(2005). Intuitus and Ratio in Spinoza's Ethical Thought. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 73-90. doi: 10.1080/0960878042000317591.

This contribution examines two related points in relation to Aquinas’s understanding of contemplation, which is a sorely neglected topic in scholarship. First, after having outlined that the final act of contemplation culminates in an intellective, simple apprehension of the truth, I will examine how this act relates to the three operations of the intellect (grasping of quiddity, judgement, and reasoning) Aquinas identifies in a number of places. Second, I argue that his view of contemplation as simple insight is significantly indebted (...) to Neoplatonic sources; therefore, we must pay attention to the way he introduces Neoplatonic elements into his Aristotelian framework. I conclude this contribution by suggesting some reasons—of a theological nature—why Aquinas would have been drawn towards a non-discursive or “intuitive” notion of contemplation. (shrink)

The present paper deals with the diachronic evolution of the Cartesian concept of intuitus, focusing particularly on the reasons for its (at least lexical) dismissal in Descartes's mature elaborations of his metaphysics. In section 1, I address the notion of intuitus presented in the Rules, showing that this concept is pivotal in Descartes' early epistemology of evidence. In section 2, I argue that such a concept can be traced back to certain distinctive elements of the Late Scholastic debate (...) on angels and human knowledge, from which Descartes could have drawn some of his early ideas. In section 3, I analyze the reasons behind Descartes' dismissal of the notion of intuitus, arguing for a deliberate choice, due both to epistemologico-metaphysical and theological reasons, on which I dwell focusing especially on Descartes' letters. -/- . (shrink)

This paper explicates Descartes’ theory of intuition (intuitus). Departing from certain commentators, I argue that intuition, for Descartes, is a form of clear and distinct intellectual perception. Because it is clear and distinct, it is indubitable, infallible, and provides a grade of certain knowledge he calls ‘cognitio’. I pay special attention to why he treats intuition as a form of perception, and what he means when he says it is ‘clear and distinct’. Finally, I situate his view in relation (...) to those of his Scholastic predecessors on one hand and current theories on the other. His view anticipates the contemporary ‘perceptual model of intuition’, though it is much bolder with its promise of certainty. (shrink)

This paper explicates Descartes’ theory of intuition (intuitus). Departing from certain commentators, I argue that intuition, for Descartes, is a form of clear and distinct intellectual perception. Because it is clear and distinct, it is indubitable, infallible, and provides a grade of certain knowledge he calls ‘cognitio’. I pay special attention to why he treats intuition as a form of perception, and what he means when he says it is ‘clear and distinct’. Finally, I situate his view in relation (...) to those of his Scholastic predecessors on one hand and current theories on the other. His view anticipates the contemporary ‘perceptual model of intuition’, though it is much bolder with its promise of certainty. (shrink)

In 1772, Kant outlined the new problem of his critical period in terms of four possible “ways” of understanding the agreement of knowledge with its object. This study expands Kant’s terse descriptions of these ways, examining why he rejected them. Apart from clarifying the historical context in which Kant saw his own achievement (the Fifth Way), the chief benefits of exploring the historical background of Way Two, in particular, are that it (1) explains the puzzling intuitus originarius/intellectus archetypus dichotomy, (...) and (2) casts doubt on the received idea that Kant broke with the traditional theocentric model of cognition. (shrink)

Review of Dika, T. (2023). Descartes’s Method. The Formation of the Subject of Science. Oxford: Oxford UP.

Who or what comes to light after the ‘beyond’ of Cartesian, Husserlian or Heideggerian post-intuitus philosophical attempts and receives a new souffl e (breath) from otherwise JeanLuc Marion’s desire to opt conceptually a new context for phenomenological and theological researches? Granted the importance of René Descartes, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, it is, nevertheless, Jean-Luc Marion who has contributed to the question of overcoming of metaphysics’ possibility in order to disqualify a ground of being within a phenomenological reality of (...) love. In the present article the author wishes to introduce an acquaintance of Jean-Luc Marion’s pensée (thinking) in reference to the inevitability of the leap through metaphysics aiming at doing justice to Ukrainian readers by putting Marion’s voice into the nuance of new approaches that have been resulted in recent contemporary French debates. Key words: self, other, saturated phenomenon, call, giveness, donation, erotic reduction, love. (shrink)

