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CHAPTER II

WHAT IS PROGRESSION?

Since we are dealing with a structural moment of intellective knowing, it is necessary to return to the root of the question even at the risk of repeating some ideas already studied. Intellection sentiently apprehends things in their formality of reality. And this formality, impressively sensed, is intrinsically and constitutively open as reality. Each real thing consists not merely in "being here", circumscribed and limited to its own notes; rather, qua reality, it consists formally and precisely in a positive openness to something which is not, formally, the thing itself. This openness—let it be said in passing—does not consist in what, with regard to another order of problems, I am accustomed to call ‘open essence’ as opposed to ‘closed essence’. The difference there touches upon the structure of what is real, whereas in our problem the openness concerns the very character of reality. In this sense, the closed essences themselves are, as reality, open essences.

In virtue of this, the formality of reality has, besides its individual moment, a moment of openness toward something beyond the reality considered individually. That is to say, a thing, by being real, exceeds or goes beyond itself in a certain way. {18} This moment of going beyond or excendence is grounded in the openness of the formality of reality. Every thing, by virtue of being real, is what it is; and considered according to its own reality, is in some way being more than itself.

Now, just on account of this character of excedence, the reality of each real thing is formally respective qua reality. The respectivity of reality is grounded upon excedence. Everything real qua real is constitutively respective in its own, formal character of reality. Openness grounds excedence, and excedence grounds respectivity. Here I shall use the terms ‘excedence’ and ‘respectivity’ indiscriminately, and I shall also speak of respective excedence and of excedent respectivity.

Although what I am going to say of this respective excedence also concerns each real thing in its reality, nonetheless as it affects our present problem I shall refer primarily to other aspects of apprehension.

The first is the field aspect. Reality is open in itself and from itself towards other real things sensed or sensible in the same impression of reality. That is, openness determines, in respective excedence, a field of reality. The field is not a type of ocean in which things are submerged; nor is it primarily something which encompasses all real things. Rather, it is something which each real thing, through its own reality, opens up from itself. Only through this openness is the field something excedent and respective. Only because "there is" a field can this field "encompass" sensed things. But this field that there is, or rather that there is this field, is owing to the openness of each real thing from its own reality. Indeed, even were there no more than a single thing, this thing would yet open the field. It is fitting to repeat this idea, already studied {19} in Part II, to bring the problem of Part III into focus.

But the formality of reality is also open insofar as it is the formality of reality pure and simple. This aspect, in which each real thing opens up the arena of pure and simple reality, is what constitutes the world. The world is not the conjunction of all real things (that would be the cosmos), nor is it what the word means when we say that everyone lives in his own world; rather, it is the mere character of reality pure and simple. I repeat what we just said about the field: were there but one single thing, there would still be a world. What happens is that with there being perhaps many—one would have to investigate—the world is the unity of all real things in their character of pure and simple reality.

Real things intellectively known in primordial apprehension and in field intellection are not just such-and-such real things. Upon intellectively knowing them, I do not intellectively know only that they are such-and-such; rather, upon knowing that, I also intellectively know, at one and the same time, that they are mere realities, that they are pure and simple reality. Now, reality as reality is constitutively open, is transcendentally open. In virtue of this openness, reality is a formality in accordance with which nothing is real except as open to other realities and even to the reality of itself. That is, every reality is constitutively respective qua reality.

Thus all real things have, qua purely and simply real, a unity of respectivity. And this unity of respectivity of the real qua real is what constitutes the world. Reality is not a transcendental concept, nor is it a concept realized transcendentally in each real thing; rather, it is a real and physical moment, i.e., transcendentality is {20} just the openness of the real qua real. And qua unity of respectivity, reality is the world.

Let us not, then, confuse world and cosmos. There may be many cosmoi in the world, but there is only one single world. World is the transcendental function of the field and of the whole cosmos.

Field and world are not, then, identical; but neither are they independent. Upon knowing intellectively and sentiently this real thing, I intellectively know, sentiently, at one and the same time, that this thing is a moment of the pure and simply real. In the field we already know the world intellectively. Conversely, pure and simple reality, the world, is as I just said, the transcendental function of the field. And in this respect—and only in this one—can one say that the field is the world as sensed. Therefore strictly speaking one should say that in an impressive way the world is also sensed qua world. But its impression of reality is the same as that of this real thing sensed in and by itself or sensed within a field. Nonetheless the two are not identical because the field is always limited to the things that are in it. If the group of things in the field is augmented or diminished, the field expands or contracts. On the other hand the world is, always and essentially, open. Whence it is not susceptible to expansion or contraction, but to distinct realizations of respectivity, i.e., to distinct transcendental richness. This transcendental richness is what we shall call "world making" or "mundification". The field dilates or contracts, the world mundifies. The world is open not only because we do not know what things there are or can be in it; it is open above all because no thing, however precise and detailed its constitution, is reality "itself" as such.

