The Life of the Mind
Page 25
] (Werke, vol. Ill), which reads as follows: "My place is the fruitful bathos of experience, and the word transcendental ... does not signify something that transcends all experience, but what (a priori) precedes it in order to make it possible. If these concepts transcend experience I call their use transcendent." The object that determines appearances, as distinguished from experience, clearly transcends them as experiences.
39. Critique of Pure Reason, B566.
40. Ibid., B197.
41. Ibid., B724.
42. Ibid., B429.
43. The Philosopher and Theology, New York, 1962, p. 7. In the same vein, Heidegger in the classroom used to tell the biography of Aristotle. "Aristotle," he said, "was bom, worked [spent his life thinking], and died."
44. In his Commentary to I Corinthians 15.
45. Critique of Pure Reason, A381.
46. Ibid., B157–B158.
47. Ibid., B420.
48. The last and presumably best English translation, by John Manolesco, appeared under the title Dreams of a Spirit Seer, and Other Writings, New York, 1969. I have translated the passage myself from the German in Werke, vol. I, pp. 946–951.
49. "Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels," Werke, vol. I, p. 384. English translation: Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, trans. W. Hastie, Ann Arbor, 1969.
50. The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, London, 1966, p. 249.
51. The Visible and the Invisible, pp. 28 ff.
52. The Human Condition, pp. 252 ff.
53. Le Discours de la Méthode, 3ème partie, in Descartes: Oeuvres et Lettres, pp. 111, 112; see, for first quotation, The Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross, Cambridge, 1972, vol. I, p. 99.
54. Plato, Philebus, 67b, 52b.
55. Ibid., 33b, 28c.
56. Le Discours de la Méthode, 4ème partie, in Descartes: Oeuvres et Lettres, p. 114; The Philosophical Works, vol. I, p. 101.
57. The Visible and the Invisible, pp. 36–37.
58. "Anthropologie," no. 24, Werke, vol. VI, p. 465.
59. Heidegger rightly points out: "Descartes himself stresses that the sentence [cogito ergo sum] is not a syllogism. The I-am is not a consequence of the I-think but, on the contrary, the fundamentum, the ground for it." Heidegger mentions the form the syllogism would have to take; it would read as follows: Id quod cogitat est; cogito; ergo sum. Die Frage nach dem Ding, Tübingen, 1962, p. 81.
60. Tractatus, 5.62; 6.431; 6.4311. Cf. Notebooks 1914–1918, New York, 1969, p. 75e.
61. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, pt. 1, qu. 1, 3 ad 2.
62. It seems that Gottsched was the first to speak of the common sense (sensus communis) as a "sixth sense." In Versuch einer Kritischen Dichtkunst für die Deutschen, 1730. Cf. Cicero, De Oratore, III, 50.
63. Quoted from Thomas Landon Thorson, Biopolitics, New York, 1970, p. 91.
64. Summa Theologica, pt. I, qu. 78,4 ad 1.
65. Op. cit., loc, cit.
66. Ibid.
67. Notebooks 1914–1916, pp. 48, 48e.
68. Politics, 1324al6.
69. The Visible and the Invisible, p. 40.
70. Philebus, 25–26.
71. Ibid., 31a.
72. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, 1962, p. 163.
73. Critique of Pure Reason, B367.
74. De Interpretation, 17al–4.
75. 980a22 ff.
76. Mcmadology, no. 33.
77. Physics, 188b30. Thomas Aquinas echoes the Aristotelian phrase: "quasi ab ipsa veritate coacti' (as though forced by truth itself), in his commentary on De Anima, I, 2,43.
78. The Dictionnaire de VAcadémie wrote in the same vein: "La force de la vérité, pour dire le pouvoir que la vérité a sur Vesprit des hommes."
79. W. H. Auden, "Talking to Myself," Collected Poems, New York, 1976, p. 653.
80. Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, Lasson ed., Leipzig, 1920, pt. I, pp. 61–62.
