88 THE ABSTRACT AND THE POSITIVE CH. vi The positive, then, is posited by us, but it is only in so far as we oppose it to ourselves that we can § 20. The show its character of positivity. A fact is subject which historically positive in so far as it is not ', our work but that of others, or if it be live and the sub- > ject for whom ours, that it is the work of a " we " it is posited. which is posited in the fact and which we cannot undo. When instead of thinking of the difference between our present self and our past we think of their identity, as we do in the moral life when, for example, we are ashamed of something we have done and repent it and disown it, and so morally undo it, disowning the self which wrought the deed, then the fact loses its positivity. Morally speaking, it has no more reality than a stain which has been washed out.
The subject, we conclude then, finds himself, it seems, confronted with the positive, when he finds himself confronted with a reality realized which is not his own work. He is then in presence of the individual.
But is such a positivity really thinkable?
CHAPTER VII THE INDIVIDUAL AS EGO THE concept that the individual is the real positive, when we reflect on it, is seen to be absurd. It is § i. Criticism absurd, notwithstanding that it imposes of the positive itself on thought as the only true reality which thought can find for its own supwhat is ex ternal to the port, because it is posited for the subject subject. without being posited by the subject.
This is a contradiction in terms which every one who pays attention to the meaning of the words " posited for the subject " must admit.
" Posited for the subject " simply means object. When we deny that the positive individual depends in any way on the subject, and affirm that the subject must presuppose this object in order to get its insertion into the real, we despoil or try our best to despoil the positive individual of every element in it which can bear witness to the action of the subject. We aim at purifying and strengthening its individuality when we withdraw it from every form of universality which the subject's thinking confers on it. The subject assumes it as matter which has its own independent elaboration. But there must be a limit to this subtraction and purification, beyond which the individual would cease to be the spring-board which enables the subject to leap 90 THE INDIVIDUAL AS EGO from the pure ideas which imprison it in the sphere of subjectivity, and to communicate with the real. And this limit, it is obvious, is that within which the object is a term of consciousness, something relative to the ego and beyond which it ceases to be object for the subject. To despoil the object of this absolute relation, by which it is bound to the subject, is to destroy any value it can have as an object. So that the positive individual cannot be conceived otherwise than as relative to the subject.
To-day, and indeed ever since Kant, there has been much insistence on the value of the intuition as a necessary antecedent of thought and as the tion of what is path by which thought enters into relation external to the with reality. Aristotle was equally insistent on the necessity of sensation, — which is the same as the intuition of the moderns, — as an immediate presence of the object, not the consequence of a subjective act, and therefore not in consequence of a proportion and symmetry between itself and the object which the subject has generated. But this intuition or sensation, by eliminating from the relation between the two terms of knowing, subject and object, everything that can be thought of as secondary and derived from the action of the subject, cannot destroy the relation itself, cannot posit a pure object confronting the subject, absolutely external to the subject, fantastically conceived as originally belonging to it. The object with absolutely no re lation to the subject is nonsense. The originality and the immediacy of intuition, therefore, cannot rob the individual of the truly original and immanent relativity it has to the subject.
Now what does relation mean? To say that two vii THE EXTERNAL OBJECT 91 terms are related implies that they are different but also affirms that there is identity. Two terms § 3. Relation. different ^nd absoiutely different could only be thought of in such a way that in thinking the one we should not be thinking the other. The thought of the one would absolutely exclude the other. Such pure difference could only hold, therefore, between two terms which are unrelatable; so that if terms are in relation, however different they are, at least in thinking one we think the other. The concept of one even contains in some form the other.
In the intuition, then, the subject is indeed different from the object, but not to the extent that there is nothing whatever of the subject in the § 4 Absurdity j, That is tQ the object ig incon_ of the positive ceivable apart from something which t external to the }ongs to it in virtue of its being intuition, by which it is in relation to the subject. Accordingly the relation of object and subject through which the object is posited for the subject, necessarily implies the concept of the object as posited by the subject. And so the concept of the positive as that which is not posited by the subject is clearly shown to be intrinsically contradictory.
