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

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Chapter II
The structure of the inter-modal synthesis of meaning and its transcendental and transcendent pre-requisites.

§ 1 - The theoretical character of the ‘Gegenstand’ in the scientific cognitive process.

The fundamental epistemological problem with respect to scientific knowledge is concerned with the possibility of the inter-modal theoretical synthesis of meaning. But since this theoretical synthesis pre-supposes a theoretical antithesis, it implies the primordial question: What gives rise to the problem of that which is opposed to the logical function, i.e. the ‘Gegenstand’?

In the Prolegomena (Vol. I) these problems have been raised and discussed in the general cadre of a transcendental critique of theoretical thought. But in their specific epistemological context they imply questions which could not yet be investigated in this provisional discussion. Therefore they ought to be resumed here in greater detail.

On the immanence-standpoint the problem concerning the theoretical antithesis cannot be posed in a really critical manner, even when behind Kant's critical inquiry the attempt is made to base epistemology on some type of metaphysics, on a ‘critical ontology’ or on modern phenomenology.

Phenomenologists presume that the ‘Gegenstand’ is no problem at all, since it is to be found as a phenomenological datum in the intentional relation of the act of consciousness. The ‘Gegenstand’ is then nothing but the ‘intended correlate’ to which the ‘intentional consciousness’ is directed. The world, according to phenomenologists, is given us as ‘intended Gegenstand’. This does not detract from the fact that in the opinion

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of Edmund Husserl it is constituted by the transcendental consciousness itself, outside of which ‘nulla res potest existere’.

In the epistemology founded in pre-Kantian metaphysics the ἀντιϰείμενον is regarded as identical with the subjective reality of a substance, supposed to be independent of human experience.

In Kant's theory, as appeared in the preceding chapter, the ‘Gegenstand’ is identified with the universally valid and ‘objective’ of experience. In this case, too, the problem of that which is opposed to the logical function, in other words the problem of the possibility of the isolating act of abstraction, has not even been raised. This renders the multivocal concept of the ‘Gegenstand’ handled in immanence-philosophy fundamentally useless to us.

A closer investigation into the primary basic problem of epistemology as it is formulated by us, should therefore be preceded by a more detailed explanation of the true character of the ‘Gegenstand’ and of the structure of the theoretical synthesis of meaning.

Is it possible to speak of the ‘Gegenstand’ of knowledge?

It is usual to speak of the ‘Gegenstand’ of knowledge, assuming that the ‘Gegenstand’ is opposed to knowledge. But to what element in knowledge is the ‘Gegenstand’ opposed? If one should say: it is opposed to the subject of cognition, this answer would be problematic in every respect. It does not become less so when one tries to be more precise by defining the ‘cognizing subject’ as the ‘transcendental consciousnes’, the transcendentally reduced ‘I think’ (ego cogito). This has been shown in the Prolegomena.

Is then the ‘Gegenstand’ opposed to our cognitive selfhood? We shall see in the sequel of our examination that such a view would make epistemology impossible.

In the Prolegomena it has appeared that the epistemological ‘Gegenstand’ owes its origin exclusively to a theoretical disjunction of the cosmic temporal meaning-systasis. Our ‘self-hood’ is not to be found in the latter. The correlate to the ‘Gegenstand’ must consequently be sought within the temporal diversity of aspects, not in the I-ness. The resistance as such is due to an antithetical opposing act, which is essentially a theoretical act of setting apart the several aspects of the cosmic

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meaning-systasis. This setting apart is only possible by means of analysis. For this reason the analytical modality must show a very special and indissoluble correlation with the ‘Gegenstand’.

The enstatic and the antithetical attitude of thought.

The modal function of feeling meets with no resistance in an epistemological sense. The subject-object relation inherent in it cannot be interpreted as an essentially inter-modal opposition (in the theoretical analysis). The analytical function itself has no theoretical resistance as long as this function remains merely inherent in temporal reality. It is part and parcel of the cosmic meaning-systasis, an indispensable aspect of empirical reality, in which all the post-logical aspects are founded.

In the Prolegomena it has been shown that in naïve experience the analytical function of thought is fitted into temporal reality and operative in the cosmic meaning-coherence. That is why naïve, pre-theoretical experience does not know of an epistemological problem. Naïve thought has no ‘opposite’ to its logical function and does not perform any inter-modal theoretical synthesis, but is operative in the full temporal reality in enstasis.

Naïve experience is a concrete experience of things and their relations in the fulness of individual temporal reality.

The analytical subject-object relation also has a merely enstatic character here. Even in the theoretical attitude of thought this relation has indeed nothing to do with the antithetical Gegenstand-relation. But here it can be opposed to non-logical subject-object relations. In addition its modal structure can be made into a ‘Gegenstand’ of analysis by abstracting it from the inter-modal coherence of cosmic time in its continuity.

The problem of meaning-synthesis is rooted in the problem of time, in the problem of the ἐποχή¹ from the continuity of the temporal cosmic meaning-coherence.

The epistemological ‘Gegenstand’ cannot be cosmic reality itself, because the analytical function, even in its deepened theo-

1 This term, which has such a central function in Husserl's phenomenolog, was by no means invented by him. It originates from Greek philosophy. There is no point in trying to find Husserlian motives behind my conception of the ἐποχή. I exclusively use this term to signify an abstraction from the temporal continuity in the cosmic coherence of meaning. The original signification is ‘refraining from’.

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retical meaning can never break the bonds of its immanence in temporal reality. The analytical function cannot transcend cosmic time or be opposed to the cosmos. That which is abstracted in anti-thetical theoretical thought appeared to be nothing but the continuity of cosmic time.

The basic problem of epistemological antithesis and intermodal synthesis of meaning thus proved to be essentially rooted in the problem of cosmic time, viz. in the possibility of a theoretical ἐποχή (refraining) from the temporal continuity of the cosmic coherence of meaning.

Varieties of ‘Gegenstande’.

