Epistemology is the science and study of how we know, and is incredibly important to form the correct foundations for the remainder of philosophy and more importantly, theology. How we think influences how we act and, how we come to a knowledge of God. It is important to understand where knowledge comes from and how it is truly pursued thus William Wallace writes in The Elements of Philosophy “man does not first know knowledge, he first knows things. It is only in one’s reflective awareness of the knowing process that he can know what it is to know”1
In order to more clearly see the importance of there being objectivity in thought we must look at the different schools pertaining to the development of this science and their views of how we know. The first school of thought are the materialists; this school reflects those who think that all of reality is merely material and can be explained through sense knowledge alone. In other words how these “philosophers” think we come to knowledge exists entirely in the material world.
At the opposite side of the schools lay the spiritualists; these philosophers, Plato being prominent among them, understand there to be non-material existence and reality but they deny the importance of the material realm for coming to knowledge. Plato believed in the existence of the soul, but rejected the importance of the body. Expounding further on his understanding he as well believed knowledge to already exist within the soul, but when trapped inside the body needed to remember what it already knew. Thus, in the view of the spiritualists, all knowledge already exists within a soul but needs to be drawn out of it.
The final, third school of thought is known as Aristotelianism; which believes knowledge to be both spiritual and material. This school sees the mind as a blank slate, ideas enter the mind primarily through our senses as they experience the objective world around us, finally culminating into further actions of the mind. For Aristotle, knowledge begins in the senses but ends in the mind; thus, having both a material and spiritual characteristic.
In order to follow the perennial philosophy of the ages Pope Leo XIII exhorts in his encyclical Aeterni Patris
“While, therefore, We hold that every word of wisdom, every useful thing by whomsoever discovered or planned, ought to be received with a willing and grateful mind, We exhort you, venerable brethren, in all earnestness to restore the golden wisdom of St. Thomas, and to spread it far and wide for the defense and beauty of the Catholic faith, for the good of society, and for the advantage of all the sciences.”2
As St. Thomas took from the patrimony of Aristotle we too see through it that because knowledge begins in our senses but ends perfected in the mind, truth itself can be described as the adequation of the mind to a thing. Because that which is experienced by our senses can lead to truth, when our senses experience something there must be a reality presenting itself to us. But truth in this sense is still imperfect and fallible. Truth is fully and substantially found only in the second act of the mind, the judgement. In order to know a thing completely you must be able to establish a relationship between the thing and that which it is not. These relationships made in judgement bring about a unity of knowledge and when it is in conformity with the actual unity of the object the mind attains truth.
Our minds are made to know truth and this is recognized by our ability to form universal ideas, beginning through our sense experience, and ending in our mind. Because knowledge and truth are the conformity of our intellect to the object perceived, if our senses are not hindered in some way, truth is an objective, attainable reality. Since there are objective ideas in reality, there must also be objective ideas about God, which are primarily found in the theology of the Catholic Church. A theology which “signifies the noblest part and the true summit of philosophical discourse… which now is the reflection undertaken by the believer in order to express the true doctrine about God.”3 With a proper understanding, following perennial teaching, of the science of epistemology we can know the presence of objective ideas and thus come to a deeper understanding of the reality outside of the mere material; which can primarily be found within the theology of the Catholic Church.
A Holy Legacy 