APRIORISM. - A philosophical term derived from the expression a priori. In its most common meaning today, it designates any method of study and research that starts from and proceeds on the basis of purely rational principles, independently of experience. Theologically, however, a. has a meaning more directly connected with the medieval use of the expression a priori (v.). It is important in the question of the demonstration of the existence of God (v.). It is common doctrine, founded on divine Revelation and defined by the magisterium of the Church, that man can arrive at certain knowledge of God through the consideration of creatures, in which there is the trace and reflection of the divine perfections. This form of knowledge is evidently a posteriori. Aprioristic, on the other hand, are the ways proposed by the ontologists (v. ONTOLOGISM) such as Gioberti, by the innatists such as Descartes, and by certain Scholastics such as St. Anselm.

Ontologism makes God the first idea directly intuited, from which the whole of human cognition unfolds. Descartes claims that the idea of God is innate, clear and distinct. St. Anselm derived His existence from the very concept of God (the a simultaneo argument). The Church rejects ontologism because it reduces the beatific vision to a natural fact; Cartesian innatism is not condemned by the Church, but finds its full refutation on philosophical ground. St. Anselm's argument is a matter of free discussion among Catholics.

St. Augustine too concedes something to a., when he demonstrates the existence of God from the introspection of the spirit, in which the eternal truths shine forth; but it is by now critically established that neither this nor the other affirmation of the divine illumination of the human intellect allows us to attribute to St. Augustine a form of ontologism, because he never speaks of a direct intuition of the divine essence on the part of our intellect considered in its natural conditions. See: AGOSTINO; ANSELMO; DIO; ONTOLOGISMO.

Bibliography7 works

BIBL.: A. Lepidi, Examen theologico-philosophicum de Ontologismo, Louvain 1874; A. Farges, L'idée de Dieu, Paris 1894; B. Geyret, La preuve a priori de l'existence de Dieu chez s. Anselmo, in Reu. de philos., 1909, p. 665 ff.; C. Boyer, Curios Philosophiae, II, Paris 1936, p. 297 ff.; A. Palumbo, Theodicaea, Rome 1942, p. 79 ff.; Fr. Spedalieri, Anselmus an Gaumilo? seu de recta sancti Doctoris interpretatione, in Gregorianum, 38 (1947), pp. 55-77; A. Chollet, A priori. A posteriori, in DThC, I, coll. 1718-24.

Pietro Parente

@incollection{ec1_apriorismo, author = {Parente, Pietro}, title = {Apriorismo}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {I}, pages = {1715--1716}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1948}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/apriorismo} }

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