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A New Critique of Theoretical Thought. Deel 2. The General Theory of the Modal Spheres (1969)

A New Critique of Theoretical Thought. Deel 2. The General Theory of the Modal Spheres

(1969)–H. Dooyeweerd–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

Chapter III
The problem regarding the possibility of the synthesis of meaning in the so-called critical transcendental philosophy of Kant.

§ 1 - The dogmatic character of the crypto-religious attitude in critical epistemology.

It should now be clear that a truly critical epistemology is dependent on the self-reflection on the cosmonomic Idea from which the thinkers starts.

In the problem of the inter-modal synthesis of meaning the very possibility of theoretical thought is at issue. Every epistemology that supposes it can find its Archimedean point in transcendental thought and pose the epistemological problem apart from a transcendental cosmonomic Idea, is ‘dogmatism’ in the objectionable sense of the word.

Such a theory may later on raise the problem of the possibility of the theoretical synthesis. But in its functionalistic attitude it takes no account of the possibility of the primary theoretic synthesis absolutized in its cosmonomic Idea, without which the isolation of the logical or the psychical functions would not be possible.

It is the dogmatic rejection of religious self-reflection that is typical of this doctrinair attitude of theoretical thought1. It refuses to carry thought in the transcendental direction to its utmost limits; not, because of purely theoretical motives, as it presumes, but precisely on account of its essentially religious postulate regarding the absolute self-sufficiency of the ‘Ver-

nunft’ which it wants to save at all costs. And this attitude of thought is forced on us, in the tyranny of every theoretical dogmatism, as the only scientific one.

No one should now attempt to maintain this dogmatism with the old argument that philosophy qua talis cannot exceed the theoretical field.

Already in the Prolegomena it has been sufficiently explained that we do not wish to contradict this thesis for a moment. In truly critical-transcendental thought, however, the philosopher should at least theoretically take account of the transcendent and the transcendental conditions without which philosophic thought is impossible. In this respect the cosmonomic Idea as a theoretical Idea in no way exceeds the limits of philosophy, though we know that this Idea itself is always religiously determined. It is much rather the postulate of the self-sufficiency of theoretical thought that cannot be epistemologically accounted for. It has not been theoretically thought out in the transcendental direction of time and it forces its religious a priori on us in the disguise of a ‘pure theory’.

If with Theodor Litt one speaks of a lack of ‘logical integrity’1, this epithet would sooner fit such a crypto-religious attitude of thought than the philosophy of the cosmonomic Idea which tears off its mask.

The reason why in this context we do not discuss the doctrine of the transcendental Ideas of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft and base our exposition for the present on the second edition only.

We shall demonstrate in some detail that epistemology could not but get involved in an impasse on the immanence-standpoint. As an example we take Kant's epistemology, on whose fundamental theses the so-called critical, transcendental-idealistic philosophy is still founded. For the present our exposition will be based only on the second edition of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. By so doing I need not yet fear the contradiction which might be inspired by Heidegger's interpretation of Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft in its first edition. In the present context our sole purpose is to characterize the ‘critical method’ as such in its failure with regard to the central problem of all epistemology.

Heidegger is of opinion that Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft has got nothing to do with epistemology, at least in its original conception, as it is found in the first edition. Its subject is supposed to be the possibility of an ontology. I think this hypothesis untenable, and intend to submit it to a special investigation later on. For the present I leave this recent controversy alone. Even if Heidegger's interpretation of Kant's original meaning should be correct, nobody can reasonably raise objections to my discussing the second edition as the basic work for the critical method in epistemology. This procedure is safeguarded by the fact that Heidegger himself acknowledges his peculiar interpretation to be inapplicable to the second edition.

Kant's doctrine of Ideas, in which the transcendental direction in philosophic thought begins to manifest itself, is intentionally omitted here, since it has been discussed in an earlier context. This is no distortion of Kant's critique of knowledge.

In the first place, I have definitely shown that Kant's epistemology can be understood only on the basis of his Idea of human personality as the autonomous ‘homo noumenon’. And secondly, I have demonstrated that his doctrine of Ideas is really determined by his practical a priori ‘faith in reason’. These two points belong to the exposition of Kant's cosmonomic Idea, discussed in the second part of the first volume.

For the posing and the solution of the problem regarding the cognitive synthesis Kant cannot appeal to his doctrine of Ideas. This is caused by the very nature of his dualistic cosmonomic Idea.

In the transcendental dialectic the theoretical Ideas make their first appearance. And this dialectic is only considered after a complete discussion of the cognitive synthesis and of the cogito, the supposed Archimedean point of Kant's epistemology. Thus Kant himself suggests that his critique of knowledge has been composed apart from any religious attitude and is quite unprejudiced, as the product of ‘pure theoretical reflection’1.

And this suggestion was accepted by the whole of critical thought in the struggle against speculative metaphysics. It was raised as a bulwark to bar religious prejudices and ‘Weltanschauung’ from the domain of epistemology.

Kant's theory will prove to result in a stalemate and involve itself in intrinsic self-contradiction.

§ 2 - Kant's doctrine of the synthesis and of the unity of our self-consciousness.

In the first place it will be clear that the mere isolation of the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Transcendental Logic is based on a fundamental misconception of the epistemological problem.

Kant did not realize that the doctrine of the sensory material of experience, in its primitive reception in the ‘transcendental forms of intuition of space and time’, pre-supposes the theoretical analysis and inter-modal synthesis of meaning.

His thesis is that the ‘datum’ in the ‘Gegenstand’ is nothing but the chaotic sensory ‘Empfindungen’1.

He adopted this thesis from Hume's psychologism uncritically, without being aware of its self-refuting character. How can the datum be the result of an analytical ἐποχή, the product of theoretical isolation? Kant writes: ‘In the transcendental aesthetics accordingly, we shall first isolate sensibility, separating from it all that the understanding adds to it by means of its concepts so that nothing may be left but empirical intuition’2.

Already at this point, and also in the ‘transcendental logic’ Kant ought to have raised the problem regarding the possibility of the theoretical antithesis and the inter-modal synthesis of meaning.

It is typical of his dogmatic attitude with respect to theoretical

thought as such that he did not sense an epistemological problem connected with the isolation of the sensory aspect of experience.

Instead he thinks that after the theoretical isolating process nothing remains but a given ‘non-conceptual’ sensory intuition, apart from any connection with the logical aspect of thought. Consequently Kant is not aware of the antinomy implied in the attempt at the theoretical isolation of a ‘pure’ sensibility. Not before his Transcendental Doctrine of the Faculty of Judgment does he raise the problem, as to how to apply the isolated ‘categories of thought’ to the sensory ‘matter’ of experience.

But the primordial epistemological problem regarding the antithetical ‘Gegenstand-relation’ as such and the transcendental conditions of the possibility of a theoretic abstraction of the sensory and the logical aspects of experience, is not even taken into consideration. Kant was not aware of the cosmic temporal meaning-coherence between the modal aspects. If so, he would have seen that the theoretical abstraction of the sensory (psychical) function of experience remains bound to the modal structure of the latter. This structure expresses the inner meaning-coherence with the logical and all the other aspects. Therefore he would have realized that a pure sensibility is a contradiction in terminis, since its very nature is to imply the analogies of the other modalities of meaning.

The influence of the metaphysical substance-concept upon Kant's epistemology.

It deserves special attention that in his transcendental logic Kant accepts an a priori reference of the categories to the sensory aspect of experience, whereas he does not acknowledge an a priori appeal of the latter to the categories.

In § 13 of the second chapter of the Transcendental Analytic, entitled Von den Prinzipien einer transszendentalen Deduktion überhaupt. Kant emphatically remarks: ‘for phenomena can certainly be given in the sensory intuition independently of functions of the understanding’1. It is true that in § 16 (in which

the Original Synthetic Unity of Apperception is discussed) it is said that ‘all the manifold of the sensory intuition is necessarily related to the “I think” in the same subject in which this manifold is found.’ But this reference does not include an appeal to the logical categories of thought as appears from the preceding quotation.

The reason is that Kant's epistemology is in many respects influenced by the metaphysical concept of the ‘thing in itself’ (substance).

We remember that in Aristotelian metaphysics the ‘substance’ (οὐσία ) was supposed to be quite independent of human thought. The latter, on the contrary, was supposed to be intrinsically related to the substances. This conception has been accepted by critical realism in contemporary philosophy. Although Kant's critique of pure reason resulted in a transcendental idealism, he was of opinion that the ‘sensory matter’ of experience originates in a mysterious affection of our senses by the unknowable ‘thing in itself’. So it is quite understandable that he did not accept an intrinsic relation of the sensory function of experience to the transcendental forms of logical thought, but only an a priori relation of the latter to the former, to ‘Gegenstände der (sinnlichen) Anschauung’. This metaphysical view is bound up with his conception of the purely receptive rôle of the ‘Sinnlichkeit’ and the active and free spontaneity of the understanding. In a deeper sense this conception was determined by the dialectical Humanistic basic motive of nature and freedom. Kant did not know the modal structure of the logical aspect and its temporal meaning-coherence with the other aspects of experience. Consequently his thesis about the a priori reference of the categories to objects of sensory intuition required another foundation. This foundation was supposed to be provided in the famous chapter of the Transcendental Logic concerning the Transcendental Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding (the categories). The demonstrative power of this chapter stands and falls with its presuppositions, which are not critical at all, but rather prescribed by the hidden starting-point of Kant's epistemology.

Kant's first discussion of the problem of synthesis. His lack of distinction between the logical synthesis and the inter-modal synthesis.

