Ens Primum Cognitum in Thomas Aquinas and the Tradition: The Philosophy of Being as First Known

Description

Kemple cites some excellent sources we've certainly read, and philosophers of science that Deely's Four Ages didn't cite: DeKoninck, Vincent Edward Smith, Newton, Eddington, and Heisenberg!

I like how he motivates the ens primum cognitum problem by quoting (p. 5) Questiones Disputatae de Veritate q. 1 co.:

sicut in demonstrabilibus oportet fieri reductionem in aliqua principia per se intellectui nota, ita investigando quid est unumquodque; alias utrobique in infinitum iretur, et sic periret omnino scientia et cognitio rerum.
Illud autem quod primo intellectus concipit quasi notissimum, et in quod conceptiones omnes resolvit, est ens, ut Avicenna dicit in principio suae metaphysicae.

When investigating the nature of anything, one should make the same kind of analysis as he makes when he reduces a proposition to certain self-evident principles. Otherwise, both types of knowledge will become involved in an infinite regress, and science and our knowledge of things will perish.
Now, as Avicenna says, that which the intellect first conceives as, in a way, the most evident, and to which it reduces all its concepts, is being.

He relates ens primum cognitum to the issue of first principles / foundations of knowledge. Ens primum cognitum is the beginning from which one proceeds in via inventionis and the end to which one "reduces all its concepts" in via resolutionis (pp. 341-2, PDF pp. 349-50).

p. 162 (PDF p. 170) fn. 45 gives some quotes from St. Thomas on how “ rerum essentiæ sunt nobis ignotæ ” (which sounds like Kant's Dingen an sich). Kemple quotes some of what was originally quoted here. I've added his De veritate, De Anima , and Exposition Symobolum quotes, too.

PDF p. 211 mentions "saving the appearances".

Ch. 5 is a good overview of the reality of relation. One part of that chapter, discussing changing the fundament or referrant, reminded me of the EPR paradox (changing the termini of a relation doesn't change the relation itself).

PDF p.
246: Remniscent of Duhem on how the interpretation of physics experiments requires an a priori theoretical framework
251: Quia vs. propter quid demonstrations?
255n69: cf. this StackExchange answer on how indemonstrable first-principles derive from the notion of being / non-being.
255: cf. Zabarella's demonstrative regress: Wallace Modelling of Nature PDF pp. 332-4 (and hypothetical-demonstrative HD method)
267: first fn interesting: ST Ia, q.11, a.2, ad.1: “Et exinde contingit quod multitudo est quoddam unum, et malum est quoddam bonum, et non ens est quoddam ens”.
273: United subjectively differs from reality. Structural realism? "Every true quiddity as intellectually possessed and revelatory of the what belonging to something, although dependent upon and derived from independently existing things, dependent upon cognitive acts for the reality of its intelligible being […] is intellectually reconstituted as a whole object but not necessarily in the same way that these aspects are united subjectively [i.e., extramentally]." cf. Duhem's "Physique et métaphysique" PDF pp. 98-127, in which he argues that physical theory can only asymptotically approach the best natural classification of the way nature really is.
319-20: I q. 45 a. 7 (on traces of the Trinity) co.: "Sap. XI, nam mensura refertur ad substantiam rei limitatam suis principiis, numerus ad speciem, pondus ad ordinem." ("Book of Wisdom (11:21). For 'measure' refers to the substance of the thing limited by its principles, 'number' refers to the species, 'weight' refers to the order.")
358: Falsity in the intellect, evil in the will, comes from inability to resolve to God: "This impossibility of resolution [of everything to God] is the root of all falsehood and error: when an object thus irreducible is accepted as true and believed, there is intellectual error; when it is accepted as good and pursued, there arises the possibility of moral evil." DV q.1, a.8, c.: "…omnis veritas sit a Deo”.

Ens Primum Cognitum in Thomas Aquinas and the Tradition presents a reading of Thomas Aquinas’ claim that “being” is the first object of the human intellect. Blending the insights of both the early Thomistic tradition (c.1380—1637AD) and the Leonine Thomistic revival (1879—present), Brian Kemple examines how this claim of Aquinas has been traditionally understood, and what is lacking in that understanding.

