The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume 3: Phenomenology of Cognition 9781138907249, 9780429282508

Citation preview

The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume 3: Phenomenology of Cognition “In his Phenomenology of Cognition, Cassirer provides a comprehensive and systematic account of the dynamic process involved in the whole of human culture as it progresses from the world of myth and its feeling of social belonging to the highest abstractions of mathematics, logic and theoretical physics. Cassirer engages with the most sophisticated and cutting-edge work in fields ranging from ethnology to classics, egyptology and assyriology to ethology, brain science and psychology to logic, mathematics and theoretical physics. His command of philosophy, literature, and the arts is superb. Echoing his work on Kant, Cassirer begins The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms with the problem posed by the meaning of being for philosophy since Plato. But Cassirer also shows that this problem gains new significance with Kant and with the development of modern culture. Cassirer weaves his conception of the development of knowledge into a broadly Kantian and German idealist dynamic-historical conception of significance and of experience that refuses to accept a fundamental opposition between literary, philosophical and scientific culture. In consequence of his great vision grounded in careful reflection and argument, Cassirer’s systematic conception of the Copernican cosmopolitan-cosmological revolution is still philosophically and scientifically unmatched in contemporary philosophy on both sides of the Atlantic and of the Pacific.” Pierre Keller, Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Riverside, USA. This new translation makes Cassirer’s seminal work available to a new generation of scholars. Each volume includes a translator’s introduction by Steve G. Lofts, a foreword by Peter E. Gordon, a glossary of key terms, and an index. Ernst Cassirer was born in Germany 1874 in the city of Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland). He taught at Hamburg University from 1919 to 1933, and then at All Souls College, Oxford, before emigrating to Sweden and then to the United States. Through its creative interpretation of Kant’s philosophy combined with a deep knowledge of the role of language and culture, Cassirer’s work

is regarded as indispensable to understanding the relationship between the two major traditions in twentieth-century philosophy, the “analytic” and the “continental”. Cassirer’s philosophy is unique, as it sought a common ground between the scientific and humanistic worldviews which frequently divided these two traditions, exemplified in his famous debate with Martin Heidegger at Davos in 1929. His work resulted in the monumental Philosophy of Symbolic Forms as well as several books on the philosophy of humanism and the Enlightenment. He taught at the universities of Yale and Columbia in the early 1940s and died in New York in 1945. Steve G. Lofts is Professor of Philosophy at King’s University College, Canada. He is the translator of Cassirer’s The Logic of the Cultural Sciences and The Warburg Years (1919–1933): Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology.

The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume 3 Phenomenology of Cognition

Ernst Cassirer Translated by Steve G. Lofts

This edition first published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business English Translation © 2021, Routledge Foreword © 2021, Peter E. Gordon Translator’s front matter, Preface, and Introduction © 2021, Steve G. Lofts The right of Steve G. Lofts and Peter E. Gordon to be identified as the authors of their work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. First published in German as Philosophie der symbolischen Formen: Phänomenologie der Erkenntnis Auflage by Bruno Cassirer, Berlin, 1929 British Library Cataloguing-­in-­Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-­1-­138-­90724-­9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-­0-­429-­28250-­8 (ebk) Typeset in Joanna by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Table

of

Contents

Foreword by Peter E. Gordonviii Translator’s Preface by Steve G. Loftsxvi Translator’s Introduction: A Phenomenology of Symbolic Creative Cognition: The Unfolding of the Symbolic Function and the Construction of a Pure Theory of the Symbolic by Steve G. Loftsxix Translator’s Acknowledgments by Steve G. Loftsxxx Prefacexxxii Introduction1 1 . The Matter [Materie] and Form of Cognition 1 2. S ymbolic Cognition and its Significance for the Construction of the World of Objects 18 3 . T he “Immediacy” of Inner Experience: The Object of Psychology 25 4. I ntuitive and Symbolic Cognition in Modern Metaphysics39 PART ONE: THE EXPRESSIVE FUNCTION AND THE WORLD OF EXPRESSION

49

I

51

Subjective and Objective Analysis

vi

table of contents

II The Expressive Phenomenon as the Basic Element of Perceptual Consciousness

67

III The Expressive Function and the Mind-­B ody-­P roblem [Leib-­S eelen-­P roblem]108 PART TWO: THE PROBLEM OF REPRESENTATION [REPRÄSENTATION] AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE INTUITIVE WORLD I

123

The Concept and the Problem of Representation [Repräsentation]125

II Thing and Property

138

III Space

167

IV The Intuition of Time

191

V

226

Symbolic Pregnance

VI On the Pathology of Symbolic Consciousness 1. The Problem of the Symbolic in the History of the Theory of Aphasia 2. The Alteration of the World of Perception in Symptoms of Aphasia 3 . Toward a Pathology of Thing Perception 4. Space, Time, and Number 5 . The Pathological Disorders of Action

243 243 259 272 282 299

PART THREE: THE FUNCTION OF SIGNIFICATION AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SCIENTIFIC COGNITION329 I Toward a Theory of the Concept 1 . The Whole of the “Natural World Concept”

331 331



table of contents

2. Concept and Law: The Position of Concepts in Mathematical Logic: Class Concepts and Relation Concepts [Relationsbegriff]: The Concept as Propositional Function: Concept and Representation

vii

336

II Concept and Object

369

III Language and Science: Thing Signs and Ordinal Signs

385

IV The Object of Mathematics 1. The Formalist and Intuitionist Grounding of Mathematics 2. The Construction of Set Theory and the “Crisis in the Foundation” of Mathematics 3. The Position of the “Sign” in the Theory of Mathematics 4. The “Ideal Elements” [Elemente] and their Signification for the Construction of Mathematics V

The Foundations of Natural-­S cientific Cognition 1 . Empirical and Constructive Manifolds 2. The Principle and Method of Physical Series Formation 3 . “Symbol” and “Schema” in the System of Modern Physics

Appendix: “‘Spirit’ and ‘Life’ in Contemporary Philosophy” (1930)

420 420 429 441

454 476 476 496 521

561

Glossary of German Terms 584 Index593

Foreword

Peter E. Gordon Some works of philosophy reflect the time in which they were written, others recall an earlier age, and still others seem to anticipate a time yet to come. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms has suffered the peculiar fate of a work that seemed unzeitgemäß, or out of tune with its time. First published in the 1920s, during the brief and troubled era of the Weimar Republic, it was intended for a cultured readership that was either rapidly disappearing or had not yet appeared, an intellectual world in which the memory of German Idealism could still inspire and the last embers of European humanism had not ceased to glow. Its author, Ernst Cassirer, belonged to that distinctive stratum of the German-­Jewish bourgeoisie, a small fragment of the Central European educated classes or Bildungsbürgertum for whom culture had become a kind of ersatz religion and who held fast to the values of Universalism and the Enlightenment even as the surrounding culture succumbed to nationalism and intolerance. Cassirer was among the hundreds of thousands of intellectuals and artists whose careers in Germany came to an end by the brutal fiat of National Socialist legislation in 1933. He fled with his wife into exile, and after two years in Oxford and a longer stay in Göteborg, Sweden, he spent his final years in the United States. Since his death in 1945, his philosophical legacy has survived in the uncertain twilight of a culture that can no longer identify with his ideals. But no work of philosophy should suffer the ignominy of being turned into a mere monument of the past. The crucial question is whether we can still read it today and, if so, how.

foreword

ix

“The human mind,” wrote Goethe, “will not be confined to any limits.” Cassirer was Goethe’s spiritual stepchild. His masterpiece, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, was a belated contribution to a philosophical genre that Goethe would have admired, especially for its readiness to break with academic convention by exploring all domains of human expression, from language to myth, from religion to science. Cassirer came from an accomplished family of artists and scientists: among his cousins were Richard, an esteemed neurologist, and Paul, a gallery owner and art collector who played a major role in promoting the works of the Berlin Secession and Postimpressionists such as Van Gogh and Cézanne. In his philosophy, these seemingly disparate domains are understood as stemming from a common source, the expressive capacity or formative principle that belongs to the human being as an animal symbolicum. For Cassirer, the mind is not a passive faculty that merely receives impressions from the external world but rather an active faculty that constitutes those impressions by investing them with order and meaning. The symbolic is the very principle of intelligibility whose powers leave nothing untouched. As it presses outward into all domains of experience, the mind comes to recognize itself in its own symbolic achievements. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms is nothing less than the philosophical record of these efforts. Cassirer came to this task well equipped with conceptual instruments that he had already honed to precision after years of philosophical research. His earlier works reflect a rigorous training in the philosophical methods associated with Hermann Cohen and the so-­called Marburg School of neo-­Kantianism, which first emerged in the last quarter of the nineteenth century as a philosophical reaction against the preceding age of metaphysical extravagance. The neo-­Kantians were a diverse group but united in the conviction that philosophy could only move forward only if it went “back to Kant,” and this meant reconceiving philosophy as a rigorous inquiry into the transcendental conditions for objective knowledge. Thanks to the reawakening of Kant’s philosophy at Marburg, Cassirer first turned his attention to the philosophical foundations of the natural sciences. He was especially keen to understand the epistemological principles of classical and modern physics, in which obsolete and metaphysical concepts of “substance” had been gradually supplanted by modern concepts of pure “function.” In Einstein’s theory of relativity,

x foreword

for example, our basic concepts cannot be construed as mere “copies” of immediate material data; they are instead “represented as constructed projects” of our own thinking. The concept of being is replaced by the concept of order. This insight into the epistemological revolution in modern physics first permitted Cassirer to realize the unique importance of the symbolic. In the early 1920s, Cassirer also made the acquaintance of Aby Warburg, whose unusual library at Hamburg became a kind of spiritual home and the place where he came to appreciate the richness and diversity of world culture and mythological belief. In fact, it would not be misleading to describe The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms as an attempt to provide the Warburg Library with a transcendental foundation. Here Cassirer presented his famous address, “The Concept of Symbolic Form in the Construction of the Human Sciences” (his inaugural publication for the Warburg Library), in which he laid out his definition of a symbolic form as “every energy of spirit by which the content of spiritual signification is linked to a concrete and intrinsically appropriate sensuous sign.”1 Symbolic forms serve as the common intellectual framework for all systems of human meaning – in myth, religion, language, and ­science – all of which bear witness to the idea that “our consciousness does not content itself with receiving impressions from the outside, rather it links and penetrates every impression with a free activity of expression.”2 When they are understood as the fruit of human symbolization, even the most “primitive” or “irrational” moments in human culture are revealed as belonging to a shared world of “self-­created signs and images.” In The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, this general principle serves as the point of departure for a transcendental inquiry into the most diverse forms of symbolic expression. However, we must not mistake this project for a mindless celebration of cultural diversity that would blur all essential distinctions between science and myth, reason and unreason. Cassirer is committed to a deeper and more expansive kind of ­rationalism – a humanism without limits. But he organizes his philosophical inquiry in a developmentalist narrative that charts the self-­education of the human species. We can think of the book as an attempt to historicize the Kantian theory of form: myth can play a crucial role in the structuring of experience only until it yields dialectically to the more sophisticated symbolic

foreword

xi

forms of monotheistic religion, and in the very same way religion must yield to the consciously self-­created forms of modern science. In this narrative of symbolization, each stage is assigned a suitable role, though none of them can compromise the underlying narrative of human enlightenment. Unsurprisingly, the third volume of Cassirer’s project is called The Phenomenology of Cognition, an implicit homage to the Hegelian idea of a phenomenology as a story of the mind’s progressive efforts to achieve the fullest and most rational form of self-­realization. For Cassirer, as for his German idealist antecedents, this narrative of self-­realization is not only epistemological but also cultural and political: the human being comes to know itself only if it also comes to recognize itself as the author of its own fate. Cassirer’s work thus implies a strong commitment to modern democracy. Nearly a century has passed since the first volume of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms appeared in 1923, and over this broad timespan, certain features of Cassirer’s work have grown antiquated and unpersuasive. For those who can no longer accept Enlightenment-­inspired appeals to progress in a modern world that made Auschwitz a possibility, the evolutionist principle that underwrites Cassirer’s philosophy may seem altogether intolerable. But we should not hasten to dismiss him too quickly as a thinker from a more optimistic age. At the end of his life, in his last and posthumously published study, The Myth of the State (1945), he acknowledged the contemporary power of modern political myths, such as those that had become official ideology in the Third Reich. He specifically warns that these myths are not organic products of the human mind; although ancient myths served proto-­rational aims, the modern myths are artificial things that can be manufactured at will. It is an insight that he shared with the philosophers of the Frankfurt School, who compressed the dialectic of regression into an aphorism: “myth is already enlightenment, but Enlightenment reverts to myth.” Nor should we neglect the striking affinities that connect Cassirer’s philosophy of language and myth to later themes in French structuralism. A neglected line of argument runs from Cassirer’s analysis of the symbolic forms of mythical thinking to the unconscious rules of totemism and myth examined by Claude Lévi-­Strauss in his structuralist anthropology. Cassirer’s philosophy also anticipates a methodological perspective that we now associate with Michel Foucault. The suggestion is not as

xii foreword

surprising as it may seem. Foucault was quite familiar with Cassirer’s work, and in 1966 he even wrote a review of Cassirer’s study of the Enlightenment. That same year, he also published Les mots et les choses (known in English as The Order of Things), and readers of the book may note its resemblance with The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Both are attempts to excavate the a priori structures that manifest themselves in all spheres of human culture and knowledge. Moreover, both insist that these a priori structures or symbolic forms are not historically invariant but instead susceptible to radical changes over time. In documenting these tectonic shifts, Cassirer not infrequently characterizes them in Aristotelian terms as a “μετάβασις εἰς ἄλλο γένος,” or a transition into an entirely different genus. What Foucault called an “archaeology of knowledge” involves a similar emphasis on the discontinuity between one episteme and another. Notwithstanding this remarkable similarity, however, there is at least one crucial difference: Foucault sees these a priori structures as anonymous. They appear all at once, as if from nowhere, and he has little interest in offering a metaphysical explanation for their point of origin. Unlike Cassirer, he refuses to see them as manifestations of the formative power of human consciousness, since he regards all such appeals to transcendental humanism with the deepest skepticism. The expressive model of human consciousness that serves as the grounds of Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms is, from Foucault’s perspective, merely a surface phenomenon of a uniquely modern episteme that may soon disappear. This places Foucault in a difficult position of affirming structures of meaning while disavowing human consciousness as their source. With this paradoxical doctrine, Foucault takes his place in a long tradition of modern critiques of transcendental humanism that extend back at least as far as Heidegger. But we might ask ourselves whether it is plausible to speak of meaning if one does not offer some account of meaning’s genesis. Adopting an attitude of knowing condescension toward seemingly obsolete doctrines of transcendental humanism is easier than supplying a worthy alternative. This was a major bone of contention in the famous 1929 confrontation between Cassirer and Heidegger in Davos, Switzerland. If Heidegger appeared to many eyewitnesses as the victor in this dispute, this was because he was willing to abandon the doctrine of transcendental humanism that had remained a dominant fixture in modern academic

foreword

xiii

philosophy at least since Kant. Cassirer, by contrast, had little interest in surrendering this doctrine, since his entire philosophy was premised on the notion that symbolic forms are the manifestation of the “pure activity of spirit.” Without this notion, he feared that the ideal of objectivity in both scientific knowledge and ethics would collapse. Unlike Heidegger, he emphasized mental spontaneity, the mind’s uninhibited freedom in the constitution of its world. Cassirer accused Heidegger of turning his back on objectivity and retreating into a kind of pragmatic relativism where space and time were reduced to merely “existential” categories without objective form. History has not been kind to Cassirer, but we should ask ourselves if his criticism was so wide of the mark. It was Cassirer, after all, who grasped the philosophical implications of the natural sciences and especially modern mathematics and physics, whereas Heidegger betrayed the superficiality of his thinking on all such matters when he declared that “science does not think.” Today when so many of our contemporary problems confront us with the need to move beyond the unfortunate divide between the natural sciences and the humanities, Cassirer’s philosophy may offer greater promise. All the same, Heidegger may have been right to suggest that the old dogma of transcendental humanism could not be sustained without a covert appeal to metaphysics. Cassirer occasionally reads as if he meant to give up on metaphysics to develop a kind of phenomenology without foundationalism. But most of these gestures are only half-­convincing. The urgent point of dispute at Davos remained unsolved: can there be objectivity without metaphysics? One solution was developed by philosopher and social theorist Jürgen Habermas, who delivered a lecture in Hamburg in 1995 on the dual occasion of the rededication of the Warburg Library and the fiftieth anniversary of Cassirer’s death. Habermas expressed in his lecture great admiration for Cassirer and extoled him as a champion of democracy and Enlightenment at a moment in German history when such champions were all too few. But he also suggested that The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms did not succeed in liberating itself from the conventional paradigm of a “philosophy of consciousness.” For Habermas, the philosophy of consciousness is the name for any philosophical doctrine that describes meaning from the isolated perspective of a transcendental subject who

xiv foreword

comes to know the world primarily through representations. Over the course of the twentieth century, many philosophers have come to see this paradigm as antiquated and indefensible, chiefly because it relies on a crypto-­metaphysical conception of a transcendental subject who stands beyond its own field of operation. It serves as the grounds of meaning but can give no account of its own genesis. Habermas tries to resolve this dilemma without following the path of metaphysical skeptics such as Heidegger and Foucault. Instead, he understands objective meaning as the shared creation of an irreducible plurality of subjects who build up the world through intersubjective communication and praxis. This solution helps to secure the objectivity of our language and our moral-­political commitments even though it is an objectivity that has dispensed with the need for metaphysical grounds. This ideal of an intersubjectively validated objectivity derives originally from the German idealists, but one can glimpse in Cassirer’s thinking a certain anticipation of Habermas’ solution. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms is an ambivalent work that sits at the boundary between two epochs in the history of philosophy. It points in the direction of a post-­metaphysical theory of the symbolic without wholly liberating itself from the older paradigm of the philosophy of consciousness. We can occasionally glimpse its author as he struggles to overcome his own philosophical inheritance, even if its authority remains too strong. This may help to explain the strange feeling of untimeliness that seems to emanate from the pages of this unusual work. Cassirer himself was a man between epochs, a contemporary of Einstein who could effortlessly call to mind lines of poetry from Schiller and Goethe. Though unashamed of his origins, he was indifferent to the claims of nation and tribe; he saw in Judaism only one source for the rational universalism that was the common inheritance of all cultures. A humanist philosopher in an age of extremes, he was in many ways the supreme representative of a world in eclipse. Although he was fortunate enough to escape the European catastrophe, he did not live long enough to see the new world that would emerge from the ruins. Whether he could have felt at home in this new age of specialization is doubtful. Erudition today is a rare commodity, and it has become just one commodity among others. For good or for ill, philosophers these days no longer have the habit of quoting Goethe. But if we look past

foreword

xv

these marks of old-­world erudition, we may yet find that The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms can come alive with new insights that even its author may never have anticipated. No genuine work of philosophy belongs only to the past.

ENDNOTES 1 Cf. Cassirer, “The Concept of Symbolic Form in the Construction of the Human Sciences,” in The Warburg Years (1919–1933). Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology, trans. Steve Lofts with Antonio Calcagno, 76. 2 Ibid., 76.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Samantha Matherne (Philosophy, Harvard University) for her comments and insights on this Forward.

T r a n s l at o r ’ s P r e f a c e

Steve G. Lofts The following translation has been made from both the original Bruno Cassirer editions and volumes 11, 12, and 13 of the Gesammelte Werke: Hamburger Ausgabe, edited by Birgit Recki and with text and notes prepared by Claus Rosenkranz and Julia Clemens. The translation of “ ‘Geist’ und ‘Leben’ in der Philosophie der Gegenwart” (“ ‘Spirit’ and ‘Life’ in Contemporary Philosophy”) that appears in the Appendix to Volume 3 of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms has been made from volume 17 of the Gesammelte Werke: Hamburger Ausgabe. This paper is mentioned by Cassirer in the Preface to Volume 3 and has been included to provide the reader new to Cassirer with an idea of the problematic that would come to preoccupy him. The original pagination of the Hamburg edition is found in the margins of the translation. All the footnotes that appear within brackets are translator’s notes. As the Hamburg edition is a critical edition, its editorial apparatus is extensive and as such contains a great deal of detailed information. Only the footnotes that seem most appropriate for this translation have been included. Unless a reference to an official English translation appears, all translations of the material quoted in German or French by Cassirer are my own. Official translations have often been amended so that the language of technical terms is consistent. Substantial changes to the translation have been noted. English translations for



translator’s preface

xvii

the Greek and Latin are included in parentheses where the translation was not given by Cassirer himself. An attempt has been made to produce a translation that is close and faithful to the original German and to preserve the original feel of Cassirer’s voice and style while providing a readable text in contemporary English. Cassirer writes in a clear, elegant, and poetic German. As with any translation, decisions have been made as to when it was more important to remain faithful to the letter of the text and when it was necessary to side with the spirit of the text. Beyond the typical challenges encountered in any translation, the translator of Cassirer is confronted with a particular problem. Other than “symbolic form” and “symbolic pregnance,” Cassirer does not coin a new technical language; rather, he employs the language of German Idealism and the technical language of scientific research, bringing a number of thinkers and scientific disciplines into dialogue. He often, however, provides these terms with a new sense. Where possible, the standard translations of these technical terms have been adopted. In some cases, however, there are differences in translation traditions. For example, Erkenntnisse is rendered as “knowledge” or “cognition” by different translators. It has, therefore, often been necessary to choose, from among the alternatives, standard translations on the basis of what was the best overall fit in the context of Cassirer’s thought. At times it has been necessary to deviate from standard translations of certain German terms to capture subtle distinctions that would appear to be synonyms and thus would normally be translated by the same English term. Because it is not always possible to translate a German term by using only one English term, in some cases more than one translation has been adopted. Like most philosophers, Cassirer has a tendency to select terms that allow him to make allusions or connect terms through the structure or morphology of the word, such as Gestalt (gestalt, figure, or shape), gestalten (to configure), and Gestaltung (configuration): Bild (image), bilden (forming), Bildung (formation), etc. Where it was thought important to the understanding or simply to the appreciation of the nuances of the text, the German has been included in parentheses. While a translation should not attempt to remove an author’s gender-­ based language, by the same token it should not introduce gender-­based language where it does not exist. There are three genders in German: the masculine, the feminine, and the neuter. The problem occurs when

xviii

translator’s preface

we translate terms like der Mensch (the human or the human being) or das Einzelne (the individual). For if we employ the pronoun “he” in these cases, we are in fact introducing gender-­based language that does not exist in Cassirer’s text. The concern here is not one of political but of philosophical correctness. When we speak of “the human,” we are speaking not of individual human beings but of what it means to be human qua human. When speaking of the “individual,” the problem is compounded by the fact that Cassirer is at times speaking of the individual qua individual and at times he is speaking of an individual as a unique person. Whereas the individual qua individual is neither he nor she, an individual as a unique person is always he or she. As a basic principle, this translation endeavors not to introduce gender-­specific language where it did not already exist. A number of strategies have been employed toward this goal. “Der Mensch” is translated as “the human” or “the human being” – the term “man” appears only when it is in an English text quoted by Cassirer or in one of his English works. In some cases, a simple restructuring of the sentence was needed to remove the pronoun or permit a repetition of the noun “the human.” Generally, “the human” and “the subject” have received the pronoun “it” and the possessive pronoun “its.” In a handful of cases, where it was clear that the subject of the sentence was singular, the word “they,” “their,” or “themself” has been used as a singular pronoun to refer to the subject or individual of an unspecified gender. This praxis dates back to the sixteenth century and is currently widely employed in informal language usage and more and more in formal contexts. Finally, in a handful of cases where Cassirer was clearly speaking of a concrete individual, both pronouns have been employed as the assumption is that the point being made would be true for women and for men. The goal of a translation should not be to interpret for the reader but rather to facilitate the reader in undertaking their own interpretation. This said, there is always a degree of interpretation that cannot be avoided. Here is not the place to go through all the reasons for translating a term one way as opposed to another. Other translations are possible, and some choices cannot be made except on the bases of an interpretation of Cassirer’s philosophy as a whole, and in some instances, the German has been included in parentheses so that the reader is free to interpret the text differently.

T r a n s l at o r ’ s I n t r o d u cti o n A Phenomenology of Symbolic Creative Cognition: The Unfolding of the Symbolic Function and the Construction of a Pure Theory of the Symbolic

Steve G. Lofts The third volume of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms draws at least five basic interconnected, systematic consequences from the results of the first two volumes. First, “it strives to make visible . . . the newly acquired concept of ‘theory’ in its whole scope and in the wealth of possible configurations that are harbored in it. [Second, it] strives to show how those other spiritual strata [that the analysis of language and myth has uncovered] spread under [unterbreitet] and support [unterbaut] the stratum of conceptual, ‘discursive’ cognition; and [third,] in the constant view to and review of this substructure [Unterbau], [it attempts] to determine the particular nature, organization, and architectonics of the ‘superstructure’ of science.” Fourth, it sets out to show how science and philosophy historically and systematically develop in and through an “Auseinandersetzung with the linguistic and mythical worlds” and, indeed, through an Auseinandersetzung with each other: how the strictly scientific concept of the world frees itself from the “natural world concept.” And finally, it establishes

xx

translator’s introduction

the symbolic function as the guiding and unifying creative principle of life, reality, spirit, perception, intuition, and natural cognition. Thus, although volume three marks a return to the problem of cognition and the construction and organization of the “theoretical worldview” that was undertaken in Substance and Function (1910), it does so with a much broader and diversified conception of “cognition” and, as a result, with a wealth of new problems. In Substance and Function, “cognition” was limited to that form of “scientific cognition” that is found in the exact sciences. However, cognition is now taken in the widest and most comprehensive sense: Cassirer now “understands by cognition not only the act of scientific comprehending (Begreifen) and theoretical explanation, but every spiritual activity in which we construct for ourselves a ‘world’ in its characteristic configuration, in its order, and in its ‘being a certain way’ (Sosein).” “The philosophy of symbolic forms is not concerned exclusively or even primarily with the purely scientific, exact world-­comprehending (Weltbegreifen); but with all the tendencies of world-­understanding (Weltverstehen)” that undertake “the Auseinandersetzung by which the opposition of I and world first takes place in a specific form in the spheres of myth, art, and theoretical cognition.” Each mode of world-­understanding (Weltverstehen) possesses its own index of sense, mode of objectivity, and dimension of truth. As we saw above, each mode of world-­understanding (Weltverstehen) would be “ ‘relativized’ with regard to the others, but since this ‘relativization’ is throughout reciprocal . . . no single form but only the systematic totality can serve as the expression of ‘truth’ and ‘reality.’ ” In fundamental agreement with Hegel, Cassirer therefore maintains that the “truth is the ‘whole’ – this whole, however, cannot be given all at once but must be unfolded progressively by thought.” Such is the task of a phenomenology of cognition: to join the first beginnings and starting points with the end and determine their logical and lawful unity: unfold the links in the chain that leads from the terminus a quo to the terminus ad quem. However, in difference to Hegel, the unity sought after cannot be one based in a substance metaphysics: Symbolic idealism begins not from the simplicity of things (substance), but from the unity of function . . . . It is only in the manifoldness of symbolic directions that the unity (Einheit) of spirit – not as substantial simplicity (substantielle Einfachheit), but as functional manifoldness – presents itself. The spirit is one (eins), in that in the multiplicity of manifold



translator’s introduction

xxi

directions of action it becomes conscious of its identity (as action in general).1

Thus, the philosophy of symbolic forms is, Cassirer insists, not a “metaphysics of cognition” but a “phenomenology of cognition”: phenomenology understood in the basic sense given it by Hegel and not the modern sense given it by Husserl. From a certain perspective, then, volume 3 marks a return to the initial project of a “phenomenology of cognition,” which was the original title of his philosophical project in 1923 (cf. x). However, Cassirer’s thought seems to have evolved and matured: we find here a number of new conceptual elements, themes, and terminological developments that arguably give only new expression to ideas already implicit in other works but that indicate a refining and recasting of his philosophical position in part as a response to developments in scientific thought that had occurred since he began his work (in particular developments in physics, gestalt psychology, and cognitive science) and in part as a response to contemporary debates (in particular, the furthering debates concerning the crisis in the foundations of mathematics) and new trends in philosophy (in particular, the rise of Lebensphilosophie). We find the broadening of the notion of “theory” beyond its restricted use to refer to a conceptual system of scientific cognition. “In the continuous movement of spirit, all seeing [Sehen], to speak with Goethe, passes directly into a considering, all considering into a musing [Sinnen], all musing [Sinnen] into a connecting, so that in every attentive glance into the world we are theorizing.” Again, quoting Goethe, Cassirer insists about “ ‘Fact’ and ‘Theory’ [that] the highest thing would be to recognize that everything factual (Faktische) is already theory.” The factum, however, is no longer restricted to the factum of science, and theory is thus no longer limited to the scientific cognition of the world but is implicated in every specific mode of configuration. The scientific cognition of the world involves “pure theory.” All “seeing” (Sehen) is thus a seeing through the “sight” (Sicht) of spirit. That all fact is theory laden is not new: it has been one of the cornerstones of Cassirer’s philosophical outlook since Substance and Function. What is new is the explicit broadening and differentiating of “theory” and its correlate distinction between “seeing” (Sehen) and “sight” (Sicht), which is not found in the first two volumes. In works prior to 1927, Cassirer uses the term “theory” to refer only to a

xxii

translator’s introduction

philosophical or scientific “theory.” And the terms “Sehen” and “Sicht”2 are employed only in a non-­technical sense. The next innovation concerns what is seen as the central concept of Cassirer’s philosophy: Symbolische Prägnanz. The concept appears for the first time in Chapter V, “Symbolic Pregnance,” and does not figure in his earlier works. Where “Prägnanz” is employed, it has a non-­technical sense as in the case of the expression “sharp and concise” (Prägnanz). What is more, it is rare in Cassirer’s later works and does not appear at all in An Essay on Man. The concept has a particular role in a phenomenology of cognition and addresses another aspect of the dualism that Cassirer located at the very basis of metaphysical thought, which the theory of the symbolic function was seeking to overcome. Symbolic pregnance must be understood within the context of Cassirer’s Hegelian-­styled phenomenology of cognition but also within his interpretation of the history of thought – the two are arguably connected. In Substance and Function, Cassirer writes: The modern expositions of logic have attempted to take account of their circumstance by opposing – in accordance with a well-­known distinction of Hegel’s – the abstract universality of the concept to the concrete universality of the mathematical formula.3

Hegel distinguishes between the speculative concept of reason and that of the understanding. The understanding (Verstehen), for Hegel, differentiates one concept from another but is unable to unite this opposition: it is locked into a binary logic of either/or: either mind or body, either universal or particular, either the community or the individual, either sense (Sinn) or sensibility. The concepts of speculative reason [Vernunft], however, are negative and dialectical and thus are able to resolve the opposition into a unity of the determination in their opposition as an identity in difference. Hegel identifies speculative reason with objectified concrete universals and distinguishes them from abstract universals. Abstract universality negates particularity and levels down a group of individuals as being identical with each other in some respect. By contrast, the concrete universal expresses, manifests, itself in and through the different particularizations of the universal, which are held within it as part of the universal’s



translator’s introduction

xxiii

sense. Like the concrete universal, the functional concept of mathematics allows no separation between the universal (law) and the particulars of the ordered series. What Cassirer calls the “genuine concept” and “symbolic function” are a generalization of Hegel’s concrete universal and a rethinking of Kant’s schema. Speaking of the mathematical function in Substance and Function, Cassirer maintains that “the genuine concept does not disregard the peculiarities and particularities which it holds under it but seeks to show the necessity of the occurrence and connection of just these particularities.” And again, in volume 3, Cassirer writes: “The genuine concept turns away from the world of intuition only in order to lead back to it with all the greater certainty: it serves for the regulation, the determination [der Bestimmung, der Determination] of the particular itself.” Symbolic pregnance designates that originary relationship of identity in difference between form and matter, sense and sensibility, universal law and particular, unitary organizational whole (Gliederung) and organized individual part (Glied4) that forms the gestalt (Gestalt) that is a product of configuration (Gestaltung) undertaken by the different modes of the symbolic function. As such, it is the generating relation that produces out of itself an organized whole: be it that of the organic, the community, the mathematical, the scientific, or the philosophical. It is the most general statement of Kant’s schema, Hegel’s concrete universal, and the genuine function concept. Cassirer traces this functional relational concept back from Hegel’s concrete universal through Kant’s schema, Leibniz’s differential calculus, and Descartes’ theory of mathematics, which is at odds with his substantialist theory of the res cogitans, and ultimately to Heractlitus’ concept of logos as polemos. The next innovation forms the structure of the entire volume and arguably the whole of Cassirer’s mature philosophy of the symbolic. Cassirer now internally differentiates the “symbolic function” into a series of functions: the expressive function [Ausdrucksfunktion], the presentative function [Darstellungsfunktion], and the significative function [Bedeutungsfunktion]. While the terms Ausdruck, Darstellung, and Bedeutung can be found in Cassirer’s work before 1927, they are not systematically related together as interlocking concepts. What is more, one does not find the terms Ausdrucksfunktion,5 Darstellungsfunktion,6 and Bedeutungsfunktion7 before 1927, when they become technicus terminus that operate as the main framework of Cassirer’s philosophy of the symbolic. In “The Problem of the Symbol

xxiv

translator’s introduction

in Philosophy” (1927), Cassirer provides us with a clear statement of how we are to understand this distinction: If we take this general differentiation of the functions of expression, presentation, and signification as our basis, which I can, of course, no more than sketch for you, then we possess a general plan of ideal orientation within which we can now indicate to a certain extent the position of each symbolic form. Of course, this position cannot be fixed once and for all such that it could be referred to within the basic plan by a fixed point. On the contrary, it is characteristic for each form that, in the various phases of its development and in the different stages of its spiritual construction, it has a different relationship to the three basic poles that we have tried to distinguish here. It shifts from place to place in this development, and by virtue of this movement it is able to attain its own area of being and meaning; it reaches its completion and internal limits.8

The three ideal poles form an x, y, z axes and planes that correspond to specific symbolic functions. This coordinate system of relational planes forms the ideal framework in which the different modes of symbolic configuration are to be situated, understood, and related to each other. Volume 3 is divided according to this triadic division of boundary concepts, each part focusing on one of these three interconnecting functions of the symbolic and connecting them to the domains of objective spirit that Cassirer designates as the symbolic forms of culture. Part 1 deals with the Ausdrucksfunktion and the Ausdruckswelt of myth; Part 2 examines the problem of language and Repräsentation and the construction (Aufbau) of the intuitive world; Part 3 turns to the Bedeutungsfunktion and the construction of scientific cognition (wissenschaftliche Erkenntnis). In the notes for volume 4, which was to treat the metaphysics of the symbolic function, Cassirer sets out the following table that makes clear the structure of volume 3: Hermeneutik

a) Expression

= “Understanding” – “Life” (Verstehen) b) Presentation = “Intuition” – “Gestalt” interpretatio naturae c) Signification = “Cognizing” – “Law”



translator’s introduction

xxv

Part 1 of volume 3 thus provides an epistemo-­critical analysis of the expressive function in our understanding of life. The mode of understanding Verstehen must be distinguished from that of Verstanden. Verstehen involves a hermeneutics of concrete praxis, a lived awareness of intelligibility (such as speaking a language, using a tool, living in a culture, or understanding a work of art or a person) that is foreign to Verstanden which involves situating something intellectually and giving an objective account of it: we understand (Verstehen) life in living it, but we cannot always explain it and therefore do not understand (Verstanden) it. In the case of Verstehen, it makes little sense to speak of a “correct” understanding of an expression such as a work of art: in the case of Verstanden, by contrast, we can speak of the “correct” objective account of something. Expression itself is a base phenomenon, it is a primal stratum in which there are no divisions, certainly no subject-­object division. Myth is the Auseinandersetzung with life in and through which expression is first configured into the world of a lived understanding of life. A sense of “livingness in general” is understood and lived through the expressive function. Cassirer’s entire philosophy seeks to move beyond the dualisms of a substantial metaphysics: in particular, the mind-­body dualism and the problem of solipsism. Cassirer distinguishes between “expressive perception” [Ausdruckswahrnehmung], which is mediated by the expressive function, and “thing perception” [Dingwahrnehmung], which is mediated by the “presentative function” and the “significative function.” Expressive perception and thing perception are different modes of perception and not simply the perception of different objects. All perception is saturated by the symbolic function: expressive perception makes manifest the lived-­experience of life, one’s own life lived in the flesh of the lived body (Leib), the foreign centers of life of the other, the life of the community, and life as such. Although in the move to scientific cognition, the sphere of lived expressive perception is progressively transposed into the form of tangible existence, into the causal relations of thing perception, it can never be entirely negated or sublated. “If we were to think of this basic function as sublated, the access to the world of ‘inner experience’ would be barred to us – the bridge which alone can lead us into the sphere of the ‘you’ would be cut. Every attempt to replace the primary function of expression by other ‘higher’ functions, whether intellectual or aesthetic, leads only to inadequate surrogates, which can never achieve what is demanded of them.”

xxvi

translator’s introduction

In Part 2, Cassirer turns his attention to the manifestation of the presentative function [Darstellungsfunktion] in representation (Repräsentation) and in the linguistic construction of the intuitive world and the establishment of the “natural world concept.” The translation of Darstellung as presentation follows the Cambridge translation of Kant. For Kant, if cognition is to have a connection to a given object, then this object must be given in some manner: this “being giving” in sensible intuition is what is meant by presentation (Darstellung) (cf. CPR, B 195). The representation (Vorstellung) by which an object is thought is its concept. However, the object must be presented immediately in intuition. Thus, the presentative function is that aspect of the symbolic that renders the concept sensibly present in intuition. Through the presentative function of the symbolic, the idea (Vorstellung) – e.g., the idea of a mountain – is made sensible as an object of intuition of a mountain. This process of presenting (darstellen) is undertaken by the productive creative force of the imagination (Einbildungskraft) as the formation (Bildung) of an image (Bild). The presentation, however, is not taken as a “re-­representation” of something else existing beyond it but as the actual presence of the thing (Sache) itself, as the formation (Gebilden) that stands there (Da) ordered in the position of presence (Dar-­stellung); beyond the “da” of the presencing, there is nothing. The mountain I see is indeed an image (Bild), but this image (Bild) is not an “image of” a mountain, an Abbild, but the mountain itself. In mythical consciousness, for example: the presentation (Darstellung) of the god . . . grasps the god in his wholly immediate living presence (Genewart); for the presentation (Darstellung) is not intended to be taken as a mere picture (Abbild); rather, it is the god itself who is embodied and active in it.

The presentation is distinguished from “representation” (Repräsentation), which connects the content of one presentation to another. Where the presentative function no longer merges, as in mythical consciousness, with the immediate living presence (Genewart), the sensible-­intuitive content can be taken as a “representative” (Vertreter), as a “representation” (Repräsentation) of an other intuitive presentation; in both Vertreter and Repräsentation, the English reader should think of the representative who stands in for the whole. In language, one element is recognized as



translator’s introduction

xxvii

standing for, representing, the whole. “The act of ‘recognition’ is necessarily bound up with the function of ‘representation’ (Repräsentation) and presupposes it.” Language is the “vehicle for ‘recognition’ [Rekognition] in the concept.” However, no matter how far language advances, it can never break from the lived intuitive content of primary expressive lived-­ experience. Whereas the expressive function forms the ground for the expressive perception of the lived body and other life-­centers, the presentative function forms the ground for thing perception. Thus, in Part 1, Cassirer provides an epistemo-­critical analysis of the construction of the self and others, whereas in Part 2, his focus turns to the construction of the intuitive-­objective world in space and time. Part 2 ends with a long chapter on the pathology of symbolic cognition in which Cassirer’s analysis points the way to the emerging field of cultural neuroscience. In Part 3, Cassirer turns to an epistemo-­critical analysis of the significative function (Bedeutungsfunktion) and the construction of scientific cognition (wissenschaftliche Erkenntnis). At this point, the “problem of truth” marks a critical turn on the “natural world concept” that has been the focus of Cassirer’s study thus far. Cassirer takes up Richard Avenarius’ concept of the “natural world concept” which refers to the pre-­scientific immediate experience of the world that was the basis on which a scientific world-­comprehension was to be constructed. In the third nexus, we see that signification (Bedeutung) designates the law (Gesetz) that is operative in the dargestellt of a lived-­experience (Erlebnis) and determines the standard of the internal organization of its presentation (Darstellung). Signification (Bedeutung) designates the law (Gesetz) that is operative in the dargestellt of a lived-­experience (Erlebnis) and determines the standard of the internal organization of its presentation (Darstellung) as a sensible Gestalt of intuition. Strictly speaking, there is a mode of mythical signification as there is a mode of linguistics aesthetic, religious, and scientific signification: “All language, for example, is as such ‘representation’ (Repräsentation); is presentation (Darstellung) of a determinate ‘signification’ (Bedeutung) through a sensible ‘sign.’ ” Working with the tradition of German Idealism, Cassirer links a number of concepts together through a play on the roots of the German words, which is impossible to capture in English: each mode of configuration (Gestaltung) is an arranging into order (Zuordnung) that sets out and establishes a positing (Setzung) of elements that determines the position (Stellen) of

xxviii translator’s introduction

each element; each position (Stellen) that is posited (gesetzt) expresses the law (Gesetz) that has set it there (dargestellt). It is often thought that signification for Cassirer refers only to scientific knowledge. Although Cassirer often seeks to reserve the terms “signification” for scientific cognition, we should, strictly speaking, speak of “pure signification” (reine Bedeutung) as he does in 1927 in “The Problem of the Symbol and Its Place in the System of Philosophy.” In pure signification, the sign is separated from the sphere of expression and presentation. It is suspended, as it were, in the free ether of pure thought. The signs of pure signification neither express nor present: all anthropomorphic expression and sensible intuition have been negated. It constructs a “view from nowhere.” Although Cassirer appreciates Frege’s and Russel’s attempts to ground mathematics in logic, they remained embroiled in the traditional concept of abstraction. For this reason, when Cassirer enters into the debate concerning the foundations of mathematics, he gravitates toward Dedekind’s mathematical structuralism and sees it as akin to his own theory of symbolic functional cognition. In the final chapter, Cassirer turns to how mathematics forms the bases of the natural-­scientific cognition of the world, how the factual manifold of intuition takes on “physical sense and value only in that we “picture” [abbilden: to map] it in the realm of number.” An intimate reciprocal relationship exists for Cassirer between science and philosophy and their creative role in the cultural process as a whole. Philosophy and science have different roles but must engage and challenge each other. At one point, Cassirer will challenge and critique scientific projects; at other times, more often than not, he will take his lead from them. Only in this critical tension is the truly intellectual cosmos constructed. The history of science and philosophy is not a history of errors for Cassirer but rather a history of discovery, of the creativity of new modes of seeing and being. Cassirer never claims to be a holder of the truth, but only one thinker working in a community of thinkers in the endless project of enlightenment.

ENDNOTES 1 Ernst Cassirer, Ernst Cassirer Naschlas, vol. 1, 263. 2 “Sicht” appears in the introduction to volume one (“Sicht” der Idee, cf. 45) and again in a non-­technical sense in chap. 3, cf. 150. It does not appear at all in volume 2. By contrast, it appears thirdty-­five times in volume 3 and often in scare quotes.



translator’s introduction

xxix

3 Cassirer, Substance and Function, 20. 4 The term “Glied” can be translated as “limb,” “member,” “link,” or “part.” Cassirer employs the term throughout his analysis of the different modes of organization that are produced by the symbolic function. Every unitary organizational whole (Gliederung) comprises a series of interconnected Gleder: the lived body (limbs); the community (members); natural processes (links); scientific concepts (parts). 5 This first appears in Language and Myth (1925) in The Warburg Years (1919– 1933). Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology, trans. S. G. Lofts with A. Calcagno (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), cf. 259. It next appears in 1927, in “The Problem of the Symbol and its Place in the System of Philosophy,” in The Warburg Years (1919–1933). Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology, trans. S. G. Lofts with A. Calcagno (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), cf. 262. It is used in the Preface to volume 1 in the context of aesthetics, cf. lxxviii. It does not appear at all in volume 2, on myth. 6 Darstellungsfunktion was first used in a technical sense in “The Problem of the Symbol and its Place in the System of Philosophy,” (1927), cf. 261. The word is found only once in volume 1, on language, and then in a footnote (cf. 130 n. 25), and it appears only twice in volume 2, on myth (cf. 50 and 98). 7 Although Cassirer speaks of the problem of Bedeutung in the Introduction to volume 1, the term “Bedeutungsfunktion” is only used once and then in a non-­ technical sense, cf. 134. It first appears in Language and Myth (1925), cf. 259. 8 Cassirer, “The Problem of the Symbol and its Place in the System of Philosophy,” (1927), 263.

T r a n s l at o r ’ s A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s

Steve G. Lofts A number of institutions have provided the material support without which this translation could not have been possible. I would like to thank the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for its fellowship and King’s University College at the University of Western Ontario for its generous research grants and a sabbatical leave to complete this project. My thanks also go to Dr. Volker Peckhaus and the Universität Paderborn, Germany, and Dr. Ryugo Matsui and the Faculty of International Studies at the Ryukoku University, Japan, for the warm welcome into their scholarly communities and for providing important logistical support during my stay as a visiting professor. A number of individuals have contributed in different ways to the production of this translation. Although this translation departs in many ways from that of Ralph Manheim’s, it has benefited greatly from his often-­elegant solutions to difficult translation problems. Sadly, John M. Krois will never know that this translation was finally completed. It was his great desire that a new translation of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms be undertaken. I am grateful for his encouragement, for his generosity as a thinker, and for his friendship. Fabien Capeillères, Pierre Keller, and Sebastian Luft have all been patient with the unending questions concerning the translation of technical terms, and their insights have helped



translator’s acknowledgments

xxxi

make this a better translation. Antonio Calcagno, Fabien Capeillères, Pierre Keller, Sebastian Luft, Samantha Matherne, Ingmar Meland, and Carmen Metta graciously commented on an early draft of the Introduction, and I am very grateful for their time and philosophical engagement with this project. The translation has also profited from feedback on previous translations of Cassirer and from the insightful comments of the four reviewers. I would also like to thank my colleagues Jonathan Geen, Antonio Calcagno, and Mark Yenson for their support and friendship. Finally, I cannot express my gratitude enough to my wife, Agnieszka Chuchrowska, whose wonder at the beauty of nature reminds me daily that there is more to life than philosophy.

Preface

vii

The third volume of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms returns to the investigations with which I began my work in systematic philosophy more than two decades ago. Its central concern is again the problem of cognition, the construction and organization of the “theoretical worldview.” The question of the basic form of cognition is, however, now posited in a broader and more general sense. The investigations of my book Substance and Function (1910) started out from the assumption that the basic constitution of cognition and its constitutive law can most clearly and sharply be demonstrated where cognition has reached its highest level of its “necessity” and “universality.” This law was, therefore, sought in the domain of mathematics and the mathematical sciences of nature, in the grounding of mathematical-­physical “objectivity.” Accordingly, the form of cognition as determined there coincided essentially with the form of exact science. In its content as well as in a methodological sense, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms has, however, gone beyond this initial framing of the problem. It has expanded the basic concept of “theory” by striving to show that there are real theoretical elements and motives of form that prevail not only in the configuration of the scientific worldview but already in the configuration of the “natural worldview,” in the configuration of the worldview of perception and intuition. And finally, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms has, in the end, driven further beyond this boundary of the “natural” worldview, the

preface

xxxiii

worldview of experience and observation, in that it disclosed an interconnection in the mythical world that, though not reducible to the laws of empirical thinking, was by no means without its laws but that exhibited a structural form with a distinctive and independent imprint. The third volume of this work now seeks to draw the systematic consequence from the results obtained in volumes 1 and 2. What it strives to make visible is the newly acquired concept of “theory” in its whole scope and in the wealth of possible configurations that are harbored in it. It strives to show how those other spiritual strata that the analysis of language and myth has uncovered spread under [unterbreitet] and support [unterbaut] the stratum of conceptual, “discursive” cognition, and in the constant view to and review of this substructure [Unterbau], we shall attempt to determine the particular nature, organization, and architectonics of the “superstructure” of science. Thus, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms draws once again the worldview of exact cognition into its problem sphere – however, it now approaches it in a different way and accordingly sees it in a modified perspective. Instead of considering its consistent existence [Bestand], The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms now seeks to apprehend it in its necessary intellectual mediations. Starting from the relative “end” that thought has achieved here, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms inquires back into the middle and the beginnings, to understand the end for what it is and what it signifies. I have discussed the general perspectives in which the framing of the problem stands in some detail in the Introduction – here it remains for me to give a brief explanation and justification of the title I have chosen for the investigations of this volume. When I speak of a “phenomenology of cognition,” I do so not in its contemporary usage but am going back to the basic significance of “phenomenology” as it was established and systematically grounded and justified by Hegel. For Hegel, phenomenology was the basic prerequisite of philosophical cognition because he insisted that philosophical cognition must encompass the totality of spiritual forms and because according to him this totality can be made visible only in the transitions from one form to another. The truth [Wahrheit] is the “whole” – this whole, however, cannot be given all at once but instead must be unfolded progressively by thought in its own independent

viii

xxxiv preface

movement and rhythm. This unfolding constitutes the being and the essence of science. The element [Element] of thought, in which science is and lives, thus receives its fulfillment and transparency only through the movement of its becoming:

ix

Science on its part requires that self-­consciousness being [Selbstbewußtseyn] should have raised itself into this Aether in order to be able to live – and [actually] to live – with Science and in Science. Conversely, the individual has the right to demand that Science should at least provide him with the ladder to this standpoint, should show him this standpoint within himself. His right is based on his absolute independence, which he is conscious of possessing in every shape [Gestalt] of his knowledge; for in each one, whether recognized by Science [Wissenschaft] or not, and whatever the content may be, the individual is the absolute form, i.e. he is the immediate certainty [Gewißheit] of himself and, if this expression be preferred, he is therefore unconditioned being.1

It would be impossible to state more sharply that the end, the telos of spirit, cannot be apprehended and expressed if it is taken as something existing for itself [für sich], as something detached and separated from its beginning and middle. Philosophical reflection does not in this way set off the end against the middle and the beginning but takes all three as integral moments in a unitary whole movement. In this basic principle of contemplation, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms agrees with the Hegelian approach – however much it must follow another approach in its grounding [Begründung] and its implementation. It also aspires to provide the individual with “the ladder” that will lead the individual from the primary configurations as they are found in the world of “immediate” consciousness to the world of “pure cognition.” Sub specie of philosophical contemplation, every single rung of the ladder is indispensable; every single one can and must be considered, assessed, “known” if we wish to understand cognition not so much in terms of its result, its mere product, but in terms of its pure process character, in the mode and form of the “procedure” itself. As for the specific details of the implementation of the theme, the third section of this volume, which deals with the construction of the

preface

xxxv

world of mathematical-­physical objects, begins from the findings of earlier analyses. I have adhered throughout to the principle that guided and determined these analyses, the idea of the epistemo-­critical “primacy” of the concept of law over the concept of thing; however, it is now necessary to establish, clarify, and prove this idea, to measure it by the vast intellectual development that mathematics and the exact natural sciences have undergone in the last two decades. It needs to be shown how, through all the radical transformations that the content [Gehalt] and shape of exact science have undergone, in a purely contentual [inhaltlich] respect, the purely methodological continuity has not been interrupted or abandoned – rather, precisely these contentual [inhaltlich] reconfigurations have reconfirmed and shed a bright light on its continuity. Whereas in the exposition of these facts, I was able to reach back to earlier investigations and draw from them,2 the first two sections of this volume begin with a more difficult task. Here we could not proceed within the framework [Rahmen] previously designated and marked off but had to acquire and delimit the domain treated in these first two sections. Admittedly, these sections, which are concerned essentially with the basic forms of expressive perception [Ausdruckswahrnehmung] and thing perception [Dingwahrnehmung], have to do with well-­known problems – problems that have always been posed by psychology as well by a critique of cognition, by phenomenology as well as by metaphysics. All these questions acquire, however, a new shaped and an altered significance as soon as we see them in the context they receive from their relation to the basic systematic question of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. For these questions, their own manner of synopsis [Zusammenschau] by which their whole intellectual “orientation” is altered here. So that this spiritual “synopsis” could emerge more clearly, the attempt had to be undertaken to survey the material presented by phenomenology, psychology, and finally the pathology of perception, in all its diversity and concrete fullness, while at the same time making visible in this material a new problematic. It was evident to me that this attempt could signify no more than a first beginning and starting point; if I undertook it, it was in the hope that my effort would be taken up and carried further by philosophical research as well as individual research. As in my earlier works, I have not only attempted to avoid any cleavage between systematic and historical considerations but have

x

xxxvi preface

xi

striven for a close fusion between the two. Only in such a reciprocal relation of this sort can the two promote and throw light on each other. Nevertheless, without exceeding the framework [Rahmen] of this book, I could not strive for anything resembling “completeness” in the purely historical [historisch] discussions. I have taken up the threads of this discussion and again dropped them accordingly where it seemed necessary to the factual [sachlich] clarification and elucidation of certain basic systematic problems. I have proceeded in the same way with regard to modern philosophy. Although I have not avoided critical debates [Auseinandersetzungen] with modern philosophy where this seemed fitting to clarify and deepen my own framing of the problem, such debates [Auseinandersetzungen] have not been allowed to become an end in themselves. In the original plan of this book, a final section was envisaged in which the relationship between the basic ideas of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms and the total labor [Gesamtarbeit] of contemporary philosophy would have been established and justified. If in the end I had to forgo this section, it was only to avoid making the present volume even longer than it is and to avoid burdening it with discussions that, in the final analysis, lie outside the ambit prescribed by its substantive [sachlich] problem. Nevertheless, I do not mean to renounce this discussion as such, since the custom, which has once more become popular, of throwing one’s own thoughts out into empty space as it were, without inquiring as to their relation and connection to the total labor [Gesamtarbeit] of systematic philosophy, has never appeared to me to be beneficial or fruitful. Thus, the critical part that should have concluded this volume will be reserved for a future publication that I hope soon to bring out under the title “ ‘Life’ and ‘Spirit’ – Toward a Critique of Contemporary Philosophy.” With regard to the philosophical and scientific literature referred to by this presentation, the manuscript of this volume had already been completed at the end of 1927; the publication was delayed only because at that time I still planned to include the final, “critical” chapter. Consequently, I have been able to take into account only a few of the works published in the last two years. Hamburg, July 1929 Ernst Cassirer

preface xxxvii

ENDNOTES 1 G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). Cf. Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 2, xxx. 2 Cf. Ernst Cassirer, Substance and Function, and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity (New York: Dover, 1953).