On the other hand, this does not release us from the necessity grounded in reason of integrating the universal in thought, whence the particular of the nominal- gets its meaning, with what is positive in istic assump- the individual. We have only shown that tion' when we oppose the individual to the universal we make the universal synonymous with the subjective. If, then, we separate from the indi vidual everything subjective, including the positing by the subject for the subject, and suppose the posi- 92 THE INDIVIDUAL AS EGO tivity something outside the subject altogether, then we are also outside the intuition itself and can only get back by suppressing that " outside of subjectivity " in which we have supposed the essence of individuality to consist. And all the attempts which, under the guise of nominalism, have been made to retain this meaning of individuality have failed and will always fail.
But are we in any better case? Have we, if we cannot attain the individual which we oppose to the universal, succeeded in securing the standpoint of universal which we want to integrate r the problem of Qr are we merely vexing ourselves in pursuing an empty shadow r Is the indi vidual we require in order to endow the universal with the substantiality of effective reality an illusive appear ance ever disappearing behind us?
This is the point to which we must now give careful attention, and we shall see that it is not a case of running forward or of turning back, but of stopping and embracing the true individual which is in us.
The universal is the predicate with which in the judgment the subject is invested. Every cognitive act § 7. The is an a pri0™ synthesis, and the universal universal as a is one of the terms of that synthesis. Even category. fae intuition is, as we have seen, unin telligible except as a necessary relation. And this relation is an a -priori synthesis between the ideal element whereby the subject illumines for itself the term intuited, and the subject of the judgment made explicit, which is the term intuited. So, then, the true universal, or the category, is the universal which can only work by being predicated of\ the subject; the individual is the subject which can only work by being VII THE CATEGORY 93 the subject of predication. The category, then (as Kant proved), is a function of the subject of knowledge, of the actual subject itself; and the individual is the content of the intuition by which the subject of know ledge issues from itself. But is it possible to fix the subject of knowledge, the category, the universality? Fixing a category means defining it, thinking it. But the category thought is the category made subject of a judgment and therefore no longer predicated, no longer the subject's act. No one before Kant had ever given thought to the category, though we all use it, and many even after Kant still fail to render a clear account of it.1 We are still accustomed to take the category in its primitive, Aristotelian meaning, as the most universal predicate which itself can never be subject.2 It may be the category of " being " which we take as this most universal concept. Can this " being " be thought, or let us say simply can it be fixed by thinking, in the position of a universal which does not function as subject? But fixing it means saying to oneself: " Being is being." That is, we afErm " being " by duplicating it internally into a " being " which is subject and a " being " which is predicate. And then in regard to the " being " which is subject, and which alone can really be said to be fixed, it is not universal at all, but absolutely particular and definitely indivi- 1 Cf. my remarks on this subject in my essay, Rosmini e Giobertt, Pisa, Nistri, 1898.
2 It should be remarked that the Aristotelian category, the most universal predicate, does not differ fundamentally from the Kantian category, a function of the judgment, when the predicate of the judgment, according to the Aristotelian logic, is given the full meaning which Aristotle intended. It is a universality which interpenetrates and so determines and illumines the subject that it becomes the whole matter of knowledge and the mode by which thought thinks. Whence the concept of the predicate is always, in substance, not an idea thought, but an act by which a given content is thought.
94 THE INDIVIDUAL AS EGO CH.
dual. So that if everything is " being " (meaning that " universal " comprises all things under it), " being " is not everything, since it is only itself by distinguishing itself from every other possible object of thought, as the unique being. And precisely the same applies to substance, or cause, or relation, or any similar object of thought on which we would confer the value of a category. The category, so to say, is a category only so long as we do not stare it straight in the face. If we do, it is individualized at once, punctuated, posited as a unique qutd^ and itself requires light from a predicate to which it must be referred. And then it is no longer a category.
