Zubiri’s Major Insights and Innovations

A brief review of the major insights and innovations in Sentient Intelligence should
help the reader understand just how radical is Zubiri’s rethinking of the major themes of
philosophy:

 Recognizes the inseparability of the sensible and intellective aspects of human

knowledge, the seat of which he terms sentient intelligence. The distinction
between sensing and intellective knowing is not something immediately given in
human apprehension, but belongs to the rational order.
 Creates a new definition of human intellection: "... mere actualization of the real
in the sentient intelligence".
 Distinguishes the formality of reality (i.e., the aspect of reality delivered to us in
an impression) from the content of reality of a thing.
 Establishes three stages or levels of human knowledge: reality 1, logos, and
reason or ratio. Truth is ultimately grounded in the first, not the second and
third, as has traditionally been assumed (this, in effect, is Zubiri’s "Copernican
Revolution").
 Expands our conception of reality to encompass both reity (reality delivered in
sensible apprehension, i.e., formality actualized in apprehension)
and reality (reality "beyond" apprehension; traditionally the only meaning of the
term). The latter is ultimately founded upon the former.
 Recognizes that while the senses (of which he identifies 11 rather than the usual
5) differ in content, it is with respect to their formality, i.e., the way in which
they deliver reality to us, that the difference is most important. This implies that
there are as many forms of actualization of reality as there are senses; but
because the sentient intellection is indivisible, they correspond to different
modes of intellective presentation of reality.
 Truth, in the most fundamental or primordial sense, is imposed upon us, through
the force of reality, rather than being something we conquer (that applies rather
to the derivative sense of truth in rational knowledge).
 A new definition of intelligence: not capability to process information, but
actualizing things as de suyo.
 Recognition of human intelligence as something which is not flawed, but
rather limited, and therefore subject to error while yet quite capable of
apprehending reality and of truth.
 Distinguishes what he terms the talitative and transcendental orders within
reality, the former having to do with the content of things (primarily the focus of
science), and the latter their formality of reality (primarily the focus of
metaphysics).

From [http://www.zubiri.org/intro.htm#Logos (INTRODUCTION TO THE

PHILOSOPHY OF XAVIER ZUBIRI, from THE XAVIER ZUBIRI
FOUNDATION OF NORTH AMERICA (http://www.zubiri.org/)]

1
Reality (here)= primordial apprehension of reality.
 Some more major insights added by your teacher:
-Actuality is "being present, from itself, for being real, putting the accent on being".-
Actualizing is the act of making actual (or giving actuality) to the real in the sentient
intellection.

-Zubiri seeks to radically reestablish the basis for human knowledge. This task goes far
beyond any type of Kantian critique—something which Zubiri believes can only come
after we have analyzed what human knowledge is. The fundamental nature of human
intellection, according to Zubiri, can be stated quite simply: "the mere actualization of
the real in the sentient intellection".

-The act of "human apprehension" is at once sentient and intellective; therefore, is an

act of sentient intelligence. Let´s put clear Zubiri´s philosophical vocabulary. For Zubiri
sensing, apprehending and intelligizing is one and the same thing.

- Here we have a first presentation of Zubiri´s analysis of human intelligence by

dividing it into three modes or phases:

 Primordial apprehension of reality (or basic, direct installation in reality, giving

us pure and simple reality).
 Logos (explanation of what something is vis à vis other things, or what the real
of primordial apprehension is “in reality”)
 Reason (or ratio, methodological explanation of what things are, and why they
are, as is done in science, for example).

-Zubiri´s aforementioned distinction between sensing (apprehend something by means

of an impression) and “pure sensing” (the mere stimulation of the senses) is critical
here. He asserts that the opposition should not be between “intellection and sensing”,
but between “pure sensing and intellection”. But, he argues, Classical philosophy
confused sensing with `pure sensing´, which led it to think that there was an opposition
between sensing and intellection. In the aforementioned distinction, formality of reality
goes with sensing (=intellective sensing, because it apprehends things with de formality
of reality), and pure sensing goes with formality of stimulate (=because it apprehend
things as mere stimulus= as a mere sign of response). The former applies to “the animal
of realities” (=human beings); the latter applies to “mere animals”. Due to millions of
years of evolution, in the animal of realities, sensing means intellective sensing [or pure
sensing, and just sensing (=sensing reality directly) are fused in one united structure,
given “at once” (=sentient intelligence)].

-Knowing and reality are in their same root strictly and rigorously congeneric. The fact
is that an intrinsic priority of knowing over reality or reality over knowing is
impossible. Knowing and reality are in their same root strictly and rigorously
congeneric. There is no priority of one over the other. And this is true not simply
because of de facto conditions of our investigations, but because of an intrinsic and
formal condition of the very idea of reality and of knowing. Reality is the formal
character—formality—according to which what is apprehended is something "in itself",
something de suyo.
-For Zubiri, perception of reality begins with the sensing process; but there is no
distinction between sensing and apprehension. As he puts it, the Scholastic nihil est in
intellectus quod prius non fuerit in sensu nisi ipse intellectus is radically false. What we
have, rather, is a fully integrated process which he terms sensible2 apprehension.

2
Or sentient?