INTRODUCTION

1.  THE MATTER [MATERIE] AND FORM OF COGNITION When we designate language, myth, and art as “symbolic forms,” there seems to lie in this expression the presupposition that they all, as determinate spiritual modes of configuration, go back to an ultimate, originary-­stratum of the actual that is beheld in them only as through a foreign medium. Reality does not seem to be comprehensible for us in any other way than in the particular nature of these forms; however, it implies, at the same time that reality is veiled by them as much as it is revealed by them. The same basic functions that give the world of spirit its determinacy, its imprint, its character, appear on the other hand to be only so many refractions that an intrinsically unitary and unique being undergoes as soon as it is grasped and appropriated [aneignen] by a “subject.” Seen from this point of view, the philosophy of symbolic forms is nothing other than an attempt to assign to each one, as it were, its own specific and distinctive index of refraction. It aspires to know the particular nature of the various refracting media, to understand each one according to its constitution and the laws of its structure. However, although it consciously proceeds into this intermediary realm, into this realm of mere mediacy, philosophy as a whole, as a doctrine of the totality of being, seems unable to remain in it. Rather, the basic drive

1

2 introduction

of knowledge repeatedly makes itself felt here: the drive to unveil the veiled image of Sais and to see the naked, unclad truth. Before the philosophical gaze, which wants to apprehend the world as an absolute unity, every manifold in general, particularly the manifold of symbols, must ultimately be dissolved: ultimate reality, the reality of “being” in itself, should become visible. The metaphysics of every age has stood before this basic problem. It posits being as uniform and simple, because and insofar as truth can be thought of only as unitary and simple. In this sense, the ἕν τὸ σοφόν [wisdom is one thing] of Heraclitus became the maxim of philosophy: it was like a reminder and wake-­up call to seek the one, unbroken light of pure cognition behind the colorful splendor of the senses, behind the manifold and diversity of thought-­forms. As Spinoza said, it belongs to the nature [Wesen] of light that it illuminates itself and the darkness – thus, it must at some point give an immediate self-­attestation of truth and reality. For thought and reality must not merely “correspond” to each other in some way but rather permeate each other. The function of thinking should not be to “express” being, i.e. to apprehend and designate sub specie its own sense-­bestowing categories. Rather, thinking feels itself equal to reality: it bears within itself the conviction and belief that it is able to exhaust its content [Gehalt]. There can be no final unsublatable barrier here, because thinking and the object toward which it is directed are one. Parmenides was the first to articulate this principle [Satz] in classical pregnance and sharpness and so became the founder of all philosophical “rationalism.” The claim made here, however, is by no means limited to the circle of rationalism. The identity of the “subject” and the “object,” the merging of the one into the other, was still regarded as the actual goal of cognition, even after the view of the means by which this goal was to be attained had completely changed. Although the basic view of the means had indeed changed, it had in no way undergone a fundamental transformation if it was now the force of sensible perception, rather than pure thinking, that was entrusted and credited with the task of laying a bridge from one realm to the other. The focal point now seemed to have shifted from one specific theoretical point of view to another – it had moved over from the side of the “concept” to that of “perception”; however, for perception, the same methodological presupposition and requirement

introduction

3

remained in force. The concept as such – it now seemed – could never break through to reality by means of its own force: it remains entangled in its own formations and creations, its own denominations and significations. Sensation is, however, not merely significative or symbolic, it is no mere “sign” of being; rather, it gives and contains reality in its immediate fullness. For, if cognition is not to be confined forever within its own circle, at some point [Stelle], a direct contact must occur between knowledge and reality. Thus, for Berkeley, Parmenides’ principle of the identity of thinking and being is replaced by a fundamental epistemological and metaphysical equation: esse = percipi. With this, although the contentual sense of the equation is, it would seem, inverted into its opposite – its pure form remained purely as such, unaltered and untouched. For here, the requirement to lay bare an originary-­stratum of reality, in which reality may become apprehensible as free from all symbolic interpretation and signification, remains valid. If we succeed in freeing ourselves from all these interpretations – if, above all, we succeed in removing the shroud of words, which veils the true essential being of things – then we are all of a sudden face to face with the originary-­perceptions that contain the certainties of cognition. In this sphere, there is no place for the opposition between truth and error, reality and semblance. For the simple existence of sense impressions remains free from all possible deception. A sensible impression may exist or not exist; it can be given or not given; however, it cannot be “true” or “false.” We enter into the domain of this opposition only when another, mediated, relationship is interpolated into the immediate presence of the impression, when a representative [repräsentativ] determination is attributed to the “presentation,” to the direct “having” of a sensation. Where a content of consciousness stands not only for itself but for another content, where it attempts to “represent” [vertreten] a content that is not immediately presenting itself [gegenwärtigen], there and only there do we find that reciprocal relationship between the parts [Gliede] of the whole of consciousness that by its further mediated consequences can cause one part [Glied] to be mistakenly taken for the other and “confused” with this other. This phenomenon does not, therefore, belong to the circle of mere sensation but to that of judgment. And of course, judgment – even in the simplest form in which it seems to content itself with merely affirming

3

4 introduction

4

and reinforcing a sensible given – distinguishes itself from sensation precisely by the fact that it no longer moves in the realm of simple existence but in the realm of signs. The moment [Augenblick] that we entrust ourselves to it, we are back under the spell of that “abstract” thinking that operates with the symbols that stand in for things rather than with things themselves. The further the “science” of nature progresses, the more it loses itself in the maze of these symbols: thus, according to Berkeley the basic task of all true philosophical self-­reflection [Selbstbesinnung] is to dispel this illusion. Philosophy achieves what mere science, inseparably bound up as it is with the medium of language and the vehicle of linguistic concepts, can never achieve: it places before us the world of pure experience in its immediate existence [Dasein] and its being-­a-­certain-­way [Sosein], free from all blending with foreign components and from all darkening and blurring by any arbitrary significative ingredients. On this point, then, the whole history of philosophy, regardless of all the internal systematic oppositions and undeterred by all the disputes between schools, seems to go in the same direction. Philosophy first constituted itself in this act of self-­affirmation – in the confidence that it takes itself as the proper organ for the cognition of reality. The assertion of the adaequatio rei et intellectus [correspondence of a thing to the intellect] remains in this sense its natural point of departure. On the other hand, this basic act contains within itself, of course, its own dialectical opposite. The more sharply philosophy seeks to determine its object, the more the object, through this determination, becomes a problem for it. When philosophy sets up its own goal and consciously formulates it, there likewise arises within philosophy itself, through the immanent necessity of its own method, the question of its own attainability, of its inner “possibility.” Thus, the positive answer given by rationalism as well as sensationalism to the problem of the cognition of reality is followed by skepticism as its shadow. The identity [Identität] asserted between knowledge as such and its objective content is abandoned, and in its place emerges instead a difference [Differenz] that becomes progressively sharper, that is intensified into a polar tension. Even the “equating” [Gleichung] of cognition – regardless of whether it is comprehended in a rationalist or sensationalist sense – does not sublate this difference [Differenz]: an equation [Gleichheit] is – according to a definition introduced

introduction

5

by Balzano into the logic of mathematics – nothing other than a special case of dissimilarity [Verschiedenheit]. The connection, the synthesis, that is asserted and expressed by the equal sign, does not make the difference [Unterschied] of the members [Glieder] standing on either side of it disappear but rather confirms this difference [Unterschied]. In this respect, the approach of the equating [Gleichung] of cognition already contains within it a germ of destruction that skepticism need only unfold and bring to fruition. The more the self-­consciousness of cognition is strengthened – the more clearly it can see through itself and the more clearly it knows its form – the more its own form appears as the necessary boundary that it is never able to exceed [überschreiten]. The absolute object that cognition initially believed it was able to capture and assimilate in this form recedes more and more into an unattainable distance – instead of apprehending the object, it seems that cognition is permitted to consider only itself, in all its contingency and relativity, as if beheld in a mirror. It was the revolution in the way of thinking that takes place in Kant’s framing of the question that first promised a way out of this dilemma. Leery of the dogmatism that teaches us nothing and of the skepticism that promises us nothing, Kant raised the following basic critical question: “Is metaphysics at all possible?”1 Cognition was now saved from the danger of skeptical disintegration; however, this salvation and liberation proved to be possible only through a shift in the aim of cognition. Instead of a static relationship between cognition and the object – as it can be designated by the geometrical expression of a congruence, the “coincidence” between the two – a dynamic relationship between both was now to be sought and established. No longer does cognition, whether as a whole or as a determinate part of itself, reach “over” into the transcendent world of objects – nor is the transcendent world of objects able to “migrate” into cognition. All these spatial images are now recognized as images. Knowledge is described neither as a part of being nor as its picturing [Abbildung]. On the other hand, the relation to this being is by no means taken away from it but rather grounded in a new viewpoint [Gesichtspunkt]. For it is now the function of knowledge that is to construct and constitute the object, not as an absolute object but as the object conditioned by this function, as the “object in appearance.” What we call “objective” being, what we call the object of experience, is possible only under the precondition of the understanding and its a priori

5

6 introduction

6

functions of unity: “Thereupon we say: we cognize the object when we have effectuated a synthetic unity in the manifold of intuition.” To understand this performance as a whole and in its detailed conditions now becomes the basic task of the “analytic of the understanding.” It seeks to show how the various basic forms of cognition, sense sensation, and pure intuition, the categories of the pure understanding and the ideas of pure reason, intermesh – and how by their reciprocal relation and determination they determine the theoretical shape [Gestalt] of reality. This determination is not taken over from the object but involves an act of “spontaneity” of the understanding itself. It is a specific mode and tendency of forming [Formung] that leads to the worldview of theoretical cognition. Consequently, this does not appear in its basic features as “given,” as a finished product, that is imposed on us by the nature of things, but as a result of a free forming [Bilden], which, nevertheless, is never arbitrary but always thoroughly lawful. How it is possible to reconcile freedom and necessity, the purely immanent self-­determination of thinking with objective validity? This question forms the problem of the entire Kantian critique of reason. From this comprehensive framing of the question, we single out that element that directly touches on the basic question that the philosophy of symbolic forms sets for itself. Whereas precritical metaphysics believed it had found an ultimate answer, Kant discovered a new and perhaps the most difficult task for all philosophical cognition. For him, what was at stake was not only to carry out theoretical sense-­bestowing, as it exhibits itself in science and in philosophy, but also to comprehend [begreifen] it for what it is. As long as we consider this sense-­bestowing simply in terms of its output, as long as we conflate it with its result, it seems in a certain sense to keep vanishing with this result. Therefore, instead of concentrating on the result of theoretical cognition, we should look back to its function and its distinctive lawfulness. It is alone the key that can unlock [aufschließen] the “truth of things.” From now on, contemplation is directed no longer exclusively toward what is disclosed [Erschlossen] but now also toward the act, the mode and manner, of the disclosing [Erschließen]. The key that is intended to open the gates of cognition should, at the same time, be understood in terms of its structure [Bau]: theoretical cognition should be understood in terms of its “structure of signification.” There is no longer a road that leads back to

introduction

7

that relationship of “immediate” coincidence [Deckung] and correspondence between cognition and its object that was assumed by dogmatism. Rather, the critical justification and grounding of cognition now stems from its knowing itself to be a mediated and mediating spiritual organ, which has its specific place [Stelle] within the construction of the whole world of spirit and carries out its specific performance [Leistung]. Such a turning back of cognition onto itself certainly seems to be possible only once it has traversed its whole course and has arrived at its highest point. Only “transcendental philosophy” is capable of such a turning back [Umkehr]: it alone is concerned not so much with objects as with our mode of cognizing objects in general, insofar as such cognition is held to be possible a priori. It alone strives to be not so much a knowledge of certain objects [Objekte] but rather a “knowledge of knowledge” [Wissen von Wissen]. These claims immediately explain why Kant, while he raises his central problem to the heights of “transcendental” contemplation, strives constantly to stay within it. Where he inquiries into the “form” of theoretical cognition, he believes that he can adequately apprehend it and set it before us in a clear and sharp outline only by keeping in view the actual telos of cognition, its end and fulfillment. Only toward this end can the logical structure of knowledge as such emerge in its necessity and purity, unmingled with contingent determinations. It must appear as a degeneration of this arduously achieved level of the philosophical framing of the question, whenever the distinctive sense of the theoretical “logos” is sought in a place [Stelle] other than where it emerges in its characteristic perfection, in its proper determinacy and exactitude. Such exactitude, such pure and complete self-­realization of the theoretical form, however, is according to Kant reserved for mathematics and the mathematical sciences of nature. The question must therefore be directed primarily to them – and it must always remain oriented by reference to them. Thus, no empirical datum can partake of the form of cognition unless it has already passed through the medium of mathematical concept formation, unless it has been determined by the pure intuitions of space and time and by the concepts of number and of extensive or intensive magnitude; unless it has passed through this medium, it remains simply matter [Stoff], mere matter [Materie]. The problem of whether this matter of sense sensation should perhaps not as such be designated only relatively, whether it does

7

8 introduction

8

not reveal a certain configuration in itself and conceal its own “more concrete” formings [Formungen], is not posited – at least not at the beginning of Kant’s critical investigation. Sensation appears here as the absolutely “given.” The only question is, how does this given fit into the a priori forms of sensibility and the understanding, without which these forms in their significance and validity arise from it and are based on it? If we inquire into the “origin” of sensation itself, at first, we receive an enigmatic answer. For this origin – so it would appear – can be comprehended in no other way than by thrusting it back into the realm of the unrecognizable, to explain it as an “affection” of the mind by “things in themselves.” The insoluble dialectical difficulties in which this explanation entangles us soon came to light in the history of Kantian philosophy and its further development by his successors.2 These difficulties become comprehensible when we recall that at this point Kant was concerned not so much with solving a problem as with doing away with it. From a purely historical point of view, this ‘doing away with’ seems understandable, even necessary: for only in this way could the road be cleared for Kant’s most positive achievement. Once this road had been fought for, however, theoretical self-­reflection must of course return to its starting point and turn its attention to the problem inherent in the dualistic opposition of “mere” matter [Stoff] and “pure” form. It is by no means just in the post-­Kantian systems that this progression of thought can be shown and pursued; rather, in large measure, it already determined the inner development of Kant’s own theory. We do not have to advance to the appearance of The Critique of Judgment to become aware of this distinctive movement of Kant’s thinking – we can sense how this thinking keeps circling round the dualism of matter and form set forth in its beginnings and how it gradually alters and deepens the sense of this opposition. For the critical theory of cognition, the “matter [Materie] of sensation” seems at first to signify nothing more than something absolutely present [schlechthin Vorhanden] – a solid substrate that the formative forces of spirit attack but whose essential being cannot be altered or penetrated. It remains the unpenetrated and impenetrable residue of cognition. The analytic of the pure understanding, however, already goes one step further. For it takes up not only the problem of the “objective” deduction of the categories but also the problem of their “subjective” deduction, and the two directions of the question complement

introduction

9

and reciprocally require each other. If the objective deduction is directed essentially toward the form of cognition of objects as it exists in the mathematical sciences of nature, if it is aimed at those principles through which the mere “rhapsody” of perceptions becomes a tightly enclosed unity, a system of experiential cognition, then the subjective deduc- 9 tion, on the other hand, immerses itself in the conditions and particular nature of conscious perception. And it comes to the conclusion that what we commonly call the world of perception, far from being a mere formless mass of impressions, already includes within itself certain basic and originary-­forms of “synthesis.” Without this, without the synthesis of apprehension, reproduction, and recognition, we should have neither a perceiving nor a thinking I – there would be an “object” neither of pure thought nor of empirical perception. At the beginning of the Critique of Pure Reason, sensibility and understanding are distinguished as the two stems of human cognition that may have sprung from a common root that is unknown to us. Thus, the opposition between the two, and their eventual communion, seemingly continued to be understood here in a realistic sense: sensibility and understanding belong to different strata of existence, although both may be rooted together in a more originary-­stratum of all being that precedes all empirical separation but that we cannot grasp or determine more closely. The analytic of the pure understanding, however, grasps the relationship from an entirely different point of view, shifting the point of the union as well as the separation of sensibility and understanding to a wholly other place. For the unity between the two is no longer sought in an unknown ground of things; rather, it is, as it were, sought in the heart of cognition itself. If this unity is at all discoverable, it must be grounded not so much in the nature [Wesen] of absolute being as in an originary-­ function of theoretical knowing, and it is through this function that it must be intelligible. Kant designated this originary-­function as the function of the “synthetic unity of apperception”; it became the supreme point to which every use of the understanding, even all logic and with it transcendental philosophy, must relate. And this “supreme point,” this focus of spiritual activity, is one and the same for all the “faculties” of spirit: hence, it is the same for the “understanding” as it is for “sensibility.” The “I think,” the expression of pure apperception, must be able

10 introduction

10

to accompany all my representations: “otherwise something would be represented in me which could not be thought at all, which is as much as to say that the representation would either be impossible or at least would be nothing for me.”3 Thus, a general condition is set up here that is valid equally to sensible representations as to purely intellectual ones. In the transcendental apperception is found a “radical faculty of all our cognition” to which both can equally be related and in which they are indissolubly linked. With this, it follows that there cannot be anything like an isolated, “merely sensible” consciousness – that is to say, a consciousness that remains outside of any determination by the theoretical functions of signification and that precedes them as an independent datum. The transcendental unity of apperception is by no means related exclusively to the logic of scientific thinking and limited to it. It is not only the condition for this thinking and for the positing and determination of its object but also the condition “of every possible perception.” If perception itself is to “signify” something at all, if it is to be perception for an I and the perception of something, then it must share in certain theoretical characteristics of validity. And from now on, it appears to be one of the specific tasks of the critique of cognition to uncover and demonstrate those characteristics that make up the form of conscious perception as such. The schematic opposition between a “judgment of perception” and a “judgment of experience,” as retained in the Prolegomena – albeit more for the sake of presentation than for the sake of systematics – has thus in principle been overcome. For the unification [Vereinigung] of sensible perceptions or representations in one consciousness and their relation to one object are never a matter of mere sensible receptivity but are always based on an “act of spontaneity.” And it now becomes evident that just as there is a spontaneity of the pure understanding, of logical-­scientific thinking and constructing, so too is there a spontaneity of the pure imagination. The imagination is also by no means solely reproductive but also originally productive. Now an uninterrupted path leads from the mere “affection” of the senses, with which the critique of reason begins, to the forms of pure intuition – and from these in turn to the productive imagination and the unity of action expressed in the judgment of the pure understanding. Sensibility, intuition, and understanding in no way form merely successive phases of cognition to be grasped in their simple

introduction

11

succession but rather show themselves to be a tight interpenetration, to be its constitutive elements. And only now is the relationship between the matter [Materie] and the “form” of cognition brought to expression that corresponds to Kant’s new basic insight, to his “Copernican revolution.” For both are now no longer absolute potencies of being but serve rather for the designation of certain differences of signification and for the structures of signification. The “matter” [Stoff] of sensation, as it was grasped by Kant in the beginning, could still be interpreted as a kind of epistemological counterpart to the Aristotelian πρώτη ὕλη [primal matter]. Like this prima materia, it was taken as the absolute indeterminate before all determination – like it, Kant’s “matter” [Stoff] had to await all determination by form that is joined to it and imprinted on it. On the other hand, the situation changed entirely after Kant had fully developed the idea of his “transcendental topics” and after, within this topic, he had fully defined the opposition between “matter” [Stoff] and “form.” For both of them have now ceased to be originary-­ determinations of being, ontological essential beings, and have become pure concepts of reflection, which in the section on the “amphiboly of the concepts of reflection” are treated along the same lines as are agreement and opposition, “one-­and-­the-­sameness” [Einerleiheit] and dissimilarity [Verschiedenheit]. They are no longer two poles of being that confront each other in an unsublatable real opposition; they are, rather, parts [Glieder] of a methodological opposition that is likewise a methodological correlation. As a result, it is now no longer contradictory but actually necessary that what from one point of view may be designated as the matter [Materie] of cognition is in another respect recognized as something formed, or at very least form-­containing. The consequence of the methodological relativization of the opposition is that the significance of both opposing parts [Gegenglieder] changes according to the underlying spiritual system of reference [Bezugssystem]. Applied to the problem of perception, this means that where we are concerned with distinguishing the world in which prescientific consciousness limits itself [sich halten] from the constructive determinations of scientific cognition, we may look on perception as something relatively simple and “immediate.” In reference to these constructive determinations, it may appear as a simple datum, as something “pre-­given” [Vorgeben]. This, however, by no means deprives us of the

11

12 introduction

12

possibility, or relieves us of the obligation, of recognizing it in another problem context as something thoroughly mediated and conditioned. This only proves that the analysis of the theoretical “form” of cognition cannot persist in a single stratum of cognition and commit itself, as it were, to this stratum but instead must always consider the totality of the elements from which cognition is constructed. For not only the region of scientific, “abstract” concepts but even that of “common” experience is penetrated with theoretical interpretations and significations. And when the transcendental critique seeks to uncover the structure [Struktur] of cognition of objects, it may not limit itself to the intellectual “sublimation” of experience, to the superstructure [Oberbau] of theoretical science, but rather, it must also learn to understand the substructure [Unterbau], the world of “sensible” perceptions, as a specifically determined and organized framework [Gefüge], as a spiritual cosmos sui generis. In the Critique of Pure Reason, as we have seen, this requirement is in no way closed off; however, this work did not explore in all directions the complex of problems that it had so clearly designated based on its own presuppositions. For its basic methodological task pointed it in another direction from the start. The “subjective” deduction is here subordinated to the “objective” deduction: the analysis of conscious perception serves only as a preparation and at the same time as a counterpart and corollary to the following truly decisive question: the presuppositions and principles on which experience as science is based. Experience as science is possible only through a necessary connection of perceptions. The problem must therefore be primarily directed toward this necessary connection and its possibility. The structure of sense, without which perception cannot be thought, is therefore thought essentially as a lawful structure: it implies that the individual perceptions are not isolated, that they may not form a mere aggregate, but that they must be gathered together into an intellectual framework [Gefüge], a “context of experience.” “That which is interconnected with the material conditions of experience (of sensation)” – so Kant formulates the second of the postulates of empirical thinking in general – “is actual.”4 This interconnection, however, is created and its particular nature and its formal character are determined by the general laws of the understanding, of which all particular laws of nature are merely specifications. Accordingly, one and the same purely intellectual synthesis conditions and renders possible,

introduction

13

according to Kant, the object [Gegenstand] of empirical intuition as well as the object [Objekte] of the mathematical science of nature. And it is precisely this one-­and-­the-­sameness [Einerleiheit] that provides for the first time a solution to the basic epistemo-­critical question as to the applicability of pure mathematical concepts to sensible appearances. The same action, which gives unity to the various representations in a logical judgment, also gives unity to the mere synthesis of various representations in an intuition, which is, generally expressed, called the pure concept of the understanding. The categories on which the system of mathematical and physical cognition is founded are accordingly the same as those on which our “natural world concept” rests. It would thus seem that no difference [Differenz], let alone a fundamental cleavage, may be recognized here: in this case, the entire demonstration on which the transcendental deduction of the categories is based would appear to be uprooted – it would no longer be possible to answer the question of the quid juris of the categories, the question of their right to be applied to empirical-­sensible appearances. This right is grounded in the supposition that all synthesis – even the synthesis that first makes perception as objective perception, as the perception of “something,” possible – is subordinated to the pure concepts of the understanding: Thus if, e.g., I make the empirical intuition of a house into perception through the apprehension of its manifold, my ground is the necessary unity of space and of outer sensible intuition in general, and I, as it were, draw its shape [Gestalt] in agreement with this synthetic unity of the manifold in space. This very same synthetic unity, however, if I abstract from the form of space, has its seat in the understanding, and is the category of the synthesis of the homogeneous in an intuition in general, i.e., the category of quantity, with which the synthesis of apprehension, i.e., the perception, must therefore be in thoroughgoing agreement.5

And in the same sense, even the pure “what” of sensation, its simple quality, is determined according to the understanding and hence in a certain respect is anticipatable, because the principle of continuity, the principle of intensive quantity, subjects the alteration in this quality to a

13

14 introduction

definite condition and prescribes a certain form for it. In this way, it is established “that the synthesis of apprehension, which is empirical, must necessarily be in agreement with the synthesis of apperception, which is intellectual and contained in the category entirely a priori.”6

14

[T]his very same formative synthesis by means of which we construct a triangle in the imagination is entirely identical with that which we exercise in the apprehension of an appearance in order to make a concept of experience of it – it is this alone that connects with this concept the representation of the possibility of such a thing.7

Thus, the thought of an original intellectual “form” underlying the perceived world is strictly carried through by Kant in every direction; however, this form for him coincides essentially with the form of mathematical concepts. In any event, both are differentiated from each other not in terms of essence and structure but according to the clarity of expression [Ausprägung]. The conditions of the mathematical-­ physical concept of the object, the concepts of number and measure, exhaust the whole theoretical content [Gehalt] and theoretical significance of perception. It must always pass through these general mathematical determinations if it is to be fixed and formed for us in any way. The question of its “what” and its “how” can be answered with real rigor only if we can convert it into a question of “how much.” For, everything that distinguishes one perception from another can be objectively and theoretically designated ultimately only through the giving of a position in a definite system of measurement or scale of magnitudes. Thus, the critical analysis of conscious perception and the analysis of the basic theoretical system of the exact sciences arrive at the same conclusion: we are everywhere brought back to the same originary-­stratum of the intellect, of a priori concepts, as the fixed foundation. As necessary and logically consistent as this result appears in the framework [Rahmen] of Kant’s general framing of the question, we cannot remain within it once the framework [Rahmen] is broadened, once we have attempted to state the “transcendental question” in a more comprehensive sense. The philosophy of symbolic forms is not concerned exclusively or even primarily with the purely scientific, exact world-­comprehending [Weltbegreifen] but rather with all the tendencies of

introduction

15

world-­understanding [Weltverstehen]. It seeks to apprehend these tendencies of world-­understanding in their diversity, in their totality, and in the inner differentiation of their manifestations. And it becomes apparent that the “understanding” [Verstehen] of the world is no mere taking up, no repetition of a given structure [Gefüge] of reality, but instead comprises a free activity of spirit. There is no true understanding of the world [Weltverständnis] that is not in this way based on certain basic tendencies, not so much of contemplation as of spiritual forming [Formung]. To apprehend the laws of this forming [Formung], we had above all to distinguish their 15 different dimensions sharply from each other. Certain concepts – such as those of number, time, and space – constitute, as it were, originary-­ forms of synthesis that are indispensable wherever a “multiplicity” is to be taken together into a “unity,” wherever a manifold is to be divided and organized according to certain shapes [Gestalten]. As we have seen, however, this organization is not performed in the same way in all domains: rather, its mode depends essentially on the particular structural principle that is effective and dominant in each particular domain. Thus, in particular, language and myth each exhibit a particular “modality” that is specific to them and that in a sense lends a common tonality to all their individual formations [Gebilde].8 If we hold fast to this insight into the “multidimensionality” of the spiritual world, then the question of the relationship between the “concept” and “intuition” immediately takes on an essentially more complex shape [Gestalt]. As long as we remain within the ambit of the purely epistemo-­critical question examining only the presuppositions and validity of basic scientific concepts, the world of sensible intuition and sensible perception will also be determined only with regard to these same concepts and evaluated as a preliminary stage to them. It is the germ from which the theoretical formations [Gebilde] of science are expected to unfold – however, the configurations that will emerge from it later are unwittingly already incorporated into the description of this germ. The structure of what is perceived and intuited is seen from the outset sub specie of the one goal: scientific objectivization, the theoretical concept of the unity of “nature.” So in the apparent “receptivity” of intuition, we find the spontaneity of the “understanding” – of precisely that understanding that, by virtue of its own lawfulness, is the condition for the pure cognition of nature, for the lawfulness of scientific experience and its object.

16 introduction

16

As essential as this tendency toward the systematization of “experience,” toward the universal system of the cognition of nature, is for sensible intuition, it is, however, not the only meaning intention [Bedeutungsintention] that is contained in sensible intuition. For, the “forms of thought,” into which the exact-­scientific comprehension envelops the world of phenomena, are confronted by forms of another imprint and another direction of sense. We found one such form of spiritual vision [Schau] effective in linguistic concepts as well as in mythical concepts. Measured by the concepts of rigorous science, linguistic concepts may appear to be mere preliminary concepts [Vorbegriffe], provisional formations, and the beginnings of thinking, while mythical concepts may simply appear as pseudo-­concepts.This does not, however, prevent them from possessing a specific character and significance. They are also modes of spiritual “sight” [Sicht]; they also divide the flowing, constantly uniform succession of phenomena and let them join together into fixed shapes [Gestalten]. Language lives in a world of denominations, of phonetic symbols, with which it links a certain signification. And in that it holds fast to the unity and determinacy of these denominations, the manifold of sensible lived-­experiences that it strives to grasp and signalize take on a relative stability and come to a kind of standstill. The name introduces the initial element of constance and duration into this manifold, and the identity of the name is the preliminary stage and the anticipation of the identity of the logical concept. The configuration takes place differently in the domain of myth: the “objective” world that is constructed here, which is glimpsed as something enduring and constant behind the infinite multiformity [Vielgestalt] of the phenomena of outward and inner perception, is a world of daemonic and divine forces, a pantheon of animated and active beings [Wesen]. In both cases, however, we find the same relationship that confronted us in the consideration and analysis of theoretical-­scientific cognition. No more than scientific cognition could disclose “matter” and “form” as separable components, existing independently of each other and pieced together subsequently and from without, can we discern any such separation when we return to the originary-­strata of language and myth. We never find “naked” sensation, as materia nuda, to which some form-­ bestowing is adjoined – rather, all that is graspable and accessible to us is the concrete determinacy, the living multiformity, of a perceived

introduction

17

world, which is dominated and permeated through and through by certain modes of forming [Formung]. The most careful and accurate analyses of that “primitive thinking” on which myth rests have repeatedly clarified with unmistakable sharpness the following one conclusion: a specific mode and tendency of perception corresponds to this mode of primitive thinking. The mythical formations [Gebilde] do not resemble a colorful veil that merely obscures the empirical representation of things that nevertheless remain in force [bestehenbleiben] behind this veil as a solid, immutable core. On the contrary, what constitutes the force of these formations [Gebilde] is that in them their proper and distinctive mode of intuiting and perceiving “reality” is given, one subject to entirely different conditions from that mode of apprehending reality that leads to the phenomenon of “nature,” as a whole, that stands under thoroughgoing empirical laws. Mythical perception knows nothing of such a “nature,” although, it is by no means lacking in internal connections, in interconnections, in which the temporally and spatially separate appears as elements, as expressions and imprints of one and the same mythical “sense.” Analogously, the same is valid of language – for here too, it is one-­sided and inadequate if we pursue what language achieves solely in the direction of its influence on thinking instead of considering as equally essential and original its influence on the construction and configuration of the world of perception. It is not initially in the construction [Fügung] and organization of the conceptual world but in the phenomenal structure of perception itself that the force of linguistic forming [Formung] perhaps most clearly and strikingly proves itself. Humboldt defines language “genetically” as the eternally repeated work of spirit to make the articulated sound capable of expressing thought. On the other hand, however, he leaves no doubt that this work of thought is intimately interwoven with the work on the world of intuition and on that of representation. By the same spiritual act by which the human spins language out of itself, the human spins itself into language; so that in the end, the human communicates and lives with intuitive objects in no other manner than that shown by the medium of language.9 Once we have become thoroughly imbued with this basic insight, this gives rise to a world of more hidden and obscure problems of form that are in no way less significant for philosophy than those problems raised

17

18 introduction

18

by the construction of scientific cognition. Only by surveying the totality of these problems can we gain an insight into that immanent dynamic of spirit that advances beyond all the fixed boundaries that we tend to draw between its various “faculties.” In this dynamic, in the continuous movement of spirit, all seeing [Sehen], to speak with Goethe, passes directly into a considering, all considering into a musing [Sinnen], all musing [Sinnen] into a connecting, so that in every attentive glance into the world, we are theorizing. In the following considerations and investigations, it is a question of taking the concept of “theory” in the full breadth accorded it by these lines from the preface of Goethe’s Theory of Colors. Theory cannot and must not be restricted to the scientific cognition of the world, let alone to a single, logically selected culminating point in it; rather, we must seek it wherever a specific mode of configuration, of elevation [Erhebung] to a determinate unity of “sense,” is at work.

2.  SYMBOLIC COGNITION AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE WORLD OF OBJECTS The particular nature of its concepts and the historical conditions of its development make it absolutely clear why philosophy should have been relatively late in drawing the totality of the problems of form involved in myth and language into the ambit of its consideration, that it should have for a long time avoided and even rejected these problems from its threshold. For the concept of philosophy attains its full force and purity only where the view of the world that is expressed in linguistic and mythical concepts is abandoned, where it is in principle overcome. The “logic of philosophy” first constitutes itself in this act of overcoming. To achieve its own maturity, philosophy requires the confrontation [Auseinandersetzung] with the linguistic and mythical worlds and the setting itself in dialectic opposition to both. Only in this way does philosophy succeed in the determination and assertion of its concepts of essence and truth. Even where, as in Plato, philosophy still makes use of myth as a form of expression and masters this form, it must stand outside and above this form: philosophy must distinguish sharply and unambiguously pure logos from myth. Myth remains attached to the world of becoming and hence to the world of semblances, whereas the truth of beings [Seiende], the ἀλήθεια τῶν ὄντων, is alone apprehended in the

introduction

19

pure concept. Philosophical cognition must first free itself from the constraints of language and myth; it must, as it were, eject these witnesses of 19 human poverty before it can rise to the pure ether of thought. The scientific cognition of nature comes to apprehend its distinctive task in much the same way as pure philosophy. To find itself, it also had to first execute that great spiritual divorce [Scheidung], the intellectual κρίσις [crisis] through which it separated itself from myth and language. This act of separation [Trennung] designates the birth of philosophy, as it forms the starting point of empirical research and the mathematical determination of nature. In the beginnings of Greek philosophy, the two problems were still one and the same. Aristotle referred to the Ionian natural philosophers as the earliest “physiologists”: they discovered the concept of logos through the concept of physis. And even where the logos had become independent, even where, as among the Pythagoreans, it was apprehended as a pure numerical relationship and to this extent was detached from the material of sensible perception, it retained its relation to physis. Number was the ground and source of all truth; however, this truth itself is only in that it is embodiment, that it appears in sensible things themselves as their harmony, their measure and order. Again, this conceptually “essential being” [Wesenheit], this οὐσία [ousia] and ἀλήθεια [truth] of number, did not abruptly spring forth but had to be slowly and gradually wrestled out of a foreign world. The Pythagorean number, the number of mathematics and natural science, was first uncovered in that in a steady intellectual process, it was reclaimed from the domains of mythical-­ magical number. The scientific cognition of nature had the same struggle with linguistic concepts as with mythical concepts. It could not simply take over the divisions and separations, the connections and combinations [Zusammenfassungen] as they are present in language, but they must be replaced by differences and unities of an entirely different kind and an entirely other intellectual imprint. Whereas language is content with naming, science seeks determination; whereas language stops at the ambiguity of the name, science seeks the unambiguousness of the concept. However, in that from its initial scientific beginnings, the cognition of nature carries out this requirement, it therefore underwent an even sharper break with the worldview of “common experience.” This cut, which is carried out here, not only separated the world of the word but separated also the world

20 introduction

of immediate perception from the world of natural-­scientific “objects.” To penetrate to the sphere of these objects, to apprehend nature in its objective being and objective determinacy, thought must leave not only the domain of names but also that of sensible sensation and sensible intuition behind it. One of the most original and fruitful features of Greek thinking, though the full significance of this fact is seldom appreciated, is that it performed both tasks at once. This was possible only because, by an equation that at first sight seems extremely strange and paradoxical, sensible reality was reinterpreted as a mere linguistic reality, a being of names. Whereas the common view of the world sees the most secure and unquestionable reality [Realität], a reality beyond any possible doubt, the philosophical view recognized the change and flux, the inconsistency and caprice of a mere nomenclature. “All things that mortals have established, believing in their truth,” says Parmenides in his didactic poem, “are just a name: becoming and perishing, being and not-­being, change of position, and alternation of bright color.”10 And here the semblance of logos of language is combated from the side of pure thought, from the side of the true philosophical logos, and this struggle designates the beginning and prelude of the scientific concept of nature. Democritus immediately takes up here where Parmenides left off: in the being of nature, the being of physis, he exhibits the same element that Parmenides had exhibited in pure thought, in logical being. The truth of nature, too, does not lie immediately before our eyes but is discovered only if we succeed in distinguishing the world of things [Sachen] from the world of words, the permanent and necessary from the accidental and conventional. And it is not only our linguistic designations that are accidental and conventional but also the entire region of our sensible sensations. Sweet and bitter tastes, as well as color and tone, exist only “according to convention”; in truth, however, there are only atoms and empty space. And this coordination of sense qualities with linguistic signs, this reduction of their reality to a reality of names, is no merely isolated, historically conditioned feature in the emergence 21 of the scientific concept of nature. It is no accident that we encounter exactly the same turn of phrase where this concept is rediscovered in the philosophy and science of the Renaissance and where it is grounded in different methodological presuppositions. Again, Galileo now separates

20

introduction

21

“objective” determinations from merely “subjective” ones, “primary” qualities from “secondary” ones, in that he degrades the latter to the level of mere names. All the sensible properties that we customarily impute to a body, all the smells, tastes, and colors, are, in relation to the object in which we think of them as inhering, nothing but words, by which we designate not the nature of the object itself but only its effect on us, on the sentient organism. Insofar as thought is directed toward a physical being, it must endow this reality with determinate characteristics of quantity, shape, and number; it must think it as one or many, large or small, endowed with this or that spatial extension and figure [Figur]. On the other hand, it does not belong to this being that it be apprehended as red or white, bitter or sweet, fragrant or malodorous, because all these denominations are only signs that we use for changing states of being that, however, are external and accidental to being itself.11 It would seem as though this methodological beginning of the scientific cognition of nature, once achieved, must in a certain sense also signify its methodological end. The scientific cognition of nature no longer seems to be able to advance beyond this goal nor to inquire beyond it. For if it did so, it would also exceed the concept of the object [Objekt] thus gained and would appear to face a hopeless regressus ad infinitum. Behind every being that gives itself as true and objective there would now arise another being without which it would be impossible to call a halt to this progress and so secure an absolutely solid, unassailable “foundation” of cognition. For the physicist at least, there was no necessity – indeed he did not seem to have the right – to cede to this progress into the indeterminate. At some point, the physicist required something determinate and definitive – and this he found when he touched the solid ground [Boden] of mathematics. Once he reached this stratum, beginning from the mere signs and semblance world of sense sensation, he felt that he had won the right to stay there and take a rest, as it were. Even the modern physicist tends to dismiss any “epistemological” doubt as to the definitive character of his concept of reality. He finds a clear and conclusive definition of the actual when he defines, with Planck, the actual as the measurable. This domain of the measurable is and consists in itself: it bears itself and elucidates itself. The objectivity of the mathematical, the firm foundation of quantity and number, must not be shaken again; it must not be undermined and uprooted, as it were, by reflection.

22

22 introduction

23

This dread of such an unrooting explains why natural science spurns the path of “dialectical” thinking, why the direction that is natural and appropriate to it consists of going back from observed appearances to principles in order to progress from principles to the inferences that can be deduced from them mathematically – not, however, in attempting to ground and legitimize these principles more deeply. Where science gives itself over to this, its first tendency, there is for it no sharp separation line between principles and objects [Objekte]. As the objectively valid, the principles form, at the same time, the actual in the true sense. Science is able at first to posit its basic determinations in no other way than by placing them before itself in tangible incarnations. There prevailed here, as it were, a methodological “materialism” that was by no means limited to the concept of matter but that can also be demonstrated in the other basic physical concepts, particularly that of “energy.” The power of this basic tendency shows itself anew throughout the history of natural-­ scientific thinking – a striving to transpose function into substance, the relative into the absolute, quantitative concepts into thing concepts. However, the theoretical development that physics has taken in the last decades shows, of course, the beginning preparations of a reversal: indeed, this reversal is perhaps that motive that gives all modern physics its methodological imprint. As long as the “classical” system of natural science, the system of Galilean-­Newtonian dynamics, possessed undisputed validity, the principles on which it rested appeared to be the fundamental laws of nature themselves. In the concepts of space and time, mass and force, action and reaction, as defined by Newton, the basic framework of all physical reality seemed to have been established once and for all. The immanent progress of the scientific cognition of nature has today increasingly cut the ground [Boden] from under this view. A single, as it were, rigid system of nature is replaced by systems that are to some extent open and mobile. The profound transformations that, in particular, the concept of substance has undergone, the progress from the physics of material mass to field physics, have now shown a new way for the critical self-­awareness of physical knowledge [Erkenntnis]. The same thinker who through his discoveries prepared the way and made possible, in terms of the pure content, the new “electrodynamic worldview” was also the author of a “revolution of the mindset” in the field of physical theory: Heinrich Hertz is the modern researcher who,

introduction

23

in his “Principles of Mechanics” (1894), initially and most decisively effected the turn from the “picture theory” [Abbildtheorie] of physical knowledge [Erkenntnis] to a purely “symbolic theory.” The basic concepts of natural science no longer appear as mere copies and reproductions of immediate tangible givens; rather, they are represented as constructive projects [Entwürfe] of physical thinking – as projects [Entwürfe] whose theoretical validity and significance [Bedeutsamkeit] is not subject to any conditions other than the fact that their necessary consequences in thought [denknotwendigen Folgen] must always be consistent with that which is observable in experience.12 In this sense, the whole world of physical concepts may now be defined as a world of pure “signs,” as was done by Helmholtz in his theory of cognition. If we compare this turn with the basic epistemological presuppositions of the “classical” theory of nature, a distinctive contrast emerges. For while Galileo grasped sense qualities as “mere signs” (puri nomi), he had torn them out of the objective worldview of natural science. They bore a conventional, accidental, and contingent character that contradicts the objective necessity of nature. Cognition must overcome and cast off everything that is merely significative [Signifikative] in order to penetrate to the actual, to the truly real. Now, however, the cut separating “subjective” appearance from objective-­concrete [objektiv-­gegenständlich] reality is carried out in a new sense. For neither sensation nor the mathematical-­physical concept any longer raises the aspiration to be immediately congruent with the being of things in the absolute sense. Both have a purely indicative [anzeigend] character: they are merely “indices” [Indizes] of reality, and the only difference between them is that the indications [Anzeige] inherently contain a different value, a different theoretical significance and general theoretical validity. The concept of the symbol has, however, virtually become a center and focus of the whole theory of physical cognition. It has been recognized and designated as such particularly in Duhem’s investigations into the object and structure of physics. For Duhem, this concept forms the actual dividing line between mere empiricism and strict physical theory. Empiricism can apparently content itself with apprehending individual facts as provided by sensible observation and linking them to one another in a purely descriptive manner. However, no such description of concrete-­sensible phenomena so much as approaches even the simplest

24

24 introduction

25

form of a physical concept, not to mention the form of a physical law. For laws are never mere summaries of perceptible states of affairs, through which the individual appearances are only strung onto a string. Rather, every law, as compared to immediate perception, comprises a μετάβασις εἰς ἄλλο γένος – a transition to a new form of reflection. This can occur only when the concrete data provided by observation are replaced with symbolic representations, which on the basis of certain theoretical presuppositions that the observer accepts as true and valid are thought to correspond to them. Every physical judgment must necessarily move in this circle: it is by no means the mere constellation of a manifold of individual observable facts; rather, it expresses a relation between abstract concepts and symbolic concepts. The significance of these concepts is not accessible to immediate sensation but can be determined and ascertained only by a highly complex intellectual process of interpretation: precisely this process, this intellectual interpretation, constitutes the essence of physical theory. Thus, there always remains a cleavage, a kind of hiatus, between the world of facts and the world of physical concepts. To speak of an identity or similarity between the contents of these two worlds has no intelligible sense. Rather, there is always a disparity between the “practical” fact, which can actually be observed, and the theoretical fact, i.e., the formula in which the physicist expresses his observation. For between the two stands the whole, highly complex intellectual labor, by virtue of which a narrative about concrete occurrences and events is replaced by a judgment, which as such has a purely abstract significance and cannot be formulated except by the application of certain symbolic signs.13 Of course, this does not mean that the modern epistemology of physics, in opposition to the classical theory, renounces every claim of reality for the physical concepts – however, it does mean that it defines this claim differently from them and must mediate it in a far more complex way. The cognition of the symbolic character of these concepts does not conflict with their objective validity; rather, it forms an element in this validity itself and in its theoretical grounding. This opens up a great number of new problems whose solution we shall not enter into for the moment;14 for our introductory considerations, it is sufficient for the time being to bear the question in mind and assign it its systematic position within our investigation as a whole.

introduction

25

3.  THE “IMMEDIACY” OF INNER EXPERIENCE: THE OBJECT OF PSYCHOLOGY The objection now arises, however, that our consideration here was bound to miss its goal because this goal lies external to the approach that we have up to now taken. When we ask whether there is any possibility that thinking may break through the stratum of the merely symbolic and significative [Signifikative] to apprehend behind it the “immediate,” unveiled reality, this goal, if it can be reached at all, obviously cannot be attained by way of “outer” experience. After all the progress made by epistemological analysis in the domain of modern physics, it is scarcely open to serious doubt that the cognition of the world of things is bound up with specific theoretical presuppositions and conditions and that consequently the process of objectivization as it is undertaken in the cognition of nature is always at the same time a process of logical mediation, a process of mediatization. It now seems, however, all the more necessary to reverse the direction of the consideration. We should seek true “immediacy” not in the things outside us but in ourselves. Not nature, as the ensemble of objects in space and time, but our own I – not the world of objects [Objekte] but the world of our existence, of our lived-­experience of reality – seems able to lead us to the threshold of this immediacy. Thus, if we wish to catch sight of reality itself, free from all refracting media, we must submit to the guidance of “inner” experience instead of outer experience. We shall never find the truly simple and ultimate element [Element] of all reality in things; however, no doubt it must be detectable in our own consciousness. Should not the analysis of consciousness lead us to something ultimate and original, neither susceptible of nor requiring any further dissection – something that may be clearly and unambiguously recognized as the originary-­existence [Urbestand] of all reality [Realität]? With this question, we are brought to the point where metaphysics and psychology immediately come into contact and in which they seem to fuse indissolubly into one another. In the history of philosophy, this process of fusion is most clearly exhibited in Berkeley, whose Principles of Human Knowledge begins with a critique of language that is amplified into a critique of all purely conceptual “abstract” thinking. Abstraction is rejected because the more we rely on it, the more it threatens to enclose us to

26

26 introduction

27

the circle of the merely mediated. For this reason, it can never become an organ of metaphysics, because metaphysical cognition aspires to be a theory of the immediate. We do not apprehend this immediate by abandoning ourselves to an investigation of nature, by reducing its appearances to laws and stating the laws in the formulas of mathematics. Rather, it discloses itself to us only if we reject this magic of conceptual formulas, if we take the world of inner perception as it shows itself to us before all artificial, abstract transformations. Pure experience, which is the sole source and kernel of all our cognition of reality, can never be sought somewhere other than in our simple, originary-­perceptions [Urperzeptionen], untouched by theoretical reinterpretations. The being of perception is the sole certain and utterly unproblematical originary-­datum of all cognition. A thorough reversal, a reevaluation of all values, has taken place here, as compared with the epistemology on which classical natural science was based. To affirm the reality [Realität] of its objects [Objekte], classical epistemology had to degrade sensation to subjective “appearance” and ultimately set it down as a mere name. Now, however, the opposite thesis is valid: sensation has become the wholly real and matter a mere name. For Berkeley, precisely the natural-­scientific concept of matter [Materie] must serve as the prime example by which to uncover the weakness and impotence of “abstract” concept formation. “Matter” [Materie] is given in no individual perception; it is itself neither visible nor palpable; thus, if we go back to its basic signification, nothing remains of it but a “general idea,” which like all general ideas, possesses no archetype [Urbild] in things but simply dissolves into the generality of a word. At best, the concept of matter [Materie] yields a vague and elusive nominal definition of actuality, while its real definition is to be found only in the ambit of sensible impression, in its individual being-­a-­certain-­way [Sosein] and in its individual differences [Differenzen]. Thus, it is the critique of language that becomes the foundation for the critique of cognition. Berkeley distinguishes a double form of language to show by them the specific difference in the character of validity of our cognitions. For him, perception itself, the entire ensemble of sensible phenomena, is valid as a form of language – however, in this form of language, we are dealing not with the conventional language of words and signs but rather with the original language in which the metaphysical originary-­being [Urwesen], God,

introduction

27

speaks to the human.15 Scholastic logic – and the science that followed it and became more and more subservient to it – had, however, progressively turned away from this originary-­stratum of all truth and reality: it had replaced and repressed the intuitive language of the senses by the discursive language of general concepts. Only if we demolish the whole edifice that it has set up can we hope to apprehend and understand being in its concrete and original constitution, in the original elements [Elemente] from which it is constructed. Thus, Berkeley’s theory summons “inner” experience to battle against “outer” experience: psychology against physics. This strife runs through his whole philosophy and is expressed particularly in his continuous polemic against the foundation of Newton’s mathematics and Newton’s theory of motion. In the physics of the nineteenth century, however, there now occurs, compared with this basic view, a remarkable shift in the battlefront. Berkeley’s theory of cognition, which contained the sharpest declaration of war by metaphysics against mathematical physics, now itself enters into the domain of physics. The foundation of physics and the revision of its principles were sought through this theory of cognition. The logic of cognition of objects, which had developed in close connection with the classical system of physics and which found its culmination ultimately in the Kantian system of transcendental philosophy, seemed to have abdicated once and for all in favor of psychology – and psychology now was constructed along strictly sensationalist lines as a pure “elements psychology.” This is the turn that in the theory of cognition of the nineteenth century was described in Mach’s The Analysis of Sensation. Mach expressly states that the proper basic methodological intension of his theory is to sublate the arbitrary separation that had hitherto been made between “inner” and “outer” experience, between psychology and physics. He called for a body of principles that would make it possible to encompass the two in an immediate unity – which would relieve us of the necessity of “transposing” our whole world of concepts whenever we move from one domain to the other. And he found this common ground in the basic matter [Stoff] from which the psychological and physical worlds are woven, much as they may seem to differ in form. As soon as we go back to this matter [Stoff], as soon as we carry out the analysis to its end, to the ultimate elements [Elemente], all artificial partitions that we have

28

28 introduction

29

set up between “inner” and “outward” vanish. With our return to the originary-­stratum of sensible impression and its pure existence, we have left behind us all that is mediate and all that is significative – and with it all the equivocations, the ambiguity, and equivocation that the term “being” takes on in the abstract language of concepts. With regard to the originary-­lived-­experience [Urerlebnis] of color and tone, taste and smell, the question of whether they belong to an inner or an outward reality loses all justification, indeed all sense: the consistency [Bestand] in which all existence [Dasein] as such is grounded cannot be thought of as belonging to or reserved for a particular kind of existence. Thus, the pure positivist view solves the riddles in which the metaphysical view entangles us: the metaphysical claim to interpret and explain the world gives way to a pure description of the world. For Mach, as a physicist, psychologist, and theorist of cognition, there remained no doubt that this description had achieved its aim once it had replaced physical or psychological “objects” by pure complex elements [Elemente] and their more or less stable combinations. The subsequent development of both physics and psychology has, however, in no way confirmed this confidence. For physics, it suffices here to recall the resolute opposition of a thinker of Planck’s stature to Mach’s theory of cognition. In it, he saw not so much the grounding as the complete dissolution of the true physical concept of the object. And the turn away from the basic assumptions of Mach’s theory of elements [Elemente] has perhaps been carried out even more sharply and clearly in the development of psychology. For the moment, we shall not enter into this development; we shall merely raise one objection to Mach’s theory, the same objection that we have been compelled to make regarding every attempt to determine the mere “matter” [Materie] of cognition outside and independently of all forming [Formung]. The most important thing, Goethe has said, is to recognize that everything factual is already theory: if this is valid of any factum, it is valid of simple sensation. Even the initial approach of Mach’s theory is valid only if we concede its underlying assumption: all the content [Gehalt] and the entire inventory [Bestand] of psychological formations [Gebilde] are confined to the consistent existence [Bestand] of their simple elements [Elemente] and can be derived from it. If, however, we examine the source of this assumption and the justification that Mach gives for it, we recognize to our surprise that it has its source not in

introduction

29

immediate psychological experience but in Mach’s view of the value and sense of the scientific method. Experience nowhere presents psychological formations [Gebilde] immediately as a sum of elementary sensations but instead presents them as undissected totalities [Ganzheiten] – whether these are taken in the sense of “complex qualities” or of psychological “gestalts.” Mach did not completely overlook or ignore this circumstance – not at least after the concept and problem of “gestalt qualities” had made their way into modern psychology. He still maintained, however, that without going back to the elements [Elemente], to the originary-­data of sensible lived-­experience, we can gain no knowledge of psychological processes. For all knowledge consists not in the simple possession of a whole but in its construction from relatively simple states of affairs; it constitutes its nature [Wesen] by the twofold process of analysis and synthesis, of separation and recombination. If we look into the origins of this conviction in Mach, it becomes clear that he is speaking not so much as an empirical psychologist but rather as a physicist: Galileo’s classical theory of the “resolutive-­compositive” method as the necessary two basic elements in all cognition clearly resonates with him. In the domain of psychology, however, Mach did not practice the same sharp critique of this assumption as he had demanded in the field of physics. He denied the elements [Elemente] of physics any right to present themselves as the expression of immediate-­actuality. For him, they were solely instrumental concepts; they are products of the economy of thinking that we cannot dispense with in describing natural occurrences but that we may not regard as the given contents of nature. With all his resulting skepticism regarding the reality [Realität] of atoms, however, Mach never lost his credulity in respect to the reality [Realität] of psychological elements [Elemente]. Here lies the clear limit and paradox of his epistemological approach. For we should assume that the “simplicity” of sensation would be treated at least along the same lines as the “simplicity” of the atom – indeed, we should expect him to exert even greater caution for a concept serving to describe the immediate reality of lived-­experience than for one that serves the presentation of the physical world of things. In Mach, however, this relationship is diametrically reversed. He never wearied of attacking the hypostatization of the concept of the atom – and he went so far in his philosophical attacks as often to underestimate the physical

30

30 introduction

31

value of this concept and its utmost significance for any “objective” science of nature. Nowhere, however, does Mach seem to have objected seriously to the hypostasis of the concept of sensation. And yet clearly at least in the sphere of pure experience, within the ambit of the psychological event, simple sensation is never encountered as a real occurrence. We need not deny the concept of simple sensation in all theoretical value whatsoever – as many modern psychologists seem to do. However, one thing is certain: it is the expression not of a fact but of a theoretical supposition. It is in no way immediately given but is posited – and it is posited based on a specific, already-­constructed preconception. Modern psychology has subjected these preconceptions to an exacting critique that reduces the supposed factuality of sensible elements [Elemente] to a theoretical prejudgment. The “immediate” in the sense of “mere” matter [Materie] has here again proven to be afflicted by an inner contradiction: the totality of psychological formations [Gebilde] cannot be dissected in such a way as to exhibit, in addition to the wholeness of the form, an amorphous something, a substrate beyond this form. If it were possible to expose such a substrate, then with this act of laying bare and isolation, this substrate would lose its significance, which it can have only as an element within an organized unity of sense, and this loss of significance would at the same time include the loss of its specific “psychological” reality [Realität]. And from still another angle, it may be seen how little the “positivist” theory of cognition was able to express and to exhaust the truly positive, distinctive positing character of the psychological. For Mach, there was no doubt about the straightforward factuality of simple sensation but also no doubt that the separation of the elementary contents of consciousness could be sharply divided into distinct sensible spheres. This separation is added by him directly into the content of the “natural world concept.” In that the world is given to us by way of immediate sensation, it breaks itself down [sich zerlegt] for us, in this very givenness itself, into a manifold of sensible impressions. With the “what” of the world, its “how,” its breaking up [Auseinandergehen] into colors and tones, tastes and smells, sensations of temperature or muscular sensations, and so forth – is also unequivocally given. In truth, however, the phenomenon of perception, when it is taken in its basic original shape, in its purity and immediacy, shows no such decomposition [Zerlegung]. It gives

introduction

31

itself as an initially undivided whole, as a total lived-­experience, which is organized in some way but whose organization by no means contains its resolution [Zerfällung] into disparate sensible elements [Elemente] in themselves. This separation occurs only when perception is no longer considered in its simple content [Gehalt] but is posited from a certain intellectual standpoint and judged accordingly. Only because it is no longer apprehended and determined according to its “what,” but questioned according to its “whence,” is there a necessity for its separation into relatively independent sensible spheres. Thus, this separation does not belong to the simple “findings” of conscious perception but already comprises a moment of reflection, of causal analysis. In that perception is considered with regard to its origins [Herkunft], to the conditions of its emergence, it breaks down [zerlegt] into different provinces, according to the diversity of these conditions. With each particular organ of perception, an independent world of perceptive contents is now correlated. To the eye now corresponds the world of colors; to the ear the world of tones; to the sense of touch and temperature the world of the rough and smooth, the cold and warm, etc. The fact that this analysis does not begin with the working out [Ausbildung] of “science” in the stricter sense but belongs already to the prescientific worldview must not tempt us into underestimating or denying its distinctive theoretical character. For not only the object world of physics but the thing-­world of prescientific experience is shot through with distinct motives of reflection, particularly with the motive of the causal interpretation of phenomena. And thus, even here, by a scarcely perceptible transformation, the genetic standpoint replaces the purely phenomenal standpoint: an actual or supposed difference in the origin [Ursprung] is read directly into the structure of perception. The empirical difference [Differenz] in the conditions of the emergence of perceptions is looked upon as their “natural,” in fact their only, principle of classification. Critical philosophy, on the other hand, which cannot simply accept the “natural worldview” but which must inquire into the “conditions of its possibility,” has every reason to question this principle and at least to doubt its exclusive and self-­evident character. This doubt in no way intends to contest the validity of the principle, but only recognizes this validity as specific and relative rather than as absolute – as a validity that is not so much given in the simple content of reality as belonging to a certain interpretation

32

32 introduction

33

of reality. Again, positivism fails to recognize here the pure energy, the activity and spontaneity of form, in that it regards a difference [Differenz] of forming as a difference [Differenz] in content, as a difference [Differenz] in the inventory [Bestand] and findings of the empirically given. The more stringently we take the positivists’ own demand for pure description, the more we must, however, insist that the spheres of “description” and “explanation” must remain sharply separated from each other – we must insist that no motive pertaining to the causal “comprehension” of the world, no motive whose validity and necessity can only be justified and “deduced” based on this causal comprehension, shall be injected into the description of what is already encountered and there [Vorgefundenen und Vorfindlichen]. The sharp separation between the “given” and the “thought” has been an accepted finding for empiricism ever since Hume and is also a basic demand of empiricism. Hume showed once and for all that the “idea” of causality in particular is not contained in the mere sensible impression and cannot be drawn from it by any kind of mediated inference. The positivistic theory of cognition, however, often forgets that this result is valid also in the opposite direction – in the final analysis, no element that is rooted in causal thinking and draws its nourishment from it may be mixed into the presentation of the pure factual being [Tatsächlich] of conscious perception. The mixing of descriptive and genetic points of view therefore signifies an offense against the spirit of the empirical method; such a mixing occurs, however, when in dealing with the pure phenomenology of perception, one goes back to the facts of sensible physiology and makes them the actual basis of division, the fundamentum divisionis. Mach did not in setting forth his theory of elements escape this danger, and thus, it is given a different methodological character than the one that first appears in the initial draft. The basic original intention of this theory was to loosen up the concepts of the object of objectivizing science and particularly the concept of “matter” [Materie]. Matter [Materie] must no longer be regarded as a substantial something – rather, it should be understood as a complex of simple, sensible impressions and defined in terms of the mere togetherness of those impressions. The dogmatic “materialism” of the physicist needed to be corrected and overcome from the perspective of psychology and with its help. Thus, the physical simple was replaced by the psychological simple, the simple atom was

introduction

33

replaced by simple sensation. And yet, on closer analysis, we find that the priority given here to the psychological over the physical, to consciousness over being, is only an apparent priority. For the decisive factor is not whether we designate as “matter” [Materie] or as “sensation” the content or matter [Stoff] from which the whole of the actual is supposedly woven; rather, what is essential is the direction in which our general interpretation of reality moves, the view of its “form,” and what categories it presupposes as original and ultimate. And it immediately becomes apparent here that despite all the modifications, the categorial scaffolding on which Mach erected his theory of cognition is in essence none other than that of the objective and objectivizing natural science. What Mach sought and demanded was a common basis for the object of psychology as well as for the object of physics. The two should not be treated separately alongside each other but be derived from one and the same root. In this way, a living interaction between “inner” and “outer” experience would be achieved: physics would be rendered fruitful through psychology. In truth, however, even the initial approach of Mach’s psychology shows that he failed in this goal and shows why he failed. In this approach, in the conception of the concept of simple sensation, Mach remained a physiologist and a physicist. Sensation is not taken here in its pure actuality, it is not taken as a process, but rather, from the beginning, it is grasped and hence reified as a substance, as the universal “cosmic-­matter” [Weltstoff]. The thing that Mach calls simple sensation is supposed to form the substrate of both physical and psychological being – however, if we take his position seriously, we find instead that the proper form of both modes of “reality” is misunderstood and basically negated. This negation becomes still more evident if we follow the modern empiricist framing of the problem back to its historical roots. Hobbes declares that perception forms the basic problem proper to philosophy: prior to all phenomena is the φαίνεσθαι [to appear]; prior to all appearances is the fact that something appears, the most wonderful and original fact of all.16 In the interpretation of this most original phenomena, however, he at once and quite consciously goes back to physical categories. He states as a principle that psychology can be raised to philosophical cognition only if it imitates the procedures of physics in its foundation as well as in its extension. For all philosophical cognition is a cognition

34

34 introduction

35

drawn from causes: however, we understand the cause of a thing only by making it come into being before our eyes, by constructing it from its simple components. To establish this thesis, Hobbes goes back explicitly to the form of Galilean natural science. However, he no longer restricts this form to any partial sphere of knowledge but demands its application to the entire field of the knowable – to psychology as well as to physics, to jurisprudence and politics as well as to logic and mathematics. Thus, for him, all thinking becomes arithmetic: addition and subtraction. A further distinction, however, is made here between pure concepts, which as such are mere arithmetical signs, and the real, to which they ultimately refer: the content with which the arithmetic deals and which it seeks to apprehend and determine. The concept as such has no other function than the mere indication of the actual, and it is so completely identified with that function that it can be distinguished in no way from the word of language, that it has no “real” significance aside from and beyond its merely “nominal” significance. Behind this world of the mere sign [Zeichen] stands, however, the world of the designated [Bezeichnet] – and this can be nothing other than a world of bodies. Thus, the seemingly phenomenological approach beginning from the pure factual “appearing itself” suddenly turned into its opposite: into the thesis of the absolute reality of “matter” [Materie] as alone knowable and real. Hobbes’ empiricist successors combated this materialism on epistemological and metaphysical grounds; however, in a methodological sense, they too failed to overcome it. For their psychology was also thoroughly naturalistic; they also believed that before a phenomenon of perception could be described as such, it had to be broken up into parts, which were comprehended as independently existing things. The question of whether such a concept of elements [Elemente], such a concept of the psychological “atom,” was itself adequate and admissible was not raised; the analogy of physics was taken as a guide to be followed unreservedly in all psychological considerations. Almost all scientific psychology of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries remained within this sphere – holding that if it could establish the “simple” elements [Elemente] of consciousness and discover the rules according to which they combine themselves into determinate associative groups, the nature [Wesen] of psychological reality would be revealed. Only one thinker stood aside here – so much so that at first

introduction

35

his voice seems to have gone almost unheard. It was Herder who first embarked on a new road in his treatise “On the Origin of Language” and in his On the Cognition and Sensation of the Human Soul. His purely philosophical foundation was based on Leibniz’s concept of the unity of consciousness as the unity of apperception. However, at the same time, he enriched this concept with all the concrete findings and insights that he had established in his own approach. He does not come from the theory of nature, nor from physics or physiology, but rather from the question as to the sense content [Sinngehalt] of language. And he showed his originality and genius not by seeking to harness language to the traditional psychological categories, but instead, by living in it, by concretely understanding and reinterpreting it, he in fact first discovered its adequate spiritual categories. A new stream of thinking thus establishes itself in the phenomenology of perception – and it immediately demonstrated its vitalizing and fructifying force. As the guiding principle of orientation is no longer sought in the domain of the cognition of nature but in that of the philosophy of language, the signs [Vorzeichen] of contemplation, as it were, alter. In the cognition of nature, it may seem meaningful, even appear necessary, to let the knowledge of the parts precede the knowledge of the whole, to ground the reality [Realität] of the whole in that of the parts. This road, however, is closed to the examination and spiritual fathoming [Ergründung] of language. For the specifically linguistic “sense” forms an indivisible unity and wholeness. It cannot be constructed piecemeal from individual components, from individual “words” – rather, inversely, the individual word assumes the whole of the sentence and can be interpreted and understood only through it. If we now apply this point of view to the problem of perception – if we let the unity of the sense of language serve as our guide in order to determine according to its model [Vorbild] the particular nature of sensibility – then a different image [Bild] of sensibility will arise. We then recognize that the isolated “sensation,” like the isolated word, is a mere abstraction. Actual lived perception “consists” just as little of colors or tones, tastes or smells, as the sentence consists of words, the word of syllables, the syllable of letters. From here, Herder, as a philosopher of language, proceeds to negate and tear down the barrier that the analytical psychology of his time had erected between the individual “regions of the senses.” How, he asked,

36

36 introduction

37

would the linguistic sound be able to designate and represent all these regions, if there were actually such an original estrangement [Fremdheit] between its own contents, between the world of tones and the contents of the remaining senses? On the basis of this presupposition, should not every linguistic expression appear as an incomprehensible and unjustified transition, as the strangest sort of μετάβασις εἰς ἄλλο γένος [a change into another genus]? Herder removes this doubt by contesting its theoretical foundation, the traditional system of psychological classification. “How,” he asks, “are sight and hearing, color and word, scent and sound, connected?” And his first answer to this question is that we must seek this interconnection not so much in the direction of the object as in the opposite direction – not in terms of the “thing” of the outside world but in terms of the I, the “subject” of perception. Objectively considered, the data of the diverse senses seem to lie completely apart from each other: however, what then are these properties in the objects? Are they merely sensible sensations in us, and as such do they not all flow into one? . . . A thinking sensorium commune, that is merely touched from different sides – there lies the explanation.

To designate this unity and wholeness of sensible consciousness, which we must think of as preceding any division into different sensory spheres, into a world of the visible, the audible, the tangible, Herder goes back to the term “feeling.” In feeling, we do not grasp [ergreifen] all those differences, according to which we tend to divide sensation into classes, as static givennesses, but here we apprehend [erfassen] them, as it were, in statu nascendi [in the nascent state]. In place of the congealed difference [Differenz], there still prevails here the pure dynamic of consciousness, that original flowing and weaving that contains within it the possibility of all the configurations to come. Feeling lies at the basis of all the senses, and this already gives to the most diverse sensations such an inward, strong, inexpressible bond that the strangest appearances emerge from this combination. I am familiar with more than one example in which people, perhaps due to an impression from childhood, by nature could not but through a

introduction

37

sudden onset immediately combine with this sound that color, with this appearance that quite different, obscure feeling, which in the light of leisurely reason’s comparison has no relation with it at all – for who can compare sound and color, appearance and feeling? We are full of such combinations of the most diverse senses. . . . If it were possible for us to halt the chain of our thoughts and look at each link for its combination – what oddities!, what strange analogies among the most diverse senses does the soul nevertheless commonly assume!. . . . In the case of sensible creatures who have sensation through many different senses simultaneously this collecting together of ideas is unavoidable, for what are all the senses but mere modes of representation of a single positive force of the soul? . . . With much effort, we learn to separate them in use – but in a certain basis they still function together. All dissections of sensation in the case of Buffon’s, Condillac’s, and Bonnet’s sensing human being are abstractions; the philosopher has to neglect one thread of sensation in pursuing the other, but in nature all these threads are a single web!17

These lines of Herder may seem at first to be no more than an isolated aperçu and, in relation to his basic theme, a mere parergon: they nevertheless place us at an important turning point not only in psychology but also in the whole development of intellectual history. For it is the earliest setting up of that great confrontation [Auseinandersetzung] that extends down to our own time and that has given all modern and contemporary psychology its specific methodological imprint. It begins the struggle between a psychology that takes its essential orientation from the procedures of natural science and whose methods of observation and analysis it seeks to imitate as faithfully as possible and another form of psychological consideration that aims above all at providing a foundation for the human sciences [Geisteswissenschaften]. Herder did not arrive at his conclusions by way of empirical psychology; rather, he was guided by his great intuition of spiritual life as a whole, which, with all its richness and wealth of concrete individual manifestations, he sought to derive one fundamental force, from a common root in “humanity.” He believed this unity to be threatened by the abstractions of the psychological analyst. Here the psychology of the storm and stress period, which pressed for a living apprehension of the whole of the psychological [seelisch] event,

38

38 introduction

39

arose in opposition to that encheiresis naturae [manipulating nature] that takes in hand only its parts. What Herder sought was not the unity of the object of nature, as it was constituted by the methods of objectivizing science, but rather the unity of humanity [Humanität]. He followed Hamann, whose basic intuition Goethe summed up in the statement that everything that the human undertakes to accomplish in deed and word must spring from a union of all its energies [Kräften]: “Everything isolated is bad.” Thus, the outlook on the world of “objective spirit” – the basic problems of the philosophy of language, aesthetics, and the philosophy of religion – has received a new decisive impulse from the psychology and phenomenology of perception. Since then, the central proposition, from which Herder started, has been increasingly confirmed and corroborated from the perspective of psychological empiricism. It has become increasingly clear that the analysis [Zerlegung] of the senses into sharply distinct spheres separate from each other in no way belongs to the original consistency [Bestand] of perception, that rather this decomposition [Zerlegung] vanishes more and more the further we return to the “primitive” configurations of consciousness. For a distinguishing and essential feature would appear to be precisely that nowhere here does there exist those sharp dividing lines that we customarily draw between the sensations of the diverse senses. Perception forms a relatively undifferentiated whole, from which each of the regions of the senses has not yet been separated out and accentuated in any true sharpness. Modern developmental psychology has demonstrated this fact by a wealth of examples from the psychology of animals, children, and “native peoples.” In all these perceptual worlds, the spheres of visual and auditory sensations, of smell and taste, show a far more intimate interpenetration, an entirely other interweaving than is the case in our “theoretical” perception with its clearly accentuated “qualities” of things. On the other hand, however, this interconnection is by no means limited to primitive consciousness but is retained far beyond it. Even in developed consciousness, the appearances of so-­called “synesthesia,” such as the phenomena of colored tones, colored numbers, colored smells, or colored words, are by no means mere anomalies but reveal a certain attitude, a general character of conscious perception. “Color and tone,” Werner summarizes the facts, “are conscious here in a sense like originary-­lived-­experience in which the specifically optical

introduction

39

‘matter’ of color and the specifically acoustic ‘matter’ of tone do not yet exist; this unity of tone and color is possible because the two have not yet become substantially differentiated or only slightly.”18 Thus, it was empirical psychology itself that gradually shattered its own dream of being able to grasp and understand the actual by dissolving it into its ultimate sensible elements [Elemente], the primal data of sensation. These “givennesses” have instead proven to be hypostases – so that the theory that seemed determined to ensure the victory of pure experience over mere construction, of sensibility over the abstract concept, actually contains in itself an unmistakable and irreducible residue of conceptual realism. Thus, once again the “matter” [Materie] of the actual, with whose establishment we began, seems to slip, as it were, through our fingers the moment that we seek to grasp it. Is there, then, no objective necessity that governs the play of our “inner” and “outer” experience? Or instead of seeking forever new solutions to the question of this matter [Materie], should we not radically reformulate the question?

