I confine myself to the logical difficulty. How can thought relate
itself to the fragmentary sensations, impressions, feelings, which, in
their contrast with and disparity from the workings of constitutive
thought, mark it off from the latter; and which in their connection
with its products give the cue to reflective thinking? _Here we have
again exactly the problem with which Lotze has been wrestling_: we
have the same insoluble question of the reference of thought-activity
to a wholly indeterminate unrationalized, independent, prior
existence. The absolute idealist who takes up the problem at this
point will find himself forced into the same continuous seesaw, the
same scheme of alternate rude robbery and gratuitous gift, that Lotze
engaged in. The simple fact is that here _is_ just where Lotze began;
he saw that previous transcendental logicians had left untouched the
specific question of relation of _our_ supposedly finite, reflective
thought to its own antecedents, and he set out to make good the
defect. If reflective thought is required because constitutive thought
works under externally limiting conditions of sense, then we have some
elements which are, after all, mere existences, events, etc. Or, if
they have organization from some other source than thought, and
induce reflective thought not as bare impressions, etc., but through
their place in some whole, then we have admitted the possibility of
organization in experience, apart from Reason, and the ground for
assuming Pure Constitutive Thought is abandoned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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