{253}

 

CHAPTER VII

SENTIENT LOGOS AND TRUTH

 

When a thing is apprehended as real and intellectively known affirmatively as what it is in reality, when this intellection intellectively knows "really" what the thing is in reality, such as we affirm, then we say that the intellection is true. What is meant by 'truth'? In order to focus correctly on the question, it will be useful to review in summary form what was said about this subject in Part I of the book.

At first glance truth seems to be a quality belonging exclusively to affirmation. But truth is a quality of all intellection and not every intellection is affirmation. Prior to affirmation there is primordial apprehension of reality, which also has its truth. Let us ask ourselves, then, what is truth as such, as a quality of intellection.

Truth involves a host of problems, because a real thing is actualized in intellection in at least two different ways, as we have seen: in primordial apprehension and in dual apprehension. Hence the different possible types of truth. The set of these questions is the problem of "truth and reality". But as affirmation {254} has always been understood in a predicative form, it has been thought that truth would therefore only be a quality of predication; and that what constitutes truth is the "is" of the predication "A is B". Now, since truth concerns intellection as such, and there are intellections of reality which are not intellections of the "is", it follows that reality and being are not identical. This is a third serious problem. So here we have formulated the three questions which we must examine:

 

§1. What is truth.

§2. Truth and reality

§3. Reality and being.

 

Let us now take up these problems from the standpoint of affirmation.

{255}

§1

WHAT IS TRUTH?

 

In precise and formal terms, intellection as such is just actualization of a real thing qua real. We have already seen that this actualization has two aspects. First is the aspect which concerns the real as real: reality is a formality which consists in being de suyo what it is, prior to being present in apprehension. To study the real in this aspect is the immense problem of reality. But intellective actualization has another aspect which concerns not the real thing but the intellection itself. Mere intellective actualization of the real qua intellective is just what we call truth: a thing is really that in accordance with which it is actualized.

Reality and truth are not identical because there are or can be realities which are not actualized nor have any reason to be so. In this sense, not every reality is true. Truth is a quality of actualization, and actualization is a physical moment of the real. Without adding a single note, actualization nonetheless adds truth to the real. Therefore truth and reality are not identical, but neither are they mere correlatives; reality is not just the correlate of truth but its foundation, because all actualization is actualization of reality. Reality is then what gives truth to intellection, what makes the truth or "truthifies" in it.

This excludes from the outset two conceptions of {256} truthful intellection. The first is to understand that reality is a simple correlate of truth-this is basically Kant's thought about the question. But it is impossible, as I have just explained. The other is the most common conception of all, according to which truth and its opposite, error, are two qualities which function ex aequo in intellection. That was Descartes' idea. But this involves serious mistakes, because error is precisely and formally possible only by virtue of truth. Error, in fact, is not a mere "lack" of truth but "privation" of truth. Intellection cannot possess error just the same as truth; rather, because it always involves a moment of reality, intellection is always radically truthful even though in some dimensions it can see itself deprived of this truth. How is that possible? This is the problem of truth and reality, with which we shall now occupy ourselves.

{257}

§2

TRUTH AND REALITY

 

The real is intellectively actualized in different ways, in virtue of which there are different modes of truth. There is above all a simple actualization. Its truth is also simple. But the real can be actualized in field "among" other realities. It is an intellection which I have called 'dual'. Its truth is also dual. They are two types of truth which are very different-something which I already hinted at in Part One. Now I shall repeat that discussion in summary fashion for the reader's benefit.

We shall examine the following:

 

1. Simple or real truth.

2. Dual truth.

3. The unity of truth.

 

1

Simple or real truth

 

The radical mode of presentation of the real in intellection is primordial apprehension of reality. In it the real is just actualized in and by itself. Its formality of reality has two moments, individual and field, but pro indiviso, i.e., in a form which I have called 'compact', which means that a thing is real and the reality in it is "thus". This actualization is truth; it is the primary mode of truth. {258} It is primary because this truth makes no reference to anything outside of what is apprehended. Therefore what this truth "adds" to reality is but its mere actuality; this is what I have termed ratification. As what is ratified is the real itself, it follows that its truth should be called real truth. It is real because in this ratification we have the real itself. It is truth because this ratification is actualizing. In virtue of it this real truth is simple. It is not simple in the sense of not being comprised of many notes; on the contrary, real truth, for example the primordial apprehension of a landscape, possesses a great multitude of notes. Real truth is simple because in this actualization these many notes constitute a single reality, and the intellection does not go outside of them; it does not, for example, go from the real to its concept.

Here one sees that every primordial apprehension of the real is always true, is real truth. Error is not possible in what is apprehended primordially as such. What is thus apprehended is always real even though it may not be so otherwise than in the apprehension itself; but there it is in fact real. Hence it is false to say that what is thus apprehended is a representation of mine. It is not a representation but primarily and primordially a presentation. And this presentation does not formally consist in being presentness but in its being here-and-now present; it is an actuality of the real. Primordial apprehension is therefore an actual presentation of reality. It is of reality, i.e., of what the apprehended is in itself, de suyo. This "being here-and-now" in presence is just actuality, the actuality of pure being here-and-now in presence. This actuality is ratification.

In summary, the primary mode of actualization of the real is to actualize it in and by itself. And this actualization is {259} its real truth. This reality of what is really true is open in the field sense, and thus can be actualized in two intellections: the actuality of the real in and by itself, and the actuality in the field of this real thing "among" other realities. This second actualization of the real is thus real, but its truth is not yet real truth but what I term 'dual truth'. It is the truth proper to the logos, to affirmation. After this summary of what real truth is, we must delve into the analysis of dual truth.

 

2

Dual Truth

The intellection of a real thing "among" others is, as we have seen and analyzed at length, an intellection at a distance, by stepping back. Each real thing in fact is intellectively known in the field of reality as a function of others. Through its field moment, each real thing is included in the field by its own reality, and then the field takes on a functional character and encompasses the rest of the things. Therefore each of them is, with respect to the field, at a distance from the others. Hence, as we have said, to intellectively know a thing among others is to intellectively know it as a function of those others and therefore to intellectively know it at a distance, by stepping back.

But let us not confuse the field aspect of each real thing and the field of reality which it determines. Each real thing refers to others; this is the field aspect of each thing, its own field moment. The field itself is the ambit constituted by this referring; it is the field of referral. The field is thus {260} determined by the real thing. Each real thing refers to another, and in this field of referral what a referring thing is as a function of others is intellectively known. Only then has one intellectively known the concrete nature of the field aspect of each thing, i.e., the concrete nature of the unity of the field aspect and the individual aspect in the reality of each thing. This unity is what the thing is "in reality".

The intellection of each thing thus takes place in the field as a medium in which each one of the things is intellectively known as a function of the rest. This intellection at a distance, by stepping back, is thus a mediated intellection; in the field of reality it is the medium of intellection. This mediated intellection is just affirmation. Affirmation formally refers back to the unity of the field and the individual, a unity intellectively known in the field of reality; i.e., it falls back upon what a real thing is "in reality". Actualization, then, is not actualization of something real in and by itself, but actualization of what something already apprehended as real is "in reality", i.e., among other things. Its intellection is affirmation.

This intellection has its own truth. What is it? Let us repeat what we have been saying: truth is the mere intellective actualization of the real qua intellective. When the actualization is not mediated, its intellection has what we have termed real truth, the formal ratification of the real in and by itself. And this truth, as I said, is simple. But when the actualization is mediated, then the real is made true in affirmation, not as pure and simple reality but rather as being in reality such-and-such among others. It is in this making true of the truth of the real in this mode of differentiating that the other type of truth consists, viz. dual truth. This is mediated truth.

Dual truth has its own character and structure. {261} Above all it has its own character. This intellection, in fact, is intellection at a distance, by stepping back. To intellectively know a thing "among others" is to intellectively know it from these others, and therefore to intellectively know it at a distance, by stepping back. In virtue of that, by being intellection "at a distance", the intellection itself is an intellection that steps back. Therefore there is, so to speak, a duality and not just a distinction between the realm of intelligence and the realm of what is intellectively known in a thing. The realm of intelligence consists in being of dynamic character, i.e. in being an intellection in movement. The realm of the thing is its actuality intellectively known in this movement. As the thing is already actualized in primordial apprehension of reality, it follows that this new actualization is "re-actualization". And since dual truth is constituted in this re-actualization, it follows that this dual truth has by the same token its own character: it is an actualization "in coincidence" of two realms which are formally distinct. Here 'coincidence' does not mean chance or anything like it; rather, it has its etymological meaning, "to be incident with". Dual truth then has the character of intellective coincidence "between" the realms of intelligence (i.e. among the realms of intellective movement) and the realms of reality. The "between" intellectively actualizes the real thing (with respect to what it is in reality) as a "coincidence" of intellection and reality; it is the actuality of the real in coincidence. Such is the character of dual truth, coincidenciality, if I may be permitted the expression. It is the "between" which determines this character of coincidenciality.

This requires some clarification in order to avoid possible confusion. A coinciding actuality is not, formally, truth, but rather the ambit of dual truth. Therefore-to get a little ahead of ourselves-I should say that in this coinciding actuality, in this {262} ambit, error is also constituted. Hence the duality of dual truth does not formally concern truth as opposed to error, but rather the coinciding actuality itself which is the ambit of truth. What is radically and formally dual is the coinciding actuality. We shall see this at greater length later. So for now I will cautiously say the following: (1) Dual truth is constituted in coinciding actuality, and (2) this constitution is an event; in coinciding actuality dual truth happens. And this expression has a very precise meaning, viz. that coinciding actuality is a formally dynamic actuality, as I shall frequently repeat. Here "to happen" is not something opposed to that already done or intellectively known, but the formal and dynamic character of affirmation itself.

This dual truth has not only its own character but also its own structure, the structure of coincidence itself. This structure is extremely complex because coincidence is the character of an intellection which "comes" to coincide just because it "fills up" the distance between the two coincident terms, between affirmative intellection and what the thing already apprehended as real is in reality. Since affirmative intellection is, as we have seen, of a formally dynamic character, it follows that the coincidence itself also has a dynamic structure, as we have just indicated. The coincidental actuality of the real, then, has a formally dynamic structure. It is for this reason that truth "happens" in this actuality without thereby being formally identical with it. And this is the essential point. Real truth either is had or is not had. But one reaches or does not reach dual truth in coincidence. And this "reaching" is just intellective dynamism. Therefore, I stress, dual truth is {263} essentially and constitutively dynamic. What is that dynamic structure? This is key problem.

In the first place, intellective movement takes place in a medium. Dual truth, by virtue of being truth in coincidence, is a mediated truth. Its foundation is, therefore, the medium. In this aspect the medium is "mediation" for the coincidence, and therefore is a dynamic mediator (not an intermediary) of dual truth. In what does the essence of this mediation consist? This is the problem of the dynamic mediating structure of coincidence, and therefore of dual truth. The total structure of dual truth is "mediating dynamic".

In the second place, this movement takes place in the medium, but is not univocally determined in it. It is not certainly in its point of departure; but that is not what is important to us here. What is now important to us is that this movement does not have a univocally determined direction in the medium. Therefore the fact that the movement goes toward a determinate thing which is going to be intellectively known does not necessarily mean that the direction of this movement automatically leads to a dual truth. As we shall see it may not lead there. How is this possible? That is the problem of the dynamic directional structure of coincidence, of dual truth.

In the third place, the movement has not only medium and direction, but also, as we have seen, different phases. Hence it follows that coincidence is not the same with respect to all phases of the movement which bridges the gap between the real and what the thing is in reality. In virtue of that, dual truth, by being truth in coincidence, has different forms. What are these forms? This is the problem of the formal dynamic structure of dual truth.

In summary, the problem of the structure of dual truth is the problem of the structurally mediating dynamic {264} and directional character of the coincidence between affirmative intellection and what a thing is in reality.

The conceptualization of this structure unfolds in three questions:

A) The mediated dynamic structure of coincidence.

B) The directional dynamic structure of coincidence in the medium.

C) The formal dynamic structure of truth in mediatedl coincidence.

1. Mediating dynamic structure of coincidence. This is a "fundamental" structure. Here I understand by "foundation" the structure of that which intrinsically constitutes the fact that intellection "between" is coincidence. I say "intrinsically", i.e. I do not refer to what originates the coincidence, but to that moment which intrinsically and formally pertains to coincidence itself, i.e. to the constituting moment of its own character. This intrinsic and formal foundation is the medium. The fundamental nature of the medium is thus, at one and the same time what is affirmed qua affirmed and the formal character of the affirmation itself as intellection. This "at one and the same time" is just coincidence. The medium is therefore a medium of dynamic coincidence. It is in this that its mediation consists. How?

A) Some pages ago we saw how the medium is constituted: it is constituted in and by the primordial apprehension of reality. Let us repeat the ideas already expounded in order to improve rigor and clarity. The real qua real is something which, in itself, is open to all other reality qua reality. This "in" is, as we already have seen in Part I, an intrinsic and formal moment of reality qua reality; it is its transcendental character, which here takes on more concretely the character of being in a field. The real in and by itself is {265} real in a way which is transcendentally in a field. The actuality of the real then autonomously actualizes the field as transcendental ambit. Being is a field is a moment of the primordial apprehension of reality; that it can function with autonomy with respect to the individual moment does not mean that it is independent of primordial apprehension. This moment is given to us there where the real itself is given to us: in the impression of reality. The impression of reality is, then, primordial sentient apprehension of the real in its individual formality and in a field; it is transcendental impression. Now, this impression has the structural unity of all the modes of reality impressively given. One of them, as I have been stressing throughout this book, is the "toward". The "toward" is a mode of giving ourselves reality in impression. When one considers it as transcendentally open, then the "toward" is "toward the rest of the realities"; it is not only a mode of reality but the very mode of the differential actuality of reality. In virtue of this, the transcendental nature of the field moment takes on the character of a field which encompasses concrete real things. The field is thus constituted in a "medium". So it is then clear that the medium is precisely and formally a medium because there are real things apprehended in the impression of reality. The real things, naturally, do not remain "outside" the medium, but neither are they merely "inside" it even though it encompasses them; rather, they "are" the concrete reality of the field moment itself of every real thing. Conversely, the medium as such is the field of every real thing insofar as it is in mediated fashion constituting, in each thing, the intellective unity of some things with others. The medium is the foundation of the intellective unity of things, but it is a foundation which is only mediated, {266} i.e., by being intrinsically the actuality which is intellectively in the field of every real thing. To be sure, the medium, insofar as it is within the field, is not purely and simply identified with the individual part of each thing's formality of reality; but this reality is actualized in the field manner in the medium. Hence it follows that the medium is, I repeat, but a moment of the actuality itself of the real qua real. The medium is but the real truth of the field. The medium, then, has on one side a grounded character; it is grounded on the individual realities; but it is on the other hand the foundation of that differentiating unity which we call "between". The "transcendental ambit", the field, thus acquires the character of "medium". Now, the medium is grounding just because it has in itself, formally, the actuality of each real thing. This cyclic unity is characteristic of the medium.

B) The medium thus constituted has the function of mediation of coincidence between affirmation and what a thing is in reality. In fact, affirmation is an intellection at a distance, by stepping back. Therefore the confidence of both terms has to be grounded in something in which it is established. But, What is the nature of this something?

a) We are not dealing with some third term which "produces" coincidence. That was the absurd idea nourished in large part by the subjectivist philosophy of the late 19th century; it was the celebrated idea of the "bridge" between consciousness and reality. We leave aside that fact that we are not dealing with consciousness but with intellection. The idea in question started from the supposition that one had to encounter a third term which would reestablish the unity of the intelligence and reality, the two terms which were thought to be found "outside" of each other. Yet all this is simply absurd, in a very radical way. It is not absurd because of what the nature of this "bridge" might be (e.g., {267} some type of causal reasoning); rather, what is absurd is thinking about the necessity of the bridge, because what does not exist is the "exteriority", so to speak, of intelligence and the real. The difference between the two terms is a "stepping back", but not a "separation", which means that what establishes the coincidence is not a third thing different than the other two, but a moment which is intrinsic to them. This moment is just the medium. The medium is not some "bridge", i.e., it is not an "intermediary", but rather is that in which the two terms "already are". There is no bridge but only a medium. And this medium is easy to describe: it is just the medium in which stepping back (i.e., distance) itself has been established, to wit, "the" reality. It is therein that stepping back has been established, a stepping back, but not a rupture. It is already in the real; stepping back is not stepping back from reality but stepping back in reality. Hence coincidence is not recomposition, but only an overcoming of of distance "in" reality itself.

In fact, what judgement affirms is not reality pure and simple, but what a thing already apprehended as real is in reality. And in turn, what a thing is in reality is just the unity of its individual and field moments, i.e., the concrete unity of each thing with all others in "the" reality. Stepping back, then, in "the" reality is how the intelligence is situated with respect to a thing. That is, the medium is just the moment of "the" reality. Conversely, coincidence is the unity of intelligence and the thing in that medium which is "the" reality. Truth as coincidence is above all coincidence of affirmation and of a thing "in" reality. And this reality is then the "in" itself, i.e., it is the medium; therefore it is something which is intrinsic to intelligence and the thing.

b) Nonetheless we are not dealing with just any coincidence, {268} because it has to be a coincidence along the lines of intellection itself, i.e., along the lines of intellective actuality of the real at a distance. For this it is necessary that the medium be not only an intrinsic moment of affirmative intellection and of the real, but that it also be something whose mediated truth as truth constitutes the coincidence between affirmation and the real. Only then will the medium have the function of mediation, of intellective mediation. The medium has to be a true mediator of coincidence, i.e., of truth. And so it is in fact.

Let us recall that the real apprehended in primary actualization, in the primordial apprehension of reality, has in this actualization what I have called real truth. And to this real truth corresponds the truth of a thing in its field moment. In virtue of this, we say, real truth is a truth which is incipiently open, open to intellection within a field in coincidence, an intellection in which we affirm what a thing is in reality. The same thing, then, as I have already said, is apprehended twice: once, in and by itself as real; secondly, as affirmed of what that thing is in reality. Now, the primordial apprehension of the real pertains formally to affirmation itself; it is precisely that of which one judges. In turn, the medium itself is the physical actuality of the field moment of that real thing, of the primordial apprehension; i.e., it has its own real truth. This real truth of the medium is but the expansion of the real truth of the field moment of a thing apprehended as real, in order to be able to judge its reality. Hence it follows, as I have already said, that the medium is real truth; it is the real truth of "the" reality of the field of "the" reality. And it is in this real truth where, in mediated fashion, that coincidence between affirmation and the real thing is established. The real truth {269} of the medium is the intrinsic and formal mediator of what is actualized in affirmation. In contrast to what is so often said, one must realize that affirming does not consist in affirming reality, nor for that matter in affirming truth, but in affirming something "in reality", in affirming something "in truth". Reality and truth are the mediated and intrinsic supposition of all affirmation as such. The coincidence between intelligence and the real is a coincidence which is established in "the" reality in which both terms are true reality, in the real truth of the medium. The real truth of the medium is thus the medium of coincidence.

This is a moment which formally and intrinsically pertains to affirmation in order to be able to be what affirmation seeks to be. A judgement does not affirm either reality or truth but presupposes them; it affirms what a real thing is in "reality of truth". And this truth is just the real truth. Mediation consists formally in being the real truth as a medium of judgement.

c) But this is not all, because coincidence, which the medium as real truth establishes, has a precise structure, viz. movement. There is a profound difference between intellectively knowing something with truth and intellectively knowing it in mediated fashion in truth. When all is said and done, in primordial apprehension of reality we already have reality with truth. But there is an essential difference with affirmative intellection, because the reality of primordial apprehension of reality is actuality of a thing in and by itself in its direct immediateness. But now, affirmative intellection of reality is intellection of reality in truth by stepping back. And distance is something to which real truth is incipiently open, and which has to be gone through. Therefore real truth is not just something in which intellective coincidence "is", {270} nor is it only something which makes that possible; rather it is something which pertains to affirmation itself because the medium is not something in which real things are submerged. It is indeed the actuality of the field moment of each real thing. Hence stepping back is only the mode of intellectively knowing in the medium. That is, the medium is a dynamic mediator. It is the mediated dynamism of the real truth of the medium. The medium is not only something which "permits" coinciding with the real, but also is constitutively something which pertains to the coincidence with the real.

Here we have the mediated structure of coincidence. It is coincidence in the medium of "the" reality, intellective coincidence in its real truth, and dynamic coincidence in stepping back.

In summary, the mediated structure of affirmative intellection consists in the intellective movement in which we intellectively know what a real thing is "in reality of truth", i.e., in the medium of the real truth. The real truth is incipiently open to being actualization of the real in coincidence, i.e., in reality of truth, and constitutes the intrinsic and formal medium of this last actualization.

But this coincidental dynamism does not have only mediated character. It also has a directional character. That is what we are going to see.

2) Dynamic directional structure of coincidence in the medium. Intellective movement takes place in the medium, but is not univocally determined there. This movement is a movement in which we are going to intellectively know what a thing is in reality as a function of others. That is, we are going "toward" that thing, but "from" the rest. The dynamism of intellection not only takes place in a medium, {271} but is "from-toward". This is the dynamic directional structure of coincidence. Intellection in movement is affirmation. Therefore affirmation itself is dynamic not only in mediated fashion but also directionally. This direction of affirmation has a complex structure, because both the "toward" and the "from" are fixed: the "toward" is what a thing which one desires to intellectively know is in reality, and the "from" is things as a function of which one is going to intellectively know the thing in an affirmative way. I shall lump all things in a single term, viz. that thing from which one affirms what something is in reality. Now, even with these terms fixed, affirmative movement does not have a univocally determined direction. Given the same "toward" and "from", the intellective movement can and does follow quite different trajectories. That is, the direction and orientation of the movement can vary. And with that variance, coincidence itself arises within the power of the intelligence, i.e., of the intellective movement of what the real thing is in reality, and the real has a directional character. This obliges us to linger on some essential points, especially these three: A) what is, more precisely, the "direction" of affirmation; B) what is the directional part of coincidence as such; and C) in what does this bundle of directions consist which we may term the "polivalence" of affirmation with respect to the nature of coincidence.

A) Above all, what is the "direction" of affirmation?. Let us recall that affirmation is a dual intellection which consists in the thing "toward" which one goes being intellectively known "from" the light emanating from something else. The thing "from" which one goes is present in the thing "toward", in a certain way as the light of the intellective affirmation of this latter. The first thing this light {272} determines is a "stopping" to consider what the thing can be which is going to be intellectively known in this light. This stopping is a stepping back, i.e., what I have called "retraction". It is not a retraction "from" reality but retraction "in" reality.

It is a retraction which is formally intellective. What one intellectively knows in this retraction is what a thing would be as a function of the light of another. This intellection is what constitutes simple apprehension in its triple form of percept, fictional item, and concept. But simple apprehension, as we saw, does not consist in prescinding from the moment of reality. On the contrary, every simple apprehension is formally constituted in the medium of reality. And the way in which reality corresponds to what is simply apprehended is that mode of reality which we call "might be". What is simply apprehended is what a thing "might be" in reality. The "might be" is not something which concerns the content of a simple apprehension as something possible in it; rather, it is the unreal mode by which the content of a simple apprehension concerns the real thing.

Even when simple apprehensions are freely created, the thing which "might be" in the form of a percept, fictional item, or concept is always mentally denoted.

Now, direction is the formality of the "might be" of simple apprehension. Therefore simple apprehension consists formally in direction. Here we have the concept of direction, which we were seeking. Intellection through stepping back is above all, as we have seen, retraction; but it is an intellective retraction in reality. This "in reality" is the "might be", i.e., the direction. Therefore direction, I repeat, is but the intellective formality of retraction.

In virtue of this, simple apprehension is not just a {273} representation of some content, but a directional focus of what a real thing "might be" in reality. Furthermore, as I just said, this directional formality is what formally constitutes simple apprehension. In primordial apprehension there is no direction but rather immediate actuality. On the other hand, simple apprehension is a moment of distanced intellection, and its formal character is "direction". Simple apprehension, I repeat, is formally intellective direction toward what the thing intellectively known by stepping back "might be" in reality.

