ON JUDGING EXISTENCE I N A PREVIOUS, mainly historical, article 1 I drew attention to a general trend among reputable Thomists to jettison the notion of judgment as the mental synthesis-or disjunction-of two concepts, and to envisage it as a simple and original act of the intellect by which a conceived form is attributed to a reality that is, ultimately, apprehended as singular and denoted by the subject of the judgment, with the result that only one concept is implied in the act of judging. This conclusion seems to be implied even in the opinion of those who hold the " two concept " theory, for they require a final act by which the mind compares its conceptual union with a like synthesis in what is objectively known and then pronounces on the identity-or lack of it- of both syntheses, in an assertive act which completes the judgment. In that case, it is only this final act which is characteristic of the judgment; the preceding acts (apprehension, conception, comparison, perception of the identity or diversity of the terms) are at most preliminary. It is clear that to understand a proposition is not the same as to judge. One can understand without judging, as when one grasps the meaning of a question or posits a hypothesis before it has been verified. At the end of the same article I surmised that the chief reason why the "two concept" theory found favor is the assumption that our primary judgments are ideal ones, such as first principles, predicated definitions, and other such abstract and universal judgments, which are all essential rather than existential. This assumption may be due to the fact that both in logic and in critical theory there was an almost exclusive concern with the type of knowledge found in science; and science 1 " On Judging," in The Thomist 88 (1974), pp. I must apologize for my delay, due to other commitments, in completing the article. 507 608 AMBROSE MCNICHOLL is expressed in the form of statements that are ideal and universal. Science however is a highly sophisticated and artificial kind of knowledge; and it should surely be evident that one cannot even begin to examine the nature and validity of such an organized and derivative form of knowledge unless one has first of all inquired into the nature and validity of basic human knowing as such. This is the line taken by those who are most prominent in critical theory today. It can hardly be denied that ideal and essential judgments may be formed out of two concepts that have previously been abstracted. But the question is: is it necessary that it should be .so? Are two concepts required by the very nature of the act of judging? Moreover, granted that there may be two concepts which are used as subject and predicate, it can be asked whether the concept used as subject functions as a concept? The essential question must be this: what is required by the very nature of the act of judging? If it is found that there are authentic judgments which do not involve more than one concept, then no more can or need be postulated. At the outset it is well to note that we are not here concerned primarily with propositions but with judgments. Peter Strawson has insisted on the difference between what he calls the " sentence " and the " assertion." He holds that the sentence, or proposition, is what carries meaning but is never, as such, either true or false. Only when it is asserted does it become capable of being true or false. 2 Although some of the Oxford school of Analysts disagree with Strawson I accept his distinction, in the .sense that to form a proposition is not the same thing as to judge. It is the logician who studies the nature and forms of propositions; and from his point of view he is entitled to speak of two concepts as of two terms. The perspective adopted in this article is more psychological than logical; m •"On Referring," Mind 59 (1950); also in A. Flew (Ed.): Essays Conceptual For qualifications cf. E. J. Lemmon: "SenAnalysis, London, 1956, pp. tences, Statements and Propositions," in B. Williams and A. Montefiore (Eds.): British Analytical Philosophy, London, 1966, pp. 78-107; and W. Quine: "Mr. Strawson on Logical Theory," Mind (1953), pp. 433-451. ON JUDGING EXISTENCE 509 it deals with the act itself of judging rather than with its conceptual or linguistic expressions. Phenomenology To find the true nature of judgment one should begin with a consideration of the various types of judgment, or what may be called a phenomenology of judgment, not only because every hypothesis must be based on facts or factual usage, but also because, if there are various types, what is proper to one type or class might mistakenly be conceived a! essential to all. For the reason mentioned above it will not be necessary to consider all the classes of propositions treated by logicians even where they are in agreement, which is not always the case. Here however it is pertinent to recall that some modern logicians find fault with Aristotle and the Scholastics for assuming in their logic that the basic type of proposition is the categorical attribution (or negation) of a predicate to a subject. The reason for this is that their logic was realistic, in the sense that it presupposed a view of reality as composed of substances with real accidents. This, for the modern critics, is a gratuitous assumption; and logic, if it is to be purely formal, should not be linked to any particular view of reality. Moreover the traditional logic is, it is claimed, unable to do justice to the type of proposition characteristic of mathematics where one is dealing, not with the attribution of properties to a subject, but mainly with relations between classes; for mathematics treats above all of classes; and the nature of the objects which it considers is determined by mutual relations to others of the same kind. No one will deny that logic should, as far as possible, be purely formal, and deal with all the types of proposition, and of inference, needed to satisfy the exigencies of thought and of the sciences. Yet, if we are to talk about the act of judging we can only begin from experience of this as it is actually exercised. The appeal to reality is very much in place in a psychological consideration of judgment, even if it is out of place in logic. Yet one wonders how the logician can speak of classes of objects without previously having had some knowledge of them and 510 AMBROSE MCNICHOLL of their properties by which they can be classified. If the judgment of relation (xRy) is logically irreducible, it need not be so from a more realistic point of view, for we can proceed to determine the relations between classes and their members only when we have first asserted that there are such things as classes and relations. Another criticism levelled by many moderns at Aristotle is that his logic deals above all with propositions in which an essential property is attributed to a subject, whereas most of the propositions which we ordinarily use do no more than state a simple fact. Whatever the justice of the criticism, one can only heartily agree with the requirement that an adequate logic, and even more so a theory of judgment, should take account of this type of proposition or assertion; and this would seem to imply a logic based more on the recognition of facts than on intelligible content, or comprehension. It does appear that the humble factual judgment has been underestimated; and one of the main themes of this article is that its fundamental role and value should be acknowledged. The author whom I find most helpful in the attempt to classiify, from a more realistic point of view, the various types of judgment is J. Austin. 3 Starting with the rhetic act (using words to convey meaning) he distinguishes three main ways in which this act takes place. There is the simple locutionary act of saying something; the illocutionary act which, while saying something, also does something; and the performatory act which moreover produces an effect in the hearer, as when one imposes a name, or pronounces the fateful words in the marriage rite: " I take you as my lawful wife." These latter acts are neither true nor false, but apt or otherwise. Similarly, the rhetic act (as distinct from the merely phonetic or phatic act) , which uses words in conformity with a definite vocabulary and grammar and with a sufficiently defined meaning and reference, does say something; but at the same time it also carries out a certain •How T'o Do Things with Words, Oxford, 196!'l, pp. 47 ff.; "Performative-Constative," in H. Brera (Ed.) : La phtilos.crphie analytique, Paris, pp. !'!76 ff. ON JUDGING EXISTENCE 511 £unction, and hence is in fact illocutionary. It is therefore in this latter class that we will find "total speech acts," or the basic forms of judgment. Although Austin modified his categories somewhat as he continued his researches he seems to have felt that the major types of illocutionary act are the following: verdictive, those which imply passing a sentence, as, e.g.: "I judge, or absolve," etc.; exercitive, expressing the exercise of some authority or power, as e. g., "I command, or forbid, or give charge of," etc.; commissive, when one promises, intends, or goes bail, etc.; behabitive as when one excuses himself, thanks, or curses, etc.; and expositive. In this last class we find various types of speech-activity, such as affirmation, negation, description and classification. It is in regard to the first three of these that we can speak meaningfully of truth and falsehood; and these are, in Austin's terminology, called constative acts of speech, the principal ones being affirmation and negation. It is true that Austin did not regard his classification as definitive; in fact he insisted that only a lengthy collaboration between experts in different fields of research could lead towards a .satisfactory "linguistic phenomenology." It is, however, at least interesting to note that he came to pick on constative utterances as particularly important and as alone capable of truth and falsehood. This seems to suggest that if we look for the nature of the act of judging we will find it in such acts, since all the other typeg appear to presuppose them. 4 P. Strawson seems also to take this for granted when he writes: " The central fact to cling to is that the primary mode of appearance of propositions is assertion; and this gives us a reason for saying that, of many propositional styles, the primary one is what is also primarily the assertive style." 5 The Analysts who have made a special study of the language •For further discussion of Austin's views cf. M. Furberg: Locutionary and lllocutionary Acu: A Main Theme in J. L. Austin's Philosophy, Goteberg, 1963. •Individuals. An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (1959), Methuen PB, London, 1965, p. 151. 512 AMBROSE MCNICHOLL of moral discourse deal with another class of judgments, namely normative or practical ones. These do not state what is the case but what should be done; not that which is but that which ought to be. Such judgments can be either in the form of imperatives (e.g.," thou shalt not kill"), and then belong to the class which Austin calls performatory; or in theoretical and general form (e.g. "murder ought not be committed"), and implies assertion. Since the imperative form is evidently not essential to judgment as such I shall take account of the normative judgment only in so far as it implies assertion. Concentrating now on the assertive type of judgment I propose the following classification, not as exhaustive but as sufficient for the purpose of this article. This kind of judgment may have to do with purely logical entities (the entia rationis of the Scholastics), as when one asserts that man is a species; here we are dealing with a form of implication or of inclusion of a member in a class or of a one class in another. In regard to this kind of judgment it should be noticed that one can only speak of a determinate class in relation to another, usually larger, class whose members are the only objects taken into consideration. This class of all the objects taken into consideration when determining another class is known to logicians as "the universe of discourse" to which this class belongs. This class is defined in relation to the class (known as its complement) of all the objects of the universe of discourse which do not belong to the class so defined, so that the logical sum of both classes is equivalent to the universe of discourse. The universe of discourse does not include all possible objects but only all those which are taken into consideration by the speakers. The class and its complement are determined by this preliminary restriction. If one pushes this classificatory activity to its limits one would eventually arrive at the supreme class of all that can be an object, that is, of all that is or can be; in other words, one is led to the notion, but the logical one, of being; and to trace this to its roots is, as I hope to show later, to be led back to the plane of real existence, so that even these ON JUDGING EXISTENCE 513 judgments have their foundation in knowledge of reality and therefore of concretely existing things. Assertive judgments concerning real as opposed to logical being may be either essential or existential. Essential ones can be of various types. They may state principles (e.g.: "whatever comes to exist has a cause ") ; they may predicate a definition (e.g.: "man is a rational animal"); they may be attributive, both when they predicate a property of its subject (e.g.: " man is able to know truth or to study philosophy ") and when they attribute an accident which is not a property (e.g.: " some men are fat") . All such judgments are ideal and abstract, but there is also the singular essential judgment, as when we state that Dante is the author of the Divine Comedy. The existential judgment is found in two main forms: an existential judgment in a wide sense, as in the examples: " Peter is a student of philosophy, Peter is studying;" or in a strictly existential form, when, namely, actual existence is attributed to an individual subject (e.g.: "Peter exists; I am; being is"). These latter judgments are always concrete. Ideal Judgments It is generally agreed that the predicate signifies some formality that is conceived in an abstract way. Such a concept presupposes a process of abstraction by which it is derived, at least in the last analysis, from some concrete object that is known. If, as the defenders of the two-concept theory hold, the subject of the judgment represents also a previously formed concept, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to explain the strictly existential judgment, with the result that they will be regarded either as incomplete judgments, or as not judgments at all. This, however, is quite contrary to common experience and use; and this already suggests that one should not confine attention to ideal judgments in the search for what is characteristic of judgment as such. To do so would be to make the mistake of seizing on something that is found only in one class of judgments and regarding it as essential to all. 514 MCNICHOLL One reason why such judgments have been taken as typical may be that, besides being clear and of most concern to scientists, they .seem to be simple and therefore primitive. In fact, however, they are the result of a complicated mental process; and their apparent simplicity hides their really composite nature. The type of relationship asserted between subject and predicate in the ideal judgment is quite different from that asserted in the singular and existential one. If one were to look only to the grammatical form of the proposition it would seem as though the same type of relationship is found in both. If, however, one examines the logical form of the ideal proposition it will appear that the assertion has to do with the mutual implication of two concepts or terms rather than with the fact that a predicate belongs to a given subject. If, for instance, I state that whatever is finite is caused, I use the attributive mode. But the .same thought is conveyed through the logical form: " finiteness implies causality; " or by the formula: " if x finite, x is caused, for all values of x." Here there is no direct reference to the existential order; there is question only of the relation between two notions. From this it would at first appear that the proposition is adequately characterized by the function of implication; and this is indeed the stand taken by many of those modern logicians who .set out to make logic a completely formal system. This is a perfectly legitimate ideal, but it seems to call for some reservations or qualifications. In the first place it .should be noted that implication itself is far from being a simple or selfevident notion. Andre Darbon, in reference to Russell's attempt to formalize logic, has pointed out that implication presupposes the notions of truth, error and combination; 6 and indeed it seems to me to pre.suppose such other basic notions as number, multitude, unity, division; and these, from a critical perspective, are all based on the prior notion of being. 7 Moreover, if the proposition is defined in terms of implication (as 6 7 La phifosophie des mathematiques, Paris, 1949, pp. 10-11. Cf. ST, la 11, ad 4; In m.i;ta. 4, S.566; 10,4.1989-98; De p()t. 9.7 ad 15. ON JUDGING EXISTENCE 515 that which implies itself) , it will be found to presuppose the three principles of identity, of excluded middle, and of noncontradiction if it is to be recognized as valid. 8 If implication is neither a .simple nor an original notion, the kind of proposition which is defined in terms of implication cannot be regarded as primary. Even if it is granted that, in terms of a purely formal system, implication may be taken as a primitive and indefinable notion, with the consequence that the proposition will be defined through implication, it must be remembered that a purely formal logistic system is constructed on the basis of extensionality alone, for the logic of classes is one of extension. Such a logic, however, presupposes one of intentionality, since classification must depend on comprehension; for a class means a collection of similar objects, that is, of objects which possess some characteristic in common. In other words, one may, adopting a purely extensional point of view, construct an abstract and completely formal system hinging on the notion of implication. Such a system will offer an exact and symbolic representation of thought processes divorced from all relationship to reality. Thought will then be treated from the sole point of view of the relationship between concepts whose content or comprehension has been excluded so that their extension alone will be taken into account. This will entail that the proposition be conceived as implication, or seen in terms of the inclusion of an individual in its class or as the determination of a relation. But whether such a system is self-sufficient is quite another matter. Thought does not occur in a vacuum, even ii it can, and indeed-in formal logic-must, be represented as such. Thought is, first and foremost, knowledge. Knowledge is, essentially, relative to reality, to what is; and truth is found primarily in this relation. Logic has its own form of truth, although I would prefer to speak rather of correctness than of truth; but to hold that this is the only kind of truth that matters is to fall into the excess of logicism. Logic alone cannot tell 8 Cf. Darbon, op. cit., pp. 10-1!!. 516 AMBROSE MCNICHOLL us what is real or existent, whereas knowledge, or at least the intellect as knowing, seeks what is real; and the philosopher, like the scientist, is concerned above all with reality. A fully formalized logic seems to be assembled inductively from the processes typical of the sciences, and especially of mathematics; whereas a complete logic should also exhibit the processes at work in all kinds of knowing, scientific or not. To keep one's feet on the firm ground of experience in this way will insure that logic is set in the context of research into the origin of basic notions and into the validity of knowledge derived from experience and of first principles. In this way, logic could treat of the formal elements of those processes by which man knows reality, always of course assuming-as I do here-that he is capable of knowing reality. This may not be a legitimate assumption in pure logic, but such an approach has at least the merit of recognizing its assumptions; and I can only agree with those writers who maintain that a presuppositionless logic is impossible, since logic demands a number of elementary truths as support. 