4. INTUITIVE AND SYMBOLIC COGNITION IN MODERN METAPHYSICS There still remains, however, one domain into which we have not yet ventured, and here, if anywhere, we may hope for a definitive clarification and appeasement of our doubt. To anyone who has lost their naïve confidence in experience, who has learned to see it with critical eyes, it must seem almost self-­evident that experience, insofar as it is understood as scientific experience, as the empiricism of psychology or physics, cannot dispel this doubt. For obviously, science can never jump over its own shadow. It is constituted by certain basic theoretical presuppositions; however, for this reason, it also remains bound to it and within it as if imprisoned in walls of iron. Is there not, however, outside of scientific methodology, even in strict opposition to it, another possible way of breaking the walls of this prison? Is all reality [Realität] actually accessible and comprehensible to us only through the medium of scientific concepts? Or is it not rather evident that a thinking that, like scientific thinking, moves only in derivations and in the derivations of derivations can never lay bare the actual and ultimate roots of being? This does not cast any doubt on the consistent existence of such roots: everything that is

40

40 introduction

41

relative must ultimately rest on an absolute and be grounded in it. If this absolute conceals itself from science and flees from it, then this shows only that science lacks the proper organ for the cognition of reality. We do not apprehend the actual by attempting to attain it step by step over the painful detours of discursive thinking; rather, we must place ourselves immediately at its center. Such immediacy is denied to thinking; it is given only to pure looking [Schauen]. Pure intuition [Intuition] accomplishes what logical-­discursive thought can neither achieve nor, in fact, aspire to achieve once it has recognized its nature. When we seek to express the essence of logical schematism in general terms, we find that it goes back to a schematism of space. All comprehending [Begreifen] that is at work here takes place according to the analogy of spatial apprehending [Erfassen]. Thinking “has” its object in this sphere only by “placing itself” at a certain distance from it and by considering it from this distance. Thus, every union with the object, however close, here signifies eo ipso a separation from it; all togetherness [Beisammen] becomes apartness [Auseinander]. If instead of this, there is to be a true unity, in which being and knowledge no longer merely stand opposed but in which they truly permeate each other, then there must be a basic form of knowledge that has overcome this type of spatialization, of positing of distance [Distanzsetzung]. Cognition can be called metaphysical in the strict sense only if it has freed itself from the constraint of spatial symbolism, which no longer apprehends being [Seiende] in spatial metaphors and images but stands amid being [Seiende] and there remains in an attitude of pure inner vision [Innenschau: introspection]. These sentences paraphrase the basic conception of Bergson’s theory. In one of his earliest works, which gives the clearest insight into the genesis of his ideas, Bergson has formulated his problem in exactly the following way: “Metaphysics,” he declared, “is the science that claims to dispense with symbols”: “La métaphysique est . . . la science qui prétend se passer de symboles.”19 Only the moment [Augenblick] in which we are able to forget everything that is merely symbolic, in which we tear ourselves away from the spell of the language of words [Wortsprache] and the language of spatial images and analogies, does true reality touch us. The separations that the symbolism of language and of abstract concept introduce into the actual may seem necessary and inevitable; however, they are not the actual in the sense of pure cognition but only for

introduction

41

the purpose of action. The human being is able to effectively act on the world only by disassembling it into pieces – by breaking it down [zerlegt] into individual spheres of action and objects of action. Where, by contrast, our relationship to the world is not absorbed in such externality of action but sought instead in the interiority of looking [Schauen], where we do not want to effectively change the world but understand it intuitively, we must break ourselves free from all abstract separations. In place of the discretion in which all the work of concepts moves and in which it entangles us more and more as it progresses, now life itself holds us in its unbroken unity and continuity; instead of remaining in the mere separation and juxtaposition that belongs to the nature [Wesen] of spatial representation, we are immersed in the flow of becoming, in pure duration. Thus, Bergson’s theory is perhaps the most radical rejection of the value and justification of symbolic forming [Formung] that has ever emerged in the history of metaphysics. This act of forming [Formung] now appears as the real veil of Maya. However, this verdict is of course based on a tacit assumption, without which it must at once become problematic. Bergson’s critique of the symbol is based on the fact that he considers all symbolic forming [Formung] as not only a process of mediation but also one of reification. The thing-­form appears to him to be the prototype of all “mediated” apprehension of reality. It is, therefore, a necessary inference only when, as a matter of principle, Bergson removes the absolutes of the pure I and pure duration from this sphere, when he seeks to protect the “unconditioned” [Unbedingt] from the violation by the category of thingness [Dinglichkeit] and save it from being fixed by it. Are the means of thinking and comprehending – which were created for the description of “physical” being, the tangible-­spatial being, and which are adequate for this description – capable of apprehending the reality of the I, which is never given to us otherwise than in the flowing movement of pure time? How can we hope to come closer to the nature [Wesen] of life by artificially interrupting its flow and stream, by dividing it into classes and genera? This nature [Wesen] defies all conceptual classifications: instead of the similarity, which must always be presupposed when the distinctive is subordinated to the unity of a genus, we encounter here a thoroughgoing heterogeneity. Precisely this infinite heterogeneity separates the authentic and original process of life from all its products.

42

42 introduction

43

44

Thus, the stream of life cannot be captured in the mesh of the network of empirical-­theoretical concepts: it constantly slips through them and flows beyond them. In this sense, every “imprinted form” appears for Bergson as the enemy of life: form is essentially limitation, whereas life is essentially boundlessness; form is isolation and stagnation, whereas the movement of life as such has only relative stopping places. However – we must now ask – does this biological view of reality exhaust the whole of its manifestations, or does it not rather depict only a partial aspect of it? Bergson’s theory has one point in common with Schelling’s philosophy of nature, by which it was indirectly but decisively influenced20; it sets vitalism against mechanism, “nature in the subject” against “nature in the object.” In his methodological proof that it is impossible to apprehend the subject, that one cannot determine it through the categories valid for the world of things, Bergson uses the same arguments that Schelling formulated in his first book, On the I as a Principle of Philosophy. However, subjectivity itself, the world of that pure I that we ascertain in intuition [Intuition], remains with Bergson restricted to an essentially smaller sphere than it is with Schelling. For this nature, which, like Bergson, he regarded as a “creative development,” is nothing other than the development toward spirit. The formative activity of spirit, as it demonstrates itself in its highest creations – in the creation of language and myth, religion, art, and cognition – is a continuation and intensification of the forming activity of nature: spiritual form does not conflict with organic form but is rather the fulfillment, the maturest fruit of the organic itself. For Bergson, however, there is no longer any such superordination of the “spiritual” world over the “natural” world. For him, nature is entirely self-­sufficient: it stands in pure substantiality on itself alone and should be understood through itself alone. Although Bergson never wearies of stressing here the opposition between the path of metaphysical intuition [Intuition] and that of natural-­ scientific empiricism, he shows himself to be the son of a naturalistic era, with its orientations and limitations. For it is a hallmark of naturalism that all true spontaneity, all productivity and originality, is reserved for the élan vital, the pure life impulse, while the work of spirit is assigned a purely negative significance. This work erects, as it were, only the rigid dikes and dams against which the stream of life forever breaks and which cause it in the end to dry up. Is not, however, this image – like a host of

introduction

43

other images and metaphors that give Bergson’s presentation its characteristic imprint – not itself borrowed from the world of spatial existence and spatial motion and therefore inadequate for the expression of the dynamic of spirit? In the spiritual sphere – and this forms one of the most significant moments in the determination and demarcation of that sphere – the concept of “objectivity” undergoes a turn and a transformation that no longer permits it to be equated in any sense with the thing concept of “naïve realism” or even to be compared with it analogically. For what concerns the central questions here is not so much the objectivity of existence as the objectivity of significance. And with this change [Wechsel] in orientation, the dualism on which Bergson’s entire metaphysics is cast shifts into a new light. For while that originary-­phenomenon of the I, that lived-­experience of pure duration that for Bergson forms the starting point and key for all metaphysical cognition, can be separated from all forms of empirical-­tangible reality and in principle set over against them – this division and separation, however, is not possible in the same sense in light of the forms in which an objective content [Gehalt] of signification is given to us. Compared to the mere world of things, the pure I may in a sense withdraw into its absolute solitude and interiority in order to apprehend and affirm its own original vitality and mobility. It achieves its own shape only by forgetting and persistently rejecting all schemata drawn from the world of things. The world of “objective spirit,” however, never and nowhere shows this character of mere limit. If the I, as a spiritual “subject,” enters into the medium of the objective spirit, this does not signify an act of alienation [Entäußerung] but an act of self-­discovery [Sich-­selbst-­finden] and self-­determining [Sich-­selbst-­Bestimmen]. The forms to which it surrenders itself here are not an inhibition to its movement, but rather, they are the vehicles of its self-­movement and self-­unfolding. For they alone make possible that great process of the “setting asunder” [Auseinandersetzung] of the I and world that is the necessary condition that the I not only is but knows itself. Bergson’s metaphysics starts from the pure phenomenon of life, which can be grasped only through emancipation from all forms of knowledge – however, it would not be metaphysics, it would not be philosophical cognition, if it did not at the same time promise a “knowledge of life.” Yet, on closer scrutiny, his philosophy, which purports to be grounded

45

44 introduction

46

purely in intuitive vision [Schau], nevertheless lacks that very element that could render intelligible the possibility of such a vision [Schau]. A self-­ awareness [Selbsterfassung] of life is possible only if it does not simply remain absolutely within itself. It must give itself form: precisely by this “alterity” of form, it gains if not its reality [Wirklichkeit] then its “visibility” [Sichtigkeit]. To detach the world of life absolutely from the world of form and oppose the two means nothing other than to separate its “reality” from its “visibility.” However, does not this separation itself belong to the class of those “artificial” abstractions against which Bergson’s metaphysics attacked from the beginning? Must all form as such necessarily signify veiling [Verhüllung] rather than manifestation [Ausprägung] and revelation? To determine the basic tendency of metaphysical intuition [Intuition] and elucidate its nature [Wesen], Bergson often resorts to comparisons with artistic intuition [Intuition]: did not Félix Ravaisson, his preceptor, go so far as to call art a “figured metaphysic” (une métaphysique figurée) and metaphysic a “reflection on art”?21 However, even in artistic activity, above all, clearly any attempt to separate the act of “internal” vision [Schau] from the “outer” configuration [Gestaltung] must necessarily fail; here the visioning [Schauen] itself is already a forming [Gestalten], just as the forming [Gestalten] remains a pure visioning [Schauen]. “Manifestation” [Äußerung] never contains something supplementary and relatively accidental that follows a finished and given inner model [Vorbild]; rather, the inner image [Bild] acquires its content [Gehalt] only in that it condenses itself into a work [Werk] and in the work [Werk] steps toward the outside. The same is true of that universal creative process by virtue of which the world of spirit, as a world of mediations, emerges from the “immediate” unity of life. A metaphysics that emphasizes in these necessary mediations no other moment than that of separation, decline [Abfall], and estrangement [Entfremdung] from true reality, remains in the spell of mystification that Kant has identified as one of the “sophistications of human reason” and designated by a famous comparison. This spell consists in supposing that the actus purus, the energy of pure movement of life, must be manifested most fully where this movement is still left entirely to itself, where it encounters no resistance in a world of forms, and in forgetting that such resistance constitutes an element and a condition of this very movement itself. The forms in which life expresses [äußern] itself and by virtue of which it obtains its “objective” shape, signify for

introduction

45

this very resistance how it designates its indispensable reverberation. If they posit limits to it, still they are those in which it becomes conscious of its force and learns to use this force. The apparent counter force thus becomes the impulse of the movement as a whole; the direction toward the outwardness [Äußerlichkeit] not of things but of forms and symbols marks off the path by which pure subjectivity first finds itself. Let us, however, break off here and for the present refrain from entering into the circle of problems that assail us here from all sides. The aim of this introductory consideration was not intended to solve these problems; rather, it was only to identify the difficulties, to point out the distinctive dialectic inherent in the mere question of the immediate [Unmittelbar], regardless of the direction from which it is raised. We have seen that neither the theory of cognition nor that of metaphysics, neither speculation nor experience, whether understood as “outer” or as “inner” experience, is able to wholly master this dialectic. The conflict can be moved further back and can be shifted from one position of the spiritual cosmos to another; however, it cannot in this way be resolved once and for all. There remains for philosophical thinking no other way forward than to content itself with a premature solution; there is nothing it can do but resolutely take this very conflict upon itself. The paradise of immediacy is closed to this thinking; it must – to quote a phrase from Kleist’s article “On the Marionette Theater” – “journey round the world and see whether it may not be open somewhere in the back.” For this, it is necessary that this “journey round the world”22 encompass the actual whole of the globus intellectualis: that the determination of what this “theoretical form” as such is to be taken not from one of its individual achievements but rather with an eye to the totality [Gesamtheit] of its possibilities. However much any attempt to absolutely transcend the domain of form fails, this domain should not merely be touched on here and there but traveled from end to end. If thought cannot directly grasp the infinite, it should at least explore the finite in all directions. Beginning with the simple expressive value of perception and from the representative [repräsentativ] character of representation [Vorstellung], in particular the representation [Vorstellung] of space and time and continuing just to the general interpretation of the sense [Sinndeutung] of language and theoretical cognition, the following investigations seek to show that a more uniform interconnection exists here. The character of this interconnection

47

46 introduction

can be designated and made known only by following its construction and through this construction, discerning that, diverse and even antithetical [gegensätzlich] as its individual phases are, it is nevertheless governed and guided by one and the same basic spiritual function.

ENDNOTES 1 Cf. Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, §4, 22. 2 For further details, see my Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit (3rd ed., 3 vols., Berlin: B. Cassirer, 1922–23), 3, intro., esp. 5ff. 3 [Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 131–32.] 4 [Ibid., A 218/B 266.] 5 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 162. 6 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 162. 7 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 224. 8 For further details, see the general introduction to the present work, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1, esp. 8ff., 27ff. 9 Wilhem Humboldt, Über die Kawi-­Sprache auf der Insel Java, nebst einer Einleitung über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts (Berlin: Königlichen Akademie des Wissenschaften, 1836), 7, 46, 60ff. [Humboldt, On Language (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988).] 10 [Parmenides, Fragment 8: Ancilla to the Pre-­Socratic Philosophers, 44.] 11 Galileo, “Il Saggiatore,” in Le Opera, ed. Albéri (Firenze: Società ed. Fiorentina, 1844), 4, 333; cf. my Erkenntnisproblem, vol. 1, 390ff. 12 For further details, see Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1, 4ff. 13 Cf. Pierre Duhem, La théorie physique. Son objet et sa structure (Paris: Chevalier & Rivière, 1906), 245ff., 269ff. 14 For further details, see esp. chap. 6. 15 Regarding Berkeley’s concept of a “visual language,” cf. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1, 74f. 16 See Thomas Hobbes, Elementorum philosophiae sectio prima de corpore (London: Excusum sumptibus Andreæ Crook sub signo Draconis viridis in Cœmeterio B. Pauli, 1655), part IV, chap. 25, §1. 17 Johann Gottfried Herder, “Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache, welche den von der Königl,” in Sämmtliche Werke, ed. Bernhard Suphan (Berlin: Weidmann, 1877–1913), 5, 60ff. [Johann Gottfried Herder, Philosophical Writings (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 106f.] 18 Heinz Werner, Einführung in die Entwicklungspsychologie (Leipzig, 1926), 68. 19 Henri Bergson, “Introduction à la métaphysique,” Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 11/1 (1903), 4.

introduction

47

20 In regard to this relationship, cf. Margarete Adam, Die intellektuelle Anschauung bei Schelling in ihrem Verhältnis zur Methode der Intuition bei Bergson (Patschkau: C. Buchal, 1926). 21 “L’art est une métaphysique figurée, la métaphysique est une réflexion sur l’art et c’est la même intuition, diversement utilisée, qui fait le philosophe profond et le grand artiste.” Henri Bergson, Notice sur la vie et les œuvres de Félix  Ravaisson-­Mollien (Paris: Didot et Cie, 1904), quoted from Adam, Die intellektuelle Anschauung, 20. [“Art is a figured metaphysics, metaphysics is a reflection on art, and it is the same intuition employed differently that renders philosophy profound and makes the great artist.”] 22 [Heinrich von Kleist, Über das Marionettentheater in Werke, vol. IV (Leipzig and Wien: Bibliographisches Instituts, 1904), 137.]

Part One The Expressive Function and the World of Expression

I SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS The simplest and surest way to demonstrate the significance that the general symbolic function possesses for the configuration of theoretical consciousness would seem to be to turn to the highest and most abstract achievements of pure theory. For in them, the interconnection stands out in full brightness and clarity. We find that all theoretical determination and all theoretical mastery [Bewältigung] of being is bound to the fact that thought, instead of turning directly to reality, must set up a system of signs and learn to make use of these signs as “substitutes” [Stellvertreter] for objects. Only in so far as this function of substitution [Stellvertretung] prevails does being begin to become an ordered whole, a framework [Gefüge] that can be clearly surveyed. The more it is able to successively represent [repräsentieren] their content in this way, the more the particular being and the particular event show themselves permeated by general determinations. In that thought pursues these determinations and goes on to symbolically present each of them, thought obtains an increasingly complete model of being and its theoretical structural whole. To be sure of this structure, thought no longer needs to reach for the individual objects and to arrange them before itself in their full concretion and sensible “reality.” Instead of devoting itself to individual things and

49

52

50

the expressive function

events, it seeks and apprehends a totality [Ganze] of relations and connections; instead of individual material details, a world of laws opens up to it. In the “form” of signs, in the possibility to operate with them in a certain way and to connect them in accordance with fixed and constant rules, thinking unfolds its own form, the character of its theoretical self-­ certainty. The retreat into the world of signs forms the preparation for the decisive breakthrough, by which thought conquers its own world, the world of the idea. It was Leibniz who, in the construction of his logic, metaphysics, and mathematics, first recognized in full sharpness the relationship that prevails here and drew conclusions from this insight. For him, the problem of the “logic of things” [Sachen] is indissolubly connected with the problem of the “logic of signs.” The scientia generalis requires the characteristica generalis as its instrument and vehicle. This [characteristica generalis] does not refer directly [unmittelbar] to things themselves but to their representatives [Repräsentanten]; it deals not so much with the res [thing] as with the notae rerum [notes of things]. This state of affairs, however, in no way detracts from its thoroughly objective content [Gehalt]. For the “pre-­established harmony” that, according to the central thought of Leibniz’s philosophy, prevails between the world of the ideal and the world of the real also connects the world of signs with the world of objective “significations.” The actual is subject without restrictions to the rule of the ideal: “le reel ne laisse pas de se gouverner . . . par l’ideal et l’abstrait.”1 On the other hand, however, this rule of thought over the sensible world cannot manifest and assert itself without, to a certain extent, thought assuming the color of the sensible world, without itself being made sensible and corporeal. The analysis of the actual leads back to the analysis of ideas and the analysis of ideas to that of signs. Thus, in one stroke, the concept of the symbol has become the spiritual focus, the focal point of the intellectual world. In it, the guidelines of metaphysics and of the general theory of cognition run together; in it, the problems of general logic and those of the particular theoretical sciences are linked. In particular, the “exact” sciences are drawn wholly into its spell since the measure of their exactness lies precisely in the fact that they admit only such statements as may be transposed into signs and, moreover, into those signs whose sense can be strictly and unequivocally defined. Step by step, the development of the exact sciences in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has brought



subjective and objective analysis

53

this ideal of cognition closer to its fulfillment. From the basic ideas of the Leibnizian characteristic grew the ideas of modern “symbolic logic,” and from them has a fundamentally new configuration of mathematics in turn grown. Mathematics stands today at a point where it can nowhere dispense with the help of symbolic logic, and indeed the works on the principles of modern mathematics, particularly the works of Russell, make it seem more and more questionable whether, aside from symbolic logic, mathematical theory can still lay claim to any special position or right of its own. Just as the concept of the symbol formed for Leibniz the vinculum substantiale [substantial bond], as it were, between his metaphysics and his logic, so too in modern scientific theory does it form the vinculum substantiale between logic and mathematics as well as between logic and the exact cognition of nature. It proves everywhere to be the strict-­spiritual bond that cannot be severed without likewise destroying the essential content [Gehalt] along with the form of exact knowledge. If the concept of the symbol is to be regarded in this way as constitutive of the concept of exact cognition, however, then this would seem to imply that it must be restricted to this sphere. If the concept of the symbol indeed initially unlocks the domain of the theoretical and the exact, then it would seem that it must remain confined to this domain and unable to pass or see beyond it. For the world of the abstract concept, it may be possible and even necessary for exact cognition to imprison itself in a world of signs. However, as highly as we may esteem the rational perfection that the concept achieves through this union with signs, it cannot be overlooked that cognition achieves this perfection only at its end. Having set out to survey the whole of cognition, of the totality of its forms, are we justified in restricting our attention to this end, instead of including at the same time its beginning and its middle? All conceptual cognition is necessarily based on intuitive cognition and all intuitive cognition on perceptive cognition. Should we not also seek the achievement of the symbolic function in these preliminary stages of conceptual thinking, whose particular nature seems to consist in the fact that in place of mediated and discursive knowledge, they harbor in themselves an immediate certainty? Would it not be an offense against this immediacy, a totally unjustified intellectualization of intuition and perception, if we were to seek to extend the rule of the “symbolic” over them? If we immediately encounter the problem of the symbol at the threshold of pure conceptual

51

54

52

the expressive function

cognition, then must we not recognize on the other hand that it emerges only at this threshold? What seems to separate the concept once and for all from perception and intuition is precisely that it can content itself with mere representative [repräsentativ] signs, while perception and intuition possess an entirely different and even opposite relationship to their object. They are supposed at least to stand in direct “contact” with this object; they refer to the “thing” [Sache] itself, not to a merely representative [repräsentativ] sign. To question or efface this boundary between the “immediacy” of perception or intuition and the mediacy of logical-­discursive thinking would be to disregard one of the most secure insights of the critique of cognition, to abandon a truly classical differentiation, growing out of a centuries-­old tradition. In the well-­known sentences that form the introduction to the “Transcendental Aesthetic,” Kant has also fixed this difference and made it a point of departure for all further analyses. And yet if we follow the guidelines prescribed by our fundamental systematic problem, a new question arises for us at this point. From the standpoint of this problem, the cut between the different “faculties” on which theoretical cognition is based and from which it is constructed must be undertaken in an essentially different way from that of traditional psychology or epistemology. The analysis of language and that of myth have granted us an insight into the basic forms of symbolic apprehending and symbolic forming [Gestalten], which by no means coincide with the form of conceptual “abstract” thinking but instead possess and preserve an entirely different imprint. From this, it follows that the symbolic purely as such, understood in its entire breadth and universality, is by no means restricted to those systems of pure conceptual signs formulated by the exact sciences, and particularly by mathematics and the mathematical cognition of nature. The world of these conceptual signs initially confronts the formations [Gebilde] of language and those of myth as something entirely incomparable, and yet, a common determination emerges insofar as they all belong to the sphere of “presentation” [Darstellung]. Thus, the specific difference [Differenz] that exists here does not preclude the belonging [Zugehörigkeit] to a common genus and the belonging-­ together [Zusammengehörigkeit] in it but rather presupposes and requires it. Each of the image-­worlds of myth, the phonetic formations [Gebilde] of language, and the signs that serve exact cognition determines a unique



subjective and objective analysis

55

dimension of presentation [Darstellung], and only taken in their totality do all these dimensions constitute the whole of the spiritual visual space [Sehraum]. We lose sight of the whole if we restrict the symbolic function in advance to the plane of conceptual, “abstract” knowledge. We must recognize rather that this function does not belong to an individual stage of the theoretical worldview but conditions and sustains this view in its totality. Not only the realm of the concept but the realms of intuition and perception are so conditioned – thus, in truth, intuition and perception also belong to the sphere of “spontaneity” and not to that of mere “receptivity,” and they show an ability not only to receive impressions from outside but also to form [gestalten] them in accordance with their own distinctive laws of formation. These three original sources of cognition, on which, according to the Critique of Pure Reason, the possibility of experience in general is based – sense, the power of the imagination, and understanding – thus prove, when considered from the standpoint of the problem of the symbol, to be interrelated and linked to one another in a new way. This connection by no means sublates the differentiation as such: the boundaries of the different domains are not effaced or blurred, but notwithstanding these boundaries, a new order is now established, a fixed nexus between the different individual phases through which theoretical consciousness must pass through before it arrives at its conclusive and definitive shape [Gestalt]. Before we can follow this progress and gradation in detail, however, we must answer a preliminary question of a general methodological character. When we inquire into the form and construction of theoretical “consciousness,” the use of this term is already encumbered with difficulties of all sorts. For the concept of consciousness seems to be the very proteus of philosophy. It appears in all of its different problem domains; however, it never exhibits the same shape but rather is comprehended in a perpetual change of significance. It is claimed by metaphysics as well as by the theory of cognition, by empirical psychology as well as by pure phenomenology. From this manifold inner bond, border disputes arise and ignite that are fought between the different regions of philosophical thinking. For our own basic systematic question, the danger of becoming embroiled in these difficulties is particularly acute, since it is by no means established from the start to which one of the conflicting domains our problem belongs. The question that the philosophy of symbolic

53

56

54

the expressive function

forms sets itself is connected by strong threads with other questions that are traditionally attributed to the theory of cognition or psychology, to phenomenology or metaphysics. No matter how much it may lay claim to a kind of methodological autonomy in its approach, no matter how much it must attempt to work independently and secure the ground [Grund] and ground soil [Boden] on which it establishes itself, it can never dispense with a constant view of all these domains. If the combination that repeatedly arises here is not to lead to a mixture, the sense in which it is to be sought and understood must be clear. If we first consider psychology, here the dividing line seems easy to draw as long as we see the task of psychology solely as providing the empirical-­causal “explanation” of the phenomena of consciousness. For like the pure critique of cognition in particular, the philosophy of symbolic forms on the whole inquires not into the empirical source of consciousness but into its pure consistent existence. Instead of pursuing its temporal causes of origin [Entstehungsursachen], the philosophy of symbolic forms is oriented solely toward what “lies within it” – toward the apprehension and description of its structural forms. Language, myth, and theoretical cognition are all taken as basic shapes [Gestalten] of “objective spirit,” whose “being” it must be possible to disclose and understand purely as such, independently of the question of its “having-­become” [Gewordensein]. We are in the sphere of the general “transcendental” question: in the sphere of that methodology that only takes the “quid facti” of the individual forms of consciousness as its starting point and goes on to inquire after their significance, their quid juris. Nevertheless, on the other hand, Kant himself repeatedly stressed that this “transcendental” method contains within it two different directions of inquiry: The one side refers to the objects of the pure understanding [Verstand] and is supposed to demonstrate and make comprehensible the objective validity of its concepts a priori . . . . The other side deals with the pure understanding [Verstand] itself, concerning its possibilities and the powers of cognition on which it itself rests; thus it considers it in a subjective relation.2

He was able in this way to combine the “subjective deduction” with the “objective deduction,” without fear of relapsing into psychological



subjective and objective analysis

57

idealism, because for him, the sense of subjectivity itself had been decisively transformed. For him, “pure” subjectivity has so little to do with the character of the individual, with the empirical and accidental, that it becomes the source and origin of all true general validity. The subjectivity of space and time serves to ground and secure the objectivity of mathematics, of the principles of geometry and arithmetic. And similarly, he returns to the transcendental unity of apperception only to render intelligible from it and by virtue of it the unity of nature as an ensemble of general and necessary laws. In this sense, he eliminates the antithesis between subject and object by disclosing their necessary interrelation in the construction and constitution of the object of experience: the conflict between the two gives way to a pure correlation. This conflict, however, threatens to break out anew if, instead of posing the question only to scientific cognition and leaving it there, as it were, we rather direct it toward the totality [Gesamtheit] of forms of “world understanding” [Weltverstehen]. Here again, we take subjectivity as a totality [Ganze] of functions, out of which the phenomenon of a “world” and its determinate order of sense is in fact initially constructed for us. However, can this “sense” – whatever significance and validity we may impute to it – lay claim to the same kind of general validity that prevailed in the ambit of theoretical cognition and its principles and axioms? Or is the “apriority” not here in constant danger of slipping down to another plane, to the dimension of the “merely subjective”? Already that thinker who had undertaken the first attempt to adhere strictly to Kant’s method but at the same time to extend it beyond the sphere of the theoretical-­scientific worldview seems to lay himself open to this very danger. The leading thought of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s analysis of language is that the spiritual content [Gehalt] of language can never be fully appreciated if we consider solely the “objective” element in it; if we take it as a system of signs serving only the presentation of objects and their relations. He instead stresses that The difference in the apprehending mood [auffassenden Stimmung] confers on the same sounds a validity enhanced in different ways, and it is as if from every expression there was a sort of overspill of something not absolutely determined thereby. . . . Neither in concepts, nor in language itself, does anything exist there isolated. But concepts actually

55

58

56

the expressive function acquire connections only if the mind operates in inner unity, if full subjectivity is directed upon a completed objectivity. If the feeling truly awakens in the soul, that language is not just a medium of exchange for mutual understanding [Verständniss], but a true world which spirit must insert, by its own inner labour, between itself and objects, then it is on the right road towards continually finding more and depositing more in its language.3

Unmistakably, a different kind of “subjectivity” is invoked here – a subjectivity that cannot be grasped in principles and developed a priori into a system of synthetic principles, as was the case in theoretical cognition. Language is not grasped solely as an abstract thought-­form but must be understood as a concrete life-­form; it must be explained not so much by objects as by the diversity of the “apprehending mood.” Is this turning about [Wendung] possible in any other way than by the fact that we surrender [überlassen] ourselves to the guidance of psychology? Does this not show us the only possible way that can lead us from the domain of “abstract” subjectivity to that of “concrete” subjectivity and thus effect the break through from “thought-­form” to “life-­form”? Today, the problem situation of philosophy entails that no clear and satisfying answer can be given to this question – unless the concept of psychology itself is first examined and its method as well as its sphere of problems are clearly delimited. Natorp’s essential achievement is that on the basis of Kant’s general presuppositions, he undertook this delimitation – that he constructed a “general psychology in accordance with the critical method.” Compared with a psychology whose highest ambition has been to compete with the natural sciences and imitate their procedure of empirical observation and exact measurement, Natorp turned backward and inward. For him, “consciousness” is not a part of being, which can be treated and investigated by the general methods valid for all objective cognition; rather, for him, it counts as its conditioning “ground.” This position implies that psychology, insofar as it aspires to be purely a “theory of consciousness,” does not stand as one systematic member among others in the system of critical philosophy but instead forms, as it were, the polar opposite and methodological counterpart to all of them. For all the other systematic members – logic as well as ethics and aesthetics – are nothing but different moments in the one great task of



subjective and objective analysis

59

objectivization. They construct a realm of objects or a realm of values, an ensemble of laws or an ensemble of norms: and for these laws or norms, they demand a determinate measure and determinate form of objective validity and obligation. Psychology, on the other hand, does not deal with a being that is already determined in this way, but inquires into what precedes and grounds every such determination as an approach. Psychology is not able, as long as it understands itself correctly, to know consciousness by describing it as some sort of analog of objective reality; rather, the fact of “the state of consciousness” [Bewußtheit] signifies for it an irreducible remainder that as such can only show itself but that cannot be “explained” in accordance with the categorial forms of our cognition of things, and in particular not according to the categories of substantiality and causality. In this respect, the “object” of psychology, inasmuch as one can speak of such a thing, is in no way comparable to the objects of nature, to “things” in space and to occurrences and alterations in time, nor does it in any way contest their rank. For the object of psychology is not itself an appearing [Erscheinend]; it is not something situated [Befindlich] and existing [Daseind] in space and time; instead, it is solely the pure fact of appearing itself. That such an “appearing” takes place, that there are phenomena [es Phänomene gibt] that refer to an I as a perceiving, intuiting, or thinking I and that are present themselves to this I means that this originary-­factum forms here the sole problem. Natorp concludes: [However,] with this it is . . . utterly impossible to articulate consciousness with nature in the manner of Aristotle, or like the overwhelming majority of modern psychologists, to consider it as juxtaposed to nature or even encompassing it, but to treat it with the same means of thinking [Denkmitteln], and thus actually to present it as another nature. There is, rather, a second “world,” the ethical world, that stands over against that of theoretical cognition (“nature” or “experience” in the Kantian sense) as well as a third, the world of art; and perhaps also the world of religion as a transcendent-­world [Überwelt] over these. The inner world of consciousness can, however, no longer be logically subordinated in any way to these three or four or set beside them or over them; to all of them, rather, to the objectivization of any kind and degree, it presents, as it were, the opposite side, the turning inward, namely the

57

60

the expressive function ultimate concentration of them all into the living consciousness. It is this ultimate concentration that the concept of the psychical as well as of consciousness with its wholly concrete content [Gehalt] must not merely ascertain, as if it were something already given, but must in general also establish and develop.4

58

This framing of the concept and the task of psychology places us for the first time on the ground [Grund] and ground soil [Boden] on which any fruitful confrontation [Auseinandersetzung] is possible between psychology and our own systematic problem, the problem of the philosophy of symbolic forms. Here, the question must first arise as to how we are able to penetrate into this pure “inner world” of consciousness as the ultimate concentration of everything spiritual as such, if its demonstration and description must, nevertheless, avoid all the concepts and all perspectives that have been created for the presentation of objective reality. Where are we to find a means by which to grasp [ergreifen] the ungraspable [Ungreifbar], that which itself still has not entered into any fixed form – be it that of an intuitive spatial and temporal order or that of a purely intellectual or ethical or aesthetic order – which is in no way “articulated”? If consciousness is nothing but pure potentiality for all “objective” formings, the mere receptivity and readiness for them, as it were, it is impossible to see how this potentiality itself can be treated as a factum, indeed in a certain sense as the originary-­factum [Urfaktum] of everything spiritual. For every factuality implies [ausssagen] more than mere determinability; it already intrinsically includes the determination in some “respect,” the imprint of some form. Natorp would counter such misgivings by pointing out that in the act the “state of consciousness” [Bewußtheit], as he understands it, can never be immediately given or discovered. The “inner world” that is spoken about here is accessible neither by direct observation nor by any other means of psychological “empiricism”; nor is it simply posited by constructive thinking as a hypothetical “ground of explanation.” For both, there are “facts” as well as “grounds of explanation” only within the direction of objectivizing contemplation itself, not outside it and before it. It is not, however, a question here of remaining within this contemplation, fixing as it were the place of “consciousness”; rather, it aims



subjective and objective analysis

61

at a fundamental change in orientation itself. Instead of surrendering ourselves to the movement of cognition toward its “object,” we should take sight of a goal that, in a manner of speaking, is situated behind every object-­cognition [Objekterkenntnis]. Clearly, this paradoxical demand can be achieved, if at all, only indirectly. We can never lay bare the immediate being and life of consciousness purely as such – however, it is arguably a significant task to obtain a new aspect and sense for the unsublatable process of objectivization by exploring it in a twofold direction: from the terminus a quo to the terminus ad quem and back again. According to Natorp, only by such a continuous back and forth, only in this two-­step method, can the “object” of psychology be made visible as such. It appears only as long as another pure “reconstructive” work confronts the constructive work of mathematics and natural science but also that of ethics and aesthetics. True, this reconstructive work will always be lacking in independence, since it must presuppose the constructive construction as already carried out. If it does not stop here, if it inquires back behind this constructive edifice, then it cannot, on the other hand, pose this question without taking the construction itself as a point of departure, without starting from what it has achieved and secured. Thus, psychology, insofar as it is understood in Natorp’s sense, seems to be nothing more than a mere work of Penelope – it unravels the intricate and elaborate woven fabric that had been tied by the different forms of “objectivization.” In this respect, it opposes a “minus direction” to the “plus direction” of pure theory, ethics, and aesthetics. Both expressions must, however, be understood here not in an absolute but in a purely relative sense: The relationship of opposition becomes a relationship of reciprocity [Gegenseitigkeit], which at the same time signifies a necessary correlation. In this correlation, however, the minus direction no longer signifies a diminution, a regression to the nullity of consciousness. To the peripheral broadening, there rather corresponds a deepening at the center. This to be sure is a referring back to the origin, yet by it nothing of what has been gained by the objectivizing tendency of knowledge is lost, but rather, what seemed lost, what was set aside as subjective in the pejorative sense, is taken up again and reinstated in its full rights, while all that is newly won is preserved and combined with the rest,

59

62

the expressive function so that the total content [Gehalt] of consciousness is not reduced but increased, enriched, and intensified.5

60

It is a truly universal program for a phenomenology of consciousness that has been constructed here in a strictly “critical” mindfulness. And the significance and value of this program is by no means diminished by the fact that it was not given to Natorp to carry it out fully and generally in the spirit in which it was projected. Down to the last years of his life and his very last works, he struggled unremittingly to carry out his plan. His General Psychology remained a fragment, and he later explicitly called its first and only completed volume a mere introduction to the framing of the problem, a “foundation of a foundation.” What led him to strive beyond this beginning was above all the fact that the further he advanced, the more clearly and determinedly the “multidimensionality” of the spiritual world was disclosed. This multidimensionality forbids us to simply present the course of the “objectivizing” and “subjectivizing” consideration, the course of the constructive-­constructive [konstruktiv-­aufbauenden] and reconstructive cognition in the image of a straight line and read into it its twofold “sense,” in its plus-­minus direction. The difference [Unterschied] between the spiritual domains of sense is a specific and not a quantitative difference [Unterschied] – and precisely this specific difference [Differenz] is blurred as soon as we attempt to determine it as a difference between a mere “more” or “less,” between a surplus of sense or deficit of sense of objectivization. The totality [Gesamtheit] of the possible stages in the objectivization of spirit cannot be projected onto a single straight line without schematic picturing [Abbildung] obscuring essential features. In the last period of his thinking, as he attempted a concrete construction and expansion of the system of philosophy, Natorp clearly recognized this and admitted it without reserve.6 The difficulty that remains here clearly shows itself as soon as we attempt to fit the concrete whole of the “symbolic forms” into the general framework [Rahmen] offered by Natorp’s psychology. Unmistakably, within the overall plan of this psychology, an important and significant role must fall to the consideration and analysis of language: the determination by the word is an indispensable preparation for the determination by the pure concept. Thus, Natorp’s psychology, in its initial projection [Entwurf: draft or design] at least, expressly



subjective and objective analysis

63

recognized this significance of language. It stresses that an objectivizing force and achievement is inherent not only in the scientifically fixed concept and in the scientifically grounded judgment but in every linguistic sentence. The immediacy of consciousness, one’s own and one utterly foreign, cannot be grasped . . . immediately, in itself, but only in its “manifestation” [Äußerung], which, as a manifestation [Ausprägung], is in fact always an alienation [Entäußerung], an emerging [Heraustreten] out of one’s own into the sphere of objectivity (at any stage). . . . It is certain that there is here rich material for an investigation that should not be neglected by the psychologist; for in their vocabulary, their syntactical relations, in each and every one of their components, the highly developed languages contain an inexhaustible treasure of primitive cognitions. . . . Cognitions, hence objectifications, which, within the boundaries of their own purpose, are scarcely inferior in sharpness and pregnancy to those of science.7

If science, from its own theoretical ideal of cognition, may look down on these objectifications as incomplete and preliminary, then from the standpoint of psychology, they depict independent and highly important stages that must be investigated and fully recognized in their particularity.8 The actual course that Natorp’s psychology takes does not, however, do justice to this fundamental recognition: wherever the process of objectification is described, this description is oriented toward the ultimate and highest phase that emerges in scientific thinking and scientific cognition. The very definition of the subject-­object-­relation is derived from this and this alone. The direction of “objective” coincides for Natorp with that of the “necessary” and “generally valid,” and this in turn coincides with the direction of “lawful.” Thus, for him, the law represents the common generic term [Oberbegriff] for every objectification in general – regardless of the form or stage to which it may belong. Thus, he not only stresses that in the cognizing of nature [Naturerkennen] that every individual must be referred to the universal of law and taken and that the individual is taken only as an “instance” of the law and valued as such but also stresses that the same mode of determination applies also to all ethical and aesthetic consideration. Ethical cognition and aesthetic cognition also seek

61

64

62

the expressive function

the law, even if they seek it only in and for the individual, and precisely only insofar as they achieved it did they achieve, in any case, the objective validity that is striven for.9 Thus, for Natorp, not only logic but also ethics and furthermore even aesthetics and the philosophy of religion belong to the sphere of the “sciences of law,” and all of them, accordingly, are objectifying in the same sense, in fact in a still more radical sense, the concrete sciences of objects: While the latter . . . strives to cognize from the phenomena of their domain the laws of these phenomena, the former inquire after the laws that determine the entire procedure of this concrete cognition of laws; they thus lead the work of reduction to laws, that is, the constructive procedure of scientific cognition, one step farther back and one step higher into the abstract.10

Even if we were to grant that this is valid without reservation for ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of religion, however, is it therefore also valid for the spiritual content [Gehalt] toward which they are directed, for ethical life, art, and religion themselves? Do they also move in the ambit of laws, or does the “objectification” that is peculiar to them not follow a completely other guiding principle – do they not seek an objectivity of a “gestalt” instead of the objectivity of law? Can the world of praxis and poiesis – to use the systematic concepts that Natorp later coined – be simply subjected to and subsumed under the generic term [Oberbegriff] of law as the generic term [Oberbegriff] of “theory”? Even in the domain of theoretical objectification, the role here that is assigned to the concept of law becomes problematic as soon as the position of the lever of consideration – as Natorp’s own foundation demanded – is situated not in the concepts of scientific knowledge but in the concepts of language. For these exhibit [zeigen] throughout a form of “determination” that is by no means identical with the determination in and through law. The universality [Allgemeinheit] of linguistic “concepts” does not stand on the same plane as the universality [Allgemeinheit] of scientific, and particularly of natural-­scientific, “laws”: the one is not merely a continuation of the other; rather, both move in different paths and express different tendencies of spiritual forming [Formung]. It is a question of sharply distinguishing these tendencies and holding



subjective and objective analysis

65

fast to each of them in their distinctive determinacy if the task of reconstruction is to succeed. Indeed, it will be seen that the “presentation function” [Darstellungsfunktion] that gives language its content [Gehalt] and character is not identical with the “significative function” that prevails in the concepts of scientific cognition and that the latter is not a mere “development” – that is, the rectilinear continuation of the former – but that both infer qualitatively different kinds of sense-­bestowing. And this difference in the “subject,” in the specific attitude of “consciousness,” must correspond to this difference in objective configurations. If we are to obtain a truly concrete view of the “full objectivity” of spirit on the one hand and of its “full subjectivity” on the other, we must seek to carry out the methodological correlation, which Natorp sets forth, in principle, in every domain of spiritual creating [Schaffen]. Then clearly the three principal tendencies of “objectification” that were put forward by Natorp in close connection to the trichotomy of the Kantian Critiques and that form, as it were, the fixed system of coordinates for his general orientation are not adequate. The consideration is driven beyond the three dimensions of the logical, ethical, and aesthetic: it must, in particular, draw the “form” of language and the form of myth into its sphere if it aspires to find its way back to the primary subjective “sources” [Quellen], the original modes of conduct [Verhaltensweisen] and the original modes of the configuration of consciousness. It is from this perspective that we now approach our question: the question of the structure of perceptive, intuitive, and cognitive consciousness. We shall attempt to elucidate it without surrendering to the method either of natural-­scientific, causal-­explicative psychology or of pure “description” as such. We instead start from the problems of “objective spirit,” from the gestalts in which it consists and is there [da ist]; however, we will not stay with them as a mere factum but instead attempt through a reconstructive analysis to find our way back to their elementary presuppositions, to the “conditions of their possibility.”

ENDNOTES 1 [Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, “Brief an Pierre Varignon vom 2. February 1702,” in Leibnizens gesammelte Werke, vol. IV (Halle and Berlin, 1859), 93.]

63

66

the expressive function

2 [Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A XVI.] 3 Wilhelm von Humboldt, “Einleitung zum Kawi-­Werk,” in Gesammelte Spriften, 7, 176. [Humboldt, On Language, 156ff.] 4 Paul Natorp, Allgemeine Psychologie nach kritischer Methode (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1912), 19 f. 5 Ibid., 71. 6 Cf. esp. the posthumous Paul Natorp, Vorlesungen über praktische Philosophie (Erlangen: Verlag der Philosophischen akademie, 1925). For details see my “Paul Natorp,” Kant-­Studien, 30 (1925), 273–98. 7 Natorp, Allgemeine Psychologie nach kritischer Methode, 99. 8 Ibid., 221. 9 Ibid., 72f. 10 Ibid., 94.

II THE EXPRESSIVE PHENOMENON AS THE BASIC ELEMENT OF PERCEPTUAL CONSCIOUSNESS The problem of perception presents itself to theoretical philosophy under a twofold aspect: a psychological perspective and an epistemo-­critical one. In the history of philosophy, both have been posited with increasing strife against each other; however, the more sharply the oppositions developed, the more evident it likewise became that we have here precisely the two focal points around which the whole problem of perception must necessarily gravitate. The question concerns either the emergence and development of perception or its objective significance and validity. It addresses either its genesis or the accomplishment that it achieves for the whole of cognition of objects. However the methodological quarrel over rank and competition between these two questions is decided, regardless of which one priority was accorded to, one thing seemed certain: they exhaustively define the interest of theoretical philosophy. For just as experience as a whole breaks down for us into two sharply divided domains – into an “inside” and an “outside” – so too do

64

68

65

the expressive function

we seem to have fully recognized the essence of perception as soon as we succeed in assigning it to its appropriate place in these two spheres, as soon as we have, on the one hand, apprehended it as a psychological event subject to specific rules and, on the other hand, comprehended it as the foundation, as the first element, of the theoretical positing of the object. In the first respect, the task seems to be fulfilled if we can uncover the becoming of perception and the causal laws governing this becoming. As particular empirical laws, they can be found and determined only within the framework [Rahmen] of a complete explanation of nature. The picture [Bild] of nature, particularly that of physics, must serve here as our necessary starting point. The question is not directed toward the truth, the objective validity of this picture [Bild] itself, which must rather be postulated and presupposed in the initial approach to the problem. The lawfulness of nature and the general categories of the cognition of nature are taken for granted: from them and on their foundation, the specific explanation of perception is obtained. Thus, the psychology of perception will necessarily culminate in physiology and physics. Psychology becomes psychophysics, whose first task is to establish a dependency between the world of perceptions and that of objective “stimuli.” Whether this dependency is thought of as a causal relationship or as a functional correspondence, “stimulus” and “sensation” are in some way attuned to each other and must accordingly agree with each other in certain foundational structural relationships. From this follows the “parallelism” in this organization of the world of stimuli and in the worlds of perception and sensation. A certain sensation is always correlated with a certain stimulus in the sense of a general “constancy hypothesis.” For the recognition, any, in the strict sense, “original” essential feature of perception can be made on the ground [Boden] of this approach: the meaning and content of perception consist in the faithful reflection and “reproduction” of the relationships of the “outside” world. Thus, even the organization of perception connects itself to the organization of stimuli. These are the differences of the physical causes of perception that we immediately rediscover in its own determinations: the tangible separation of the sensible organs necessarily leads to an analogous separation in the sensible phenomena. The epistemo-­critical question forms – so it would seem – the diametrical opposition to this framing of the problem. It moves not from



the expressive phenomenon

69

“things” to “phenomena” but from phenomena to things. Perception and its constitution must therefore not be taken as conditioned [bedingen] “from outside” but as conditioning [bedingend]; it must be taken as a constitutive element in our cognition of the thing [Ding]. Precisely because perception is to be considered solely in terms of this function, it is, however, depicted from the start in a certain “light,” according to a certain theoretical perspective. Perception is no longer determined by the outside world as its “cause”; rather, it is determined by the aim that is set down for it. And this aim is none other than to make possible in its part “experience,” the science of nature. The significance of perception now lies in the fact that although it is indeed no longer the picture [Abbild] of an existing world, it is arguably, in a certain sense, the prototype [Vorbild] of the natural object. It already contains this object in a kind of schematic sketch but cannot follow up its determination of the object except by applying the functions of the pure understanding to that empirical material given in perception. From this interconnection, it is also explained why perception is customarily taken from the start as a kind of objective “framework” [Gefüge] that is thoroughly analogous to the structure [Bau] of the framework [Gefüge] of “nature,” the structure [Struktur] of the tangible world. To the “properties” [Eigenschaften] of things correspond certain “qualities” of perception. Perception seems already organized in itself and divided off according to certain basic shapes and classes. This means, however, that the thing-­property-­category, which is a constitutive condition of the theoretical concept of nature, is injected into the pure description, into the phenomenology of perception. It is described as a “manifold” into which order and interconnection should be brought only by the synthetic function of pure intuition and the synthetic unities of the pure understanding. And yet, on closer scrutiny, this entity, which ostensibly is merely “determinable,” itself contains highly characteristic features of theoretical determination. True, it is still by no means the “actual,” the complete and definitive object: it nevertheless contains an intention toward it. While it is directed in this way toward the object, it has already imperceptibly become directed according to it. Thus, however far back the pure critique of cognition may carry its description of “immediate” perception, this description is always subject to a universal norm that is itself derived from the concept and general task of the critique of cognition

66

70

67

the expressive function

itself. The nature [Wesen] of perception is determined by its “objective validity.” For this reason, however, a specific “interest” of knowledge is already injected into the presentation of this nature [Wesen]. To “understand” perception now means to comprehend it as a particular member in the construction of the cognition of reality – to assign it the place that befits it within the totality [Ganz] of the functions that form the basis for the “relation of all [our] cognition to its object.” Perception assumes, however, an essentially different shape for us as soon as we decide not to apprehend it exclusively in this one “aspect,” in this prevision of the “nature” of the theoretical science of nature. Indeed, the attempt to detach it from all spiritual reference [Bezug], to cut it off from the totality of possible significatory intentions [Bedeutungsintentionen] and situate it in its naked in-­itself [Ansich], seems from the start absurd and methodologically hopeless. Even “sensibility” can never be thought of as simply prespiritual [Vorgeistig] or even as absolutely nonspiritual [Ungeistig]; rather, it “is” and exists [besteht] only insofar as it is organized according to determinate functions of sense. These functions are, however, by no means limited to the world of “theoretical” sense – in the restricted meaning of the word. In that we disregard the specific conditions of theoretical-­scientific cognition, we have not abandoned the domain of form in general. We do not thereby sink back into a mere chaos; rather, an ideal cosmos once more awaits us and envelops us. A cosmos of this kind appeared to us with progressive clarity in the construction of language and in the construction of the mythical world. And with this, a new and essentially broader point of view [Aspekt] for the consideration and evaluation of perception itself is given. It now reveals certain basic features that are by no means directed from the outset toward the object of nature or toward the “cognition of the outside world”;1 rather, these features disclose an entirely different direction of apprehension. Myth, in particular, shows us a world that is far from being without structure [Struktur], without immanent organization [Gliederung], but one that does not know the organization of reality according to “things” and “properties.” Rather, here all the configurations of being show a peculiar “fluidity”; they are distinguished [unterscheiden] without being divorced [scheiden] from one another. Each of them is, as it were, ready at any moment [Augenblick] to transform itself into another, seemingly antithetical configuration. Mythical “metamorphosis” is bound by no logical



the expressive phenomenon

71

law of “identity” – nor does it find its limit in any fixed “constancy” of classes. For there are no logical classes, no genera in the sense that they would be separated from one another by certain unalterable characteristic traits and that must remain forever in this separation. On the contrary, all the boundary lines drawn here by our empirical concepts of genera and species keep shifting and vanishing. Not only does one and the same being [Wesen] continuously transition over into new forms, but at one and the same moment [Augenblick] of its existence [Existenz], it also contains and combines within itself an abundance of different and even mutually opposed shapes [Gestalten] of being. This distinctive fluidity of the mythical world would not be comprehensible if immediate perception, purely as such and before any “intellectual” apprehension and interpretation, necessarily contained within it, as it were, the division and partitioning of the world into fixed classes. If this were the case, myth would transgress at every step not only the laws of “logic” but also the elementary “facts of perception.” In truth, there is nevertheless so little conflict between the content of perception and the form of myth that both completely merge into one another: they coalesce together into a thoroughly “concrete” unity. Where we do not reflect on myth but truly live in it, there is still no such rift [Riß] between the “actual” reality of perception and the world of mythical “fantasy.” The mythical formations [Gebilde] immediately bear here the color of full, immediate perception – on the other hand, this perception itself is as though bathed in the light of the mythical configuration. Such an interpenetration becomes understandable only if perception itself exhibits certain original, essential features in which it corresponds to and, as it were, accommodates the mode and tendency of the mythical. Developmental psychology has customarily characterized “primitive” perception as “diffused” and “complex.” However, even this “diffusion,” this lack of differentiation and organization, is valid only if we tacitly apply to primitive perception a definite intellectual standard, the standard of theoretical forming [Formung]. In itself, “primitive” perception is far from being unorganized or blurred – its differences [Differenzen] are found on a totally different level from that of the “objective” apprehension of reality as an ensemble of “things” and “properties.” Consequently, if the philosophy of myth is to fulfill the fundamental demand first made by Schelling, if it is to understand myth not only allegorically as a kind of primitive physics or primitive history

68

72

69

the expressive function

but “tautegorically” as a sense formation [Sinngebilde] of independent significance possessing its own imprint,2 then it must do justice to that form of perceptive lived-­experience in which myth is originally rooted and from which it forever draws new nourishment. Without such a foundation in an original mode of perceiving itself, myth would hover in the void; if instead of being a universal form of the appearance of spirit, it signified rather a kind of spiritual disease, however widely distributed, it would still signify an accidental and “pathological” phenomenon. In truth, however, the correlate of the mythical view of the world cannot be missed – the foundation that it has in a certain tendency of perception cannot be missed – if we bear in mind that although the theoretical worldview has in many ways modified this foundation and overlaid it, so to speak, with configurations of another kind and source, it has by no means dispelled this foundation entirely. Even this worldview does not know reality altogether as an ensemble of things and as a complex of alterations that are governed and linked together by strictly causal laws. It “has” the world in still another and more original sense, insofar as the world is revealed to it as a pure expressive phenomenon [reines Ausdrucksphänomen]. We must go back to this stratum of expression if our reconstruction is to be erected on the ground [Grund] and ground soil [Boden] from which myth grew, and an understanding of it is indispensable to us in explaining and deriving certain features of the empirical worldview. For “theoretical” reality was also not originally experienced as a totality [Ganz] of physical bodies, endowed with definite properties and physical qualities. There is rather a kind of experience of reality that is situated wholly outside this form of the natural-­scientific explanation and interpretation. It is present wherever “being” as it is apprehended in perception confronts [entgegentreten: faces] us not as a being of things, of mere objects [Objekte], but as the mode of existence of living subjects. How such an experience of other [fremde] subjects – an experience of the “you” is possible may appear to be a difficult metaphysical or epistemological question. This question does not concern, however, the pure phenomenology of perception, which is interested solely in the fact of the matter, the quid facti of perception, and must not be allowed to mark off its road in advance. In any event, immersion into the pure phenomenon of perception shows us one thing: the perception of life is not absorbed [aufgehen] by the mere perception of things; the experience of the “you” can never be simply



the expressive phenomenon

73

dissolved into the experience of the mere “it” or reduced to it even by the most complex conceptual mediations. Even from a purely genetic standpoint, there seems to exist no doubt to which of the two forms of perception we should accord priority. The further back we trace perception, the more the form of the “you” possesses a priority over the form of the “it” and the more clearly the purely expressive character prevails over the matter-­character [Sachcharakter] or thing-­character. The “understanding of expression” is essentially earlier than the “knowledge of things.” Even psychological empiricism, where it strove not to fit the facts into a preconceived constructive schema but to follow them without bias, confirmed these facts and circumstances [Sachverhalt]. Even attempts to apprehend and describe animal “consciousness” have shown that it is an error to attempt in any way to apply or introduce immediately into the world of the animal the framework of order [Ordnungsgefüge] that is integrated into human perception. The dangers of such an “introjection” are obvious, and it is understandable that a certain tendency of modern psychology believes itself able to avoid them only in that it was able to push aside the entire problem that is given here. The modern psychology of behavior, the direction of “behaviorism,” grew out of such a negation, out of a methodological asceticism. It seemed more cautious and safer in any case to deny the animal any kind of “consciousness” than to describe this consciousness in a purely anthropomorphic manner, in accordance with specifically human categories. Descartes, with perfect consistency, was only following the prescriptions of his own logic when in his psychology he denied animals any conscious life and made them into mere machines. For the essential being of “consciousness” signifies for him the basic act of reflective self-­apprehension of the I – the act in which the being of the I apprehends and constitutes itself as the being of thinking. Without this basic act of pure reason, there can be no act of sensation, perception, or representing for Descartes. Insofar as the psychic at all “is,” it can be thought of only in a definite rational forming [Formung] and construction [Fügung], because the “clear and distinct idea” is the basic presupposition and the only valid criterion for any positing of existence [Existenz]. It seems strange at first sight that the Cartesian thesis, which grew entirely from the ground soil [Boden] of “rationalism,” should have been revived in contemporary psychology by those who

70

74

71

the expressive function

like to identify themselves as radical empiricists. It is, however, no accident that the ways of rational deduction should meet with those of pure “experience” – insofar as by pure experience we mean the procedure of inductive observation and comparison. For precisely this induction itself, as a procedure of objectivizing natural science, is bound to definite logical presuppositions, which show it to be a work of the intellect, of the thinking apprehension of reality. Its criteria of being and criteria of truth are thus qualitatively no different from those of its apparent opposition, from the method of deduction; rather, both poles, by their very antagonism, establish a thoroughly unitary principle and ideal of cognition. And in fact, from the standpoint of this ideal of cognition, the world of animal consciousness remains problematic – it remains indemonstrable because it is unprovable. A different picture [Bild] presents itself to us, however, if we broaden the scope of consideration and draw the essential line of demarcation differently. For although we may not inject the forms of our thing-­world [Dingwelt] and the intellectual categories at the base of its construction into the animal world, an entirely different interconnection emerges as soon as we remember that for the human, this intellectually conditioned world [bedingt Welt] is also far from being the only world in which the human is and lives. If we were to reserve the concept of “consciousness” for the designation of the reflexive acts of knowing, on the one hand, and for objective intuition, on the other, we would run the danger not only of doubting the possibility of animal consciousness but also of disregarding or disowning a vast domain and, so to speak, an entire province of human consciousness. If we seek to go back to the earliest stages [Stufen] of consciousness, the view that the world was here experienced [erleben] as a chaos of unordered “sensations,” in each of which a definite objective quality such as “light” or “dark” and “warm” or “cold” was apprehended, proves to be absolutely untenable. Koffka, for example, remarks: If this theory of original chaos were sound, we should expect that “simple” stimuli would . . . first arouse the interest of the child: for it is the simple that it will first be possible to separate out of the chaos and that will first enter into other combinations. This contradicts all experience. The stimuli which most influence the behavior of the child are



the expressive phenomenon

75

not those which seem particularly simple to the psychologist because simple sensations correspond to them. The first differentiated sound reactions respond to the human voice, hence to highly complex stimuli (and “sensations”). The infant is not interested in simple colors, but in human faces. . . . And as early as the middle of the first year of life the effect of the parents’ facial expression on the child can be established. For the chaos theory, the phenomenon corresponding to a human face is merely a confusion of the most divergent sensations of light-­dark and color, which moreover are in constant flux, changing with every movement of the person in question or the child itself, and with the lighting. And yet by the second month the child knows its mother’s face; by the middle of its first year the child reacts to a friendly or an “angry” [böse] face, and so differently that there is no doubt that what was given to the child phenomenally was the friendly or angry [böse] face and not any distribution of light and dark. To explain this by experience, to assume that these phenomena arose by combination of simple optical sensations with each other and with pleasant or unpleasant consequences from the original chaos of sensation, seems impossible. . . . We are left with the view that phenomena such as “friendliness” or “unfriendliness” are extremely primitive, even more primitive, for example, than that of a blue spot.3

A bridge to the phenomena of animal consciousness can be built, if at all, only from this fundamental view, from the recognition not of the immediacy but of the original character of pure expressive lived-­experience. For this consciousness, particularly at its higher levels, seems to enclose in itself a great wealth and astonishingly fine shadings of such lived-­ experiences. With regard to chimpanzees, for example, Wolfgang Köhler writes: “What . . . is present in the expressive movements depicts an exceedingly large manifold,” through which the animals “understand [verstehen] one another,” even though we cannot speak of any kind of language between them and cannot say that any particular movements or sounds possess an indicative-­function and presentative function: We psychologists, who tend to reduce such understanding [Verstehen] in the human being to analogies or reproductive completions from the human’s own conscious experience, are here thrown into a theoretical

72

76

the expressive function perplexity which contrasts strangely with the self-­evidence and certainty of the actual understanding-­process [Verstehens-­Vorganges] among the animals themselves.4