To summarize, in this intellective movement which is affirmation, one comes to intellectively know what a thing is in reality as a function of others which reveal the possibilities of what it directionally might be.

Granting this, In what does the directional structure of the coincidence consist?

B) Directionality of coincidence. Every affirmation is a movement, and as such has direction. Toward what? We have already given the answer on several occasions: toward what a thing, intellectively known affirmatively, is in reality. This "in reality", as we also saw, is the unity of the individual moment and the field moment of the real thing which is intellectively known.

This intellection is a movement which takes place in mediated fashion. And in this taking place, what the intellection, so to speak, does is to "go" to that unity. This "going" is but a returning from the retraction to the thing itself, i.e., going "in" the field "toward" the thing. Hence it follows that, qua intellectively known affirmatively, the unity in question is intellectively known as "unification". The direction, then, is direction toward unification; it is the "might be" of the unification. In this direction the intellection seeks to reach the thing. But not as something which just is there, quiescent, {274} but as intellectively known already as real in primordial apprehension. In virtue of this, the thing which directionally we seek to reach is the thing which already has real truth, but which is incipiently open, and which therefore is dynamically unfolded as making a demand; it is the real thing as "making a demand" or "making a claim". We have already met the concept of demand when treating the subject of evidence, where it was a vision called forth by a thing from itself, from its own reality. In the present problem this same demand has the directional function of intellection. Making a demand is always one of the aspects of the force of imposition of the real apprehended in the impression of reality.

The "might be" is direction; and what a thing "is" in reality is present to us as making a demand. Therefore the coincidence between intellective movement and a thing is a coincidence of formally dynamic character; it is the coincidence between a direction and a demand. And this coincidence between a direction and a demand is the step from "might be" to the "is" in which affirmation consists. It is, I repeat, a formally dynamic and directional moment of the mediated actuality of the real in affirmation. It is the coincidence between a simple apprehension freely created by me, and the positive or negative demand which the real has before it.

This actualization, by virtue of being dynamically directional, confers a precise structure upon affirmation. This coincidence, in fact, is not something which consists in "carrying" us to the actualization but rather is a moment of the actualization itself in its intrinsic and formal dynamic nature. This intrinsic and formal character of actuality in directional coincidence has that moment which is rectitude. Coincidence as "coincidence of direction and of demand" has the {275} formal moment of rectitude. This is, as I see it, the strict concept of rectitude.

This coincidence, then, is not a quiescent but a dynamic one. It is above all a mediated dynamic coincidence, viz. a thing actualized in the medium of reality, i.e. actualized in the reality of truth; but it is also a directional dynamic coincidence, viz. a thing actualized in the rectitude of affirmative movement. The medium and the direction are not just conditions of affirmation, but intrinsic and formally constitutive moments of it, not just as an act of intellection but as actualization of the thing which is intellectively known. Qua actualized in intellective movement, a thing has a mediated and directional actuality; it is actuality in reality and actuality in rectitude.

Rectitude is perhaps what most clearly delineates the dynamic structure of affirmation. When all is said and done, one might think that the "medium" is just that in which affirmation resides, not affirmation itself. Rather, "rectitude" would clearly denote that one is dealing with a formally dynamic moment. Nonetheless, this dynamic character is not unique to rectitude but also applies to the medium itself, because we are not dealing with a medium in which one affirms, but rather with the mediated character of affirmation. It is the affirming itself which is mediated. Affirmation is a happening and its mediality is an intrinsic and formal moment of what is affirmed qua affirmed. A thing is intellectively known in affirmation; and as this intellection is at a distance, mediality is the intrinsic and formal character of the reality itself qua intellectively known. The medium is dynamic mediation and rectitude is-to speak pleonastically-dynamic rectitude. As I see it, one can never sufficiently insist on truth as a {276} dynamic coincidence, i.e., upon affirmation as intellective movement.

But this only puts us face-to-face with a serious problem. It is necessary, in fact, to conceptualize in what, "formally", this coincidence between direction and demand consists. Because the directionality of affirmation is polivalent, and therefore its coincidence also is so. In what does this polivalence consist?

C) Directional polyvalence. Naturally there is in every affirmation a plurality of directions for going "toward" what is affirmed starting "from" something else. What is affirmed, in fact, has many notes and many aspects, which means that starting "from" some thing I can go "toward" what is affirmed in many ways. "Really" the thing "from" which one intellectively knows opens to us not a direction but a bundle of directions "toward" the thing intellectively known. Once the "from" and "toward" are fixed, there is still a plurality of possible directions. I can go toward a thing intellectively known in order to intellectively know the color it has in reality, but I can also direct myself toward the thing itself in order to intellectively know any other of its notes. In order to intellectively know what a man is in reality, I can start from his zoological relatives; but here is where the multitude of directions opens up: I can go in the direction of speech, but I can also go in the direction of upright walking, or of forming groups. In the first case the man will be in reality a speaking animal, in the second a bipedal animal (the one par excellence), and in the third a social animal, etc. Within this bundle of directions, I move in one of them according to an option of mine, anchored securely in the richness of what is intellectively known, but in a direction determined only by an {277} option of mine. This plurality of directions is, nonetheless, not what I term directional polyvalence. Valence is the quality of coincidence in the order of truth. Polyvalence consists in those qualities, those valences, being able to be diverse within each direction. It does not then refer to various directions, but to various valences within each direction with respect to the truth intended to be in them.

And this is because, as we have said repeatedly, in contrast to real truth which one "has" or does not have, dual truth is "arrived at" or not arrived at, or is arrived at by different means in the intellective movement of affirmation. Now, in each case we have a strict coincidence between the direction and the demand of the real thing. Since in this coincidence the real is actualized, and therefore its intellective valences are diversified, it follows that directional valence has two aspects which must be conceptualized successively, viz. the aspect which concerns the very root of all valence, i.e. the aspect which concerns the actuality of the real in affirmation, and the aspect which concerns the polyvalence of this affirmation in the order of its truth.

a) Above all, there is the root of all valence, which ultimately is the root of all polyvalence. A real thing is, as we saw, the terminus of two apprehensions. One, its primordial apprehension as a real thing about which one judges. But this same thing, without ceasing to be apprehended as real, is the terminus of what, provisionally, we shall call second actuality: actuality in affirmation. Of these two actualizations, the second presupposes the first: affirmation presupposes the primary actuality of a thing and returns to actualize it in affirmation. Therefore, we said, affirmation is formally "re-actualization". What is this "re"? That is the question. {278}

The "re" is not some repetition or reiteration of the first actualization. In the first place, this is because of the formal explanation of the term 'to actualize': in the first actualization we have a "real" thing, but in the second we have the thing "in reality". We have reality, then, twice, but with different aspects. In the reactualization we have the real, but actualized "in reality". The same reality is thus actualized in two different aspects. Insofar as the second aspect is grounded in the first, we shall say that that second contribution is "re-actualization". Here, "to reactualize" is to actualize what something, already real, is in reality.

But this is not the most fundamental characteristic of the "re", because upon actualizing what an already real thing is "in reality", this actualization is not an actualization only of a second aspect of the same thing, but is another mode of actualization or of actuality of the thing. Upon being intellectively known according to what it is "in reality", a real thing is actualized at a distance, i.e., by stepping back, and in the direction of demand. Therefore, in affirmative intellection the real acquires not only another actuality, but above all a new mode of actuality. The primary actuality is "reality" pure and simple. The actuality in affirmation is an actuality through stepping back, and demanded with respect to a fixed direction. We are, then, dealing not with a repetition but with a new mode of strict and rigorous actuality. Now, the demanding actuality of the real in a fixed direction is what formally constitutes seeming. Affirmation is affirmation of actuality in coincidence, and the actual in this coincidence is seeming. This is, as I see it, the formal concept of seeming. The "re" of reactualization is, then, actualization of the real in seeming. Here we have the essential point. It was necessary to give a strict and rigorous concept of what seeming is. {279} It is not enough to make use of the term as something which does not require conceptualization.

Let us explain this concept at greater length. Above all, seeming is an actuality of a real thing; it is the real thing in its own reality, which is actualized as seeming. It is not to seem reality, but reality in seeming. But in the second place, it is actuality in "direction"; otherwise the real thing would not have any seeming. Something seems to be or not to be only if it seems to be or not be what it "might be". That is, seeming is an actuality but in a certain direction, since as we have seen, "might be" is formally direction. But this is not yet sufficient, because the "might be" is always and only a determined "might be". Something seems to be or not to be not what it might be without further ado, but what such and such a determinate thing might be. The determination of the "might be" is essential to seeming. Seeming, then, is not directional actuality but actuality in a "determinate" direction. In the third place, it is an actuality of a real thing insofar as this thing calls forth, in its actuality, inclusively as well as exclusively, determinate "might be's". Only then is there seeming. Without this third moment the "might be" would certainly be determined but would not go beyond being a directional moment of a simple apprehension. There is only seeming when this determinate "might be" is determined by a real thing in making a demand. Uniting these three moments into a single formula, I say that seeming is the demanding actuality of the real in a determinate direction. It is the actuality of the coincident qua coincident.

Now, what is actualized in intellective movement has its own exclusive content; it is not the purely and simply real, but what a real thing is "in reality", i.e., the unification of the individual and the {280} field moment of the thing. Therefore this actuality, which is seeming, is formally actuality of what a thing is "in reality". The content of seeming is always and only that which the real thing is in reality. In other words, seeming is always and only seeming what something real is in reality. The actuality of the "in reality" is seeming, and conversely seeming is intellective actuality qua intellective of what the thing is "in reality".

It is precisely on account of this that seeming constitutes a proper and exclusive mode of actuality of a thing in affirmative intellection. Primordial apprehension of reality is not and cannot be seeming; it is purely and simply reality. All idealisms, whether empiricist or rationalist, take for granted that what is apprehended (i.e., what I call primordial apprehension of reality), is merely seeming, and that only to reason does it fall to determine what reality is. But this is absurd, because the immediate and direct part of the real, apprehended primordially, excludes a limine the very possibility of all seeming. Every idealism speaks of seeming, but none has taken care to give a strict concept of this mode of actuality. What is apprehended in primordial apprehension of reality has that intrinsic compaction in virtue of which it is but real. The compaction consists in not having, nor being able to have, the moment of seeming. It is real and only is real. Therein consists, as we saw, all of its inexhaustible greatness and its possible poverty. On the other hand, in the real apprehended not primordially but differentially, there is always a radical uncompacting; uncompacting is the difference between reality and seeming.

It is fitting now to explain the concept of seeming not just saying what it is, but also saying-and very forcefully-what it is not. {281} When we say that something "seems", we do not intend to say more than that it "only seems". But this is absurd. Seeming is not being an "appearance"; it is a mode of actuality of the real itself, and therefore the real actualized in an affirmation-as we shall see forthwith-is real and at the same time seems to be so. Seeming is not the opposite either formally or in fact, of being real. The real intellectively known by stepping back is real and seems to be so; at least it is not excluded that it may be so. Seeming as such is not something the opposite of the real, but a mode of actuality of the real itself. If one wishes, it is "appearing". And in fact, what is purely and simply real has its own real truth, which as we saw is incipiently open. To what? We said that it is open to another actualization. Now, we should say that that to which the real truth, i.e. what is purely and simply real, is primarily open is to seeming to be so in an intellection in movement.

Now, this actualization in movement is just affirmation, judgement. From this arises the most strict and formal concept of judgement. Judgement, I said, is intellection through stepping backing from what a real thing is in reality; it is then intellection in coincidence. Now, in this stepping back and coinciding, intellection is the actuality of a thing as "seeming"; so it follows that the formal terminus of judgement is seeming. Judgement is, so to speak, the formal organon of seeming. And here we have the essential point: judging is always and only intellectively knowing the real in its seeming. Correctly understood, "seeming" here has the meaning explained above. A mind of the kind we usually call "purely intuitive" (let us not again discuss the concept of intuition as a moment of the primordial apprehension of reality) would not have "seeming" but only reality. And therefore it would not have judgements {282} but only primordial apprehensions of reality. The absence of judgement would be grounded upon the absence of seeming, and in turn the absence of seeming would be grounded upon the compaction of the apprehended real in and by itself.

And this brings us not only to conceptualize judgement but also to give precise formal rigor to a concept which has been appearing throughout our study, viz. the concept of stepping back or distance. Negatively, as I have said on numerous occasions, 'distance' in this context does not mean spatial distance. Distance, I said, is that stepping back in which each thing is situated with respect to others when it is apprehended "among" them; it is the distance of the "reality-among", the "between two" of the real. I said in chapter IV that this distance is the unity of the unfolding between the individual moment and the field moment of each real thing, i.e. the unity of the unfolding between being "real" and being "in reality". This unfolding is distance because one must review the distinction, and because the reviewing is a dynamic form of the unity itself. But there is besides another unfolding. When surveyed, in fact, this unity is in turn a unity between reality and seeming. By stepping back, and so being at a distance, being "in reality" is thus unfolded in turn into its "in reality" and into its "seeming". Then the distance which formally is unity of unfolding between the individual moment and the field moment inexorably grounds the unity of unfolding of the field moment itself, the unity of unfolding between "being in reality" and "seeming". It is a modality of stepping back or distance, affirmative distance; it is a distance proper to every differential actualization and only to it, proper only to movement within a field as such. Let us not confuse the unfolding of "real" and "in reality" with the unfolding of reality and seeming. {283} This second unfolding is proper only to the "in reality" of the first unfolding.

As this actualization is the very essence of judgement, it follows that the duality of being real and of seeming (in the actuality of each real thing thus intellectively known) confers upon affirmation an essential quality in the order of truth: a valence. Valence, we may now say, is the quality of coincidence between seeming and being. A valence can be diverse; this is polyvalence. It is a polyvalence with respect to dual truth. This is what must now be considered in greater detail.

b) Affirmation as affirmation, is in fact an intellective movement in which a simple apprehension of mine freely forged confronts the reality of something already apprehended as real. In order for there to be affirmation there must be an intention of coincidence between the direction constituting the "might be" of my simple apprehension and the demand for rejection or admission-let us call it that-of a real thing with respect to that simple apprehension. To be sure, we are not dealing with a rejection or admission as an actuating moment of the real thing, but only of that physical moment of it which is its physical actuality. It is this actuality which, when we confront it in the direction in which my simple apprehension consists, is actualized in the form of a demand. But this is something which is exceedingly complex.

Above all, I can freely elect simple apprehension, and the direction in which I am going to confront a real thing. This option of mine is what is responsible for the fact that among the many directions which a thing opens to me when I apprehend it, only one of them acquires the character of being the direction embarked upon. The direction then turns into a path instead of an option, {284} the path of affirmation. Affirmation is not only a direction but a path, the path upon which I embark in order to intellectively know the real affirmatively. This option is discernment, the krinein, and therefore is that by which every affirmation is constitutively a krisis, i.e., judgement. Affirmation is judgement precisely and formally by taking place in a path with choices.

But this necessary discernment is not sufficient for intellective movement to be affirmation. Affirmation is not just an utterance, but a positive intellection of the real. For this not only is the discernment of a path necessary, but it is also necessary that this path lead to a coincidence, i.e. that the affirmation possess rectitude and lead to the real. Now this second moment is not at all obvious, because with what has been said, rather than an affirmation we would have only an intent of affirmation. In order for there to be an affirmation it is necessary for there to be coincidence, convergence, and rectitude between simple apprehension and the real thing.

This affirmative intellection in its own coincidence has different valences, different qualities in the order of truth. Every affirmation has in some way this diversity of valences. I say, "in some way", because this is just what we have to examine now.

aa) Every affirmation has in the order of truth an essential radical quality; it is what I call parity. In every affirmation there is the actualization of that about which one affirms and the simple apprehension on which is based what one affirms. In every affirmation there are, then, two poles. But it is necessary that each of them not go off "on its own", so to speak. This quality is parity. Permit me to explain. If I ask myself how many wings this canary has in reality, and if I answer "yellow", that response is not an affirmative coincidence but just the opposite, because what is real about {285} the question asked is along the lines of quantity (number of wings), and the given response expressed the real along the lines of quality. There is no coincidence and therefore no rectitude. The two directions are "disparate"; this is the dis-parity, disparity or absurdity [in Spanish]. To say that the number of wings of this canary is yellow is not a falsehood, but something more radical, viz. the incongruence or disparity between two lines of intellection. In order for there to be affirmation there must be "parity" between the direction of simple apprehension and the demands of the real. Only when there is parity is there coincidence and therefore rectitude. The disparity is formally and constitutively "uttered without parity". Rectitude therefore is not synonymous with truth in even the slightest way, but is essentially pure and simple parity. What is parity? Every simple apprehension is a "might be". Hence every simple apprehension directs us to the real not only by the mere fact of being a "might be", but moreover in this direction a directional line of the actuality of the real qua real is pointed out. What is pointed out is a mode of directing myself to the real as quality (please excuse the expression) of a line of the might be is acknowledged, in which the real as real is actualized. Yellow points out the line of that mode of being directed to the real which is its actualization; it is actualization as quality. Number points out in its mode of directing itself to reality another aspect of actualization of the real, viz. as quantity. Along these lines, then, the real as real is directionally actualized. Pointing out, in Greek, is called kategoria. Every "might be" points out a line of actualization of the real qua real, and it is in this the category consists, viz. directional actualization of the real qua real. It is in this directional focus that, in my opinion, the problem of the categories of the real must be conceptualized. The categories are not supreme genera of "being" (cf. Aristotle); they are not forms of judgement (cf. Kant); {286} but rather they are the directional lines of actualization of the real qua real along various dimensions. We shall see later the problem of the categories in all of its fullness. Returning to parity, we see that parity is parity of categorial line. Disparity is categorial disparity. So here we have the first qualitative moment, the first valence in the order of truth: parity. Its opposite is disparity. The opposition between "with-parity" and "dis-parity" is the first directional polyvalence of affirmation.

bb) But there is a second quality with a valence. It is not enough that an affirmation be not a disparate one; it is necessary that, even if not so, it make sense. "Making sense" or "being meaningful" is the second moment of valence. Making sense is not parity. Within something which is not disparate or absurd one can pronounce an affirmation whose direction does not fall back upon the possible demands of the object about which one is affirming. In such a case the direction of the simple apprehension veers toward emptiness. Direction toward emptiness is not the same thing as disparate.

This emptiness can occur in at least two ways. It can be that the sense of my simple apprehension remains outside of the demands of the real object about which affirmation is made. Then the affirmation is nonsense or meaningless. But it can happen that in the affirmation the sense of the simple apprehension destroys the positive demands of that about which one affirms; this is counter-sense or contra-meaning. And this is not some subtlety but something which has come to carry out an essential role in science and philosophy.

For example, if I consider an electron situated exactly at a precise point in space, and wish to intellectively know what its dynamic state is in reality, i.e. its momentum, there is not and cannot be any answer. To attribute to it {287} a momentum is, in itself, not something disparate but meaningless (because of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle). An electron precisely localized in space cannot have any precise momentum. The "might be" of the momentum is a determinate direction, but it does not make sense to realize it in a localized electron. In virtue of this there is no directional coincidence, nor for that matter the actuality which is seeming. To fall into the void is just "not-seeming". All the variables which physics calls 'dynamically conjugate' are found in this example from atomic physics. I have not cited them except by way of example. That is a problem of atomic physics which we cannot discuss further here.

The counter-sense or contra-meaning is, if one wishes, the more serious problem. It is not a falsehood, nor even a contradiction, but a destroyer of the possibility of any meaning. Thus Husserl thinks that to say that a priori truths are grounded upon contingent facts is not something which is just false or contradictory, but is contra-meaning. The meaning of the demands of the concept of "a priori" truth are annulled by the meaning of "empirical fact". For Husserl the contra-meaning is the supreme form of not being true. But personally I think that there is something more serious than the contra-meaning, and that is disparity or absurdity. In disparity or absurdity, I repeat, the demands of that about which one judges have nothing to do with the direction of the simple apprehension. To intellectively know them unitarily in an object is the disparity or absurdity. On the other hand in contra-meaning there is no disparity or absurdity; what happens is that the direction of the simple apprehension does not find where to realize itself in the object.

The second valence in the order of truth is meaning. Polyvalence adopts the form of "with meaning" and "without meaning" and "contra-meaning". {288}

cc) But there is a third quality of the coincidence in the order of truth.

Coincidence, I repeat, is dynamic coincidence between intellective direction and the direction of the demands of the actuality of the real. In this direction one is going to intellectively know not the real as real (that would be primordial apprehension of reality), but what this real is in reality. That is, a real thing in dynamic coincidence acquires a new actuality, a reactualization of the real in the order of what it is in reality. This actuality of the real in directional coincidence is, we said, what constitutes seeming, viz. the demanding actuality of the real in a determinate direction. Therefore affirmative intellection, what a thing already apprehended as real is in reality, is the coincidence of what it seems to be and what the real thing is in reality. Or stated more succinctly, it is the coincidence between seeming and being real (where it is understood that we are dealing with being "in reality"). This coincidental actuality is exceedingly complex. How are they "one", i.e., in what are the two terms coincident? The coincidence is actuality as coinciding; therefore that in which real being and "seeming" are "one" is in being actuality. But these two terms are not independent, i.e., are not juxtaposed; rather, seeming and being real are mutually grounded the one upon the other. There is always actuality in coincidence, but the coincidence can have two different foundations; i.e., there are two possibilities of coincidence. First, what a real thing is in reality grounds what it seems to be; and second, what it seems to be grounds what the real thing is in reality. In both cases-and I repeat this over and over because it is essential-there is coinciding actuality. But the quality of this intellective coincidence is in the two cases essentially different. {289} In the first, we say that affirmative intellection, in its actuality in coincidence, has that quality which we call truth. In the second case, there is also actuality in coincidence, but its quality is what we call error. Each one of the two possibilities of actuality in coincidence is what constitutes that which we have previously termed 'path'. Path is not only a direction upon which one embarks, but a direction along the lines of one or the other of the two possibilities. The first is the path of truth. The second is the path of error. The path or way of truth is that in which it is the real which grounds the seeming or appearance. The way of error is that in which it is seeming or appearance which grounds reality; reality would be what appears to us. Here we have the radical complexity of every affirmation in its directional structure; it is the third valence of coincidence.

To understand it better, we must first of all clarify what each of the two paths is. So let us begin with the path of truth. Judgement, I have stated, is the formal organ of seeming or appearance as such. Now, its truth consists formally in that appearance is grounded upon what a thing is in reality. It consists, then, in what determines the actuality in coincidence of an appearance being what the thing is in reality. This is the path of truth. It is not something extrinsic to truth, nor is it the path to arrive at truth; rather it is an intrinsic and formal moment of truth itself as such; it is "truth-path". It is the "path-like" character of affirmation about the real. Only in a derivative sense can one speak of a truth as a quality of what is affirmed. Primarily truth is a dynamic directional characteristic of affirmation; it is the direction by which "appearance" is determined by "real" being. Truth itself is this directional determination. It is the path in which one is intellectively knowing what something seems to be in reality {290} by making the intellection converge toward what the thing really is. This convergence of the path is truth itself. Only in and by this dynamic and directional truth is it that we can have truth in what is affirmed. We shall see this below.

