Thought

THOUGHT. - From the Latin pensare, to weigh, to ponder (the Greek νόμος, διάνοια has a different derivation), the term preserves its etymological reference in one of its meanings that is today most proper to it, namely as the reflective activity of the intellect (v.). Although less frequent, the use of "pensare" in the sense of "to consider," versare animo, is not lacking in classical Latinity: "vulnera laude pensabimus" (Quintil., Declam., 3, 16; cf. E. Forcellini, Lexicon totius latinitatis, III, Padua 1940, p. 625). To our present-day "pensare," however, cogitare corresponds more exactly (from cogere, a contraction of coagitare, as it were to gather and to stir up mentally: where a certain semantic parallelism is present with "pensare" in the sense of "to ponder"; cf. op. cit., I, ibid., p. 672).

In a very broad sense, after Descartes, in whom however it is not exclusive, th. is every conscious activity of the spiritual being: "What is a thing that thinks? It is a thing that doubts, that conceives, that affirms, that denies, that wills, that does not will, that also imagines and that feels" (Medit., II: Ital. trans. by A. Tilgher, I, 2nd ed., Bari 1928, pp. 98-99; cf. Princ. philos., part 1, § 9). In a narrower sense th. is sometimes coextensive with cognitive activity: it therefore excludes the acts of the appetitive-volitive faculties. In a more proper sense, common to present-day Neo-Scholasticism, th. is only every moment of intellectual-rational knowledge, that is, the spiritual perception of universal values, of causes, principles, reasons, ends, and relations of being and of things. It therefore comprises, together with the concept (v.), the fundamental acts of judging (v. GIUDIZIO) and of reasoning (v. RAGIONE; RAGIOCINIO), and it is the constitutive activity of science, of philosophy and also, in part, of ethical-juridical-economic practice, of religion and of art. Taken in this sense, it may be affirmed that th. always entails knowledge (v.), if this is understood, in a generic sense, as the presence of any given datum to consciousness. But th. is not without further qualification convertible with knowledge if by knowledge is meant an effective perception of being and of reality. The activity of th. can in fact, by virtue of its (relative) spontaneity, turn to immanent and subjective constructions that have, wholly or in part, no correspondence in the real: "into abstract concepts, into th., into words enters everything imaginable, therefore also the false, the impossible, the absurd, the senseless" (A. Schopenhauer, Die Welt..., Suppl., I, I, ch. 6; Ital. trans. by G. De Lorenzo, II, Bari 1930, p. 85). Foundation must therefore be granted to the Kantian affirmation: "to think an object and to know an object is not the same thing" (Kritik d. r. Vernunft. Transzendent. Logik, § 22). Although the further Kantian thesis is anything but demonstrated — that "the categories have no use for the knowledge of things except insofar as these are taken as objects of sensible experience" (ibid.), that is, in other words, that human th. runs idle if it does not refer to an object of empirical intuition (v. KANT; OGGETTIVISMO).

In idealism (v.) th. is the structure and the essential ground of reality which, by its intrinsic and absolute spiritual meaning, is integrally resolved in th. In Marxism th. is the simple subjectivization of the objective-dialectical processes of eternal matter. In Bergson (v.) th. is one of the directions in which the force or vital impetus of reality develops. Without accepting the idealistic equation being = th., or the total naturalistic dissolution of th. itself, it may be said in a realistic sense, although with improper use of the term, that all nature and reality is th., insofar as it is the expression and effect of absolute Rationality, and the concrete actualization of ideal moments and processes (cf. the "cosmic th." and "psychic th." of Blondel).

Ugo Viglino