Idealism II

As such the path was paved and prepared for the messiah of critical idealism, which not the prophets themselves, but their works pointed to with ironed immovable finger. O, this Kant! Who can be compared to him?

I have made Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason subject of a thorough examination, which I may give the predicate of being fifteen years old, and have laid down the results in my main work. I will therefore express myself very briefly here and only bring the most significant part of his teaching in connection to what is said here.

We have seen, that already Berkeley taught about the ideality of space, time and causality, but in a way, which can satisfy a theologian, but not a philosopher. Furthermore we remember us, that Hume made the first philosophical assault on the highest law of nature, the law of causality.

That this assault of the Scotsman had a very significant influence of Kant’s thinking power, has fertilized and fired it up, Kant admitted it openly. He doesn’t call Hume the “good” Hume; this might be attributed to this, that philosophers are the born enemies of theologians as it were in a demonic way, while their souls tremble of joy when they meet each other, which of course doesn’t preclude that they come to quarrel and badmouth each outer.

Like how an anatomist lays the stomach or hand of a cadaver before his pupils and clearly shows them, how the stomach digests, how the hand grabs an object, from which components the stomach and hand are made of, how the whole functions etc., in the same way Kant took the human mind, dissected it, without forgetting even the smallest cogwheel in the clockwork, how the brain understands/perceives/recognizes. This is very important to hold onto. There is nothing in the human mind, so on the ideal side, absolutely nothing, which Kant hasn’t found or recorded. He has inventoried (his own expression) the pieces of our mind, like the most diligent merchant the goods of his depository and did not forget anything. He only erred by

not completely correctly recognizing the nature of every piece and therefore sometimes recording the same piece two times, like the categories Quality and Substance;

or incorrectly taxing (defining) a piece, like space and time; or taking a in two parts sliced piece for one, like causality.

He also erred by,

1. taking the sensuous impression as simply given and not asking: how come, that one relates the image in his mind to a thing outside his head?

2. that he abused his subjective law of causality to obtain the thing-in-itself by fraud;

3. that he deemed the real domain to be inaccessible.

I will examine this within well-defined boundaries.

Kant distinguishes three main capabilities of the human mind:

1. Sensuousness

2. Intelligence

3. Reason.

The sensuousness has two forms: space and time, and one aid: the imagination; the intelligence has twelve primordial concepts: categories, and one consultant, the judgement-power; reason has one peak, one blossom: the self-consciousness.

The sensuousness visualizes; the intelligence thinks; the reason concludes.

Now like the stomach must have the capability to digest, before mother milk comes in it, like the hand must have the capability to grab, before it touches an object, however also like a stomach does not digest if no nutrition comes in it ,and the capability of the hand can only be active if there is an object, likewise the brain has capabilities before all experience, which can only become active in combination with the raw material of experience.

These capabilities before all experience are: receptiveness (being sensitive of impressions) and Synthesis (composition and connection as action). Their forms were called by Kant aprioric, i.e. they are original, before all experience independent forms, which stand and fall with the brain. The outer world lies in the it, like a ball of smooth clay in a hand which encompasses it and gives it its form and the composition of its parts.

I have shown in my critique, that

Space and time (according to Kant forms of the sensuousness)

Matter (substance)--}

General causality-----}-according to Kant forms of the intelligence

Community-----------}

are indeed, as Kant taught, ideal i.e. only present in our brain. They are like the components of the mind:

Senses

Intelligence

Imagination

Memory

Judgement-power

Reason

irrefutably determined for all times by the deep thinker. Against all this, can struggle only foolishness, ignorance and a perserva ratio (perverse reason).

Another question is however: has Kant placed the single components of the mind in the right combination among each other and are the conceived forms not merely ideal, but also aprioric, i.e. present before all experience? with other words: are the forms of the mind – those of the sensuousness (pure visualizations a priori) and of the intelligence (categories) correctly established and justified?

On these question I may not give an extensive answer. I must refer to my previous work and can repeat here only, that Kant has in the inventory of our mind nothing forgotten, but that the has arranged most of it incorrectly and has taxed a lot of it wrongly.

