IMMANENTISM. — A neologism that has enjoyed considerable success in modern and contemporary thought, both in philosophical discussions with the development of transcendental idealism and in religious discussions during the time of the modernist controversy. To avoid misunderstandings, the two terms “immanence” and “i.” must be kept distinct: not every position of immanence is i. The latter indicates (when used in its precise, rather than vague and ambiguous, sense) a doctrine that excludes epistemological and metaphysical—and therefore also theological—transcendence, an ordering of knowledge and reality in their totality made in such a way as to enclose man within his own immanence: the perfect and exhaustive adequation of thought and being. Immanence, on the other hand, may signify (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: a “transcendent” is “immanent” to man which, as transcendent, is not identified with him and, as immanent, is not spatially exterior or separate from him. In this sense, immanence is a “method” that leads to transcendence; that is, it indicates the integral development of whatever is immanent to thought, to the point that, at the highest degree of development, it necessarily culminates in transcendence—that is, it leads to a conclusion opposed and contrary to that of i. Thus used, the terms “immanence,” “immanent,” and “method of immanence” concern religious questions which, although they should not simply be identified with the doctrine of modernism (Blondel, for example, lies outside it), are connected with it (v. IMMANENZA; MODERNISMO) and, in any case, are something quite different from i. 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 something immanent to II. Here we shall limit ourselves to considering i. 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 “being found in”) of attributes in a concept of which they are constitutive. In classical Latin the term immanens is lacking, whereas the concept of in-manere is found in I. Io. 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 i.; but it is extremely important to note this reversal of meaning, since it brings out the profound difference—so profound that the two concepts become antithetical—between Christian “interiority” and modern “immanence”: the former entails transcendence (the “God in us” of St John and later of the Fathers) and is such by virtue of transcendence (the interiority of God, who transcends us immeasurably); to reduce it to immanence is to annul it as interiority in empty subjectivity, insofar as what is immanent to the subject is identified with the subject itself as such, in which it is immanent. In this way i. ends by losing the true concept of transcendence and, with it, the true concept of immanence. Medieval philosophy used the term in the Aristotelian sense 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 latter being that whose action remains entirely within 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 sgg.; cf. s. Tommaso in h. l.). Spinoza, taking up the scholastic distinction, asserts that God is the causa immanens of all things, each of which also has its transientes causes: «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 regards God as the immanens cause of all things, there is no longer any escape from pantheism, which is one of the theological forms of i. And with this we have already reached the position, typical of modern thought, of the opposition between the two terms immanence and transcendence, which has displayed a wealth of meanings (and also a depth of analysis) in the epistemology and metaphysics of transcendental idealism.
However, in order to understand precisely the meaning of modern i. (and to measure the extent of the reversal it has effected in classical metaphysics), it is necessary to keep in mind the Aristotelian-scholastic concept of causa or actio immanens, namely: an immanent cause is one in which its action remains, as opposed to the other (transiens), which is outside (exiens). In modern i., however, the opposition is no longer between the action that remains within and that which goes outside, but between the action internal to the being in which it is produced and that which comes from outside. In other words: everything that is produced in a being without the intervention of an external agent and without the slightest influence of an external cause is immanent to that being. In this way, the opposition between immanence and transcendence acquires a new meaning: the former comes to indicate the self-sufficiency of the being to which everything is immanent, which is the principle of itself, without there being any other external cause to whose action it owes anything; the latter signifies a cause or principle that, coming from outside, limits the unconditioned character of the being upon which it acts and makes it dependent upon itself. 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 being; and therefore it excludes transcendence, that is, another being “beyond,” which would be its principle (and end). When the opposition is posited in these terms, one passes from immanence to i. It is evident that at this point the opposition between immanence and 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 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 metaphysical, cannot fail to be pantheistic), the world and God are not two really distinct and opposed realities: God immanent in the world means that the world has within itself the principle of its existence, the reason for its existence and for all its effects; the world and its principle correspond perfectly, that is, once again the world corresponds to itself, is the principle of itself, and is therefore unconditioned and self-sufficient. Even a religious philosophy (modernism) that makes similar use of the principle of immanence (“God immanent in man”) does not escape pantheism and thereby destroys the concept of immanence itself, since, when used in such a way as to deny transcendence, it ceases to be immanence and is transformed into i., which, as has been said, is no longer immanence, for immanence has meaning only with respect to transcendence. Nor is it immanence any longer in the sense of a relation of reciprocal coessentiality, that is, of a reality that does not exist (and cannot exist) independently of another (for example, in those theories that assert that God does not exist independently of the world, yet is not identified with it), since here a certain relation between immanence and transcendence still remains, which rigorous and absolute i. cannot accept, even though it is then compelled to admit a fictitious and illusory distinction between the Principle (Subject, Ego, Spirit) and its manifestations. But such a distinction, valid for finite and empirical subjects, for the, so to speak, phenomenal level 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 II.
