The Monist, Vol. 2, 1891-1892 : $b A quarterly magazineVarious
Philosophy
The Monist, Vol. 2, 1891-1892 : $b A quarterly magazine
Various
Philosophy -- Periodicals
When Clifford speaks of things in themselves he does not mean Kant’s
thing in itself, he means neither the object independent of the thinking
subject nor the thing independent of space and time. He means the thing
as it would be if viewed from the thing itself.
A man appears to other thinking beings as an active body, as an organism
that is in motion; but to himself he appears as a feeling being. The
subjectivity of things as they appear to the things themselves consists
in our own case of states of awareness, and this subjectivity is called
by Clifford the thing in itself.
A certain brain motion is in its subjective aspect a feeling. This
feeling is according to Clifford the thing in itself of the visible,
observable, and measurable motion. The thing in itself of so-called
inanimate beings is not feeling, but elements of feeling. In other words,
the world-substance is everywhere in itself potentiality of feeling and
Clifford therefore calls it “mind-stuff.”
Schopenhauer arrives at his conception of the thing in itself practically
in the same way. There is the world as it appears to us, the objective
world of motion in space and time. What the kernel of this world may be,
we can know from self-observation. The kernel of ourselves, Schopenhauer
says, is Will; and the will is also the kernel of things; the will is the
thing in itself.
We understand by will the passage into action, i. e. an incipient
motion of the organism if accompanied with the psychical element of
consciousness, and this consciousness is a state of awareness of the will
including its direction and aim. Will, as the term is generally used, is
always conscious. Schopenhauer however speaks of the will as being blind,
i. e. without knowledge, without awareness of itself and its aim. This
indicates that he uses the word not in its original but in a figurative
meaning.
The fall of a stone may be characterised as a blind motion without
awareness and without the stone’s having a consciousness as to its
direction or aim; and in a similar (although not in the same) way
Clifford speaks of the elements of feeling as being not rational. We
agree with Schopenhauer that that factor in a stone which makes it fall
when placed in a certain position is as much a natural process as the act
of a man, only of a lower grade and a simpler kind. Schopenhauer calls
that which both have in common “will.” Yet in common language we call the
objective aspect of that which both processes have in common, “motion.”
What then is the subjective aspect of a falling stone? It is not a state
of awareness, it is no feeling, but it is the potentiality of a state of
awareness, it is potential feeling. There _is_ a subjective aspect, but
this subjective aspect is so far as we can judge of no account to the
stone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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