COLLECTION: A DAWN EMERGES

1.

THE TRILOGY: RELIGION - THE NEWEST TESTAMENT

2.

THE TRILOGY: PHILOSOPHY - THE METATHEORY OF PHILOSOPHICAL KNOWLEDGE

3.

THE TRILOGY: SCIENCE - ON ANALYTICAL-PHENOMENOLOGICAL-EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOTHERAPY

VOLUME 1 - THE FUNDAMENTS

4.

THE TRILOGY: SCIENCE - ON ANALYTICAL-PHENOMENOLOGICAL-EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOTHERAPY

VOLUME 2 - THE THEORY

5.

THE TRILOGY: SCIENCE - ON ANALYTICAL-PHENOMENOLOGICAL-EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOTHERAPY

VOLUME 3 - THE TECHNIQUE

6.

THE TRILOGY: SCIENCE - ON ANALYTICAL-PHENOMENOLOGICAL-EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOTHERAPY

VOLUME 4 - SYMBOLIZATION

7.

THE TRILOGY: SCIENCE - ON ANALYTICAL-PHENOMENOLOGICAL-EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOTHERAPY

TECHNICAL KIT

MARIA AUXILIADORA DE SOUZA BRASIL

THE TRILOGY: PHILOSOPHY

THE METATHEORY OF PHILOSOPHICAL KNOWLEDGE

Editorial Coordinator

Sílvia Raquel Amorim Braga

Revision

Paulo José Ribeiro Teixeira

Márcia Teixeira de Freitas

Translation

Jefferson Wolfe Conboy

Soledade Fonseca da Mota

Collection: A Dawn Emerges, 2

Belo Horizonte | 2017

Collection: A Dawn Emerges, 2

Brasil, Maria Auxiliadora de Souza

The trilogy: philosophy: The metatheory of philosophical knowledge / Maria Auxiliadora de Souza Brasil. Belo Horizonte: Fundação Souza Brasil , 2017. (Collection: A Dawn Emerges, 2).

ISBN 978-85-60974-22-1 (printed version)

1. Psicoterapia. 2. Psicologia. 3. Psiquiatria. 4. Filosofia I. Título.

Cover:

Simone Rodrigues Alves

Electronic editing:

Frederico F. Albuquerque Leal

Published in 2017 by Fundação Souza Brasil

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PREFACE

My studies on the human being have led me to a trilogy that can be expressed as follows: the human being, living, needs to take a stand regarding the mystery of the world, to make himself religious; he also needs to reflect on everything that exists, its principles and causes, to make himself a philosopher; he needs, likewise, to investigate himself, his structure and his dynamics, to make himself a scientist. Therefore, I realized I needed to study more in depth the religions, the philosophies and the sciences. From the religions I have intuited that the human being needs to believe in the Creator, have faith in his capacity to understand his destiny in the world and have charity towards those who do not have the consolation of this belief and faith. From the philosophies I have deduced that the human being seeks, through reason, through intuition and through participation, to explain his existence, nature and attributes, as well as his relation with the world. From the sciences, I have induced that the human being seeks to apprehend the phenomena through the accumulated experience of different and numerous perceptions.

My studies on the religions can be summarized, firstly, as follows: religion, reconnection, is the subordination and bonding to the divinity, which includes the fulfillment of the earthly duties connected to religious rituals, to justice and to ethics. Pelagianism was a brief movement of religious liberation from naive religious beliefs; on the other hand, the perennial character of religious preaching led the cult of the virtues to exaggeration; there was an attempt to conciliate morality and faith, with the aim of avoiding the excesses of both. The reconnection with the mystery of the world presented, from the beginning, a characteristic of dependence, which led to terror-fear and to fascination; there were also the intuition of certain values considered to be supreme and the rational recognition of a fundamental relation between the person and the divinity.

Secondly, I have come to realize that there are two basic ways in the study of religions: that of immanent religion, which considers that the reality we are speaking of is, in some manner, in man himself, who “experiences” the divinity, does not bond to it; and that of transcendent religion, more precisely, absolutely transcendent, which considers divine reality as infinitely beyond man, which makes bonding impossible. Thirdly, I have realized the types of religions: natural, that is, based on truths, principles and norms deduced from living; revealed, that is, based on the revelation of God to a man or to a people, leading to institutionalization; and mystical, that is, based on the unspeakable experience of the presence of God.

In the examination of the relation between religion and philosophy I could observe that: there is a connection between them, if we consider that the content of religion is the main theme of philosophical reflection and philosophy is fundamentally religious, and what is important is that one does not cancel out the other. There is a tension between them, generating a permanent battle, which the western world has been always winning, in its secular contention against the spontaneous metaphysical spirit, which is that of the religion of revelation, and in favor of exact science and technique. One must consider that philosophy studies, by means of description and critical examination, the language and propositional content of religion, that is, the relation (or lack of relation) between religious beliefs and moral principles and the structure and forms of the religious enunciations and experience, and the relation between religious values and other values.

The study of religions has led me to the conclusion that the most expressive religion is Judaism and that is why I have carried out a hermeneutical exegesis of its holy texts, the Old and New Testaments, examining their contributions and fallacies, fallacies that cause an obstruction in the development of its followers. An examination of such an obstruction made it clear that its cause lies in the absence of freedom and a critical spirit, which obscures any expectation of development, since it hinders the choice of right thinking, which is the definitive attitude to make effective right conduct. The need to create the Newest Testament became evident so that it would correct the fallacies of the Old and New Testaments and would point to a future that guarantees the development of all human beings on the road towards the greater goal, God.

My studies on the philosophies can be summarized, firstly, as follows: philosophy, love of wisdom, theoretical knowledge, or of knowledge in general, practical and theoretical knowledge, encompasses the wisdom of the sage, who knows the reason that guides all, and the knowledge of the erudite, who is curious and seeks to “possess” wisdom; true philosophy is the search for wisdom “for its own sake”, that is, with the exclusive purpose of knowing. We can also consider philosophy, eloquence or practical morality, the contemplation of the cosmos, the method of scientific investigation, the state of life, the inner experience transmitted by a master, life in community, the moral effort guided by God, the practicing of the law.

Secondly, I have come to understand the origin and historical movement of philosophy: it started intertwined with mythology and with cosmogony; we can see Egyptian influences in Greek philosophy; there were also philosophers in China and in India, but philosophy only reached its maturity in Greece. Thirdly, I have come to understand the duplicity of meaning given to philosophy on various occasions: often a universal interest in reality was shown, and scant attention was given to the diversity of facts; some praised the superiority of reason and others the superiority of intuition, sometimes more mystical than discursive; some stated the importance of theory and others the fundamental character of virtue and conduct; often speculative activity dominated and at other times critical activity; some did not accept the “suppositions” and others immersed themselves in them; some only identified themselves with pure knowledge and others lived in the eagerness of salvation.

The study of the philosophies has led me to conclude that, just as with religions, they present, together with their contributions, fallacies that aggravate the obstruction in the development of human beings, fallacies that are due to reasonings, intuitions and phenomenological visions that come from sick minds, which give rise to fear of freedom and of a critical spirit. The need to create a metatheory of philosophical knowledge to correct the fallacies present in the philosophies became evident, one that points towards a future that guarantees the evolution of all human beings in the search of their own maturity, the only way to guarantee the guidelines of “good-living”, of the greatest possible happiness for all.

My studies on the sciences can be summarized, firstly, as follows: Science, a way of knowing that aspires to formulate, by means of rigorous and appropriate language, if possible with the help of the language of mathematics, the laws which rule phenomena and register laws of varied orders. The laws that guide phenomena have, all of them, common elements, which are, to be able to describe a series of phenomena, to be proven through the observation of facts and experimentation and to be able to predict, whether a complete prediction, or a statistical prediction, future events; the proof and the prediction depend upon the methods used. The theory of scientific theories, for its confirmation, does not need such an abundance of facts.

Secondly, I have come to understand the types of sciences, the sciences of nature and the sciences of the spirit, or of culture, and their possible reduction, ones into the others, having as a basis mathematics, which leads to physics, which leads to biology, which leads to psychology, which leads to sociology. Thirdly, I have come to understand, from the relation between science and philosophy, that there are aspects of science which do not have any relation with philosophy, the fact that science informs us on reality in an increasingly objective way, while philosophy does not progress because it is a ceaseless weaving and unweaving of systems, furthermore because science is a way of knowing, while philosophy is a way of living, that is, science refers only to that which is related to the phenomenal, and philosophy engages itself with that which is noumenal; there is an intrinsic relation between philosophy with science, if philosophy is considered as a primitive state, that is, one of the stages of science; some relation can be observed between philosophy and science, since the latter is an object of the first, since philosophy offers the problems for science to solve and since philosophy is, essentially, the theory of the knowledge of science.

The study of the sciences has led me to conclude that, like the religions and the philosophies, they present, together with their contradictions, fallacies that also aggravate the obstruction in the development of human beings, fallacies that result from beliefs, mysticism and imperfect methodologies, all leading to biased statements and to the creation of unproven laws and assertions. The need to complete the science of the soma with that of the psique and of the socius became evident; the first, that of the soma, with the concept of integration of all domains of the organism, having the brain as the supervising element, also affected by the inferior domains; the second, that of the psique, with the concept of harmonization, whose general law is completed with that of its corollaries, of the living field, of perception, of emotion, of intelligence, of consciousness, of morality, of sexuality and of religiosity, which together form the personality, as a result of learning; the third, that of the socius, with the concept of group harmonization, leading to synthality.

In this manner, I have arrived, through my studies, at the need to correct the fallacies that have been causing the obstruction in the development of the human being and of humanity as a whole. The study of religions led me to formulate my contribution to the Newest Testament, indeed the “Good News” that will guide, in the future, a healthy and promising religiosity, with the aim of achieving the well-being of all of us. The study of the philosophies has led me to formulate the metatheory of philosophical knowledge, which integrates all the knowledge acquired by mankind, with the objective of consolidating our well-being. The study of the sciences on the human being has led me to formulate the theory and technique that gave origin to the Analytical-phenomenological- existential Psychotherapy, a procedure that, taking into account the data of the religions, the philosophies and the sciences, leads to self-knowledge, which permits the evolution with the aim of harmonizing eternity with temporality, total well-being. This is my mission!

Maria Auxiliadora de Souza Brasil

PRESENTATION

The Souza Brasil Foundation feels honored to publish the work of Professor Maria Auxiliadora de Souza Brasil. Brazilian, a Ph.D., full professor of the Department of Psychology (in the area of Psychology of Personality) at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, her work is the outcome of scientific studies and research carried out for over half a century of professional practice. It offers to the humanities professionals, especially those who are engaged in promoting the psychic health of human beings and human groups, to educators, parents and teachers, and to all who seek to know themselves, the Analytical-phenomenological-existential Psychotherapeutic Technique and the Theory with the same name that resulted from it.

Retainer of its copyrights, the Souza Brasil Foundation was created by a group of professionals trained by the author in the Analytical-phenomenological-existential Psychotherapy, with the aim of increasing the knowledge about mental health and, consequently, promoting the personal and professional self-fulfillment of each human being. Previously limited to the practice of the psychotherapy, the founders envisioned the possibility of taking their knowledge to the world. Published in a bilingual edition, Portuguese and English, and with distribution to all member countries of the United Nations, the present collection promises the emergence of a new dawn, whose light will illuminate all of those engaged in creating the conditions for each person to find the path to his own self-fulfillment.

The fundaments of the Analytical-phenomenological-existential Technique and Theory are theological, philosophical and scientific and constitute the trilogy presented in this collection. More than presenting the knowledge about the knowledge of the religions, the philosophies and the sciences about the human being and the human group, the author invites the reader to become a theologian, a philosopher and a scientist. It could not be otherwise, since true knowledge is interior, esoteric, universal in its essence and diverse in its appearance. On the religions, the Theory points to the fact that each one believes in what he needs to believe according to his developmental stage. In the same way, the philosophy of each individual is the expression of his phase of psychic development. And science has among its limitations those that result from the mentality of the scientist. It urges that each person, in the realm of his familial, professional, political and social responsibilities, broaden the scope of his work by elevating his own living field.

The publication of the present work fulfills, thus, the purpose of taking to all that which is universal in its essence. It holds the promise of creating a network of knowledge that will allow the education and information of individuals to allow them to live in a free and conscious way. It makes it possible for ignorance about the development of the human being, a source of errors and failures in public policies and of unnecessary suffering in the lives of many individuals, give place to true knowledge, a sine qua non condition for happiness, a goal of all of us, human beings.

Fundação Souza Brasil

1 PROLEGOMENA

In the prolegomena, the introduction, we would like at first to convey a purpose that has accompanied us for practically our whole lives as a thinking being, which is to elaborate the meta-theory of philosophical knowledge. We have always been baffled by the deductive fallacies of philosophers regarding the universe, nature, reality, thought, idea, knowledge and philosophical knowledge in particular. It has always seemed absurd to us, absolutely utopic, the unfolding of ideas of many philosophers regarding such subjects, they get lost in preciosities of language that seem more like delusions than effective reasoning of healthy minds directed towards the search for truth.

We believe in the existence of the Creator and in the fact that everything that is, is because of His will. And as such, we believe that it is His will, He who created us, that such reasoning has occurred in the thinking of philosophers, and that is why, considering the possibility that many of our readers have never had the opportunity to read such texts, we offer them, to begin with, a synopsis of them. The history of philosophy has recorded the tendencies of philosophers in the attempt to approach the different themes of their interest, basically the universe and the human being who lives in this universe, approaches of a rational, intuitive and phenomenological character, all of them in chronological sequence that encompass ancient, medieval, modern and contemporary thought.

Our intention is, initially, to do an exegesis, an interpretation, of the history of philosophy, of a hermeneutic nature, based on laws, at the deductive-rational level. Such an exegesis seeks to distinguish between what we consider truthful, topian, and what we consider untrue, utopian, in the text under investigation. Once we have asserted that everything that is, is because of the will of the Creator, we can only be sure of having fulfilled our clarifying role that He has determined us to fulfill, at this moment of our existing, regarding the validity of the contribution of the different philosophies that deal with the universe and the human beings that inhabit this universe. Our exegesis of the history of philosophy indicates, thus, the basis in which the meta-theory of philosophical knowledge must support itself.

Afterwards, we intend to order this exegesis by subject, in the sense of clarifying the contributions selected by us from the essence of each philosophical tendency, whether rational, or intuitive, or phenomenological, so as to show the appropriate path to elaborate the meta-theory of philosophical knowledge, a purpose we have been nourishing in our aspirations. Such an ordering obeys a logical sequence of subjects, which are the universe, nature, reality, thought, idea, knowledge, freedom, culture and ethics. These subjects, in this order, offer us the substance that will permit the construction of the metatheory we aspire.

Our expectation is that our contribution will have the desired effect, which is that philosophers will undertake an objective rereading of the philosophical texts in order to purge them of assertions that are completely utopian concerning the subjects under investigation, and in doing so confer greater credibility to their truthful assertions, avoiding the imitation of logic that the peoples have lived to this day. The meta-theory of philosophical knowledge we have elaborated intends to integrate philosophical knowledge, which is the result of the contribution from religions, sciences and philosophies, with the objective of establishing the directives human beings must follow in the search for the goal of their existing, which is the greatest possible happiness for all.

In our understanding, the elaboration of the meta-theory of philosophical knowledge is an urgent need of humanity, since the deductive fallacies regarding the human being and human group have led us to formulate misleading philosophical systems, which have served only to feed spurious political systems, geared towards power struggles and, consequently, towards wars. The future of humanity depends on the education of its peoples, in order to transform individuals into persons, beings in harmony with themselves and with their fellow creatures, moving towards their final destination, communion with the Creator. Such acquisition can only result from the transmission of culture based on truth, on the verification of reality

2 HISTORY

Since our purpose is the elaboration of the Metatheory of Philosophical Knowledge, we think it is appropriate to offer our readers a synopsis of the History of Philosophy, under the assumption they are not familiar with it.

The nature of philosophical knowledge has given rise to different philosophies, as many as there are cultural manifestations of humanity. There is evidence of an opposition between rational philosophy, knowledge about the human being and human group based on reason, intuitive philosophy, knowledge about the human being and human group based on intuition, and phenomenological philosophy, knowledge about the human being and human group based on participation.

2.1 Rational philosophy

In ancient thought

In the period called Cosmological, rational philosophy found firm expression in the Greek miracle, which foreshadowed the Germanic miracle at the end of the Middle Ages. The free pursuit of knowledge strengthened the spirits, guaranteed the climate for reflection. From free thinking resulted the different conceptions of the world and of life. Regarding the first question of the primordial sole substance, “arche”, the Ionians tried out some answers of a cosmological nature: for Thales, the oneness principle is the state of fluidity and humidity; for Anaximander, it is either a mixture of all substances or the infinite, a qualitative undetermined substance; for Anaximenes, it is the gaseous state. It must be considered, later on, in Pythagoras, the assertion that all of reality is structured by a regularity that can be expressed in numbers.

Also in the same period, from the pantheist conception of the world of Xenophanes, Parmenides of Elea arrived at his conceptualization of substance: what it is, is eternal humidity, without beginning nor end, it cannot proceed from the non being, which is ineffable and unthinkable; if what is, is, everything that is to come is illusion. Because it gives relevance to thought, as an instrument to know the truth, Parmenides is considered the founder of the theory of knowledge and of metaphysics, and his disciple Zeno developed a kind of scientific conversation later on called dialectics. Heraclitus, also influenced by Xenophanes, proved to be, however, an intransigent adversary of Parmenides, taking from him the assertion that “what is, is”, from Zeno the assertion that “movement is”, and from the Ionians that of the existence of a live matter, asserting that the fundamental substance is fire, which transforms itself into water, which in turn transforms itself, partly into igneous steam, partly into earth, then returning to the form of water and fire, all according to certain measures; therefore, all, is constantly changing.

Ending the period, we still have: Anaxagoras, who considered the existence of infinite types of matter qualitatively distinct. Empedocles, for whom the fundamental substances are fire, water, air and earth; all bodies are made up from the aggregation of a limited number of elementary types of matter; according to how matter is in man, thus will be his knowledge. Democritus, who asserted that there was only one kind of matter or fundamental substance, made up of several moving corpuscles, indivisible, innate and imperishable, which he called atoms.

In the period called Anthropological, the attempts to explain nature were followed by the attempts to explain mankind. No longer bound to tradition, in the habit of questioning beliefs, human thought started to question the costumes, to criticize the norms, to make critical and rational reflection its norm. The Sophists, masters of wisdom, added, to the exercises they submitted themselves and their disciples, the problems of ethics: for Prodicus, things are ethically indifferent; for Protagoras, there are rational rules for human acts.

