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  The Nature of Knowledge n The Problem of Knowledge A good way to gain an adequate understanding of Rosmini’s work is to make clear the meaning of the terms object and objectivity. It is not merely a matter of words, since other words could be used, provided that the meaning remains unaltered. If what Rosmini calls object received another name in other thinkers, the only task would be to indicate the equivalence between the corresponding expressions. But if there is no or almost no equivalent in other philosophers, the clarification of this term takes on a high philosophical significance and not merely a philological or semantic one. It is in fact the key to enter Rosmini’s admirable thought. His whole philosophical system starts from the reflection upon the nature of objectivity, and it would not be too bold to say that the omission of a similar explanation indicates that the problem of knowledge has been overlooked.1  1. The term object (Greek antikeímenon, Latin obiectum) is actually given its original meaning by Rosmini: namely, that of something staying in front of a faculty of the subject. The difference is that according to Rosmini, only the intelligence has an object , whereas sensations cannot take place without some sort of physical contact, which necessarily suppresses the distance and distinction required by objectivity (see Teosofia, 15, 1587–88). In any case, although an object requires a subject, there is nothing in Rosmini like the suppression of the differences between both or the elevation of both terms to a higher unity, which would contain the identity of subject and object. This identity would be given only in the act of sensation, in which, as Aristotle and the Scholastics said, sensus in actu est sensibile in actu. For that reason, the senses do not have an object, but something we, together with Rosmini, may call a “term” (termine) (cf. Psychology, II, 1551–54). The subject could not objectify an object if the object were n The first question in philosophy concerns the nature of the cognitive act. Philosophy is a kind of knowledge;2 even if we understand it as the knowledge of reality, it answers to logical laws valid for ideas, not to those applicable to reality as such. Let us assume that the result of our research is that it is not possible to escape the dominion of human thought, and that there is no sufficient reason to speak with certainty about something external to the mind; philosophy could not go beyond either the subjective categories of knowledge or its historical course; the attempt to speak about reality would be devoid of sense and condemned to failure. What sense could there be in philosophy as a search for truth or knowledge? Philosophy would have no other reference than its products: that is, philosophical investigation and philosophical systems. At best we could speak about a transcendental objectivity , which would turn out to be a kind of transcendental illusion. The analysis of the act of knowledge must therefore precede all other analysis if we want to avoid perpetual skepticism. All other sciences , philosophical or not, are waiting, so to speak, for these results. It is not possible to evade the question and proceed with the analysis or description of the different kinds of knowledge. What makes an act of knowledge what it is? This inquiry comes first and underlies every epistemological discussion. In a letter to Benedetto Monti, included in the critical edition of  ⁄ Epistemological Foundations not present to it as something categorically different. Objectivity is a specific attribute of the intelligence and for that reason its act is called knowledge, whereas sensation, left to itself, does not possess objectivity. For the history of the term object, see Theo Kobusch, “Objekt,” in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie (Basel and Stuttgart: Schwabe, 1984), 6:1026–52. Kobusch, however, does not mention Rosmini. The esse obiectivum of the Second Scholasticism, which helped to shape the discussion on objectivity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, bears some resemblance to Rosmini’s own conception. 2. Speaking about the starting point of philosophy, Rosmini writes: “[T]he primal philosophical element of philosophy is . . . the ideological element. Because philosophy is certainly knowledge, it must begin from ideas; we are deluded if we think it can begin from any other point” (Preliminare alle opere ideologiche, no. 31 of the Nuovo saggio, translated as appendix 35 to An Historical Critique, no. 31. See also ibid., no. 29). [18.217.228...

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