Immanentism

IMMANENTISM. - A neologism that has been very successful in modern and contemporary thought, both in philosophical discussions with the development of transcendental idealism and in religious ones at the time of the modernist controversy. To avoid misunderstandings, the two terms "immanence" and "immanentism" must be kept distinct: not every position of immanence is immanentism. The latter indicates (if used in its precise sense and not in a vague and ambiguous one) an exclusive doctrine of gnoseological and metaphysical transcendence - and therefore also theological - a systematization of knowledge and of reality in their totality carried out in such a way as to close man within his own immanence: a perfect and exhaustive adequation of thought and being. Immanence, on the other hand, can mean (as, for example, in Blondel and in the so-called "philosophy of action"; v. AZIONE) the bond between two beings without this entailing their identification: there is "immanent" in man a "transcendent" which, as such, is not identified with him and, as immanent, is not spatially exterior to him or separated from him. In this sense, immanence is a "method" that leads to transcendence, that is, it indicates the integral unfolding of what is immanent to thought to the point that, at the maximum of its development, it necessarily terminates in transcendence, that is, it leads to a conclusion that is opposed and contrary to that of immanentism. Used in this way, the terms "immanence," "immanent" and "method of immanence" involve religious questions which, although they are not to be identified outright with the doctrine of modernism (Blondel, for example, is outside it), are connected with it (v. IMMANENZA; MODERNISMO) and, in any case, are quite different from immanentism properly so called, which is the negation of every form of real transcendence and the resolution of religion and its content into a moment of the process of the spirit and one immanent to it. We limit ourselves here to the consideration of immanentism in its properly philosophical aspects.

Greek thought did not ignore the meaning of the term "immanence": with the word ἐνυπάρχειν Aristotle indicates the inherence (the "being in" or "finding oneself in") of attributes in a concept of which they are constitutive. In classical Latin the term immanens is lacking, while the concept of in-manere is found in 1 Jn 4:12 ff.: "Deus in nobis manet, et charitas eius in nobis perfecta est. In hoc cognoscimus quoniam in eo manemus, et ipse in nobis, quoniam de spiritu suo dedit nobis." Evidently the Johannine sense of the term is radically different from that of modern immanentism; but it is extremely important to note this reversal of meaning, inasmuch as it brings out the profound difference (to the point that the two concepts become antithetical) between Christian "interiority" and modern "immanence": the former implies transcendence (the "God in us" of St. John and then of the Fathers) and is such because of transcendence (interiority of a God who transcends us incommensurably); to reduce it to immanence is to annul it as interiority in empty subjectivity, inasmuch as that which is immanent to the subject is identified with the subject itself as such, in which it is immanent. In this way immanentism ends up losing the true concept of transcendence and, with it, the true concept of immanence. Medieval philosophy employed the term in the Aristotelian meaning indicated above, but, besides using it in a logical sense, it also used it in a metaphysical sense in the distinction between actio or causa transiens and actio or causa immanens, that is, the action of which remains entirely in the subject without modifying its object. It is known that this distinction had already been clearly formulated by Aristotle: "Quorum [operum] vero non est aliud quoddam opus praeter actionem, in ipsismet actio est (ἐν αὐτοῖς ὑπάρχει ἡ ἐνέργεια): ut visio in vidente, et speculatio in speculante, et vita in anima" (Met., VIII, 8, 1050 a 34 ff.; cf. St. Thomas in h. l.). Spinoza, taking up the scholastic distinction, affirms that God is the causa immanens of all things, each of which also has its causae transientes: "Extra Deum nulla potest dari substantia, hoc est res quae extra Deum in se sit... Deus ergo est omnium rerum causa immanens, non vero transiens" (Ethica, I, 48). The formal distinction is still the scholastic one, but in Spinoza, who considers God as the causa immanens of all things, one no longer escapes pantheism, which is one of the theological forms of immanentism. And with this we are already in the position, typical of modern thought, of the opposition of the two terms immanence-transcendence, which has had a wealth of meanings (and also a depth of analysis) in the gnoseology and metaphysics of transcendental idealism.