Human thought, warned by the exercises of the Sophists, started to found its behaviour on evidence and reflection, and not on customs. At this time a special kind of dialectics emerged, which consisted in leading the speaker to reach by himself, through questions, the knowledge of truth. Departing from concrete particular cases, Socrates compared them to other similar cases to discover the ethical principles; this procedure earned him the title of inventor of induction.

In the period called Systematic, Plato established ethics, based on the Socratic principle of the good, and defined the State as a community of will organically produced, consisting of the teaching, defensive and food producing classes, as the three parts of the soul. With Aristotle, knowledge became systematized, with logic constituting a particular science, an instrument to achieve the right knowledge of truth. Aristotle established the categories, more general predicates that can be attributed to things: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, action, passion, position, state. He valued experience, repetitive observation, considering judgments to be true if they correspond to real relations, and false if not. The essence of the organic is in the fact that the parts presuppose the whole, accommodating themselves to it, being the instrument, organ, for existence and its development.

In the period called Eclectic, Hellenistic and Greco-Judeo, the Stoics came about, with Zeno of Citium, for whom logic encompasses rhetoric (grammar, poetry and musical theory) and dialectics (theory of knowledge and formal logic). His theory is sensualist, where the natural concepts come from experience, and are joined to the concepts proceeding from reflection which is deliberating, scientific and philosophical, which also avail themselves of images. The categories are substance, property (quantity and quality), structure (place, time, action, passion, position, state) and relation. The philosophers became counsellors of the people, engaged in ridding them of primitive religious beliefs. They were sought after to instruct in the meaning of life, and started to defend certain conceptions of the world and to interpret them in their practical aspect. Consequently, interest in ethics became widespread.

Also during this period, Carneades insisted on the characteristic difficulty of knowledge obtained through syllogism, since if the conclusion is valid as long as its premises are valid, there should be some basic propositions immediately evident to guarantee the initial link of the chain, but such propositions do not exist; what exists is the probability, which possesses degrees, which are, representations probable in themselves, representations that, furthermore, are not in contradiction with others, and representations confirmed in all senses. Sextus Empiricus discovered that, in syllogism, the greatest premise is valid only in the condition that the conclusion is also valid; he asserted that knowledge is relative, but that empirical investigation and relative truth are possible. At the time of the fusion of the Greek and Roman cultures, it became indispensable, in order to explain the meaning of life, a first deliberate attempt to synthesize the contributions of the philosophers. For Plotinus, the creator of neo-Platonism, rational knowledge, dialectics, perceives its own ideas (consciousness of itself ).

In medieval thought

In the period called Patristic, of dogma, a need was felt to scientifically demonstrate the truth of Christianity, to refute the attacks of which it was the victim, and the Christians availed themselves of Platonic, Stoic and neo-Platonic philosophies. Justin asserted that the wisdom of God, Logos, was manifest in man in order to redeem the world; even before Christianity, Logos already manifested itself, but in a fragmented way, in Moses, in the prophets, in the pagan prophets and philosophers; reason is a result of Logos, and true rationality is in Christianity. Saint Augustine, in his theory of knowledge, asserted: reason is the true source of knowledge, availing itself of the senses, and the cause of error is premature judgment; man is certain, at least, that he exists, that he doubts and of the other facts of consciousness. The writings attributed to Saint Dionysius, on Christian mystical experience, also admitted that knowledge was only a pale attempt to explain revelation.

In the period called Scholastic, of the system, the main characteristic was a preoccupation in philosophically founding Christian doctrine, a system of dogmas, with specific interests in each phase. The first, of Platonic-Augustinian influence, asserted that the general concepts, universal, are real beings, substances, things, “res”, whereby we get realism, and that there is an independent reality of the cognizant subject. The second, of Aristotelian influence, taught that singular concrete things are the “first”, the true, the substances per se, and that the universal ones, general concepts, are not at all real, but mere names, whereby we get nominalism. In the third phase criticism prevailed. Roger Bacon, reasserted that the basis of phenomena is only in experience: in sensible experience, the fundaments of the science of nature; in interior experience, or spiritual, knowledge of the supra-sensible and of the divine. For Ockham, the concept is the sign, the act of Knowledge; the sciences are real when they deal with concepts of objects, and they are rational when the concepts themselves become objects of thought; the representations of sensibilities and of understanding are natural signs, and words are artificial signs.

In modern thought

In the period called Humanistic, the Renaissance, there was a mitigated attitude towards the rational. Humanism reinvigorated, on the one hand, the studies of the neo-Platonists and, on the other, that of the neo-Aristotelians, outstanding among the latter ones, Alexander of Aphrodisias, who asserted the mortality of the soul, and Pompanazzi, who proposed the substitution of faith in the immortality of the soul for faith in the unlimited progress of humanity. Montaigne, worried about the circumstantiality of value, not finding an absolute validity for the norm, recommended submission to law and customs, for cautions’ sake, and advocated the search for interior freedom to achieve individual happiness, which results from peace of the soul.

In the period called Scientific, of scientific-metaphysical ambivalence, the main characteristic was the search for a scientific explanation of the world, which began with an interest in the derivation of efficient causes, with Kepler, who was concerned about the investigation of quantitative relations. Galileo considered the importance of sensible observation, as long as it was preceded by suppositions, which are operations of thought; the absolute properties are only the figure, magnitude, number, movement and rest, while the other qualitative properties (colour, smell, flavour, etc.) are related to a subject; the Aristotelian-Scholastic logic proves and orders, but does not discover truths; it is necessary thus, to induce, to measure and to deduce (analyze and synthesize); there is a regular dependency between the elementary causes and the effects; if the why of phenomena is impenetrable (their essence), we can, at least, question the how (their laws, their dynamics, their relation); the natural facts are manifestations of movement (translation and dislocation, separation, composition, oscillation); Two general presuppositions are: the principle of simplicity and the principle of finality.

There is yet other news about the so called Scientific period. Francis Bacon maintained the value of science as a vehicle of power; he considered it necessary to observe, experiment and methodically reflect, which requires freedom from all prejudice (from the species, from the individual, from double meanings, from authority) and the adoption of the inductive method. For Descartes, non-intuitive knowledge demands comparison, which needs the concept of magnitude, qualitative or quantitative, the latter being the approach of natural science, which creates the hypothesis and carries out the experiment. All perception already implies some kind of judgement. The sceptics marked their passing through the modern philosophical scenario with the critical study of the work of Descartes and other philosophers. Pascal insisted that one must not accept any concept that is not defined, nor approve any principle that cannot be deduced from these definitions.

Spinoza, in his theory of knowledge, availed himself of the “geometric method”: he started with definitions and axioms, then passed on to propositions with their proofs, adding the corollaries and the scholiums. The succession of thoughts reflects the historical succession of things, whereby the perfect knowledge of cause carries with it knowledge of the effect; thus, experience is not necessary, since the order of the beings corresponds to the order of thinking. True knowledge is deductive knowledge, that is, through the causes, until the cause of the causes, God. It is impossible to know particular things in all their varieties, but their laws, which are their essence, the eternal, can be known. Reason is the faculty of forming appropriate ideas.

John Locke refuted the concept of the existence of innate ideas; not even the most general concepts (of identity, diversity, possibility, impossibility, etc.), nor the fundamental principles (of identity, of contradiction, etc.) are innate. Ideas result from experience, and the concepts and judgments are formed through abstractions and generalizations. Experience results from perception, which comes, first of all, from the senses, and secondarily, from interior processes pertaining to the soul. Knowledge is the perception of the correspondence between two ideas. There are four types of correspondence between ideas: identity and diversity, relation, coexistence or not in the same object, real existence. Truth consists in ideas or words joining or separating, as the things they represent agree or not. There are three degrees in our knowledge of existence: the sensible, the intuitive and the deductive.

The Deists, represented by John Toland and Mathews Tindal, taught that God created the world and abandoned it to its regular course, without interfering in it with miracles, while the Theists had been asserting the reign of God in the world through revelation, grace and miracle. Based on Herbert of Cherbury, the Deists asserted that rational religion had existed in a pure state in the first men and was renewed in its purity by Christ, a mere mortal. Ambitious clergymen tried to keep the people spiritually dependent, teaching them incomprehensible doctrines and mysterious ceremonies, disfiguring rational religion. It is necessary to depurate religion again and recognize that what is essential is to believe in God and follow one’s duty, avoiding spiritual dependence fed by the clergy. The best service provided to God is moral conduct.

The English Moralists greatly contributed to the development of an ethics independent of theology. For Richard Cumberland, the sociability instinct is the fundamental impulse of man; the natural state is that of mutual peace and benevolence; what is good is that which promotes the good of all, since God demands that man aspire to the best for the greatest number of people; respect for the law, for selfish reasons is not, morally speaking, the most meritorious. For Ralph Cudworth and Samuel Clarke, moral law is known through an innate disposition of reason, and there is no need, therefore, of revelation or experience; moral goodness consists in doing what is appropriate; the moral principles, recognized with the same immediate evidence that one recognizes the mathematical axioms, make the ethical forms as valid as the mathematical principles.

Also noteworthy is the contribution of the German Illuminists. Tomasio defined ethics as the art of living happily, thanks to reason and virtue. Christian Wolff divided the disciplines in empirical and rational; he asserted that philosophy is the science of the possible, of what is exempt of contradiction, having as its supreme principle, identity, and as its method, the analysis of concepts and deduction. Crusius and Lambert emphasized the importance of experience, the division of the formal and material elements of knowledge, the distinction between cognitional reason (logical dependency) and real reason (causal dependency). Nicolau Tentens divided the faculties into cognitional and appetitive and a special sensitive one. Gotthold Lessing considered human history as the education of reason, and the processing of the search for truth as more important than its possession. For Herder, humanity is a great individual, passing through childhood (East), youth (Egypt and Phoenicia), adulthood (Greece), the virile age (Rome) until old age (Christianity), in such a way that none of these degrees is only a means, but they are all, at the same time, an end.

Fichte distinguished two fundamental forms of philosophical systems: dogmatism, according to which intelligence (the I) is a product of things in themselves, therefore, dependent; and idealism, according to which all representations of things come from intelligence. According to him, it is necessary to make a choice; he chose transcendental or critical idealism, which presupposes the existence of laws necessary for intelligence. The following are basic principles of intelligence: that of position (the I), which is the thesis; that of contraposition (the non-I), which is the antithesis; that of limitation (in the I, a divisible non-I in contraposition to the divisible I), which is the synthesis (teleological). Any position is in logical relation to a contraposition, there being a synthesis.

The basic activities of the I, according to Fichte, refer to Kant’s categories of quality (reality, denial, limitation). With the limitations all the categories of quantity occur (unity, plurality, totality) and two categories of relation (causality and reciprocal action), whereas the third one (substance-accident) occurs because the I is the oneness substance, where all possible accidents take place. There are degrees of intelligence: imagination, which receives the impulse, produces the sensation; the non conscious I lives intuition; from there it departs to the perception of the I for itself (distinct from the non-I); reflection limits the activity of imagination; reflection presupposes judgement, which is based on reason; in pure reason, the I understands that the non-I is placed by itself, which gives us certainty of our freedom.

August Comte explained the development of knowledge by the law of the three stages. In the first, the theological, what is predominant is man’s fantasy that he can know the essence of things, its first causes and its ultimate ends, explaining them by the action of personal beings, gods and spirits (fetishism, polytheism, monotheism). In the second, the metaphysical, man’s fantasy that he can know everything continues, but now using explanations based on abstract ideas (principles or forces). In the third, the positive, man recognizes the impossibility of knowledge of the absolute essence of reality and seeks, through observation and experimentation, to establish the laws that guide phenomena (laws of statics or of dynamics) and that allow prediction. >The simpler the object, the faster knowledge reaches the positive stage, with the preponderance of the deductive method.

For Comte, isolated man is an artificial abstraction; man is, essentially, a social being. To the initial selfishness, as a result of the development of intelligence, altruism superposes itself, which is the basis of morals. Thus, in theological morality (the first stage) and in metaphysical morality (the second stage), men obey in function of personal interests; but in positive morality (the third stage), men learn to live for the others. In the social sphere, the military sphere corresponds to the theological stage, which is characterized by the existence of an absolute authority that leaves the economic work to the slaves; as examples, he mentions the domination of the Church in the Middle Ages, the last organic period, necessary to prepare the ground for development. The sphere of the jurists corresponds to the metaphysical stage, when the middle classes start to demand and the military class changes from belligerent to defender; it is an unstable period, of transition. The industrial sphere corresponds to the positive stage, in which the economical and social struggles relegate the military and political ones to a second position; during this period there is a preoccupation in promoting the well-being of the proletariat, offering them regular employment and a rational educational system.

English positivism found in John Stuart Mill’s theory of knowledge its greatest expression. Stuart Mill considered experience as the only source of knowledge, and induction, the only fertile scientific method, the one that leads to generalizations, to the laws of phenomena, that, once established, are valid until proven wrong; even the causal law and the logical principles were not given a priori, they are generalizations from experiences. The inductive methods are those of agreement, of difference, of concomitant variations and of residue. Thomas Buckle, based on the assertions of J. S. Mill that there is a historical science capable of establishing universal laws of the history of humanity, engaged himself in the search for general laws of peoples’ lives. Carlyle disagreed with this concept, asserting that history has been made by great men, according to the creative freedom of each one.

Hartmann distinguished three spheres of the cognizable: that of the subjective idea, of the immediate phenomenal world; the real objective, of nature known by science through phenomena; the metaphysical, of the only and real substance, of the unconscious, basis of nature. The categories are the logical structure of the word, and they rise to consciousness through their concepts. There are the categories of sensibility and of thought. The categories of sensibility are quality and quantity. The categories of thought are: explanatory, reflective (logic and the methods of measurement, of division, of judgement, of induction and of deduction); speculative (causality, finality, substantiality). Causality is only understood through finality. Substance can be found in the metaphysical sphere; it is the unitary subject of all that succeeds, having as eternal attributes the idea (the logical) and the will.

Nietzsche considered that the supreme value consists in asserting the will to live. To “Know yourself ” he added “become who you are”, valuing the actualization, through the will, of the daily potentiality within the essence of the being. The real world is that of the senses; the world of metaphysics and of religion are dreamed worlds. There is no personal immortality. The supreme good is not knowledge nor the greatest well-being possible, but life itself; and not only life, but healthy and strong life. The essence of the living being is the will; but not the will for pleasure, but the will for power. What is good is all that leads to the feeling of power, and bad all that comes from weakness. Compassion for those who fail and for the weak is worse than all the vice; the first principle of philanthropy is that the weak and failed ones must succumb, and we must help them to perish.

Haeckel asserted that the only solid basis of the natural unitary conception of the world results from scientific knowledge, which lies in critical experience (a posteriori). Empirical knowledge is achieved through observation of the exterior world and through conscious reflection. The dualist conception of the world results from a divine revelation, which gave origin to obscure and improbable dogmas. The so called a priori knowledge was achieved a posteriori. The world is a great whole guided by fixed natural laws submitted to a process of evolution whose beginning and end are unknown. There is no personal immortality of the soul. There is no free will; the will is a physiological function. God is the last and incognizable cause of all things. Matter and energy are the inseparable attributes of substance.

Wilhelm Ostwald, a monist as Haeckel, agreed with him in some aspects: all is nature, and nature is all; all is submitted to the same laws, whose knowledge is based on experience. But Ostwald taught an energetic monism. Energy is work, and work generates energy. Work is a magnitude whose measurement is made through the product of power. There are six kinds of energy: mechanical, heat, light, magnetic and electrical, chemical, and psychic. All happenings consist of temporal or spatial alterations of energy, including those of consciousness and of consciousness of the I. All the work of culture consists of increasing gross energy and its useful part. It is science that predicts occurrences and points the ways to reach the ends. The end of culture is happiness. The level of culture can be measured by the availability and utilization of energy.

John Unold summarized monist ethics in some fundamental concepts. Man must have as an end and as law perfect adaptation. The moral precept must occupy, in man, the place of natural force (instinct). Moral education, based on science, must teach the natural consequences of acts. Scientific ethics teaches the value of Nation and Humanity, what is owed to predecessors and contemporaries, what is the duty towards the current generation and the future generations. There is no other immortality but that of the memory of the people. The law of striving for perfection already exists in nature; but it is in culture that it achieves its moral character. The human aspiration to perfection manifests itself in the scientific-intellectual, artistic-literary, technical-economic, political-social, ethical-religious spheres. In a strictly ethical sense, the directions of the aspiration towards perfecting are the tendencies towards humanization, individualization and socialization. The learned man feels that it is his duty to participate in the cultural work of humanity.

In contemporary thought

From rationalist philosophy we have, initially, a naturalist conception of the world, with Oswald Spengler, who manifests it as thus: religion is the essence of all culture; cultures are living beings of a superior category, but also lacking an end; every culture is the living body of an idea, and it has a youth, a maturity and an old age; every civilization is the terrestrial remnant of an extinct culture; history is the fulfilment of a possible culture; to causality, the supreme law of nature, there is the correspondent, in history, the sign, need of life (interior direction, but not “end”); history is producing itself, and therefore cannot be known, since only what is produced, finished (“nature”) can be known; knowledge kills its objects (it measures, divides, calculates); causality is the developed sign, disorganized, dissected in the forms of the intellect. For R. M. Holzapfel it is possible to found the validity of an ideal with psychological investigations.

A culturalist conception of the world asserts, according to G. Windelband, that the method of the natural science is not the only scientific one, the historical method is equally valid. The purpose of science is knowledge of the laws (nomothetic) and successes (ideographic); the latter is the most important for the scientific foundation of a conception of the world and of life, since all feelings and interests have origin in the singular and in the incomparable, while repetition and rule anesthetize feeling. There is no proof of the immortality of the soul; those who wish to immortalize themselves must do so through participation in supra-temporal and eternal values and through collaboration so that they can be realized, since for value to coincide with reality, for the rational to become real, human action is necessary. The supra-temporal can be found in eternally valid values of the true, the beautiful, the good and the saintly.

According to H. Rickert, culturalism tries to show that desire for knowledge cannot be satisfied, completely, in the natural sciences, and a directing point of view is necessary to distinguish the essential in the cosmic course and in human history, since totality cannot be fathomed by science. For the natural sciences, which are limited to the quantitative, it is enough to prove the identity between cause and effect; but complete reality needs to admit causal inequality, and this is the object of the cultural sciences. In all knowledge, the cognizant individual has to take a stand towards certain values, and the objective validity of scientific knowledge is dependent on the validity of the values that are at the basis of the concepts set forth; the stand that is taken is a “duty”, for which it is necessary to admit that there are values that are absolutely valid, supra-historical.