This dilemma, this opposition between what a certain psychological methodology demands as an element [Element] of the psychological [Seelisch] and the relatively first and original element [Element] that experience seem to give us appears to be avoidable only through a fundamental altering of our whole framing of the question. Thus, Köhler further asks:

73

May it not be distinctive to certain configurations . . . that they bear in and for themselves the character of the terrible, the uncanny, not because an innate ad hoc mechanism enabled them to do so but because . . . in a given constitution of the psyche, certain gestalt-­conditions [Gestaltbedingungen] necessarily and substantive-­lawfully produce the character of the terrible, while others call forth that of the charming, the awkward or the energetic and severe?5

It becomes evident in questions of this kind how the modern psychology of perception is driven everywhere into a new domain, which, to be sure, it sometimes seems to enter only hesitantly. The actual development and cultivation of this domain is conditioned on psychology’s ability to free itself once and for all from the spell of that sensationalist theory of perception that has dominated it for centuries. Sensationalism obstructs a free view of these problems in two ways. In that it posits the sensible “impression” as the basic element [Element] of everything psychic, it has negated the actual life of perception in a twofold sense. In the “upper” sense, in respect to the problems of thinking and cognition, the entire pure significative content [Gehalt] of perception, insofar as it is recognized at all, must now be transposed back into its sensible “matter” [Materie] and derived from it. Perception becomes an aggregate: “perception” emerges from the simple confluence and associative combination of impressions. The pure intellectual form of the distinctive theoretical lawful construction under which the perceived world stands is thus misapprehended. This misapprehension is, however, at the same time the starting point of a distinctive dialectic within sensationalist psychology, since in seeking to limit the rights of the intellect as far as



the expressive phenomenon

77

possible, it in no way escapes from its domination. This curtailment of the legitimate claim of the intellect leads rather to the fact that it brings itself to bear from another place; it tries to assert itself in, as it were, an “unlawful” way. It now slips unnoticed into the determination of perception [Wahrnehmung], the pure “perception” [Perzeption] as such: it “intellectualizes” it where it seemingly threatened to “sensualize” it. For the dissolving of the perceived world into a sum of individual impressions misapprehends the role played in it not only by the “higher,” spiritual functions, but also by the strong and propelling substrate on which it rests. The sensationalist theory of perception retains, as it were, only the bare trunk of the tree of cognition – it sees neither its crown, which rises free into the air, into the ether of pure thought, nor its roots, which sink 74 into the earth. These roots do not lie in the simple ideas of sensation and reflection, which empiricist psychology and epistemology regard as the originary-­ground of all knowledge of reality. They consist not in the “elements” [Elemente] of sense sensation but in original and immediate expressive characters. Concrete perception does not wholly detach itself from these characters even where it resolutely and consciously takes the path of pure objectivization. It never dissolves into a mere complex of sensible qualities – such as light or dark, cold or warm – but is always attuned to a certain, specific expressive tone; it is never directed exclusively toward the “what” of the object but apprehends the mode of its overall appearance as a whole – the character of the luring or menacing, the familiar or uncanny, the soothing or frightening, which lies in this appearance purely as such and independently of its objective interpretation. We shall not, however, continue further along the path that is gradually bringing psychology back to this profound stratum of the pure lived-­ experience of expression [reinen Ausdruckserlebnisse]. Ludwig Klages in particular has proven to be a leader and pioneer, advancing from the apprehension and interpretation of these lived-­experiences to a general transformation of the methodology of the psychology of perception, hence to a revision of its framing of the question. Once again, however, we see ourselves impelled here to take another path than that of immediate observation and description. The course of our investigation leads us, as always, through the world of forms, through the region of “objective spirit.” From objective spirit, by way of an inferential and “reconstructive” consideration, we seek to gain access to the realm of “subjectivity.” And in

78

75

the expressive function

view of the findings of our earlier investigation, there can be no doubt at what point we should apply our lever. Where it is a question of the problem and phenomenology of the pure lived-­experience of expression, we can entrust ourselves to the leadership and orientation neither of conceptual cognition nor simply to the leadership of language. For both of these are primarily in the service of theoretical objectivization: they construct the world of “logos” as a thought and spoken logos. In respect to the domain that is in question here, they thus take a centrifugal rather than a centripetal direction. Myth, however, places us in the living center of this domain. For its particular nature consists precisely in showing us a mode of world configuration that independently and autonomously confronts all the modes of mere objectification [Vergegenständlichung]. It does not recognize the cut between “real” and “unreal,” between “reality” and “semblance,” which theoretical objectivization [Objektivierung] performs and must necessarily perform. All its formations [Gebilde] move rather on a single plane of being, which is wholly adequate to it. There is neither kernel nor shell here; there is no substantial thing, no consistent and enduring something that underlies the changing and fleeting appearances, the mere “accidents.” Mythical consciousness does not infer the being [Wesen] from the appearance but rather possesses it: it has the being [Wesen] in the appearance. The being [Wesen] does not recede behind the appearance but rather emerges from it; it does not veil itself in the appearance but in the appearance is given to itself. The actual given phenomenon never has here a character of a mere surrogate representation [Repräsentation] but rather the character of an authentic presence [Präsenz]; a being [Seiende] and actuality stand there [da] in phenomenon in full presence [Gegenwart] instead of “re-­presenting” [vergegenwärtigen] itself only mediatedly through the phenomenon. If in magical activity water is sprinkled in rain magic, the water does not serve as a mere symbol [Sinnbild] or as an “analogy” of the “actual” rain; rather, it is linked and united to the actual rain by the bond of an original “sympathy.” It is the daemon of the rain itself who lives in every drop of water and who is tangibly and corporeally there [da] in every drop of water.6 In the world of myth, every appearance is thus always, and essentially, an incarnation. The being [Wesen] is not distributed here over a manifold of possible modes of presentation [Darstellung], each of which contains a



the expressive phenomenon

79

mere fragment of it, but is manifested in the appearance as a whole, as an unbroken and indestructible unity. This very situation can be expressed in “subjective” terms by saying that the mythical world of lived-­experience is not so much grounded in presenting or significance-­bestowing acts as in the pure expressive lived-­experience. What is presented here as “reality” is not an ensemble of things that are endowed with determinate “characteristic traits” and “indicators” by which they can be recognized and distinguished from one another; rather, it is a manifold and wealth of original “physiognomic” characters. As a whole and in its individual details, the world still has a distinctive “look” [Gesicht] that may be apprehended at any moment as a totality and can never be dissolved into mere general configurations [Konfigurationen], into geometrical-­objective lines and outlines. The “given” by no means consists here primarily in the merely sensory, in a complex of sense data, which are animated and made “meaningful” [Sinnhaften] only by a subsequent act of “mythical apperception.” Rather, expressive sense [Ausdruckssinn] adheres to the perception in which it is apprehended and immediately “experienced.” Only in this basic experience do the essential features of the mythical world find their full clarification. What perhaps divides it most sharply from the world of purely theoretical consciousness is the distinctive indifference [Gleichgültigkeit] with which mythical consciousness confronts important differences [Differenzen] in signification and value. For myth, the content of a dream is just as weighty as the content of any waking lived-­experience; for myth, the image of the thing [Sache] or its name is equivalent to the object that it designates.7 This “indifference” becomes fully intelligible only if we consider that in the mythical world there is no logical presentative or significative sense [Zeichensinn] but that pure expressive sense [Ausdruckssinn] still enjoys almost unrestricted sway. For purely according to expression, a being is not apprehended according to what it signifies for empirical “reality” as a totality [Ganz] of causal connections, as a totality [Ganz] of causes and effects. Here the being does not obtain its content [Gehalt] and, so to speak, its weightiness from any mediated consequences that it produces; rather, this sense resides purely in itself. Not what effectuated it but what it “is” in its simple existence and what makes itself known in this existence is what is decisive here. “Appearance” and “effect” [Wirkung], and thus appearance and reality [Wirklichkeit], cannot

76

80

77

the expressive function

be detached here from each other or offset against each other: all the power that a content exerts on mythical consciousness is grounded and contained in the manner, the mode, of appearing as such. From the perspective of such a fundamental view, the relationship between “image” and “thing” [Sache], insofar as the two are distinguished, must actually be reversed. The image must assert a distinctive primacy and priority over the thing [Sache]. For, purely in terms of expression, what “is” in the object is not sublated and annihilated in the image, but rather, it is set forth in it in the most enhanced and most potentized measure. The image frees this being of the expressive from all merely coincidental and accidental determinations and condenses it, as it were, into a single focal point. In the empirical view of the world, the “object” is determined and known by dissecting it backward into its conditions and following it forward into its effects. What it “is,” is only as a single position in a system of such effects, as a link of a causal framework [Gefüge]. Where, however, an event is not thus considered as a mere moment in a thoroughgoing and universal lawful order but is experienced [erleben] in its physiognomic individuality, so to speak – where instead of the analysis and abstraction that are the preconditions of all causal comprehending, pure “vision” [Vision] rather prevails – the very image unlocks the true essential being [Wesenheit] and makes it knowable. All “image magic” rests on the presupposition that in the image the magician is not dealing with a dead imitation of the object but rather that in the images he possesses the being [Wesen], the soul, of the object.8 Anatole France relates in his novel Thaïs, in which he gives an account of “primitive” beliefs and primitive Christianity, how the Christian hermit Paphnuce, after converting the courtesan Thais and burning his clothing, ornaments, and house furnishings, is haunted both while awake and in his dreams by the images of the things he has destroyed. And now he comprehends that the destruction of the outward existence [Existenz] of all these objects remains ineffectual as long as one has not also exorcised and banished the images in which they live on. He cries out to God: Ne permets pas que le fantôme accomplisse ce que n’a point accompli le corps. Quand j’ai triomphé de la chair, ne souffre pas que l’ombre me terrasse. Je connais que je suis exposé présentement à des dangers plus grands que ceux que je courus jamais. J’éprouve et je sais que le



the expressive phenomenon

81

rêve a plus de puissance que la réalité. Et comment en pourrait-­il être autrement, puisqu’il est lui-­même une réalité supérieure? Il est l’âme des choses.9

The “soul of things” signifies here the pure expressive sense with which they grasp onto consciousness and draw it into their spell, and this sense is revealed with greater diversity, force, and purity in dreams and visions than it is in the world of the awake. For in the waking world, pure looking [Schauen] is replaced and displaced by empirical effective action; objects lose their original “look” [Gesicht] and are instead taken only as colorless and formless nuclei for certain causal and teleological relations. In still another respect, however, the figure [Gestalt] world of myth shows us a way to the understanding of the pure expressive phenomena. If we wish to describe this figure [Gestalt] world without theoretical preconception, we must dispense not only with a false concept of the thing but also with a false, or at least insufficient and inadequate, concept of the subject. Nothing seems more usual and more justified than to understand the basic act of mythical consciousness as an act of “personification.” We believe that we have interpreted myth, that we have disclosed its psychological “mechanism,” when we have explained how consciousness succeeds in transforming empirical reality, the reality of things and their attributes, into a reality [Wirklichkeit] of another kind, a reality [Realität] of animated and active subjects. In truth, however, this is to misjudge both the starting point and the end point of mythical consciousness, both its terminus a quo and its terminus ad quem. For mythical consciousness distinguishes itself from theoretical cognition as much in the mode and way it constructs the personal world as in the way it constructs the world of things. Mythical consciousness has its own “category,” a specific view not only of objectivity but of “subjectivity” as well. Myth in no way signifies a mere “overturning” [umschlagen] of the objective view of the world into a subjective view of the world, because this would require both of these two aspects to be present [vorhanden] and determined. It is, however, precisely this determination that forms the actual problem at which myth must work in its own way and according to its basic tendencies. It forms a mode of “setting asunder” [Auseinandersetzung] of I and world: one in which both poles, in which they separate from each other and oppose each other, first obtain their form, their fixed shape [Gestalt].

78

82

79

80

the expressive function

It therefore becomes evident that the representation of the “I,” the representation of the living and active “subject,” does not constitute the beginning but rather a determinate outcome, a result of the mythical process of forming [Formung]. Myth does not start from a finished representation of the I and the soul but is the vehicle that leads to such a representation; it is a spiritual medium by virtue of which “subjective reality” is first discovered and apprehended in its particularity.10 In its most original, truly “primitive” configurations, myth thus knows as little of the concept of a “soul substance” as that of a “thing substance” in the metaphysical sense of the word. Being, corporeal as well as psychic [seelisch], has not yet become solidified; rather, it possesses and preserves a distinctive “fluidity.” Reality is not yet divided up into definite classes of things with characteristic traits established once and for all – nor have any hard and fast dividing lines been drawn between the various spheres of life. Just as there are no permanent substrates for the world of “outward” perception, so too are there no enduring subjects for the world of inner perception. For here too, the basic motive of myth, the motive of “metamorphosis,” prevails. This mythical gestalt shift also draws the “I” into its sphere and absorbs its unity and simplicity. Like the boundary between forms of nature, the boundary between “I” and “you” is a thoroughly fluid one. Life is still a single unbroken stream of becoming: a dynamic flow that only gradually divides in itself and sediments [absetzen] into separate waves. Consequently, although mythical consciousness imprints the form of life on everything it seizes, this type of pan-­animation is not equivalent, from the start, to pan-­ensoulment; at first, life shows itself to be vague and fluent, a thoroughly “pre-­animistic” feature. It preserves a noteworthy indifference between personal and impersonal, between the form of the “you” and that of the mere “it.” There is nowhere an “it” as a dead object, a “mere” thing; on the other hand, the “you” likewise possesses no sharply determined, strictly individual face [Gesicht] but is open to losing itself at any moment [Augenblick] in the representation of a mere it, an impersonal general force.11 Every single feature in the intuitively lived, experienced reality has magical features and references; every event, however ephemeral and vaporous, has its magical-­mythical “sense.” A whisper or rustling in the woods, a shadow darting over the ground, a flicker or shimmer on the water are daemonic in their nature and origin; however,



the expressive phenomenon

83

only very gradually does this pandaemonium divide into separate and clearly distinguishable figures [Gestalten], into personal spirits and gods. All intuitive actuality is surrounded by a breath of magic, enshrouded in a magical atmosphere; however, precisely this common atmosphere in which it is and lives prevents its individual particularity from coming to appearance and fully unfolding. Everything is connected with everything else by invisible threads, and this connection, this universal “sympathy,” preserves a vaporous, strangely impersonal character. “It befits itself, it gives itself up [sich anzeigen], it warns”:12 without that, there must necessarily stand behind it a personal subject; without that, behind the warning, in any clear recognizable outline, there stands a warner. Rather, the whole of reality, far more than any individual part of it, constitutes this subject. Precisely because this constant pointing [Hinweisen] and indicating [Anzeigen] forms the element [Element] in which mythical consciousness is and lives, it requires no special explanation; the pure act, the function of this showing and signifying, stands as it were on itself, requiring no reduction to a personal substrate, to an agent. However difficult it may sometimes be to inspect this basic structure of the mythical world from the standpoint of our worked-­out theoretical consciousness and from its separation of the inner and outward, the subjective and objective, its particular nature stands out sharply and clearly as soon as we turn to a different domain – as soon as we situate ourselves in the sphere of the pure expressive phenomena. For we at once encounter here that distinctive duality that myth shows us in its primary configurations. Where the “sense” of the world is still taken as a pure expressive sense, every appearance itself discloses a determinate “character,” which is not merely disclosed or inferred from it but which belongs to it immediately. It bears in itself the features of somber or joyful, excited or subdued, comforting or fearful. As expressive values and elements, these determinations are inherent to the appearing contents themselves; they are not merely read into them indirectly by way of the subjects that we regard as standing behind the appearance. It is a misapprehension of the pure expressive phenomena when a certain psychological theory makes them originate in a secondary act of interpretation, when it explains them as products of “empathy.” The basic shortcoming of this theory, its πρῶτον ψεῦδος [first falsehood], lies in its reversing the order of phenomenal givenness. It must first kill perception by making it into a complex of

81

84

82

the expressive function

mere sensible contents of sensation in order to then reanimate this dead “matter” of sensation by the act of empathy. The life that is allocated to it in this way is, however, in the end, a mere semblance of life – the work of a psychological illusion. Perception does not possess the character of “liveliness” on its own right; rather, it bears it only from a foreign authority to life [Instanz zu Lehen]. It is overlooked here that perception is in no way immediately given as a totality [Ganze] of sensations but that certain modes of appearing belong to its pure appearance, which are located in an entirely different plane. However, no theory is able to conjure up these modes out of nothing if they were not in some absolutely original way co-­given [mitgegeben] in the content [Gehalt] of perception itself. We actually arrive at the data of “mere” sensation – such as light or dark, warm or cold, rough or smooth – only insofar as we set aside a certain fundamental and originary-­stratum of perception and we demolish it, so to speak, in a certain theoretical intention [Absicht]. No abstraction, regardless of how far it is carried, is able, however, to eliminate and extinguish this stratum as such; it remains what it is and asserts itself for what it is, even if, in pursuit of certain theoretical aims, we must look beyond it and finally “disregard” it altogether. This “disregard” [Absehen] is perfectly justified from the point of view of the purely theoretical intention [Absicht], the intention of constructing an objective order of nature and apprehending its lawfulness; it cannot, however, do away with the world of the expressive phenomena as such. And similarly, we are clearly no longer speaking the language of these phenomena themselves, we are no longer understanding them from their own center, if we take them as mere “epiphenomena,” as additions to the original given alone content of sensation. A certain expressive character is in no way a subjective appendage that is subsequently and, as it were, accidentally added to the “objective” content of sensation; rather, it belongs to the essential consistent existence of perception. This expressive character is hardly “subjective”; it is rather what gives to perception, as it were, its original color of reality [Realität] and makes it into a “perception of reality” [Wirklichkeit]. For every reality that we apprehend is, in its original form, not so much a reality of a certain thing-­ world that stands over against us and confronts us, as it is, rather, the certainty of a living effectiveness that we experience. This access to reality is, however, given to us not in sensation, as a sensible data, but only in



the expressive phenomenon

85

the originary-­phenomenon of expression and is expressive like “understanding” [Verstehen]. Without the fact that an expressive sense reveals [offenbart] itself in certain lived, experiential perceptions, existence would remain silent for us. Reality could never be deduced from perception as the mere factual-­perception if it were not in some way already implied and manifested in a distinctive way by virtue of expressive perception. And this manifestation in no way links the appearance of life immediately to individual subjects, to determinate I-­worlds that face each other in sharp and clear differentiation. What is primarily apprehended here is life as such far more than its separation into individual spheres and its bond with certain individual centers; it is a universal character of reality, not the existence and being-­a-­certain-­way [Dasein und Sosein] of a distinct individual nature [Wesen] that originally “appears” in expressive perception. In all its diversity and vitality, it preserves the character of the “impersonal”; it is always and everywhere an announcement [Kundgabe], but for this very reason, it remains within the phenomenon of announcement as such without need of a determinate substrate for itself. And precisely this throws a new light on the “impersonal” of certain basic and originary-­ configurations of myth. Once again, the “thought-­form” of myth proves here to be closely connected with its “life-­form”; it only reflects, and places before us in objective form, what is contained and grounded in a concrete mode of perception. The relation that exists between the method of phenomenological analysis and the method of a purely objectively directed “philosophy of spirit” presents itself anew in this point and in the greatest urgency. Both are so closely linked with one another and necessarily dependent on one another in that they are always intertwined not only in their positive results, but also inversely, every false or imperfect move in one direction of consideration makes itself felt at once in the opposing side. An inadequate apprehension of the objective consistent existence that is given in the individual symbolic forms always involves the danger 83 that the phenomena in which this consistent existence is grounded will be misapprehended – and on the other hand, every theoretical prejudice that injects itself into the pure description of phenomena endangers our evaluation of the sense content [Sinngehalts] of the forms that result from it. There is above all one category, the use of which has repeatedly complicated and obstructed an unprejudiced interpretation both of the

86

84

the expressive function

pure expressive phenomena and of the unprejudiced apprehension of the basic structure of the mythical world. Both are believed to be justified if they are permitted to arise out of an act of “personification” and be rooted in it. And, indeed, this characterization may first appear appropriate and adequate provided that we consider only the negative aspect of the question. For without doubt, the pure expressive phenomena on the one hand and mythical configurations on the other do not yet show that form of objectivity [Gegenständlichkeit], the form of mere “objectivity” [Sachlichkeit], that is striven for and erected in the construction of the system of theoretical cognition. This factor, however, in no way means that both domains, because they do not possess a distinct thing-­category in the empirical-­theoretical significance of the word, must already be provided with a distinct personality-­category and must necessarily be based on it. For this working out of the opposition itself, the tension that arises between both poles, is achieved only at a certain “height” of spirit and may not simply be relegated to the beginnings, to the primary and “primitive” strata. As far as the mythical world is concerned, we have seen that this tension sets in only where the human ceases merely to accept the reality that surrounds it but actively opposes itself to it and begins actively to form it. To the extent that the different spheres of human doing diverge from one another and are apprehended in their particular sense and value, the initial indeterminacy of mythical sensation recedes, and the intuition of an organized mythical cosmos, the intuition of a world of the gods and a state of the gods begins to arise.13 In the same sense, it is true that the world of expression as such does not from the start include a determinate, clearly developed I-­consciousness. For all lived-­experience, expression is initially nothing other than an enduring [erleiden]; it is far more a being-­gripped than a grasping – and this “receptivity” stands in evident contrast to that kind of “spontaneity” in which all self-­consciousness as such is grounded. If we misapprehend this, we are forced to conclude that animal consciousness, insofar as it is filled and as it were permeated and saturated with expressive lived-­experiences, should for this reason be described as a person-­organized and person-­formed consciousness. This conclusion was drawn most sharply and radically by Vignoli in his Myth and Science. Vignoli, whose theory is constructed on a purely positivist theory of cognition, seeks to understand and interpret myth by



the expressive phenomenon

87

disclosing its biological roots. Myth seems to him a necessary and spontaneous function of consciousness, a function that is variable in its matter, however enduringly consistent in its form. Its empirical universality can be accounted for only if we disclose a constant originary-­disposition of the soul, from which it arises and from which it perpetually draws new force. For the purposes of this requirement, Vignoli wants to subject to careful examination the simplest and elementary acts of spirit, in their physical-­psychical interconnection, in order . . . to catch out the ground-principle that inevitably involves the genesis of myth with necessity, the initial source from which it is diffused by subsequent reflex efforts in various times and varying forms.

It now appears, however, that if we wish to expose this generally valid principle, this real “a priori” of the mythical, we cannot stop at an analysis of human sensation, perception, and representing. Our path leads us back one step further in the series of organic lived-­forms. Even in the animal world there prevails an urge to vitalize and to “personify” in some way every sensible influence that the animal undergoes from outside: For the animal every sensible sensation, . . . in the form in which it comes to consciousness, . . . is immediately closely connected with the representation of something living, as it corresponds to the animal’s own inner life. The animal preserves from its life – even if this only enigmatically comes to consciousness – the drama of actions, sensations, and drives, of hope and fear. . . . The lively sensation proper to the animal, which dominates its interiority, . . . is transferred to all bodies and appearances of nature that outwardly draw its attention. Thus, every form, every object, every appearance of the outside world becomes vivified and animated by the intrinsic consciousness and personal psychical faculty of the animal itself. The bodies and appearances of nature are for the animal not real objects [Objecte] as they are in themselves, but it is sure that they are grasped as virtual living and acting objects that can be personally useful or personally dangerous.14

This psychic [seelisch] drama from which myth is born thus has its point of departure not in human consciousness but already in animal

85

88

86

the expressive function

consciousness: already here an impulse [Drang] to apprehend all existence [Dasein] in general, of which the animal becomes aware in the form of personal existence [Existenz], prevails. The human is not the only nor the first being [Wesen] whose world stands under the rule and control of this impulse [Drang]; the human merely transforms the unformed, unconscious drive toward “personification” into a conscious and reflective act. In support of this thesis, Vignoli adduces a large amount of empirical data that he gathered in his observations of animals over a period of years. Admittedly, if we examine the range of these observations, they show only one thing with certainty: how predominate the pure expressive character in the perceptive world of animals is and how decidedly it outweighs any “objective” thing-­property-­perception.15 They do not, however, prove that for the animal these characteristics as such would already have to adhere to a determinate “subject” or even to a clearly apprehended “person” and that they are generally experienceable only indirectly via this “bearer” [Träger]. In the positing and presupposition of such a subject, a synthesis of a different kind and of a different spiritual origin is obviously effected. One thing, however, must be admitted and stressed: this synthesis can also not simply spring from nothing; it cannot emerge from a kind of generatio aequivoca [spontaneous generation]. It is connected with a basic tendency of sense perception, and it remains attached and indebted even where it rises far above it. As for the thought, which according to Vignoli determines the construction of animal consciousness – the thought that “every cosmic reality [Realität] . . . is endowed with the same life and free will as the immediate manifestation of the animal’s own interiority seem to it to possess”16 – of course, we cannot award and confer to the animal, any more than we can to the human, the appearance of the total-­image [Gesamtbild] of life from the beginning in this minted [geprägt] form, in the form of conscious and free will. When the human too first grasped life, it appears far more as a whole-­of-­life than as an individually formed and individually delimited life of individual subjects. Initially, it bears within itself neither the features of I-­constancy nor those of thing-­constancy: it does not immediately sediment [absetzen] into either an identical subject nor into a permanent object. If we seek to show the origin of this composition, of this differentiation and organization, we find ourselves led beyond the



the expressive phenomenon

89

domain of expression into that of presentation, beyond the spiritual region in which myth is preeminently at home and into the region of language. Only in the medium of language do the infinite diversity and the surging multiformity [Vielgestalt] of expressive lived-­experiences begin to be fixed; only in language do they obtain “figure [Gestalt] and name.” The proper name of the god becomes the origin of the figure of the personal gods, and through its mediation of the representation of the personal god, the representation of the human’s own I, of its “self,” is first found and secured.17 This comparison between the achievement of language and that of myth seems, however, to awaken and intensify a misgiving that must have arisen earlier in our consideration. Since our aim is purportedly an understanding of the construction of the theoretical world, what – it may be asked – justifies us in lingering amid the formations [Gebilde] of mythical consciousness? Must not every theoretical view of the world that can lay claim to the name begin by dismissing these formations [Gebilde] and renouncing them once and for all without reservation? We can gain access to the realm of cognition only by freeing ourselves from the texture of dreams in which myth entangles us, only by seeing through its image-­world as a mere world of semblance. And once this access has been gained, once the realm of truth has been disclosed as such, what sense is there in looking back from it to the realm of semblance? Language is in this respect by no means equivalent to the question of myth. For it is obvious that language participates in a distinctive and independent way in the configuration and organization of the theoretical world. Even science cannot dispense with its collaboration – it too must always start from the preliminary stage of linguistic concepts, from which it detaches itself only gradually to attain the form of the pure concepts of thinking. In reference to myth, however, the cut constitutes itself more sharply and more inexorably. This cut leads to an unsublatable separation, to an authentic and definitive crisis that consciousness itself undergoes. The image-­world of myth and that of theoretical cognition cannot exist with one another and cannot be co-­located in the same space of thinking. Rather, both comport themselves so as to stringently exclude each other: the beginning of one is equivalent to the end of the other. Just as in the Greek myth, a bite from the apple of Proserpina implicates the soul for good in the realm of shadows and prevents it from returning to the light of the day, so too

87

90

88

the expressive function

once the day has dawned here, once theoretical consciousness and theoretical perception are born, no return to the world of mythical shadows would seem possible. For what can such a return be but a regression, a slipping down into a primitive and overcome stage of spirit? As necessary as this conclusion may seem if we limit ourselves to purely abstract considerations regarding the form of myth and the form of science, it contains great difficulties as soon as we consider and evaluate both from the standpoint of a universal “phenomenology of spirit.” For the world of “spirit” forms a thoroughly concrete unity: so much so that the most extreme oppositions in which it moves appear as somehow mediated oppositions. In this world, there is no sudden rift [Riß] or leap [Sprung], no hiatus by which it separates into disparate “parts.” Rather, every figure through which spiritual consciousness as such passes seems to belong in some way to its permanent and enduring consistent existence. The surpassing of a certain form is itself made possible not by the vanishment, the total eradication, of this form but by its preservation within the continuity of the whole of consciousness. For what constitutes the unity and totality [Ganzheit] of spirit is precisely that there is no absolute “past” in it; rather, it is still concerned in itself with the past, and it preserves the past in itself as the present [Gegenwart]. As Hegel writes on this connection: The life of present spirit [gegenwärtigen Geistes] is a cycle of stages which on the one hand still exist next to one another and only on the other hand appears as past. The moments [Momente]: elements] that spirit seems to have left behind it, it has in its present depths [gegenwärtigen Tiefe].18

If what this basic view asserts were correct, then we would not be able to believe that even so distinctive and paradoxical a formation [Gebilde] as mythical “perception” is totally lost or superfluous within the general picture [Gesamtbild] that theoretical consciousness projects [entwirft] of reality. It must be expected that the basic tendency that plainly dominates this perception will not be absolutely extinguished, however much it is marginalized and modified by other modes of seeing. The extinction [Untergang] of the contents of mythical consciousness in no way likewise signifies the necessary extinction [Untergang] of the spiritual function from



the expressive phenomenon

91

which they stem. Nothing of the mythical formations [Gebilde] need be salvaged in the reality of experience and in the sphere of its objects, and yet it can still be shown that the potency of spirit, whose first concrete manifestation [Ausprägung] was myth, asserts itself in a certain respect and that within the new “dimension” of theoretical self-­consciousness, it lives on and continues to effectively act in a new shape, in a kind of metamorphosis. At what point in our empirical worldview this continuing effect is most readily found becomes clear as soon as we recall that we have taken not thing-­perception but the pure expressive perception as the actual correlate of myth. For now, the question is whether, in the progress and development of theoretical consciousness, this pure expressive perception is ever wholly displaced by the “objective” tendency of perception or whether it claims an independent right side by side with the “objective” tendency of perception and possesses a domain of its own whose construction and determination it cannot do without. As a matter of fact, this domain can be precisely identified: it is nothing more and nothing less than the form of knowledge in which reality is not so much based on objects of nature as based on the appearance of other “subjects.” This knowledge, the knowledge of the “other psyche” [Fremdseelisch], has admittedly – however natural it inserts itself into the whole of our cognitive experience and appears as an indispensable and “self-­evident” component of it – always formed the real crux of epistemological and psychological reflection. New theories are forever being devised to explain and justify it – in every case, however, it appears that the degree of certainty to which all these explanations can lay claim is far from approaching the certainty that is already present in the simple phenomenological evidence. Instead of confirming or grounding this evidence, theory has rather almost without exception been a denial of this evidence. For, as different as their points of departure were and as various as the paths taken, these attempted explanations all agreed in one basic presupposition and in one determinate methodological aim. They all started from the assumption that all knowledge which does not refer to, and is not limited to, one’s own states of consciousness must be mediated by “outward” perception, and furthermore, they all recognized “outward” perception as present [vorhanden] and valid only in the form of thing perception. To reduce the perception of the “you” to the general

89

92

90

the expressive function

form of thing perception thus appeared as the true problem by which the theory constantly exerted itself anew. However, this very approach forms rather a πρῶτον ψεῦδος [first falsehood]. For to think of the whole of the experienceable as a complex that either consists in tangible [dinglich] contents or must necessarily be pieced together out of them as components is itself an arbitrary theoretical narrowing of the pure horizon of lived-­ experience. In truth, within this horizon, expressive perception not only signifies, in contrast to thing perception, the psychologically earlier, the πρότερον πρὸς ἡμᾶς [first according to us], but also designates an authentic πρότερον τῇ φύσει [first according to nature]. It has its specific form, its own “essential being,” which cannot be described, much less replaced, by categories valid for the determination of entirely other regions of being and sense. Far more clearly and convincingly than in traditional psychology, which has almost always been guided in its descriptions by definite conceptual presuppositions to which it was bound, this form stands out in the mirror of language. It can be immediately recognized here how all perception of “objective” characters originally starts from the apprehension and differentiation of certain “physiognomic” characters, with which, in a manner of speaking, it remains saturated. The linguistic designation of a certain movement, for example, all but conceals this element in itself; instead of describing the form of the movement as such, as the form of an objective spatiotemporal event, the state of affairs is named and linguistically fixed, of which the movement in question is an expression. Klages, who, of all modern psychologists, has most clearly recognized the interconnection that exists here and, in many cases, has been the first to open it up to theoretical understanding: “Quickness,” “slowness,” and if necessary even “abruptness” may be understood in terms of pure mathematics; by contrast “impetus,” “haste,” “inhibition,” “pedantry,” “exaggeration” are just as much names for states of life as for modes of movement, and actually describe the latter by indicating their character. Anyone who wishes to characterize figures of movement and forms of space, finds themself unexpectedly entangled in a characterization of the attributes of the soul, because forms and movements have been experienced [erleben] as appearances of the soul before they are judged by the understanding



the expressive phenomenon

93

from the standpoint of objectivity, and because the linguistic statement of factual concept only takes place through the mediation of the lived-­ experience of impressions.19

Thus, language shows us how that basic psychic-­ spiritual existence [seelisch-­geistige Bestand] from which mythical intuition arises survives long after consciousness has surpassed the narrow limits of this intuition and has advanced to other configurations. The source does not suddenly cease to flow; it is merely conveyed into another and broader channel. For if we were to think that the original source domain of myth completely withered and dried up, that the pure expressive, lived-­experiences were quite simply extinguished and annihilated in their distinctiveness and particularity, then vast and massive domains of “experience” would lie fallow. There is no doubt that not only the knowledge of things as physical objects but also the knowledge of “other subjects” [fremden Subjekte] originally belongs to this experience. No form of reflection, of mediated inference, can create this knowledge – it is not for the issue [Sache] of reflection to bring into being the stratum of lived-­experience in which it is rooted but only for this issue to interpret it theoretically. It is a strange presumption on the part of theory, a kind of intellectual hybris, if it believes itself able to not only demonstrate the distinctive mode of certainty that is given here but also produce it. What is thus produced remains in the end a phantom; a simulacrum that would like to simulate the reality of life in which, however, no independent vital force is inherent. Indeed, in the end almost all the well-­known “explanations” of the knowledge of other subjects amounts to nothing more and nothing less than a sheer illusionism. What distinguishes these theories from one another is only the manner in which they describe the illusion and in which they think it emerged. Sometimes it is viewed as a kind of logical deception, other times as a kind of aesthetic deception; sometimes it is described as a sophistication of reason, other times as a sophistication of the imagination. What these explanations fail to appreciate, however, is that the sense and content [Gehalt] of the pure expressive function as such cannot be attested to by way of a single sphere of spiritual configuration, because as a truly general and, as it were, world-­encompassing function, it precedes the differentiation in the various domains of sense and precedes

91

94

92

the expressive function

the divergence of myth and theory, of logical reflection and aesthetic intuition. Its certainty and its “truth” are, in a manner of speaking, pre-­ mythical, pre-­logical, and pre-­aesthetical; it forms the common ground soil [Boden] from which all these configurations have in some way sprung and to which they remain attached. And this is, of course, why this truth seems to slip through our fingers when we attempt to fix it – that is, when we attempt to “prescribe” it in advance to a single domain and designate and determine it exclusively by means of the categories of this domain. If we start from the standpoint of logic and theoretical cognition, it seems possible to secure the unity of cognition only by taking all knowledge, regardless of what kind of objects it may refer to, as strictly homogeneous. The difference [Verschiedenheit] in the content of the known should not and must not include a difference [Verschiedenheit] in the principle of certainty or in its methodology. Thus, the demand that knowledge of the “other I” [fremden Ich] be subject to the same conditions on which the knowledge of nature, the world of empirical objects, is based would appear justified and reasonable. Because the object of nature is actually and truly constituted only in the thought of the lawfulness of nature and because the object and lawfulness belong together and correlatively refer to each other in the realm of objectivizing cognition, the same must be valid for that form of experience by virtue of which the knowledge of other subjects is constructed for us. This knowledge, too, must above all be secured by a generally valid principle. And where are we to find this principle [Prinzip] if not in the principle [Grundsatz] of causality, which is the actual a priori for all cognition of reality and which appears to be the only bridge by which we can transcend the narrowly circumscribed region [Bezirk] of “immanence,” of “one’s own” [eigen] phenomena of consciousness? Although, on the whole, Dilthey’s view of the human sciences [Geisteswissenschaften] points in a different direction, even he was at first “positivistic” enough to regard this reasoning as cogent and to make it the foundation of his epistemological considerations. According to Dilthey, the belief in the “reality of the outer world” – the world of bodies in space as well as the reality of other [fremd] subjects – is rooted in an analogy to which he essentially gives the form of a causal inference. We never directly “become aware” of the reality of other subjects, but



the expressive phenomenon

95

rather, we can only posit this reality mediately, through a “transference”: this principle almost obtains for him the dignity of an axiom;20 however, of course, his own concrete view of the nature [Wesen] and structure of the spiritual contradicts it at almost every step. Even when we thus disregard the construction of a concrete spiritual-­historical reality in order to position ourselves exclusively on the ground soil [Boden] of the pure theory of cognition, even considered from this standpoint, the theory of the “conclusion by analogy” contains a noteworthy paradox. For if what this theory asserted were correct, then there would exist a principle that possessed a truly universal significance for the whole of our worldview and for the whole of our apprehension of reality and that was posited on the narrowest conceivable epistemological basis. If the certainty of the “other [fremd] I” were based on nothing other than a chain of empirical observations and inductive inferences – if it were grounded on the supposition that the same or similar expressive movements as we perceive in our lived body appeared also in other physical bodies and on the supposition that the same “effects” must always correspond to the same “causes” – then it would be hard to conceive of a conclusion with so little foundation. Both as a whole and in its details, this conclusion proves on closer consideration to be thoroughly vulnerable. For one thing, it is a well-­known epistemological principle that although we can infer like effects from like causes, we cannot conversely infer like causes from like effects, since one and the same effect can be produced by different causes. Apart from this objection, however, a conclusion of this kind could at best provide the basis for a provisional assumption, a mere probability. The “belief” in the reality of the other [fremd] I would then, as far as its purely epistemological dignity is concerned, be grounded in the same way as the belief in the existence of light ether, for example – though with the highly important and methodologically crucial difference that the latter “hypothesis” is constructed on incomparably sharper and more exact observations then the first. Thus, any variety of epistemological skepticism – down to the most radical working out of the thesis of solipsism – would need only to attack this “conclusion by analogy” to be certain of success. The certainty that the reality of life is not limited to the sphere of one’s own existence and one’s own phenomena of consciousness [Bewußtseinsphänomene] would itself be a purely “discursive” cognition

93

96

the expressive function

and one, moreover, possessing a highly questionable origin as well as a highly questionable validity. No doubt considerations of this sort made it necessary to shift the center of inquiry from the domain of the intellect, from the region of the “logical” in general, to another field. In place of a purely “discursive” grounding, an “intuitive” grounding was sought; instead of in the mediacy of reflection, one was sought in the immediacy and originality of “feeling.” The certainty of the other [fremd] I must – it has been stressed – be grounded not in deductions and inferences, not in a sum of mental operations, but rather in an original mode of “lived-­experience.” Theodor Lipps puts forward the form of “ ‘co-­lived-­experience’ or ‘re-­ lived-­experience’  ” [“Miterlebens” oder “Nacherlebens”] as an example of such a lived-­experience. In it, and in it alone, he asserts, is the possibility of a “you” and its reality opened up to the I. This in turn implies, however, that this reality can never be an original but only a borrowed reality: The other [  fremd] psychological individual is . . . created out of me. The other’s interiority is taken from mine. The other [  fremd] individual or I is the product of a projection, a reflection, a radiation of my self (or that which I experience [erleben] in me, through the occasion of the sensible perception of a foreign [ fremd] corporeal appearance) into this very sensible appearance, a distinctive kind of duplication of me.21 94

Thus, once again, the knowledge of the existence and of the constitution of the “other [fremd] individual” is traced back to a process of mirroring [Spiegelung], to a “reflecting” mediation. This process as such has not changed; only the refractive medium has changed. However, is the goal that this theory sets for itself really achieved – has it in this way obtained a “nearness of life” [Lebensnähe] by shifting the center of gravity from logic to aesthetics? What assures us that this other [fremd] I that we obtain from our own being and project outward is not more than a phantasm, a kind of psychological fata morgana [superior mirage]? If we follow the threads of this theory, the other [fremd] I appears as a strange hybrid, composed of elements [Elemente] of a diverse source and epistemological dignity. The theory is based primarily on sense sensation, because the starting point for the act of empathy is the perception of material properties and changes, which are apprehended purely as



the expressive phenomenon

97

such, as “merely physical” contents. It is not doubted that the world is originally given in this “merely physical” way; it is only stressed that this primary appearance is not sufficient, that a new phenomenon, the phenomenon of life and animation, must be produced by a distinctive and basic act. Through acts of sympathy [Mitgefühl: feeling with] and vicarious feeling [Nachgefühl: feeling according to, following], through the act of “instinctive sympathy,” reality is redeemed from its initial mechanical rigidity and is transformed into a spiritual-­psychic [geistig-­seelisch] reality. And yet, if this transformation is indebted to the empathy of our own I in the “matter” of mere sensation, then the “appearance” of life is degraded into an aesthetic semblance. According to this basic view, the world appears animated only as long as it is veiled, as it were, in the twilight of aesthetic intuition – however, under the sharp beam of cognition, this illusion must be dispelled. It must now become evident that where we believed we grasped and obtain life itself, only an idol of life has been given. This consequence can be avoided only if we uncover the circulus vitiosus in which the theory of “conclusions by analogy” as well as the theory of empathy move. Both assume as a real fact what is itself the product of a certain theoretical interpretation; both accept as given the divorce [Scheidung] of the actual, its dualistic separation [Trennung], into an “outside” and an “inside,” into “physical” and “psychic” being, without inquiring into the conditions of the possibility of this separation itself. The phenomenological analysis must here reverse the order and direction of consideration. Instead of asking by what processes of logical inference or of aesthetic projection the psyche becomes psyche, it must rather follow perception back to the point where it is not a thing perception but a pure expressive perception, and where, accordingly, it is inside and outside in one. If any problem exists here at all, then it is concerned not with “internalization” [Verinnerlichung] but rather with the unremitting “external realization” [Entäußerung] by which the original expressive characters gradually become objective “characteristic traits” and determinations and properties of things. This “external realization” [Entäußerung] increases to the degree that the world of expression transitions into another form – as it moves toward the world of “presentation” and finally toward the world of pure “signification.” As long as it persists purely within itself, it remains self-­centered in itself and unchallenged.

95

98

96

the expressive function

It is not necessary to infer here from the purely expressive characters a reality that is evinced in them; rather, it is they themselves that bear the immediate color of reality. For at this phase of its development, they alone completely fill consciousness. There exists no other measure of being, of objective “validity,” that could dispute or impoverish this claim. Where life persists entirely within the phenomenon of expression, it contents itself with that phenomenon – it has not yet comprehended the thought of the “world” as a form other than as a totality [Gesamtheit] of possible expressive lived-­experiences – as their stage and scene, as it were. Over against this initial aspect of the world, the thing concept and causal concept of theoretical cognition create a new view and a new definition of “being.” If we take this definition as unique and exclusive, as the only possible definition, then we destroy all the bridges to the pure expressive world. What was previously a phenomenon now becomes a problem – and a problem for which no acuteness of cognition, no finely spun theory, would ever be fully adequate. Once the phenomenon as such has concealed itself from view because the plane of vision in which it was originally visible has given way to another horizon, then no force of mediated inference can ever bring it back to us. We cannot find the way back by heaping up or refining the instruments of theoretical thinking – we can find it only by penetrating more deeply into the general nature [Wesen] of this thinking and by learning to understand its conditionality as well as its uncontestable right and necessity. Once we have clearly apprehended and understood the direction in which this thinking continues to progress, it becomes evident that and why the world of expression cannot be sought nor found in this direction. No reinforcement or refinement of the instruments of pure theory will bring us any further unless we change our line of sight. The immediate ingenuous sense of expression must be distinguished from the sense of the theoretical cognition of the world; it must be restored in integrum [original condition], before the first step can be taken toward its “explanation.” Scheler’s achievement was to have clearly recognized this path, to have disclosed through his sharp critique the original phenomenological weaknesses inherent in the empathy theory no less than in the analogy theory. In his own theory, he seeks to avoid both Scylla and Charybdis. His theory does not attempt to “explain” the certainty of the “other [fremd] I” by something other, that lies before it; nor does it attempt to reduce



the expressive phenomenon

99

it to this other. Rather, it takes the certainty, it takes the “you-­evidence,” not as a datum that can be further reduced with which contemplation must begin. The basic lacuna of the theory of empathy as well as the theory of conclusion by analogy, according to Scheler, is that in both the phenomenological standpoint is abandoned entirely and a more realistic standpoint is supposed – and indeed covertly supposed. More than before, however, the philosopher must above all take care not to look to what is given but what, according to some presupposed realistic theory, “ ‘can’ be ‘given.’  ”22 What is “possible” within such a theory must not be made into the measure of the phenomenally actual. Scheler’s “theory of perception” describes this “reality” such that it consists of expressive units and expressive totalities rather than of qualitatively determined and qualitatively differentiated “sensations.” These totalities cannot be explained merely as a sum of mere color qualities combined with unities of sense and form, or as gestalts of motion and alteration. Rather, they form a primary and undivided whole, which first acquires a different gestalt by the fact that it can be apprehended in two different “directions of action.” The perceptive lived-­experience can – in the act of so-­called “outer” perception – acquire the function of designating the body of the individual as an object in “nature,” in the physical world; or it may, however, acquire the function of symbolizing an I – either one’s own or that of the other [fremd] – by an act of inner perception. At first, this lived-­experience is, in and for itself, neither an intuition of a “corporeal world” nor an intuition of a “merely psychic [seelisch]” reality. What is apprehended in it is rather a unitary life stream, so to speak, which is still wholly neutral toward the subsequent breaking down into the “physical” and “psychic.” Whether this original neutral originary-­ground [Urgrund] is later configured [gestalten] into the intuition [Anschauung] of a corporeal object or the intuition of a living subject depends essentially on the direction of configuration [Gestaltung], on the form of looking [Schauen] as a “separating vision” [Auseinanderschau] or an “interpenetrating vision” [Ineinanderschau]: Thus, it is first through the different directions of perception – and according to one or the other as is the case – that a sequence of stimulus takes on one unitary formation as an appearance in which the body of the other individual comes to perception (e.g. as an appearance

97

100

the expressive function

which is the intuitive sequence of impressions of our environment [Umwelt]); however, another unitary formation of this sequence of stimulus is given, in which we come to the perception of the I of the other [fremd] individual, i.e., as an appearance that is the intuitive sequence of the expression of the inner world. For this very reason, it is fundamentally impossible to dissect the unity of an “expressive appearance” (e.g. a smile, a menacing or kindly or affectionate look) into a sum, however great, of appearances whose parts would be identical units for a unity of appearance in which we perceive the body, i.e. a unity of impression on behalf of the physical environment. If I pursue the unity of appearance given in the orientation [Einstellung] of outward perception, which might even become a view of any small parts of the body of the individual I will never in any possible combination of these unities find the unity of a “smile” or of an “pleasing” or “menacing gesture.” . . . And so, a quality of redness which lies before my eyes as the coating of a physical cheek will never be the unity of “blushing” in whose redness a sympathetically felt shame seems to “end.”23 98

We shall go no further into the grounding that Scheler provides for his thesis; we will, rather, content ourselves with singling out the one element that is exactly in line with our own investigation and framing of the problem. It is characteristic that Scheler, in order to designate the actual phenomenological difference [Unterschied] between “inner” and “outward” perception, must start not from a difference [Differenz] in the material but from a diversity [Verschiedenheit] of the “symbolic function.” Once again, we find here a confirmation of our basic view that what we call “reality” can never be determined from the standpoint of material alone but that there enters into every mode of positing reality a certain motive of symbolic forming [Formung] that must be recognized as such and distinguished from other motives. In still another and more specific respect, however, Scheler’s investigation is significant for us. For once again, it clearly becomes evident that the “expressive function” is a genuinely originary-­phenomenon, which also asserts its originality and unexchangeable particularity in the construction of theoretical consciousness and theoretical “reality.” If we were to think of this basic function as sublated, the access to the world of “inner experience” would be barred to us – the bridge which alone can lead us into the



the expressive phenomenon

101

sphere of the “you” would be cut. Every attempt to replace the primary function of expression by other “higher” functions, whether intellectual or aesthetic, leads only to inadequate surrogates, which can never achieve what is demanded of them. Such “higher” functions can be effective only insofar as they already presuppose the primary stratum of expressive lived-­experience in its absolutely originary [originär] and original form.24 Certainly this stratum is considerably modified and transformed as soon as we advance from the mythical world to the aesthetic world and from the aesthetic world to the world of theoretical cognition; however, it is not in all this totally eliminated. In the progress of theoretical-­scientific cognition, the purely expressive function loses ground [Boden] – the pure “image” of life is transposed into the form of a tangible existence and into tangible-­causal interconnections. It can, however, never entirely enter into this form nor perish in it, because if it did so, not only would the mythical world of daemons and gods disappear but the basic phenomenon of “livingness in general” would vanish with it. We thus see that the basic motive of consciousness, which we have recognized as the actual organon of the mythical world, intervenes at a decisive point in the construction of the reality of experience. That we believe that we know and apprehend this reality as twofold, “outward” and “inner,” “physical” and “psychic” [psychisch], is not because we in some way “insert” psychic [seelisch] being and events into the consistent existence of the thing-­world. It is, rather, the one originally given sphere of life that in itself is differentiated and that, by virtue of this differentiation, is more and more confined. By virtue of this process, the world of objects, the world of “nature” and “natural laws,” becomes correlated with the appearances of life; while at the same time they can never entirely absorb these appearances into this correlation and thereby be able to dispose of them. The paths of “subjective” and “objective” analysis lead here to one and the same goal. Scheler essentially took the first road: as a phenomenologist, he sought to work out the content [Gehalt] of I-­consciousness as well as “other-­consciousness” [Fremdbewußtseins]. In so doing, he took consciousness in its fully developed form: he started from the worldview of “outer” and “inner” experience to occasionally look backward and draw more “primitive” configurations of consciousness into the sphere of consideration. We, however, had to take the opposite direction given

99

102

100

the expressive function

our general framing of the problem. We had to begin with the characterization of the mythical world as a formation [Gebilde] of “objective spirit” in order, by way of a “reconstruction,” to arrive at the stratum of consciousness that corresponds to this formation [Gebilde]. Only when the results of both methods of consideration illuminate and confirm each other can we gain the double perspective in which the purely expressive lived-­experience will reveal its dimension of depth. From the standpoint of a purely psychological consideration, it remains a kind of paradox when Scheler defends the thesis that other-­consciousness [Fremd-­ bewußtsein] is earlier than I-­consciousness, that perception of the you precedes that of the I. For as soon as we abandon ourselves exclusively to introspection, the method of psychological “self-­observation,” and confide in it alone, everything that is apprehended in it and through it seems to be placed within the sphere of one’s own self. Seemingly, the I must in some way always be “pre-­given” here before a world – be it the world of outward objects or the world of other [fremd] subjects – can open up to it. The state of affairs presents itself differently if we start from a consideration of the symbolic forms and in particular from the consideration of myth. For perhaps nothing is so characteristic of the mythical worldview as the fact that within it the knowledge of “one’s own I,” of a strictly individual “self” insofar as such a knowledge is present, stands not at the beginning but at the end. The presupposition that the theory of cognition of “psychological idealism” has so often set forth as self-­evident – the assumption that originally only our own states of consciousness can be given and that it is only through them, by inference, that the reality of other worlds of lived-­experience and the reality of a corporeal nature can be acquired – is shown to be thoroughly problematic as soon as we glance at the structure of mythical phenomena. Here, the I is in itself only insofar as it is at the same time in its counterpart and only insofar as it is related to this counterpart, to a “you.” Insofar as it knows itself, it knows itself only as a point of reference in this basic and originary relation [Urrelation]. Other than in this mode of being directed toward, of intention toward other centers of life, the I is nowhere in possession of itself. It is no thing-­like substance, which can be thought of as existing in total isolation, separate from all other things in space, but acquires its content, its being-­for-­itself, only by knowing itself to be



the expressive phenomenon

103

with others in one world and by distinguishing itself from others within this unity. As Scheler stresses: Thus, the situation is not such that we would have to construct out of the “initially” given material of our own lived-­experiences our image of other [  fremd] lived-­experiences, in order then . . . to insert these lived-­ experiences into the corporeal appearance of others; rather, a stream of lived-­experiences “initially” flows that is indifferent in respect to the I-­you and that contains, undivided and blended together, the factual one’s own and the other [Fremd] in undifferentiated mixture; and in this stream there gradually forms the clearly configured eddies that slowly draw new elements [Elemente] of the stream into their circles and in this process are correlated with successive and very gradually differentiated individuals.25

Our study of the form of the mythical “I-­consciousness” has everywhere given us the most striking examples and evidence of this process. In myth, we can still look directly into the becoming of the more stable eddies that gradually detach themselves from the continuum of the life stream. We can follow how, from the whole-­of-­life, from its undifferentiated totality, which along with the human world also contains the world of animals and plants, a being of “one’s own” [eigen] and also a form proper [eigen] to the human rises up and separates out only slowly – and how within this being the “reality” of the genus and the species always precedes that of the individual. From such configurations of cultural consciousness and the law of sequence that is visible in them, we learn to apprehend and understand the basic features of individual consciousness more sharply. As much as it is difficult to recognize and interpret in the consideration of the individual, soul appears here, as Plato said, as though “written in large letters.” It is only in the great creations of cultural consciousness that the “becoming of the I” can truly be discerned. For the human matures to the consciousness of its I only in its spiritual deeds; the human possesses its self only when instead of remaining within the ever-­identical series of lived-­experiences, it divides the series and configures it. And only in this image of the configured reality of lived-­ experience does the human find itself as “subject,” as a monadic center of multiform existence.

101

104

102

103

the expressive function

In myth, this act of turning inward [Innenwendung] and becoming aware [Innewerdung] can be followed step for step. The primary kind of mythical “givenness” consists in the fact that the human is divided and torn between the manifold outward impressions, each bearing a determinate magical-­mythical character. Each of these impressions takes up with its existence the whole of human consciousness and draws it into its spell, each imprinting its own color and mood [Stimmung]. At first, the I has nothing to oppose to this imprint; it is still unable to change it, so the I can only accept it and in this act of acceptance become its prisoner. It becomes a plaything caught between all the expressive elements that present themselves in certain individual appearances and that assault it suddenly and without opposition. These elements follow one another without fixed order and without transition; unpredictably, the various formations [Gebilde] change their mythical “visage” [Antlitz]. Abruptly, the impression of the homelike, familiar, sheltering, and protective can transition into its opposite – that is, into the inaccessible, terrifying, monstrous, and gruesome.26 As Usener has shown by his distinction between the “gods of the moment” and the “special gods,” reality is “daemonic” in this wholly indeterminate sense long before it becomes a realm of determinate daemons, delimited from one another and endowed with personal properties and characteristics.27 This occurs when the confusion of diverse, swiftly changing impressions gradually loosens and thickens into figures [Gestalten] where each one bears a determinate essential being-­in-­itself. From the elementary mythical lived-­experiences that rise up out of nothing and dissolve into nothing there now emerges something resembling the unity of a character. The pure expressive phenomena as such still preserve their old strength; they enter, however, into a new and closer relation with one another; they fuse into formations [Gebilde] of a higher order. The expression is not only lived but is, as it were, characterologically evaluated. It is by determinate, relatively constant physiognomic features that the daemon or god is recognized and distinguished from others. And what myth begins in this direction is completed by language and art; for the god acquires full individuality only through the name and image of the god. Thus, the intuition of its self [seiner selbst] as a determinate, clearly delimited individual being [Einzelwesen] is not the starting point from which the human progressively constructs its comprehensive view of reality; rather, this intuition is only the end, only the mature



the expressive phenomenon

105

fruit, of a creative process in which all the diverse basic energies of spirit operate and in which they intervene [eingreifen] reciprocally in each other.

ENDNOTES 1 [Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 104.] 2 Cf. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 2, 7ff. 3 Kurt Koffka, Die Grundlagen der psychischen Entwicklung. Eine Einführung in die Kinderpsychologie (Osterwieck am Harz, 1921), 94ff. See analogous observations and conclusions in Karl Bühler, Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes (2nd ed., Jena: Fischer, 1921), 83ff. Also, in Clara Stern and William Stern, Die Psychologie der frühen Kindheit bis zum sechsten Lebensjahre (Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1914), 312. [Clara Stern and William Stern, Psychology of Early Childhood Up to the Sixth Year of Age, trans. Anna Barwell (New York: H. Holt and Company, 1924).] 4 Wolfgang Köhler, “Zur Psychologie des Schimpansen,” Psychologische Forschung, I (1922), 27f., 39. 5 Ibid. 6 For further details, see Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 2, 55ff. and 76ff. and my Language and Myth, 75ff. 7 For further details, see Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 2, 48ff. 8 Cf. Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge, Egyptian Magic (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1899), 65: The Egyptians . . . believed that it was possible to transmit to the figure of any man or woman or animal or living creature the soul of the being which it represented and its qualities and attributes. The statue of a god in a temple contained the spirit of the god which it represented, and from time immemorial the people of Egypt believed that every statue and figure possessed an indwelling spirit. 9 Anatole France, Thaïs (Paris: Calmann-­Lévy, 1920), 264f. [Do not let the phantom accomplish that which the body has not accomplished. When I triumphed over the flesh, suffer not the shadows to overthrow me. I know that I am now exposed to greater dangers than I ever ran. I feel and know that the dream has more power than the reality. And how could it be otherwise since it is itself but a higher reality? It is the soul of things.] 10 For further details, see Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 2, 197ff. 11 Cf. the discussion and documentation of the idea of the mana in Language and Myth, 51ff.; and in Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 2, 199ff.

106

the expressive function

12 [Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Faust, line 11408: Es eignet sich, es zeigt sich an, es warnt.] 13 For further details, see Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 2, 232ff. and 249ff. 14 Tito Vignoli, Mito e Scienza, 1879, German trans., Mythus und Wissenschaft (Leipzig: f. A. Brockhaus, 1880), 5ff. and 44ff. 15 This “primacy of expressive lived-­experience,” which seems to be determining and typical for the animal consciousness, has been borne out by recent work in animal psychology, particularly by the observations and penetrating investigations of Pfungst. By abundant observations – which have so far not been published in their entirety – Pfungst has shown that a great number of the “feats of intelligence” commonly attributed to the higher animals are in reality achievements of pure expression, that they are based not on inferences and intellectual processes but rather on the extremely fine feeling that animals possess for certain involuntary expressive movements of the human. 16 Cf. Vignoli, Mythus und Wissenschaft, 49. 17 For further details, see my Language and Myth, 17ff., 42ff. 18 G. W. F. Hegel, “Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte,” in Sämmtliche Werke, vol. 9 (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1840), 98. 19 Ludwig Klages, Ausdrucksbewegung und Gestaltungskraft (Leipzig: Barth, 1923), 18. 20 Cf. Wilhelm Dilthey, “Ideen über eine beschreibende und zergliedernde Psychologie,” in Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (Berlin: Verlag der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1894). 21 Theodor Lipps, Die ethischen Grundfragen. Zehn Vorträge (2nd ed., Hamburg and Leipzig: L. Voss, 1905), 16f. 22 Cf. Max Scheler, Wesen und Formen der Sympathie (2nd ed., Bonn: Verlag von Friedrich Cohen, 1923), 282. 23 Ibid., 304ff. 24 Scheler soundly remarks the following in opposition to the “empathy theory”: It is impossible to say on what datum the process of empathy into one’s own I should be based. Would, for example, any optical contents whatever suffice? Certainly not. For we do not ‘feel into’ any optical contents whatever. They say optical contents of ‘expressive movements’ or at least of the actions of some animated being [Wesen] are necessary. This answer, however, does not advance matters. That optical images of certain movements are images of expressive movements is an insight which presupposes the cognition of the consistent existence of another animated something. To view it as an ‘‘expression’’ is not the cause [Grund] but the consequence of this assumption. (Scheler, Wesen und Formen der Sympathie, 278.) 25 Scheler, Wesen und Formen der Sympathie, 284.



the expressive phenomenon

107

26 As an illustration, I cite a single example taken from Jakob Spieth’s book Die Religion der Eweer in Süd-­Togo (Leipzig: Dieterich’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1911), 7f.: With the arrival of the first settlers of Anvlo, a man must have stood in the jungle before a large, thick monkey-­bread tree. The sight of these trees frightened him. He thus went to a priest in order to have this event interpreted. The answer he received was that that the monkey-­bread tree was a trõ that lives with him and wants to be admired by him. The angst was thus the sign by which that man recognized that a trõ revealed itself to him. 27 For further details, see Cassirer, Language and Myth, 18ff.; Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 2, 249ff.