What has been said of the category or pure uni versal clearly applies a fortiori to every universal, in so § 8. Particu- ^ar as ^ functions as such, and so assumes larity of the the office of category. Each of the Platonic universal. ideas, highest archetypes of single natural things, in order to be thought of must be individualized. For if this horse is horse (universal), the horse (universal) itself is horse; and if following Plato in the manner shown in the Phaedrus we transport ourselves on the wings of fancy to the heaven where the real horse is to be seen, that horse the sight of which will render possible here below the single mortal horse, it is clear that the real horse in heaven is only seen by affirming it, that is, by making it the subject of a judgment, precisely in the same way as in the case of any sorry nag we meet here on earth and stop to look at. So the celestial horse is unique in its incom municable nature, and in itself, omnimodo determinate it can neither be intuited nor apprehended in thought without using terms which encircle it with the light of a predicate which universalizes it\ We must say, for vn THE INDIVIDUALIZED UNIVERSAL 95 example, " The horse is " and then " being " is the category and horse the individual.
We may conclude, then, that the universal has, even when interpreted in the most complete form by the nominalists, the need of being particularized in the individual. When, then, there is no individual and it is still to seek, the universal posits itself as indi vidual, if by no other way, then by confronting itself with itself so making itself at one and the same time individual and universal. And the effort, therefore, to integrate the universal as pure universal which it is believed is necessary, is vain, because the universal as pure universal is never found.
We can now say that the individual and the universal in their antagonism to one another are two abstractions. Think the individual and creteness of the m thinking it you universalize it. Think universal and tne universal and in thinking it you inthe particular. dividualize it> SQ that the inquiry concerning the concept of the individual has always been orientated towards an abstraction, for it starts from an abstraction, namely, the concept of the universal as idea to be realized or as category to be individualized. In treating the two terms between which thought moves, — the individual which has to be brought under the category, the category which has to interpenetrate the individual, — no account whatever has been taken of the thought itself, in which the two terms are immanent. From the universal which can be thought of but does not think, and from the individual which can be intuited but does not intuit, we must turn to the concreteness of thought in act, which is a unity of universal and par ticular, of concept and intuition; and we shall find that the positive is attained at last, and clear of contradiction.
CHAPTER VIII THE POSITIVE AS SELF-CREATED THE distinction between abstract and concrete thought is fundamental. The transfer of a problem from § i. Abstract abstract to concrete thought is, we may and concrete say, the master-key of our whole doctrine, thought. Many and various doctrines, which have thrown philosophy into a tangle of inextricable difficulties and have blocked the path of escape from empiricism, have in our view arisen entirely from looking at the abstract in unconsciousness of the concrete in which it is engrafted and by which it is conceivable. For empiricism itself is an abstract view of reality, and all its difficulties arise from the restric tion of its standpoint. It can only be overcome when we succeed in rising to the speculative standpoint.
Of doctrines which spring from the soil of abstract thought we can find perhaps no more notable and significant example than that of the L'tJctnessof table of judgments, from which Kant in Kant's classifi- the Critique of Pure Reason deduces the cation of the categories. He distinguishes — to take one example or his method — three species or modality in the judgment, according to whether the judgment is assertorical, problematical, or apodeictical; or according to whether the relation of the predicate to the subject is thought to be actual or possible 96 cii.vm CLASSIFICATION OF JUDGMENTS 97 or necessary. And in classifying the judgments which are thus set in array for our thought and regarded as the content of our mind, inherent in it but de tachable from it, a content communicable to others because conceivable in itself, he is right in holding that there are all these three, and no more than these three, species of modality. But when judgments are regarded in this way and found to be so diverse, the one true judgment on which, as Kant himself taught, all the others depend and from which they are in separable, the / think, is falsified. For example, the true_ judgment in its concreteness is not " Caesar conquered Gaul," but " I think that Caesar conquered Gaul." It is only the second of these judgments which is truly a judgment we can make, and in the first or abbreviated form of it the principal proposition is not absent but apparently understood and not expressed, and it is only in the full form that we find the modality of the function of judgment, and the true relation which holds between the terms which this function brings together in an a priori synthesis. The former of the two judgments, if taken as a distinct judgment, is clearly no more than an object of thought, abstracted from the subjective act which posits it within the organic whole of its own synthesis. It has no modality in itself since in itself it is not conceivable. And inasmuch as it is only by being presupposed as conceivable by itself that it can be posited beside other judgments different from it, so it is assertorical while the others may be problematical or apodeictic. But when, however actualized, it is not presupposed, but really thought, as alone it can be thought, as a content of the / think, then its differences from the other judgments 9 8 THE POSITIVE AS SELF-CREATED CH.