Space and time are since Kant irrefutably ideal in our head. There is independent from subject time nor space. Should it really succeed to create with an air pump absolute nothingness, then we don’t have empty space, but absolute nothingness – two things, which are toto genere different from each other, for empty (mathematical) space lies completely on the ideal side, in the head of human, absolute nothingness on the real side outside the head. Only confused thought can let the two domains flow in each other and blend their forms with each other.

Likewise purely ideal like space and time are the Categories of Quality and Relation, i.e. independent of the human mind there are:

1. no secondary qualities of the things (Locke);

2. no relation between cause and effect;

3. no community (reciprocity).

And should there be complete legions of those, which Fichte strikingly characterized with the words: “they consider themselves to be enlightened with halve philosophy and complete confusion” who mock it – so it is and so it remains: the mind has gained these priceless jewels of knowledge and no force can rob them back. Magna est vis veritatis et praevalebit. (The truth is mighty and will prevail.)

But these five compositions and connections are not aprioric; the last three are also not categories in the sense of Kant (forms of thinking a priori).

What was now – for this is the main issue – the result of the Transcendental Aesthetic?

We can only talk from the human standpoint of space, of expanded objects.

And what was the result of the Transcendental Analytic?

The arrangement and the regularity of the appearances, which we call nature, we bring them ourselves in it, and we couldn’t find them in it, if we wouldn’t have, or the nature of our mind, initially placed them. (First edition)

So exaggerated, so nonsensical as it sounds, to say: the intelligence itself is the source of the laws of nature and thereby the formal unity of nature, so right is and in accordance with the object, namely experience, is such an assertion. (ib.)

What does this mean with dry words? It means, if we also take the expression of Kant:

the empirical of the visualization is given to us from outside

as support:

By an inexplicable mysterious way impressions are made on our senses. The senses furnishes these impressions with expansion and brings them in a relation to time. These phantoms are then furnished by the intelligence with color, temperature, smooth- of coarseness, hard- or softness etc. (categories of Quality) or brief, it makes them substantive. Furthermore it brings these two phantoms in a causal relation, connects then such links into causal rows and finally brings the whole nature in an affinity, i.e. it makes them to a formal unity.

Or with other words:

Of the deceptive image of the senses our intelligence builds a deception-nexus, an independent from the mind not existing dynamical interrelation: the world is nothing, a being-less wizardry of our mind based upon a for us unknown strange stimulation.

And despite all this, despite this destructive result of the Critique of pure Reason, which no reasonable one will subscribe or accept, it remains an unshakable truth, that

Space and time

Matter (Substance)

General causality

Community

are ideal and exist merely in our head. How however, one may ask, is this possible? The ghostly, grim phenomenality of the world is yes demanded by the ideality of these forms; how can the reality of the world be saved?

In this question the riddle of the transcendental idealism mirrors itself, like how in the essay “Realism” the mentioned formula of the riddle was mirrored. I will answer it at the end of this essay in a satisfying manner.

We now have to discuss the mistake mentioned under 2).

With Kant causality is, the relation of the effect to a cause, a Category, a primordial thought a priori, before all experience, which is only present for the experience and has without it no meaning, similar to how a hand is set up, to grab touchable objects. Without the material of experience it is a dead primordial thought. So if one would want to use causality for something else than bringing necessary connection in the world, one would misuse it. Kant therefore didn’t get tired of emphasizing that one shouldn’t applicate the Categories there where who don’t have the safe ground below our feet. So he warns for a transcendent usage as impermissible, in opposition to the permissible reasonable transcendental usage, i.e. usage of it on objects of experience.

Nevertheless he himself made on a weak moment such an impermissible transcendent usage of the category of causality, because he shied back from the naked result of his philosophy, the ghostly being-less phantasmagoria world and shook in the innermost part of his heart. Rather he preferred the reproach of inconsequence – which he hasn’t been spared of - than being thrown in one pot with Berkeley. His hand must have shivered and his forehead been soaked with sweat of fear, as he seized the thing-in-itself with the causality, that which lies as ground of the appearance, on that which according to his own teaching the categories can find no application. I stand, as I have said in my main work, with admiration before this act of despair of the great man and always when the absolute idealism of Buddhism lures me in its charming nets, then I don’t myself save myself by clamping at my own teaching or something, rather by imagining Kant in this despair. Because if a man like Kant brings his work, the most beautiful fruit of human profundity,rather a mortal wound than declaring the world the be a phantasm, which it after all is according to his own teaching – then there can be no choice, when the thing-in-itself-idealism places itself next the critical idealism, then we may not follow the siren calls of the Indian prince.

