KNOWLEDGE – COGNITION IN GENERAL

Thomistic Philosophy Page

The nature of cognition

For Aquinas, following Aristotle, cognition is an activity which knowing subject perform,
not something that happens to them. Thus, contrary to the kinds of actions where one
thing acts on another, (e.g. fire heating water) cognition is an action that an animal
performs but which remains in the animal. It is, therefore, called an immanent action. As
when water becomes hot from a fire, there is a change in us when we know, and it is a sort
of union, as the fire and water approach the same temperature. As an immanent activity,
though, we do not become merely like something else, as water becomes hot like the fire.
Rather, in cognition we become the thing, in such a way that we do not cease being what
we are. This way of becoming another is called the intentional order. In knowledge we
become the intentionally the object known, and thus acquire a new perfection for
ourselves, the same perfection of the things we know. And since, for Aquinas “form” is the
principle of perfection, knowledge consists in acquiring or receiving the forms of the things
we know and thereby becoming one with them.
The perfection belonging to one thing is found in another. This is the perfection of
a knower insofar as he knows; for something is known by a knower by reason of
the fact that the thing known is, in some fashion, in the possession of the knower.
Hence it is said in The Soul that the soul is “in some manner, all things,” since its
nature is such that it can know all things. In this way, it is possible for the
perfection of the entire universe to exist in one thing. (De Veritate 2, 2.)
The union involved in knowledge
Knowledge presupposes some kind of union, because in order to become the thing that is
known we must possess it, we must be identical with the object we know. But this
possession of the object is not a physical possession of it. It is a possession of the form of
the object, of that principle which makes the object to be what it is. This is what Aristotle
means when he says that the soul in a way becomes all things. Entitatively the knower and
object known remain what they are. But intentionally (cognitively) the knower becomes the
object of his knowledge as he possesses the form of the object, That is why Aquinas says
with reference to intellectual knowledge:
Intelligent beings are distinguished from non-intelligent beings in that the latter
possess only their own form; whereas the intelligent being is naturally adapted to
have also the form of some other thing; for the idea of the thing known is in the
knower. (ST I, 14, 1.)
In the union of physical objects, the objects that are united retain their identity. When the
union presupposes a substantial change, as in the process of nutrition, the food loses its
identity to become the living organism.
In cognition, the actual knowledge is identical with its object. The knower, without losing
its physical being, is identical with the object known because it possesses in a unique way
the form of the object known. Both subject and object retain their identity, but the subject

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acquires an additional perfection: the form of the object known. The knower and the
object known may be physically distinct while they are cognitively identical.
The foundation of knowledge: immateriality
The knowing being is not limited to its own being, but it is capable of being other than
itself, while the non-knowing being is limited to its own being. The knower has, in addition
to his own form, the form of the thing known. What makes knowing beings capable of
having the forms of other beings?
Non-intelligent beings possess their own form; whereas the intelligent being is
naturally adapted to have also the form of some other thing; for the idea of the
thing know is in the knower. Hence it is manifest that the nature of the non-
intelligent beings is more contracted and limited; whereas the nature of intelligent
beings has a greater amplitude and extension; the soul is in a sense all things. Now
the contraction of the form comes from matter... Forms, according as they are
more immaterial, approach more nearly to a kind of infinity. Therefore it is clear
that the immateriality of a thing is the reason why it is cognitive; and the mode of
knowledge is according to the mode of immateriality. (ST I, 14, 1.)
Aquinas explains the sentence, “the contraction of the form comes from the matter,” in
this way:
Form is made finite by matter, inasmuch as form, considered in itself, is common
to many; but when received in matter, the form is determined to this one particular
thing... Form is not made perfect by matter, but is rather contracted by matter. (ST
I, 7, 1.)
In other words, when a form informs physical matter, that form is restricted exclusively to
that matter: material things known must exist in the knower, not materially, but
immaterially.
The reason for this is that the act of knowledge extends to things outside the
knower: for we know even things that are external to us. Now by matter, the form
of a thing is determined to some one thing. Wherefore it is clear that knowledge is
in inverse ratio of materiality. And consequently things ‘such as plants’ that are not
receptive of forms save materially, have no power of knowledge whatever... But the
more immaterially a thing receives the form of the thing known, the more perfect is
its knowledge. (ST I, 84, 2. Cf. In De Anima II, lect. 24, n. 551, ff; De Ver., 2, 2.)
Anything that receives in a purely material way, as a passive potency, is limited to one form
at a time; matter is the principle of individuation.
In the physical order (the existential order), the forms are restricted. Only one form can
exist in “this” or “that” physical individual matter. In the intentional order, the cognitive
power receives the forms abstracted from the physical individual matter, and therefore free
from the element (matter) that reduces them to “this” or “that” individual.
The immateriality that is the foundation of knowledge should not be confused with that
immateriality which corresponds to spiritual substances (e.g., the angels of Thomas’
philosophy or the “incorporeal substances” of Aristotle’s philosophy). Such substances are
entirely without matter. The immateriality that is the root of knowledge implies only a

