The Knower, The Known, & the Relation Between

Continuing with yesterdays' conclusion, "to be and to be intelligible for the human mind are equivalent expressions," such that there is nothing the human mind cannot potentially know. Being is wholly pervaded with, and constitutive of, infinite intelligibility; and the latter is mirrored in our own infinite potential to know. 

Mind and being are not only deeply related, they're inseparable (just try to pry them apart) because this relation -- or relation as such -- is built into the nature of things.   

Which is all very strange, and yet I often find myself wondering to myself: Has the whole world gone crazy? Am I the only one who gives a shirt about its tucking ontology?

Guess so, since nobody else ever said that.  

Remember, it's not just the intelligence nor intelligibility that are so weird, it's the nexus between, the relation, the link. Again, we've already highlighted the centrality of relation, and of how its principle abides upin the Godhead. 

That is, prior to the Creator <--> creation vertical relation is a horizontal one between the First and Second Persons; thus, the latter must be the basis of all positive creativity and of all receptive intelligibility. 

I would like this post to be about this primordial and irreducible Relation. Let's hope the post is in a cooperative mood, in other words, that it rolls on Shabbos. 

All that exists, because it exists, is ordered toward a knowing mind.... This means: not only is the eye sun-related, the sun as well is eye-related; all that has being is mind-related in its most intrinsic core. Mind and being are interconnected (Pieper, emphasis mine!).

The reason we have emboldened relation and its cognates (and will continue doing so below) is because we usually think of the things related -- the relata -- as real, but not the relation between! So, yeah, we're kind of using our outdoor voice. Sorry, Dude, but we never apologize. Except about Donny's ashes.

But we're here to tell you that the relation is equally real as that which it relates.  This may be a little difficult to wrap our mind around, but recall Clarke's bottom line: that to be is to be substance-in-relation. 

Now, not to get sidetracked, but I think this goes to why the Third Person of the Trinity is likewise a little difficult to wrap our minds around, for what exactly is it? It is the relation between Father and Son, and is itself a Person (relation is a person, and person is a relation).

We'll return to this principle later, when we get back to Clarke's Person and Being. Right now I want to continue with Pieper's The Truth of All Things. But of course, these two works are in fact related, since the truth of all things is person(s), and vice versa.

The object-subject relationship.... precedes any activity of the mind.... Reality in itself is oriented toward man's perceiving mind, without the mind's contribution, and simply by virtue of its very being, which man has not bestowed on it (Pieper).

This is at once both obvious and tricksy. Any science, for example, just assumes this object-subject relation. Baseballically speaking this relation is first base, but there is no scientific explanation of how scientists find themselves standing on first base, let alone are able score (AKA, know truth). That's above their playgrade -- i.e., it is a metaphysical, not merely a scientific, question.

Moreover, the human mind in turn is ordered toward the realm of existing things, also not by its own doing but by virtue of its very being, which, again, is not its own creation. This orientation of the human mind toward reality precedes any of the mind's own choices and decisions.

Again, we don't make up the rules, despite what that fucking kraut says -- Kant and his "unknowable noumema." Sure it's unknowable -- in its essence, but practically speaking it is infinitely knowable, so we may know infinitely. 

Our knowledge, in a certain sense, is the offspring of truth (Thomas, in Pieper).

In what sense might that be? Oh, maybe in the sense that the Son -- the Logos -- is the offspring of the Father?

But that's jumping ahead. Suffice it to say, -- and this is no game -- oh, but it is! -- 

If our mind were not by its nature already in touch with reality, it would never be able to reach reality at all. 

Is this not self-evident?

Perhaps not, so let us continue:

the concept of transcendental truth affirms the relatedness of every being to the inner core of another being....

And "To affirm that every existing thing in its being is ordered toward the inner core of another being" is only possible 

if there really exists some entity essentially designed to conform with everything there is. Of such nature, indeed, is the human soul, which in a certain sense is all in all.... Conformity of being and knowledge is called "true" (Thomas, in Pieper).

Moreover,

The mind by it's nature is oriented to conform to all that has being (ibid).

Conclusion:

reality, any reality without exception, can only be called true -- meaning: knowable -- if the human soul possesses in itself the ability to know the totality of all things.... [another name for which is the Absolute].

the relationship of an object to the knowing mind exists in concrete fact only in the act of knowing itself, by which the object's latent knowability is transformed into actual knowledge....

It is the mind that in its most specific activity "relates" to reality; more precisely, it is the mind that changes an already existing but only potential relationship between objective reality and subjective cognition into actual fact....

And this field of reference, the "world" of man the knower, is nothing less extensive or significant than the total universe of all that is. Being able to know means to exist in relation to, and be immersed in, all that is. The mind, and the mind alone, is capable of grasping the universe (Pieper).

We may reduce this to Phenomena, Noumena an the Relation between, which is to say, Person(s).

Your maples, Manny.