81. Notes on metaphysics, Akademie Ausgabe, vol. XVIII, 4849.
82. Critique of Pure Reason, A19, B33.
83. The only Kant interpretation I know of which could be quoted in support of my own understanding of Kant's distinction between reason and intellect is Eric Weil's consummate analysis of the Critique of Pure Reason, "Penser et Connaître, La Foi et la Chose-en-soi," in Problèmes Kantiens, 2nd ed., Paris, 1970. According to Weil, it is inevitable "d'affirmer que Kant, qui dénie à la raison pure la possibilité de connaître et de développer une science, lui reconnaît, en revanche, celle d'acquérir un savior qui, au lieu de connaître, pense" (p. 23). It must be admitted, however, that Weil's conclusions remain closer to Kant's own understanding of himself. Weil is chiefly interested in the interconnection of Pure and Practical reason and hence states that "le fondement dernier de la philosophie kantienne doit être cherché dans sa théorie de l'homme, dans l'anihropologie philosophique, non dans une 'théorie de la connaissance' ..." (p. 33), whereas my chief reservations about Kant's philosophy concern precisely his moral philosophy, that is, the Critique of Practical Reason, although I agree of course that those who read the Critique of Pure Reason as a kind of epistemology seem to ignore completely the concluding chapters of the book (p. 34).
The four essays of Weil's book, by far the most important items in the Kant literature of recent years, are all based on the simple but crucial insight that "L'opposition connaître ...et penser ...est fondamentale pour la compréhension de la pensée kantienne" (p. 112, n. 2).
84. Critique of Pure Reason, A314.
85. Ibid., B868.
86. Ibid., Bxxx.
87. Ibid.
88. Ibid., B697.
89. Ibid., B699.
90. Ibid., B702.
91. Ibid., B698.
92. Ibid., B714.
93. Ibid., B826.
94. Ibid., B708.
Chapter II
1. De Veritate, qu. XXII, art. 12.
2. Critique of Pure Reason, B171–B174.
3. Critique of Judgment, trans. J. H. Bernard, New York, 1951, Introduction, IV.
4. Science of Logic, Preface to the Second Edition.
5. Philosophy of Right, Preface.
6. Frag. 108.
7. Thucydides, II, 43.
8. Critique of Pure Reason, B400.
9. Ibid., B275.
10. See Emst Stadter, Psychologie und Metaphysik der menschlichen Freiheit, München, Paderborn, Wien, 1971, p. 195.
11. See the magnificent description of such a dream of "complete loneliness" in Kant's Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, trans. John T. Goldthwait, Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1960, pp. 48–49.
12. Critique of Pure Reason, B157. Cf. chap. I of the present volume, pp. 43–45.
13. Ibid., B158 n.
14. "Anthropologie," no. 28, Werke, vol. VI, p. 466.
15. The Trinity, bk. XI, chap. 3. English translation: Fathers of the Church series, Washington, D.C., 1963, vol. 45.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., chap. 8.
18. Ibid., chap. 10.
19. An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Ralph Manheim, New Haven, 1959, p. 12.
20. "Discours aux Chirurgiens," in Variété, Paris, 1957, vol. I, p. 916.
21. Phaedo, 64.
22. Diogenes Laertius, VII, 2.
23. Sämmtliche Werke, Leipzig, n.d., "Ueber den Tod," vol. II, p. 1240.
24. Phaedo, 64–67.
25. Cf. Valéry, op. cit., loc. cit.
26. See N. A. Greenberg's analysis, "Socrates' Choice in the Crito," in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. 70, no. 1, 1965.
27. Heraclitus, frags. 104,29.
28. Republic, 494a and 496d.
29. Ibid., 496a ff. Cornford, The Republic of Plato, pp. 203–204.
30. Philebus, 62b.
31. Laws, 935: In disputes, "all are wont to indulge in ridicule of their opponent." It is impossible "to abuse without seeking to ridic
ule." Hence, "every writer of comedy or iambic or lyric song shall be strictly forbidden to ridicule any of the citizens ... and if he disobeys he shall be banished from the country." For the passages in the Republic, however, in which the fear of ridicule plays hardly any role, see 394 ff. and 606 ff.
32. Theaetetus, 174a–d.
33. "Träume eines Geistersehers," Werke, vol. I, p. 951.
34. Phaedo, 64.
35. Ibid., 66.
36. Ibid., 65.
37. Protreptikos, B43, ed. Ingemar Düring, Frankfurt, 1969.
38. Ibid., B110.
39. Republic, 500c.
40. Letter of March 1638, Descartes: Oeuvres et Lettres, p. 780.
41. Editor's note: we have been unable to find this reference.
42. Akademie Ausgabe, vol. XVIII, 5019 and 5036.
43. Plato, in the Phaedo, 84a, mentions Penelope's web but in the opposite sense. The "soul of the philosopher," set free from the bondage of pleasure and pain, will not act Penelope-like, undoing her own weaving. Once rid (through the logismos), of pleasure and pain that "nail" the soul to the body, the soul (Plato's thinking ego) changes its nature and no longer reasons (logizesthai) but looks upon (theāsthai) "the true and the divine" and abides there forever.