9 To adopt this realistic .standpoint is to pass beyond a too exclusive concern with the proposition and its logic to consideration of the full-blooded and vital act of judgment; and in this act we find assertion or affirmation (or negation) as characteristic and as directed towards what is or is real. For the judgment, basically, is an assertion that something is or is so and so. To discover its fundamental structure we must tum to the activity itself, as we find it in our experience, rather than to its logical expression. Admittedly, this transfers the discussion from the field of logic to that of psychology; but to do this is to " rescue " the judgment and to restore it to the context where it should first of all be considered. The transition from the logical to the psychological plane may conveniently be made by reflecting for a moment on the •E.g.: L. Brunschvicg: Les ages de l'intelligtmce, Paris, 1984, p. 77; A. Darbon, op. cit., pp. 4-6; 72-78; F. Gonseth: Qu'est-ce-que la logique, Paris, 1987, pp. 11, 12, 60. Cf. E. Jacques: Introduction au probleme de la connaissance, Louvain, 1958, p. 806. ON JUDGING EXISTENCE 517 formulation of the affirmative categorical judgment taken as the basic type. The formula S is P is not only an assertion; it is the assertion of an identity. Except in the case of a tautology, however, the subject and predicate are not identical. This might seem to indicate that we are dealing with implication rather than assertion; but if we set the formulated judgment in the context of actual thinking and knowing, we can see that we are indeed dealing with an assertion, although this, as is natural and only to be expected, leads beyond knowledge to its object. The identity that is asserted is then found not to obtain between the subject and predicate as such, but in the known object; for what is asserted is this: that reality, denoted as subject, is identically the same reality that has the attribute or quality designated by the predicate. Taking as example the ideal judgment already mentioned, the sense of the statment: " whatever is finite is caused," is expressed by saying: "that being which is finite is identically the same being as that which is caused." 10 This undel'.standing of the judgment not only shows how there can be at the same time assertion and identity; it also brings clearly into view the fact that every judgment, as a vital activity, implies in one way or another a reference to the concrete and existential order. 1 ° Cf. C. gent. 1.36; ST, la 85.5 ad 3; 13, 12. In this last place Aquinas says: "In every true affirmative statement, although the subject and predicate signify what is in fact in some way the same thing, they do so from different points of view. This is true not only of statements in which the predicate means something that only happens to belong to the subject, it is also true of those in which it expresses part of what the subject is. Thus it is clear that in ' a man is white' although ' man ' and '(a) white ' must refer to the same thing, they do so in different ways, for 'man' and 'white' do not have the same meaning. But it is also true for a statement such as 'man is an animal.' That which is a man is truly an animal: in one and the same thing is to be found the sensitive nature which makes us call it an animal and the rational nature which makes us call it man . . . The difference between subject and predicate represents two ways of looking at a thing, while the fact that they are put together affirmatively indicates that it is one thing that is being looked at" (trans. of H. McCabe, 0. P., in the Blackfriars edition, vol. 3, p. 95). In my previous article (p. 817, nn. 177, l 78) I referred to :Fr. McCabe's criticism of the attempt of K. Wall, 0. P., to show that the affirmation entails at least a partial identity, in the ideal order, between subject and predicate. 518 AMBROSE MCNICHOLL One of the main points which I wish to make in this article is precisely this fact, that such a reference is to be found as implied in all our judgments. This seems to follow, first of all, from the psychology of knowing, at least as this is understood by Aquinas and his followers. It is his constant teaching that human knowing is integrated out of activities which are intellectual and sensitive, so blended as to form one dynamic unity; and that the connatural activity of the intellect requires the concourse of the imagination, not just when the concept is first formed but as long as the act of the intellect endures. There is no concept, not even of the most immaterial being, without an accompanying image.11 Since this image is derived from contact through the senses with the material and existent world, the act of the intellect, and its concept, retain this relationship to the existential order, even where there is question of our most abstract concepts. This is clear enough in concrete judgments which bear directly on existing singular beings. In other kinds of judgment, such as the ideal ones, the image continues to symbolize the object previously grasped through the senses even though the object is no longer physically present; in this case, the judgment relates immediately to the object present in thought, and mediately to the really existing object. In judgments about purely fictitious beings the reference is to an object that is only thought about, but this object is conceived on the pattern of real beings that were at one time known. We may perhaps illustrate this by means of some examples. In the pure existential judgment the subject stands for a particular existent being, as, for instance, when I affirm: " Peter exists." In the attributive existential judgment, e.g. "Paul is a doctor," the logical subject is still a non-conceptual term, and what it refers to could be indicated by pointing with one's 11 Cf. ST, la, 84.7; 85.1ad5; 5 ad 2; In Boet. de Trin., 6.2 ad 5; Inlib.dememor. 2.814; to avoid any possible misunderstanding one should note that the image is not taken here in its purely subjective reality but as representing the object known, i.e., as endowed with characteristics (this color, size, shape, etc.} which are not its own just in so far as it is an image but are due to the object repres.ented and are to be traced back to it. ON JUDGING EXISTENCE 519 finger; the subject denotes a really existing individual. In the attributive universal judgment, e. g., "man fulfils himself by means of work," the logical subject is, of itself, an abstract concept; when it is used as the subject of an assertion it does not function merely as having abstract signification, as it would if it were used as a predicate; its function is to denote a singular existent being, while this being is characterized by means of some formal or essential quality. Such a judgment can be reformulated in this way: " that individual existing being denoted as man is identically the same as the individual who fulfils himself through work." In the ideal and abstract judgment, e.g. "every finite being is caused," the logical subject is an abstract and universal concept, or perhaps a transcendental one, which however is used to indicate, through the mediation of imagination, that which is real (the finite being that exists) and which is grasped under some universal aspect (as caused). Subject of Judgment If all judgments retain, implicitly at least, a reference to the real and existential order, it seems clear that our primary and basic judgments are those which refer explicitly to that order; and in my previous article I tried to show that there is a growing consensus on this point. One decisive consequence of this is that the role of the subject of assertion must be sought through examination of this kind of judgment; and here there can be no question of signification in the strict sense of the word. The subject stands for an individual and existing reality; and this can only be denoted, for every concept abstracts from the individual characteristics. This is particularly clear where there is question of proper names. As J. S. Mill puts it: "Proper names are not connotative: they denote the individuals who are called by them; but they do not indicate or imply any attributes as belonging to those individuals ... these names are simply marks used to enable those individuals to be made subj ects of discourse." 12 12 A System of Logic, I, c. fZ, § 5; eighth edition, London, 1949, p. 520 AMBROSE MCNICHOLL The conclusion to which these reflections are leading can now be stated, and then further explained and strengthened. No judgment has, as its subject, anything that is purely conceptual, whether this is taken as essential or as accidental. The judgment, as assertion, affirms (or denies) an identity in relation to subject and predicate; and this identity is not found in regard to the concept which may figure as subject in the judgment but in regard to the reality denoted by the subject and which alone has the formal element predicated in the judgment. The role of the logical subject is to indicate the real subject as having the form which is predicated of it. That is to say, the subject in the judgment does not formally represent or signify; its role is properly that of denoting; and it always, in one way or another, stands for, or leads back to, an object found in the existential order, and primarily the physical existential order, although the judgment may then be used to refer to objects whose existence is ideal. When therefore an abstract term, or a concept, enters into a judgment as its subject it ceases to function in the way proper to a concept and fulfils the role of indicating some concrete object. In short, the subject of the judgment is never an abstract concept functioning formally as such; it is always, at least mediately, an existing object, and the proper role of the subject term is to indicate this. This conclusion depends, to a great extent, on the claim that the basic type of judgment is that which hears directly on concrete and singular existent beings such as we come in contact with through ordinary human experience, and not the ideal and abstract type such as we find in the sciences, however important or privileged these may be in other respects. In my previous article I quoted a number of thinkers, both thomistic and nonthomistic, who not only agree but insist on this fact which has been so often overlooked. Before I go on to strengthen this claim I would like to state it in the words of another acute thinker who has expressed it far better than I could hope to do. In the work already quoted,18 A. Darbon writes: " Kant 18 Note 5; p. 190 (my translation) . ON JUDGING EXISTENCE has maintained, and this is one of his teachings which deserves to be retained, that the judgment, not the concept, is the complete act of knowledge. ' To think means exactly this: to judge.' We can make no other use of concepts than to judge by their means, for they are nothing else than predicates of judgments. That is to say that the concepts of quantity, figure, etc., do not take on their full meaning except on condition of being used in the last resort by judgments of this kind: ' This is a quantity, that is a figure.' But this is to say that the subject of these judgments of perception is no longer a conceptual term but a thing of our experience. And it is to it that we attribute a mark of reality; or rather we judge that it forms part of that reality in which we live and move, and of which we have only an obscure feeling, not distinct thought. The concept, in its final use, serves only to determine this indistinct, intuitive and global experience of reality, or rather certain fragments of it which we have singled out; and it itself takes on a character of reality only indirectly and in reference to this experience. Doubtless we cannot think, in a certain sense, of anything that is not real, although we can think of it badly and in thinking of it deform it. But, once more, to think is to judge and not to conceive. And what is real is the subject of this judgment, whereas its predicate, even though it signifies something when the judgment is true, does not express it fully; it does not preserve all its substantial reality, any more than the drawing of a tree on a sheet of paper, however exact it may be, transposes the being of the tree onto the paper. Similarly, when one detaches the concept from the judgment by which it communicates with reality, and by which it is at least a means of expression, and having thus isolated it one elevates it to the dignity of a real essence, one confers this honor on it at precisely the moment when it loses all right to this honor. The concept is a garment with which we propose to clothe reality; and realism is the philosophy which says: it is the habit that makes the monk." 14 "In the next paragraph he goes on to say, in effect, that in the abstract sciences, such as mathematics and logic, concepts are not applied to perceived objects, and AMBROSE MCNICHOLL A thoroughgoing attempt to clarify the position exemplified in this passage should undertake an investigation into linguistic and logical usage. Since this is out of the question here I must at least refer to the notable contribution towards such a research made by P. F. Strawson, all the more so since his general thrust seems to be in the direction of the position adopted here. In the first part of his book Individuals he shows that our conceptual scheme of things includes the scheme of a common spatio-temporal world, and that the central position in that scheme is filled by particulars, among which the basic ones are those which are directly locatable and are or possess material bodies.15 Among these a privileged role is played by what we call persons. In the second part he deals with subjects and predicates. The link between both parts consists in this, that the particular is the paradigm of a logical subject for us. " Particulars are paradigm logical subjects; an expression that is also, or purports to make, an identifying reference to a particular, is the paradigm of a logical subject-expression." 16 Taking the assertive as the basic form of judgment he first of all notes that to be an object of reference distinguishes appearing in discourse as a subject from appearing as a predicate, whereas universals only can be predicated. He then sets out to find a basis for this distinction, contrasting his own views with those of various other authors. 17 they thus attain to a higher level of generalization. But there thought becomes symbolic, representing the unknown objects, to which concepts are applied, by means of letters and signs. The sign thus plays the role of subject without really being so. To relate x, as member of a class, to y by the formula xRy is not to make a judgment. Such a formula is neither true nor false; and if we don't know what we are judging there is no judgment. All that such a formula does is to provide the schematic outline of a possible judgment. 15 Cf. p. !W4 (of the edition quoted, note 5). 16 Ibid., p. 234. For comparison with St. Thomas, cf. ST la, 85, 3. 17 G. Frege ("On Concept and Object," and " On Sense and Reference," in Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, edited by M. Black and P. Geach, Oxford, 1952; J. Cook Wilson: Statement and Inference, 2 vol., 1926; B. Russell: "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism," Monist, 1918-1919; P. Geach: "Subject and Predicate," Mind, 1950; W. Quine: From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge (Mass.), 1953; Methods of Logic, 2nd ed., New York, 1959. ON JUDGING EXISTENCE 528 He first examines a grammatical criterion for the distinction. The act of ref erring to a thing in a proposition is found never to be the same as the act of predicating that thing; what is referred to is an object, while what is predicated is a concept. Objects have a certain completeness, but predicates are incomplete for they demand completion in a proposition. I take this to mean that universals do not have an autonomous role in our conceptual scheme. They are essentially incomplete. To make sense, a predicate stands in need of a subject as a point of reference; it has to be completed by being tied to a subject. But there is no logical subject unless we presuppose particulars as objects that are, at least relatively, complete in themselves. Next he proposes a categoria1 criterion for the distinction, distinguishing universals into sortal and characterizing. The former (e.g., water, dog) supply a principle for distinguishing and counting the individual particulars which it collects (e.g., pool of water, terrier) and does not presuppose any such antecedent principle. The characterizing universal, such as verbs and adjectives (e.g., wet, barking), supplies such a principle only for particulars already distinguished or distinguishable in accordance with some antecedent principle or method. It is distinctive of the sortal universal that it has instances, whereas what is proper to the characterizing universal is to characterize. From this it appears that only universals, or complexes containing universals, can be predicated, while particulars, as such, are never predicated. In order to explain the correspondence between these two different criteria Strawson goes on to consider the conditions for introducing terms into a proposition. The condition for a particular is that it identify by referring, and this implies that a definite empirical proposition be true, and be known by the speaker to be true. "Particular-introducing expressions carry a presupposition of empirical fact, in the shape of propositions, known to users of the expression, which suffice to identify the particular in question." 18 No such condition is needed for the 1• Ibid., p. 248. 524 AMBROSE MCNICHOLL universal; all that is required is that its meaning be known. The subject-expression presents a fact in its own right and as, to that extent, complete; hence it can never be a predicate. The predicate-expression in no sense presents a fact in its own right, and is, to that extent, incomplete. It can be completed only by explicit coupling with another expression. It should be noted that Strawson'.s analysis has dealt with our conceptual system in relation to the world of everyday experience. The universals of which he speaks are above all those whose instances, or inferiors, are known through ordinary experience, and which he therefore aptly calls " empirical universals." It is these which, he maintains, cannot be fully known except in reference to individuals. One might argue in favor of another class of universals which might possibly be fully known without such a reference to any individual; but it is surely legitimate to base an analysis on the way in which we do, in. fact, make use of universals in our ordinary judgments about the world of common experience. When a universal is so used, as a predicate, it is incomplete in comparison with the logical subject; and without particulars there is no logical subject. Hence the philosopher of language, as Strawson says in another work,19 " must recognise the need for such linguistic or other devices as will enable (him) both to classify or describe in general terms and to indicate to what particular cases our classifications or descriptions are being applied . . . we can surely acknowledge that we can form no conception of experience, of empirical knowledge, which does not allow of our becoming aware in experience of particular items which we are able to recognise or classify as instances of general kinds or characteristics. We must have the capacities for such recognitions and classifications, i. e., we must have what Kant calls intuitions." If, as Strawson contends, the logical subject of a .sentence is primarily a particular, we have every right to regard as basic those judgments which refer to such particulars and which 19 The Bounds of Sens!!, London (Methuen), 1966, pp. 47-48. ON JUDGING EXISTENCE 525 carry a presupposition of an empirical fact known to the speaker. This is the main point I wish to make at present; but one further precision made by Strawson must be kept in mind. 20 There are certain single empirical statements which contain no particular, such as: "it is raining; snow is falling." These, he holds, do not introduce particulars into discourse; they provide a basis for such introduction, that is, for the conceptual step from empirical fact to particular and ultimate facts. Here we seem to be dealing with a particular type of universal which does not need a subject, although in order for the proposition containing it to be valid as a statement with truth value it must be made in a definite context. He calls this type of universal a "feature universal," and inclines to the view that beneath every sortal universal there is a feature universal from which it is derived since the sortal can collect only those individuals which have certain features in common. But since features are grasped only in individuals it seems as if one should postulate at least the possibility of an individuator in order to conceive the feature universal. Strawson at any rate does not regard propositions of this sort as subject-predicate propositions, for they contain two distinguishable elements without the contrast between completeness and incompleteness which marks the distinction of subject from predicate. But he will grant that such propositions provide the basis for constructing subject-predicate propositions, and that these are needed if we are to refer to particulars. All this does not mean that a predicate concept may not be used as a subject. "Whenever you have something that can be identifyingly introduced into a proposition, and can be brought under some principle of collection of like things, then you have the possibility of that thing's appearing as an individual, as a logical subject." 