In the primary analytical ἐποχή the ‘Gegenstand’ may be conceived in a larger or lesser degree of abstraction. The absolute limit of ‘gegenständliche’ abstraction is found in the functional basic structure of the modal aspects.

An entire law-sphere with its immanent modality of meaning can function as a ‘Gegenstand’.

Within such an abstracted law-sphere a whole field of mutually coherent particular ‘Gegenstände’ reveal themselves. Finally it is possible to abstract a structural ‘Gegenstand’ from a thing or event of naïve experience and from a typical total structure of social life. This structural ‘Gegenstand’ is no longer merely modal, or functional, but displays typical structural coherences of an inter-modal character in the analytical ἐποχή. This latter kind of ‘Gegenstände’ constitute the field of our investigations in the third volume.

§ 2 - The relation between inter-modal meaning-synthesis and deepened analysis. The objective analytical dis-stasis and the analytical character of the theoretical ἐποχή.

The question may be asked: What is the reason why the deepening of analysis can only be accomplished in the inter-modal meaning-synthesis of thought? This question deserves close attention. Why cannot the deepening of meaning in the analytical aspect remain at rest in the cosmic meaning-systasis? Why should the opening analytical function abstract its ‘Gegenstand’ from the full cosmic coherence of time?

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The answer is: the analytical function itself cannot possibly abide by the mere meaning-systasis of cosmic reality because of the dynamics of its ‘universality within its own sphere’. This universality can only reveal itself in the deepened meaning of analysis. It sets the modal structures of the law-spheres apart from each other by breaking up the continuity of the cosmic meaning-coherence into a logical discontinuity.

In its purely enstatic function the logical law-sphere can never approach the totality of meaning in its own modality. Enstatic logical analysis is restrictively bound to sensory perception and can only analytically distinguish concrete things and their relations according to sensorily founded characteristics.

The reason why the naïve concept of a thing cannot be based on an inter-modal synthesis of meaning. The analytical character of the ἐποχή.

Naturally this does not mean that the naïve concept of a thing is founded in a synthesis of analytical and psychical meaning. Naïve, pre-theoretical thought is unable to isolate the psychical function as its ‘Gegenstand’ from the full temporal reality.

The truth is that the naïve concept of a thing remains embedded in the full temporal systasis of naïve experience forming an indissoluble subjective component part of it. This is the reason why pre-theoretical thought is unable to analyse the modal aspects of the reality of a thing. Naïve analysis does not penetrate behind the objective outward appearance, and cannot embrace the functional laws of the modal spheres in an inter-modal synthesis of meaning. It has to be satisfied with pre-theoretical distinctions oriented to the praxis and more or less verifiable in the sensory aspect of experience. These distinctions are not arranged according to a systematical-methodical viewpoint.

But conformable to the transcendental Idea of the consummation of its meaning, the logical function requires the analytical comprehension of the totality of the modal functions with their law-conformities.

It is characteristic of this Idea of analysis not to leave the cosmic data alone, but to separate its own substratum- and superstratum-functions, and even the analytical modus itself, which is abstracted in the inter-modal meaning-synthesis. From the Prolegomena we know that this theoretical setting apart of the modal aspects is only possible by means of an analytical disjunction of their continuous coherence in cosmic time. It is

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the continuity of the latter from which theoretical analysis has to abstract its ‘Gegenstand’, though this analysis can have actuality only within cosmic time.

The disclosure of the logical anticipatory sphere in the pre-logical ‘Gegenstand’.

In the first place the deepened analytical function can make the pre-logical law-spheres into its ‘Gegenstand’ and concentrate on one of them in particular (that of number, space, movement, energy, organic life, or psychical feeling).

This concentration originates from the actual direction of theoretical attention, which cannot be explained in a purely modal analytical way. The result is that under its functional guidance the logical anticipatory sphere of the pre-logical ‘Gegenstand’ is opened¹. The modal aspects of number, space, movement, etc., with their law-conformities, which have sovereignty in their own spheres, follow the lead of systematic analysis, thus revealing their meaning-coherence with the logical modality. The pre-logical law-spheres abstracted into the ‘Gegenstand’ of theoretical analysis, reveal their ‘predisposition’ to the systematic tendency of theoretical thought, their anticipatory appeal to logical systematics.

This state of affairs is fundamentally disregarded in the metaphysical conception of substance. For according to the latter the pre-logical properties of the ‘thing in itself’ are supposed to have no relation whatever to human thought, although the latter is certainly related to the substance.

1 We have pointed this out already in the General Theory of the Law-spheres.

The deepening of the logical object-side of reality in theoretical thought. The objective-analytical dis-stasis.

At the same time the logical object-side of reality is deepened in the subject-object relation. It changes from an objective logical systasis, merely embedded in temporal reality, into an objective logical ‘standing apart’, the objective dis-stasis of a functional multiplicity in the analytical aspect.

In theoretical scientific thought the modal concept of function discloses the logical object-side of reality. Analysis is no longer

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content with a sensorily founded distinction of things whose modal aspects have not been analysed, but it proceeds to the theoretical disjunction of these aspects themselves.

Only now are those aspects which precede the logical law-sphere distinctly objectified in the latter. And yet this objective analytical dis-stasis is no more a creation of theoretical thought than the objective analytical systasis is a creation of pre-theoretical thought. It belongs to the objective logical aspect of the full temporal reality, and is only made manifest by theoretical analysis. Empirical reality is doubtless not given in analytical dis-stasis; the latter can only function within the continuous coherence of cosmic time. But this dis-stasis is an objective possibility in the logical aspect of reality itself.

The ἐποχή which is characteristic of theoretical thought, is made in deepened analysis. It functions within the logical law-sphere; but it is the theoretical meaning-synthesis that refers analysis to its ‘Gegenstand’. Now that the modal meaning of the theoretical ἐποχή has been explained, the possibility of the inter-modal synthesis of meaning demands our attention. The modal analytical aspect cannot explain this possibility, because it has been theoretically abstracted itself. This theoretical abstraction appeals to the inter-modal synthesis of meaning.

§ 3 - Intuition in the continuity and in the functional refraction of cosmic time.

