84 BEING AS BEING THE OBJECT OF PHILOSOPHY 85

the possibility of meaningful and critical metaphysical analyses. Metaphysics but the fact of reflexive cognition itself, which is always already present wherever
was to emerge as the basic science of being, and although the term "being" the dichotomy of the œgnizing subject and the cognized object appears.
was not always understood in the same way, yet it was always seen as providing There are acts of spontaneous cognition in which the subject-object
the basic and all-guaranteeing objectivity of cognition. As was already dichotomy does not yet exist. These are the "existential judgments" in which
mentioned, however, the very notion of "being the fundamental object" of human we immediately affirm the existence of some concrete object given to us in
cognition allows for a variety of interpretations concerning me ontic character immediate sensory experience. Such existential judgments are our absolutely
of the "object." And, indeed, in different authors we find different ontic first cognitive acts, bearing in mind that acts of sensory experience do not exist
conceptions of the object from conceiving of being as "Sinn" (meaning, in separation from intellectual cognition. We do not have the experience of
content) all the way to conceiving of being as "esse" from the system of Thomas color or sound, or still less the perception of some material object, as simply
Aquinas. It is not, however, tile ontic character of the object of intellectual the perception of sound, color, or a purely material object. It is true that our
cognition that, with regard to this apprehension and point of departure, cognition begins from sensory perception, but this perception remains in
determines the nature of metaphysics in terms of its realism or non-realism. cognition in communion with die intellect, constituting a single function that
This is determined by the point of departure. involves the activity of both the intellect and the senses. The belief that sensory
It so happened in the history of philosophy that both the Aristotelian perception is the initial cognitive act, and that intellectual cognition is then
abstractionist point of departure, as well as its transcendental counterpart in the constructed upon it, arose as a result of the description and analysis of cognition
philosophers mentioned above by way of example, were points of departure and the isolation of the sensory and intellectual cognitive structures. In reality,
within the particular situation that is presented by the "field of being" delimited however, we are dealing here with a single indivisible cognitive human function,
by die cognitive "subject-object" axis, and this emerges only in reflexive thought. in which we can later, through analytical description, isolate different cognitive
Reflexive human thought, which gave birth to philosophy, also determined the structures according to the different immediate sources of cognition, namely,
character of metaphysics and its history. The historical experience of the our intellect and individual senses.
continuity of this problematic has shown both the splendor and paltriness of the The involvement of the cognitive powers sometimes modifies the content
philosophical thought planted and grown on such a field of being. of our cognition of reality. This happens—to a certain extent—in various types
On the basis of this historical experience, it may be said, on the one hand, of indirect cognition, where there is some sort of intermediary between the
that the philosophical problematic is constandy alive in the different epochs and cognizing subject and what is cognized. This intermediary never makes the
that it is concentrated around the concept of being and its particularizations or cognized object so dependent upon the subject that the subject would become
"manifestations," correctly perceived already in antiquity. On die other hand, the cognitive reason of the object. If the subject were to become the cognitive
history also reveals that this problematic was continually "infected" with idealism reason of the cognized object, then we would never arrive at the cognition of
and with die iilusoriness or at least the deficiency of the proposed solutions. the thing itself, but would always remain "enclosed" within thexonfines of the
No doubt the essential cause of both the deficiency of the solutions arrived subject—which is idealism, contrary to natural human cognition.
at by the different philosophical systems (in their attempt to ultimately explain Hence, we should appeal to the type of cognition that, being an expression
reality) and the constant tendency toward idealism is precisely the "axial" point of natural human language, does not presuppose in its point of departure any
of departure, that point of departure in the conception of philosophy wherein "intermediaries" modifying the understanding of reality. Such cognition consists
we proceed from the data appearing in our reflexive cognition, whether this in a process of "separation," which determines the real object of metaphysics.
data be objective (as in the approach of the Peripatetic and classical philosophy)
or subjective (as has been the case since the time of Descartes, and later Kant
and those who adopted his method of philosophizing). Of course, reflexive
cognition itself can also be permeated with reflexiveness to a greater or lesser
degree; here, however, it is not the degree of this permeation that is at issue,