Main Philosophical Directions

Directions of Epistemological Theory

Apriorism

Rationalism refers to those philosophical schools that view the source of all knowledge, or at least its most valuable part, as residing in reason (ratio) or logical thinking. In its pursuit of an increasingly comprehensive, systematic, and, at the same time, one-sided development, rationalism traverses a series of forms. Three forms, in a certain sense corresponding to the three types of empiricism mentioned earlier, have emerged in history up to this point: the first can be termed apriorism, the second ontologism, and the third panlogism.

Apriorism may generally be regarded as a naïve form of rationalism because it contains empirical elements both in its original form and, to some extent, in later stages of development. In its nascent state, apriorism arises from the monistic tendency of our reason to reduce the diversity of phenomena presented in experience to a unity, whether in the form of a singular primal substance or a unified formal principle expressed in numerical relationships. In this sense, ancient cosmological reasoning unites naïve empiricism and apriorism. These reasonings exhibit a naïve empirical stance in their belief in the immediate truth of specific experiential phenomena, as they explain the origin of things from primal substance or geometric forms, adding to this naïve empirical element an aprioristic element that lies beyond actual experience. Since both elements belong equally to a naïve stage of thought, they are not clearly distinguished from one another: the factually perceived and the elements derived from one's own thinking merge directly. It is within this fusion that the subjective certainty of the correctness of their views arises, characterizing ancient reasoning and indicating its kinship with mythology. Consequently, a decisive break with the mythological form of thought occurs only when the aprioristic thought turns toward the investigation of itself, attempting to cast off the empirical elements that were initially fused with it. At that moment, doubt in the reality of experience emerges as a distinctive critical symptom.

In this doubt, which permeates both the Eleatic reasoning and that of Heraclitus, there emerges for the first time the aspiration to establish apriorism as a unified dominant direction. However, such an aspiration does not extend beyond the simple negation of the empirical world. The empirical is merely opposed to being as it is mentally understood. Rather than comprehending the phantom of being in any manner, both the Eleatics and Heraclitus consider it simply as the opposite of being, as non-existent, thus leaving thought entirely isolated from it with its a priori conceptualization. Meanwhile, in the philosophy of the Eleatics and Heraclitus, the manner in which they present their fundamental concepts still reflects a desire to provide them with a tangible form—a desire that has transitioned from the preceding naïve empirical stage of thought. Thus, the concepts of resting being among the Eleatics and the continuous flux of things in Heraclitus appear in the guise of symbolic contemplations, still not fully detached from the notions they denote. The globe, in which the essence materializes according to Parmenides, and the fire of Heraclitus, which perpetually consumes the world and produces it anew from itself, represent fluctuating products of a thinking process that is gradually advancing toward self-knowledge.

If this conjunction of concepts with sensory contemplations, this mixing of the aprioristic direction with naïve empiricism, was to finally exit the stage, it could only do so under one unavoidable condition: the emergence of doubt, a destructive skepticism that would declare war on the entire phantasmagorical sensory world. Therefore, the reasoning of the Eleatics and Heraclitus inevitably leads to skepticism. Skepticism cannot be satisfied with concepts that enjoy special privileges based on speculative considerations; it can effortlessly oppose each of the aprioristic viewpoints with another: the resting being with continuous change, and the latter with the necessity of being. Indeed, the dialectic of the sophists is directed against both naïve empiricism and apriorism. While Protagoras points to the subjective variability of sensory perception, Gorgias highlights the arbitrariness of words that express concepts—an arbitrariness that strips them of universality.

The resolute reaction against the destructive skepticism of the sophists gave rise to the first form of pure apriorism: in this form, apriorism consciously separates itself from the opposing empirical direction for the first time, while simultaneously seeking to establish a relationship between being, understood in concept, and empirical reality—a relationship that makes possible the explanation of the world. This first of the more advanced forms of apriorism is embodied in Plato's theory of ideas. In this doctrine, an initial attempt was made to substantiate the viewpoint of apriorism, deriving from the essence of thought as it moves within concepts. This justification reflects the influence exerted on this first significant form of apriorism by the skepticism of the sophists, indirectly, and by Socrates, who directly attempted to establish universally valid knowledge in opposition to sophistry. One must concur with sophistry that mutable objects cannot be acknowledged as objects of knowledge, nor can mutable perceptions and opinions serve as the content of knowledge. However, in contrast to the variability of perceptions, concepts present a constant and stable content of knowledge. Since the permanent objects corresponding to concepts are not given in sensory experience, this simultaneously eliminates the viewpoint of empiricism. Reality, in the proper sense, belongs solely to ideas, the archetypes of concepts, and the knowledge of reality is entirely a product of human reason, which, through its immanent dialectical thinking, ascends from sensory perceptions to the corresponding concepts.