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certain independence from matter that permits the forms to become the objects of the
cognitive power.
The impressed and expressed species in the process of cognition
Cognition is an act by which the knower actually becomes the object known. It is
impossible to know an object unless we have in a cognitive way the form of the object we
know. For this reason the ancients believed that, since we are capable of knowing all
things, our soul is in some way composed of “all things”:
Some philosophers –and this, as we have seen, was the view of Empedocles–
thought that intellect was a composition of all the principles of things, and this
explained its universal knowledge. (In De Anima III, lect. 7, n. 677.)
Since the soul is not “all things”, we have to acquire a likeness of the real form, or
knowledge would be impossible. This likeness of the real form is called the “species.”
(Remember, however, that the species is not just a “little picture” of the object. As a word
(“tree”) may represent an object (a tree) and as a calling card may represent a businessman,
so the species may represent an object without looking like that object.)
There are two kinds of species, called the “impressed species,” and the “expressed
species.” The general reason for the need of “impressed species” is this: a finite being is
first potentially that which it comes to be actually. The knower becomes the object
potentially by means of the impressed species that specifies and determines the cognitive
faculty to be the object of which the species is the similitude.
The created intellect cannot understand any substance unless it becomes actual by
means of some species, which is the likeness of the thing understood, informing
it.... (Summa Contra Gentiles III, c. 51. nr. 3.)
Our passive intellect has the same relation to intelligible objects as primary matter
has to natural things; for it is in potentiality to intelligible objects, just as primary
matter is to natural things. Hence our passive intellect can be exercised concerning
intelligible objects only so far as it perfected by the intelligible species of
something.” (ST I, 14, 2, ad.3. cf. R. Lambert, “A Textual Study of Aquinas’
Comparison of the Intellect to Prime Matter,” New Scholasticism 55 (1982) 80-99.)
Thus the impressed species actuates the cognitive potency and so renders it fully capable of
eliciting its act. In doing so, it also specifies that particular act so that the act includes one
object and no other.
The mere reception of an impressed species is not yet cognition. For this reception is
purely passive, while cognition is an active immanent action. The impressed species is not
that which (quod) is known, but that by means of which (quo) the object is known. (See De
Pot. 8, 1, co.)
It is clear that the species by which the intellect is actualized are not in themselves
the intellect’s object, for they are not that which, but that by which it understands.
(In De Anima, III, lect. 4, n.78.)
The species is not that which is understood... In the act of understanding, the
species function as the thing by which one understands, and not as that which is
understood, even as the species of color in the eye is not that which is seen, but
that by which we see. And that which is understood is the very intelligible essence