And once again the truth laughed ironically. Also its greatest genius, its most true Parsifal hadn’t solved the world-riddle: he had given an itself contradicting answer.

Anyway – and this is the mistake of Kant mentioned under 3) – the thing-in-itself would have been a zero or an x, if Kant would have been allowed the find it with at hand of the causality. Since according to his Transcendental Aesthetic it is the (ideal) space alone which furnishes the things expansion, the things-in-themselves being expansionless, their being would be forever unrecognizable, i.e. be an x, since we can form no image of the being of thing which is a mathematical point.

As the result of all this Kant has improved and corrupted the teaching of Locke. He has improved it, since he has completely fathomed and established the ideal part; he has corrupted it, since he moved the itself moving individualities, which Locke had left on the real domain, to the ideal domain and made them here to zero’s.

Kant has two legitimate successors: Schopenhauer and Fichte. All others are crown-pretenders without legal title. And of these two only Schopenhauer is relevant for critical idealism: he is from this regard the only intellectual heir of Kant.

I have regarded the Critique of the Schoperhauerian works, the separation of the incorrect and transient ones from the significant and immortal ones, as my life-task and must therefore, in order to no repeat myself, refer to the appendix of my work. With him too, I can only mention that, which relates to the topic which we discuss.

As we have seen, with Kant the cause of a sensuous impression was a mystery. Initially he let it be simply given, then he placed the thing-in-itself for it, although he didn’t have the right to do so.

Now Schopenhauer was very dissatisfied with this weak spot of the Kantian cognition theory and with astounding astuteness he asked the in this essay already often mentioned question:

How do I come to a visualization at all?

This question is actually the heart, the cardinal point of critical idealism; for on its answer depends nothing less, than the definitive ruling, if the world possesses reality or is only a phantom, a being-less illusion.

Schopenhauer found that we, without the relation of the change in the sensory organ to a cause, would not come to a visualization at all. Thereby the law of causality lies here as an aprioric function next to the sensuous impression, not, as Kant wants, as a primordial concept behind the from outside given empirical of the visualization. The law of causality is therefore not a primordial concept a priori – Schopenhauer rejected with full right the whole machine of aprioric primordial concepts – but instead a function of the intelligence: its only function.

In this lies a merit, which is not smaller than Locke’s section between what is ideal and real. For this proof, that the law of causality is the primordial function of the intelligence, Schopenhauer received his first laurel wreath from the truth: famously the German nation hasn’t wreathed one for him during his lifetime, and how did he desire one from its hand, how did he deserve it!

But it is incomprehensible, that Schopenhauer remained with the law of causality on the subjective side and plainly denied the activity on the real side. That the activity is a cause – this certainly relies on the law of causality: without subject it wouldn’t be a cause; however that the activity itself depends on the law of causality, by which it should be placed – this is sheer nonsense. If one thinks about this sentence, then one immediately feels, how in our reason something is violently hidden. Schopenhauer has however not hesitated to apodictically proclaim it:

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. (Fourfold Root, § 21)

Schopenhauer simply mixes cause with effect here, and the natural result of this mix-up was that he initially declared, like Kant, the outer world to be a deceptive and illusionary image, and that he later on, like Kant, fell in glaring contradiction with the fundament of its teaching.

The truth is (and it has been reserved for me, to proclaim it) that as certain it is that the law of causality is purely ideal, subjective and aprioric, likewise certain is the from subject independent activity of the things, thus the activity on the real domain. The ideal function must the triggered, stimulated from outside, otherwise it is dead and just nothing.