21 This possibility will be discussed in the next section, but at this stage I would point out that a predicate concept can be used as a subject only if one •• Individuals, pp. ff. On the same point cf. A. Lalande, Vocabulaire tech,nique et critique de la philosophie, 7th. ed., Paris, 1956, pp. 811-813 (Predicat). 21 Ibid., p. 526 AMBROSE MCNICHOLL already knows how to use it as a predicate, and if one knows the logical role of the concept. I can, for instance, make the classificatory judgment: " blue is a color; " but such a judgment is intelligible only to one who is already able to use color predicates, in such judgments as: " this coat is blue, this flag is green, etc." These judgments are primary and descriptive. From such as these we can take the predicate (blue) and use it as a subject, namely to denote one member of the class of all colored things. In other words, the universal must first be grasped as predicable. It acquires meaning only by being first predicated of a subject, and thereafter it can be used as a logical .subject, although its function then, I would maintain, is no longer to signify but to denote. 22 If the predicate, as such, is always universal, one may ask about its relationship to what, in Scholastic philosophy, is known as the logical universal, since the "quasi property" of this universal is commonly said to consist in its capacity to be predicated of many individuals; and this discussion may shed .some light on the question mentioned a short time ago about the possibility of knowing a universal without reference to any particulars. If the classic work of John of St. Thomas 23 be taken as representative, the Scholastic understands the logical universal as the abstracted nature conceived by the mind as in relation to the individuals from which it has been abstracted, and as capable of being predicated of them. As abstract, possessing unity through precision from its inferiors, and as negatively common it is apt to be in many inferiors; and such aptitude is the foundation of logical universality. Formally, however, the logical universal regards the aptitude of the abstracted nature to be predicated of its inferiors; it is the relation of universality 22 For some reflections in the preceding three paragraphs I am indebted to Fr. P. Bearsley, S. M., in the first (unpublished) part of his dissertation Some Fundamental Features of Human Empirical Knowledge presented at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas, Rome, 1973. •• Ars Logica, II, q. 3, a. 5; 2nd. ed., by Reiser, 0. S. B. (Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus, Torino, 1948), pp. 333-336. ON JUDGlNG EXlSTENCE 527 conceived by the mind as existing between that nature and its inferiors, in so far as that nature can exist in them as identified with them; and this is a logical, not a real, relation, for it exists only in so far as it is thought. The " quasi property " of such a relation is predicability or the aptness to be referred to many under the aspect of predication. The relation of actual predication follows on this. The first thing to note is that it is not the same thing to know a universal, for which one act of simple apprehension by the mind seems to be sufficient, and to know it formally as universal. For this there is needed not only a complex apprehension through which it is known in relation to a determined subject, but many such apprehensions, since, in most cases at least, it has to be .seen in relation to different subjects. Thus, John of St. Thomas points out that to know the universal as such one must have positive knowledge of the term from which it has been abstracted. 24 A concept, by itself alone, does not reveal its universality. The fact that I have a concept of redness does not in any way make known that this quality may be found in many different objects. For this I must have recourse to experience, for it is my experience of a spatio-temporal order of reality that provides the notion of a merely numerical multiplicity:· The abstract nature represented in the concept exhibits itself as essentially one, and as capable of being participated by many individuals; but this latter aspect comes to light only when the nature is set in relation to its inferiors. In other words, and as again John of St. Thomas notes, inferiors are known as inferiors only when known as able to contain and contract the universal nature. 25 He seems to have no doubt that, in order to know a universal, one must first know of the existence of its inferiors: " The existence of many individuals can alone be the foundation for a universal unity to be abstracted and rendered apt for predication." 26 What at any rate seems to be ••Ibid., 334a45-bl 7. ••Ibid., 336bl 7-!l7. •• Ibid., b " Existentia autem plurium individuorum solum potest esse fundamentum, ut abstrahatur unitas universalis et reddatur apta ad istam praedicationem." AMBROSE MCNICHOLL agreed on by most Scholastics is that the logical universal is formally known as such when it is known as apt to be predicated of its inferiors. In that case, it can be distinguished formally from the predicate in so far as, when so used, it is tied only to one inferior by actual predication, whereas as universal it connotes the possibility of being referred to many such inferiors. The Scholastics who write on this subject seem to assume that predication is the actualization of the aptitude of the universal to be referred to an inferior as existing in it and identified with it. This, if I am not mistaken, implies that for a universal nature to be seen in relation to a given inferior there is no need of a second concept. If, therefore, to judge is, in essence, to relate the universal nature to an individual instance of it, there is no need of two concepts, although, as I shall later point out, there is need of two apprehensions, as far as the normal judgment is concerned. Moreover, if the logical universal is known as apt to be predicated of many inferiors, it is natural for the act of predication to follow immediately. This may perhaps imply that, in normal and direct forms of knowing, there never is a concept without a judgment, since the concept is always, in such cases, derived from some experienced object, and therefore spontaneously grasped in relation to it. I am inclined to think that such is indeed the case. This would help to explain why Descartes, Malebranche, Renouvier and Kant regarded the judgment as the first act of the mind (for Descartes, of the will) , and why Kant, dissatisfied with the prevailing logical theory of judgment, looked for its explanation by reference to the unity of apperception. 27 If, finally, one looks for what the Scholastic would regard as the ontological background to the view that particular and empirical judgments are primary for man, he will doubtless be led to the teaching that every concept of ours is a determination of the concept of being, which includes, actually though only implicitly and in a confused way, all that is. Whatever we •1 KrV, Anal. Concept., c. 2, sect. 8; A 90-94. ON JUDGING EXISTENCE 5i9 conceive, we conceive as " a being that is ... ," even though it is only the metaphysician who is attentive to the " being" component of his concept and to its implications; precisely because this component is ever-present it is taken for granted and neglected, if not denied. Although the word " being" is usually translated as " that which is," and this is certainly part of the content of the concept, yet, for St. Thomas, what is expressed in the concept of being is primarily and directly existence itself, not as factual givenness, but as the act of existence, the immanent source of actuality, perfection and intelligibility in all that is.28 Every other concept, therefore, carries, through this primary concept of being, a relation to the existential order, even when we think of a non-existent object, for this is conceived on the analogy of an existent one. The function of the subject in judgment is to express this existential reference; it is not that of representing something that is abstract. This is shown most clearly in the singular judgment; and that is at least one reason why this type of judgment can lay claim to be the most typical and basic type among all the many kinds possible to the human mind. The subject of such a judgment is certainly not an abstract concept, nor a term representing one; it is a particular, represented by a term whose function is to denote it. I would sum up this section by suggesting that there are two fundamental types of judgment: one that is simple and elementary; the other complex and derived. The simple type is that in which the subject does not signify or represent but denotes; and what it denotes is a particular known through experience. Such a judgment may be either existential or attributive, the former when what is said to belong to the subject is existence itself as expressed by the act of judging; the latter when a conceived form is expressed as a predicate and attri28 Cf. In I Sent. 8, 4, 2 ad 2: "Ens autem non dicit quidditatem, sed solum actum essendi, cum sit principium ipsum; " In I met. 4.2: 553: " Hoc vero nomen ens imponitur ab actu essendi; " 556: " hoc autem nomen ens significat ipsum esse; " De vei'. I.I ad 3 in cont.: "Ratio autem entis ab actu essendi sumitur, non ab eo cui convenit actus essendi." 530 AMBROSE MCNICHOLL buted to the subject. In the complex type of judgment the subject is indeed a concept but, by being used as subject its function is not to signify (although of course it retains its signification) but to denote in a mediated way .something existent, while the predicate is a conceived form that is attributed to it; and many of these complex judgments are classificatory. The existential aspect of such a judgment comes to light if it is equivalently expressed in this way: that being S (existent, or conceived on the analogy of existent being) which is member of class xis also member of class. y, for all values of S. In order therefore to discover the nature of the act of judging one should examine the first, or simple, type; and since the pure existential judgment presents special difficulties it is advisable to consider first the attributive existential judgment, and then to pass on to the judgment that predicates existence alone. The Attributive Existential, (Concrete Judgment) Since the subject of this type of judgment (e.g.: "this table is oval; " " Peter is a clerical student ") is singular it does not signify or express a concept. Its function is to denote a singular existent being. The speaker could just as well indicate this individual thing by pointing with his finger-which is tantamount to saying" this "-and at the same time uttering the predicate. This predicate signifies some element, essential or accidental, in the make-up of the thing so indicated; for short it can be termed essential in so far as it does not, of itself, have to do with the existential order, for it is, as such, universal and abstract. It is represented by means of a concept which has been obtained by abstraction. The fundamental structure of this kind of judgment, therefore, would appear to consist in this: that a formal element of the known object is abstracted and represented in the mind by a concept, and that it :functions as a predicate when it is referred to the object :from which it has been abstracted and which is denoted by the subject term. The judgment is the attribution of such a form (P) to that subject. There is no question of a comparison of one concept with ON JUDGING EXISTENCE 581 another but of a universal concept, which expresses some intelligible aspect of the known object, with the actual entity which has been known in the first place. The identity expressed in the judgment is found, not in the mental order, but in the existential order, since that entity which is denoted by the subject is identically the same entity in which the formal element signified by the predicate has been apprehended. This implies that, from the Scholastic point of view at least, one has to distinguish here between a direct and an indirect type of knowing. The judgment involves direct knowledge in which an intelligible aspect of the known object, obtained through abstraction, is represented in the concept which is an intrinsic constituent of the immanent act of knowing. It also involves knowledge of the individual entity in which that intelligible form has been grasped; and this entity, the real object of knowledge, is reached only indirectly by the mind in so far as it remains in " continuation " 28 a with it through the whole sensitive process by which objects are in the first place known. Singular beings, as such, are known only in this indirect way, by what St. Thomas calls "conversio supra phantasma," 29 by a certain " refiexio " 30 or return through the sense faculties to the object in its individuality. The judgment, therefore, presupposes two apprehensions. One is direct, by which the universal concept is formed which is to play the role of predicate in the judgment. The other is indirect; it does not result in the formation of a new concept but brings the mind back to the individual object perceived through the mediation of the senses, and allows the conceived form to be attributed to it as to its subject. St. Thomas sums all this up in his usual terse way in a text which also indicates that, for him, our basic judgments have to do with singular objects known by means of the senses: " In human beings the complete judgment of the intellect is aDe ver., 10, 5. Cf. ST la, 84, 7; 85, I ad S, ad 5; 5 ad 2; 86, I; 2a2ae, 173, 3; In 3 anim. 8 (713). ••De ver., 10, 5 ad 2; De anim. 20 ad l in contr. 2 •• 29 582 AMBROSE MCNICHOLL chieved through' conversion' back to sense objects, which are the first beginnings (principia) of our knowledge, as was pointed out in the First Part." 81 This is, as far as I can see, what some Scholastic writers 82 mean when they say that the judgment requires a complex apprehension, or that thought, in judging, moves on two levels. By a concept one thinks an individual being as an essence but, since this is a simple apprehension, one cannot distinguish the two levels. Only when the reference to existent reality is explicitly grasped can the concept be seen in relation to the object from which it was derived, and this level (of indirect apprehension) be recognized as distinct from the level of simple apprehension. This entails a certain reflection on the process by which the abstract concept has been formed, a reflection which is spontaneous and which allows the singular to be attained as such. Since the object is now attained under two distinct formalities; e.g. as Peter and as a student, the judgment is possible and follows naturally. The relation to the object can then be seen to characterize the intellect and to reveal its nature. In other words, the intellect can, in this reflective way, grasp its own nature as ordained to what is real. 83 It is by reason of this reflection that the concept is able to function as a predicate. The concept, for instance, of " whiteness," cannot be a predicate in a concrete judgment unless it is referred to a subject; then it is no longer "whiteness" but " white," as when one pronounces: " this paper is white." The predicate, originally at least, is not signified by an abstract term but by a concrete one which implies a reference to the subject. I will return to this point in a moment. 81 "In nobis perfectum iudicium intellectus habetur per conversionem ad sensibilia, quae sunt prima nostrae cognitionis principia, ut in Primo habitum est" (ST 2aitae, 173, 3). cf. De ver. 12, 3 ad 2; 28, 3 ad 6. 32 E.g., J. Isaac, 0. P.: "Sur la connaissance de la verite," Revue de Sciences Philosophiques et Theologiques, 3ft (1948), pp. 887-850. He agrees (pp. 888-840, 848) that the judgment does not require two concepts, and that our primary judgments bear on singular facts. 88 The role of reflection is basic in any consideration of the truth of the judgment. In these pages I am concerned only with the nature of judgment. ON JUDGING EXISTENCE 588 Although the judgment, as formulated, requires two terms it does not imply two concepts, but it does imply two apprehensions. The subject, as such, does not represent a concept. What it does represent is that kind of knowing which is called indirect and which leads the intellect, immediately or mediately, to the object from which the whole knowing process begins and which is either an actual existent or, if it is internal to the knower himself, is grasped on the analogy of such an existent. The subject, therefore, is a pure medium leading to that object in which the formality signified by the predicate-concept has has been apprehended. Its function is correctly described as denoting or indicating. The simple and essential nature of the act of judging is revealed in the action of a person who, without expressly forming a proposition, indicates by pointing with his hand a definite object, at the same time uttering the predicate, e.g., "red," or " student." The etymology of the word "predicate " bears this out, for it seems that the word comes from the root " deik " whose original meaning is: to show or indicate.84 When the predicate of a judgment is said to be an abstracted form which is referred, by means of the subject, to the object in which it was apprehended, the word "abstract" is not to be taken verbally, as meaning" obtained through abstraction;" and this is true of all concepts. What is obtained in this way may, however, be designated either by means of a concrete term or by means of an abstract one, depending on the type of abstraction in question. Our primary judgments are those which make use of concrete terms, such as " man," " red," "moving," which denote concrete and singular beings, whereas judgments using abstract terms (humanity, redness, motion) are secondary and derived. The concrete term signifies the universal in so far as it is a whole; it designates individuals according to that which they all have in common, while it does not explicitly express that by which one such individual differs ••Cf. A. Emout et A. Meillet: Dicticmnaire etymologique de la langue latine, 3rd. ed., Paris, 1951, p. 307 (Dieere). 534 AMBROSE MCNICHOLL from another. In this kind of judgment the same thing is known in two different ways, universally (by means of a concept) and in its singularity (by means of the "return to the senses.") . Abstract terms ref er to those notions which, in Scholastic terminology, are obtained through formal abstraction, although St. Thomas also uses the term " precision," in so far as the universal prescinds from the individuating material conditions of the singular existent. Those authors who see the judgment as consisting of two concepts seem to have this kind of concept in mind, perhaps because they are most common in the sciences. But these notions are not the ones which are originally and spontaneously formed in the mind, as are those generic and specific ones which are expressed in concrete terms and predicated of individuals. These are obtained by what is called total abstraction. The notion expressed in an abstract term is the fruit of a further mental process, one which is more constructive than abstractive. For not only does the knower prescind from the subject in which the form is realized but the abstract notion is considered, in a quasi-fictitious manner, as though it were a form given in itself. Whiteness, for instance, is treated as if it were a pure form, and almost as though it were a substance in itself. 