Read on Twitter
1/12) St. Thomas & Kant
《Essence and The Real》
Got this request for a QRD on these two concepts from @Nix64261997 but I realised that it& #39;d take more than a single tweet and would be useful if it was not hidden in a pre-existing thread.
《Essence and The Real》
Got this request for a QRD on these two concepts from @Nix64261997 but I realised that it& #39;d take more than a single tweet and would be useful if it was not hidden in a pre-existing thread.
2/12) Essence: The essence of a thing is just that through which something is a certain kind of being/thing. It is also that through which a thing is intelligible or capable of being grasped intellectually.
3/12) To grasp humanity is to grasp the essence of human beings–that which makes them human–and thus to understand what a human being is.
4/12) To grasp triangularity is to grasp the essence of triangles–that which makes them triangles–and thus to understand what a triangle is and so on and forth.
5/12) This, essence, is distinct from existence–except in the case of God–which is to say that we can identify something in the real and a priori, and it& #39;s essence, independent of whether it actually exists.
6/12) The real: This isn& #39;t in the thing-in-itself–the noumena that exists independent of the a priori forms of our perception–space being one of these primary forms.
7/12) Rather it actually exists in the phenomena–the sense impressions–that we do perceive which exist in mind.
8/12) In this sense, space and time are in our mind a priori as organising categories. They probably don& #39;t exist in the noumenal realm.
Will we ever know if they do exist?
Probably never–that& #39;s the nature of the-thing-in-itself.
Will we ever know if they do exist?
Probably never–that& #39;s the nature of the-thing-in-itself.
9/12) The real isn& #39;t out there where we can& #39;t have direct unmediated contact with this from which the phenomena exists upon, but in your mind existing as phenomena by which experience itself is structured, allowed, sustained.
10/12) Both science and metaphysics–albeit Kant and St. Thomas would correctly point to the fact that metaphysics is a science as such–are made possible through these structures of experience, not through the noumena which we cannot know.
11/12) The noumena isn& #39;t the essence of the thing–that is something we can enquire into from the real, or anterior to it through the synthetic a priori if appropriate, and find through reason.