But there is another path, the path of error. Error is also primarily a path. It is the path by which the actuality in coincidence of appearance is what grounds and constitutes what a thing is in reality. Error is above all a path, the erroneous path. It is possible that what is affirmed by this path turns out to be truthful, but it would be so only accidentally, just as the conclusion of a chain of reasoning can be accidentally true even though the premises were false. This does not prevent the way from being an erroneous one, of course. This path is an error, but with respect to what? With respect to the path which leads to an actuality in coincidence in which appearance is bounded in real being. To follow the contrary path-it is in this that error consists. Every error, and therefore all error, is a constitutive deviation, deviation from the path [via] of truth. In error there can also be actuality in coincidence-this must be emphasized-but it is an actuality in a deviate path. Therefore this actuality has in its very actualization its own character, viz. falsehood. Falsehood is actuality in coincidence along a deviate path. Even when accidentally its content turns out to be truthful, nonetheless this presumed truth would be a falsehood with respect to its intellective quality. Falsehood consists formally only in being a characteristic of actuality. It is a false actuality insofar as it is actuality. It is truly actuality but a not true actuality. The path of error is the path of a falsified actuality; it is the falsification which consists in taking my appearance (in its being appearance) as reality. Only derivatively {291} can one speak of falsity in what is affirmed. What is radical and primary is falsehood in the affirmation itself. Falsehood, I claim, is actuality in deviation, in error. Error is a dynamic and directional characteristic of affirmation itself prior to being a characteristic of what is affirmed.

Truth and error-here we have the two valences of coincidence in the order of truth. This statement may come across as confused because in it the word 'truth' and the concept of truth appear twice: truth as valence opposed to error, and truth as that in the order of which valence is constituted. But there is no such confusion; we shall see this forthwith. Before though let us speak of truth and error as valences. Truth is the coincidence between seeming and reality when it is reality which determines seeming, and error in the opposite case.

In contemporary philosophy there has been an effort to introduce other valences besides truth and error; there might be in fact an infinite number of them. Classical logic has always been bivalent (truth and error), but in the logics to which I allude there would be a polyvalence in the order of truth which is different from these two; this is polyvalent logic. I shall allude only to a trivalent logic because of its special importance. Besides the valences of truth and error, an affirmation can have a third valence, uncertainty or indeterminism. This does not refer to my not knowing what is real in a determinate way, but to whether an affirmation about the real is, in the order of truth, something formally uncertain or indeterminate. We shall return to the example I explained when speaking of the "meaning" of affirmation. We saw that in virtue of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle the statement that an electron which is precisely localized in space has a precise momentum would be one which makes no sense physically. Now, in trivalent logic {292} we are not dealing with the fact that such a statement has no meaning, because it does. The fact is that it would be a statement which is neither true nor false, but indeterminate in the order of truth. Thus we have three valences: truth, error, uncertainty or indetermination.

I am not going to delve into this problem; it is a topic of the logic of physics. Here I am not doing a study of logic but of the philosophy of intelligence. And from this point of view the question changes its aspect. And this is what dispels the confusion surrounding the concept of truth to which I earlier alluded.

In fact, as possibilities truth and error in affirmation are co-possible just because they are paths of actuality in coincidence grounded in real truth. This does not mean that truth and error can apply to an affirmation indiscriminately, because error is always deviation. Hence error is not just an absence of truth; if it were-and in fact it has been assumed to be in most of modern philosophy-truth would be just the absence of error. It would be as if would say that having sight is the absence of blindness. And this is not true because error, falsehood, is "deviation"; therefore it is not an absence but a privation of truth. Only with respect to dual truth is error possible. Both are co-possible, but this copossibility does not mean equality; rather it means the copossibility of effective possession and privation. Therefore the Hegelian idea that error is finite truth is unacceptable. Error certainly can be given in finitude, but the fact is that dual truth also can only be given in finitude. Dual truth is not less finite than error because both are grounded in the dual stepping back from reality primordially apprehended as compact. But error is finite also by virtue of being privation. {293} Error is then doubly finite: by being, like truth, grounded in a stepping back based upon real truth, and also because this basis or foundation is privational. Truth is in some form (as we shall see) prior to error.

If we consider the presumed third valence, indetermination or uncertainty, we find ourselves again with a priority of truth with respect to it. Because with respect to what would a given affirmation be uncertain or indeterminate? Clearly it is an uncertainty in the order of truth. Without being in some way in the truth, there is no uncertainty or indetermination. Truth is, as in the case of error, prior in some form to uncertainty or indetermination. And this is essential in any philosophy of intelligence.

And this makes plain to us the confusion in the concept of truth to which I have alluded on several occasions. Valence is, let us reiterate, the quality of coincidence in the order of truth. What is this order of truth? Here "truth" is coincidence between seeming and being, prior to which this coincidence is grounded in one or the other of the two terms. This coincidence is constituted in the medium of intellection through stepping back, that is, in the field. The field is a real moment. Now, the real truth of the field is truth as ambit, as ambit of coincidence. It is the mediated truth of every affirmation. The valence of every affirmation is the quality of this affirmation in the order of truth as ambit: truth as coincidence is the foundation of valence. Error is also grounded in this truth as ambit; error is not truthful affirmation, but is truly affirmation. The valence of every affirmation is so in the order of truth as ambit; mediated truth is the foundation of truth itself as valence. There is then {294} a difference between truth as ambit and truth as valence. As valence it is opposed to error, but as ambit it is the mediated foundation of truth and of error insofar as they are valences. Thus a true judgement is doubly true: it is truly a judgement and also it is a true judgement. A true judgement involves truth as ambit and as valence.

It is in this truth as ambit where every valence is constituted, not just the valence of truth. Affirmation has, in the order of mediated truth as ambit, different valences. The parity is clearly a valence apprehended in the ambit of mediated truth. Only because we move intellectively in mediated truth can we affirm with parity or with disparity. There could not be parity except as modality of truth as ambit. The same should be said of meaning: we apprehend it in mediated truth. Finally, the valence "truth" is apprehended in mediated truth. It is in the light of truth modally known intellectively that we intellectively know the light of each of the three valences: parity, meaning, and truth, and of all their respective polyvalences.

 

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With this we have seen the dynamic directional structure of affirmation in its different valences. Each of them is a quality of a movement in which we go from something simply apprehended toward a real thing about which we seek to intellectively know what it might be in reality. Now this movement "from-toward" takes place in the medium, but is a movement having different phases. In each of them the actuality in coincidence is not only mediated and characterized by valence, but also has its own formal character: the dynamic structure of affirmation. This is what we must now examine.

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3) Formal dynamic structure of mediated coincidence. Let us repeat some ideas. Affirmation is an intellection at a distance which is going to the real in the medium of and by the mediation of "the" reality. This movement has a precise direction, viz. the direction toward the real as actualized in a coincidence. The actuality in coincidence of the real in a determinate direction is appearance. Therefore judgement is the formal organ of the appearance of the real. Coincidence is thus the actuality of the real in appearance, regardless of the determinant of this coincidence. Judgement is thus of a directional dynamic nature.

But this does not suffice, because in that intellective movement we have considered the real up to now only insofar as it is that toward which an affirmation moves. But now it is necessary to consider the real itself precisely and formally "qua affirmed". In our problem, what is affirmed does not float on its own, but is real though only "qua affirmed". In this sense we can say that what is affirmed qua affirmed is the precipitate of the real in affirmation. This precipitate is the valence truth-error. Truth and error as formal structure of what is affirmed qua affirmed are the precipitate of the real along the path of truth or of error. That is what I indicated earlier when I said that truth and error as moments of the real qua affirmed are structures which are only derivative with respect to the paths of truth and error. Therefore truth and error as structural moments, as formal moments of what is affirmed qua affirmed, also have a formally dynamic structure.

In virtue of this, dual truth and error are of a formally dynamic nature in three respects:

1. Because they are characteristics or moments of an {296} act of affirmation, which is an intellective movement which takes place in a medium.

2. Because the affirmation is affirmation along some direction, along a path of coincidence of seeming and real being: the path of truth or of error of what is affirmed.

3. Because what is affirmed "qua affirmed" has a formal dynamic structure according to which what is affirmed is truth or error as dynamic precipitate.

What is this formal dynamic structure of truth and error? That is the problem.

To judge, I have indicated, is to intellectively know at a distance what a thing, already apprehended as real, is in reality. Insofar as it is distanced, i.e, through stepping back, this affirmative intellection is directed toward the real thing from a simple apprehension. To judge is ultimately the intellection of the actuality of the realization of a simple apprehension in the thing about which one is judging.

What is this realization? Naturally we are not dealing with a physical realization in the sense of a real process of notes, but of a realization along the lines of intellective actuality; it is the affirmation of realization as a moment of actuality. This realization is then known intellectively and formally as dynamic. A real thing, qua intellectively known, is intellectively known as "realizing" therein a simple apprehension. This gerund expresses the dynamic moment of what is affirmed qua affirmed, viz. the actuality of what is intellectively known is realizing actuality along the lines of actuality as such.

This dynamic respectivity has a very precise dynamic character. Affirmative intellection is a movement in different phases; it is a phased dynamism, because the two moments of intellection through stepping back are a retraction with respect to what a real thing is in reality, and an affirmative intention of what it is. And these two moments are {297} only phases of a single movement, the movement of intellection at a distance. It is therein where the intellective actuality of what a thing is in reality happens. As I have said, we are not dealing just with the fact that there are two phases of a movement which "drives" to an affirmation, but that they are two phases of a movement in which the intellective actualization of what a thing is in reality "goes on happening". Hence this actualization itself is of a phased character. The realization which a judgement intentionally affirms is then phased. In this actualization the coincidence between seeming and real being happens, and likewise truth and error as structures of what is actualized also happen. Truth and error, then, are not just paths but are also as a consequence dynamic moments that are structurally phases of what is affirmed qua affirmed.

To clarify this thesis, we must understand this structure in three stages: a) In what, more precisely, does the character of the phases of dual truth consist? b) What is the nature of each of these phases? c) What is the unity of these phases of dual truth?

a) The character of the phases of truth. If I speak only of truth it is for two reasons. First, so that I do not have to repeat monotonously the phrase "and error" when referring to truth. And second, because error is a privation of truth; therefore the explication of what error itself is can only brought to fruition by explaining what truth is.

In order to understand precisely the character of the phases of truth, let us take the most trivial of examples: "This paper is white". The classical conceptualization of truth is as a phase. For philosophy in general, the content affirmed is "this white paper", and as an affirmation it means that in this paper is found "the white" which is affirmed in the predicate, {298} or that "the white" is in this paper. Now, all that is correct but is not sufficient, because we are not here speaking of the white paper. If we were speaking, in fact, only of the fact that the white is in this paper, the usual interpretation would be correct. However, we are not dealing with this, but with the affirmative intellection that this paper is white. And then the question does not concern the fact that physically this paper "has" whiteness, but how it becomes true, i.e., how the intellective actuality of the whiteness in this paper comes to "happen". Therefore the truth "isn't here", but is something which constitutively "happens". The white is had by this paper, but truth is not so had; rather it is the intellective happening itself of the white in this paper. Truth happens in the intellective actuality of what a real thing is in reality; it is the happening of the actuality in coincidence that this paper is really white. The "is" expresses the actuality as a happening. To be sure, I do not here take the verb 'to happen' as something completely distinct from 'fact' (this distinction is the subject of another discussion, that of the difference between happening and fact). 'To happen' expresses the dynamic character of every realization as actualization. Truth is given in the actuality in coincidence of the real in intellective movement. In this coincidence the real, upon being actualized, gives its truth to intellection. This "giving of truth" is what I shall call 'making true' or 'truthing'. Formally, what is thereby constituted in actuality in coincidence is appearance. And dual truth consists in what the real is making true as appearance. Now, the making true is, in dual intellection, the happening of truth qua truth of what is affirmed; and conversely, happening is the making true of the real. This happening is, then, the happening of the actuality of the real as appearance. {299}

Now, this happening is much more complex than one might think, because it has its own different phases. These phases are not just "aspects" which are intellectively known in accordance with the point of view one adopts, but rather are constituent "phases" of the actuality of what is affirmed as such; i.e., they are phases of the dual truth itself. In fact, when affirming "this paper is white", I do not make one affirmation but two, because that affirmation consists in the intellection of the real realization of the white in this paper. And this involves two moments. One, that the quality by which this paper is intellectively actualized to me is that quality which consists in "white". The other, that this quality is realized in this paper, and therefore is real in it. When affirming "this paper is white", I have uttered not one affirmation but two: the realization of the white, and the realization that this paper is white. One might then think that in this judgement there are not two affirmations but three, given that besides saying that the quality is "white", and that this quality is realized in the paper, I also say that this of which I am judging is "paper". True, but there are still not three affirmations. First, because this does not happen in every judgement but only in propositional judgment and predicative judgement; it does not happen in positional judgment. When I open the window and yell, "Fire!", I make two affirmations: that I see fire, and that I see it in the street or wherever. Moreover, even in the positional or propositional judgements, the subject is not affirmed but is purely and simply that of which one judges, and as such is not affirmed but presupposed and only indicated. In every affirmation there are then two moments, and only two moments. These moments are in phases; they are the phases of the intellective realization of the predicate in the real thing, for example the realization of the white in this paper. In fact, "the white" {300} intellectively known in itself in retraction is only a simple apprehension of what this paper or some other thing "might be". Intellectively knowing that this "might be" is now real is an affirmation; intellectively knowing that this reality is established as real in this piece of paper is another affirmation. Only by virtue of the first affirmation is the second possible. There is then a rigorous ordering which grounds these two moments in intellective movement. The intellective movement and the truth actualized in it structurally involve two "phases". We are not dealing with two "aspects" but with two moments which are strictly "phases" of what is affirmed qua affirmed. In this two-phased movement is where the truth of an affirmation happens. The affirmation then has two phases, each of which is true for each phase. We shall see later what the unity of these phases is. Now we must clarify each of these phases in and by itself.

b) The phases of truth. The phases of dual truth, i.e. of the coinciding unity, are of intrinsically different character. Dual truth, as I said, happens in the actuality in coincidence of the real in the intelligence. Actuality in coincidence means not the coincidence of two actualities, but an actuality which is strictly "one" in coincidence. This actuality consists, on the one hand, in being so along a fixed direction, in accordance with a fixed simple apprehension; here actuality in coincidence is "seeming". But this same actuality is, on the other hand, intellective actuality of the real as real; it is what we call being "in reality". The coinciding unity of seeming and of being real in the field is that in which truth, in phases, happens, and there are two phases.

The first phase of this happening consists in that which is affirmed of a subject being in itself what {301} realizes in it a fixed simple apprehension, for example "white". White is a simple apprehension; its actuality in this role, independently of what the role might be, is the realization of this simple apprehension. Therefore when I affirm that this paper is white, the white itself is really actual, corresponding to the simple apprehension of the white. Here there is an actuality in coincidence which consists in the actual corresponding to my simple apprehension. And when this coincidence of the actual real with my simple apprehension conforms to it, the coincidence comprises authenticity. This is the first phase of truth. And as such, authenticity is "truth" in a certain phase. Authenticity is the actuality in coincidence as conformity of the real with my simple apprehension.

This requires some clarification. To accomplish this let us change examples and say, "This liquid is wine". The authenticity of the "wine" is above all a characteristic, not of the wine as reality, but of its intellective actuality. The liquid as real is what it is and nothing more; only its intellective actuality can be authentic. In the second place, this characteristic of the intellective actuality is constitutively and essentially respective. The actuality of the wine can only be authentic if its actuality corresponds to the simple apprehension of the wine, or stated more crudely, to the idea which we have of wine. Without this respectivity to simple apprehension, the intellective actuality of the wine would not be authenticity; it would be a quality apprehended as real in and by itself, for example in the primordial apprehension of reality. In the third place, it is not necessary that this simple apprehension, with respect to which I affirm that this wine is authentically wine, be a "concept" of the wine. A few lines back I employed the common expression 'idea' just to leave open the {302} character of the simple apprehension with respect to which this is wine. It can be, certainly, a concept; the liquid which realizes the concept of wine will be authentic. But this is not necessary; simple apprehension can be not a strict concept but a fictional item or even a percept. Thus one can speak rigorously of an authentic or non-authentic character in a literary work. One might even speak of authenticity with respect to a percept when one understands that this percept presents reality to us completely and without distortion. That wine-and only that wine-will be authentic which realizes fixed characteristics which my simple apprehension of the wine intellectively knows.

Classical philosophy grazed-no more than grazed-this entire problem when it referred created things to God, to the Divine Intelligence. For this philosophy, the respectivity to the intelligence of the creator is what comprises what is called 'metaphysical truth'. But this is wrong on three counts. First, because every truth is metaphysical. What classical philosophy calls metaphysical truth should have been called "theological truth". In the second place, this is not authenticity, because every created reality is conformable to the Divine Intelligence, including that reality which is non-authentic wine. For God there is no authenticity; authenticity is not theological truth but human intellective truth. And in the third place, this truth does not refer to the naked reality of things but only to their intellective actuality; it is not a characteristic of naked reality but of the actuality of the real. It is just on account of this that I call it authenticity. Only in a human intelligence can authenticity happen. And even so, it does not necessarily happen there. The wine in question may not be authentic but false. That is, truth as authenticity can happen {303} in the actuality in coincidence of what I call "wine", but it may also not happen. The privation of actuality is falsity; we could be dealing with false wine. This obliges us to state with greater rigor what authenticity is as truth, and what the false is as error.

We say of something that it is authentic wine when, in its intellective actuality, it realizes all the characteristics bundled in the simple apprehension of wine, in the "idea" of the wine. The actuality in coincidence is then a conformity of what is actualized with its simple apprehension. And in this consists formally that mode of truth which is authenticity. In authenticity there is a "seeming", but it is a seeming grounded in the reality of what is actualized; this seems to be wine and it is so; it seems to be wine because it is. It is in this coincidence of seeming and of real being, grounded in actual reality, that the "conformity" of wine with its simple apprehension consists. It is in this that authenticity consists. It is not simple actuality in coincidence but an actuality in coincidence which consists in conformity.

But something different can occur, because there is the possibility that we might take as wine something which only seems to be so. And because in this seeming as such I can consider only some characteristics of simple apprehension which are determinant of seeming, it may occur that the actuality of the real is not just seeming, but "seeming" only. To take as wine what is only so in appearance is exactly what constitutes the falsum of the wine. Correctly understood-and I must emphasize this-it is a falsum only along the lines of respective actuality. This which we call wine is not, in its naked reality, either true or false. Only the false is the opposite of the authentic. The authentic is what is conformable with {304} what seems to be in the actuality of the real; the false is what only has the appearance of conformity and does not in fact have conformity with respect to simple apprehension. It is not just a lack, but a privation of authenticity.

Here, then, truth is authenticity and error is falsehood. I have given the example of wine. Now it should be clear that the same must be said of any predicate whatever, for example, of "white". If white were not authentically white, my judgement (that this paper is white) would be erroneous by virtue of the inauthenticity or falsity of the predicate.

However, this is but a phase of the truth of my affirmation. Although it is necessary that white be authentically white, it is also necessary that this authentic white, that this authentic wine, be that which authentically is realized "in" this paper or "in" this liquid. For that, conformity of the predicate with simple apprehension is not enough.

Second phase. In it we intellectively know, as I just said, that a real thing (this liquid, this paper) is authentically what we apprehend the predicate to be (authentic white, authentic wine). Here the coincidence is, as in the case of authenticity, a "conformity", but a conformity of a different stripe. In both phases there is a conformity of intellection and reality. But in authenticity one deals with a conformity of a real thing with the simple apprehension by which we intellectively know the thing. On the other hand, in affirmation (this paper is white, this liquid is wine) what formally is known intellectively is the conformity of affirmative intellection with a real thing. They are, then, two conformities of different stripe. In authenticity one deals with a realization in what is intellectively known measured by the intellection itself; on account of this, what is authentic is the wine or the white. On the other hand, if I affirm that {305} this liquid is wine or that this paper is white, I am dealing with a realization measured not by intellection but by the real itself. It is affirmative judgement which is conformable with reality. In authenticity it is the wine or the white which is measured by the idea of the wine or the white, i.e., the real in its "seeming" is measured by the idea; whereas in affirmative intellection the "seeming" is supposed to be measured by reality. In order not to generate neologisms, I shall call affirmations of the type, "This paper is white," or "This liquid is wine," affirmative intention or judgement. To be sure, authenticity is also affirmation, judgement. But as there is no expression which is the homologue of authenticity, for the time being I shall refer to this the second type of conformity as conformity of affirmative intention or conformity of judgement. I shall forthwith return to put things in strict order. This conformity of affirmative intention, this conformity of judgement with the real, is what is called truth in contrast to authenticity. I insist that authenticity is also truth, but we shall now hold to the common use of language.

This requires some further clarification. In the first place, What is that real thing with which truth is conformable? Certainly it is the real itself; there is not the slightest doubt. But equally certain is the fact that it is not the real in its naked reality, so to speak, but the real actualized in coincidence in intellection. We are not dealing, then, with a conformity between an intellection "of mine" and a thing which "on its own account" wanders through the cosmos. That would be to give rise to a "material" coincidence, one which is extremely random. Rather, the conformity with which we are here occupying ourselves is a constitutive and formal coincidence. Now, a thing in its naked reality is foreign to this intellective coincidence; {306} and the same is true of intellection itself. Coincidence is not given formally other than in the intellective actuality of the real. And this actuality not only is not foreign to the real, but includes it. Intellective actuality is of no importance to the real, but intellective actuality formally includes the real. It is for this reason that there can be a conformity with the real.

In the second place, With what conformity are we dealing? It is not a conformity such as the coincidence of physical notes or properties. The intelligence has no note in common with white paper or with this specimen of wine. As physical notes, the two things, intelligence and reality in actuality, are formally irreducible. We are dealing with a conformity of a kind which is merely intentional; that which intellection knows intellectively in its affirmative intention it knows as realized in the real actualized thing. This is a conformity between what is actualized as actualized and the very actuality of the real. But it is still necessary to correctly understand this realization, because we are not dealing with the case of affirming, "This paper is white" and that in fact the paper is white. Rather we are dealing with something more, the fact that formally and expressly what I affirm is the realization itself. If we were dealing with only the former, truth as conformity would be merely the conformity of a statement and a real thing (even though just actualized). But in the latter case, we are not dealing with the conformity of a statement but with the conformity of the affirmation itself as affirming a realization, with the realization itself as actualized in that affirmation.

Every judgement, then, affirms the realization of the predicate in the thing which is judged. This realization is in the first place a realization along the lines of actuality. And in the second place, {307} it is a formally affirmed realization, the affirmation of a realization. When the realization affirmed as such is intentionally conformable with the realization of the real in its actuality, then and only then is there truth in the sense of truth of a judgement.

Anticipating some ideas which belong to Part Three of this study, I may say that this intentional conformity can have different modalities. One is the conformity as something which in fact is given. That is what I just explained. But it can happen that that conformity is something more than what is just "given"; it can be that it is something which has been intellectively "sought". In this case the conformity is not just conformity but fulfillment, conformable to what has been sought and how it has been sought. Truth is not only authenticity and judgmental conformity; it is also conformity with fulfillment. It is a different type of truth, truth as fulfillment, the third phase of truth. But let us leave aside this essential problem for now, and limit ourselves to the first two phases.

When there is this intentional conformity of judgement with the actualized real, we say that the judgement is truthful. Truth is a conformity of seeming with a real thing. When there is a lack of conformity, the judgment is erroneous; this is lack of conformity between seeming and real being. That form of error is quite different than the form of error which is opposite to authenticity. As opposite to authenticity, the error judges seeming according to "appearances". On the other hand, as opposed to the truth of judgement, error is a lack of conformity, or rather a "deformity". Appearance and deformation are both privations. They do not rest upon themselves but upon the presumed truth of authenticity and conformity. In truth, whether of authenticity or conformity, seeming {308} is grounded in the real; in error of appearance and deformity, the real is grounded in mere seeming. Correctly understood, this refers to intentional foundations. But seeming is always and only an seeming of the real. And it is precisely on account of this that there can be error. Therefore, to take seeming as real in and by itself is to falsify the seeming at its root, to deprive it of what constitutes its raison d'etre as seeming of the real. Now, judgement is the formal organ of seeming. Therefore the falsification of seeming is eo ipso a falsity of judgement; it is error, a privation. This also requires more detailed consideration.

Above all, truth and error are not forms of objectivity but forms of reality.