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 of things existing outside the soul, just as things outside the soul are seen by
corporeal light. (SCG II, c. 75, nr. 7. cf. ST I, 85, 2.)
The intellect forms a new species called the expressed species, the natural word.
The intelligible species is the likeness of the thing understood, which likeness
informs the intellect for the purpose of understanding. For the intellect cannot
understand except insofar as it is actuated by this likeness, just as nothing else can
act as being in potentiality but only as actuated by a form. Accordingly, this likeness
is as the principle in the act of understanding, and not as the term of understanding.
Consequently that which is the first and direct object in the act of understanding is
something that the intellect conceives within itself about the thing understood,
whether it be a definition or proposition according to the two operations of the
intellect mentioned in De anima III. Now this concept of the intellect is called the
interior word and is signified by means of speech: for the spoken word does not
signify merely the thing understood, but the concept of the intellect through which
it signifies the thing. (De Pot, 9, 5, co.)
An external thing understood by us does not exist in our intellect according to its
own nature; rather, it is necessary that its species be in our intellect, and through
this species the intellect comes to be in act. Once in act through this species as
through its own form, the intellect knows the thing itself... Understanding remains
in the one understanding, but it is related to the thing understood because the
above-mentioned species, which is a principle of intellectual operation as a form, is
the likeness of the thing understood.
The intellect, having been informed by the species of the thing, by an act of
understanding forms within itself a certain intention of the thing understood, that is
to say, its notion, which the definition signifies... This is a necessary point, because
the intellect understands a present and an absent thing indifferently. In this the
imagination agrees with the intellect. But the intellect has this characteristic in
addition, namely, that it understands a thing as separated from material conditions,
without which a thing does not exist in reality. But this could not take place unless
the intellect formed the above-mentioned intention for itself.
Now, since this understood intention is, as it were, a terminus of intelligible
operation, it is distinct from the intelligible species that actualizes the intellect and
that we must consider the principle of intellectual operation, though both are a
likeness of the thing understood. For, by the fact that the intelligible species, which
is the form of the intellect and the principle of understanding, is the likeness of the
external thing, it follows that the intellect forms an intention like that thing, since
such as a thing is, such are its works. And because the understood intention is like
some thing, it follows that the intellect, by forming such an intention, knows that
thing. (SCG I, c.53, nr.2-4. Cf. SCG I, c.59, nr.2; SCG IV, c.11, nr.5.
Another reason for the necessity of the expressed species lies in the distinction
between the being and its operation. See ST I, q. 56, B.A.C. edition, Introduction,
p. 252, and ST I, 27, 1, and SCG IV, c.11.)

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EXTERNAL SENSE COGNITION
What one means by an external sense is obvious: one of the five means by which we are
directly aware of the world around us. They are sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. For
Aquinas, the senses put in direct contact with external reality by making us aware of
concrete individual qualities of material objects. The nature of the sense object defines and
specifies each of the sense powers. For example, color defines sight, sound hearing, etc.
Thus, sight just is that power by which we are aware of the colors of material things. (On
the external sense, see also ARISTOTLE, De anima II, 5; III, 2. AQUINAS, ST I, 78, 3; In De
Anima II, lect. 14; In De Sensu at Sensato.)
Objects of the external senses
By the general object of a sense is meant that which in any way can be apprehended by a
sense. It is called a sensible. The object of an external sense is called an external sensible.
(See De Anima II, 5 (418a 5-25); In De Anima II, lect. 13.)
SENSIBLES:
1. Per se (essential)
a. Proper sensible: It directly refers to one sense. Color, e.g., is the proper
sensible of sight.
b. Common sensible: It is an essential sensible which can be sensed by more than
one sense. Size, e.g., can be sensed by sight and touch. Common sensibles are
not sensed immediately, but by means of a proper sensible. e.g., Peter’s size, by
means of his color. Motion, rst, number, size, and shape are common
sensibles. In modern philosophy they are called “primary qualities”. What we
have called “proper sensibles”, modern philosophy (Galileo, Descartes, etc.)
calls “secondary qualities”.
2. Per accidens (accidental). The accidental (per accidens) sensible is not directly an object
of the sense, but the object of another cognitive potency. But that potency is
helped by that which the external sense grasps. We say, for example, that the sugar
is sweet. Sugar is the object of the intellect, which is apprehended with the help of
the external senses (which apprehend its sweetness and white color). The sugar is
accidentally (per accidens) the object of the senses: per se (essentially), it is the object
of the intellect.
The objects of the senses are accidents of beings, like color, sound, and so forth. These
objects have to be immaterial because they are received without matter (i.e., without prime
matter), though with some of the conditions of matter: “A sense can receive species
without matter, although still under the conditions of matter; the intellect receives its
species entirely purified of such conditions.”(De Ver. 2, 2.) “For as things exist in sensation,
they are free indeed from matter, but are not without their individuating material condition,
nor apart from a bodily organ. For sensation is of objects in the particular, but intellection
of objects universally”. (In De Aanima, n. 284.)
Veracity of the external senses
The senses deceive us, but not when they are concerned with their proper sensibles (e.g.,
sight and red color). They can deceive us regarding the common sensibles (like the size of a