The basis of the whole argument is to be found in his conception of the synthesis as ‘the combination of a manifold as

such’ and its transcendental logical unity, guaranteed by the original synthetical unity of apperception. In advance of all investigation Kant proclaims that this synthesis is an actus of the spontaneity of the understanding (conceived of in the theoretical abstraction of a ‘pure’ logical function). The only argument adduced for this thesis is that ‘the synthesis of a manifold as such’ cannot be ascribed to the senses. The latter are only receptive, and even the forms of sensory intuition are nothing but the way in which the subject is affected by the things in themselves.

In the preceding chapter (§ 10) containing an introductory discussion of the categories, Kant distinguishes synthesis as such from the function to conceive it in a conceptual form. The former is called the mere result of the power of imagination (Einbildungskraft), ‘a blind, though indispensable function of the soul, without which we would have no knowledge at all, and of which we are nevertheless scarcely ever conscious’. The function of conceiving the synthesis of imagination in a conceptual form is exclusively attributed to the understanding, which by this function provides us with knowledge properly so-called. This is indeed a dark point in Kant's argument which we shall discuss in detail later on. For the present we are entitled to eliminate it because it will appear from the sequel that it is of no consequence for Kant's epistemological conception of synthesis.

Kant himself emphatically states that all combination, no matter whether we are aware of it or not, is an act of the understanding1.

This is to say that even the unconscious imagination can execute the synthesis only by means of the logical function of the understanding.

Since the theoretical abstraction of the sensory and the logical functions of experience does not imply an epistemological problem for Kant, this line of thought must result in the thesis that theoretical synthesis is the pre-requisite of all analysis:

‘The reader will easily enough perceive that this act’ (viz. the transcendental synthesis) ‘must be originally one and the same and of equal validity for every synthesis, and that its dissolution, viz. analysis, which appears to be its opposite, must, nevertheless, always pre-suppose it; for where the understanding has not previously combined, it cannot dissolve or analyse, since only as having been combined by the understanding can any-

thing that allows of analysis be given to the faculty of representation’1.

Kant does not recognize the cosmic systasis of meaning as it is determined and arranged by the cosmic temporal order, and in which the analytical function itself can only function. Theoretical thought has to take over the task of the cosmic law-giver. And so Kant cannot understand that logical synthesis itself is under the law of the analytical meaning and can never be the pre-requisite of the analytical. The modal meaning of the law-spheres is erased by the absolutizing of the theoretical logical function. And this is another reason why the problem of the inter-modal synthesis of meaning in theoretical knowledge must remain hidden from Kant. He does not distinguish the latter from the functional logical synthesis. According to him all synthesis, no matter whether it is a combination of the manifold of sensory intuition or of a logical manifold of concepts, is a logical act of the understanding2.

The lack of genuinely transcendental reflection culminates in Kant's ‘Transcendental Logic’ in the logicizing of the cosmic and cosmological self-consciousness.

His argument starts from the concept of combination which in addition to those of the manifold and of synthesis also pre-supposes that of unity. Kant has penetrated to the insight that the categories of thought as conceptual forms of synthesis pre-suppose the basic unity of self-consciousness:

‘We must, therefore, look still higher for this unity (as qualitative)3 namely in that which contains the ground of the unity of diverse concepts in judgments; the ground, consequently, of the possibility of the understanding, even in regard to its logical employment’4. (Italics are mine).

If Kant had not started from the dogma concerning the autonomy of theoretical thought, he might have acknowledged the necessary transcendence of self-consciousness (operating in theoretical thought) above the logical function. Now he has barred the way to this transcendental insight. The theoretically abstracted logical and sensory functions are assumed to be the only sources of our knowledge. The transcendental unity of self-consciousness cannot be found in sensibility: so it must be of a logical nature after all. Kant identifies it with the cogito as the form of the representation ‘I think’. He explicitly calls the fundamental law of the necessary unity of apperception (i.e. the transcendental unity of self-consciousness) an ‘analytical proposition’.

The transcendental unity of self-consciousness is the concept of the ‘cogito’ that must be capable of accompanying all my different theoretical concepts, if they are to be my own concepts. It is thus made the mere transcendental logical pre-requisite for all theoretical categories of thought. In an epistemological sense, the selfhood is merged into the primary logical unity of thought:

‘for the sole reason that I can comprehend the manifold of the representations in one consciousness, do I call them my representations, for otherwise I should have as many-coloured and diverse a self as I have representations of which I am conscious.
Synthetical unity of the manifold in intuitions as given1 a priori, is therefore the ground of the identity of apperception itself which is a priori antecendent to all my determinate thought. Combination, however, is not found in the objects themselves; it cannot be derived from them through perception and then taken up into the understanding. On the contrary, it is a function of the understanding alone, which itself is no more than the faculty of combining a priori and of bringing the manifold of given representations under the unity of apperception. This principle is the highest in all human knowledge’2.

The internal antinomy in Kant's conception of the transcendental unity of self-consciousness.

The whole internal antinomy of the so-called critical transcendental epistemology is implied in nuce in this view of the cognitive selfhood as merely a logical form of the unity of consciousness. The deeper identity experienced in our self-consciousness is of a transfunctional and super-temporal character. It is knowing oneself to be one and the same in and beyond all cosmic temporal functions and knowing one's functions as one's own. If the thinking I-ness would be logical-functional, it would have to resist all non-logical aspects of reality, the psychical included, as not my own, not belonging to my selfhood. It would have to do so on the ground of the principium contradictionis. This would also cancel the possibility of a meaning-synthesis between the logical function of thought and Kant's sensory experiential material. In other words, Kant's critique of knowledge destroys itself by setting our cognitive functions apart and making them independent, and by identifying cognitive selfhood with the primary logical unity of the activity of thought1. It is true, Kant qualified the original unity of apperception in the ‘pure self-consciousness’ explicitly as a synthetical unity (in the sense of a form or law-conformity determining all experience). He considered it as the original a priori relatedness of a multiplicity (in intuition) to the cogito, the ‘I think’, in the same subject in which this multiplicity is found.

It is true also that Kant founds the purely analytical ‘unity of apperception’ - of which he assumes that it coalesces with

the representation (i.e. the concept) of the identity of consciousness in a multiplicity of given representations - in the synthetical unity of apperception1. But all this does not concern the possibility of inter-modal meaning-synthesis in the transcendental unity of self-consciousness. Kant writes: ‘the manifold representations given in an intuition would not all of them be my representations if they did not all belong to one self-consciousness’2. But if this self-consciousness is only the final logical unity of the activity of thought, it remains in an antithetical position towards sensibility, because of the theoretical isolation in which Kant conceives of it. Then the sensory representations cannot possibly be related to self-consciousness. In Kant's functionalistic critique of knowledge the religious transcendence of the selfhood, the cosmic interlacement of the modal functions in time, and the theoretical intuition cannot possibly play a part3.

The transcendental unity of apperception in Kant remains essentially a supposed ultimate formal unity of the logical function of thought.

The following quotations may be additional evidence for this statement:

‘in the transcendental synthesis of the manifold of representations in general, and also in the original synthetic unity of

apperception I am conscious of myself, not as I appear to myself, but only of the fact that I am. This representation is a thought, not an intuition’1. A little further on we read: ‘I exist as an intelligence which is conscious solely of its power of combination’2 etc., and Kant explicitly calls the objective unity of apperception ‘the logical form of all judgments’3, whereas repeatedly he emphasizes that thought in itself is nothing but ‘the logical function’4.

Summary of our criticism of Kant's conception of the transcendental unity of self-consciousness.

We can sum up the internal contradiction in Kant's conception of ‘the transcendental unity of apperception’ as follows:

The synthesis of meaning pre-supposes a temporal coherence of meaning in the modal diversity, as well as the transcendent unity above the modal diversity. Kant assumes a final logical unity of thinking above logical multiplicity5. To this unity all multiplicity both in thought and in intuition is supposedly related. Logical unity above logical multiplicity, however, cannot possibly exist, because the modal meaning of the logical only contains logical unity in logical multiplicity6. In Kant's epistemology the super-logical unity of self-consciousness is precluded a priori by his dualistic cosmonomic Idea in which this epistemology is founded. The result is that Kant's logicizing of the transcendental unity of self-consciousness cancels itself in internal antinomy.

The selfhood, as the unity above the diversity of meaning, can never be grasped in a concept, but only intended in a transcendental Idea. In Kant's transcendental logic the I-ness has become a formal concept, viz. the logical unity above logical multiplicity. This is nothing but a transposition of the metaphysical concept of the ‘soul’ as a ‘simple substance’ into the modal meaning of the logical aspect, where this concept is even more self-contradictory.

§ 3 - The problem of the inter-modal synthesis of meaning in Kant's so-called transcendental logic.

Kant speaks of the transcendental unity of self-consciousness in order to express that it is the pre-requisite of all a priori cognition. Self-consciousness is the Archimedean point in Kant's epistemology. He conceives it as the transcendental logical condition of knowledge determining everything else. But we saw that he had not even touched upon the primordial fundamental problems of epistemology in his doctrine of the transcendental unity of apperception (i.e. the logical form of self-consciousness).

This raises the inevitable question: What did he really mean by his distinction between transcendental and formal logic, fundamental to his entire critique of knowledge?

Although in critical philosophy this distinction is considered to be of extraordinary importance, it has not been very clearly defined1. All are agreed that ‘transcendental logic’ is concerned with ‘synthetical’ cognitive thought.

