Classical philosophy never set itself this question, viz. In what, formally, does the act of intellective knowing consist? It described some intellective acts, but did not tell us in what intellective knowing consists as such. Now, I believe that {77} intellective knowing consists formally in apprehending something as real.

Finally, in the third place, apprehending reality is not merely an exclusive and elemental act of the intelligence, but is its radical act. Man is a {78} hyperformalized animal. The autonomization in which formalization consists has become changed into hyperautonomization in man, i.e., it has been changed from sign into reality. With this, the catalog of possible suitable responses to a stimulus becomes practically indeterminate. This means that in man, his sentient structures no longer assure his suitable response. That is to say, the unity of arousal, tonic modification, and response would be broken if man were not able to apprehend stimuli in a new way. When the stimuli do not suffice for a suitable response, man suspends, so to speak, his response and, without abandoning the stimulus, but rather conserving it, apprehends it according as it is in itself, as something de suyo, as stimulating reality. That is, he apprehends the stimulus, but not as mere stimulus: this is the radical dawn of intellection. Intellection arises precisely and formally at the moment of transcending or going beyond mere stimulus, at the moment of apprehending something real as real when pure sensing is suspended.

Now, the impression of reality is the formality of an apprehending act which is "one". This impression qua impression is an act of sensing. But insofar as it is of reality, it is an act of intellective knowing. And this signifies that sensing and intellective knowing are precisely the two moments of something which is one and unitary; two moments of the impression of reality. And that is what we must examine now: the unity of the impression of reality. {79}

A) Formal unity of the impression of reality: sentient intellection. Sensing is not the same thing as intellective knowing. But is this difference an opposition? Classical philosophy has always set intellectual knowing over against sensing. Even the one time when Kant sought to unify them, it was always a "unification", but not a formal structural "unity" which was in question. The fact is that classical philosophy, just as it failed to conceptualize what intellective knowing is in a formal sense, never conceptualized what sensing is in a formal sense either. Given this situation, the foregoing presumed opposition remained, as I said before, as part of the intellectual atmosphere. We have already seen what intellective knowing is: it is apprehending something as real, i.e., in the formality of reality. What is sensing? Here there lurks a hidden confusion which it is necessary to dispel. Indeed, failure to realize this confusion has had grievous consequences for philosophy. Sensing, in fact, consists in apprehending something impressively. But "sensing" can denote "only sensing", where the "only" is not merely a negative conceptual precision, but a proper positive mode of sensing as impression; this is what I have called "pure sensing". Sensing apprehends something impressively. Pure sensing apprehends this something which is impressing in the formality of mere stimulation. Therefore, sensing is not formally identical to pure sensing. Pure sensing is only a mode of sensing as such. Whence the necessity to carefully distinguish these two aspects in that which we designate with the single word ‘sensing’: sensing as sensing and pure sensing. {80}

Classical philosophy confounded sensing with pure sensing, and hence thought that there is opposition between sensing and intellective knowing. This is not true, and the proof is that there is an impression of reality. An impression of reality as impression is sensing; but, because it is of reality, it is intellective knowing. Impression of reality is formally sensing and intellective knowing. In the impression of reality sensing and intellective knowing are but two of its moments. This is a radical and essential overcoming of the dualism between sensing and intellective knowing. From Parmenides through Plato and Aristotle, philosophy was based on the dualism according to which a thing is something "sensed", and which at the same time "is". In the midst of all of the discussions about the dualism or non-dualism of things, the duality of the two acts has been left intact: the act of sensing and the act of {81} intellective knowing. But, I believe that in man, sensing and intellective knowing are not two acts, each complete in its order; rather, they are two moments of a single act, of one unique impression, of the impression of reality. Now it is necessary to determine this intrinsic and formal unity.

It is not a synthesis, as Kant thought, because we are not dealing with a case where the acts conform to a single object. The unity in question is not an objective synthesis, but a unity which is formally structural. It is necessary to emphasize this: it is sensing which senses reality, and it is the intellective knowing which intellectively knows the real impressively. {82}

This act can be described in two ways, the two ways in which one can describe the impression of reality. In the impression of reality we can start from the impression itself. Then "in" this impression is the moment of reality. As impression is what formally constitutes sensing, and reality is what formally constitutes intellective knowing, it follows that saying that the moment of reality is "in" the impression is the same as saying that intellection is structurally "in" the sensing; i.e., the impression of reality is intellective sensing. For this reason, when we apprehend heat, for example, we are apprehending it as real heat. An animal apprehends heat only as a thermic response sign; this is pure sensing. In contrast, man senses heat as something "in its own right", as something {83} de suyo: the heat is real heat. But we can describe the impression of reality starting from the moment of reality. In that case the moment of impression is structurally "in" the moment of reality. For the above example, we apprehend the real as being warm. Sensing is thus "in" the intellective knowing. In virtue of this, that intellection is sentient intellection. In the impression of reality I sense real heat (intellective sensing), I sense warm reality (sentient intellection). The impression of reality is thus intellective sensing or sentient intellection. The two formulae are identical, and so I shall use them indiscriminately. But in order to better contrast my views with the usual idea of the intelligence, I prefer to speak of sentient intelligence, embracing in this denomination both intellective sensing and sentient intellection. Hence I shall say that the impressive apprehension of reality is an act of the sentient intelligence.

