The definition of an epistemic standpoint goes back to Aristotle’s explanation in Analytica posteriora I, 27 of the role played by prósthesis in the passage from the »unity, which is a substance without position, to the point, which is a unity with a position: this passage is the result of a determination [ek prosthéseôs]« (87a34-36). The position of a determination (prósthesis can also be rendered with addition) or the lack thereof generates the haplôs (simpliciter) and ek prosthéseôs (secundum quid) distinction of Analytica priora I, 38 (49a12-49b33), whereby the secundum quid, i.e., the trópos epistêmês of Metaphysica I min., 3 (995a14-15) is the result of a determination by the knowing subject, in as far as he configures a domain of objects. In De anima III, 7 Aristotle states that a cognition in act is identical with its object (431a1) and in Ethica Nichomachea I, 7 makes the examples of the carpenter and the geometer looking at the same angle, the former being content with an approximation that satisfies the objectives of his work, while the latter, who is a student of truth, looks at its essence at essential attributes (1098a 29-42). Obviously, to bring attention to the epistemic standpoint implies a re-consideration of Aristotle’s notion of truth laid out in Metaphysica IV, 7 as mere affirming of what is and denying what is not (1001b27-28). Such a re-consideration was brought about in the Renaissance by Cusanus, Agricola, Melanchthon, and Ramus, who can all be said to have anticipated modern coherentism in as far as they made it clear that the human being opens up the world by means of an historical consciousness, which provides the actual basis for all scientific-conceptual operations, first and foremost for the setting up of modes of cognition and their connections. With the Renaissance, then, truth stops being constitutive, a part of metaphysics. It becomes regulative, instead, and thus operative and practical.
The Epistemic Standpoint from Kant to Hegel
POZZO, Riccardo
2007-01-01
Abstract
The definition of an epistemic standpoint goes back to Aristotle’s explanation in Analytica posteriora I, 27 of the role played by prósthesis in the passage from the »unity, which is a substance without position, to the point, which is a unity with a position: this passage is the result of a determination [ek prosthéseôs]« (87a34-36). The position of a determination (prósthesis can also be rendered with addition) or the lack thereof generates the haplôs (simpliciter) and ek prosthéseôs (secundum quid) distinction of Analytica priora I, 38 (49a12-49b33), whereby the secundum quid, i.e., the trópos epistêmês of Metaphysica I min., 3 (995a14-15) is the result of a determination by the knowing subject, in as far as he configures a domain of objects. In De anima III, 7 Aristotle states that a cognition in act is identical with its object (431a1) and in Ethica Nichomachea I, 7 makes the examples of the carpenter and the geometer looking at the same angle, the former being content with an approximation that satisfies the objectives of his work, while the latter, who is a student of truth, looks at its essence at essential attributes (1098a 29-42). Obviously, to bring attention to the epistemic standpoint implies a re-consideration of Aristotle’s notion of truth laid out in Metaphysica IV, 7 as mere affirming of what is and denying what is not (1001b27-28). Such a re-consideration was brought about in the Renaissance by Cusanus, Agricola, Melanchthon, and Ramus, who can all be said to have anticipated modern coherentism in as far as they made it clear that the human being opens up the world by means of an historical consciousness, which provides the actual basis for all scientific-conceptual operations, first and foremost for the setting up of modes of cognition and their connections. With the Renaissance, then, truth stops being constitutive, a part of metaphysics. It becomes regulative, instead, and thus operative and practical.
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