(4) Conclusions

We will now examine causal relations.

For everyone it’s as certain as an irrefutable fact, that nothing in the world happens without cause. Nevertheless there hasn’t been any lack of those, who have called into question, the necessity of this highest law of nature, the causality.

It is clear, that the general validity of the law is only then protected from all doubt, if it can be shown, that it lies before all experience in us, i.e. that, without it, it would be impossible, to perceive an object at all, or to generate an objective valid connection of the appearances.

Kant tried to prove the apriority of the causality from the last (lower) standpoint, in which he was completely unsuccessful. Schopenhauer has thoroughly disproven the “second Analogy of Experience” in § 23 of Fourfold Root (particularly using that all consequence is sequence, but not all sequence is consequence), which I refer to.

Even if Kant’s proof for the apriority of the causality wouldn’t contain a contradiction, it would nevertheless be false, because it rests upon a pure concept of Understanding and, as we know, pure concepts a priori are impossible. It was therefore Schopenhauer’s task, to proof the apriority of the causality in a different way. He positioned himself at the higher standpoint, i.e. he showed, that we, without law of causality, would never be able, to perceive the world, that it therefore must be given to us before all experience. He made the transition of effect (change in the sensory organ) to cause the sole function of the Understanding.

Meanwhile I have already refuted above that, that the simple and completely determined function of the Understanding does experience an expansion by the Understanding itself. The causal relations, which as a whole fall under the concept of causality, are not covered by the Schopenhauerian law of causality. They can be established by the reason, as I will immediately show.

Initially the reason knows the causal interrelation between representations and the immediate object (my body). They are only my representations, since they are the causes in my senses. The transition from their effects to them is the affair of the Understanding, the connection of the effects with the causes and vice versa is the work of the reason. Both relations are connected to knowledge by it.

This aprioric causal interrelation between me and perceived objects determines nothing more, than that the objects affect me. If they affect other objects too, is still a question. A unconditional direct certainty about that can’t be given, since we are not able, to leave our skin. On the other hand it’s just as clear, that only a lost reason can desperately hold onto this critical reservation.

First and foremost the reason recognizes, that my body is not a privileged subject, but instead an object among objects, and transfers, based on this knowledge, the relation of cause and effect to objects among each other. Thus it subjects, by this extension, all appearances of possible experience, to causality (the general causality), whose law from now on contains the general formulation: wherever in nature a change takes place, it is the effect of a cause, which preceded it in time.

By subjecting the changes of all objects to causality, grounded on the law of causality, the reason connects the activity of appearances. Like it did before with those appearances themselves, by composing the partial-representations into objects. And by this it essentially expands our knowledge. Hereby however it hasn’t come to an end.

From the knowledge, that all bodies, without exception, are incessantly active (otherwise they couldn’t even be objects of experience) it gains the other knowledge, that they are active in all directions, that there are therefore no separated, parallel to each other running rows of causality, but instead that every body, directly and indirectly, affects all others and simultaneously experiences the activity of all others bodies on itself. By this new connection (community) the reason gains the knowledge of an interrelated nature.

Kant treats the community in the third Analogy of Experience and has his eyes fixed on nothing else, than the dynamic interrelation of the objects. Schopenhauer however didn’t want to allow the reciprocity in this sense and opens a polemic against, which reminds us of the struggle of Don Quixote with the windmills and is really petty. Reciprocity isn’t a concept a priori; the Kantian proof also doesn’t suffice; but the issue, which it is about, has full validity. Schopenhauer stays at the word reciprocity, which should say, that two states of two bodies are simultaneously cause and effect of each other. In no syllable Kant has argued such a thing. He merely says:

Each substance must contain in itself the causality of certain determinations in the other substance, and at the same time the effects of the causality of that other; ^(213D,235E)

as with two wrestlers, both press and get pressed, without the pressure of one being the cause of the pressure of the other and vice versa.

We stand before the most important question of cognition theory. It is: Is the object of my visualization the thing-as-it-is, gone through the forms of the subject, or does the object give me no justification, to assume a thing-as-it-is as its ground?

The question is answered by the pre-question: Is the cause of a change in my sensory organ independent from the subject, or is the cause itself from subjective origin?

Kant made causality into a pure form of thinking a priori, which had only the goal, to place appearances in a necessary relation among each other. The empirical of the visualization is, according to him, simply given and independent from causality. The causality, which therefore can only find application on the appearances, has only validity on the domain of appearances, and would be completely abused, if I transgress this domain, to record something behind the world as representation with support of the causality. Though all Kant’s researches have the clearly expressed goal, to define the limits of human knowledge, where on the other side the “shoreless ocean” begins with its “deceptive prospects”. He doesn’t get tired of warning us for sailing this ocean, and asserting in many ways, that:

the pure forms of Understanding can never be used for transcendental applications, but at all times empirical applications.

