Explaining further judgment as “an action which, by purifying and abstracting the sensory likeness received sentiently by the senses, causes it to enter into the intellective faculty” (6), and repeating that “this whole world must enter the human soul through the doors of the senses”, Bonaventure says:
“Yet these activities are vestiges in which we can see our God. For the perceived species is a similitude generated in the medium and then impressed on the organ itself, through this impression it leads us to its starting point, that is to the object to be known. Hence, this process manifestly suggests that the Eternal Light begets of Himself a Likeness or a co-equal, constubstantial, and co-eternal Splendor; that He who is the image of the invisible God and the brightness of his glory and the image of his substance, Who is everywhere by His first generation like an object that generates its similitude in the entire medium, is united by the grace of union to the individual of rational nature as the species is united with the bodily organ, so that through this union He may lead us back to the Father, as to the Fountain-head and Object” (7)
In this formula the explanation of the regular knowledge finds its teleology and transcends the empirical knowledge itself forming the true metaphysics.
Here the big question: WHY? finally may be answered. The final cause of this kind of knowing finds its explanation, and it is inseparable with the notion of the Eternal Light.
If, therefore, all knowable things must generate likeness of themselves, they manifestly proclaim that in them, as in mirrors can be seen the eternal generation of the Word, the Image, and the Son, eternally emanating from God the Father (7).
Bonaventure emphasizes this final cause in his theory of knowledge again and again. He follows Aristotelian logic but shows that the philosopher stopped short and never actually became a true metaphysician. That is why he also needs Plato, whom he also attempts to correct, taking him as having proclaimed the impossibility of empirical knowledge at all. There is the way of knowing by abstraction and the way of knowing by ascending directly to archetypes into the divine mind. There is also a midground where the regular knowledge is judged by the eternal, which is never completely absent from the human mind. That is what Bonaventure says about judgment, which speaks for “beholding of eternal truth”:
For judgment has to be made by reason that abstracts from place, time, and change, and hence it abstracts from dimension, succession, and transmutation by a reason which cannot change nor have any limits in time or space. But nothing is absolutely immutable and unlimited in time and space unless it is eternal, and everything that is eternal is either God or in God. . . .
All things shine forth in this light. . . . Therefore, those laws by which we judge with certainty about all sense objects that come to our knowledge, since they are infallible and indubitable to the intellect of him who apprehends, since they cannot be eradicated from the memory of him who recalls, for they are always present, since they do not admit of refutation or judgment by the intellect of him who judges, because St. Augustine says, No one judges of them but by them, these laws must be changeless and incorruptible, since they are necessary. . . . eternally in the Art (9).
As I see it, the theory is consistent, broad, has many levels, answer many questions and reconciles different positions. It is realistic and highly speculative, includes empirical considerations but also transcends their artificial limitations. It entails the moral theory and calls for a certain type of action. These actions are seen in efforts of self-perfection in the traditional Christian mode where the highest respect is shown to the First Principle, the Word and the Holy Ghost. The final destination of all efforts to know invariably lies there, and our minds being created and in this sense unsubstantial are still grounded in the divine source and in this way participate in the divine light of this source. It could be considered more and more but now is the time to stop at this point leaving the rest for the future investigation.
Список литературы
Works of Saint Bonaventure: 1) Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, The Franciscan Institute, 1956; 2) Disputed Questions on the Knowledge of Christ, 1992; 3) Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity, 1979; 4) On the Reduction of the Arts to Theology, 1996; 5) On the Eternity of the World, Marquette University Press, 1964
2. Aristotle: The Basic Works, Random House, New York 1941: 1) Phyisica; 2) De Anima; 3) Metaphysica; 4) Ethica Nicomachea
3. Plato: Complete Works, Hackett Publishing Company, 1997: 1) Timaeus.
4. The Holy Bible, the New King James Version, 1990
5. Cullen C. M. , Bonaventure, Oxford University Press 2006.
6. Gilson E., History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages, Random House< New York, 1954.
7. Великие Святые России, Преподобный Серафим Саровский в воспоминаниях современников, Сретенский монастырь, 2000.
8. A Buddhist Bible, edited by Dwight Goddard, Beacon Press, Boston 1994.
9. Upanishads, the principle texts selected and translated from the original Sanskrit by Swami Prabhavananda and Frederick Manchester, © 1975.