On the foundation of these basic concepts, modern thought 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 find one’s way through the intricate forest of modern thought and its immanentist positions, it is necessary at least to distinguish between gnoseological i. and metaphysical i. They must also be treated separately for chronological reasons, while keeping in mind that the two are closely connected.
Although Cartesio is still on the path of realism and transcendence, the Cogito is the starting point of the development of modern thought: philosophy begins to cease being the science of being (metaphysics) and to identify itself with the science of knowing, that is, with gnoseology, which gradually absorbs metaphysics until it establishes itself as the only metaphysics possible. But perhaps, rather than with Cartesio, gnoseological i. begins with modern empiricism, and precisely with its critical phase, LOCKE, JOHN (v.) Hume (v.). It is, in fact, with Locke that philosophy becomes the “critique” of knowledge, an analysis of the human intellect, in order to test its possibilities and mark out its limits. Philosophy thus comes to identify itself with the “critical inquiry” into knowledge, its origins, and its value; it becomes pure gnoseology. It is also with Locke that sensory experience is critically assumed as the limit of reason. At the very 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 images of the sensible, a content of subjective consciousness; among them reason establishes connections and relations. Consequently, truth is nothing but the joining and separating of signs that sensory 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 drives the presuppositions of critical empiricism toward greater consistency: given that the original fact of knowledge (and the fact to which all knowledge must be reduced) is sensory impression, ideas are nothing but copies: either “memories” of impressions no longer actual, or “anticipations,” through the imagination, of impressions not yet received. Consequently, all reality, spiritual and material (nor is there any transcendent Reality or God, which is the product 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, sect. IV; sect. VII). In brief, for Hume, the subject cannot go outside itself: the problem of the correspondence between ideas and things is nonexistent, since 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 is equal to phenomenon: the being of a thing (and the being of man) is its appearing to a consciousness. Hume’s gnoseological i. is absolute. It is not properly skepticism, since, once the real (the whole of it) is 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. may also be called empirical conscientialism: the universe is a continual sensible appearing and disappearing to consciousnesses, which are themselves bundles of subjective impressions, so that all reality is a 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 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 «phenomenism» and Kantian «criticism» is only this (and it is, without doubt, fundamental): Hume identifies the real with empirical consciousness (empiricist epistemological i.). Kant with transcendental consciousness, which is why the latter’s position may be called transcendental epistemological i., which, in the development of absolute idealism, becomes transcendental metaphysical i..
For Kant, a deepening of the concept of experience leads to a conclusion different from Hume’s, namely, to the discovery that there are objective and universally valid conditions, forms, or functions, not derivable from sensory experience but given a priori, which make experience itself possible, since through them the subject constructs it—that is, gives order (laws) to the content supplied by sensory receptivity. For Kant, the forms are transcendental, that is, non-empirical (because they are not derived a posteriori) and not transcendent, because their legitimate use cannot go beyond the limits of experience. Kantian transcendentality thus entails a twofold immanence of the forms: their immanence in thought and their immanent, non-transcendent use, since sensory experience constitutes the limit of their operation and therefore of human knowledge. The opposition between immanent and transcendent is thus formulated in these terms: «we call immanent those principles whose application remains entirely within the limits of possible experience; transcendent, on the other hand, those which must surpass these limits, namely, the ideas of reason» (Critica d. r. pura, Dialettica trascendentale, introduction, § 1). Consequently, in order to resolve its problems (those of metaphysics), reason «has need of concepts other than those pure concepts of the understanding whose use is merely immanent, that is, refers to experience insofar as it can be given» (Prolegomeni ad ogni metafisica futura, § 40). All the subject’s representations are accompanied by the I think, or by the awareness that they all belong to the same consciousness. «I call it», Kant says, «pure apperception... since apperception is that self-consciousness which, insofar as it produces the representation I think—which must be able to accompany all the others, and is one and identical in every consciousness—cannot be accompanied by any other. I also call its unity the transcendental unity of self-consciousness, in order to indicate the possibility of the a priori knowledge that derives from it». The manifold representations given in a certain intuition are all together my representations, insofar as they all belong to one self-consciousness (Critica d. r. pura, Analitica trascendentale, bk. I, ch. 2, § 16). The I think, legislator of nature and constructor of the world of experience, as transcendental self-consciousness, has its limit in experience and does not transcend II. 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 epistemological i. differs from Hume’s empirical i. insofar as the Kantian representation is not pure sensory impression, but an empirical content ordered by the a priori forms or by the subject’s transcendental activity.