III THE EXPRESSIVE FUNCTION AND THE MIND-­B ODY-­ PROBLEM [LEIB-­S EELEN-­ PROBLEM] 104

In the pure phenomenon of expression, in the fact that a certain appearance in its simple “givenness” and visibility gives itself to cognition [erkennen] as something likewise inwardly animated [Beseelt], initially and immediately shows us how consciousness can apprehend another reality while at the same time remaining purely with in itself. From where this fact itself originates and how to explain it, this question can no longer be posed, because any solution would necessarily move in a circle. How can the simple phenomenon of expression be comprehended and derived from something that transcends it since expression is itself the vehicle that initiates us to every kind of “transcendence,” to all consciousness of reality [Realität]? A skeptical denial of this original “symbolic character” of perception would cut off all our knowledge of reality at the root – on the other hand, any dogmatic attempt to ground this symbolic character is doomed to failure. We stand here at a point where, as Goethe said, the “most indigenous” and necessary of concepts, the concept of cause



the mind-­b ody-­p roblem

109

and effect, threatens to lead us astray and bring us to disaster,1 because every application of the category of causality to the pure expressive function is unable to explain it and can only obscure it because it robs the pure expressive function of its character as an authentically “originary-­ phenomenon.” However, are we perhaps not running the same risk of obscuring if instead of considering this phenomenon purely for itself and letting it stand and consist in itself, we take it together with others – if we think of it as a species in a genus? Can we look at “expression” as a particular mode and direction of “symbolism” without misjudging its particularity, its irreplaceable particular nature? Does such classification not weight it down with a problem from which expression in itself is totally and happily exempt? For its distinctive privilege is precisely that it does not admit of a difference [Differenz] between “image” and “thing” [Sache], the “sign” [Zeichen] and the “designated” [Bezeichnet]. In expression, there does not exist a separation between what an appearance as “mere sensible” existence is and a distinct spiritual-­mental content [geistig-­seelischen Gehalt] that appearance mediately gives to cognition. It is its own being 105 [Wesen] toward manifestation, and nevertheless, with this manifestation, we are and remain place after place within the interior [Ort für Ort im Innern]. Here there is neither kernel nor shell; there is no “first” and “second,” no “one” and “other.” Consequently, if we define the concept of “symbolism” in such a way that we limit it to those cases in which precisely this differentiation between “mere” image and the “matter itself” [Sache selbst] emerges clearly and in which this differentiation as such is apprehended and worked out, we shall find ourselves beyond any doubt in a region to which this concept can have no application. We have, on the other hand, given the concept of the symbol another and broader signification from the beginning. We have attempted with the concept of the symbol to encompass the totality [Ganze] of those phenomena in which generally the sensible [Sinnlichen] presents itself as always a special case of “sense fulfillment” [Sinnerfüllung] – in which something sensible [Sinnlichen], in the manner of its existence [Dasein] and its being-­a-­certain-­way [Sosein], presents itself at the same time as the particularization and embodiment, as the manifestation [Ausprägung] and incarnation of a sense [Sinn]. It is not necessary here that both elements already be sharply separated from one another as such, that they become

110

106

the expressive function

known in their alterity and opposition. This form of knowledge designates not the beginning but the end of the development. The duality of these elements is, to be sure, invested in every primitive appearance of consciousness; this potency, however, is in no way unfolded in actuality from the beginning. However deeply we may penetrate into the configurations of the sensible-­spiritual consciousness, we never encounter this consciousness as something absolutely objectless, as something absolutely simple, before all separations and differentiations. It always appears as something living that divided itself within itself, as a ἓν διαφερόμενον ἑαυτῷ [one at variance with itself]. However, although this difference [Differenz] exists, it is, nevertheless, not yet posited as such; rather, this positing occurs only if consciousness transitions from the immediacy of life into the form of spirit and into the form of spontaneous spiritual creation. Only in this transition can all those tensions that as such already belong to the simple consistent existence of consciousness unfold: what previously was a concrete unity despite all its inner antithetical oppositions now begins to separate from one another and to “lay itself out” [auslegen: interpret] in analytical separation. The pure phenomenon of expression has as yet no such form of bifurcation. In it, a manner, a mode, of “understanding” is given that is not attached to the conditions of conceptual interpretation [Interpretation]: the simple exposition [Darlegung: interpretation] of the phenomenon is at the same time its laying out [Auslegung: interpretation], the only one of which it is susceptible and needful. However, this unity and simplicity, this self-­evidence [Selbstverständlichkeit], vanishes at once and gives way to a highly complex problematic as soon as the purely theoretical consideration of the world, as soon as philosophy, turns to the phenomenon of expression and draws it into its jurisdiction. For now, the diversity of elements that are harbored in expression are intensified into the diversity of origins. The phenomenological question is transformed into an ontological question; acceptance of what expression proclaims as its “sense” is replaced by the question of the being that forms its ground. This being cannot be thought of as simple; it presents itself rather as a combination of two heterogeneous components. In it, the “physical” and the “psychic,” “lived body” and “mind” [Seele], are connected and related to each other. How is such a “connection” between the two poles possible, however, if each of them originates in and belongs to another world? How can two entities that



the mind-­b ody-­p roblem

111

appear to be absolutely antithetical in the metaphysical nature [Wesen] of things stand together and exist together in experience? Thus, the bond that embraces mental [seelisch] and corporeal [leiblich] existence in the appearance of expression breaks in the moment we pass over from the plane of the appearance to that of true being, to the plane of metaphysical cognition. There is no possible mediation between what the body is and what the mind [Seele] as a metaphysical substance is. It is everywhere the striving of ontology, which is already grounded in its original framing of the question, to transpose every problem of sense into a problem of pure being. Being is the foundation in which all sense must ultimately be in some way fixed. No purely symbolic relation is truly known and certain as long as its fundamentum in re has not been successfully exhibited – that is to say, as long as what it signifies in itself is not traced back to and grounded in some real determination. And it is above all two determinations that dominate here the whole problematic of metaphysics: the thing concept and the causal concept. All other relations culminate in the category of thing and in the category of causality, which literally absorbs them. What is not directly given as a relationship of “things” and “properties,” “causes” and “effects,” or what cannot be rethought by theoretical intellectual work into such a relationship remains ultimately unintelligible – and this impossibility of understanding [Verstehen] throws suspicion on its consistent existence and threatens to dissolve it into an inessential [wesenlos] semblance, a delusion of the senses or imagination. Nowhere is this general state of affairs more clearly revealed than in the fate that the mind-­body-­problem [Leib-­Seelen-­Problem] undergoes as soon as it frees itself once and for all from the ground soil [Boden] of “experience” and crosses over into the sphere of metaphysical thinking. What is required of it with this crossing over is above all that it unlearn, as it were, its own language. The language of the pure expressive function is treated as meaningful and intelligible only if it can be translated into the language of the substantial metaphysical view of the world, into the language of substance-­concepts and causal-­concepts. Every effort to effect this translation, however, proves in the end inadequate. There always remains an obscure remainder that seems to defy all metaphysical intellectual work. The entire work of metaphysics since Aristotle has been unable to dispose of this remainder completely, to eliminate in principle

107

112

108

the expressive function

the “irrationality” of this mind-­body-­relationship [Leib-­Seelen-­Verhältnis]. Despite all the efforts of the great classical systems of modern times, despite all the attempts undertaken by the “rationalism” of Descartes and Malebranche, by Leibniz and Spinoza, to draw this problem into its own sphere and subject it to its domination, it still seems to persist in its own place, to preserve a strange and paradoxical “stubbornness” [Eigensinn]. The modern metaphysician, insofar as he wants to be at the same time a phenomenologist, finds himself here in a difficult dilemma. Even he does not succeed in drawing the problem wholly into the sphere of the metaphysical cognition of being and essences and penetrating it with its light. On the other hand, however, the metaphysician conceals the fact that this impenetrability is in no way absolutely imputed to an original obscurity of the problem itself. Only the change of illumination, the change from the aspect of experience to the metaphysical aspect, creates that strange twilight and dim light in which the mind-­body-­problem [Leib-­ Seelen-­Problem] has stood throughout the history of metaphysics. It is the essential merit of Nicolai Hartmann’s metaphysics that it grasped this problematic situation with its characteristic acuteness and rigor of thinking and that it has unapologetically and unreservedly been acknowledged.2 Hartmann’s “metaphysics of cognition” no longer undertakes, like older metaphysical systems, the attempt to dispel this twilight; it attempts solely to display it. Hartmann no longer seeks to solve the riddles of metaphysics at any price but contents himself with their clear and full apprehension. Thus, for him, “aporetics” becomes an essential component of metaphysics. As far as the mind-­body-­question [Leib-­Seelen-­Frage] is concerned, there would seem at first sight to be no room for such skepticism if we consider only the immediate phenomenological “evidence.” Hartmann starts from the assumption that the unity of the lived body and the mind [Seele] lies ready in the nature [Wesen] of the human, and therefore it is not necessary to first disclose it. This unity is and consists as long as it is not artificially torn apart. All traditional metaphysical theories that claim to give an explanation of the relationship of the lived body and mind [Seele] have, however, been guilty of precisely such an artificial separation. Neither the theory of interaction nor that of psychophysical parallelism does justice to its task: instead of describing or at least



the mind-­b ody-­p roblem

113

circumscribing what is phenomenally given, they replace it with a state of affairs of a wholly different kind. Even for Hartmann, however, the unity, which presents itself from the side of the phenomena as unquestionable and secure, collapses the moment [Augenblick] that we attempt to clarify and explain it intellectually. From the standpoint of pure lived-­experience, from the standpoint of consciousness, we are aware [kennen] neither of a mind [Seele] without a lived body nor of a lived body without a mind [Seele]. On the other hand, this unity of awareness [Kenntnis] in no way implies a unity of cognition [Erkenntnis]. No matter how much immediate knowledge [Wissen] shows us the “physical” and the “psychic” as not only associated with one another but indissolubly linked to one another, we cannot succeed in transforming this actual bond into a conceptual bond and into the sense of the concept of a necessary bond. How a process [Prozeß] can begin as a bodily occurrence [Vorgang] and end as a psychic occurrence [seelisch Vorgang] . . . is absolutely incomprehensible. We can well understand in abstracto that this can be so, however we cannot understand in concreto how it is so. There is here an absolute boundary of the cognizable at which all categorial concepts, physiological as well as psychological, fail. To assume a “psycho-­ physical” causality, which would directly prevail on both sides of the problem of the divide, was naturalistic naïveté. Indeed, it is even highly questionable whether the two domains, physiology and psychology, are in general adjacent, whether they actually touch at a common, so to speak, linear borderline, or whether they do not rather gape far apart, with a whole domain, a third, irrational domain between them. . . . For since the unity cannot be denied ontologically, but is to be apprehended neither physiologically nor psychologically, then it is to be understood as a pure ontic unity, independent of all apprehension, as a unity which is at once metaphysical and metapsychical, in short as an irrational stratum underlying psycho-­physical being [Wesen]. . . . The uniform nature [Wesen] of the psychophysical process lies then in this ontological deep stratum; it is an ontically real, irrational process, which is in itself neither physical nor psychic but has in these two only its surface areas that are exposed to consciousness.3

109

114

the expressive function

According to Hartmann, the characteristic mode of inferring, by which the general relationship of metaphysics to the lived mind-­body-­problem [Leib-­Seelen-­Problem] is determined, comes to light with exemplary pregnancy and clarity. When it becomes apparent that the unity of the lived mind-­body-­interconnection [Leib-­Seelen-­Zusammenhang], which is undeniable as a phenomenon, can always find only an imperfect, internally inconsistent presentation in the concepts of metaphysics, then the conclusion is not that there is a lacuna in the concepts but rather that there is an irrationality in being. Metaphysical thinking is not held to task for shattering the unity of the phenomenon and dissolving it into disparate elements [Elemente]; rather, the unintelligibility and contradiction is relocated to the core of reality itself. In being itself, there is a yawning hiatus irrationalis that can be closed by no effort of thinking. There seems to remain only one way by which to bridge this gulf that separates the nature [Wesen] of the psychic and that of physical. If both must remain heterogeneous, as long as they remain entirely in the sphere of the empirically familiar [bekann­ ten] and accessible existence, there nevertheless exists the possibility that what for us is absolutely dissimilar can be posited, in this respect, in an inner relation as has descended from a common ground. This common ground surely cannot be found in the domain of the experienceable but must be sought rather in a transcendent realm, and this implies, at the same time, that it can no longer be recognized in the strict sense but can only be assumed or at best hypothetically posited. Hartmann accordingly concludes:

110

The parallelism of psychic [seelisch] and physical appearances would then be the necessary consequence [Folgeerscheinung] of a common root. The uniform, ontically real processes [Prozesse] which must . . . ultimately be at work, begin or end neither in the physical nor the psychic, but in a real third realm of which there is no immediate consciousness; it is only different parts or links in these real processes [Prozesse] that are manifested as a physical or a psychic occurrence [Vorgang] in the appearance.4

From this, we see that the answer that modern metaphysics has given to the question of the interconnection of the lived body and the mind [Seele] differs in content but not in general conceptual type from that of the



the mind-­b ody-­p roblem

115

older systems. The originary-­ground [Urgrund] in which the sublation of oppositions is sought is no longer, as in occasionalism, as in the Spinozist philosophy of identity, or in Leibniz’s system of pre-­established harmony, defined as a divine originary-­grund [Urgrund]; however, the function it fulfills – namely, the connecting of the empirically incompatible into a unity and of effecting a coincidentia oppositorum in the sphere of absolute being – has remained unchanged. It does not solve the problem, however, but merely postpones it. For the question of the mode of the interconnection between the lived body and the mind [Seele] is raised for us by the appearance, which shows us that the two are never separate but can be cognized only in their interrelation. This question is not answered if, instead of explaining the unity of the phenomenon, we rather refer back to the unity of an unknowable, transcendent originary-­ground [Urgrund]. What is experienced [erleben] in every simple phenomenon of expression is an indissoluble correlation, a thoroughly concrete synthesis of the bodily [Leiblich] and the psychological [Seelisch] – however, we cannot “explain” this concrete lived-­experience and cannot understand it by going back to that “caput mortuum [dead head] of abstraction,”5 as Hegel called it, to the thing-­in-­itself as the ultimate common root of all empirically different and separated entities. The task has been set by experience itself, the problem has grown in the womb of experience; thus, it should be expected and demanded that the problem be solved by means of experience. The leap into the metaphysical can no longer help here: because the lived mind-­body-­question [Leib-­Seelen-­Frage], more than any quesiton, already belongs to the “natural worldview” and arises with necessity within its boundaries, within its theoretical horizon. To recognize them here in their original and genuine framing, it is of course a question of taking this horizon in its full breadth and in the manifold of its possible aspects. This breadth is arbitrarily narrowed, and the manifold curtailed if we take the category of causality as the only category, or as the truly constitutive category, for all empirical existence and events. From the standpoint of theoretical natural science, this approach surely appears justified, since for natural science, nature ultimately signifies nothing other than “the existence of things . . . insofar as it is determined according to universal laws.”6 And yet this order and determination according to laws, through which the “object” of natural cognition is first constituted, is by no means the only form of empirical

111

116

the expressive function

determinability. Not every empirical “nexus,” mediately or immediately, dissolves into a causal nexus; rather, there are certain basic forms [Gestalten] of connection, which can be understood only if we resist the temptation of such a dissolving, if we leave them as they are and consider them as formations [Gebilde] sui generis. And the interconnection between the “lived body” and the “mind” [Seele] constitutes itself as precisely a prototype of such a connection. As for metaphysics, it has been forced to recognize more and more clearly in the course of its history that this interconnection cannot just be fitted into the schema of causal thinking, indeed that the application of this very schema to the point of departure and to the ground gives rise to all sorts of aporias and antinomies. From this state of affairs, however, the inference is drawn that empirical causality must at this point be replaced by a causality of a different form and dignity, by a “transcendent” causality. The relationship is comprehended not fundamentally as a noncausal one but rather as a transcausal one, based on a causality of a higher order. Hartmann stresses:

112

The type of determination, which prevails in the ontological domain, in the all-­embracing sphere of being, and which links formations of being [Seinsgebilde] which are connected through the character of being [Seinscharakter] as such regardless of how heterogeneous they are in other respects, can obviously only be of a far more general order than the causal nexus. Its relation to the causal nexus, as the nexus of objectified [objizierten] nature, must be that of the transobjective to the objectified [Objizierten]. It may not be sought on this side of causality, but only beyond it; it can be neither causal nor ciscausal [ziskausal], but only “transcausal”; a trans-­objective type of determination, insofar as it belongs to the same sphere of being as the subject and the trans-­ subjective entity that stands behind it.7

Instead of the empirical determination that prevails in the world of spatiotemporal events, another “intelligible” determination is assumed, which admittedly can be posited only in a manner and under the condition that at the same time its unsublatable irrationality, its fundamental uncongnizability, is conceded. Should not, however, the deeper ground of this irrationality be sought, rather, in the false measure that is applied here from the beginning to the phenomenon that we wish to elucidate?



the mind-­b ody-­p roblem

117

The history of metaphysics shows us clearly that every attempt to describe the lived mind-­body-­relationship [Leib-­Seelen-­Verhältnis] by transforming it into a relationship of the conditioning and the conditioned, “ground” and “consequence,” has culminated in inextricable difficulties. This relationship constantly evades thinking – regardless of whether thinking seeks to catch it in the meshes of an empirical causality or of a purely intelligible determination. For every kind of determination makes the mind [Seele] and lived body appear as two independent, essential beings existing for themselves, one of which is conditioned and determined by the other, and precisely in opposition to this form of being-­determined-­ through-­ one-­ another, the distinctive mode of “mutual interpenetration,” of reciprocal being-­interwoven and being-­interlaced as it exhibits the relation of the lived body and the mind [Seele], constitutes itself in its continued resistance. Not the progress into the world of metaphysics – into a world that is essentially constructed and governed by the concepts of substantiality and causality – but rather only a return into the “originary-­phenomenon” of expression can lead us here toward a solution. For every metaphysics, which does not set out from the beginning to be an “ontology” but which rather leaves the phenomenon of expression in its distinctive structure and recognizes it in this structure, the problem indeed assumes a totally new form [Gestalt]. In modern metaphysics, it was Klages who first took this road. For him, the pure expressive lived-­experience signified, as it were, a kind of Archimedean point, from which he sought to unhinge the world of ontology. And with this, the separation of being into a corporeal half and a mental [seelisch] “half” fades away. As he stressed: The mind [Seele] is the sense [Sinn] of the lived body and the lived body is the appearance of the mind [Seele]. Neither effectively acts upon the other, for neither one belongs to the world of things. Since “effectuating” [Bewirken] is inseparable from the effective acting on each other [Aufeinanderwirken] of things, the relationship of cause and effect [Wirkung] is merely a relation of separated parts of an already disintegrated interconnection; sense and appearance, however, are themselves an interconnection, or rather they are the archetype of all interconnections. Anyone who finds it difficult to visualize [vergegenwärtigen] a relationship which

113

118

the expressive function is incomparably different from the relationship of cause and effect, and of an infinitely closer kind, need only consider the analogous relationship of the sign to what it designates [Zeichens zum Bezeichneten]. . . . As the concept inheres in the linguistic sound, so does the mind [Seele] inhere in the lived body; the former is the sense of the word, the latter the sense of the lived body; the word is the cloak of the thought, the lived body is the appearance of the mind [Seele]. Just as there are no wordless concepts, there are no appearanceless minds [Seelen].8

114

We take up this pregnant formulation because it brings us back to the center of our own systematic problem. The relationship of the mind [Seele] and the lived body constitutes the prototype and model for a purely symbolic relation [Relation], which cannot be rethought in terms of either a thing-­relation or a causal-­relation. There is here originally neither an inside and outside nor a before and after, neither an effecting nor an effected; there prevails here a connection that needs not be joined together from separate elements [Elemente] but which primarily is a meaningful whole that interprets [interpretiert] itself – that breaks apart into a duality of elements [Momente] in order to “lay itself out” [auslegen] in them. A genuine access to the lived mind-­body-­problem [Leib-­ Seelen-­Problem] is found only once we recognize in general that all thing connections and all causal connections are ultimately based on sense-­ connections of this kind. Sense-­connections do not form a special class within the thing-­connections and causal-­connections: they are rather the constitutive presupposition, the conditio sine qua non, on which the latter based themselves. In the course of our investigation it will become increasingly clear that it is the symbolic functions of “presentation” and “signification” that creates access to that “objective” reality in which we are justified in speaking of thing-­relations and causal-­relations. And thus, it is the spiritual triad of the pure expressive, representative, and significative functions that first makes possible the intuition of an organized reality. Precisely for this reason, however, any explanation that seeks to bring the content [Gehalt] of these functions closer to us by comparisons drawn from the thing-­world is a ὕστερον πρότερον [latter before]. The relationship of the “appearance” to the psychic content [seelisch Gehalt] that is expressed in it; the relationship of the word to the sense that is presented through it; and finally the relationship in which



the mind-­b ody-­p roblem

119

some arbitrary abstract “sign” stands to the significative content [Gehalt] to which it points have no analogy in the manner in which things stand side by side to each other in space, in which events follow one another in time or in which real alterations are produced by one another. Its specific sense can be obtained only from itself but not be elucidated through analogies taken from the world that is “made possible” only by this sense. What aggravated the cognition of this state of affairs is the fact that all these acts of expressing, presenting, and signifying are themselves not immediately present [gegenwärtige]; rather, they can become visible in no other way than in the whole of their achievement [Leistung]. They are only insofar as they are active and manifest themselves in their action. They do not originally look back at themselves but instead look toward the work that they accomplish, toward the being whose spiritual form they have to construct. And this likewise implies that initially no other description of their proper reality and efficacy can be given than the one that is drawn from their work [Werk] as such, their effectings [Gewirkten], and that in a way speaks its language. This relationship does not initially appear only in the “speculative” interpretation in the strict sense that the phenomenon undergoes in the sphere of metaphysics. Particularly where the relationship of the lived body and the mind [Seele] is concerned, the naïve and unbroken unity between the two, which presents itself in every simple expressive lived-­experience, has become questionable long before the commitment of any actual metaphysics. The mythical worldview has already executed the rupture: in myth, the dualism separating the duality of elements into a substantial separation of two essential beings has already been introduced. In its beginnings, to be sure, myth does not seem to clearly distinguish between the two spiritual attitudes – it seems to stand halfway between the apprehension that results from the standpoint of the purely expressive phenomenon and that which follows from the standpoint of the theoretical, “metaphysical” interpretation. Admittedly, the separation of the mind [Seele] and lived body is initiated here, but it is far from possessing the radical sharpness that it will later disclose. Barely separated, body and mind [Seele] seem prepared at any time to flow back into one another. The world is pervaded by a magical force that may be thought equally well as corporeal or spiritual and that is totally indifferent toward this separation. It inheres in “things” as well as in “persons,” in the “material” as

115

120

116

the expressive function

well as in the “immaterial,” the inanimate as well as the animated. It is, so to speak, quite simply the mystery of efficacy [Wirken] that is apprehended and mythically objectified – without there being within this mystery a boundary between the particular modes of “psychic” [seelisch] and “corporeal” efficacy [Wirken].9 This demarcation takes place not only if consciousness “has” and experiences [erlebt] the world as a totality [Ganze] of expressive characters but also if it transitions to comprehend reality by providing it with fixed substrates. For this substantialization – at the level of “concrete” thinking on which we still stand – is possible only if it transitions immediately into the form of a spatial determination and a spatial intuition. The kind of “community” that exists between the lived body and the mind [Seele] seems now as a mere “togetherness,” and this togetherness includes in itself at the same time a fundamental apartness [Auseinander]. The duality has gone from a duality of elements to a duality of domains: reality has definitively broken down into an “inner world” and an “outer world.” The corporeal no longer appears as the plain expression, as the immediate manifestation [Ausprägung] of the mental [Seelisch]. The body does not reveal the mind [Seele] but rather is a shell that conceals it. Only when it breaks through this shell in death does the mind [Seele] come into its own nature [Wesen] as well as its own value and sense. This mythical-­religious originary-­conception, however, still maintains the bond between the lived body and the mind [Seele], insofar as the two, although separated in their nature [Wesen] and origin, remain nevertheless intimately linked with one another by their fate. The unity of mythical fate takes the place here of an ontic unity of being [ontischen Wesenseinheit]. By a primordial decree of fate, the mind [Seele] is confined to the cycle of corporeal becoming, fastened to the “wheel of births.” The strictness and consistence of this mythical bonding does not negate the separation that has been effected between the spheres of corporeal being and psychic [seelisch] being; it prevents, however, the mythical from drawing all the logical consequences implicit in this separation. Metaphysical thinking first takes the final and decisive step. It makes the “togetherness” of the lived body and the mind [Seele] a merely empirical and therefore accidental element. This accidental connection cannot sublate the necessary opposition that arises from the nature [Wesen] of both. No vinculum substantial [substantial bond] is strong enough to forge these originally heterogeneous natures into a true unity. In the course of its history, metaphysics



the mind-­b ody-­p roblem

121

has been increasingly impelled to take this road. With Aristotle, the soul still appears as the entelechy of the lived body and thus its most proper “reality.” With modern metaphysics, however, the lived body [Leibe] is stripped of everything that belongs to the sphere of pure “expression,” making it a mere body [Körper], and it further determines the matter of this body as a purely geometrical matter. For Descartes, the only necessary characteristic that remains of the concept of body is extension in length, breadth, and depth. On the other hand, all psychic [seelisch] being, the whole being of consciousness, is exhausted in the act of cogitatio. Between the spatial world constructed by geometry and mechanics and that fundamentally aspatial being that we apprehend in the act of pure thinking there is, however, no possible logical or empirical mediation; the only medium in which the two can find each other and in which their opposition is sublated is the transcendence of the divine originary-­ground. However, this sublation, which they undergo in the absolute, does not, of course, appease the empirical-­phenomenal oppositions but as such only brings them forth more sharply. Ultimately, we can avoid these oppositions only by working our way back to their actual source: by putting ourselves back at the center of their symbolic relation [Relation] in which the psychic [seelisch] appears related to the bodily and the bodily related to the psychic [seelisch], in the pure phenomenon of expression. The particular nature of this relation [Relation], however, can emerge clearly only if we go beyond it – if we take the expressive function not as an isolated element but as a member within a comprehensive spiritual whole and seek to determine its position and to understand its particular achievement within this whole.

ENDNOTES 1 Cf. Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, “Über Naturwissenschaft im Allgemeinen,” in Naturwissehnschafte Schriten (Weimar ed.), 11, 103. 2 For more detail on the following remarks on Nicola Hartmann’s metaphysics, I refer the reader to my article, “Erkenntnistheorie nebst den Grenzfragen der Logik und Denkpsychologie,” Jahrbücher der Philosophie. Eine kritische Übersicht der Philosophie der Gegenwart, 3 (1927), 31–92, 79ff. 3 Nicolai Hartmann, Grundzüge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis (Berlin and Leipzig: de Gruyter, 1925), 322f. 4 Ibid., 324.

117

122

the expressive function

5 [Cf. G. W. F. Hegel, Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences: The Logic, §44.] 6 [Immanuel Kant, “Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals,” section 4.422 in Practical Philosophy.] 7 Hartmann, Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, 260f. 8 Ludwig Klages, Vom Wesen des Bewußtseins. Aus einer lebenswissenschaftlichen Vorlesung (Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1921), 26f. 9 For further details, see Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 2, 199ff. and Cassirer, Language and Myth, 53ff. That a certain basic trait of the primary experience of expression expressed this in indifference becomes apparent when we consider the parallels that other “primitive” formations of consciousness show to this mythical-­magical view. It has often been pointed out by child psychology, for example, that the same indifference exists in the world of the child – that “the child experiences spiritual-­personal contents as concrete and corporeal.” Cf. Werner, Einführung in die Entwicklungspsychologie, §43; and Clara Stern and William Stern, Die Psychologie der frühen Kindheit, 417ff.

Part Two The Problem of Representation [Repräsentation] and the Construction of the Intuitive World

I THE CONCEPT AND THE PROBLEM OF REPRESENTATION [REPRÄSENTATION] If we wish to progress from that primary form of the consciousness of reality that is contained in the pure expressive lived-­experience to richer and higher forms of the view of the world, then we can only search for a road map and a general guiding principle for this progress in the objective configurations of spiritual culture. If the outcomes – which lie beyond what is included in the simple expressive experience – are to become visible here, then it must be our task to go back from them to the functions in which these outcomes are grounded. We have found that the sense and basic tendency of the pure expressive function could be apprehended most clearly and surely if we took the world of myth as our point of departure. It is still entirely dominated by this sense, which, as it were, permeates and animates it. And yet as the mythical world unfolds more richly, a new motive asserts itself. Already, that reality is for myth a self-­contained “cosmos” – that it sees reality not as a mere sum of individual features and characters but as a totality [Ganze]

119

126

120

the problem of representation

of figures [Gestalten] – points toward this motive. In the earliest forms of mythical consciousness to which we can make our way back, the “look” [Gesicht] of the world, it would seem, is still understood in terms of an unceasing change. This mobility and fleetingness, this abrupt and unmediated enveloping of all figures [Gestalten] into one another, would seem to belong to the very nature [Wesen] of the mythical aspect of the world itself. The world nowhere here stands fast to the contemplative regard that is directed at it but rather in every moment [Augenblick] appears in a different, strangely ephemeral and vaporous light. Even if other fixed formations gradually rose out of its surge and flow – even if in themselves the individual appearances as such did not have a fluid and indeterminate daemonic “character” but were apprehended and lived [erleben] as the manifestation [Ausprägung] of daemonic or divine beings [Wesen] – these very beings [Wesen] would still possess no true constancy and universality. “The individual appearance is deified in full immediacy, without that a still more delimited generic concept was at play; the one thing that you see before you, that thing itself and nothing more is the god.”1 Myth is, however, driven further and further beyond this first intuition of the mere “gods of the moment” [Augenblicksgötter] as it associates itself with a new, basic force of spirit and it internally permeates itself with that power. It is the force of language that first lends stability and duration to the formations [Gebilde] of myth. Usener has striven in his book on the “names of the gods” to follow this process in detail and to clarify and interpret it with the help of the history of language. Though many of his specific interpretations may be uncertain or questionable, he has clearly and sharply apprehended a basic general tendency in the phenomenology of mythical consciousness.2 Language first provides that possibility of finding-­again and of recognizing by virtue of which totally different and spatially and temporally separated appearances can be understood as utterances [Äußerungen] of one and the same subject, as revelations of a determinate and self-­identical divine being [Wesen]. Even at this basic stage, language thus accomplishes in principle what it will achieve in its highest logical development [Durchbildung]: it becomes the vehicle for “recognition [Rekognition] in the concept,” without which even myth would not be able to bring it to duration and to the internal stability of gestalts. In this common achievement [Leistung] of language and myth, however, we already stand at the threshold of a new spiritual



the concept and the problem of representation

127

world. Myth already reveals the striving and the force, not simply to glide along in the stream of feeling and affective agitation but to restrain this movement and focus it into a determinate spiritual focal point, into the unity of an “image” [Bild]. Because its images rise immediately from its flowing movement of interiority, however, they are always in danger of being swept back into it. An element of rest and inner consistency is achieved only when the image grows, as it were, beyond itself – when, in a transition that is at first almost imperceptible, it becomes a presentation [Darstellung]. For the presentation of a god comprises in itself two different spiritual elements [Elemente] and sublates them into each other. It grasps the god in his wholly immediate living presence [Gegenwart]: the presentation is not intended to be taken as a mere picture [Abbild]; rather, it is the god itself who is embodied and active in it. On the other hand, however, this momentary effect does not exhaust the whole of its being. The presentation [Darstellung] is, as presence [Gegenwart], at the same time re-­presentation [Vergegenwärtigung]: what stands before us as here and now, what is given as this particular and determinate [presence], announces itself, on the other hand, as the emanation and manifestation [Ausprägung] of a force that is never wholly unfolded in such particularity. Through the concrete individual details of the image we now perceive this total force [Gesamtkraft]. Though it may hide itself in a thousand forms, it remains its identical self in them all: it possesses a fixed “nature” and “essential being” that in all these forms is mediately seized – that is, “represented” [repräsentiert] in them. Although this kind of “representation” [Repräsentation] can, however, be fully understood and appreciated only from the standpoint of language, not every mode of linguistic utterance [Ausprägung] is bound up with it in the same way. There seems to be, rather, a basic stratum of linguistic utterances [Ausprägungen] in which the tendency toward “presentation” is, if at all, present [vorhanden] only in its embryonic beginnings. In it, language still moves almost exclusively in pure expressive elements and expressive characteristics. At first, the linguistic sound seems to be entirely confined to the phase of mere phonetization. It “designates” no individual factor of “objective” reality; it is, rather, a mere outpouring of inner states of a speaking and the immediate discharge of its dynamic tension. All that is customarily designated as “animal language” seems to be confined permanently to this phase. As diverse as the animal cries

121

128

122

123

the problem of representation

and shrieks may be – the cries of fear or pleasure, mating calls, and calls of warning – they do not go beyond the sphere of mere “sounds sensation.” They are not “significant” in the sense of being correlated as signs with determinate things and occurrences in the outer world. According to the observations of Wolfgang Köhler, even the language of the most highly developed anthropoid apes, rich as it is in immediate expressions for the most diverse subjective states and desires, remains confined to this sphere: it never becomes the “depiction” [Zeichnung] or “designation” [Bezeichnung] of the objective [gegenständlich].3 Likewise with children, the function of designation stands only at the end of linguistic development; here too, the words of “objective” language, which they have learned, for a long time still do not have the specific, objectivizing sense [Sinn] connected with them by developed language. Rather, everything meaningful [Sinnhaft] is rooted in the stratum of emotion [Affekt] and sensible stimulation and is referred back to it over and over again. Thus, the first “adjectives” [Eigenschaftswort] used by the child do not so much designate the properties [Eigenschaften] and characteristic traits of things but rather bring an inner state to expression. Similarly, as late as the second year of life, the affirmation and negation, the “yes” and “no,” are used not as a “statement” [Aussage] in the logical sense as an ascertaining positing [konstatierende Setzung], but rather as an expression of an emotional position-­taking [Stellungnahme], of a desire, or of defense.4 Only gradually, in the course of the development of language, does the pure “presentative function” assert itself, growing stronger and stronger and finally acquiring domination over the whole of language.5 Even now, however, it must unmistakably share this domination with other spiritual motives and fundamental tendencies. As far as language may progress in the direction of “presentation” and pure logical “signification,” it can never tear away from its interconnection with the primary expressive lived-­experience. Determinate “expressive characteristics” remain interwoven with its supreme intellectual achievements. Everything that we habitually designate as onomatopoeia belongs to this sphere: in the genuine onomatopoeic formations of language we are dealing far less with the direct “imitation” of objectively given phenomena than with a phonetic and linguistic formation that still remains wholly in the spell of the purely “physiognomic” view of the world. The sound attempts here, as it were, to capture the immediate “look”



the concept and the problem of representation

129

[Gesicht] of things and with it their true nature [Wesen]. Even where living language has long since learned to use the word as a pure vehicle of “thought,” it never wholly relinquishes this interweaving. It is above all poetic language that persistently strives back toward this ground of “physiognomic” expression, in which it seeks to plunge into an originary-­source [Urquell] and eternal fountain of youth. Even where language is solely concerned with working out a determinate logical “sense,” which it simply seeks to set forth as such in its objectivity and universality, it cannot dispense, however, with the manifold possibilities that are available in melodic-­rhythmic means of expression. These prove themselves to be genuine vehicles and constituents of sense-­bestowing itself and not superfluous embellishments. Thus, the elements that we usually subsume under the concept of “linguistic melody” play a part in codetermining the logical structure and logical understanding of the sentence: Configured from a unitary sense, the linguistic melody contributes decisively to the precise determination of significations; thus, it is the sensible expression, the representation [Repräsentation] of the whole-­sense as a unity.6

Clinical observation in the pathology of language shows that in cases of so-­called “amusia,” in which the “musical” parts of language are no longer correctly apprehended, the apprehension of grammatical and syntactical meaning [Bedeutung], in this respect, is modified and is usually impaired in some way. Certain “modal” tendencies of linguistic sense [Sinn] that are indispensable to its understanding and interpretation, such as the interrogative or imperative character of certain sentences, are in many cases expressed almost exclusively by musical elements [Elemente].7 It is once again confirmed that the “spiritual” element of signification is closely bound up here with the “sensible” element of expression – as both, only in their reciprocal determination and penetration, constitute the actual life of language. This life can never be merely sensible any more than it can be purely spiritual; it can be apprehended only as the lived body and the mind [Seele] at once, as an embodiment of logos. Although the sensible character of expression and the logical element of signification cannot be separated in the factual reality of language,

124

130

the problem of representation

the purely functional difference between them remains unmistakable. Any attempt to dissolve expression into signification or to derive one from the other genetically remains vain. Similarly, as seen by developmental psychology, the function of “presentation” does not grow out of formations belonging to the sphere of mere expression but always constitutes them toward a specifically new and decisive turning point. The world of animal sensation still seems to be situated wholly on the other side of this great dividing line. Just as the animal lacks presentation in the word, it lacks the true “indicative” [hinweisend] gesture; the “grasping into the distance,” which is a part of all interpretive movement, remains closed in it. Nature effectively acts here wholly as an outward stimulus that must be sensibly present [gegenwärtige] so that it can arouse the sensation corresponding to it: it does not enter into the relationship of the mere image, which is projected by the imagination and which in a sense anticipates the existence of the object.8 Ludwig Klages stresses this in his book Expressive Movement and The Force of Configuration that Because . . . the human responds no less to images than to physical impressions, its expressive movement is often connected with the content of the presentation of spatial intuition . . . admiration, because oriented toward “elevation,” is aimed upward; envy, because oriented toward “abasement,” is aimed downward. Such feelings and expressive factors are alien to the animal, just as on the other hand the animal is without intuition of space, and consequently, for example, totally disregards all painted or sculptured images-­of [Abbilder: picture]. . . . No animal . . . has the least apprehension for the objective content of pictures [Abbilder]. For the animal a human drawn or painted in perspective is never anything more than a piece of colored paper or canvas.9 125

And even for the human, long after having learned to live in images, long after having completely enveloped itself in its self-­created image-­ worlds of language, myth, and art, it obviously must pass through a long development before it acquires the specific image-­consciousness. In the beginning, the human nowhere distinguishes between the pure image plane from the causal plane; over and over again, the human imputes to the sign not its presenting function but a determinate causal function,



the concept and the problem of representation

131

not its character of signification but a character of effect.10 And here again, the series of “ontogenetic” development has faithfully retained the features of the phylogenetic. The ontogenetic development shows that wherever the function of presentation stands out as such – where instead of merging into its presence [Gegenwart], into its simple “presence” [Präsenz], it succeeds in taking a sensibly intuitive content as a presentation, as a “representative” [Repräsentanten], of another – here, as it were, an entirely new height of consciousness is achieved. The moment any individual sensible impression is used symbolically and understood as a symbol is always the dawn of a new day of the world. The account that the teacher of the deaf-­mute and blind Helen Keller has given of this first breakthrough of “linguistic understanding” of her pupil is one of the most important psychological records of this state of affairs, whose actual significance goes far beyond the sphere of individual psychological problems.11 For here, there appears with particular clarity and intensity that the pure function of presentation is hardly attached to any particular sensible material, be it optical or acoustical: this function can nevertheless assert itself successfully and without impairment, even where the matter at its disposal is restricted in the extreme – reduced to the purely tactile domain. When the child realizes in this way the presentative function of names, this state of affairs of “calling” [Heißen], then the child’s whole inner attitude [Stellung] toward reality changes – a fundamentally new relationship between “subject” and “object” arises for it.12 Only now do the objects that hitherto seized directly on the emotion [Affekt] and the will begin, as it were, to recede into the distance – into a distance where they can be “looked at,” where they can be made present [vergegenwärtigen] in their spatial outlines and according to their independent qualitative determinations. For this force of intuition, Herder chose the term “reflection.” We have seen that for him the concept of reflection had a different signification from that given it by the philosophy of language of the eighteenth century, in particular that of the philosophy of language of the French Encyclopedists. For him, it no longer designates the mere power [Kraft] of the human intellect to shift sensible-­intuitive contents about at will, to break them down into their elementary components and create new formations [Gebilde] from them by free combination. Reflection, in Herder’s sense, is no mere thinking “about” given intuitive contents;

126

132

the problem of representation

rather, reflection codetermined and constituted the shape [Gestalt] of these very contents:

127

The human demonstrates reflection when, emerging from the wholly vaporous dream of images flitting past its senses, it can concentrate upon one element of wakefulness, dwell voluntarily on one image, observe it calmly and lucidly and isolate characteristic traits that prove that this and no other is the object.13

How do we, however, arrive at this positing of characteristic traits, which must necessarily precede any comparison of characteristic traits and everything that we are accustomed to call “abstraction” in the purely logical sense of the word? It is not enough here to single out from the given, still undifferentiated whole of an appearance certain elements [Elemente] toward each of which consciousness turns into a particular act of “attentiveness.” Rather, what is decisive in this is that from this whole an element is not only detached by abstraction but at the same time taken as a representative [Vertreter], as a “representative” [Repräsentant] of the whole. For only with it does the content contain the imprint of a new general form without losing its individual detail, its material “particularity.” Only then does it function as a “characteristic trait” in the true sense: it has become a sign that enables us to recognize it again when it reappears. This act of “recognition” is necessarily bound up with the function of “representation” [Repräsentation] and presupposes it. Only where we succeed, as it were, in condensing a total [Total] appearance into one of its elements, in concentrating it symbolically, in “having” it in the individual element and concisely imprinted [prägnant] in it,14 only then do we raise it out of the stream of temporal becoming. Only now does its existence, which had initially only ever belonged to a single point in time and seemed captive in it, acquire a kind of duration: only now is it possible to find again in the simple, as it were, punctual “here” and “now” of the present of lived-­experience [Erlebnisgegenwart] another, a “not-­here” and a “not-­now.” Everything that we call the “identity” of concepts and significations, or what we call the “constancy” of things and properties, is rooted in this basic act of finding-­again. Thus, it is a common function that makes possible, on the one hand, language and, on the other hand, the specific organization of the intuitive



the concept and the problem of representation

133

world. The question of whether the “articulation” of the intuitive world must be comprehended as preceding or following the emergence of articulated language – the question of whether the first is the “cause” or the “effect” of the second – in this form, is falsely formulated. What can be pointed out is no such “earlier” or “later” but only the inner interconnection that exists between the two basic forms and tendencies of spiritual organization. Neither of them, in a purely temporal sense, “arises” from the other; however, they resemble two stems that spring forth from the same spiritual root. We cannot lay bare this root as such, and we cannot disclose it as a datum of consciousness immediately accessible to observation. We can find it only indirectly, by devoting ourselves without preconception to the consideration of the two offshoots, both of which stand before us in a clear bright light, and then seek to follow them back to their common “origin.” Here again, the indissoluble unity of the psychophysical interconnection is disclosed. In each one of its acts, the basic power of “reflection” is effective at once “inward” and “outward”: it appears, on the one hand, in the organization [Gliederung] of the sound, in the articulation [Artikulation] and rhythmization of the linguistic movement, and, on the other hand, in the sharper differentiation and relief of the world of representation [Vorstellungswelt]. The one process constantly works on the other, and it is from this living, dynamic interrelation that a new equilibrium of consciousness gradually arises and a stable “worldview” is produced. The consideration of language has shown us the general direction in which this “positing of characteristic traits” moves. From the passing vaporous “dream of images,” language first emphasized certain individual features, certain stable peculiarities and properties. Such “properties” may be viewed, vis-­à-­vis their pure content, by their entirely sensible nature; however, their positing as properties nevertheless signifies a pure act of abstraction or, better, of determination. Such a determination is alien to pure expressive lived-­experience: it lives in the moment [Augenblick] and is absorbed in the moment. There is here, however, contrary to its fundamental character, contrary to the Heraclitean flux of becoming in which it stands and in which it alone seems to exist, a demand that consciousness nevertheless steps twice, in fact as often as it wants, into the same stream. Beyond the distance of objective time and the time of lived-­experience, it must seize upon a permanent and stable content and

128

134

129

the problem of representation

posit it as identical with itself. Identifications of this kind – even if they limit themselves to the positing and establishment of purely “sensible qualities” – contain the germ and beginning of every form of “concept formation.” For the “equality” [Gleichheit] or “similarity” that we apprehend in two different and temporally separate impressions is itself no mere impression that is added to the others, nor does it simply embed itself in the same plane to which they belong. If something that is given here and now is taken as a this and recognized [erkennen] as a this – if, for example, it is recognized as a certain shade of red or as a tone of a certain pitch – we already have to do with a genuinely “reflective” element. The “qualifying concept formation” that takes shape in language does not, however, stop here. It does not content itself with positing different things as one on the ground of some similarity or equality that stands out in them; rather, it also composes together the individual positings that have been acquired in this way into comprehensive totalities, into distinct groups and series. Thus, for example, not only can the most multifarious color phenomena with all the changes of tonality, brightness, etc., that they display in themselves, be taken as instances of red and green, but also “the” red and “the” green themselves appear in turn as special instances, as representatives of “color in general.” With this, we arrive at the ground soil [Boden] of those concepts that Lotze subsumed under the term “first universal.” Lotze sharply stressed that the generic concepts of “color” or “tone” were not formed by suppressing and effacing the individual and specific differences [Differenzen] of color and tone appearances, by gathering together the totality [Gesamtheit] of these appearances in a general representative-­image [Vorstellungsbild], into a “general idea.”15 Rather, what is decisive is that in the sequence of these particulars, certain incisions are made by which this series now undergoes a characteristic division and organization. In its constant and uniform flow, certain outstanding points gradually emerge, around which the other members group themselves; it forms certain configurations that are held fast as clearly accentuated key factors and as such are supplied, as it were, with a particular accent. Our analysis of linguistic concept formation has shown how language plays a decisive role in this type of accentuation and articulation. The “first universal” is secured only by the fact that it finds its footing and its fixed condensation in language.16 It is, as it were, a new potency and a new dimension of



the concept and the problem of representation

135

mindfulness to which consciousness arises under the guidance of language. The manifoldly dispersed is not only gathered together but composed into independent and distinctive formations [Gebilde] of a higher order. These formations [Gebilde] form the actual centers of crystallization, to which all that is newly arising clings. We have thus far sought to follow this process in language; we have sought to show in its formations the “analysis of reality,” its separation into “substances” and “qualities,” into “things” and “properties,” into spatial determinations and temporal relationships. We have to pose the same question once again, but from a different point of view. The inner bond between the form of language and the form in which we apprehend intuitive reality will be disclosed in full clarity only if we find that the construction of the two leads through essentially the same stages. As soon as it is shown that the classification [Einteilung] of the world, the divisio naturae, into objects and states, genera and species, is by no means “given” from the beginning, a question arises: To what extent is the rich and varied fabric of the intuitive world itself wrought and governed by definite spiritual energies? This question cannot be answered without, in a certain sense, unraveling the fabric and following its various threads separately. However, this methodologically necessary particularization must never lose sight of our task as a whole. Analysis can and must be taken here as no more than the preliminary stage and preparation for a future synthesis. The more closely we follow the special paths taken by the general basic function of “representation” [Repräsentation] and “recognition,” [Rekognition], the more clearly their nature [Wesen] and specific unity will be revealed to us – and it will be increasingly evident that it is ultimately one and the same fundamental performance by virtue of which spirit rises to the creation of language as well as the creation of the intuitive worldview, to the “discursive” comprehending of reality as well as to its objective intuition.

ENDNOTES 1 [Hermann Usener, Götternamen. Versuch einer Lehre von der religiösen Begriffsbildung (Bonn: Cohen, 1896), 280.] 2 For further details, see 101–3 and Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 2, 251ff. 3 Cf. Köhler, “Zur Psychologie des Schimpansen,” 27. Cf. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1, 130f.

130

136

the problem of representation

4 For further details, see Clara Stern and William Stern, Monographien über die seelische Entwicklung des Kindes. Die Kindersprache: Eine psychologische und sprachtheoretische Untersuchung, vol. 1 (Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1907), 35, 39, and 224ff. 5 I use the term “function of presentation” [Darstellungsfunktion] in the same sense as did Karl Bühler, whose works were not known to me when I treated the problem from the standpoint of the philosophy of language in the first volume of the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (cf. esp. 16ff., 126ff.) This is all the more reason to point here the fundamental agreement between the findings of a general analysis from the standpoint of the philosophy and history of language and of Bühler’s investigations, which are essentially oriented toward psychology and biology. See Karl Bühler, “Kritische Musterung der neueren Theorien des Satzes,” Indogermanisches Jahrbuch, 6 (1919); “Vom Wesen der Syntax,” in Festschrift für Karl Vossler (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1922). And cf. his recent article “Über den Begriff der sprachlichen Darstellung,” Psychologische Forschung, 3 (1923), 282–94. 6 Julius Stenzel, “Sinn, Bedeutung, Begriff, Definition. Ein Beitrag zur Frage der Sprachmelodie,” Jahrbuch für Philologie, 1 (1925), 182. 7 For further details, see Arnold Pick, Die agrammatischen Sprachstörungen: Studien zur psychologischen Grundlegung der Aphasielehre (Berlin: J. Springer, 1913), 162f. 8 For further details, see Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1, 122f. 9 Klages, Ausdrucksbewegung und Gestaltungskraft, 95, 198. The fact that animals often “react” strongly to pictures [Abbilder] – i.e., shrink back from them with violent expression of fear – does not refute this view but instead confirms it. Pfungst tells us, for example, that a young ape that he had brought up took a violent fright one day at the sight a human portrait, a drawing of Frederick the Great by Fidus, with strongly accentuated eyes. The animal could only be quieted after the picture was removed. But obviously, the drawing had not been taken as a picture of a man; the ape had merely grasped certain expressive factors in it. What affected the animal was the physiognomic lived-­experience of the “eyelike” as such, which by no means presupposes the recognition of a human face and of the eye as “part” of this face. With regard to this difference, see Werner’s remarks in Einführung in die Entwicklungspsychologie, 53. 10 For further details, see Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 2, 51ff., 301ff. 11 Well-­known as the following report is, I would like to quote it here because of its characteristic details: We went out to the pump-­house, and I made Helen hold her mug under the spout while I pumped. As the cold water gushed forth, filling the mug, I spelled “w-­a-­t-­e-­r” in Helen’s free hand. The word coming so close upon the sensation of cold water rushing over her hand seemed to startle her. She dropped the mug and stood as one transfixed. A new light came into her face. She spelled “water” several times. Then she dropped



the concept and the problem of representation

137

on the ground and asked for its name and pointed to the pump and the trellis, and suddenly turning round she asked for my name. I spelled “Teacher.” Just then the nurse brought Helen’s little sister into the pump-­ house, and Helen spelled "baby" and pointed to the nurse. All the way back to the house she was highly excited, and learned the name of every object she touched, so that in a few hours she had added thirty new words to her vocabulary. Helen Keller, The Story of My Life (New York: Doubleday, 1903), 316. Cf. Clare Stern and William Stern, Die Kindersprache, 177ff. 12 Good examples for the decisive importance of the appellative function may be found in Bühler, Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes, 207ff., 374ff. 13 Johann Gottfried Herder, “Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache,” Werke, 5 (1772), 34ff. Cf. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1, 85ff. 14 On the concepts of “pregnance” and “pregnant having,” see chap. 5. 15 [Originally in English.] 16 For further details, see Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1, 215ff.

II THING AND PROPERTY 131

The question of the relationship between language and thinking is as old as philosophy – indeed, probably older: it is among the earliest problems that forced themselves on the human spirit. The problems of language seemed to have seized and aroused the human spirit earlier than the problems of nature. Like a truly originary-­wonder, language kindled the philosophical emotion of wonderment. When the human first turned toward language, language confronted the human not as something that has become [Geworden] but as something existing [Bestehend] – not as its own work but as a foreign power to which the human felt subjected and before which it had to submit. The worldview of magic is thoroughly filled and permeated with this belief in the omnipotence of the word and the name. Philosophical reflection dissolves this magical spell; however, in its beginnings, it is also wholly dominated by that “archaic logic” for which the forms of thinking and those of language form an indissoluble unity.1 And although philosophical logic gradually sought to loosen this connection, although it sought more and more to reflect on the independent and autonomous laws of “pure” thinking – the philosophy of language stubbornly adhered to them for a much longer time. The thesis of the identity of speech and thinking recurs here in ever-­new forms and comes to be supported by ever-­new justifying grounds. “Language has created reason; before language the



thing and property

139

human was without reason”: this is the thesis succinctly formulated by so late a thinker as Lazarus Geiger.2 With this, language seems assured of the highest rank in the realm of spirit; an absolutely universal value seems to be accorded to its achievement. If, however, we examine more closely this supposed identity of language and reason, we find of course that it remains imperfect in two different directions – on the one hand, it gives language too much and, on the other, it gives it too little. Not only does this view overlook that there are forms in which conceptual thought frees itself from the guidance and guardianship of language and constructs an independent realm of “theoretical” signification, but those forms also fail to see that the spiritual function that language has to fulfill cannot be narrowed to the sphere of essentially “logical” problems, the sphere of concepts, judgment, and inferences. The power of the linguistic form is not exhausted in what it accomplishes as a vehicle and medium for logical-­discursive thinking. It already permeates the “intuitive” apprehension and configuration of the world; it is no less involved in the construction of perception and intuition than it is in the construction of the realm of concepts. This construction is bound to the fact that the general turn that we have designated as the transition to “presentation” [Darstellung] takes place within and permeates the whole of consciousness. The world of intuition is already essentially determined by the fact that its individual elements [Elemente] do not possess a merely “presentative” [präsentativ] character but rather possess a “representative” [repräsentativ] character – they do not simply “stand there” [dastehen] but rather stand for one another. They can reciprocally point to one another and in a certain sense represent [vertreten] one another. Even where it is strongly emphasized that the sound is no mere outward cloak for thought but “the indication and cause of a determinate configuration of thought,” it is not always made clear that in principle the same inference must also be drawn for the sphere of intuition and even more so for that of perception. Lazarus formulates this relationship, for example, as follows: “Beyond language and before it, there is to be sure an intuitive cognition of individual things, or rather appearances; however, there can be a comprehending and knowing only by means of language.”3 Is it, however, actually possible to separate “intuitive recognizing” [Erkennen] in this way from comprehending and knowing, and can it be assumed that it is a purely material substrate? Is there an immediate

132

133

140

134

the problem of representation

intuition of things, or is the knowledge of things, the organization of reality according to “things” and “properties,” not itself the result of a mediation that we do not ordinarily see through, because we are always preforming it and because we are always absorbed in its execution? A glance at certain findings in developmental psychology will show us that the organization of the world according to things and properties is by no means “self-­evident” and that it is not necessarily inherent in every form of the “lived-­experience” of reality. Thus, for example, the “perceiving” and “representing” of the animal does not seem to be defined by its yielding stable “things” with determinate properties that may change in the thing itself but also equally possess an enduring constitution. From the complex whole of the lived-­experience of perception, no individual characteristic traits are as yet extracted in which a content is recognized and by which the animal is able to designate it as “this,” as the “same” [derselbe] content regardless of how often and under what different conditions it appears. This self-­sameness [Dieselbigkeit] is not at all an element that is contained in the immediate lived-­experience, since there is, on the plane of sensible lived-­experience itself, no “recurrence of the same.” Every sense impression, taken purely as such, possesses a proper, never-­recurring “tonality” or “coloration.” Where the purely expressive character of this tonality or coloration predominates, the world is not yet “homogeneous” and constant in our sense. Particularly since Hans Volkelt’s painstaking observations, there seems to be no doubt that for the animal there are in general no fixed content of things but instead that its perception of reality is constructed of still-­unorganized “complex qualities.”4 “The things,” Thorndike emphasizes, “are not, for the animal, the hard and fast, well-­defined objects of human life”; rather, they lie as though embedded and fused in certain concrete general positions [Lage], and these must be wholly identical in order to move the animal to an identical behavior.5 It is thus clear also from this angle that the “thing” is by no means grounded in the sensible character of perception, in the mere “impression,” but is of a “reflective” character – in the sense of Herder’s concept of “reflection.” Likewise, in the development of the child, it is unmistakable that the intuition of the thing-­world does not exist from the beginning but must in a sense be wrested from the world of language. The first “names” that the child masters and uses with understanding seem to designate



thing and property

141

no fixed and durable objects [Objekte] but instead only more or less fluid and vague general impressions. Any alteration in these total impressions, however slight from our standpoint, suffices to prevent the use of the “same” name. The mother need only have on another hat or dress; a thing need only occupy a different position in the room to produce an impression of strangeness on the child and no longer release the word which otherwise occurs regularly.6

Only to the extent that the word is freed from this initial narrowness, only when it is apprehended in its universal significance and applicability, does the new horizon of the “thing” arise in the child’s consciousness. Here again, the moment [Augenblick] when symbolic consciousness is awakened as such designates the real moment [Moment] of the breakthrough. All observers agree in describing the almost insatiable “hunger for names” that originates in the child at this point – as the child never tires of asking for the linguistic designation of every new impression. Some observers even stress that this desire of the child for naming seems to intensify into a kind of mania.7 This mania of naming becomes intelligible as soon as we realize that it is in no way an empty mental game of spirit but that what is at work here is an original urge toward objective intuition. The “hunger for names” is ultimately a hunger for gestalts: it arises from a drive toward “essential” apprehension. Thus, characteristically, at first the child does not ask what a thing is called [heißen]; rather, the child asks what the thing is. For the child, the being of the object and its name fuse entirely into one; in the name and through it, the child has the object. Even before the child appropriates the name for the conscious purpose of communication, it becomes decisive and significant for the construction of its own world of representation [Vorstellungswelt].8 The cognition of the identical signification of the name and the cognition of the identity of things and the identity of properties develop and unfold with one another: each is only a different moment of the turn that consciousness undergoes in coming under the domination of the pure “presentative function.” Only now that the sense of the name is acquired does being stand fast under our gaze, so that in quiescent consideration it can dwell on it. And only in this standing firm is the “object” acquired and secured.

135

142

136

the problem of representation

The mythical-­magical view knows as yet nothing of such truly enduring objectivity. It also lacks the “thing” in the characteristic and specific significance that it assumes in the sphere of theoretical intuition and theoretical cognition. Everything “actual” is still transformable here into one another – all properties are transferable from one object [Objekt] to the other.9 Only as the pure symbolic consciousness works itself out [sich ausbilden] with emergent formation [Herausbildung] of language does the “category” of the thing progressively acquire significance and stability: so much so that it ultimately progressively permeates the whole of intuition and ever-­more clearly and sharply – and in a certain sense, ever-­ more inflexibly and unilaterally – imprints its stamp onto it. However, precisely because of the almost unlimited domination that this category exerts in the realm of theoretical being and cognition, it seems difficult if not impossible to disclose its “origin” within this realm itself. If everything that is theoretically recognized gives itself to us only as an imprinted form proper to it, how could we hope to be able, as it were, to theoretically understand and deduce the act of imprinting as such? We can never succeed, so to speak, in immediately befalling the function that prevails here: it gives itself to us only in its product of its own and always vanishes with this product. And yet there appears a way to make it at least indirectly visible – in so far as not all of the framework [Gefüge] of the theoretical world, not all its structures [Strukturen], exhibit one and the same mode and consistency of construction [Fügung]. In the formations [Gebilde] of consciousness the phenomena are always ladened, so to speak, with a certain purely presentative character; however, the dynamic relationship of tension that prevails here is not everywhere the same. And this very inequality, this variability, shows us how the two elements, which are known only in their reciprocal relation, can be distinguished from one another in this reciprocal relation. In this differentiation, we surely must resist the temptation of seeking to make the differences [Differenzen] of signification [Bedeutung] and significance [Bedeutsamkeit] intelligible by tracing them back to ontically real differences [Differenzen] – to explain them through realistic assumptions concerning the constitution and structure of the thing-­world or the constitution of the world of simple sensations. We have shown the circle in which all such explanations move in our appraisal of the attempts to stamp the pure expressive phenomenon as



thing and property

143

a mediated phenomenon that is grounded in certain acts of judgment, 137 reasoning, and inference.10 The same form of “justification” [Begründung] always returns anew in the attempts to give an explanation of the pure presentative function. There always prevails here an endeavor to replace the “pointing to” [Hinweis] that every genuine presentative phenomenon includes in itself by another, purely mediated form of rendering [Erweisen] or demonstrating [Beweisen]. The act of “intention,” of objective “meaning” [Meinen] in general, is somehow transformed into a discursive act, into a consequence of a logical approach of thought. However, the presentative phenomenon cannot be broken down into a web of analogies, insofar as we take it in its fundamental shape [Gestalt] and original determinacy, any more than the simple expressive lived-­experience can be. The fact that the “representation” [Vorstellung] represented [repräsentiert] something objective to us, that in and through it this objectivity “gives itself to be recognized,” is sharply distinguished in its pure “findings” from the fact that one content is dependent on another, that it is grounded through it either by an empirical or a transcendent causality. The final form by which this mode of causality is recognized, the form of the “inductive” inference or “deductive” derivation, necessarily passes by the phenomenon and problem of presentation. For this in no way belongs to the sphere of “abstract” thinking. Rather, here we are situated in the very midst of the intuitive apprehension of reality. The mode of this apprehending is of course entirely different from that of the pure expressive lived-­experience. In place of the mode of “you-­ perception,” such as prevailed in the expressive lived-­experience, a new mode, that of “it-­perception,” begins to stand out. In the one case as in the other, we do not, however, deduce the “you” or the “it” but immediately have it in a specific and original manner of sight [Sicht]. It is futile to ask whence this sight [Sicht] stems from – we can affirm only what it in itself is. For our task is not to subsume it under some already existing and validly accepted theory: rather, it is a question of comprehending how it is through this sight [Sicht] itself that pure “theory” as such, that the positing and apprehending of “objective” determinations and states of affairs, first becomes possible. Wherever genuine representation [Repräsentation] is given, what we have is not the naked material of sensation, which is, through certain acts that are carried out on it, subsequently made into the presentation of something objective 138

144

the problem of representation

and interpreted as such. It is, rather, always a formed total intuition that stands before us as an objectively significant whole, filled with objective “sense.” It remains for us only to recognize this basic symbolic relationship, like that of pure expression, as a genuine originary-­phenomenon, which can be shown to be a constitutive element in all “knowledge” of an object. Without the fact that the appearances of consciousness do not hover before the mind as merely momentary images but that what is given here points to a not-­here and what is given now points backward or forward to a not-­now. Without this, the phenomenon of an intuitive world could not be understood or even described. It is only in and through this function of showing [Weisen] and by virtue of it that there is for us a “knowing” of objective reality and a specific organization, a partition according to “thing” and “attribute” – conversely, this function of showing itself cannot be rendered comprehensible based on objective determinations and presuppositions. To clarify the details of this state of affairs, we take a determinate sphere of sensible-­intuitive phenomena as our starting point. Sensationalist psychology generally takes the world of colors as a manifold of sensations that are organized according to certain differences, which are graduated according to brightness and color tone. However, in his seminal investigations into optics [Lichtsinn], Hering has for good reasons already protested against this designation. Whoever calls colors “sensations,” he points out, gives the impression that is initially a question of “subjective” determinations. If this designation of subjectivity can be physically grounded, however, it is in no way phenomenologically grounded. For from the standpoint of pure lived-­experience, color is not at all given to us as a state or modification of our own I; rather, what is disclosed to us in it is always some objective determinations, relationships pertaining to objective reality. In this sense, therefore, color – as long as we do not pass from a phenomenological consideration to a physiological or physical explanation – is to be designated far more as a property than as a sensation. In it, neither a state of the I nor any constitution of light is directly and genuinely perceived, but through it, we look at objective structures: In seeing [Sehen] it is not a question of a looking [Schauen] at rays as such, but seeing through the mediated looking [Schauen] of the outer



thing and property

145

things of these rays; the eye is expected to inform us, not concerning the intensity or quality of the light that comes from these outside things, but concerning the things themselves.11

Even from the standpoint of “physiological optics,” it thus proves necessary to draw a sharp division between the mode of “seeing” [Sehen], which consists of a mere receptivity to impressions of light and their differences [Differenzen], and the mode of vision [Schau], in which our intuitive world is constructed. In particular, the fact of the so-­called “color constancy of the visual things” makes it evident that mere similarity of certain stimuli, for example the quantity of light entering the eye, is in no way sufficient to unequivocally determine the content [Gehalt] of intuition. According to the particular conditions to which the perception is subject, the “same” light stimulus can be used in very different ways for the construction of reality – and apparently the same light – “sensation” can have a very different objective “significance.” A sharper phenomenological analysis – such as that carried out in exemplary fashion by Schapp in his Contributions to the Phenomenology of Perception – shows first of all that in the appearance which we call “color,” certain orders can be differentiated and that the appearance itself possesses a very different significance for us according to its affiliation with one of these orders. In the one order, color is taken as a “light formation” [Lichtgebilde] that is apprehended as such and elucidated in its determinacy, without which it performs the function of making the objective visible and representing it. In the other order, on the contrary, the regard [Blick] is directed purely toward objective determinations, and here color serves only as a perspective [Durchblick] for the objective that appears in it and is not considered in its own mode of appearance. Schapp describes this relationship in the following way: There is a difference between the naive person and the artist’s ways of seeing things, even if we disregard all aesthetic considerations. The naive person . . . sees things only in the color these things apparently preserve in all changes of light, which one may also call their actual, inherent color; they do not see the reflections, the lights, the colored shadows, except where they force themselves on the attention. True, the naive person sees the shadow that their figure makes on the ground

139

146 140

the problem of representation

[Boden] when the sun is shining, they also see the reflection cast on the wall by a moving hand mirror, the glittering of a helmet in the sunlight, the flickering of light on the walls when a fire is burning in the fireplace – however, when the sky is overcast, . . . it does not occur to the naive person that a cherry or an eye always has this spot of light regardless of the illumination. . . . Thus, although the object cannot be perceived without such light images, it is certain on the other hand that the light images themselves need not be perceived if the object is to be represented. . . . We can consider them, as they group themselves in the object, as they lie on it in shadows, as they infuse it with light, as they cast a radiant sunshine over it. . . . In this case, to be sure, the things seem to be somewhat neglected. It seems to me that we can be so much taken up with the light images that the object almost vanishes. The perception of things does not seem to be compatible with the perception of light images; rather, the perception of a thing requires that the light images recede modestly into the background, where they are indispensable. When they are situated in the appropriate place, there is a perception of the thing. Where they stand out so vividly that one cannot overlook them, perception is disturbed. They should “guide” the look to the thing; the look must not become caught in them.