The apprehension of reality is, then, an act which is structurally one and unitary. This structural unity is what the "in" expresses. Classical philosophy, on the other hand, believed that there are two acts: the act of sensing gives "to" the intelligence what it is going to work on, i.e., to know intellectively. But this is not the case. The difference between "to" and "in" is essential. That difference expresses the difference between the two concepts of the intelligence. To say that the senses give "to" the intelligence what it is going to work on is to suppose that the intelligence has as its primary and suitable object that which the senses present "to" it. If this were true, the intelligence would be what I call a sensible intelligence. A sensible intelligence is an intelligence "of" the sensible. On the other hand, to say that the senses sense what is sensed "in" the intelligence does not mean that the primary and suitable object of intellective knowing is the sensible, but rather something more than that, viz. that the very mode of intellective knowing is to sense reality. {84} Hence, it is a sensing which is intellective qua sensing. In this case the intelligence is sentient. Sentient intelligence consists in intellective knowing being only a moment of impression: the moment of the formality of its otherness. To sense something real is, formally, to be actually sensing intellectively. Intellection is not intellection "of" the sensible, but rather intellection "in" the sensing itself. It is clear, then, that sensing is intellective knowing: it is intellective sensing. Intellective knowing is thus nothing but another mode of sensing (different from pure sensing). This "other mode" concerns the formality of what is sensed. The unity of intelligence and sensing is the unity of the content and formality of reality. Sentient intellection is impressive apprehension of a content in the formality of reality; it is precisely the impression of reality. The formal act of sentient intellection is, I repeat, impressive apprehension of reality. The senses do not give what is sensed "to" the intelligence, but rather are actually sensing intellectively. There is no object given "to" the intelligence, but rather an object given "in" the intelligence itself. Sensing is in itself a mode of intellective knowing, and intellective knowing is in itself a mode of sensing. Reality is apprehended, then, in the impression of reality. This is sentient intelligence. That which we call ‘intellective knowing’ and ‘sensing’, I repeat, are but two moments of the single act of sentiently apprehending the real. As it is not possible to have content without formality nor formality without content, there is but a single act, viz. intellective sensing or sentient intellection: the sentient apprehension of the real. This act is, then, intrinsically and structurally "one": it is, I emphasize, the impression of reality. Sentient intellection is, then, purely and simply impression of reality. In this apprehension intellective knowing is the very mode of sensing. {85}

The concipient intelligence:

Here we have, then the unity of the impression of reality: sentient intellection. What is the structure of that unity? Or what comes to the same thing, what is the structure of the impression of reality? {88}

a) On one hand, since Aristotle’s time, dynamis has signified potency, that according to which something can receive actuations or actuate itself, and this acting is not just on something apart from the agent, but also on the agent itself (though insofar as this is distinct from its own actuation). {90}

Now, such is the case with sentient intellection. To be sure, there are two potencies, the potency of sensing and {91} the potency of intellective knowing. As potencies they are essentially distinct. In as much as it is a potency, the intelligence is essentially irreducible to pure sensing, because a formality of reality will never emerge from a sign-based formality. But this intellective potency is not by itself facultized for producing its act. Nor can it produce other than as intrinsically and formally united with the potency of sensing—the unity in virtue of which, and only in virtue of which, the intellective potency acquires the character of a faculty. By the same token, sensing cannot be human sensing, i.e., cannot produce the act of impression of reality unless it is intrinsically and formally "one" with the intellective potency. This unity is the sentient intelligence. On the other hand, pure sensing is already facultized: it is a "potency-faculty". The sentient intelligence is not a potency but a faculty. It is a faculty composed not only intrinsically but also—and this is the essential point—structurally by two potencies, that of sensing and that of intellective knowing. Hence, it is not the case that these two potencies concur in the same object (the classical idea until Kant’s time), nor that they concur partially in a total act (Kant’s objective synthesis); there is no concurrence, but rather codetermination. They are codetermined in a single act of sentient intellection, in the act of impressive or sentient apprehension, in the impression of reality. The intelligence as a faculty is sentient, and human sensing as a faculty is intellective. Hence the unity of the impression of reality is the unity of the act of a single faculty.

This conceptualization is not a fact—that I have already noted—but it is to my way of thinking the unique conceptualization which permits us to realize the fact of the impression of reality. The impression of reality is a fact, and therefore {92} so is intellective sensing or sentient intellection. The conceptualization of a faculty structurally composed of sentient and intellective potency is, I repeat, the only scientific conceptualization of the fact of the impression of reality.

