text),102 De utilitate credendi, chapter 11. The upshot is again that knowledge is intuition of a here-and-now present thing. And with these concepts of intuition and of knowledge, which determined Augustine as well as the Middle Ages, we come up against the concept of knowledge as the Greeks understood it. True and proper knowledge is θεωρεῖν—pure, visual relatedness to the thing itself. And for the Greeks, the highest form of knowing is that which is related to the being that truly and properly is. You can see that in trying to determine the Greek view, I am simply repeating what Thomas said, except that for Thomas the objectum optimum for the intellect was precisely Deus as he could be apprehended through biblical revelation, whereas for Aristotle the proper object of knowledge was that-which-is-eternal—the heavens and the νοῦς—and this object of knowledge does not have the least to do with Thomas’s God.
You can see the significance of the concept of intuition for the interpretation of knowing. But perhaps it has struck you that in the course of this characterization, I have not mentioned one perhaps essential figure: Hegel. Hegel’s logic and dialectic seems to break out of this idea of knowledge—but it only seems to, for far from breaking out of it, his logic and dialectic is nothing other than the intuitus originarius raised to a higher power,103 the intuition of the act of thinking and of its self-intuition, νόησις νοήσεως. Dialectics is authentically and radically speculative philosophy (cf. Thomas and Aristotle).
Even from a rough consideration of these connections, it is not surprising that knowledge was and is interpreted as intuition and with reference to intuition.104 In traditional logic it was presupposed as obvious that [124] truth as a characteristic of knowledge is intuitiontruth.105 But the task of a philosophizing logic in the sense that we characterized it is to ask questions like these: Is this preliminary determination of truth, which goes unquestioned, in fact ultimate and self-grounded, or not? Is it not finally a prejudgment, even if a necessary one? And why it is a necessary prejudgment? In contrast to this preliminary determination of truth, what is the more radical question about truth that has to be asked? And what kind of investigations will
102. [In the sed contra that precedes the corpus of I–II, quest. 3, art. 5, Thomas cites Augustine at De trinitate I, 8: “contemplatio promittitur nobis, actionum omnium finis, atque aeterna perfectio gaudiorum” (Migne, Patrologia Latina XLII, p. 831): “We are promised contemplation, which is the fulfillment of all our actions and the everlasting perfection of all our joys.”]
103. [In class, Heidegger said potenzierte (Moser, p. 257.18) rather than erzwungene (GA 21, p. 123.21).]
104. [The following sentence renders Moser, pp. 257–258.]105. Cf. what we said above (§4) about how logic today is built on something that is supposedly obvious.