Affirmative intentionality is not objective, but is much more than objective, because it falls back upon reality itself. Ultimately, an objective error doesn't cease to be an error because it is objective, and it is always called to be rectified at the proper time not in its objectivity but in the reality of what is affirmed. But as truth and error are forms of intellection, they inevitably pose two questions. First, How can we intellectively examine what truth and error of intellection are? Andnd second, On what can we base ourselves to discern the error of truth?

First, let us consider the possibility of examining if something is true or erroneous. If it were a question of examining what I affirm of "external" reality, so to speak, with an affirmation of mine, I should be trapped in a circle from which there is no escape. And this is because such an examination would examine a judgement about another judgement, which would not further us in any way with respect to truth or error, because these two are what they are not as conformity of some judgements with others, but as conformity of a judgement with the real. If the real were not in a {309} judgement there would be no possibility of speaking of truth and error. But the fact is that the reality which judgement affirms is, as we have seen, not a naked reality but a reality which is intellectively actualized. Now, this intellective actuality has two moments. One, which I have already mentioned, is the real "being here-and-now" [estar] from itself by the mere fact of being real. But this intellective actuality-let us not forget-has another decisive moment. I have already indicated it in the Part I of the book. It is that being real in intellection consists in a real thing being present to us as being de suyo what is presented; this is the moment which I called the moment of prius, which is formally constitutive of all intellection as such from its first, radical intellective act, the impression of reality. This moment is what "in the intellection" submerges it in reality. We shall see forthwith what this prius or prior thing concretely is in affirmative intellection. But for now let us note that the actuality which a judgement intellectively knows in coinciding is the actuality of the real in its two moments of being here-and-now present and of prius. Now, the actualized "real" and the "intellective" actualization of the real are the same actuality. Seeming and being real are given in the same intellective actuality. Hence the possibility of comparing not just one judgement with another, but of comparing a judgement with the real. This is but the possibility of comparing seeming and being real in the same coinciding actuality.

But this does not go beyond being a possibility. Let us then ask ourselves in the second place in what does the foundation consist upon which this possible discernment between seeming and being rests? It is a discernment which ultimately is between truth and error. To be sure it is a moment of actuality itself. But in an actuality, as I just said, the real is there {310} like a prius with respect to that actuality itself. Therefore in the "coinciding" actuality the real is present precisely in that very moment of prius. Now, the actuality in coincidence of the real is a coincidence between seeming and being real in the same actuality. Insofar as this actuality is coinciding actuality of the prius as such, the actual in this actuality has that formal moment of being remitted in coincidence from the seeming to what is real in that actuality. Now, this moment of remission, this moment of coincidental actuality in which the prius consists, is just what formally constitutes that which, a few pages back, I called demand. Demand is, precisely and formally, the coinciding actuality of the prius as such; it is coinciding actuality of the de suyo as suyo; it is the coinciding prius of the suyo. It is in this that, intellectively, demand consists. In virtue of this, demand appearing formally and expressly, leads to the real which "seems" in it. There is a seeming and a being real in the same actuality. And in it the real is being a prius of the seeming. This formal nature of the demand of the real with respect to seeming, this prius of the real with respect to seeming in the same intellective actuality is what not only permits but inexorably compels examination of the foundation of the coinciding of seeming and of being real. This does not refer to the fact that the seeming leads by itself to the real as something beyond the seeming itself; rather, it refers to the fact that seeming leads to the real as something real which is now actualized in the same actuality as the seeming. Here we have the foundation of the discernibility of error and truth: the coincidental actuality of the prius as such.

Since this demand is precisely evidence, it follows that in the coinciding actuality of the prius as such {311} the intrinsic unity of evidence and truth is constituted. It is a dynamic unity, because this unity is a unitary foundation, but one which is only of a principle. The intellective unfolding of this unity is therefore somewhat problematical; it comprises the whole problem of intellectual work, as we shall see in Part Three. This unity does not rest upon the unity of some first judgements which are self-evident with a first "immediate" truth in them. This, which has been so monotonously repeated in philosophy during the course of the last several centuries, is in reality once again to denaturalize the unity of evidence and truth. We are not dealing with a unity of judgements among themselves or of their constituent parts among themselves, but of the unity of every judgement as such with the real as such actualized in accordance with a coinciding prius in a single actuality. The so-called first judgements receive their truth from the same thing where all others receive it, viz. the coincidental actuality of the prius, from the priority of the real with respect to seeming in a single intellective actuality. To be sure, this does not mean that that unity of evidence and of truth does not have different modalities. But as I see it, that modalization of evident truth has nothing to do with what, traditionally, has been understood by types of truth. Let us briefly examine the matter.

Traditionally, the types of truth have usually been conceptualized as a function of the connection of the predicate with the subject. There are, we are told, truths which are immediately evident, those in which the predicate pertains to the subject with an evidence which is grounded in simple inspection by the mind, simplex mentis inspectio. In the other cases one deals with truths of mediated evidence, where the connection of the predicate with the subject is grounded in a third, different term. This third term could be rational unity; {312} and evident mediated truth is then what is usually called a truth of reason. There are cases in which the third term is not reason but experience; these are the truths of fact or matters of fact. But I think that this whole conceptualization is completely wrong, because while it is true that every judgement has a predicate and what may be termed a subject, not every judgement is a "connection" of these two. But even leaving this serious problem aside, the conceptualization which is proposed is still unacceptable.

Beginning with the last point, the division of mediated truths into two types (truths of reason and truths of fact) is inadequate. Their difference is supposed to be grounded in the necessity of the mediated connection of the predicate and the subject. Furthermore, these two terms and their connection are conceptualized as moments of reality. It is reality itself which is either necessary or merely matter-of-fact. But to me, this difference is not adequate, even along the lines of the moments of reality. There are truths which are not of reason but which nevertheless are more than truths of fact. For example, if one says that the necessity for every effect to have a cause is a truth of reason (we won't discuss the propriety of this example; it is just one which is commonly adduced), then it will be a truth of fact, for example, that this paper is white. Nonetheless I think that there are truths which are not necessarily of reason (let us call them truths of absolute necessity), and which are still more than truths of fact because they are truths which deal with that structural moment of the real by which it is necessary that the real have notes of fact. Thus, for example, we have the properties of the cosmos and the properties of history. The cosmos and history are not absolute necessities of the real, {313} but nonetheless are more than just facts; they are that in which every factual reality is a fact. Every fact is necessarily produced in the cosmos and in history. The cosmos and history are thus like the necessary fact of all facts. Therefore, if I call the truths of fact factical truths, I may term these other truths-in order to give them some name-factual truths. The proper constitutive essence of every reality is a factual moment of it. Therefore, from this point of view there are not just two types of truths, but three. There are truths of reason (I retain the name, though it is inadequate); they are necessary truths of the real qua real, which does not in any sense mean that this necessity is a priori, nor strictly speaking absolute either. There are factical truths; they are truths of fact. I include among them every factical reality, with its laws; the laws are necessities "in" the factical. But there are factual truths which concern the necessity that in the real there be facticity. They are therefore truths which are prior to every factical truth. I just said that the factical comprises laws. But these laws are, as I said, necessities "in" the factical. On the other hand, the necessity "of" the factical is prior to every fact and to every law; it is just the factual, the necessity of the factical. The truths about the cosmos and history as such pertain to this type of truth.

But with all of the foregoing, the difference between these three types of truths (truths of reason, factual truths, factical truths) as truths is completely wrong if we deal with them formally as truths. And the reason is that this difference does not concern truth, but only the reality which is truthful. Now, truth is formally a moment, not of naked reality, but of the intellective actuality of the real. And as such, truth has an evidence {314} which is always necessary. It may be that this paper is white only in fact, and that it might not be so. But supposing that I have this white paper in my apprehension, it is just as evident and necessary to intellectively know that this paper is white as to intellectively know that every effect has a cause, or that every fact has to be given in a cosmos and every event in a history. The difference between these three types, then, is not a difference of truth but of reality. And therefore to appeal to it is, with respect to the problem at hand, simply to step outside the question, because what we are here seeking is a difference of truths qua truths. The truth of fact is as truth just as necessary as the truth of reason qua truth. Nonetheless, there are different types of truth qua truth.

And from this very point of view, the conception which we are criticizing has even more serious effects. In the first place, it speaks to us of truths of immediate evidence and mediated evidence. But this difference is unacceptable. Usually one understands by "immediate evidence" that whose truth is grounded in the simple inspection of the predicate and the subject. But this is not the case. From the moment that intellection is a stepping back, its presumed connection is essentially and constitutively a connection which is given in a medium of intellection. The presumed simple inspection, however simple it may be, is always inspection in a medium, the medium of "the" reality. The fact that there is no intermediary does not mean that the connection is not evident in a medium. The immediateness refers to the lack of a third term which establishes the connection; but there is a medium and a mediation in which this connection is established. Having confused immediateness with immediacy is a cardinal error.

But in the second place, the usual conceptualization understands {315} that evident truth consists in a mode of connection, wherein the content of the predicate is linked to the content of the subject. But in fact, nothing could be further from the truth, because affirmation as such, as we have seen, does not fall back upon these two contents and their connection, but upon the reality of the content of the subject and the realization in it of the content of the predicate. Therefore evident truth is not a conformity between two objective representations, but something essentially different, viz. the intentional conformity of my affirmation with the realization of the real. The constitutive prius of evidential demand is the prius of the real with respect to its coincidental actuality as real. That is, those instances of presumed immediate evidence are not immediate nor even evidences (they lack the moment of demand), which once again leaves the problem of the different types of evident truth qua truth as posed but not answered.

In the intellective actuality of the real, it is the real itself which "gives truth", which makes truth or "truthifies". Now, the real has different modes of making truth, and these different modes are just the different types of truth qua truth. The forms of reality (of reason, factual, factical) are truths which differ according to their different form of coinciding actualization as such. There is a mode by which the real gives authenticity to what is affirmed in affirmation. In virtue of that I would say that the real makes truth as authentification. There is another mode according to which the real itself is what, so to speak, dictates to us what we must affirm of it. Let us recall the as early as Heraclitus the logos was something which the sophos, the wise man, had to "listen to". In this regard it has for many, many years been the custom to interpret Heraclitus' logos as the voice of things. Affirmation is a "verdict", just what the word 'judgement' expresses. There is no word which is adequate {316} to express what I call "speaking [dictar] the truth". If, for the sake of symmetry, and without any motive of employing the word outside of this context, I may be permitted to coin a new word, it should be the verb "to veridict", to mean that the real has that mode of making truth in the judgement which I call veridictant. Finally, in truth as fulfillment-and I shall deal with it at length in Part Three-the real verifies the search for truth. The real then has that mode of making truth which is verification. In summary, authentication, veridictance, and verification are the three types of truth qua truth, i.e., the three modes by which the real is a prius in coincidental actuality.

Prescinding for the time being from the third mode, we may say that authenticity and what I have called conformity (which is veridictance) are two phases of truth, two forms of making truth. And for this very reason they are phases of a single movement in which, dynamically, the truth is formally constituted on an on-going basis. Therefore after having summarily examined each one of the phases in and by itself, it is necessary to confront the question of their unity; this is the problem of the unity of the phases of dual truth.

c) Unity of the phases of dual truth. Let us return to repeat some ideas. Every intellection is just intellective actuality of the real. When this actuality is the actuality of something real in and by itself, the intellection is primordial apprehension of the real. As such that intellection has its real truth. When a thing is intellectively known which has already been apprehended as real, but "among" others, then the intellection is an intellection at a distance through stepping back; it is affirmative intellection or judgement. There one does not apprehend the real as real (that was already apprehended in the primordial apprehension of reality); rather, one intellectively knows what this real thing is {317} in reality. In that intellection we do not leave aside the intellectively known actuality of primordial apprehension; on the contrary, the intellection through stepping back takes place formally within this apprehension, but with its own character, movement. In this movement the real thing already apprehended in primordial apprehension acquires a second actuality, viz. coinciding actuality. It is an actuality which happens in a movement. In this coinciding actuality the real acquires the character of seeming. As this movement is given within the primordial apprehension of reality, i.e., within the radical intellective actuality of the real in and by itself, it follows that seeming and being real, forged in the coincident actuality, are given in the same actuality of the real already apprehended as such. Actuality in coincidence, as coincidence of seeming grounded in real being, is dual truth. Therefore dual truth is something which "is not present" in a statement but which "happens" in an affirmative coincidental movement, because it is there that the coincidental actualization of the real happens. Hence it is that dual truth "happens". The predicative verb "is", when it exists, expresses the happening not of the real as such (that is a different problem), but the happening of the real actualized in coincidental actuality. There, then, seeming and being real coincide. And the possibility of intellectively knowing this unity is the moment of the prius of every intellective actuality. In coincidental actuality this prius acquires that formal character which is demand. Demand, as I said, is coincidental actuality of the prius as such.

This actuality, and therefore this truth, is formally dynamic. They happen-let us repeat-in a movement which begins when we step back within a real thing in order to {318} know intellectively by retraction what it "might be" in reality, and then return intentionally to what it "is". In this return, what the real is in reality is actualized as seeming. And its coincidence with the real already apprehended as such is the formal character of coincidental actuality, and therefore of the dual intellection of what the thing is in reality; the coincidence between seeming and being real is grounded on this. Such is the structurally dynamic character of dual truth.

The happening of this coinciding actuality has an essential character, and that is the "conformity" between what is intellectively known and the real. And this conformity is a dynamic conformation of the intellection, for the same reason that the coincidental actuality of the real is dynamic. This dynamism has, as we have seen, two phases. Above all, it is a conformity of what the real is in reality with what, in simple apprehension, we have intellectively known that it "might be"; it is conformity as authenticity. But it has a second phase, which I shall provisionally term 'affirmative conformity'. As noted, this phrase is not strictly correct, because authenticity also is affirmative conformity. What I am calling 'affirmative conformity' we have already seen as veridictance ("speaking the truth"). Veridictance is affirmative conformity just as is authenticity. Therefore the unitary essence of the two phases is in being conformity. In the actuality of conformity, the real is actualized according to the simple apprehension of what it might be; this is authenticity. It is the conformity of the real with respect to simple apprehension of what might be. In veridictance, it is conformity of what is intellectively known with the real. The two are both conformity, even if of different character. The first is the realization of a property in itself; the second is realization of this property in the {319} subject of the judgement. This is the dynamism of conformity of the phases: one goes from the authenticity of the predicate to its realization in the already-real subject. It is in this passing that the happening of dual truth as conformity consists. In its two phases it in fact deals with conformity. Therefore it is conformity itself which is essential and constitutively dynamic. Each moment of it is one of its phases. Conversely, the formal dynamic unity of authenticity and veridictance consists in being the happening of conformity. Conformity is what happens in a movement of conformation.

This is not all, however. On the basis of only what has been said, one might think that conformation is a movement, to be sure, but that the conformity itself, which the conformation conforms, is not. Nonetheless I say that the conformity is intrinsically and formally dynamic. How can this be, and why is it so?

In order to understand this it is necessary to make an essential distinction between two moments of dual truth: conformity and adequacy. The promiscuity with which these two words have traditionally been employed must not obscure the fundamental difference of what is designated by them; they are two very different moments of truthful judgements. In what does this difference consist? Hence does it arise? And above all, What is its intrinsic articulation? Here we have the three points which need to be elucidated; that will be the clarification of the structurally dynamic character of dual truth.

a) In the first place, in what does the difference consist? It is something well known. Conformity means that that which is affirmed of a real thing in the judgement is realized in it. And that happens both in what I have called 'authenticity' as well as in what I have called 'veridictance' (speaking the truth). But to be sure, this does not mean that what is affirmed will be realized in a real thing {320} in such form that there is a total recovery between simple apprehension, whose realization is effectively given in the thing, and what this thing is in reality. Only if there were this recovery would there be a strict "equation"; this is "ad-equacy". Conformity would then be more than mere conformity, it would be adequation. Conformity is always given in dual truth, but not adequation. If I say that this paper is white, I speak in conformity with the paper. But this does not mean that the whiteness of the paper consists in pure and perfect whiteness. There is conformity, but not adequation. In order for there to be adequation, it is necessary to say not just "white" but "white in such-and-such degree", specified with infinite precision. To say "white" without further commentary does not adequately express the whiteness of the paper. Conformity is not just adequation. The difference between these two aspects of judgement is well known. Although in philosophy it is commonly said that the difference exists, the problem of its origin has not been posed, and this is especially true of the articulation of these two moments.

b) Whence arises the difference between conformity and adequation? A little reflection on what I have just said will disclose that the difference does not stem from the connection between the content of the predicate and the content of the subject. On the contrary, it stems from the fact that the subject is the real thing about which one judges, and that the predicate is the realization of simple apprehension in this real thing. Now, the real thing of which one judges has already been given in a primordial apprehension of reality. Therefore the difference stems from the nature of dual truth as such. The real thing, in fact, is already there to be intellectively known with regard to what it is in reality. For this the intelligence takes that retractive stepping back which is simple apprehension; these simple apprehensions {321} of every order are innumerable. Now from among them, oriented by the other things from which I start in the process of simple apprehension, I select one by a free choice. Hence there is a double origin for inadequation.

Above all, the approximation to adequation is gradual; the conformity can go on becoming itself more and more adequate. But in addition to the gradual becoming, there is a moment which it is much more important to me to emphasize in a systematic way. It is that the movement of truth, let us not forget, has a directional character. And this means only that we intellectively know by going toward the real in a determinate direction; but it also means something essentially new. In the direction toward the real, in fact, the truths conformable with the real, but not adequate to it, constitute in their own conformity not so much a representation of the thing as a focus toward adequation. This means not that reality is such as I affirm it to be, but that even if it is so, the conformity itself is like the map of a road, whose truth consists in the fact that if I follow the road completely I will have found the adequation which I sought. The conformities are ultimately justified focuses. Taking each focus of these conformities, it turns out that what they constitute is an intentional scheme of adequate truth. Gradual becoming and directional focus are two characteristics of the dynamic unity of dual truth.

For these two reasons, which ultimately are one, simple apprehension and therefore the affirmation of its realization are not necessarily adequate to the real even if they are conformable to it. There is no "equation"; such is the origin of the difference which we study. It is not owing to the connection between the {322} content of the predicate and the content of the subject but to the character of an intellection that steps back from what the thing, already real, is in reality. Only the difference between primordial apprehension of reality and intellection in stepping back from what it is in reality, is the origin of the difference between conformity and adequation.

c) With this we have taken a decisive step in our problem: we have struck upon the very point and mode in which conformity and adequation are articulated. If philosophy has not in the past made an issue of the origin of the difference of these two moments of truth, we should not be surprised that it has not made an issue of the articulation between them. The primordial apprehension of reality actualizes the real to us as that which we are supposed to intellectively know in an intellective movement that steps back. A real thing is "placed", but placed "among" other realities in order to intellectively know by stepping back what it is in reality. This intellection is therefore a movement which goes "from" other things "toward" what the real thing is in reality as terminus of intellection. As terminus of the "toward", the real thing is the "goal" of intellective movement. Now, in this movement the proper intentum of simple apprehension of reality remains, as we have seen, distended in intention. And in this distention the intention is not just an intentum, distended by stepping back, but is an intention in a peculiar "toward". The "toward" points to the real thing already placed. In this regard the formal terminus of the "toward" is adequation. This is the radical structurally dynamic moment of dual truth, adequation as terminus of the direction of the intellection in the "toward". But, how does this intentional movement take place? It does so step by step. And each of these steps is a terminus of a phase of the {323} intentional movement toward adequation. Each phase is therefore also intentional. But the terminus of this intention of phases isn't the real thing "placed" by primordial apprehension, but what at each step we intellectively know of the thing in conformity with it. We go on intellectively knowing what the thing is in reality in diverse simple apprehensions, each realized in the real thing. But none is realized adequately. The fact that each of these is realized in the real thing is just what comprises conformity. The intention of affirmative movement has thus unfolded into two intentional moments: the intention directed toward the real thing placed by primordial apprehension, and the intention conformable (in each of its phases) with what the thing is. In the affirmative intention there are, then, two intentions, or rather two different intentional phases. Therefore the "conformable" intentions are but the system of phases in which the final intention of the "toward" progressively becomes more adequate. This unity of the two intentional moments is, then, formally and structurally dynamic: the conformity in the intentional phase of the final intention that is adequate to the thing, which has been placed for the affirmative intellection. Each phase of conformity is the inadequate coincidental actuality of seeming and of being real (the foundation of seeming); therefore this coincidence is but an intentional moment toward the coincidental actuality which is adequate to the real thing in its fullness, given in the primordial apprehension of reality. Here we have the precise articulation between conformity and adequation.

This articulation is, then, essentially dynamic. The conformity is in itself the unity as phases of the two phases themselves, the phase of authenticity and the phase of veridictance; and this conformity is in turn a phase toward adequation, which is formally the final terminus {324} of the intellective movement. Each conformity is a direction toward adequation; such is the dynamic structure of dual truth qua truth. Heraclitus even told us (fragment 93) that the Delphic Oracle does not declare or hide, but indicates, signifies (semainei) what is going to happen. This is the nature of dual truth, that each conformity points toward the same adequation.

The foregoing is proper to every dual truth. To say that this paper is white is a conformity which gradually points more and more to the white which is adequate to that of this paper. All judgements, as conformity, point towards a remote adequation, off in the distance. This cannot be achieved by any intellective movement. The adequate color is given as such-and-such a color in the impression of reality of primordial apprehension; but it is not there given to us as formally adequate. In order to apprehend it adequately we need an intellective movement which continues to make more and more precise the real whiteness of the paper. When we move towards this goal in an intellective movement, we continue actualizing moments of richness in conformity with what is the real whiteness of the paper. But to reach the goal adequately in this dynamic intellection is a never-ending and therefore unrealizable task. For the intellection in movement, the adequation will always be a far-off goal. Hence every truthful judgement, every dual truth, is structurally an approximation; it is the gradual approximation to the real, an approximation each of whose moments is a conformity. Every dual truth is therefore intrinsically and structurally approximate within reality, approximate to what an adequate truth should be. This approximation is a movement which slides over the real as given in primordial apprehension. {325} This is what makes it difficult to conceptualize that its dual actuality is formally dynamic.

What is this approximation? The approximation is always something gradual. But this does not mean that each degree of it is a type of falsity or deficiency. There are different types of approximation. In the example cited of the white paper, clearly "white" is inadequate because it only more or less approximates the real color of the paper, and this approximation consists in each degree being only a type of degree of accuracy, i.e., each degree is in itself a falsehood, a deficiency. But it is not necessary that things always be this way. Every inaccuracy is an approximation, but not every approximation is an inaccuracy. And this is essential in order to understand other types of judgements, for example those of mathematics and mathematical truth.