In such propositions, the double relationship of the supersensible world of ideas, a product of thought, to the empirical world is articulated: objectively, in that ideas are recognized as active forces shaping sensory things according to the archetype of ideas; and subjectively, in that sensory perceptions serve as the conditions prompting thought to activity and encouraging it to rise from perception to the corresponding concept. Both of these relationships are, of course, closely interconnected: the stimulation of the cognitive activity of thought by sensory perceptions is possible only because the ideal objects corresponding to the concepts themselves are found within sensory things. Knowledge in concepts is a subjective process that, to a certain extent, proceeds in the opposite direction from the objective process of the emergence of things. Consequently, in the doctrine of ideas, being in concepts and empirical, sensory being do not stand in direct opposition to each other. The empirical is no longer invalid; it itself is reality, possessing only lesser value in comparison to the world of ideas. Thus, the opposition is supplanted by a distinction in value between both worlds, a distinction that simultaneously allows sensory perception to be recognized as a preparatory stage for knowledge in concepts, and experience as a condition for such knowledge.

In the establishment of the relationship between the supersensory realm, the realm of concepts, and the sensory empirical world, which makes the explanation of the world from the perspective of apriorism possible, lies the foundation for understanding that Platonic apriorism has not entirely liberated itself from the empirical elements that re-enter it in a naïve form. This is inevitable because, for Plato, not only universal but also individual and concrete concepts correspond to ideas; therefore, in this sense, the world of ideas serves merely as an imprint of the empirical world, possessing a value that is higher than that of the latter.

In the epistemological foundation of the doctrine of ideas, this return to naïve empiricism is particularly evident in two assumptions: first, the recognition that dialectical thinking cannot, by itself, attain knowledge but requires stimuli provided by sensory perceptions; and second, the acknowledgment that the relationship between concepts derived from thought and ideal objects is not entirely the product of thought itself but also a result of recollection, wherein the soul becomes aware of its previous direct contemplation of ideas. Thus, the initial formation of ideas is conceived by analogy with the formation of empirical perceptions, and consequently, it occurs under the condition of retaining and recalling empirical impressions. Dialectical thinking is merely a process establishing a connection between the processes of perception and recollection, rather than the ultimate source of concepts.

Despite its realistic inclination, Aristotle pursued apriorism with much greater consistency than Plato. His critique of the Platonic doctrine of ideas primarily targets those elements where it closely approaches naïve empiricism: against the hypostatization of ideas as independent objects conceived similarly to sensory things and against the doctrine of recollection. According to Aristotle, the ideal does not constitute a separate world alongside the sensory; rather, it is entirely immanent to the latter as the form of matter. Therefore, it is not recollection of previous contemplation of ideas that generates concepts in us, but the direct impact of the objects of experience, by which the forms of these objects are imprinted in sensory perceptions and subsequently articulated into concepts through logical analysis. In this manner, the infinite multitude of Platonic ideas is reduced to a small number of formal principles, the distinguishing feature of which, particularly as clearly evident in the principal among these principles, the principle of purpose, is universality. This universality imparts to them the character of aprioristic immanent concepts, in contrast to other concrete concepts such as animal, human, tree, etc.

Thus, Aristotle’s theory of knowledge, while valuing the empirical world more than Plato’s doctrine, nonetheless imposes a stricter form of apriorism due to the aforementioned limitation of principles to a small number of concepts with the broadest scope. However, he could not execute this rigorously. A hindrance to this endeavor was the fact that Aristotle attributed reality to formal principles only in their concrete forms as given in experience. The only exceptions in this regard were the forms devoid of matter: God, or the Unmoved Mover, and the Active Intellect of humanity. Yet, even they are members in the series of developments given in sensory experience. Furthermore, Aristotle did not strive to demonstrate the internal immanent necessity of his formal principles, even the highest among them, the principle of purpose (entelechy). For him, it sufficed that these principles proved applicable everywhere; thus, from a strictly rationalist perspective, they appear arbitrary or, at best, derived through generalization from experience. This inability to consistently uphold the rationalist principle again finds its explanation in the fact that Aristotle, like all ancient philosophy, failed to overcome naïve empiricism.

The very arbitrariness and lack of proof of the foundational principles inherent in Aristotelian philosophy are found to an even greater extent in the later philosophical systems influenced by Platonic and Aristotelian apriorism, which, in a certain sense, represent attempts at its further development: in the systems of the Stoics and Neoplatonists. Here, the principles underlying the explanation of the world of phenomena take on the character of entirely arbitrary constructions; they serve to a far greater extent for metaphysical fantastical constructs than for scientific metaphysics. This aligns perfectly with the fact that metaphysics based on such arbitrary aprioristic assumptions, as exemplified by the Stoics, is coincidentally united with an empirical theory of knowledge grounded in perception.