TRANSCENDENTAL ANTHROPOLOGY BY LEONARDO POLO

(Piá Tarazona, Salvador: "La antropología trascendental de Leonardo Polo".

Studia poliana Pamplona 1 (1999): 101-15).

University of Navarre

Navarre, Spain

Leonardo Polo’s much awaited Antropología trascendental (Transcendental Anthropology) has just been published. After the first draft in 1972 and the author’s subsequent revision, especially over the last two years, the first of two volumes, titled La persona humana (The Human Person), is now available.[1]  The second volume, La esencia de la persona humana (The Essence of Man), is currently under revision by Polo.

As Polo’s book constitutes nothing less than an entirely new approach to anthropology, the unsuspecting reader might well become disorientated on venturing into such hitherto unexplored territory. This introduction, consisting of a few brief observations on certain key concepts, will hopefully resolve such a case in point and, in the process, lead to an unexpected and rewarding surprise.

1.       Transcendental Anthropology in the work of Polo

In El acceso al ser (Access to Being),[2] Leonardo Polo puts forward, as a philosophical method, the abandonment of the mental limit. With this method, four principal themes come into play: on the one hand, the extramental act of being of the physical universe and the extramental essence and on the other, the act of being and the essence of man. The abandonment of the mental limit can thus be understood as a method directed towards a more profound understanding of the real distinction between the being and the essence of the creature as put forth by Thomas Aquinas. Hence, each one of the four dimensions which follow upon the abandonment of the mental limit will have as its theme one of the four subject areas related to creatures.

Polo explores the extramental act of being, a metaphysical study of the first principles, in El ser (Being).[3] In Volume IV of Curso de teoría del conocimiento (Course of Theory of Knowledge),[4] the author presents a systematic study of the extramental essence, i.e., the physical universe. According to Polo’s scheme, the first dimension of the abandonment of the mental limit, serves as a method for metaphysics and the second dimension, for that of philosophical physics.[5]

In Volume I of Transcendental Anthropology, the author studies the human act of being, i.e., its personal dimension. The study of the essence of man, will be taken up in the forthcoming second volume, presently under revision. In this way both the third and fourth dimension of the abandonment of the mental limit are dealt with.

In the book which is presently the focus of our attention, Polo develops the third aspect of the abandonment of the mental limit,[6] something he had only touched upon in previous texts. The attentive reader cannot help but realize the impact that the abandonment of the mental limit has on anthropology; a totally new subject area is revealed. What becomes apparent is that an understanding of the human act of being cannot be approached in the same way as is the act of being of the universe, since the conclusions reached by metaphysics cannot be applied, in the strict sense, to anthropology.

Therefore, the study of anthropology must necessarily have a distinct point of departure from that of metaphysics. In Polo’s scheme of things this means that in anthropology, the mental limit is abandoned in a completely different way than it is in metaphysics (and in philosophical physics).[7]  When the study of man is carried out exclusively on the basis of anthropology the conclusions arrived at are totally new. As a result, throughout Transcendental Anthropology, one is confronted with a completely renovated and workable vocabulary, one that is strictly anthropological. On the one hand, new, philosophical terms are used, such as: the character of furthermore, co-existence, the absence of replication, the intellectus ut co-actus, intimate openness, outward openness, the transcendental search, love-I and see-I, etc. On the other hand, Polo brings new meaning to the terms inherited from traditional philosophy. This is clear from such expressions as: transcendental freedom, the habit of wisdom, transcendentality, nothingness, synderesis, the I, giving and accepting, transparency, etc. But the author avoids the use of strictly metaphysical notions, which, if introduced into anthropology, would lead to a symmetrisation of ideas. In this regard it is worth noting that Polo studiously avoids the notion of substance in his study of man.

2.       The structure of the book

Volume I of Transcendental Anthropology is structured into three, clearly differentiated parts. The first deals with the presentation of themes which are further elaborated in the second and third parts. In this presentation, the reasons for undertaking a specifically transcendental anthropology are explained. To begin with, such a task requires an extension of the list of the transcendentals found in traditional philosophy. To this end, Polo carries out an exhaustive study of article 1 of the first question in Thomas Aquinas’ De veritate, with a view to amending it.[8] The grounds for this rectification are based upon an earlier discussion concerning the ultimate meaning of that which is transcendental, in which it becomes clear that Polo’s conception of transcendentality bears no resemblance to that of traditional philosophy: for the latter, transcendental signifies supra-universal or trans-categorical, whereas for Polo, transcendental is equivalent to act of being.[9]