While the recent tradition has emphasized the primacy of the real (so-called ens reale) in human recognition of the primum cognitum , Kemple argues that this misinterprets Aquinas, thereby closing off Thomistic philosophy to the broader perspective needed to face the philosophical challenges of today, and proposes an alternative interpretation with dramatic epistemological and metaphysical consequences.

Brian Kemple, Ph.D. (2016), is a recent graduate of the Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas (Texas, USA). He writes on metaphysics, epistemology, phenomenology, and semiotics and is author of Peirce and Heidegger: The Intersection of Phenomenology and Semiotics (Mouton de Gruyter, 2019).

The only PhD dissertation completed under the great Thomist-semiotician John Deely!

Ph.D., Philosophy, University of St. Thomas, Houston TX, 2016.

Dissertation: Ens Primum Cognitum in Thomas Aquinas and the Tradition

Director: John Deely

Advisers: John Hittinger (co-director), Mirela Oliva

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Escaping the Framework of Modernity
Prefatory Notes on Terminology
Subject and Object, ens naturae and ens rationis
Ideoscopic and Cenoscopic
Concept, verbum mentis , species expressa
Ens ut primum cognitum and ens primum cognitum
Influential Approaches to Ens Primum Cognitum
Objectively and Socially-Constituted Reality
Thomas Aquinas: Intellectus Agens , Verbum Mentis , Relatio

1 The Latin Thomists and Ens Primum Cognitum
1.1 The Early Dispute: Setting the Stage
1.1.1 The Scotistic Foil
1.2 Thomas Cajetan and the Doctrine of Being
1.2.1 Cajetan’s Four Cognitions and Three Abstractions
1.2.2 The Doctrine of Analogy
1.2.3 Conclusion
1.3 John Poinsot, the Nature of Concepts and Ens ut Primum Cognitum
1.3.1 Objectivity and Conceptualization
1.3.2 De Primo Cognito
1.3.3 Objectivity and the Concept of Ens Primum Cognitum

2 Recent Thomistic Interpretations of Ens Primum Cognitum *
2.1 Étienne Gilson’s “Metaphysical Realism”
2.1.1 Overcoming Critique
2.1.2 Abstraction and the Nature of the Concept
2.1.3 Realism vs. Idealism and the Question of Ens ut Primum Cognitum
2.2 Jacques Maritain
2.2.1 Maritain on Abstraction
2.2.2 Concept Formation
2.2.3 Maritain on Ens Primum Cognitum
2.3 Conclusion

3 The Intellectus Agens and Concept Formation
3.1 St. Thomas and the Obiectum Intellectus
3.1.1 Ens, ens ut verum, and ens intelligibile
3.1.2 Quod quid est, quid est, and quod quid erat esse
3.1.3 Quidditas rei and quidditas rei materialis
3.2 Intellectus Agens
3.2.1 Illuminare
3.2.2 Digression on Nature: Matter, Form, and Understanding
3.2.3 Abstrahere

4 The Discursion of Concept Formation
4.1 The Discursion of Intellectual Discovery
4.1.1 From Pre-Philosophical Cognition to Philosophical Science
4.1.2 Intellectual Discovery and the Philosophical Sciences
4.2 Formation of the Verbum Mentis
4.2.1 The Derivation of Primary Concepts
4.2.2 Terminus of Intellectual Operation and Intentional Fundamentum
4.2.3 Necessity of Composition
4.2.4 Definition and Quiddity
4.3 A Recursive Analysis of the Species Expressa
4.3.1 True and False Concepts
4.3.2 Species Expressae and Cognition-Dependent Objects
4.3.3 What is Inessential to Things is Essential to Our Concepts

5 Relation and Ens Primum Cognitum
5.1 What is Relation?
5.1.1 Relativa Secundum Esse
5.1.2 Relativa Secundum Dici
5.1.3 The Constitution of Cognition-Dependent Relative Being
5.2 Relations and Objectivity
5.2.1 Intellectual Apprehension of Relations
5.2.2 Interpretation and the Constitution of Objective Realities
5.2.3 “Reality”, “The Real”, and Objective Constitution

6 The Nature of Ens Primum Cognitum
6.1 Summary of Argument
6.2 The Nature of Ens Primum Cognitum
6.2.1 St. Thomas and the Resolutio ad Ens Primum Cognitum
6.3 Conclusion

*References Historically Layered