44. "Ueber das Wesen der Philosophischen Kritik," Hegel Studienausgabe, Frankfurt, 1968, vol. I, p. 103.
45. Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, Lasson ed, Leipzig, 1917, pt. II, pp. 4–5.
46. Reason in History, trans. Robert S. Hartman, Indianapolis, New York, 1953, p. 89.
47. Reason in History, p. 69. Author's translation.
48. Preface to The Phenomenology of Mind.
49. Politics, 1269a35, 1334al5; see bk. VII, chap. 15.
50. Paul Weiss, "A Philosophical Definition of Leisure," in Leisure in America: Blessing or Curse, ed. J. C. Charlesworth, Philadelphia, 1964, p. 21.
51. VIII, 8.1 follow the translation given in Kirk and Raven, frag. 278.
52. Timaeus, 34b.
53. "Der Streit der Fakultäten," pt. II, 6 and 7, Werke, vol. VI, pp. 357–362.
54. "Ueber den Gemeinspruch," Werke, vol. VI, pp. 166–167.
55. Hegel, Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, Introduction.
56. Sophist, 254.
57. Republic, 517b, and Phaedrus, 247c.
58. Sophist, 254a–b.
59. See chap. I of the present volume, pp. 33–34. In the beginning of De Interpretation, Aristotle refers to his De Anima, as having dealt with some of the same points, but nothing in De Anima seems to correspond to the points raised in De Interpretation. If my reading of the text is correct, Aristotle might have thought of the passage used by me in chap. I, that is, De Anima, 403a5–10.
60. De Interpretation, 16a4–17a9.
61. "Reflexionen zur Anthropologie," no. 897, Akademie Ausgabe, vol. XV, p. 392.
62. Monologion.
63. In what follows here, I have relied closely on the first chapter, on "Language and Script," of Marcel Granet's great book La Pensée Chinoise, Paris, 1934. I used the new German edition, which has been brought up to date by Manfred Porkert: Das chinesische Denken—Inhalt, Form, Charakter, München, 1971.
64. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B180.
65. B180–181.
66. Tractatus, 4.016 ("Um das Wesen des Satzes zu verstehen, denken wir an die Hieroglyphenschrift, welche die Tatsachen, die sie beschreibt, abbildet. Und aus ihr wurde die Buchsta-benschrift, ohne das Wesentliche der Abbildung zu ver-lieren").
67. A Defence of Poetry.
68. Poetics, 1459a5.
69. Ibid., 1457bl7 ff.
70. Critique of Judgment, no. 59.
71. Ibid.
72. Ibid.
73. Prolegomena to Every Future Metaphysics, no. 58, trans. Carl J. Friedrich, Modem Library, New York, n.d. Kant himself had been aware of this peculiarity of philosophical language in the pre-critical time: "Our higher rational concepts ... usually take on a physical garment in order to achieve clarity." "Träume eines Geistersehers," p. 948.
74. No. 59. It would be interesting to examine Kant's notion of "analogy" from the early writing to the Opus Postumum, for it is striking how early it occurred to him that metaphorical thinking—that is, thinking in analogies—could save speculative thought from its peculiar unrealness. Already in the Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels, published in 1755, he writes with respect to the "probability" of God's existence: "I am not so devoted to the consequences of my theory that I should not be ready to acknowledge ... its being undemonstrable. Nevertheless, I expect ... that such a chart of the infinite, comprehending as it does a subject which seems
.. to be forever concealed from human understanding, will not on that account be at once regarded as a chimera, especially when recourse is had to analogy." (Italics added. English translation, by W. Hastie, quoted from Kant's Cosmogony, Glasgow, 1900, pp. 146–147.
75. See Francis MacDonald Cornford, Plato's Theory of Knowledge, New York, 1957, p. 275.
76. The essay, "The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry," edited by Ezra Pound, in Instigations, Freeport, N.Y., 1967, contains a curious plea for the Chinese script: "Its etymology is constantly visible." A phonetic word "does not bear its metaphor on its face. We forget that personality once meant, not the soul, but the soul's mask [through which the soul sounded, as it were—per-sonare]. This is the sort of thing one can not possibly forget in using the Chinese symbol.... With us, the poet is the one for whom the accumulated treasures of the race-words are real and active" (p. 25).
