A History of Philosophy in EpitomeSchwegler, Albert
Philosophy
A History of Philosophy in Epitome
Schwegler, Albert
Philosophy -- History
traced to the activity of the senses, but that there must also be
presupposed besides these, intellectual functions, and hence an
independent province of supersensible knowledge. We see with the eyes,
and hear with the ears, but to group together the perceptions attained
through these different organs, and to hold them fast in the unity of
self-consciousness, is beyond the power of the activity of the senses.
Again, we compare the different sense-perceptions with one another, a
function which cannot belong to the senses, since each sense can only
furnish its own distinctive perception. Still farther, we bring forward
determinations respecting the perceptions which we manifestly cannot owe
to the senses, in that we predicate of these perceptions, being and
not-being, likeness and unlikeness, &c. These determinations, to which
also belong the beautiful and the odious, good and evil, constitute a
peculiar province of knowledge, which the soul, independently of every
sense-perception, brings forward through its own independent activity.
The ethical element of this Plato exhibits in his attack upon
sensualism, and also in other dialogues. He maintains (_in the
Sophist_), that men holding such opinions must be improved before they
can be instructed, and that when made morally better, they will readily
recognize the truth of the soul and its moral and rational capacities,
and affirm that these are real things, though objects of neither sight
nor of feeling.
(2.) _The Relation of Knowing to Opinion._—Opinion is just as little
identical with knowing as is the sense-perception. An incorrect opinion
is certainly different from knowing, and a correct one is not the same,
for it can be engendered by the art of speech without therefore
attaining the validity of true knowledge. The correct opinion, so far as
it is true in matter though imperfect in form, stands rather midway
between knowing and not-knowing, and participates in both.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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