La logique cartésienne est introuvable parce qu’on a cherché une logique qui n’existe pas, c’est-à-dire une logique classique sur le modèle des manuels de la tradition réformée. La puissance transgressive de Descartes, même dans ce domaine, a été radicale : il a bafoué l’Arbre de Porphyre, vidé de sens la théorie des catégories, montré l’inutilité du syllogisme pour la recherche scientifique. Sans efficacité, à son avis, fut le renouveau d’une logique fondée sur des normes préconstituées. Il se « limite » (...) pourtant à suggérer, sur le modèle des procédés mathématiques, une attitude de pensée centrée sur l’intuitus et dont les relations sont garanties par les notions de « série » et de respectus. La transgression cartésienne a été si bouleversante que « Descartes logicien » devient un auteur maudit et l’attitude qu’il aurait voulu inspirer n’a connu aucune fortune, à telle enseigne que même la Logique de Port-Royal qu’on voudrait cartésienne consacre un grand espace à la syllogistique.Undiscoverable is the Cartesian logic, because scholars looked for a logic that does not exist, i.e. a classical logic after the model of traditional, more or less reformed, manuals. Descartes’ transgressive power was radical even in this domain : he scorned Phorphyrius Tree, voided the theory of categories of all meaning, showed the uselessness of syllogism for scientific research. Just as totally ineffective was, in his view, the renewal of a logic founded on preconstituted norms. He therefore « limits » himself to suggest, after the model of mathematical procedures, an attitude of thought centered on intuitus and whose relationships are guaranteed by the notions of « series » and respectus. The Cartesian transgression turned out to be so upsetting that « Descartes the logician » became a wicked author and the attitude he had meant to inspire had no fortune whatsoever, to such a point that even the Logic of Port-Royal – purportedly Cartesian – leaves much room to syllogistics. (shrink)

This short essay by Karol Kuzmány (1806–1866), a founding father of Slovak aesthetic thinking, was written in Czech and published in 1836 in Hronka, a periodical edited by the author. In the essay, Kuzmány follows on from the thinking of his teacher at Jena, Jakob Friedrich Fries (1773–1843), particularly Fries’s theory of Ahn(d)ung (intuitive awareness). In the introduction, Kuzmány emphasizes that his concern is to bridge the gap between the theory of imitation and the theory of art based on imagination. (...) In the first part of the essay, concerning general aesthetics, Kuzmány presents his theory of beauty – the feeling of the essence of things through perception by the mind (Anschauung or intuitus mentis); the basic idea – truth, the moral good, and beauty – according to Kuzmány, comprises the idea of religion in the broader sense – Humanität, humanitas. Rather than the opposite of beauty, the sublime constitutes beauty’s being raised to a qualitatively higher level: it is based on a contemplated intuitive awareness, which is itself felt. The second part of the essay consists of Kuzmány’s attempt to define art and to categorize kinds of art and genres of poetry. He distinguishes between unmediated art, which represents beauty to the external senses, and mediated art, which is aimed at inner feeling. The latter category includes poetry, which is, according to him, the supreme art, for it can, with the help of language, represent all forms of unmediated art as well. Kuzmány also devotes himself to a speculative justification of its genres, poetic style, and verse. (shrink)

La théorie de la perception emprunte, chez Descartes, deux chemins différents. D’un côté, la perception interne se développe selon le paradigme visuel de l’intuitus ; de l’autre, la perception externe est pensée à l’aune d’un modèle discursif. À la présentation s’opposerait donc une signification. Or, contre les commentateurs qui ont fait de Descartes le philosophe ayant ouvert l’ère de la représentation, l’auteur montre que le modèle discursif prime sur le paradigme visuel et que bien que Descartes affirme que les (...) idées sont comme des images et des tableaux, son modèle de la perception est en fait celui de la fable, c’est-à-dire d’un texte. (shrink)

The main point for criticizing the Cartesians for Vico is the notion of method, interpreted as exceptionally discursive procedure, devoid of spontaneity and creative force which are necessary for discovering new truths. These qualities are embodied for Vico in the Latin term ingenium, loan translation of which is found in Italian (ingegno) and is absent in French. The criticism of Cartesianisn suggested by Vico does not consider the fundamental bilingualism of this philosophy and wide use of the term ingenium in (...) the corps of Descartes’ Latin works. The analysis of the latter proves that the early Descartes’ notion intuitus mentis, as well as the concept of natural light of mind are, in the end, based exactly on ingenium, but not on the discursive methodical procedures. Human soul, following Descartes, reveals its content in several hypostastes and each method of revelation corresponds to specific terminology. Soul as mens is not the same as soul as ingenium. But even the early Descartes’ study of soul is marked by peculiar nominalism, proclamation of the real existence of individual soul as a separate entity. Therefore later, stating his ego cogito, Descartes states exactly the individual substance, not thinking in general. The terminological couple ingenium/mens is not translatable already in the French texts of Descartes himself (both merge in the French esprit), however their Ukrainian translations do not consider neither this untranslatability nor obvious references of Descartes’ esprit to other Latin compliances which differ each time. The article also analyses frequency in usage of the terms ingenium and mens in early and late Descartes’ Latin works; it has been proved that the augmentation of the meaning of metaphysical problems gradually turned mens into the main subject of Descartes’ research and deactualised the problem of ingenium. (shrink)