It is not possible to doubt that by ‘transcendental logic’ Kant meant the doctrine of ‘pure understanding’, in contradistinction to the so-called ‘formal logic’ already discussed. By means of the ‘pure understanding’ we think ‘Gegenstände’ absolutely a priori, so that the a priori concepts of the ‘pure understanding’ are related to ‘Gegenstände’. On the other hand general or formal logic is supposed to abstract from all relationships between thought and ‘Gegenstände’ and only to concentrate on the ‘form of thought as such’.

The question, however, as to what cosmological character is attached to the ‘synthesis’ brought about in transcendental thought, and in what cosmological sense we have to take the a priori relatedness of the categories of thought to the ‘Gegenstände’ of cognition, has never been investigated, as far as I know.

In Kant's transcendental categories the problem of the inter-modal synthesis of meaning has not been seen.

A close study of Kant's exposition of the character of the transcendental logic with regard to the ‘pure categories of thought’ will reveal that he especially thinks of the logical function as operative in the categories. In his ‘Lecture on Logic’ (Logikvorlesung) he calls the latter ‘Notionen’ or conceptus dati a priori1.

As sharply as possible he puts in the foreground that it is the same function which is active in formal analytical and in transcendental synthetical thought.

‘The same function,’ says Kant, ‘which gives unity to the various representations’ (i.e. concepts) ‘in a judgment, also lends unity to the mere synthesis of the different representations in an intuition which is called a pure concept of the understanding.
‘The understanding produces the logical form of a jugdment in concepts by means of analytical unity. And it is the same understanding which by the same operations imparts a transcendental content to its representations by means of the synthetic unity of the manifold in intuition. For this reason they are called pure concepts of the understanding, applying a priori to objects. This is a synthetic function beyond the power of general logic’2.
And in § 20 of the Transcendental Logic we read: ‘That operation of the understanding, however, by which the manifold of some given representations (be they intuitions or concepts) is brought under one apperception, is the logical function of judgment.’ (Italics are mine). ‘Consequently all of the manifold, in so far as it is given in a single empirical intuition, is determined in relation to one of the logical functions of judgment, by which it is brought into union in one consciousness. Now the categories are nothing else but these same functions’ (Italics are mine) ‘of judgment as far the manifold of a given intuition is determined in relation to them’1.

In Kant's view ‘synthetical thought’, with its categories applied a priori to ‘Gegenstände’, is thus rooted in the same logical function as formal analytical thought. This is why he orientates the categories to the table of the formal logical judgments2.

In Kant's line of argument this orientation is not arbitrary. It is justified in principle because the categories (as to their modal meaning, we would say) are indeed of a logical nature. Consequently, it is confusing to contrast them with the purely logical forms of the theoretical activity of the understanding, as is done by Windelband and in the prevailing view. This would imply that with regard to their formal peculiar character they had a meaning different from the logical. Kant never meant this.

He only distinguished them from all others as synthetic logical concepts a priori applied to possible experience. The synthesis in which the categories themselves are founded was not considered by Kant as an inter-modal but as a purely logical synthesis. The neo-Kantians of the Marburg School who raise objections to Kant's supposed deduction of the categories of thought from the table of logical judgments, by no means wish to detract from the logical origin of the categories. Only those who abandon the elevation of the logos to the (pseudo) Archimedean point of philosophic thought can gain an insight into the real epistemological character of the inter-modal theoretical synthesis of meaning.

So long as the logical is taken to be the origin of all determinateness of meaning, the inter-modal synthesis of meaning as well as the modal meaning-structure drop out of the theoretical view. According to Kant the (theoretical) synthesis of a ‘multiplicity in sensory intuition’ is of a logical functional character, though it doubtless implies a conjunction between two different modal functions of experience. It is even conceived apart from the theoretical intuition of time which only makes the inter-modal synthesis possible. It is ‘a priori related’ to the sensory function of experience, but in Kant's line of thought this relation is completely problematical. Its problematical nature renders it insufficient to accord a more than logical meaning to the categories. And Kant did not intend to do so. In his Kritik der praktischen Vernunft he makes use of the table of the categories quite apart from any sensory experience; and in the first chapter of the Transzendentale Doktrin der Urteilskraft he emphatically states: ‘Indeed a meaning is left to the pure concepts of the understanding also after every sensory condition has been abstracted. But this is only a logical meaning’ (Italics are mine) ‘of the mere unity of the representation to which no “Gegenstand” and consequently no meaning has been given that might produce a concept of the object. So, e.g., “substance”, after all sensory determination of stability has been abstracted, can only mean something that can be thought of as a subject without being a predicate to anything else. I can infer nothing from this representation, because it tells me nothing at all about the determinations of a thing that should be accepted as such a first subject. Consequently, the categories without schemata are only functions of the understanding for concepts, but do not represent an object. They derive the latter sense from

sensibility which realizes the understanding by restricting it at the same time’1.

And in the 22nd paragraph on Transcendental Logic Kant writes that ‘the categories have their origin in the understanding alone, independently of sensibility’2,3.

In this last pronouncement it is especially the part italicized by Kant himself that is important. For it states emphatically that in his own view the category itself implies no inter-modal synthesis of meaning. It is true he never tires of asserting that a category cannot be used for cognizing things in any other way than by applying it to the objects of experience1. Bu this confirms the statement that it is only the synthesis of the categories with the ‘transcendental form of sensory intuition’ time that can have an inter-functional, inter-modal character in Kant's line of thought.

Criticism of Kant's table of categories.

At this very point, however, Kant's lack of a cosmological foundation for his epistemology is very evident. His prejudice that we can acquire knowledge from two ‘sources’ only has no room for more than one kind of inter-functional synthesis a priori in cognition, viz. that between a logical category and a form of sensory intuition. In addition he could not call this a synthesis since he had bound himself to the prejudice that all synthesis is only a logical function of the understanding.

So Kant could not see that, if his categories were really to be transcendental conditions of mathematical natural scientific knowledge, they must already contain inter-modal syntheses of meaning.

The mathematical categories must combine original mathematical and logical meaning, the dynamical categories must contain original physical meaning in analytical abstraction2, if they are to render mathematics and physics possible.

We have shown that unity, plurality and totality (Kant's categories of quantity) in the logical aspect are entirely distinct from the numerical unit, the numerical manifold, and numerical totality, as well as from the sensory analogies of the latter.

Kant creates endless confusion when he ascribes the origin of number to a schematism of the categories of quantity by which the latter are supposed to assume an a priori sensible image in time as a form of sensory intuition. For lack of insight into the modal structures of meaning he was not aware of the analogical character of his supposed purely logical categories of quantity. His mathematical categories of ‘quality’ (reality, negation, limitation) can have kinematical-mathematical modality only if (as categories of ‘intensive magnitude’) they possess the complicated synthetical structure of meaning analysed in the general theory of the modal spheres.

The categories of quality must then comprise the logically disclosed modality of motion in a synthetical meaning-coherence with the logically disclosed arithmetical and spatial aspect. But Kant ascribes to these categories a logical meaning a priori related to sensory intuition.

He is not aware of the analogical character of the terms reality, negation and limitation in their logical use, and has not analysed their meaning as categories of intensive magnitude. In consequence the fundamental concepts of the kinematical branch of mathematics are misinterpreted as an a priori ‘synthesis of sensation (Empfindung) with the representation of time’, in which sensation is conceived of as ‘content of time’1. Kant also says that they are a priori determinations of time after rules (viz. the categories of quality), with respect to the content of time2.

Apart from their a priori reference to ‘time’ Kant's categories of quality, just as his categories of quantity, relation and modality, lose their supposed character as ‘transcendental conditions of experience’. But his conception of time is the weakest point of his epistemology. We have seen that the origin of this conception is doubtless to be traced back to Newton's ‘absolute time’. Apart from its metaphysical interpretation the latter was conceived in a kinematical-mathematical sense, this is to say in the modal meaning of pure uniform motion (tempus quod aequaliter fluit), in its abstraction from the energy-aspect. Kant has only substituted a transcendental-idealistic for a metaphysical interpretation by making time into a pure form of sensory

intuition. He has neither abandoned the kinematical-mathematical sense of Newton's concept of time, nor the absolutization of the kinematical time-aspect. The conception of the latter as a pure form of sensory intuition, in which the subjective impressions of the ‘inner sense’ are supposed to be received, must result in a fundamental confusion. Kant's epistemology has neither room for the modal diversity of the different aspects of time nor for the distinction between its law-side as temporal order and its factual side as duration, nor for the subject-object relation in the experience of time.

The impossibility of a really critical epistemology apart from a cosmological foundation is nowhere more convincingly demonstrated than in Kant's discussion of this most fundamental problem of philosophy.

It is of no avail to say that Kant's conception of time was oriented only to Newton's physics and its mathematical foundations. Even in this restricted sense the problem of time cannot be critically discussed without an insight into its integral cosmological character1 and the modal diversity of its different aspects. As soon as this state of affairs is lost sight of, every critique of human knowledge lands in a cosmological dogmatism.

Kant's mathematical categories of quantity and quality, as logical functions of the synthesis of a ‘manifold in general’, are related to the same confused idea of time, and by the intermediary of the latter to ‘Gegenstände überhaupt’. It is impossible that these categories which in themselves are nothing but logical forms of judgments, could assume numerical and kinematical-mathematical sense as transcendental determinations of time if the latter is conceived as a pure form of sensory intuition.