For Rickert, the multiplicity of values became real in cultural goods, which contribute to the elevation of life. It falls on the will to transform values into goods, which makes the concept of an active volitive subject indispensable. However, the action of the subject comes about as a result of his taking a stand towards values, and therefore, the existence of a system of values is necessary; this system, however, cannot be rigid and finished, since in historical development, nothing is definitive. It is necessary to look for a “third kingdom”, which represents the unity of value and reality, at the basis of which there is the act of valuing, which includes the acts that create value (in investigation, in artistic production, in moral action). The moral will is called upon to organize vitality, in the sense of ethical norms. Pure vitality is the “exterior side”, which needs contact with the divine to elevate itself, whereas religious conduct is the path to greater proximity with life.

A conception of the world based on the theory of knowledge presents connotations of its philosophies of origin. The positivistic one, according to Ernst Mach, confirms the anti-metaphysical orientation and restricts itself to positive facts, real (the elements: sounds, colours, pressures, heat, perfume, space, time, etc.), which depend on circumstances external to the body and internal (sensations); from sensations memories are built, representations (unconscious memories), feelings, volitions, concepts; memories combine themselves with optical sensations and direct attention, giving rise to perception; the I is a complex of sensations and representations that reacts to impressions through acts and creations, and then undoes itself. For F. A. Lange, the “I”, the “things” and their properties, “causality” and the other categories are fictions, convenient ways to label sensations.

The pragmatist conception of the world, according to J. Dewey, W. James, G. F. S. Schiller, J. Simmel, is that what is true is convenient for the species, practically efficient, sustains and guides human action in the sense of conserving and nourishing life; religious beliefs are true, since they comfort us and reinforce our vital activity. The conception of critical idealism, according to Hermann Cohen, although anti-metaphysical as those preceding it, is that the sensations present only certain intentions, and it is up to thought and its products, to solve problems and satisfy these intentions; the products of thought are the categories, which cannot be established by logic, in a complete and valid way, for all times, since new problems may require new categories; scientific thought creates an ordered reality; ethics, a doctrine of duties, is independent of experience; it is the responsibility of the State to moralize individuals; the concept of God is the idea of perfect morality.

The conception of critical realism is that the world exists, independently of cognizant individuals and of knowledge; the content of knowledge, even in the possibility of perfect knowledge, is distinct from objectively known reality. An inductive metaphysics is possible, one that uses and interprets, all together, the data of the particular sciences. For W. Stern, the fundamental problem around which all the conceptions of the world rotate, at all times, is the problem of the relation between the psyche (spirit) and the physical (matter); another problem, even deeper, is the distinction between person (a real set with unitary activities and tending towards an end, conscious or nor), and thing (a passive and receptive aggregation, mechanical, substitutable without remnants); it is also important not to accept anthropocentrism, nor the assertion that everything real is rational, but keep in mind that the end of the world includes the constant elevation of its own end.

2.2 Intuitive philosophy

In ancient thought

In the period called Cosmological, the philosophy called irrational, imbued with the feeling of religiosity, confused itself with the tradition of the rituals and dogmas. In fact, the monist conception of the world, around a primordial substance “arche”, whether from Thales, with the notion of fluidity and humidity, or from Anaximander, with the notion of substantial infinite, or from Anaximenes, with the notion of gaseous state, is a mystical-religious conception. This conception considers matter to be endowed with power and life, although it distinguishes, in living matter, a passive part, pure matter. Continuing, we find in Pythagoras the doctrine of Transmigration of Souls, with the assertions that reincarnation is ruled by the principle of punishment and reward, and that the numbers, which represent the regularity of the structure of reality, are good, the odd ones, and evil, the even ones.

Also in the same period, we have Xenophanes, who loathed the licentiousness of the Gods of Homer and Hesiod and proposed a static God and a pantheist conception of the world. Parmenides of Elea, based on Xenophanes, developed metaphysics, as complementary to the theory of knowledge which he elaborated around his conception of substance, that what is cannot proceed from what is not, which is ineffable and unthinkable. Heraclitus, influenced by Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno and the Ionians, tried to enrich the concept of substance, considering that all is constantly becoming and that the cyclic process of the universe is due to contradictions; he can then assert that human knowledge itself works sensibility and reason, and human laws treat freedom and slavery; reason must find support for itself on the law; determinism, which produces the illusion of repose in the bosom of movement, is the reason of the universe, and to find in it the rule of acts is the problem of human reason.

Closing the period we still have: Anaxagoras, who asserted that the order of the world proceeds from the Spirit, the “nous”, a kind of thinking matter, susceptible to dividing itself, and that can be found, in greater or lesser quantity in all living beings, including plants; the “nous” knows it all; the more “nous” there is in man, the greater his knowledge. For Empedocles, love unites all elements and hate separates them. For Democritus, there in nothing better than interior peace, which frees man from the realm of affections and the anguishing belief in the gods; in order to free himself, man must control his fantasy, be fair, be master of his pleasures, be a citizen of the world.

In the period called Anthropological, the interest in knowing man himself started to become a priority, even though it was always present in the previous period, when the main concern was knowledge of the world. With the Sophists, masters in knowledge, considerations on ethics started, and noteworthy among them, were Prodicus, who asserted that things gain moral value thanks to the ethical ends they serve; Protagoras, said that penalty has value as an example and not as expiation, and that it is not possible to know if the gods exist or not, since it is impossible to check this matter. Also important is the Socratic concept that correct evidence leads to fair action, to virtue, which in turn, leads to happiness, and that unhappiness comes from perversity. The Socratics adopted and developed the assertions of the master: Antisthenes maintained that man should reduce his desires to a minimum in order to be happy; Diogenes led such practice ad absurdum.

In the period called Systematic, Plato consolidated the Socratic concept of the good, transformed into ultimate end that channels and justifies conduct. The fundamental virtues are wisdom, strength of character, temperance, justice. The values are: the measure; the beautiful, the balanced, the perfect; the spirit and evidence; the science, the arts and fair opinions; the “pure” feelings of pleasure, without pain. Aristotle asserted that all human action purports to carry out something good, a value; the supreme value is happiness, which depends on the human being developing his own nature for a specific form, human, rational; beside the dianoetic virtues, wisdom and prudence, there are the ethical virtues, directions of the will based on an intention. The soul is to the body as the form is to matter, as real life is to the capacity to live, as the act is to power.

In the period called Eclectic, Hellenistic and Greco-Judeo, according to the Stoics, mainly in the theory of knowledge of Zeno of Citium, which is sensualist, experience is valued; he considered that the representations of perception imprint themselves on the soul, a virgin wax, and maintain themselves in memory as images. For the Stoics, the supreme end is happiness; for happiness it is enough virtue and pleasure, when it results from virtue; one must live according to nature, submitting man’s reason to the world’s reason; virtue can be learned; the cardinal virtues are wisdom, strength, mastery of oneself, justice; the moral value of conduct depends, essentially, on intention; there is essential equality in all men; positive law must not be considered valid, in absolute terms, for each case.

Also in this period, Marcus Tullius Cicero adopted: the theory of knowledge of the skeptics, disseminating the theory of probability; the ethics and theology of the Stoics, preaching that conduct must be virtuous. Plutarch considered the ideas of Plato and the numbers of Pythagoras as thoughts of the divinity. Philo desired to see the influence of the Old Testament in Greek philosophy; in ethics he was a rigorous Stoic, asserting that the passions must not only be dominated but also extinguished (Mosaism), and the ecstatic unification with God is an ever greater good than the suppression of passions. Plotinus, creator of Neo-Platonism, asserted that matter receives value from ideas, souls; the soul of the world is in all souls; the most valuable part of the human soul is reason, which pre-exists the body and immerses in it due to an originating guilt; the soul reincarnates in diverse bodies, plant, animal, human, celestial, according to the degree it has overcome its inclination for the sensual; the unitary human soul collects all sensations, feelings, appetites, judges them and influences them by virtue of its freedom, reflection; the essence of the will and of moral conduct is in the effort of the soul to free itself from sensuality, thanks to knowledge. The supreme degree of knowledge is the perfect union with the originating oneness in the ecstatic state, which constitutes, at the same time, the supreme blessedness.

In medieval thought

The characteristic of the period called Patristic was a new religious and moral life, based on dogma of love for one’s fellow creatures and for a paternal God, and no longer for knowledge as a supreme value. Tertullian considered Plato the patriarch of heretics, the source of all erroneous teachings; he asserted the Christian doctrine was a new law, and reason should bow towards revelation. Saint Augustine asserted, in his theory of knowledge, that: God created the world from nothing; in order to recognize as true or false what is outside of it, consciousness needs a norm, and this norm is God. The writings attributed to Saint Dionysius, on Christian mystical experience, assert that, in order to return to God, man needs to stop all activity of human knowledge, in order to immerse himself into divine knowledge.

In the period called Scholastic, of the system, characterized by the preoccupation in philosophically founding the Christian doctrine, system of dogma, we have Abelard, who, in his ethics, asserted that Christianity is the restoring of natural moral law, already known by the ancient ones, and that the ethical character of actions depends solely on the intention of the subject. Saint Thomas, in his ethics considered, as did Saint Augustine, evil to be a non-being. The supreme end of man is perfection, which contains in it happiness. The noblest activity of man is knowing, which conditions desire. Knowing God is supreme happiness; but the possible knowledge of God in this world is an imperfect knowledge. It is good that which does not contradict rational nature, individual and social. The norm of virtuous conduct is the divine law known through reason, and its application depends on consciousness. Moral virtue is a habit resulting from the will. The material virtues are prudence, temperance, strength and justice; the supernatural virtues are faith, hope and charity. Man depends on the help of divine grace to fulfil the virtues. It is the responsibility of the State to keep the peace, promote material prosperity and encourage intellectual and moral virtue. Ockham and Duns Scott believed that the will always directs itself towards the good, revealed by God, independently of being understood by reason.

In modern thought

In the period called Humanistic, the Renaissance, there was a mitigated attitude towards the intuitive. The philosophy of the Renaissance developed, in a general way, the concept of the individual evaluation of value, instead of the passive receptivity of a heteronomous authoritarian judgment, keeping, however, the concept that the external authority is useful to control people. The Renaissance movement began, in full force, in Italy. Montaigne recommended submission to law and custom, for the sake of caution, but also the search for interior freedom in order to conquer individual happiness, which comes from peace of the soul. Agrippa von Nettesheim reminded everyone of the mystical-religious conception of a universal soul, and the consequent mutual dependence of all happenings. Hugo Grotius believed natural law was conceived by reason and guided towards the social, and that divine law was known through revelation.

In the period called Scientific, of metaphysical-scientific ambivalence, in the search of a scientific explanation of the world, some concepts are not suited to this more general vision. For Hobbes, who applied the method of the natural sciences to the study of man, good is what is desired, and evil what is hated; the fixed moral norms are those that are determined by the State, and no value is absolute. Herbert of Cherbury spoke of a natural religion, and of evident religious and moral principles: there is a Supreme Being; He must be revered; virtue, together with piety, are the most valuable forms of this reverence; man must regret his sins; reward and punishment must come from the goodness and justice of God, in this world and the other.

Continuing with the attempt of a scientific approach to phenomena, Descartes recommended methodic doubt, including towards the “evident”, which although seeming to be “clear and distinct” knowledge, many times does not withstand criticism. The most immediate knowledge is that of understanding itself. Certain ideas (concepts and principles) spring from the spirit throughout the development of the individual (they are innate), external impressions serving only as stimulus. There are six elementary affects: admiration, love, hatred, desire, happiness, sadness. Ethics deals with how the will must behave in relation to the affects. Good is that which God orders. Judgment belongs to the will. The error is a precipitated judgment. Consent is a very important moral activity.

Geulincx did not see a reciprocal influence between the body and the spirit, but rather the acting of God on one and the other (occasionalism), since the spirit cannot act in the corporeal world; God values the intention, not success; the greatest virtue is humility resulting from self-knowledge; self love is the root of evil; happiness is unattainable; the moral commandments are not to be discussed. Malebranche observed that knowledge of ourselves is of an inferior quality to the knowledge we have of the world, since the psyche can be measured only indirectly and even so, we can only speak of occasionalism, and not in causality; God promotes everything and He is the Supreme Good; error comes from distortion of rational concepts by sensible images; sin comes from acquiescence to sensible passions, which do not depend on human freedom.

For Pascal, since the original sin man has been incapable of achieving the good, since there is no self-determination, and moral value is a gift granted by God. Bayle concluded that the world is a “thing in itself ”, and not susceptible to be known; the allegedly divine commandments must be justifiable to our consciousness; the absolute foundation of the moral commandments is the eternal idea of good and these commandments are innate in all men; The State must guarantee tolerance to all beliefs and to those who do not believe. For Spinoza, the highest degree of scientific thought is the intuitive understanding of the particular and the general. In his ethics, Spinoza developed the concept that theoretical knowledge is not the ultimate end and must be placed at the service of morals. There are three primary affects: desire, happiness and sadness; love and hatred are, respectively, happiness and sadness connected to their external cause. That which is considered good is that which is desired; it is not the fact that it is considered good that makes it an object of desire.

For Locke, neither the idea of the existence of God nor the moral principles are innate. Only the desire to be happy is innate. It is from the experience of individual and communitary happiness that custom is established; and education is able to disseminate certain moral principles. There are three kinds of norms: divine law, that of the city or political, and that of public opinion. Revelation anticipated the knowledge of moral values that man would take too long to know only by the use of reason. For the sage, virtue is desirable “in itself ”, but people need to see other advantages in practicing it. Political power should be concerned with the common good, according to the majority.

Among the moralists, Shaftesbury and Mandeville stand out. For the former, moral judgment is value judgment, different from theoretical judgment of the real; there is evidence of sentiment, as there is evidence of the intellect; the origin of ethical judgment lies in reflexive affects, innate, of contentment and discontentment, that the inclinations (instincts, passions, affects) manifest; the inclinations can be anti-natural (bad), natural (sociable) and selfish; goodness is innate to man; the practice of virtue causes happiness; the restraint of passions, because of fear or other advantages, does not represent moral value. For Mandeville, in virtuous acts there is also selfishness and vanity, and in communitary life there are mere gatherings caused by fear of loneliness and other dangers; it is the laws that have taught men the advantages of altruism and sacrifice; the vices (greed, prodigality, envy, haughtiness, etc) are the sources of progress of the communities.

In his ethics, Leibniz distinguished the metaphysical evils from the physical evils. He concluded that life offers more pleasure than suffering. Birth and death are passages to new forms of existence. Sensations, feelings and appetites are confused thoughts; from consciousness want arises. Even unconscious representations can constitute motives. Motives influence the will, but do not compel it. The more rational a decision is, the more free it is. Every being tends towards the most perfect for himself and for others, which causes ever greater happiness. Hope of a more perfect life, a happier one, is a complement to moral motivation. The essential elements of religion are knowledge of God and virtue, while dogma and worshipping are accidental, and the religions should seek a form of reconciling themselves.

The French illuminists manifested two distinct orientations. On the one side, Helvetius and the materialists (La Mettrie, Holbach, Diderot, D’Alembert, etc.) considered religion harmful to morality because it promotes fanaticism and discord; there is no immortality, except in the memory of those who remain; self love motivates all acts; necessity enslaves men; what distinguishes good men from evil men is the way they organize their lives in search of happiness; what is good is useful; duties are the means to achieve greater happiness for all; education and the laws of the State are important to this end. On the other side, J. J. Rousseau considered man to be naturally good, and that this natural feeling makes revelation useless, infuses the belief in God, in immortality and in freedom, and gives origin to moral judgment.

In his ethics, Kant asserted that besides theoretical knowledge of what is (real or ideally), there is practical knowledge, of what should be. Only good will has absolute value, independent of its effects. As valuable as they may be, the effects of ill will will not have moral value, they can have, at most, legal value. Good will encompasses disposition and the activity in the sense of the morally accepted action. Good is the will that is ruled by principles that can be considered perennial and universal; this is a categorical imperative, an a priori synthetic-practical principle. There is moral value in wanting something in accordance with the law, something fair. It can occur that in diverse communities, people want opposite things and, nevertheless, they all behave morally, because they all consider their conduct fair.

Also regarding ethics, Kant asserted that the individual is only a being of reason as long as his will is regulated by objectively valid principles, which make him independent of any external power. Impulse must submit itself to the judgment of practical reason. Doing what is morally fair has value only when it is done out of duty and not by inclination. Duty is power, whereby we conclude that freedom is necessary. The will is also necessary. One must distinguish empirical reason (of man as a phenomenon) from the will to freedom (of man as a thing in itself ). Immortality is necessary so that man can continue to seek perfection. In order for virtue to lead to happiness, the existence of God is necessary; but respect for the law, and not the hope of happiness in a future life, must be the only motive of moral conduct.

According to Kant there are three fundamental functions of the spirit: knowledge (theoretical reason), will (practical reason) and feeling (pleasure or pain). For him, only causality is objective, finality is subjective; only compliance with moral law can be accepted as an end; teleological consideration is a regulative idea, a heuristic principle. He distinguishes between: the pleasurable, that which satisfies the senses; the useful, that which fulfills a desire; the good, that which corresponds to moral will; the beautiful, that which is disinterested; the sublime, that which is moral-aesthetic. Schiller also considered the requirement for respect for the moral unconditional; he saw in aesthetic education the best moralization procedure, since it provides the notion of the valuable in itself, it prepares the balance between the sensible and the supra-sensible, overcoming the internal contradiction between what is natural and what is spiritual.

The ethics of Fichte considers the I to have an infinite aspiration, that is, the finite I aspires to the absolute I. The world is the material of our activity, the things of the world are what we do to them. Our sensible or natural instincts distinguish objects and seek satisfaction in them. Reflection elevates the rational being above the instincts, permits him to convert them into objects, gives him consciousness of duty. The instincts seek comfortableness, tranquility and joy; the moral impulse always seeks new problems. The basic moral law consists in each one fulfilling his destiny, acting according to one’s own moral judgment, which presupposes us to be free from submission to natural instincts. Moral law leads to immortality, which consists in living above the temporal, obeying the laws of reason, which presuppose active participation in the development of the community.

In the thinking of Fichte, it is the responsibility of the church to create an internal community of certainties, and, of the State, to regulate the external community among men, respecting the right of the body, of property, of life and of health. Morality concerns intention, and the law, external action. The constitution must predict the development of the State. The historical process, in its moral purpose, must be understood as: an initial state, when reason occurred instinctively; a second state, in which rational law became conscious, but with external authority, against which there were protests; afterwards individual free will started to develop, which led to the “perfect sin” (enlightenment); then, the time of initial rationality is lived (starting with Kant), who understands moral law as a requirement of the superior essence of man; it will be followed by perfect rationality, when unconditional submission to moral law will lead man to true freedom, and then to blessedness (love for the eternal, love for God and life in God).