I am not referring to the so-called "mathematics of approximation", but to the "mathematics of precision" as it were which yields properties which are strictly true of mathematical reality: numbers, figures, etc. Are these true judgements approximations? Clearly they are not in the sense of a degrees of inaccuracy. But there is an approximation of a different type than degree. What is it? In perceptive realities that reality is "placed" into primordial apprehension of reality as the terminus of a movement which adequately recovers it. Indeed, reality and adequate truth are not the same thing because adequate truth is only reality as terminus of an intellective movement which achieves and recovers reality which has already been primordially apprehended. With respect to mathematical realities, these realities are something "placed" by a double act: a "definition" of what that reality is, and a "postulate" of its reality. Now, {326} mathematical intellection renders judgements of these realities thus defined and postulated which are strictly true. Are they approximations? In order to respond to this question we must agree on the terminus of that presumed approximation. That terminus is just what is defined and postulated. The intellective movement here pronounces judgements which are strictly necessary and therefore true. But that is not the question at hand, because that strict necessity concerns only conformity. And our question is in knowing if these properties themselves, which are strictly conformable to the thing, adequately recover that to which they refer, for example a number or a figure. For this it is necessary to know what that figure or that number "is". But the question already has a disconcerting air. What does this "is" mean here? Because apart from the fact that these "things" can be understood in different ways, and therefore "be" in a way which is not univocal (a straight line can be understood either as the shortest path or as the line which has all of its points in the same direction, etc.), the strangeness of the question lies in the fact that all of these things are at the outset those which we have defined and postulated. And here the difficulty arises, because these "things" are not what they are through being defined and postulated in an isolated way, each independent of the others; rather, it is by each of them being what it is within the definition and postulate which structures the whole group to which they belong. This is essential. No mathematical "entity" is what it is except within a complete defined and postulated group, and only in reference to it does the apprehension of any one of the mathematical entities in question make sense. Each thing is but an "aspect" of this totality, an aspectual realization of what is defined and postulated. The mathematical world {327} is not a juxtaposition of mathematical entities each defined and postulated by itself; rather, each of those entities only is an entity within the complete group and as a moment of it. Thus, each figure is the figure from a space, etc.; each number belongs to a field of numbers, etc. Each mathematical "thing" receives its reality only from this aspectual character. Now, if that group had no structural properties other than those defined and postulated, every mathematical judgement would be true in the sense of being just an aspect, and therefore everything defined and postulated would be adequately apprehended in each thing. But this is not the case. Gödel's theorem shows that the whole thus postulated and defined necessarily has properties which go beyond what was defined and postulated. This definition and these postulates in fact pose questions which are not resolvable with them alone. And therefore these solutions are just the discovery of properties which go beyond what was defined and postulated. Then the adequate intellection of each thing in this whole is left, at each step, outside of what was defined and postulated, properties which intellective movement does not achieve. These properties are not just "more" definitions and postulates, but rather are necessary properties of the thing and confer upon its reality a distinct structure in the complete whole. As each thing is not intelligible except as an aspect of this whole, it follows that each thing is a mode of reality, which is in some way distinct, on the basis of which it could be apprehended in a fully adequate movement. In virtue of that, each necessary conformity is an inexorable approximation to an adequation which goes beyond the thing defined and postulated. There is no approximation of inaccuracy, but there is approximation of the aspects. Were mathematics no more than a {328} system of theorems and demonstrations linked together logically, the difference between conformity and adequation would be nothing but a conceptual subtlety. But mathematics isn't that; it is the intellection of mathematical realities, endowed with their own structure. It is for this reason that, as I see it, Gödel's theorem does not refer only to postulated "reality", but shows that with respect to it, every mathematical truth is an aspectual approximation, because that reality has a proper translogical "structure".

We cannot investigate this question further here. There are types of approximation which are different than the approximation of inaccuracy and approximation of the aspects. That depends on the different types of reality, which is the problem we are not going to discuss here.

In summary, every real truth without exception is, like conformity, the happening of the dynamic approximation to adequation.

Now, this does not only happen with every dual truth. The fact is that it happens with intellective movement as such. The intellection of the real "among" other realities is by its own structure a dynamism of approximation to real truth. That is, "the truth" as such is a gigantic intellective movement toward what "the real" is "in reality" in a directional focus, schematic and gradual. And not just every dual truth, but also "the" dual truth is an approximation to "the" real truth. This is the whole of work human knowledge, viz. intellective approximation to reality.

With this we have completed our summary analysis of dual truth. Dual truth is the quality of an affirmative intention in which what a thing is in reality is coincidingly actualized in the intellection {329} "among" others. When, in this coinciding, seeming is grounded in real being, then the affirmation is truthful. This affirmation and its truth have a formally dynamic structure: the actualization takes place in a medium, in accordance with a determined direction and a dynamic structure. Dual truth is, then, constitutively dynamic precisely because it concerns coincidental actuality. On the other hand real truth, as we saw, is intellective actualization of the real in and by itself. They are, then, two types of truth. But these two types are not merely juxtaposed. Various times I have alluded to their internal articulation. Now it is necessary to expand this allusion into a summary conceptualization of the intrinsic and formal unity of real truth and dual truth.

 

3

The Unity of Truth

 

In what sense do I speak of the unity of truth? Let us briefly review the basic ideas. We are not dealing with the unity of phases of dual truth but with the unity of the two modes of truth, viz. simple truth and dual truth. Both truths have first and foremost the unity which just being true confers upon them: they are true, and hence are mere intellective actuality of the real. Insofar as what is actualized is real, it constitutes what we may, without further ceremony, call reality; insofar as this real is intellectively actualized it constitutes truth. These two moments of the real are not identical; but as we have seen, neither are they independent. Nor are they simply correlative; rather, they are seen to be intrinsically and formally {330} grounded in each other. Truth is always and only truth of the real; but it is not possible to think that reality is just the correlate of truth. The real, by being what it is de suyo, gives its truth to intellection, and is what makes truth therein. The real is then truthful reality (in the sense of "truthifying" or making truth), or reality "in truth".

This intellective actualization of the real has in turn two moments: it is actuality of the real thing, and it is actuality of the field of reality which that thing determines. Truth is thus constitutively truth of a thing and truth within a field.

This "and" of the two moments can in turn be actualized in two modes, and therefore truth also has those two modes. One is that mode in accordance with which the real is intellectively actual in and by itself. This means that its two moments, individual and field, are actualized unitarily; it is a direct apprehension of the real thing, immediate and compact. The intellective actualization is then what I have called real or simple truth, in the sense that the real is actualized in and by itself. But there is another mode, that in accordance with which a real thing is actualized, not in and by itself, but "among" others. The thing is, to be sure, actualized as a "real" individual, but its field moment encompasses the other things. Hence this actualization of the real has two aspects. On one hand we have the thing as intellectively known, but on the other its unity with individual formality is problematic. As this unity is what the real thing is "in reality", it follows that what is problematic in this actualization is found in what the real thing is "in reality". I leave aside the attentive intellection for obvious reasons. {331} The intellection of the real is then dual; it is an intellective movement of affirmation that comes from stepping back, in which the real is actualized in coincidental actuality. This coincidental actuality is just dual truth.

Therefore truth is always and only intellective actualization of the real. The two modes of truth, simple truth and dual truth, have above all the unity which being true confers upon them, i.e., being intellective actualization of the real qua intellective. But this is not enough to speak of the unity of truth, because it could be treating of two types of truth, i.e., of two types of actualization. And this is not the case; there is an intrinsic unity, even a formal one, of the two modes of truth, in virtue of which those two modes of actualization are not just "species" but in fact "modes" of actualizing. The actualization itself is intrinsically modalized. And this modalization is expressed in a second character of unity. The first was the unity which consists in the fact that both are intellective actualization. The second is that these two actualizations are not independent. Coinciding actualization of dual truth bears intrinsically and formally in its bosom the simple truth of the real. It is necessary to stress the formal presence of real or simple truth in every dual truth. This presence is twofold: in the first place, because the real truth of that of which one judges is intrinsically present to dual truth; and in the second, because dual truth is found to be based on the medium of intellection and the medium of intellection is the real truth of the field. Affirmative intellection is in fact possible only by virtue of primordial apprehension of reality, and takes place in a medium which is also real truth. Hence every dual truth is always and only modulation of the simple truth of {332} the real. But this simple truth is not just a foundation which is intrisically present to the dual truth, but in that duality the real acquires, so to speak, its internal unfolding, the unfolding which consists in actualizing what the real thing is in reality. Simple truth is then inchoatively a dual truth. But the modulation of the simple truth, and the inchoate character of the dual truth, still point to a third unity more profound than mere actuality and simple dependence. What is this unity?

The fact is that the actualization of the real qua actualization is constitutively open. The openness is the intrinsic and formal unity of the two modes of truth; moreover, it is a character of all truth, both simple and dual. Modulating and being inchoate are the expression of openness. This is the third and radical character of the unity of truth. On what is the openness grounded? In what does the openness, as a moment of actualization in itself, consist? What is the ambit of this openness? Here we have the three points to which we must briefly attend.

a) On what is the openness grounded? The openness of which we are here dealing is a mode of actuality, and as such formally affects intellection as such. If our intellections were no more than a simultaneous addition or a succession of various acts of intellectively knowing, there would be no reason to speak of openness. But this is not the case, because the formal and radical terminus of intellective actuality is the impression of reality; i.e., the intellection in which the real is actualized is constitutively sentient. And the very impression of reality is formally open; it is, as we have already seen in Part I, the transcendentality of the impression of reality. Thus the diversity of intellections can at times be the unfolding of the same impression of reality. It is in this {333} unfolding that the real is actualized not just in and by itself, but also "among" other real things. Hence it follows that the primary intellective apprehension of the real makes the turning toward other intellective apprehensions necessary. And this turning is precisely the openness, or rather, the expression of the openness; every intellection is a turning, and is a turning because it is constitutively open, and is constitutively open because it is constitutively sentient. And as the intellective actuality of the real is truth, it follows that the openness of intellection is openness of truth and to truth. Because the intellection is sentient, truth is constitutively open. Each truth implies the others and is inchoatively turned to them. The openness is the radical condition in accordance with which all the real is apprehended, either actually or inchoatively, among other realities.

b) In what does this openness consist? In the sentient actuality of the real, the real is actualized in the unity of its two moments, the individual and the field. Now, the openness of the real which is of interest to us here is found formally in its moment of being in a field. Everything real is actually or incipiently open to what is within a field. Therefore its intellective actuality, its truth, also is so. Every actuality is either actually or incipiently open. And this diversity is apprehended intellectively in two modes: the unitary mode and the differential mode. As we already know, in the unitary mode the apprehension of reality involves the field moment in a compact unity with the individual moment, whereas in the differential mode the field moment is autonomized by an intellective movement that unpacks it. In both cases we are dealing with the same formal structure, viz. the structure of "fieldness", i.e., of the nature of the field. But it is necessary carefully to avoid a possible point of confusion. {334} Since intellection "in" the field of reality, as we have seen, is dynamic, it might seem that every intellection is formally dynamic. And this is completely false, because the dynamism is not proper to the structure of every intellection, but only that of intellection that steps back in a field, i.e. of the intellection of the real "among" other realities. To be sure, in every intellection there is or can be dynamism. But this does not contradict what I just said, because in the primordial apprehension of reality there can be dynamism because there is actualization, i.e. because it is already intellection. Such is the case, for example, with the effort to be attentive; while it takes place in differential intellective movement, an actualization is produced because there is dynamism. In this case it is intellective movement which determines the intellective actualization of the real. That is, intellection is not formally dynamic; only dual intellection is formally dynamic. The primordial apprehension of reality is not formally dynamic because it is not formally apprehension of the real "among" other realities. What happens is that the real, in and by itself, is incipiently open to being actualized among other realities. Therefore its intellection isn't formally dynamic, but only so consequent upon the primary actualization of the real; but it is incipiently open to being actualized in intellective movement, in dynamism, a dynamism of reactualization. The reason is clear: all of the real is incipiently intellectively known according to what it is in reality. And since this intellection, when it is an intellective movement, is already formally dynamic by being so, it follows that the intellection of the real, even though not always formally dynamic, is nonetheless always incipiently open to a dynamic intellection.

Having said this, it is clear that the openness of which we are here speaking {335} formally consists in "fieldness", i.e., the nature of being in a field. Dual truth is formally and constitutively open by being actuality of the real in its moment of fieldness, in the ambit of reality. This is the third point to which we must attend.

c) The ambit of openness is the ambit of truth as a whole. In fact, every simple truth is incipiently open to a dynamic truth, and each moment of this dynamic truth is a moment of conformity which is structurally open to adequation with "the" reality, open to "the" truth. But this openness to "the" truth has various aspects, because the openness of truth is but the openness of the actualization of the real, and therefore is but the openness of the field aspect of the real itself as real. There is an aspect of the real which is of cosmic character; every truth is in this aspect a truth open to all of the other cosmic truths. But there is in the real another moment, the transcendental moment, that moment which concerns the real qua real. Now, as we saw in Part I, this transcendental character is formally and constitutively open. The real qua real is not something already and necessarily concluded. It is, on the contrary, a characteristic which is not a priori, but really grounded in the real characteristic of the type of reality. This transcendental order is, then, constitutively open. Therefore, if we call the truth of the cosmic unity of the real 'science', and we call the truth of the transcendental unity of the real 'philosophy', it will be necessary to say that this difference of types of knowing depends essentially on the nature of the known real. Science and philosophy are open truth. Human knowing is the enormous actualization of this constitutive cosmic-transcendental openness of the real.

Naturally, not every truth is scientific or philosophical in the foregoing sense. {336} But every truth involves actuality of the real within a field. Therefore man is an animal open not only to thousands of modes of knowing, but to something more profound. In contrast to a pure animal, which is an animal of "closed" life, man is rather the animal open to every form of reality. But as the animal of realities, man not only is an animal whose life is open, but above all the animal intellectively actualizing the openness itself of the real as real. Only on account of this is his life open. Sentient intelligence, that modest faculty of impression of reality, thus actualizes in the human animal the entire openness of the real as real. Intelligence actualizes the openness of the real. In turn-but this is not our subject-when it arises from a sentient intelligence, the real itself is open, but it is another type of reality qua reality.

What is this openness to the real? One might think that it is the openness to being. If that were the case, man would be the comprehendor of being. But he isn't. Man is the sentient apprehendor of the real. Truth is not the truth of being nor of the real as it is, but the truth of the real as real. Therefore, the problems posed to us include not only that of "truth and reality" but the serious problem of "truth, reality and being". After having examined what truth is, and what the truth of the real is (in its diverse forms and in its primary unity) we must pose to ourselves the third problem: truth, reality, and being.

{337}

§3

TRUTH, REALITY, AND BEING

 

Every truth, we said, is intellective actuality of the real qua intellective. Now, this actuality assumes two forms: the truth of the primordial apprehension of reality and the truth of affirmation. These two forms are unitarily the two forms of openness of the intellection to a real thing. But philosophy up to now has not understood matters in this way. It has rather been thought that that to which intellection is firmly open is being. This conceptualization is determined by an analysis only of dual truth. All of intellection is thus centered in affirmation, and in addition affirmation is identified with predicative affirmation of the type, "A is B"; every other possible form of intellection would be a latent type of predication. Seeing this white color would be a latent way of affirming that this color "is" white. This predicative judgement has been the guiding thread of the accepted analysis of intellection. Nonetheless, I do not think that this conceptualization is viable. Above all, because judgement itself, not only in its predicative form but also as affirmation, does not fall back upon the "is" designated as a copulative but upon the "real". The truth of an affirmation is not primarily and formally truth of what "is" but of the "real". Moreover, the fact is that there is an intellection of reality which is not affirmative, and which despite its undeniable originality and priority contemporary philosophy has passed over. This of course is the primordial apprehension of reality. And the primordial apprehension of reality is not a type of latent intellective affirmation. {338} First, because this primordial apprehension isn't affirmation, and second because this apprehension does not fall back upon being. Its formal terminus is not substantive being, the so-called substantive being is not the formal terminus of primordial apprehension; its terminus is rather the real in and by itself. Therefore the truth of primordial apprehension of reality is not truth about substantive being but about substantive reality. Reality, then, is not being, and the truth about reality is not the truth about being. Nonetheless, despite the fact that being is not formally and primarily included in the intellection of the real, it has an internal articulation with the real in the structure of every intellection. Therefore if we seek to analyze the nature of truth, we must proceed step-by-step. We must first of all see that affirmation, and therefore its truth, are not affirmation and truth of being but of reality. Then we must see that primary intellection, i.e., the primordial apprehension of the real, does not apprehend substantive being but reality. Its truth is what I have called 'real truth'. But since being, despite not constituting the formal terminus of intellection can be included in some way in every intellection, we must determine the positive structure of every truth as such according to the internal articulation of its two moments of reality and being.

Thus, three questions are posed for us:

A) Affirmation as affirmation of reality. This is the problem of "truth and copulative being".

B) Primordial apprehension as intellection of reality. This is the problem "truth and substantive being".

C) Internal structure of the truth of intellection in its two moments of reality and being. This is in all its generality the problem of "truth, reality, and being".

{339}

1

Truth and Copulative Being

 

Judgement, as we have seen, has three different forms: predicative, propositional, and positional.

a) Let us begin by analysis of the predicative judgement "A is B", which is the guiding thread of the entire classic conceptualization of truth in its unity with being. Upon what does this judgement rest? We have already seen that the "is" has three different functions. It signifies the "relation" in which A and B are. That is properly what has given rise to the word 'copula'; this is copulative being. But the "is" has another more profound function, one which is prior to the foregoing; this is the function of expressing the very connection between A and B, i.e., their "connective unity". But besides this and prior to expressing this connective unity, the "is" expresses affirmation as such. And these three functions have a precise order of foundation, as we have also seen. The copula is grounded in a connection: only because A and B are in connective unity do they acquire sufficient functional autonomy to give rise to the relation of B and A. But in turn, this connective unity does not constitute predicative judgement; what constitutes predicative judgement is the affirmation of said connective unity, and therefore of the copulation. Predicative judgement consists in affirming that the unity A-B is in the terminus of the judgement. Therefore our whole problem centers on this primary function, to wit, on the "is" as affirmation. What is this affirmation?

We are not asking about the structure of the act of predicative intention but rather about what {340} is predicated itself as such, i.e., we are asking ourselves about the "is" to which the copula alludes. What does this copula fall back upon?

To be sure, it does not fall back upon some objectivity; the "is" does not consist in "objectively it is thus". Being is more than objectivity. There has been a tendency to think that the "is" of affirmation falls back upon the "being" of what is affirmed. Predicative affirmation would then fall back upon the being of A, of B, and of their connection. Only later would it be able to express the relation. Leaving aside for the moment this "relational" aspect of the copula, we may ask ourselves: Does predicative affirmation fall back upon being? Certainly not. That upon which the predicative affirmation falls back is the reality of A, of B, and of their connective unity. On the other hand, according to the generally accepted interpretation, affirmation would fall back upon the being of A, and upon the being of B. Formally, these two beings have nothing to do with each other, because being A isn't being B, nor conversely. Therefore the being to which the copula 'is' would allude would be the unity of those two beings. In this unity the being of A and the being of B would be modified by their connective unity. Thus it is understood that the being of A-B would be a rigorously copulative being. Affirmation would consist in affirming copulatively the unity of the two beings, A and B. But this is not correct. Affirmation and its "is" do not fall back directly and formally upon the being of A, of B, and of their connection, but rather upon the reality of A, of B, and of their connection. In predicative affirmation there is certainly a connection, however, it is not a connection of beings, but a real connection or constitution; it is B being realized in the reality of A. That A, B, and their unity are presented to us as "being" does not mean that my affirmation falls back upon this "being", upon being itself, nor is it grounded on being. But it falls back upon the real-with however much "being" one may like-but {341} only insofar as it is real. We are not dealing with a thing, the res as res essente qua essente, as res essente qua res. We saw this in the analysis of affirmation. That of which one affirms is always the real already apprehended in primordial apprehension of reality. This real is "re-intellegized" among other real things. And the unity of this intellection is in the field moment of reality. The medium of intellection at a distance (by stepping back) is not being but reality within a field. And affirmation itself consists in affirming the realization of the simple apprehension B in the reality A already primordially apprehended. When this affirmation is predicative the intellective movement has its own character-it is a gathering together. Permit me to explain. Predicative affirmation, like all affirmation, is a dual intellection; it intellectively knows a real thing among others and from others. But it is dual in a second aspect proper only to predicative affirmation, because that thing which one intellectively knows is present in what is intellectively known, but only "in connection" with it. Every judgement is affirmation of a realization of the simple apprehension in that about which one judges. And when this realization has a connective character, there are two dualities: the duality proper to affirmation as intellection at a distance, by stepping back, and the duality of the connective unity of B and A. This second duality is what is peculiar about predicative judgement. Predicative affirmation consists in affirming the unity of this duality. In virtue of it, the intellective movement of affirming B in A (or what comes to the same, the realization of B in A) is, qua act, an act of connection; and it is this connective act qua act which I term 'gathering together' [Sp. colegir] in the etymological sense of "reuniting with" [Lat. col-legere], and not in the usual sense of inferring or something similar. Intellective movement through stepping back is now a movement that gathers together. In this gathering together one intellectively knows the connective real itself. The real is now {342} actualized intellectively in the collecting. The real is intellectively known in the connective structure of its actuality, it is intellectively actualized, in the movement of gathering together. If one wishes, every judgement affirms a realization, and when the reality itself is connective, this realization is intellectively known in being gathered together. This gathering together is not just another form of movement, but constitutes in movement itself a moment which is proper to intellection. What is known intellectively through gathering together is the real in its connective unity; this real is what is affirmed in the "direct mode".

But affirmation through gathering together affirms the connective real in the copula "is". What is this "is"? The "is" does not constitute affirmation. As affirmation, affirmation is constituted only as affirmation of the real. But the "is" nonetheless has its own meaning; it expresses the affirmed real qua affirmed. This expressing does not mean either the real or its truth, but what is affirmed qua affirmed. Affirmation, we have seen, is intellection by stepping back in intellective movement. Therefore affirmation is a coincidental actuality between the realm of intelligence and the realm of the real. So when affirmation is connective, the coinciding is actualization in a gathering together. Then the copulation is not just gathering together or reuniting B and A, but above all reuniting or gathering together the intellection and the connective reality itself. The terms of the copulation are intelligence and what is affirmed. The copulative "is" expresses this unity of intelligence and the real through gathering together. This unity is what is affirmed "qua affirmed". Then one thing is clear: as the "is" expresses the real thing affirmed qua affirmed, it follows that the "is" is based upon reality and not the other way around. This is the ulteriority of being with respect to reality. Now, in affirmation we intellectively know the real as distanced, {343} as given in by stepping back in the form of an impression of reality. Therefore "being" is the expression of a primary impression of reality. Affirmation does not intellectively know in a direct mode the being of the real, but rather the reality itself; but it intellectively knows in an indirect mode the being of the real. The obliquity is precisely what the idea of expression designates. Affirmation affirms reality in a direct mode and in an indirect mode the expression of what is affirmed qua affirmed, i.e., being. How? That is the essential question. We shall see how subsequently; but in any case we can already see clearly what I said many pages back: the dialectic of being is grounded in a dialectic of reality. And this grounding is what, in this case, the verb 'to express' designates. Being and its dialectic are but the expression of the real and of its connective dialectic. The element of predicative judgement is not being but reality. Therefore its truth is not the truth of being but the truth of the real.

But this is not the only problem with the conceptualization we are discussing. We are trying to see if, in fact, judgement is formally the place of being and of its truth. I have sought to make it clear that this is not the case for predicative judgement. But there is another more fundamental problem conjoined with this one, and that is that not every judgement is predicative. What happens with the other two forms of judgement, propositional judgement and positional judgement?

b) Contemporary philosophy has not occupied itself as it should have with these forms of judgement; rather it has simply taken for granted that they are but incipient forms of intellection of what the affirmed "is". Now, that is not true, and indeed therein one can see quite clearly the non-universality of "copulative-being" as the character of every intellective act. There are intellections, in fact, in which the copulative "is" does not intervene even in an incipient way. This is what we must now summarily discuss. {344}

What I have called 'propositional judgement' is what constitutes the meaning of a nominal phrase. This type of phrase lacks a verb. Classical philosophy, as we have already said, did not consider this type of proposition. At most, when any thought was given to it, people considered such propositions as incipient predicative judgements. To say, "woman, variable" would be an ellipsis for "a woman is something variable". But this is completely untenable. No linguist would today agree that a nominal sentence carries in some elliptical sense an understood copula. The linguist thinks, and with reason, that a nominal phrase is an original and irreducible type of a-verbal sentence. There are two types of phrases: verbal and a-verbal; both are ways of affirmation essentially irreducible. In the second there is no verbal ellipsis. This is clearer when sentences with verbal ellipsis are most frequent, for example in classical Sanskrit. But together with them there are strictly nominal phrases without verbal ellipsis; for example in the Veda and the Avesta nominal phrases are rarely elliptical. And this is essential for two reasons. First, because of what I just said: a nominal phrase is in itself and by itself a non-verbal sentence. It lacks, then, copulative being. But it is not therefore incipient predication. Philosophy has traditionally reflected upon judgements which lack a subject (the so-called 'impersonal' judgements) or upon judgements which lack a predicate (the so-called 'existential' judgements), though with poor results. But it has never occurred to anyone to think that there might be judgements without a copula. Now, the nominal phrase lacks a copula, and nonetheless is a judgement in the strictest sense of the term. And this discloses to us the second reason why the theory of incipient judgement is untenable. A nominal phrase, in fact, not only lacks a copula; but just on account of that, as we have seen, {345} affirms reality with much more force than if the verb "is" were employed. To say, "Woman, variable" is to affirm the reality of variability in a way that is much stronger than saying "a woman is variable". The nominal phrase is an explicit affirmation of reality without any copula. And this shows once again that the formal part of judgement is not the copulative affirmation of the "is", but the affirmation of the real as reality.