The categories of quality correspond to the logical forms of affirmation, negation and limitation. The latter are nothing but analytical relations of identity, exclusion and limitation (S is P; S excludes Q, S excludes an infinitesemal series of non S). In an inter-modal theoretical synthesis with the kinematical aspect of experience these logical forms can have no other function than that of an analytical-synthetical determination of

the kinematical-mathematical meaning inherent in the aspect concerned. This is what Kant cannot accept because of his prejudice concerning the two exclusive sources of experience and his elimination of the cosmic order of time. So he ascribes a mathematical sense to the categories of quality themselves. The logical function of synthesis must fulfil the task of an inter-modal meaning-synthesis.

The same thing occurs in the case of Kant's categories of relation (inherence and subsistence, cause and effect, and interaction between the agens and that which undergoes the effect). But from the logical point of view the situation is more obscure here than in the case of the mathematical categories. The latter correspond indeed to different forms of analytical relations. As to the third class of Kant's categories this correspondence is doubtful. It is entirely lacking with regard to the first and the third categories. The category of inherence and subsistence is taken over from the traditional Aristotelian logic. It was closely bound to the metaphysical concept of substance and to the linguistic relation of subject and predicate. From the strictly logical viewpoint it must be seriously doubted whether it corresponds to a particular form of analytical relation. Apart from the metaphysical concept of substance it can hardly be different from the analytical relation of identity. Kant supposes that it is the logical form of the categorical judgment. But he fails to demonstrate this assertion.

The category of interaction between the agens and that which undergoes the effect (which is also taken over from Aristotle) lacks any correspondence to an analytical form of relation. It can never have an analytical meaning since it implies the reference to energy and its effects. Kant pretends that it corresponds to the logical form of a disjunctive judgment. The ground of this assertion remains quite obscure1.

So it is only the second category of the third class, viz. that of causality, which has undoubted correspondence with a genuine form of analytical relation. Our provisional analysis of the modal

structure of the logical aspect has shown that the analytical relation of causality has an analogical character: it is necessarily qualified by the analytical nucleus of the logical aspect. As an analytical law of every logical conclusion, it is nothing but the principium rationis sufficientis. Kant has rightly observed that it is the logical form of a hypothetical judgment. Even in an inter-modal synthesis with the energy-aspect of human experience the logical function of synthesis implied in the analytical relation of causality cannot give more than an analytical determination to the genuine causal relation of energy. Kant, however, ascribes the meaning of physical causality to the category of causality as a pure concept of the understanding. This appears from his statement that the concept of energy (Kraft) and that of action and undergoing an effect are to be derived from the category of causality and dependence, and that, as ‘Prädicabilien’ of this original notion, they have the same character of pure concepts of the understanding1.

Thus Kant turns the (logical) principium rationis sufficientis into the ‘ground of possible experience’. The physical causal law is misinterpreted as the logical principle of the sufficient ground in its a priori relation to sensory phenomena in the succession of time2.

The complex inter-modal synthetical structure of the fundamental physical concept of causality is not for a moment discussed. On Kant's authority we must believe that it is nothing but a purely logical function of synthesizing a manifold given in the temporal form of sensory perception.

In the same way the three categories of modality are deduced (possibility-impossibility; actuality and non-actuality; necessity-chance). The conception of this class of categories is extremely typical of Kant's epistemological standpoint. It has an interesting history in immanence-philosophy which cannot be examined here in detail.

Aristotle's conception of the relations of possibility and actuality (δυνάμει ὄν and ἐνεϱγεία) had its foundation in the metaphysical form-matter schema. In Leibniz possibility was identified with the logically possible, the logically non-contradictory. The actual is taken to be identical with a selection from the logically possible realized by the deity, the ‘intellectus arche-

typus’. This selection is the ‘compossible’, i.e. that which is compatible with all the rest and is the comparative best. In Kant, possibility, actuality and necessity become the logical categories of modality. As such they are alleged to be related a priori to sensory phenomena1. Within the cadre of human experience only the sensory is supposed to be actual, in its formal determination by the forms of intuition and thought; but actuality itself is a category of thought. The dogmatical character of this conception and its untenability can only appear from a structural analysis of the pre-theoretical experience of reality. But Kant's frame of mind causes him to ignore our pre-theoretical experience.

The problem of the inter-modal synthesis in Kant's doctrine of the ‘transcendental imagination’ (‘transszendentale Einbildungskraft’)2.

In his ‘transcendental logic’ Kant introduced the famous, but extremely obscure notion of the ‘transcendental imagination’. In the 24th section he discusses the application of the categories to ‘objects of sense in general’.

The ‘transcendental imagination’ also plays a central part in the chapter on the schematism. And it should consequently be supposed that we can understand the transcendental meaning of the category only from ‘the transcendental schema’, which has its origin in this ‘productive faculty of the imagination’. But it will appear that nothing is gained in this way.

In the opening passage of § 24 Kant has again explained the purely logical character of the synthesis in the categories with great emphasis3.

He then continues as follows: ‘But as there is a certain form of a priori sensory intuition in the mind based on the recepti-

vity of the representative faculty (sensibility), the understanding, as spontaneity, can determine inner sense by means of the manifold of given representations in accordance with the synthetic unity of apperception. In this way it can think synthetic unity of the apperception of the manifold of sensory intuition a priori - that being the pre-requisite to which all objects of our (human) intuition are necessarily subjected. In this way the categories, in themselves mere forms of thought, obtain objective reality, i.e. application to objects that can be given us in intuition. These objects, however, are only phenomena, for only of the latter can we have an intuition a priori’.

And now with great emphasis Kant distinguishes this a priori ‘synthesis of the manifold of sensory intuition’ as a ‘synthesis speciosa’ or ‘figurative synthesis’ from the merely logical synthesis (synthesis intellectualis). The latter is thought in the mere category in respect of the manifold of an intuition in general, and is called ‘Verstandesverbindung’ (combination through the understanding)2.

The above mentioned figurative synthesis in its relation to the transcendental unity of apperception is called ‘transcendental synthesis of the imagination’, in contradistinction to the merely logical synthesis.

What does Kant understand by ‘imagination’?3.

1

In Hume's psychologistic critique of knowledge the imagination was considered to be the faculty that enables us to picture something not actually given in our sensory impressions. This imagination was conceived as subjected to the psychical laws of association only. Kant starts from this ‘empiricistic’ conception of the ‘imagination’ but only in order to show that the sensory phantasy itself is made possible only by the transcendental, figurative ‘synthesis of imagination’.

What place does Kant assign to the ‘imagination’ in his ‘transcendental logic’? Can this imagination perhaps elucidate the fundamental problem of epistemology, viz. the possibility of the inter-modal theoretical synthesis of meaning? Kant starts with defining the imagination as ‘the faculty of representing an object that is not present in our intuition.’ And then he says that on account of the subjective condition under which alone it can give a corresponding intuition to the concepts of the understanding, it belongs to receptive sensibility.

And, on the other hand, in so far as its synthesis is an act of spontaneity, Kant characterizes the imagination as an operation of the understanding on sensibility. As such it is the first application of the understanding to the objects of possible intuition and at the same time the basis of the exercise of all the other applications of that faculty. This shows clearly that it is precisely the synthetical activity of the productive phantasy which is ascribed to the logical function of thought. This fact is also acknowledged by Heidegger with regard to Kant's conception of the ‘imaginative faculty’ in the second edition of the ‘Critique of Pure Reason’1.

In the ‘transcendental operation of the imagination’ as a ‘figurative synthesis’ Kant sees a synthetical influence of the understanding on the ‘inner sense’ (Kr. d.r. V., p. 138) and the problem lies exactly in the possibility of this ‘influence’. The ‘inner sense’ is affected (affiziert) by the transcendental synthesis: ‘Now human understanding is not itself a faculty of intuitions, and cannot receive the latter, even if they are given in sensibility, into itself, in order to combine them as the manifold of its own intuition. Therefore its synthesis, considered in itself, is nothing but the unity of the act of which, as an act, it is aware even without the aid of sensibility. By means of the

unity of this act, however, our understanding is capable of determining sensibility internally with regard to the manifold which may be given to it according to the form of sensory intuition. Thus, under the title of a transcendental synthesis of imagination, the understanding exercises this action on the passive subject, whose faculty it is; and we are therefore justified in saying that the inner sense is affected by this’1.

In contradistinction to psychological ‘empiricism’ Kant very carefully distinguishes the synthetical unity of ‘transcendental apperception’ from sensory intuition. The figurative synthesis, as a synthesis, takes its origin only in the understanding: ‘the understanding, therefore, does not find in this (i.e. the inner sense) such a conjunction of the manifold, but creates it by affecting this sense’2.

In his doctrine of the ‘synthesis speciosa’ Kant does not offer a solution of the basic problem of the inter-modal synthesis of meaning. He leaves it unsolved. Even if in his ‘transcendental imagination’ Kant had in mind an original systasis of logical and sensory functions - a possibility that we intend to discuss later on - the inter-functional synthesis would only have been ascribed to the isolated logical function of thought. Kant's conception of the synthesis, founded in the dogma concerning the formative autonomy of theoretical thought, left no room for any other solution.

So we may conclude that neither in his doctrine of the categories, nor in that of the ‘transcendental imagination’ did Kant consider the real problem of the intermodal meaning-synthesis.

The doctrine of the categories does not belong to general epistemology but to the cosmological analysis of the modal meaning-structures.