For Schelling, the original sin is in the I, in individual existence, whereby it can be concluded that blessedness, the union with God, does not predict individual immortality, and several reincarnations are necessary until the individuals perfect themselves to the point of being able to lose their personal identity and plunge into the absolute; individual will must submit itself to the universal will, which is the return to God; moral action is the manifestation of perfect will, which presupposes the conscious I; the most perfect form of consciousness is the religious one. As to Schleiermacher, he valued religious feeling, nevertheless, denying that it results from moral consciousness, but asserting rather that it results from the fact that the human being feels absolutely dependent on everything he does and is; knowledge and the will are partial aspects; only in religious feeling can man live his total being and his dependence on total reality.

In regard to speculative idealism, the assertion that the absolute is the starting point of all knowing, empiricism and naturalism were in opposition. For Herbart, there is the being, the happening and the valuing of the relations of the will, the moral judgments of value. From the relation of the will with moral consciousness arises the idea of interior freedom; with the intensity of volition arises the idea of perfection; with another will that disinterestedly supports it, arises the idea of benevolence; with another will that does not give in to it, arises the idea of a right; with the need for reward, arises the idea of remuneration. These five moral ideas represent the basis of individual ethics, from where the social ethics comes. Teaching must be educational, impress moral character, availing itself of the means provided by psychology. Religion strengthens the moral tendencies in man.

Feuerbach taught that the object is granted by the senses, and not by thought, which only gathers and interprets the sensations. Reality has individuality as its essence; thought, which has generality as its essence, cannot elaborate a system about the totality of the world. The theses of the existence of God and of the immortality of the soul are unsustainable, but the power of religion is indisputable. Man imagines God according to the best in himself, whereby religious faith is the best source of information about a people, mainly about its morality. Moral value must have value in itself. The basis of ethics is the relations of men among themselves, where and when the I can achieve the plenitude of its essence. Without the community there would be no laws or moral judgment. Seeking happiness is the aspiration of all. The community guarantees the limitations of selfishness. Atheism congregates forces to create a better life.

In his ethics, J. S. Mill received the influence of his father, James Mill, and of Bentham, who had both refused the authority of tradition, valuing criticism and the search for the greatest happiness possible for the greatest number of people, considering that intensity, duration, certainty, proximity, fecundity and purity are elements that allow us to evaluate pleasure. J. S. Mill added that: whoever has rejoiced in spiritual and social pleasures does not exchange them for sensible pleasures; a value that was a means to achieve pleasure can, through development, become a value in itself. Harmony between society and the individual must be sought, sacrificing it in the search for the common good should be avoided; women must be given the right to emancipation in the judicial, economic and political sense.

Fechner sought the regular relation between the physical and the psychic, which are two ways of manifesting a single essence: God. Lotze asserted that there was an absolute at the core of all reality, to which the whole mechanism of nature serves, as a means for valuable spiritual ends. Everything is a being. Knowledge consists in the contents of consciousness finding themselves in a regular relation with objects. Consciousness, through judgments of contentment and discontentment, knows values. The most valuable spiritual activity is love, which makes the compulsory force of moral judgments of value comprehensible, which show us the way to participate in culture, to collaborate in the fulfillment of a universal end, according to the will of God.

For Hartmann, the natural processes are the means for the spirit to find itself. Nature must contain, in an unconscious way, this purpose, without which it could not become conscious to man. The universal will manifests itself without hindrances as exterior nature; when partial effects collide particular will arises, which, turned against itself, causes pain; when the obstacle is removed, pleasure arises. Pleasure and pain are the basic elements of consciousness; from the elaboration of these feelings, sensations and representations arise, which are conditions for the activation of the will. In its development consciousness apprehends the universal end. Dissatisfaction results from the contradiction of the will with itself; peace can only be reached through the annihilation of individual reason, for which it is necessary that each one knows himself; the task of each man is to know himself and contribute so that other men know themselves; only by doing so will universal peace arise and will it be possible to return to the absolute unconscious.

Wilhelm Wundt asserted that knowledge is the ever more perfect apprehension of the real world, which exists independently of us and the knowledge we have of it. The psychic is pure happening, something current, having the will as essence. The objective goods are values in themselves, independently of the pleasure they provide us, even though the consolation they may offer is a good motivation for them to be pursued. Moral values are intuited throughout the evolution of humanity, and give rise to norms and ideals. The objective values are morality, law, science, art, religion, because they produce culture. Collaborating with culture is how the individual elevates himself from temporality to eternity. Moral action is the most fundamental of all, and its ultimate end is to institute a universal society, indispensable basis for the development of culture; but this is not the ultimate moral end, and there should be a universal moral order, divine, to which this objective belongs.

For Nietzsche, there are two types of moral evaluation: master morality and slave morality. In master morality: the exceptional man is he who needs no approval from anyone, he honors that which has power over himself, he venerates age and tradition, he is ready for victory and for pleasure; whoever is not exceptional is worthless. In slave morality: the good man is the one who is giving, patient, humble, affable, in sum, the degenerate, tired, weak. The true ideal is that of the exceptional man, that is, the hero, the super-man. The discipline of pain is what creates the superiority of men. Well-being makes man worthless. The exceptional man knows that there is a hierarchy in morality, and he does not intend that there be a single morality for all men. Society does not exist for itself, but to serve as support to a chosen stock.

In contemporary thought

In confessional religious philosophy, catholic doctrine asserts that a personal God created the world, and rewards and punishes men after death; his existence was revealed in the Ancient Covenant and confirmed in Jesus Christ. The truth revealed in the Holy Scriptures is true because it was revealed, and not because natural reason can understand it as true; the Church, through the ecclesiastic magisterium, gives the guarantee of what was truly revealed and the proofs (fundamental theology, apologetic) that rationally found faith. Faith and science cannot contradict each other; the ultimate end of science is truth, and not freedom, and faith prevents science from falling into error. The Mosaic commandments can be summed up in two: love God above all things, and love one’s neighbor as oneself.

Neo-Scholastic philosophy, or neo-Thomism, asserts that the world exists, independently of the cognizant subject and the contents of knowledge; it is possible to have a metaphysics that avails itself of the particular sciences and of scientific methods as its fundament; reason can explain the existence and essence of God, the immortality of the soul, freedom; in order to know reality, there is experience (external and internal) and rational thought. Values, including the moral ones, are not a product of the spirit, which only recognizes them; without God all norms would perish; the will is free (indeterminism), but character and motives influence it (determinism); even the fully developed man owes humble submission to God and to the Church; love to one’s neighbor must manifest itself, also, in the sense of social well-being.

Modernist philosophy develops the conception that: metaphysics is impossible, whereby it is impossible to “know” God and divine revelation; what exists is a subconscious need of the soul to approach the incognizable, which makes it ”experience”, “live” God, which happens with greater vigor in the prophets and apostles; reason tries to clarify religious experience, transforming it into knowledge, giving rise to ideas and concepts of the divine (incognizable); the church transforms personal experience into dogma. Hermann Schell talks about an ideal Catholicism, capable of developing, assimilating modern ideas. An expression of modernism, the liturgical movement seeks to renew interest in worship and, in a general way, the modern church is trying to participate, ever more effectively, in movements for social well-being.

The protestant conception of the world, based on the spirit of the Reformation and in the efforts of Martin Luther, finds itself diluted in different ramifications. Liberal Protestantism, influenced by the Enlightenment, having broken away from the traditional dependence on the authority of the Church over culture, pontificates an ethics oriented towards progress; Orthodox Protestantism itself concedes that it is not enough to avail of the authority of the Church, and that it is necessary to ground that which is asserted; in a general way, Protestantism considers that the truth of religion is obtained through subjective individual “experience” or “living”. For E. Troeltsch, the proto-phenomenon of all religions is the mystical living; religions tend towards a normative end, the idea of God being important. Also for P. Wernle, besides theoretical thought of value, there is an experience of evaluation and of will, an interior recognition of moral values, which generates the compulsoriness of their fulfillment; what is essential is this experience, and not dogma.

Rudolf Euckem represents the fundamental Protestant attitude concerning individual freedom in the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures and criticism of the Church. His idealist metaphysics can be summarized as: there is a universal personal life, a cosmic personality, for whose development everyone collaborates, combating everything they feel is against God; each one must try to achieve spiritual reality, which confers to human spiritual life an “interiority” , “its own content”, a “substantial character”; for all to convert into spiritual beings, into personalities, depends on the decision of each individual, although all continue to be natural beings, subject to resistance to the developmental process; true culture consists in the continuous victory over the selfish nature of man, transforming natural individuality into eternal spiritual personality, a participant in the cosmic personality.

From irrationalist philosophy we have the attempt at a new spiritual dimension. It maintains that life and creation should be guided by feeling, by instinct, by intuition; they cannot be understood by the intellect. Even the economy needs the spirit to give it life. It is not rational thought, but feeling, that knows values and sets the will into action to transform them into goods, which can be found in the life of the National State, in art, in morality, in religion. The National State is necessary since each nation needs to develop its culture, which justifies the wars, in the sense of avoiding practical materialism and moral and spiritual degradation. In art, expressionism stimulates the manifestation of the divine that each one feels in himself. In religion (non-confessional), personal expression must move towards the social, inspiring the fulfillment of supreme values, since socialism is also spiritual and social education.

According to Henri Bergson, irrationalism asserts that only intuition can understand life. The live stream of things slips through the artificial constructions of science (analysis and synthesis), which cannot touch it. In the psychic happening, time has a special signification; past and future incessantly act on the present, and only intuition can apprehend the live “I” in its concrete duration, real. In the same way, the concept of natural causality does not apply to the psyche, since the “I” vacillates and oscillates, and it is necessary to await action to apprehend it; it is only free in the rare instances in which it takes possession of itself and submerges, by means of intuition, in the reality of concrete time. The universe lives and evolves thanks to an originating vital impulse, God; the inorganic is the extinction of the organic, which is instinct and intelligence. The human being must free himself from the domination of needs and of the intellect, a slave to utility, and, by an act of the will, live in intuition, creatively, like God.

According to J. Müller, irrationalism advocates the individual’s fidelity to himself, the worshipping of personal life, the return to natural life, maintaining that what is most important is to live, and afterwards, to know, through life, through experience; it teaches that consciousness, around which intellectualist reflection revolves, is only the surface of the spirit; it is necessary that the truth revealed by Jesus Christ be purged of the Jewish legal conceptions and the Greek intellectual conceptions, and that a life full of love and abnegation be lived. According to W. Rathenau, everything is, ultimately, spirit. H. Keyserling reminds us that an apt education is one that separates, from the transitory symbols, the permanent meaning of reality, and that seeks to steer men to freedom, to their own determination and to the development of a profound and individual existence.

Other manifestations of irrationalism took form and have their place in contemporary thought. Theosophy, according to H. Blavatsky, seeks to make effective the ideals of universal love and fraternity; R. Steiner, seeks to show the importance of daily duties in relation to the “great spiritual connection of the world”. Spiritism, according to Allan Kardec, embraces the same ideals of fraternity and love. Parapsychology develops its interests for the phenomena of inter-mental communication (telepathy) and others inexplicable by the known natural laws. Christian Science, with Mary Baker Eddy, is based on the Bible and seeks to formulate a spiritualistic metaphysics. Psychoanalysis, with S. Freud, intends to explain the depth of the soul’s life and to help man free himself from the traumas of his childhood.

2.3 Phenomenological philosophy

In ancient thought

In the period called Cosmological , phenomenological philosophy found its origins in pacifying and propitiatory mythical formulas resulting from the feeling of religiosity. These origins remained in the assertions of Thales about fluidity and humidity, in Anaximander’s about the substantial infinite, and in Anaximenes’ s about the gaseous state. The hylozoistic vision, which offered the hypothesis of the existence of a vital principle at the basis of the world, is completed with the assertion of the existence of passive matter, pure matter. In Pythagoras, we continue to trace these origins, when he asserts that the opposites find themselves, harmonically gathered in a superior order, in a cosmos, a word he created, and that started to characterize the period as Cosmological.

Also in the same period, we have the pantheist conception of the world, of X enophanes, which led Parmenides, when developing his theory of knowledge, to assert, when conceptualizing substance, that there is the apparent world, which is given to us by perception, and the true world, concealed from the senses, only accessible to thought. His disciple Zeno, developing a special kind of scientific conversation, later on called dialectics, definitively consolidated the contribution of the master who glimpsed at the phenomenological trail. Heraclitus, also influenced by Xenophanes, took fr om Parmenides the assertion that “what is, is”, but he diverged from him, taking from Zeno the assertion that “movement is”, and from the Ionians the existence of living matter, and concluding that everything is constantly becoming; the cyclical process of the universe results from contradictions.

Closing the period we still have: Anaxagoras, who asserted that, at the beginning all things were together; our universe was born from chaos, by a mechanical process of separation and union. Empedocles asserted that the qualitative differences of a composition result from the quantitative differences in the union of its components. Democritus intuited the existence of atoms, corpuscles that differentiate only quantitatively, through their form, size, position and order, and move eternally in empty space, in all directions, connecting to each other in greater and smaller masses, nothing happening by chance; thought only distinguishes itself from the senses by its greater precision and fineness, which permits it to apprehend the world, completing sensible perception.

In the period called Anthropological, dialectics, which had become the established tool for developing thought, started to characterize a time, that of separation-union man-world, which led to the concept of separation-union I-you and to the corresponding collective. With the Sophists, masters in wisdom, the cogitations on ethical problems led Protagoras to assert that “man is the measure of all things, of those that are, while they are, and of those that are not, while they are not”; He was sanctioned as the discoverer of subjectivity and of the necessary relation between subject and object; the discovery of subjectivity, gave greater vigor to dialectics and whetted in the spirits an appetite for doubt. Socrates asserted that every morally evil action comes from a lack of evidence; consequently, virtue can be learned, and must be practiced according to the law of the State. The Socratics developed, with Euclid, the notion that good and being are the same thing, and this got lost in polemics, whose excesses Aristippus attempted to correct, recommending enjoyment of worldly goods without submission to them.

In the period called Systematic, the Socratic concept of good, which had become the supreme ideal, inspired Plato to assert that the State can only fulfill its ends by suppressing private property, and adopting a constitution whereby the law prevails, and where the principles of authority and freedom are in harmony; it is necessary to avoid timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny, and it is essential to entrust the government to the philosophers. Aristotle asserted that all knowledge consists in the junction of concepts to form judgments, and in the combination of judgments to form syllogisms and demonstrations. To the principle of identity, “what is, is”, he added that of contradiction, “the same thing cannot, at the same time, be and not be, considered from the same point of view and in the same relations”, and of the excluded third, “any one thing must be denied or confirmed”. He considered the good to be the just mean between extremes. He valued the social, the supremacy of the middle class, art as catharsis, self education of character, which consists in the desire (sensual) to submit oneself to the will (rational).

In the period called Eclectic, Hellenistic and Greco-Judeo period, according to Zeno of Citium and in his theory of knowledge, sensualist in essence, yet not leaving out the rational, the Stoics asserted that by means of instinctive associations and comparisons, the concepts common to all, experience, emerge. To the categorical syllogism, Aristotelian, the hypothetical and the disjunctive can be added, the scientific-natural concepts of a general consensus, innate, are irreproachable, absolutely true. The Epicureans taught that canonicity, logic, offers the standard, the canon, of what is true and of what is false, of what we must aspire to and what we must avoid. The perceptions of the senses are all true, and from them result the concepts and presuppositions; the criteria of truth depend on observation. Man must free himself from preoccupations and suppositions; he is free, he is not subject to any coaction from nature. Pleasure is to be found in virtue, in what is in accordance with nature, and pain, in its opposite.

Also in this period, Pyrrho of Elis, the founder of the skeptic school, taught that nothing is beautiful, nor ugly, nor fair or unfair in itself; men are the ones who judge things so. Timon of Phlius concluded that, if what exists is an eternal clash of opinions, what is fair is the suspension of judgment, which leads to complete serenity of animus, the supreme end. Aenesidemus elaborated the ten fundamental commandments of the skeptics: all knowledge is relative; it depends on the needs of the living beings in general, of men in particular, of the disposition of the organs of the senses, of their subjective states, of its position and distancing in relation to the object under observation, of the conditions of the means that exist between them, of the quantity and composition of the objects that act on the senses, of the frequency or lack of frequency of impressions, of education, of custom, of uses, of religious and philosophical conceptions. For Plotinus, the creator of Neo-Platonism, rational knowledge, dialectics, perceives its own ideas (consciousness of itself ).

In medieval thought

In the period called Patristic, of dogma, the ethics of Saint Augustine, which is contradictory, appears as follows: on the one hand it asserts that the will must act on sensuality, sexuality and the joys of life, which are obstacles to a moral life, and on the other, it explains that everything was predestined, both the recovery of certain spirits as well as the condemnation of others; for him, evil is not something real, but a non-being, a wanting, and to overcome it man needs divine grace and the coercion of the State. Conversely, the Christian Gnostic, Origen, taught that God created all spirits with equal perfection and with freedom to choose to practice the good; those who did not do so were punished, the worst ones were transformed into demons, and the ones who were not so bad, into human souls trapped in matter; but all is presided over by a divine educating plan, which predicts the action of Logos, made into flesh in Christ, with the objective of promoting the return of all spirits to God.

In the period called Scholastic, of the system, Abelard, the main founder of the scholastic method, sought to conciliate realism and nominalism. He explained that realism is right to teach that the universals are not mere words, “nomen”, since they really exist: before individual things, in God; in things, constituting the equality or similarity of their fundamental qualities; behind things, constituting the general concepts which permit comparison and abstraction. Nominalism is correct, since singular things are also real beings, individual substances. However, he observed that the words, names, could not denominate the multitude of individual things, “res”, to which they apply, if they were not connected to a concept, whereby conceptualism.

Also in the Scholastic period, Saint Thomas Aquinas sought to reconcile Christian doctrine with the philosophy of Aristotle, giving continuity to the work of his master, Albertus Magnus; by doing so, the interpretation of Siger of Brabant was corrected, inspired in Averroës and Maimonides, that there were two truths, that of the theologian and that of the philosopher. Saint Thomas, more realist than humanist, accepted the conceptualist solution of Abelard and the theory of knowledge of Aristotle, adding that understanding has the capacity to judge, that it is a “union and separation, through affirmation and negation”, being able to show the relation between the individual and the general, the law, but not being able to deduce the first from the second; the general concepts (object, something, oneness, etc), the categories (substance, quantity, quality, etc.) and the most general and evident axioms permit reason, through syllogisms, to achieve new knowledge.

