There Cannot Be Genuine Sensation Without a Real Sensed Thing

Abstract

In this essay, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange refutes Kantian and occasionalist notions of sensation that have been smuggled into Thomism and Catholic thought. He maintains that sensation by its very nature requires an object that is sensed, since sensation without a sensible object is no sensation at all. To defend this position, he draws upon Aristotle, St. Thomas, and the Thomistic Commentators, arguing that the opposite position not only denies the distinctions between hallucination and sensation, bodily vision and imaginary vision, but also ultimately denies that the metaphysical certitude of the first principles of reason are materially resolved in that which is sensed.