Nevertheless he violently used the causality, in order to obtain the thing-as-it-is, when he, according to this law, concludes a ground, from the appearance on what appears, an intelligible cause. He did it, while he feared nothing more than the allegation, that his philosophy is pure idealism, which makes the whole objective world into illusion and takes away All reality from it. The three remarks (TN; at the end) of the first part of Prolegomena, with this in mind, very much worth reading. I can’t condemn this great inconsequence. It was the smaller one of two evils, and Kant bravely embraced it. Meanwhile Kant gained nothing by this subreption; because, as I have mentioned above, a thing-as-it-is without expansion and motion, in short a mathematical point, is for human thought nothing.

Let us assume that Kant obtained the thing-as-it-is by a justified method and we know only, that it is, not how it is, thus the object would be nothing else, but the thing-as-it-is, as it appears according to the forms our knowledge. Or as Kant says:

In fact, when we (rightly) regard the objects of the senses as mere appearances, we thereby admit that they have a thing in itself as their ground—·namely, the thing of which they are appearances. We don’t know what this thing is like in itself; all we know is its appearance, viz. how this unknown something affects our senses. (Prolegomena, § 32)

This is the right foundation of the transcendental or critical idealism; however Kant has obtained it by fraud.

The intended inconsequence was very soon discovered (G. E. Schulze). Schopenhauer discusses it several times, particularly in Parerga. He accuses Kant, that he didn’t say, as the truth demands:

simply and absolutely that the object is conditioned by the subject, and conversely ; but only that the manner of the appearance of the object is conditioned by the forms of knowledge of the subject, which, therefore, also come a priori to consciousness, (WaWuV I, appendix)

and explains, that on the way of representation one can’t transgress the representation. How is it explicable that he stands on the viewpoint of the Fichtean idealism, although he couldn’t find enough words, to condemn it? He has found the thing-as-it-is on a different way, as will, and therefore didn’t have to fear being called an empirical idealist.

Is it then really impossible, to come to the thing-as-it-is on the way of representation? I say: certainly it is possible, and indeed with use of the Schopenhauerian law of causality. The Kantian causality can’t lead us to it, but this law can.

The Understanding becomes active, as soon as in some sensory organ a change takes place; since its sole function is the transition of the change to its cause. Now can this cause, like the change, lie in the subject? No! it must lie outside of it. Only through a miracle could it be in the subject; since without doubt a notification takes place for example to see an object. I may want a thousand times to see another object that this determined one, I would not succeed. The cause is therefore fully and completely independent from subject. Must it nevertheless lie in the subject, then nothing else remains but assuming an intelligible cause, which brings with invisible hand changes in my sensory organs, i.e. we have the Berkeleyan idealism: the grave of all philosophy. Then we act very wise, when we, as soon as possible, reject all research with the words of Socrates: I know one thing only, that I know nothing.

We won’t do this however, rather we keep standing there, that every change in the sensory organ directs to an outside of me lying activity (subjective: cause). Space isn’t there, to first generate this “outside of me” (we belong to nature and nature doesn’t play hide-and-seek with itself), rather, as we know, to give the sphere of activity but to place – as we now openly dare to say – the thing-as-it-is boundaries and determine its placement among the other things-as-they-are.

Would Schopenhauer have entered this way, which he had opened in such considerate manner, then his brilliant system wouldn’t have become a fragmented, necessarily glued, by incurable contradictions ill system, which one can explore only with great indignation and admiration. If he didn’t enter it, he has downright disavowed the truth, and indeed with full consciousness. Certainly, he wasn’t allowed to enter it, since he, like Kant, believed, that space is a pure visualization a priori; however it would have been more honorable for him to, like Kant with causality, to leave the suggestion of an inconsequence, than proclaiming that the causes of an appearance lie, like the sensation of the sensory organ, in the subject.

I say: Schopenhauer has consciously denied the truth. Let everyone judge for himself. In Fourfold Root § 21:

Locke has completely and exhaustively proved, that the feelings of our senses, even admitting them to be roused by external causes, cannot have any resemblance whatever to the qualities of those causes. Sugar, for instance, bears no resemblance at all to sweetness, nor a rose to redness. But that they should need an external cause at all, is based upon a law whose origin lies demonstrably within us, in our brain ; therefore this necessity is not less subjective than the sensations themselves.