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star) and the accidental sensibles (as when oleo is mistaken for the high priced spread).
Consider the following statements of Aristotle and Aquinas:
Now I call that the proper object of each sense which does not fall within the ambit
of another sense, and about which there can be no mistake, as sight is of color, and
hearing of sound, and taste of savor, while touch has several different objects. Each
particular sense can discern these proper objects without deception; thus sight errs,
not as to colors, nor hearing as to sound; though it might err about what is colored
or where it is, or about what is giving forth a sound. This, then, is what is meant by
the proper objects of particular senses. (ARISTOTLE, De Anima, II, 5 (418a 12-20).)
But the senses can be deceived both about objects incidentally sensible and about
objects common to several sense. Thus sight would prove fallible were one to
attempt to judge by sight what a colored thing was or where it was; and hearing
likewise if one tried to determine by hearing alone what was causing a sound.
(AQUINAS, In De Anima, II, lect. 13, n. 385.)
And if someone raises the objection that error sometimes arises even with regard to
proper sensible, his answer is that this is attributable not to the senses, but to the
imagination; for when the imagination is subject to some sort of abnormality, it
sometimes happens that the object apprehended by a sense enters the imagination
in a different way than it was apprehended by the sense. This is evident, for
example, in the case of madness, in anyone whose organ of imagination has been
injured. (AQUINAS, In Meta, n. 693.)
Sensation and the composite
Sensation belongs neither to the soul, nor to the body, but to the composite. Therefore the
sensitive power is in the composite as its subject. Some operations of the soul are
performed by means of corporeal organs; as sight by the eyes, and hearing by the ears.
Sense powers depend upon the body for their existence and operation.
Perception and sensation
Sensation signifies solely an act of one of the senses, without that which is added to
sensation by memory, intellect, and other senses. Perception includes everything that is
added to a sensation. For example, if I hear a noise, I may interpret it as the sound of two
cats. Two cats indicates my perception; the noise, my sensation.

INTERNAL SENSES
Our internal experience shows immediately that sense cognition is not limited to the mere
sensation of colors, sounds, odors, etc. For instance, I am aware that I possess an internal
image of the Golden Gate Bridge, even if I am not there, and I remember things that
happened yesterday.
The animal should apprehend a thing not only at the actual time of sensation, but
also when it is absent. Otherwise, since animal motion and action follow
apprehension, an animal would not be moved to seek something absent… (ST I,
78, 4.)

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To explain experiences of this kind, we must refer to the internal senses. The internal
senses include:

The Common Sense

Nature of the common sense
By means of the central sense, a knowing subject perceives the actual sensations of the
external senses, distinguishes between them, and combines them.
The proper sense judges of the proper sensible by discerning it from other things which
come under the same sense: for instance, by discerning white from black or green. But
neither sight nor taste can discern white from sweet: because what discerns between two
things must know both. Wherefore the discerning judgment must be assigned to the
common sense; to which, as to a common term, all apprehensions of the senses must be
referred; and by which again, all the intentions of the senses are perceived; as when
someone sees that he sees. For this cannot be done by the proper sense, which only knows
the form of the sensible by which it is immuted, in which immutation the action of sight is
completed, and from which immutation follows another in the common sense which
perceives the act of vision. (ST I, 78, 4, ad.2)
The proper object of the common sense is not the common sensibles. For common
sensibles can be known by the external senses through their proper sensibles: e.g., shape
can be seen through color. The proper object of the common sense is the sensations of the
external senses.
Functions of the common sense
The common sense has the following functions:(Regarding these functions, see
ARISTOTLE, De anima, III, 2 (426b8-427a15); De Somno 2 (455a5). Cf. THOMAS, In De Anima
III, lect. 3, nr. 599 ff.)
1. To know all the sensations of the external senses which are known separately by
the external senses.
2. To compare and distinguish these qualities, e.g., color and taste.
3. To be aware of the operations of the external senses.
4. To distinguish the real objects from the images of the fantasy, e.g., to know
whether we are dreaming, and to realize that our dreams are not reality.

The imagination or phantasy

Nature of the imagination
The imagination is, as it were, a storehouse of forms received through the senses. (ST I, 78,
4.) The existence of this power is obvious through introspection. The imagination is really
distinct from the external senses, because an external sense cannot retain the impression of
the sense object when this object is no longer acting upon the organ. And it is also distinct
from the common sense because the common sense operates only when the external
senses are sensing an object. The imagination, on the other hand, produces images of
objects even when these objects are absent.