The intermodal synthesis of meaning is a subjective cognitive act. Its super-individual universal validity depends on the cosmic temporal order, which makes it possible. As an actus it pre-supposes the transcendent super-temporal I-ness or selfhood which, according to the Archimedean point of our cosmonomic Idea, shares in the religious root of the whole of temporal reality. In the direction of the meaning-synthesis to the selfhood, possible only in the transcendental direction of the cosmic temporal order, we discover the transcendental condition of the cognitive inter-modal meaning-synthesis. In the selfhood as the religious root of all cognitive activity, we find its transcendent condition. But while our theoretical reflection on the possibility of the synthesis of meaning chooses the transcendental direction, our attention is again drawn to the relation between the deepened theoretical analysis in which we have performed our analytical ἐποχή, and cosmic time, in whose con-

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tinuity this ἐποχή is brought about. The theoretical concept of the analytical aspect proved to be a theoretical abstraction. That which is abstracted from in order to grasp the analytical modality itself in the theoretical synthesis, proved to be the cosmic continuity of time, in the meaning-systasis of temporal reality.

Actual analysis exceeds the modal limits of the analytical law-sphere.

If this is so, actual analysis must be something more than the modal analytical function which we can grasp as the product of a synthetic abstraction. The excess lies in that which cannot be theoretically isolated in the analytical modus. It is that temporal bottom layer of the latter by means of which our analytical function of thought is embedded in cosmic time itself. Through this bottom layer our thought is in continuous temporal contact with all the other modal functions which our selfhood can claim in time as its own. This temporal bottom layer of actual analysis is our intuition. Since Plato every epistemology that wanted to reach greater depths has tried to shed light on this intuition. But its true character is bound to evade philosophy, as long as a priori the latter eliminates cosmic time from its epistemological reflection.

Our intuition cannot be theoretically isolated just because it has a continuous temporal character. The continuous meaning-coherence in the temporal refraction of meaning is immediately grasped by it behind all theoretical conceptual limits. Intuition is thus a cosmic intuition of time. Whoever thinks he can isolate it theoretically, turns it into a theoretical synthetical concept eliminating exactly that which is essential to intuition, viz. its being embedded in the temporal continuity of the cosmic meaning-coherence. In its temporal actuality, however, intuition is nothing without the selfhood transcending time.

In the transcendental temporal direction of theoretical intuition, our selfhood becomes cosmologically conscious of itself in the temporal coherence and diversity of all its modal functions.

It is human personality that operates in cognition; it is not one or more of its abstracted modal functions. In its religious root this personality transcends its temporal acts and modal functions. This holds good no matter whether the cosmological self-consciousness, in the cognitive activity, is directed in Christ to the true Origin of all things, to the sovereign Creator and

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Heavenly Father, or, in sinful apostasy, seeks itself and the Origin in the temporal.

Self-reflection on the modal functions as being our own.

The modal aspects of temporal reality are not alien to us in the sense of transcending the human selfhood. They are cosmically our own. Apart from the religious root in which the creation finds its totality of meaning and in which our selfhood shares, they have no meaning. In the intuitive self-reflection on the modal functions, as our own in cosmic time, is revealed the possibility of our synthetic knowledge of the modal law-spheres. In our intuition, the analytical and non-analytical functions of experience come to an actual and conscious contact which does not affect their modal diversity. In this way our selfhood experiences the temporal coherence between the modal aspects of reality. In this experience the I-ness remains the central point of reference. Intuition, being bound to time, cannot transcend the modal diversity of meaning. So long as the analytical function has not been deepened in the transcendental direction of time, and remains inert in the foundational direction of the temporal order, our intuition does not arrive at a free synthesis of meaning. Then it remains at rest in the systasis of the datum. Or rather the other way round: it is by means of our intuition that the modal analytical function enters continuous cosmic time. So long as our intuition remains at rest in the foundational direction of the cosmic temporal order, the modal analytical function cannot unfold itself by deepening its meaning. Then we are not actually operating in the transcendental freedom of theoretical thought on the road to inter-modal meaning-synthesis.

The intuition which simply rests in the cosmic meaning-coherence, is typical of the attitude of thought in naïve experience. All of us, no matter whether we are men of science or not, adopt the naïve attitude as soon as we are not theoretically engaged. In the resting pre-theoretical intuition we have an enstatic conscious ‘Erleben’ of the full temporal reality as it presents itself in the typical structures of individuality and their relations. This conscious ‘Erleben’ or ‘Hineinleben’ into reality primarily unfolds itself in the integral experience of temporal reality to which any kind of theoretical meaning-synthesis is still alien. This integral experience of reality must not in any way be mis-

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interpreted theoretically in accordance with the functionalistic view-points of immanence-philosophy (e.g., as something of a purely sensory psychical nature, or as a synthetical logical arrangement of sensory impressions). The conscious enstatic ‘Hineinleben’, as an entering into reality, although by no means detached from the analytical function of thought, lacks theoretical insight into the modal aspects of our experience. But theoretical insight, originating from antithetical disjunctive thought, and reading the disclosed and opened modal aspect as its ‘Gegenstand’, cannot itself reveal this modality to us as our own. The true datum is never that which has been merely theoretically read.

Only as the disclosure, opening, and theoretical deepening of the real datum in pre-theoretical conscious ‘Erleben’, is theoretical insight possible. Conscious ‘Erleben’ is the temporal basic layer of all cognition.

The misconception with regard to the possibility of non-intuitive knowledge. All theoretical knowledge rests on conscious insight.

It is a misconception to think that actual synthetical thought is possible without intuitive insight. The analytical law-conformity of thought must itself be known intuitively, if analysis is to be possible. And it is a fortiori an indispensable condition of scientific knowledge that we have an intuitive insight into the ‘Gegenstand’.

As soon as my intuition is inoperative, I do not know anything. Neither the modal subjective psychical, nor the modal subjective logical function, without our theoretical intuition, can give us conscious insight into the sensory impressions or analytical coherences revealing themselves in it.