Also in the Scholastic period, the mystic Eckhart renewed the conception that man must renounce individuality, on knowing the world, in order to understand God and live the absolute experience of the encounter with Him; and the path is suffering. Nicholas of Cusa considered four levels of knowledge: the senses and imagination provide us with vague images, understanding comprehends and diversifies them, reason seeks the more extensive general concepts, mystical intuition immediately penetrates the unity of all contraries, God; he asserted that what is most valuable is not the possession of knowledge, but its acquisition, and that value does not exist in the “absolute”, but depends on the capacity to evaluate.

In modern thought

In the period called Humanistic, the Renaissance, the main characteristic was of a general mitigated attitude. Giordano Bruno, according to his progressive cosmology (matter is the passive substratum, and the form, the determining active principle, the force of the matter), considered, as did Nicholas of Cusa, that the path to the end is more important, more precious than the end. For Campanella, the supreme end of action is self-affirmation, which can only occur in the social. Agrippa von Nettesheim recalled the mystical-religious conception of a universal soul and the consequent mutual dependence of all happenings. Jacob Boehme explained evil as the necessary background from which the good stands out, since God is the unity of contraries; there are no “chosen people”, since what is necessary is that every man have love in his heart; man is free to do good or evil.

In the period called Scientific, of metaphysical-scientific ambivalence, Spinoza asserted, in his ethics, that the Universe is neither moral nor immoral. Man is virtuous when he lives according to his nature, and he is evil when dominated by exterior forces; in order to be able to know the transitory objects that excite, to master them and to live virtuously, it is necessary to have rational knowledge of things, not in isolation, but as modifications of the divine essence. The supreme virtue, the supreme happiness, is the intellectual love for God. Only in the democratic State is it possible to live true freedom and morality.

Berkeley asserted that the ideas cannot come from matter, which is passive and inert; the order and succession of sensible ideas are produced by God in our spirit, and they produce in us a representation of a corporeal world, whose regularity lies in his will. Hume started from the sensualist assertion that the individual lives and feels that he is living; there are the representations and the facts; there are the senses, reason and imagination; the senses give us the perceptions, which are worked on by reason, according to the principle of identity; the representations proceed from the imagination, and the passage from one representation to the other is conditioned by the three principles of association (spacial and temporal contiguity, similarity and causality); there are the representations of the senses and of self-perception (sensation and reflection); concepts result from impressions (of sensation and of reflection); nature determines action, and not only dialectic dispute; the agreeable and the disagreeable, for us and for others, is what our actions determine; the man who has achieved his spiritual balance does not need religious motifs to act morally.

Leibniz distinguished between knowledge of reason, valid independently of experience (according to the principle of identity) and knowledge in fact, valid when there is sufficient reason (departing from sensations). The most important ordering principles are number, time (ordering of the successive, of which it excludes itself reciprocally) and space (ordering of the simultaneous, of which it does not exclude itself reciprocally). The data of the senses are unified thanks to the principle of continuity, which establishes a relation, an affinity, between the most diverse concepts, guaranteeing the domain of reason, which permits science (for example: the concepts of rest and of movement, absolute contraries, are united by the concept of speed). There are the unconscious representations, the perceptions, and the conscious representations, the apperceptions.

Immanuel Kant, in his doctrine of knowledge (critique of pure reason), distinguished between pure knowledge (a priori) and empirical knowledge (a posteriori). Knowledge consists of analytical judgments (of concepts) and synthetic judgments (of objects), and both judgments can be a priori and a posteriori. The a priori synthetic judgments depend on the existence of pure intuitions (a priori), as the representations of space (form of the external sense) and of time (form of the internal sense); space and time are not things in themselves, that is, independent of consciousness, but they are orderings that we imprint onto sensations; consciousness creates the object according to its internal laws. Sensibility intuits singular things, and thought thinks the universal. It is necessary to distinguish the phenomenon (sensation) from appearance.

For Kant, knowledge occurs when the phenomena determine the objects through categories. The categories are a priori concepts. The judgments are: regarding quantity (extension), individual, private and universal; regarding quality (structure), affirmative, negative and infinite; regarding the relation, categorical (a is b), hypothetical (if a is b, it is also c) and disjunctive (a is b or c); regarding modality (cognitional value), problematic (a can be b), assertional (a is b) and apodictic (a has to be b). The categories, deduced from the system of classes of judgments, are: quantity (unity, plurality, totality); quality (reality, denial, limitation); relation (substance-accident, causality, reciprocal action); modality (existence, possibility, necessity).

According to Kant, the following references to time are schemes of the categories: that of substance (permanence), that of causality (regular succession), that of reality (existence), etc. It is through these schematized categories that we think the phenomena as objects, that we recognize the existence of nature. Experience joins a priori knowledge with a posteriori knowledge. The conditions of experience are the principles of pure intellect: all phenomena are extensive magnitudes (gathering of parts), and, at the same time, intensive (units since the origin); in all changes of phenomena there is something permanent (law of substance); any alteration presumes a previous cause (law of causality); all substances that can be perceived simultaneously in space are in mutual relation (law of community). Ideas are a priori concepts (as pure intuitions and the categories), which regulate the work of experience and remind us that the path of knowledge is limited.

Schelling taught that nature is full of life, which manifests itself evolutionarily, from the unconscious form to the conscious one, with greater and greater perfection. Nature and intelligence are object and subject. The all-oneness is subject-object, and each thing is classified according to what is dominant in it, the natural element (object, real series) or the spiritual (subject, ideal series). There are potencies of real series (matter, light, organism), which act in all natural phenomena, and potencies of ideal series (intuition, intellect, reason), which act in spiritual phenomena. Everything that happens in nature results from opposite polar forces. The intention of the Universe is to return to the divinity through science, art, morality and religion.

Hegel asserted that the world is development and self-understanding of the spirit. The content of universal science should coincide with its object, the separation subject-object thus disappearing. There is a development in the spirit, from vulgar consciousness, with the separation subject-object, through stages, which are phenomena of the spirit, to absolute philosophical knowledge. Consciousness progresses thanks to experience, always renewed, that the object is not as it was thought. The psychological development of individual man and the historical development of humanity fuse into one; there is not, necessarily, a dependence on temporality in the developmental progression, and it can occur that more advanced stages represent themselves through phenomena that happened much earlier. Thought develops through degrees of position, of contraposition and of conciliation of opposites. To the degrees correspond three moments of thought: the abstract, of the intellect; the dialectic, or rational-negative; the speculative, or rational-positive.

The logic of Hegel divides itself into: the theory of the being, qualitative, quantitative and moral; the theory of essence, or of the true being, which encompasses “reality” as “essence”, which is one with its “phenomenon”; the theory of the concept or of the essence which manifests itself in the being. Reality is considered according to the moments of substantiality, of causality and of reciprocal action. The subjective concept is: concept as such, in the moments of generality, particularity and individuality; then, judgment, a separation of the concept in its moments; after that, ratiocination, a meeting of judgments. Concept, because it is also objective, must have, at the same time, the signification of real relations; we only judge and deduce because objectivity is a judgment or a ratiocination. The objective concept encompasses the moments of mechanical order, of the chemical process and of theology. Ratiocination is the epitome of subjective relation, and the final connection is the epitome of objective relation, the idea. The moments of the idea are “life”, “knowledge” and “absolute idea”, which is the ultimate end and is also “reason”. The objective logic we see in the world consists in the dialectics of idea, that is, the march of reason. The science of logic accompanies this logic of the world. There is the process of thought, which progresses according to its inner law, and from which results the ever clearer distinction between the “I” and the “object”, until absolute knowing.

For Hegel, nature is the idea in its “other being”, in its “being outside of itself ”, in the phenomenon; nature contains elements which are strange to the spirit; only the general laws result from reason, and experience offers knowledge of the particular. The spirit is the “being in itself ” of the idea. There is the subjective spirit and the objective spirit. The theory of the subjective spirit encompasses: anthropology, which studies the spirit in its intimate union with the body; phenomenology, which looks at the spirit in its distinction between the body and the exterior world, in contraposition to the “non-I”, developing itself through degrees of sensible consciousness, of perception, of intelligence, of consciousness of itself, of reason; psychology, which has as object the spirit as reason and as will, reconciling the “I” with the “non-I”. The theory of objective spirit treats the productions of the free spirit, rational, and the forms of fulfillment of human freedom: the law, which makes life together possible through the contract (between people), the respect for property (of things) and punishment of the delinquent; morals, which encompass the knowledge of subjective motives; objective ethics, which confirms the existence of a moral order in general consciousness, which penetrates each individual, demanding absolute obedience, manifesting itself through the family, society and the State, through education, with the objective of the well being of all.

The objective of universal history, for Hegel, is human freedom as consciousness of itself. The needs, the instincts, the passions, the human activities are the means to achieve this end. The fundamental periods are the ones of the East (childhood), the Greek (youth), the Roman (adulthood) and the Germanic (old age), the last one being the return of the mature spirit to itself; for the people of the East only the despot is free, for the Greeks and Romans only some men are free, for the Germanics all men are free. Reason should make the passions move in favor of the envisioned objective: individual and universal freedom. It is in the absolute spirit that the subjective and objective spirit unite; this unity fulfills itself in the objective form of intuition as art, in the subjective form of feeling and of representation as religion, and in the subjective-objective form of thought as philosophy.

Religion, for Hegel, develops itself throughout the history of humanity: in the first stage (Chinese, Native Indians), God is almighty substance and man is impotent; in the second (Persians, Syrians, Egyptians), God is spiritual individuality, and man continues impotent; in the third (Jewish, the sublime; Greeks, beauty; Romans, utility) God is spiritual individuality and free subjectivity, and man pursues the models of this subjectivity; in the supreme stage (Christian), God is absolute spirit, Father as origin, Son as consciousness and representation, Holy Spirit as path and reconciliation of humanity with Him. The absolute idea, which is intuited in art and represented in religion, reaches, in philosophy, the most elevated degree: it is the idea that thinks itself, truth that knows itself, reason that understands itself. The diverse philosophies, which manifest themselves in the different periods of history are phases of development of one philosophy, which encompasses all; at each phase, philosophy thinks reality, expresses the development and the cultural moment in a provisory system.

Schopenhauer considered causality to be the only guiding idea of scientific knowledge, which cannot, however, attain the first cause, nor the last one. Nevertheless, our spirit needs to think the oneness. The multiplicity of the oneness is perceived in function of space and time, which are the forms of human intuition. Each one is, in his intimateness, will to live; the phenomenal world is will. Wanting is continuous dissatisfaction and, therefore, permanent pain. Pleasure is fleeting, and soon converts itself into tedium. The will fulfills itself: in the inorganic, mechanically; in the organic, as stimuli; in consciousness, as motive. Individual wills are only manifestations of the oneness’ will. The basic moral feeling is compassion. To free oneself from unhappiness, the individual needs to deny the will, annihilate all impulses, above all the sexual one, and submerge into nothingness, which is the real world.

Herbert Spencer, a representative of English positivism, considered knowledge to be relative, and the absolute to be incognizable. He tried to reconcile empiricism and a prioricism, observing that there is the matter of experience, but that there are also, the a priori suppositions, acquired forms of intuiting and of thinking, which are the indestructibility of matter, the real and potential continuity of movement and the conservation of energy. The concept of energy is basic, but it is symbolic, since it explains itself by the subjective living of muscular distension and effort. A thing becomes known when we know how it came into being. The universal happening is only perceptible for the individual at a determined range of happenings, which encompasses two processes: the thing comes about for the individual when its elements, earlier separated, gather themselves into a whole (evolution) and disappear when its elements disperse themselves (dissolution). In general terms, evolution, besides integration, that is, the passage from an incoherent state to a coherent one, is also differentiation and specialization.

Spencer considered even the development of the spirit to consist in the distribution of matter and movement, one which occurs in the nervous system. Consciousness represents the internal side of these modifications, while the nervous and cerebral processes are the external side. Feelings are the elemental states of consciousness; from their integration and differentiation all spiritual life results. The process of the world is evolution, balance, dissolution, evolution again and so on. Each specific science is knowledge that is only partially united; it is the responsibility of philosophy to completely unify knowledge. Since absolute reality is incognizable, it is not possible to know God (agnosticism); asserting that a known God would no longer be a God, it intends to reconcile knowledge and faith. The supreme knowledge of man is that the power that reveals itself through the phenomenal world completely eludes investigation.

Ernst Laas, German positivist, interpreted that idealism (Plato) and positivism are basic orientations of philosophy. Platonism aspires to a priori knowledge, through deduction, which starts from concepts; it teaches the existence of a truly transcendent reality, spiritual, divine; it proposes an ascetic ethics and absolute ideals. Positivism only recognizes positive facts (internal and external perception), a posteriori knowledge, inductive; it proposes hedonism, a moral for this life, resulting from the hopes and demands of the world we live in, from the community to which we belong. Eugen Dühring censured the policy of those who kept people bound by a religious belief they did not share, with the excuse that this belief was necessary to keep social order; he taught that there is a universal moral order, that evil always destroys itself and the good always wins, since there is, in the essence of the world, a tendency towards progress and towards perfection that the State slows down, since it hinders personal freedom, which can only be achieved in economically free communes.

In contemporary thought

The phenomenological conception of the world, with E. Husserl, is that of the intimate relationship of intuition (sensation, positivism) and concept (thought, critical idealism). For Husserl, logic is an a priori valid science, independent of psychology. Phenomena are the “immediately given”, and permit the clarification of concepts, passing from the singular (datum of intuition) to the contemplation of the universal essence, which can occur in any perception. In the intuition of essence, we discard all empirical circumstances and the object’s own real existence. Once the essence is intuited, we can establish, independently of experience, that which is valid for the object. The essences are the real content of the object; they are ultimate data not susceptible to proof, being able only to be brought to evidence. The essences belong to the realm of the validity of ideal objects.

3 EXEGESIS

Our exegesis, an interpretation of the History of Philosophy, is hermeneutic because it is based on laws extracted from philosophical thought at the rational-deductive level. All the cultural wealth of knowledge we have gathered throughout our lives points towards the fact that, at all times and in all places, there have been, there is, and there will probably be, those individuals who seek knowledge concerning the human being based on reason, rational philosophy, on intuition, intuitive philosophy, and based on participation, phenomenological philosophy. According to how he thinks about knowledge of the human being, whether based on reason, or on intuition, or on participation, each individual will guide his conduct in accordance with the assertions he chooses regarding his origin, life and destiny, as well as the origin, life and destiny of humanity and of the universe.

The human being, the phenomenon man, which appeared on the face of the earth for the first time at a time unknown, and in a way that is also unknown, has been freeing himself very slowly from the ecological limitations; his freedom has been possible thanks to the accumulation of knowledge about the world, things, the beings in general and about himself, in particular. In order to survive, he had to turn his attention, initially, to the space around him, to which he had to adapt and from which he had to extract his nourishment. To the notion of space he added the notion of time, given the relative regularity of the demands of his organism and the constancy, also relative, of external phenomena, of nature, of his “habitat”. The more he knows, the more man becomes free to opt, to choose his conduct. The freer he is, the greater is his personal and social responsibility.

There have been two hypotheses regarding the development of human thought: one, that each generation has been representative of a certain developmental phase; the other, that development occurs in a disorderly way over time, and that even more advanced acquisitions may occur before others of lesser significance. History has not been able to provide us with precise data in this regard, and the problem is open to speculation. Just as the attempts of humanity in terms of explaining the origin and destiny of the universe, which include the explanation of its own origin and destiny, so the explanations on the development of human thought continue to be unsatisfactory and biased.

Restricting ourselves to historical data to the extent where it has been possible for us to understand and order them, we can say that not even in the sense of predominance, as historians would generally like it, can we discern a developmental line of human thought throughout time. It seems to us more likely that specific tendencies, kinds of approach, have manifested themselves at all times, with the coloring, the argumentation and the language specific to each time, and to each place at each time. A problem of a more general nature is that of the approach to knowledge, on the one hand, through reason and, on the other, through intuition: rationalists and intuitionists have existed and still exist at all times and places, as there have been and there are the phenomenologists, the conciliators, the neutral ones. Thesis, antithesis and synthesis have presented themselves, generally, in spatial and temporal simultaneity.

3.1 Rational philosophical knowledge

Human thought, which generates the theory of knowledge, Gnoseology, has disregarded insoluble problems, such as that of the origin of God and of the origin and destiny of the universe, leaving them to irrationalist approaches, and it has occupied itself mainly with the perception of its capacity to know, through reflection, the power of the laws of nature, to symbolize them and to seek protection in their logic. Philosophical tradition, in the form of postulated principles, has perpetuated the systems and schools. Ancient peoples have recorded their philosophies, each one presenting its individualist version, with questionable deductions, confused and mixed derivations of somewhat imprecise corollaries. The school, generally local, sometimes national, was always known as a sort of contract, a fraternity, between masters and their attendees. At the end of the ancient world, the various schools became jumbled in a vast syncretism, leading, necessarily, to the reflections of an anthropological nature that followed.

The following contributions to philosophical knowledge have been recorded:

In ancient thought

In the Cosmological period, the free pursuit of knowledge strengthened the spirits, guaranteed the climate for reflection. From free thinking the different conceptions of the world resulted, now surpassed by science, yet there remains the conception of substance (what is, is eternal unity, without beginning nor end, not proceeding from the non-being, which is ineffable and unthinkable; the movement is, therefore, all constantly becoming), of thought as an instrument to know the truth and of existence of a single kind of fundamental matter or substance made up of innumerable mobile corpuscles, imperceptible, indivisible, innate and imperishable, the atoms.

In the Anthropological period, the attempts to explain nature were followed by the attempts to explain mankind. No longer bound to tradition, in the habit of questioning beliefs, human thought started to question the customs, to criticize the rules, to make critical and rational reflection its norm, there remaining the conception that things are ethically indifferent, but that there are rational rules for human acts and that conduct must be founded on evidence and on reflection, and not on customs.

In the Systematic period, the concept established was that knowing the good leads the individual, necessarily, to be good, and that logic is the instrument to attain the knowledge of truth, since judgement is real if it corresponds to real situations, and false if not. Also established was the basic concept that the essence of the organic is in the fact that the parts presuppose the whole, they accommodate themselves to it, they are the instrument, the organ, for its existence and development.