35 No one will doubt that it is possible to form judgments which employ only such abstract terms, as, for example, when one says: " truth is found in conformity of the mind with reality; " or: " morality is regulation of action by right reason." The speculative sciences, and especially philosophy, make constant use of this type of judgment, which does not seem to have any immediate relation to individuals. However, one may note first of all that, if such abstract terms are to function as subject in an assertion, they must always be understood, not as simply abstract, but as qualified by a genitive which is implicitly un85 Cf. chap. l ("La notion centrale du realisme thomiste: !'abstraction,") of G. Van Riet's Problemes d'Epistemologie, Louvain/Paris, 196(), where the well-known texts of St. Thomas on abstraction are quoted and discussed. ON .tUDGIN"cially cc. 9 and 1(}. The same ideas are found in his Being and Some Toronto, 1949. 556 AMBROSE MCNICHOLL al being. Existence in this sense (i.e. "to exist") can only be expressed in the judgment, and indeed only in the pure existential judgment, as when I affirm: "Peter is." To conceive actual existence is to transform it into an abstract formality, and to transfer it from the existential to the essential order; and if it were a predicate, the existential judgment (e.g." being is ") would be turned into an ideal and essential one (" being is being ") . In other words, in the judgment " being is existing," the copula either has an existential function, and the judgment would be equivalent to "being exists existing," an evident tautology, or the copula has only the function of uniting subject and predicate, and then the judgment would not affirm existence, and the meaning would be " being is being." 89 Gilson is thus forced to conclude that while the attributive judgment consists of two concepts joined by the copula (which does not then signify actual existence), the pure existential judgment has no predicate. It is composed of a subject and of the act of existing; and the verb " is " is not then a copula, but simply the affirmation of the act of existence. It is by this act of judgment alone that actual existence is grasped. Gilson has the uncanny knack of sensing, as it were, the direction in which a co.rrect solution to a problem may be found, although he is not always so successful in working out the details of that solution. I find it difficult to accept his contention that the attributive existential judgment (e.g. "Peter is studying ") is not really existential, for such a judgment does surely assert not only that Peter is a student but also that he is a really existing being. Moreover, the pure existential judgment is left, so to speak, hanging in the air, as though no conceptual activity preceded or prepared it. But even if there were no preceding concept of actual existence this would not mean that it was unknown. The knowing activity which results in the concept of the object as known (e.g., as student, or as being) comprises the whole process of " continuation ••For similar views cf. E. Brisbois: "Qu'est-ce l'existence," in Rev. Phu. Louvain 48 (1950)' pp. 185-219. ON JUDGING EXISTENCE 557 through sense " which links the intellect to the concrete and existing object; and it is this indirectly representative knowledge-intellectual as well as sensitive-that finds expression in the verb and in the judgment. The fact that there is no adequate concept of actual existence does not imply that there is no knowledge of it; and it is precisely such knowledge that, as Gilson insists, can find adequate expression only in the judgment. One might say that the judgment has reference to actual existence by reason of its subject, not by reason of the predicate which, as such, is an abstract formality. While Gilson opens up the interesting possibility of a judgment which has no concept, he also affirms that there is no predicate in the pure existential judgment. This might lead one to suspect that here there is really no judgment at all, especially if one retains the " two concept " notion of judgment; and it could seem to cast doubt on the notion of judgment which I have put forward as being the simple act by which the intellect refers a conceived form to the object denoted by the subject. Here one must start from facts; and it can hardly be denied that the pure existential judgment is truly a judgment. If I am asked whether such a thing as a space-ship or a laser beam exists, and I reply that it does, I surely intend to make an assertion; so too the servant of the German noble visiting Italy who scribbled "Est! Est! Est! " on the inn in Montefiascone to indicate that he had found excellent wine there. Nor does the judgment need to have a predicate, at least in the opinion of St. Thomas, who writes: " a simple enunciation can be formed from just a noun and a verb, but not from other parts of speech without these." 9-0 When he says that in the phrase " Socrates is" the "is" must be taken as a substantial predicate 91 he means that " is " in its full and proper sense is attributed only to substances, while all other kinds of being are said to be only 00 " Potest autem ex solo nomine et verbo simplex enuntiatio fieri, non autem ex aliis orationis partibus sine his " (In 1 perih. I, 6) . •1 In 5 meta. 9.896. 558 AMBROSE MCNICHOLL in a certain manner. 92 He combines these considerations in the following passage: " This verb ' is ' is sometimes predicated in itself in the enunciation, as when one says ' Socrates is: ' by which we intend to signify nothing else than that Socrates really exists. Sometimes however ' is ' is not predicated in itself, as principal predicate, but as joined to the principal predicate in order to connect it to the subject; as when one says' Socrates is white ' it is not the intention of the speaker to affirm that Socrates really exists but to attribute whiteness to him by means of the verb ' is; ' and hence in such cases ' is ' is predicated as joined to the principal predicate." 93 From this it appears that the judgment, simply as such, does not require more than the subject and the verb; and since the subject of the judgment, as such, is not a concept, for its role is to denote rather than to signify, it follows that there can be a judgment without any concept at all. This implication mu.st, at fir.st sight, appear paradoxical and disconcerting. Yet it must be remembered-and this probably is the main. point which Gilson wished to make-that the pure existential judgment is unique, since other forms do require at least one concept. The reason why this judgment is unique is that, as Kant had noted, but not for the reason he gave, existence as actually exercised cannot be a predicate in the same formal way as other aspects of real being; it cannot figure as the third term in a judgment and at the same time retain its properly existential value. The predicate, as third term in the judgment, always expresses some formal determination of the subject; but actual existence is not a form but that by which every form is rendered actual. "Any Quodl. 9.3. Hoc verbum est quandoque in enuntiatione praedicatur secundum se; ut cum dicitur So!Yl'ates est: per quod nihil aliud intendimus significare quam quod Socrates sit in rerum natura. Quandoque vero non praedicatur per se, quasi principale praedicatum, scd quasi coniunctum principali praedicato ad connectendum ipsum subiecto; sicut cum dicitur So!Yl'ates es.t albus non est intentio loquentis ut asserat Socratem esse in rerum natura, sed ut attribuat ei albedinem mediante hoc verbo est; et ideo in talibus est praedicatur ut adiacens principali praedicato " (In 2 perih. 2.2rn). 92 98 " ON JUDGING EXISTENCE 559 form is compared to existence itself as potency to act;" 94 for " existence is the actuality of every form or nature . . . hence existence itself must be compared to the essence which is other than itself, as act to potency." 95 In general, for St. Thomas at any rate, " existence itself is the most perfect of all things: ... it is the actuality of all things and even of forms themselves. Hence it is not compared to others as that which receives to that which is received, but rather as that which is received to that which receives." 96 The actuality expressed by existencemore accurately, one should say by "existing "-can only be represented by the fullest actualization of knowledge; and this is the act of judgment. The psychology of judgment, within the Thomistic tradition at least, seems to demand this. The knower, as actually knowing, is identical (intentionally, not physically) with what is known, in respect of the formality under which the object is attained. Knowledge implies intentional identity between the knower and the essence-or some formal aspect-of what is known. But it is precisely the actual existence, the physical "existing," of the known object, and of the knower, that distinguishes one from the other. With regard to this" existing" there can be no identification, and hence no adequate conceptual knowing. The only act of the intellect that is able to grasp actual existence as completely actual is the judgment, always presupposing that it is the final phase of a unified process, intellectual and sensitive, that reaches continuously from mind to object; for it is by means of the senses, and principally the sense of touch, that we come into contact with the world of physically existent beings, just as the only way in which actual •• " Forma aliqua comparatur ad ipsum esse ut potentia ad acturn " (De anim. 6 ad 8). 95 " Esse est actualitas omnis formae vel naturae ... oportet igitur quod ipsurn esse cornparetur ad essentiam quae est aliud ab ipso, sicut actus ad potentiarn " (ST la 8.6). 96 " Ipsurn esse est perfectissirnurn ornniurn: . . . est actualitas ornniurn rerurn et etiarn ipsarurn forrnarurn. Unde non cornparatur ad alia sicut recipiens ad recepturn: sed rnagis ut receptum ad recipiens " (ibid., 4.1 ad 8; cf. De pot. 7.2 ad 9). 560 AMBROSE MCNICHOLL existence can reveal itself to us is through action. It is also presupposed, in Thomistic psychology, that what knows is, strictly speaking, neither the intellect nor the sense faculty, but the person, the individual knower, whose substantial unity (of soul and body) is reflected in the dynamic unity of the one knowingprocess which integrates both intellectual and sense elements. 07 What is lacking in the conceptual phase, and present in the judging phase of knowing as one of its distinguishing marks, is the consciousness of this distinction, as regards real existing, between the knower and what is known. The knower is aware that his physical existence is distinct from that of the known object. The actual existence of the object is known even though it cannot be adequately conceptualized; and it is this knowledge which finds expression in the act of judgment, which is therefore rightly characterized as the act by which existence is either affirmed or denied. Perhaps this is what St. Thomas has in mind when, contrasting the " simplex notitia," involved in all kinds of knowing, with " scientia visionis," he says that the latter has to do with what is " extra genus notitiae," as, for example, when there is question of the knowledge of the existence of things. 08 This curious phrase seems to indicate that, for him, the knowledge of existence is of a quite different kind from all other ordinary kinds. In another place, he draws a contrast between the way an angel knows existence (as concretely exercised in the existent being) and the human way. The human intellect's connatural way is to know concrete forms and concrete existing in abstraction, " per modum resolutionis cuiusdam." 99 This phrase seems to stand for the indirect type of knowing implied in the " return to the senses." The pure existential judgment would then express the basic orientation of the intellect towards its primordial object, namely being as primarily .signifying existence as act. This basic thrust of the mind underlies all its conceptual activity, and can therefore 97 Cf. De ver. 2.6 ad S; SS.IS ad 7; In de anim. 1.101.52; De anim. 19; Quorll. 9.7; ST la 75.2 ad 2. cf. B. Lonergan: Collection, New York, 1967, c. 14. •• De ver. S.S ad 8; cf. 1.2 ad 8. •• BT la 12.4 ad 8· 561 ON JUDGING EXI.ENCE be described as intuitive, or even-to use Heidegger's favorite phrase-pre-conceptual, a pre-grasp (Vorgriff) of being as existence. The author who, to my mind, has made the most successful, or at least the most interesting, attempt to unravel the kind of knowing involved in the pure existential judgment is Maritain,100 whose theory I shall try to summarize as best I can. The background to his theory is formed, if I am not mistaken, by the convergence in his mind of two trends of thought which seem to have developed independently of each other before he realized that they could and should be fused. One trend led to the ,recognition of the primacy, in the philosophy of St. Thomas, of existence as act. 101 The other was a growing awareness of the importance for St. Thomas of the kind of knowing called " by connaturality " 102 which Maritain explained as an intuitive and pre-conceptual, although intellectual, knowledge which is :it work when we know either ourselves or singular material beings,103 and which is operative in the artist as creative intuition where an affective element plays the role normally filled by the concept.w 4 Maritain begins by recalling that our concepts are normally derived by way of abstraction which employs the internal image of the known object. The usual kind of judgment, which is attributive, makes use of a predicate obtained in this abstractive manner and which signifies some formal aspect of the object, which it then attributes to the subject. In this way one can form the concept of existence, in the same way namely as 100 "Reflexions sur la nature blessee et sur !'intuition de l'etre," in Revue Thomiste 68 (1968), pp. 5-40. 101 Cf. " L'Existentialisme de saint Thomas," in Esistenzialismo (Acta Pont. Academiae Romanae S. Thomae Aq., Nova Series, vol. 13), Roma, 1947, pp. 40-64; Court traite de l'e:i:istence et de l'existant, Paris, 1947, ch. l, pp. 42-60 (English version: Existence and the Existent, New York, 1956, pp. 82-44). 102 Cf. ST 2a2ae 45.2; and la 1.6 ad 8. 10 • Cf. "On Knowledge through Connaturality," in Review of Metaphysics, 4 (1951) pp. 478-481; The Range of Reason, London, 1958, ch. 8. 10 • Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry, New York, 1958 (Meridian PB, 1955), chs. S-4. AMBROSE MCNICHOLL one forms the concept of any other reality, and this concept of existence can function as predicate in the attributive judgment. But this concept belongs to what, in Aristotelian terminology, is known as the first degree of abstraction. It signifies existence as it is normally understood in everyday, or nonphilosophical, language; and "to exist" in this sense is simply "to be there" (etre la), to be present in the world of the speaker, as when one affirms that the presence of a spy in the military forces is certain. This is what modern Thomists refer to as " esse in actu " as distinct from " esse ut actus; " and Maritain proposes to use the Heideggerian term Dasein to signify existence in this sense. It is well expressed in the French phrase: " il y a." This concept follows on the sense knowledge by which the singular existent being is reached. When, for instance, I know a rose, I form a sensible image of some aspect of it, e.g. its color, which is due to the intentional (in the cognitive sense) action of the rose on the eye. When the intellect, making use of the image, forms the concept of color, it is also conscious of the act of seeing insofar as it depends on the intentional activity of the rose, and therefore it is also conscious of the existence of the rose. In other words, existence is already known; it is present to the mind, and hence spiritualized, but only in remote potency since it is present only mediately as implied in the consciousness of the act of seeing. Existence is then known by means of a concept. There is explicit knowledge of the object but only implicit knowledge of its existence. One who knows that " the rose is there" does not yet explicitly know the existence of the rose, for he knows the presence of the rose only by means of a concept which is not its adequate substitute. The existence is known in the way in which a form is known, as though it belonged to the order of essence rather than of actual existence; and there is no explicit recognition, at this level, of the distinction of existence from essence. This type of existential judgment can be called a judgment of presence. In it the subject is attained as present in the world of the speaker; ON JUDGING EXISTENCE 563 what it says, in effect, is: this is here. The existence in question is not existence as such but as relative to the world of things. The existential reference belongs, in the copulative assertion, to the subject and predicate rather than to the copula, whereas in the truly existential judgment it belongs to the copula; and this first concept of existence, although in itself analogical, is used as if it were univocal, since it simply means: " present to my world." The intellect makes use of this concept 0£ existence (as Dasein) in three main ways. First of all, in ordinary language about things, as when one says: " Peter is there." The " is " in this case functions merely as copula, and only the " there " is used existentially as referring to a particular subject. What " is " then does is to attribute " there " to such a subject. In the second place, the concept of existence is used in the same way in the natural sciences, as when one asserts: " the dinosaur no longer exists," i.e., is no longer present in our world. Finally, it is also so used in natural philosophy (which moves in the first degree of abstraction), and in such philosophical systems as Dialectical Materialism where it has the additional meaning of " to make, or produce." Maritain thinks that it is also in this sense that it is used by Phenomenologists, and that the constant temptation for the Christian philosopher is to conceive existence only in this way, for instance when he speaks of the existence o:f God, as though God simply were" there", in some kind of invisible world; and he suspects that Heidegger thought of existence only in this way. It is possible, however, to raise this concept to the third degree of abstraction. The philosophers who are truly metaphysicians can do this if they realize that the concept of being is analogical; yet, if they lack the intuition of " existing " as such, or reach it only implicitly, they still have only conceptual knowledge of it. This was the case with Bergson, who conceived being as duration, as distinct from Spinoza who conceived being as univocal. It is also true, for Maritain, of Aristotle whose intuition of being centered on essence rather than on existence, 564 AMBROSE MCNICHOLL and who thought of being in the same way as the other transcendental notions, so that existence was conceived as though it were some kind of essence. Such a concept is obtained through abstraction in the third degree. It can not only precede the genuine intuition of existence and being but can block it, in so far as existence is then conceived on the pattern of other acts, for instance in the way that " to understand " is called an act in relation to the intellect. There is a fundamental difference between the two cases, for, with regard to understanding, the intellect is already presupposed as existing, whereas the intellect, or any other power, is nothing at all if it does not actually exist. To make clear the difference between these two usages of existence as Dasein one could say that in the simple judgment of presence (in the first degree of abstraction) , existence is reached as just a fact (as given in the world), whereas in the metaphysical judgment (in the third degree of abstraction) it is reached as act but as not intrinsically different from other acts. In order to gain adequate knowledge of existence in its uniqueness as the actuality of all acts one has to pass beyond this essentialized notion of existence; and this can only occur