(in so far as they are judgments] disappear. For all judgments are alike acts of the thinking I, the form of whose acts is constant. The / think is not assert- orical, because it cannot be apodeictical nor even problematical. Or, if you call it assertorical then it is necessarily so; you must say it is apodeictically assert orical. For it is impossible to think what we cannot think we think, just as it is impossible to think that by thinking we can make it true or false that Caesar conquered Gaul.1 And it is not a mere question of words. Indeed it did not escape Kant himself that in all the twelve § 3 Empirical classes °f judgments, which he distin- character of the guished under the heads of quality, classification. quantity, relation, and modality, we always bring judgments back to the common original form of the / think. We have to understand, then, that every judgment (be it assertorical, problematical, or apodeictic) is contained within a fundamental judgment which itself is outside any such classi fication. The serious consequence to be drawn from this criticism of the Kantian theory is that it is not judgments but dead abstractions which are classified. Judgments are spiritual acts, but judgments and all spiritual acts become natural facts when they are thought of abstractly outside their concrete actuality. In reality in Kant's assertorical judgment the real relation, which is not a necessary but a merely con tingent one, is not a part of the judgment but of the natural fact, apprehended empirically, and con sidered in its abstract objectivity, independently of the mind which represents it. So that the distinction 1 With regard to this matter of the\ classification of judgments, cf. Sistema di Logica, vol. i. part ii. ch. 5.
vm THE FUNDAMENTAL JUDGMENT 99 Kant makes is one the ground of which is in the empiricism which sees the object of thought and does not see the thought which makes it object.
This example is, as I have said, the more significant from the fact that Kant is the author of transcendental §4. Kant's idealism. The chief characteristic of tran- inconsistency. scendcntal idealism is the forceful manner in which it rises above empiricism, recalling experi ence from the object to the subject which actualizes it. Kant himself in this as in many other cases goes about laboriously expounding artificial and untenable doctrines, because he fails to grasp firmly his own sound principle, which may be called the principle of the indwelling of the abstract in the concrete thought.
It is, then, in concrete thought that we must look for the positivity which escapes abstract thought, be it of the universal or of the individual. It § 5 Thought., h abstract universal that thought as the concreteness of the thinks, but the abstract universal is not universal and thought. The abstract individual is only the individual.
we want to intuit, to feel, to grasp as it were in a moment, to take by surprise. Neither universal nor individual is concrete thought, for taken in its natural meaning the universal is not individualized as it must be to be real; nor is the individual universalized as even it must be to be ideal, that is, to be truly real. When Descartes wished to assure himself of the truth of knowledge, he said: Cogito ergo sum; that is, he ceased to look at the cogitatum which is abstract thought and looked at the cogitare itself, the act of the ego, the centre from which all the rays of our world issue and to which they all return. And then he no longer found in thought the being which is only a ioo THE POSITIVE AS SELF-CREATED CH.
simple idea, a universal to be realized, a being like that of God in the ontological argument, at least as the critics of that argument, from the eleventh-century monk Gaunilo to Kant, represented it. He found the positive being of the individual. He found in thought the individuality which can only be guaranteed by intuition, as Kant and all the nominalists, ancient, modern, and contemporary, are agreed. It is indeed only by an intuition that Descartes sees being, but by an intuition which is not immediate, such as the nominalists need, and as Kant also needs, with his theory of the datum^ the term or matter of empirical intuition. The intuition is the result of a process: Cogito. I am not except as I think, and I am in so far as I think; and I am therefore only in so far as and to the extent that I think.