Furthermore, when we shift between the two orders of color distinguished here – when a color that we had hitherto taken as a mere “light effect,” as a color lighting, is seen in the form us an “inherent” color, “the color of the thing” or vice versa – the total perception takes on another character and sense. There is a wholly determinate dependency between the order in which “color” enters into relation with our consciousness and the object that is depicted by this order of color; “the immediate consequence of a change in the color order is a change in the object represented.”12 What is designated here as the order of color is precisely that very determinate “sight” [Sicht] that results in every case from the particular presentative function that color fulfills in each individual case. Color as such – Schapp also stresses – is what presents things to us:

141

The color that is there, however, is not enough in order to present things. Rather with it, the color orders itself, organizes itself into forms. . . . It is by means of this ordering of color that space and



thing and property

147

figure are prefigured for us. In reference to color, space then is something presented. Color itself is not presented, it is directly given, but it presents . . . forms in space. . . . The gestalt, for its part, presents the thing with its properties. It does not yet belong to the thing, nor is it an immediate form of the thing; but it is something presented, which in turn presents.13

From this, it follows that color is not itself a content that is found as such in an objective space and variously organized in this space; rather, taken in the manifold of its potential modes of appearance, it forms the initial substrate out of which the representation of objective reality, the representation of “things in space,” is acquired and constructed. What the naïve view present [präsent], what it believes it can, so to speak, grasp with the hands as a thing, owes this very corporeal “presence” [Gegenwart] itself to the forms and orders of “representation” [Repräsentation]. Admittedly, however, we should not let this insight obscure the originality of these forms and mislead us into assigning them to a stratum of mere mediacy, from which they are fundamentally removed by their significance and achievement. The theory of cognition of both “rationalism” and “empiricism” have committed the same error in this respect. However much they differ in their answers to the question as to the ground of the “relation of our representations to the object,”14 they agree, far more than their proponents seem to realize, in their grasping of the problem itself and their methodological approach to it. Both theories seek a way by which “mere” representation, through determinate mediating acts that are applied to it, can be transformed into the form of objective, concrete intuition; they seek to explain the metamorphosis by which the appearance develops from a mere datum of consciousness into a content of reality [Realität], of the “outer world.” Empiricism reduces this metamorphosis to “associations” and “reproductions” – rationalism reduces it to logical operations, judgments, and inferences. What is overlooked in equal degree, however, is that all the psychological or logical processes invoked here come in a manner of speaking too late. They all refer to a connection of elements [Elemente] that are viewed in some way as already “existing,” as posited before the connection. The question, nevertheless, not only concerns the possibility and ground of connection but also addresses the possibility of positing connectability.

142

148

143

the problem of representation

No associative combination of mere “impressions” and no logical interweaving of them, however close, is able to explain that original mode of positing inherent in the fact that an appearance points to an objective being, that it is given as an element in an objective intuition. Rationalism believes this mode of positing can be rendered “comprehensible” [begreiflich] only by stamping it as an achievement of the concept [Begriff], an act of pure intelligence. This basic tendency is already pronounced in the first classical form [Gestalt] in which rationalism emerged in the history of modern philosophy. What Descartes wants to show in the first lines of his Meditations is precisely that the thought of the identity of the thing and the constancy of the thing are as such in no way contained in the mere sensible data of perception, in the qualities of color and tone, touch, smell, and taste but rather are brought to them only secondarily, through logical reflection. Only by applying the “innate idea” of substance to the manifold and in themselves totally disparate sensible phenomena do we acquire the intuition of an identical and constant object, to which these phenomena refer and whose determinations and properties they present. The piece of wax that I have before me in sense perception and that shows itself to me as white and round, hard and fragrant, may change in every single respect; it may, in melting, suffer a change in all its accidents: it nevertheless remains for me the same wax, because it does not have this self-­sameness [Dieselbigkeit] from the senses but derives it from the pure understanding: “sa perception [. . .] n’est point une vision, ni un attouchernent, ni une imagination, et ne l’a jamais été, [. . .] mais seulement une inspection de l’esprit”15 [“its perception is neither a vision, nor a touching, nor an imagining and has never been these, it is but an inspection of the mind”]. Thus, with one stroke, the act of perception, by virtue of the objective relation that inheres in it, is transformed into a pure act of thinking. It is the “regard of spirit,” the inspectio mentis, that first makes mere impressions into modes of the appearance of the object. The ability of the sensible appearance to make the objective “visible” [sichtig] and to represent it is reduced to a faculty of the understanding, to the force of its “unconscious inferences”16 – and here, of course, Descartes forsakes his original ground [Boden] and prepares the way for a transition from the phenomenology of perception to the metaphysics of perception. Having combated the realism of the absolute object by starting out from the “cogito,” he succumbs in the end to the



thing and property

149

realism of “innate ideas.” Just as the clear and distinct idea of God must bring him back to that scholastic ontology that he had overcome in his basic form and method, so too must his pure analysis of theoretical consciousness bring him back to metaphysical assumptions regarding his origins and genealogy.17 If one wants to avoid this step, which amounts to an outright μετάβασις εἰς ἄλλο γένος [transgression to another genus], there remains only one way: instead of seeking to derive and explain the phenomena from their transcendent “grounds,” one must apprehend them solely in their reciprocal reference and let them elucidate each other reciprocally by virtue of this reference. Such an elucidation is made possible because the character of “presentation,” which belongs as such to the nature [Wesen] of “consciousness” in general, does not emerge with equal distinctness [Prägnanz] and clarity in all the formations [Gebilde] of consciousness. And this enables us to break it down into diverse phases and to observe the transition from one to the other. This mode of consideration clearly brings out the dissimilarity in the dynamic tension of the relationship between the content of an appearance as such and its presenting function, to which we have already referred in general terms. Every sensible content, however “elementary,” is already filled with such a tension and, as it were, laden with it. It is never simply “there” [Da] as an isolated and detached content; rather, in this very existence [Dasein], it points beyond itself, forming a concrete unity of “presence” [Präsenz] and “representation” [Repräsentation]. As consciousness progresses to richer and higher configurations, this unity also gains a sharper and more determinate imprint. Its elements are set off more and more clearly from one another – while at the same time the inner referentiality and joining together of the elements is not relaxed or weakened by this isolation but rather emerges in 144 every great measure in it. By comparing the various sensible spheres in respect to this progress, we can establish a kind of hierarchical structure in them. A certain sequence takes place in them that leads from the relatively indeterminate to higher and higher degrees of determinacy, of intuitive “distinction.” The “primitive” senses let only the beginnings of such a determinacy be recognized. They move essentially in an ambit of certain, often-­ intensive expressive values that cannot be “qualitatively” delimited from one another with any true sharpness. The individual data of the sense of

150

the problem of representation

smell, for example, seems to be distinguished for us primarily by such an expressive character: by the character of the attractive or repellent, the pungent or mild, the pleasant or unpleasant, the soothing or exciting. These affective differences still do not lead, however, to a truly “objective” difference of individual qualities. A gradation and ordering, such as those that confront us in other sensible manifolds, above all, as with tone and color, proves to be impracticable here. A clear spatial determination is still lacking: the smells do not “adhere” to determinate places; rather, in respect to localization, they are characterized by a thoroughgoing vagueness, a “rubberlike plasticity.”18 This vagueness can be clearly seen in how difficult it has been for language to establish, as it were, a firm foothold in this domain and to permeate it with its force. Where language seeks to designate determinate qualities of smell, it is usually compelled to proceed indirectly, through substances [Dingworte] that it has coined on the basis of other sensible-­intuitive data. A classification, such as that of color, into “general” names – red, blue, yellow, and green, etc. – is not possible here.

145

Either our words for smell convey it adjectivally (rose-­like, camphory) or they merely involve a comparison with the “actual” bearer of smell (raspberry-­like, jasmine-­like). Nowhere is an abstraction of smell possible; from jasmine, lily-­of-­the-­valley, camphor, and milk we can easily abstract out the common color, namely “white,” but no one can analogously abstract out a common smell by regarding the common factor and disregarding the distinguishing factors.19

We stand here, then, outside the sphere of that “first universal” that is the starting point for all language formation and all true concept formation. We take an essential step toward “raising impressions to representations”20 as soon as we pass from the domain of smell sensations to that of tactile sensations. The sense of touch has sometimes even been designated as the true “sense of reality” – as the sense whose phenomena have “the most load-­bearing character of reality [Realität]” and, hence, possesses an epistemological primacy over all other senses.21 However suitable this tendency toward [Zug zu] objectivization is, it stops, as it were, halfway. For it makes no sharp and clear cut between merely circumstantial and purely objective determinations but gives



thing and property

151

us the latter clothed in the former. Here we can apprehend objects [Objekte] in no other way than through the medium of perception of our own lived body and cannot detach them from this foundation. The phenomena of touch thus remain in a sense “bipolar,” in that here a “subjective” component, relating to the lived body, inevitably combines with another component, oriented toward things and tangible properties. There are tactile phenomena which, particularly where the inner attitude is suitable, seem to be exclusively an indication of the objective, but a change in this attitude can . . . make the factor of sensation in them – that is to say, a circumstance of our body – stand out as an intuitively given and not as a merely disclosed property. . . . Though in an actual sense either the subjective or the objective aspect of tactile perception may be almost unnoticeable, its bipolarity remains . . . intuitively realizable.22

The tendency [Tendenz] toward presentation is thus unmistakable here – however, it does not yet achieve actual fulfillment: the “objective” content stops, so to speak, at the boundary of our lived body instead of becoming a true “counterpart” [Gegenüber], instead of retreating to an ideal distance. Such distancing is achieved only in the highest, “objective” senses, in hearing and vision. And even here a kind of gradation of the presentative phenomenon can be demonstrated, since not all phenomena within these two domains disclose this function with equal determinacy and emphasis. As to colors, the seminal investigations of Hering, which were pursued by Katz, distinguish a threefold “mode of appearance.” We may take them as simple optical states: as “light images” of a determinate brightness and tonality, which we apprehend purely as such. Or else we may take them as “objective colors” – as colors that do not, as it were, hover in the void but rather adhere to definite tangible bearers and come to our consciousness as the “properties” of these bearers. In the first case, we have before us the appearance of a “colored area,” which is given to us as a simple, flat quale, without it being linked to an objective substrate; in the latter case, color appears to us as a “surface color,” an inherent constitution of a certain object [Objekt]. From both modes of appearance, a third is differentiated; spatial colors

146

152

147

the problem of representation

or color-­space – that is, colors which seem to fill a determinate three-­ dimensional space. We do not need to pursue here the various individual problems that arise from this consideration of the world of colors according to this threefold perspective.23 What is decisive for us and of general significance is that with the change in the perspective under which the phenomenon of color is taken, under which “aspect” it is beheld, the phenomenon as a whole, as an intuitive datum, undergoes at once a characteristic shift. If by a change of “inner attitude” we take an appearance that we had hitherto taken as a surface color [Oberflächenfarbe] and as such related to a certain objective bearer and transfer it into an appearance of mere plain colored area [Flächenfarbe], then with this the total colored image has changed for us – it stands before us in a different intuitive determinacy. Helmholtz pointed out that the colors of a landscape stand out much more brilliantly and distinctly if one slants one’s head or holds the landscape upside down. He interprets this phenomenon as follows: In the usual mode of observation, we seek only to judge the objects [Objecte] correctly as such. We know that at a certain distance, the green area [Flächen] appears in a somewhat modified color tone; we accustom ourselves to disregard this change and learn to identify the altered green of distant meadows and trees with the corresponding color of nearby objects [Objecte]. In the case of very distant objects [Objecte], such as mountains, little of the object’s color can be recognized, for it is largely covered over by the color of the illuminated air. This indefinite blue-­green color, on which border the light-­blue field of the sky or the reddish-­yellow sunset above and bright-­green of the meadows and woods below, is very much subject to alterations by contrast. For us it is the indefinite and changing color of the distance; we know the change it undergoes at different times of day and in varying illuminations, but we do not define its true character, since we have no definite object [Objecte] to transfer it to: what we know is precisely its shifting character. However, as soon as we place ourselves in unusual circumstances, for example looking under our arm or between our legs, the landscape appears as a flat picture. . . . And thereby the colors also lose their relation to near or distant objects [Objecte] and confront us purely in their distinctive differences.24



thing and property

153

Up to now, psychology has had at its disposal two different ways of explaining this distinctive change in the total sense impression brought about by an alteration of the “inner attitude.” It could, with Helmholtz, regard the appearance as the outcome [Ergebnis] of an intellectual activity, of a process of judgment and inference, though of course this process had to be taken as a fabric of “unconscious inferences” and so transferred from the ground of pure phenomenology to that of metaphysics. In this displacement, even the “empiricist” Helmholtz showed that he was still heir to the rationalist theory of perception formulated by Descartes. If the psychology of perception, on the other hand, sought to remain with the pure phenomenon, if it insisted – as Hering persistently did in his arguments against Helmholtz – that what was involved in the appearances spoken about here is “an essentially different manner of seeing [Sehen], and not merely our knowing of a difference in outward circumstances,”25 then, nevertheless, to make this “difference of seeing” intelligible, the psychology of perception must trace perception back almost exclusively to the reproductive element that accompanies and modifies the act of vision. A logical function is now replaced by the function of the memory and “reproductive imagination.” As Hering stresses: What we see in a given moment is not conditioned only by the type and intensity of the radiations entering our eye and the state of the retina as a whole; rather, these are only, so to speak, the primary genetic factors of the colors caused by the radiations. With them are associated the reproductions of former experiences, induced by all sorts of subsidiary circumstances, and these secondary and as it were accidental factors also play a part in determining seeing at any particular time. . . . The color in which we have most often seen a thing is imprinted ineffaceably on our memory and becomes a fixed property of the remembered image. . . . Everything that is already known to us from experience or that we regard as known to us in respect to color, we see through the glass of remembered colors and hence often differently than we should otherwise see them. In view of the usually fleeting nature of seeing, the remembered color of a visible thing can even take the place of an entirely different color which we should have seen if all occasion to reproduce a remembered color had been excluded, on the assumption, to be sure, that we do not give special attention to the color. We

148

154

the problem of representation possess a great aptitude for distinguishing the so-­called actual color of a thing from its accidental colors. We thus distinguish those finely graduated shadows on the surface [Oberfläche] of a body, which help us to perceive its form, its relief, its distance as something accidental from the color of the surface [Fläche] that bears the shadow, and we suppose that outside of the darkness of the shadow and through it we see the “actual” color of the surface. The reflected colors that appear on smooth surfaces are in a sense separated in perception from the “actual” color of the surface.26

149

The appearances that Helmholtz interpreted as logical-­intellectual phenomena, as products of judgments and inferences, are thus defined by Hering as essentially “mnemic” phenomena: for him, memory is in general an essential property of all “organized matter.”27 In the long run, however, psychological empiricism was not able to remain content with this explanation either. Katz expressly emphasized that remembered colors did not suffice to interpret his experiments that took up and extended those of Hering, that even where the colored papers that were to be judged were neither individually defined as such nor known to the observers from former experience, the characteristic appearances of “light perspective” – i.e. the distinguishing of the “actual” color of an object from a quality of illumination “accidentally” attaching to it – still occurred.28 From this, he concludes that the remembered colors, to which he had at first attributed a central position in the seeing of color, would have to be relegated to a subordinate role.29 Empirical psychology stands here at the threshold of our general philosophical problem. For again it turns out that in the construction, in the ordering and organization of the world of color as well as in the role that this world of color plays in the representation [Repräsentation] of spatial and objective relationships, we have to do not so much with an achievement of the discursive “understanding,” or of the merely “reproductive” imagination, as with that “productive imagination” that Kant identified as “a necessary ingredient of perception itself.”30 An “ingredient of perception” in the strict sense can never be a factor that is simply added to the given “sensation” – whether to reinterpret it by judgment or to complement it with reproductive elements [Elemente] of memory. We have here no such subsequent supplement but instead an act of original forming [Formung]



thing and property

155

that applies to the intuition as a whole and first “makes it possible” as a whole. If we designated this act, on the basis of our earlier considerations, as an act of “symbolic ideation,” it should thus be understood that this mode of ideation is no “secondary and as it were accidental factor” that codetermines [mitbestimmt] prevailing seeing [Sehen] but that, taken spiritually, it first constitutes seeing [Sehen]. For there is no seeing [Sehen], and nothing can be visible [Sichtbar] for us, that does not stand in some mode of spiritual sight [Sicht], of ideation in general. A seeing [Sehen] and a seen [Gesehen] outside of this “sight” [Sicht], a “bare” sensation in general preceding all configuration, is an empty abstraction. The “given” must always be taken in a determinate “regard” [Hinsicht] and apprehended sub specie of this regard, because it is this regard that first lends it its “sense.” This sense is here to be understood neither as a secondary-­conceptual nor as an associative addition; rather, it is the simple sense of the original intuition itself. In the moment [Augenblick] that we pass over from one form of “sight” [Sicht] into another, it is not only an individual element of intuition, but intuition itself in its totality [Totalität], its unbroken unity, that undergoes a characteristic metamorphosis. And Goethe’s words, which follow, are valid not only for the scientifically determined or the artistically formed but also for simple empirical intuition, namely all the looking-­ats [Anschauenden] are always undertaken productively: “and, as much as knowers may crucify and bless the imagination, they must, nevertheless, even before they understand it, invoke the productive imagination to help.”31 For Goethe, this relation to the “productive imagination” led to that “difference . . . between seeing and seeing,” on which he insists over and over again, concluding that all “sensible” seeing is always already a “seeing [Sehen] with the eyes of spirit.” When the physiologist or physiological opticist seeks to cut off the sensible from the spiritual factor, when he tends to regard the former as “primary” and the latter as “secondary and accidental,” this tendency may be relatively justified from the standpoint of the “sight” [Sicht] in which he himself stands and which prescribes his direction of considerations, namely from the standpoint of the causal analysis, the genetic “explanation” of the process of perception. However, such a relative justification must not be absolutized. The purely phenomenological consideration, if it ever speaks of any “earlier” or “later,” is inclined, rather, to reverse the relationship: it stresses that

150

151

156

152

the problem of representation

“ideation,” that the mode of “sight” [Sicht], is the true πρότερον τῇ φύσει [first according to nature], because it is only in it and through it that the significance of the seen emerges and because it is determined only according to it. If we now consider once more from this standpoint the world of color and the diverse “modes of appearance” that color serves us, we find thoroughgoing confirmation of our general conclusion. As much as we may push the “reduction” of colors – the more and more we may strip color of its presentating character, of its representative [repräsentativ] value for the spatial and objective – we never succeed in tracing them back to a point where they become mere “sensations” without any intuitive organization. The so-­called colored area [Flächenfarben] presents itself as the “mode of originary-­appearance” of color – and both biologically and psychologically, the principle may be put forward that “the center of the retina presents to consciousness the colored area as the first reaction to light, or that it must pass through this state that serves this mode of reaction before it reaches the perception of surface colors.”32 Even where there is a fully developed consciousness of color, space, and objects, all spatial, objective colors, under artificially selected experimental conditions, can be transposed into mere colored areas [Flächenfarben] – that is, a “complete reduction of color impressions” can be brought about.33 Thus, color no longer makes space any more than it makes a determinate thing. Rather, it makes itself visible, as it were: it appears as a member within a manifold of graduated “lived-­experiences of light.” These lived-­experiences of light still show a distinct forming [Formung] as they sharply detach from one another and in this detachment order themselves. Not only do they possess different degrees of “coherence,” so that one color seems separated from another by a greater or lesser “distance” that results in a definite principle of the series, but also in this series, certain points are distinguished around which the individual elements [Elemente] organize. Even taken as a mere light impression, an individual color shade is not simply “present” [präsent] but at the same time “representative” [repräsentativ]: the given here and now, for example a momentary and individual red, not only gives itself as its own [zu eigen] but is known to us also as “a” red, as an exemplar of a species through which it is represented. It is so embedded in a total series of shades of red that it appears to belong to and be ordered within the series, and by virtue of



thing and property

157

this correlation, it can bring the totality of the series to presentation. Without this relation, not even the impression would be determined as “precisely this one,” as τόδε τι [a this, fully specified particular] in the Aristotelian sense. We arrive at a new dimension of presentation when an individual color impression not only represents [repräsentieren] the color species to which it belongs but also functions as a means of presentation for something quite heterogeneous, for the determinations of things and spatial determinations. The colored quality as such now becomes a mere “accident” that points to [hinweisen] its bearer, to its enduring substrate. As soon as consciousness follows this “pointing out” [Weisung], this mode of “ideation,” color itself as a pure intuitive lived-­experience may be said to appear in another light: the new form of “sight” [Sicht] makes something else visible [sichtig] in it. As long as we stop with color as the colored area, we can speak of neither an alternation of color by illumination nor of the fact that one and the same color can be given in different degrees of “manifestation” [Ausprägung].34 For both these statements presuppose an act of identification that is still totally lacking in our apprehension of the colored area as such, as a simple, “flat quale.” Every color phenomenon is valid here only for a single moment [Augenblick] and fills, on the other hand, this temporal moment [Zeitmoment], this its present [Gegenwart]. It is referred only to itself and is centered in itself, so that any change in its constitution simultaneously and necessarily comprises a change of what it “is,” a change of its being [Wesen]. It is, however, just this distinctive self-­sufficiency, this “autarchy” of color, that falls away as soon as we cease to take it merely “in itself” but use it as a means of presentation, as a “sign.” It now becomes itself as “ambiguous” as every sign, so its nature is and must be ambiguous. Just as a certain word of language can always only be interpreted in the whole of the sentence and from the whole of the sense that finds its linguistic utterance [Ausprägung] in the sentence, so can the individual appearance of color “mean” [besagen] different things according to the context in which we take it. And the diverse relevance of significance and pregnance of significance remains entirely within the sphere of the intuitive lived-­experience. In a purely intuitive sense, a color strikes us differently: it “looks differently” as soon as, taken representatively [repräsentativ], it is moved out of its place – as soon as it is “seen” not as a surface color but as a colored

153

158

the problem of representation

area, or vice versa. If two colors, a and b, are compared as colored areas, a may clearly appear as the brighter and b as the darker – this relationship can suddenly inverse itself as soon as we transition to another order of consideration, as soon as we take a and b as colors of things or spatial colors. Hering’s and Katz’s investigations are full of striking examples of this characteristic sudden change of color phenomena through the transition from one order of color into another. One of the examples reads as follows: Stand at the window and take in one hand a piece of white paper, in the other a piece of grey paper and hold them at first horizontally at a slight distance from one another. . . . If you incline the grey paper toward the window and the white paper away from it, the retinal image of the grey paper will soon have a greater light intensity than that of the white paper, but although you notice the changes in brightness, you will still, despite its greater light intensity, see the paper that is “actual” grey, as grey, and the “actual” white one, despite its weaker light intensity, as white. If we observe the paper with only one eye through some sort of fixed tube, it will be easy to see their colors on one and the same plane, provided the two images are immediately adjacent and neither is shaded, and only a segment of each paper is visible. We will now see the grey paper as lighter and the white one as darker, in accordance with the difference in their light intensities. . . . If we incline a grey or white paper alternately toward the window or away from it, we take the visible increase in whiteness (brightness) or blackness (darkness) of the surface as a mere accident to its “actual” color: the white as well as the grey paper retains the color “which it actually has,” even if it accidentally looks lighter or darker. We do not see here the “actual” color of the surface change, as is the case when for some reason a “spot” arises on the surface; rather, the color belonging to the surface seems to persist, although we actually observe its change. In many cases an accidental increase in the whiteness or blackness of a surface is seen as something totally separate from its “actual” color; thus, for example, when a shadow passes across a surface or when a moved mirror casts a moving spot of light on the surface.35

154

As we see, the mutation in the phenomenon here goes back to the change in the point of reference. If the “thing” that bears a certain color is



thing and property

159

taken as this point of reference, the “recognition” and “representation” [Repräsentation] may be said to follow, as it were, the thread of the thing. A constant color is ascribed as a permanent “property” to the constant “object,” and all the appearances of color have only the one sense and the one task – namely, to present this property for us, to serve as a sign for it. Accordingly, we look away [“ab”-­sehen] from the change in lighting effects “to take a look at” [hinsehen] simply the “permanent color” of the object. However, as soon as this “intent” [Absicht] and “regard” [Hinsicht] are changed, the whole look [Gesamtgesicht] of the color phenomenon changes with them. It appears as something different if it is seen [gesehen] sub specie as the “substantiality” of the thing, or when it is seen as an “effect” based on a passing combination of circumstances. Another of Hering’s examples follows: I am walking along a path beneath a covering of dense foliage; for a brief space direct sunlight falls through a gap in the leaves; at the first moment [Augenblick] I believe I see a spot colored white by spilled lime, however when I look more closely, I see no whiter, but only light on the grey-­brown earth.

The direction of “ideation” thus forces the purely “optical” phenomenon into specific pathways: in one case, the optical appearance is used as a presentation of a thing-­property-­interconnection and, in the other case, as a presentation of a causal-­interconnection; in the one case, it symbolizes for us a substantial being (the being of the “spot”) and, in another case, a light reflection as a momentary effect. In both cases, however, it would be misleading if we described the phenomenon such that the “category” of substantiality or causality was only subsequently added to an intrinsically identical existing “sensation” and that it pressed this sensation into a ready-­made formal schema.This is because precisely what is decisive is overlooked here: the identity of the point of reference, which shows “recognition” and “representation” [Repräsentation] the way, “is there” [da ist] not simply in the sense of pre-­given, but it results initially from the direction of consideration and from the ideal goal that is looked toward. If intention is directed toward the “unity of the object,” in the sense of “objective” experience, then the color of the illumination

160

155

156 157

the problem of representation

appears as an accident that we disregard in order not to lose sight of the continuity of this object. If, on the contrary – though in general this occurs only in a particular “scientific” attitude – we are investigating phenomena of light and color as such, if we do not look through them, as representatives [Repräsentanten], toward the objects, but immerse ourselves in their proper framework [Gefüge], the identity moves from the domain of the thing to that of the “appearance.” This latter, even in all its fleeting nature and changeability, in its momentary “being-­a-­ certain-­way and not otherwise,” is what we now wish to hold onto and recognize: the presenting is drawn closer into the series to be presented [Darzustellenden]. We have not departed, however, from the correlation of the presenting and the presented in general – for, if this were the case, then we would have abandoned the domain of concrete “intuition.” Only the poles of the basic relationship, only the points of reference, have been displaced [verschoben], while the relationship itself continues on in its general function.36 At the same time, it becomes evident here how the sensible phenomena can achieve a representative character, can become the bearer of the presentative functions only by progressively organizing themselves – on the other hand, each sharper organization that an intuitive whole undergoes conversely gives rise to richer and broader possibilities for presentation. Only within a structured manifold can an “element” stand for the “whole,” and, on the other hand, for consciousness, wherever a configured whole is present [vorliegen], only the re-­presentation [Vergegenwärtigung] of its elements can stand for the “whole,” in order to apprehend in and through it the whole, in order to “have” the whole by virtue of this mediation. There corresponds, then, to each change in a reference point, each “re-­centering” in an intuitive given structure, in general an envelope of that which is depicted [dargestellt] in and through it. In mere plain color, such a change in “perspective” is possible only to a limited degree: as long as it is taken as such, as long as it is taken as a mere “flat quale,” it still has within it no significative functional difference, no foreground and background so to speak. This difference, however, appears at once as soon as the color becomes surface color, as soon as it is taken as a “property,” as the enduring constitution of a “thing.” In the sensible lived-­experience, which in the mere here and now is given as a single undivided complex, certain basic factors now stand out



thing and property

161

clearly and are sharply delimited from one another. The unitary intuition breaks down into a constant and variable factor: the “invariable” color of the object is “seen” through all changes in illumination; it is set off from all the modifications that these changes bring with them. If this contrasting, this inner organization, occurs in a different way, then the “object” [Objekt] of seeing is thereby also altered. The singular bright spot that breaks the darkness of the forest path – to continue with Hering’s example – can refer now to this, now to that thing-unity: it can be taken as the “dark ground in the sunlight” or as the whitish color of spilled lime. In the first case, the factor of “illumination” is posited as variable, and the difference that is revealed to us at a certain point in our optical field is “explained” through its variation – in the second case, this factor is regarded as constant, and the difference [Differenz] is explained by the supposition that two different [verschieden] “visual things” (the earth and the lime lying on it) are given. And in each case, the color phenomenon takes on another character and another purely intuitive sense according to one or the other thing-unity that is attached to it. It “is” something other as soon as it moves into another series of objects and presents this series in its totality [Ganzheit] and its interconnection. For the being of the appearance does not separate itself from its representative [repräsentativ] function: it “is” no longer the same as soon as it “signifies” something other, as soon as it points to another total complex as its background. It is mere abstraction if we attempt to detach the appearance from this complexity – if we attempt to apprehend it as an independent something before and outside any function of pointing to [Hinweisen]. For the naked core of mere sensation, which just is without presenting something, never exists in actual consciousness and for it; rather, it is, if anything, given to the psychologist only as a consistent existence in consciousness: it forms the example par excellence for that illusion that William James has called “the psychologist’s fallacy.”37 Once we have fundamentally freed ourselves from this illusion, once we have recognized that it is not “sensations” but “intuitions,” not elements [Elemente] but configured totalities [Ganzheiten], that form the individual data of consciousness we can ask, in what exists the relationship between the “form” of these intuitions and the “presentative function” that they have to fulfill? It then becomes evident that a genuine reciprocal relation is present here; the forming [Formung] of intuition is the real vehicle that is indispensably required by

158

162

the problem of representation

presentation and, on the other hand, it is the use of intuition as a means of presentation that facilitates the emergence of every new “side” and element in intuition and that configures it into an increasingly richer and more differentiated whole.

ENDNOTES 1 Cf. Ernst Hoffmann, “Die Sprache und die archaische Logik,” in Heidelberger Abhandlungen zur Philosophie und ihrer Geschichte, vol. 3 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1925). 2 [Lazarus Geiger, Der Ursprung der Sprache (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1869), 141.] 3 Moritz Lazarus, Das Leben der Seele in Monographien über ihre Erscheinungen und Gesetze (Berlin, 1857), 2, 193. The modern psychology of thinking – in the form represented by Hönigswald, for example – also seems at first to seek the achievement of language exclusively in the domain of discursive thinking and to limit it expressly to this domain. If we examine it more closely, it becomes clear that the doctrine of the “verbality of thought” [die Worthaftigkeit des Gedankens], as developed by Hönigswald, has a far more inclusive signification. According to Hönigswald, there is no thought without a primary verbal reference, no experience of thinking whose “possibility” is not connected to the condition of a possible correlation to the word. For whoever thinks “something” reaches out in the very positing of this something into a sphere of objective being and objective validity: they presume that what is thought is the same for all, or ought to be. Accordingly, to think “something” and the possible understanding [Verständigung] of what has been thought are interchangeable concepts: anyone who thinks “something” necessarily seeks a linguistic expression, because and insofar as he presumes such an objective content [Gehalt] of his thoughts. The “verbality of thinking” is accordingly “the decisive condition for any linguistic-­constructive unfolding of thoughts in sentences and discourse” and, “taken psychologically, it also explains the unerring striving of thinking for the linguistic-­constructive unfolding of its thoughts.” If we examine this argumentation more closely, we recognize that it is by no means restricted to the sphere of logical-­discursive thinking in the limited sense of the term but refers to all acts of theoretical consciousness in general, insofar as they lay any claim to “objectivity,” insofar as they refer to and are oriented toward an “object” in any way. This intention toward the objective is by no means limited to thinking as logical judgment and inference but belongs properly to perception and intuition: in them, too, “something” is to be perceived, “something” is intuited. If the positing of a something is closely connected with “verbality,” then this must appear in these primary strata and participate decisively in their construction. Indeed, it is distinctive of Hönigswald’s psychology of thinking that compared with the traditional view and the traditional terminology of psychology, it considerably broadens the concept of “thinking.” For



thing and property

163

here, “thinking” no longer signifies a single class of psychological phenomena, over against other classes (such as sensation or intuition, feeling or volition), but is the basic psychological phenomenon as such: it is what makes every psychic content psychic. “Thinking” here becomes the universal expression for sense-­relatedness and the sensefullness of lived-­experience in general. And precisely this sensefullness – which, as Hönigswald stresses, belongs to even the most elementary psychological factum, whether we call it sensation, representation, perceptual clement, etc. – is truly constituted only by the “verbality of sense.” Cf. Richard Hönigswald, Die Grundlagen der Denkpsychologie (2nd ed., Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1925), 28ff., 128ff., 157ff. 4 Cf. Hans Volkelt’s observations on the spider; for details, see his Über die Vorstellungen der Tiere (Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1912), 15ff., 46ff. 5 Edward L. Thorndike, Animal Intelligence, 1898 (New York: Macmillan, 1911), 119ff. 6 Bühler, Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes, 128. 7 Cf. David R. Major, First Steps in Mental Growth (New York: Macmillan, 1906), 321, quoted from Clare Stern and William Stern, Die Kindersprache, 176. 8 For documentation, cf. Die Kindersprache, 175ff. 9 Cf. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 2, 69ff. 10 See 81ff. 11 Ewald Hering, Grundzüge der Lehre vom Lichtsinn (Berlin: J. Springer, 1920), 13 (first appeared in Handbuch der gesamten augenheilkunde, ed. A. K. Graefe, part I, chap. 12). 12 Wilhelm A. J. Schapp, Beiträge zur Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung, vol. I (Halle: Niemeyer), 78ff., 106f. 13 Ibid., 114f. 14 [Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 63.] 15 [René Descartes, “Méditations métaphysiques (2nd Meditation),” in Œuvres, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, vol. IX (Paris: Cerf, 1904), 24f.] 16 [Cf. Hermann von Helmholtz, Handbuch der physiologischen Optik (2nd ed., Hamburg and Leipzig: Voss, 1896), 602.] 17 For further details, see the introduction to my Leibniz’s System in seinen wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen (Marburg: N. G. Elwert, 1902). 18 For further details, see Hans Henning, Der Geruch (2nd ed., Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1924), 275, 278. 19 Ibid., 66. 20 [See Hermann Lotze, Logik: Drei Bücher, vom Denken, vom Untersuchen und vom Erkennen (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1880), 14ff.] 21 David Katz, Der Aufbau der Tastwelt (Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1925), 255. 22 Ibid., 19. 23 For a detailed treatment, cf. Katz’s penetrating analysis in Die Erscheinungsweise der Farben und ihre Beeinflussung durch die individuelle Erfahrung (Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1911). 24 Helmholtz, Handbuch der physiologischen Optik, 1867, 607. [Hermann von Helmholtz, Helmholtz’s Treatise on Physiological Optics, trans. James P. C. Southall (New York: Dover Publications, 1962), 8 – trans. modified.]

164

the problem of representation

25 Hering, Grundzüge der Lehre vom Lichtsinn, 8. On the basis of the fundamental consideration that “Gestalt impressions and true data of judgment are thoroughly different from one another,” Karl Bühler also sharply criticized Helmholtz’s “Judgment Theory”; cf. Die Struktur der Wahrnehmungen, part I of Karl Bühler, ed., Handbuch der Psychologie (Jena, 1922), sections 15ff. 26 Hering, Grundzüge der Lehre vom Lichtsinn, (§4), 6ff. 27 Cf. Ewald Hering, Über das Gedächtnis als eine Allgemeine Funktion der Organisierten Materie (Vienna: Gerold, 1876). 28 For further details, see Katz, Die Erscheinungsweise der Farben und ihre Beeinflussung durch die individuelle Erfahrung, esp. 214ff.; on the concept and problem of “light perspective,” cf. esp. 90ff. 29 Ibid., vii. 30 See 8f. 31 Geothe, Naturwissehnschafte Schriten, 6, 302. 32 Katz, Die Erscheinungsweisen der Farben und ihre Beeinflussung durch die individuelle Erfahrung, 306ff. 33 On the concept and method of this “complete reduction of color impressions,” cf. Ibid., 36ff. 34 For further details, see ibid., (§24), 264ff. 35 Hering, Grundzüge einer Lehre vom Lichtsinn, (§4), 9. 36 It is characteristic that Katz, who at first seems bent on fitting his observations and experiments into the framework of a general theory of association – that is, of explaining them by mere laws of the “reproductive imagination” – was increasingly forced away from this basis, the basis of explanation by the facts themselves. He points out expressly that the phenomenon of “light perspective,” the differentiation of the “true” colors of objects from the colors they take on only in a definite “abnormal” illumination, cannot be explained “by central reproductions of optical residues.” “To operate simply with reproduced perceptions” he writes, “is not permissible [in the present case] because the events in question . . . are not in every respect identical with those which we ordinary have in mind in connection with the association of impressions and representations.” For in association, in the customary sense of the word, a full independence and autonomy is imputed to the elements [Elemente] that associate with one another: each of them is susceptible to entering into any other association as well as the present one. Furthermore, there need be no “inner” interconnection between the elements [Elemente] combined in association: they come “together” only externally, without being necessarily referred to each other in any way. Eventually, it was considered to be necessary that the two links in the association be connected with one another, be present coexistently or successively. However, none of these three presuppositions applies to the process that leads to the separation of the illumination and what is illumined. According to the prevailing view, the impression that occurs where the lighting is not normal reproduces the color impression that would occur



thing and property

165

in normal illumination. Thus the surface colors themselves are taken as the elements [Elemente]. This view is, however, false; for I can never experience the surface colors for themselves without a determinate illumination; a determinate illumination is not associated with a determinate surface color; rather, the elements that enter into relation with one another are themselves products of surface color and illumination. Furthermore, the elements here combined have an inner affiliation: they are color lived-­experiences that can always pass over into one another by a continuous process of change. And finally, these colors, lived-­experiences, are never given simultaneously; nor in order to connect with another do they have to follow one another with a certain rapidity, as is the case with syllables, for example, if they are to enter into association with one another. By way of fixating these differences, Katz substitutes the term “chain association” for the usual concept of association. What distinguishes the “chain association” from associations in the common sense of the word is that the associated elements [Elemente] themselves are products of two quantities (illumination and the illumined), whose nature as products of a variable (illumination) and a constant quantity (the illumined) must first be drawn from the lived-­experience of a chain of elements. (375ff.) This concept of “chain association,” however, does not broaden the framework of the “classical” theory of association but instead destroys it. For here we are dealing with an entirely different form of relation than that which is present in any “association of similarity” or “association of contiguity.” It consists of one of those relationships of “symbolic co-­givenness” [Mitgegebenheit] by virtue of which a particular phenomenon, given here and now, presents and brings to presentation not only itself but also a total complex – here the phenomenon of the same object in different illumination. Thus, what holds the members of the series together is not their similarity or the frequency with which they were given in empirical succession or coexistence but the common function of pointing to that they fulfill: the fact that with all their sensible heterogeneity they relate to a common reference point (namely, the X of the identical “object”). This relation is not explained by association; rather, it is what makes possible the “association,” the connection of the manifold and diverse. “The consciousness of the one object in which the color changes take place,” says Katz, “supplies the bond that makes possible the connection of the color experiences yielded by this object in different lights” (379ff.). However, precisely the specific form of this consciousness, as we have seen, can never be adequately designated, let alone explained, by the “togetherness,” by the “association of representation” (cf. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1, 34ff.). Katz’s investigations instructively show how the pure color phenomena enter into a totally different interconnection with one

166

the problem of representation another and gain an entirely new correlation as soon as we pass from the order of “colored areas” to that of “surface colors” – that is, as soon as we relate them, and fasten them, to the “objective unity” of the object. Although before this they were relatively isolated and each phenomenon in a sense represented only “itself,” now – thanks to this common reference – they form an unbroken series, a closed chain in which every link represents the whole and stands “for” the whole. The individual sensible appearances are not externally connected with one another by mere empirical similarity or by relationships of empirical succession and coexistence but instead gathered together and made into one by the common medium of the unitary object that each of them symbolically represents [repräsentiert]. This gathering together, which first gives them their “spiritual bond,” is an act of signification: because and insofar as the manifold and particular color appearance all “mean” and “present” the same object [Objekt], they themselves enter into the unity of an “intuition.”

37 [William James, Principles of Psychology (New York: Dover Publications, 1950), 196f – cited in English.]

III SPACE The construction of intuitive reality begins, as has been shown, when the continuous flow of the same series of sensible phenomena begins to divide. Amid the continuous stream of appearances, certain basic unities are now held fast, which now form the fixed center of orientation. The individual phenomenon takes on its characteristic sense only by being referred to these centers. And all further progress of “objective” cognition, all clarification and determination that the general view of intuitive existence undergoes is connected to the broadening of this process to include ever-­wider spheres. With the decomposition of phenomenal reality into presentative [präsentativ] and representative [repräsentativ] elements, into the presenting [Dartellend] and the presented [Dargestellt], a new motif is acquired that takes effect with increasing force and henceforth determines the entire movement of theoretical consciousness. The original impulse that inserts itself here implants itself, as it were, in the form of waves, and it does not, to be sure, bring to a halt the flowing mobility in which the whole of the phenomena is initially given to us but gradually causes definite individual vortices to separate out of it with increasing distinctness. The organization of the world of appearance under the aspect of “thing” and “property,” which we have alone considered up to now, of course forms only a single element in the whole of this process. It is made possible only by its alliance with other

159

168

160

the problem of representation

motives and being effective along with them. The positing of fixed thing-­ unities, to which, as it were, the changing appearances are fastened, takes place such that these unities are determined at the same time as spatial unities. The “consistent existence” of the thing is bound to the stability of such spatial unities. That a thing is precisely this one and persists as this one arises for us, above all, from the fact that we designate its “position” [Stelle] in the whole of intuitive space. At every moment [Augenblick], we award a determinate place [Ort] to it, then we take together the ensemble of these places [Orte] into an intuitive totality [Gesamtheit] that presents the movement of the object as a continuous, lawfully determined alteration. And just as the thing thus appears linked to a fixed point in space, and its location in “actual” space, relative to the location of all other objects, seems determined, so we also ascribe spatial “magnitude” and “shape [Gestalt]” to it as objective determinations. From this results the “union” of the thing motive and space motive that has found its most pregnant scientific expression [Ausprägung] in the concept of the atom. This concept, however, is only the continuation of an approach that, before it operates in the construction [Konstruktion] of the theoretical-­physical worldview, was already effective in the construction [Aufbau] of the empirical perception of the world. Perception, too, succeeds in positing “things” and in differentiating them from their variable states and constitutions only in that it places them into an objective space and, so to speak, locates them in it. Each single, “actual” [wirklich] thing bears witness to its reality [Wirklichkeit] above all by the fact that it occupies a part of space from which it excludes everything else. The individuality of the thing rests ultimately on the fact that it is in this sense a spatial “individual” – it possesses a “sphere” of its own, in which it is and in which it asserts itself against all other being. Our consideration is, therefore, led back directly from the thing-­property-­problem to the problem of space: the very statement and formulation of the former includes certain basic determinations of the latter. Admittedly, however, we stand here before an almost inextricable complex of questions: there is no domain of philosophy or theoretical cognition in general into which the problem of space does not in some way enter and with which it is not interwoven in one way or another. Metaphysics and the critique of cognition, physics, and psychology are all equally interested in its positioning and its solution. We

space

169

cannot think of following here the problem into all its intellectual ramifications; rather, from its rich and intricate fabric, we shall single out only the one thread by which it proves to be linked to our own central basic systematic question. Our question asks, what is the relation of the problem of space to the general problem of symbolism? Is the space, “in” which things are presented to us, a simple intuitive givenness, or is it rather the fruit and result of a process of symbolic forming [Formung]? With this framing of the problem, we find ourselves on new ground [Boden], far from the beaten paths of psychological and epistemological consideration. For now – though it may seem strange and paradoxical at first sight – the focal point of the problem shifts from the philosophy of nature to the philosophy of culture. The question as to what space signifies for the constitution of the thing-­world is focused and deepened into another question: What does it imply and accomplish for the construction and conquest of a specifically spiritual reality? We cannot fully understand its “origin,” its value, or its distinctive “dignity” until we have determined its place [Stelle] within a general “phenomenology of spirit.” What interconnection – we must now ask – exists between the objectivizing achievement of the pure spatial intuition and those other spiritual energies that decisively cooperate in the progress of objectivization? What part, in particular, does language play in acquiring and securing the world of spatial intuition? Traditional psychology and the theory of cognition give no adequate answer to all these questions; indeed, they do not seem to have formulated the question itself with any real sharpness and precision. By neglecting to do so, however, they have closed off an important approach to the problem of space. They have, as it were, dropped the thread that connects and integrates this problem not only with the universal problematic of being but also with the problematic of sense [Sinn]. And yet, on the other hand, precisely the most familiar theories of space show precisely the point at which their proponents, though for the most part unconsciously and as it were involuntarily, were compelled to consider the question along precisely this line. From the moment when the problem of space in general was first seen and treated with truly systematic sharpness, one basic concept began to occupy a central position in its consideration. It forms the common thread through the whole history of the theories of space. Whether these theories were oriented along the

161

170

162

the problem of representation

lines of “rationalism” or “sensationalism,” “empiricism” or “nativism,” they are all led back in their construction and in their grounding to the concept of the sign. We find this feature in the spatial theory of Kepler and Descartes, who in the seventeenth century laid the first foundation for a mathematically exact treatment of the problem; we find it, far more sharply expressed, in Berkeley’s New Theory of Vision, which became the starting point of “physiological optics”; it can, however, be followed equally through the modern theories on the “origin of the representation of space” down to Helmholtz and Hering, to Lotze and Wundt. This interconnection deserves a brief historical survey, because such a survey will lead us almost automatically to the systematic question that is latent in all theorizing about space. Descartes’ analysis of the concept of space is closely linked with his analysis of the concept of substance. There exists here a methodological unity and correlation that accurately reflects the ontological-­metaphysical interconnection of problems. For according to the basic presuppositions of Cartesian metaphysics, the “thing,” the empirical object, can be clearly and distinctly defined only through its purely spatial determinations. Extension in length, breadth, and depth is the only objective predicate by which we can determine the object of experience. Whatever else we customarily regard as a property of the physical real, if we wish to gain a strict comprehension of it, must be traced back to relationships of pure extension and dissolved in them without remainder. However, another reason for the indissoluble interconnection, which is demonstrated here between the concept of the thing and the mathematical concept of space, is the fact that both are traced back to one and the same basic logical function and together rooted in it. For, as Descartes shows, the identity of the thing as well as the continuity and homogeneity of geometrical extension are in no way data that are immediately given in sense sensation or perception: The look [Gesicht] gives us nothing but images, hearing gives us nothing but sounds or tones: thus, it is clear that that something that we think of as being beyond these images or tones, as designated by them, is given to us not by sensible representations coming from outside, but rather by innate ideas, having their seat and origin in our own power of thinking.1

space

171

Thus, on closer scrutiny, all those determinations, which we customarily attribute to the space of intuition, are nothing other than purely logical characters. It is by such characters, by characteristic traits such as constancy, infinity, and uniformity, that we define the space of pure geometry; however, the intuition of the space of things, of “physical” space, arises in the same way. What is more, the understanding grasps together the individual data provided by the senses, compares them with each other, and in a sense attunes them to one another. In this act of attunement and this reciprocal correlation [Zuordnung], space comes into being as a constructive schema of thought – as a creation of that “universal mathematics” that is for Descartes the general basic science of order [Ordnung] and measure. Even where we believe to perceive space immediately, we stand already in the midst of the ambit and under the spell of this universal mathematics. For what we call the magnitude, the distance, the reciprocal position [Lage] of things, is nothing that can be seen or touched: it can only be estimated and calculated. Every act of spatial perception comprises an act of measurement and thus of mathematical inference. Thus, ratio – in that twofold sense according to which it signifies “reason” and “calculation” – immediately presses forward here to explain the domain of intuition [Anschauung] – and, with this, the domain of perception – and accordingly subject it to its basic law. All looking-­at [Anschauen] is bound to a theoretical thinking, and this theoretical thinking is bound to a logical judgment and inference, such that it is a basic act of pure thinking that first renders reality accessible to us in the form of an independent thing-­world as an intuitive spatial world. In its construction and its epistemological presuppositions, Berkeley’s New Theory of Vision seems to be the exact reverse of this Cartesian doctrine; however, it nevertheless shares with it one specific starting point. For Berkeley, the sensationalist, who held that all original reality was contained in simple sensible impression, also recognized that sense “perception” as such did not suffice to explain the specific consciousness of spatiality and the spatial organization and arrangement in which the objects of experience are given to us. Individual sensible data are, also for him, not obtained, in that it immediately bears in itself spatial determinations, which are produced rather by a complex process of interpretation that the mind [Seele] carries out on this data. Our image of space does not come into being through the joining of a qualitatively new perception to

163

172

164

the problem of representation

the perceptions mediated by our senses, particularly those of sight and touch. What is required to awaken this image in us and to take hold of it is rather a determinate relation that establishes itself between the givenness of individual senses: in such a way that we are able to transition from one to another according to fixed rules that are able to reciprocally correlate themselves to each other. However, whereas Descartes, to explain this correlation, has recourse to an originary-­function of the intellect and its “innate ideas,” Berkeley takes rather the opposite path. For Berkeley, the “pure space” of the geometer Descartes as well as the “absolute space” of the physicist Newton are not so much ideas as idols. They do not stand up to the psychological critique directed at the discovery of the simple state of affairs of consciousness. Observation and unbiased phenomenological analysis both know nothing of this “abstract” space within which the mathematician and the mathematical physicist operate; they are aware of no absolutely homogeneous, unlimited extension, free from all sensible qualities. There is, however, for them equally no proper class of sensations through which we have learned about the magnitude, position [Lage], and distances of objects. Rather, another basic power of the mind [Seele] enters here that can be reduced neither to simple “perception” nor to the logical-­discursive activity of the understanding, which can be designated neither as merely sensible nor as yet “rational.” In it, we have an authentic activity, a “synthesis” of spirit – one that is, however, grounded not so much in the rules of abstract logic and formal mathematics as in the rules of the “imagination.” What distinguishes these rules from those of mathematics and logic is above all the fact that they can never produce generally valid and necessary combinations but only empirical and accidental ones. It is not any “objective,” any inner factual necessity, but habit and custom2 that connect the individual sensible spheres and finally make them grow together into such a concrete whole that they can mutually represent one another. According to Berkeley, the development of spatial intuition is bound to this representability [Vertretbarkeit] – it presupposes that the sense impressions, over and above their initial merely presentative content [präsentativen Gehalt], gradually take on a representative [repräsentativ] function. According to him, however, this representation [Repräsentation] is effected through nothing more than a reproduction. To render possible the construction of our spatial experience, the no less significant power

space

173

of “suggestion” must be joined with the power of “perception.”3 As this power strengthens, as the individual sense impressions acquire the ability [Fähigkeit] to “indicate” [andeuten] others totally different from it and in a certain sense to corporeally make them present [vergegenwärtigen] to consciousness, the chain closes for us, by which the elements [Elemente] of reality fit themselves into a whole, into a world of space and of “things in space.” Descartes’ rationalist theory of space and Berkeley’s empiricist theory form, however, only the initial prelude to a wealth of speculative, psychological, and epistemo-­critical theories that successively appeared in the thinking of the nineteenth century. As much as all these theories differ from each other in their pure content, however, they may be said to have undergone essentially little change in their intellectual type since Descartes and Berkeley. Considerations still move within the general methodological alternative that had already been sharply and precisely set out here. All subsequent theories of space seem in a sense to be bound to this alternative: they must go the way either of “reflection” or of “association.” Of course, there is not always an unequivocal, definitive decision between the two; we often encounter theories that attempt, as it were, to hover between these two opposing poles. Thus, for instance, as a mathematician and physicist, Helmholtz is governed by Cartesian intellectualism, whereas as a physiologist and empiricist philosopher, he approaches Berkeley. His theory of “unconscious inferences” shows a clear historical and systematic continuity with Descartes’ Dioptrics; on the other hand, the character of these inferences is changed by the fact that their true analog and model is sought no longer in the syllogisms of logic and mathematics but in the forms of “inductive inference.” Here too, the associative connection and reproductive completion of sense impressions ultimately suffices to explain their taking up and insertion into a spatial ordering. If we look into the reasons for this methodological duality in Helmholtz’s theory of space, we find that it rests on an analogous cleavage in Helmholtz’s general theory of signs. His whole theory of cognition is anchored in the concept of the sign; the world of phenomena is for him nothing other than an ensemble of signs, which are in no way similar to their causes, to real things, but which are lawfully correlated with them in such a way that they are able to express all differences and relations of things. Although Helmholtz seems to

165

166

174

167

the problem of representation

recognize the primacy of the symbolic concept, he does not, however, adhere to it with truly systematic rigor. For, instead of integrating and subordinating the problem of causality to the general problem of signification, he takes rather the opposite course. The function of the sign is to be comprehended and explained as a special form of causal relation. The “category” of causality, which according to Helmholtz is the condition for the “comprehensibleness of nature,” thus forces its way into the pure description of phenomena and diverts it from its proper course.4 For us, however, this raises the question of what mode this description must take if the problem and phenomenon of representation [Repräsentation] are left in their place if we seek to elucidate and understand them on their own terms. The analysis of the thing-­property-­relation has already shown us that that this relation could not be apprehended in its core and could not be appreciated in its crucial significance as long as we sought to explain it by discursive judgments or mere reproductive processes. Nearly all the “theories of signs” that have appeared in the development of the theory of space, from Berkeley down to Lotze’s theory of “local signs,”5 are, however, dominated by this dilemma. To be able to explain the “form” of space based on its own premises, philosophical empiricism was forced to more sharply frame its own basic concept, the concept of “sensation.” It had to separate what simple sensation in itself “is,” in its own immediacy, from other elements that are added to it only in the course of experience and which in many ways modify its initial consistent existence. Only on the grounds of such transformations and transfigurations can the intuition and representation of space be developed from the data of mere sensation. Admittedly, no art of “psychic chemistry,” despite the increasing refinements that have been brought to it, has been able to solve this task in a satisfactory way, has really succeeded in fathoming the mystery of “spatialization.” Hering’s “nativism” disposes of all these derivations by stressing that something spatial can never “arise” out of a togethernesss or succession of aspatial elements [Elemente] – that, rather, extension and spatiality must in a sense be recognized as irreducible “characters” of all our sense perceptions. Modern psychology has thus progressively given up the hope of surprising, as it were, consciousness at the point where it effects its crucial transition from intrinsically aspatial sensation to spatial perception. What is undertaken here and what is now inquired into no longer

space

175

refers to the development of spatiality as such but to the differentiation of certain phases, certain accentuations and organizations within spatiality itself. We cannot show how something that was previously as such aspatial achieves the quality of spatiality – we can and must, however, inquire into what way and by virtue of what mediations mere spatiality passes over into “space,” how pragmatic space transitions into systematic space. For it is a long way from the primary mode of spatial lived-­experience to formed space as the condition of the intuition of objects and further from this intuitive-­objective space to the mathematical space of measure and order.6 At the present stage in our investigation, we entirely disregard this last phase of space, the structure of mathematically “defined” and “constructed” space;7 we take space solely as the “form” of empirical intuition and of the empirical object world. Even so, it becomes at once apparent by this restriction, however, that this form is shot through with symbolic elements [Elemente] and fulfilled with them. What we call “space” is not an inherent object that is mediately presented to us, that gives itself through certain “signs” to be recognized; it is, rather, a particular mode, a particular schematism of presentation itself. And in this schematism, consciousness acquires the possibility of a new orientation – it acquires a specific tendency [Richtung] of a spiritual regard, through which all the shapes [Gestalten] of “objective” and objectivized reality are now transformed. This transformation does not signify a real transition from mere “quality” to “quantity,” from pure “intensivity” to “extensivity,” from intrinsically aspatial sensation to a somehow “spatial” perception. It does not relate to the genesis – whether metaphysical or psychological – of spatial consciousness; rather, only a change in the signification presents itself in it [sich darstellen], which spatial consciousness itself undergoes and by virtue of which the whole of the sense contained and implicit in it is brought forward. Again, to render this metamorphosis visible, we begin not with psychological observations and considerations, but rather, in line with our general methodological presuppositions, we seek to attack the problem from its purely “objective” side, from the standpoint of “objective spirit.” There is no achievement or creation of spirit that is not, in some way, related to the world of space and that does not, as it were, seek to make itself at home in it. For the turning toward this world signifies the first and necessary step toward “objectification” [Vergegenständlichung],

168

169

176

170

the problem of representation

toward the apprehension and determination of being in general. Space forms, as it were, the general medium in which spiritual productivity can first “establish” [feststellen] itself, in which it can bring it to its first formations [Gebilde] and shapes [Gestalten]. We have already seen how language and myth immerse themselves in this medium, how they “imagine” [sich einbilden] in this medium. The two do not proceed uniformly in the process but differ in the basic direction that they forge. In the totality as well as the whole sense of its spatial “orientation,” myth remains bound to the primary and primitive modes of mythical world-­feeling. The spatial “intuition” that myth achieves does not conceal or annihilate this world-­feeling but is rather the decisive means for its pure manifestation [Ausprägung]. Myth arrives at spatial determinations and differentiations only by lending a distinctive mythical accent to each “area” [Gegend] in space, to the “there” and “over-­there,” the rising and setting of the sun, the “above” and “below.” Space is now divided into determinate regions and directions; each of these has, however, not only a purely intuitive sense but also an expressive character of its own. There is no space here as a homogeneous whole, within which the individual determinations are equivalent to one another and interchangeable with one another. The near and far, the high and low, the right and left all have their unmistakable particular nature, their particular mode of magical significance. Not only is the basic opposition of the “holy” and the “unholy” interwoven with all these spatial oppositions, but it also literally constitutes them; it, as it were, drives them forth [hervortreiben]. What makes a precinct [Bezirk] spatially particular and particulared [Besonderen und Besonderten] is not some abstract-­geometrical determination but instead the unique mythical atmosphere in which it stands – the magical aura that shrouds it. Accordingly, the directions in mythical space are not conceptual or intuitive relations [Relationen] – they are independent essential beings [Wesenheiten], endowed with daemonic forces. One must immerse oneself in the pictorial [bildlich] presentations of the tendency of the gods and daemons, as they are found, for example, in ancient Mexican culture, to wholly feel this expressive sense, this “physiognomic” character that all spatial determinations possess for mythical consciousness.8 All “systematization” of space, which is by no means lacking in mythical thinking, also does not go beyond this sphere. The augur who marks off a templum, a sacred precinct, and in it differentiates various zones thus

space

177

creates the basic condition and precondition, the first beginning and impulse of all “contemplation” as such. The augur divides the universe according to a definite point of view – he sets up a spiritual system of reference, toward which all being and events are oriented. This orientation should render possible and safeguard an overview [Überschau] of the whole of the world and in and with it a preview [Vorausschau] of the to come. Of course, this view [Schau] does not move within a free, ideal, linear framework [Gefüge], as in the domain of pure “theory”; the individual spatial areas are rather inhabited by real, fateful powers, powers of blessing or of doom.9 The magical ring that embraces the entire existence of nature and the entire existence of the human is not burst asunder but only reinforced; the distances conquered by mythical intuition do not break its power but serve only to confirm it anew. In comparison with this basic attitude of myth, language seems from the beginning to forge a new and basically different path. For what characterizes the first spatial terms that we find in language is their embracing of a definite “deictic” function. We have seen that a basic form of all speech goes back to the form of “showing” – that language can come into being and thrive only where consciousness has developed [ausbilden] this form. The indicative [hinweisend] gesture is already a milestone in this development – a decisive stage on the way to objective intuition and objective configuration.10 What is embedded in this gesture, however, comes to a clear and complete unfolding only when language takes up this tendency and guides it into its own channels. In its deictic particles, language creates the first means of expression for near and far and for certain fundamental differences of direction. These, too, are seen at first sub specie entirely in terms of the speaking subject and from their particular “standpoint” – the difference in direction from the speaker to the person addressed and conversely from the person addressed to the speaker seems to form one of the earliest differences [Differenzen] ever to have been noticed and fixed in language. With this difference [Differenze], with this differentiation of the I from the “you” as well as from objective being, which it stands “over against,” there occurs at the same time, however, a breakthrough to a new phase in the consideration of the world. A tie [Band] now stretches between the I and the world that at once ties them together and separates them from each other, keeping them apart.

