The Degrees of Knowledge
...ss diversity of essences which separate being. Sometimes it is a mode co-existing with being, which every subject has, and which therefore comprises an object of thought that is transcendental like itself. This is all a function of being. Another important point that the author made in this short reading is when he talks about how Aristotle compared specific essences to whole numbers. He goes on to discus how an added union establishes a new number; every specific difference constitutes a new essence. The transcendentals might be compared to transfinite groups of the same power. He goes on to say that the transfinite group of even numbers has the same power as the transfinite group of whole numbers; which is the being, or the true, or the good and they have as much importance alone as all three together. The next interesting point in this paper is when the author talks about the perception of the generic or specific nature that the intellect attains in the individual more than the individual itself. From this once can see that it attains a universal object of concept communicable to all the individuals of the same species or of the same genus. This is what is called univocal, it is simply one and the same in intellect because it is offered to the mind by a plurality of transobjective subjects and is returned to them in judgments. Next he talks about Unum in multis, which is invariant without actual multiplicity, understood in several ways, and by that very fact positing among them a population of essence. But in the perception of the trancendentals, one can attain a nature more than itself, and object of concept not only transindividual, but transgeneric; he calls such an object of concepts superuniversal. The scholastics call it analogous, that is to say that it is realized in diverse ways but according to similar proportions in the diverse subjects in which it can be found. From the universals, it differs essentially, even as an object of concept. This is so not only because it has greater amplitude, but also and it is polyvalent. Another important idea he discusses is the concepts of being, which is the same with all transcendental concepts. From this one can understand that the concept of being is therefore implicitly and actually multiple. This is true because it only makes incomplete abstraction from its analogates, and in contrast to universal concepts it hold a diversity that can be essential, in which the way it is realized in things. One can understand that it is one in a certain respect, in the since that it does make incomplete abstraction from its analogates, and is disengaged from them without being understandable apart from them, without attaining, a pure and simple unity, which could alone be there to the mind if it were able to see a actuality which would be at once itself and all things. Another important point that is made in this paper is the metaphysical transintelligible and ananoetic intellection. He describes it by saying that an intelligible analogue is the object of dianoetic intellection, it is not the same for those of its analogates which do not fall at first within our grasp but which are known by the intermediary of the primordially apprehended analogate. They are known in the end as in a mirror, in virtue of the likeness it has with them. He calls specular knowledge “ananoetic intellection”. He says that the transobjective s...