Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Kant: position (Zusammenfassung); pure desire to know, the unconditioned gets beyond the subject; Plotinus, Plato

Kurzinhalt: pure desire to know = transcendental illusion; what makes knowledge knowledge is experience, not a grasp of the unconditioned, naive assumption that knowing is taking a look

Textausschnitt: 66/7 That, very roughly, is the Kantian position. Kant dropped much of the rational level. Simply to say, 'It is,' is just to talk; it is not knowledge of anything. The pure desire to know is transcendental illusion, because it moves you beyond the level of possible experience. The Kantian criterion, the ultimate criterion that is constantly operative in the Critique of Pure Reason, is the idea of possible experience. Knowledge is possible insofar as we construct experience. When we start talking about angels and God, we are not constructing any experience, and consequently our sets of a priori forms are irrelevant. It is a fundamental Kantian assumption that what makes knowledge knowledge is experience, not a grasp of the unconditioned, not something that occurs in the judgment. (184; Fs) (notabene)
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67/7 The Kantian position is not easily transcended. If one reflects upon one's capacity to reflect, one can see that there is a demand for the unconditioned, and this demand makes one say that science is only probable, that it has not yet reached the unconditioned. This demand for the unconditioned and obtaining of the unconditioned is something that constitutes a third level in our knowing. But if one simply speaks vaguely about evidence, it is not self-evident that one has to go beyond experience and understanding to posit a third level in which the unconditioned is reached; one ignores that reflectivity and thinks simply of the fulfilment of the conditions, of verification in the materialist sense of having the requisite sensation. One does not think of having the requisite sensation as the fulfilment of the conditions that, combined with the link between the conditions and the conditioned, introduces something new, namely, a satisfaction of the demand of rational reflection for the unconditioned, a satisfaction that through the attainment of the unconditioned gets beyond the subject. If the unconditioned is attained, then there is attained something independent of the subject, something in an absolute order, that something that we name truth. Truth is absolute, and it is the means through which we know the real. (184f; Fs)
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68/7 In other words, in all that development there is the naive assumption that knowing is taking a look. I say the assumption is naive, but it has been held by very profound philosophers. Why are there subsistent universals in Plato? Well, you know the universal, and knowing is taking a look of some sort, or at least remembering a look, and therefore there has to be the universal. Why is it that in Plotinus the first, the One, does not know, is beyond knowledge? Because knowledge involves an imperfection. The first knower is had in the Intelligence, the Nous, that emanates from the One; but the One is beyond being and beyond knowing, because being and knowing imply a duality. (185; Fs) (notabene)
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69/7 That is an example. There are many other criticisms that can be made of Kant, but the fundamental objection is that the issue is not placed on the rational level. His a priori is validated insofar as it is a necessary condition of possible experience. His ultimate is experience, not truth, not the unconditioned; and that is where he differs from being. Moreover, because he does not reach the unconditioned, his doctrine is an immanentist doctrine. One gets out of merely experiencing and understanding, to reality, through an absolute, through the unconditioned. In Kant there is not that unconditioned. It is implicit, of course, in that he does acknowledge simple fact - you can prove a position by introducing a virtually unconditioned; but he does not have the unconditioned as a systematic structural element in his philosophy, and he cannot introduce it into his philosophy without destroying that philosophy. As long as the unconditioned is not recognized, implicitly or explicitly, the philosophy is an immanentist philosophy. You have the experiences, you perform acts of understanding, but you cannot use true propositions as the means through which you know reality. (185; Fs) (notabene)