171

178

172

the problem of representation

The intuition of space that is worked out and laid down in language is the clearest indication of this distinctive twofold relation. In it, the distance is posited, but even in this positing, it is, in a sense, also overcome. In the intuition of space, which is acquired with the help of language, the moments of “apartness” and “togetherness,” of thoroughgoing discreteness and thoroughgoing connection, to a certain degree counterbalance one another: they stand toward one another in a kind of ideal equilibrium. Even in its highest and most universal manifestations, however, myth is able to apprehend spatial differences only by injecting a difference of another type and origins into them. Every difference in spatial perspective involuntarily changes for myth into a difference of expressive features, of physiognomic characters. Thus, its spatial perspective, in spite of its tendencies toward “objective” configuration, remains bathed in the color of feeling and subjective sensation. Language is also still thoroughly rooted in this sphere. At the same time, however, a new turn clearly and sharply takes place in it: the turn from expressive space to presentative space. Individual “places” [Orte] no longer appear distinguished from one another only by certain qualitative and perceptible characters; rather, there is now disclosed in them determinate relations [Relationen] of the “between,” the spatial order. Even those “primitive” spatial terms in which, for instance, the differences in the coloration of vowels are used as the means to express different degrees of distance indicate this basic tendency that is forged by language. They distinguish the “here” from the “over-­there” and “presenting” from “absenting”; at the same time, however, they connect the two in that they initiate a “measured relation” between both, even if it is still elementary and inaccurate. Thus, the progress from merely pragmatic space to objective space, from the space of action [Handlungsraum] to the space of intuition, while not completed, is at least determined and anticipated in its general principle. The mere action space [Aktionsraum], which we must impute also to the animal world, still comprises no free overview of spatial determinations and relationships; nevertheless, no “synopsis” allows for the bringing together of the locally [örtlich] separate into the unity of a simultaneous regard [Blick]. Instead of such a συνορᾶν εἰς ἕν [to see the unity], as Plato calls it, a relationship of correspondence and the reciprocal attainment [gegenseitigen Abgestimmtheit] of certain movements prevails. Such a correspondence is possible, without needing to be accompanied and guided

space

179

by the “representation” of spatial relations, by a “synoptic overview” of them.11 The execution of certain movements may be fixed by long practice, they may always be performed in the same way by means of certain “mechanisms,” without which this execution must lead in any way to a representative [repräsentativ] “consciousness,” to a presentation [Darstellung] and re-­presentation [Vergegenwärtigung] of the individual stages in their “separateness” and “succession.” There is no doubt that this transition to the pure representation [Repräsentation] of spatial relationships is also a relatively late step in the development of human mental life. Reports on natural peoples reveal to what extent their spatial “orientation,” no matter how much keener and more precise than that of cultured human beings [Kulturmenschen], moves nevertheless entirely in the channels of a “concrete” spatial feeling. Although every point in their surroundings, every bend in a river, for example, may be exactly known to them, without that they would be able to draw a map of the course of the river, to hold it fast in a spatial schema. The transition from mere action to the schema, to the symbol, to presentation, signifies in every case a genuine “crisis” of spatial consciousness; moreover, it does not remain limited to the ambit of this consciousness but instead goes hand in hand with a general spiritual turn and transformation, with an authentic “revolution in the mode of thinking.”12 To make the general character of this transformation clear, let us glance back at the result of our analysis of the thing-­property-­relation. We already found there that we can arrive at the “constancy” of the thing only through the mediation of space – that “objective” space forms the medium of empirical objectivity in general. Both the production of the intuition of space and the intuition of the thing are made possible only when the stream of successive lived-­experiences is, as it were, halted – when the mere succession is transformed into a “given at once” [Zumal]. This transformation occurs when a different signification, a different “valence” is attributed to the elements of the flowing event. Insofar as each appearance is thought of as belonging solely to the sphere of events, it is “given,” strictly speaking, only in an individual point of time, because the moment [Augenblick] creates it and snatches it away. Certain halting places and relative points of rest can be acquired in this unceasing becoming only because the individual contents, though variable and ephemeral in their existence, point beyond themselves to something permanent – to

173

174

180

the problem of representation

something of which all these changing images are only diverse modes of appearance. Once the variable is taken in this way as the presentation for something persistent, it takes on an entirely new “look” [Gesicht]. For the regard [Blick] no longer rests on it but passes through it and beyond it. Like in the linguistic sign – where it is not the tone or sound or its sensible modifications that we apprehend but instead the sense in it that we “remark” – the individual appearance loses its independence and self-­ sufficiency, its individual concretion, as soon as it functions as a sign for a “thing,” for something objectively intended and objectively formed. The fact of “color transformation” has already called our attention to this state of affairs. A color that we see in some unusual lighting is adjusted and adapted to the “normal” lighting; it is, as it were, transformed back into its normal color tone and taken as a merely “accidental” deviation from it. This differentiation of “constants” and “variables,” the “necessary” and the “accidental,” and “universal” and “individual,” contains the embryo and core of all “objectivization.” The phenomenon has been described as follows:

175

In every perception of abnormal lighting there is a more or less pronounced phenomenal split of the color sensations into illumination and the illumined. . . . The material of sensation produced by the optical stimulation is split by the inner eye in such a way that the components of the color process corresponding to the objective colors are used for the construction of the objective images, while that component which is distributed more or less intensely over the whole somatic field of vision, and which corresponds to the color of the illumination, appears as abnormal illumination.13

As Katz stresses, such a “taking into account” of the lighting is found where the eye is presented with unusual, variegated illuminations that accordingly could not have been previously experienced.14 From this it follows that as soon as the optical “appearance” of color is posited from the “standpoint” of the thing, as soon as the colored is taken as a means for the presentation of things, the optical lived-­experience is organized in a characteristic way and by virtue of this organization is transformed. And this decomposition of an inherently uniform appearance into components of different signification is also indispensable for the

space

181

construction of spatial intuition. Here again, there is a “splitting” by virtue of which the permanent in the given perception is separated from the variable, the “typical” from the “transitory.” Space as object space is posited and achieved only when a representative [repräsentativ] value is attributed to certain perceptions, when they are selected and distinguished as fixed reference points of orientation. Certain basic configurations are set up as norms by which we measure others. Since William James, the psychological theory of spatial intuition has taken this state of affairs into account by stressing the motive of “selection” as an essential condition for the working out [Ausbildung] of the representation of space. On the ground [Boden] of the “nativist” theories of space, James begins from the assumption that [“]we have native and fixed optical space-­sensations; but experience leads us to select certain ones from among them to be the proper bearers of reality [Realität]: the rest become mere signs and suggesters of these.[”]15 In all our perceptions, such a selection takes place: in all of them, we take hold of certain configurations that, we say, present the “actual” form of the object, while we regard others as only peripheral or more or less accidental appearances of this object. The deferrals and distortions of perspective that the image of an object undergoes under certain conditions of seeing are in this way “corrected.” Thus, the “seeing” of an image always includes a wholly determinate evaluation of it: we do not look at it as it immediately gives itself to us but place it in the context of the spatial total of experience and thus give it its characteristic sense.16 It is assuredly no accident, but symptomatically and systemically significant, that in elucidating this basic relationship, James, in spite of himself, falls back to a comparison with language: The signs of each probable real thing being multiple and the thing itself one and fixed, we gain the same mental relief by abandoning the former for the latter that we do when we abandon mental images, with all their fluctuating characters, for the definite and unchangeable names which they suggest. The selection of the several “normal” appearances from out of the jungle of our optical experiences, to serve as the real sights of which we shall think, is psychologically a parallel phenomenon to the habit of thinking in words and has a like use. Both are substitutions of terms few and fixed for terms manifold and vague.17

176

182 177

178

the problem of representation

By means of this process, the individual spatial values acquire a distinctive “transparence” for us. Just as we look through the accidental illumination color in which we see an object to its “permanent” color, so too does, with all their particularity and change, the manifold of optical images that arise for example in the movement of an object [Objekt] look through to its “enduring shape [Gestalt].” They are not mere “impressions” but function as “presentations”; they go from being “affections” to being “symbols.”18 Thus, from this perspective, we see again that the symbolic function reaches back into a far deeper stratum of consciousness than is usually supposed or granted. Not only does it give its imprint to the worldview of theoretical cognition, the worldview of science, but it has already imprinted its seal on the primary shapes [Gestalten] of perception. The interconnection here as well as the difference that prevails can be made clear by comparing the structure of “perceptive space” with the structure of “abstract” geometrical space. Clearly, the two structures cannot be posited as identical with one another; perceptive space as such can neither be predicated of the uniformity nor of the constancy or infinity in the sense in which mathematics defines and uses these predicates. Despite this difference, however, the two disclose a common element, insofar as a determinate mode and tendency of constant-­formation takes shape and operates in them. Felix Klein has stated that the “form” of every geometry depends on which spatial determinations and relations it selects to posit as invariable. The usual “metric” geometry begins by considering all these properties and relationships of a spatial formation [Gebilde] as “essentially” belonging to it, as unaffected by certain alterations – by a displacement of the formation [Gebilde] in absolute space, by a proportionate growth or diminution of its determining parts, and finally, by certain reversals in the arrangement of its parts. A shape [Gestalt] may pass through any number of such transformations, but for the purposes of metrical geometry, it remains one and the same; it still represents an identical geometrical concept. In establishing such concepts, however, we are not restricted once and for all to any fixed choice of transformations. Thus, for example, metrical geometry transitions into projective geometry if we include the totality of possible project transformations in those operations, which compared to a spatial shape [Gestalt] should remain unchanged despite the movement, the similarity of transformation and

space

183

the mirroring. Thus, according to Klein, every particular geometry is a theory of invariants that is valid in reference to determinate groups of transformations.19 Precisely in this respect, however, we find that the conception of the various “geometries” and the formation of the concept of space underlying each one of them merely extends a process that is already embedded and forecast in the configuration of empirical space, the space of our sense experience. For this space also comes into being only when a multiplicity of appearances, of individual optical “images,” are grasped together into groups and these groups are taken as presentations of one and the same “object.” From this moment on, the changing individual appearances form a periphery only, and every part of this periphery sends out points, as it were, which guide our observation in a certain direction – which lead it back over and over again to the same thing-­unity as a center. And here too – though not to the same extent and magnitude as in the construction of purely geometrical, symbolic space – it is possible to situate these centers differently. The point of reference itself can be displaced; the mode of relation can change. And whenever such a change takes place, the appearance takes on not only another abstract signification but also another concrete-­intuitive sense and content [Gehalt]. A striking example of this transformation in the intuitive sense of spatial shapes [Gestalten] is provided by the well-­known phenomena that is usually subsumed under the term “optical inversion.” One and the same optical complex can be transformed now into this spatial object, then into that spatial object, which can be “seen” as this or as another object. It has been justly stated that in such inversions, it is not a question either about being subjected to deceptive judgments or about the mere “representations” that we make for ourselves but about the authentic perceptual lived-­experiences.20 In all this, it is once again confirmed how a change in “sight” [Sicht] at once alters the seen [Gesehen] according to perception, how every displacement in a viewpoint transfigured the beheld [Erblicken] purely in its consistent phenomenal existence. The further consciousness progresses in its forming [Formung] and organization and the more its individual contents become “significant” – that is, the more they acquire the force to “point to” other contents – the more grows the freedom with which it can change one shape [Gestalt] into another through a change of “sight” [Sicht].21

179

184

180

the problem of representation

We have already seen that this act of concentration, as an act of the formation and creation of centers, goes back to a basic productive spiritual function and that accordingly it can never be fully explained by merely reproductive processes.22 Berkeley falls into a logical circle in his theory of the concept as well as in his theory of the origin of the representation of space in that in both cases he invokes the function of representation [Repräsentation] but then seeks to reduce this function to mere “habit and custom.”23 In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant uncovers this circle and at the same time attacks the problem at its root, by inquiring into the conditions of the possibility of “association”: of that empirical rule of association . . . on what, I ask, [does this, as a law of nature,] rest, and how is this association even possible? The ground of the possibility of the association of the manifold, insofar as it lies in the object [Objekt], is called the affinity of the manifold. . . . There must therefore be an objective ground, i.e. one that can be understood a priori to all empirical laws of the imagination, on which rests the possibility, indeed even the necessity of a law extending through all appearances, a law, namely, for regarding them throughout as data of sense that are associable in themselves and subject to universal laws of a thoroughgoing connection in reproduction. I call this objective ground of all association of appearances their affinity. . . . It is therefore certainly strange, yet from what has been said thus far obvious, that it is only by means of this transcendental function of the imagination that even the affinity of appearances, and with it the association and through the latter finally reproduction in accordance with laws, and consequently experience itself, become possible; for without them no concepts of objects at all would converge into an experience.24

The “transcendental” function of the imagination that Kant appeals to here is not, however, apprehended in its actual core even where we attempt to trace it back to “apperceptive” processes rather than to the merely reproductive processes. Of course, this seems to constitute a decisive step that goes beyond any sensationalist foundations, because “apperception” not only signifies the apprehension and subsequent grasping together of “given” impressions but also exhibits a pure spontaneity, a creative act of spirit.

space

185

Meanwhile, psychological theories tend to obscure this independence by the fact that – and this is the case particularly in Wundt – they tend to elucidate “apperception” by way of the phenomenon of 181 “attention” and the fact that they tend to let apperception be absorbed completely in the phenomenon of attention. In particular, Jaensch has made use of this phenomenon to explain spatial perception. He repeatedly falls back on the “showing behavior of attention” as the real decisive motive. Everything that we designate as a “localization in space,” appears to be determined and conducted by such showing behavior. As a general principle of this localization, Jaensch formulates the theorem “that in the case of the absence of other localization motives, visual impressions are located in the distance of the locus of attention.”25 Even if we accept, however, all the individual results of Jaensch’s experiments, there arises here, nevertheless, a general methodological question as to whether the principle of attention has been sufficiently clarified and determined theoretically enough to serve as a sound foundation for a theory of space? As with the theory of space, attempts have also been made to base a general theory of concepts on this principle. Here too, the achievement of “abstraction,” in which the concept should have its source, was seen as essentially an achievement of attention. In that our regard passes over a series of sensible representations, these will not be uniformly considered in the totality of their properties; rather, we extract from them in each case a certain element on which we mainly dwell. In this way the parts that are not noticed [beachtete] are finally repressed and only those others that stand at the center of attention are retained, and with this, the concept [Begriff], as an ensemble [Inbegriff] of the noticed [Beachtet] arises. If we examine this theory of the concept more closely, we soon find, however, that it also implicates us in a circle – that in it the sought is confused with the given, what is to be grounded with the ground. For attention can become a concept-­ creating act only by forging a determinate direction from the beginning and by retaining this direction throughout its entire movement – by apprehending the manifold of perceptions from a unitary point of view [Gesichtspunkt] and so comparing them. This unity of “sight” [Sicht], however, does not first create the concept; rather, it already implies 182 the concept: it is precisely what constitutes its logical content [Gehalt] and its logical function. For the formation of concepts, it is not enough

186

the problem of representation

that attention is in general paid – such attention can also accompany any other act of mere sensing, representing, or fantasizing – but rather, the decisive factor lies in that which [worauf] is remarked: in the goal that thought has in view when it discursively runs through a series of particular contents and to which it refers these contents as a whole. However, the same basic act that was indispensable for the acquisition of conceptual forms is also indispensable for the acquisition of characteristically determined spatial forms. The various geometrical “spaces” make this particularly evident; depending on how the regard is directed toward one or another goal, depending on how it posits one or another element as “invariant,” one or another “mode of space” is formed, the concept of “metric” or “projective” space etc. is constituted. Our empirical intuition of space, however, also goes back, as we have seen, to a constant skilled act of “selection” of this sort, and this selection always requires a certain principle of selection, a determining viewpoint. Here too, certain fixed points are posited, cardinal points around which appearances revolve. Because the rotation point as well as the sense of rotation of this movement can change, an individual perception may assume a different signification and a different value for the total structure of spatial “reality.” Beyond all these differences, however, the unity of the basic theoretical function that governs the totality [Ganz] of these relations asserts itself. While perception does not remain a mere apprehension of singularities, given here and now, in that it acquires the character of a “presentation,” perception gathers the colorful abundance of phenomena together into a “context of experience.” The division between the two basic elements of presentation – between the presenting and the presented, between “representing” [Repräsentant] and the “represented” [Repräsentat] – bears in itself the germ from whose development and complete unfolding the world of space emerges as a world of pure intuition.

ENDNOTES 1 Descartes, Renati des Cartes Notæ in programma quoddam: sub finem anni 1647. in Belgio editum, cum hoc titulo: Explicatio mentis humanæ, ubi explicatur

space

2 3

4 5 6

187

quid sit, & quid esse possit, eds. C. Adam and P. Tannery (Paris, 1897–1909), 8, 360; cf. my Erkenntnisproblem, vol. 1, 489f. [“Habit and Custom” in English.] George Berkeley, An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision in Works, ed. Alexander Campbell Fraser, vol. I (4 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901), 93–210, and The Theory of Vision, or Visual Language, shewing the Immediate Presence and Providence of a Deity, vindicated and explained in Works, vol. II, 369–415; on the concept of “suggestion” and its position in Berkeley’s system, cf. my Erkenntnisproblem, 2, 283ff. For further details, see part 3, chap. 1, 2. [Cf. Hermann Lotze, Metaphysik. Drei Bücher der Ontologie Kosmologie und Psychologie (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1879), 550ff.] Martin Heidegger, in “Sein und Zeit,” Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, 8 (1927), 102ff., has worked out in a sharp analysis those determinations related to the primary lived-­experience of space, to purely “pragmatic” space. According to Heidegger, every characterization of the initially “present at hand” [Zuhanden], of availably “useful thing” [Zeug], comes up against the element of spatiality. Place and the multiplicity of places must not be interpreted as the where of a random being present [Vorhandensein] of things. Place is always the definite “over there” and the “there” of a useful thing belonging there. . . . This regional orientation of the multiplicity of places of what is at hand [Zuhanden] constitutes the aroundness [Umhafte], the being around us [Um-­uns-­herum] of beings encountered initially in the surrounding world [umweltlich]. There is never a three-­dimensional multiplicity of possible positions initially given which is then filled out with objectively present things. This dimensionality of space is still veiled in the spatiality of what is at hand. . . . All these wheres are discovered and circumspectly interpreted on the paths and ways of everyday dealings; they are not ascertained and catalogued by the observational measurement of space.

What distinguishes our own considerations and task from that of Heidegger is above all that it does not stop at this stage [Stufe] of the “at hand” and its mode of “spatiality” but that instead without denying Heidegger’s position extends beyond [hinausfragen] it. For we want to follow the path [Weg] that leads from spatiality as an element in the at hand [Zuhanden] to space as the form of objectively present [Vorhanden] and furthermore to show how this path leads right through the domain of symbolic forming [Formung] – in the twofold sense of “presentation” and of “signification” (cf. part III). 7 In regard to the structure of this “mathematical” space see part 3, chap. 3–5. 8 Cf., for example, the illustration of Theodor Wilhelm Danzel, Grundzüge der Verlag, Altmexikanischen Geisteskultur (Hagen and Darmstadt: Folkwang-­ 1922).

188

the problem of representation

9 Cf. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 2, 113ff and 130ff. 10 Cf. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1, 122ff and 136ff. Hans Freyer, in Theorie des objektiven Geistes. Eine Einleitung in die Kulturphilosophie (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1923), agrees in stressing the decisive importance of the “indicative” gesture and the fundamental difference between it and anymore “expressive movement” (cf. esp. 16ff.). 11 The pure “action space” [Aktionsraum] in which the animal world is in general absorbed is characterized in Hans Volkelt’s account of the spatial orientation of the spider in his Über die Vorstellungen der Tiere: When an object had fallen into the web, the spider, if it reacted at all, hastened to it only when the object moved; if however the object hung quietly, the spider did not run directly from its dwelling to the object, rather it made a stop in the center of the net in order – to speak in human terms – to determine the direction of the object caught in the net by feeling the radial thread. . . . When a housefly flew into the net, the victim sometimes escaped the spider in this way; for sometimes the fly would freeze in some desperate posture the moment it touched the net. Attracted to the center by the first jerk, the spider would feel the radical threads one by one; sometimes it detected the direction in which the fly lay motionless, sometimes it did not; in the latter case it returned home empty-­handed. . . . From all this it follows unquestionably that even in the center of the web the spider does not obtain adequate information of what is going on in the periphery through optical qualities (whether through an image or a mere seeing of motion), but that touch plays an essential part in conditioning its behavior . . . even when the object hangs in the net at a very slight distance (23 cm.) from the spider, the insect sometimes fails to find it. (51f.) 12 Certain experiments that have been undertaken with certain pathological alterations of “spatial consciousness” also throw light on this difference between “action space” and “symbolic space.” They show that many of the patients whose capacity to recognize spatial shapes [Gestalten] as such and to interpret them objectively is greatly impaired but are nevertheless still able to fulfill certain highly complex spatial performances if they can be approached in another way, through certain movements and “kinesthetic” perceptional movements. Cf. Adhémar Gelb and Kurt Goldstein, “Über den Einfluß des vollständigen Verlustes des optischen Vorstellungsvermögens auf das taktile Erkennen,” in Psychologische Analysen hirnpathologischer Fälle, 1 (Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1920), 157–250. (For further detail, see chaps. 4, 6.) It would seem – as can be gathered from the penetrating self-­analyses of blind people – that we must conceive the “space” of the blind not as a presentation and image-­space but primarily as a dynamic “space of action” [Handlungsraum], a definite field of action [Aktion] and movement: Cf. Wilhelm Ahlmann, “Zur Analyse des

space

189

optischen Vorstellungslebens. Ein Beitrag zur Blindenpsychologie,” Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie, 46 (1924), 193ff.; and J. Wittmann, “Raum, Zeit and Wirklichkeit,” ibid., 47 (1924), 428ff. 13 Eino Kaila, “Gegenstandsfarbe und Beleuchtung,” Psychologische Forschung, 3 (1923), 32f. 14 Katz, Die Erscheinungsweise der Farben und ihre Beeinflussung durch die individuelle Erfahrung, 275f. 15 William James, The Principles of Psychology, vol. 2 (London: Macmillan and Co. 1902,), 237. 16 If, for example, a square figure [Figur] is seen on a surface placed obliquely to the eye, then it should, according to the pictorial relationship to the retina, appear as a quadrangle with two acute and two obtuse angles, while in fact it retains in this instance its square “character.” Similarly, an optical impression that as such would correspond to an ellipse is “transformed” into a circle – that is, to the shape [Gestalt] that we would behold if it were represented on a frontal-­parallel surface. Here this phenomenon characteristically seems to be entirely lacking or very much impaired in certain pathological cases of “mental [Seele] blindness.” In the report of Gelb and Goldstein, when a circle or square was first presented in a frontal-­parallel position and the optical images of the two figures were then changed by rotation on a vertical axis, the patient with “mental [Seele] blindness” distinctly “saw” an ellipse or an upended rectangle when the amounted to 25 or 30 degrees. In binocular vision, the phenomenon of “apparent shape [Gestalt]” was regained, but in limited degree, since the patient now saw the image more according to the “actual” formal constitution of the object [Objekt] than according to the pictorial relationship to the retina. Cf. Gelb and Goldstein, in Psychologische Analysen, 36ff. 17 James, The Principles of Psychology, 2, 240. 18 Thus, it would also seem that the purely genetic question is concerned with establishing that this characteristic “symbolic consciousness” is a relatively late development. This consciousness had to be achieved in acquisition and use of language, and the psychology of visual perception also led to the conclusion that the first reaction to light that the retina presents to consciousness consists in plain colors and that only gradually does the consciousness of surface colors arise and solidify. Cf. Katz, Die Erscheinungsweisen der Farben und ihre Beeinflussung durch die individuelle Erfahrung, 306ff., 397ff. 19 Cf. Felix Klein, “Vergleichende Betrachtungen über neuere geometrische Forschungen,” Mathematische Annalen, 43 (1893), 63–100. Cf. part 3, chap. 4. 20 See Erich M. von Hornbostel’s excellent presentation of the phenomenon of “optic inversion” in his “Über optische Inversion,” Psychologische Forschung, 1 (1922), 130–56. 21 Koehler also stressed in his intelligence tests of anthropoid how closely all the “insightful” achievements of the anthropoid are connected with the faculty of optical-­spatial organization and a relatively free optical-­spatial “synopsis.” A large share of the difficulties created for the animal by certain “intelligence”-­ task arose precisely from this transformation of optical structures. Cf. W.

190

the problem of representation

Koehler, “Intelligenzprüfung an Anthropoiden, I,” in Abhandlungen der königlichen preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, physikalisch-­ mathematische Klasse (Berlin: Verlag, 1917), esp. 90ff., 105ff. This faculty of regrouping and “recentering” within purely visual space seems, from a psychological view, to be the beginning and precondition for the acquisition of that “schematic” space that, as Leibniz said, is no real thing but rather an “order of possible togetherness” (un ordre des coexistences possibles). 22 Cf. esp. 152ff. 23 For further details, see my Erkenntnisproblem, 2, 297ff. 24 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 112f. and A 122f. 25 Erich Rudolf Jaensch, “Über die Wahrnehmung des Raumes. Eine experimentell-­psychologische Untersuchung nebst Anwendung auf Ästhetik und Erkenntnislehre,” in Supplementary vol. 6 of Zeitschrift für Psychologie (Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1911), esp. chap. 5, on localization of attention.

IV THE INTUITION OF TIME Highly developed theoretical thinking tends to consider time as an all-­ 183 embracing “form” for all events, as a universal order in which all the content of reality “is” and in which an unequivocal place is assigned to it. Time does not stand beside things as a physical being or as a physical force: it has no independent character of existence or effective action. All the connections of things, all the relations prevailing between them, however, are ultimately traced back to determinations of temporal events, to the differentiation of the earlier and later, the “now” and the “not now.” Only when thought succeeds in grasping together the manifold of events [Ereignis] into a system within which the individual events are determined in respect to their “before” and “after,” do phenomena join together into the total-­gestalt of an intuitive reality. The particular nature of temporal schematism first makes possible the form of “objective” experience itself. Thus, time, as Kant says, forms “the correlative of the determination of an object in general.” The “transcendental schemata,” which, according to Kant, guarantee the interconnection between understanding and sensibility, are nothing other than “a priori determinations of time according to rules.” Through them, the temporal series, the temporal content, the temporal order, and the temporal ensemble are determined into the consideration of all possible objects. There

192

the problem of representation

exists, however, a sharp and fundamental difference between “schema” and “image”: The image is a product of the empirical faculty of the productive imagination, the schema of sensible concepts (such as figures in space) is a product and, as it were, a monogram of the pure a priori imagination, through which and in accordance with which images first become possible.1

184

In that Kant posits the problem of time in this way, he adds, to be sure, that “this schematism of our understanding with regard to appearances and their mere form is a hidden art in the depths of the human soul, whose true operations we can divine from nature and lay unveiled before our eyes only with difficulty.”2 Indeed, whether we approach this problem from the side of metaphysics or from the side of psychology or the critique of cognition, we seem at once to encounter here an unsurpassable “boundary of comprehension.” Augustine’s dictum still seems to retain its full validity: time, which to the immediate consciousness is the most certain and most familiar of facts, shrouds itself in darkness as soon as we seek to pass beyond this immediate givenness and draw it into the sphere of reflective contemplation.3 Any attempt at a definition of time or even of an objective characteristic of time threatens to embroil us immediately in inextricable antinomies. To be sure, a common ground of these antinomies and aporias seems to reside in neither metaphysics nor the critique of cognition observing the strict boundary that Kant demonstrates and emphasizes in his differentiation between the “image” and the “schema.” Instead of relating sensible images to the “monogram of the pure imagination,” they have repeatedly succumbed to the temptation of illustrating and “explaining” the imagination by purely sensible determinations. What makes this temptation even stronger and more dangerous is that it never ceases to be renewed and fostered by a basic positive power [Kraft] of spirit: the power of language. In designating temporal determinations and temporal relationships, language is at first wholly dependent on the mediation of space; and from its interwovenness with the spatial world likewise results also a bond with the world of things, which are thought as present [vorhanden] “in” space. The “form” of time is thus



the intuition of time

193

expressed here only insofar as it can in some way be based on spatial 185 and objective determinations.4 The compulsion of this dependence is so strong that it makes itself felt beyond the sphere of language, in the concept formation of exact science. Exact science also seems to possess no other possibility than to give an “objective” description of time in that it presents and elucidated its being [Wesen] in spatial images. It, too, takes the image of the endless straight line as an “external figurative representation of time.”5 Does any such figurative character, however, apprehend the actual gestalt of time? Or does it not rather inject a specifically different, essentially alien element into it? All linguistic determination is necessarily at the same time a linguistic fixation – however, does not the mere attempt at any such fixation deny time its true and proper sense, which is precisely the sense of pure becoming? Myth seems to penetrate here more deeply than language into the originary-­form of time, for it seems able to abide [verweilen] in the originary-­form of time and because it grasps the world not as a rigid being but as a constant event – not as a finished gestalt but as an ever-­ renewed metamorphosis. And from this basic view, it rises to a wholly universal intuition of time. For in myth, the intuitions of the becoming [Werdenden] and the become [Geworden] are separate from the intuition of becoming [Werden]. All individuals and particulars are subject to the forceful power of becoming as a universal and irrefragable power of fate. The existence and life of an individual being [Einzelwesen] is measured out to it by this power. The gods themselves are not masters over time and fate but subjected to their originary-­law, the law of μοῖρα [portion]. Thus, time is here lived [erleben] as fate – long before it was comprehended as a cosmic order of events in the purely theoretical sense.6 It is no mere ideal network for the ordering of the “earlier” and “later”; it is, rather, itself the spinner of the net. With all the universality that is already imparted to it, it thus proves itself full of vitality [Lebendigkeit] and concretion: in it, as an original reality, all being, earthly as well as celestial, human as well as divine, remains decided [beschlossen] and bound. A new relationship, however, announces itself as soon as the question of origins is no longer posed from the perspective of myth but from that of philosophy, from that of theoretical reflection. The mythical concept 186 of beginning is now transformed into the concept of principle. This is initially apprehended in such a way that a concrete temporal intuition

194

187

the problem of representation

enters into the purely conceptual determination of the principle. What emerges for philosophical thought as the enduring “ground” of being is at the same time the first and earliest shape [Gestalt] of being that we must find if we follow the chain of becoming back to its beginning. This interweaving [Verflechtung] of motives, however, loosens as soon as the question of thinking is no longer directed exclusively toward the ground of things but also toward the ground of its own being and its own justification. Where philosophy first raises this question, where instead of inquiring after the ground of reality, it inquires after the sense and ground of truth, the bond between being and time seems to be severed in one stroke. The true being that is now discovered is a timeless being. What we call time is henceforth no more than a mere name – a yarn spun by language and human “opinion.” Being itself knows of no earlier or later: “And it never Was, nor Will Be, because it Is now, a Whole all together, One, continuous.”7 With this concept of timeless being as the correlate of timeless truth, the tearing away of “logos” from myth takes place – the mature assertion [Mündigkeitserklärung] of pure thinking compared with the mythical powers of fate. And philosophy always returns in a new turn [kehren] in the course of its history to its origin. Spinoza, like Parmenides, sets up the idea of a timeless cognition, a cognition sub specie aeterni [from the viewpoint of eternity]. Time also becomes for him a formation [Gebilde] of the imaginatio, the empirical imagination, which falsely attributes its own form to substantial, absolute being. However, metaphysics is not, of course, able to master the riddle of time and expel it from its midst – it is not able, in the pregnant words of Parmenides, to eject coming into being [Entstehen] and passing out of being [Vergehen] from itself.8 For while being, as absolute being, seems freed from the burden of contradiction, a still graver contradiction now weighs on the world of phenomena. From now on, the phenomenal world is subject to the dialectic of becoming. The history of philosophy shows how this dialectic, which Eleatic thinking discovered in the abstract concepts of multiplicity and motion, gradually penetrates empirical cognition, physics, and their fundamental foundation. Newton carries out this foundation when he positions the postulate of an “absolute time,” which flows along itself without regard to any outward object, as the keystone of his system. The more contemplation immersed itself in the nature [Wesen] of this absolute time, the



the intuition of time

195

more sharply and clearly it became evident, however, that – to use the Kantian expression – an “existing non-­thing [Unding]” had been posited in it. In making flux the basic element of time, we posit its being and nature [Wesen] in its passing out of being [Vergehen]. Time is not supposed to take part in this passing out of being [Vergehen], because the change applies not to time itself but only to the content of the events, to the appearances that follow one another in it. With this, however, we seem to have once again posited a being [Seiende], a substantial whole, that is assembled together from nonexistent [nichtseiende] parts. For the past is “no more” and the future is “not yet.” Thus, the only consistent existence that remains of time seems to be the present [Gegenwart] as a medium between the “no-­longer” and the “not-­yet.” If we give to this medium a finite extension, if we regard it as a length of time, then the same problem immediately arises in it – the medium becomes a multiplicity of which only a single moment exists and is at a time, while all others precede the being or have left it behind them. If on the other hand we understand the now in a strictly punctual sense, it ceases by virtue of this isolation to be a member in a temporal series. Against such a “now,” Zeno’s paradox applies; the flying arrow is at rest because at any point in its course, it occupies a single position [Lage] and so is not in a state of becoming, a state of “transition” [Übergang]. If any, the problem of temporal measurement, which would appear to be a purely empirical problem that is raised by experience itself and fully soluble only by means of experience, repeatedly entangles philosophy in a confusion of dialectical considerations and arguments. In the correspondence between Leibniz and Clarke, as Newton’s defender and representative, Clarke deduces the absolute and real character of time from its measurability: how can something, which is not, possess the property of objective magnitude and number? Leibniz, however, at once reverses this argument into its opposite: he seeks to show that a quantitative determination of time is conceivable without contradiction only if we think of it not as a substance but rather as a purely ideal relation, as an “order of the possible.”9 Thus, all progress in the cognition of time – whether it is acquired from the standpoint of the considerations of metaphysics or of physics – only seems to more clearly and inexorably reveal its intrinsically antinomic character: by whatever means we seek to grasp it, the “being” of time threatens to slip forever through our fingers.

188

196

189

the problem of representation

This dialectic, which repeatedly arises as soon as thinking attempts to master the concept of time by subordinating it to a general concept of being, has been most pregnantly and clearly expressed in that classical chapter of St. Augustine’s Confessions, in which, for the first time in the history of Western philosophical thinking, the problematic of time was posed and surveyed in its full scope. If, as Augustine concludes, the present [Gegenwart] only becomes a determination of time, a temporal present, in that it transitions into the past, then how can we designate a being that exists only by annihilating itself? Or how can we attribute magnitude to time and measure this magnitude, since such a measurement can come about only by linking the past and the present [Gegenwärtige] with each other and taking them together in one regard of spirit – while, on the other hand, both moments are in their pure mode of being antithetically opposed to each other? Here only one way out remains: a mediation must be found that does not sublate this opposition but that nevertheless relativizes it – one that makes it appear not as an absolute contradiction but as a merely conditioned opposition. And according to Augustine, this mediation is effected in every genuine act of time-­consciousness [Zeitbewußtsein]. We find the Ariadne’s thread that can lead us out of the labyrinth of time only when we express the problem in a fundamentally different form – only when we transfer it from the ground soil [Boden] of realistic dogmatic ontology to the ground soil [Boden] of a pure analysis of the phenomena of consciousness.10 Now the separation of time into present, past, and future is no longer a substantial separation by which three individual heterogeneous modes of being are to be determined each in their “in-­itself” [Ansich] and separated from one another – rather, now it applies solely to our knowledge of appearing reality. Strictly taken, we cannot speak of the three times as beings; rather, it would be more proper to say that as the present [Gegenwart], time contains in itself three different relations and by virtue of them three different aspects and determinations. There is a present of the past, a present of the present [Gegenwärtige], and a present of the future. “The present of the past is called memory, the present of the present [Gegenwärtige] is called intuition, that of the future is called awaiting.” Thus, we may not think of time as an absolute thing, divided into three absolute parts; rather, the unitary consciousness of the “now” encompasses three different basic directions and is first constituted in this triality. The



the intuition of time

197

conscious present is not chained, as it were, to an individual moment [Moment] and firmly bound to it; rather, it necessarily passes beyond it, both forward and backward.11 Comprehending time does not mean, therefore, to put it together from three separate but nevertheless linked essential beings – rather, it means to understand how three clearly separate intentions – the intention toward the now, the intention toward the earlier, and the intention toward later – are grasped together into the unity of a sense. True, the possibility of such a synthesis can no longer be derived or proven by something else – rather, we stand here before a phenomenon, which, as a genuine originary-­phenomenon, as such can be accredited and explained only out of itself. “Quid est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quaerat, scio, si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio” [“What then is time? Provided that no one asks me, I know. If I want to explain it to an inquirer, I do not know.”].12 Consider the example of a bodily voice. It begins to sound, it sounds and goes on sounding, then it ceases: and now there is silence, the sound has passed, the sound no longer is. It was future before it began to sound, and so could not be measured, for as yet it did not exist; and now it cannot be measured because now it exists no longer. Only while sounding could it be measured for then it was, and so was measurable. But even then, it was not standing still; it was moving, and moving out of existence. . . . “God, Creator of all things” – Deus creator omnium – the line consists of eight syllables, in which short and long syllables alternate. . . . Each long syllable has double the time of each short syllable, I pronounce them, and I say that it is so, and so it is, as is quite obvious to the ear. As my ear distinguishes I measure a long syllable by a short and I perceive that it contains it twice. But since I hear a syllable only when the one before it has ceased. . . . Each of the long syllables has twice the time of the short. As I recite the words, I also observe that this is so, for it is evident to sense-­perception. To the degree that the sense-­perception is unambiguous, I measure the long syllable by the short one, and perceive it to be twice the length. But when one syllable sounds after another, the short first, the long after it, how shall I keep my hold on the short, and how use it to apply a measure to the long, so as to verify that the long is twice as much? The long does not begin to

190

198

191

192

the problem of representation

sound unless the short has ceased to sound. I can hardly measure the long during the presence of its sound, as measuring becomes possible only after it has ended. When it is finished, it has gone into the past. What then is it which I measure? Where is the short syllable with which I am making my measurement? Where is the long which I am measuring? Both have sounded; they have flown away; they belong to the past. They now do not exist. And I offer my measurement and declare as confidently as a practiced sense-­perception will allow, that the short is single, the long double – I mean in the time they occupy. I can do this only because they are past and gone. Therefore, it is not the syllables which I am measuring, but something in my memory which stays fixed there. So it is in you, my mind, that I measure periods of time. . . . In you, I affirm, I measure periods of time. The impression which passing events make upon you abides when they are gone. That present consciousness is what I am measuring, not the stream of past events which have caused it. When I measure periods of time, that is what I am actually measuring. . . . Or how does the past, which now has no being, grow, unless there are three processes in the mind which in this is the active agent? For the mind expects and attends and remembers, so that what it expects passes through what has its attention to what it remembers. Who therefore can deny that the future does not yet exist? Yet already in the mind there is an expectation of the future. Who can deny that the past does not now exist? Yet there is still in the mind a memory of the past. None can deny that present time lacks any extension because it passes in a flash. Yet attention is continuous, and it is through this that what will be present progresses towards being absent.13

The sharp cut is made between the time of things and the time of pure lived-­experience – between the time that we think of as the riverbed of the objective events and the time-­consciousness that by its very nature [Wesen] can be given to us in no other way than as “present time” [Präsenzzeit]. Once it has been clearly apprehended, the problematic disclosed here never ceases. It now passes through the history of metaphysics as well as that of the theory of cognition – and it has recently undergone a resurgence in the attempts at a foundation for the modern “psychology of thinking.”14



the intuition of time

199

We also see ourselves, however, referred back here to the center of our systematic question. For the demand here is clear and precise, and the phenomenon of the representation [Repräsentation] of time must not be confused with the problems of the being of time, as ontologically-­real, as “metaphysical” time. We cannot begin with the latter in order, from here, to penetrate into lived-­experienced time, into the “time of the I” [Ichzeit]; rather, we can take only the opposite path. The question is, how can we be guided from the pure phenomenon of the “now,” which grasps [begreift] in itself the future and the past as constitutive moments, to that mode of time in which these three stages are separated from one another, in which they are posited as objectively “apart” [auseinander] and successive [nacheinander]? The direction of consideration can be only from the “ideal” to the “real,” from the “intention” to its “object.” No road ultimately leads back from the metaphysical category of substantiality to the pure intuition of time. The only logical conclusion here is precisely to reject this intuition – to explain it with Parmenides as nonbeing [nichtseiend], or with Spinoza as the formation [Gebilde] of the imagination. However, because the pure phenomena cannot simply be done away or simply annihilated by the dictums of metaphysical thinking, the only possibility of solving the problem consists in fundamentally transforming and reversing the problem. What must be recognized is the transition from the original temporal structure of the I to that temporal order in which empirical things and events [Ereignis] stand for us, in which the “object of experience” is given to us. And here it initially appears that what this “object” implies and intends not only is related [bezogen] in a mediated way to the temporal order but also can be posited only through this order. In modern philosophy, this framing of the question was not first introduced by Kant but rather by Leibniz. Leibniz already shows – and this forms a central point in his polemic against Newton’s theory of time – that “monadological” time forms the πρότερον τῇ φύσει [first according to nature] and that we can reach mathematical-­physical time through it alone. According to the system of monadology, the “presence” [Präsenz] of the I, which in itself grasps [begreift] past and future, is the starting point, the terminus a quo, whose being and sense can be explained by no influxus physicus, by no causality “from the outside.” It forms the medium for all other objective being and for all objective knowledge. For according to Leibniz, who reverses the realistic concept

193

200

194

the problem of representation

of substance, the monad is only by virtue of its representing [Vorstellen] – however, it can represent in no other way than by envisaging and expressing the past and the to come [Künftig] in the now. This expression of the many in the one (multorum in uno expressio) belongs to the essence of every appearance of consciousness; but it is perhaps more clearly comprehensible and demonstrable in the character of temporal phenomena than anywhere else. In every other domain, it might seem as if “representation” [Repräsentation], as mere mediated act, were merely added to an otherwise immediately given consciousness of matter – as if it did not originally belong to the matter of consciousness but were only superimposed on it afterwards. In space, it is true, every content necessarily refers to the others, so that every “here” is connected with an “over-­there [Dort]” by causal determinations, by dynamic effects. The pure sense of the “here,” however, seems at first sight capable of existing for itself [für sich], seems possible to comprehend and define it independently of the “over-­there [Dort].” For time, however, such a separation is not even possible in abstraction. Every moment immediately comprises in itself the triad of temporal relations and temporal intentions. The present [Gegenwart], the now, obtains its character as present only through the act of re-­presentation [Vergegenwärtigung], through the pointing to the past and to the to come [Künftig] comprised in it. Accordingly, “representation” [Repräsentation] is not merely added here to “presentation” [Präsentation] but constitutes the very content [Gehalt] and core of “presence” [Präsenz] itself. The cut that attempts to separate here “content” and “presentation,” the “existing” and the “symbolic” from each other would, if successful, strike and destroy the vital nerve of temporality itself. And with this specific form of time-­consciousness, the form of the I-­consciousness would also be annihilated. For the two reciprocally condition each other; the I finds and knows itself only in the threefold form of time-­consciousness, while, on the other hand, the three phases of time merge together into a unity only in and by virtue of the I. The way that temporal determinations – which seem to conflict and perpetually repel each other when abstractly and conceptually posited – nevertheless “join together” can be rendered intelligible only by way of the I and not by way of things. For on the one hand, as Kant put it, “the standing and lasting I . . . constitutes the correlate of all our representations, so far as it is merely possible to become conscious of them”;15 on the other



the intuition of time

201

hand, however, the I can assure itself of its identity and permanence only through its own unbroken flow. It is constancy and change, permanence and transition, in one. While I feel myself as if standing in this now, I not only find myself following from the past in a continuous transition, but I also never find myself sharply cut off in the forward direction, stopping at one moment and then after a pause beginning again. Also, in the forward direction I am ever-­flowing. While in this now, I feel myself passing from the now that has just become past, I am at the same time certain that this now in which I stand vanishes forthwith and flows into another now. My now-­lived-­experience has in itself these two aspects; it feels itself to be coming from a before and moving into an after. Every now is for me a vanishing just-­now-­having-­been-­present [Soeben-­Gegenwärtiggewesensein] and at the same time a transition into another now, that is, into a just-­ now-­not-­yet-­having-­been-­present [Soeben-­Gegenwärtiggewesensein].16

Of course, this form of lived-­I-­experience [Icherlebnisses] cannot be shown otherwise than in pure description – however, it cannot be “explained” in the sense that it could be traced back to something else, to something deeper. Regardless of what direction this explanation takes, regardless of whether it follows metaphysical or psychological tendencies, the attempted derivation always becomes a sublation: the deduction immediately reverts into the negation. In assigning time to the domain of the “imagination,” Spinoza must also assign the I to the same sphere. True, for Spinoza, consciousness, cogitatio, also appears as an attribute of the infinite substance and thus seems to be determined as something eternal and necessary. He leaves no doubt, however, that this consciousness has no more than the name in common with the human I-­consciousness. If we attribute the predicate of self-­consciousness to substance, if we speak of divine understanding and divine will, then we are, according to this view, letting ourselves be governed by a mere linguistic metaphor: in substance [der Sache nach], no more common ground exists here than exists between the dog as the sign of the zodiac and the dog as a barking animal. The originality and independent particular nature of both I-­consciousness and time-­consciousness are attacked from an opposite side by the

195

202

196

the problem of representation

criticism of psychological empiricism and sensationalism. Once again, we are under the spell of a fundamental substantial apprehension here; however, not the simplicity of being but the simplicity of sensation to which every configuration of consciousness should be reduced and into which it should be dissolved.This elementary consistent existence as such contains within its pure in-­itself [Ansich] neither the form of the I nor the form of time. Both appear rather as secondary products – as the accidental determinations that require a genetic derivation from the simple. The I thus becomes a “bundle of representations,” while time becomes a mere multiplicity of sensible impressions. Whoever seeks time among the fundamental facts of consciousness, among the simple perceptions, will find nothing corresponding to it: there is no single representation of time or duration, just as there is no such single representation of a tone or a color. Five tones played on a flute – Hume insists – produce the impression of time in us. This is, however, not a new impression that is introduced as similar and equivalent into the purely acoustical impressions no more than the mind [Geist], for example, under the inducement and stimulus of mere auditory sensations, creates a new idea, an idea of “reflection,” which it draws from itself. For although it may dissect all its representations a thousand times, it will never gain the original perception of time from them. What it in truth becomes aware of in the hearing of the tones is, then, in addition to the tones themselves, nothing other than a modal character that adheres to them, the particular manner in which they appear. We may later reflect that this mode of appearance is in itself not confined purely as such to the material content of the tones but that it can manifest itself in any other sensible matter. In this case, however, time becomes separable from every particularity of the matter of sensation, but not from sensible matter in general. For Hume, accordingly, the representation of time is not an independent content; rather, it arises from a certain form of “noticing” or “considering” sensible impressions and objects.Yet this derivation, which Mach essentially takes over unchanged from Hume, clearly moves in the same circle as does every attempt to reduce specific modes and directions of “intention” to mere acts of attentiveness [Aufmerksamkeit].17 To “notice” time, we “pay attention” to the sequence – and “take note” of it alone and not of the particular contents that appear in this sequence.18 It is, however, clear that precisely this direction of attention already comprises the whole of time



the intuition of time

203

with its general structure and characteristic sense of order. Psychological empiricism succumbs here to the same fallacy that realistic ontology had succumbed in its sphere. It also seeks to derive “phenomenal” time from a type of “objective” determination and relationship; the only difference being that its objects [Objekte] are no longer absolute substances but sense impressions that are posited but that are no less absolute. Neither “things in themselves” nor “sensations in themselves,” however, explain the fundamental relation that confronts us in time-­consciousness. The “succession of representations” is by no means synonymous with the “representation of succession” – nor is there any way of seeing how the latter might simply “result” from the former. For as long as the flow of representations is taken purely as an actual alteration, as an objectively real event, it contains no consciousness of alteration as such – of that way in which time is posited as a sequence and yet as unremitting present [Gegenwart], as “re-­presentation” [Vergegenwärtigung] in the I and given to the I.19 This stumbling block has frustrated all other attempts to comprehend the symbolic inclusion of the past in the now, as well as the anticipation of the future from the now by deriving both from causal laws of objective being and objective events. Once again, an attempt is made here to render intelligible a pure interconnection of knowing, a form of “consciousness,” by replacing it with an interconnection of being. As closely as the two may be linked, however, it still remains generically different from what it is supposed to explain. Even though the past may in some sense continue to exist in the present [Gegenwärtige], no bridge can be built from this supposed consistent existence to the phenomenon of representation [Repräsentation]. For “representation” [Repräsentation] differs from mere “retention” not in degree but in kind.20 To explain the specifically “conscious recollection,” to explain the knowledge of the past as past, it is not enough that the past is in some way substantially available [vorhanden] in the present [Gegenwärtige] or that the two are linked with one another by unbreakable threads. For precisely when the past “is” in the present [Gegenwärtige], when it is thought as “nonexistent” in the present [Gegenwart], it remains obscure how consciousness can nevertheless view it as nonpresent [nichtgegenwärtige], how the being of the past can recede into a temporal distance. Any real coincidence that may be asserted here does not include this distance but rather threatens to exclude it and

197

204

198

the problem of representation

make it impossible. How can the present [gegenwärtig] point of time that, according to Parmenides, in regard to being, is “altogether present [vorhanden] only in the now” and that, “remaining as the same in the same, rests by itself and remains fixed”21 nevertheless divide and differentiate itself in itself? How can it, as present [Gegenwart], separate and distinguish the past and future from itself? Plato referred in his struggle against Protagoras’ sensationalist theory of cognition to the specific form of the recollective certainty [Erinnerungsgewißheit], μνήμη [memory], which by itself [für sich] alone is sufficient to refute the identification [Gleichsetzung] of “knowing” and sense perception.22 This objection by no means loses its force when the phenomenon of “memory” [Gedächtnis] is made into the starting point and pivotal point of a psychology of cognizing and attempts to understand it within the framework [Rahmen] of a purely naturalistic consideration. Such a physiological theory of “mneme” has been systematically developed particularly by Richard Semon, and more recently, Bertrand Russell has taken it up as a basis for his analysis and explanation of consciousness. According to Semon, what we call “memory” does not belong merely to the sphere of “consciousness”; rather, we must see in it a basic attribute of all organic matter and organic life. What distinguishes the “living” from the “dead” is precisely that all living things have a history; that is to say, how they react to certain present [gegenwärtig] effects depends not only on the constitution of the momentary stimulus but also on earlier stimuli that have affected the organism. The impression produced on an organic formation [Gebilde] is in a sense retained even after its cause has ceased to exist. For every stimulus leaves behind it a certain physiological “trace,” an “engram,” and each of these “engrams” plays a part in codetermining the manner in which the organism will respond in the future to the same or similar stimuli. Thus, what we call conscious perception never depends solely on the present [gegenwärtig] state of the lived body, and particularly of the brain and nervous system, but on the totality of the effects that have been exerted on them.23 Russell relies on these determinations to show that they and they alone can yield a sharp and exact demarcation between matter [Materie] and “mind” [Geist]. “Mind” and “matter” [Materie] differ not in their nature [Wesen] or “matter” [Stoffe] but rather in the form of causation [Verursachung] that prevails in them. In the one case, we acquire an adequate description of the event and its lawfulness by going



the intuition of time

205

back to merely physical causes – that is, to causes whose effect does not in general endure more than a single moment. In the other case, however, we find ourselves pointed beyond this consideration – if we are to fully comprehend an event that is given here and now, we must, as it were, go back to temporally remote forces. However, on the other hand, according to Russell, this difference [Differenz] between “physical” and “mnemic” causation suffices to explain the phenomenological difference [Differenz] between “perception” and “recollection” – indeed, this difference [Differenz] signifies nothing other than precisely this twofold form of causality. It is never possible, in this view, to divorce perceptions and representations, sensations and ideas, according to purely inner criteria, such as their greater or lesser intensity or any other psychic “character” inhering in them. What separates the one from the other, what designates and constitutes the sphere of “images”24 as such, is rather the circumstance that in it different laws of connection prevail:

199

The difference between images and sensations can only be made by taking account of their causation. Sensations come through sense organs, while images do not. . . . An image . . . has a mnemic cause – which does not prevent it from also having a physical cause. And I think it will be found that the causation of an image always proceeds according to mnemic laws, i.e, that it is governed by habit and past experience. . . . And I think that if we could obtain an exact definition of the difference between physical and mnemic causation, we could distinguish images from sensations as having mnemic causes, though they may also have physical causes. Sensations, on the other hand, will only have physical causes.25

Even this very consistent theory, however, forgets that phenomenological differences [Unterschiede] of signification cannot be elucidated or leveled down just because one depicts [abbildet] them on the plane of existence and causal events.26 It overlooks that a difference [Differenz] of causation as such is given only for a foreign observer who in a manner of speaking considers consciousness from the outside. This observer, who already operates with an “objective” time, into which he tries to insert events and in which he attempts to order them, may in so doing distinguish two modes of causal connection: the one that is subject to purely “physical” laws and the

200

206

201

the problem of representation

other that is subject to both physiological and psychological laws. Every such differentiation within the natural causes of events, however, obviously presupposes already the thought of a natural order in general and with it the thought of an objective order of time. Only a consciousness that knows how in general to distinguish between present [Gegenwart], past, and future and to recognize the past in the present [Gegenwärtige] can link the present [Gegenwart] to the past and can too behold in the present the “continuing effect” of the past. This separation remains in every instance the radical act: the originary-­phenomenon [Urphänomen] that cannot be explained by any causal derivation because it must be presupposed in every causal derivation. Even if we take the naturalistic theory of “mneme” in its full scope, even if we start from the supposition that no impression can be made on the living organic substance without being oriented toward and modified by previous impressions, this modification still remains only a factual event that replaces one effect by another. However, how – we must go on to ask – can this alteration as such be recognized? How can the present [Gegenwärtige] not only be determined objectively by the past but also know itself to be so determined and relate itself to the past as the ground of its own determination? Even though “engrams” and traces of the earlier may be left behind, these factual residues [Rückstände] do not in themselves explain the characteristic form of relating back [Rückbeziehung]. For this relating back presupposes that a multiplicity of temporal determinations occur within the indivisible moment of time, that the total content of consciousness given in the simple “now” is distributed over present, past, and future. This form of phenomenal differentiation forms the real problem. The theory of the “mneme” can, however, at best explain only the real inexistence of the earlier in the latter, but it cannot make comprehensible how in the content given here and now an organization is effected, through which individual determinations are selected out of it and distributed over a temporal dimension of depth. Thus, this theory, like Hume’s, puts the question aside in the belief that one can derive the “representation of succession” from the “succession of representations.” Naturalistic-­oriented psychology attempts to grasp the relationship of “perception” and “recollection” such that recollection, so to speak, appears only as a reduplication of perception, as perception of the second power [Potenz]. Recollection, said Hobbes, is the perception of a



the intuition of time

207

past perception: sentire se sensisse, meminisse est [memory is to perceive that one has perceived]. In this very formula, however, a twofold problem is implicit. Hobbes defines sensation as nothing more than the reaction of the organic lived body to an outward stimulus. How, however, under these circumstances can the phenomenon of memory arise? How can the reaction that follows a present [anwesenden] stimulus be interpreted as the cause of an absent [abwesenden] stimulus? How is it possible to “perceive that one has perceived”? The whole difficulty is evident in the linguistic form that Hobbes gives to his proposition: Sentire se sensisse implies that two different sensations belonging to different times are linked to the same subject, that it is the same “I” that feels and has felt. And it also implies that precisely this I separates its states and modifications, that it gives them different temporal place values [Stellenwert] and orders these place values into a continuous series. Thus, Hobbes actually reverses the relationship that was initially posited: however, because according to the basic principles of his system, he must conceive of sensation as the precondition of memory, memory becomes for him at the same time an ingredient of sensation itself. Even this consistent “materialist” writes: I know there have been philosophers, and those learned men, who have maintained that all bodies are endued with sense. Nor do I see how they can be refuted if the nature of sense be placed in reaction only. And, though by the reaction of bodies inanimate a phantasm might be made, it would nevertheless cease, as soon as ever the object was removed. For unless those bodies had organs, as living creatures have, fit for the retaining of such motion as is made in them, their sense would he such, as that they should never remember the same. And therefore, this hath nothing to do with that sense which is the subject of my discourse. For by sense, we commonly understand the judgment we make of objects by their phantasms; namely, by comparing and distinguishing those phantasms; which we could never do, if that motion in the organ, by which the phantasm is made, did not remain there for some time, and make the same phantasm return. Wherefore sense, as I here understand it, and which is commonly so called, hath necessarily some memory adhering to it, by which former and later phantasms may be compared together, and distinguished from one another.27

202

208

203

204

the problem of representation

According to Hobbes, this state of affairs becomes particularly evident in the consideration and analysis of tactile phenomena, since tactile qualities are perceived not by sense alone but also by the memory. “For although some things are touched in a point, they cannot be felt without the flowing of a point, that is to say, without time; however, time to feel requires memory.” In fact, as the most recent investigations in the domain of tactile sense have with particular clarity shown, motion, and hence time, are among the formative factors of tactile phenomena themselves. The study of these phenomena is therefore eminently suited to confuting that “tendency of temporal atomism” that for a long time held almost undisputed sway in the psychology of perception. It shows that precisely the fundamental qualities of the tactile sense – qualities such as “hard” and “soft,” “rough” and “smooth” – arise only through motion, so that if we limit tactile sensations to a single moment [Augenblick], within this moment they can no longer be discerned as data at all. It is not a temporally detached stimulus filling only a certain moment [Moment] nor the corresponding sense sensation or a sum of such momentary sensible lived-­experiences [Augenblickserlebnisse] that leads to tactile qualities; rather, if we consider them from the standpoint of their objective “causes,” they are processes of stimuli that do not respond with individual “sensations” but constitute a total impression that no longer possess any essential temporal components.28 Thus, we have here exactly the reverse of the relationship described by Hume: the representation of the flow of time does not arise from a succession of sensible lived-­experiences; rather, a distinctive sensible lived-­experience results from the apprehension and organization of a specific temporal process. Strange as it may seem at first sight, the idea of time is not “abstracted” from the sequence of impressions – rather, the running through of a series, which can be apprehended only in succession, leads ultimately to a product that has cast off all succession and seems to stand before us as unitary and simultaneous. Thus, it is shown from a new angle that the function of “memory” [Gedächtnis] is in no way limited to the mere reproduction of past impressions but performs a genuinely creative task in the construction of the perceived world – that “recollection” [Erinnerung] not only repeats perceptions that were previously given but constitutes new phenomena and new data.29 This creative feature of pure time-­ consciousness comes to light even more clearly and characteristically if we consider the third basic



the intuition of time

209

direction in which it moves – if we consider the look-­forward [Vorblick: preview] into the future rather than the look back [Rückblick: retrospective] into the past. For this looking forward into the future also belongs to the nature [Wesen] of time-­consciousness, which completes itself only in the interpenetration of the present [gegenwärtig] intuition, recollection, and expectation. St. Augustine already stressed that expectation necessarily belongs to the character of time-­consciousness as much as recollection, and wherever “monadological” rather than objective physical-­time is under consideration, it is everywhere the phenomenon of expectation that occupies a central position. The “expression of the manifold in the one,” which characterizes the monad, according to Leibniz, holds just as fundamentally for the future as for the past. The I, which sees itself as standing “in time,” views itself not as a sum of static states but as a being [Wesen] that stretches itself [erstreckt sich selbst] forward into time, striving out from the present [Gegenwärtige] toward the to come [Künftig]. Without this form of striving, what we tend to think of as the “representation,” as the actual re-­presentation [Vergegenwärtigung] of a content, can never be given to us. Thus, the genuine I is similarly never a mere “bundle of perceptions.” It is, rather, the living source and ground from which ever-­new contents are produced: “fons et fundus idearum . . . praescripta lege nasciturarum.” Its content [Gehalt] escapes us if we attempt to think of it as purely static, if we determine it through the concept of mere being rather than through that of force. Leibniz described this state of affairs by using a bold neologism: percepturitio [to perceive], to which he accorded equal rank with the present [gegenwärtig] representation, perceptio [perception].30 The two are inseparably linked with one another, because consciousness is only by the fact that it does not remain within itself but constantly reaches out beyond itself, beyond the given present [Gegenwart] to the not-­given. Modern psychology has also extended and deepened its analysis of “memory” in this direction: it also stresses that one of the most essential achievements of memory is to be found in expectation, in the direction toward the future.31 Considered genetically, expectation actually seems to be earlier than recollection, because the distinctive “directedness toward” the to come [Künftig] seems to be found in the earliest manifestations of the life [Lebensäußerungen] of the child.32 Only as it reinstated the Leibnizian concept of the “tendency” and came to recognize its fundamental significance did the psychology of the nineteenth century free itself from the

205

210

the problem of representation

rigid mode of representation that posited together individual impressions as something already present [gegenwärtig] and consistently existing, like the stones of a mosaic. William James above all clearly recognized and remarked here that under such presuppositions of this mode of representation one could not possibly gain a true insight into the dynamic becoming, into the “stream of consciousness.” Characteristically, the consideration of language led James to this conclusion. Thus, he stresses:

206

The truth is that large tracts of human speech are nothing but signs of direction in thought, of which direction we nevertheless have an acutely discriminative sense, though no definite sensorial image plays any part in it whatsoever. Sensorial images are stable psychic facts; we can hold them still and look at them as long as we like. These bare images of logical movement, on the contrary, are psychic transitions, always on the wing, so to speak, and not to be glimpsed except in flight. . . . If we try to hold fast the feeling of direction, the full presence comes, and the feeling of direction is lost. . . . One may admit that a good third of our psychic [Seele] life consists in these rapid premonitory perspective views of schemes of thought not yet articulate.33

