Video transcription

In this final fragment of the third stage, devoted to exploring the term Metaphysics, we should like to outline one of the deepest conflicts within Philosophy. In deciding where to seek a truth capable of quenching our thirst for knowledge, whether in sensible objects or in intelligible ones, philosophical thought is radically split in two by the struggle between Idealism and Empiricism, at least as it is officially staged, on the academic level, from Aristotle's critique of Platonic Ideas onwards.

To explain what knowledge consists in from an idealist standpoint, Plato bequeathed to us two images: the diagram of the Divided Line and the Myth of the Cave. We have already discussed the Divided Line, where Plato maintains that truth resides indubitably in the upward movement. Thought and Language enable human beings to ascend towards objective truth, on condition that they cultivate inner detachment from the senses. By this, of course, he does not mean a monastic withdrawal from the world, but a sharp taking of distance from empiricist thought.

In the Myth of the Cave, the Intuition of Forms is likened to the direct vision of ideal “bodies”, as opposed to the perception of phenomenal shadows. In his most famous metaphor, Plato compares the human being to an individual chained inside a cave. He is turned towards the wall and looks at the shadows of objects that the light behind him projects before his eyes, taking them to be real. The philosopher, by contrast, is the one who has managed to break his chains and, having emerged from the cave, sees the true bodies that cast those shadows. In our diagram, “the cave” is everything lying below the line that separates the Sensible World from the Intelligible World.

Although Plato is very firm in excluding the senses as a vehicle of true knowledge, over the course of history Philosophy will seek rather to develop the Aristotelian legacy, giving rise to a position antithetical to Idealism: Empiricism, which refuses to grant any status of objectivity to whatever would claim to transcend the Sensible World. Some classical empiricists, such as Berkeley or Hume, deny any autonomous status to abstractions. From this standpoint, only what falls within the scope of our sensory experience can be accepted as “existent”, and thus investigated.

From an idealist perspective, by contrast, the concepts of 'Reality' and 'Existence' must be carefully distinguished. 'Reality' is, in fact, a more extensive concept than 'Existence', since it includes not only everything that has a position in Space and Time, and therefore falls within the spectrum of human sensory perception, but also various objects grasped by Thought, such as logical and mathematical objects.

The sphere of Thought encompasses two kinds of object. The first consists of conceptual abstractions from Phenomena, simple “representations”, what Kant calls 'Empirical Concepts'. The second kind is not made up of representations, for it is not generated by any process of abstraction. Kant calls these 'Pure Concepts' or 'a-priori' concepts.

Now, for platonic Realist Idealism, the true objects of metaphysical inquiry are not the Pure Concepts, but the archetypal Forms of which the Pure Concepts are reflections. If we were to eliminate the Intelligible World from the gnoseological framework, as Kant does, we should be compelled to admit that Pure Concepts are produced by the mind itself. We should then also have to admit, in consequence, that it is the mind that produces the laws of Physics, rather than reflecting them. Kant intends to study the “conditions of possibility of thought” but he does not investigate them as “transcendent constraints” as Plato does. He studies, that is, the “reflection”, but not the “outline” that produces the reflection. We shall tackle this knot in the chapter “Nous”.

Let us try, for a moment, to remove the fourth gnoseological dimension from our framework, in order to emulate the position of Empiricism. Empiricist logic collapses and superimposes the status of “reality” upon that of “existence”. Lacking this distinction, it cannot but perceive, in the term “Realist Idealism”, by which Plato's standpoint is defined, a “contradiction in terms”.

Enzo Melandri, for instance, writes, in a strongly critical tone: “The term ‘ideal reality’ is used opposed to ‘actual reality’ without noticing the contradiction between ‘real’ and ‘ideal’. Perhaps Philosophy, by its failed attempts to lay down precise rules for such discourse, has cast upon it the discredit belonging to illusory, delusive and self-refuting theories.” Melandri perceives a contradiction because, by implicitly assuming the superimposition of “reality” and “existence”, he is forced to conclude that whatever “does not exist” is “not real”. Yet, this is a presupposition, not a result, a prejudicial stance that undermines the rest of his reflection.

At this point, Socrates might pose one of his irritating questions, such as: “Is Logic real?” or “Does Logic exist?” We speak of “Logic” because it is an absolutely certain foundation, capable of deciding the truth or falsity of human judgments, to the point that, for a professional logician, this object of thought is as solid and concrete as, if not more than, an empirical object. In response, some empiricists would describe it as a mere “tool” for organising knowledge, glossing over the fact that a “tool” is indubitably an object of use, even if abstract. Moreover, if one were to confer upon this “tool”, this “convention”, this “linguistic abstraction”, or however one chooses to call it, a status of “unreality” or “non-existence”, it would not even be possible to define it as a “tool”, since, for empiricist logic, no property can be attributed to something that in fact “does not exist”.

Such fragile justifications are insufficient to resolve the contradiction inherent in the initial position. On the other hand, Idealism answers the question “whether Logic exists” as follows: “No, Logic does not exist, but it models what exists.” If this statement sounds absurd, it means one is still approaching it from an empiricist standpoint. This meaning has far-reaching implications, and overcoming the apparent contradiction without suppressing either of the two terms brings about a genuine logical transformation.

For Idealism, the scope of the concept of 'Reality' is directly proportional to the scope of the logical architecture of the knowing subject. In the past, some theologians attempted the curious inverse operation. They tried to extend the concept of 'Existence' to that of 'Reality', endeavouring, for example, to supply a philosophical proof of “the existence of God”. Success in demonstrating this was generally regarded as an achievement. Kant, for his part, has already shown the inconsistency of such claims, treating them as logical errors.

