Jul 17 2008
Rosmini’s Skectch of His Own Philosophy: 1. Distinction Between Subject and Object.
1. Distinction Between Subject and Object.
It is clear, then, from what we have already said that the object known is a thing entirely different from the subject or knower. the subject that knows is a person, the object, as such, is impersonal. Sometimes however we may say that in a certain sense the object known is a subject that knows, when, for instance, the object of thought is man; sometimes also the subject that knows is itself the object known, as when we think of ourselves. But the subject that knows can never,, as such, e confounded or mixed up with the object known. Always and in every case the subject and the object retain their respective natures, each remaining perfectly distinct from the other, so distinct that if it were otherwise our knowledge itself would be extinguished. The distinction between subject and object is therefore an essential characteristic of cognition.
The question, therefore, is reduced to this: Whence does our understanding obtain its object?
Human cognitions are divided into two classes, intuitions and affirmations.
Intuitional knowledge or cognition is that which regards the things, as considered in themselves, the things in their possibility. Things considered in themselves as possible to subsist or not to subsist are the ideas.
Cognition obtained by means of affirmation or judgments is that knowledge which we acquire by affirming or judging that a thing subsists or does not subsist.
From this description the following consequences spring:
1. That the cognitions by intuition necessarily precede those of affirmation, for we can not affirm that a thing subsists or does not subsist unless we first know the thing itself as possible to subsist; for example, I can not say that a tree or a man subsists unless I first know what a tree or a man is. Now to know what a thing is comes to the same as to know the thing in its possibility, for I may know what a tree is, and yet not know that this tree as yet subsists.
That the objects as known all belong to intuitional knowledge, because affirmation is limited to affirming or denying the subsistence of the object as known by intuition. Affirmation, therefore, does not furnish any new object to the mind, but only pronounces the subsistence of the object already known. Intuition, therefore, places us in possession of possible objects, and these we call ideas. Affirmation does not furnish us with new possible objects, or new ideas, but produces persuasions in respect of the objects which we know already. There are, therefore, cognitions which terminate in ideas, and cognitions which terminate in persuasions. By the first we know the possible world, by the second the real and subsistent world. Hence there are two categories of things-things possible and the things subsistent, in other words ideas and things.