This is even clearer if we consider positional judgement, which is the real intellectively known as "being", for example "fire", "rain", etc. But it is not this being which is affirmed in the direct mode; rather what is affirmed in direct mode is the real apprehended in primordial apprehension, as primary and complete realization of a simple apprehension. That of which one judges is the real in and by itself, but without previous denominative qualification. Therefore there is only a single noun. And this is even more true than may at first glance be supposed, because the copulative "is" is not limited to being absent as in the nominal phrase and the propositional judgement; rather there are facts which are much more important to our problem. Indeed, there are languages which lack the copula "is", or if they have it, it never has the copulative function in them. But despite this affirmations about the real are made in them. They are not Indo-European languages. The theory of affirmation has been grounded exclusively upon Indo-European languages, and within that group, upon the Hellenic logos, Aristotle's celebrated logos apophantikos. And this has led to a false generalization, to thinking that the "is" is the formally constitutive moment of all affirmation. To be sure, since we express ourselves in languages which derive from the Indo-European trunk, it is not possible for us to eliminate the verb "is" from our sentences, {346} and we necessarily have to say that this or that thing "is" real, etc. In the same way Greek philosophy itself, from Parmenides to Aristotle, has had to use sentences in which one says "being is immobile", etc. Here the "is" appears twice, once as that of which some predicates are affirmed, and once as the copula itself which affirms them. These two meanings have nothing to do with each other -something which clearly manifests the great limitation of the Indo-European sentence in this type of problem. Since the world's languages have already been created, the essential point is not to confuse this historical and structural necessity of the Indo-European family with the conceptualization of affirmation itself. So leaving aside being as that which is affirmed, what is important to us here is that very act of its affirmation, the copulative "is", is not constituted by affirmation about being. To be sure, affirmation falls back upon the real as something "being", but "reality" is being and not "being" is reality. It is the real given as realization of a simple apprehension, but it is not the real given as such-and-such reality, qualified and proposed for some ulterior act of another simple apprehension. It would be absurd to pretend that when I exclaim, "Fire!", I am saying, "This is fire". That would be just a translation of my exclamation, and a poor one to boot. The exclamatory affirmation does not fall back upon being but upon the real. And once again, this affirmation affirms reality with much more force than its translation into a copulative sentence. It could be translated better by saying, "It is fire". But the affirmation of reality is clearly much weaker than in the exclamation without the "is".

Nonetheless, both positional affirmation and propositional affirmation affirm the real in a direct mode, {347} but at one and the same time affirm, in an indirect mode, their expression as "being". The exclamation is in itself the expression of the real qua affirmed; it involves being as an expression of the impression of reality. That is to say, in copulative judgement as well as in propositional and positional judgement, there is a properly and formally constitutive moment, to wit, reality; but there is also a congeneric moment so to speak, which is the expression of what is intellectively known as being. How is this possible? One might think that it stems from the fact that while affirmation does not consist either expressly or incipiently in a copulatively known "is", that of which one judges, the real, consists in being a "substantive being", as opposed to the copulative being which is only given in judgement. Truth would then be the truth of substantive being affirmed in copulative being. Now, that is impossible. We have seen that judgement does not formally consist in the copulative "is". Let us now examine if the real of which one judges consists, qua judged, in substantive being.

 

2

Truth and Being of the Substantive

 

I dealt with this problem in Part I, following along the lines of the discussion I devoted to it in On Essence. But for greater clarity I shall repeat what has already been said.

That of which one judges is the real apprehended in primordial apprehension of reality. It is the primary and radical form of intellection, anterior therefore to all possible {348} judgement, and something that falls back upon the real in and by itself. Therefore its truth is not the truth of either conformity or adequation as in a judgement; rather, it is purely and simply real truth. What we now ask ourselves is if this apprehension and its real truth fall back formally upon a thing insofar as it has being. As a real thing is substantive, the stated question is identical to asking whether the terminus of primordial apprehension and its real truth is a thing as substantive being. That was the idea of all of philosophy after Parmenides: affirmation states what the real is as substantive being. But to me, this is untenable. Intellection, primarily and radically, simply apprehends the real in and by itself as reality. The so-called 'substantive being' is, to be sure, in this intellection, but only as a moment grounded inn the formality of reality. To think that reality is a mode other than being substantive is, as I shall explain forthwith, an enormous entification of reality. To see this more clearly, let us summarize briefly what the real is which we apprehend primordially, what being is, what substantive being is, and why the intellection of reality is at one and the same time intellection of the real and of its substantive being, i.e., what being real truth is.

a) We need not directly treat of the real qua real; that is a metaphysical problem. We are asking about the real in and by itself, but only insofar as it is apprehended in primordial apprehension of reality. In this primordial apprehension what is apprehended has the formality of reality; it is not a stimulus but rather something real, i.e., it is apprehended not as a sign for response but as something de suyo. This de suyo is not some logical necessity, so to speak, but rather means only that the moments of what is apprehended pertain to it not by virtue of the response {349} which it can elicit, but as something "of its own". Because of language constraints, we express this by saying that what is apprehended "is" of itself what it is and how it is. But here the "is" does not designate the formal and proper character of what is apprehended, as we have already seen. What is apprehended is reality, and not being, in the strict sense of the word.

This difference between reality and being we have considered up to now only in a negative way: reality is not being. Subsequently we shall view the nature of this difference in a positive way.

Let us consider a piece of iron. We repeat once again: it has such-and-such properties. But these properties are not the being of the iron, but the iron itself, the ferric reality; not "being iron" but "ferric reality". And the same happens if what one desires to say is that the iron exists. Reality is the de suyo, and therefore is beyond the difference between essence and existence in the classical sense. Essence and existence concern only the content of what is apprehended; but the de suyo is neither content nor formality. Regardless of the nature of the difference between essence and existence, classical essence as well as classical existence are what they are only because that essence and that existence belong de suyo to a thing. The "being" of iron is not the "iron". What, negatively, does this difference mean? Let us recall that we are speaking about the reality and the being of a real thing qua apprehended in primordial apprehension. Now, one might think that in contrast to "'being' iron", he could lay hold of another verb to express the ferric reality. It would be the verb "there being". One would say "there is" iron as opposed to "is iron". The "there is" always and only means something which there is in my life, in my situation, etc. But it does not, simply speaking, designate "reality". {350} Reality is a formality of a thing in and by itself; there is no question of "there is" or "there is not". The verb which, as I see it at least with respect to Spanish, serves our need is being here-and-now [estar] as opposed to being [ser]. The difference between them has been stressed many times by saying that estar means something circumstantial, for example "being here-and-now sick". On the other hand, ser means permanent reality, as when we say of someone that he "is an invalid". Nonetheless, I do not believe that this is the radical meaning of the verb estar. Estar designates the physical character of that in which is in actu exercito, so to speak; on the other hand, ser designates the "habitual" state, without any allusion to the physical character of reality. The tuberculosis patient "is" an invalid. But on the other hand, when we say that he is [está] coughing, he is [está] feverish, etc., we formally designate the character of the coughing and of the fever in a physical way: he "is" here-and-now [está] coughing, he "is" here-and-now [está] feverish, etc. It is true that very frequently the circumstantial is expressed by means of the verb estar; but it is just there that we are seeing in the circumstantial the formally physical character of its reality. The contraposition between ser and estar is not primarily one between the permanent and the circumstantial, but between a "mode of being", habitual or otherwise, and the "physical character" of reality. On account of this, at times one uses the verb estar to designate the physical character of the habitual, for example when saying of someone that he "is [está] tubercular". Now, the verb estar designates physical reality as opposed to the verb ser which has another meaning which we shall explain forthwith. In the primordial apprehension of reality, a thing "is" [está] physically and really apprehended in and by itself in my apprehension. Referring back to the concept of actuality which we have been explaining throughout the course of this work, let us recall that 'actuality' does not mean "presence" but the "being here-and-now" [estar] {351} present insofar as it is here-and-now [estar]; it is the real "being here-and-now [estando] present in and by itself as real. Reality is not, then, being. So what then is being?

b) When we speak of iron, we may allude not to its properties, nor to its existence, but to what the iron might "be" [sea]. Properly speaking, it is this "being" [ser] which is opposed to "being here-and-now" [estar]. But it immediately springs to mind that this "being" [ser] is not a formal moment of ferric reality, because it is the iron, it, the ferric reality itself, which "is" [es]. It isn't "being iron" (we have already seen that it isn't) but rather that the "iron is". What is this being? Everything real is, qua real, respective (let us not confuse respectivity and relation). And this respectivity of the real qua real is what I understand by 'world'. This respectivity is constitutive of the real qua real; i.e., everything real is formally worldly. Now, a real respective thing qua reality is the physical reality of it and the world intrinsically and formally constituted by it. But I can consider a real thing not as constitutively and formally real (in its twin dimensions individual and worldly) but as an "actual" reality in the world. The world is "respectivity"; actuality in this respectivity of the real qua "is" here-and-now [está] in the world constitutes the actuality of the real in the world. Reality, then, is not only something which constitutes the world, but moreover is actual in the world constituted by it. Now, the actuality of the real in the world is just "being". "Iron is" means that that which physically constitutes real iron is ferricly actual in the world. This being in the world as actuality of the real being here-and-now (estar) in respectivity (to the world) is what constitutes being. If iron were able to sense its reality, it would sense it as ferric reality, ferricly actual in the world. This and nothing more {352} is what "iron is" means. Everything else isn't being but reality. Thus, it is one thing to describe man as a reality born of some progenitors and among other realities; and something else to describe him by saying that "he saw the light". This last is the actuality of what was generated (reality) in the world (light). Being does not pertain to reality as a formal moment; being is not a proper and formal moment of reality. What then is the real insofar as it is? That being does not pertain formally to the reality of the real does not mean that being does not pertain to the real. And this is what we must now ask ourselves, viz. In what does this pertaining consist?

c) The real is not the subject of notes, but rather is a system constructed of constituent and constitutive notes. That is, the real is not a substantial subject, but a substantivity. Of this substantivity we say, and with reason, that it "is". This means that being, although not identified with reality, is still completely poured into it, so to speak. And it is poured into it as substantive reality. Being is then being of substantivity. And one might term this 'substantive being'. But that would be an incorrect denomination, because we are not dealing with the fact that being is substantive, nor the fact that substantivity is being, but rather that the substantivity of the real "is". It is not a substantive being, but the being of the substantive. This is the most radical form of "being", not because substantive reality is a mode of being, but because the being of the substantive is the being of what is most radical in a real thing, the being of its own substantivity. Let us not, then, confuse the being of the substantive and substantive being. If at times I speak of substantive being it should always be understood that I refer to the being of the substantive. And this brings us to essential consequences in the order of intellection.

d) Reality and being in fact are not identical, {353} but neither are they independent. When taken together, substantive reality and its being in primary intellection, i.e. in the primordial apprehension of reality, confront us with three essential characteristics.

In the first place, we meet with not only the distinction between but also with the anteriority of reality with respect to being. Reality is not the supreme mode of being, but on the contrary being is a mode of reality. For this reason there is no esse reale, real being, but only, as I say, realitas in essendo, reality in being. A real thing "is"; it is that, the real thing, which "is", but it is not true that being is the reality of a real thing. Reality is not ens. And all the rest is an unacceptable entification of reality. Greek philosophy and subsequent European philosophy have always identified reality and ens. Both in philosophy as well as theology, real things have been considered formally as real entia (entities), and God Himself as the supreme reality would be subsistent being, the supreme ens (being or entity). But this seems to me totally unacceptable. Reality is not entity, nor is the real ens. Ens is only the real insofar as it is. But prior to being ens, the real is real. Only insofar as the real is encountered in the ulterior actuality of its being, only then can and should it receive the denomination of ens, a denomination which is posterior to its condition as real. Therefore the entification of reality is ultimately only a gigantic conceptual hypothesis. Even when treating of God, it is necessary to say that God is not the subsistent being nor the supreme ens, but an absolute reality in the line of reality. It is not the case that God "is"; one can only be called ens based on created things which are. But in and by Himself God is not ens. A real thing is not real because it "is", but rather it "is" because it is real. So reality and ens are not identical. {354} Being is ulterior to the formality of reality.

In the second place, this ulteriority does not mean that being is something like an ontological accident of the real. That would be absurd. Everything real "is", and "is" inexorably, because everything real is formally respective, and therefore is actual in this respectivity, i.e., "is". Since "reality" is a physical formality of what is apprehended in sentient intellection, it follows that while the "is" and its ulteriority are not a physical moment of its formal reality, nonetheless this ulteriority of its actuality in the world as such, i.e., being, is an ulteriority which is certainly ulterior, but also physical in its way, just as physical is the actuality of the real. The real is not a mode of being, but the real is (at least is present) in the world, i.e., "is here-and-now [está] being". To say that the real is here-and-now [está] in being means more concretely that the real is here-and-now [está] being. Although being is not a formal moment of the real, to be here-and-now [estar] being is a physical moment of the real, but consequent upon its formal reality.

Hence being is not primarily something understood, as has been assumed since Parmenides' time; rather, being is something sensed when a real thing is sentiently apprehended in and by itself. Being is sensed, but not directly, i.e., it is not the formal terminus of that apprehension; rather, being is co-sensed, sensed in an indirect mode as ulterior actuality. The real "is" here-and-now [está] being by virtue of being already real. What is apprehended in the direct mode is the being here-and-now [estar]; the being [siendo] is not apprehended except indirectly. I shall return to this subject later.

In the third place, intellection is mere actualization in the sentient intelligence, and the real in this actualization is truth, real truth. Real truth does not make the "is" intervene as a formal terminus of it. Upon intellectively knowing the real {355} in and by itself, we intellectively know that the real is being by being real. Real truth is the unity of the real as something which "is" here-and-now [está] actualized in intellection, and as something which therefore is "being" [siendo]. Real truth does not require intervention by being but only by the real. Only because the real "is" here-and-now [está] being, is the "being" [siendo] co-intellectively known when the real is intellectively known. If the "being" [siendo] is found in this intellection, it is not to constitute it formally, but as an indirectly intellectively known moment in the real. Being is in the primordial apprehension, not as formally constitutive of it, but as an ulterior moment of that apprehension, even though in it. Let us not confuse being in the apprehension with constituting it formally. Real truth is not the truth of the being of the substantive, but it inexorably if indirectly encompasses this being of the substantive. How? That is the question of the internal articulation of truth, reality, and being in the intellection.

 

3

Articulation of Truth, Reality, and Being

 

In the two previous subsections the essential aspects of this articulation have been gradually emerging, above all their negative burden, which reveals what is unacceptable about the conceptualization we have been discussing. It was a conceptualization according to which truth falls back upon being, both copulative as well as substantive, in such a way that reality would consist only in a mode of being, albeit a radical one. As this view customarily says, "being" means "being real". It was when criticizing this conceptualization that the essentially negative aspects of the problem appeared. {356} Now we must gather those aspects in a positive way. This will make clear the rigorous nature of the articulation which we seek.

This is an articulation in the intellection. Reality, I repeat, is de suyo intrinsically and formally respective qua real; that is, it is "worldly" in the precise sense of world as the unity of respectivity of the real as real. But its worldliness is grounded precisely and formally in reality. It is reality which, by being real, grounds the world and is worldly. Hence reality, by being worldly, has its own actuality in this world qua world constituted by it; it is being. Therefore, upon intellectively knowing the real, we co-intellectively know, we co-sense, the real as being. And then the problem we face is what and how this co-intellection is possible; this is precisely the internal articulation of reality and being in intellection.

We have seen that the two moments cannot be identified nor are they independent. Being is always an inexorable real "necessity" of reality; therefore it is always "ulterior" to the real as real. Co-intellection is grounded in this ulteriority, which has different aspects in intellection depending on whether one deals with the primordial intellection of reality or affirmative intellection. It is on one hand the ulteriority of what I call the "being of the substantive", co-intellectively known in the primordial apprehension of reality. On the other hand, it is the ulteriority of being in affirmative intellection, what I call the "being of the affirmed". The two ulteriorities are not independent, but possess an intrinsic and radical unity. The co-intellective articulation of reality and being is what integrally constitutes truth. The problem of the articulation thus breaks down into four questions:

a) The intellection of reality in its being of the substantive. {357}

b) The intellection of reality in its being of the affirmed.

c) The unity of being in intellection.

d) Reality and being in truth.

 

a) The intellection of the real in its being of the substantive. We have already seen this in part I, but it is necessary to recall it specifically. When we intellectively know the real in primordial apprehension, we co-intellectively know the moment of being, as we have seen. How and why? This is the question.

In primordial apprehension, reality is the formality of what is impressively apprehended. In this impression of reality the real is apprehended in and by itself. But this reality impressively apprehended has in its very formality a worldly dimension. And the actuality of what is apprehended in this worldly dimension is what I have called 'the being of the substantive'. That every primordial apprehension is worldly is clear because that apprehension apprehends formality in its two moments, individual and field. Now, the field of reality is but the worldly respectivity qua apprehended in impression. Hence to perceive a real thing in its field moment is to perceive it in some way in its worldly respectivity itself. Thus the actuality of something real in impressive intellection is also the actuality in the field of reality and therefore in the world. And the actuality of the real in the field and in the world is the being of the substantive. Only because the real is in and by itself within the field and in the world, only because of this does the real have actuality within the field and worldly; i.e., only because of this "is" it the real. That actuality, that being given in impression of reality, is therefore, {358} as I said, an ulterior and physical moment of the real. But that the ulteriority is physical does not mean that the terminus of the ulteriority is also something formally physical; that is another question. Indeed we are going to see shortly that ulteriority is a physical moment of the real, but that being is not physical in the same sense in which the notes of a thing are. The real is real and has in itself an "is" in physical ulteriority; but being is, formally, only just ulteriority of physical reality: it is not "something", it is not a note. Therefore the real apprehended in impression is sending us, in impression, on to what is ulterior to it, to its being. This sending is not, then, a type of logical movement but a physically apprehended movement in reality given in impression; reality in impression is physically apprehended and impressively sends from the formality of reality to what is ulterior to it, to its worldly actuality, because the ulteriority itself is a physical moment of the impression of reality. In this way being itself is formally something "sensed".

Thus this ulteriority has, in apprehension, a precise character to which I did not explicitly allude in the Part I, but which it is important to emphasize here. The real is not a simple otherness passively received, but is the real itself sending, by its own formality, from this individual formality to its actuality within the field and the world, to its being. This physical sending is a sending "from" what is present to us in an impression; therefore, this "from" is strictly an ex. The primary apprehension of the being of the substantive is therefore "ex-pression"; it is what is expressed in the "im-pression" of reality. The formal character of the ulteriority apprehended in primordial apprehension is expression. In the impression itself one apprehends in ex what is here-and-now present to us; {359} one apprehends what is impressively present in its physical ulteriority. It is, if one wishes, a type of physical push of the impression from itself toward its being. The ex presupposes the impression, and is only apprehended in it; however, its apprehension is not a second act, but rather the same act in its dimension of indirect or indirect ulteriority. It is but the ex of the apprehension in impression itself. Impression and expression are two dimensions of one and the same primordial apprehension of reality: the dimension of in (direct) and the dimension of ex (indirect). These two dimensions are generated together but not as coordinated; rather, the expression is an expression only of and in the impression itself. In this expression what is expressed is the being of the substantive. Expression is a physical character of the primordial apprehension of reality. Its character of "being here and now present" is being here and now expressed physically. Being concerns real things by themselves, even if there were never any intellection of any of them; but in their intellection, the being of the real is expression. In the primordial apprehension of reality, we intellectively know reality in and by itself impressively; we intellectively know, expressively, the substantive being in it. And since ulteriority is a physical moment of the real-it "is here-and-now being" real-it follows that not only do we express reality in impression, but we inexorably have to express it. That is to say, to the primordial apprehension of reality in impression corresponds in an essential way its expression. Therefore upon intellectively knowing the real, we necessarily co-intellectively know its being, its worldly actuality.

It is unnecessary to stress that we are dealing with an intellective expression. The expression in all of its fullness is not something which is limited only to intellective expression of the real. But here we are dealing with expression just as intellective expression; it is the formal structure of the physical ulteriority of {360} what is apprehended in the impression of reality. It will therefore be useful to clarify the character of this expression, in which the intellection of the being of the substantive consists.

In the first place, this expression, as we have already said, is not a second act, as if grounded in the apprehension of the real and carried out "after" the act of expression that apprehension. We are not talking about that. It is not a second act but a second dimension, the ex dimension of the same apprehensive act. Therefore what we have in the expression is not something that was expressed, but something which is strictly speaking expressed now. The expressed nature of reality in its "being here-and-now" present is the apprehension of reality in being. Therefore the "expressed reality" as "expressed" is its being. Expression is, then, ulterior expressed actuality.

In the second place, this ex-pression, by virtue of being the second dimension of the unique apprehensive act of reality, has also a simple character, i.e., the immediate dimension of the primordial apprehension of reality. It is because it is immediate that it is not a type of latent affirmation (or anything like that) of some "is". It is not latent predication but an intrinsic dimension of the primordial apprehension of reality. What there is, is a dimension of this apprehension grounded on the dimension of the "in"; and just like the "ex", the apprehension of the "ex" is indirect. Apprehension apprehends the real in a direct way, but also apprehends it in its being; therefore the being is indirectly apprehended. Now, this indirectness is expression. We directly apprehend the real, and in an indirect mode its worldly actuality. Precisely on account of this it is very difficult to distinguish being and reality. History amply manifests this difficulty.

In the third place, one might think that this character of expression proper to being {361} does not consist in that of which it is an expression, viz. the real, but rather something formally meant by the expression itself. Yet that is not the case. Being is neither meaning nor sense, but the expressed nature "of" reality. That something may be expressed in one of its dimensions does not mean that being expressed is "meaning something". We are not dealing with an act of meaning something, but with an expressed actuality. Strictly speaking, it is not so much expression as an expressed character. Therefore reality is not the meaning of being, but on the contrary, being is what is expressed of reality in its being here-and-now [estar] present, however much "being" [siendo] one wishes, but being in being here-and-now present [estar]. Being is grounded in reality as what is express in what is impressed. Reality, as real, is being here-and-now present; it is thus reality which "is", and not the case that being is reality. Therefore reality is not the radical form of being. On the contrary, what is indeed true is that the radical form of being is the being of the substantive.

Now, ratification of the real in its intellective actuality is real truth. Therefore to real truth corresponds essentially not just the being "here-and-now present" of the real, i.e. the impressive ratification of the real as real, but also the "being" [siendo] here and present, i.e., the ratification of its worldly actuality. The real truth of intellection is at once truth of the real which "is here-and-now" and of the being here-and-now of the real. They are two aspects of real truth both grounded in a precise order: the truth of being [siendo] is indirectly of the truth of being here-and-now. Only the truth of the real qua real makes the truth of the real in its being of the substantive possible.

