from the general notions supplied by ontology alone. If the special sciences could supply the content of ontological notions, then no distinct science of being would be required.

That ontology treats of being as being is the common heritage of Aquinas and Hartmann. Because of its formal object, this science is the most universal; all differences of being are themselves ways of being. Thus Hartmann is led to affirm that being is the identical element in the manifold of that which is. It is not so much the concept of being, however, as being itself that is investigated by the metaphysician and brought to clear consciousness. In its generality, being is an abstraction and a kind of concept without existence of its own. Hartmann agrees with the Rchoolmen that being as such is not patient of any strict definition or of any particular differentiation from this thing or that. Under some form or other the general notion of being is given together with all knowledge, naive




as well as reflective. But the natural realism at the root of the natural, scientific, and philosophical attitudes orientating the mind first of all to being as an independent thing, is a starting-point rather than a basis for ontological investigations. For this outlook already supposes some obscure conception of being, the world, and the knowing subject which must themselves be clarified and justified to serve as the groundwork for any scientific account. Geyser is included among those Scholastics who maintain that naturalism can and must be proven, a position that is con- tested by Gilson, Olgiati, and other exponents of methodic realism.

What Hartmann asserts of being as such is founded on his conviction that its nature is directly given in the cognitive phenomenon. But to what extent the conscious grasp. conditions as well as presents the known object can be decided only after reflective thought. Only in this way can valid principles that have survived the critical test be provided. Granted, moreover, that we can discourse upon that which is only in so far as it is an object of knowledge, the question arises concerning how we can distinguish one thing from another in our knowing. This is only possible through the determinate relation this thing bears to the knower, a relation that allows it to be known but not to be constituted in its own being. One thing by its very nature is related in such and such a way to us when we know it, and so it is distinguished from other things that are otherwise related. While for Hartmann the state of being an object excludes that of being in itself, the object is for Geyser a useful noetic means of that which is. Although the concept of object involves the relation of the known thing to consciousness, the constitutive note of the object as such is its state of opposition or standing over against the knowing act in an independent way. Hence, Geyser concludes that nothing which is can escape being confronted with the subject when it is judged upon or intuited.

Like the Scholastics, Hartmann gives much attention to the relation between essence and existence. Whereas traditional metaphysics examined the distinction between essentia (Wesenheit) and existentia (Existenz) as it is found in real being, critical ontology substitutes for this the problem of whatness (Sosein, quidditas) and thatness (Dasein). The consequence of this shift in perspective is that for Hartmann essence is itself existence, and existence itself essence. Since every being has a certain determination and in some way is, a quidditative as well as existential moment must be assigned to everything. There is existence in the sphere of ideality and essence in the sphere of reality. From the textual examination of an opusculum by the thirteenth century English Dominican, Thomas of Sutton, Geyser seeks to remove some misconceptions about the Scholastic doctrine on this capital point. The essence, while really distinct from




existence, is a real constituent of the finite existing thing, rather than a kind of ideal being. Reality is conceived as something wider than bare existence, since it includes the real and individually determined essence as well. Thus the import of the distinction for the Scholastics by no means implies a separation between ideal essence and real existence. Yet the ontological question concerning concrete essences of things must not be confused with the logical inquiry into the nature and validity of our ideal universal notions, for the latter constitute the region of abstract and non- real essences.

Hartmann is not altogether clear in the meaning he attaches to whatness and thatness, for the mere words are in no sense new or self-explanatory as adequate substitutes for the traditional analysis. Scheler's radical separation of whatness and thatness is to be rejected with reason, since it forbids any transition from one to the other and reduces the latter to complete unknowability as being exclusively extra mentem. This extreme separation is also denied by those who maintain a real distinction between essence and existence, since both moments enter into the structure of the actual entity. Nor do pure essences and laws positively exclude real existence as altogether incompatible, even though it is not involved in their ideal meaning. Aristotelians as well as Hartmann distinguish between the questions quid sit and an sit. But from the fact that a transition can sometimes be made from essential to existential judgments, it need not be concluded that whatness and thatness themselves pass over into each other. For the questions remain distinct, nor can the answer to the one question suffice as an answer to the other. The reason for this lies in the fact that the relations one thing bears to another are grounded in the essence, without constituting it. Thus essence admits a certain indifference to existence, since the existential act belongs to it in virtue of its extrinsic relations rather than as an intrinsic factor of its own inner content. Without granting the argument, Hartmann would nevertheless allow for some indifference in his theory of neutral whatness that need not have existence in the real order.