Volkelt's incorrect contrast of logical necessity and intuitive certainty.

According to Johannes Volkelt, the ‘logical necessity of thought’ does not refer to intuition as its source. He means to say that the knowledge of logical necessity is not objectively founded in intuition. For this statement he adduces the following reasons: ‘I am certain of logical necessity as of something purely objective, supra-personal, something that shows the inner coherence of ground and consequence; hence something

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that forms a complete contrast with all intuitive necessity. When asked why I admit some logically necessary proposition, I do not answer: ‘Because I am intuitively certain of this statement’, or ‘because I am quite certain of this proposition intuitively’, but ‘because this proposition is objectively founded, because it follows from objective considerations, because it rests on proofs’¹.

Here Volkelt shows that he has not grasped the transcendental meaning of intuition in logical thought. The same lack of insight is seen in a note saying that intuition in itself is capable of psychological analysis. Intuitive certainty, especially with regard to the logical aspect, is assumed to be the ‘subjective form in which the objective compulsion of the logical manifests itself to me.’ But how could objective logical states of affairs be known by us apart from subjective logical certainty, - which in the last instance is founded in the immediate in-sight of intuiton. Apparently Volkelt has no insight into the logical subject-object relation.

His further argument, we are sorry to say, can hardly be taken seriously: ‘Intuitive certainty is, therefore, not the creator of logical truth, but only the way and character in which I become aware of the self-supporting truth. Consequently(!) we are not concerned here with a type of intuitive certainty that could be put on a level with moral, religious and aesthetical intuition’¹.

Of course it cannot be reasonably supposed that intuition creates truth. But does Volkelt mean to say that the moral, aesthetical or religious intuition creates that into which it gains an insight? And has intuition suddenly changed into something different when, instead of being directed to the moral and

1 Gewissheit und Wahrheit (1918), p. 579, also p. 224: ‘Der logischen Notwendigkeit bin ich als einer rein sachlichen, überpersonlichen, nach Grund und Folge zusammenhängenden, also in völligem Gegensatze zu allem Intuitiven stehenden Notwendigkeit gewisz. Werde ich gefragt, warum ich mich zu irgend einem logisch-notwendigen Satze bekenne, so antworte ich nicht: ‘weil ich dieses Satzes intuitiv gewisz bin,’ sondern: ‘weil dieser Satz sachlich begründet ist, aus sachlichen Ueberlegungen folgt, auf Beweisen beruht.’

1 ‘Die intuitive Gewissheit ist also nicht die Erzeugerin der logischen Wahrheit, sondern nur die subjektive Art und Weise, wie mir die sich selbst tragende logische Wahrheit zu Bewusstsein kommt.
Es handelt sich hier also(!) keineswegs um einen Typus der intuitiven Gewissheit, welcher der moralischen, religiösen und ästhetischen Intuition an die Seite gestellt werden köntte.’

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aesthetical law-spheres or to that of faith, it focuses on the logical states of affairs?

Is it perhaps only in this case of a subjective character, whereas in the other case it has an infallible objectivity?

Volkelt's meaning is clearer in an earlier context. There he contrasts two kinds of certainty, viz. the intuitive certainty originating from the ‘logical necessity of thought’ and the certainty derived from the intelligible moral law. Volkelt thinks he can characterize this contrast in such a way that the moral type has no other basis than our intuitive certainty, whereas logical truth is based on the ‘coherence of the understanding’ which in our intuition can only be experienced subjectively.

Even sensory impressions can only be related to my-self and to things by conscious intuition.

What does Volkelt really mean by intuition? His answer is: ‘the immediate certainty of something that transcends experience’! And what does he mean by ‘experience’? Only its sensory psychical aspect! This explains his statement: ‘When I am immediately certain of the sensation of sweetness, this is not an intuitive certainty; when, however, according to Kant, we are certain of the moral law that is alive in our intelligible I, we have to deal with intuitive certainty’¹.

With this Volkelt has in principle accepted the sensualistic conception of experience, prevailing in the so-called empiricistic trend of immanence-philosophy. This conception is meaningless insofar as the sensory-psychical aspect of experience has no experiential sense apart from the inter-modal coherence of meaning.

Experience is related to the human I-ness. It is fundamentally different from the animal awareness of sensations.

Ultimately Volkelt appears to start from the same cosmonomic Idea that forms the foundation of Kant's dualistic conception of the temporal world-coherence viz. that of the realm of sensory phenomena and that of the super-sensory noumena.

This in itself suffices to unmask Volkelt's demand for ‘an absolutely unprejudiced’ epistemology. His argument loses its

1 ‘Wenn ich der Empfindung des Süssen unmittelbar gewiss bin, so ist dies kein intuitives Gewiszsein; wenn wir dagegen nach Kant der in unserem intelligibelen Ich lebenden Sittengesetzes unmittelbar gewisz werden, so liegt intuitive Gewiszheit vor.’

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foundation when it is admitted that restricting experience to sensory impressions¹ is equal to cancelling the possibility of experience. For the psychical can only exist in the temporal coherence of experience together with all the other aspects. And on the other hand, we can not possibly have intuitive certainty about that which is fundamentally in-experienceable. How could I really be aware of a sweet taste, if I could not relate this sensory impression to myself, by means of my intuition entering into the cosmic stream of time?

I do not experience this sensory impression without some awareness of its objective or non-objective character. Only in intuition do I experience the coherence of a psychical impression with the pre-psychical aspects of empirical reality, in which the sensory subject-object relation is founded.

Only in this way am I quite sure that a so-called adequate sensory impression of sweetness is an intentional objective one, which every human being with a normally developed taste is bound to receive from the matter tasted, because in its psychical object-function sweetness belongs to the full reality of the matter tasted.

Man's experience of the sensory aspect of reality is never apart from his logical faculty of distinction, and only in our intuition is our logical subject-function in actual temporal contact with the other aspects of reality.

The supposed ‘pure sensation’² is a theoretical abstraction destroying itself in contradiction. It is the product of an analytical ἐποχή, and for this very reason it cannot be ‘purely sensory’.