In the Eclectic period, it was asserted that, to the natural concepts that come from experience, are joined the concepts coming from deliberate reflection, whether scientific, or philosophical. It was also asser ted that in syllogism, the greatest premise is only valid under the condition that the conclusion is also valid, since there are no basic suppositions immediately evident to guarantee the initial link of the chain, there being thus the probability, which manifests degrees that are, probable representations in themselves, representation that, furthermore, are not in contradiction with others, and representations confirmed in all senses. It was concluded that rational thought, dialectics, perceives its own ideas (consciousness of itself ).

In medieval thought

In the Patristic period, of dogma, it was asserted that reason results from Logos, God, and it is the true source of knowledge, availing itself of the senses, and the cause of errors are precipitated judgments; man is certain, at least, that he exists, that he doubts and of the other facts of consciousness.

In the Scholastic period, of the system, it was concluded that: the concept is the sign, the act of knowledge; there is a reality independent of the cognizant being; there are the general, universal concepts; only in experience is there fundament for phenomena; the sciences are real when they treat the concepts of objects, and they are rational when the concepts themselves become objects of thought; the representations of sensibility and of understanding are natural signs, and words are artificial signs.

In modern thought

In the Humanistic period, they defended faith in the unlimited progress of humanity and the search for interior freedom in order to achieve personal happiness, which is a result of the peace of the soul, without harming the law and customs.

In the Scientific period a scientific explanation of the world was sought, developing an interest in the derivation of efficient causes and their quantitative relations, through sensible observation, as long as it is preceded by suppositions, which are operations of thought, and by methodical observation, experimentation and reflection. It was asserted that: every perception already implies a judgment; one cannot accept any concept that has not been defined, nor approve any principle that cannot be deduced from these definitions; one should start by the definitions and axioms, then move on to propositions with their proofs, adding the corollaries and the scholiums; knowledge is the perception of the correspondence between two ideas. It was also asserted that: the instinct of sociability is the fundamental instinct of man; the natural state is that of mutual peace and benevolence; good is that which promotes the common good; ethics is the art of living happily, thanks to reason and virtue. And moreover: the following are basic principles of intelligence, that of position (the I), which is the thesis, that of contraposition (the non-I), which is the antithesis, and that of limitation (in the I, a divisible non-I in contraposition to the divisible I), which is the synthesis; the I understands that the non-I is placed by himself, which assures us of our freedom. And furthermore: everything is nature, and nature is everything; everything is submitted to the same laws, whose knowledge is based on experience; the end of culture is happiness; moral education must teach the natural consequences of the actions; the tendencies towards humanization are directions of the aspiration towards perfecting and encompass individuation and socialization; the learned man feels that it is his duty to participate in the cultural work of humanity.

In contemporary thought

A naturalist conception of the world manifests itself as follows: every culture is the living body of an idea; every civilization is the terrestrial remains of an extinct culture; history is the outcome of a possible culture.

A naturalist conception of the world asserts that the following are eternally valid values: the true, the beautiful, the good and the holy; the desire for knowledge is not completely satisfied in the natural sciences, and a directing point of view is necessary to distinguish the essential in the cosmic course and in human history, since totality is unfathomable by science.

A conception of the world based on the theory of knowledge presents versions. The positivist one restricts itself to positive data, the real. The pragmatist considers true that which is convenient to the species. That of critical idealism considers that it is up to thought, and to its products, the categories, to solve problems. That of critical realism is that the world exists, independently of cognizant individuals and of knowledge, and that the purpose of the world includes the constant elevation of its own end.

3.2 Intuitive philosophical knowledge

Parallel to the perception of his capacity to know, through reflection, the power of the laws of nature, to symbolize them and to seek protection in their logic, the human being has developed a permanent desire to communicate with the whole of reality, that his scant knowledge did not allow him to obtain. He desired certainty. His logic, as much as it proliferated, did not appease his spirit. The arguments that he developed to explain the origin and destiny of the world, and his own origin and destiny, he knew, came from himself, and the real fundament, as long as it was such, came from his own reflecting. From his desire to communicate with reality, he learned that the suppression of reasoning permitted him a sensation of more immediate contact with the real which, sometimes, led him to panic, and, at other times, led him to understanding and peace. All ancient peoples have registered, in their philosophies, such experiences, but some individuals and some schools dedicated more attention to them.

In ancient thought

In the Cosmological period the philosophy called irrationalist, became jumbled with the traditions of rituals and dogmas, beginning with the monist conception of the world around a primordial substance “arché” and the assertion that what is cannot come from what is-not, which is ineffable and unthinkable. It asserted that: everything is constantly becoming; determinism, which produces the illusion of restfulness in the bosom of movement, is the reason of the universe and finding in it the rules of acts is the problem of human reason. It also asserted that: inner peace frees man from the realm of affects and from the anguishing belief in gods; in order to free himself, man should control his fantasy, be fair, be master of his pleasures, be a citizen of the world.

In the Anthropological period the interest in knowing man himself started to gain priority, although it had always been present, in the previous period, the first preoccupation of knowledge was the world. It was asserted that: it is not possible to know if the gods exist or not, since this subject is impossible to be verified; correct evidence leads to fair action, to virtue, which, in turn, leads to happiness; man should reduce his desires to a minimum, in order to be happy.

In the Systematic period the concept of the good became well established, transformed into the ultimate end that channels and justifies conduct. It was asserted that: the fundamental virtues are wisdom, strength, temperance, justice; every human action purports to carry out something good, a value, and the supreme value is happiness; there are the dianoetic virtues, intellectual, valid by themselves, which are wisdom and prudence, and the ethical virtues, directions of the will based on an intention.

In the Eclectic period, it was believed that: the supreme end is happiness, to which virtue and pleasure are enough, the latter only when it is the result of virtue; one should live according to nature, the reason of man submitted to the reason of the world; virtue can be learned; there is an essential equality among all men; the supreme degree of knowledge is the full union with the originating oneness in the ecstatic state, which constitutes, at the same time, supreme blessedness.

In medieval thought

In the Patristic period, of dogma, the characteristic was of a new religious and moral life, based on love towards one’s fellow creatures and to a paternal God, and not based on knowledge as a supreme value. And moreover, God created the world from nothing; in order to recognize as true or false what is outside of it, consciousness needs a standard, and this standard is God; in order to turn to God, man must stop all activity of human knowledge, so as to plunge into divine knowledge.

In the Scholastic period, of the system, characterized by the preoccupation in philosophically founding the Christian doctrine, a system of dogmas, we have the assertions that follow: Christianity is the restoration of the natural moral law, already known by the ancient ones; the ethical character of acts depend solely on the intention of the subject; evil is a non-being; the supreme end of man is perfection, which contains in itself happiness. And furthermore: the noblest activity of man is knowing, which conditions wanting; knowing God is the supreme happiness, but the knowledge of God that is possible in this world is imperfect; good is that which does not contradict the rational, individual and social nature. And even more, the standard of virtuous conduct is the divine law known through reason, and its application is the responsibility of consciousness; moral virtue is a habit resulting from the will; the following are moral virtues: prudence, temperance, strength and justice; the following are supernatural virtues: faith, hope and charity; man depends on divine grace to carry out the virtues; it is the responsibility of the State to keep the peace, to promote material prosperity and to encourage intellectual and moral virtue; the will is always guided towards the good, revealed by God, independently of being understood by reason.

In modern thought

In the Humanistic period, the Renaissance, there was a mitigated attitude toward the intuitive; the concept of the individual evaluation of value was developed, preserving, however, the concept that the external authority is useful in controlling the plebeian; out of prudence, the submission to law and custom was maintained, keeping in mind, however, that in order to conquer personal happiness, which is a result of a peaceful soul, it is necessary to seek inner freedom; it was asserted that there is a mutual dependency of all happenings.

In the Scientific period it was asserted that virtue, together with piety, is the most valuable form of reverence to the Supreme Being. Methodical doubt was maintained, including concerning the apparently evident. It was deduced that: the most immediate knowledge is that of understanding itself; certain ideas (concepts and principles) sprout from the spirit throughout the development of the individual (they are innate), external impressions serving only as a stimulus; ethics deals with how the will should behave in face of the affects; judgement belongs to the will; error is a precipitated judgment; assent is a very important moral activity. And moreover: the greatest virtue is humility resulting from self knowledge; the idea of the good is innate in all men; the finite I aspires to the absolute I; the world is the material of our activity; knowledge consists in all content of consciousness meeting itself in a regular relation with the objects, that is, in the ever more perfect apprehension of the real world; it is by collaborating with culture that the individual elevates himself from temporality to eternity.

In contemporary thought

Confessional religious philosophy asserts that: faith and science cannot contradict one another; the highest end of science is truth, and faith prevents science from falling into error; it is fundamental to love God above all things and to love one’s neighbour as oneself.

Neo-scholastic philosophy, or neo-Thomism, asserts that the world exists, independently of the cognizant subject and the contents of his knowledge; the will is free (indeterminism), but character and motives influence it (determinism).

Modernist philosophy develops the conception that: it is impossible to know God, but there is a need of the soul to approach the incognizable, that makes it seek to “experiment”, “live” God; reason seeks to clarify religious experience, transform it into knowledge, giving origin to the ideas and to the concepts of the divine.

The Protestant conception of the world manifests: in liberal Protestantism, an ethics geared towards progress, with the need to ground that which is asserted; in fundamental Protestantism, the need of individual freedom to interpret the sacred texts and to seek development.

Irrationalist philosophy considers that: each people needs to develop its culture always with the aim of the social; the universe lives and evolves thanks to an originating vital impulse, God; the human being must free himself from the dominion of the needs and of the intellect, slave to utility, and, through an act of the will, live in intuition, creatively, as God. And moreover: the ideals of universal fraternity and love must be made effective, including in the daily duties, which are related to the great spiritual connections of the world.

3.3 Phenomenological philosophical knowledge

The human being can, besides developing his capacity to know, through reflection, the power of the laws of nature, symbolize them and seek protection in their logic, and besides supplying ratiocination to have the sensation of a more immediate contact with the real, develop the capacity to broaden his perception to try to encompass the different angles of apprehension of the phenomenon existence and of the phenomenon human existence. Such a capacity leads him to develop bolder hypotheses regarding reality, considering it in triple aspects, it can be, at the same time, the truth, a concealment of the truth or a way to it. Such a perspective can be observed from the most ancient records of the philosophies of peoples, but as cogitations of a few chosen ones; with the passage of time, it became a body of doctrine inside a few schools.

In ancient thought

In the Cosmological period it was asserted that: opposites find themselves, at the same time, harmoniously gathered in a superior order, in a cosmos; there is the apparent world, the one that is given to us by perception, and the true world, hidden from the senses, only accessible to thought; what is, is, movement is, therefore it is constantly becoming. And moreover: our universe was born from chaos, through a mechanical process of separation and union; there are the atoms, corpuscles that differentiate themselves only quantitatively, and that move themselves through empty space, in all directions; the qualitative differences of a compound are the result of the quantitative difference of the union of the compounds; thought distinguishes itself from the senses by its greater precision and fineness which permit it to apprehend the world, completing sense perception.

In the Anthropological period it was asserted that: man is the measure of all things; there is the subject, the object and the necessary relationship between them; every morally evil action comes from lack of evidence; virtue can be learned, and can be practiced according to the law of the State; dialectics is the habitual instrument of education of thought, through the examination of doubt.

In the systematic period it was asserted that: private property must be suppressed and the constitution must harmonize authority and freedom; it is essential to entrust government to philosophers; all knowledge consists in the joining of concepts to form judgments and in the combination of judgments to form syllogisms and demonstrations; the same thing cannot, at the same, be and not be, considered from the same point of view and from the same relations, and any one thing must be denied or asserted. And furthermore: the good is the middle point between extremes, whereby the sovereignty of the middle class; art is a catharsis; the self-education of character is important, and it consists in desiring it (sensual) and subordinating oneself to wanting (rational).

In the Eclectic period, Hellenistic and Greco-Judaic, it was asserted that: through instinctive associations and comparisons, concepts common to all comes about, and these are innate, unassailable, absolutely true; the canonicity, logic, offers the measure, canon, of what is true and of what is false; from the perceptions of the senses, which are true, there comes about the concepts and the presuppositions. And moreover: man is free; pleasure is in virtue; all knowledge is relative; rational knowledge, dialectics, perceives its own ideas (consciousness of itself ).

In medieval thought

In the Patristic period, of dogma, it was asserted that: everything was predestined; evil is not something real, but a non-being, a need; everything is presided over by a divine educating plan, with the objective of promoting the return of all spirits to God.

In the Scholastic period, of the system, it was asserted that: understanding has the capacity to judge, which an union and separation, through affirmation and negation; the general concepts, the most general and evident categories and axioms permit reason, through syllogisms to reach new knowledge; value does not exist “in absolute”, but depends on the capacity to evaluate.

In modern thought

In the Humanistic period, the Renaissance, it was asserted that the supreme end of action is self-affirmation, which can only occur in the social; there is an universal soul and the consequent mutual dependency of all happenings; there are no “chosen people”; what is necessary is that every man have love in his heart; man is free to carry out good or evil.

In the Scientific period it was asserted that the universe is neither moral nor immoral; man is virtuous when he lives according to his nature; in order to live virtuously it is necessary to have the rational knowledge of things; the supreme virtue, the supreme happiness is the intellectual love of God; only in the democratic State is it possible, to live true freedom and morality. It was also asserted that: the individual lives and feels that he is living; there are the facts and the representations; the senses supply the perceptions, which are worked on by reason; knowledge is relative and the absolute is incognizable; something becomes known when it is known how it came into being; it is the responsibility of philosophy to completely unify knowledge.

In contemporary thought

The phenomenological conception of the world holds that phenomena are the immediately given, and they permit the clarification of concepts, passing from the singular (the datum in intuition) to the contemplation of the universal essence, which can occur in any perception.

3.4 Philosophical knowledge as a whole

The roots of rational philosophical thought can be summarized as follows. Fear of the unknown, besides giving rise to a feeling of religiosity, enabled, also, the human being to perceive his capacity to know, through reflection, the force of the laws of nature, to symbolize them and to seek protection in their logic. Ancient thought sought: firstly, to explain the origin, the mechanism and the destiny of the universe; secondly, to explain the origin, the mechanism and the destiny of the human being in this universe; thirdly, to systematize the acquired knowledge in the previous periods; fourthly, to rethink this systematization. Medieval thought engaged in teaching what had been learned, at first, in an apologetic way, and, later on, in a somewhat more structured way. Modern thought sought to make the knowledge and the language used to express it more precise. Contemporary thought, once again took up the theme of applying the greatest possible rigor in the search for and communication of knowledge.

The roots of intuitive philosophical thought can be summarized as follows. Fear of the unknown, besides giving rise to a feeling of religiosity and enabling the perception of his capacity to know through reflection, also led, the human being to the intuition that reason does not achieve total knowledge. Ancient thought, running parallel to the structures of reason, encouraged intuition in that concerning the explanation of the origin, the mechanism and the destiny of the universe, and of the human being in the universe. Medieval thought was engaged with the intuitive-religious vision of the world, seeking to dogmatize and transmit this vision. Modern thought sought to police intuition, giving it new strength with a more precise language. Contemporary thought took up again the theme of the intuitive-mystical vision of the universe.

The roots of phenomenological philosophical thought can be summarized as follows. Fear of the unknown, besides giving rise to a feeling of religiosity, enabling the human being to perceive his capacity to know through reflection and leading to the intuition that reason does not achieve total knowledge, also led the human being to perceive that the phenomenon universe and the phenomenon human being in the universe are not cognizable in its origin nor in its destiny, and they are scarcely knowable in their mechanics. Ancient thought simultaneously to its development of the structures of reason and the flights of intuition, began to venture into the apprehension of the phenomenon universe and the phenomenon human being in the universe. Medieval thought engaged itself in broadening the concept of the world, with the intuitive-religious approach to the subject. Modern thought sought to launch the basis of the dialectic rational-intuitive vision of the phenomenon I-world, subject-object. Contemporary thought once again took up the theme of the phenomenal vision of the world.

Rational philosophical thought generated the theory of knowledge, Gnoseology, engaged mainly with the statics and dynamics of things and of the universe and with the structure and functioning of organisms. Intuitive philosophical thought, since rational philosophical thought did not achieve total knowledge, sought to complement it with irrationalist hypotheses that would appease to the spirits. Phenomenological philosophical thought, aware of the limitations of rational and intuitive philosophical thoughts, sought a synthetic reflection of their contributions.

4 ORDERING

Current philosophical thought presents a series of assertions to which we try to give as orderly a sequence as possible, in order to offer a relatively coherent panorama of its contributions.

4.1 The universe, nature, reality

The universe, the scenery where philosophers have traveled over time, the first preoccupation of human knowledge, has given rise to different explanations, most of them already supplanted by science, there remaining the conceptions of substance, of thought as an instrument to know the truth and of the existence of only one kind of matter, or primordial substance, made up of innumerable mobile corpuscles, imperceptible, undividable, innate and imperishable, the atoms. What is, is eternal unity, without beginning nor end; the movement is, therefore, everything is constantly becoming; the reason of the universe is the determinism, which produces the illusion of restfulness in the bosom of movement. The world, the material of our activity, exists independently of the cognizant being and the content of his knowledge. The universe lives and evolves thanks to an originating vital impulse, God. The opposites find each other, at the same time, harmonically gathered in a superior order, in a cosmos. There is the apparent world, the one that is given to us by perception, and the true world, hidden to the senses, only accessible to thought.

Nature, a whole from which nothing can be excluded, the manifestation of the universe in our planet, the set of natural phenomena supposedly determined by laws, is “what it is”, the generation of what grows, the first element from which emerges what grows, the beginning of the first movement immanent in each one of the natural beings by virtue of its own natural disposition, the primary element of which an object is made or of which it comes from, the first reality of things, the essence of the beings that have in themselves, and while they are so, the beginning of their movement. Everything is nature and nature is everything; everything is submitted to the same laws whose knowledge is based on experience.

Reality, the quality of what is real, effective existence, that which in fact exists, which is not imaginary, offers the material on which perception will work on, a sensation accompanied by the consciousness of the object itself whose existence shall be known. Knowledge comprises the possibilities and the limits of the authentic, of the genuine, of the true, of the natural, of the non-illusory, of what exists, of what is current, of what transcends experience in the apprehension of the real. The basic reality, the fundamental substance that everything is made of, feeds thought, which, in turn, will create the idea, which will permit knowledge. There is a reality independent of the cognizant being.

4.2 The thought, the idea, knowledge

The thought, that which we have in the mind when we reflect with the object to know something, to understand something, to deliberate when we intend to make a decision, is not a physical object, but the product of a mental process, that it, its content. It is not known exactly what mental processes are, if they exist and if they can be reduced to, or explained in terms of behavior, cerebral processes. Thinking is an act or operation of a subject of an intellectual nature; thought is what contains the act of thinking, and it can be an image, a concept, an abstract entity that can be communicated or expressed to itself and/or to other subjects. Thinking is what we do to remove doubt and arrive again at certainty, to reach an idea, some knowledge to which we can hold on to.