when the mind reaches an intuition of actual existence pure and simple. Such an intuition is embodied in a judgment, but not in any attributive kind of judgment. This is the pure existential judgment, what may be called the metaphysical existential judgment, which differs from all others, and finds expression in such words as: " I am; reality is; things exist." Through this intuitive judgment existence as act is spiritualized, no longer only in potency but in act, by means of an intellectual act (the intuitive judgment) which is proportionate to existence in its unique actuality. By this judgment the act of existence is posited in the mind as proportionate to existence as it a.eluates and gives reality to things which exist independently of the mind. Through such a judgment one has knowledge of existence, but there is no concept; it is the act of judging, not ON JUDGING EXISTENCE 565 a concept, which corresponds to existence itself as unique act. Once this intuitive judgmental act has taken place the intellect is able to reflect on it, and by so doing to form the properly metaphysical concept of existence as act. Such a concept is different from all others, for it has not been obtained through abstraction (which would turn it into a form) but through reflection on an intuition through which existence as act is adequately represented in the mind. This concept of existence is in the third degree of abstraction; it is fully metaphysical. It alone does justice to the unique reality and perfection of existence, and hence Maritain proposes to refer to it as Sein. This concept, therefore, does not precede the intuitive judgment but follows it as the conceptual expression of what has been made present to the mind through the previous act of judgment. A Thomist would hardly quarrel with Maritain over that basis of his theory which is the uniqueness of the properly metaphysical notion of existence as act. Nor would he question the power of the intellect to grasp being as existential. It is clear that, for St. Thomas, what the intellect knows as its direct and primary object is being; rn 5 and being means, first of all, actual existence (cf. n. 7 above). It is presumably for this reason that Maritain can speak of the basic grasp of existence as an intuition. His distinction of existence as Dasein from existence as Sein agrees with that of " existence in act " from " existence as act " in the terminology favored by other existential Thomists, and it clarifies existence in act by invoking the notion of presence. Such distinctions enable one to go along with authors like Regis when they hold that the " to be " of judgment cannot refer to actual existence, since no concept is able to represent existence as act. This may be one reason why they regard the judgment as formed by the union of two concepts. Maritain's theory, now opposing this view, has all the more value since he himself formerly advocated it; and it explains why the " to i,os 10 • 10 • Cf. ST la2ae 94.2; C. g1mt, 2.88, etc. Epistemology, pp. 821 ff. 566 AMBROSE MCNICHOLL be" of judgment does not usually refer to existence as act, while it does lead thought back to the existential order. Fabro would apparently side with Maritain on this point, to judge by what he had written ten years before Maritain's article appeared. 107 There he maintains that the existence affirmed in judging is not formally recognized either as distinct from essence or as that real and intrinsic principle which is the act of all acts and the proper effect of God; only metaphysicians-and indeed very few of them-can reach this notion of existence. The judgment, as such, affirms only actual existence (esse in acfa) , that factual givenness which can be affirmed of every existent, whether in the physical or in the mental order, whether substantial or accidental. The judgment, as such, has to do with different modes of "being actual "-what Maritain calls Dasein-although all such modes are ultimately grounded in existence as act. This enables us to preserve the notion of judgment as affirming that a form is in a subject, in whatever realm of being to which that subject belongs. The "there" of the judgment of presence can be interpreted as such a form. As a result, the property of the judgment, as distinct from the concept, lies in its power to express this mode of existing, namely, existence in a subject. The kind of existence in question will depend on the type of subject, which may be logical, mathematical, scientific, poetical, physical or metaphysical. 108 Comparing the theories of Maritain and Fabro on the one hand, and that of Regis on the other, it appears that they approach the question of the " esse " attained by judgment from different standpoints. Regis, doubtless due to his "two concept " theory of judgment, is forced to the conclusion that the judgment can affirm only the mode of " esse," namely the way that a form is realized in a subject. This conclusion is confirmed by the consideration that " since we cannot give to the ipsum esse rei of judgment the meaning of act of existing as pure actuality, the only remaining possibility is to give it the 10 • 108 Partecipazione e causalita, pp. 52-68; 285-236. Cf. also Lonergan, Verbum, p. 66, n. S!il. ON Ju:t>GING EXISTENCE meaning of mode of exiffting '' (op. cit., p. 329). This confirmation, however, overlooks the possibility that the judgment, as such, refers neither to esse as pure actuality nor to what is merely a mode of existence, but to that esse by which things are, or are actuai, namely, to factual existence. This leaves Regis with the problem of explaining how the judgment, seen as having for its direct object the mental synthesis of concepts obtained by simple apprehension, can possibly refer to actual existence. The approach of Maritain and Fabro is quite different. They begin from the fact that judgment is characterized by the power to affirm actual existence. From this they go on to show that it is therefore able to express esse as act, and finally as the act of all acts, pointing out that this last function is possible only when he who judges is a true metaphysician. It is precisely because the judgment can express both actual existence and existence as the act of all acts that it is also able to express every mode of existence; while it remains true, as Regis rightly points out, that to express a mode of existence is to signify the existence of a form in a subject, the mode of existence depending on the type of subject in question. This interpretation seems much closer to the thought and to the thoroughgoing realism of St. Thomas. Moreover it fits in with the view that our basic judgments are existential and singular, and that our initial notion of being is not just essential but existential. Returning now to Fabro, we note that he outlines two steps by which we pass from the confused and initial notion of being which lies at the source of all thought to the metaphysical notion of being. The first step is the acquisition of the methodological notion of being as "that which has existence," where there is explicit recognition of the distinction of subject (essence) from act (existence). Aristotle did not get beyond this stage, seeing existence only factually, as the act of essence and as subordinate to it. St. Thomas took the second step, rising to knowledge of existence as the act of all acts and as object of divine causality. Some Thomists, continues Fabro, regard as intuitive this 568 AMBROSE MCNICHOLL knowledge of existence as act of all acts. That they are somewhat uneasy about this is shown by the fact that they refer to this intuition as abstractive, which seems rather contradictory. Maritain's theory offers one way out of this difficulty, while Fabro prefers to speak of " risoluzione " rather than of intuition. The metaphysical notion of being is understood as the term of an ascending process of intellectual clarification of what is meant by potency and act. This, however, demands a foundation in experience and in direct apprehension, and the emergence in consciousness of the ultimate act of existence (esse ut aotus). Hence, he admits, one may speak of an implicit intuition, insofar as this apprehension of existence is co-present whenever an existent is known; and this co-presence is the ground of every other kind of presence. The question that arises at this point is: can such intuitive or semi-intuitive knowledge be properly called a judgment? and it is here that a Thomist would most likely hesitate to agree with Maritain, especially if there is no concept involved in such knowledge. Yet we are dealing with a fully intellectual-or, better, human-act of knowledge; and since what is distinctive of judgment is the power to affirm or deny existence, it can reasonably be maintained that here we do indeed have a judgment, but one that is unique of its kind. As already noted (nn. 90, 93) , no more is needed for the judgment than subject and verb; and since the primary sense of " is " refers to actual existence, the intuition, when formulated by using the copula, would seem to take the form of a judgment. In this connection St. Thomas points out that " this verb ' is ' . . . signifies first of all that which enters into human understanding as absolute actuality: for ' is,' simply as such, signifies ' to be in act,' and hence it signifies in the manner of a verb." 109 At any rate it does seem that reflection on such an act, whether it be truly a judgment or not, could explain how existence may be conceived by the 10 • " Hoc verbum est ... significat primo illud quod cadit in intellectu per modum actualitatis absolutae: nam est, simpliciter dictum, significat in actu esse " (In 1 perih. 5.78). ON JUDGING EXISTENCE 569 genuine metaphysician and yet not be represented in a concept obtained by abstraction and therefore presented as a form rather than as " the actuality of every form." 110 What does seem certain is that this altogether basic level of intellectual knowing, where there is question of the intuitive grasp of reality as existent, does not involve conceptual activity. As Fr. Lonergan says: "Prior to concepts there are insights. A single insight is expressed only by uttering several concepts. They are uttered in conjunction, and reflection pronounces whether the insight and so the conjunction is correct ". 111 What he means is perhaps made clearer in another place: " Being is not reduced through possibility to intelligibility as to prior concepts; being is the :first concept; what is prior to the first concept is, not prior concept, but an act of understanding; and like other concepts, the concept of being is an effect of the act of understanding. Hence, when it was stated above that intellect from intelligibility through possibility reaches being, an attempt was being made to describe the virtualities of the act of understanding in its self-possession, to conceptualize reflectively the pre-conceptual act of intelligence that utters itself in the concept ' being '." 112 It is doubtful that Lonergan would agree with Maritain in calling this" pre-conceptual act of intelligence " a judgment, although he does certainly regard it as an intuition. Quite a lot has been written 1.'ecently on this matter of our pre-conceptual modes of knowing; and foremost among Thomists is D. de Petter, 0. P., 113 whose work has been popularized by his pupil E. Schillebeeckx, 0. P., who sums up this theory for us.114 De Petter, as Schillebeeckx understands him, takes up the same problem as J. Marechal and his followers Ibid. Insight, p. 808. 112 Verbum. Word and Idea in Aquinas, London, 1968, p. 44. 118 Begrip en werkelijkheid, Hilversum, 1964, esp. pp. 25-186; 168-178. 1 " The Concept of Truth and Theological Renewal, London/Sydney, 1968, pp. 18-19, and appendix, pp. 157-206; cf. also his Revelation et Theologie (Approches 110 111 Theologiques, I, Paris, 1965), Part 8, ch. 1. 570 AMBROSE MCNICHOLL (Rahner, Coreth, Lenergan and Donceel especially), agreeing with them that concepts alone cannot lead the mind either to truth or to reality. To do this they must be set in the context of a far wider totality, namely the total knowing activity of the mind; and this wider context includes, as the ground of the validity of knowledge, a non-conceptual element. Marechal was of the opinion that this non-conceptual grounding activity is to be sought, not in intellectual acts themselves nor in their content, but in the dynamic structure of the human spirit as intrinsically orientated towards being, and indeed towards infinite being, and hence, at least implicitly, towards God.115 De Petter suggests that the non-conceptual dimension is to be found in intellectual activity itself insofar as there is a dynamic and objective element in the content of knowledge. The concept, as he sees it, is a limited expression of a prior awareness of reality, an awareness which is not itself expressed since it is implicit and non-conceptual. When man knows, what he knows, i.e., reality, is present to him through a kind of basic awareness which is pre-conceptual and can never be adequately expressed by means of concepts. 116 The knower is conscious11 " For a brief introduction to the " transcendental Thomism " of Marechal and his followers, especially Rahner, cf. G. McCool: A Rahner Reader, London, 1975, especially his introduction and ch. 1. 116 Perhaps this line of thought has links with the theory, foreshadowed by Reid, Jacobi, Schelling and Schopenhauer, and developed by Dilthey and then by Max Scheler and Nicolai Hartmann, which grounds our awareness of existent reality on factors which precede knowledge and pertain to vital or emotive experience. Scheler has given full and explicit attention to this conviction. Actual existence, he contends, is not known but felt. What is known is the essence (Sosein), while value (Wert) is grasped by affective intuition. It is through lived experience (of such phenomena as resistance, effort, etc.) that beings are attained as existing (Dasein) and as real (Realsein). What exists is never given as an object (Gegenstand) but as what resists (Widerstand). Our basic cognitive evidence bears on the relation between our knowledge of essence and our lived experience of existence. This evidence is expressed in the judgment: " something in general exists," and negatively in the judgment: "nothing does not exist;" and every affirmation presupposes the assertion: " something exists." This judgment expresses our most radical philosophical intuition: that being asserts itself over against the abyss of nothingness. Cf. especially his " Idealismus-Realismus," in Philosophischer Anzeiger, II, Bonn 1927 pp. 255-324; Vom Ewigen im Mens.chen, Gesammelte Werke, Bern, V (1955), in particular pp. ll!MIS. ON JUDGING EXISTENCE 571 again in a non-conceptual way-of the inadequacy of his concepts, and he thus transcends his conceptual knowledge. He is cognitively in touch with reality although he cannot give full and explicit expression to this basic type of knowledge. By reason of this "grounding" the concept (as regards its objective content) can refer to reality, even though it cannot lead the mind to it as it is in itself. In other words, the concept, through its objective content, points in the direction of the reality which is known; it provides the objective perspective in which this reality is found, although, as abstract, it is unable to place the mind in possession of it. In this way, the concept retains its own validity, limited though it be; for it, and it alone, as set in the wider context of the non-conceptual awareness of reality, can give meaning and direction to the act of knowing. Knowledge, therefore, includes an experiential (i.e., intellectual but non-conceptual) element together with conceptual thought. If this be the case with all our knowledge of reality, it will be so pre-eminently where the knowledge of actual existence is concerned; and this intellectual though non-conceptual grasp of existent reality may well be what Maritain speaks of as intuition. And since judgment seems to imply reflection, it may be the consciousness of this intuition, as leading to a concept, that finds expression in the pure existential judgment. Since the word "intuition " is ambiguous, and creates difficulties, it might be more advisable to use the term "contuition" favored by some recent writers, although not in quite this particular context. The question however remains: granted that there is such an intellectual intuition, or contuition, can it be called a judgment? Since the normal type of judgment implies a concept, it is possible that this existential intuition, although expressed in the logical form of a judgment, is not really such. Another possibility is that suggested by the later Wittgenstein-repudiating his former opinion, as well as that of B. Russell-that there is no such thing as an ideal, unique and logical structure common to all forms of language, nor therefore of judgment, and 572 AMBROSE MCNICHOLL that every statement functions as it is. Then it would be a mistake to try to reduce all forms of judgment to one basic type which would exhibit the "essence" of judgment, especially if one were to take into account all the mental procedures which belong to the realm of informal logic. As a last resort in the attempt to answer this question one may turn to the study of propositions which, although they may be distinct from assertions, give expression to them and may be taken to reveal something of their nature. It is on this level of enquiry that most of the recent discussions of the thorny problem: "Is existence a predicate? " have moved; and here I would like to refer to the stand taken on this point by B. Miller, all the more so because he seems to have much in common with Maritain. Against the majority of recent writers on this point, but in company with Frege and Geach, 111 he maintains, in my opinion successfully, that "exists" can be a predicate.118 This is shown by distinguishing first from second level predication. At the first level " exists " is said of individuals, and has the sense of " actuality." At the second level it is said of kinds of things, and has the sense " there is ... ". N egl,ect of this basic distinction constitutes a fatal flaw in B. Russell's theory of descriptions, and hence invalidates his thesis that existence can significantly be predicated only of propositional functions. 119 Miller then goes on to indicate a third sense of " exists," one in which it is used as a proposition; this is what he calls its " propositional " sense. He begins by assuming that predicates are incomplete expressions, for they make sense only as part of a propo.sition. He next suggests that such a thing as a logical117 Cf. P. Geach and M. Black (Eds.): Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, Oxford, 1960, p. 146; P. Geach: "Form and Existence," as already quoted, n. 36; "What Actually Exists," Proc. Arist. Soc., Suppl, vol. 42 (1968), pp. 7-16; Three Philosophers (with G. E. M. Anscombe), Oxford, 1961, pp. 88-97. 118 " In Defence of the Predicate 'Exists'," Mind, 84 (1975), pp. 338-354. The chief defenders of the opposing view are quoted on pp. 338 and 339. 11 • Cf. "Proper Names and their Di5tinctive Sense," Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 51 (1973), pp. 201-210; "Proper Names and Suppositio Personalis," Analysis, 154 (1973), pp. 133-137. ON JUDGING EXISTENCE 578 ly simple proposition is not inconceivable. By such a proposition he means "not only that it is not composed of other propositions, but even that it has no sub-propositional logical components, e.g., logical subject, logical predicates, quantifiers, etc." 12 ° Confusion is caused by failing to distinguish theories of predication-which is never logically simple, and theories of proposition. It is possible to conceive of a proposition without subject or predicate, one which functions both referentially and predicatively, and in which both uses are indistinguishable. Such a proposition would have a referent and would affirm something of it. As examples of such propositions he quotes the Rumanian " Fulgura " (literally: " Lightens ") , the German "Es klappert " (literally: " It rattles ") or " Es regnet " (literally: " It rains ") , and such English phrases as: "It is raining," showing that in these instances there is neither logical subject nor logical predicate, for the proposition has complete sense as it stands; although these propositions are logically simple, their ground is ontologically complex.121 The.re is, however, a type of logically simple proposition whose ground is ontologically simple, namely, such propositions as: "Exists," "Is wise," "Is thinking," "Is loving." Among such propositions "Exists" is fundamental. 