Moreover, it should be taken into account that Polo scrutinizes the classic list of transcendentals exclusively from the perspective of the real distinction between being and essence, an approach not to be found in philosophical tradition. Indeed Aquinas, in his presentation of the transcendentals, only resorts to the real distinction for the sake of resolving certain problems that crop up, but his list of transcendentals is not laid down on the basis of the real distinction as a heuristic method. That is to say, the range of transcendentals found in Aquinas is not a consequence of the real distinction between being and essence. By way of contrast, I believe that it is justifiable to state that, in Polo, the extension of transcendentals is attained precisely and exclusively on the basis of this real distinction. And indeed, the real distinction between being and essence is the touchstone whereby Polo determines, firstly, which notions of the traditional group can be verified as transcendental and which can not, and secondly, those which can be postulated as additional transcendentals.[10]

The modification of the transcendentals found in Transcendental Anthropology can be thus more readily understood. Polo refers to the act of being, rather than ens, as being transcendental in the fullest sense of the word.[11] If the principle of the real distinction is respected, essence cannot be considered, in the strict sense, transcendental since it is differentiated from the act of being by reason of its dependence upon it: essence is the potential of the act of being.

Carrying on with the real distinction, the one (unum) qualifies as transcendental only if it is equivalent to act of being. Hence Polo admits the transcendentality of the one in a particular sense: transcendental one is transcendental only if it signifies identity. Identity is the existential character which pertains to the divine act of being: God is Identical as the Original Act of Being. In this sense, it can be said that one as identity is transcendental, because it is equivalent to act of being.[12]

Polo admits two further concepts of one, though not as transcendentals: a) one, as the unity of order of the physical universe, that is to say, the final cause of the universe in co-causality with the efficient-cause, both formal and material, so that it is in this sense that the essence of the physical universe is termed tetracausal;[13] b) one as uniqueness, which is characteristic of the mental limit: only the one is knowable.[14] But if one is objectively knowable in that it is already known by its presence, it follows then that, by abandoning this way of knowing, we can know with a non-presence (non-objective) knowledge. This is the method of knowing by means of intellectual habit which, in Polo’s, terms, is designated as the abandonment of the mental limit.[15]

The critique of the Thomistic transcendentals something and thing is made from the same perspective: something and thing do not qualify as transcendentals since they are not convertible with any act of being. Something, for Polo, refers to a known thing, that is to say, something is an intentional or aspectual description of the knowable object and, as such, is not transcendental, but rather mental. It is in this sense that something can be said to be interchangeable with oneness if the latter is understood as the uniqueness of the mental presence: something is always something known in presence, or in other words, one is something that is known.[16]

Polo’s critique of the transcendental thing is comparable: thing designates the reality insofar as it is not known intentionally in the complete sense, given that knowledge, as concerns the object, is aspectual. But in that case, thing is not equivalent to act of being and therefore it is likewise not to be regarded as a transcendental. Furthermore, if the concepts of thing and something were transcendental, they would necessarily be mutually convertible. But if something signifies intentionally known reality and thing, reality as not fully intentionally known, it is clear that, albeit correlative concepts, they are not mutually convertible, and therefore cannot be transcendentals.[17]

Up to this point, the amendment of the traditional grouping of transcendentals is clear. However, this is not the most important part of Polo’s approach, but rather an indispensable preparation for carrying out further amplification of the transcendentals. The amplification, as well as the amendment, is grounded on the real distinction between the act of being and its essence; therefore the extension of the transcendentals must be carried out from the perspective of the act of being.

Indeed, the extension of the transcendentals is only justifiable if a distinct act of being is found that does not appear in the traditional group. This is the overriding thesis contained in Polo’s approach: man’s act of being is different from the act of being of the physical universe, i.e. they are distinct transcendental acts of being.[18] Thus, the extension of the list of transcendentals is carried out from the perspective of the human act of being, this being the point of departure of transcendental anthropology.

However, it would not be true to say that in the traditional group of transcendentals no typical features of transcendental anthropology appear. By way of clarification, one would have to say that the relative transcendentals follow through on the process set into motion by transcendental anthropology. Logically then, Polo develops his extension of the transcendentals on the basis of the transcendentality of truth and of good.[19]

That truth is a relative transcendental means that the human being is open to the knowledge of extramental reality: in the words of Aristotle, “the soul is, in a certain sense, all things”.[20] However, to define the truth as a relative transcendental is based on a metaphysical proposition: truth is convertible with the act of being of the physical universe, i.e., the being of the universe is true.