A) First, there is the most visible stratum: the execution of the vital acts. This is the "arousal–tonic–modification–response" structure of which we spoke some pages back. A living organism carries out these actions while finding itself "among" things, some external, others internal to itself. This "among" in which the living organism finds itself has two characteristics. First, there is that according to which the living organism finds itself placed among things: it has its fixed locus among them. {93} This is a characteristic essential to the living organism, though one which it shares with all other non-living realities. But the living organism has a proper modal characteristic exclusive to it: when it is thus placed among things, it is situated in a determinate form among them; i.e., it has its situs among them. The category of situs had no role in Aristotle’s philosophy because he considered it as a highest category of being. Nonetheless, to my way of thinking this is not true. It is an essential metaphysical category, but only of the living organism. Position and situation, taken in the widest sense and not just in the spatial sense, are two radical concepts of this stratum of the living organism. They are not identical, but neither are they independent: a single positioning gives rise to quite diverse situations. Thus positioned and situated among things, the living organism lives by its vital processes. This stratum, nonetheless, is the most superficial.

B) The living organism never remains univocally characterized by the web of its vital processes. In the vital processes of a mole and a blind dog we shall never encounter a situation of luminous character. But the difference is essential: the mole does not visually cope visually with things "before him", but the dog does. Therefore, beneath the vital processes there is in every living organism a primary mode of dealing with things and with itself: the habit. Habit is the foundation of the possibility of every possible vital process. In fact, through its habit, through its mode of dealing with things, these latter "are situated" for the living organism in a certain formal respect; this is the formality. In Aristotle’s philosphy and in all of medieval philosophy one sees this category completely shipwrecked. But to my way of thinking, this owes to the fact that Aristotle considered the habitus as a highest category of being, ultimately reducible to a {94} quality. Nonetheless, I think that we are dealing with a radical metaphysical category of the living organism. In contrast to both Aristotle and the medievals (for whom the habitus is a disposition encrusted more or less permanently in the subject), I formally conceive of what I call ‘habit’ as a "mode of dealing" with things. For this reason, it is a category exclusive to living organisms since non-living organisms do not have a mode of dealing with things. And as a category of living organisms it is radical in them.

Now, habit has two faces. On one hand, the habit determines the type of vital process. On the other, it is something determined by the very nature of the structures of the living organism. Whence the mode of dealing with things is always something intermediate, so to speak, between action and structures. Thus, sentient intellection is a habit which determines every human process, but is {95} at the same time determined by the human structures. Analysis of the facts moves among actions and among the habits taken in and by themselves; but these habits conduce to something which is not a fact but a terminus of a structural conceptualization. This is the third stratum of the life of every living organism.

The somatic structure and, therefore, its potencies and faculties of sensing, assume diverse forms. In the first animals, it was a type of diffuse sensing which I term sentiscence. In the more developed animals {96} we find a systematization of the structures of stimulus-based impression. This systematization is to my way of thinking the proper formal nature of what quite appropriately we call the nervous "system". The nervous system is the systematization of impressivity. This impressivity makes sentiscence into a strict sensibility. The systematization has for its part a unique character, viz. centralization, by which the nervous system is the transmitter of the stimulus. This systematization grows in complexity from the first nerve centers to the brain and within the brain to the cortex wherein formalization culminates. Susceptibility, sentiscence, and sensibility are the three different forms of the structure of stimulation.

c) All of this happens in man, but there is in him something different as well. In addition to the biological autonomization of the stimuli, he has the potency to know intellectively in a way determined by the hyperformalization of his sentient structures. This potency is not by itself a faculty. The structural unity of intelligence and sensing is determinant of the habit of sentient intellection whose formal act is the impression of reality. Now, qua determinant of that habit, the unitary structure "sensing-intelligence" is the faculty of sentient intelligence. It is because of this that man impressively senses reality. We are dealing, then, not just with habit but with structures. It is for this reason, I repeat, that intellection is an act of sentient apprehension of the real. It is an intellection which in a certain way (although not exclusively) we could term "cerebral". The brain is the sentient organ which by its hyperformalization determines in an exact way the need for intellection to assure man’s ability to respond suitably. {97} In addition, the brain has an even deeper function: that of keeping intellection in a state of suspense. This is what gives rise to its state of vigilance. Finally, by virtue of being sentient, the activity of the brain formally and intrinsically modulates the intellection itself, i.e., the impression of reality. In the unity of these three moments (the exacting nature of hyperformalization, vigilance, and intrinsic modulation) consists the structural sentient moment of the sentient intelligence.

b) Nor is it a systematic note. Rather, it represents a new element, but one which is elemental though necessitated by the hyperformalized material structures and formally and intrinsically modulated by them. {98}

{99}

§2

1) The diversity of the senses. At first glance the answer seems to be obvious. The diversity of {100} the senses consists in the diversity of the qualities which the senses offer to us: color, shape, sound, temperature, etc. In this respect the senses differ among themselves by virtue of the distinct richness of the sensed qualities. Aristotle already noted that sight is the sense which manifests to us the greatest diversity of information: pollas deloi diaphoras. Today, the senses are specified by a distinction in the receptive organs. They are some eleven in number: vision, hearing, smell, taste, equilibrium, contact-pressure, heat, cold, pain, kinesthesia (including muscular, tendon, and articular sense), and visceral sensibility. I prescind from the fact that the specificity of some of these receptors is in dispute; that is a psycho-physiological question.