Insoluble problems, such as that of the existence of God and of the origin and destiny of the universe, must be relinquished. Thought is the instrument to know the truth. No longer shackled to traditions, accustomed to questioning beliefs, human thought started to question customs. Suppositions are operations of thought. It is the responsibility of thought and its products, the categories, to solve problems. Thought distinguishes itself from the senses by its greater precision and fineness, which permit it to apprehend the world, completing sensible perception.

The idea, a representation of something, an interior vision of this something, is the creation of thought, and it will permit knowledge. The idea distinguishes itself from the perception of concrete objects and even from the general idea of them. Ideas are the result of the activity of a cognizant being; the objects of human knowledge consist of ideas formed according to memory and imagination. Knowledge, the faculty of knowing, discernment, is achieved through reason, through intuition and through participation; reason engages with the statics and dynamics of things and of the universe and with the structure and functioning of organisms; intuition, since reason does not achieve total knowledge, seeks to complement it with irrationalist hypotheses that appease the spirits; participation, phenomenology, conscious of the limits of reason and of intuition, seeks a synthetic reflection on their contributions.

Philosophical tradition, under the form of postulated principles, has perpetuated the systems and schools. The free search for knowledge has strengthened the spirits, it guaranteed a climate for reflection. The concept that knowing the good leads the individual, necessarily, to be good, became established. Logic is the instrument to reach true knowledge, since judgments are true if they correspond to real relations, and false if not. Reason is the result of Logos, God, and it is the true source of knowledge, availing itself of the senses, and precipitated judgments are the cause of errors. Man is sure, at least, that he doubts and of the other facts of consciousness.

Knowledge is the perception of the correspondence between two ideas. The desire for knowledge is not completely satisfied in the natural sciences, and a directing point of view is necessary to distinguish the essential in the cosmic course and in human history, since totality cannot be fathomed by science. It is not possible to know if the gods exist or not, since this issue cannot be verified. The supreme degree of knowledge is the full union with the originating oneness in the ecstatic state, which constitutes, at the same time, supreme blessedness. The most immediate knowledge is that of understanding itself. Certain ideas (concepts and principles) sprout from the spirit throughout the development of the individual (they are innate), external impressions serving only as stimuli.

Knowledge consists in the contents of consciousness finding themselves in regular relation with objects, that is, in the ever more perfect apprehension of the real world. It is known that it is impossible to know God, but there is a need of the soul to approach the incognizable, which makes it “experiment”, “live” God; reason seeks to clarify the religious experience, transform it into knowledge, giving rise to the ideas and to the concepts of the divine. Man is the measure of all things; there is the subject, the object and the necessary relation between them.

All knowledge consists in the joining of concepts to form judgments and in the combination of judgments to form syllogisms and demonstrations. The same thing cannot be and not be at the same time, if considered from the same point of view and from the same relations, and any one thing must be denied or asserted. All knowledge is relative. Rational knowledge, dialectics, perceives its own ideas (consciousness of itself ). The individual lives and feels that he is living. There are the facts and the representations. The senses supply the perceptions, which are worked on by reason. Knowledge is relative and the absolute is incognizable. Something becomes known when it is known how it came into being. It is the responsibility of philosophy to completely unify knowledge.

Every perception already implies a judgment, a fruit of intelligence. The principles of intelligence are that of position (the I), which is the thesis, that of contraposition (the non-I), which is the antithesis, and that of limitation (in the I, a divisible non-I in contraposition to the divisible I), which is the synthesis; the I understands that the non-I is placed by himself, which assure us of our freedom. From judgment there comes the concept. The basic concept is that the essence of the organic is in the fact that the parts presuppose the whole, accommodate themselves to it, they are the instrument, the organ, for existence and its development. To the natural concepts, coming from experience, are added the concepts that come from deliberating reflection, whether scientific or philosophical.

The formation of concepts avails itself of syllogism, an assertion resulting from a greater premise, which is only valid under the condition that the conclusion is also valid, since there is no basic proposition immediately evident to guarantee the initial link of the chain; one can talk about probability, which manifest degrees, which are, probable representations in themselves, representations that, furthermore, are not in contradiction with others, and representations confirmed in all senses. The concept is the sign, the act of knowledge. There are the general concepts, universal. Only in experience can we find the fundament of phenomena. The sciences are real when they deal with concepts of objects, and they are rational when the concepts themselves become objects of thought. The representations of sensibility and of understanding are natural signs, and the words are artificial signs.

A concept that is not defined should not be accepted, nor a principle that cannot be deduced from these definitions should be approved. One must start from the definitions and axioms, move on to the propositions with their proofs, adding the corollaries and the scholiums. The evaluation of value must be individual, but external authority is useful to control the plebeians. Through instinctive associations and comparisons, the concepts common to all come about, which are innate, unassailable, absolutely true. The canonicity, logic, offers the measure, the canon, of what is true and of what is false. From the perceptions of the senses, which are true, there comes about the concepts and the presuppositions.

Understanding has the capacity to judge, which is a union and separation through affirmation and negation. The general concepts, the more general and evident categories and axioms are what permit reason to achieve new knowledge. Value does not exist “in absolute”, but depends on the capacity to evaluate. The phenomena are the immediately given, and make it possible to clarify the concepts, passing from the singular (a datum in intuition) to the contemplation of the universal essence, which can occur in any perception.

The scientific explanation of the world has developed interest in the derivation of efficient causes and their quantitative relations, through sensible observation, as long as preceded by suppositions, which are operations of thought, and by observation, by methodical experimentation and by reflection. Methodical doubt must be considered, even when dealing with the apparently evident. Faith and science cannot contradict each other. The highest end of science is the truth, and faith prevents science from falling into error. There is a mutual dependence of all events.

4.3 Freedom, culture, ethics

It is interior freedom that permits the achievement of personal happiness, which is a result of the peace of the soul, without harming the law and customs. The will is free (indeterminism), but character and motives influence it (determinism). Individual freedom is necessary for the interpretation of sacred texts and for the search for development. The human being must free himself from the domination of needs and of the intellect, a slave of utility, and, through an act of will, live in intuition, creatively, as God. Private property must be suppressed and the constitution must harmonize authority and freedom. It is fundamental to entrust government to philosophers.

The end of culture is happiness. The educated man feels that it is his duty to participate in the cultural work of humanity. Every culture is the living body of an idea; every civilization is the terrestrial remains of an extinct culture; history is the reality of a possible culture. It is by collaborating with culture that the individual rises from temporality to eternity. Things are ethically indifferent, but there are rational rules for human acts. Conduct must be founded on evidence and reflection, and not in customs. The sociability instinct is the fundamental instinct of man. The natural state of man is that of mutual peace and benevolence. Good is that which promotes the well being of all.

Ethics is the art of living happily, thank to reason and virtue. Moral education must teach the natural consequences of the acts. The tendencies towards humanization are directions of the aspiration towards perfecting and encompass individualization and socialization. The eternally valid values are the true, the good and the saintly. Interior peace frees man from the realm of the senses and the anguishing belief in gods. In order to free himself man must control his fantasy, be fair, be master of his pleasures, be a citizen of the world. Right evidence leads to fair action, to virtue, which, in turn, leads to happiness. Man must reduce his desires to a minimum in order to be happy.

The good is the ultimate end that channels and justifies conduct. The fundamental virtues are wisdom, strength of character, temperance, justice. Every human action proposes to carry out a good, a value, and the supreme value is happiness. There are the dianoetic virtues, intellectual, valid in themselves, which are wisdom and prudence, and the ethical virtues, directions of the will based on intention. For happiness virtue and pleasure are enough, the latter only when it is a result of the former. One should live in accordance with nature, submitting the reason of man to the reason of the world. Virtue can be learned.

Life should be based on love towards one’s fellow creatures and towards a paternal God, and not on knowledge as a supreme value. In order to recognize as true or false what is outside of it, consciousness needs a norm, and this norm is God. In order to return to God, man must paralyze all activity of human knowledge, in order to be able to plunge into divine knowledge. The ethical character of acts depends only on the intention of the subject. Evil is a non-being. The supreme end of man is perfection, which contains in itself happiness. The noblest activity of man is knowing, which conditions want.

Knowing God is the supreme happiness, but the knowledge of God possible in this world is imperfect knowledge. Good is that which does not contradict rational, individual and social nature. The norm of virtuous conduct is the divine law known through reason, and its application is the responsibility of consciousness. Moral virtue is a habit resulting from the will. The moral virtues are prudence, temperance, strength of character, and justice. The supernatural virtues are faith, hope and charity. Man depends on divine grace to carry out the virtues. It is the responsibility of the State to keep the peace, to promote material prosperity and to encourage intellectual and moral virtue. The will always directs itself towards the good, revealed by God, independently of being understood by reason.

Virtue, together with piety, is the most valuable form of reverence to the Supreme Being. Ethics deals with how the will must behave in facing the affects. Judgment belongs to the will; error is a precipitated judgment. Assent is a very important moral activity. The greatest virtue is the humility resulting from self-knowledge. The idea of the good is innate in all men. The finite I aspires to the absolute I. The love of God above all things and the love of one’s neighbor as to oneself is fundamental. An ethics geared towards progress is fundamental, with the requirement of being founded on what it asserts.

The ideals of universal love and fraternity should be made effective, including in daily duties, which are in relation to the great spiritual connections of the world. Every morally evil action comes from a lack of evidence. The good is the fair middle between extremes. Art is a catharsis. The self education of character is important, and it consists in desire (sensual) submitting itself to want (rational). Pleasure is in virtue. Everything was predestined. Evil is not something real, but a non-being, a need. Everything is presided over by a divine educating plan, with the objective of promoting the return of all spirits to God.

The supreme end of action is self-affirmation, which can only occur in the social. There is a universal soul and the consequent mutual dependence of all happenings. There are no “chosen people.” What is necessary is that every man has love in his heart. Man is free to carry out good or evil. The universe is neither moral nor immoral. Man is virtuous when he lives according to his nature. In order to live virtuously the rational knowledge of things is necessary. Supreme virtue, supreme happiness, is the intellectual love of God. Only in the democratic State is it possible to live true freedom and morality.

The contributions of current philosophical thought can be summarized as: The universe is the scenery where philosophers have traveled through time. Nature is the manifestation of the universe on our planet. Reality, that which is, offers the material on which perception will work, which permits thought. Thought generates the idea, which will permit knowledge. Knowledge occurs through reason, through intuition and through participation, and consists in the ever more perfect apprehension of the real world. Interior freedom is what permits the achievement of personal happiness. Culture is the living body of an idea. Ethics is the art of living happily. It is the responsibility of philosophy to completely unify knowledge.

5 METATHEORY

The metatheory of philosophical knowledge holds that there is:

5.1 The scenery and the character

The scenery where the philosopher transits, the universe, is represented on our planet by nature, which permits the apprehension of reality, which will generate thought, which will produce the idea, source of knowledge. This wonderful immensity, not yet totally known, if it will ever be, and which already existed before the appearance of the first human being on the face of the earth, is the total field from where each one of us takes his particular field. The most common explanation for its existence is that a oneness principle transformed itself into several organisms, which develop, and to which they return, permanently and incessantly, according to laws established by it, and that contain the key to its mystery.

The universe, a set of everything that is, is harmony, seeks harmony, works harmony. Harmony represents a system of relations that can be noticed in any part of the universe and which make it possible to reconcile opposites, specially the limited and the unlimited. The work of harmonization of the universe consists in detecting the causes of the dissonances, which are signs, warnings of saturation of permanence at a certain developmental level, of one or several components of the harmonic whole. The human being has been granted to envisage that the laws that rule the harmony of the universe exist and he should seek to know them in order to develop the set of instruments which is offered him for the greater efficiency and comfort in fulfilling his destiny.

The character that transits in this scenery, the philosopher, is the human being who seeks to know it and to know himself living in it. Such a character is a cosmic being, naturally so from the age of sixty on. His living is that of illuminated plenitude. Existing, committed to existence, he acts as a model. He recognizes that the destiny of the world depends on the acting of each one in particular and of everyone in general. He becomes aware that the enemy to be avoided is isolation, which can lead to a discouragement from acting in the world, and to the merely private intuitive-mystical solution to his existing. Keeping the spirit of communion and sublimation, the love of humanity, a true universal love, his participation in the unification of the universe becomes more vigorous, he updates the binomial “development and faith”. To serve and to love, to serve with love, now and always, becomes his motto until the end.

The philosopher seeks to systematize the descriptions of the results of intuition, of induction and of deduction, passing, necessarily, through the general data to arrive at a particular conclusion, in the search for the unity of thought, an imperious dialectic requirement of his philosophizing. He seeks to contribute to clarify the relation between individual interior fulfillment and the exterior fulfillment of his acting in the world. He intends, in an intuitive-rational perspective of the rational-deductive condition of existing, to unify the data of the philosophies. He seeks to deduce the universality of the spirit through the conjunction of formal logic with dialectic logic and the consequent penetration of the true meaning of the infinite unity of the universe.

5.2 On religions, sciences and philosophies

From the religions, it can be intuited: The existing symmetry between the individual spirit and the world of objects, a symmetry that presents itself as a pre-existing spiritual supra-reality that clarifies the universe of phenomena. The need of the idea of the existence of God and of reconnection with the origin. The idea that a oneness principle, usually denominated God, transformed itself into various organisms, remaining one, differentiating itself, in its intimateness, into diverse elements, coordinated in hierarchies and functions that reinforce this unity, preserving the same scheme in all smaller individuations.

From the sciences, it can induced: The universality of matter, by the confirmation of the “in-itself ”, through the apprehension of phenomena through accumulated experience from different and numerous perceptions. The hypothesis that the individual expresses himself, at each moment of his life, in function of the level of integration of his components of temperament, biochemical, and of character, ethical-social. The individual becomes a person in function of the transformation of his instinctive, impulsive, unconscious living, into rational, intelligent, conscious living. The human being has, in his own bio-psycho-social essence, the key to the mystery of existing; there is a general law, that of harmonization, of the whole and in the whole, from which all the others are mere explanatory corollaries of the synergy of the universe.

From the philosophies, it can deduced: The universality of the spirit, through the conjunction of formal logic with dialectic logic and consequent penetration of the true meaning of the infinite unity of the universe. Rational intuition instructing rational-deductive knowledge. The habitual hypothesis, present in philosophies, that reason, starting from materialism, if taken to the last consequences of reflection, arrives, through logic, at the conclusion that existence surpasses science, the world exists independently of being well or poorly understood, man “is,” independently of knowing that he “is being,” the phenomena surpass by far the human capacity to become aware of them; as a consequence, the irrational character of the world leads to the need for the principles of altruism, fraternity and love to be considered.

It is fundamental to systematize the descriptions of the results of deduction, indirect knowledge, but also interior knowledge as intuition, that the individual can have of the world and of himself in the world. Concerned with the human being, his existence, nature and attributes, as well as his relation with the world, philosophy, the love of knowledge, can be: rational, knowledge about the human being based on reason, which does not exhaust the object of knowledge; intuitive, knowledge about him based on intuition, trying to arrive at the object in its aspect not touched upon by reason; phenomenological, a knowledge about him based on participation, on the meeting of the two previous approaches. Whether rational, or intuitive, or phenomenological, each philosophical approach always brings with itself the germ of its opposite.

Philosophical knowledge is supported necessarily, on fundaments that are at the same time real, those directly connected to the notion of cause and effect, and ideal, those directly connected to the idea of enunciation. It seeks the fundament of reality exercising the freedom to found, which is the fundament of fundaments. It starts from the principle of freedom, inherent to the being, which does not have fundament because it is abysm, it is founding, and it is founding in freedom. It arrives at the principle of sufficient reason, a principle of fundament that has at its basis the previous one, and the fundament freely establishes the conditions that, afterwards, start to necessarily unfold.

Doctrinally, knowledge is universal, one in its essence, diverse in its appearance. It starts from intuition, direct knowledge, the origin of ratiocination, whether deductive, or inductive, or participative, phenomenological. It intends, by doing so, to contain all the truth the human being has been able to detect. It considers belief in God a way, a phase of the human being in the search for himself, and nature, in its diversity, starting from the body of the individual himself, a set of symbols that integrates him into the visible world, a super-symbol called creation, of which he must avail himself for his development.

5.3 The integration of philosophical knowledge

The integration of philosophical knowledge inspires the guidelines for the conduct of humanity. The human being is a depository, in his intimateness, of all the truth that, for some reason, he does not permit himself to reveal to himself; it is to be presumed that to become aware of that which he knows in the core of his own being threatens the individual so much that he himself establishes a control over the manifestation of that in which he really participates in his essence. It makes sense to suppose that what the human being fears so much is the mere challenge of fully living each instant, facing mutability, the transitoriness in the eternal, which would make him god. Freed from all illusion, he would possess perfect health, sainthood, and would no longer avail himself of excuses to not fully act all his potentialities.

The human being needs to believe that there is a Creator, to hope to be correctly interpreting his destination in the world and to show charity towards those who do not have the consolation of this faith and of this hope. Faith in the existence of the Creator is the result of the logical ratiocination that the universe is here, therefore something or someone created it. Hope that he is able to understand his destination in the universe makes him seek to contribute towards the elevation of humanity. Charity towards those who do not yet have this faith and this hope makes him seek the means to help those who can acquire them and to give constant assistance to those who do not arrive at such discernment.

The reason for the developmental blockage of humanity lies in hidden motives underlying individual and collective decisions, which hinder the choice of the true, the good, the beautiful and the saintly. Individuals do not overcome the obstacles to development because they do not exercise free thinking, because of the fear of a cruel and revengeful God, because of the belief in sin, in punishment, in hell. Choice, the definite act of the individual, guarantees his survival and development. It depends on the organic-psychic apparatus of the individual, which varies at each developmental phase: in childhood, the individual must be conditioned to correct choices; in adolescence, he must be monitored in these choices; only in adulthood does he manifest the necessary consciousness to freely exercise it.

Inasmuch as the principle of freedom is inherent to the being, it is enough that he rely on an appropriate environment and with the correct, true information, to develop to the maximum of his potentiality, seeking to be happy. It is necessary to eradicate the belief in a God that would have created creatures to later on punish and condemn them to hell for the imperfections He himself created. It is also necessary to eradicate the belief that this same God would have sent his only son to save his creatures and permitted them to martyr and crucify him. Furthermore, the religions need to examine their penchant for power over the spirituality of individuals and the material goods that they have been accumulating over time, goods that, by themselves, would be enough to solve the misery of the whole world.