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The imagination receives the impressed species from the common sense. It retains these
species when actuated by them. The imagination produces as the term of its action an
expressed species, called a phantasm. When we use our imagination, we always have an
image of the object in which we know the real object.
Functions of the imagination
The imagination has the following functions:
1. To preserve the impressed species that it receives from the common sense--not
only the impressed species related to sight, but any impressed species (e.g., that of a
melody).
2. To combine images or phantasms to form unreal images (artistic ability).
3. To know quantity. (Thus the imagination plays an important role in mathematics.)

The estimative sense

Nature of the estimative sense
This power is called “instinct”. By means of this power, the animals are capable of
perceiving the beneficial and harmful character of concrete objects. The perception of such
beneficial or harmful character is followed by a movement of the sense appetite to attain
the beneficial object or to avoid the harmful one. The purpose of this cognitive power is
the good of the animal.
The existence of the estimative power is evident from observation. Animals, for example,
know what kind of food is good or harmful for them, and the lamb spontaneously avoids
the wolf. Although experience helps this power, the apprehension of what is harmful and
beneficial need not be based upon previous sensations of the harmful or beneficial
character of a particular object. For this reason, we may say that the estimative power
perceives “insensate intentions”, i.e., objects of knowledge not yet sensed by any other
external or internal sense.
The operation of the estimative power is similar to what is called “knowledge through
affinity”, which inclines the human being through immediate intuition to avoid what is evil
and to tend towards the good. For example, we instantaneously withdraw our hand from a
hot oven. The estimative power depends upon the disposition of the body in its judgment.
This is obvious, for example, in the case of the mating season of animals.
The estimative power in human beings is called the cogitative power:
Animals perceive these intentions only by some natural instinct, while man
perceives thee by means of coalition of ideas. Therefore, the power that in other
animals is called the natural estimative power, in man is called the cogitative power,
which by some sort of collation discovers these intentions. Wherefore it is also
called the particular reason for it compares individual intentions, just as the
intellectual reason compares universal intentions. (ST I, 78, 4, co.)
Functions of the cogitative power
The cogitative power has the following functions:
1. To know the sensible per accidens in individuals, e.g., to know that the red color
belongs to that man.

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 2. To consider individual things as sharing a common nature:
The cogitative faculty apprehends the individual thing as existing in a
common nature. It is able to do this because it is united to intellect in one
and the same subject. Hence it is aware of a man as this man, and of a tree
as this tree; whereas instinct is not aware of an individual thing as in a
common nature, but only insofar as this individual thing is the term or
principle of some action or passion. Thus a sheep knows this particular
lamb, not as this lamb, but simply as something to be suckled; and it knows
this grass just insofar as this grass is its food. Hence, other individual things
that have no relation to its own actions or passions it does not apprehend at
all by natural instinct. For the purpose of natural instinct in animals is to
direct them in their actions and passions, so as to seek and avoid things
according to the requirements of their nature. (In De Anima, n.398.)
3. To prepare the phantasm for the intellect.
4. To deduce individual conclusions from universal and particular premises:
a. To steal is evil.
b. This is to steal.
c. Therefore, this is evil.
5. The cogitative power is thus a sort of bridge between the intellect and the senses.
The memorative sense
Nature of the memorative sense
The memorative power retains the perception of the estimative power, that is, it retains the
perceptions that cannot be retained by the imagination. Hence, the memorative power is to
the estimative sense as the imagination is to the external senses and to the central sense.
Functions of the memorative sense
The memorative sense has the following functions:
1. To retain the perceptions of the estimative sense, namely, to remember what is
harmful and beneficial for the animal.
2. To recognize the experiences of the past as concretely past.
3. In man, to help the recollection of memories by way of a sort of syllogism, or by
way of a spontaneous recollection, like association. This is called reminiscence in
man:
As to the memorative power, man has not only memory,... but also
reminiscence by syllogistically, as it were, seeking for a recollection of the
pest by the application of individual intentions. (ST I, 78, 4; cf. ARISTOTLE,
De Anima, III, 2; De Memoria et Reminiscentia)

IDENTITY OF THE KNOWER AND THE KNOWN

Those who are new to Thomistic psychology and epistemology are often confused by the
claim that in the act of knowing, the knower becomes one with the known. Indeed, it is an
often misunderstood part of Thomistic epistemology. If this theory is true, then it nicely
sidesteps a lot of the epistemological problems that lead to skepticism, solipsism or