However, in order to understand exactly the meaning of modern i. (and to measure the scope of the overturning that it has wrought upon classical metaphysics), it is still necessary to keep in mind the Aristotelian-Scholastic concept of cause or actio immanens, namely: a cause is immanent when its action remains within it, as opposed to the other kind (transiens), which goes outside (exiens). In modern i., by contrast, the opposition is no longer between the action that remains within and the action that goes outside, but between the action internal to the being in which it is produced and the action that comes from outside. In other words: immanent to a being is everything that is produced in it without the intervention of an external agent and without any exterior cause exerting the slightest influence. In this way, the opposition immanence-transcendence acquires a new meaning: the former comes to indicate the self-sufficiency of the being to which everything is immanent, which is a principle of itself, without there being any other cause external to it to whose action it owes anything; the latter signifies a cause or principle that, coming from outside, limits the unconditionality of the being upon which it acts and makes that being depend on it. In other words, from the standpoint of immanence, the being in which an effect is produced is itself the immanent cause of that effect, of every effect and of itself as a being; and therefore it excludes transcendence, that is, another being "beyond," which would be its principle (and its end). When the opposition is posed in these terms, one passes from immanence to i. It is evident that, at this point, the opposition immanence-transcendence ceases, insofar as i. as such (not immanence understood in its true sense) is the negation of transcendence in its authentic sense, that is, of the real Being "beyond" (trans) the human and natural world, whose being is not the same (univocally) as the being of the world. For i. (and i., when it is metaphysical, cannot fail to be pantheist) the world and God are not two really distinct and opposed realities: God immanent in the world means that the world has within itself its principle, the reason for its existence and for all its effects: the world and its principle correspond perfectly to one another, that is, once again, the world corresponds to itself, is a principle of itself and therefore is unconditioned and self-sufficient. Even a religious philosophy (modernism) that makes a similar use of the principle of immanence ("God immanent in man") does not escape pantheism and by that very fact destroys the concept of immanence, insofar as, employed in such a way as to deny transcendence, it ceases to be such and is transformed into i., which, as has been said, is no longer immanence, which has meaning only in relation to transcendence. Nor is it such any longer in the sense of a relation of reciprocal co-essentiality, that is, of a reality that does not exist (and cannot exist) independently of another (for example, in those theories that affirm that God does not exist independently of the world, yet is not identified with it), insofar as here a certain relation of immanence-transcendence still persists, which rigorous and absolute i. cannot accept, even if it is then compelled to admit a fictitious and illusory distinction between the Principle (Subject, I, Spirit) and its manifestations. But such a distinction, valid for finite and empirical subjects, for the, so to speak, phenomenal grade of reality, does not subsist metaphysically, that is, with respect to the Absolute, which is its manifestations, which are, in turn, the Absolute and are annulled in it.

On the foundation of these basic concepts, modern thought has gradually deepened, clarified and systematized i., to the point of adopting it as its essential characteristic (especially German transcendental idealism and its many derivatives). But in order to orient oneself in the tangled forest of modern thought and its immanentist positions, it is necessary at least to distinguish between gnoseological i. and metaphysical i. They must be treated separately also for chronological reasons, while keeping in mind that the one and the other are closely connected.

Although Descartes is still on the line of realism and transcendence, the Cogito is the starting point of the development of modern thought: philosophy begins to cease being science of being (metaphysics) and to identify itself with the science of knowing, that is, with gnoseology, which gradually absorbs metaphysics to the point of positing itself as the only possible metaphysics. But perhaps, more than with Descartes, gnoseological i. begins with modern empiricism and precisely with its critical phase, represented principally by Locke (v.) and Hume (v.). It is, in fact, with Locke that philosophy becomes "critique" of knowledge, analysis of the human intellect, in order to test its possibilities and mark its limits. Philosophy thus comes to identify itself with "critical inquiry" into knowledge, its origins and its value; it becomes pure gnoseology. It is again with Locke that sensible experience is critically assumed as the limit of reason. Right at the beginning of the Essay one reads: "it is evident that the mind does not know things immediately, but only through the mediation of the ideas it has of them." Now, for Locke, ideas are nothing but the image of the sensible, a content of subjective consciousness; among them reason establishes connections and relations. Consequently, truth is nothing but the union and separation of signs that sensible experience impresses upon the soul. Beyond the "collection of simple ideas," substance is an empty name; but simple ideas are a pure content of subjective consciousness; therefore the reality known is nothing but this content (Essay, I, II, chaps. 30-32).

Hume pushes the presuppositions of critical empiricism to greater coherence: given that the original fact of knowledge (and to which every cognition must be referred back) is the sensible impression, ideas are nothing but copies: either "memories" of impressions no longer actual, or "anticipations," by means of the imagination, of impressions not yet received. Consequently, all reality, spiritual and material (nor is there a transcendent Reality or God, a fruit of the imagination), is identified with impressions and ideas, that is, with the subjective contents of consciousness. There are no substances: the so-called "substance" is a collection of impressions or ideas; there are no necessary and objective causal connections: so-called causality is only a "constant succession" of facts (Inquiry, sec. IV; sec. VII). In short, for Hume, the subject cannot go outside itself: the problem of the correspondence of ideas and things is non-existent, insofar as there are no things, but only subjective impressions: every thing (the real) is a bundle of impressions or ideas, that is, a content of consciousness. Reality equals phenomenon: the being of a thing (and the being of man) is the appearing to a consciousness. Hume's gnoseological i. is absolute. It is not properly skepticism, insofar as, the real (all of it) having been identified with the phenomenon (phenomenism), knowing corresponds to the real. "Empirical idealism," insofar as it makes the idea a derivative of sensation, Hume's gnoseological i. can also be called empirical conscientialism: the universe is a continuous appearing and disappearing of sensibles to consciousnesses, which are in turn bundles of subjective impressions, whereby all reality is a fine dust of phenomena, to which the mechanism of association and habit gives the appearance of substantiality.