Nonetheless, as I see it, this is not the radical difference among the senses in the case of human sensing. The organs of the human senses sense with a sensing in which what is sensed is apprehended as reality. As each sense presents reality to me in a different form, if follows that there are different modes of the impression of reality. Now, the radical difference between the senses is not in the qualities which they present to us, nor in the content of the impression, but rather in the form in which they present reality to us. On this point, philosophy has gone astray. It has simply assumed that the thing sensed is always something which is "in front" of me. But besides being quite vague, this obscures a great falsehood, because being in front of me is only one of the different ways of a real thing being present to me. Since the fact that an apprehension is of reality is what formally constitutes intellection, it follows that the modes of reality’s being present to us in the human senses are eo ipso diverse modes of intellection. {101} For the sake of greater clarity I shall successively examine the modes of presentation of the real in sensing as modes of intellective sensing and as modes of sentient intellection.

A) The modes of presentation of reality: intellective sensing. In what follows, I shall limit myself to a brief sketch. Sight apprehends a real thing as something which is "in front"; we say that it is "before me". The thing itself is before me according to its proper configuration, according to its eidos. But this does not apply in the case of hearing. To be sure, a sound is just as immediately apprehended in the sense of hearing as a color can be in the sense of sight. But in the sound, the thing sounding is not included in the audition; rather, the sound directs us to it. This "direction" or "sending back" is what, following the etymological meaning of the word, I shall call "notice". What is real of the sound is a mode of presentation proper to it: notifying presentation. In smelling, an odor is apprehended immediately as in the case of a sound or a color. But the thing is neither present as in the case of sight, nor merely made known by notification, as in the case of hearing. In smelling, reality is presented to us apprehended in a different form: as a scent. Smell is the sense of scenting. In the case of taste on the other hand, a thing is present, but as a possessed reality, "savored". Taste is more than notice, or scent; it is reality itself present as enjoyable. It is reality itself which, as such-and-such reality, has a formal moment of enjoyment. In the case of touch (contact and pressure) a thing is present but without eidos or taste; this is the naked presentation of reality. But the senses also present reality to me in another form. In kinesthesia I no longer have reality present, nor any notice of it, etc. I only have reality as something "towards". This is not a "towards" reality, but reality {102} itself as a "towards". It is thus a mode of directional presentation.

But neither reality nor my sensing are exhausted in these types of sentient apprehension. Above all, we must consider heat and cold; they are the primary presentation of reality as temperant. There is in addition the apprehension of reality not simply as temperant but also as affectant: sorrow and pleasure are the primary expression of that affection. Reality is temperant and affectant. But the {103} apprehension of reality has still another moment, viz. reality as position. This is what is proper to the sense of equilibrium. According to it, I apprehend reality as something centered.

Eidetic presence, notice, scent, taste, naked reality, towards, temperature accommodation, affection, position, and intimacy are first line modes of presentation of the real; they are therefore modes of the impression of reality. It is not the case that "the" mode of reality’s presence is vision, and that the other modes are nothing but replacements for vision when it fails us. Indeed, exactly the opposite. To be sure, the modes are not all equivalent; but all are in and by themselves proper modes of the presentation of reality. The preponderant rank of some modes over others does not proceed from the fact that they are replacements for vision, but from the very nature of reality. There are, for example, realities which cannot have any other mode of presentation than naked reality apprehended tactilly. And in these cases it could be that reality thus sensed is of a rank much superior to any reality eidetically sensed. In all modes of presentation of reality, then, there is always an intellective sensing. {104}

In the second place, such a preponderance has been given to the presentation of the real in vision that what is not seen is declared eo ipso to be unintelligible. And this is absurd not only philosophically, but also scientifically. Indeed, elementary particles are realities, since they are given a splendid mathematical description in quantum mechanics. Nonetheless, they are not visualizable {105} as if they were waves or particles. Their real structure is such that they are emitted and absorbed as if they were corpuscles and they propagate as if they were waves. But they are neither. And it is not just that in fact we do not see these particles, but that they are in themselves realities which are "non-visualizable". And as we shall immediately see, the identification of the visible and the intelligible is philosophically false: every intellection is sentient and, therefore, every mode of apprehension of the real—even if that reality be neither visual nor visualizable—is true intellection, and what is apprehended therein has its proper intelligibility.

A) Above all, the diverse senses are not merely juxtaposed with each other, but, on the contrary, overlap each other totally or partially. If we were dealing with the qualitative content of each sense, this overlap would be impossible. For example, it would be absurd to pretend to have a taste of fire or of the pole star. But we are dealing with modes of {107} presentation of the real. And these modes, and not the qualities, are what overlap. I can have a perfectly enjoyable intellection of the pole star. Although we may not apprehend the quality proper to a sense in a particular thing, nonetheless we apprehend the mode of presentation proper to this sense when we apprehend the real by other senses. To clarify this I shall discuss a few typical cases which are of special importance.