Now, in this respect, intellectively knowing a real thing is {21} intellectively knowing it open to ... what we do not intellectively know, and perhaps shall never know, what might be in reality itself. Therefore intellection of a thing qua worldly is not just a mere movement among things, but a progression toward the unknown and perhaps even toward meaninglessness or nothingness.

Our present question is to conceptualize what this progression is.

a) Above all, I repeat, it is a progression "from" the real, i.e., from an effective intellection. This intellection is not necessarily just the primordial apprehension of something; but it is always an intellection in which we have already intellectively known—or at least have sought to intellectively know—what that real thing is in reality. The point of departure is the entire primordial apprehension of the real, and of what this real is in reality with all the affirmations which constitute this intellection. The progression is then always progression from the great intellective richness of the real.

b) The real opens reality from itself in the impression of reality; it is the openness of the moment of reality. With that, this moment of reality is made autonomous in a dimension other than that of individuality. And being made autonomous has two aspects. One is the aspect of this reality by which real things constitute a field; it is the constitutive moment in which the logos moves. In this movement of the logos, the moment of reality has a very precise function: it is the medium of intellection. But the moment of reality is autonomous in another respect. The impression of reality apprehends not only real things, but also that each real thing is pure and simple reality; it is openness not only to the field but to the world. A real thing is apprehended not according to what it is "in reality" but according to what it is "in reality itself". One goes from real things and their field to the world: {22} this is the progression we are speaking of. In this openness, reality has been made autonomous: not only is it the medium, but it is also something intellectively known by itself. Reality, then, has another function which is very precise: it is the measure of what, in the world, the reality is which is going to be intellectively known. In fact, as one’s point of departure is real things and what these things are in reality, one progresses from these intellections while gathering in them another intellection, more or less explicit, of what real being is. To be sure, it is a being-real which concerns the things included in the field and therefore encompassed by it. But this being-real goes beyond those real things qua "real". Hence it follows that in the previous intellection of these things, we have already intellectively known in some form what it is to be real. And then reality is no longer just the medium of intellection but is the measure of what is going to be intellectively known as purely and simply real in openness. As this openness of the real qua real is the world, it follows that ultimately the field itself has been provisionally converted into the measure of what is going to be intellectively known in the open world, into the measure of what is going to be intellectively known in the open world, viz. what a thing is in reality itself. To progress in this open world is to move ourselves into a "formal" intellection, rather than a "provisional" one, of what it is to be real. As the world is formally a world open from reality, real things intellectively known in the field seek to determine a progression of what things are in reality.

c) Thus progression is the movement which leads not from some real things to others, but from the field of all real things toward the world of pure and simple reality. The terminus of this "toward" in its new function has a complex character, as we shall see shortly. On one hand, it is {23} a "toward" other real things outside the field; and thus progression on one hand will be an effort to expand the field of reality. But on the other hand, when we intellectively know, in the field of reality, what real things are encompassed by it, we have intellectively known—perhaps without realizing it—what it is to be purely and simply real. Then progression is a progression in a world which is open not only to other real things as signs, but also to other possible forms and modes of reality qua reality. And this is very important as well as decisive.

In summary, progression is not just a movement. Nonetheless movement and progress have an intrinsic unity: this unity is formally in the "toward" of the impression of reality.

This difference between movement and progression has a very precise character. The intellective movement of the logos is a movement quite well defined: it is movement of retraction and affirmative reversion within the things of the field. But progression is another type of movement. It is not movement within the field of reality but movement toward the real beyond any field at all. Therefore progress is a search for reality. It is intellectus quaerens. And because of this, though every progression is a movement, not every movement is progression, because not every intellective movement is a search for reality. To be sure, no movement is haphazard and chaotic. The movement of retraction and affirmation is grounded upon the actualization of what something already real is in reality among other things of the field, and is necessarily determined by said actualization. In progression, movement is grounded and determined in measured fashion by the previous intellection of pure and simple reality. One "affirms" what is, in the reality of the world, something already actualized in an apprehension that is primordial and in the field. One seeks reality {24} within reality itself, beyond real sensed things, according to a measure of reality. It is a radical search in a world open in itself. Progression is being opened to the unfathomable richness and problematic nature of reality, not only in its own notes but also in its forms and modes of reality.

Here, then, we have what progress is: the search for reality. But this progression is intellective. And then we may ask ourselves not only what intellective progression is in itself, but what is the properly intellective part of this progression.

 

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