Descartes' dictum, cogito ergo sum, could be said to inaugurate the modern era in which the reali s identified as the thinkable. It would take many years for Hegel to put it bluntly: the rational is the real; the real is the rational. Post-modern deconstructionists have been right at least in their good zeal to tear away at the fortress of this mindset. People like Heidegger, Marcel, Derrida and Marion have sought the fissures in our experience that reveal an other-than-being and other-than-rational, all the while maintaining that these liminal experiences are nevertheless very real indeed.
The so-called identity of being and knowing did not begin with Descartes, but I believe it took on a narrow meaning after him. Parmenides, the pre-Socratic thinker, curiously declares that "the same for thinking and for being." As a grad student I wrestled with Heidegger's indictment of the identity of being and knowing. I sought to reclaim something good from the tradition, to demonstrate that metaphysics is not always a dead-end. Rahner's philosophical anthropology, and the Thomistic ontology on which it is based, seemed an apt example of transcendence within metaphysics.
My thesis focused on a critical dialogue between the post-Kehre Heidegger and the early Karl Rahner. On the one hand, you have Rahner, a transcendantal neo-thomist seeking to ground his philosophy of religion in an updated version of neo-platonic "emanatio et reditio."
This philosophy of religion wants to open the way to a possible revelation from an unknown God. To do so, Rahner relies on the age-old identity of being and knowing. In other words, as beings who can know, human beings can hear/know the revelations of God because everything that is, is knowable. Nothing that exists is unknowable, because the fields of being and knowing are coextensive.
Being and knowing relate to each other as aspects of the emanation and return of being. Every being is self-present, and thus is given over for appearance and knowledge. Every being goes out and returns to itself, thus making itself knowable, and at the same time, a real being.
On the other hand, Heidegger critiques the metaphysical tradition based on its false understanding of the identity of being and knowing. Metaphysics, for Heidegger, has usually misplaced its attention by focussing either on the being or on the knowing, grounding one in the other. Heidegger wants to retrieve the originary sense of this identity qua relation.
No longer interested merely in one or the other dyads of this relationship, Heidegger tries to think the relationship itself. Identity is characterized by "the same," as in the fragment from Parmenides: "the same is thinking and being."
In my imagination, Heidegger would criticize Rahner for being so metaphysical and onto-theo-logical. Rahner's philosophy grounds knowledge in being in such a way that Being is reduced to entities. Heidegger wants to go backward and conceive of identity in terms of itself, such that being and knowing are together constituted as themselves through belonging. Being and knowing are what they "are" because they are the same and yet different.
I defended Rahner against the deadly charges of onto-theo-logy, since he seemed to leave room for transcendence. I still think this is true. I think every philosopher of metaphysics, when s/he is most true to experience, leaves a door or a fissure in even the most logical of systems. Deconstructionists want to discover these fissures and go through them. In a way, we should follow their lead.
It seems to me now that perhaps the whole notion of identity of being and knowing needs to be rethought. What does one mean by thinking? If one means the positive string of logical propositions, each following upon the other with deductive certainty, then I disagree. There is more to thought than what can be described in purely logical terms. The field of meta-logic deals with this question, whether there is truth that some form of logic cannot express. I wonder. Perhaps we need a new understanding of what logic is all about.
The same goes for being; what do we mean by being? If we mean the positive appearance of stable entities against a similarly stable and positive field of illumination, then perhaps we again leave too much out. There is more to reality than what can be seen and defined, but that doesn't make things any less real. I'm interested of late in Michel Henry's phenomenology of the hidden, of what is interior, of what is never oriented to give an appearance of itself. Intentionality itself, however useful for gaining access to being beyond sedimented concepts, perhaps leaves out those areas of reality that are never given to be objects of intention.
Are being and knowing coextensive? Can we know everything? Can everything that exists be in some way known? Good questions.
The so-called identity of being and knowing did not begin with Descartes, but I believe it took on a narrow meaning after him. Parmenides, the pre-Socratic thinker, curiously declares that "the same for thinking and for being." As a grad student I wrestled with Heidegger's indictment of the identity of being and knowing. I sought to reclaim something good from the tradition, to demonstrate that metaphysics is not always a dead-end. Rahner's philosophical anthropology, and the Thomistic ontology on which it is based, seemed an apt example of transcendence within metaphysics.
My thesis focused on a critical dialogue between the post-Kehre Heidegger and the early Karl Rahner. On the one hand, you have Rahner, a transcendantal neo-thomist seeking to ground his philosophy of religion in an updated version of neo-platonic "emanatio et reditio."
This philosophy of religion wants to open the way to a possible revelation from an unknown God. To do so, Rahner relies on the age-old identity of being and knowing. In other words, as beings who can know, human beings can hear/know the revelations of God because everything that is, is knowable. Nothing that exists is unknowable, because the fields of being and knowing are coextensive.
Being and knowing relate to each other as aspects of the emanation and return of being. Every being is self-present, and thus is given over for appearance and knowledge. Every being goes out and returns to itself, thus making itself knowable, and at the same time, a real being.
On the other hand, Heidegger critiques the metaphysical tradition based on its false understanding of the identity of being and knowing. Metaphysics, for Heidegger, has usually misplaced its attention by focussing either on the being or on the knowing, grounding one in the other. Heidegger wants to retrieve the originary sense of this identity qua relation.
No longer interested merely in one or the other dyads of this relationship, Heidegger tries to think the relationship itself. Identity is characterized by "the same," as in the fragment from Parmenides: "the same is thinking and being."
In my imagination, Heidegger would criticize Rahner for being so metaphysical and onto-theo-logical. Rahner's philosophy grounds knowledge in being in such a way that Being is reduced to entities. Heidegger wants to go backward and conceive of identity in terms of itself, such that being and knowing are together constituted as themselves through belonging. Being and knowing are what they "are" because they are the same and yet different.
I defended Rahner against the deadly charges of onto-theo-logy, since he seemed to leave room for transcendence. I still think this is true. I think every philosopher of metaphysics, when s/he is most true to experience, leaves a door or a fissure in even the most logical of systems. Deconstructionists want to discover these fissures and go through them. In a way, we should follow their lead.
It seems to me now that perhaps the whole notion of identity of being and knowing needs to be rethought. What does one mean by thinking? If one means the positive string of logical propositions, each following upon the other with deductive certainty, then I disagree. There is more to thought than what can be described in purely logical terms. The field of meta-logic deals with this question, whether there is truth that some form of logic cannot express. I wonder. Perhaps we need a new understanding of what logic is all about.
The same goes for being; what do we mean by being? If we mean the positive appearance of stable entities against a similarly stable and positive field of illumination, then perhaps we again leave too much out. There is more to reality than what can be seen and defined, but that doesn't make things any less real. I'm interested of late in Michel Henry's phenomenology of the hidden, of what is interior, of what is never oriented to give an appearance of itself. Intentionality itself, however useful for gaining access to being beyond sedimented concepts, perhaps leaves out those areas of reality that are never given to be objects of intention.
Are being and knowing coextensive? Can we know everything? Can everything that exists be in some way known? Good questions.