Sight gives me the reality "before" me; touch gives me the "naked" reality. The overlap of the two modes of presence is obvious: I have "before me the naked reality". This does not mean a vision of the eidos plus a touching of that same eidos; that is generally absurd. Rather, it means that the real is present "before" me as "naked" reality. The "before" me is the proper mode of presentation of the real in the sense of sight, and the "naked" reality is the mode of presentation in the sense of touch. These two modes of presentation are those which overlap. All the modes can also overlap with the mode of presentation of taste. Reality, indeed, is not just something present before me, in its naked reality, but something also in principle "enjoyable" as reality and by being reality. This enjoyableness is grounded in the mode through which reality is present to me in the sense of taste. Sight and touch give us, as I said, the naked reality before me, and I add now that it is enjoyable by being reality. Sight and touch, when they overlap with hearing, present to me the reality to which this latter sense points: the sonorous thing is apprehended as something which sounds before me and in its naked reality. A similar thing occurs in the case of heat and cold: I can sense myself acclimated or adjusted to every reality qua reality. In another aspect, orientation and equilibrium overlap with the other modes of sentient intellection of the real. In every intellection there is an orientation, {108} and every orientation is oriented in reality by being reality, even if it be merely reported. On the other hand, every intellection of the external real, overlapped by the intellection of intimacy, makes of each intellection, including external intellection, an effort to achieve intimacy with what is apprehended.

Overlapping the visceral sensibility, the "towards" determines therein an intellection of the greatest importance. The visceral sense gives me reality as intimacy; i.e., I apprehend myself as actually being in myself. But with the overlapping of the "towards", this actually being in me propels me inside of myself to be present to myself. And this intellection of my own intimacy in its "inside" is an intellection of the "me" through the "actually being"; viz. it is reflection. Reflection has always been regarded in philosophy as being the primary act of the intellection (every intellection would be a reflection); reflection would also be an immediate act (every act of intellection would already be by itself a reflection); finally it would be an exclusive act of the intelligence and foreign to sensing (the senses, we are told, do not turn back upon themselves). But this triple conceptualization is strictly false. In the first place, not every act of intellection is a reflection. Every reflection presupposes a previous "being here-and-now in {109} myself"; only because I am already in myself is there reflection. But since being in myself is an act of sentient intellection, i.e., of strict intellection, it follows that reflection is not a primary intellective act. In the second place, reflection is not an immediate act; i.e., intellection is not an act which is formally an entering into myself. The entering of the intellection into itself is an entering grounded on a "towards" of my own intimacy. Reflection is not an immediate act. Finally, it is not an act which is foreign to sensing, because it is an act of sentient intellection. One does not enter into himself except by sensing himself. I apprehend myself, and I turn "towards" myself, and I sense myself as a reality which turns towards itself. And these three moments unitarily comprise reflection.

All of these forms of overlapping are authentic overlapping, that is, each mode is intrinsically and formally in the rest as a structural moment of the rest of them. No mode has any prerogative, not even the visual mode. It is in the diversity of overlapped modes that the immense richness of the apprehension of reality consists. To be sure, not every real thing is apprehended according to all of its modes; but this does not mean that they do not all overlap, because those modes according to which a reality is not present to us are modes of which we are positively "deprived". Indeed, if we were radically deprived of a sense, independently of the fact that we were deprived of the qualities which that sense can apprehend, we would not have the mode of presentation of the real proper to that sense. A man blind from birth not only does not see black and white or colors, he cannot have the presentation of the real of the other senses as something which is here-and-now {110} "before him". He not only doesn’t see qualities, but is deprived of apprehending the real as something which is "before". Such a man apprehends the "naked" reality of something tactically, but never apprehends it as something which is "before" him. Quite different is the situation of the blind man who at one time was able to see. In this blind man there is not an actual seeing of black and white or colors, but the act of apprehending the real from the other senses as something real "before him" still exists. Thus, a blindness to black and white or colors is not the same as a blindness to the mode of presentation of the real "before me". Hence, in every primordial apprehension of the real there is a strict unity not of sensible qualities, but of modes of presentation of the real, although at times it may be in that special form which we term "privative". Each of these modes taken by itself is nothing but a reduced and deficient mode of the primary impression of reality, whose plenitude is the primary unity of all eleven modes. But then, what is this unity?

B) One might think that the various senses constitute a primary diversity such that what we call "impressive apprehension of reality" would be a "synthesis"; the intelligence would thus be what synthesizes the senses. In my view, this is false because it does not correspond to the facts. The unity of these senses is already constituted by the mere fact of being senses "of reality", by being modes of apprehension of reality. The unity of the senses is not, then, a synthesis, but a primary unity, the physical unity of being apprehensors of reality. And since apprehending reality is intelligence, it follows that the unity of the senses is in being moments of the same "sentient intellection". Hence, the apprehension of reality is not a synthesis of senses, but on the contrary "the" senses {111} are "analyzers" of the apprehension of reality. From the point of view of the qualities—the only one adopted up to now by philosophy—one easily arrives at the idea of a synthesis. Scholastic philosophy conceived this synthesis as a "common sense". The distinct qualities which comprise the perceived thing in each case would be submitted to a synthesis of qualities. But this is false: that synthesis is not what is primary; rather, it is the unity of reality. And it is this primary unity of reality which constitutes the foundation of the synthesis of the qualities. The qualities are in fact qualities of a reality. Pure animal sensing also has a unity which is prior to any possible synthesis of qualities. The senses of an animal are also analyzers of its pure sensing. And in the animal, the unity prior to the senses is a unity of stimulation in which the animal’s senses are the differentiation of the stimulation. There is, then, a unity of being in stimulation prior to the diversity of the senses. In man, the unity of sensing is also given, but not in the form of a unity of being in stimulation, but a unity of reality. The unity of being in stimulation does not coexist in man with the unity of reality. Indeed, it is the replacement of the unity of being in stimulation by the unity of reality which is the constitution and origin of sentient intelligence. If the two unities were to coexist, man would have senses "and" intelligence, but he would not have sentient intelligence. Sentient intelligence is the structuralization of the diversity of the senses in the intellective unity of reality. If man could have only the mere unity of being in stimulation, it would signify a complete regression to the state of animality.

