A finite state of man and of the world, of which one becomes aware thanks to the idea of the Infinite, corresponding to the unlimited nature of the intellect. If we can become conscious of the limits of existential and human conditioning, it is precisely because these limits are not intrinsic but extrinsic, and because knowledge enjoys its own inner illimitation: the intellect or knowledge (the two are one) is more than what it knows and more than the knowing subject. Just as the light that fills a crystal is not produced by the crystal, the intellect, in act and in its supra-human essence, is uncreated and uncreatable (Meister Eckhart). This is what the doctrine of the intellect as the “sense of being” accounts for.

More precisely

Finitude is not first a psychological observation but an ontological datum: it means that everything participating in created existence is subject to limitation, contingency, and dependence—that its being is never absolute but received. To be finite means to be referred to a principle that grounds us without ever being exhausted in us; it means discovering that the existence we possess is not self-sufficient, but “participated.”

Such participation illuminates the relation of the finite to the Infinite. For if the finite knows itself to be finite, it is because it finds itself measured by more than itself: the awareness of our limits already implies, in some way, the obscure intuition of that which has no limits. Without some implicit presence of the Infinite, finitude would be inconceivable. Finitude is thus not merely a boundary; it is a sign pointing beyond itself to the Principle from which it proceeds.

Consequently, finitude does not confine to immanence but opens toward transcendence. The created world, in its constitutive limitation, is in some way “translucent” to the Being from whom it receives reality; this reception is not merely extrinsic dependence but ontological participation. Hence, finitude, far from being experienced as closure, can be understood as a call: a call to recognize the Source who grants being and to orient the intellect toward what infinitely exceeds it.

This constitutive tension—between the experiential limit of the subject and the intellect’s aspiration to the illimited—is not an insoluble drama but the very imprint of our belonging to the Principle. In it appears the metaphysical structure of reality: the finite proceeds from the Infinite and returns to it.

For further reading

  • Meister Eckhart, Sermons and Treatises, trans. A. de Libera, Paris, Gallimard, “Pléiade,” 2023 —
    On the uncreated intellect and inner illumination.
  • Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, qq. 12–13, Leonine ed.; trans. J.-P. Torrell, Paris, Cerf, 1997 — On the disproportion between created intellect and the divine Essence.
  • Nicholas of Cusa, De Docta Ignorantia, I, 3–5; trans. H. Pasqua, Paris, Cerf, 2009 — On the incomprehensibility of the Infinite and the coincidence of opposites.
  • John Scotus Eriugena, De divisione naturae, I, 1–23; ed. E. Jeauneau, Paris, Cerf, 1995 — On the procession of beings from the Principle and ontological participation.
  • Bruno Bérard, Metaphysics for Everyone (Angelico Press); trad. of Métaphysique pour tous (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2022); Italian: Sui sentieri della metafisica; Spanish: ¿Qué es la metafísica?; German: Was ist Metaphysik? — On the understanding of the intellect as sense of being, the distinction between the finite and the Infinite, and the participation of knowledge in the principial order.