To my criticism of Kant's doctrine of the categories I add a theoretical remark, the truth of which has already been established in the general theory of the modal spheres. That which the so-called critical epistemology treats in the chapter on the ‘categories of knowledge’ really belongs to the cosmological analysis of the modal structures of the law-spheres. It cannot be discussed in the dogmatical way of Kant's transcendental idealism. It is not possible to carry out a structural analysis of the modal aspects of experience, unless the universality of cosmic time, overarching all the modal functions, has been discovered.

The theory of the modal spheres, which proposes to give this structural analysis, must not be deterred by Kant's dogmatic restriction of scientific knowledge to the sensory aspect of experience. It should proceed with the execution of its imperative task of applying the analysis of the modal structures of meaning to all the law-spheres in their mutual coherence in time.

The epistemological problem proper in its restricted sense is concerned only with the question of the possibility of the inter-modal theoretical synthesis in which we grasp a modal aspect distinctly. And it is precisely this genuine epistemological problem which is constantly avoided by Kant.

§ 4 - How the problem of the inter-modal synthesis of meaning has been avoided in Kant's ‘Transcendental Doctrine of the Faculty of Judgment’.

Not before his ‘Transcendental Doctrine of the Faculty of Judgment’ does Kant seem to go into the problem of the inter-functional synthesis of meaning. The solution he offers is not really a critical solution, for he avoids the problem precisely at the crucial point. To demonstrate how ‘pure concepts of the understanding’ can be applied to phenomena at all, Kant formulates his well-known theory concerning the transcendental schematism of the ‘pure concepts of the understanding’: ‘It is now clear,’ he observes, ‘that there must be a third something of a similar nature to the category on the one hand, and to the phenomenon on the other, which makes it possible to apply the former to the latter. The mediating representation must be pure (i.e. void of anything empirical) and yet both intellectual and sensible. Such a representation is the transcendental schema.

The concept of the understanding contains the pure synthetical unity of the manifold in general. Time, as the formal condition of the manifold content of the inner sense, and consequently of the combination of all representations, contains an a priori manifold in pure intuition. Now a transcendental determination of time is in so far of the same kind as a category (which constitutes its unity) as it is universal, and is based on a rule a priori. On the other hand it is in so far homogeneous with a phenomenon, as time is contained in every empirical representation of the manifold. This makes the application of the category to phenomena possible by means of the transcendental determination of time which, as the schema of the concepts of the understanding, mediates the subsumption of the phenomena under the category’1.

Kant's argument here simply contains a petitio principii. For the problem is: How is an inter-functional (inter-modal) synthesis between the logical categories and (psychical) sensory phenomena possible? The answer is: by means of the schema as the a priori (inter-functional) synthesis of a category and the psychical form of sensory intuition, time. But in this ‘schematizing of the categories of thought’, the inter-modal synthesis has apparently already been accomplished, just as it was pre-supposed in the transcendental imagination. We do not get any answer at all to the question: How is this inter-functional synthesis possible? In other words the possibility of the inter-functional synthesis between the logical category and the sensory phenomenon is explained by the inter-functional synthesis in the

a priori schematized category. But this constitutes the petitio principii, since, on Kant's standpoint, the fundamental problem is exactly the ‘transcendental determination of time’.

The inter-functional synthesis pre-supposes a temporal coherence in the modal diversity of meaning, as well as a unity above the latter. Kant assumes an ultimate logical unity above a logical multiplicity in the ‘cogito’.

From the chapter on the schematism it appears that Kant must have seen the insufficiency of his conception of the unity of self-consciousness to explain the inter-functional relatedness of ‘the categories of thought’ to ‘sensory phenomena’.

In his Der Philosophische Kritizismus I, 478 (3rd ed.) Riehl observes: ‘The necessary combination of the pure concepts with the forms of intuition seems capable of demonstration without difficulty. Are not thought and intuition originally united in their common subject of consciousness?’1
Such an optimistic statement only proves that Riehl, who with regard to the conception of the cognitive synthesis perfectly agrees with Kant, has not realized the aporia (impasse) in which Kant's view of the transcendental unity of self-consciousness is involved. Without any really critical investigation of the possibility of an inter-functional meaning-synthesis he takes it for granted that as a matter of course the ‘cogito’ (in the Kantian sense of the transcendental logical subject) is the ground of the unity of thought and sensory intuition2. Yet Riehl admits: ‘Between the cognitive concepts and those of a purely logical combination there is not any essential difference, only one of application. Their use in purely logical propositions is analytical, that in judgments of experience is synthetical. In the former it is without any relation to the universal form of intuition (viz. time), in the latter it is in relation to this form’3.
Apparently Riehl did not see that in Kant's line of thought the same thing holds for the transcendental-logical unity of self-consciousness, and that it is precisely the relatedness of the latter to
sensory intuition which has been only dogmatically posited by Kant. Riehl, too, fails to account for it in a truly critical consideration of the fundamental transcendental problem involved in the Kantian ‘cogito’. Therefore, I believe Riehl has not understood that in the chapter on the schematism Kant's critical conscience has been roused. This chapter must not be explained from the dependence of the great Königsberg thinker on the traditional view of the universality of the concepts1.

§ 5 - The problem of the inter-modal synthesis of meaning in the first edition of the ‘Kritik der reinen Vernunft’ according to Heidegger's interpretation.

Meanwhile Martin Heidegger in his important work Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (1929) has made a remarkable attempt to show that in the first edition of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft Kant indeed assumed a common root of thought and sensory intuition, in the ‘transcendental faculty of the imagination’.

With this Heidegger again tackles a problem that has been of central importance in the whole of post-Kantian idealism. Heidegger calls this idealism rationalistic. To my mind, this is an error, and the reader may find the arguments for this opinion in the second part of Vol. I. Heidegger holds that the ‘productive imagination’ also functions as the root of practial reason in Kant's system. This view strongly reminds us of Fichte's interpretation of Kant. But Heidegger's interpretation did not take its origin in German idealism and has developed in a different direction, viz. in that of the modern ‘philosophy of existence’.

In the first edition of the Kr. d.r. V. Kant twice speaks of three subjective ‘sources’ as the activities of the soul's faculties.

From these the possibility of all experience is supposed to originate, viz. sense, imagination, and apperception (as ‘pure thought’)2.

To each of these faculties he ascribes a special kind of synthesis: the ‘synthesis of apprehension in intuition’, the ‘synthesis of reproduction in imagination’, and the ‘synthesis of recognition in concepts’. This is seemingly a contradiction of the thesis already posited in the ‘Introduction’ (and repeated in the same context in which he distinguishes three faculties), according to which there are only two sources of knowledge. Here it is stated that we possess no others, although Kant mentions the possibility of a common root which is unknown to us1.

In the second edition this seeming anomaly has already disappeared, and throughout we hear only of two cognitive functions whose common root is unknown to us.

And Heidegger admits that ‘Kant recoiled from this unknown root. In the second edition of the Kritik d.r. V. the transcendental faculty of the imagination, which appeared in the passionate impulse of the first plan of the book, was pushed back and re-interpreted - in favour of the understanding’2.

Heidegger is of the opinion that in the second edition the ‘transcendental faculty of the imagination’ has been maintained only nominally: ‘The synthesis is merely called “imagination” in so far as it is related to intuition, but at bottom it is the understanding’3.

This last assertion is indeed irrefutable. We have already

shown this clearly. I would draw attention to Heidegger's admission: ‘If, as is done in the second edition, the transcendental imagination is cancelled as a special basic faculty; and if its function is transferred to the understanding as mere spontaneity, then there is no longer any possibility to understand pure sensibility and pure thought with regard to their unity in one finite human reason, or even to make this unity a problem’1.

This last remark perfectly agrees with the whole of my previous argument. In advance, however, I must warn against Heidegger's sharp (though unwarranted) distinction between the epistemological problem and that of the ‘Sein des Seienden’. I must do so on the grounds given in the third part of the first Volume of this work. If Heidegger only meant to oppose the positivistic neo-Kantian tendency to deprive the transcendental motive in Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft of its depth, I might agree with Heidegger to a certain extent. At least, if he meant to emphasize the fact that the Kritik der reinen Vernunft was really written for the sake of the metaphysics of practical reason. Any attempt, therefore, to lay the point of gravitation of Kant's critical philosophy in ‘theoretical reason’ would be an intrinsical falsification of Kant's problems. Against such a background I am willing to agree that there is a kernel of truth in Heidegger's thesis that the Kritik has nothing to do with a ‘theory of knowledge’, in the sense of a pure theory concerning the possibility of mathematical natural science. That is to say, I could agree with its basic intention, and that in spite of its exaggeration. The Critique of Pure Reason has doubtless an epistemological character. But its ultimate aim is not a mere epistemological foundation of mathematics and natural science.

Ultimately Kant's critique of the theoretical cognitive faculty is orientated to his idealistic conception of the super-temporal noumenon.

This is a fundamental theme of the traditional metaphysica generalis, which found the ὄν ἧ ὄν, as the transcendent, immanent in the theoretical νοῦς.. Kant was the first to orientate this theme to the religious root of the Humanistic ideal of personal-

ity. In his critical philosophy it can only be interpreted according to the dualistic cosmonomic Idea in which it is founded. The sharp contrast between phenomena and noumena, which he scrupulously maintains in his Kritik der reinen Vernunft, is a proof that the great Königsberg thinker does not for a moment doubt the absolute transcendence of the practical Ideas above the temporal world. Accordingly as he rejects the claims of the speculative science-ideal to the province of metaphysics, he all the more clings to his unshakable rational faith in the homo noumenon elevated above all time. The decline of the Humanistic self-consciousness, manifest in the philosophy of existence, which originated from the problems of irrationalistic historism, is nowhere to be seen in Kant's philosophy.