Kant (v.) sets out to demonstrate against Hume that scientific knowledge has an objective validity, but at the same time he accepts from the English philosopher — and this must be kept in mind in order to understand and explain Kant — the concept of reality as consciousness. On this point, the difference between Humean "phenomenalism" and Kantian "criticism" is only this (and it is, without doubt, fundamental): Hume identifies the real with empirical consciousness (empiricist gnoseological i.). Kant with transcendental consciousness, so that the German philosopher's position may be called transcendental gnoseological i., which, in the development of absolute idealism, becomes transcendental metaphysical i.

For Kant the deepening of the concept of experience leads to a conclusion different from Hume's, and precisely to discovering that there are conditions or forms or functions that are objective and universally valid, not derivable from sensible experience, or a priori, which make experience itself possible in that with them the subject constructs it, that is, gives order (laws) to the content supplied by sensible receptivity. The forms, for Kant, are transcendental, that is, not empirical (because not derived a posteriori) and not transcendent, because their legitimate use cannot go beyond the limits of experience. Kantian transcendendentality therefore entails a twofold immanence of the forms: their immanence to thought and their immanent and not transcendent use, inasmuch as sensible experience constitutes the limit of their functioning and hence of human knowledge. The opposition between immanent and transcendent is thus posed in these terms: "we call immanent the principles whose application remains wholly and entirely within the limits of possible experience; transcendent, on the other hand, those which must overstep these limits, that is, the ideas of reason" (Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Dialectic, introduction, § 1). Consequently, reason, in order to resolve its problems (those of metaphysics), "has need of concepts different from those pure intellectual concepts, whose use is only immanent, that is, refers to experience insofar as it can be given" (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, § 40). All the representations of the subject are accompanied by the I think or by the awareness that they all belong to the same consciousness. "I call it," says Kant, "pure apperception... since it is apperception, that self-consciousness which, insofar as it produces the representation I think — which must be able to accompany all the others, and is in every consciousness one and identical — cannot be accompanied by any other. I also call its unity the transcendental unity of self-consciousness, to indicate the possibility of a priori knowledge, which follows from it." The manifold representations, given in a certain intuition, are all together my representations, insofar as they all belong to one self-consciousness (Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Analytic, bk. I, ch. 2, § 16). The I think, legislator of nature, constructor of the world of experience, as transcendental self-consciousness, has its limit in experience, it does not transcend it. Thus phenomenal reality (which Kant distinguishes from noumenal reality), that is, the world as it is known, is a set of representations unified by transcendental self-consciousness. This transcendental gnoseological i. differs from Hume's empirical one in that the Kantian representation is not the pure sensible impression, but an empirical content ordered by the a priori forms or by the transcendental activity of the subject.

It also differs from the metaphysical i. of transcendental idealism, where the I is no longer merely the constructor of the world of experience, but the creator of reality, that is, not only of form but also of content, without there being a noumenal or in-itself reality that transcends it. Thus the Self-consciousness becomes the absolute principle of the real immanent to it, and it, in turn, is entirely adequate to the real. The I think, which in Kant is only gnoseological transcendendentality, in post-Kantian idealism is transformed into metaphysical transcendendentality. The pure or absolute I of Fichte (v.), or I-hood, is the single principle, of which the multiplicity of individuals and things (the world) is but one of the moments through which it realizes itself: everything is a phenomenon of the I, a representation of consciousness (Doctrine of Science, part 1, § 1). Nor does Schelling's deduction of nature and spirit from the "undifferentiated Unity," from an original Absolute, substantially arrive at different results. Hegel (v.) draws the extreme consequences: the rational process of the world (becoming) is the same process as that of the Absolute or of Reason, so that there is a perfect adequation between Thought and Being, rational and real: Being and Thought identify with each other. The form of the Absolute is the concept (Science of Logic, bk. III, sec. I, ch. 1): metaphysics and logic are one, indeed the true metaphysics is logic itself. Therefore in philosophy the Absolute acquires its full self-consciousness, its absolute freedom and complete revelation of itself to itself (ibid., sec. III, ch. 3). In short, the real in its totality is immanent to thought, that is, it is resolved into the conscious experience or transcendendentality of the Subject. Hence the aversion of transcendental idealism to every form of realism, of dualism, of transcendent reality or values. Hegel is the most complete metaphysical form of absolute i., where reality and truth identify with rational knowing, and Reason (of the human order) is itself the principle of its own absoluteness. Being is thus negated in Thought (metaphysics of Thought), indeed, as Gentile (v.) says, in the act of thinking or in thinking Thought.

