On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and On the Will in Nature: Two Essays (revised edition)Schopenhauer, Arthur
Philosophy
On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and On the Will in Nature: Two Essays (revised edition)
Schopenhauer, Arthur
Sufficient reason; Will
According to this, the order in which changes succeed each other in
real objects becomes known to us as objective only by their causality.
This assertion Kant repeats and explains in the "Critique of Pure
Reason," especially in his "Second Analogy of Experience,"[99] and
again at the conclusion of his "Third Analogy," and I request every
one who desires to understand what I am now about to say, to read
these passages. In them he affirms everywhere that _the objectivity
of the succession of representations_--which he defines as their
correspondence with the succession of real objects--is only known
through the rule by which they follow upon one another: that is,
through the law of causality; that my mere apprehension consequently
leaves the objective relation between phenomena following one another
quite undetermined: since I merely apprehend the succession of my
own representations, but the succession in my apprehension does not
authorize me to form any judgment whatever as to the succession in
the object, unless that judgment be based upon causality; and since,
besides, I might invert the order in which these perceptions follow
each other in my apprehension, there being nothing which determines
them as objective. To illustrate this assertion, Kant brings forward
the instance of a house, whose parts we may consider in any order we
like, from top to bottom, or from bottom to top; the determination of
succession being in this case purely subjective and not founded upon
an object, because it depends upon our pleasure. In opposition to this
instance, he brings forward the perception of a ship sailing down a
river, which we see successively lower and lower down the stream, which
perception of the successively varying positions of the ship cannot be
changed by the looker-on. In this latter case, therefore, he derives
the subjective following in his own apprehension from the objective
following in the phenomenon, and on this account he calls it an
_event_. Now I maintain, on the contrary, that _there is no difference
at all between these two cases, that both are events_, and that our
knowledge of both is objective: that is to say, it is knowledge of
changes in real objects recognized as such by the Subject. _Both are
changes of relative position in two bodies._ In the first case, one of
these bodies is a part of the observer's own organism, the eye, and the
other is the house, with respect to the different parts of which the
eye successively alters its position. In the second, it is the ship
which alters its position towards the stream; therefore the change
occurs between two bodies. Both are events, the only difference being
that, in the first, the change has its starting-point in the observer's
own body, from whose sensations undoubtedly all his perceptions
originally proceed, but which is nevertheless an object among objects,
and in consequence obeys the laws of the objective, material world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account