How Heidegger approaches Kant's critical transcendental philosophy.

Heidegger wants to understand Kant from the very point of view of this modern state of decline. In this view the selfhood in our self-consciousness is interpreted with reference to its ‘innermost original essence’ as ‘time itself’. It is, however, hardly right to efface the whole (metaphysical) contrast between phenomena and noumena which is so fundamental in Kant's line of thought. Heidegger's maxim for the interpretation of a philosophical system cannot make this eradication acceptable. He lays down as a rule that a correct interpretation should not merely stick to what a thinker has really expressed in words, but should penetrate to ‘that which is implied in the words’1.

For although what Heidegger remarks is true, namely, that ‘the power and light of a guiding Idea should impel and lead the interpretation’2, this Idea should not be imposed on the system that is being investigated. It may only be the cosmonomic Idea which Kant himself has laid at the foundation of his Critiques, although he should not be aware of it. Heidegger, however, bases Kant's philosophic thought in an entirely different cosmonomic Idea, viz. the irrationalistic and historicistic basic Idea of his own existentialism. Thus he falls into an arbitrary hermeneutic method that he himself has erroneously elevated to a maxim of correct interpretation, when he remarks: ‘However, in order to extort from what the words say that which they

are intended to say1, every interpretation must necessarily have recourse to violence’2.

The result is then that the interpretation of Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft becomes an introduction to Heidegger's own philosophy of ‘Sein und Zeit’, which no doubt is itself highly interesting.

According to Heidegger's interpretation the ‘transcendental imagination’, as the supposed root of the two Kantian ‘stems’ of knowledge, must be identical with ‘pure reason’, both in its ‘theoretical’ and in its ‘practical operation’. It is identical also with the ‘pure finite selfhood’ whose ‘Dasein’ (i.e. existence) is rooted in time itself. Pure reason must then be conceived as ‘pure receptive spontaneity’, as ‘pure sensory reason’. The synthesis considered by Kant as the central theme of the entire Kritik der reinen Vernunft, is reinterpreted by Heidegger as an ontological synthesis. According to him it must not be conceived as the mere conjunction into a unity of an isolated sensory intuition and isolated ‘pure concepts of thought’, but should be understood as an a priori, non-empirical disclosure of the ontological structure of what is3.

The essential character of the finiteness of human knowledge, according to Heidegger, is that human understanding does not create its ‘objects’ but receives them. For human life (das Dasein) is at the mercy of ‘das Vorhandene’ i.e. given nature; human life is dependent on it and only rises superior to the ‘Vorhandene’ because of its capability to understand that which is. For this purpose human ‘Dasein’ a priori, and previous to all experience, designs an image of the being of what is. ‘Thus the question about the possibility of an a priori synthesis more and more concentrates on the problem: how can a finite being, which, as such, is delivered to what is (at hand) and is dependent on the reception of what is given, know the latter before any reception of what is, i.e. intuit it without, however, being its ‘creator’?4.

Heidegger's conception of transcendence.

Heidegger wants to read these problems also in Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft. The transcendence of the selfhood then remains of a temporal character. It is only the transcendence of the temporal finite human ‘Dasein’ above the ‘Vorhandene’ (the sensible things that are given), but it is not an ideal transcendence above time itself. Time as ‘pure intuition’, as ‘pure self-affection’ is the essence of the finite human selfhood. If the selfhood, the I-ness is found in the ‘transcendental imagination’, it is identical with ‘time’ as ‘pure intuition’. In the ‘transcendental imagination’ must be sought the original essential unity of the ‘stems’ of knowledge that Kant isolated at first, but which, as such, could not be fully grasped. These ‘stems’ of knowledge are sensory intuition and logical thought. The ‘transcendental imagination’ must be understood as the ‘formative medium’ (bildende Mitte) of the two ‘stems of knowledge from which they originate as from the primitive original synthesis’. Heidegger here shows a much deeper insight into the real problems of the cognitive synthesis than Kant's most articulate modern followers. The latter simply eulogize Kant's discovery of ‘the synthetical character of all objective knowledge’ and his ‘Copernican deed’, without penetrating to the crucial questions implied in his transcendental idealism. Perhaps Heidegger's superiority in this respect is due to the fact that, however much he may start from the philosophical immanence-standpoint, he approaches Kant from the modern state of decline of the Humanistic ideals of personality and science. In Kant these two still function as the unshakable pillars of his cosmonomic Idea. His faith in the autonomy of theoretical reason caused him to overlook the most fundamental problems of a transcendental critique of human knowledge. Heidegger, who is no longer biased by this dogmatic prejudice, was confronted with the real problem of the inter-functional synthesis and tries to solve it in his own way, though he ascribes this solution to Kant himself.

Heidegger's interpretation of Kant changes that philosopher's thought considerably both as to its foundation and its essence. And yet Heidegger's book is extremely valuable as an attempt to think out the problems of Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft with regard to the fundamental chapter on the ‘synthesis’.

The problem of the primary (ontological) synthesis in Heidegger.

The question is: to what extent does Heidegger's interpretation approach the fundamental problem regarding the possibility of the inter-modal synthesis of meaning?

For the answer we must first recall what Heidegger means by the fundamental synthesis. He seeks the primitive original synthesis in the transcendental imagination, i.e. in the formative medium between ‘pure thought’ and ‘pure intuition’.

This shows that Heidegger is aware of the fact that every theoretical isolation of the ‘understanding’ and ‘sensitivity’ presupposes a primary inter-modal synthesis. We acknowledge this without implying that Heidegger has really understood Kant's view. But has Heidegger also seen that we can only isolate a modal function theoretically within the fulness of the temporal meaning-systasis and by starting from it?

Only against the background of the primary cosmic temporal coherence of meaning can the fundamental problem concerning the possibility of theoretical synthesis be conceived in its true sense. If this primary temporal coherence of the modal aspects of experience is to be acknowledged as a basic fact, a philosopher must break with the immanence-standpoint.

For this standpoint is based upon an overt or hidden hypostasis of theoretical thought. Such a break is not to be expected from Heidegger who seeks the selfhood in the temporal (historically conceived) ‘Dasein’. He writes:

‘The ontical only becomes accessible to a finite being on the basis of a preliminary willingness to let something take up a position as an entity opposite to us. Thus the ontical possibly presenting itself to us is beforehand drawn within the unifying horizon of a possible belonging together. This a priori unifying unity must anticipate that which presents itself to us, at the same time opposing itself to the latter. That which presents itself, however, has already beforehand been encompassed by the temporal horizon held up to it in pure intuition. The anticipating unifying unity of the pure understanding must therefore also beforehand have united itself with pure intuition. This a priori united whole of pure intuition and pure understanding “constitutes” the scope of our willingness to let an entity take up a position opposite to us. In this scope all the ontical will be able to present itself to us. In view of this totality of transcendence the point is to show how - and this means at the same time

“that” - pure understanding and pure intuition are a priori interdependent’1.

What appears clearly from this quotation is that Heidegger also thinks reality is only accessible to the selfhood in the theoretical abstraction of that which is opposed to the logical function as a phenomenon (the ‘gegenständliche’). The fact that being only manifests itself to us as a phenomenon - which is identical with the ‘object’ (‘Gegenstand’) to Heidegger - reveals the finiteness, the temporal character of human knowledge which has been delivered to what is given (das Vorhandene) in nature. The ‘phenomenon’ (the empirical ‘Vorhandene’) he considers as the Platonic μὴ ὄν, the relative nothing, which only receives its ontological (not ontic) being through the ‘pure synthesis’ of the transcendental imagination.

With reference to the first edition of Kant's Kritik d.r. V. Heidegger has raised the question: How is the primary ontological synthesis possible in which the image of the ‘Sein des Seienden’ is planned? In his system of thought this question is as unanswerable as the fundamental problem regarding the epistemological synthesis was to Kant

For Heidegger also eliminates the cosmic order of time and even merges the selfhood into time, to which, however, he does not ascribe its cosmic all-sided meaning. This distinguishes his view from Kant's practical (ethical) metaphysics which maintained the selfhood as the super-temporal, super-sensory noumenon.

Nevertheless, Heidegger makes a serious attempt to explain the possibility of the primary (really theoretical) meaning-synthesis between ‘pure thought’ and ‘pure sensibility’. He does

so by ‘interpreting’ Kant's line of argument in the style of his own existentialistic philosophy. ‘Pure thought’ and ‘pure sensibility’ must be conceived as modi of the ‘transcendental imagination’, which in essence is time and selfhood. The three modi that Kant distinguishes in the cognitive synthesis, in the first edition of his Kritik der reinen Vernunft1, are essentially no more than the threefold unity of time as the present, the past and the future. Thus the problem regarding the primary meaning-synthesis seems to have been solved at one masterly stroke.

Time and the ‘cogito’ (as the transcendental unity of self-consciousness) are no longer opposed to one another as irreconcilable contrasts: they are identical:

‘In laying the foundations of his metaphysics, Kant was the first to explain both time as such and the “I think” as such transcendentally. He did this in such a radical way that he brought them together in their original identity, however, without explicitly considering this identity as such’2.

For sensibility means finite intuition with Kant. Its transcendental form (‘time’) is ‘pure receptivity’. The ‘inner sense’ receives nothing ‘from without’, but everything from its own self. As time it is ‘pure self-affection’3, as Kant qualifies it. But, according to Heidegger, this ‘pure self-affection’ is the transcendental basic structure of the finite ego itself, and the finite ego is nothing but the ‘pure understanding’, the ‘transcendental unity of self-consciousness’ which as such must be understood as ‘pure sensuous understanding’, as ‘purely receptive spontaneity’.