Here, of course, we are not questioning faith, but the logical language with which Philosophy has sought to grapple with the problem. Instead of attempting to prove “the existence of God”, a task that already betrays the weakness of the premise, Metaphysics seeks to demonstrate the “subsistence of the Idea of God”, which is not a product of Theology, Psychology, or Sociology, but an Idea-Form of Reality.

Metaphysics, understood as the “Science of Logic”, does not investigate the “existence” of any object whatsoever, but the “subsistence” of transcendent constraints, and it provides their formal expression through Ideal Geometry.

What we wish to emphasise here is that Idealism maintains an important distinction: Reality comprises objects that exist, that is, objects that occupy a position in Space and Time, and can therefore be experienced by the senses, and objects that subsist, which can be grasped by the mind. All of them are real. They all belong to this Reality. Evidence of this is the fact that even objects that “do not exist” are capable of generating powerful effects of a physical kind, as happens with the “Idea of God”, in whose name human beings produce, at every instant, an incalculable number of empirical events.

William James writes: “This subordination of our mind to abstractions is one of the cardinal facts of our human constitution. They polarise us, they magnetise us, and we turn towards them and away from them, seek them, hold them fast, hate them and love them, just as if they were so many concrete beings. And they are, in fact, ‘real beings’ inhabiting a realm of their own, and are as ‘real’ as the changing objects of sense.”

The 'Idea', that is, the conceptual correlate of a specific Form, is not the hypostatisation of a concept, but a logical and structural function of Reality, which directs and shapes human lives. When Art appropriates the Form, endowing it with anthropomorphic attributes, it becomes “a God”. For Metaphysics, 'Idea' and 'God' are analogical terms, as we shall see in the coming chapters.

The question, therefore, is this: can we investigate Reality while excluding an object such as the “Idea of God”, merely because it does not satisfy the canons of “reality”, or “existence”, laid down by empiricist logic? From a metaphysical standpoint, the answer is obviously “no”. This is why, in antiquity, the concept of Science was broader than it is today. Philosophy encompassed Science, just as the Whole (that is, Reality) encompasses the Part (that is, Being).

The human being is literally shaped by the Ideas-Forms far more than by physical contact with bodies. Indeed, from an idealist viewpoint, the more abstract and universal the object of thought, the greater the transformations it will produce in the physical world.

Thus, if we need Science in order to study the Sensible World, we need Metaphysical Philosophy in order to study the world of Ideas-Forms.

Yet the mutual implication between 'Reality' and 'Being' cannot remain a mere notion stored in memory. To understand Idealism means to stake oneself in a total and absolute way. The knowing subject must become the object of his own knowledge, for the archetypal Forms that structure Reality are reflected within him. If the direction of inquiry is not reversed, from external objects to internal ones, there may be Knowledge (Dianoia), even to the point of extreme erudition, but no Comprehension (Noesis), that is, no awareness of how such contents are related to one another in an architectonic manner.

To embrace Idealism means something more than knowing the notions contained in the theory. It means not only grasping it intellectually, but being willing to undergo, in one's own person, an inner transformation, a passage from the “Logic of the Part”, with which we are naturally endowed as individuals, to the “Logic of the Whole”. It means undertaking a path which, if pursued sincerely and in depth, cannot leave us identical to the self from which we set out.

Idealism maintains that the human mind is capable of “intuiting” archetypal metaphysical Forms. Since the perception of Phenomena grasped by the senses clouds and confuses their intuition, then the mind, in order to recover the Forms, must be trained to ignore material differences, that is, to ignore the stimuli necessary to guarantee our survival as physical individuals. This cognitive attitude calls for a certain self-discipline and a certain “detachment” from the world. This is why Synthetic thought, consciously intent on pursuing the way of the unity of all things, is a “spiritual” mode of thought, not in the sense of “religious”, but in the sense of “non-material”. It is an attitude inseparable from a particular conduct, directed towards mastering disturbing physical sensations, an attitude that gives rise to a distinctive vision of existence.

The underlying rationality of the metaphysical project, then, establishes a decisive discriminant in the basic stance of the knowing subject. A subject who is inwardly convinced that Reality is the product of free individual choices will never, by self-limitation, come to glimpse “the rules” by which the Sensible World is shaped. To return to the “chess metaphor”, for such a person, movement on the board will be nothing but the outcome of the choices of the individual pieces.

Idealism, on the contrary, arises from the conviction that “something invisible” impels us to move on the board in ways and directions that we do not fully understand. Modern culture, so steeped in individualism and in confident self-determination, rebels against this oppressive ideal “cage”.

To uphold Realist Idealism, therefore, means not so much to be “pre-modern”, as to be consciously “anti-modern”. This is because “to be modern” means to surrender to one's own time, to flow along with it.

Idealism, by contrast, takes not “contemporaneity” but “eternity” as its horizon. Its aim is not to render individual consciousness adaptable to the context in which it lives, but painfully stateless and untimely.

The philosopher, who arrives spontaneously at Metaphysics, is neither the dreamer in love with his own thoughts, nor the sentimental devotee. He is simply “the piece” that senses itself being moved on the board by something that transcends it, and that studies how to gain “freedom” through understanding invisible rules.

Our third stage, wanderer, comes to an end here. In the next chapter, we shall consider how Metaphysics has been misinterpreted, concealed, rediscovered and forgotten. “To the Principle!”