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Thomism and ‘Affective Knowledge’ (II)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2024

Victor White O.P.
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In order to understand what St. Thomas means by affective knowledge ‘or knowledge by ‘inclination ‘or ‘connaturality,’ something must first be said of what he understands by ‘knowledge,’ and what by ‘affect,’ ‘inclination,’ or ‘connaturality.’ Readers will not expect in this short article a full and detailed account, let alone a justification, of St. Thomas’s theory of knowledge and of appetite. A brief survey of some salient points such as is required for our present purposes is all we shall attempt; and to obviate the necessity of explaining St. Thomas’s medieval terminology we shall frankly paraphrase his thought in less unfamiliar language. Those readers who wish to study the matter further in St. Thomas’s own words will find at the end of the article a selection of ‘readings ‘in which they may investigate the various points raised.

St. Thomas’s account of the nature of knowledge is much more ‘phenomenological ‘than is often supposed by those who have not studied him closely. Nothing could be further from the truth than that St. Thomas’s epistemology is based on an a priori ‘ faculty psychology,’ or that he short-circuits the ‘critical problem ‘of knowledge by unwarranted assumptions based on illegitimate abstractions. It is a first principle with St. Thomas (as it had been with Aristotle) that potencies can be affirmed only as inferences from actualities; and” the whole structure of his ‘faculty psychology ‘(if such it can indeed be called) is based on a thoroughgoing empiricist scrutiny of the ‘given ‘fact of knowledge.

Type
Original Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 24 , Issue 277 , April 1943 , pp. 126 - 131
Copyright
Copyright © 1943 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 We do not of course intend to endorse all the developments of Existentialism and Phenomenology, which have tended to degenerate into an anti-metaphysical phenomenalism. But its basic criticism of post-Cartesian thought is undoubtedly sound and salutary. Marcel de Corte in his La Philosophie de Gabriel Marcel has shown convincingly how the preoccupation with Idealism has inhibited the full development of the Existentialist trend since Kierkegaard, and how its principles in effect demand the complement of a metaphysic such as Aristotle and St. Thomas have elaborated. See also Maritain’s Sept Leçons sur l’Elre and Gilson’s God and Philosophy.

2 We here leave out of account angelic pesception, which though of objects does not derive from objects: An angel, according to St. Thomas, does not judge, for his, God-given ideas are comprehensive and render judgment superfluous. But angelic knowledge is ‘also in its own way reflexive, and involves the awareness of Subject-Object distinction. ‘

3 The ‘reflection’ of sensation (sentire se sentire) is, according to St. Thomas, ‘incipient’ only ; it attains only to awareness of the otherness of perception and perceived. Only intellect can achieve the reditio completa, and affirm the ‘I’ and the ‘That.’