What an open sophistry and intentional mix-up! On the law of causality relies merely the perception of the active thing-as-it-is, not its activity itself, which would be present too without a subject. The law of causality is the formal expression for the necessary, exceptionalness, always the same staying operation of the Understanding: to seek that, what changes a sensory organ. First the reflecting reason connects based on general causality the change in the sensory organ as action with that, which evoked it, as cause; i.e. it brings the from subject totally independent real effect of a thing-as-it-is in a causal relation. The formal causal interrelation is therefore indeed always purely subjective (without subject no relation of cause and effect), but not its real dynamical ground.

As certain as it is, that I, without the law of causality, would not come to a visualization – from which Schopenhauer very properly deduces its apriority – so certain is it, that the Understanding can not exert its function without outside impact, from which I deduce with the same good right, that the activity of the things, thus its force, is independent from subject.

We consider the last composition, which the reason brings about. It is the substance.

Matter, a form of Understanding, we have to imagine us, like space and present, as the image of a point. It’s only the capacity, to precisely and truthfully objectify the specific activity of a thing-as-it-is, to make it perceivable. Now since the diverse activities of the things, as far as they must become objects of the visualization, must enter in this single form of Understanding without exception, matter becomes the ideal subtract of all things. By this the reason is given a diverse homogeneity, which it connects into a single substance, from which forms of activity are merely accidental changes.

The reason connects so rigorously and without exception in this direction, that even the things-as-they-are, (who so to speak can only be forced by surprise, to make a weak impression on our senses,) immediately becomes substantive for us, like for example pure nitrogen, whose presence can be concluded merely because it makes breathing and burning impossible.

Based on this ideal composition we attain the representation of a completed world; because with it we objectify also all those sensuous impressions, which the Understanding can’t mold in its forms, space and matter, like tones, smells, colorless gasses.

This composition contains no danger, as long as I’m conscious, that it is an ideal composition. Is it recognized as real, then the clumsy and thereby transcendental materialism arises, whose practical usefulness I have recognized in my work, but which must be unconditionally shown the door on theoretical domain. Schopenhauer sometimes pulls his hand away from it, then stretches his hand out to it, depending on if he places matter in the subject, or in the object, or in the thing-as-it-is, or between one and the other, during his regrettable odyssey. We won’t make ourselves guilty of this unfortunate halfness.

How is now the unity concluded of this substance?, this ideal composition, based on matter, a form of Understanding. Only because the themselves objectifying forces, in a certain sense, are essentially similar and form together a collective-unity. From the nature of this substance, which is only unitary, can only be extracted what is in accordance with this nature, as determination of the, it juxtaposing diverse ways of activity of the bodies, like the essence of time is succession, since in the real development of things is succession, and space has to have three dimensions, since every force is expanded in three directions. What has now as inseparable, with the substance been connected? The persistence, i.e. something, which doesn’t lie in it, a property, which isn’t extracted from it, but from the activity of some things in empirical way.

Thus we see that Kant deduces the persistence of the substance not from it, but from the aprioric time, and Schopenhauer calls upon space for its support:

The firm immovability of space, which presents itself, as the persistence of the substance.

But actually he deduces it from the causality, which he makes for this goal, on the most arbitrary way, identical with matter and in turn makes its essence (but only as long as he wants to prove the persistence of the substance a priori) stand in the intimate union of space and time.

Intimate union of space and time causality, matter, actuality are thus one, and the subjective correlative of this one is the understanding. (WaWuV I, appendix)

How the most diverse concepts are blurred here into one pot! As Hamlet said: Words, words, words!

In the course of our critique everything revealed, that our cognition has aprioric forms and functions solely for the goal, of recognizing the from subject independent real. Nature, from which we are a part, doesn’t play an unworthy game with us. It doesn’t deceive us, doesn’t hide itself; it only wants to be questioned honestly. It always gives the upright researcher, as far is it can, a satisfying answer.

One thing we haven’t examined yet, that is, by what is the Synthesis of a diversity juxtaposed on the real side?

Kant denies a from the object coming coercion to a determined Synthesis. Immediately the question arises: by what should the synthetic subject know, that the from the sensuousness to the Understanding delivered partial-representations belong to one object? How come, that I always compose exactly the same part into one object and never doubt what does belongs together, and what doesn’t? Kant doesn’t explain this operation and we have to assume, that the judgement-power, as it were instinctively, correctly choses the into one object belonging parts and composes them into extensive magnitudes.

