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
rationalist 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 himself 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, and induce reflective thought not as bare
impressions, etc., but through their place in some whole, then we have
admitted the possibility of organic unity 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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