XII
Intellect and Reason
(See Exposition on Brief, Chapter 12)
T
HINKING
has a twofold function to discharge:
first, to form concepts with sharply outlined contours; secondly, to
unite the single concepts thus formed into a unified whole. In the
first instance, we have to do with the activity of differentiation;
in the second with that of combination. These two mental
tendencies do not by any means enjoy equal favor in the
sciences. The number of persons possessing the acumen which
differentiates even down to the minutest trifles is noticeably
greater than that of persons possessing the combining power of
thought which penetrates to the depths of
things.
For a long time
the function of science has been supposed to consist in an adequate
differentiation among things. We need only recall the state of
natural history in Goethe's day. Through the influence of Linnaeus,
it had become the ideal of this science to investigate the
differences among individual plants sufficiently to succeed in
setting apart new classes and sub-classes on the basis of the most
insignificant characteristics. Two species of animals or plants
differing only in the most unessential details were forthwith
assigned to different classes. If some creature hitherto assigned to
a certain class was discovered to show an unexpected divergence from
the arbitrarily determined class-character, the result was, not an
effort to discover how this divergence might be explained on the
basis of that very class-character, but on the contrary a new class
was at once set up.
This
differentiation is the work of the intellect. It has only to divide
and to retain the concepts in this process of division. It is a
necessary stage preliminary to all higher forms of scientific
knowledge. First of all, must we have definitely fixed, sharply
outlined concepts before we can seek for a harmony among these. But
we must not stop at the stage of division. To the intellect, things
are divided which a fundamental human need requires us to see united.
To the intellect, cause and effect are divided; mechanism and
organism; freedom and necessity; idea and reality; spirit and Nature;
etc., etc. All these differentiations are established by the
intellect. They must be established, because otherwise the world
would appear to us as a blurred, obscure chaos which would form for
us no unity except in the sense that it would be utterly
indeterminate.
Intellect itself
is not capable of passing beyond this process of division. It holds
fast to the divided members.
The task of
passing beyond this belongs to reason. It must cause the concepts
formed by the intellect to pass over into one another. It has to show
that what the intellect keeps in strict separation is in reality an
inner unity. The division is something artificially introduced, a
necessary intervening stage for our knowledge, but not its
conclusion. Whoever apprehends reality only intellectually alienates
himself therefrom. In place of reality, which is in truth a unity, he
sets up an artificial multiplicity, a manifoldness, which has
no relation to the essential nature of reality.
This is the source
of the discord which arises between intellectually pursued
knowledge and the human heart. Many persons whose thinking has
not so developed as to enable them to reach thereby a unified
world-view which they can grasp with complete conceptual clarity are,
nevertheless, capable of penetrating through their feeling to
the inner harmony of the world as a whole. To these is given by the
heart that which the scientifically trained receive from the
reason.
When such persons
meet the intellectual view of the world, they reject with scorn the
endless multiplicity and cling to that unity which they do not know,
indeed, but which they sense more or less vividly. They see very well
that the intellect is alienated from Nature, that it loses sight of
that spiritual bond which units the parts of
reality.
Reason leads back
to reality. The unity of all being, which had before been felt or
only vaguely sensed, is completely fathomed by reason. The
intellectual view must be deepened by the view of reason. If the
former is looked upon, not merely as an inevitable transitional
point, but as an end in itself, it does not yield reality but only a
caricature.
Difficulties at
times arise in combining the thoughts formed by the intellect. The
history of science affords numerous evidences of this fact. We often
see the human mind struggling to reunite the differences
created by the intellect.
In the reasoned
view of the world, man finally arrives at undivided
unity.
Kant called attention to the
difference between intellect and reason. Reason he defined as the
capacity to perceive ideas; whereas intellect is restricted to seeing
the world in its dividedness, in the isolated-ness of single
parts.
It is true that
reason is the capacity to perceive ideas. Here we must define the
difference between concept and idea, to which we have hitherto paid
no attention. For our purpose up to this point it was necessary only
to discover those qualities of thought which are present in both
concept and idea. The concept is a single thought as grasped by the
intellect. If I bring a number of such single thoughts into a
living flux so that they pass over into one another, become united,
thought-structures thus arise which exist for the reason alone, which
cannot be attained by the intellect. The creations of the intellect
surrender their isolated existence to the reason, and thenceforth
they live only as parts of a totality. These structures formed by the
reason we shall call ideas.
That the idea reduces to unity a
multiplicity of intellectual concepts was stated also by Kant. But he
defined those structures which come to manifestation through
the reason as mere phantasms, as illusions, eternally reflected
before the human mind because man is forever striving to attain a
unity of experience which is never given to him. The unities which
are formed in ideas do not rest, according to Kant, upon objective
relationships; they do not flow from the thing itself, but are mere
subjective norms according to which we bring order into our
knowledge. Kant, therefore, designated ideas, not as constitutive
principles which must be determinative for things, but as regulative
principles which have meaning and significance only for the
systematics of our knowledge.