1 ‘Empfindungen’.

2 ‘reine Empfindung’.

The inter-modal synthesis of meaning is only possible through the theoretical intuition of time.

The inter-modal synthesis of meaning appears thus to be possible only through the theoretical intuition. The latter is necessarily related to the transcendent selfhood. I cannot grasp the modal meaning of a law-sphere in a theoretical concept, if I lack temporal theoretical insight into the aspect opposed to the analysis. My intuition moves to and fro between my deepened analysis and its ‘Gegenstand’ to bring them into actual contact in the inter-modal synthesis of meaning. In this process I become conscious of my theoretical freedom of thought. The actual syn-

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thesis of meaning accomplished in it can never be explained by means of the isolated functions of consciousness. Theoretical intuition is operative in deepened analysis itself, and only by its intermediary is theoretical thought able to analyse the ‘Gegenstand’ in the intermodal synthesis of meaning. In this intuition I implicitly relate the intermodal meaning-synthesis to the transcendent identity of the modal functions I experience in the religious root of my existence.

But it is only in a transcendental reflection, led by our transcendental basic Idea, that this implicit relation can be made explicit to theoretical thought.

In its subjective subordination to the cosmic order of time, theoretical intuition is an absolutely transcendental condition of the cognitive meaning-synthesis. As such it can never be conceived in a category or a concept, but can only be approached in the transcendental Idea of temporal consciousness.

Only by the latter can our selfhood become cosmologically conscious of itself in its intuitive reflection.

The relation between theoretical and pre-theoretical intuition. Cosmic and cosmological self-consciousness.

Theoretical intuition, actualized in synthetical thought, is no more detached from pre-theoretical intuition, operative in enstatic thought, than the transcendental direction in the cosmic order of time is detached from the foundational direction. In the inter-modal synthesis and analytical disjunction of the modal aspects of experience our theoretical intuition is actualized in synthetical thought as insight. It can only be understood as a deepening of pre-theoretical intuition, to which it must always refer in the foundational direction of time.

In the composure of my pre-theoretical intuition I have an immediate enstatic experience of temporal reality as my own in my thought. In pre-theoretical thought our I-ness enters enstatically by means of its naïve intuition into the cosmic temporal coherence of experience.

And thus we have conscious experience of the modal diversity of meaning but without distinct knowledge of the modal aspects. In contrast with theoretical self-consciousness we can speak here of a pre-theoretical cosmic self-consciousness. In this the theoretical self-consciousness remains founded, in accordance with the cosmic temporal order. All theoretical reflection on the modal aspects of reality, and all intuitive insight is

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founded in experience in identity, only deepened, but never cancelled in theoretical intuitive insight. It is only man who can have cosmic and cosmological self-consciousness because only man's cosmic temporal structure is founded in an individual religious root transcending time, viz. his selfhood. Only his selfhood is able to enter into the temporal cosmos by means of his intuition of time and to set apart and combine the modal aspects in theoretical thought. In contrast with those creatures that have no self-consciousness and are ex-statically absorbed by their temporal existence, man's selfhood is able to enter enstatically into the coherence of cosmic time.

Rejection of a separation between intuition and analysis.

We have approached intuition as the temporal bottom layer of the analytical function which it exceeds. This implies that we must reject any attempt to detach intuition from the analytical aspect and to contrast it to analytical thought as a mysterious metaphysical faculty.

Because of their inherent depreciation of methodical theoretical conceptual thought, such efforts will always cause the one-sided reaction of those who think they have once for all banished intuitive insight as an ‘asylum ignorantiae’ from epistemology. According to Schelling's romanticism there exists a method of speculative thought characteristic of men of genius. The latter rise above the primary logical principles, in their ‘intellectual intuition’. The idea of such a method is not only internally contradictory, but Schelling's ‘intellectual intuition’ has a perfectly theoretical character; it is connected with a theoretical abstraction which cannot exist without an analytical ἐποχή.

The metaphysical psychologizing of intuition in Bergson.

In recent times Bergson in particular has introduced intuition as a metaphysical cognitive organ diametrically opposed to theoretical-logical analysis. To analytical, disjunctive scientific thought with its conceptual delimitation, he ascribes the function of a mere biological adaptation to matter. Similar to the pragmatist view he attributes merely technical utility to science with regard to human conduct. On the other hand he considers intuition to be an immediate subjective psychical ‘emphaty’ penetrat-

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ing with ‘intellectual sympathy’ into the ‘durée’, i.e. the creative qualitative vital stream of time. Intuition alone can give us ‘metaphysical knowledge of absolute reality’. This irrationalistic psychologistic metaphysics lacks critical reflexion. It loses sight of the fact that the supposed isolation of an actual psychical ‘intuition’ and ‘durée’ can itself only be the product of an (erroneous) theoretical analysis and synthesis of meaning. For this intuition is supposed to be cleared of any connection with the other aspects of experience.

Every attempt to isolate intuition theoretically cancels itself. In spite of himself Bergson feels obliged to connect intuition with concepts¹. He does so in an internally contradictory way by depriving the intuitively founded concept of every analytical delimitation. He misinterprets this concept as the fluid expression of ‘psychical empathy’ which is supposed to lack the analytical ἐποχή essential to theoretical thought.

There can be no question of genuine philosophy, according to him, ‘unless it surpasses the conceptual, or at least unless it frees itself from rigid, ready-made concepts, and creates notions entirely different from those we habitually handle; I would say supple, mobile, almost fluid concepts, always ready to mould themselves in accordance with the fugitive forms of intuition’² (italics are mine).

1 Introduction à la Métaphysique (now included in La Pensée et le Mouvant, 2ième edit. 1934, p. 213). ‘Certes, les concepts lui sont indispensables, car toutes les autres sciences travaillent le plus ordinairement sur des concepts, et la métaphysique ne saurait se passer des autres sciences.’ [Certainly, the concepts are indispensable to it, for all the other sciences mostly work with concepts, and metaphysics could not do without the other sciences].
Cf. also: La Pensée et le Mouvant (2ième edit. 1934) p. 39: ‘l'intuition, comme toute pensée, finit par se loger dans des concepts: durée, multiplicité qualitative ou hétérogène, inconscient-differentielle même, si l'on prend la notion telle qu'elle était au début.’ [Intuition, like every thought, at last gets deposited in concepts; duration, qualitative or heterogeneous multiplicity, unconscious-differential even, if the notion is taken such as it was at the beginning.]