But the being of the substantive, which is the radical form of being, is not the unique form of being in the intellection. What is that other form, and why and how does it necessarily concern human intellection of the real? {362}

b) The intellection of reality in its being of the affirmed. When I intellectively know a real thing not only in and by itself as real, but also among other real things, that real thing, as we have repeatedly said, is actualized in intellection at a distance, i.e., by stepping back. The unity of the real as individual and within a field in reality is then unpacked; in a certain way it is distended. As the unity of both moments is formally what a thing is "in reality", it follows that in the stepping back, what the thing is in reality remains problematic. Thus the field of reality becomes the medium of intellection in which what a thing is in reality is going to be intellectively known. This intellection-as we have already seen-is an intentional decrease of distance. When we assume a distance or "step back", we have created simple apprehensions, and in the intentional decreasing we return to the real thing from within reality, which is then newly actualized, i.e., reactualized, but now in the order of simple apprehensions. This intellection, by virtue of being an intellection installed formally in the real as real, is therefore an affirmation. The formal moment of affirmation is, then, the realization of a simple apprehension in a real thing, a realization along the lines of intellective actuality. This is what constitutes what a real thing is in reality; i.e., the formal terminus of the affirmation is the "in reality".

This is not all there is in affirmation, because what is affirmed in it is definitely a realization; and this realization, as the reactualization it is, concerns actualized thing itself as a real moment. But then I must consider not just what is affirmed as a moment of the real, but also what is affirmed qua affirmed, just because it is a distanced intellection, through stepping back. {363} There is not only the realization of a simple apprehension qua realization; there is also the realization itself qua affirmed. What is affirmed is intellectively known, but upon intellectively knowing it, what is affirmed qua affirmed is co-intellectively known. For greater clarity, if we take the example of predicative judgement, the affirmation "A is B" consists first of all, in direct mode, in affirming the realization of B in A; but it also consists in affirming, albeit in an indirect way, that this realization is intellectively known, i.e., that this realization "is" in the real. The affirmation co-intellectively knows that what is affirmed is something formally intellectively known qua affirmed. Affirmation always takes place as a unity of powers of intelligence and of what a thing is "in reality". And this unity is on one hand affirmation of what a thing is "in reality", but on the other affirmation of what this unity "is". The "is" of the realization expresses the intellective actuality in its unity. Besides the direct mode realization, affirmation intellectively knows in an indirect mode that this realization is intellectively known in the real; and this being here-and-now is what affirmatively constitutes the "is". The "is" is the being of what is affirmed of the real qua affirmed. This being is not, to be sure, the being of the substantive, because the being of the substantive concerns the real by being "real", whereas the being of what is affirmed does not concern the "real", but what the real is "in reality". I shall return later to this point, because first it is necessary to clarify further what this being of the affirmed is.

In the first place, the being of what is affirmed expresses in an indirect mode, as I have been saying, what a thing is "in reality". In this aspect the being of what is affirmed is expression. And it is so in the sense previously explained: the being of what is affirmed qua affirmed is {364} now expressed in the affirmation itself. But, in what does this being express consist? This is what must be clarified.

In the second place, there is the nature of this expression, of this "being expressed". Only by seeing it will we have seen what the being of the affirmed is. When one intellectively knows a real thing, not in and by itself, but "among" others, it is necessary to recall that the "among" has at least three functions. It has a constitutive function (ratio essendi) in the thing, one which constitutes its distinction from others. It also has an intellective function (ratio cognoscendi) which constitutes not its distinction, but the intellective stepping back from others. And finally it has an actualizing function (ratio actualitatis), the mode of actualizing a thing "among" others when the thing is intellectively known at a distance. The first function concerns reality, the second affirmation, and the third the intellective actuality of the real in intellection. For the problem at hand, only the second and third functions are of interest. These two functions have a precise articulation. Stepping back is an act of retraction in which we elaborate simple apprehensions. Their actualization in the real, the third function, thus has two aspects. Above all there is the most visible one, the relationship of a thing to what is simply apprehended. This is what constitutes what is affirmed, because what is affirmed is the realization of what is simply apprehended. But in order for this to happen, it is necessary to presuppose that intellection has carried out the stepping back. Then the respectivity to simple apprehension (the third function) rests upon respectivity to stepping back itself (the second function). That respectivity is not reactualization, because reactualization concerns the real with respect to simple apprehension. It is something previous, the respectivity to stepped-back intellection qua stepped back, {365} respectivity to the intellection of what a thing is "in reality". If intellection were not distanced, a stepping back, i.e., sentient, there would be no opportunity to speak of what something is "in reality"; there would be nothing but "reality". Therefore everything real intellectively known at a distance, in stepping back, is constitutively respective qua intellectively known this way. And this respectivity to intellection at a distance, in stepping back (of what something is "in reality") is what constitutes what I term the intellective world. It is a world by homology with the real world which is respectivity of the real qua real. But the intellective world is not the world of the real, but only the world of the "in reality". Now, what is affirmed is what a real thing is in reality; and the "affirmed" qua affirmed is the actuality of the "in reality" in respectivity to the intellective world; it is a mode of being. And this actuality is what constitutes the "being of the affirmed". Being affirmed is the actuality in the intellective world of what a thing is in reality. And since, in affirmation, this actuality goes out of (ex) the realization itself, it follows that the being of what is affirmed consists in being what is "expressed" of what a thing is in reality as actuality in the intellective world.

To preclude erroneous interpretations it is important to emphasize two points.

Above all, intellective world has nothing to do with what, classically, was termed intelligible world, a notion coined by Plato (topos noetos) and which is an essential part of the thought of Leibniz and Kant. The intelligible world is a world of strict necessities of what is conceived, and in this sense it is a world of absolutely necessary truths. It is a second world juxtaposed to the sensible world, and is above it as something a priori with respect to it. {366} But I doubt that such a world exists. Only a single world exists, the real world. And since the real is actualized in the formality of the impression of reality in a sentient intellection, it follows that the real world is at once and radically something intellectively known and sensed. But that is not all. The fact is that the intellective world is not constituted only by the objective content of simple apprehensions (be they concepts, fictional items, or percepts). This content is at most but a part of the intellective world. But what formally constitutes the intellective world is the respectivity of the "in reality". In this respectivity, simple apprehension does not enter by reason of its content, but ultimately by its formal moment of reality, i.e., by being what the real "might be". "Might be" does not mean that what we apprehend is reality only approximatively. It means something else. Even if a concept were formally and exhaustively realized in the real, its character of concept would always consist in being formally a "might be" of the real, because the "might be" is the direction to the real. Now, the "might be" is grounded in stepping back, as the foundation, as the principle of the intellection of what things are "in reality". This "in reality" concerns not just simple apprehension (either as content or as "might be"), but also and above all its actualization. And this radical respectivity of the "in reality" to stepping back is what formally constitutes the intellective world-something which has absolutely nothing to do with the intelligible world of classical philosophy.

But it is necessary to attend to a second point. The real world pertains to the real qua real; and this respectivity makes the real be a world. But the intellective world does not pertain to the real as such. It pertains only to the real primarily qua really known intellectively; {367} moreover it pertains only to the real intellectively known qua really intellectively known at a distance, in stepping back. And since this stepping back is a formal and exclusive moment of human intelligence, by virtue of being sentient intelligence, it follows that only with respect to a human intelligence, i.e. a sentient one, is there an intellective world. For an intelligence that intellectively knew the real in and by itself exhaustively, there would be neither affirmations nor an intellective world. This does not comprise any kind of subjectivity, because intelligence is always actualization of the real. And this actualization has two dimensions: the dimension of the "real" and the dimension of the "in reality". That this duality is only given with respect to human intelligence does not mean that each one of its two terms is but a mere actualization of the real. The intellective world is an actualization of the real in an intelligence which intellectively knows in intellective movement, in a sentient intelligence. The intellective world is a world of the "in reality" proper to the "real" world. This duality is a duality along the lines of intellective actualization, and therefore has nothing to do with subjectivism.

In summary, the actuality of the real in the intellective world is the being of what is affirmed. And it is necessary to point out now in a consistent way the characteristics constitutive of the being of what is affirmed.

aa) The being of the affirmed is not, to be sure, the being of the substantive. But neither is it merely copulative being. First, because the being of what is affirmed pertains to every affirmation and not just to predicative affirmation, the only one which has copulative being. Second, because the being of what is affirmed does not concern intellection itself qua intellection but only what is affirmed qua affirmed in it. Therefore, as I see it, it deals with a particular division of being, {368} one which is different from the classical division. Classically, being was divided into substantive being and copulative being. This division is unacceptable, because substantive being does not consist, as was thought classically, in real being (substantive being is only the ulterior actuality of the real in the world), and because copulative being does not encompass all forms of affirmation. The division should be established between these two forms of being: the being of the substantive and the being of the affirmed. Both are "what is expressed": the first is what is indirectly expressed in primordial apprehension of reality; the second is what is indirectly expressed about what the thing is in reality. And since this duality is grounded in the actualizing characteristic of a sentient intellection, the question inexorably arises of what might be the unity of these two modes of being, i.e., the question of why they are "being".

But in order to be able to delve into this topic, we must first attend to a second characteristic unique to the being of what is affirmed, which is extremely important, and which more clearly outlines the problem of the unity of being.

bb) The being of the affirmed is the actuality of the real in the intellective world, in the world of the "in reality". And this being is what is expressed in an affirmation. Now, there is a serious problem involved, that of negative judgement, because affirmation and the affirmed are the opposite of negation and what is negated. Hence it might seem to follow, first, that it is not true that intellection at a distance, in stepping back, consists in being an affirmation-it could be a negation-and second, that what is expressed "isn't" always-it could "not be". This is the whole problem of negation and of the negative. It is not some useless subtlety, but as we are going to see, is something which affects the most essential part of some great philosophical systems. {369}

There is, in fact, a serious ambiguity in the idea of "affirmation". To be sure, affirmation can be the opposite of negation. In this sense, it would be absurd to pretend that intellection at a distance, in stepping back, is constitutive affirmation. But this is not the radical idea of affirmation. In the radical sense, affirming consists only in intellectively knowing at a distance, by stepping back into the reality of something, what this something is in reality. In this second meaning, affirmation is not the opposite of anything; it is only distinguished from primordial apprehension of reality. The primordial apprehension of reality is compact intellection of the real in and by itself, an apprehension which bears in an expressed way the being of the substantive. On the other hand, affirmation is unpacked and bears in an expressed way the being of what is affirmed. Here we are speaking of affirmation only in the second sense. And it is essential to keep this foremost in one's mind. Even when one predicatively affirms "A is not B", the affirmation itself is the affirmation that that "is" so. Therefore the "is not" does not concern the affirmation itself in the second sense. It is the same to affirm something in the first sense as to affirm that this something "is". This sameness (tauton) was the celebrated thesis of Parmenides, albeit in a dimension and an aspect which are completely different from what constitutes what I call "being of the affirmed". This is because for Parmenides, sameness refers to the sameness of both intellection and the "is" (something which we already saw is impossible). But Plato interprets the sameness as sameness of both predicative affirmation and the "is". To simplify the terminology, I shall speak only of affirmation simpliciter in lieu of predicative affirmation; but understand that I refer only to predicative affirmation. Similarly, in place of the "is" one should speak of "is in reality"; but for the foregoing reason I shall speak only of the "is". Granting this, for Parmenides {370} one could never either know or express in a statement the "not being". Being, and only being, "is".

But despite that, Parmenides' own Poem continually uses-as it scarcely could avoid doing-negative sentences and judgements, affirmations that being "is not" this or that.

Despite this, I still think that affirmation is an intellection at a distance, in stepping back, in which we intellectively know what something "is" in reality. To affirm is always and only to affirm the "is". But affirming is one thing and the character of what is affirmed qua affirmed another. Now, while affirming is always and only affirming the "is", what is affirmed can consist in an "is" or in an "is not". This "is not" is what is usually termed the negative. It is clear that if I affirm the negative I affirm that something "is" just negative. What happens is that then the opposite of negation and the negative cannot be called "affirmation", as if the negative were the opposite of the affirmative. This is unacceptable unless one is willing to maintain indefinitely something which is a serious ambiguity. The opposite of the negative (not-being) is the positive (being) and not the affirmative. Therefore every affirmation consists in affirming the "is", but this being affirmed can have a positive character ("is") or a negative one ("is not"). As I see it, all the negations in Parmenides' Poem are negations only in the character of the thing affirmed, but not in the affirmation itself.

Affirmation, then, has two completely different meanings in our language. On the one hand, it means the intellection of the real at a distance, in stepping back; and on the other, the positive part of certain affirmations. Confusion of the two meanings has been the root of some serious consequences in the history of philosophy. Everything we have been saying throughout this book concerns only affirmation but not this positive part. {371} Thus we have the following schema: 1. being of the substantive; 2. affirmed being which in turn can be being, (a) positive or (b) negative.

But this by itself poses serious questions. In the first place, there is the question of in what the duality "being and not being" formally consists as a duality between the positive and the negative in what is affirmed. This is the problem of what is negated. And since what is affirmed, i.e. the "being affirmed", consists only in the "is", there arises the second question, viz. What is the internal structure of the being affirmed in its double dimension of being and not-being?

First question: In what, formally, does the duality "positive-negative" consist, i.e., the duality "being and not-being", in what is affirmed. Although for greater facility of expression I may set forth examples of predicative judgement, as I have said, the problem refers to all of affirmative intellection, whether predicative or not. What do we understand by not-being?

At first glance one might think that not being consists in affirming of A, instead of what it is, namely B, something which it is not, for example C. When I affirm, "A is C", I affirm something which is not. In this aspect not being consists in error, and the error itself would be "not being" by being otherness. This is what Plato thought: to affirm what is not is to affirm of a thing "something other" than what it is. Not being is to heteron. The head of the Vedantists, Sankara, thought the same thing. Error would then consist in "super-imposition" (adhyasa), i.e., in transferring to one thing a notion which only fits another. But this does not suffice, because negative judgement itself, when affirming of something that it "is not", can be perfectly truthful; it can be true that "A is not B". And in this case the negation is not otherness. Moreover we are not dealing with the fact that a thing is (or is not) the same as what is attributed to it, {372} or something else; rather we are dealing with the affirmation itself according to which a thing "is not", independently of whether this affirmation is or is not erroneous. Not being is not otherness but a dimension of the affirmed itself qua affirmed; it is affirming "is not".

Nonetheless, this is not sufficient, because affirming "is not" can mean that we deny that "A is B". In such case the negation would be negation of an affirmation, a negated copula; one denies that A "is" B. But neither is this correct. Not every negation is negation of an affirmation; rather, negation or denial is always in itself negative. It is not a negated copula but a negative copula. Put in the most general terms, we are dealing not with a negated affirmation but a negative affirmation. What, formally, this negative, this "is not", is -that is the question.

Let us recall what has been said many times in these pages. Affirmative intellection is intellection at a distance, in stepping back of what a thing, already known intellectively as real, is "in reality". We are not talking about distancing ourselves from reality, or stepping back from it, but keeping ourselves there. Hence every affirmative intellection is an intellection in reality. Since the negative is a mode of this intellection, it follows that the "is not" does not consist in unreality. The "is not" does not consist in either otherness or unreality. What the stepping back does is to "unfold" a real thing; it is the unfolding of "reality" and "in reality". This unfolding therefore opens, as I said before, a type of gap in the real; it is the gap of the "in reality". To be sure, this gap is just intellective; it does not concern the physical reality of a thing, only its actualization in stepping back. The affirmative intentionality is an intellective movement in this gap. {373} With this, our problem is now fully addressed, because affirmative intellection is first of all an intellection at a distance, in stepping back; second it is the opening of a gap, the gap of the "in reality"; and lastly it is an actualization of the real in this gap by means of an intellective movement. Therefore to ask ourselves, What is the "is not"? is to ask ourselves for a mode of actualization in movement of a real thing in the gap of the "in reality".

In order to conceptualize this actualization, it is necessary to bear in mind that we are dealing constitutively with an actualization with respect to simple apprehensions, elaborated in the stepping back. What are these simple apprehensions? Their content, as we have already seen, can be quite varied: percept, fictional item, concept. But it is not this content which formally constitutes simple apprehension; rather, it is their intrinsic and unique dimension of reality: the "might be". The "might be" is not the reality which is; but rather is, in reality, the distanced version of what a real thing is "in reality". As I said, the stepping back opens a gap in reality, and this gap is the gap of the "might be" with respect to what a thing is. The gap of the "might be" is therefore the actualization of a thing in accordance with a twin possibility: the possibility of being or the possibility of not being the actualization of a determinate simple apprehension. The stepping back, and therefore the gap, is the foundation of this duplicity of actualization of the real in intellective movement. If we make use of a common though inaccurate expression, and call all simple apprehensions "ideas", we may say that for Plato the realm of Ideas is the realm of full reality (ontos on, he called the ousia of the Idea). For Aristotle on the other hand, the realm of ideas is the realm of the abstract. I do not share either of these conceptualizations. {374} To begin with, an idea is not in and by itself reality, but neither is an abstraction. First because the idea, in this sense of simple apprehension, is not always abstract; it can have the concrete nature of a fictional item, and above all the radical concrete nature of the percept-a point over which classical philosophy has constantly stumbled. But moreover and above all, it is because the idea is neither the realm of reality nor the realmof the abstract, but the realm of the "might be". Every idea is formally and constitutively directed toward the reality of which it is an idea, and this direction is the "might be". Therefore the realm of ideas, in its "might be", constitutes a twin possibility of actualization: either the real actualizes the simple apprehension (the idea), or it does not do so. This is positive or negative actualization. They are two possibilities generated together precisely because they constitute the twin dimension of the "might be", its twin structural dimension. The negative is not grounded in the positive nor the positive upon the negative; rather, both are grounded in the "might be" of simple apprehension as such.

Granting this we may ask ourselves what this actualizations is which we call negative. It has different moments which must be carefully distinguished.

aa) Let us take this piece of paper. Let us suppose it is not green. That means above all that the green, the greenness, is not actualized in the paper. But that is not sufficient for the "is not", because we are not concerned with whether this piece of paper does or does not have greenness, but with whether this "not-having", this not being actualized, becomes a mode of intellective actualization. We are not dealing with the fact that the green is not actual, but with the actualization of this "not" as such.

bb) We are dealing, then, not with actual being but with the intellection of the actuality of this "not". To understand it, {375} let us think about the fact that affirmative intellection is a stepping back, and that therefore there is above all the moment of contribution of the simple apprehensions for the intellection of what a thing is in reality. In our case, I contribute the simple apprehension of green. I see that it is not actualized in this paper. But this seeing is not a negation; it is merely the intellective manifestation of the non-actualization. The negation is only a quality of intellective movement. Prior to the non-actualization of the green, the intelligence carries out a type of "turning away" from the green in the thing. We are not talking about a movement of the intelligence as carrying out some act, i.e., we are not talking about a "physical" movement. We are talking about an intellective movement qua intellective, qua intellectively knowing actuality of what is intellectively known in movement. The turning away is an intentional turning away; it is a positive act of turning away or aversive intellection. It is what the Greeks expressed with the preposition ¦pÕ, apo, which in Latin is ab. Therefore the intellection in this apo is apo-phasis, negation. In it not only is the actualization manifest, but moreover the aversion itself consists in the positive intellection of the "non" of "non-actualization". With that the mere manifestation of "non-actualization" has become aversive intellection, i.e., "actualization of the non". The non-actualization is now negative actualization. It is intentional actualization in apo. But this which is absolutely necessary is nonetheless not yet sufficient for there to be negation in the formal sense.

cc) And this is because intellective movement is constitutively an intentional movement, i.e., intellection of an "is". Now, given what has been said, we would at most have "not being" as such. But this is not a negation. Negation is the affirmation that this not-being "is". That is, negation and the negative in it do not consist in {376} "not-being" but in "being not". The negative actualization is the actualization of the not-being "qua affirmed". The negativity in question is at one and the same time "non-actualization" and the actualization of the "not" and the "being not" of this actualization; and here we have the difference between the negative and negation. The "is not" is not just otherness, nor is it unreality nor mere actualization of a "no"; rather, it is the "being-not" of a thing qua actualized with respect to a determinate simple apprehension. Affirmation falls back in a direct mode upon the actualization of the "no" in the intellectively known real, but for this very reason expresses in an indirect mode what is affirmed qua affirmed, i.e. is the "being not" of the affirmed. But then, the "no" is inscribed in "being" just like "yes". In what does this inscribing consist? That is the second question.

Question Two: The internal structure of the being of the affirmed. This "being" in which the "not" is inscribed is the being of the affirmed, not the being of the substantive. Therefore we are not talking about admitting, without further ado, the being of not-being, as Plato thought with his celebrated 'parricide' (patraloia) of Parmenides. For Plato, the Idea is full reality, ontos on, and therefore to admit the idea of not-being is for him to admit the being of not-being, the very reality of not-being. But the "not-being" is a "being-not" of the affirmed as such, and therefore the being of the not-being in question corresponds only to the being of the affirmed and not to being simpliciter. Now, "being-not" is one of the two possibilities generated together of the "might be", together with that of "being-yes" so to speak (kataphasis). Hence it follows that everything we have said about negation can be applied, mutatis mutandis, to intellection which is not a turning away or aversive, i.e., which is conversive, to the positive "yes it is". The positive is not what is affirmed as such, but what is affirmed conversively, just as the negative is what is affirmed aversively. To say that this paper {377} is white does not consist only in intellectively knowing it as having that quality, but in affirming that it is "positively" the white of my simple apprehension. The positive is what is intellectively known in the conversive moment of the affirmed. Hence, it is the being of the affirmed itself which has the two moments of the "no" and the "yes".

The being of the affirmed is the being of the "in reality". This "in reality" is just the gap which the unfolding of one thing among others opens therein when it is actualized. This gap is not a gap "of" reality, but a gap "in" reality. The gap consists in the "in reality" of individual reality. Therefore when we intellectively know something in a stepping back, we already intellectively know the gap, not as something which is not real, but as something in the real. And just on account of this, intellection in the gap intellectively knows, in an indirect mode, the gap itself as actuality in the real. And this is the being of the affirmed. The being of the affirmed is the being of the gap of the "in reality". Now, the gap as such, I repeat, is not an absence of reality but just the opposite; it is a moment of the actualized real. The gap is, then, the field of the "in reality" open to what the real "might be". The gap is therefore the openness of the being of the affirmed in its twin dimensions, positive and negative. Gap is opening, and therefore the actuality of the real in it is openness of the being of the affirmed. It is for this reason that the being of the affirmed inexorably has the two possibilities: being-not and being-yes. The gap is the ambit of intellective movement, and therefore is the ambit of the co-intellection of affirmed being. And the intellection of the real in this gap is therefore co-intellection of its being in its twin dimension, positive or negative. To be "in reality" is to be open to the "being yes" and to the "being not". {378} The intellective world is the world of the "yes and no" of what the real is in reality. It is, at bottom, the world of the problem of the real. And here we have the internal articulation of the positive and the negative in the being of the affirmed.

With the foregoing, we have covered the essentials of the being of the affirmed as contrasted with the being of the substantive.

But we are not dealing with a difference in contraposition because both are "being". Thus, as I said a few lines above, a question inexorably springs to mind concerning the intellection of the unity of the being of the substantive and the being of the affirmed.

c) The unity of being in intellection. In order to see this unity it will suffice for us to review systematically what has already been said in the last few pages.

Classical philosophy identified substantive being with reality itself; it would be the esse reale. That is what I call the entification of reality. On the other hand it identified what we here call 'being of the affirmed' with the being of predication, with the copulative "is". That is what I call logification of intellection. This, as we have already seen, is wrong. The being of the substantive is not substantive reality, but the being of real substantivity; being is "of" the real, but is not the real itself. Therefore real substantivity and the being of the substantive are not identical. On the other hand, the being of the affirmed is not formally identical with the copulative "is", because not every affirmation is predicative. But starting from these two identifications, i.e., starting from the entification of reality and the logification of intellection, which have run throughout the course of the history of philosophy, some great philosophical systems have conceived that the unity of the two forms of being is in turn a unity of identity. This is the identity of the entification of reality and the logification {379} of intellection. It is the third and most radical identification in these systems. To the identity of the being of the substantive with reality, and the identity of the being of the affirmed with copulative being, the philosophical systems in question add the identity of these two identities, which would be the identity between the being of the substantive and the being of the copulative. That formal, complete identity would constitute the unity of "being". Both substantive being as well as copulative being are identically beings. "Being" would then constitute the domain of the identity. And this has been a conceptualization fraught with enormous consequences, because when one conceptually identifies the being of the substantive and substantive reality on the one hand, and on the other identically conceptualizes the being of the affirmed and copulative being, the identity of both forms of being becomes decisive for the conceptualization of intellection itself and of reality. To be sure, this identity is not necessary; but we must note that it is very difficult to avoid in the milieu of the entification of reality and the logification of intellection.