We stand on better ground than Kant. As I have shown above, space is the form of Understanding, by virtue of which the subject can perceive the boundaries of the activity of a thing-as-it-is, thus it doesn’t lend him the expansion first. Every thing-as-it-is is an in itself closed force of a determined intensity, i.e. every thing-as-it-is has individuality and is essentially a unity. The reason can therefore only compose into one magnitude that, which it encounters as an individual whole; i.e. it can only know through Synthesis, that which, independent from it, as unity, as individuality, is present. It thus always knows due the available continuity of the individual force to distinguish, what belongs to it, and what doesn’t.

We draw near the end. I summarize. As we have seen, is the world with Kant through and through illusion, a perfected work of art of the Understanding, from his own means, by himself, in himself, for himself, with one word: a miracle! This is would be the case even, if he would have succeeded, in finding a real basis for the thing-as-it-is. He would have obtain it through trickery however, since his philosophy opens no way to the thing-as-it-is.

The world as representation with Schopenhauer is likewise through and through a product of the subject, nothing but deception. Against his better knowledge and judgement, with harsh sophisms, he made it to it with violent methods, partially out of real need, since his philosophy rests upon breakable pillars (on space and time as pure visualizations a priori), partially out of carelessness, since he was in the position to juxtapose against the ideal world as representation a real world as Will.

One would deceive oneself however, if one were to believe, that Schopenhauer has maintained until the end, that the world as representation is nothing else, but a pure web and tissue of the perceiving subject. He was a genius, a great philosopher, but not a consequent thinker. One and the same philosophical matter has presented itself before his restless mind countless times, and always he found new perspectives, but he didn’t knew, with rare exceptions, to unify them in a whole. For his philosophy the remark of the Goethean Theory of Colors fully applies:

It is a continuous stating and revoking, an unconditionally declaring and instantly limiting, so that at the same time everything and nothing is true.

He has on one side greatly perfected the Kantian cognition theory, on the other hand essentially corrupted, and was trapped in self-deception, when he awarded himself the merit, to

have completed the from materialism starting, but into idealism leading row of philosophers. (Paralipomena)

Initially he said in Parerga:

The thing-as-it-is actually can’t be ascribed expansion, nor duration.

Here we encounter for the second time the very characteristic “actually”. Already above it was: matter is actually the will. We will still often encounter this “actually”, and at the conclusion of this critique I will compile a few “actually” into a small bouquet.

Then he says:

The organism itself is nothing but the will which has entered the region of representation, the will itself, perceived in the cognitive form of Space. (Will in Nature, comparative anatomy)

Kant’s section through what is real and what is ideal was no section at all. He misjudged the truth so completely, that even that which is the most real of all, force, was pulled to the subjective side and wasn’t even worthy of a category: he made it belong to the predicables of the pure Understanding. He made the real simply ideal and thus ended with only ideal in his hand. Schopenhauer’s division of the world in a world as representation and a world as will is likewise a flawed one, since what is real can and must be separated in the world as representation from what is ideal.

I believe, that I have succeeded, to put the knife at the right place. The center of gravity of the transcendental philosophy, which my philosophy relies on, doesn’t lie in the subjective forms space and time. Not in the width of a hair a thing-as-it-is works beyond where space has indicated its expansion; not in the width of a hair is the real motion of a thing-as-it-is beyond my present: my subjective cork ball stands always exactly at the point of the world-development. The center of gravity lies in the subjective form matter. Not that matter doesn’t faithfully reflect the essence of a thing-as-it-is up to details – no! it does reflect it faithfully, for this goal it’s precisely a form of Understanding; the difference lies more fundamentally, in the essence of both. The essence of matter is absolutely something different, than that of the force. The force is everything, is the only thing which is real in the world, is completely independent and autonomous; matter however is ideal, is nothing without the force.

Kant says:

If I take away the thinking subject, the whole material world must vanish, for it is nothing but a phenomenon in the sensibility of our subject, and a class of its ideas.

And Schopenhauer says:

No object without subject.

Both statements rest upon pure visualization a priori, space and time, and correct conclusions from wrong premises. If I take away the thinking subject, then I certainly know, that individual forces, in real development, remain, but that they have lost materiality: “the material world must vanish”, “no object anymore”.

We thus have:

a. aprioric forms and functions

on the subjective side	on the real side
Law of causality	Activity in general
Point-space	Sphere of activity
Matter	Force
Synthesis	Individuality
Present	Point of motion

b. ideal compositions

on the subjective side	on the real side
General causality	One thing-as-it-is affecting another
Community	Dynamical interrelation of the complete world
Substance	Collective-Unity of the world
Time	Real succession
Mathematical space	Absolute nothingness

We will now quickly produce the visualizable world according to my cognition theory (continuation of the Kant-Schopenhauerian cognition theory).