2 ‘Elle (i.e. “la philosophie”) n'est proprement elle même que lorsqu'elle dépasse le concept ou du moins lorsqu'elle s'affranchit des concepts raides tout faits pour créer des concepts bien différents de ceux que nous manions d'habitude, je veux dire des représentations souples, mobiles, presque fluides, toujours prêtes à se mouler sur les formes fuyantes de l'intuition’ (italics are mine). Introduction à la Métaphysique, op. cit., p. 213/214.

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A little further on we read: ‘If metaphysics is possible, it can only be an awkward effort, even painful(!), immediately to place itself with a kind of intellectual dilation in the object that one studies, to pass from reality to the concepts and no longer from the concepts to reality’¹.

The facts are, however, as follows: If the analytical ἐποχή from the continuity of cosmic time - which Bergson identifies functionalistically with the psychical duration of feeling! - is cancelled, we necessarily fall back in the merely enstatic intuitive attitude of the thought of naïve experience. It is exactly from this attitude that Bergson wishes to withdraw in his attempt to isolate intuition theoretically from analysis. There is, however, no third possibility between theoretical synthesis and pre-theoretical naïve experience, as far as human knowledge is concerned.

In Bergson's concept of ‘pure duration’ we can clearly detect the theoretical synthesis of meaning with its analytical ἐποχή - although in an apert irrationalistic turn of thought. For this ‘duration’ has been obtained by him from the full temporal experience in a process of theoretical abstraction; and this is done with the aid of an intuitively founded analysis! Bergson does not see this, because he starts from the metaphysical prejudice that the absolute, full reality has been given us in the actual psychical stream of time.

In other words Bergson starts from a metaphysical absolutization in which the primary analysis and inter-modal synthesis of meaning remain hidden from him. The lack of really critical transcendental self-reflection appears clearly in his optimistic belief that, if his intuitive metaphysical method were generally accepted, the strife between the different philosophic movements would cease. For he thinks he can chiefly explain this strife by the fact that the methods of technical scientific thought, serviceable to practical utility, were forced on the disinterested manner of knowing reality, proper to philosophy².

1 op. cit., pp. 21/2: ‘Si la métaphysique est possible, elle ne peut être qu'un effort pénible, douloureux même(!) pour se placer tout de suite, par une espèce de dilation intellectuelle, dans la chose qu'on étudie, enfin pour aller de la realité aux concepts et non plus des concepts à la realité.’

2 ‘Les difficultés inhérentes à la métaphysique, les antinomies qu'elle soulève, les contradictions où elle tombe, la division en écoles antagonistes et les oppositions irreductibles entre systèmes, viennent en grande partie de ce que nous appliquons à la connaissance désintéressée du réel les procédés dont nous nous servons couramment dans un but d'utilité pratique. Elles viennent principalement de ce que nous nous installons dans l'immobile pour guetter le mouvant au passage, au lieu de nous replacer dans le mouvant pour traverser avec lui les positions immobiles...’ [The difficulties inherent in metaphysics, the antinomies it evokes, the contradictions into which it gets involved, the division into antagonistic schools and the irreducible oppositions between the systems, are for a large part due to the circumstance that we apply to the disinterested knowledge of reality, the methods we usually employ for a practical purpose. They originate chiefly from our taking up a position in what is immobile in order to watch the moving in its passage, instead of placing ourselves in the moving in order to traverse the immobile positions with it.]

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Why theoretical intuition can never operate apart from the analytical function. Intuition and instinct.

Intuition cannot be isolated from analysis. Conversely, analysis can never function without intuitive insight. This has been convincingly proved by Henri Poincaré, in his La Valeur de la Science and in his Science et Hypothèse, to refute the idea of a ‘pure analysis’ in the mathematical sciences.

But is it not a fact that sometimes theoretical states of affairs are grasped intuitively at one glance by a truly original thinker, before they are theoretically analysed in all their details? Is not there after all such a thing as an actual intuition that can do without the aid of the analytical function? Does not a kind of intuition exist in men of genius which intuits directly, apart from any logical activity of thought? There is nothing so easy as this interpretation of the above-mentioned fact; but there is also nothing that is more confusing. A simple consideration can convince us of its untenability.

This intuition of men of genius, which for the rest is by no means infallible, can provide them with a real theoretical insight only when it distinguishes and identifies logically. In case this subjective analytical function is absent, at most some animal instinct but not a theoretical intuition can be operative.

It is quite possible, however, for theoretical intuition to grasp certain modal law-conformities synthetically in the free direction of its attention¹ without a previous exhaustive analysis of the fundamental law-conformities in the modal field of research.

1 The free direction of our attention to abstract modal states of affairs is typical for theoretical intuition in contradistinction to the pre-theoretical, which latter in directing our attention is rigidly bound to psychical factors. With respect to the latter point cf. August Messer Psychologie (5th edit. 1934) p. 282 ff. For the rest his explanation is not free from confusion. We refer for instance to the following remark: ‘Natürlich entstehen für uns durch unsere Aufmerksamkeit nicht blosz die Objekte unseres theoretischen Denkens und Erkennens; dasselbe gilt für die Gegenstände unseres Fühlens, Wertschätzens, Strebens und Wollens. Ja, diese atheoretischen Kräfte in uns sind die wichtigsten Ursachen des Aufmerkens.’ [Of course it is not merely the objects of our theoretical thought and knowledge that originate for us from our attention; for the objects of our feeling, our sense of values, our striving and our volition, the same things hold good. These a-theoretical powers in us are even the most important causes of our attention.] This remark shows that the writer has not been properly alive to the characteristic difference between the free direction of theoretical (synthetical) attention and that of the pre-theoretical consciousness. Similarly his attempt to explain attention psychologically shows a lack of insight into its supra-functional intuitive depth. This defect affects all his interesting discussions of the connection between attention and theoretical analysis.

