The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. I, Nos. 1-4, 1867Various
Philosophy
The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. I, Nos. 1-4, 1867
Various
Philosophy -- Periodicals
3. If, for the transcendental philosopher, the subjective alone has
original reality, he will also make the subjective alone in knowledge
directly his object; the objective will only become an object indirectly
to him, and, whereas, in ordinary knowledge, knowledge itself—the act of
knowing—vanishes in the object, in transcendental knowledge, on the
contrary, the object, as such, will vanish in the act of knowing.
Transcendental knowledge is a knowledge of knowing, in so far as it is
purely subjective.
Thus, for example, in intuition, it is only the objective that reaches
the ordinary consciousness; the act of intuition itself is lost in the
object; whereas the transcendental mode of intuition rather gets only a
glimpse of the object of intuition through the act. Ordinary thought,
therefore, is a mechanism in which ideas prevail, without, however,
being distinguished as ideas; whereas transcendental thought interrupts
this mechanism, and in becoming conscious of the idea as an act, rises
to the idea of the idea. In ordinary action, the acting itself is
forgotten in the object of the action; philosophizing is also an action,
but not an action only. It is likewise a continued self-intuition in
this action.
The nature of the transcendental mode of thought consists, therefore,
generally in this: that, in it, that which in all other thinking,
knowing, or acting escapes the consciousness, and is absolutely
non-objective, is brought into consciousness, and becomes objective; in
short, it consists in a continuous act of becoming an object to itself
on the part of the subjective.
The transcendental art will therefore consist in a readiness to maintain
one’s self continuously in this duplicity of thinking and acting.
III.—PRELIMINARY ARRANGEMENT OF TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY.
This arrangement is preliminary, inasmuch as the principles of
arrangement can be arrived at only in the science itself.
We return to the idea of science.
Transcendental philosophy has to explain how knowledge is possible at
all, supposing that the subjective in it is assumed as the chief or
first element.
It is not, therefore, any single part, or any particular object of
knowledge, but knowledge itself, and knowledge generally, that it takes
for its object.
Now all knowledge is reducible to certain original convictions or
original fore-judgments; these different convictions transcendental
philosophy must reduce to one original conviction; this one, from which
all others are derived, is expressed in the first principle of this
philosophy, and the task of finding such is no other than that of
finding the absolutely certain, by which all other certainty is arrived
at.
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