In this article the author gives an answer to the comment of a critic of his book «Gnosiologia», Athens 19733 (English edition: The Foundations of Knowledge, edited with an Introduction by J. P. Anton, translated by B. Coukis-J. P. Anton, Albany-New York, State University of New York Press 1968, 317 pp.), which questions the bilateral interconnection between Being and Consciousness within the act of knowing. According to the critic, whereas Consciousness is dependent on Being and subject to its indications and restrictions, Being (i.e. all sorts of reality which become objects of knowledge) is self-existent, independent and by-itself, indifferent to the approaches of Consciousness. This thesis is countered by the author with a series of arguments based on theory and on practice (and, in the last part of the article, with concrete examples drawn from scientific ontology) in order to demonstrate the position maintained in «Gnosiologia». Reality, that is, is grasped by the mind if and to the extent that it becomes known not by the layman (the ordinary man) but by theoretical man, the man of science. The scientifically disciplined consciousness comes as occasion requires to the decision that the Being under its investigation is existent, i.e. that it can «exist», that «it meets the conditions» of existence. If we deny this sense of «existent» —the author argues— we shall be subject to errors of misunderstanding, which critical Gnosiology strives both daringly and circumspectly to avoid.
Academy of Athens