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In this respect the so-called arithmeticizing of geometry is instructive. The general theory of functions, as it was founded arithmetically by Weierstrasz, was by no means discovered in a ‘purely analytical’ way, but, as Poincaré has shown, by an intuitive insight into the arithmetical law-conformities. We may add to this statement that the discovery was made under the guidance of the intuitive ὑπόϑεσις of the a priori modal aspect of movement, without which ὑπόϑεσις the insight into the mathematical concept of function would not have been possible.

Riemann, the second founder of the general theory of the mathematical functions, directed his intuitive theoretical attention to the spatial aspect. He was geometrically rather than arithmetically minded.

If analysis is identified with arithmetical analysis, one might be inclined to call Riemann an ‘intuitive thinker’, and Weierstrasz an analytical one. In this way one would again introduce a false contrast between analysis and intuition. But then the true state of affairs has been misinterpreted.

Even pre-theoretical intuition cannot function without logical distinction.

The attempt to relate only theoretical intuition (with the various directions of its theoretical attention) to the analytical function, is another cause of a great deal of confusion. In this case pre-theoretical intuition is supposed to be entirely detached from our logical function.

But even pre-theoretical intuition can only inform us of pre-

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theoretical states of affairs with the help of analytical distinction. However, it lacks the actual inter-modal synthesis of meaning in which analysis is deepened to scientific analysis.

§ 4 - The limits of a concept and of a definition, and the so-called phenomenological attitude of mind.

Our conception of the theoretical (inter-modal) synthesis of meaning implies the impossibility of logicizing the modal meaning of any of the law-spheres opposed to theoretical analysis. It is not even possible to logicize the logical law-sphere itself, i.e. to grasp its meaning in a ‘purely logical’ way.

If it were possible to logicize the ‘Gegenstand’, there would not be any possibility of theoretical knowledge, no matter how paradoxical this thesis may appear to the logicist.

From this state of affairs we can infer the limits set to the formation of concepts and definitions about the modal structure of meaning. Once the modal meaning-nucleus, the modal retrocipations and anticipations of a law-sphere have been encompassed in the process of a correct theoretical synthesis of meaning, there is no longer any sense in asking a closer conceptual analysis of the nucleus of the meaning-modality analysed in this process. In the theoretical in-sight (actual in theoretical analysis) this nucleus is opened, laid bare. It is the task of theoretical thought to encompass the original modal meaning-nuclei in its concepts, deepened into Ideas, and not only the nuclei, but with them also their expression in the surrounding analogical meaning-moments. Only in the actual analysis founded in theoretical insight do they become capable of being read distinctly in the indissoluble correlation of the subject- and the law-side of the aspect concerned.

In this theoretical laying bare of the modal meaning we do not grasp a rigid εἶδος, an ‘absolute essential structure’, a ‘Sache an sich’, as modern phenomenology in its rationalist trend supposes it can do. The theoretical Idea of the modal meaning-structure will never attain to perfect static visibility in our theoretical insight. It will never reach the full realization of what has been subjectively intended in it. This is precluded already by the temporal structure of the modal aspect itself. In the transcendental Idea of number, space, movement, energy, organic life, psychical feeling, retribution, love, etc., true theoretical in-

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sight is carried along with the movement of the entire process of meaning-disclosure.

And in this process a truly Christian philosophy will realize, with ever increasing clarity, that the fulfilment of meaning refracted in cosmic time into the various modalities, is not given us in an eidetic intuition but in the religious self-reflection on our part with Christ¹. The transcendental synthetical Idea of a modal aspect involves us in a gradual process of reading its meaning. It approaches the transcendental limits of a modality, but it cannot give us the fulfilment of meaning of the latter.

In the foundational direction of time the concept of a modal aspect may be anterior to the transcendental synthetical Idea of its meaning, but it depends on the latter for its own deepening. This deepened concept is a guarantee that the theoretical Idea cannot do away with the analytical ἐποχή from the continuity of cosmic time. In the Idea of a modal function we can do no more than grasp the specific character of the meaning-modus, analysed in the concept, in the anticipatory direction of cosmic time. In this way the modal concept is integrated in the dynamics of meaning.

So this Idea remains a limiting concept, although in a different sense from what Kant meant. It remains determined by the cosmonomic Idea as the ultimate ὑπόϑεσις of philosophical thought.

1 St. John 13:8.

The internal antinomy in the idea of an adequate ‘Wesensschau’.

Suppose the Idea phenomenologically conceived of as the εἶδος of a modal aspect could be fully realized in theoretical insight, as the result of an adequate intuition of its essence, then this insight would have to grasp the fulness and the totality of meaning adequately.

It should not only intend this fulness and totality in the transcendental direction of time; a mere referring to it as to the transcendent root of all temporal meaning, would not suffice. It should possess this fulness as an immanent datum of phenomenological consciousness. But as soon as this condition had been fulfilled, the modal meaning, as such, would have been cancelled. For this condition can only be realized in the transcendent identity of all temporal modal meaning.

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But the identity meant by phenomenology in its ‘adequate intuition of essence’ remains enclosed in the horizon of a particular aspect, whose meaning-coherence is incapable of seclusion. As theoretical, philosophical identity it is necessarily an identity in the analytical ἐποχή, performed in the inter-modal synthesis of meaning¹.

For this reason also the theoretical insight into the transcendental meaning-coherence of a modal aspect, intended by us in the modal Idea, necessarily remains intentional. The modal ‘Gegenstand’ as well as the analytical modus are themselves of an intending character because of their restless temporal mode of being which is incapable of seclusion.

I deem it of supreme importance for my readers to take account of this state of affairs in its deepest foundations.

