The Monist, Vol. 2, 1891-1892 : $b A quarterly magazineVarious
Philosophy
The Monist, Vol. 2, 1891-1892 : $b A quarterly magazine
Various
Philosophy -- Periodicals
between activity and capacity in the organs, the activities of which
are concomitants of the psychosis.” Mr. Marshall then supplies the
psychological interpretation of the physiological phenomena attendant on
the pleasures of Rest and of Relief, and of the pain of Obstruction or
hindered activity. He concludes the present article with the statement
that the physical concomitants of pleasure-pain phenomena are to be found
in general qualities common to all processes which are at the basis
of our conscious life; and that this is corroborated by introspective
analysis of pleasures and pains. Mr. Marshall’s idea does not appear to
us as a happy solution of the problem.
The object of Mr. Caldwell’s paper is to explain Kantism through
Schopenhauer, who claimed to be Kant’s only true successor in philosophy.
Schopenhauer came to the conclusion that Kant’s only real discovery,
given in the “Æsthetic,” was that Space and Time were known by us _a
priori_. The principle of Causality is the only element of value he
finds in the “Analytic,” and a much simpler account could have been
given of it. The “Dialectic” represents the Negative side of the
Critical Philosophy, which although conclusive, might have been stated
more simply. In Ethics Kant rendered the immortal service of showing,
by his attribution of a noumenal freedom to man, compensating for his
phenomenal necessary determination, “that the kingdom of virtue is not
of this world”; although the _K. d. prakt. V._ is only an application
to ethics of the principles already reached in the sphere of the Pure
Reason. Schopenhauer finds the _K. d. Urtheilskraft_ to contain the
characteristic defect of Kant’s whole Philosophy—the starting from
indirect instead of direct knowledge. Lastly, the criticism of the
Teleological Judgment only shows what the _K. d. r. V._ already showed,
the subjectivity of what we may call the ontological categories.
According to Schopenhauer, the chief tendency of the Kantian philosophy
is to establish “the total diversity of the real and the ideal.” The
Ideal he explains as “the visible, spatial appearance with the qualities
that are perceived on it,” and the Real as the “thing-in-and-for-itself,”
which is the reality underlying and determining the world of experience,
and, as such, a real and not a hypothetical entity. Schopenhauer never
speaks of it in the plural, as Kant does, and so keeps consistently to
a monistic point of view. He says, “The way in which Kant introduced
such a thing-in-itself and sought to reconcile it with his philosophy
was faulty.” This concerns Kant’s method, against which Schopenhauer
directs the full force of his criticism. The fundamental principle
of Kant’s method Schopenhauer takes to be the starting from indirect
reflective knowledge: Philosophy is for Kant a science of conceptions,
while for himself it is a science _in_ conceptions; philosophy being a
conceptualised or _generalised_ statement of our knowledge. Schopenhauer
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