Inasmuch as the individual expresses himself, at each moment of his life, in function of the level of integration of his components of temperament (biochemical) and of character (ethical-social), it is necessary to keep in mind the contributions of science to the knowledge of the human being. The individual becomes a person in function of the transformation of his instinctive, impulsive, unconscious living, into rational, intelligent, conscious living. The personality, an expression of the level of integration of his components of temperament and of character, is affected by the living field of the individual, by his perception, by his emotion, by his intelligence, by his consciousness, by his morality, by his sexuality and by his religiosity, all in constant interaction.

Each element that constitutes the personality has a specific function. The living field, the basic component of the harmonic whole, is the representation the individual makes for himself of the total field, the universe. Perception is the taking hold of reality, entering into relation with it in order to know it. Emotion is the affective state, the inclination towards certain actions. Intelligence is the capacity to solve problems. Consciousness is the being-for-itself of interiority. Morality is the interpretation of the “must be.” Sexuality is entering into a concrete-material communion with the universal whole. Religiosity is entering into an abstract-spiritual communion with the universal whole. Each one of these elements encompasses levels, according to the configuration of each chronological age.

The following are levels of the living field: The dynamic field, of causation of the effects originating in the causer or in other sources and received by him as caused. The field of determination, which encompasses the form and the usable and transformable things of the environment. The field of intention, which encompasses participation, adaptation, desire. The field of imagination, which encompasses what is formed of non-spatial images of objects and possible states. The field of elevation, as the field of potential values, which encompasses the set of enhancements, perfections, improvements that the person can achieve.

The following are levels of perception: Perception in space, of the living field of the moment in which the phenomenon occurs, is the first datum of the individual. Perception in time, of the differentiation between the living field of the moment and that of the previous moment, is the second datum of the individual. Perception in duration, of the relation between the living field of the current moment and of the previous moment, is the third datum of the individual. Perception in the unity of structure of opposites, the notion that the contradictions are apparent, is the fourth datum of the individual. Perception in the unity of mechanism, the notion that, in him and outside him, everything occurs according to a pre-established plan, is the fifth datum of the individual. Perception in the unity of movement, the notion that, in him and outside him, everything that occurs depends on option and action, and, at the human level, on responsibility for the action, is the sixth datum of the individual.

The following are levels of emotion: The emotion shock, sudden perturbation of the humoral and neural-vegetative equilibrium of the individual. The emotion fear, resulting from the incapacity of perception of the structure of the living field, which causes emotional dependency. The emotion anger, exaltation of the affective state of fear in the sense of aggressiveness, which can reach furor. The emotion love, the civilized way the individual responds to his affective dependency on the environment, the apex of a regular sequence of feelings, from the dissatisfaction of the individual with himself, moving through envy, through jealousy, through hatred and through the revalorization of the object, which permits one to yield to the feeling of love.

The following are levels of intelligence: The intelligence that balances external actions, sensory and motor, a capacity of the living being to respond to internal and external stimuli in a concrete way. The intelligence that balances internal actions, symbolic representative of concrete reality, a capacity of the living being to respond to internal and external stimuli in a thought out way. The intelligence that balances internal operations, symbolic-representative of concrete reality, a capacity of the living being to respond to internal and external stimuli in a logical way. The intelligence that balances internal operations, symbolic-representative of reality, concrete or imaginary, subordinated to hypothetical-deductive thought, the possibility of the living being to respond to internal and external stimuli in a rational-abstract way.

The following are levels of consciousness: Spontaneous consciousness, pre-object, the living before the reflective dissociation between subject and object, which encompasses the areas of transition, all the way from the so called unconsciousness per se, archetypical source, to pre-consciousness and consciousness of the immediate, the syncretic vision of the “here and now”, the living of the primary-totalizing “I-world”, when the individual does not perceive his individuality, he is not able to see himself separated from the other individuals and things, he lives the finality but he has no knowledge of it. Reflective consciousness, the awareness of what goes on in spontaneous consciousness, whereby the experience of separation “I-subject” and “world-object”, initially at the concrete level and, later on, also at the abstract level, the individual becoming “spectator-actor” of the universal plot. The consciousness of the absolute, the awareness that individuality is a parcel of totality, that he, individual, is part of the whole, which he serves.

The following are levels of morality: Infantile morality, primitive, of spontaneous consciousness, in which the individual, in his primary totalizing living “I-world”, finds himself vulnerable to rewards and punishments of a concrete, material, objective nature, and, later on, also reflective, but only at the concrete level. Adolescent morality, that at the beginning of reflective-abstract consciousness, when the individual, rehearsing subjectivity, the living of “I-subject and world-object”, rebels against infantile dependency, but does not have the appropriate argumentation to break the chain of dependency. Adult morality, that of abstract reflective consciousness at its bloom, achieving full freedom as a result of living in consciousness of the absolute.

The following are levels of sexuality: Partial sexuality, infantile and adolescent, an artificial figure, one that has as a background only part of the whole living experience, at the beginning only that of the dynamic living field of stimuli of a reflexive nature and, afterwards, also those of the living fields of determination, of intention and of imagination, is occasionally satisfied, between one misunderstanding and another, which can go all the way from the burlesque to the most abysmal destructiveness. Total sexuality, adult, a natural figure, one that has as a background the whole living experience, which encompass the living fields: dynamic, of determination, of intention and of imagination crowned by that of elevation, is satisfied in a consented and programmed way, in a life context where sex is used to obtain the greatest pleasure possible, which can include procreation.

The following are levels of religiosity: Partial religiosity, infantile and adolescent, also as partial sexuality, an artificial figure, one that has as a background only part of the whole living experience, at the beginning only that of the dynamic living field of stimuli of a reflexive nature and, afterwards, also those of the living fields of determination, of intention and of imagination, is satisfied, as in partial sex, occasionally, between one misunderstanding and another, which can go all the way from fanaticism to the most sophisticated insanity. Total religiosity, adult, also as total sexuality, a natural figure, one that has as a background the whole living experience, which encompass the living fields: dynamic, of determination, of intention and of imagination crowned by that of elevation, is satisfied, as in total sexuality, in a consented and programmed way, in a life context where mysticism is used to obtain the greatest spiritual well-being possible, which can lead to ecstasy.

The developmental scheme of the human being presents cumulative stages, which can be summarized as:

From birth to nine months, the being of anguish, his acting occurs in the dynamic living field of automatic stimuli and responses, ruled by the primacy of instinct; his perception occurs in space, in the “here and now”; his emotion is shock; his intelligence is, only, that of the directing dynamic potency of the universe, which guides the vital processes; his consciousness is spontaneous pre-object; morality is inexistent; his sexuality is orgiastic, unbridled; his religiosity is that of mystical-homeostatic living.

From the age of nine months to a year and a half, the being of fear, his acting occurs in the living field of imagination at the level of naive belief; his perception occurs in time and duration; his emotion is anticipation-fear; his intelligence acts only at the level of balancing external sensory-motor actions; his consciousness is spontaneous naive object; his morality is perverted in the sense of passive submission; his sexuality is sensual masochistic; his religiosity is mythical of fear.

From the age of a year and a half to three, the being of anger, his acting occurs in the living field of imagination at the level of naive doubt; his perception occurs in time and duration; his emotion is anticipation-anger; his intelligence acts at the level of balancing internal actions symbolic-representative of concrete reality; his consciousness is spontaneous naive object; his morality is perverted in the sense of active-aggressive submission; his sexuality is sadomasochistic; his religiosity is mythical of anger.

From the age of three to six, the being of pretense, his acting occurs in the living field of imagination at he level of naive shrewdness; his perception occurs in time and in duration; his emotion is anticipation-false love; his intelligence acts at the level of balancing internal acts symbolic-representative of concrete reality; his consciousness is spontaneous object distorted by permissiveness; his morality is perverted in the sense of pseudo-submission; his sexuality is permissive sadomasochistic; his religiosity is mythical of pretense.

From the age of six to twelve, the practical being, his acting occurs in the living field of elevation at the concrete level; his perception occurs in time and duration; his emotion is anticipation-true love, naive; his intelligence acts at the level of balancing internal actions symbolic representative of concrete reality; his consciousness is reflective on the concrete; his morality is practical-utilitarian; his sexuality is occasional; his religiosity is mythical latent.

From the age of twelve to fifteen, the quarrelling being, the pre-adolescent, his acting occurs in the living field of elevation at the abstract level of pugnacity, instructed by perception on the unity of structure of the contraries analytic, that is, only in some situations, taken by the emotion anticipation-anger, reflected, with his intelligence at the level of balancing internal operations on the abstract at the service of reflected doubt, his consciousness is reflective on the abstract at the level of doubt, his morality at the level of pugnacity on the abstract level, his sexuality is sadomasochist reflected and his religiosity mythical belligerent.

From the age of fifteen to eighteen, the pacifying being, the adolescent per se, his acting occurs in the living field of elevation at the abstract level of search for self consensus, instructed by perception on the unity of structure of the contraries synthetic, that is, in all situations, broadened by perception on the unity of mechanism analytic, taken by the emotion anticipation-fear, reflected, with his intelligence at the level of balancing internal operations on the abstract at the service of pacification, his consciousness and morality are reflective at the abstract level of search for his own consensus, his sexuality is masochist reflected and his religiosity mythical masochistic.

From the age of eighteen to thirty, the communitary being, the young adult, his acting occurs in the living field of elevation at the abstract level of cooperation with the community, instructed by perception on the unity of mechanism synthetic broadened by perception on the unity of movement analytic, taken by the emotion anticipation-true love extended to the community, with his intelligence at the level of balancing internal operations on the abstract at the service of cooperation at the communitary level, his consciousness is reflective on the abstract, at the level of cooperation in the communitary level, his morality is at the level of a search for consolidation of independence and of his devotions of love to family and to the community, his sexuality and his religiosity are socialized.

From the age of thirty to sixty, the humanistic being, the mature adult, his acting occurs in the living field of elevation at the abstract level of cooperation with humanity, instructed by perception on the unity of movement synthetic, taken by the emotion anticipation-true love extended to humanity, with his intelligence at the level of balancing internal operations on the abstract at the level of cooperation at the humanistic level, his consciousness is of the absolute, his morality is at the level of organization in the sense of cooperation with humanity beyond conventions, his sexuality and his religiosity are humanistic.

From the age of sixty and over, the cosmic being, the elderly adult, his acting occurs in the living field of elevation at the abstract level of integration with the cosmic totality and instructed by perception on the unity of movement synthetic of the absolute, taken by the emotion anticipation-true love, cosmic, with his intelligence at the level of balancing internal operations on the abstract at the service of totality, his consciousness is of the absolute, his morality is of full freedom, his sexuality and his religiosity are socialized at the cosmic level, as the prototype, the paradigm, of future generations.

Education, in order to be truly carried out, must be informative and formative. The information must be correct and true and the formation must be worked on based on the developmental phases of each individual. There are individuals with a normal psyche, those who accept the reality that they are alone, and individuals who have a fragile psyche, those who do not accept this reality. Both the individuals with a normal psyche and the individuals with a fragile psyche, when uninformed about the reality of life, have inappropriate attitudes in the situations brought about by life, and they need to be clarified about seeking to correct their conduct in order to adapt themselves to the commerce of life. Those individuals who do not submit themselves to the educational process, either because of their ill nature or because of any other organic deficiency, must be conditioned by the authorities, so as not to disturb the environments they frequent.

In order to carry out the educational process a satisfactory political regime is necessary, one that adopts a communitary, humanistic and cosmic philosophy, which will recommend the means for the permanent search for mystical living, well-being of the body, for mystical experience, psychic well-being, and for mystical ecstasy, well being of the spirit. To this end, it is necessary that all nations engage themselves with the physical, mental and spiritual health of all its members, that is, that the United Nations be broadened to encompass the whole planet. By doing so, all capable individuals will pass from ignorance, irrationality, to wisdom, rationality, and they will monitor those less capable so that they can have their positive potential channeled towards their own well-being and the well being of humanity, for it must not be forgotten that all that is, is so because of the will of the Creator, there being, thus, a reason for them to be in the world.

Everything suggests that the government must be entrusted to philosophers, those who permanently seek to know the universe and the human beings who live in it. The philosopher, seeking to systematize the descriptions of the results of intuition, of induction and of deduction, establishes the basis of solid thinking and guarantees the guidelines that human beings should observe in the search for the goal of their existing, which is the greatest possible happiness for all. Such guidelines can be summarized as follows.

The universe, the scenery where humanity travels, this immensity without beginning or end, well or poorly known, is here, therefore something or someone created it. The human being needs to believe in God although it is impossible to know if He exists. There is a need of the soul to approach the incognizable, which makes it “experience”, “live” God, which can be only an illusion. The human being is sure, at least, that he exists, that he doubts and of the other facts of consciousness. The sciences make explicit the means for the survival of the individual, for planned and responsible procreation and for the unlimited progress of humanity. The meeting of the individual with himself and with the world permits the transmission of culture; the obscure, distorted meeting is the way for the open, clarified meeting; each individual that interprets the meaning of life more clearly will necessarily contribute to his vision being share by the others.

Ethics, the art of living happily thanks to reason and virtue, should be guided towards progress, although it is prudent to submit to law and custom, as long as it does not hinder the search for interior freedom and for personal happiness, which is a result of the peace of the soul. Conduct must be founded on evidence and reflection, and not only on custom. Inasmuch as it is logic that leads to knowledge of the truth, since reason is the true source of knowledge, the cause of error are precipitated judgments; rational knowledge perceives even its own ideas, permitting the individual to become aware of himself; the history of humanity can be summarized in the education of reason. In pure reason, the I understands that the non-I is placed there by himself, which assures us of our freedom. The eternally valid values are the true, the beautiful, the good and the saintly.

Inasmuch as the totality cannot be fathomed by science, a system of values open to progress becomes necessary, since the aim of the world includes the constant elevation of its own end. Inasmuch as value does not exist “in absolute”, but depends on the capacity to evaluate, to clarify the concepts, which avail themselves of phenomena, of the immediately given, which feeds intention and permits the contemplation of the universal essence, it is necessary to make the greatest effort towards the development of individuals until maturity, which is communitary, humanistic and cosmic, and which will enable them to make the proper exercise of evaluation. Faith and science cannot contradict one another. Private property must be suppressed. Authority and freedom should be in harmony. It is essential to entrust government to philosophers. The guidelines human beings must follow in the search for the goal of their existing, which is the greatest possible happiness for all, can be summarized as follows: to love God, that is, to revere the mystery, above all things and to love one’s neighbor as oneself!

6 PERORATION

Our peroration, the conclusion, intends to be an effective act of faith in that we have collimated our objective of elaborating the metatheory of philosophical knowledge. We have abandoned all lucubrations of philosophers regarding insoluble problems such as that of the origin and destiny of the universe and of the human beings who live in it, focusing only on observable phenomena, which are those that science has already researched as they presented themselves to us. For the same reason we have abandoned all speculation of philosophers on the idea of the existence of a God who would have created creatures to later on punish and condemn them to a utopian hell for the imperfections that He himself had created, and that he would have sent his only son to save the creatures and allowed them to martyr and crucify him.

Under the assumption that our readers are not familiar with the history of philosophy, we present a synopsis that clarifies the tendencies of philosophical thought as well as the movement observed in it. From the rational tendency, we have recorded the attempts to explain the origin, mechanism and destiny of the universe and of the human being in the universe, as well as the transmission of such explanations. From the intuitive tendency we have recorded the attempts to broaden such explanations availing of intuition. From the phenomenological tendency we have recorded the attempts to broaden such explanations availing of a synthesis of the contributions of reason and intuition, therefore, of participation.

Our exegesis has concluded that philosophical thought, as history has recorded it, does not offer any consistent theory, nor any deductive system to which certain observable consequences would follow from a set of observable facts. No consequent conclusion can be observed from established principles that would add anything to the initial knowledge. The basic principles which preexist any theory and which are that of identity, of contradiction, of causality and of finality, are not made explicit in any philosophical exposition. Not even a fundament, a principle that could encompass all particular principles, can be noted, whether real, material, of the idea of cause, origin, whether logical, formal, of the idea of reason. The lack of a taxonomy can be noted, some kind of appropriate ordering and classification of the terms used by different thinkers, a metalanguage.

Our ordering of philosophical knowledge offers the concepts of: universe, a scenery where philosophers have traveled; nature, a manifestation of the universe on our planet; reality, a source of the material on which perception works, which permits thought; thought, a generator of ideas, which permits knowledge; knowledge, which results from reason, intuition and participation, consists in the ever more perfect apprehension of the real world; interior freedom, which permits the conquest of happiness; culture, the living body of an idea; ethics, the art of living happily. Such an ordering necessarily includes the concept that it is the responsibility of philosophy to completely unify knowledge.

The metatheory of philosophical knowledge elaborated by us makes explicit that the universe is the scenery where travels the philosopher, the character that seeks philosophical knowledge, the integration of all knowledge acquired by the human being. It expounds: with the religions, the symmetry between the individual spirit and the world of objects, the need of the idea of the existence of God and the reconnection with the origin and the idea of a oneness principle, the universe; with the sciences the universality of matter, the integration between temperament and character and the transformation of the individual into a person; with the philosophies, the universality of the spirit, the certainty that existence surpasses science and the irrational character of the world.

Systematizing the results of such assertions, we have concluded that virtue can be learned, as long as the government is entrusted to philosophers and that the educational process eradicates the absurd notions of a revengeful and cruel God and avails itself of the knowledge about the development of the human being, in order to be able to monitor him according to the integration of his personality at each stage of his living, including respecting the delays or prematureness that might occur in function of individual differences. The guidelines the human beings should follow in the search for the goal of his existing, which is the greatest possible happiness for all, can be summarized as follows: to love God, that is, to revere the mystery, above all things and to love one’s neighbor as oneself!

Table of Contents

1. PREFACE

2. PRESENTATION

3. 1 PROLEGOMENA

4. 2 HISTORY

1. 2.1 Rational philosophy

2. 2.2 Intuitive philosophy

3. 2.3 Phenomenological philosophy

5. 3 EXEGESIS

1. 3.1 Rational philosophical knowledge

2. 3.2 Intuitive philosophical knowledge

3. 3.3 Phenomenological philosophical knowledge

4. 3.4 Philosophical knowledge as a whole

6. 4 ORDERING

1. 4.1 The universe, nature, reality

2. 4.2 The thought, the idea, knowledge

3. 4.3 Freedom, culture, ethics

7. 5 METATHEORY

1. 5.1 The scenery and the character

2. 5.2 On religions, sciences and philosophies

3. 5.3 The integration of philosophical knowledge

8. 6 PERORATION