Video transcription

When Kant says that we are able to know a priori the universal regularity of nature, he fails to see that his a priori Concepts must necessarily be placed within a dimension that lies beyond the mind and beyond the Sensible World, and that comprehends them both.

By studying phenomenal relations, Isaac Newton reaches the threshold of Objective Knowledge by remodelling his conceptual space upon the metaphysical Formal Relations that constitute the Logic of Reality. In order to understand the "super-logic of the Whole", Newton, through an introspective act, abandons the "sub-logic of the Part". He leaves behind the psycho-logical dimension from which he began, and draws instead upon the metaphysical one.

He speculates upon Forms that are neither conceptual nor sensible, that is, they originate neither in his mind nor in nature. Newton never asks what these Formal Relations, intuited by him, are "in themselves". His refusal is famous, condensed in the phrase: "hypotheses non fingo", just as Socrates does not ask the question when he explains the Divided Line to Glaucon. Neither of them is troubled by the Noumenon that so greatly unsettles Kant.

One approaches it, without ever touching it, through Geometry, because the Noumenon is not an entity, but a Form, a constraint, an ideal nexus.

In the Phaedo, Plato describes for us the process of Anamnesis:

"When the soul proceeds by itself in search of itself then it reaches what is pure, eternal, immortal and unchanging, for it is composed of these very elements and is born together with them. Whenever it gathers itself into itself, whenever it is able to do so, it ceases from its wandering, and remains still and stable, because such indeed are the elements to which it turns its attention, and this condition is what we call 'Wisdom'."

Human consciousness, as the phenomenon of genius demonstrates, has the potential to conform itself to the Logic of Reality and to its structure of archetypal Forms through an act of profound introspection that guides it towards transcendence. Yet let us be clear: there is no need to ascribe to this term any theological connotation. Transcendence is nothing other than the acquisition of Objective Thought in the strictly philosophical sense.

Episteme means subsistence, "that which stands on its own", and it denotes a state of transcendence with respect to the sub-logic of the Part. It is a condition of universal legislative validity, because whatever is subsistent depends on nothing else and gives its laws to whatever is subordinate to it.

In the Timaeus, Plato affirms the perfect and absolute knowability of metaphysical Forms and maintains that the Intelligible World, precisely because it is stable, is the object of true philosophical knowledge. The Sensible World too can be known, and it will indeed become the object of scientific knowledge, yet all knowledge grounded in Phenomena remains at the level of "second-order" notions:

"This is my view: Objective knowledge and Subjective knowledge are two different modes, because there are entities that cannot be perceived through the senses, but only through the mind. They are different modes, because they have separate and distinct origins. Objective knowledge is the fruit of Comprehension, whereas Subjective knowledge is a product of rhetoric. The one is rational, the other irrational. Every human being partakes in Subjective knowledge. Objective knowledge belongs to the Gods and to a small number of human beings."

That small part of humanity which attains Objective Knowledge is represented by true philosophers, that is, by those who understand the foundations of the theory of Ideas-Forms. For Plato, then, there exists a genuine path of "restructuring" that an individual mind must undergo if it is to rise from the subjectivity of Doxa, the object of Impressions and Beliefs, to the objectivity of Episteme, reached through the mirroring of the Logic of Reality, the object of Knowledge and Comprehension.

The Divided Line is perfectly clear on this point. It tells us that, if we are to bring our mental structure into conformity with the structure of Reality, we must discipline ourselves and seek what remains stable and invariant within the flux of Becoming. These abiding elements are the Ideas-Forms and the logical-metaphysical architecture that structures the intelligible dimension.

The greatest geniuses in history, by correctly identifying archetypal Formal Relations, have been able, through mathematical language, to formulate those universal laws that describe the behaviour of Phenomena. It is true: observation of the world and of its sensible properties is the basis of knowledge, and this constitutes the object of Knowledge (Dianoia). Yet, to activate Comprehension (Noesis), we must move away from the mere perceptual datum and recognise the Formal Relations in which such Phenomena participate. We must leap into a different dimension, traversing the final stretch of the Divided Line, exactly as Newton's speculative mind did beneath his apple tree.

This is nothing other than the presupposition of Theoretical Physics. The steps then are these: if physical Phenomena are subject to Objective laws, and if Subjective thought is capable of reconstructing those Objective laws, then thought, though presently Subjective, is potentially Objective. To grasp Objectivity, one must "reconfigure" the logical framework of the mind upon the universal structure of archetypal Formal Relations.

The Pythagorean and Platonic inquiry into this structure of archetypal Forms begins from Dialectic, that is, from the logical analysis of Relations of Opposition. It is precisely from this standpoint, namely at the level of the representation of Formal Relations, that the positions of Plato and Kant inevitably converge, though in a way that ultimately vindicates the former. The Psyche constructed by the Platonic Demiurge, on the metaphysical plane, and the architecture of Kant's Pure Reason, on the psycho-logical plane, are not, in their essence, two different entities.

If they appear so, it is because each observes the same object from a different perspective. The surfaces of their two mirrors, the clearest ever produced by humankind, reflect the image of one and the same body, with the differences due to the distortions, the imperfections of a consciousness still evolving and struggling to detach itself from empiricism.

Never, perhaps, as in this passage from Kant, does the description of Pure Reason seem so close to the Platonic Psyche:

"Pure Reason is a sphere so complete and so thoroughly interconnected within itself that one cannot touch a single part without touching all the others, and nothing can be known without first assigning to each its place and its influence upon the rest. For since there is nothing outside it that could correct our judgment, the validity and the use of each part depend upon the relation it bears to the other parts within Reason itself. And as in the constitution of a living body, the end of each organ can be derived only from the design of the whole."

Anyone who re-reads this passage objectively will sense that Kant is not describing some banal "schema of possible experience", but a highly tangible dimension, the seat of truth, whose logical constraints are so solid that thought cannot pass beyond them, just as a human body cannot pass through a brick wall.

For us, this is one of the finest descriptions of the reflection of the Intelligible World upon the mirror, and of the project of Philosophy itself. Plato and Kant both aspire to formulate a "Theory of Everything", to reconstruct a system of objective Forms, and they share common adversaries: persuaders, mystifiers, and relativists.

The problem is that they adopt different strategies in order to fight them. Kant seeks the key to objectivity upon the surface of the mirror, where it does not in fact reside, and tries to delegitimize anyone who claims to have turned and looked directly at the body that produced the reflection. Plato too never turned around, but he understood that the body producing the reflection subsists and that it is our duty to conjecture it.

In the next video, the last of the stage Nous, we shall draw the conclusions of the comparison between Plato and Kant, and clarify further the function of the Archilogon. "To the Principle!"