122 In this case we are not using "exist " twice, once as subject and once as predicate, its functions are simultaneously referential and predicative. It is truly a proposition, with complete sense, and it is logically simple. Miller argues that the logical structure of such existential propositions as " Fido exists" is such that they cannot be true unless " Exists " is true also; and that the Thought and Existence," The New Scholasticism, 48 (1974), p. 426. Logically simple propositions," Analysis, 160 (1974), pp. 123-128. This invites comparison with Strawson's "feature universals;" cf. n. 20. 122 Cf. J. T. Kearns: "The Logical Concept of Existence," Notre Dame Journal, of Formal Logic, 9 (1968), p. 322: " It ("exists'') is the basic concept of an interpreted system (for thinking about individuals), and it cannot be reduced to more fundamental concepts." Quoted by Miller, Mind, op. cit., p. 338, n. 6. 120 " 121 " 574 AMBROSE MCNICHOLL ontological ground of " Exists " is simple, and indeed unique. 128 As the most preferable rendition of its meaning, in ordinary language, he proposes: " Something, and necessarily only one thing, exists necessarily." 124 In other words, if " Exists " is true, it is necessarily true, although the ground of its truth can be shown only on external grounds; 125 and hence, if true, it would imply that God exists. Miller's thesis, particularly as the fruit of a quite different approach, lends support to Maritain's contention that at the source of thought we find an existential affirmation of a unique kind which precedes the conceptual distinction of subject from object, while employing the functions of both. 126 For both Cf. "Thought and Existence," op. cit., pp. 428-435. Making Sense of 'Necessary Existence'," American Philosophical Quarterly 11, (1974), p. 53. On p. 52 he lists four features of the proposition "Exists." 125 He outlines such grounds in "The Contingency Argument," The Monist, 54 (1970), pp. 359-373. 126 A favorable context for both theories is provided by the conviction, shared by many genetic psychologists and sociologists, that while human knowledge implies both experience and conceptualization, experience is not tied of necessity to any one particular form of conceptualization, and that all forms of conceptualization are socio-historically conditioned. They argue that man becomes conscious of his experience through the conceptual scheme which he receives from his social environment. What is first presented to experience, according to this view, is reality as a continuous totality; and consciousness of self develops only when conceptual aids enable him to differentiate out of this continuous reality. This he does first of all by distinguishing some objects that are permanent and mdependent, and then by apprehending his own self-identity through contrast with such objects. The concepts of object and subject are therefore not altogether primary. Before they can originate there is the confused apprehension of reality, what the Thomist would call the initial apprehension of being. This view would confirm the possibility of a basic intellectual type of knowing where there is no explicit logical distinction of subject from obj·ect, yet which implicitly includes both. Heidegger's contention that man has, as his most distinctive characteristic, a pre-ontological and prelogical grasp of Being would also point in the same direction. Indeed it is characteristic of the whole existentialist movement that its starting-point, as a philosophy, is not man as think1lr, as a subject set over against a correlative object, but man as existent, as aware of himself, through immediate experience, as open to others and to the world. Here also experience (the total experience of self-among-others) is taken to precede the conceptualization which allows one to differentiate consciously between self and others. Cf. John Macquarrie (Existentialism, Penguin, 128 12 •" ON JUDGING EXISTENCE 575 authors, this basic type of knowledge is ontologically simple. Maritain explains this simplicity by reference to actual existence as intuited, but he would agree that such an intuition demands, as its ultimate ontological ground, the existence of God. It can hardly be denied that this convergence of two views which, although independent and from different angles, presuppose a common thomistic frame of reference, is significant. Yet, one must recognize that these two authors are dealing with different topics. To accept " Exists " as a proposition does not commit one to holding for the intuitive kind of knowledge of which Maritain speaks; at least, such a necessary correlation remains to be shown. If we do correlate the two theses, the knowledge expressed in " Exists " would seem to correspond to that which Maritain refers to existence as Sein. Yet, since this is grasped, as such, only by the true metaphysician, to correlate " Exists " with Sein may be unduly restrictive. This difficulty could perhaps be met by saying that " Exists " may be a proposition in at least two ways. It could be understood, first, in the same way as such propositions as " Es klappert; " it would then refer to existence as factuality, i.e., on the first level of predication. It could also be understood in its own unique way as an ultimately grounding proposition; and then it could be correlated with Sein (esse ut actus) and through this to God as lpsum Esse. In either case, I think, one is entitled to suggest that at the root of thought there is an intellectual activity of affirmation which finds expression in a proposition which has neither a logical subject nor a logical predicate; and that its correct formulation is simply this: " Exists." To see thought as grounded ultimately in such an existential affirmation is to stress the realism of the intellect, and in particular of its existential judgment. To refer judgment to actual existence as its primary object does not, as some Thomists fear, 1973, p. 58): "The existentialist begins with concrete being-in-the-world a11.d out of this initial unity self and the world arise as equiprimordial realities." 576 AMBROSE MCNICHOLL. entail formal recognition 0£ the distinction between essence and existence. The existence affirmed by the judgment, simply as such, is the " there is ... ," or factual existence, which all can and do know. This implies nothing more than recognition 0£ the difference between presence and absence; and a singular existential judgment 0£ this kind will be found to be presupposed by attributive judgments, for these deal with a subject which must first 0£ all, in some sense or another, be given. Since this prior existence is usually taken for granted, the judgment will usually high-light the form, essential or accidental, which is found in the subject, and will hence be attributive; but it is because the judgment can affirm existence in the more basic sense 0£ " being there," or " being actual," that it can express the manner in which the form exists in the subject. This at any rate seems to be the more obvious meaning 0£ the main texts of St. Thomas already quoted. 121 It is only by properly metaphysical reflection that one passes from this knowledge of existence as factual givenness to knowledge of it as act, and finally as that act which, as an intrinsic principle, actuates the essence and all that is in it, and which, in the la.st analysis, must be explained as caused by God. When actual existence is known in this way it may then be grasped as distinct from the essence which it actuates, insofar as essence and existence are known as two intrinsic principles of really existing beings, and not just, in Suarezian fashion, as two states (i.e., possible and real) of one reality. To hold that the judgment refers to actual existence is not to turn all men into metaphysicians, although they may be potentially such; but it does strengthen the conviction that all men are spontaneously realists. Conclusion The following diagram attempts to show how our various (categorical) judgments may be divided off from each other, on the basis 0£ the theory outlined in this article: 127 Cf. especially notes 72, 75,76, 83, 91, 92 above. 577 ON JUDGING EXISTENCE ( Attributive ( ( ( ( ( Judgment ( ( ( ( (Ideal ( (abstract) ( ( ( (Logical (Mathematical ( Scientific (Physical ( Poetic, etc. ) ) ) ) ) ) (Essential ) ( (e.g.: "Peter) (Real ( is a philos- ) ) (concrete) ( opher "). ( ) ( Existential ) (e.g.: "Peter) is there"). ) Judgment of ) ) presence. "To be in" (inesse) of a form ( (Non-Attributive: Metaphysical ( ( Pure Existen- ) ( tial judgment; > ( (e.g. (" Peter is.") ( (Ultimate (as grounding): " Exists." ) "To be" (esse) ) affir) med as: Factual ( esse in actu) ) "To be as act" ( esse ut actus) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ( ( ( ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) With regard to this division, tentative as it is, it should be noted, first, that it is based on the assumption that ideal judgments always presuppose singular and concrete existential ones, and that these refer to actual existence as £actually given. Further, most ordinary judgments are of the attributive kind. They include a form signified by the predicate which is attributed to that entity which is denoted by the subject. Finally, the peculiarity 0£ what I have called metaphysical judgments, which may have no predicate (in the sense of a form) or even no logical subject, would only show that there is no ideal logical £orm £or all judgments. Hence, as elsewhere, the exception may serve to prove the rule governing ordinary forms of judgment. The diagram will, it is hoped, show clearly that the judgment is the cognitive act by which the mind grasps its object as existent; that it is the primary expression, on the level of 578 AMBROSE MCNICHOLL knowing, of the basic orientation of the intellect to existent reality. It may be purely intuitive, in regard to the act of existing (esse ut actus) . This is ultimately and logically presupposed, at least implicitly, by all other judgments. The consequent and normal activity of judging makes use of the conceptual function of thought, by affirming that the form signified by the concept is found (exists) in the reality denoted by the subject of the judgment; it relates the abstract concept to the existent reality known in the first place. This is apparent in " real " judgments, out of which the intellect can formulate " ideal " ones. The transition to " ideal " judgments lies in correlating different concepts among themselves as all qualifying the same object. This mental uniting could more correctly be called synthesis, or implication, rather than judgment. If the line of argument followed in thi.s article is sound, the conclusion is partially negative: the judgment does not require two concepts, nor does it consist in the mental union of two concepts. Positively, the judgment is adequately explained as that simple and original act by which the intellect attributes a form, signified by a concept, to that being to which it originally belongs and which is denoted by the subject of the judgment. It is not claimed that such attribution is needed for every possible type of judgment, in particular for purely existential ones, but that the normal attributive kind of judgment does not require more than this; and that all judgments imply, directly or indirectly, a reference to what has been known, in the first place, as individual and actually existing. This view of judgment does :full justice to its nature as being, in the words of St. Thomas, the act by which knowledge is brought to completion. 128 It is through this act that the most complete conformity possible for us is established between knowledge and reality. To the dualism of essence and existence in real beings there corresponds, in knowledge, the dualism of concept and judgment. What is represented in the concept per128 ST 2a 2ae, " iusophic Method [London: SCM Press; LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court, 1970), p. xv. Hereafter, cited in text and notes as "CSPM.") But Hartshorne initially arrived at his position independently of Whitehead. " I came to Whitehead already convinced that experience is essentially participation, that any reality we can conceive must be constituted of feeling in some broad sense, that reality is creative process and the future is open even for God . . . that metaphysical freedom is real. . . . The sources of my ideas about God are in good part elsewhere, though I enormously admire Whitehead's discussion of the theistic problem." (In Philosophical, Interrogations ed. by Sydney and Beatrice Rome [New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1964), pp. 8it2-28. See Two Process Philosophers: Hartshorne's Encounter with Whitehead, ed. by Lewis S. Ford [Tallahassee: American Academy of Religion, 1978], chapter 1.) 608 604 R. J. CONNELLY the selector of the detailed goods and evils of the world, Whitehead distinguishes between God and creativity. 2 The concern expressed here is more typical of Hartshorne's works than Whitehead's. One of Hartshorne's strengths through the years has been his clarification of certain basic issues in natural theology. The refrain in many of his writings is: How can we understand the relation between deity and the world so that self-creation is attributable to both? The first paragraph of his systematic metaphysics raises the question as traditional theologians had to deal with it. Later on in CSPM he states: " If the religious issue is as central in metaphysics as it seems to be, to attempt to .settle everything else and only then to ask about ' God ' is to be in danger of begging the chief metaphysical questions." 3 But on the same page Hartshorne seems to say it doesn't really matter where you start. " N eo-classical metaphysics," when its ideas are adequately explicated, is neo-classical natural theology, and vice versa. In three several books I have tried to show, at least in outline, how from the mere idea of God a whole metaphysical system follows; one may also proceed in the opposite direction, and show how from general secular considerations one may arrive at the idea of God and a judgment as to its validity. But the two ways of proceeding differ only relatively and as a matter of emphasis. 4 But even here, Hartshorne suggests that the most important function of philosophy is to clarify the religious issue or theistic question, by whatever means. And the question in a sense dictates the method and kinds of answers to be found. As Hartshorne says, " in metaphysics he who sets the question largely determines what answers can be given." 5 Hartshorne recognizes that Whitehead wa3 more concerned, as I would put it, with the secular issue or the actual world question. 6 But I don't think he realizes how far apart this puts •Whitehead's Philosophy: Selected Essays, 1935-70 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972), p. 138. "CSPM 40. • CSPM 40-1. • Amelm's Discovery (LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court, 1965), p· 159. "CSPM CREATIVITY AND GOD 605 the two process philosophers. Their views on the relation of God to creativity will serve to illustrate the distance. The Actual World Question According to Whitehead The actual world, consisting of a plurality of actual entities, anchors the starting point and development of Whitehead's philosophy of organism. The actual world including ourselves is the basic datum of speculative philosophy. We know nothing beyond this temporal world and the formative elements which jointly constitute its character. The temporal world and its formative elements constitute for us the all-inclusive universe .... The actual temporal world can be analyzed into a multiplicity of occasions of actualization. These are the primary actual units of which the temporal world is composed.7 The world as a plurality of actual entities is given in immediate experience. But Whitehead is careful to distinguish between immediate experience and presentational immediacy. For the theory of the universal relativity of actual individual things leads to the distinction between the present moment of experience, which is the sole datum for conscious analysis, and the perception of the contemporary world, which is the one factor in this datum. 8 " The perception of the contemporary world " is only one mode of perception and not the most significant for grounding philosophical explanation. One persistent error in the history of philosophy is the limitation of immediate experience to the givenness of presentational immediacy. Rather, we" must-to avoid' solipsism of the present moment '-include in direct perception something more than presentational immediacy." 9 The perceptual mode of causal efficacy delivers the more. Because of the latter we can find in the present moment of experience a non-sensuous perception of the "other." "The pre.sent moment is constituted by the influx of the other into that selfidentity which is the continued life of the immediate past within Religion in the Making (New York: Macmillan, 1926), pp. 90, 91. Symbolism (New York: Macmillan, 1927), p. 47. •Process and Reality (New York: Macmillan, 1929), p. 125. Hereafter, "PR." 7 8 606 R. J. CONNELLY the immediacy of the present." 10 The immediate past is made up of actual occasions. This is the most important sense in which the actual world is given in immediate experience. Most important because the mode of causal efficacy provides speculative philosophy with its experiential foundation. Individual efficacious actualities given in this mode are the primary metaphysical data. Ultimately, every metaphysical statement must be capable of being justified in terms of the evidence of immediate experience. This is the background meaning for the ontological principle. But immediate experience in and of itself is a limited resource. In ordinary human experience actual entities are not perceived in their discriminated individuality, in either the mode of presentational immediacy or that of causal efficacy. Immediate experience does not clearly reveal for immediate inspection the characters of actualities. Therefore, it is up to speculative philosophy and the method of descriptive generalization to reconstitute the concretely real by discovering those metaphysical characters which account for actual entities as efficacious forces of process in nature and the sources of our own immediate experience. In other terms, the data of immediate experience necessarily require metaphysical interpretation, for " there are no brute, self-contained matters of fact, capable of being understood apart from interpretation as an element in a system." l.l What should be clear from this discussion is that the concretely real entities given in our immediate experience of the temporal world are the foundation of Whitehead's philosophy of organism. There is no appeal beyond the plurality of actual entities. In fact, the explanatory purpose of philosophy is to approximate concreteness by exhibiting the relation of more abstract entities to the concrete facts of our experience. " The true philosophic question is: How can concrete fact exhibit entities abstract from itself and yet participated in by its own nature? " 12 Adventures of Ideas (New York: Macmillan, 1933), p. 233. Hereafter, "AI." PR 21. 12 PR SO. 10 11 CREATIVITY AND GOD 607 The eategoreal scheme summarizes Whitehead's answer to the question. The Category of the Ultimate in particular expresses what it means "to be " in Whitehead's system. Concrescence, or the becoming of an actual entity, is the root meaning of the really real. And the actual world is the becoming of a plurality of actual entities. In this context, it is obvious that creativity is not an actual entity itself or some external agency. Creativity is precisely that principle of dynamism or fusion intrinsic to all instances of becoming. Selfcreation of actual entities is the ultimate metaphysical principle which defines immediacy or actuality at the present moment. Whitehead intends the category of the ultimate, as well as the rest of the scheme, to represent "tentative formulations of the ultimate generalities," 123 and so be truly metaphysical in scope and application. Nevertheless, these generalizations have been constructed to elucidate our immediate experience of entities in the now actual temporal world. Whitehead's use of the term " actual occasion " in the category of the ultimate and elsewhere in the scheme indicates his obligation to entities in the extensive context of the current cosmological epoch. In sum, the actual temporal world of our experience stimulates the " true philosophic question." Then generalizations based on this experience are metaphysical to the extent that they have application to any and all cosmological epochs. Since Whitehead's method of descriptive generalization is bound from the beginning to the actual temporal world of actual ·entities, metaphysical principles must gain initial credibility in elucidating that actual world. Given this methodological commitment it would necessarily follow that " God is not to be treated as an exception to all metaphysical principles, invoked to save their collapse. He is their chief exemplification." 