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relativism. The identity of knower and known, then, is to be distinguished from the view
that what we know are ideas or sense impressions that are caused by extra-mental realities.
The Thomistic view is stronger than the view that our ideas are impressions that are similar
to, or the same in kind with, the object of which it is the idea. This other theory (ala John
Locke) is often called “indirect realism” because it claims that we do not have direct access
to extra-mental reality, but only indirect access, through impressions and ideas. Thus, on
the Lockean view, there is a chain of causality: things affect us and our senses producing
sense impressions and ideas, and these produce knowledge.
Solipsism and Relativism
There is, then, the obvious problem of knowing that our impressions are true
representations of reality. There is no way to check them that does not itself rely on
sensation and so is open to the same possibility of error. And since, on this view, one
cannot tell if one’s senses are delivering accurate information, one has reason to doubt that
there is any referent for what one senses. One can reasonably (?) say that there is no
extramental object (solipsism), or that there may or may not be an object, and we may or
may not observe it accurately (relativism). The Thomistic theory cuts off bad consequences
like these before they begin by denying that what we directly (and properly) perceive or
know are sense impressions or our own ideas. Instead, what we perceive is the thing, and
the sensible species (in the sense organ) is that by which the identity that is perception
comes about. It works in an analogous manner for the intellect: what we know is the
universal existing in the thing; the idea is that by which we know the universal.
Assimilation and Identification
The summary so far given merely says what the Aristotelian-Thomistic theory is not. It is
harder to explain what this (non-Lockean) identity really amounts to and why one ought to
believe that Aquinas and Aristotle are right in their theory. The main point in favor of this
theory of knowledge is the recognition that both sense knowledge and intellectual
knowledge are activities that we engage in. In opposition to the Lockean view, where sense
impressions are things that we suffer and undergo, Thomas and Aristotle claim that this is
not the essence of sensation, although both admit that there is a passive element in the
organs when they are passively affected by the sense object. Thomas and Aristotle believe
that sensation is an activity that remains in the one who senses, and is not an activity that
passes from an object to the organ. Thus, Aquinas calls it an immanent activity (as opposed
to a transitive activity- like the heating of water). Aristotle says that it is a kind of being
acted upon or motion, but one that should receive its own name. Like transitive actions,
e.g. the heating of water, something receives a new form as the water receives the form
heat from the fire. However, in such cases, the form of heat in the water is not the same as
the form of heat in the fire, but only the same in kind, being in different parts of matter.
Moreover, in the case of the heating of water, the water loses the form that it had before,
namely the form of coolness. In the case of sensation, these features do not obtain: the
reception is not of a similar form, but of the SAME form; and the reception does not
involve the destruction of the pre-existing form, but does involve the fulfillment and
completion of the knowing power; and thus, the reception is not into matter, but a kind of
immaterial reception. Thus, the knower becomes one with the known, because it IS in a
new way, i.e. with the very same form of the thing known, and this happens in an
immaterial way that fulfills the knower. What I’ve said about sensation works the same

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with the intellect, but the identity is such that it occurs even without an organ, and thus the
intellect is immaterial in an even stronger sense than the sense powers.
The Aristotelian-Thomistic account, then, neatly sidesteps indirect realism/phenomenalism
that has plagued philosophy since Descartes. It claims that we directly know reality because
we are formally one with it. Our cognitive powers are enformed by the very same forms as
their objects, yet these forms are not what we know, but the means by which we know
extramental objects. We know things by receiving the forms of them in an immaterial way,
and this reception is the fulfillment, not the destruction, of the knowing powers.
The Fit with Materialism
The theory is not without its problems and it is not entirely clear that it accords with other
things we know about the world, because as a corollary to the theory, Aristotle and
Thomas seems to be making the claim that what really happens in perception is nothing
that can be empirically verified in the way other material interactions can be verified.
Precisely because perception is an immaterial, immanent action, it is of a different kind
than transitive actions, which is what their theory would claim scientific observation can
detect. Thomists tend to believe that such a consequence is not fatal to the viability of this
identity theory since they would also claim that the very life of living things cannot be
totally explained, as modern science tries to do, by appealing only to microscopic parts in
interaction (bio-chemistry). And yet it seems a matter of intuitive experience that an
organism is more than the parts working together (for an organism that has just died has all
the same parts). Thus, although modern chemistry and biology no doubt make true and
illuminating observations about some of the mechanisms by which living things live and
have perception, that sort of explanation does not totally capture the whole of what it
means to live and perceive. Thus, the appeal to souls and immaterial reception of form is
an irreducible and ineliminable source of explanation.