It also differs from the metaphysical i. of transcendental idealism, in which the I is no longer merely the constructor of the world of experience, but the creator of reality—that is, not only of its form but also of its content—without there being any noumenal or in-itself reality transcending II. Thus Self-consciousness becomes the absolute principle of the real immanent in it and, in turn, is wholly adequate to the real. The I think, which in Kant is merely epistemological transcendentality, is transformed in post-Kantian idealism into metaphysical transcendentality. Fichte’s (v.) pure or absolute I, or Egoity, is the sole principle, of which the multiplicity of individuals and things (the world) is merely one of the moments through which it realizes itself: everything is a phenomenon of the I, a representation of consciousness (Dottrina della scienza, part 1, § 1). Nor does Schelling’s deduction of nature and spirit from the «Undifferentiated Unity», from an original Absolute, essentially arrive at different results. Hegel (v.) draws the ultimate consequences: the rational process of the world (becoming) is itself the process of the Absolute or of Reason, so that there is perfect adequation between Thought and Being, the rational and the real: Being and Thought are identified. The form of the Absolute is the concept (Scienza della logica, bk. III, section I, ch. 1): metaphysics and logic are one, indeed,
true metaphysics is logic itself. Therefore, in philosophy the Absolute acquires full self-consciousness, absolute freedom, and complete revelation of itself to itself (ibid., section III, ch. 3). In brief, the real in its totality is immanent in thought, that is, it is resolved into the conscious experience or transcendentality of the Subject. Hence transcendental idealism’s aversion to every form of realism, dualism, or transcendent reality or values. Hegel is the most complete metaphysical form of absolute i., in which reality and truth are identified with rational knowing, and Reason (of the human order) is itself the principle of its absoluteness. Being is thus negated in Thought (the metaphysics of Thought), indeed, GENTILI (v.) says, in the act of thinking or in thinking Thought.
It is impossible even to mention the many forms of post-Hegelian immanentism and of contemporary philosophy. We shall limit ourselves to observing 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 reality as such. Moreover, every form of absolute immanentism inevitably resolves itself (even if it is called «philosophy of spirit», «idealism», etc.) into forms of positivism and materialism. It is not without reason that positivism is the child of Kant, with transcendental idealism as mediator, and that Marxism is the child of Hegel and materialist evolutionism. Indeed, once the whole world is posited as 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 much effort to conclude that thought (spirit) is an epiphenomenon and to reverse Hegel’s standpoint: not history elevated to the transparency of the Idea, but the Idea «materialized», brought down 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 inevitably leads to idolatry or the divinization of man (of science, of history, of the party, etc.). It should be observed that, especially in the most recent philosophy, there are forms of immanentism that present themselves under the appearance of an apparent and equivocal «transcendence». For example, certain existentialist philosophies (Heidegger, Jaspers; V. ESTENZIALISMO): their transcendence has nothing to do with true transcendence properly so called (not only cosmological but also theological). It is understood as the «limit» or the «horizon» of the subject, which can be shifted even though it can never be eliminated altogether; transcendence, as it is said, «horizontal» (and not «vertical»), that is, immanent in the world and therefore posited by the subject itself. We remain within the line of idealistic immanence, of which (non-Christian) existentialism is one of the latest manifestations, even if 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 standpoint, is that, under a discerning and objective critique, it proves entirely erroneous and, even more, absurd, that is, contrary to reason. Since a thorough examination is not possible here, we shall limit ourselves to a few points of immediate evidence. When empiricist gnoseological immanentism (Hume) reduces substance to a bundle of impressions of subjective consciousness and consciousness itself (spiritual substance) likewise to a collection of impressions, it says something entirely meaningless: if the same subject is itself also a set of subjective impressions, one must ask whose set of impressions it is and, if it is such a set, how it can be the subject of impressions: where everything is impression — subject and object — there is no longer any impression, because the subject of which something is an impression is missing. The here of which everything is an impression cannot itself be an impression. The same objection applies, transferred from empirical consciousness to transcendental consciousness, to Kantian idealist immanentism: in brief, the phenomenon 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 realist 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 demand for the absolute, therefore thought is absolute. But this therefore is inconclusive; indeed: a) precisely because thought is a demand for the absolute, it is not absolute, nor is it the Absolute; b) if it is true that the demand is subjective, this in no way entails that there is no objective reality; indeed, that demand exists precisely because reality is objective. In addition to this aspect, which may be called metaphysical, the paralogism has another, gnoseological aspect, perfectly corresponding to the first: thought is «perceptive» of truth; perception belongs to the subject, therefore thought is «constitutive» of truth—it creates II. The truth 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 activity itself of the thinking subject; otherwise thought ceases to be experience and becomes thought of nothing. It is the truth of being that makes thought be, not thought the truth of being. The fact is that immanentism attributes to the subject what belongs to the object, that is, to truth, and makes human thought an absolute and divine thought. Now, the absolutization of reason and its self-sufficiency is precisely an irrational affirmation. Hegel’s absolute rationalism (immanentism) is, at bottom, absolute irrationalism, that is, contrary to reason.