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
The arrangement of transcendental philosophy itself is determined by
those original convictions, whose validity it asserts. Those convictions
must, in the first place, be sought in the common understanding. If,
therefore, we fall back upon the standpoint of the ordinary view, we
find the following convictions deeply engraven in the human
understanding:
A. That there not only exists outside of us a world of things
independent of us, but also that our representations agree with them in
such a manner that there is nothing else in the things beyond what they
present to us. The necessity which prevails in our objective
representations is explained by saying that the things are unalterably
determined, and that, by this determination of the things, our ideas are
also indirectly determined. By this first and most original conviction,
the first problem of the philosophy is determined, _viz._: to explain
how representations can absolutely agree with objects existing
altogether independently of them. Since it is upon the assumption that
things are exactly as we represent them—that we certainly, therefore,
know things as they are in themselves—that the possibility of all
experience rests, (for what would experience be, and where would
physics, for example, wander to, but for the supposition of the absolute
identity of being and seeming?) the solution of this problem is
identical with theoretical philosophy, which has to examine the
possibility of experience.
B. The second equally original conviction is, that ideas which spring up
in us freely and without necessity are capable of passing from the world
of thought into the real world, and of arriving at objective reality.
This conviction stands in opposition to the first. According to the
first, it is assumed that objects are unalterably determined, and our
ideas by them; according to the other, that objects are alterable, and
that, too, by the causality of ideas in us. According to the first,
there takes place a transition from the real world into the world of
ideas, or a determining of ideas by something objective; according to
the second, a transition from the world of ideas into the real world, or
a determining of the objective by a (freely produced) idea in us.
By this second conviction, a second problem is determined, _viz._: how,
by something merely thought, an objective is alterable, so as completely
to correspond with that something thought.
Since upon this assumption the possibility of all free action rests, the
solution of this problem is practical philosophy.
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