Is this explanation a true solution of the central problem of the intermodal synthesis of meaning? Certainly not. Neither in Heidegger's reasoning nor in Kant's has the genuine kernel of the problem been conceived.

In Kant the real problem of the inter-functional meaning-synthesis only arises as an after-thought, after he had begun to

absolutize the primary meaning-synthesis which had been the pre-supposition of his analysis of the sources of knowledge. Heidegger, whose penetration is deeper, acknowledges that in the isolation of the ‘sources’ of knowledge, ‘pure synthesis’ is already operative. But as soon as he is himself confronted with the problem, and has to account for the original meaning-synthesis, he makes both cognitive functions flow together into a supposed identity in time as ‘pure intuition’.

If the two cognitive functions in time are one and the same, the possibility of a real synthesis has not been explained. It has even been cancelled. In the cognitive theoretical concept the inter-modal synthesis of meaning pre-supposes the analytical ἔποχή, the abstraction of the continuity of cosmic time. Even cosmic time guarantees only the temporal coherence, but never the deeper identity of the functions. How then can time as a ‘pure form of sensibility’ perform this task? Designating Kant's ‘pure understanding’ as ‘pure sensory understanding’ will result in a kind of dialectic that Kant would certainly have rejected as emphatically as he could. The real issue is the possibility of a synthesis between logical and sensory modalities and Kant did not for a moment contemplate letting sensibility and understanding flow together dialectically. It is true, he did not pay due regard to the modal aspects as such, and in the first edition Kant still works with the ‘genus proximum’ of thought and sensory intuition, viz. ‘representation in general’1. But when Heidegger looks upon this fact as an indication of the internal affinity of the two ‘cognitive stems’2, he forgets that the genus-concept applied to the modal aspects is of a logical origin.

Heidegger's conception of the ‘transcendental imagination’ as the root of the two abstracted ‘stems of knowledge’ obtained in a theoretical analysis and synthesis of meaning, results in an undeniable dialectic. The cause is that it seeks this common root in time, apparently conceived here in the Kantian sense. It tries to solve the problem of the primary synthesis between ‘pure thought’ and ‘pure sensibility’ (= time) by proclaiming ‘pure sensibility’ to be the origin of ‘pure thought’3.

I pass by the internal contradiction into which Heidegger gets

involved by first calling the selfhood the origin of time and then identifying it with time1.

I want only to lay strong emphasis on the fact that Heidegger after all makes one of the ‘stems of knowledge’ in its supposed ‘purity’ into the origin of the other. He does so notwithstanding his search after a deeper root of ‘pure sensibility’ and ‘pure thought’ which was to make the inter-modal meaning-synthesis possible. He overlooked the fact that ‘pure sensibility’ is at best a theoretical abstraction originating solely from the analysis and inter-modal synthesis of meaning, and unable to account for this synthesis. Even Heidegger's ‘existential time’ is not cosmic time guaranteeing the continuous coherence between the modal aspects of experience. If he had had real insight into cosmic time, he would never have sought the transcendence of the selfhood in the inner experience of the ‘ex-sistere’, in the historical time-aspect with its anticipatory future. In time our selfhood only expresses itself in the refraction of meaning and the coherence

of its modal functions. Time cannot be the deeper identity of the modal functions, not even in its cosmic continuity. It cannot contain the totality of meaning but refracts it in the modal and typical meaning-diversity.

Is there really a point of contact in the first edition of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft for Heidegger's interpretation?

Is there really a basis to be found in the first edition of Kant's Kr. d.r. V. for Heidegger's interpretation? I think we should view the facts like this: Kant actually started from a primary formal unity of logical thought and sensibility, not only in the first edition but also in the second. The transcendental imagination can indeed have no other function in Kant's argument than that of a connecting link between the two ‘stems of knowledge’. The assertion that Kant considered the imagination as the ‘hidden root’ of both ‘stems’ is already refuted by Kant's critical starting-point. If it is a question of a hidden root, we can only formulate speculative hypotheses about it. And in the Preface to the first edition Kant rejects such hypotheses with great sharpness. I refer to the following utterance:

‘And then certitude and clearness are the two indispensable requirements which the form of such an enquiry must answer, and which the author who risks such a ticklish job should try to fulfil. As regards certitude I have come to the conclusion that in this kind of studies it is in no way permissible to express a mere opinion, and that anything resembling an hypothesis is inadmissable... and should be removed as soon as it is discovered’1.

In the same Preface Kant writes about the second chapter of the ‘Transcendental Analytics’. This chapter contains the passage quoted above concerning ‘sense’, ‘imagination’ and ‘apperception’ as the three original faculties of the soul. In the Preface Kant observes:
‘The view taken here, which goes somewhat deeply into the sub-
ject, has two aspects. The one is related to the objects of the pure understanding. It is intended to establish the objective validity of its a priori concepts and to render these intelligible, and for this reason it is an essential part of my work. The other aims at considering the pure understanding itself as regards its possibility and the cognitive faculties on which it rests, consequently from the subjective viewpoint.
And although this latter orientation is very important with regard to my principal aim, it does not form an essential element in it (Italics are mine). For the principal question remains: what and how much can the understanding and reason know apart from any experience? and not: how is the faculty of thought itself possible? The latter question is as it were an inquiry into the cause of a given effect, and in so far resembles in some degree a hypothesis (although, as I shall show later on, it is not really so).
Yet here I seem to permit myself the liberty to pronounce a mere opinion, and therefore the reader ought also to be free to hold a different opinion. In this connection I would remind the reader that in case my subjective deduction, contrary to my expectation, should not have fully convinced him, the objective deduction at which I chiefly aim in this work retains its full force’1.
Consequently it is not in accordance with Kant's intention if the subjective way of deduction is played off against the objective method and is even made the centre of Kant's problem.

The thesis of the twofold origin of all cognition (viz. sensibility and understanding) was considered by Kant to be so little contradictory to the other thesis about the three original sources

(functions of the soul) containing the pre-requisites of the possibility of all experience, that he immediately coordinates the second thesis with the first in the section entitled: Transition to the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. It is contrary to the fundamental principles of a correct interpretation if a fundamental contradiction is supposed to exist here. The ‘transcendental power of the imagination’ is not a third ‘stem of knowledge’ in the first edition. Kant much rather ascribes it to the ‘pure sensibility’, which relates to the ‘transcendental unity of the apperception’ (the logical form of self-consciousness), which only renders it intellectual. This is clearly seen in the ‘third section of the deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding’ in which Kant tries to show the internal foundation of the unity of knowledge.

He had already discussed the three kinds of synthesis, and now he follows a line of reasoning that descends from the ‘transcendental unity of the apperception’. Next he follows a course of argument in the opposite direction by starting from the empirical phenomenon in observation and perception. Heidegger has investigated these two methods very minutely. Arriving at the end of the second method, Kant writes:

‘For the constant and permanent “I” (of pure apperception) forms the correlatum of all our representations in so far as it is at all possible to become conscious of them. The whole of consciousness belongs to an all-comprehensive pure apperception, just as all sensory intuition belongs to a pure inner intuition, viz. time. It is this apperception which must be added to pure imagination in order to render its function intellectual. For in itself the synthesis of imagination is at all times sensible though it is exercised a priori, because it connects the manifold only in the way it appears in intuition, e.g., the shape of a triangle’1.

So, also in the first edition the ‘transcendental unity of self-

consciousness’ has decidedly not been conceived to be sensible.

And then follows Kant's definition of the ‘pure imagination’ which is fundamentally identical with that of the second edition:

‘So we have a faculty of pure imagination as the fundamental faculty of the human soul on which all knowledge is based. By its means we combine the manifold of intuition with the condition of the necessary unity of pure apperception. These two extremes, viz. sensibility and understanding, must necessarily hang together by means of this transcendental function of the imagination;...’1.

The question how the ‘transcendental imagination’ was enabled to perform this mediating function was never answered by Kant, neither in the first edition, nor in the second. This leaves only one possible explanation of Kant's argument: Kant started from a necessary systasis viz. that of ‘pure sensibility’ and ‘pure thought’ (but not from the real meaning-systasis in cosmic time), and misinterpreted the primary meaning-synthesis from which he started as a systatic datum2,3

This is the dogmatic standpoint which from the start I have tried to point out in Kant's epistemology.

So long as the prejudice of the self-sufficiency of theoretical thought is adhered to, the transcendental and the transcendent conditions of all theoretical knowledge must necessarily be eliminated the cosmic temporal order, as well as the insight into this order and the transcendence of the religious selfhood above cosmic time. The primary synthesis between the understanding and sensibility was not recognized by Kant as a real problem in the chapter on the schematism. He only thought problematic the possibility of subsuming the so-called ‘empirical’ phenomena under the pure concepts of the understanding. But he was unable to raise the deeper problem behind

it, viz. about the conditions under which ‘pure thought’ and ‘pure sensibility’ can be synthetized. He could not ask this, because the mere raising of such a problem would have meant relinquishing the immanence-standpoint based on the faith in the self-sufficiency of ‘reason’ in all theoretical epistemological questions.

In the supposedly ‘given’ unity of pure thought and pure intuition the logical function remained the true law-giver and determining factor in Kant's view.

