Jacques Mariten's Peripatetic Critique of Modern Philosophers on the Priority of Epistemology over Ontology

Maritain, as one of the neothomist philosophers, believes in the return to Thomas Aquinas’s views in all philosophical fields. One of the topics of interest to Maritain is modern epistemology, which has not only been isolated from metaphysics but also prioritized and is the first topic raised in the works of Descartes. Maritain argues that this primacy has led to idealism and the perversion of philosophy, since epistemology is one of metaphysical issues and should be raised after metaphysical premises, in particular ontology. Maritain presents critical realism, which is based on reality and existence as rational truth that expressed in sensory terms, against modern philosophers views. That is to say, the sense and experience of human being is the first encounter with the external world, but that reason dominates all levels of perception and validates human perceptions, intends the existence of the object behind its empirical appearance. The most important comprehension of reason, then, is the existence which beside quiddity forms  basic structure of any object. Accordingly, all modern epistemological views are either realistic or idealistic, but are rejected as idealists, because they ignore the role of external reality or “thing” in shaping mental “object”.