The impression of reality, then, has its own very precise structure. To impressively apprehend the real as {112} real is to apprehend the thing as actually being "before me" and in its "naked reality", and in its "enjoyability", and in its "direction", etc.

This primary unity is sentient intelligence. And thanks to this primary unity, it is possible and indeed necessary for there to be an overlap of some modes by others. Overlap is grounded in the primary unity of the sentient intelligence. Sentient intelligence, therefore, is not some vague concept, but, as I said before, something endowed with its own structure. Thus, the diverse modes of sentient intelligence emerge from its structural unity. {113}

In what does its transcendentality itself consist? What is transcendental depends on how one conceives the "trans" itself. "Trans" does not here mean "being beyond" apprehension. If that were true, the impression of reality would be impression of the transcendent—which would mean that the sentient apprehension of the real would be, formally, (i.e., qua apprehension) apprehension of something which in and through itself were real beyond apprehension; it would be {115} to think that the moment of otherness meant that the content of the impression of reality were transcendent. Now, it may or may not be true that that content is transcendent; that would have to be investigated in each case. But it is false that, formally, the otherness of reality is transcendent. That would mean that in the mere act of apprehending something we are apprehending a real thing which is and continues to be real even though we do not apprehend it. And this, I repeat, is formally false. In apprehension we have something real "in its own right". But that "in its own right" should mean real beyond apprehension is, in the first place, something which must be justified. And in the second place, this justification must be based precisely upon transcendentality. The possible transcending is based, then on transcendentality, and not the other way around.

‘Trans’ means something completely different here. Provisionally, it means that we are dealing with a characteristic of the formality of otherness and not with a characteristic, transcendent or no, of the content itself. It is a characteristic which is internal to what is apprehended. It does not withdraw us from what is apprehended, but submerges us in its reality; it is the characteristic of the "in its own right", of the de suyo. And it is this reality which, in a way to be made more precise forthwith, goes beyond the content, but within the formality of otherness. This intra-apprehensive "going beyond" is precisely transcendentality. The impression of reality is not impression of what is transcendent, but rather transcendental impression. Therefore "trans" does not mean being outside of or beyond apprehension itself but being "in the apprehension", yet "going beyond" its fixed content. In other words, that which is apprehended in the impression of reality is, by being real, and inasmuch as it is reality, "more" than what is it as colored, {116} sonorous, warm, etc. What is this "more"? That is the question.

For classical philosophy this "more", i.e., transcendentality, consists in that moment in which all things coincide. Transcendentality would be commonness. Although the word "transcendentality" is not Greek but medieval, that which it designates is Greek. In what do all things coincide? They coincide in being. Parmenides told us that to intellectively know something is to intellectively know that it "is" (such, at least, is my interpretation). The "is" is that in which all things coincide. And Plato called this coincidence commonness, koinonia. This commonness is participation. Nothing, for example, is "the" being, but everything participates in being. In turn, this participation is a progressive differentiation of a supreme genus which is "the" being. Things are like branches of a common trans, of a supreme genus, which is "the" being. Unity, participation, genus: here we have the three moments of what I believe constitutes in Plato the first sketch of what we call transcendentality. I leave aside the fact that these three moments are not, for Plato, the only ones to characterize being; four other equally supreme genera apply: movement, rest, sameness and otherness. Together with being they are the five supreme genera of things. They have a commonness among themselves, at least a partial one, and participation is grounded on this community. Aristotle profoundly modified this scheme but remained in the same general conceptual line. For Aristotle, being is not a genus, but a supreme trans-generic universal concept. Whence community is not participation; it is only a conceptual community of things. Transcendentality is what is proper to a concept in which what is conceived is in all things. Being is the most universal concept, {117} common to everything. Other concepts are not transcendental, except possibly generic concepts. And this line of thought was followed throughout the middle ages. Transcendentality consists in being a trans-generic concept.

