The neo-scholasticism of Bernardo Kastrup

The so-called Analytic Idealism of Bernardo Kastrup has given rise to such a great discussion that it recalls scholasticism; but the former consolidated the hermeneutical spectrum of Catholicism, the latter on the contrary undoes it. The difference is capital, because it points to the possible result, which in both cases is of the Western culture; but as nature that, in its progressive dissolution, gives rise to the emergence of a new stage of that same culture.

That stage would be the one that is interesting, but not determined by that neo-idealist scholastic of Kastrup; but by that of Realism, subsumed in the Middle Ages by the idealist journey, which goes from St. Augustine to Hegel. Kastrup's neo-idealism cannot participate in this emergence, although that is what he intends with his aggiornamento; because he anchors himself in that apotheosis of Idealism, which is Hegel on the edge of Modernity, trying to extend it; just as Maritain's neorealism was the protest —beautiful and useless in its pathos— against this idealist apotheosis.

Maritain was ignorant —perhaps consciously— of the idealistic nature that restricted the Realism of St. Thomas; like a foot of St. Augustine on his bald head, refusing to yield the bridles of the wagon of Christ in its apotheosis. Perhaps Kastrup ignores —also consciously— the Realism that inevitably cracks all that Idealism; like a balloon of scientific rigor, which shows the quantum contradictions of its transcendentalism.

Namely, the new scholasticism —promoted by Kastrup— undoes the hermeneutical spectrum of Catholicism; which from the outset is not interested in defending, weakening it already in this indifference, which highlights the free nature of its presuppositions. This is paradoxical, starting from the hermeneutical sufficiency of the idealist tradition, developed from Kant to Hegel; since this sufficiency comes from the logical presuppositions of Christianity, given as necessary since St. Augustine.

No matter how contradictory this may seem, it is what explains the substantialism of Thomistic Realism; in the inviolability of doctrine —not in philosophical excellence— fixed by St. Augustine in sealing the Patristics. That is why Scholasticism is not a universal and free development, but within the marked limits of doctrine; and that they will be maintained —even as the problem of God— throughout the idealist tradition, with that apotheosis from Kant to Hegel.

Interested in the hermeneutical body of Idealism, Kastrup maintains this limit, anchored in his doctrinal origin; It does not matter if he is not actually interested in this nature of his philosophy, but seeks to reconcile it with science. In short, the problem of the idealist tradition has always been its epistemological baggage, not its logic; which is distorted by this baggage, but not by its very structure, of realistic origin, in Aristotelianism.

In fact, the problem of Idealism would still be in this Augustinian origin, which draws its logical basis from Neoplatonism; skipping the Aristotelian correction, in the objective substantialism of Plotinus, with that excess with which the Patristics concludes. This explains why the very nature of Kastrup's neo-idealism is defensive in criticism, like that neorealism of Maritain; also that his effort is useless in its pathos, like that other, typical of formal logic rather than of a real need.

It is this defensive character what undoes this hermeneutical body, which Kastrup tries to save in his critique; which is realistic, in a negative function —as criticism— rather than positive, since in fact it does not postulate something. This is important, because Kastrup does not even deny Realism —which he admits as experiential— but conditions it; so it is rather an epistemic adaptation, as a defensive contraction in the face of scientific advances.

His critique of Realism then suffers from the same excess as in Feuerbach and Marx, reducing it to matter; so it even resulted in a false realism, since it did not manage to establish its singular ontology. In effect, Feuerbach's critique of Hegel's absolutism depended on the same Hegel’s ontological presuppositions; established since Kant —on the basis of Descartes to Spinoza—, as belonging to that tradition that he criticized.

The singularity of this emergence and originality of Realism is precisely its epistemological independence; allowing an effective adaptation of traditional ontology, but from Hegelian objectivism; which is not what Kastrup anchors himself in, but in its transcendentalism, as precisely the presupposition that Hegel tries to overcome. Hegel does not succeed, because of that epistemic burden of his tradition, in that need for God that complicates it; but whose obsolescence is not enough to liberate the system, since it is this what is determined by its centrality.