In transcendental anthropology it is affirmed that if extramental reality is transcendental by reason of its being an act of being, even more transcendental is the act of being on which its truth depends, that is to say, the openness of the human act of being as intellection is transcendental. Therefore, only on the condition that intellection is admitted as transcendental can the transcendental character of truth be safeguarded. It is in this way that Polo establishes the personal intellect as one of the transcendentals convertible with the human act of being.[21]

Likewise, if the good is looked upon in metaphysics as a relative transcendental (the good is convertible with the act of being of the physical universe, by reason of this being good or, according to Thomas Aquinas, “all that is, insofar as it is, is good.”[22]), in transcendental anthropology it is proposed that the openness of the human act of being, as love, is transcendental. Therefore, in keeping with this radical consideration of love, an additional personal transcendental is encountered by Polo which he denominates personal love.[23]

The foregoing is indicative as to how Polo carries out the task of amplifying the transcendentals as formulated in traditional philosophy and introduces that subject matter which is peculiar to transcendental anthropology: personal intellect and personal love are anthropological transcendentals because they are convertible with the human act of being or human person. Therefore, the human person as act of being is knowledge and love. One can also say that the activity of the human personal being is a loving and knowing one.

As a consequence of the amplification of these two anthropological transcendentals, the scope of the act of being, in terms of being, likewise undergoes amplification: given that the act of being of the extramental reality cannot be considered as equivalent to the human act of being, two acts of being must be posited as differentiated by reason of their existential activity. If this transcendental distinction is not admitted as such, it is neither possible to establish the transcendental nature of intellection and love in anthropology, nor can truth and good in metaphysics be established as relative transcendentals, since not all acts of being are personal and consequently do not all know and love.

Intellection and personal love are convertible with the human act of being, but not with the extramental act of being, because the being of the physical universe does not possess intimacy, which is personal existential activity. However, the human person is being as openness, both cognitive and loving, and it is because of this that person signifies intimacy. Polo therefore denominates the existential activity of the human act of being as co-existence or being furthermore (ser además).[24] In Polo’s words, “Man is not restricted to being, but rather to co-being. Co-being designates person, that is, being as intimate and outward openness: therefore co-being refers to being-with.”[25]

The radicalism of the personal being is summed up in its double character of openness. Human person considered as outward openness signifies being-with, co-existing as it does with the being of the physical universe, with other human beings and with God; this openness is both cognitive and loving and as such is the ultimate significance of the relative transcendentals truth and good. But the human person is also intimate openness or co-being: “co-existence is inward being, i.e. intimacy.”[26] Consequently, the human person can be properly denominated as co-being-with.

If the human being’s character of openness is examined more closely, freedom should be added as one of the personal transcendentals along with those of being (co-existence), intellection and personal love, because co-existence is intimate, cognitive and loving by reason of its being free. Transcendental freedom implies the intimate openness of being, i.e., co-existence (freedom is the co- of co-existence). Freedom is convertible with the other personal transcendentals.[27] These are the four transcendentals of the human person as conceived by Leonardo Polo.

This amplification gives new dimension to the investigation into the radical conception of the human person as proposed by Polo. His study of the human person is not a regional ontology, nor is it the study of man as a particular or special entity within metaphysics, but rather within anthropology, which he conceives as a science totally distinct from metaphysics, precisely because the subjects of these two sciences are transcendentally distinct. Metaphysics for Polo is the study of the act of being of extramental reality, whereas anthropology centers on the human person’s act of being, and it is precisely for this reason that he defines anthropology as transcendental.[28]

The act of being of the physical universe and the human act of being are distinct acts of being insofar as their existential activities are concerned; whereas the former persists, the latter co-exists. Their study should therefore also be based on two distinct methods. According to Polo, metaphysics abandons the mental limit in its first dimension, whereas transcendental anthropology does so in its third dimension.[29] Consequently, since both metaphysics and anthropology have their respective fields of study and method distinct one from the other, it is appropriate to differentiate them as separate self-contained conceptual systems.

3.       The method: the third dimension of the abandonment of the mental limit

Once this distinction is made in the second part of Volume I, Polo expounds his method with regard to the abandonment of the mental limit as corresponds to its third dimension.[30]

This section is the most difficult and arduous to follow, especially for those unfamiliar with Polo’s body of thought, as the style is reminiscent of certain passages of Access to Being (1964). But the complicated nature of the text is not due to the intention of the author, who takes great pains to be as clear as possible, but rather to the complexity of the subject matter itself. Doubtless, of all the themes undertaken by Polo to date, that of the human person is the most complex. I would recommend a patient and attentive reading.