Above all, the transcendental is, first of all, something proper to what constitutes the formal terminus of intellection. And this is not "being" but "reality". I shall consider the idea of being at length in another chapter. In the second place, this intellection is sentient. Hence, the real is transcendental by virtue of its reality as its own formality; reality is formality. In what does the transcendentality of this formality of reality consist? {118}

2. The Formal Nature of Transcendentality. We shall not construct concepts of the nature of transcendentality. Reality is the formality of impression, and transcendentality is the moment of the "ex" of this formality. The analysis of the "ex" is, then, an analysis of the impression of reality. It is not a theory. There in the impression of reality do we immediately discover transcendentality as an "ex". This analysis shows us that transcendentality has four constitutive moments. {119}

a) Reality is the formality of the de suyo. Now, if for any reason the content of a real thing is modified, the real thing does not therefore necessarily become another reality. It can continue to be the same real thing, although modified. What is this sameness? To be sure, it is not a simple phenomenon of perceptive constancy but a strict numerical sameness of the moment of reality. The content of the de suyo, i.e., what is de suyo, has changed but has not changed the de suyo itself as such. The same formality of reality, with numerical sameness, "reifies" whatever comes into its content. The thing is the same although not the same. The sameness in question is not a conceptual identity; it is not mere community. It is communication, reification. This does not mean that the concept of reality is equal in the two distinct realities, but that there is a numerical sameness. Each new apprehension of reality is inscribed in the formality of reality numerically the same. This is what constitutes the first moment of transcendentality: openness. The formality of reality is in itself, qua "of reality", something open, at least with respect to its content. The formality of reality is, then, an "ex". By being open this formality is that by which a real thing qua real is "more" than its actual content. Reality is not, then, a characteristic of the content already completed, but is open formality. To say "reality" is always to leave in abeyance a phrase which by itself is begging to be completed by "reality of something". The real qua real is open not in the sense that each real thing acts on all the others by virtue of its properties. We are not dealing with actuation but with openness of formality. The formality of reality {120} as such is openness itself. It is not openness of the real, but openness of reality.

b) Since reality is formally "open", it is not reality except respectively to that to which it is open. This respectivity is not a relation, because every relation is a relation of one thing or of a form of reality to another thing or other form of reality. In contrast, respectivity is a constitutive moment of the very formality of reality as such. Reality is de suyo and therefore to be real is to be so respectively to that which is de suyo. By its openness, the formality of reality is respectively transcendental. Respectivity transcends itself. The "ex" is now respectivity. It is reality itself, the formality of reality, which qua reality is formally respective openness. {121} To be real is more than to be this or that; but it is to be real only respectively to this or that. Respective openness is transcendental. This is the second moment of transcendentality.

What is the world? It is not the conjunction of real things, because this conjunction presupposes something which "conjoins" {122} these things. Now, that which conjoins real things is not some common concept with respect to which the real things are simply special cases. That which conjoins is a physical moment of the real things themselves. And this moment is the moment of pure and simple reality of each one of them. The character of being purely and simply real is what—because it is an open character—formally constitutes that physical unity which is the world. It is the formality of reality qua open, qua transcendent, of the real thing, and what constitutes it in a moment of reality itself. It is an openness, then, which radically and formally concerns each real thing by the fact of being purely and simply real. Therefore, were there but one single real thing, it would be constitutively and formally "worldly". Everything is de suyo worldly. In this respect, each real thing is more than itself: it is precisely transcendental; it has the transcendental unity of being a moment of the world. The formality of reality is thus "world-making". This is the fourth moment of transcendentality, of the "ex".

Thus there is a transcendental structure in every real thing which is apprehended in an impression of reality. The formality of reality is respective openness, and therefore is reifying. This respectivity has two moments: it is own-making and world-making. That is, each thing is "this" real thing; in a further sense it is "its own" reality (own-making); in a still more ulterior aspect it is pure and simple worldly reality (world-making). This does not mean a "contraction" of the idea of reality to each real thing, but just the reverse: an "expansion", a physical "extension" of the formality of reality from each real thing. This is the transcendental structure of the "ex": being de suyo is extended to being "its own" [suyo], and thereby is extended to being "worldly". {123}

We have examined the structure of the impression of reality in its two-fold modal and transcendental moment. As modal, the structure of the impression of reality is {124} the structure of sentient intellection. As transcendental, the structure of the impression of reality is the respective openness to worldly its-own-ness. Now, these two structural moments are not independent. Indeed, they are but moments of a single structure and they are mutually determined in constituting the unity of the impression of reality. This is what we must now clarify.

In contrast, content is that which constitutes the fact that the formality of reality is "reality" in all of its concreteness. The real is not only "such-and-such" a reality but also "reality" as such. The content is the determination of the reality itself. This is the transcendental function. It too involves content, and not just in an abstract way, but also as making of it a form and a mode of reality. Reality is not something insubstantial, but a formality which is very concretely determined. There are not only many real things, but also many forms of being real. {125} Each real thing is a form of being real; we shall see this in a later chapter. Thus it is clear that transcendentality does not conceptually repose upon itself, but depends upon the content of things. Transcendentality is not something a priori. But neither is it something a posteriori. That is, it is not a type of property which things have. Transcendentality is neither a priori nor a posteriori; it is something grounded by things in the formality in which they "are situated". It is the content of real things which determines their transcendental character; it is the mode in which things "are situated". It is not a property but a function: the transcendental function.

