We distinguish knowledge by participation, in which the gap between subject and object is in some way abolished through that participation, from knowledge by abstraction, in which the gap is maintained while the subject abstracts a concept from the object. Participative knowledge is not subjective; on the contrary, by virtue of the transparency of intelligence, it is objective by nature. “Otherwise, we would not even know what ‘objectivity’ means” (Borella), and “man, entirely enclosed within his subjectivity, could not even conceive the notion of subjectivity if he did not possess the faculty of objectivity” (Schuon).
More specifically
This distinction corresponds to the classical opposition between intuitive intelligence and discursive intelligence. The former grasps form, meaning, or essence in a single intellectual act, by an “ontological sympathy”; the latter proceeds through analysis, reasoning, and sequential steps. Participative knowledge belongs to the realm of intellectual intuition: it does not merely represent its object but coincides with it analogically.
In metaphysical terms, intellection is not reducible to a cerebral mechanism. It manifests, within the human subject, a faculty of universality that transcends the particular. When we grasp a mathematical principle or a logical law, we do not apprehend a subjective impression but an objective structure of reality. This capacity to surpass psychological subjectivity is precisely what Borella and Schuon call the transparency of intelligence.
Knowledge by abstraction is not inferior; it is indispensable for science, conceptual clarity, and communication. Yet it remains mediate: it constructs representations, models, categories. Participative knowledge, by contrast, arises from intellectual presence: it is less “knowing about” than “knowing according to.”
Metaphysical tradition affirms that true knowledge implies a certain likeness between knower and known: one knows only what one is capable of becoming. Participation reveals man as microcosm and “mirror of the intelligible.”
Further reading:
– Plato, Meno; Symposium
– Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q.84–88
– René Guénon, The Multiple States of Being
– Jean Borella, The Crisis of Religious Symbolism
– Frithjof Schuon, The Transcendent Unity of Religions
– Bruno Bérard, Metaphysics for Everyone (Angelico Press), trad. of Métaphysique pour tous (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2021); It. Sui sentieri della metafisica; Sp. ¿Qué es la metafísica?; De. Was ist Metaphysik? and Métaphysique du paradoxe (L’Harmattan, 2019)