Plato did not thematically conceive this identity. When he dealt with being, he considered the being of the real and copulative being indiscriminantly. For him it was sufficient that in both cases he was dealing with einai, esse, being. In Plato we are not talking about an express identification, but only with a serious lack of discrimination. And this lack of discrimination is what we may qualify with the expression utilized by Simplicius to expound Parmenides' philosophy. For Simplicius the on is understood by Parmenides monakhos, in only one way. This non-discriminating, and therefore this conceptualizing as the same, with respect to "being" when one speaks of real being and copulative being, leads to the best-known concepts of Plato's philosophy. His failure to discriminate between "is" and "reality" in turn led to a theory of intellection (intellection is {380} "vision" of the real, is Idea), and to a theory of the real itself (reality is what is "seen", the Idea itself). The lack of discrimination between real being and copulative being led him to two main thoughts which are, at one and the same time, a theory of intellection and a theory of the real centered upon two concepts: the reality of non-being, and the community (koinonia) of the different ideas among themselves and with intellection. This is the unitary structure of the real (the real "is" and "is not") and of affirmation (community among predicates and a real subject). This is the philosophy stemming from a lack of discrimination between the two types of being, real being and copulative being. But as I see it, this lack of discrimination takes place in the deepest stratum of the entification of reality and the logification of intellection. And that is impossible. Being is not reality, and affirmation is not predication. Neither the real nor the affirmed being are comprised by community of notes or of genera, as Plato said.

Plato's lack of discrimination becomes a positive identification of real being and copulative being in modern philosophy. In this identity, one can start from real being, and then the copulative being has the structure which the structure of real being imposes upon it. That was Leibniz' philosophy. The real is a "single" substance (monad), whose identity consists in the vis of unity of union and separation of the "details" which comprise that monadic unity of the real. Predicative judgement is the intellective form of this monadic structure of the real; it is because of this that the judgement is a constitution or copulation. The copulative "is" is the adequate intellection of what reality is in itself. Seen from the point of view of intellection, both conceptive as well as affirmative intellection is intellection of what reality is in itself. This is what is called "rationalism". {381} But it is impossible. Affirmation is not a constitution, as even Aristotle thought and which was repeated constantly by Leibniz. But even in the case of predicative affirmation, its constitution does not consist in a bonding activity, but in actuality of realization. It is not the structure of the real which determines the predicative structure of intellection. The first is a question of actuity, the second of actuality. Once again, the radical mistake of this identification follows from the entification of reality and the logification of intellection. Rationalism consists in affirming the identification of entification and of logification, the latter grounded in the former.

This identity can be brought about by another route: real being is primarily and radically a moment of affirmed being. "Being" is the element of thinking, and the movement of thinking is at once structuring movement of the real and something "put" by thinking itself. That was Hegel's philosophy. Being real is "a" determination of being as such, as thought being; this is idealism. Idealism consists, as I see it, in the identification of being real with the being of the affirmed, with the latter grounded in the former. In Leibniz, real being models intellection; in Hegel, the being of the affirmed (intellectively known or thought, the expression used is immaterial) dialectically constitutes the being of the real. Dialectically, because the movement of thinking consists in starting from the "position" of being, and this position is ultimately a "judgement". In Hegel thinking thus constitutes the logical genesis of being in all its forms. Dialectic, for Hegel, is an internal movement of intellectively knowing as such. And by virtue of being intellection of "being", this dialectic is a dialectic of being itself. This, as we shall see forthwith, is impossible, because dialectical movement does not rest upon itself. In the first place, it does not fall back upon being but upon the real; and secondly, {382} because the real itself is not primarily known intellectively in movement nor as position in movement.

Plato, Leibniz, and Hegel represent the identity of being real and copulative being. The entification of the real and the logification of intellection are the two foundations of classical philosophy; and it is not by chance that they have led to ontologist rationalism, even to idealism. But none of this is tenable. Being has forms which are quite different but which nonetheless have the unity of that by which all are forms of "being". It is necessary then to confront, in a positive way, the problem of this difference and its unity.

aa) The difference between the being of the substantive and the being of the affirmed. The being of the substantive, let us repeat, is not substantive reality. The substantive "is here-and-now being", an expression in which reality is designated in the 'is here-and-now', and being in the 'being'. Thus being is not something accidental, because the real is being de suyo. Therefore there is no "real being" but instead "reality in being", as I have been saying throughout the hundreds of pages of this work. On the other hand, every real thing is so among other things with respect to which this thing is what it is "in reality". And here we have the radical difference: being as being of "reality", and being as being of what it is "in reality". The first is the being of the substantive, the second is affirmed being. And both are "to be here-and-now being", either as pure and simple reality, or as being affirmed in accordance with what is one [se es] in reality.

This difference is then a difference in the "to be here-and-now being". Therefore it is in the unity of the "being here-and-now" where the unity of being is constitutively found. In what is this difference grounded, and in what then does the unity of being in this foundation consist? {383}

bb) Foundation of the difference. The difference between the being of the substantive and the being of the affirmed is, as we have just said, a difference which concerns the real but which does so in a different mode in each case. The being of the substantive concerns the real only by virtue of being real. And even were there no intellection, there would be and is in all the real a being of the substantive. But the being "as such" of the substantive does not consist only in the "being of the substantive", but in the "as such" of this being. And this "as such" is not given except in the intellection of the real. This intellection is the impression of reality. On the other hand, the being of the affirmed certainly concerns the real, but does so according to its "in reality" among other real things. Now, this "among" is here an intellective function of what the real is in reality. And in this aspect the "among" concerns the real which is intellectively known in a movement which intellectively knows a thing among others. Hence it follows that being, both the substantive being as well as the being of the affirmed, lead back (albeit in different ways) to intellection itself, to an intellection which constitutively involves that double possibility of apprehending the real in and by itself and of apprehending the real as something which is "in reality" among other real things. This double possibility only concerns sentient intellection. The impression of reality has, in fact, the two moments of individual formality and field formality, whose unity in the formality of reality constitutes what a thing is "in reality". Therefore, in the unity of the formality of reality in impression is where, in its foundation, the unity of the being of the substantive and of the being of the affirmed is constituted. An intellection which was not sentient, when it apprehended the real, would not have the duality of being as such of the substantive and of the being of the affirmed. And that means that {384} this difference and hence this unity are not given within the being of the substantive. This being has no differentiation whatsoever along those lines. It is a difference which is given only in the "to be here-and-now being", between the being of the substantive "as such", and the being of the affirmed "in reality". It is a difference which is thus given within sentient intellection and which pertains to the real in the order of actuality. The real is situated and actualized in sentient intellection as "real", and as what it is "in reality". Having identified these two actualities with each other, after having identified actuality with actuity, is also what has led to rationalism and to idealism. The internal root of the identification of these two actualizations is found in the fact that being is considered as something understood. But this, as we have seen, is not the case. Being is not formally understood but is something formally sensed in the impression of reality. And this being sensed, this being in impression, is what is divided into being of the substantive as such and being affirmed.

Granting this, In what does the unity of the being of the substantive and of affirmed being consist?

cc) Unity of being of the substantive as such and of the being of the affirmed. The unity in question is in the fact that both are "being". The whole problem is then referred to the unity of "reality" and of "in reality". Clearly this unity is the very formality of reality, "of" which and only "of" which being is the being; it is the being of the real. The unity of being is therefore unity of the "of". Now, this unity of the being "of" the intellectively known real has its own structure, which it is fitting to set forth.

The formal character of being has three moments. In the first place, being is actuality. It is not, therefore, a formal or constitutive moment of the real as real, {385} but the worldly actuality of the real. This actuality is reactualized in sentient intellection, because the world is apprehended sentiently as field.

This actuality opens the way to a second moment: being [noun] is ulterior actuality. Ulteriority is the second formal moment of being [noun]. By virtue of being a worldly actuality, being [noun] presupposes the worldly respectivity of the real. This respectivity is, on the one hand, the respectivity of the real qua real (world); and on the other, the respectivity toward other real things which, impressively understood, comprise the intellective world. They are not two worlds. This is only one world, the real world, but this world has its own dimensions according as one looks at the real world of what is "real" or at the real world of what is "in reality". The ulteriority of being consists in the actuality of the real in that respectivity which constitutes the world. And being [noun] is "to be here-and-now in the world", whether in the sense of real simpliciter, or of "in reality" what the real is. Now, this actuality, because it is ulterior, is not formally identical with the real, but the real is really in the world, i.e., "is being" de suyo.

In the order of intellection, the real is what is apprehended "directly"; and its ulteriority is apprehended, as we have seen, "indirectly". When we impressively apprehend reality, we co-apprehend its actuality in that respectivity. When we apprehend the real in im-pression, we then have indirectly apprehended its very ulteriority; i.e., we have this ulteriority in the express sense. This is the third moment of being, indirectness or expression. Being is the expression of the impression of reality. Only because the expressed is co-intellectively known in impression can we and ought we to say that the expressed is indirectly known intellectively; indirectness is expression. {386} Both the being of the substantive and the affirmed being have that formal unity of the ex which is grounded in the ulteriority of actuality. The "in" and the "ex" are the two dimensions of the formality of reality apprehended in sentient intellection. The first is the direct dimension; the second, the indirect dimension. That being is "of" reality means, then, that the "of" consists in express ulterior actuality. And here we have the formal characteristic of being.

But the unity of being is not just formal. That is, we are not dealing with the fact that there are two species of being, viz. being of the substantive "and" being of the affirmed, but rather with the fact that these two presumed species are more than species because the unity of the "and" does not have a formally additive character. The "and" is dynamic unity. The fact is that the two forms of being are not just coordinated, but moreover the affirmed being is grounded in the being of the substantive as such. The being of the substantive "as such" is the radical form of being. This does not mean, I repeat, that reality consists in being esse reale, but that the being of the substantive "as such" is the radical form of being in intellective actuality. Nor does it mean that affirmation falls back in a formal way upon the being of the substantive: affirmation falls back formally upon reality. Only because in that actual reality the being of the substantive is indirectly expressed, do we co-express the being of the affirmed when judging about the real. To say that the radical form of being is the being "as such" of the substantive means that inside the lines of intellectively known being, the radical type of being is the being of the substantive "as such". It is in this that the being of the affirmed is grounded. And as the intellection of the real among other things of the field is a movement by which we are going from one thing to another, the unity of both forms of being is a formally dynamic unity. {387}

But it is necessary to purge a false idea about this dynamic unity, namely the idea that this dynamism is dialectical. Dynamic unity is not dialectical. The dialectic, regardless of the structure assigned to it, is always and only a "step" from one intellective position to another, not dialectic of actuality as such. When Hegel speaks to us of the dialectic of reality it is because he understands that reality is a moment of being and that being is a position of thought. But the dynamic unity of the forms of being in intellection is not the unity of "passing from one thing to another". To be sure, in the affirmed itself there can be a "passage" from one affirmation to another. But the dynamism which leads from the being of the substantive as such to the being of the affirmed is not a "passing" in the intellection; rather it is the very constitution of the foundation of being affirmed in the prior structure of the being of the substantive as such. The "passing" is grounded in the being of the substantive; but this foundation is not, in turn, a passing. Reality is present in the primordial apprehension of reality, and is affirmed, in what it is in reality, in the affirmative intellection. Only there does the notion of passing fit.

This dynamic unity which is prior to any passing, and which constitutes the unity of being of the affirmed and of the being of the substantive as such, also has different moments.

Above all, the actuality of the real in worldly respectivity acquires its own character. Without abandoning the real, and therefore without abandoning either the being of the substantive as such, intellection goes from one real thing to another; the respectivity (of the real) as such, without ceasing to be what it is, is distended, so to speak, in respectivity to other real things among which the real is actualized in intellection; this is the primordial world as the field of reality. With it the actuality of the real in respectivity has {388} also become distended; the being of the substantive as such has been distended into the being of the affirmed. Distention is not a passing, but at most the structural condition so that there where the distention is manifested there may be a passing. Distention is the first moment of the dynamic unity of the being of the affirmed and the being of the substantive as such.

This distention is not bilateral, because the being of the substantive as such is the radical form of intellectively known being. Whence it follows that the being of the affirmed as distention of the being of the substantive is an unfolding of this latter, but an unfolding of actuality. The actuality of the real in worldly respectivity is unfolded in its actuality among other real things. Being affirmed is thus an ex of the being of the substantive. The being of the substantive as such is what is ex-pressed in the im-pression of reality; and in the distended im-pression in affirmative intellection there is ex-pressed affirmatively its being as being "in reality". Each of the two beings is an ex-pression of reality. But in turn the real of the primordial apprehension of reality is the determinant of affirmation; this determination is evidence, an ex. Evidence is formally a moment of the real actualized in intellective movement. But since this actualization bears in an expressed way being, it follows that evidence is indirectly-and only indirectly-a moment of being. Evidence is not evidence of being, but evidence of the real. And just on account of that, indeed only on account of it, evidence of the real is indirect co-evidence of being. Therefore the expression in which the being of the affirmed consists, and the expression in which the being of the substantive as such consists, have the unity of being a distention unfolding itself, whose radical dynamic character is the ex of being. Only by means of this prior ex has the ex proper to the being of the affirmed been able to be constituted. {389} Being is being as such of the substantive "and" being of the affirmed. I said that this "and" is not additive. Now we can explain precisely: the "and" itself is the character of an ex; the being of the substantive determines in ex the being of the affirmed. The dynamic unity of being is, then, unity of distension and of unfolding.

But this unfolding, this ex, in turn has its own character. Ex is the distended unity of the real which is here-and-now being. And so this gerundive takes on a modal characteristic: being [noun] is an ulterior actuality and hence gerundive actuality; it is a gerundive present. This "being" which is neither process nor a moment of a process, is rather a structure of the very being of the real, what I call temporality. Being [noun] does not happen temporally but rather is temporal. Temporality pertains to the substantive being of the real, and therefore also pertains, although in an indirect way, to substantive being in its impression of reality; this is the temporality of the being of the substantive. In what does it consist? Being, as I said, is ulterior actuality of the real in worldly respectivity. And this actuality is first of all a "being already"; but it is also a "yet to be". The "is" of the being of the substantive is thus radically the unity of an "is already" and of an "is yet to be" in the "is now". None of these three expressions is by itself actuality; only their intrinsic unity is actuality. Only that unitary actuality constitutes the actuality of the "is". Already, now, and yet-to-be are not three phases of the happening of being, but three faces of its own unitary actuality. Its unity is the structure of the "being" [verb]. Temporality is the dynamic unity of the formal ulteriority of being with respect to reality. Time is grounded therefore in being and not the other way around. This temporality pertains to the real by itself and by the mere fact of being, independently {390} of any intellection, because independently of intellection the real has being of the substantive. But the being of the substantive "as such" is only given in sentient intellection; and therefore only there, albeit indirectly, is temporality apprehended as such. Its distention in the ex is expressed in a form proper to the being of the affirmed, viz. its temporal connotation. This temporal connotation, in accordance with whether it is a now, a before, or an after, is in its affirmation the unfolding of the temporality of the real apprehended in the impression of reality. The "being" [verb] of the being [noun] of the substantive is what determines the temporal connotation of the being [verb] of affirmed being [noun]. The temporal connotation of the "is" is an unfolding of the temporal unity of the being of the substantive.

In summary, being has the formal characteristic of actuality, ulteriority, and indirectness in expression; this is the formal unity of being. And this unity is constitutively dynamic: distension, unfolding, and temporeity are the structure of the dynamic unity of being affirmed and of substantive being as such.

We have thus seen the difference between the intellection of reality in its being of the substantive and in its being of the affirmed. We then examined the unity of being in sentient intellection. With this we are now able to consider the articulation of reality and being in what constitutes the truth of intellection. This is the fourth of the questions we posed about truth, reality, and being.

d) Truth of intellection: reality and being in truth. Allow me to repeat carefully what has already been expounded. Intellective actuality of the real has, as we know, two aspects. On one hand, there is the formality of the reality of a real apprehended thing. On the other, there is the intellective actuality of this formality, but qua "intellective" actuality. {391} And this comprises the radical truth of a thing, its real truth. This truth is constituted in the impression of reality, and as such the real truth has the dimension of an in. But as the real in impression has, ulteriorly, being, the being of the substantive, it follows that intellection expressly bears being as such, and therefore the impression itself has a dimension of the "ex", grounded in the dimension of the "in". To real truth there pertains, then, in direct mode the "in" of the formality of the real, and in indirect mode the "ex" of the express, of its being; the being express comprises the being of the substantive as such. This being as such is express only in intellection. Therefore the being of the substantive pertains, to be sure, to a thing; but the being of the substantive "as such" pertains only to the real intellectively known qua actual in intellection. In virtue of this, the primordial apprehension of the real constitutes real truth, but at one and the same time constitutes the formal truth of what apprehension itself is; intellection constitutes not only the truth of the real, not only apprehends the real, but also constitutes that moment in accordance with which apprehension itself is co-apprehending that which in it "truthifies" the real. The unity of "truth" of the real (in its reality and in its being) with the "being truth" of intellection itself, is the formal structure of real truth as such. Intellection not only intellectively knows the real, but also co-intellectively knows that this intellection "is" true. And of these two moments, the second, "being" truth is the ex itself, and is grounded in the truth of impression. Here we have the radical structure of intellection, of the actualization of the real: intellection actualizes the real "truthfully", and actualizes so that this intellective actualization "is" truth. The second moment is grounded in the first. This grounding is not {392} a foundation or logical inference or anything like that; rather, it is the intrinsic and formal grounding character of the very impression of reality as actualization.

Truth, to be sure, is not only truth of the "real"; it is also truth of what a real thing is "in reality". But this "in reality" is the distention of the field moment of the real, already apprehended in primordial apprehension; and its intellection is an affirmative movement based on what a thing is "in reality", and bears along with it, as co-intellectively known, the being of the affirmed as such. The being of the affirmed is the real being affirmed in this intellective movement of mine, and therefore the actuality of the being of the affirmed is at one and the same time the affirming intellection in its merely actualizing character; it is intellectively knowing that the intellection "is true". It is an actualization of the "real" and of the fact that it is mere actualization, i.e., of the fact that the affirmation "is" true. The characteristic of the mere intellective actualization of the real which constitutes reality is then at one and the same time truthful intellection and intellection of the fact that the intellection

itself is true. This is the unity of reality, being, and being true.

I do not deem it necessary to insist once again that here 'truth' does not mean anything more than the ambit of truth, because if we take truth in the sense of the truth of a determinate thing, then that ambit gives rise to two different possibilities: the possibility of truth and the possibility of error. Here we are dealing simply with the ambit of truth as mere actualization. And this ambit is not a mere "element" of intellectively knowing but is also an intellective, "physical actuality" of the real.

{393}

 

CONCLUSION

 

Let us review the general line of argument in this study. I asked about the structure of intellectively knowing what the real is in reality, i.e., as unity of its individual and field moments. This intellection is the intellection of the real among other real things. This "among" distends the two moments, individual and field, impressively sensed in sentient intellection of reality. And then the intellection is converted into movement, into the unfolding of the impression of reality. It is a movement which starts from the real already apprehended in primordial apprehension, in the impression of reality; a movement which begins by stepping back from the real but within the field of reality. With that, the field of reality becomes a medium of intellection of the real; it is the "mediated" intellection of the impression of reality. That stepping back is a movement of retraction, in which the intellection elaborates the complex group of simple apprehensions (percepts, fictional items, concepts) whose formal characteristic is what the thing "might be" in reality. This "might be" is the directional foundation of the contribution of the simple apprehensions, in accordance with which intellection is moved toward the individual real and in stepping back knows intellectively what that real thing is in reality. This intellection is the affirmation, the judgement; {394} it is the logos. To judge is to intellectively know what the real, apprehended as real in an impression of reality, is "in reality"; and this sentient intellection consists in actualizing the real of which one judges in the order of simple apprehension; that is sentient logos. In other words, to judge is to judge of a realization; to affirm is sentient intellection of the realization of what "might be" in what "is". It assumes different forms (positional, propositional, predicative), and different modes (ignorance, guessing, doubt, opinion, probability, plausibility, firmness). These affirmations are determined by the real itself in the order of its actualization with respect to simple apprehensions; this determination is evidence. It is a radical moment of the impression of reality; it is the force of imposition, the demanding force, of the real as given in impression. This intellection has its own essential character: truth. Truth is the actualization of the real in sentient intellection. It can be simple; then it is the truth of the real purely and simply known intellectively in and by itself. That is real truth. But this actualization can also be actualization of a real thing among others of the sensed field. Then one intellectively knows, in affirmation, a real thing based on these other things; this is dual truth, the coinciding and demanding actuality of intellection and of the real. With respect to affirmation this coincidence is "seeming"; seeming is demanding actuality of the real in a determinate direction. With respect to the thing, the coincidence is the "real". Truth is coincidence of seeming and of the real, such that the seeming is grounded in the real. All of this is an intellective movement of formally sentient character, a movement of the impression of reality and in the impression of reality. Dual truth has the three forms of authenticity, speaking the truth or veridictance, and fulfillment. In all of them there is a moment of conformity with {395} the actualized real, and a moment of possible adequation, but one which is imperfect and fragmentary with respect to the real. Conformity is no more than a step toward adequation. Both moments have between them that unity which we call "approximation" to the real. Every conformity is approximation to an adequation in an impression of reality. Truth has the dynamic unity of approximated being. In this truth and in all of its forms there is above all the real itself in a direct mode; but there is in an indirect mode its being, the being of the substantive as such and the being of the affirmed. Being is formally worldly actuality, ulterior and express, of the real impressively apprehended. Being is something sensed in an impressive actuality, of dynamic character, which culminates in temporeity. Intellection is at one and the same time truth of the real and of its being, but truth of its being grounded in truth of the real. This actuality is not only actuality of the real and of its being, but is also at the same time an actuality of what is intellectively known qua intellectively known, and therefore an actuality of intellection itself; it is at one and the same time truth and being-truth. Intellection is not just intellection of the real, but also co-intellection that this intellectively knowing of the real is true. And in this radical unity consists the internal articulation of reality, of being, and of truth in intellection.

This is the structure of the intellection of what something is in reality. In order to understand it, the analysis of all the moments of intellection in the order of reality was necessary. It was necessary to see step by step how every intellection consists formally in an unfolding of the impression of the reality of the real. We are not talking about coming to a kind of realism, as it was called classically, but rather of showing that all the moments of intellective knowing are radically and formally immersed in the real, and determined by the real itself {396} as real impressively apprehended. The aspects of this determination therefore comprise the structure of intellective knowing of the logos. The real is not a point of arrival of the logos but rather the intrinsic and formal moment given in the primordial apprehension of sentient intellection. Therefore not only is it not a point of arrival which is more or less problematic, but rather it is the precise and radical point of departure, and the very structure of intellective movement. It is not just an intentional terminus. The logos is essentially and formally a mo-

dalization of sentient intelligence.

With this we have put the finishing touches on what I proposed at the beginning of this second part of my study, viz. the examination of the field structure of intellective knowing, i.e., the structure of the sentient logos. It is a structure determined by the real as merely actualized in sentient intellection. But as we shall see, this structure is the commencement of a progress within reality and directed toward the real qua moment of the world, understanding by 'world' the respective unity of the real purely and simply as real. The logos is a movement but not a progression. We are dealing with an enormous effort of intellection of what the real is, vaster at each iteration. This progression is what, as I see it, comprises reason. Reason is a progression from the field to the world. And as the field is the sensed world, reason is constitutively and formally sentient reason. What is this progression? That is the theme of Part III of this study.

 

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