13 God, like any other actual entity, is subject to metaphysical principles. God is an actual entity, and so is the most trivial puff of existence in far-off empty space. But, though there are gradations of imi2a PR l!l. 11 PR 5U. 608 R.J. CONNELLY portance, and diversities of function, yet in the principles which actuality exemplifies all are on the same level.14 And in contrast with Descartes, Whitehead states: " In the philosophy of organism, as here developed, God's existence is not generically different from that of other actual entities, except that he is ' primordial ' . . ." 15 This allows for distinctiveness but not categoreal distinctiveness. God's rdation to that ultimate metaphysical principle must be described in the same way. In all philosophic theory there is an ultimate which is actual in virtue of its accidents. It is only then capable of characterization through its accidental embodiments, and apart from these accidents is devoid of actuality. In the philosophy of organism this ultimate is " creativity; " and God is its primordial, non-temporal accident. 16 The other " accidents " are the actual entities which make up the actual temporal world. And" Neither God, nor the World, reaches static completion. Both are in the grip of the ultimate metaphysical ground,. the creative advance into novelty." 11 The Theistic Question According to Hartshorne Hartshorne's essay in systematic metaphysics, CSPM, reiterates the notion that dominates most of Hartshorne's metaphysical writings: " a single meaning postulate suffices for metaphysics, the explication of the idea of God." 18 I suggest that CSPM is basically one more exercise guided by the theistic question. But let us look at the alternative he associates with Whitehead's system. Instead of postulating the meaning of " God," we may instead take "concrete entity," concreteness simply as such. Since the abstract presupposes a concrete from which it is abstracted, the general abstraction, " concreteness as such," could not be unexemplified. "PR 28. PR 116. 16 PR 11. 17 PR 529. 15 1 •csPM 2s. CREATIVITY .AND GOD 609 Hence analytic judgments made possible by meaning postulates explicating "concreteness" are necessarily applicable, no matter what the state of affairs may be. Whitehead's metaphysics, for instance, is just the attempted explication of what it is to be concrete (hence also of what it is to be abstract, in so far as the abstract-concrete contrast is inherent in concreteness as such) .19 Hartshorne has not developed this approach in CSPM or elsewhere as far as I can tell. If he had, I suspect the outcome would be much the same. Which is to say, it would still be Hartshorne's metaphysics and not Whitehead's. The above quotation illustrates what metaphysics is all about for Hartshorne. He describes metaphysics " as the study which evaluates a priori statements about existence." 20 " Concreteness as such " fits the description because, according to Hartshorne, this metaphysical abstraction could not possibly conflict with any conceivable experience and must be, to that extent, an "innate idea." Consequently, the metaphysician is "the critic of abstractions," as Whitehead would say. "The abstractions are criticized, not, as in science, because they are inaccurate to the facts, but because other equal,ly general or even more general abstractions are left out of account, and thus the general meaning of ' concreteness ' is not brought out." 21 Logic, therefore, is the backbone of philosophy. 22 And logical clarity and comprehensiveness are primary standards of metaphysical truth. In metaphysical matters, " Critical rationalism, not empiricism, is the arbiter." 23 Whitehead would agree that speculative philosophy in major part is a rationalistic enterprise. And he would agree that " rigid empiricism" is doomed to failure. The metaphysical first principles can never fail of exemplification. We can never catch the actual world taking a holiday from their sway. Thus, for the discovery of metaphysics, the method of 1 "CSPM 24. ••csPM 19. 21 CSPM 22 CSPM xvii. •• CSPM xviii. 610 R. J. CONNELLY pinning down thought to the strict systematization of detailed discrimination, already effected by antecedent observation, breaks down. 24 But Whitehead does allow for an " empirical side " to philosophy .2s The elucidation of immediate experience is the sole justification for any thought; and the starting point for thought is the analytic observation of components of this experience. But we are not conscious of any clear-cut complete analysis of immediate experience, in terms of the various details which comprise its definiteness.26 This difficulty does not deter Whitehead. On the contrary, he seems to stress the importance of a balance between rationalization and direct insight or intuition grounded in situations of immediate experience. " The speculative school appeals to direct insight, and endeavors to indicate its meanings by further appeal to situations which promote such specific insights." 27 The search for metaphysical principles then entails the discernment of form in fact. Public verification requires that " The categoreal forms should come to us with some evidence that they are widespread in experience." 211 This means that immediate experience and direct insights grounded in that experience must be repeatable. In sum, the testing of metaphysical principles, according to Whitehead, seems to demand rationalism and a kind of flexible empiricism. But then Hartshorne also sees the need for intuition. As he notes, " technical logic alone cannot establish a metaphysics, intuitions being also needed." 29 But the role of intuition is not clear to this reader. The first chapter of CSPM is intended" to put the reader into the intuitive center of the philosophy." sQ ••PR 7. ••See Two Process Philosophers, pp. 45-8. ""PR 6. Modes of Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1988), p. !'l86. The Function of Reason (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 19!'l9), p. 78. 2 • CSPM xviii. "°CSPM xxi. 07 28 CREATIVITY AND GOD 611 Hartshorne consults experience to reveal creativity as a fundamental metaphysical principle. But the whole discussion is bound into the theological problem of creation. What seems to happen in this context is that immediate experience is used to stimulate our consciousness of the idea of creativity and the category of the ultimate, and then that idea is explicated in relation to another abstraction which also involveS' an intuition, God's creativity. In the end, the God category seems to absorb the category of the ultimate. But let us ignore the God concept for the moment. Let us ask how experience is related to the idea of creativity. Hartshorne indicates that concepts do derive somehow from experience. 31 But how they derive and even that they do derive from experience seems irrelevant in metaphysics. For " metaphysical concepts derive from any experience in which reflection occurs, and they will be illustrated in any experience." 32 All that seems to matter is our experience of the concept. Experience of the world of creative entities may be the starting point of metaphysics, but only in the sense of providing the raw material for reflection, and any experience will do to start with. Hartshorne does not seem to need immediate experience of the world to ground the ongoing process of reflection. This summary may not do justice to Hartshorne. But if it is somewhat accurate then I conclude tentatively that Hartshorne's allusion to Whitehead's system as an attempt to explicate the meaning of the general abstraction " concreteness as such" ignores Whitehead's method of sticking faithfully to this world of actual entities through intuition and immediate experience. To lose sight of this grounding is to lose sight of the primacy of the category of the ultimate and the real world of experience. Hartshorne's alternative is more a metaphysics o:f abstractions with God as supremely abstract and .supremely concrete Being. In Hartshorne' s metaphysics the notion of God apparently 31 CSPM 31. •• CSPM 31. 612 R.J. CONNELLY subsumes creativity and becomes the ultimate category of existence.33 From the vantage point of his own system Hartshorne remarks: If reality is essentially creative process ... then objective necessity is merely what all real possibilities have in common, their neutral element, which will be actualized "no matter what " course the creative process may take. This neutral element is creativity in its essential or irreducible aspect, which is inseparable from the necessary aspect of deity. 34 In fact, Hartshorne identifies creativity and the necessary aspect of deity. Creativity "is the only essence that is eternal, the continuum of undifferentiated potentiality (the bare power of God) that alone precedes every event whatever." 35 Possible actuality is the power of God. The necessary existence of the divine essence constitutes possibility as such which cannot fail of actualization. "Necessary existence is ... an essence, embodied in any and every total state of contingent actuality." 36 The ground of all possibility is therefore necessary. God " is really the content of ' existence' [that is, pure being or creativity], the generic factor of the universe." 37 He is the "Universal of universals, the Form of forms," 38 the " principle of all principles." 39 Here metaphysics finds its proper object. For the divine essence " is really the entirety of what we can know a priori about reality." 40 Hartshorne's own metaphysics naturally leads him to suggest " that one or two of the remarks by Whitehead about crea•• In an unpublished letter to this author, dated May 30, 1968, Hartshorne states, " The basic categories require God's existence, including deity itself as in a sense the category." ••Anselm's Discovery, p. 43. •• " Santayana's Doctrine of Essence," in The Philosophy of George Santayana, ed. by P. Schilpp (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1940), p. 167. •• The Logic of Perfection, and other Essays in Neo-Classica! Metaphysics (LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court, 1962), p. 102. 81 Ibid., p. 305. ••Anselm's Discovery, p. l!l7. ••Logic of Perfection, p. 119. ••Ibid., p. 119. Sec CSPM 19: "Metaphysics may be described as the study which evaluates a priori statements about existence." CREATIVITY AND GOD 613 tivity might possibly be applied to God instead ... " 41 But he does resist attributing to Whitehead the notion that creativity is identical with God. He says, according to Whitehead, creativity is not identical with God, nor is it an individual, coordinate with or superior to God. It is a mere universal or an ultimate abstraction, the ultimate abstraction. Like all universals, it is real only in individuals, including the one essential individual, God. God is not identical with creativity, because you and I are creative too, with our nondivine but real creative action. Whitehead could perhaps here employ scholastic language and say that, just as in Thomism " being " is not simply the same in God and other things, so in his system "becoming" or "creativity," rather than mere being, is the supreme but analogical unity. 42 Hartshorne somewhat compromises the objectivity of this account by inferring on Whitehead's behalf a categoreal difference between God and other entities. For the divine becoming has properties whose uniqueness can be stated in categorical terms; it alone is able adequately to embrace all actuality as its data; it alone goes on primordially and everlastingly in the same individual way, embodying the same individual personality traits; etc. These are not just differences; they are categorical differences, statable in purely general terms (as the " self-existence" of God in contrast to " existence through another" was statable in Thomism). So there is no simply univocal concept here. 43 Whitehead does affirm these differ·ences but, on methodological grounds, as I have argued above, he also refuses to view these as categorical. And if such differences were the main reason for choosing analogical rather than univocal predication of being, I suspect Whitehead would be more comfortable with the latter. Perhaps he would say, along with many Thomists, 41 "Whitehead's Metaphysics," in Whitehead and the Modern World: Science, Metaphysics, and Civilization, Three Essays on the Thought of A. N. Whitehead (Boston: The Beacon Press, 1950), p. 41. 42 Whitehead's Philosophy: Selected Essays, p. 185. •• Philosophers Speak of God (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1953), p. 614 R.J. CONNELLY that" being" is one concept which is predicated analogously.44 The reference to Thomism in the above quote is revealing of Hartshorne's own metaphysics. To stress categoreal difference and identify creativity with God is to stress the .selfexistence of God and the dependence in existence of other beings. Hartshorne, like Thomists, explicitly wants to maintain that God is Creativity Itself and yet creatures are really creative too. God, it should now be clear, is not, according to our argument, the " one substance," the sole real individual, but simply the one substance or individual which is necessary to reality, or which is constitutive of being .as such, all other individuals being part-constitutive only of accidental aspects of being. Individuality and necessity of existence are not the same, nor is accidental reality unreal reality. 45 But to what extent is accidental reality real independently of God's reality? Whitehead would have to agree that God is uniquely necessary to the becoming of other entities. But is God's creativity the universal ground of the becoming itself in other entities? Whitehead is committed to saying that creativity as actualized in the plurality of entities which make up the actual world, including God, is the only ground there is. And the ground is plural. Hartshorne seems to conclude that the supreme uniqueness of God's being is the singular ground of being in all others. Creativity is intrinsic to God. The key question is, granted that creativity is intrinsic to other entities as well, is that creativity derived from God's creativity? Do creatures, in their imperfect fashion, share or participate in perfect existence, as the Thomist would say? The answer seems to be " yes " according to Hartshorne. Compare the following: •• This could imply that conceptual unity requires that " being " be understood as an essence or form. In the last section of this paper, using A. H. Johnson as guide, I will develop briefly the case for creativity as eternal object which does not have to be identified with God. The above discussion of the differences between Whitehead and Hartshorne does not, however, assume or require this particular interpretation of creativity. ••Man's Vision of God and the Logic of Theiam (Chicago: Willett, Clark & Company, 1941), p. i84. CREATIVITY AND GOD 615 ... with David of Dinant and Bruno I hold the doctrine (called "crazy" by Aquinas) that primary matter, the ultimate potency which all change whatever actualizes, is an aspect of God, his power to form himself and so create form. 46 God is contained in our existence, not merely as cause of our " coming to be " but as constitutive of the very meaning of " coming to be." 47 [Divine existence is] the presupposed common medium of all reality. 48 Whitehead's metaphysical method and his emphasis on the category of the ultimate rather than God prevent him from going this far. There seems to be no place for analogy of participation in being in Whitehead. Creativity as Eternal Object We have seen that Hartshorne identifies creativity and the necessary aspect of God. He argues that this is the only eternal object necessary in process metaphysics. "[H]ere I seem not to be Whiteheadian-I think there is but one eternal object; God's fixed essence, as distinct from his contingent actuality." 49 Whitehead would object to such a reduction of the multiplicity of eternal objects to one. But it may be possible, following the insight of A.H. Johnson, to infer that creativity is indeed one of many eternal objects. Then, if we combine this interpretation with the general theory of eternal objects, Whitehead's system can explain how creativity is one in concept but predicated analogically for each instance of becoming. This includes God's becoming. A. H. Johnson contends that " the term 'creativity' refers to an eternal object and ' also ' to the exemplification of that •• " Santayana's Doctrine of Essence," p. 46. '"Man's Vision of God, p. 47. ••Logic of Perfection, p. 99. •• Philosophical Interrogations, p. 847. See CSPM 65: " My position with respect to eternal objects is simply that the necessary or eternal aspect of deity is the only eternal object. I should like to say that this eternal entity is not a multitude but, in the language of classical theism is 'simple'." 616 R.J. CONNELLY eternal object." 5-0 Johnson's defense of this thesis is all too brief and he seems to misrepresent "'Whiteheadon several points. But the main thesis is established in a convincing manner, I think. Johnson comments on Whitehead's description of creativity as "the universal of universals characterizing ultimate matter of fact." 51 Thus, in Whitehead's broadly Platonic language, creativity is an Idea (eternal object) which is exemplified in particular actual entities. More specifically, the creative process whereby one actual entity appropriates data provided by other actual entities, and so constitutes itself, is an exemplification of the eternal object " creativity." 52 Another key text is mentioned in an appendix to WTR. 53 There Johnson comments on the statement, "creativity is a character which underlies all occasions." 54 The Universal (essence, principle) " Creativity " is exemplified (manifest, present) in particular actual entities (that is, in the process whereby actual entities are objectified in each other in the act of self-creation) .55 And, significantly, this reading gains Whitehead's own approval in the margin: "right." 56 Johnson might have been more explicit and listed the term " eternal object." But the general thesis does not seem affected by its absence. Whitehead himself only makes extensive use of the term in SMW and PR. 57 Be••Whitehead's Theory of Reality (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1962), p. 70. Hereafter, "WTR." 01 PR 31. " 2 WTR 70. ••"Appendix B," 212-13. "This appendix is composed of photostat reproductions of some marginal notes appended by Professor Whitehead, in 1937, to the rough draft of a manuscript" (WTR 213) . ••Science and the Modem World (New York: Macmillan, 1925), p. 255 is the proper citation and " general metaphysical character " the exact phrasing in Whitehead. Hereafter, "SMW." 00 WTR 221. 00 WTR 221. 01 See Christian's An Interpretation of Whitehead's Metaphysics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), p. 195, for frequency of occurrences in other works. CREATIVITY AND GOD 617 sides, more explicit confirmation is available on the same page when Johnson clarifies the relation between God and creativity. He calls attention to paradoxes formulated by D. C. Moxley in this regard and replies: These apparent paradoxes can be solved by bearing in mind the fact that the term " creativity" is applied to "creativity" as essence (eternal object)- (in this sense " creativity " is the universal of universals) and to " creativity" as exemplified in the selfcreative process of an actual entity. The phrase which refers to God as a " creature of creativity " is using the term " creativity " in the second sense. That is to say, God is the "creature" or outcome of his own self directed process of self creation.58 And again Whitehead appends: " right." Apart from citing the original text of Whitehead, as I intend to do in another paper, this should count as persuasive evidence in favor of creativity as an eternal object. Johnson makes the association explicit. And as he says, " The ' absence of objection,' by Whitehead, to the details of the exposition of his position is significant." 