But, if we observe
the manner in which ideas come into existence, this point of
view is shown at once to be fallacious. It is true, of course, that
the subjective reason has a craving for unity. But this craving is
void of content, a mere empty striving toward unity. If reason
is confronted by something absolutely lacking such unity of nature,
reason cannot produce the unity out of itself. But, if reason is
confronted by a multiplicity which admits of being reduced to an
inner harmony, then reason brings this to pass. Such a multiplicity
is the world of intellectually formed
concepts.
Reason does not
presuppose a determinate unity, but the empty form of unification; it
is the capacity to bring harmony to light when harmony exists in the
object itself. Concepts themselves unite in the reason to form ideas.
Reason brings the higher unity of the intellectual concepts into
evidence, the unity which the intellect possesses, indeed, in its
images but lacks the capacity to perceive. The fact that this truth
is overlooked is the cause of much misunderstanding as to the
application of reason in the branches of scientific
knowledge.
To a slight extent every science in
its very rudiments, and even ordinary thinking, has need of reason.
When, in the proposition: “Every body possesses weight,”
we unite the subject-concept with the predicate-concept, we have
already a union of two concepts and, therefore, the simplest activity
of the reason.
The unity which
reason takes as its object is existent prior to all thinking, prior
to all use of the reason; only, it is concealed; it exists merely as
a potentiality, not as an actual phenomenon. Then the human mind
introduces division in order that we may have a complete view into
reality through the reason's unification of the separated
members.
Whoever does not
presuppose this must either look upon all thought-combinations as the
arbitrary work of the subjective mind, or else assume that the unity
exists behind the world we experience, and that it forces us, in a
manner unknown to us, to reduce the multiplicity again to unity. In
that case, we unite thoughts without any insight into the true
reasons of the interrelation which we bring about; in that
case, truth is not cognized by us but forced upon us from without.
All knowledge which proceeds from this presupposition we may call a
dogmatic knowledge. To this we shall later return.
Every such
scientific point of view will meet with difficulties when called upon
to explain why we bring about one or another combination of thoughts.
That is, this point of view requires that we seek for subjective
reasons for combining objects whose interconnection on objective
grounds is concealed from us. Why do I form a judgment when the thing
which requires the interconnection of subject-concept and
predicate-concept has nothing to do with the forming of this
judgment?
Kant took this question as the point
of departure for his critical work. At the beginning of
hisCritique of Pure
Reason we find the question,
How are synthetic judgmentsa priori
possible? — that is, How is it possible
that I unite two concepts (subject and predicate) if the
content of the one is not already contained in the other, and if the
judgment is not a mere experiential judgment, the fixing of a
single fact? Kant considers that such judgments are possible only
when experience cannot exist except on the presupposition of their
validity. The possibility of experience is, therefore,
determinative if such a judgment is to be formed. If I can say
to myself that experience is possible only in case this or that
synthetic judgment isa priori
true, then the judgment possesses validity. But this
principle cannot be applied to ideas themselves. According to Kant
these never possess that degree of
objectivity.
Kant decides that the propositions of
mathematics and pure natural science area priori
such valid propositions. He takes, for example, the
proposition 7 + 5 = 12. In 7 and 5 the sum 12 is, he concludes, by no
means contained. I must go beyond 7 and 5 and call upon my sense of
sight, whereupon I find the concept 12. My vision makes it necessary
that the proposition 7 + 5 = 12 shall be assumed. But the objects of
experience must approach me through the medium of my sense of sight,
thus blending themselves with its principles. If experience is to be
possible at all, such propositions must be
true.
Before an objective examination, this
whole artificial thought-structure of Kant fails to maintain itself.
It is impossible that I have no clue in the subject-concept which
directs me to the predicate-concept. For both concepts are attained
by my intellect, and that in reference to a thing which in itself
constitutes a unit. Let no one be deceived at this point. The
mathematical unit which lies at the basis of number is not primary.
The primary thing is the magnitude, which is a certain number of
repetitions of the unit. I must assume a magnitude when I speak of a
unit. The unit is an image created by our intellect which separates
it from a totality just as it separates effect from cause, substances
from their attributes. When I think 7 + 5, I really hold 12
mathematical units in mind, only not all at once but separated
into two parts. If I think the group of mathematical units all at
once, this is absolutely the same thing. This identity I express in
the proposition 7 + 5 = 12. The same is true of the geometrical
examples cited by Kant. A limited straight line with the
termini A and B is an indivisible unit. My intellect can form two
concepts of this. At one time it may consider the straight line
as a direction and at another as the distance between the two points
A and B. From this fact comes the judgment: The shortest
distance between two points is a straight
line.
All judgments, in
so far as the members which enter into the judgment are concepts, are
nothing more than the reunifying of that which the intellect has
divided. The interconnection comes to light as soon as one enters
into the content of the intellectual
concepts.
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