Understanding Human Knowledge, Existence, and Faith
Understanding Human Knowledge and Perception
The understanding of moisture problems. Hume’s theory of knowledge aims to highlight the limits of human knowledge and reason. Hume referred to all content in the human mind as originating from experience and perceptions. The human mind’s perceptions are divided into two classes: Impressions and Ideas.
- Impressions are vivid and immediate sensory perceptions, encompassing both external and internal experiences (e.g., seeing the color green or feeling a sharp toothache).
- Ideas are reproductions of previous perceptions. Being mediate, they are weaker (e.g., remembering the green slate of the classroom when no longer present or the toothache from the previous day).
Ideas always derive from impressions and are images or representations of them. Both impressions and ideas can be simple or compound. Compound perceptions result from combinations made by the mind with simple ones, thereby increasing knowledge. Simple perceptions (impressions or ideas) cannot be distinguished or separated, while complex ones can be (e.g., a complex impression of a block can be separated into smell, color, etc.).
Ortega’s “Vital Reason” and the Nature of Human Existence
Ortega defended “vital reason.” To understand life, we must act within a particular circumstance; we must invent life. Pure reason, in the rationalist sense, must become vital. It is impossible to speak of man in the abstract, as a concept, since “man has no nature… but history.” Man has to make a living; he is made: life is a daily work with others in the world, a continuous action.
To prevent barbarism, Europe demands that man truly be at the height of his time, knowing his history and valuing the great efforts of those who fought in the past to achieve what he possesses and enjoys. (The concept of “the times” signifies the historical level reached at a given moment.)
St. Augustine: The Problem of God and Human Nature
The Problem of God
God is the primary object of St. Augustine’s philosophy. The main argument for God’s existence, according to St. Augustine, is the presence in man of universal, necessary, and immutable truths. The first of these is the human aspiration for truth and happiness, followed by the first principles of reason, the axioms of mathematics, ideas like “justice,” and so on. These eternal truths are unchanging and necessary.
God appears as the necessary being demanded by the very universality and necessity of eternal truths. St. Augustine placed “exemplary ideas” in the divine intelligence, which appear in time according to God’s designs and creative action. God introduced into matter what St. Augustine called “germinal reasons.” Matter carries within itself the seeds or roots from which things originate. All beings bear the mark of God, as they respond to His ideas and originate from the seeds imprinted by Him in matter. This exemplarism leads St. Augustine to say that divine beings bear within themselves the imprint of God.
The Problem of Man
St. Augustine held a dualistic conception of man, where body and soul are inseparable but functionally distinct substances. The soul is a self-sufficient substance. Augustine stated that man is Eternity, Truth, and Love, and his image consists of three faculties or powers:
- Memory, which makes the past present.
- Intelligence, which seeks truth.
- Will, which tends towards happiness.
He addressed the world’s ills suffered by man, especially the origins of hatred, selfishness, slander, suspicion, and even crime against one another. Human nature is receptive and open to receiving God’s action, manifested as an inner drive and desire for its own regeneration.