KNOWLEDGE AND LOVE

As human persons, we have two proper abilities that separate us from the other animals.
These are cognition, especially through the intellect, and appetition, especially through the
power of the will. It is through these abilities that we relate to being.
The proper act of the will is love. In his work Christian Ethics, Dietrich von Hildebrand
defines act as “a conscious meaningful relationship to an object.” We cannot rationally
perform any act without simultaneously willing its natural end, and the natural end of every
act is the good. All persons possess in their nature a dynamism towards the good. This
potentiality is actualized in a life of virtue.
We cannot love anything that is not good. In his De Caritate, Aquinas wrote that “a thing
is lovable according as it is good”. Good is the fulfillment of a thing according to its nature.
Therefore, a thing is good to the extent that it is. Good and being are convertible, and the
will reaches being as good. All individual beings are also good and thus capable of being
desired--that is, they can be objects of love.
It must be understood that evil does not possess real being, for it is only a privation in
something that exists; the subject of evil is good in itself but lacks some fullness of being
and perfection. Evil, then, has only the being that corresponds to the truth of predication.
It is impossible to love evil, and no one consciously chooses what he thinks to be evil for
himself. As Pascal wrote in his Pensees “All men seek happiness (i.e.--the good). The will

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never takes the least step except to that end. This is the motive of every act of every man,
including those who go and hang themselves”. To choose evil is to choose non-being,
which is totally unintelligible and goes against one’s very nature.
In order to love, we must have knowledge of what is really good. In The Truth of All
Things, Josef Pieper writes: “The good is essentially dependent upon and interiorly
penetrated by knowledge”. Knowledge stems from the relationship of the intellect to the
thing known. The natural tendency of the intellect is to come to the knowledge of truth.
Not surprisingly, Aquinas tells us that “being is the first thing to fall into the intellect”. It
follows, as stated in the Summa Theologiae, that “all things are knowable insofar as they
have being”. Knowledge reaches being actually and properly, and according to the natural
tendency of the intellect, being must therefore be true.
Being is true and being is good. “True” and “good” are called transcendental attributes of
being. These attributes belong to being precisely because it is being, and they are
convertible with being itself. If both truth and good are being, it follows that truth and
good name the same reality. Each names this one reality under different aspects.
Wisdom, or the grasp of the ultimate principles of being, can be “divided” by a logical
distinction into sophia and phronesis. Sophia is the speculative understanding exercised by the
intellect. Phronesis is the practical wisdom that orders one’s life to its proper end. Sophia
and phronesis are really united, and ultimately truth and good come together in wisdom.
A person’s relationship with being is based on truth, good, and wisdom. The relationship
of the intellect to being, i.e. knowledge, seeks truth. The relationship of the will to being,
i.e. love, seeks the good. As we have seen, truth and good are convertible with being and
come together in wisdom. Therefore, love and knowledge must have a fundemental unity.
Knowledge without love cannot act and love without knowledge cannot know what is
really good, just as sophia and phronesis can only function properly when joined. It follows
that the intellect and the will cannot be separate faculties. This corresponds to the
transcendental attribute “one”, which denotes inner integrity or wholeness. This unity is
dynamic and manifests itself in a wise, ordered life.
Ultimately, knowledge and love, sophia and phronesis, share the same Source and the same
Destiny. Knowledge in its quest for truth will at last reach God as ultimate Truth. Love in
its pursuit of good will finally arrive at God as infinite Good. God is the pure actualization
of truth and good-- that is, Being Himself. In The Meeting of Knowledge and Love, Rev.
Martin D’Arcy describes God as “perfect being seen in all its superessential splendour.”
From this conclusion, we can see that there must be a God; otherwise, there would be no
ultimate end and life would be utterly meaningless.
Love and knowledge are thus inextricably bound together in man’s very nature and if we
live according to our nature, they will lead us straight to our Source and Ultimate End. This
union is achieved through a life lived in the cultivation of virtue on our part, and by God’s
perfect love for us that constantly pulls us toward Him. If we do not follow this natural
path of love and knowledge, we will only find emptiness and despair since our nature will
never be fulfilled. As the poet Francis Thompson wrote in “The Hound of Heaven”
“Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.”

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