Green is not suchness qua mere content; suchness is the mode by which green consists in real green. At the same time reality involves content in a very precise way. It is not true that content is simply a particular case of reality, but rather that reality involves content in a very precise way: as transcending it. Transcendentality could not be given without that of which it is transcendental. Such-making and transcendentalization are the two inseparable aspects of the real. They constitute the structural unity of the impression of reality. {126}

Naturally, it does not mean what it originally meant for Andronicus of Rhodes, viz. "post-Physics" or "what comes after the Physics". Very soon after this editor of Aristotle, ‘metaphysics’ came to signify not what is "after" physics, but what {128} is "beyond" the physical. Metaphysics is then "beyond-physics". This is what I have just called the ‘transcendent’. Without employing the term, its greatest exponent was Plato: beyond sensible things are those things which Plato calls ‘intelligible things’, the things he termed ‘Ideas’. The Idea is "separated" from sensible things. Hence, what later was called meta came to mean what for Plato is "separation", khorismos. Plato boldly debated how to conceptualize this separation in such a way that the intellection of the Ideas would permit intellective knowing of sensible things. From the standpoint of the sensible things, they are a "participation" (methexis) in the Ideas. But from the standpoint of the Ideas, these Ideas are "present" (parousia) in things, and are their "paradigm" (paradeigma). Methexis, parousia, and paradeigma are the three aspects of a single structure: the conceptive structure of the separation. Aristotle seemingly rejected this Platonic conceptualization with his theory of substance. But ultimately, Aristotle nurtured himself on his master’s conceptualization. In the first place, his "first philosophy" (later termed ‘metaphysics’) does not deal with separated Ideas, but does deal with a "separated" substance: the Theos. And, in the second place, among physical substances Aristotle (after an initial disclaimer) in fact occupied himself more with primary substance (prote ousia) than with secondary substance (deutera ousia), whose link to primary substance he never saw very clearly. And the fact is that ultimately, even after he converted the Idea into the substantial form of a thing, Aristotle always remained in an enormous dualism, the dualism between sensing and intellective knowing which led him to a metaphysical dualism in the theory of substance. In this way the idea of the "meta-physical" as "beyond-physical" lives on.

Though with somewhat varying interpretations, medieval thinkers understood that {129} metaphysics is "trans-physics"; the term even briefly appeared at one time. But here is the great error which must be avoided. In medieval thought, "transphysical" always means something beyond the physical. And what I am here saying is just the opposite: it is not something beyond the physical, but the physical itself, though in a dimension which is formally distinct. It is not a "trans" of the physical, but is the "physical itself as trans". For this it was necessary to overcome the dualism between intellective knowing and sensing which in Greek and medieval philosophy always led to the dualism of reality. The terminus of sensing would be sensible things, changeable and multiple as the Greeks were wont to call them. Thus, for the Greeks, transcendental means what "always is". The "trans" is, therefore, the necessary jump from one zone of reality to another. It is a necessary jump if one starts from the concipient intellection. But there is no jump if one starts from sentient intellection.

In modern philosophy, Kant always moved within this dualism between what Leibnitz called the ‘sensible world’ and the ‘intelligible world’. To be sure, Kant saw the problem of this duality and the intellective necessity of a unitary conceptualization of what is known. For Kant, indeed, intellection is knowledge. And Kant tried to reestablish the unity, but along very precise lines, those of objectivity. The sensible and the intelligible are for Kant the two elements (a posteriori and a priori) of a primary unity: the unity of the object. There are not two objects known, one sensible and the other intelligible, but a single sensible-intelligible object: the phenomenon. What is outside of this unity of the phenomenal object is the ultra-physical, noumenon. And that which is beyond the phenomenon is therefore transcendent; it is the metaphysical. Hence, the Kantian unity of the object is constituted in sensible intelligence: {130} it is the intrinsic unity of being an object of knowledge.

2) With regard to the concipient intelligence, it was thought that the transcendental is something which is not just beyond physical reality, but indeed is a type of canon of everything real. The transcendental would thus be a priori, and moreover something conclusive. We have already seen that the transcendental is not a priori. I might add now that it is not something conclusive, either; i.e., transcendentality is not a group of characteristics of the real fixed once and for all for everything. On the contrary, it is a characteristic which is constitutively open, as I have already said. To be real qua real is something which depends on what the real things are and, therefore, is something open, because we do not know nor can we know whether the catalogue of types of real things (i.e., of what is reality qua reality) is fixed. {131} This does not refer to whether the type of real things is open, but rather to the question of what reality is as such. For example, the Greeks thought that the character of substance expressed the real as such. But personal subsistence is another type of reality as such about which the Greeks did not think.

One might think that I am here alluding to evolution. In a certain respect that is true; but it is secondary, because evolution would have to discharge here not a cosmic function, i.e., "in such a way", but would have to be a {132} characteristic of reality itself qua reality. Suchness, I said, has a transcendental function. Now, the transcendental function of evolution would be, as I have already indicated, dynamic transcendentality. But evolution in the strict sense is a scientific question, and as such is a question merely of fact—a fact however well grounded, but by virtue of being a scientific fact, always disputable. For this reason, when I speak here of evolution I do not refer to evolution in the strict and scientific sense, i.e., to the evolution of real things, but to evolution in a more radical sense, which can even be given without scientific evolution. It is that the different modes of reality as such go on appearing not just successively but grounded transcendentally and dynamically one in another. And this is not a scientific fact, but something primary and radical. It is dynamic transcendentality.

NOTES