The law of causality, i.e. the transition of effect in the sensory organ to cause was not specifically mentioned the inventory of the mind by Kant. He noted only the general causality (connection of two objects) which is why I said above that he deemed a in two parts sliced part to be one. The distinction between the two of them is however extraordinarily important. One part (connection of subject and object) is entirely aprioric and ideal, the other one is only ideal, is a connection a posteriori, established by the reason based upon the aprioric law of causality.

Schopenhauer also improved the Kant’s cognition theory

1. by the proof that the senses cannot visualize, instead that the representation is the work of the intelligence, is intellectual, not sensual,
2. by this, that he shattered the Category-machinery in a thousand pieces,

which by the way the fools lime and pick up. Repairing this nonsense delivers them unspeakable joy.

On the other hand Schopenhauer corrupted the cognition theory of Kant by destroying alongside the Categories, the Synthesis (the composing faculty of the reason) and didn’t knew to save the Categories,

1. Matter (substance)
2. General causality
3. Community

in another form, namely as compositions and connections by the reason a posteriori.

He also subscribed the great mistake of Kant: space and time are pure visualizations a priori. They are, as I have proven: compositions a posteriori based upon aprioric forms (point-space, present). –

We remind us that Kant had obtained by fraud the thing-in-itself, i.e. that which is independent from the human mind, the truly real, and nevertheless had to let it be an x. Schopenhauer determined it in the human breast as will.

He determined furthermore, that this will is not merely arbitrariness, the conscious activity of the will, but also that which Spinoza called motion of the soul. According to this he separated the will-activity in an unconscious and a conscious one. For this the truth reached him a second laurel wreath.

The kernel and chief point of my doctrine is that, that what Kant opposed as thing–in–itself to mere appearance (called more decidedly by me representation) and what he held to be absolutely unknowable, that this thing–in–itself, I say, this substratum of all phenomena, and therefore of the whole of Nature, is nothing but what we know directly and intimately and find within ourselves as willing; that accordingly, this will, far from being inseparable from, like all previous philosophers assumed, and even a mere result of, knowledge, differs radically and entirely from, and is quite independent of, knowledge, which is secondary and of later origin; and can consequently subsist and manifest itself without knowledge: a thing which actually takes place throughout the whole of Nature, from the animal kingdom downwards; that this will, being the one and only thing–in–itself, the sole truly real, primary, metaphysical thing in a world in which everything else is only phenomenon, i.e., mere representation, gives all things, whatever they may be, the power to exist and to act; (…) that we are never able therefore to infer absence of will from absence of knowledge; for the will may be pointed out even in all phenomena of unconscious Nature, whether in plants or in inorganic bodies; in short, that the will is not conditioned by knowledge, as has hitherto been universally assumed, although knowledge is conditioned by the will. (On the Will in Nature, Introduction)

It is here, in the kernel of nature, in the will, that he tumbles in the unspeakably sad fluctuating between individual will and the one indivisible will in the world, which is the stamp of his complete teaching. On the ideal domain sometimes he is realist, then idealist, on the real domain he is half pantheist, half thing-in-itself-idealist.

Because of this the truth smiled ironically with him too, but only very weakly; for the love towards him was too strong. He is after all the one, who had almost pulled off her last veil: a deed, which she desires from the depth of her heart, to bless and redeem all humans.

He had found the core of nature in his breast as individual will:

Man forms no exception to the rest of nature ; he too has a changeless character, which, however, is strictly individual and different in each case. (On the Basis of Morality, II)

Why did he leave this firm ground and threw himself in the arms of an imagined basic unity in the world? How insignificantly little would I have found to improve in his magnificent teaching, if he had remained with the individual! For – hereby I have to say it – if he would have done this and had taken his partition of the individual will in a conscious and an unfathomable unconscious one as support, then his teaching the Occident would stand there as the same blue miraculous flower like Buddhism in the tropical forests of India: only even more magical and aromatic, since it is rooted in the soil of critical idealism. Similar to how the painter makes with one single stroke on his image a crying child smiling, I want to make with a single change from Schopenhauer’s toxic-soaked by contradictions eroded system a consequent system of thing-in-itself idealism, which one can laugh at, but not rebut. Or as he himself says:

But whether the objects known to the individual only as representations are yet, like his own body, manifestations of a will, is, as way said in the First Book, the proper meaning of the question as to the reality of the external world. To deny this is theoretical egoism, which on that account regards all phenomena that are outside its own will as phantoms, just as in a practical reference exactly the same thing is done by practical egoism. For in it a man regards and treats himself alone as a person, and all other persons as mere phantoms. Theoretical egoism can never be demonstrably refuted, yet in philosophy it has never been used otherwise than as a sceptical sophism, i.e., a pretence. As a serious conviction, on the other hand, it could only be found in a madhouse. (WaWuvW, § 19)

I only need to give the unconscious, unfathomable human will omnipotence, which Buddha had unequivocally given it and which Schopenhauer had to give the one indivisible will in the world, - and Schopenhauer’s system is the blue miraculous flower, consequent, unassailable, irrefutable, intoxicating for the individual. Now the Berkeleyan eternal spirit, God, who brings in our brain the first impulse for the creation of the phenomenal world, now the subrepted (obtaining by illegitimate means) thing-in-itself of Kant, the ground of appearance, is nothing but the unconscious part of the human will, which brings forth from his unfathomable depth with omnipotence the sensuous stimuli, who make this, according to his functions and forms, into a world of illusion, into a pure being-less phantasmagoria.

I confess here openly, that I have for a long time experienced a strong internal struggle between Buddha and Kant on one side and Christ and Locke on the other side. Almost equally powerfully I was requested, by one side to establish the blue miraculous flower in the Occident and by the other side to not deny the reality of the outer world. I eventually chose for Christ and Locke, but I confess that my on myself and my fate focused thoughts have as often moved on the foundations of my teaching as on the charm of Buddhism. And as human (not as philosopher) I do not favor my teaching above Buddhism. It is just like Dante says:

Between two kinds of food, both equally

Remote and tempting, first a man might die

Of hunger, ere he one could freely choose.

(Paradise, Canto IV)

---

The only thing which I still have to do, is solving the riddle of transcendental idealism. I summarize it here, since Schopenhauer has appeared, with the words:

The world is dependent on the mirror the human mind, whose functions and forms are the following:

Functions
Receptiveness of the senses
Law of causality
Synthesis

Aprioric forms
Point-space
Matter
Present

Ideal (a posteriori) forms
Matematical space
Substance
Time
General causality
Community

The world is essentially phenomenal, is appearance. Without subject no outer world.

And nevertheless the world is a from subject independent collective-unity of itself moving individuals, which a real affinity connects, a dynamical interrelation, as if they are weld together.

This is the solution. The whole of intellectual functions and forms aren’t there for the creation of the outer world, but merely for the recognition, just like the stomach only digests, while not simultaneously bringing forth the nutrition, like the hand only grabs an object, not also produces the object. The law of causality leads towards the activity of the things, makes them cause, but does not produce them; space shapes the things, but doesn’t initially lend them expansion; time recognizes the motion of the things, doesn’t move them however; reason composes the perceived parts of a thing, but doesn’t first furnish them their individual unity; general causality recognizes the connection of two activities, but doesn’t bring them forth; community recognizes the dynamical interrelation of all things, but doesn’t bring it forth; finally matter (Substance) makes the things material, substantive, it objectifies their force, but doesn’t bring forth the force.

Here, as I have proved in my work, here, where the force, the real thing-in-itself, weds itself with matter in the human mind, this is the point, where what is ideal must be separated from what is real.

Therefore I have not made the section between what is ideal and real. This has been done already, excellently, unsurpassably by the genius Locke. But he determined the ideal side inadequately and the real side completely false. I have therefore, fertilized by Berkeley, Hume, Kant and Schopenhauer gone back to Locke and have based upon his correct section solved the riddle of the transcendental idealism. The world is not as the mind mirrors it: it is appearance and toto genere different in its whole being and indeed merely due the secondary qualities of Locke, which I summarized in the concept matter (substance).

And now we want to continue to the second form of idealism, the true thing-in-itself-idealism, of which there is only one system in the world: Buddhism.