According to Polo, “the character of furthermore (además) is the requisite method for attaining human co-existence”.[31] Above all, the underlying implication of what this attainment consists in must be clarified: as human person is individual, it is not possible to attain the person in general terms; thus, to attain oneself as a person, one has to give up the pretension of thinking of oneself, that is of discovering oneself in the object or as the object. Moreover, the object as thought of is precisely what must be abandoned in order to arrive at human co-existence. Endeavoring to know the person as an object or a subject necessarily implies the loss of personal intimacy, for no object, as it is pure mental presence, has intimacy.

The human person cannot be beyond the reach of its own attainment, that is to say, self-knowledge must necessarily be solidary with its own existential activity. For that reason, if the human act of being is being furthermore, (always more) the proper way of attaining oneself is with the character of furthermore. In other words, the character of furthermore has a dual dimension, a thematic and a methodical one. The thematic dimension of the character of furthermore resides in its intimate co-existence, whereas its methodical dimension lies in the third dimension of the mental limit. The mental limit is defined as mental presence, i.e. the object present as thought.

According to Polo, this methodical dimension consists in disengaging from the mental limit, in other words, the methodical dimension of the character of furthermore has, as its point of departure the mental presence from which it disengages.[32] Disengaging from the mental presence is the abandonment of the mental limit strictu sensu, being as it is, its maximum expression.

If that which I am is neither an object nor a subject, I should have to abandon any objective knowledge of my own being in order to know myself according to my own existential activity: this is the meaning of attaining personal co-existence. To my understanding, being furthermore means being always more; for this reason, it does not follow that personal attainment can reach definitive fulfillment, for the human person is always more. From this we can appreciate that if the human person signifies being always more, the personal knowledge that it has of itself ought to be guided by the character of furthermore (in its methodical sense): being always more can only be understood in the sense of furthermore.

Therefore, the aspiration of fully attaining oneself as I (human subject) is to be discarded. For Polo, the human person is not equivalent to I because the person is co-existential activity whose aspectual manifestation is I. Therefore it must be understood that the I  is not always more, because such an interpretation would constitute a premature attainment. Taken from this perspective, it could be said that an anthropology which understands the person as I, is premature anthropology.

The I  cannot be furthermore because it is not the equivalent of personal intimacy, but rather “the apex of man’s essence insofar as it is dependent upon the person”.[33] This distinction between person and I  is one of Polo’s great discoveries which he develops in Transcendental Anthropology.[34]

4.       The personal transcendentals

The personal transcendentals are explored in the third section of Transcendental Anthropology. The first to be expounded is being: the human person’s act of being is equivalent to co-being or co-existing. The act of co-existence is more worthy than that of mere existence. The human being is superior to the being of the physical universe and so personal transcendentals are considered as superior to metaphysical transcendentals. The dual character of the human person is thus pointed out. This is another of Polo’s noteworthy discoveries which provides the essential structure for the whole scope of personal transcendentals whereby each transcendental is studied according to its dual character.[35]

The dual character of human co-existence resides in its dual character of intimate and outward openness. Nevertheless, intimate co-existence does not imply the internal existence of “another” person, i.e., the intimacy of the person is not any “other” person. On the contrary, intimate co-existence is equivalent to what Polo describes as the created person’s absence of replication.[36] The absence of replication points to the fact that co-existence is always something yet to be attained; no attainment, as such, ever constitutes a complete fulfillment. Thus, the method used to arrive at co-existence is the character of furthermore, that is to say, all surpassing. Herein resides the solidarity between the method and the theme: both the method as well as the theme are furthermore. Put in another way, the absence of replication is the manner in which the created person lacks identity. In Polo’s understanding, Identity as existence can only be attributed to God: Original Being.[37] Subsequently, in creatures, the act of being is distinct from essence. Hence, Polo calls the act of being of the physical universe, persistence or non-contradictory existence.[38]

Moreover, the intimate openness of the human person is, in turn, dual. According to Polo, this duality consists of interior and inward openness.

Interior openness consists in the discovery that the human person lacks replication. Interior openness implies the duality of co-existence and freedom, because freedom is the intimacy of the co-existence by means of which lack of replication is discovered. Put in such a way, freedom is the co- of human co-existence and this is so precisely because as human existence is free, it is co-existential. Thus it can be concluded that transcendental freedom is convertible with co-existence.

Inward openness leads to the discovery that, in absolute terms, the lack of replication cannot be definitive. Consequently, as the lack of replication is not definitive, existential activity is oriented towards the search for the replication which it lacks. This search is both cognitive and loving, that is to say, carried out by means of the personal intellect and personal love.

Therefore, interior openness is oriented towards inward openness: the discovery that one’s act of being lacks replication leads to the search for the Personal Replication. In this way freedom and co-existence are convertible with the intellect and personal loving.