59 This is especially true with respect to the ultimate principle of creativity which is presupposed by all other elements of Whitehead's categoreal scheme. Here if anywhere we would expect Whitehead to correct a misleading interpretation of his thought. Johnson goes on to contest Moxley's charge that irresolvable problems arise in connection with Whitehead's comparison of creativity and Aristotelian matter. Admittedly, Johnson does clear up much of the confusion in Moxley's account. But he ignores various uses of "character" in Whitehead's thought. As a result, some confusion remains. The main source of controversy is found in PR. " Creativity " is another rendering of the Aristotelian " matter," and of the modern " neutral stuff." But it is divested of the notion of passivity, either of "form," or of external relations; it is the pure notion of the activity conditioned by the objective immortality of the actual world. . . . Creativity is without a character of its •• WTR ftftl. ""WTR 218. 618 R. J, CONNELLY own in exactly the same sense in which the Aristotelian " matter" is without a character of its own. It is that ultimate notion of the highest generality at the base of actuality. It cannot be characterized, because all characters are more special than itself. 60 At first glance, Johnson .seems to reduce Whitehead's analogy to a clarification of the relation of abstract creativity to its own concrete exemplification. The only point they [matter and creativity] have in common is the feature that each is without any specific "concrete" character of its own. Is it not true that an eternal object (e.g., creativity) is abstract, awaiting exemplification in some particular, specific, actual entity? 61 Or, as Johnson expresses it in the appendix: As an essence or eternal object, " creativity " has a distinct meaning; but this essence has, of course, no particular concrete character until it is actualized in some actual entity or other. In this sense it is " without a character of its own." 62 This reading considerably weakens the force of Whitehead's analogy. It is certainly true, but trivial, to remark on Whitehead's behalf that creativity like matter is an abstraction considered apart from actuality. Every eternal object fulfills that description. The dual mode of existence implied in the addition of concrete character to abstract meaning is applicable to any eternal object. The concrete defines the context in which the unique role of creativity " as primary matter " is properly understood. Primary matter is that fundamental potential principle transcendentally ordered to all actuation in concrete entities. It is the ultimate principle of indetermination relative to all " other " determinations. That does not make it absolute non-being, only relative non-being. Matter in itself signifies minimal determination which is the capability for supporting all other determinations. Similarly, Whitehead's creativity is the ultimate prinPR 46-7. WTR 71. •• WTR 222. 00 01 CREATIVITY AND GOD 619 ciple of connectedness fusing all other (more special) characters into synthetic unity. And creativity-ordering-other-characters constitutes the meaning of actuality. One main object of Whitehead's reference to primary matter is to emphasize the unique function of creativity in concrete individual beings. Johnson touches on this point when he states, " also, 'creativity' is a common, general characteristic of all (otherwise different) actual entities; similarity [sic] 'matter' in Aristotle's philosophy." aa This promising but ambiguous statement is not developed. But in the sentences which immediately follow, Johnson does seem to capture the most fundamental aspect of Whitehead's reference to Aristotelian matter. A further confusion is likely to arise unless one notes, rather carefully, another slightly different usage of the term "creativity." Whitehead sometimes states that" God and the actual world jointly constitute the character of the creativity for the initial phase of the novel concrescence." 64 Johnson interprets" character of creativity" to mean" the data provided by God and the world of ordinary actual entities." 65 Here he should mention the" .shifting" character of creativity. " This function of creatures, that they constitute the shifting character of creativity, is here termed the 'objective immortality ' of actual entities." 66 This is the sense in which creativity is a character which transports other characters representing objectified actual entities. 67 Then the reference to Aristotelian matter serves primarily to elucidate the role of creativity in objectification. " ' Creativity ' is another rendering of Aristotelian ' matter ' ... it is the pure notion of the activity ""WTR 71. 0 • WTR 71. Whitehead himself remarks in the margin next to the same text in the appendix, "very careless of me-and yet, a fairly good phrase " (WTR 222). •• WTR 222. 68 PR 47. 61 The term "transport" is meant to convey the function of the type of process Whitehead calls " transition " (see PR 320-22) . 620 R.J. CONNELLY conditioned [characterized] by the objective immortality of the actual world." 68 But Johnson is not very clear on the theory of objectification. In the appendix he concludes that " data used in the creative process are called ' creativity '." 69 He bases this on a text from AI: "this factor of activity (the actual world relative to that [new] occasion) is what I have called 'Creativity'." 70 This compounds rather than dispels the " confusion." For Whitehead himself merely claims that creativity is that "factor " of activity " included in " the actual world. The two terms " creativity " and " actual world " should not be identified. The initial situation includes a factor of creativity which is the reason for the origin of that occasion of experience. This factor of activity is what I have called" Creativity." The initial situation with its creativity can be termed the initial phase of the new occasion. It can equally well be termed the " actual world " relative to that occasion.71 Creativity is a " part " of the initial situation, an " element " in the actual world. It is the ultimate character (activity, selfcreation, fusion, etc.) whose characters (data: God and actual occasions "as objectively real") condition immediate concrescence. In sum, creativity is both an intrinsic principle of singular concrete beings and also the" means" of objectifying one being in another. The second function is analogous to primary matter in its role in substantial change. But creativity is activity itself not pure passive potentiality. •• PR 46-7. The insertion of " characterized " may be justified by citing equivalent texts in which the term actually appears. For example: "Actuality in perishing . . . acquires efficient causation whereby it is a ground of obligation characterizing the creativity" (PR 44). "It is the function of actuality to characterize the creativity " (PR 344) . " This objective intervention of other entities constitutes the creative character which conditions the concrescence in question " (PR 836) . " Each actual occasion gives to the creativity which flows from it a definite character in two ways" (Religi01i in the Making, 157). ""WTR 222. 70 WTR 222. The first set of parentheses should be brackets, indicating transposition of material not contained in the original text. See Advimtures of Ideas, p. 280. 71 Adventures of Ideas, p. 230. CREATIVITY AND GOD 621 Composite Essence of Eternal Objects Whitehead indicates in SMW that every eternal object can be described in terms 0£ a composite essence.72 "Individual essence " stands for what an eternal object is in itself or what unique contribution it can make to actuality. This unique contribution is identical for all such occasions in respect to the fact that the object in all modes of ingression is just its identical self. But it varies from one occasion to another in respect to the differences of its modes of ingression. 78 The second sentence refers to the " relational essence " of an eternal object. The relational essence involves all other eternal objects and expresses the unlimited number of ways in which an eternal object can have ingression into actual occasions. That is, in any one occasion, only a selection of an eternal object's relationships to other eternal objects will be effective in the aesthetic synthesis. 74 In sum, as far as ingression is concerned, the individual essence of an eternal object answers the question What, and relational essence the question How. 75 The individual essence may be described as " determinate " insofar as the essential meaning or " whatness " of an eternal object remains constant. But Whitehead also maintains that the total effectiveness of an eternal object can only be measured in terms of how its relationships to other eternal objects are ordered for relevance in a given actual occasion. Considered in the abstract, the relational essence of an eternal object mere72 SMW ch. x. Whitehead emphasizes this theory in a letter to Hartshorne, dated 1936: " There is one point as to which you-and everyone-misconstrue me-obviously my usual faults of exposition are to blame. I mean my doctrine of eternal objects." ("An Unpublished Letter from Whitehead to Hartshorne," in A. N. Whitehead: Essays on His Philos.ophy, ed. by George L. Kline (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963), p. 199. Whitehead goes on to clarify five points including his theory of the individual and relational essences of eternal objects. 73 SMW "SMW 75 This doctrine of a composite essence, and especially the connection between the individual and relational aspects, is inadequately developed in Whitehead's thought. 622 R.J. CONNELLY l'Jftlc ly represents potential for relevant ordering. In other words, eternal objects are " determinable" in relation to individual actual occasions. " In the essence of each eternal object there stands an indeterminateness which expresses its indifferent patience for any mode of ingression into any actual occasion." 16 At the same time, the relational essence embodies a demand for sonie definite mode or other. For "there is no entity which is merely 'any'." 77 This is the necessary background for understanding Whitehead's comment that an eternal object "introduces the notion of the logical variable, in both forms, the unselective 'any' and the selective 'some'." 78 "The variable is an ingenious combination of the vagueness of ' any ' with the definiteness of a particular indication." 79 " Vagueness " implies that the composite essence of each eternal object involves an internal but indeterminate relationship to actuality in general. 80 But " definiteness of particular indication " also implies external and determinate relationships with particular actual occasions. (From the side of the actual occasion, this latter relation is internal. 81 ) In brief, the individual essence of an eternal object is only intelligible as a term of particularized relationships with other eternal objects and the actual world of becoming. An eternal object acquires significance through its concrete instances. Creativity as eternal object is utterly unique among eternal objects just as God is utterly unique among actual entities. 1 "SMW 248. Essays in Science and Philosophy (New York: Philosophical Library, 1947), 77 p. 118. PR 174-5. Modes of Thought, p. 145. 80 I have not found an explicit text to support this usage of " internal." Justification must rest on the interpretation of such passages as: " an eternal object, considered as an abstract entity, cannot be divorced from its reference to other eternal objects, and from its reference to actuality generally " (SMW 229f) . In the latter case, " reference " must be internal to avoid the Platonic separation. A purely external relation to actuality would leave an eternal object essentially independent. This is obviously not Whitehead's intention. 81 SMW 284-5. 78 79 CREATIVITY AND GOD What creativity shares with other eternal objects is a composite essence. The individual essence of creativity provides for sameness or identity of character in each instance of becoming. This is the sense in which every entity is equally creative. And the relational essence provides for observed differences of ingression. It accounts ior the fact that each creative entity is unique in its display of creativity. Consequently, one and the same essence is embodied differently in each actual entity. If we grant this understanding of Whitehead's theory of eternal objects and creativity as one eternal object, it follows that creativity can be predicated of God and actual occasions without categoreal distinction. Hartshorne would be reluctant to accept this view oi analogy for reasons already discussed. Another reason is that he explicitly rejects Whitehead's general doctrine of eternal objects. " I believe that the latter doctrine, so far as I grasp it at all (and I may misconceive it), is to some extent a generally eclectic affair, not wholly pertinent to the. central insight .... " 82 Perhaps it is as pertinent as the difference between creativity identified with God and creativity as one among a multiplicity of eternal objects. The latter would allow Whitehead to say that creativity is one metaphysical determinable made determinate in each actual entity by that actual entity. But it need not be equated with the entire content of the primordial nature of God. To be real in relation to the latter means to embody creativity and a selection of other eternal objects. Hartshorne implies that God's entire essence as creativity is somehow embodied in each actual entity. And the result is that God's creation of creatures logically precedes the self-creation of creatures. The logical view of the situation is rather that God, being both self-creative and creative of others, produces creatures which likewise, though in radically different ways, are self-determining, and also productive of effects beyond themselves. 83 82 Whitehead's Philosophy: Selected Essays; pp. 163-4. See CSPM xv: "[Whitehead's] doctrine of 'eternal objects ' has always seemed to me, ... an extravagant kind of Platonism, a needless complication in the philosophy of process." 83 CSPM 11, my emphasis. 624 R.J. CONNELLY The primacy of the category of the ultimate in Whitehead seems to demand that each actual entity be self-productive in the very act of being self-creative. This is the more radical view as far as a metaphysics of pluralism goes. Since Whitehead grounds existence in each actual entity, a multiplicity of eternal objects does not compromise each actual entity's power of self-definition. Hartshorne is concerned about the possibility of compromise. He suggests that eternal objects as " forms of definiteness," available from all eternity, detract from creatures' power to be self-creative. Referring to a multiplicity of eternal objects, he says: "The ultimate principle is experiencing as partly free or self-creative, and this principle, being ultimate, accounts for definiteness without help from any other principle." 84 Whitehead's own doctrine of composite essence, in my estimation, adequately shows how an eternal object may be understood as relatively definite in terms of its individual essence, and yet only contribute that essence in concrete synthesis. Hartshorne seems to neglect the doctrine of composite essence in his interpretations of Whitehead. 85 But more important, Hartshorne seems to be grappling with a problem peculiar to his own metaphysics and not Whitehead's. If Hartshorne grounds the creative existence itself of creatures in God's existence, then in what sense are creatures truly creative? In metaphorical terms, it depends on what they do with the gift. Perhaps Hartshorne, just because he grounds all existence in God's nature, steers away from a multiplicity of forms of definiteness in order to accentuate the power of self-definition that is left to creatures in his system. It remains to be seen whether such a tactic is very helpful in avoiding a reduction of the plurality of events (= actual entities) to mere states of the divine individual. Whitehead's "problem" is the reverse. If he places so much categoreal emphasis on the independent crea"'CSPM 62. ••Approaching it from another angle, Lewis S. Ford notes that " Hartshorne's account makes no distinction between 'definiteness ' and ' determinateness,' terms clearly distinguished in Whitehead's twentieth category of explanation" (Two Process Philosophers, p. 64; cf. p. 40 fn. 27). CREATIVITY AND GOD tivity of creatures, how can he adequately explain creativity in God so as not to compromise God's unique metaphysical status? Conclusi-On These and other questions concerning the relation of creativity to God in the thought o:f Whitehead and Hartshorne demand greater attention from commentators. In this paper I have simply tried to suggest that Hartshorne is overly optimistic about the usefulness of his own point of view in clarifying Whitehead. While stressing the priority of the theistic question and the idea of God as the starting point of metaphysics, Hartshorne is also of the opinion that the end result is perfectly compatible with Whitehead's system. It is my personal view that a metaphysics can also be integrated by taking as intuitive starting point, not creativity or the category of the ultimate, but deity, defined in Anselm's words as a reality such that none greater (meaning better) can be conceived .... [It can also be shown that] deity exists necessarily and eternally, and in addition, that non-divine creativity must also have actual instances. One will in this way have derived the equivalent of "the category of the ultimate" from the religious idea alone. . . . In other words, the theistic intuition, properly understood and expressed . . . will yield the essence of the Whiteheadian metaphysics.86 According to my discussion above it is certainly questionable whether the essential yield is the same. The degree of difference, however, does deserve further study. R. J. CONNELLY Incarnate Word College San Antonio-, Texas •• Whitehead's Philosophy, Selected Essays, p. 165. IS THERE A THOMIST ALTERNATIVE TO LONERGAN'S COGNITIONAL STRUCTURE? 0 N SEVERAL OCCASIONS in his various works, Bernard Lonergan makes the claim that the cognitional structure he elaborates in Insight is capable of further clarification, but not of revision. This assertion has often been questioned; here I should like to investigate the possibilities of offering a serious challenge to it. In particular, I shall be concerned to discover whether, in fact, an alternative may be derived from the selfsame source which Lonergan credits as the point of departure for his own cognitional theory, namely, the epistemology of St. Thomas Aquinas. This study will attempt to show that there are, certainly, alternatives to Lonergan's cognitional theory; but these are all variants of an idealist theory of knowing, and not Thomist. 1. Lonergan's Structure and Its Invariance The cognitional structure that Lonergan presents in Insight is, perhaps, well-enough known; but it will be useful, I think, to outline it here, and amplify it with considerations drawn from his other writings, particularly Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas. 1 Lonergan's criticism of any form of empiricism and rationalism consists in the pointed charge that both of these epistemological views reduce human knowing to one act or operation, and, in doing so, fail to do justice to all the operations that are involved in coming to know. Rather than conceiving knowing as simply one act, Lonergan insists that it 1 Ed. David Burrell. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967. The chapter originally appeared as articles in Theological Studies, between 1946 and 1949. LONERGAN'S COGNITIONAL STRUCTURE is a dynamic structure of operatwns, in which each operation presupposes and completes the one which preceded it. The structure is characterized as dynamic for two reasons: firstly, because the component elements are themselves activities or operations; and, secondly, because the structure is self-assembling or self-constituting. 2 Accordingly, Lonergan proposes that human knowing is achieved as the term of the successive operations at three levels of consciousness, the levels, that is, of experience, of intelligen