1 It has been proved by W. Ehrlich in his study Kant und Husserl (1923) p. 96 ff., that the phenomenological ‘Wesensschau’, which according to Husserl (Ideen I, p. 144) always moves in acts of reflextion (durchaus in Akten der Reflexion bewegt) cannot adequately grasp the essence of the ‘immediately experienced’ (‘schlechthin erlebte’). Husserl himself speaks of: modifications of experience through reflexion (‘Erlebnismodifikationen durch Reflexion’), p. 149.

Phenomenology is a more dangerous adversary of a Christian philosophy than any other variety of immanence philosophy.

I frankly admit that modern phenomenology is a much more dangerous adversary of a Christian philosophy than classical Humanistic idealism or naturalism. And this is owing to the fact that in its problems it has indeed penetrated to an a priori level of philosophic thought which had never been seen so sharply in the earlier Humanistic views. This renders the semblance of its being unbiased all the stronger and all the more deceptive.

The scientialistic trend in phenomenology, founded by Husserl, unwilling to commit itself to any super-theoretical pre-supposition, will not leave the religious ‘facts of consciousness’ alone. It only requires the philosophical investigator to attune himself to the acts of consciousness in the purely theoretical phenomenological attitude, to the adequate description of ‘the essence’, the ‘pure datum’ in all that is intended in them. It merely requires the philosophical investigator not to utilize a single ‘matter of

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fact’, except in the phenomenological reduction¹, in order to gain a complete view of the ςοδἶε, the essence of this ‘fact’, both as to its intentional noetic and its intended noematic sides.

That a concept and a definition are both restricted within certain limits will be readily assented to by the phenomenologist, although he means something quite different from what we have found. But he will stamp as an internal contradiction the statement that the ‘Wesensschau’ cannot be an adequate representation of the ‘essence’ of what is intended.

For what could remain in the ‘matter of fact’ that is incapable of apprehension by our insight, once its ‘essence’ has been envisaged?²

Immanent criticism of the ‘phenomenological attitude’ is made extremely difficult because of the very different schools of thought into which the movement has split up, (compare only Husserl, Pfänder, Scheler, N. Hartmann, Heidegger, Hoffman), which start each from a different type of cosmonomic Idea. That is why I must restrict myself to a general characterization of the ‘phenomenological attitude’ as a definite type of the immanence-standpoint.

The phenomenological ‘Wesensschau’ is really founded in a special conception of the mode of being of what has been

1 Phenomenological reduction is the theoretical elimination of (the relinquishment of) the entire natural ‘view of the world’ (Weltansicht) and of all normative appreciations as actual prejudices of the investigator, in order to make them into the ‘Gegenstand’ of disinterested phenomenological research.

2 Cf. Scheler in his Phänomenologie und Erkenntnistheorie (Schriften aus dem Nachlasz, Bnd. I, 1933) p. 288 (which treatise was written after his chief work on ethics), where he writes: ‘Absoluter Maszstab jeder “Erkenntnis” ist und bleibt die Selbstgegebenheit des Tatbestandes, gegeben in der evidenten Deckungseinheit des gemeinten und des genau so wie gemeint auch im Erleben (Erschauen) Gegebenen.’ [The absolute criterion of every cognition is and remains the state of affairs as it presents itself, given in the evident coalescence of what has been intended and of what has been given in immediate experience (contemplation) exactly as it has been intended.] The reader will no doubt notice the erroneous identification of ‘Erleben’ and ‘Erschauen’. ‘Etwas das so gegeben ist, ist zugleich absolutes Sein, und der Gegenstand der nur Gegenstand eines solches Seins ist, eines solchen puren Wesens, ist in idealem Masze adäquat gegeben.’ [Something given like that is at the same time an absolute being, and the Gegenstand which is merely the Gegenstand of such a being, of such a pure essence, is given adequately to an ideal degree.]

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created. This conception is no longer accounted for by phenomenology as such; it is rooted in a deeper level of the a priori than the merely immanent transcendental horizon of human consciousness¹.

Anyone who realizes the self-insufficiency of all meaning, and, in a Biblical sense, acknowledges that no meaning-modus is capable of seclusion, cannot adopt the phenomenological ‘attitude’, because it is contrary to the truth.

The fundamental thesis of Husserl's phenomenology is that the transcendental ego as the ultimate subject of ‘absolute phenomenology’ or ‘egology’ has no horizon which could transcend its transcendental sphere of being and consequently render this ego relative². This implies that the transcendental ego is elevated to the rank of a ‘super-human being’, and elevated above all meaning as the ultimate constitutive origin of the latter. It is this very primordial absolutization of the phenomenological attitude which determines Husserl's conception of the adequate intuition of essence. It is simply uncritical to suppose that this conception could be accepted apart from its pre-supposition which transcends the theoretical attitude of thought.

The phenomenological attitude in principle lacks a radical transcendental self-reflection. This appears already from its demand that the ‘phenomenological reduction’ shall also include the investigator's human selfhood.

Anyone who has attained to real self-knowledge realizes the transcendental impossibility of the existence of ‘a pure essence’ in the phenomenological sense. At the same time he will also see that it is impossible to arrive at a real equation between the fulness of meaning and the theoretical view which is only possible in the analytical ἐποχή.

As to the modal aspects, the synthesis of meaning, and the actual theoretical insight into them, their essence lies open in the absolute relativity of the temporal meaning-coherence. Also this meaning-coherence possesses no ‘absolute essence’ but points

1 The different ‘levels of the a priori’ will be discussed in Part. II ch. IV of this Volume.

2 Cartesianische Meditationen (ed. by Prof. Dr S. Strasser, publ. Martinus Nijhoff, the Hague 1950) p. 107: ‘die absolute Phänomenologie, die des transzendentalen ego, das eben keinen Horizont mehr hat, der es über seine transzendentale Seinssphäre hinausführen, es also relativieren könnte.’

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beyond and above itself to the fulness of meaning which transcends all transcendental boundaries of experience. In Christ alone the meaning of all that is finds its adequate fulfilment, because in Him it is directed to God in a perfect way, i.e. in the absolute self-insufficiency which is proper to meaning.