Another logical movement springs from those whom a correlation of fact
within the unity of a system altogether failed to satisfy. There must
also be development of the correlated terms from a single principle.
Form and content must not only correspond one to the other. They must be
exhibited as distinguishable moments within a unity which can at one and
the same time be seen to be the ground from which the distinction
springs and the ground in virtue of which it is over-ruled. Along this
line of speculation we have a logic which claims that whatsoever is in
one plane or at one stage in the development of thought a residuum that
apparently defies analysis must at another stage and on a higher plane
be shown so to be absorbed as to fall altogether within thought. This is
the view of Hegel upon which logic comes to coincide with the
progressive self-unfolding of thought in that type of metaphysic which
is known as absolute, i.e. all-inclusive idealism. The exponent of logic
as metaphysic, for whom the rational is the real is necessarily in
revolt against all that is characteristically Kantian in the theory of
knowledge, against the transcendental method itself and against the
doctrine of limits which constitutes the nerve of "criticism." Stress
was to be laid upon the constructive character of the act of thought
which Kant had recognized, and without Kant's qualifications of it. In
all else the claim is made to have left the Kantian teaching behind as a
cancelled level of speculation.
Limitation of Transcendental Method.
Transcendental method is indeed not invulnerable. A principle is
transcendentally "deduced" when it and only it can explain the validity
of some phase of experience, some order of truths. The order of truths,
the phase of experience and its certainty had to be taken for granted.
The sense, for example, in which the irreversibility of sequence which
is the more known _in ordine ad hominem_ in the case of the causal
principle differs from merely psychological conviction is not made fully
clear. Even so the inference to the a priori ground of its necessity is,
it has been often pointed out, subject to the limitation inherent in any
process of reduction, in any regress, that is, from conditionate to
condition, viz. that in theory an alternative is still possible. The
inferred principle may hold the field as explanation without obvious
competitor potential or actual. Nevertheless its claim to be the sole
possible explanation can in nowise be validated. It has been established
after all by dialectic in the Aristotelian sense of the word. But if
transcendental method has no special pride of place, Kant's conclusion
as to the limits of the competence of intellectual faculty falls with
it. Cognition manifestly needs the help of Reason even in its
theoretical use. Its speculation can no longer be stigmatized as
vaticination _in vacuo_, nor its results as illusory.
Logic and Psychology.
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