77. IX, 1–8.
78. Marshall Cohen s unfortunately unpublished manuscript "The Concept of Metaphor," which I was kindly permitted to consult, contains many examples, together with an excellent review of the literature on the subject.
79. The Odyssey of Homer, bk. XIX, II. 203–209, trans. Richmond Lattimore, New York, 1967, p. 287.
80. "Das Homerische Gleichnis und der Anfang der Philosophie," in Die Antike, vol. XII, 1936.
81. Diels and Kranz, frag. B67.
82. Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens, Bern, 1947.
83. Bruno Snell, "From Myth to Logic: The Role of the Comparison," in The Discovery of the Mind, Harper Torchbooks, New York, Evanston, 1960, p. 201.
84. Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life, New York, 1966, p. 135. His study of "The Nobility of Sight" is of unique help in the clarification of the history of Western thought
85. Diels and Kranz, frag. 101a.
86. Aristotle seems to have thought along diese lines in one of his scientific treatises: "Of these faculties, for the mere necessities of life and in itself, sight is the more important, but for the mind [nous] and indirectly [kata symbebekos] hearing is the more important.... [It] makes the largest contribution to wisdom. For discourse, which is the cause of learning, is so because it is audible; but it is audible not in itself but indirectly, because speech is composed of words, and each word is a rational symbol. Consequently, of those who have been deprived of one sense or the other from birth, the blind are more intelligent than the deaf and the dumb." The point of the matter is that he seems never to have remembered this observation when he wrote philosophy. Aristode, On Sense and Sensible Objects, 437a4–17.
87. Op. cit., p. 152.
88. See Hans Jonas, chap. 3, on Philo of Alexandria, especially pp. 94–97, of Von der Mythologie zur mystischen Philosophie, Göttingen, 1954, which is the second part of Gnosis und spätantiker Geist, Göttingen, 1934.
89. The Phenomenon of Life, pp. 136–147. Cf. Von der Mythologie, pp. 138–152.
90. Bonn, 1960, pp. 200 f.
91. Theaetetus, 155d.
92. 982bl1–22.
93. 983al4–20.
94. See, for instance, Nicomachean Ethics, VI, 8, where the nous is the mental perception (aisthēsis) of the "unchangeable primary or limiting terms" for which "there exists no logos" (1142a25–27). Cf. 1143b5.
95. Seventh Letter, 34lb–343a, paraphrase.
96. On July 2,18
85.
97. No. 160.
98. Nietzsche, Pfullingen, 1961, vol. II, p. 484.
99. Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, New York, 1953, nos. 119,19,109.
100. Phaedrus, 274e–277c.
101. Physics, 209bl5.
102. 286a, b.
103. 275d-277a.
104. Phüebus, 38e–39b.
105. Ibid., 39b–c.
106. 342.
107. Ibid., 344b.
108. Ibid., 343b.
109. Ibid., 341e.
110. Critique of Pure Reason, B33. For: "Nicht dadurch, dass ich bloss denke, erkenne ich irgend ein Objekt, sondern nur dadurch, dass ich eine gegebene Anschauung ... bestimme, kann ich irgend einen Gegenstand erkennen" ("I do not know an object merely in that I think, but only insofar as I determine a given intuition, can I know an object") (B406).
111. I am quoting from an early lecture-course of Heidegger's on Plato's Sophist (1924–25) according to a literal transcript, pp. 8, and 155, 160. See also Comford's commentary on the Sophist in Plato's Theory of Knowledge, p. 189 and n. 1, where noein is said to stand for the act of "intuition (noēsis) which sees directly, without ... discursive reasoning."
112. 38 c–e.
113. P. 50 of chap. I of the present volume.
114. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1003 a 21.
115. Ibid., 984 b 10.
116. Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate, qu. I, art. 1.
117. Critique of Pure Reason, B82, B83.
118. Sein und Zeit, Tübingen, 1949, no. 44 (a), p. 217.
119. See Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 100b5–17.
120. An Introduction to Metaphysics (1903), trans. T. E. Hulme, Indianapolis, New York, 1955, p. 45.
121. Ibid.
122. Critique of Pure Reason, B84 and B189–B191.
123. An Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 45.
124. Protreptikos, Düring ed., B87.
125. 1072b27.
126. 1072a21.
127. This mistranslation mars W. D. Ross's Aristotle, Meridian Books, New York, 1959, but is mercifully absent from his translation of the Metaphysics in Richard McKeon's The Basic Works of Aristotle.
128. Philosophy of History, Introduction, p. 9.