Here, then, is the true positivity which Plato sought, and without which it appeared to Aristotle there could § 6. The true be no sure basis of the ideas: the positivity positivity. which is a realization of the reality of which the idea is the principle, and which integrates the idea itself by what is intrinsic in it. For if the idea is the idea or ground of the thing, the thing must be produced by the idea. The thought which is true thought must generate the being of what it is the thought, and this precisely is the meaning of the Cartesian Cogito. I — this reality which is "I," the surest reality I can possess, and which if I let it go all possibility of assuring myself of any reality whatever is gone, this one and only firm point to which I can bind the world which I think — this "I am " is in so far as I think. I realize it in thinking, with a thought which is myself thinking. The " I," as we shall see more clearly later, only is in so far as it is THE SELF OF THE COGITO 101 self-consciousness. The " I " is not a consciousness which presupposes the self as its object, but a con sciousness which posits a self. And every one knows that personality, definite personality, can only be thought of as self-constituted by its own inherent forces, and these are summed up in thought.
In the intellectualist theory the ideas, as Plato conceived them, confront thought, and there is no § 7. Intellect- way of passing from the ideas to what is uaiism. positive in the individual. The individual is the discovery which thought makes when it suddenly realizes that it has withdrawn from its original stand point, and instead of having before it the ideas which it has constructed and projected before itself, has itself confronting its own self. The individual is the realization of the process in which the ideas arise and live the moment we turn from the abstract to the concrete. In the concrete we must seek the positive basis of every reality. This, as we know, Descartes did not do. He suddenly fell back into the intellectualist position, and later philosophy has been no more successful.
The positive nature of the being which is affirmed of the " I " in the Cogito ergo sum consists in this. In § 8 The t^ie " ^ " t^ie particularity and the univeruniversal and sality coincide and are identified by giving the particular pjace to tne true individual. Aristotle de fined the individual as the unity of form and of matter, of the ideal element which is universal and of the immediate positive element which is particular. They are identified (and this is the point) not because they are terms which are originally diverse and therefore either of them conceivable without the other, but because they can only be thought as difference in 102 THE POSITIVE AS SELF-CREATED CH.
identity. In fact, I, who am in so far as I think, cannot transcend the punctual act of the thinking without transcending myself; no greater oneness than this can be thought. But if my oneness depends on my thinking, my thinking must itself be the highest universality there can be. For the thinking by which I think myself is precisely the same thinking by which I think everything. What is more, it is the thinking by which I think myself truly, that is, when I feel that I am thinking what is true absolutely and therefore that I am thinking universally. The act of thinking, then, through which I am, posits me as individual universally, as, in general, it posits all thinking or, indeed, all truth, universally.
From this standpoint, whilst we are able to answer the ancient and vexed question which divided the realists and the nominalists, and at the same of realism and time to solve the problem or the principle the truth of of individualization, we are also able to see that both realists and nominalists have had more reason in their respective contentions than they ever suspected. For not only is the universal real, as the realists affirmed, but there is no other reality; and not only is the individual real, as the nominalists affirmed, but outside the individual there is not anything, not even a name, an abstract or arbitrary scheme, or the like. The universal, not presupposed by thought, but really posited by it, is all that can be thought real. When, then, we make distinctions, as indeed we must, all distinctions fall within it. If anything could issue^ from thought it could not be thought. And universality therefore invests every principle or entity however diverse which we would oppose to thought, it being impossible vni ONENESS 103