Without pressing for the moment the vagueness of the notion of ideal existence, it must still be asked whether there is here any genuine indifference of essence with respect to ideality and reality. Is essence a tertium quid distinct from these two spheres of existence? While essence can but need not exist really, yet it must have at least ideal existence. Only in reference to the real sphere does it enjoy any authentic indifference. A third essence apart from the ideal and real essences is a purely logical entity. Since the essential content does not necessarily require actual existence, it must have the ground for its existence outside itself and must form some sort of duality or compositeness with its existence. Yet essence



NEO-SCHOLA.STIC CRITIQUE OF NICeo.0i HARTMANN 129

and (existence are not conjoined as thing an(I thing; they are mut1tu4ally ordered I)Iinciples-- -quiSbws (c'lia ----of the actutial beiiig they coinstiitute, rather than distinct entities themiselxrves. That the contrast l)etween themii is only a relative one is Hartmann's contention, leading him to identify them eventually. Undoubtedly, nothing in the world is solely essence or solely existence. That which is, is determined and has existent being as so determined. So much the Scholastics also admit, yet they go on to observe that the alternative between separation and identity is not absolute, and that the real question concerns the nature of existence and what relation it bears to essence. Hartmann argues that the existence of the tree is the essence of the forest, but it would be more correct to state that the essence of the tree shares in the essence of the forest, and the existence of the tree in the existence of the forest.

The gnoseological assumptions of critical ontology are also examined by Geyser, who notes that we cannot know the existing thing as it is in itself, if it be supposed that all our knowledge is conditioned by the organ- izing activity of the knower. The conformity between what is and what we know remains problematic because Hartmann derives the content of categorical concepts with Kant from the subject rather than with Aristotle from the existent thing. Too rigorous a contrast is drawn between logical and real categories. Hence the appeal to emotional sources is here inevitable. Geyser questions whether the object is directly manifested through emotional experience, or whether the emotional reaction of the subject is not rather consequent upon some cognitive representation of the thing. Emotionality bears primarily upon the self-experience of the human person, revealing him in his concrete living essence. Only thereafter (without demanding any temporal succession) is it directed to other persons and things. Hartmann's study of objective emotional reference is a valuable contribution that tends to confirm the realist thesis without supporting the extravagant claims of Scheler for the directly cognitive function of emotion. Yet apart from strict acts of knowing, emotional experience is an insufficient source for the awareness of being in itself. What are reported as really present may be only affections of the self, although a stronger case can be made for the characteristic feelings of confrontation, opposition, obstacle, and the like. Here there must be an experiential difference in the content of consciousness to make us aware of something other than ourselves. Emotion can indicate only the fact of an independent existence, leaving to cognitive analysis the specification of the nature of that which is other.

Fundamental to Hartmann's ontology of ideal being is the assertion of a manner of existence different from that exercised by the essence in the real order. If the universal has no basis in the real and is not to be confused




with its state of being apprehended by the mind, then it must exist in a way peculiar to itself. But these premises need not be granted, since universal knowledge can be sufficiently guaranteed and explained in terms of an essential grasp of the ideal in the concrete. What must be clarified is the relation between the abstract thought which gathers the general aspects of individual reality and the ideal intuition of the universal. Hart- mann approaches the Scholastic view in maintaining that mathematical relations, for instance, are not simply created by the mind but observe their own intrinsic laws. From his admission that detachment from the real world is possible only mentally and not really, however, we may conclude that the mental activity of prescinding from reality involves the formation of essences as understood rather than as existing. In this way, the knowing subject is the bearer of known but non-existent universal notions which intentionally refer to the world of being in itself, without themselves having any subsistent existence of an ideal sort. Abstraction is not merely a negative disregard, but also a positive apprehension which differs from the phenomenological Wesensschau in seizing the essence in the individual existing instance itself. The pure essence as isolated by thought has no being in itself, but is considered in itself according to its inner determination.

VI Finally, brief mention may be made of a study on Hartmann's ontology

by Sofia Vanni Rovighi,15 who has also written a competent book on Edmund Husserl. Reviewing the theory of natural realism, she notes that critical ontology is an immediate realism in seeking to transcend the subject without having recourse to a formal demonstration of the objective validity of thought. Yet its mediate character is evident when knowledge is said to consist in the representation of an object that is thought. Whether that which is thought makes contact with the thing itself can be determined only by extra-theoretical or emotional methods. Because he has lost sight of the importance of intentionality, Hartmann's gnoseol- ogy is inferior to Husserl's with respect to the object of knowledge. It confuses a necessary condition of knowledge, the representation, with knowledge itself. Cognition is an act sui generis, in which being is made present and manifested to the mind through an intentional union or identification. There is no need to search behind the object of knowledge for the being itself, since it is the being which is known as an object by means of the representation. The object is not an intermediate reality, but designates the thing as actually known by a mind.