It is impossible even to hint at the many forms of post-Hegelian immanentism and of contemporary philosophy. We limit ourselves to noting that every form of gnoseological immanentism is destructive of the realism of truth and, by that very fact, of truth as such; just as every form of metaphysical immanentism is destructive of the concept of being and, by that very fact, of the real as such. Moreover, every form of absolute immanentism fatally resolves itself (even if it calls itself "philosophy of spirit", "idealism", etc.) into forms of positivism and materialism. Not for nothing is positivism a child of Kant, with transcendental idealism as mediator, and Marxism a child of Hegel and of materialist evolutionism. In fact, once the world is posited as wholly immanent in Thought and Thought as wholly immanent in the world, absolute idealism and absolute positivism — the reduction is that of the idealist L. Weber — are the same thing. Marx (v.) did not have to make great efforts to conclude that thought (spirit) is an epiphenomenon and to overturn Hegel's point of view: not history raised to the transparency of the Idea, but the Idea "materialized", lowered into history. Once a transcendent Reality is denied, natural facts (positivism and materialism) and human facts (historicism, e.g. that of Croce) are divinized: absolute immanentism has its fatal outcome in the idolatry or divinization of man (of science, of history, of the party, etc.). It should be observed that, especially in more recent philosophy, there are forms of immanentism that present themselves under the aspect of an apparent and equivocal "transcendence". For example, certain existentialist philosophies (Heidegger, Jaspers; v. ESTENZIALISMO): their transcendence has nothing to do with true and proper transcendence (not only cosmological but also theological). It is understood as the "limit" or the "horizon" of the subject, which can be shifted even if it can never be entirely eliminated; a transcendence, as it is said, "horizontal" (and not "vertical"), that is, immanent to the world and therefore posited by the subject itself. We are still within the line of idealistic immanence, of which (non-Christian) existentialism is one of the latest manifestations, even though it polemically opposes German idealism.

Immanentism, in all its forms, is a doctrine that implicitly or explicitly denies the fundamental truths of Christianity (the transcendence of God, the immortality of the personal soul, the supernatural, etc.); but what matters, from a philosophical point of view, is that it, upon a prudent and objective critique, presents itself as wholly erroneous and, even more, absurd, that is, against reason. Since an in-depth examination is not possible here, we limit ourselves to a few points of immediate evidence. When empiricist gnoseological immanentism (Hume) reduces substance to a bundle of impressions of the subjective consciousness and consciousness itself (the spiritual substance) likewise to a collection of impressions, it says something that has no meaning whatsoever: if the subject itself is also a collection of subjective impressions, one must ask of whom it is a collection of impressions and, if it is such, how it can be the subject of impressions: where everything is impression — the subject and the object — there is no longer any impression, because the subject of which something is an impression is lacking. The here of which everything is an impression cannot itself be an impression. The same objection holds, transferred from empirical to transcendental consciousness, for Kantian idealist immanentism: the phenomenon, in short, can be the phenomenon of a consciousness that is not itself substantially a phenomenon. As can be seen, the concept of substance (and of being) is reborn in a realistic sense, and with it the truth of the fundamental principles of classical-Christian gnoseology and metaphysics. From a strictly metaphysical point of view, immanentism is the consequence of a paralogism: thought is a subjective exigency of the absolute, therefore thought is absolute. But it is an inconclusive therefore; in fact: a) precisely because thought is an exigency of the absolute, it is not absolute nor is it the Absolute; b) if it is true that the exigency is subjective, this does not at all imply that there is no objective reality; on the contrary, that exigency exists precisely because of the objectivity of reality. Besides this aspect, which may be called metaphysical, the paralogism has another, gnoseological one, perfectly corresponding to the first: thought is "perceptive" of truth; perception belongs to the subject, therefore thought is "constitutive" of truth, it creates it. It is precisely the opposite: precisely because thought is perceptive of truth, truth is its object, otherwise thought would perceive itself. If thought is (intellectual) experience, it must be experience of a content not identifiable with the very activity of the thinking subject, otherwise thought ceases to be experience and is thought of nothing. It is the truth of being that makes thought be, and not thought that makes the truth of being. The fact is that immanentism attributes to the subject what belongs to the object, that is, to truth, and makes of human thought an absolute and divine thought. Now the absolutization of reason and its self-sufficiency is precisely an irrational affirmation. The absolute rationalism (immanentism) of Hegel is, at bottom, absolute irrationalism, that is, against reason.

Michele Federico Sciacca