“religious philosophy”—these expressions are practically identical; they have almost the same meaning. One is as mysterious as the other, and they irritate modern thought to the same degree by the inner contradiction they contain. Would it not be more proper to pose the dilemma as: Athens or Jerusalem, religion or philosophy? Were we to appeal to the judgment of history, the answer would be clear. History would tell us that the greatest representatives of the human spirit have, for almost two thousand years, rejected all the attempts which have been made to oppose Athens to Jerusalem, that they have always passionately maintained the conjunction “and” between Athens and Jerusalem and stubbornly refused “or” Jerusalem and Athens, religion and rational philosophy, have ever lived peacefully side by side. And this peace was, for men, the guarantee of their dearest longings, whether realized or unrealized.
But can one rely on the judgment of history? Is not history the “wicked judge” of popular Russian legend, to whom the contending parties in pagan countries found themselves obliged to turn? By what does history guide itself in its judgments? The historians would like to believe that they do not judge at all, that they are content simply to relate “what happened,” that they draw from the past and set before us certain “facts” that have been forgotten or lost in the past. It is not the historians who pronounce “judgment”; this rises of itself or is already included in the facts. In this respect the historians do not at all distinguish themselves, and do not wish to be distinguished, from the representatives of the other positive sciences: the fact is, for them, the final and supreme court of judgment; it is impossible to appeal from it to anyone or anything else.
Many philosophers, especially among the moderns, are hypnotized by facts quite as much as are the scientists. To listen to them, one would think that the fact by itself already constitutes truth. But what is a fact? How is a fact to be distinguished from a fiction or a product of the imagination? The philosophers, it is true, admit the possibility of hallucinations, mirages, dreams, etc.; and yet it is rarely recognized that, if we are obliged to disengage the facts from the mass of direct or indirect deliverances of the consciousness, this means that the fact by itself does not constitute the final court of judgment. It means that we place ourselves before every fact with certain ready-made norms, with a certain “theory” that is the precondition of the possibility of seeking and finding truth. What are those norms? What is this theory? Whence do they come to us, and why do we blithely accord them such confidence? Or perhaps other questions should be put: Do we really seek facts? Is it facts that we really need? Are not facts simply a pretext, a screen even, behind which quite other demands of the spirit are concealed?
I have said above that the majority of philosophers bow down before the fact, before “experience.” Certain among the philosophers, however—and not the least of them—have seen clearly that the facts are at best only raw material which by itself furnishes neither knowledge nor truth and which it is necessary to mould and even to transform. Plato distinguished “opinion” (doxa) from “knowledge” (epistêmê). For Aristotle knowledge was knowledge of the universal. Descartes proceeded from veritates aeternae (eternal truths). Spinoza valued only his tertium genus cognitionis1 (third kind of knowledge). Leibniz distinguished vérités de fait from vérités de raison2 and was not even afraid to declare openly that the eternal truths had entered into the mind of God without asking His permission. In Kant we read this confession, stated with extraordinary frankness: “Experience, which is content to tell us about what it is that it is but does not tell us that what is is necessarily, does not give us knowledge; not only does it not satisfy but rather it irritates our reason, which avidly aspires to universal and necessary judgments.” It is hard to exaggerate the importance of such a confession, coming especially from the author of The Critique of Pure Reason. Experience and fact irritate us because they do not give us knowledge. It is not knowledge that fact or experience brings us. Knowledge is something quite different from experience or from fact, and only the knowledge which we never succeed in finding either in the facts or in experience is that which reason, pars melior nostra (our better part), seeks with all its powers.
There arises here a series of questions, each more troubling than the other. First of all, if it is really so, wherein is the critical philosophy distinguished from the dogmatic? After Kant’s confession, are not Spinoza’s tertium genus cognitionis and Leibniz’s vérités de raison (those truths which entered into the mind of God without His permission) confirmed in their hallowed rights by a centuries-old tradition? Did the critical philosophy overcome that which was the content, the soul even, of the pre-critical philosophy? Did it not assimilate itself to it, having concealed this from us?
I would recall in this connection the very significant conflict, and one which the historians of philosophy for some unknown reason neglect, between Leibniz and the already deceased Descartes. In his letters Descartes several times expresses his conviction that the eternal truths do not exist from all eternity and by their own will, as their eternity would require, but that they were created by God in the same way as He created all that possesses any real or ideal being. “If I affirm,” writes Descartes, “that there cannot be a mountain without a valley, this is not because it is really impossible that it should be otherwise, but simply because God has given me a reason which cannot do other than assume the existence of a valley wherever there is a mountain.” Citing these words of Descartes, Bayle agrees that the thought which they express is remarkable, but that he, Bayle, is incapable of assimilating it; however, he does not give up the hope of someday succeeding in this. Now Leibniz, who was always so calm and balanced and who ordinarily paid such sympathetic attention to the opinions of others, was quite beside himself every time he recalled this judgment of Descartes. Descartes, who permitted himself to defend such absurdities, even though it was only in his private correspondence, aroused his indignation, as did also Bayle whom these absurdities had seduced.
Indeed, if Descartes “is right,” if the eternal truths are not autonomous but depend on the will, or, more precisely, the pleasure of the Creator, how would philosophy or what we call philosophy be possible? How would truth in general be possible? When Leibniz set out on the search for truth, he always armed himself with the principle of contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason, just as, in his own words, a captain of a ship arms himself on setting out to sea with a compass and maps. These two principles Leibniz called his invincible soldiers. But if one or the other of these principles is shaken, how is truth to be sought? There is something here about which one feels troubled and even frightened. Aristotle would certainly have declared on the matter of the Cartesian mountain without a valley that such things may be said but cannot be thought. Leibniz could have appealed to Aristotle, but this seemed to him insufficient. He needed proofs but, since after the fall of the principles of contradiction and of sufficient reason the very notion of proof or demonstrability is no longer anything but a mirage or phantom, there remained only one thing for him to do—to be indignant. Indignation, to be sure, is an argumentum ad hominem [an argument directed at the man]; it ought then to have no place in philosophy. But when it is a question of supreme goods, man is not too choosy in the matter of proof, provided only that he succeeds somehow or other in protecting himself . . .
Leibniz’s indignation, however, is not at bottom distinguished from the Kantian formulas—“reason aspires avidly,” “reason is irritated,” etc. Every time reason greatly desires something, is someone bound immediately to furnish whatever it demands? Are we really obliged to flatter all of reason’s desires and forbidden to irritate it? Should not reason, on the contrary, be forced to satisfy us and to avoid in any way arousing our irritation?
Kant could not resolve to “criticize” reason in this way and the Kantian critique of reason does not ask such questions, just as the pre-critical philosophy never asked them. Plato and Aristotle, bewitched by Socrates, and, after them, modern philosophy—Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, as well as Kant—seek, with all the passion of which men are capable, universal and necessary truths—the only thing, according to them, which is worthy of being called “knowledge.” In short, it would hardly be extravagant to say that the problem of knowledge, or more exactly, knowledge as a problem, not only