Despite his rejection of psychologism in company with the phenomenolo-

15i "L'ontologia di Nicolai Hartmann, "Rivista difilosofia neo-scolastica, vol. XXXI, 1939.




gists, Hartmann nevertheless is led astray by psychological preoccupations in his defense of realism. What stands in the place of the thing is called an image by Hartmann, and a species impressa by the Scholastics. When the thing is not present or is known in another way than as it is in the order of nature, our cognitive act terminates in a representation or species expressa of the thing. These psychological conditions of knowledge suppose its presence and are not themselves direct proof of its validity. They suppose the fact of knowing, moreover, precisely as an apprehension of being through an intentional identification. It is inverting the problem and the order of cognition to begin with the impressions and representations and ask how we can "pass" from them to reality. For they have neither being nor meaning except as moments in a "passage" that has already transpired. Formulated in terms of the problem of the bridge between mind and thing, the cognitive act loses its proper nature as an immanent vital operation and is submitted to the deceptive requirements of spatial imagery.

In his work on Possibility and Actuality, Hartmann rejects the Aris- totelian position in favor of the Megaric doctrine of possibility. The Peripatetic axiom that potency is for the sake of act, an orientation or predisposition to actuality, is challenged as being teleological and as reducing act and potency to mere stages in a process. Potentiality, however, is not only ordered in a final way to act; its formal nature cannot be understood apart from this ordination. Nor is reality reduced to pure process in this way, since apart from denying change altogether there is no escape from pan-metabolism except by assigning some end and norm of change and changing things. To state that the real is possible and that possibility is a component of reality, does not further the investigation unless some basis for the distinction between logical and real possibility be offered and some ground given for distinguishing between the possible and other real factors. If the various degrees of perfection are distinguished in terms of potency and act, it becomes impossible to accept Hartmann's identification of these concepts. The monistic tendency latent in his univocal or homogeneous notion of the being of subject and object receives its ontological expression here. Taking necessity in the Kantian sense of dependence upon and determination by another, Hartmann is led to deny any absolute necessity and to characterize the ultimate basis of all necessary beings as a contingent principle without sufficient reason in itself.

When God is termed the completely contingent being, the continuity between an irrational theory of knowledge and an irrational theory of being is strikingly manifested. Only because necessity is defined initially as dependence upon another can Hartmann conclude to the irrationality of being and the contingency of its ground. Hence, he is forced to deny the principle of non-contradiction in his fundamental assumption that




the world as an autarchic totality is an indubitably given truth. The previous teaching on essence and existence as correlative moment in an identical reality now receives explication in the view of the UIlaVei6 as a progressive divine identity. Corresponding to the hypothesis of the Bestehen of ideal being as requiring an ideal form of existence, is this final enclosure of being in the world of possibility,"8 an enclosure no less radically atheistic than Heidegger's doctrine on finite existence in the world of time. Thus the final import of the Scholastic critique of Hartmann centers about the philosophy of creatureliness and the age-old problem of the relation between the world and God. Behind the critical question lies the aporetic of being. And the structure of our general ontology in turn commits us with regard to the meaning of finiteness and the ground of contingent existence. Hartmann's greatest claim to respect t1 n the Neo-Scholastics is his clear appreciation of the importance of the problem of being and his frank statement of the main issues at stake today.

JAMES COLLINS.

ST. Louis UNIVERSITY.

EXTRACTO La filosofia de Nicolai Hartmann ha sido estudiada y criticada cuidadosa-

mente, desde su proprio punto de vista, por los Neoescolasticos principales de Europa. Los puntos en que concuerdan son la importancia central del problema del ser, la primacia del acceso ontol6gico, la coo dinaci6n de la mente con una realidad no hecha por ella misma, y la investigaci6n ieria de los problemas permanentes relatives a las categories, a los atri itos trascendentales y a la distinci6n entre la esencia y la existencia. En muchos puntos particulares, sin embargo, los Escolasticos consideran inadecuadas las soluciones propuestas por Hartmann. La distinci6n que introduce entre ontologia y metafisica no puede mantenerse: el factor critico en la "ontologia critica" obra en oposici6n a su tendencia, por otra parte realista; la noci6n de existencia ideal no esta esclarecida; el sentido anal6gico de la posibilidad y de la necesidad no se ha explorado a fondo. Se aconseja que se vuelva a considerar la ensefianza tradicional de la cosa y del objeto, la intencionalidad del conocimiento, la convertibilidad de la verdad y del ser, la inmanencia vital del acto de conocer, y la relaci6n entre el conocimiento divino y la cuesti6n de la realidad inteligible. Las opi- niones escolasticas de la abstracci6n, del problema de los universales, de la contingencia y del dinamismo no6tico, son apropiadas para una apreciaci6n y una valuaci6n ma's completa de la doctrina de Hartmann.

16 E. Przywara, "Essenz- und Existenz-Philosophie: Tragische IdentitAit oder Distanz der Geduld," Scholastik, vol. XIV, 1939.



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Neo-Scholastic Critique of Nicolai Hartmann