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Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 2 (of 2) cover

Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 2 (of 2)

Chapter 70: CHAPTER XIV.
By Jaime Luciano Balmes
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Philosophy & Ethics

About This Book

The author critiques sensism and Condillac's claim that all mental activity reduces to transformed sensation, arguing for distinct intellectual acts and the existence of pure ideas and intellectual intuition. He distinguishes geometrical and non-geometrical ideas, examines the role of sensible intuition versus discursive cognition, and compares Aristotelian and Kantian accounts of the intellect. Subsequent sections develop the idea of being—its simplicity, negation, identity, distinction between essence and existence—and explore the origins of unity and number, the necessity in ideas, and the relation between language and general concepts, defending the reality and explanatory power of universal reason.

CHAPTER XIV.

FUNDAMENTAL EXPLANATION OF THE OBJECTIVE POSSIBILITY AND OF THE NECESSITY OF THE IDEA OF TIME.

103. Things in themselves, abstracted from our intuition, are susceptible of change. Where there is change, there is succession, and where there is succession, there is a certain order in the things which succeed,—an order which is really in the things themselves, although it does not subsist by itself, separated from them.

Kant might object to this, that perhaps the changes are not in things, but in the phenomena, or the manner in which they are presented to our intuition. But he cannot deny, that whether these changes are in the reality, or not, they are, at least, possible, independently of the phenomena. Therefore, he asserts, without reason, that time in the things is nothing, and that it is only the form of our internal sense. If he admits the possibility of real changes, he must also admit the possibility of a real time; if he denies that it is possible for the things in themselves to be really changed, we would ask him how he came to know this impossibility,—he, who limits all our knowledge to the purely phenomenal order. We cannot know that a thing is impossible in an order, if we know nothing of this order; if Kant maintains that we know nothing of things in themselves, he cannot prove that we know the impossibility of their really changing.

104. It is then demonstrated that time, or a real order in things, is, at least, possible. Therefore, we cannot say that time is a purely subjective condition, to which nothing can correspond in the reality.