Now then, intellection as a personal transcendental, also involves a duality; the habit of wisdom with the personal intellect. According to Polo, the habit of wisdom, or the third dimension of the abandonment of the mental limit, is equivalent to the methodical dimension of the character of furthermore;[39] in other words, it is the cognitive act whereby personal co-existence, or the thematic sense of the character of furthermore, is attained. The habit of wisdom is the method whose theme is the personal intellect, upon which it is innately dependent; for this reason Polo calls this duality, solidarity.[40]

The character of furthermore is dual according to a methodical and a thematic sense; both method and theme are furthermore and for this reason they are solidary. This is so, because in the case of personal knowledge, one’s personal being cannot remain apart from such knowledge, as if it were a spectator. On the contrary, the person must necessarily reach itself according to its personal being. Therefore, if the act of being of the human person is furthermore, the method applied will also be furthermore: the person is being furthermore, which is attained as furthermore. Hence, Polo uses the term transparency to describe the habit of wisdom or the cognitive act with which personal co-existence is reached.[41] Said in other words, the habit of wisdom is the intellect’s transparent contemplation of itself.

However, by means of the third dimension of the abandonment of the mental limit, i.e., the habit of wisdom, knowledge of the personal intellect can only be reached thematically: this third dimension constitutes the culmination and final stage of the abandonment of the mental limit. But what yet remains to be discovered is the theme of knowledge proper to the personal intellect. For if the personal intellect is cognitive act, i.e., method, it must possess its own characteristic theme. In spite of the fact that this is beyond the scope of the abandonment of the mental limit; Polo provides a solution to this problem at the end of Transcendental Anthropology.[42]

After having studied intellection as a personal transcendental, Polo goes on to examine the dual character of the transcendental love, which is treated according to the structure of the gift.[43] In man, both giving and accepting pertain to the human act of being, whilst gifts form part of the essence of man. For the human person, loving implies giving as well as accepting: acceptance is likewise a true giving.

With this as a basis, the convertibility of transcendental freedom with personal love can be understood: to give is transcendentally free insofar as it refers to acceptance, and to accept is transcendentally free insofar as it refers to giving. However, man is not capable of giving the act of giving itself, but only of giving gifts: man cannot give his own act of being, as this is not at his disposal. But he does have the potential to give his works; for this reason, man can only give gifts from his essence. Thus, the giving structure is completed with gifts: “The gift involves giving and accepting. This means, definitively, that the structure of the gift is triune, and not dual”.[44]

Finally, Polo undertakes a study of transcendental freedom, which is understood as convertible with the other personal transcendentals This conversion is based on the dual character of freedom, which is equivalent to the duality of the openness of human co-existence.[45] It has been said that freedom is the openness of the human being, or being furthermore, but openness is understood as dual according to whether it is interior or inward openness.

Interior openness is the co- of human co-existence, the intimacy or being furthermore; this freedom is denominated by Polo as native freedom.[46] Native freedom is the equivalent to disengaging from the mental presence, whereby the human person attains itself and discovers that its lack of replication: this is the sense of the conversion of native freedom with co-existence. Likewise, native freedom extends to the essence of man, where it finds the truth of the gift –essential love– which in turn is raised to the transcendentals giving and accepting.

But freedom is also convertible with intellection and personal love. This conversion is accomplished by inward openness. It must be remembered that interior openness (the discovery of the lack of replication) is oriented towards inward openness, that is to say, the search for the Replication which the person lacks. This search is directed by the transcendental character of freedom which Polo calls freedom of destination.[47]

Therefore, freedom of destination is the superior member of transcendental freedom, which, with native freedom, takes on a dual dimension. In this way, native freedom is oriented toward freedom of destination, for destining oneself is equivalent to searching cognitively and lovingly for the Replication which is lacking. In effect, “the finding of truth and the finding of love correspond to each other: to fall in love is inseparable from finding the truth and finding the truth is inseparable from falling in love”.[48] It is here that co-existence, freedom, intellection and personal love convert among themselves in the most radical fashion: human co-existence is a “created gift which is accepted as a giving destined to be accepted. This second acceptance simply transcends the human person”,[49] as it is dependent upon divine generosity.

To conclude, I do not think that this book will disappoint anyone’s expectations; on the contrary, it opens the way for a completely new panorama which facilitates a deeper understanding and knowledge of the human person. As for the rest, the reader may or may not accept Polo’s ideas concerning the extension and exposition of the personal transcendentals, but what he cannot do is remain indifferent.

Salvador Piá Tarazona

Department of Philosophy

University of Navarra

31080  Pamplona (Spain)

e-mail: spia@unav.es