In the senses a change takes place.
The Understanding, whose function

is the law of causality and its forms space and matter, searches the cause of the change, constructs it spatially (puts boundaries of the activity in length, width, depth) and makes it material (objectification of the specific nature of the force)

The thus constructed representations are partial-representations. The Understanding offers them to the

Reason, whose function is Synthesis and its form the present. The reason composes them into complete objects with support of the

Judgement-power, whose function is: judge what is homogenous, and the

Imagination, whose function is: hold on to that which is composed.

Thus far we have single, completed objects, next above and behind each other, without dynamical interrelation and standing in the point of present. All mentioned forms and functions are aprioric, i.e. they are inborn, lie before all experience in us.

The reason now comes based on these aprioric functions and forms to the production of compositions and connections. It composes:

a. the always continuing points of present traversed and to be traversed positions into time, which must be imagined as the image of a line of indefinite length. With help of time we know:

Changes of places which are not perceivable;
The development (inner motion) of the things.

The reason composes:

b. based on the point-space arbitrary large empty space-particles into mathematical space. On it relies mathematics, which essentially expands our knowledge.

It connects:

c. based on the law of causality

the change in the subject with a thing-as-it-is, which caused it;
every change in any Thing in the world with the thing-as-it-is which caused it: general causality;
all things among each other, while it recognizes, that every Thing affects all other things and all things affect every single thing: community.

Finally the reason connects:

d. all different, by the matter objectified types of working of the things into one substance, with which the subject objectifies all such sensuous impressions, which the reason can’t shape.

All these compositions are brought about a posteriori. They are the formal net, in which the subject hangs, and with it we spell out: the activity, the real interrelation and the real development of all individual forces. Therefore the empirical affinity of all things isn’t, like Kant wants, a result of the transcendental affinity, instead they both run parallel.

From this point of view the Transcendental Aesthetics and the Transcendental Analytic of Kant manifest their complete magnificent importance. In them he has, with exceptional sharpness, recorded,

the inventory of all our possessions through pure reason, ^(10D,14E)

with the exception of the law of causality. He erred only in the determination of the true nature of space, time and the Categories and, by not juxtaposing something real against the single subjective pieces.

If we arrange the ideal compositions according to the table of Categories, then in the remainder belong

Of Quantity| 2. Of Quality|3. Of Relation| ----|----|---- Time|Substance|General causality Mathematical space| |Community

I have, while still standing on the domain of world as representation, found the forms of the thing-as-it-is: individuality and real development, and have as well strictly separated force from matter and have the truth on my side. It is an as unfounded as it is a common opinion in philosophy since Kant, that development is a time-concept, and is therefore only possible due time (it’s the same, if I were to say: the horseman carries the horse, the ship carries the current); similarly, that expansion is a space-concept, therefore only possible due space. All upright empiricists must form a closed front against these doctrines, since only nutcases can deny the real development of the things and their strict “I-ness”, and natural sciences based on empirical idealism are completely impossible. On the other hand it’s impossible for the thinker who has absorbed Kant’s teachings, to believe in a completely from subject independent world. To escape from this dilemma Schelling invented the Identity of the Ideal and Real, which Schopenhauer fittingly disavows with the words: (…)

The only path, on which that which is real can be separated from what is ideal, is the one proceeded by me. What obstructs its entrance, was the false assumption, that space and time are pure visualizations a priori, whose invalidity I had to prove first.

My theory is nothing less than a philosophy of Identity. The separation of matter from force proves this adequately. But furthermore there exists a fundamental difference between the law of causality and the activity of the things; between space, this faculty, to expand in indefinite length into three dimensions, and a certain determined individuality. Is time, this measure of all developments, identical with the development itself of a force? etc.

Time and space are, in accordance with Kant’s great teachings, ideal; individuality and motion however (without this assumption no natural science, nor a philosophy free from contradictions is possible) are real. Both have only the goal, to recognize them. Without subjective forms no perception of the outer world, yes however striving, living, willing individual forces. It’s about time, that the battle between realism and idealism is brought to an end. Kant’s assurance, that this transcendental idealism doesn’t nullify the empirical reality of the things, originates from a complete self-deception. A thing-as-it-is, which, as appearance, has borrowed its expansion and motion from pure visualization time and space, has no reality. That is rock-solid. The by me in its fundaments modificated Kant-Schopenhauerian critical idealism leaves however the expansion and motion of the things intact and claims only, that the object distinguishes itself through matter from the thing-as-it-is, while certainly the manner and way of the appearance of a force require the subjective form matter.

Posted Mar 22, 2017, 1:01 PM UTC · edited