Habermas critically examines faith in the salvific promise of metaphysics, a notion based on the ancient and medieval conviction that the world is rationally determined in every respect, as it compares to the self-reflexive turn of thought towards itself in modernity. According to his account, modernity is the first period to analyze the means through which we cognize the world. However, a more rigorous comparison reveals that the construction of such an antithesis adheres to an antiquated blueprint.
From the perspective of ancient metaphysics—Aristotelian metaphysics, for example— the hypothesis of an immediate acquaintance with things is epistemologically naïve. Thought does not first begin when things are given to it in »sensuous certainty.« Rather, a reflection on subjective acts of perception already demonstrates that perception is limited to distinguishing colors, sounds, and smells. It is unable, however, to distinguish things as they truly are. It is these acts of distinguishing, which precede all consciousness, that Aristotle investigates, particularly in their significance for all further cognitive acts. This marks the conceptual origin of a thought that presents things to itself versus an (empty) consciousness, which only commences its activity with reflection on what it has thus been (blindly) ›given.‹ Thus, what stands opposed in the history of European philosophy is not faith and reason, but rather two distinct forms of thought’s reflection on itself.