Heidegger, approaching Kant from the modern state of decline of the Humanistic self-consciousness, saw the problem as an abyss. But he, too, was unable to pose it in a truly critical way. For he clung to the immanence-standpoint even more tightly than Kant had done. In proclaiming time to be ‘pure sensibility’ and the very essence of the selfhood and hence the root of the Kantian ‘stems of knowledge’, he is blind to the truth that this ‘pure time’ is itself a theoretical abstraction. It pre-supposes the inter-modal meaning-synthesis of which it is intended to render an account. In the supposed unity of pure thought and pure intuition he ascribed only a subservient position to the former. But he did not realize that in the last instance he, too, sought his Archimedean point in a theoretical synthesis.

A modal function can never be the root of all the functions. And it is never possible to demonstrate the possibility of the primary synthesis by means of an original ‘pure synthesis’.

§ 6 - The functionalistic ‘Thesis of Consciousness’ (‘Satz des Bewusztseins’) and the view of the limits of experience in the light of the cosmonomic idea.

In the relentless struggle against speculative metaphysics the Kantian conception of experience has become the shibboleth between the supposedly ‘critical’ and the ‘dogmatical’ trends of thought. This conception was precipitated in the so-called ‘Satz des Bewusztseins’ (the thesis of consciousness) or the ‘Satz der Immanenz’ (the thesis of immanence).

According to the transcendental-idealistic view of this ‘Satz’ there is no possibility of any experience outside the limits of the transcendental consciousness. All that we have knowledge of is necessarily immanent in the transcendental consciousness.

Is not this thesis really a truism whose validity is so universal and elevated above any prejudice that every intelligent mind

has to admit it, no matter on what cosmonomic Idea his philosophy is founded?

It would be so, if it were not necessary for us to give an account of the meaning of our words. For, if anywhere, the bitter wisdom of Mephisto holds good here: ‘Mit Worten lässt sich trefflich streiten.’ [Words are admirably suited to carry on a debate.]

The meaning of the ‘Satz des Bewusztseins’ depends on the meaning which phenomenalistic and transcendental-idealistic immanence-philosophy ascribe to the words ‘consciousness’ and ‘experience’. The philosophic sense of these words is determined by the starting-point of philosophical thought.

The influence of the Kantian conception of ‘empirical reality’ in the normative special sciences.

The Kantian conception of consciousness has resulted in misinterpreting ‘empirical reality’ in a functionalistic manner and in narrowing the limits of the possibility of experience in an unjustified (because sense-less) way. That is why Mephisto's scepsis is necessary with regard to the ‘Satz des Bewusztseins’ just as much as with regard to every other ‘axiom’ of immanence-philosophy.

Especially in the normative special sciences the functionalistic view of ‘empirical reality’ as the synthetically arranged sensorily perceptible has become a deep-rooted pernicious prejudice. It is almost impossible to convey one's thoughts to one's colleagues in an intelligible way, if one has broken with this prejudice. Whatever does not belong to ‘empirical’ reality in the sense mentioned is considered as a construction of thought. In such an ‘empirical’ reality the ‘juridical person’ has no place: it is therefore a construction of thought, a ‘form of thought’. Only in this empirical ‘reality’ does the law of causality hold. Causality is per se a ‘category of the experience of nature’. In ‘empirical reality’ the will is only a psychical a-normative factum. When jurisprudence can do nothing with the psychological concept of will, the juridical concept of volition is considered to be a technical construction of thought, or a ‘form of thought’. The territory of the state is nothing but the sensorily perceptible land and water within its geographical boundaries. Anything that is not sensorily perceptible in it, does not belong to ‘empirical reality’, but is a normative construction of thought, etc.

All the modal aspects of reality contained in the normative law-spheres are transformed into psycho-psychical phenomena in behalf of this functionalistic conception of experience. The normative principles of these law-spheres are hypostatized into super-temporal ideas according to their super-subjective meaning, insofar as under the tyranny of naturalism they do not share in the fate of the subject-side of the aspects concerned. Or they are deprived of their true meaning and proclaimed normative ‘forms of thought’.

For the benefit of the ‘Satz des Bewusztseins’ naïve experience is fundamentally and essentially misinterpreted. In truth the Humanistic conception of experiential reality tyrannizes science by means of the prejudice of the Humanistic immanence-stand-point.

The ‘Satz des Bewusztseins’, of course, also allows of other interpretations than the critical-Kantian one. In a coarser, psychologized sense it is found in the so-called ‘empiricistic-positivistic’ schools of thought. In Husserl's phenomenology, as we know it from his posthumous writings, the thesis assumes a new transcendental-idealistic meaning freed from the Kantian exclusively natural-scientific conception of experience.

But in whatever shade of meaning this thesis may be propounded from the immanence-standpoint, it is always oriented to a definite type of the cosmonomic Idea of immanence-philosophy. Kant's conception of empirical reality is entirely dominated by his dualistic Humanistic cosmonomic Idea. The normative aspects of reality fall outside of ‘experience’, because the realm of experience is allotted to the mechanistic science-ideal, to which the autonomy of the free personality must not be sacrificed. For this reason it must be called a superficial procedure for Christian thought to assume that it can accept the ‘critical’ conception of experience of Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft and at the same time reject his Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. For Kant's ethics and his theory of experience form an indissoluble whole so that the one stands or falls with the other. The functionalistic restriction of experience to the horizon of Kant's transcendental consciousness does not simply mean its restriction to the ‘phenomena’, but the complete theoretical destruction of all possibility of experience.

This thesis may seem to be strange at first sight. But it will no longer be so to anyone who has assimilated our previous expositions of the meaning-character of created reality.

Why is it meaning-less to restrict the datum of experience to the sensory matter of sensory impressions? Because this thesis is self-destructive, insofar as Kant's conception of matter is the product of theoretical abstraction. What has been abstracted can never be the datum. The sensory function of intuition has a modal meaning by which it is integrated into the full temporal reality and which offers an insurmountable resistance to any attempt to make the sensory aspect of experience theoretically independant. Such an attempt cannot be supposed to leave at least the sensory aspect of experience intact, but it cancels this aspect and lands us in ‘pure nothingness’ (das reine Nichts). If the human selfhood is capable of consciously experiencing the sensory aspect of reality in its subject-object relations, it necessarily experiences this sensory aspect in the cosmic temporal meaning-coherence.

This conscious experience is a quite different thing from the subjective undergoing of sense-impressions found in animals. And if the human selfhood transcends cosmic time, not a single aspect of temporal reality can transcend the self-consciousness operative in all human experience.

Speculative metaphysics has invented the splitting up of temporal reality into a noumenon and a phenomenon. The phenomenalistic conception of human experience remains tainted with the (fundamentally religious) prejudice of this metaphysics which is recognisable even in the disguise of a positivism claiming to be free of all manner of preoccupation.

There is nothing in experience that has been given us without the psychical function of consciousness. But if nothing outside of this function had been given us, we should not have been given anything at all, not even the sensible itself.

This thesis is merely the counterpart of the thesis we have formulated in the Prolegomena: We cannot know anything without logical thought, but if we were not were able to know anything outside of logical thought, we could not know anything at all. For not a single aspect of experience can exist outside of the cosmic coherence of meaning, and where meaning ceases, there is an end of created reality and of all human experience.

Let the attempt be made to take the phenomenalistic conception of experience seriously and then to abstract everything that is of a non-sensory and a non-logical character in our naïve experience of reality. The experiment will appear to be impossible without a complexity of shiftings of meaning. By means of these

all kinds of things are supposed to be implied in the sensible and the logical that were not to be found in them originally.

But anyone who in the future wants to defend the phenomenolist conception of experience in all seriousness will at least have to give an account of the meaning of the sensory and the logical aspect.

This is certainly not done by means of the neo-Kantian argument that it is transcendental logical thought which determines all sensory matter of experience and in this way creates the meaning of the latter.

The ‘critical method’ will have to become more critical, if it wants to maintain its claim to the self-assumed honour of being ‘critical’.

Conclusions

Our expositions justify the conclusion that the ‘conception of experience’ adhered to on the standpoint of the functionalistic ‘Satz cles Bewusztseins’ (the thesis of consciousness) must be rejected if the insight into the possibility of cognizing the modal functions is not to be precluded a priori. The conception of experience mentioned above is based on a fundamental misinterpretation both of the cosmic and the cosmological self-consciousness, of which the latter is founded in the former. Besides, the data of experience are also misconstrued. They have been given to our self-consciousness to which all modal aspects of temporal reality are related. They have not been given to the sensory function of this self-consciousness, and they are never of a functional but of a cosmic-systatic character.

The cosmic and cosmological intuition of time can never be identified with a supposed ‘pure sensibility’, or with ‘a form of sensory intuition’.

Human experience of temporal reality in principle has no specific functional boundaries, because in the root of self-consciousness it transcends time itself. All the modal aspects of temporal reality are at least in principle immanent in possible experience, immanent in the cosmological self-consciousness. In the last instance it is not some abstract functions of consciousness but the fulness of self-consciousness which experiences the modal meaning-functions in cosmic time as its own. This insight means the final liberation of epistemology from the prejudices of immanence-philosophy.

The assertion that our experience is restricted to the sensory

and logical aspects of reality, in other words, that we can have no experience of the other meaning-functions in their original character, is absolutely contrary to the datum of our cosmic self-consciousness.

It would be a matter for surprise that epistemology could so long accept this thesis as an axiom, if behind this prejudice we had not discovered the dualistic-Humanistic cosmonomic Idea with its polar tension between the science-ideal and that of personality.


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