This study focuses on the essential difference between Kant’s and Husserl’s transcendental Idealism. In fact, Husserl describes in the «Cartesian Meditations» his own ontological thesis as a «transcendental idealism», in which all sorts of entities have to be constituted by an activity of the transcendental subjectivity, so that we have to regard pure consciousness as the ontological origin of all entities in the world. But this study is interested in the two opposite signications of the Kantian copernican inversion. On the (...) one hand, the Copernican inversion has the same sense as the phenomenological reduction, which implies that Husserl can’t agree with Kant’s presupposition of absolute things in themselves; on the second hand, it involves a relativistic and anthropologistic orientation, so that the aprioristic structures of given objects are founded on the universal structures of finite subjectivity, on pure forms and faculties of human consciousness. At the opposite, Husserl enounces a methodological prescription for any phenomenological elucidation: it is not allowed to presuppose in phenomenology any given faculty or given nature of transcendental subjectivity. This prescription has important consequences on which this study focuses. First the ontological difference between intuitus originarius and intuitus derivatus, in nite and nite type of intuition, doesn’t have any validity: the difference between factual and rational truths only depends on the essence of the truth itself, and doesn’t have its foundation on the ontological difference between creative and receptive sort of intuition. Secondly, this first thesis admits an immediate application on the level of subjective constitution of objects: the modality in which an object appears to the subjectivity doesn’t depend on the universal structure of finite subject, but is exclusively founded on the essence of the object itself, so that it is impossible to consider the aprioristic constitutive structure as a merely subjective structure. Thirdly, in this transcendental phenomenology everything has to be constituted by subjectivity: the aprioristic character of the pure forms of sensibility is not founded on the structure of finite subjectivity, but rather on the essential connection between sensual material and form; so that it is not allowed to presuppose any facticity of time and space; the pure forms of sensibility have to be constituted by a special type of synthesis that we have to elucidate in opposition to other types of higher levels. The profound signication of Husserl’s anticopernican inversion is that the field of transcendental phenomenology consists of the essential form of an eidos ego, which is «more objective than any objectivity», as Levinas said; and that transcendental phenomenology is completely dominated by the principium reddendae rationis. (shrink)

본 논문은 칸트가 『순수이성비판』초판 A99~110에 간단히 기술만 하고 더 이상 파고들지 않은 ‘인식의 삼중적 종합(dreifache Synthese von Erkenntnis, KrV A99~110)’ 체계에 주목하며, 칸트가 비판서 이전부터 전제한 시간의 구성적 의미를 「교수취임논문」을 통해 규명한다. 그리고 시적 직관 속에 구체화된 시간의 반추를 통해서 시에 현시된 내적 시간 의미를 ‘직관에서의 각지의 종합(Synthesis der Apprehension in der Anschauung)’ 관점에서 재구성하고 재해석한다.BR 본론 앞부분에는 시간 개념의 출현과 관련하여 외재적 시간에 대한 문제제기를 한다. “변화라는 개념[도] 오직 경험에서만 얻을 수 있는 개념”이기 때문이다. 본론 두 번째 절은 내적으로 (...) 연결되는 표상들의 시간에 관해 고찰한다. 이 절에는 칸트가 말한 단일한 시간의 “내적이고도 실재적인 형식”을 정현종의 시적 직관 속에 재경험해 보는 시도를 한다. 끝으로 본고는 단일하면서도 임의적인 시간 의미를 고은(高銀)의 시 한편을 빌려와 풀어보고자 한다. 마지막 절에서는 고정되어 있지 않은 임의적 시간이 뜻하는 바에 관하여, 이를테면 시간의 끝없는 생성에 관하여 시적 상상력을 접목해본다.BR 칸트에 따르면, “세계 내 관찰가능한 모든 사건들, 모든 운동들, 모든 내적 변화들”(Diss. §14-6)과 매 순간 공간적이든, 비공간적이든 동시적으로 우리 앞에 펼쳐지는 수많은 것들은 시간의 문을 반드시 거친다. 시간은 “모든 감각에 앞서서 표상되는 직관의 형식이며, 동시에 모든 감각 가능한 것들에 나타나는 관계들의 조건들”(Diss. III, §14-3)로 파악된다. 다른 말로 하면, 시간은 어떤 대상의 현존을 통해서 내감에 촉발된 표상들에 나타나는 관계들의 조건이다.BR 칸트가 뜻하는 시간 관계의 조건에는 두 가지가 있다. 다양한 내용들을 직각적(intuitiv) 으로 포괄하는 동시적 관계조건(혹은 병렬 형식, co-ordinatio, Diss. I, §1)과 “우연적인 것 까지도 통틀어”(Diss. III, §15, Folgesatz) 상이한 내용들이 차례로 잇따르는 계기적 관계조건(순차적 형식, successio, Diss. I, §1)이다. 동시적이거나 잇따르는 시간의 형식 속에서 다양한 내용들은 서로 연결되고 정립됨으로써 일정 꼴을 띄고 개념에도 테두리가 생긴다. 그러므로 이런 의미에서 직관에서의 각지의 종합은 시간의 근원적 질서를 전제한다. 마치 우리가 정현종 시인과 고은 시인의 시를 통해서 그 안에 다양한 ‘시작’을 보고 ‘하나’의 시작에 대해 다시 생각해볼 수 있는 계기의 시간을 이어가는 것, 시간의 이러한 국면은 우리에게 언제 어디서나 새로운 인식의 바탕을 제공한다. (shrink)