How can these “rapid previews” (“these premonitory perspective views of schemes of thought”34) be explained if all psychological being and life is ultimately held to be contained and grounded in “simple sensations,” if we cling to the dogma that all our representations and ideas are nothing other than copies [Kopien] of previous impressions? The certainty of recollection might in a certain sense be fitted into this schema: an attempt might be made to reduce the consciousness of the past to a kind of factual continued existence, to an effect extending from the past into the immediate present [Gegenwart]. Compared with the consciousness of the to come [Künftig], however, every such reduction fails. A thing or a process may take effect [wirken] on us even after it has vanished. However, can there be any such influence [Einwirkung] by things before they are? And if the answer to this question is no, then what actual “stimulus,” what objective “cause,” may we adduce for the expectation of the coming [Kommend], for the characteristic “intention” toward the future [Zukunft]? From the standpoint of any naturalistic and objectivistic theory of consciousness, it only remains here to reverse the state of affairs: what appears



the intuition of time

211

to us, in an immediate and purely phenomenological sense, as expectation must dissolve the concern [Sache] into mere recollection and let it be explained through laws of association and reproduction. With this, to be sure, the direction of consciousness toward the future is not so much understood as denied and annihilated. Our looking forward [Vorblick] to the future becomes a mere self-­deception, a phantasmagoria in contrast to the “actual” consciousness as a combination of the “existing” [Daseiend] and “having been” [Gewesen]. Even if, however, we were able to apprehend and appropriately describe from this point of view the form of “objective” time as is thought and grounded by the mathematical science of nature, with this apprehension, historical [historisch] time, the time of culture and history [Geschicht], would still be set aside and divested of its true sense. For the sense of history constitutes itself for us not solely from a looking back [Rückblick] into the past but no less from a looking forward [Vorblick] into the future. It depends as much on the striving as on the act, as much on the tendency toward the to come [Künftig] as on the contemplation and re-­presentation [Vergegenwärtigung] of the past. Only a willing and acting being [Wesen], who reaches out into the future and determines the future by virtue of its will, can have a “history”; only such a being [Wesen] can know of history because and insofar as it continuously produces it. Thus, true historical time is never a mere time of events; rather, its specific consciousness radiates as much from the center of willing and performing as from contemplation. The contemplative element is inseparably interwoven here with the active element: looking [Schauen] draws nourishment from effective action [Wirken], as effective action draws nourishment from looking [Schauen]. For the historical willing itself is not possible without an act of the “productive imagination” – on the other hand, the imagination can be truly creative only where it is determined and inspired by a living impulse of the will. Thus, historical consciousness rests on an interpenetration and a reciprocity of force of the deed and force of the image: on the clarity and certainty with which the I is able to set before itself an image of a future being and direct all individual activities toward this image. Here again, the mode of symbolic “representation” [Repräsentation] is manifested in its full force and depth: here, in a manner of speaking, it is the symbol that hastens ahead of reality, showing it the way and

207

212

208

the problem of representation

initially clearing its path. It does not merely look back on this reality as being [seiende] and become [gewordene]; it is itself an element and motif of its becoming itself. It is this form of symbolic looking [Schauen] that the truly specific difference [Differenz] by which the spiritual, historical will is distinguished from the mere “will to live,” from pure vital driving forces. Although it seems to press impetuously forward, in truth the drive is always determined and directed from behind. These forces that direct it from behind, and thus not from before it, arise from sense impression and immediate sensible need. The will breaks loose from this bond. It reaches forward into the to come [Künftig] and outward into sheer possibility while placing both before itself in a purely symbolic act. Every phase of action now occurs in constant regard to an ideal projection [Entwurf], which anticipates the action as a whole and which assures its unity, coherence, and continuity. The greater the force of this forward-­looking [Vorschau] and free looking-­over [Überschau], the richer the dynamic, the purer the spiritual form that the action itself acquires. Its significance now lies not solely in its output but in the process of effective action and configuring [Gestalten] itself, which as such at the same time contains within itself the condition for a new basic direction of understanding [Verstehen] of the world. It is once again confirmed here that historical reality “is there” for us and obtains its characteristic shape [Gestalt] only through a determinate and distinctive mode of “sight” [Sicht].The determinations that our analysis of spatial consciousness have yielded now find their counterpart in the forming [Formung] of time. As we were impelled to differentiate mere “action space” from “symbolic space,” an analogous difference thus also exists in the temporal sphere. Every activity that occurs in time is in some way organized in time; it discloses a definite sequence, an order in succession, without which it could not exist as an intrinsically uniform coherent whole. It is, however, a long way from the ordered sequence of events as such to the pure intuition of time itself and its individual relationships. Even animal life moves in a sequence of activities that are highly complex and subtly organized in respect to time. The animal organism can assert itself within its environment [Umwelt] only by “responding” in the correct way to the stimuli which strike it from outside, and this response comprises a definite sequence, a temporal combination of the individual moments of action. Everything that we customarily apprehend under the name of animal “instinct,” ultimately seems to go back to the fact that certain situations in which the animal is placed repeatedly release the same



the intuition of time

213

“chains of activity,” each one of which discloses a completely determinate sense of direction [Richtungssinn]. The unity of the direction of sense [Sinnrichtung], however, that emerges in the performance of the activity is not given “for” the animal; it is not in any way “represented” [repräsentiert] in its consciousness. So that the individual stages and phases may be interwoven in one another, it is in no way required that they be “encompassed” and “comprehended” “subjectively” by an “I.” Rather, the animal that moves in such a sequence of activities is, as it were, a captive within it. It is not able to break out voluntarily from that chain of events, unable to interrupt the sequence by re-­presenting [vergegenwärtigt] its moments individually. And here too, there is no possibility or requirement for such a form of re-­presentation [Vergegenwärtigung] of an anticipatory preparing of the way [Vorwegnahme] of the future, an anticipation of the future in an image or ideal projection [Entwurf]. Only in the human does a new form of doing arise, which is rooted in a new form of temporal vision [Schau]. The human distinguishes, chooses, and directs – and this “directing” always comprises at the same time a self-­directing, a self-­extending into the future. What was previously a rigid chain of reactions now forms itself into a flowing and mobile yet centrically self-­enclosed and self-­contained sequence in which every link is determined by reference to the whole. In this force of “looking before and looking back” exists the true determination and basic function of human “reason.”35 It is, in one and the same act, “discursive” and “intuitive”: it must differentiate the individual stages of time from one another and draw each out into a clear organization in order then to posit them back together in a new synopsis. It is this temporal differentiation and integration that first gives to activity its spiritual imprint, that demands free movement and at the same time requires that this movement be unswervingly directed toward the unity of a goal. From this, we see that and why it is not permissible to dissect the unitary consciousness of time by singling out one or another of the basic determinations that it comprises and attaching a particular and exclusive value to it in its isolation. Once a single phase of time has been distinguished from others in this way and made into a norm for all others, we no longer have before us a spiritual total-­image of time but only a particular perspective, however significant it may be. We have seen how such perspectivist differences of temporal “sight” [Sicht] are already shown in the configuration of the mythical worldview. According to how the accent of thought and feeling is laid on the past, the present,

209

210

214

211

the problem of representation

or the future, divergent mythic-­religious intuitions and interpretations of the world events arise.36 The same difference is preserved, however, in the sphere of purely conceptual, “metaphysical” interpretation. There are forms of metaphysics that belong to a definite type of temporal intuition within which they seem to be, in a sense, confined. While Parmenides and Spinoza embody the pure “present type” of metaphysical thinking, Fichte’s metaphysics is wholly determined by a looking into the future. Such one-­sided orientations, however, always seem in some way to do violence to the pure phenomenon of time, to dismember it and in this dismembering destroy it. No thinker has argued more strenuously against such abstract dismemberment and destruction than Bergson – and it may be said that the whole construction and development of his thought from the Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience [Essay on the Immediately Given to Consciousness] to the L’évolution créatrice [Creative Evolution] become intelligible only if we bear this point in mind. It is the lasting achievement of the Bergsonian metaphysic that it reversed the subordinate relationship that ancient ontology assumed between the spheres of being and time. The image of time should not be formed and modeled according to a dogmatically fixed concept of being – rather, the content of reality and that of metaphysical truth should be determined according to the pure intuition of time. Did Bergson’s own theory, however, wholly fulfill this demand as sharply as it stated it? Does it remain wholly and exclusively within the intuition of the originary-­givenness of time, the intuition of “pure duration” – or do not certain “premises,” certain “pre-­givenness” and “prejudices” once again mix themselves into the description of this originary-­givenness? To acquire clarity on this point, we must go back to Bergson’s theory of memory. Matter and memory form the two cornerstones and binary poles of Bergson’s metaphysics. Whereas the old metaphysics drew a sharp dividing line between the extended substance and the thinking substance, between the lived body and mind [Seele], Bergson’s system makes a fundamental division between the realm of memory and that of matter. It is pointless to trace, in some way, one element back to the other, because it is a contradiction to comprehend memory as a “function of organic matter.” According to Bergson, attempts of this kind can be undertaken only as long as no clear and secure difference is made between the two basic forms of what is customarily called “memory.”



the intuition of time

215

There is a purely motor memory that consists merely in a sequence of exercised movements and is thus solely a form of habit. Truly spiritual memory, however, is strictly and fundamentally separate from this type of motor memory, from mechanism and automatism. For with spiritual memory, we no longer find ourselves in the realm of necessity, but rather in that of freedom: we are no longer in the ambit of things and under their compulsion but rather at the center of the I, of pure self-­consciousness. The true self is not the self that reaches outward in action and effectively acts outward – rather, it is the I that is capable of looking back into time in pure recollection and of retrieving itself in its depth. This profound look into time is disclosed to us only once effective action is replaced by pure looking [Schauen] – when our present becomes permeated with the past and the two are lived as an immediate unity. This mode and direction of looking [Schauen] is, however, continuously obstructed and diverted by the other perspective [Blickrichtung] that is directed toward activity and its future goal, which itself is reached and gained only through our action. Our former life is now no longer preserved in the form of pure images of recollection; rather, every perception has validity only insofar as it contains within it the germ of an incipient activity. With it, however, an experience of a different nature takes form. A series of functionally ready mechanisms, offering more and more numerous and diverse reactions to outward stimuli, presenting ready responses to a steadily increasing number of possible questions that may come to it from the outside world, are now deposited and, as it were, stored up in the body. The sum of these mechanisms, constantly reinforced by practice, may be called a kind of memory; this memory, however, no longer represents our past but only performs it; it does not retain images of it but only extends previously useful efficacies into the present moment.37 According to Bergson, however, only memory as distinct recollection,38 the image memory turned back toward [in] the past, possesses a truly spiritual significance – the motor memory has no speculative, cognitive value, only a pragmatic value. It serves to preserve life, but it must pay for this achievement by renouncing all apprehending of the actual ground of life, by losing access to the “knowledge of life.” Once we enter the realm of activity and utility, we must leave pure looking [Schauen] behind us. We no longer stand in the intuition of pure duration; rather, another image, the image of space and of bodies in

212

216

213

the problem of representation

space, is injected into it. “Things” in space are set next to one another and treated as rigid, mutually exclusive unities: our activity acquires a determinate center only in such unities; it can be engaged only in them. And every step toward this “reality” [Wirklichkeit], toward this ensemble of possible efficacies [Wirksamkeiten], removes us farther and farther from true reality [Realität], from immersion in the original form and life of the I. If we wish to regain this life, then we must free ourselves by a kind of violent resolution [Entschluss] from the superior power of perception, because this power presses and drives us forward while we wish to go back into the past. Thus, sensation and recollection can never take the same road. The one entangles us more and more solidly in the constraint of the merely effected [Gewirkt], and the other frees us from it; the one places us in a world of “objects,” and the other enables us to discern the nature [Wesen] of the self, before all objectivization and independent of the fetters of spatial-­objective schematism. A system such as Bergson’s, which is the expression and elaboration of a unitary, self-­contained basic intuition, may claim that it should not be viewed and judged from outside but should be measured by its own standards. Accordingly, we ask of it only this one question: Has it remained faithful to its own task and norms and described and apprehended the phenomenon of time as a whole, as it presents itself in pure intuition? And here, however, a doubt and systematic misgiving arises. For in the intuition of time, the three stages of the past, present, and future are given to us as an immediate unity – as a unity in which no stage is evaluated differently from the others. No phase is detached from the others – none is the “genuine,” true, and original stage – because they are all equally given in the simple “sense” [Sinn] of time and equally, necessarily enclosed in it. In St. Augustine’s dictum, there are not three times but only the one present, which is, however, a present of the past, a present of the present [Gegenwärtige], and a present of the to come [Künftig] (praesens de praeteritis, praesens de praesentibus, praesens de futuris). And similarly, the I, in its self-­intuition [Selbstanschauung], is neither split into three entirely different directions of time-­consciousness nor confined within a single one of these, to which it is exclusively or preeminently entrusted [anheimgegeben]. If we take time not as a substantial but rather as a functional unity, as a function of re-­presentation [Vergegenwärtigung] that encloses within itself a threefold direction of sense [Richtungssinn], then none of its moments



the intuition of time

217

may be detached from the whole association without bringing about its disintegration as a whole. However, precisely such a detachment gives Bergson’s metaphysics its imprint. Fundamentally, he recognizes only the past as originally temporal, whereas the consciousness of the future already stands outside the framework [Rahmen] of pure temporal intuition. Where we do not look to [erschauen] the past but act, where we wish to take up the future [Zukünftig] and configure it, the picture of pure duration is blurred and beclouded – and instead of its own formation [Gebilde], we see a formation [Gebilde] of a different type and origins. What now stands before us is no longer genuine, original temporality [Zeitlichkeit] but the abstract schema of homogeneous space: To call up the past in the form of an image, we must be able to withdraw ourselves from the action of the moment, we must have the power to value the useless, we must have the will to dream. The human alone is capable of such an effort. But even the past to which we return is fugitive, ever on the point of escaping us, as though our backward turning memory were thwarted by the other, more natural, memory, of which the forward movement bears us on to action and to life.39

Despite all the emphasis on the “momentum of life,” on the “élan vital,” a distinctive romantic-­quietist feature enters here into Bergson’s theory. The looking back into the past is philosophically transfigured: it alone leads us into the ultimate ground of the I and into the depths of speculative cognition. Any such idealization is denied the direction toward the future: it has only a “pragmatic” value and no theoretical value. Is the future, however, always given to us only as the aim of an immediate and, in the most restricted sense, practical effective action, or must not a purely spiritual “looking forward” [Vorblick], an ideal element and motive, underlie the effective action itself if it is to raise up to true force and freedom? Plato did not discover the content [Gehalt] and sense of the “idea” solely in knowledge and in pure cognition – he found it in every configurative doing, in ethical activity no less than in work-­forming [werkbildend] and in the demiurge’s activity. Thus, the creator of the work [Werkbildener] who by virtue of his art produces a certain implement does not act on the basis of mere habit and the “routine” of skilled craftsmanship

214

218

215

the problem of representation

[hand-werklich]. Rather, an originary-­form of spiritual vision [Schauen] determines the artisan’s effective action and shows him the way. The carpenter who fashions a loom does not imitate an already available [vorhanden] thing that stands before him as a sensible model: rather, he looks [blicken] toward the form and purpose, the eidos of the loom itself.40 Even the divine demiurge, according to Plato, proceeds no differently. Its creation is determined and guided by the form of its vision [Schauen], by its looking to [Hinblick] the idea of the good as the archetype (Urbild) and model-­ image [Musterbild]. This ideality of doing is misjudged and denied by Bergson. For him, all doing is ultimately grounded in sensible need and breaks down into definite motor mechanisms and automatisms. Thus, the pure intuition that leads us back to the past comes into the sharpest opposition with any kind of “intention” that points to the future and anxiously awaits it. The purely phenomenal analysis of time-­consciousness offers, however, no support for such an evaluation. It shows us no stark difference of validity between conscious recollection and conscious expectation; rather, it shows that a common and characteristic basic power [Kraft] of spirit operates in both. The power of spirit to situate [hinstellen] the to come [Künftig] before itself in the image is not inferior to its power to transform the past into an image and renew it in the image: in both, the same originary-­function of “re-­presentation” [Vergegenwärtigung], of “representation” [Repräsentation], is expressed and actuated. The knowledge that spirit acquires of itself can be gained and secured only in this twofold way: such knowledge arises only if spirit preserves its history and anticipates its future in its pure presence [Gegenwart]. Bergson also understands development as “creative development” – however, his concept of creativeness, which is essentially derived from the intuition of nature, not from that of spirit, is oriented toward biological time and not historical time. Historical time does not permit the sharp cut between the function of recollection and that of activity that is determinative and decisive for Bergson’s entire metaphysics. The two are perpetually intertwined here. The operation is determined and guided by historical consciousness, by looking back into the past – on the other hand, truly historical recollection first grows from forces that reach forward into the future and help to give it form. Only to the degree that spirit itself “becomes,” to the degree that it unfolds toward the future, can it catch sight of itself



the intuition of time

219

in the image of the past. The form of this mirroring, this “reflection” is inseparable from that of its striving and its will.41 Thus, for the I, its own “history” changes and undergoes a progressive intensification and sublimation, as it reaches out more freely and more boldly and comprehensively into the future and unfolds itself in that direction. Accordingly, from the standpoint of historical life and historical consciousness, the direction toward the past and the direction toward the future are not considered and treated as elements [Elemente] of a real opposition but only as elements [Momente] in an ideal correlation. When, nevertheless, the former view prevails with Bergson, it seems almost as though he had succumbed to the illusion that he had so clearly exposed. For a spatial intuition and schema also seem to have slipped unnoticed by him into his analysis of time and the different stages of time. In space, if we wish to effect any movement at all, we must decide on a single direction for it. We must move forward or backward, right or left, up or down. With regard to temporal directions, it only appears, however, that there is a rigid “separation” [Auseinander]. There exists here, on the contrary, a multiplicity whose elements [Elemente], while differing from one another, always reciprocally permeate each another; here, to speak with Bergson’s own characteristic words, there prevails “une multiplicité de fusion ou de pénétration mutuelle” [“a multiplicity of fusion or mutual penetration”].42 Only in their immediate “concrescence” do the two beams of vision – the one leading back from present to past and the other leading out into the future – yield the one concrete total intuition of time. Of course, this concrescence must never be thought of, according to the analogy of spatial relationships, as a simple coincidence or concrescence. Rather, it always concerns a mutual opposition of motifs and a constant “confrontation” [Auseinandersetzung] between them. This conflict [Kampf], however, cannot and is not permitted to end with the victory of the one and the defeat of the other. For the two are destined to work perpetually against each other, and only through this opposition, to weave the living cloak of time and historical consciousness. In this sense, the historian, as Friedrich Schlegel said, is a prophet turned backward. The true intuition of time cannot be acquired in a mere retrospective recollection; rather, it is simultaneously a cognition and an act: for the process in which life itself takes on form, life in the spiritual and not in the mere biological sense and that process in

216

217

220

the problem of representation

which life comes to comprehend and know itself. These two must eventually form a unity, and hence this comprehending [Begreifen] is not the merely external embracing [Umgreifen] of a finished and available form into which life has been squeezed but is the mode and way life gives itself its form so that in this act of giving, this active configuration, it may understand itself.

ENDNOTES 1 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 184 and B 181. 2 [Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 181.] 3 The following chapter was written before the appearance of Heidegger’s recent analysis of “time” and “temporality” (Sein und Zeit), which in many respects points to entirely new paths. I shall not attempt here, after the fact, to enter into a detailed critical engagement [Auseinandersetzung] with the results of this analysis. Such a critical engagement will be possible and fruitful only once Heidegger’s work is available as a whole. For the basic problem of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms lies precisely in that domain that Heidegger expressly and intentionally excluded from the first volume of his book. It does not deal with that mode of “temporality” [Zeitlichkeit] that Heidegger elaborates as the “original sense of being of Dasein” [ursprünglichen Seinssinn des Daseins]. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms in no way contests this “temporality” as it is disclosed as the ultimate ground of the “existentiality of Dasein” and is made transparent in its individual elements. However, its question begins beyond this: it begins precisely where a transition is effected from this “existenziell” temporality to the form of time. It seeks to establish the conditions of possibility of this form as the condition of the positability [Setzbarkeit] of a “being” that goes beyond the existentiality of Dasein. In regard to time as to space, this transition, this μετάβασις [moving over] from the sense of being of Dasein [Seinssinn des Daseins] to the “objective” sense of “logos,” constitutes its proper theme and problem. (Cf. 175 n. 6.) 4 For further details, see Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1, 157ff. 5 [Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 154.] 6 Cf. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 2, 136ff., 145ff. and 148. 7 Parmenides, Fragment 8, in Hermann Diels, ed., Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin: Weidmann, 1903). [Ancilla to the Pre-­Socratic Philosophers, 43.] 8 Ibid., verse 22. Cf. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 2, 162ff. 9 For further details, see my edition of G. W. Leibniz, “Hauptschriften zur Grundlegung der Philosophie,” in Philosophische Werke, eds. A Buchenau and E. Cassirer (Leipzig: Felix Meiner, 1924), 1, 142, 159, 189ff., 225ff.



the intuition of time

221

10 In the construction of St. Augustine’s intellectual world, the time motif already demonstrates its proper force in that it leads to a fundamental reorientation, a transformation and reconfiguration of the question of being [Seinsfrage]. It therefore already fulfills here this motive in essentially the same function that it does in the development of modern “ontology.” Modern ontology also sees its task above all as to bring to light and to genuinely apprehension time as the “horizon of all understanding of being and every interpretation of being,” and finds “the central problem of all ontology rooted” in the right view and explanation of the phenomenon of time (cf. Heidegger, Being and Time, esp. §5). 11 Nec proprie dicitur, Tempora sunt tria; praeteritum, praesens et futurum; sed fortasse proprie diceretur, Tempora sunt tria; praesens de praeteritis, praesens de praesentibus, praesens de futuris. Sunt enim haec in anima tria quaedam, et alibi ea non video; praesens de praeteritis memoria, praesens de praesentibus contuitus, praesens de futuris exspectatio. (St. Augustine, Confessions, book XI, chap. 26. [See Augustine, Confessions, book XI, chap. 20.] [What is by now evident and clear is that neither future nor past exists, and it is inexact language to speak of three times – past, present, and future. Perhaps it would be exact to say: there are three times, a present of things past, a present of things present, a present of things to come. In the soul there are these three aspects of time, and I do not see them anywhere else. The present considering the past is the memory, the present considering the present is immediate awareness, the present considering the future is expectation. St. Augustine, Confessions (Oxford World's Classics), trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 235.] 12 Ibid., XI, 17. [Augustine, Confessions, 231.] 13 Ibid., XI, 27 [Augustine Confessions, 242f.]: non igitur longum tempus futurum, quod non est, sed longum futurum longa expectatio futuri est, neque longum praeteritum tempus, quod non est, sed longum praeteritum longa memoria praeteriti est. [So the future, which does not exist, is not a long period of time. A long future is a long expectation of the future. And the past, which has no existence, is not a long period of time. A long past is a long memory of the past. (Augustine, Confessions, 243)] The “longa expectato” and the “longa memoria” should here of course not be taken as the real duration of expectation and memory as psychic acts but mean that the expectation or memory determines the content toward which

222

the problem of representation

it is directed as “short” or “long”: the temporal determination applies not to acts but to their “intentional object.” 14 Cf. Hönigswald, Die Grundlagen der Denkpsychologie: on the difference between “present time” and “objective time,” “formed time” and “transient time”; see esp. 67ff., 87ff., 307ff. 15 [Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 123.] 16 Johannes Volkelt, Phänomenologie und Metaphysik der Zeit (Munich: Beck, 1925), 23ff. 17 Cf. 184–86. 18 Cf. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, book I., part II., §3: “But here it only takes notice of the manner in which the different sounds make their appearance; and that it may afterwards consider without considering these particular sounds.” 19 On the difference between “phenomenological” time and objective, “cosmic” time, cf. Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie (Halle: Niemeyer, 1928), secs. 81ff. I have unfortunately been unable to take into account the penetrating analysis of temporal consciousness given by Martin Heidegger, “Edmund Husserl’s Vorlesungen zu Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins,” Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, 9 (1928), 367–498, based on of Husserl’s lectures. [Edmund Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917), trans. J. B. Brough (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990).] 20 This is sometimes admitted even by thinkers of a strictly “positivist” and psychologist orientation; cf., for example, Theodor Ziehen, Erkenntnistheorie auf psychophysiologischer und physikalischer Grundlage (Jena: G. Fischer, 1913), 287ff. Elsewhere, I have attempted to show that in his own logic and epistemology Ziehen does not draw the systematically necessary consequence from this and fails to take into account this fundamental difference, which he himself has disclosed. See Cassirer, “Erkenntnistheorie nebst den Grenzfragen der Logik,” 39ff. 21 [Parmenides, Fragment 8: Ancilla to the Pre-­Socratic Philosophers, 44.] 22 Cf. Plato, Theaetetus, 163Dff. 23 For further details, see Richard W. Semon, Die Mneme als erhaltendes Prinzip in Wechsel des organischen Geschehens (3rd ed., Leipzig: Engelmann, 1904). Richard Wolfgang Semon, Die mnemischen Empfindungen in ihren Beziehungen zu den Originalempfindungen (Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1909). 24 [German and English provided by Cassirer: “ ‘Bilder’ (images).”] 25 Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind (London: Macmillan, 1921), 149–51; cf. 287ff. 26 For further details, see my critical comment on Russell’s work in Jahrbücher der Philosophie, 3, 49ff. 27 Hobbes, De Corpore, part IV, chap. 25, §5. [Hobbes, De Corpore in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, ed. Sir William Molesworth, vol. 1 (London: J. Bohn, 1839), 393.] On Hobbes’ psychology, cf. Richard Hönigswald, Hobbes und die Staatsphilosophie (Munich: Reinhardt, 1924), 109ff.



the intuition of time

223

28 For further details, see David Katz, Der Aufbau der Tastwelt (Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1925), (ch. 3), 56ff. 29 It is historically and systematically interesting to observe how the psychological and epistemological problems presented by the “consciousness of recollection” have repeatedly led to a crisis in strict sensationalism and positivism and forced them at a certain point to reverse their position. In the philosophy of the nineteenth century, this transformation is perhaps most conspicuous in Hans Cornelius. On precisely this point, Conrnelius, who had originally advocated a strict empiricism in the manner of Mach and Avenarius, effected a reversal that ultimately brought him close to Kant’s “transcendental” framing of the problem. He starts from the supposition that the form of temporal lived-­experience can in no way be “explained” – that is, reduced to other facts – because any attempt at such an explanation must presuppose that which is to be explained. That a manifold of lived-­experiences and every individual experience are given as part of a temporal totality [Ganzheit] and an I-­totality [Ich-­Ganzheit] is “one of the facts that must be recognized as valid for every period [für jede Zeit] in our lives – that is to say, it is a transcendental regularity.” Further, Cornelius seeks to show that the traditional view of the consciousness of recollection (put forward by sensationalism and association psychology) by no means suffices to account for the moment [Augenblick] when a definite content an appears in consciousness, not only itself but also another content, b, that preceded it is given. The recollection of a lived-­experience a cannot be explained by saying that some sort of after-­effect, a “remembered image” a, remains behind. For the existence of such an after-­effect would only be a content belonging to the new moment – that is, this after-­effect would be given as a present [gegenwärtiger] content given simultaneously with b. Rather, in order that a knowledge [Wissen] of the past should be given in the present [gegenwärtig gegeben sei], it is requisite that this after-­effect should also have the property of mediate this knowledge to us, that it contain as it were a reference to this past content. The fact that a knowledge of a past lived-­experience is contained in the present lived-­experience of recollection, that the first thus represents the latter for our knowledge – this fact I designate as the symbolic function of the lived experience of recollection. It may readily be seen that here again we have to do with a transcendental regularity. For if recollection were not generally and primarily a recollection of manifoldness of lived experiences, then the cognition of the passage of time would not take place. From this consideration, in which he expressly refers to Kant’s corresponding exposition of the “synthesis of reproduction” and the “synthesis of

224

the problem of representation

recognition in the concept,” Cornelius arrives at a new orientation of the theory of cognition that leads him from his original positivist position to a transcendental system. Cf. Hans Cornelius, Transcendentale Systematik. Untersuchungen zur Begründung der Erkenntnistheorie (Munich: E. Reinhardt, 1916), 53ff., 73ff. 30 Letter to Burcher de Volder, in G. W. Leibniz, Philosophische Schriften, ed. C. J. Gerhardt (7 vols., Berlin, 1875–90), 2, 172. 31 Quaecunque in Anima universim concipere licet, ad duo possunt revocari: expressionem praesentis externorum status, Animae convenientem secundum corpus suum; et tendentiam ad novam expressionem, aue tendentiam corporum (seu rerum externarum) ad statum futurum repraesentat, verbo: perceptionem et percepturitionem. Briefwechsel zwischen Leibniz und Christian Wolff, ed. Gerhardt (Halle, 1860), 56. 32 See, for example, Koffka, Die Grundlagen der psychischen Entwicklung: eine Einführung in die Kinderpsychologie, 171. 33 James, Principles of Psychology, 1, 252f. 34 [Originally in English.] 35 Sure he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and god-­like reason To fust in us unus’d (Hamlet 4.4.36–39) 36 Cf. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 2, 152ff. 37 Henri Bergson, Matière et mémoire. Essai sur la relation du corps à l’esprit (2nd ed., Paris: f. Alcan, 1900). Materie und Gedächtnis. Essay zur Beziehung zwischen Körper und Geist (Jena: E. Diederichs, 1908), 74f. [Bergson, Matter and Memory, trans. N. M. Paul and W. S. Palmer (Cambridge: Zone Books, 1990), 82.] 38 [German: Erinnerungsgedächtnis; original French: mémoire-­souvenir.] 39 Bergson, German trans., 75. [Bergson, Matter and Memory, 82ff.] 40 Plato, Cratylus, 389A. 41 Cf. 208ff. The same basic view of the nature [Wesen] of “historical time” is beautifully and concisely formulated by Theodor Litt, Individuum und Gemeinschaft. Grundlegung der Kulturphilosophie (3rd ed., Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1926), 307: I see the having-­been [Gewesen] and having-­become [Geworden] as orientated towards me as the center of the process, because this center designates at the same time the only place at which I can apply the lever to complete what has been begun, to correct what has been done amiss, to realize what is required. And it is no outward coexistence of two forms and directions of configuration that this center like all vital centers unites in itself; it is no series of acts of contemplation and acts of effective



the intuition of time

225

action that are connected solely by the formal principle of free configuration – rather, the two are connected in their content down to the last and smallest particle. Every line of becoming that I see running toward me from the past signifies for me not only a motif of organization and an interpretation for the present [Gegenwart], which besieges me and claims me as a realm of history still becoming, but also a summons [Aufruf] to a decision [Entscheidung] with which I, the active one, determine, in my part, the future of this reality. . . . Thus, in what we with half-­truth call the “image” of the past, there also lives a will that is turned toward that which is to come [Kommend] – and a knowledge [Wissen] of that past is embedded in the guiding image to which this will devotes itself. Starting from essentially different fundamental presuppositions, Heidegger has established the same result, the intuition of the future-­motive that is inherent in “historical time”: this ground is one of the most fruitful and important features of his analysis in Being and Time. In summing up this analysis, he writes: Only a being that is essentially futural in its being so that it can let itself be thrown back upon its factical there, free for its death and shattering itself on it, that is, only a being that, as futural, is equiprimordially having-­being [gewesend], can [hand down to itself its inherited possibilities, take over its own thrownness and] be in the moment [augenblicklich] for “its time.” Only authentic temporality that is at the same time finite makes something like fate, that is, authentic historicity, possible. (Being and Time, §74, 385/366.) These lines are perhaps the sharpest expression of the systematic opposition between Bergson’s and Heidegger’s respective “metaphysics of time.” 42 [Henri Bergson, Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience: thèse pour le doctorat, présentée à la Faculté des lettres de Paris (chap. 2) (Paris, 1889).]

V SYMBOLIC PREGNANCE 218

The previous considerations have shown us how, as the construction of the world of perception is accomplished, the individual contents that offer themselves to consciousness are permeated with ever-­richer and more-­diverse sense-­functions. The further this process progresses, the broader the sphere that consciousness is able to encompass and to survey in a single element [Moment] becomes. Each of its elements [Elemente] are now saturated, as it were, with such functions. Each element [Element] stands in a manifold of sense associations, which in turn are systematically interconnected and by virtue of this interconnection constitute that whole that we designate as the world of our “experience.” Whatever complex we may single out from this totality of “experience,” whether we consider the togetherness of phenomena in space or their succession in time – whether we consider the thing-­property-­order or the order of “causes” and “effects” – these orders always exhibit a certain “construction” [Fügung] and a basic common formal character. They are of such a nature that from each of their elements a transition is possible to the whole, because the constitution [Verfassung] of this whole is presentable and presented in each element of the whole. By virtue of the interweaving of these presentative functions, consciousness acquires the capacity “to spell out appearances, in order to be able to read them as



symbolic pregnance

227

experiences.”1 Each particular phenomenon is now no more than a letter that is not apprehended for its own sake, a letter that is not, for instance, considered according to its own sensible components or according to the totality of its sensible aspect; rather, the regard passes through and beyond it in order to re-­present [vergegenwärtigen] the signification of the word to which the letter belongs and the sense of the sentence in which this word stands. The content is not simply “in” consciousness in order to fill it by its mere existence [Dasein] – rather, it speaks to consciousness and “means” [besagen] something for it. Its whole existence [Existenz] has in a sense transformed itself into pure form; henceforth, it serves only the task of mediating a certain signification and to unite together with others into frameworks of signification [Bedeutungsgefügen], into sense complexes. Even sensationalist psychology, despite its basic tendency to disengage the elements [Elemente] of consciousness from their sense associations and to uncover them in their pure “in-­itself” has been unable to wholly overlook the difference between what the individual sensible perception as such “is” and how it functions in the systematic construction of the unity and whole of consciousness. It blurs this difference, however, in that it attempts to reduce the function itself to some sort of existence. How, the sensationalists ask, can the individual “impression” mediate a signification if this signification itself is not “located” in it? And can this “being located in” mean [besagen] something other than that it is contained as a component in the whole of the impression? The regard [Blick] sharpened by psychological analysis must be able to discover and to isolate this component. Thus, sensationalism does not think to deny and disavow the element of signification of the individual perception – rather, it remains faithful to its basic tendency; it composes this element from individual sensible matters of fact and attempts to “explain” it by virtue of this composition. They strive to make the spiritual “form” intelligible by transforming it back into sensible matter – by showing how the mere togetherness, the coalesce and empirical concrescence of sensible impressions, suffices to produce this form or at least an image of it. Seen in this way, it is true, this image remains a simulacrum: the image itself has no shape [Gestalt] and truth; rather, truth and reality are imputed only to the substantial elements [Elemente] from which it is fitted together like a mosaic.

219

228

220

the problem of representation

This insight acquired by the psychological critic, however, need not hamper or restrict the use that we make of this image in factual psychic life. Even though the image may be recognized and as such, so to speak, epistemically exposed as a simulacrum [Scheinbild], it is enough that it still has, precisely as semblance [Schein], reality – that is to say, that it arises according to the determinate and necessary laws of the “imagination.” A compulsive and uniform mechanism of consciousness produces it from the sensible lived-­experiences and their associative connection. Thus, admittedly, the image is not granted a logically inherent right [Eigenrecht] or a specific sense content [Gehalt] different from mere sensation – indeed, however, it is awarded a practical, biologically significant achievement. Its character consists in this achievement. What we have designated as the “symbolic value” of perception in the preliminary considerations has, according to the view of sensationalism, nothing other than a purely economic value. Consciousness cannot devote itself in every moment with equal intensity to all the individual sensible impressions that fill it; it is not able to re-­present [vergegenwärtigen] them all with equal sharpness in the same concretion and individualization. It thus creates schemata and total-­images into which enter a fullness of individual contents, and in which they flow indiscriminately into one. These schemata, however, do not aim to be, nor can they be, any more than mere abbreviations, compendious thickening of the impressions. Where it depends on the sharpness and exactness of seeing [Sehen], these abbreviations must be thrust aside – the symbolic values must be replaced by “real” [wirklich] values – that is to say, by actual [aktuell] values of sensation. Accordingly, all symbolic thinking and perceiving amount to a mere negative act: an act that arises from the need and requirement for omission. A consciousness possessing sufficient scope and force to live in the individual details themselves and to apprehend them all immediately would not require these symbolic formations of unity; it would be completely “presentative,” instead of remaining representative [repräsentativ] in the whole or in individual parts. As long as this basic view prevailed, the first presupposition for any true phenomenology of perception was lacking. By restricting themselves in principle to the “given” of sense data, sensationalism and positivism had to a certain extent rendered themselves not only “symbol-­blind” but with this also blind to perception itself: they had now eliminated



symbolic pregnance

229

precisely the characteristic element and motive by which perception is set apart from mere “sensation” and surpasses it. From two different sides, a transformation and fundamental methodological correction of this approach was achieved, and the ground [Boden] thus prepared for a deeper epistemo-­critical and phenomenological understanding of perception. The Critique of Pure Reason took the lead by recognizing the concept of “transcendental apperception” as a “condition of possibility of perception” itself. What is first given – Kant explains – is appearance, which, when it is connected with consciousness, is called perception; this is because without the relationship to an at least possible consciousness, appearance could never become for us an object of cognition. “But since every appearance contains a manifold, thus different perceptions by themselves are encountered dispersed and separate in the mind, a combination of them, which they cannot have in sense itself, is therefore necessary.”2 This corrects the basic mistake of sensationalism, which, 221 according to Kant, lies in the erroneous assumption that “the senses do not merely afford us impressions but also put them together, and produce images of objects, for which without doubt something more than the receptivity of impressions is required, namely a function of the synthesis of them.”3 Thus, “images” and “impressions” no longer epistemo-­ critically and phenomenologically belong in the same class; nor can the former be derived from the latter. This is because every genuine image contains within it a spontaneity of connection, a rule according to which the configuration occurs. The Critique of Pure Reason subsumes the totality [Gesamtheit] of these possible rules, on which the construction and organization of the world of perception is based, under the concept of the “understanding.” The understanding is the simple transcendental expression for the basic phenomenon that all perception as conscious perception must always and necessarily be formed perception. Neither could perception be thought of as “belonging” to an I nor could it objectively refer to a “something,” a perceived object, if both modes of relation were not subject to general and necessary laws. These laws first lend perception its “subjective” as well as its “objective” significance, which free it from its individuality and give it a place in the whole of consciousness and objective experience. Thus, the pure concepts of the understanding, which express nothing other than precisely this correlation of individuals with the whole and

230

222

the problem of representation

the various tendencies of this correlation, are not subsequently added to perception but rather form the constituents of perception itself. Perception exists only insofar as it takes determinate forms. The analysis by virtue of which sensationalist psychology arrives at the determination of the elements [Elemente] of consciousness actually presupposes the structure of consciousness as such. That is, it presupposes a synthesis: “where the understanding has not previously combined anything, neither can it dissolve anything, for only through it can something have been given to the power of representation as combined.”4 The analytical unity of apperception, the decomposition of the whole of perception into individual elements [Elemente], is possible only if we presuppose some sort of synthetic unity.5 That they stand in those characteristic sense associations, expressible through the individual categories, is what makes the perception into a determined perception, into the expression of an I as well as into the “appearance” of an object [Objekt], an object [Gegenstand] of experience. Admittedly, however, there still remains a difficulty and ambiguity here that the Critique of Pure Reason was not able to fully elucidate and eliminate. For the essentially new idea [Gedanke] that it coined did not at first find its adequate expression, insofar as Kant, precisely where he most decisively attacked the methodological presuppositions of previous psychology, nevertheless continued to speak the language of this psychology. The new “transcendental” insight that he was striving to establish and secure is expressed in the concepts of eighteenth-­century faculty psychology. And thus, it would seem as if “receptivity” and “spontaneity” as well as “sensibility” and “understanding” were comprehended as basic mental “powers” [seelische “Grundkräfte”], each of which exists as a psychological reality and which then brings forth, in their real interaction, in their causal intertwining, experience as a “product.” Obviously, with this, the sense of the “transcendental” itself would be sublated: had Kant not determined this sense by saying that the transcendental question was concerned “not so much with objects but rather with our mode of cognition of objects in general,” insofar as this is to be possible a priori?6 And had he not repeatedly stressed that for him it was concerned not with an explanation of the emergence of experience but with the analysis [Zergliederung] of its pure consistent existence? All these explanations, however, have not been able to prevent Kant’s analytic of the understanding from being interpreted as a new type



symbolic pregnance

231

of psychological “forms bestowing factory” [Formgebungsmanufaktur] of thought. If the assertions of this interpretation were justified, Kant’s framing of the question would of course have no advantage over sensationalism, except that it shifts the relationship of powers within consciousness and adds one more to the number of psychic [seelisch] powers. As much as one may esteem this change and increase, the Kantian deduction nevertheless would still seems to occupy the same methodological plane as the attempted sensationalist explanations. This is because, in this case, it would depict only a new attempt to solve pure problems of signification by transposing them into problems of reality, by tracing them back to real events and the causal “powers” determining these events. A new attempt to justify the objective validity of the pure concepts of the understanding, which originally were Kant’s sole concern and which he sought to apprehend in the “conditions of their possibility,” by deriving them from an existing “transcendental subject” as their “author” of their validity. However, with this, of course, an ontic problem would be substituted for the critical-­phenomenological problem – a substantial consideration for a purely functional one. The “understanding” would appear to become a magician and necromancer animating “dead” sensation, awakening it to the life of consciousness. However, is this mysterious process, this magic of the understanding, needed once we have recognized that this purportedly “dead” sensation is itself no reality [Realität] but a mere product of the art of psychological thinking? Can we continue to inquire into how something “becomes” signification from a mere existence that is foreign to signification, how a sense arises out of the mere “raw matter” [Rohstoff] of sensation as something fundamentally foreign to sense once we have seen that this very being foreign to sense [Sinnfremdheit] is itself a mere fiction? If it is true, as Kant emphatically declares, that “appearance . . . without the relation to an at least possible consciousness . . . could never become an object of cognition for us, and would therefore be nothing for us, and since it has no objective reality in itself and exists only in cognition it would be nothing at all,”7 then on what ground [Boden] can critical philosophy inquire into how this “nothing” becomes “something,” into how it is taken up into the forms of consciousness and, as it were, recast as it exists only “in” these forms and not “before” them? We are led to a similar consideration and an analogous methodological question by another school of thought, which not only differs

223

232

224

the problem of representation

from Kantian thinking in its historical point of departure but also seems to be diametrically opposed to it. In its definition and analysis of perception, modern phenomenology begins not so much from Kant as from Brentano and his definition of consciousness. Brentano’s Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint locates the distinctive element of consciousness, of everything “psychic” in general, in the character of “intentionality.” A content is a “psychic” content insofar as it grasps in itself a distinctive direction of determination, a determination of “meaning” [Meinen]: Every psychic phenomenon is characterized by what the medieval scholastics called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object and what we, though in not entirely unambiguous terms, would call the relation to a content, the direction toward an object [Object] (which is not to be understood as reality [Realität]), or immanent objectivity. . . . This intentional inexistence is distinctive of psychic phenomena. . . . And thus, we may define psychic phenomena as phenomena which intentionally contain an object in themselves.8

Here again, it is seen and most keenly stressed that the psychic does not first consist in itself, as an isolated “datum,” only subsequently to enter into relations, but rather, the relation belongs to the very determinateness of its being [Wesen]. It is only because by its very being [Sein] it goes beyond itself, toward something else. On the other hand, there remains here a lack of clarity in the expression of this state of affairs, since in designating this basic relational direction, Brentano also speaks of a difference of existence [Existenz]: he distinguishes between the real existence [Existenz] of the thing and intentional or mental “inexistence.” The semblance [Anschein] is reawakened in that the function of “meaning” [Meinen] is explained and clarified as such through a substantial existence [Dasein] – as though the representation were “directed” toward the object only because it “lies” in it in some form, because it “enters” into it and is “contained” in it. Precisely with this, however, the particular nature of the “intentional” relation that should have been emphasized seems to have once again been blurred. Full clarity was achieved here only by Husserl’s continuation and development of Brentano’s basic idea in his Logical Investigations and The Idea Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology. For when Husserl speaks of signification-­conferring and sense-­bestowing acts, by virtue of which an



symbolic pregnance

233

object presents itself to consciousness, he makes it clear that this relation of the presenting to the presented is to be clarified by no analogies taken from the world of things [Sachwelt]. He no longer speaks of the “mythology of activities” [Tätigkeiten] that sees in acts the activities [Betätigungen] of a real psychic subject, and likewise, the relation of the act to its object [Objekt] is explicitly grasped in such a way that one can no longer be said to be in or dwell in the other. Now a sharp difference is made between what is contained as a real part in an act and what it ideally “represents” [vorstellig macht], what it aims at in the sense of intention. Where this differentiation is not made or not strictly carried out, we will always, as Husserl emphasizes, enter into an infinite regress: if the representation can relate to the object only by containing a fragment of it, so to speak, an eidolon of it as a real component, this reinclusion and encapsulation must be repeated indefinitely: The picture [Abbild], as a real part of a psychological-­real perception, would again be something real – namely, something real that would function as an image [Bild] for another. This could only be done, however, by virtue of a picturing-­ consciousness [Abbildungsbewußtsein] in which something first appears – with which we would have a first intentionality – and this would function again in consciousness as an “image-­object” [Bildobjekt] representing another “image-­object” – for which a second intentionality founded in the first intentionality would be necessary. It is, however, no less evident that each individual one of these modes of consciousness already requires the differentiation between the immanent and actual object [Objekt] thus comprising the same problem which should have been resolved by the construction.9

We always arrive, however, at antinomies of this sort when we forget that the basic relationship of “representation” [Repräsentation] or “intention” is the condition of possibility of every cognition of objects and that in its description, therefore, nothing may be taken up that initially belongs to that which this relationship makes possible, that initially belongs to the thing-­world, as a real part of it or as a real occurrence in it. The lines are now sharply drawn against sensationalism. Husserl bluntly calls its having hitherto closed itself off to the specific particularity of “signification-­ conferring acts,” its having believed that what these acts accomplish must

225

234

226

the problem of representation

consist always and necessarily in arousing certain fantasy-­images, which are constantly correlated to expression, evidence of the backward state of descriptive analysis.10 To render the relationship here recognizable and terminologically graspable, Husserl divided the stream of phenomenological being into a “material [stofflich] stratum” and a “noetic stratum.” To the latter belong all purely functional problems – that is to say, all the genuine problems of consciousness and sense. For “to have sense,” or “have something in sense” is the basic character of all consciousness, which for this reason is in general not just lived-­experience but a meaningful “noetic” lived-­experience:11 Consciousness is precisely a consciousness “of  ” something; by its nature [Wesen] it bears in itself “sense,” it is, so to speak, the quintessence of “soul,” “spirit,” “reason.” Consciousness is not a title for “psychical complexes,” for “contents” fused together, for “bundles” or streams of “sensations” which, without sense in themselves, also cannot lend any “sense” to whatever mixture. . . . Consciousness is, therefore, toto coelo [completely] different from what sensualism alone will see, from what in fact is irrational matter without sense – but which is, of course, accessible to rationalization.12

We thus see ourselves led back to our central problem from two different movements and directions of thought: from the concept of “synthesis” and from the concept of “intention.” From the standpoint of this problem, however, there still remains a doubt and a misgiving. If we equate the spheres of consciousness and “sense,” as Husserl does, with such radical sharpness, can we still, within consciousness in general, retain the opposition between matter and form as an absolute opposition? Do we still have here two “strata,” one of which can be designated as a merely material [stofflich] stratum? Or rather, in speaking of the animating acts that animate the matter of sensation, that first fill it with determinate sense, do we not still retain a vestige of that dualism that sees a cleavage between the “physical” and the “psychic,” which instead of regarding “the living-­body” and “mind” [Seele] as correlative to one another sees them as substantially different? The necessity of this correlation has already become apparent in our consideration of the pure expressive phenomena [Ausdrucksphänomene], and with every step that we have



symbolic pregnance

235

taken in the direction toward the problems of presentation, it has been confirmed anew. Thus, it becomes fundamentally untenable to set off “existence” and “consciousness,” “matter” and “form” from one another as different “strata.” Husserl breaks the whole of lived-­experience down into two halves: into the “primary contents” that still contain no “sense” in themselves, and into the lived-­experiences, such as into the elements of lived-­experience that are grounded in some specific intentionality. Beyond the “sensual” lived-­experiences, beyond the data of sensation, such as the data of color, of touch, of tone, etc., there is found, as it were, an animating, sense-­bestowing stratum: “a stratum by which precisely the concrete intentional lived-­experience arises out of the sensual, which has in itself nothing pertaining to intentionality.”13 However, does this “coming about” [Zustandekommen] belong to what can be demonstrated purely phenomenologically? Since phenomenology as such necessarily remains within the sphere of sense and intentionality, can it even attempt to designate that which is foreign to sense? The “remarkable duality and unity of the sensual ὕλη [hylé] and the intentional μορφή [form]” may in fact repeatedly suggest itself here: does it, however, justify our speaking of a “formless matter” and a “matterless form”? This separation may in a certain sense belong to an indispensable instrument of our analysis of consciousness. Are we justified, however, in transferring this analytical separation, this distinctio rationis, into the phenomena, into the pure “givenness” of consciousness itself? Can we here speak of an identical and consistent material like existence that enters into different forms – as we know only the concrete totality of the phenomena of consciousness – as, to speak in Aristotelian terms, we know only the σύνολον [compound] of “matter” and “form”? From the standpoint of a phenomenological consideration there is no more a “matter in itself ” than a “form in itself” – there are only total lived-­experiences that can be compared from the perspective of matter and form as well as can be determined and organized according to this perspective. We can, for example, say that it is “the same” melody to which we hearken, now in immediate perception and now in mere recollection; this does not mean, however, that the two lived-­experiences, the lived-­experience of perception and that of recollection, agree in any substantial component, only that they are associated with each other and functionally

227

236

228

the problem of representation

related to one another. It is not a question here of the recurrence of the same sensible consistent existence [Bestand] in different forms; rather, what happens is that certain lived-­experience-­totalities, which are numerically and qualitatively different, are nevertheless directed toward the same thing and present the same “object.” And with this, that relativization that, as we have seen throughout, flows out of the concept of presentation is likewise given. For no content of consciousness is in itself merely “present” [präsent] or in itself merely “representative” [repräsentativ]; rather, every actual lived-­experience grasps in itself both elements in an indissoluble unity. Every presenting [Gegenwärtige] functions in the sense of a re-­presentation [Vergegenwärtigung], just as every re-­presentation [Vergegenwärtigung] demands a connection to some conscious presenting [Gegenwärtige]. It is, however, this reciprocal relation and not the “form,” the noetic element alone, that constitutes the foundation of all animation and “spiritualization” [Begeistung]. What nevertheless gives rise over and over again to an abstract separation between the “hyletic” and “noetic” elements, and what seems to justify this separation, is that the two, though never separable from one another in an absolute sense, are, to a great extent, independent variables in respect to each other. The “matter” must of course always stand in some form: it is, however, confined to no mode of sense-­bestowing but can transition and, as it were, “suddenly change over” from one into the other. This state of affairs emerges more clearly when we consider examples where this transition alters the modality of sense. If we consider a lived-­experience in the optical sphere, this is never composed of mere “sensible data,” of the optical qualities of brightness and color. Its pure visibility [Sichtbarkeit] is never to be thought outside and independently of a certain form of “sight” [Sicht]; as a “sensible” [sinnlich] lived-­experience it is always the bearer of a sense [Sinn] and stands as it were in the service of that sense. Precisely in this way, however, it is able to perform different functions and by virtue of them to “represent” [vorstellig macht] different worlds of sense [Sinnwelten]. We can consider an optical formation [Gebilde], such as a simple drawn line [Linienzug], according to its purely expressive sense. As we immerse ourselves in the graphic [zeichnerisch] configuration and construct it for ourselves, a distinct physiognomic “character” simultaneously speaks [ansprechen] to us in it. A distinctive “mood” [Stimmung] is expressed in the purely spatial determination; the



symbolic pregnance

237

up and down of the line in space embraces an inner mobility, a dynamic rise and fall, an emotional [seelisch] being and life. And here we do not merely read our own inner states subjectively and arbitrarily into the spatial form; rather, the form gives itself to us as an animated [beseelt] totality, as an independent manifestation of life [Lebensäußerung]. Its constant and quiet gliding along or its abrupt breaking off; its curving and uniformity or its erratic nature; and its hardness or softness all come out in the line as a determination of its own being, its objective “nature.” However, all this immediately withdraws and appears as if destroyed and extinguished, as soon as we take the drawn line [Linienzug] in another “sense” – as soon as we understand [verstehen] it as a mathematical formation [Gebilde], as a geometrical figure [Figur]. It now becomes a mere schema, a means for the presentation of a general geometrical lawfulness. Whatever does not serve the presentation of this lawfulness, what is given merely as an individual element in the line, now at once becomes utterly insignificant – it has dwindled, one might say, from the spiritual field of vision [Blickfeld]. Not only the colors and brightness values but also the absolute magnitudes that appear in the drawing [Zeichnung] are included in this annihilation; they are absolutely irrelevant for the drawn line as a geometrical formation [Gebilde]. Its geometrical significance depends not on these magnitudes as such but only on their relations [Beziehungen], on their relations [Relationen] and proportions. Where we previously encountered the rise and fall of a wavy line and in it the harmony of an inner mood, we now catch sight of a graphic presentation of a trigonometric function; we have before us a curve whose total content [Gehalt] for us is ultimately exhausted in its analytical formula. The spatial shape [Gestalt] is nothing more than a paradigm for this formula; it is only the cover in which an in itself unintuitive mathematical thought is clothed. This thought does not present only itself – rather, in it, a more comprehensive lawfulness, namely the lawfulness of space as such, presents itself. On the basis of this lawfulness, each individual geometrical formation [Gebilde] is connected with the allness [Allheit] of other possible spatial shapes [Gestalten]. It belongs to a certain system – to an ensemble of “truths” and “principles,” of “grounds” and “consequences,” and this system designates the universal form of sense, through which alone each particular geometrical shape [Gestalt] is possible, through which it is first constituted and becomes “intelligible.”

229

238

230

the problem of representation

And once again, we stand in an entirely different sphere of vision [Gesichtskreis] when we take the drawn line [Linienzug] as a mythical emblem [Wahrzeichen] or as an aesthetic ornament. The mythical emblem as such embraces in itself the fundamental mythical opposition, the opposition between the “sacred” and the “profane.” It is erected to separate these two domains from each other, to warn and frighten, to bar the unconsecrated from approaching or touching the sacred. Here it does not act merely as a sign, a mark by which the sacred is recognized; it possesses also a factually inherent, magically compelling and repelling power. Of such a compulsion, the aesthetic world knows nothing. Viewed as an ornament, the drawing [Zeichnung] nevertheless seems distant both from the sphere of “signifying” in the logical-­conceptual sense as well as from the magical-­mythical interpreting and warning. It possesses in itself its sense, which discloses itself only to pure artistic contemplation, to aesthetic “vision” [Schau] as such. Once again, the lived-­experience of spatial form completes itself here only in that it belongs to a total horizon and opens this up for us – in that it stands in a certain atmosphere in which it not simply “is” but in which, as it were, it lives and breathes.14 We find the same relationship compressed within a more restricted space if instead of confronting the different modalities of sense-­ bestowing against each other, we confine ourselves to a single one of them. Once again, we can follow here the same characteristic process of differentiation, by which a content can assume different nuances of “significance” and can transition from one to another. We have seen, for example, how the content of “color” only seemingly presents an absolutely uniform optical quality. Depending on whether the color is grasped as a simple and independent determination or whether it is thought to adhere as the “object-­color” of an object [Objekt], it obtains itself a different “valence.” Seen in the one aspect, the world of colors, as Goethe said, presents to us nothing other than the “actions [of the eye] and undergoing [the affect] of light”15 – while in the other it appears affiliated to the thing-­world, referred to it and as it were arrested by it. On the one hand, colors are for us, as it were, free-­floating light-­formations [Lichtgebilde] and light-­structures [Lichtgefüge]; on the other, they make visible not themselves but something else through themselves. And in this case too, we cannot, for instance, exhibit an indifferent and equally valid substrate of color in



symbolic pregnance

239

general, which later enters into various forms and is thereby modified in diverse ways. Rather, it turns out that the color phenomena, in their purely phenomenal constitution, already depend on the order in which they stand – that their pure mode of appearance is determined by precisely this order.16 It is with a view to expressing this reciprocal determination that we introduce the concept and the term “symbolic pregnance” [symbolischen 231 Prägnanz]. By “symbolic pregnance,” we mean how a lived-­perceptive-­ experience, as a “sensible” lived-­experience, contains in itself at the same time a certain non-­intuitive “sense” and brings it to immediate concrete presentation. It is not a question here of naked “perceptive” givennesses, onto which some sort of “apperceptive” act is later grafted, through which they are interpreted, judged, transformed. Rather, the perception, by virtue of its own immanent organization, acquires a kind of spiritual “articulation” [Artikulation] – which, as structured in itself, also belongs to a determinate construction of sense [Sinnfügung]. In its full actuality, in its totality and vividness [Lebendigkeit], it is at the same time a life “in” sense [Sinn]. It is not only subsequently taken up into this sphere but is, one might say, born into it. The term “pregnance” is meant to designate this ideal interwovenness, this relatedness of the single perceptive phenomenon, given here and now, to a characteristic totality of sense [Sinnganze]. If, for example, we turn in one of the basic, principle directions of our time-­consciousness, if we turn toward the future and advance, as it were, into it, then this advance does not signify that a new impression, a phantasma of the futural, is joined to the sum of present [gegenwärtig] perceptions, as given to us in the now. Rather, the future presents itself as a wholly distinctive mode of “sight” [Sicht]: it is “anticipated” from the present. The now is a future-­filled and future-­saturated now; praegnans futuri, as Leibniz called it. We have everywhere seen that this kind of pregnance is distinguished by unmistakable characteristics from any purely quantitative accumulation of perceptive images or their associative connection and combination and that it cannot be explained by being reduced to purely “discursive” acts of judgment and inference. The symbolic process is like a unitary stream of life and thought that flows through consciousness and that by this flowing movement produces the diversity and interconnection and both the richness and the continuity and constancy of consciousness.

240

232

233

the problem of representation

This process thus shows from a new angle that the analysis of consciousness can never be traced back to “absolute” elements [Elemente] – it is precisely because relation [Relation], the pure relation [Beziehung] that governs the construction of consciousness and that stands out in it as a genuine “a priori,” emerges as a first by nature [wesensmäßig Erstes].17 Only in the back and forth between the “presenting” and “presented,” and from this back and forth can a knowledge of the I and a knowledge of ideal and real objects arise. We apprehend here the true pulse of consciousness, whose mystery consists precisely in that every beat strikes a thousand connections. There is no conscious perception, the mere “datum” of which would be a simple given and in this givenness reflective; rather, every perception contains in itself a determinate “directional character” by means of which it points beyond its here and now. As a mere differential of perception, it nevertheless grasps within itself the integral of experience.18 This integration, this apprehension of the whole of experience starting from a single element, is made possible and feasible only by certain laws that regulate the transition from one to the other. The individual value of the momentary perception must – in order to preserve the mathematical simile – be apprehended as one that stands in a universal functional equation and can be determined from it. This determination itself is no mere accumulation and additive combination of individual values, but it is attainable solely through the order that they undergo within certain fundamental and principal categorical forms. The individual, the existing, is determined in respect to its objective significance, in that it is integrated into the spatiotemporal order, the causal order, and the thing-­property-­order. Through such an ordering, it acquires a specific directional sense – a vector, as it were, pointing to a determinate goal. Just as, mathematically speaking, directed and non-­directed magnitudes cannot simply be added together, we cannot speak, phenomenologically and epistemo-­critically, of “combining” “matters” [Stoffe] and “forms,” “appearance” and categorical “orders.” Surely, however, we not only can but also must determine every particular in “respect” to such orders if “experience” is to come into being as a theoretical framework [Gefüge]. The “participation” in this framework [Gefüge] initially gives the appearance its objective reality and objective determinacy. The “symbolic pregnance” that it acquires detracts in no way from its concrete abundance – it forms, however, at the same time the guarantee that this



symbolic pregnance

241

abundance will not simply dissipate itself but also round itself into a stable, self-­contained form.

ENDNOTES 1 [Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, §30, and Critique of Pure Reason, B 370f.] 2 [Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 120.] 3 Ibid., 623ff. u. 113ff., A 120 and B 126ff. Cf. 9ff. 4 [Ibid., B 130.] 5 Ibid., B 130 and B 133. 6 [Ibid., B 25.] 7 Ibid., A 120. 8 Franz C. Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1874), I, 115. [Franz C. Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, trans. Antos C. Rancurello, D. B. Terrell, and Linda L. McAlister (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 68: trans. modified.] 9 Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie, 186. [Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to A Phenomenological Philosophy, trans. Kersten (Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1983), 219: trans. modified.] Cf. Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen (2 vols., Halle: Niemeyer, 1913–21), 2, 372ff. 10 Cf. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 2, 61. 11 Husserl, Ideen, (§85 and §90) 175, 185. [Husserl, Ideas, 208, 218] 12 Husserl, Ideen, (§86) 176. [Husserl, Ideas, 207f.] 13 Husserl, Ideen, (§85) 172. [Husserl, Ideas, 203.] 14 Cf. my lecture at the Congress on Aesthetic in Halle (1927): “Das Symbolproblem und seine Stellung im System der Philosophie,” Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, 21 (1927), 191ff. [Cassirer, “The Problem of the Symbol and Its Place in the System of Philosophy,” 254–71.] 15 Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Theory of Colours, trans. Charles Lock Eastlake (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982), xviii.] 16 Cf. part 2, chap. 2, 143ff. 17 On this basic idea of the “primacy of the relation,” I agree with Natorp, who sees in it the foundation and presupposition for all “critical psychology”: Relation seems to be so essential to consciousness that . . . all genuine consciousness is relation – that means however: not the presentation [Präsentation] but representation [Repräsentation] is the original, the presentation is merely abstracted [Cassirer: represented] from representative consciousness, as an element contained in it. . . . Actually, what is present to consciousness seems to detach itself by abstraction only as the foundation for representation; only for theoretical reconstruction

242

the problem of representation does it precede, while actually, in the real life of consciousness, the relation is the first and immediate factor, to which the other point of reference always belongs and is equally essential. (Allgemeine Psychologie, 56)

18 For this concept of “integration,” see Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1, 37.

VI ON THE PATHOLOGY OF SYMBOLIC CONSCIOUSNESS 1.  THE PROBLEM OF THE SYMBOLIC IN THE HISTORY OF THE THEORY OF APHASIA As long as there has been a logic and a philosophy of language, philosophical consideration has been continually preoccupied with the relationship between thinking and speech. From the first conscious beginnings of philosophical reflection, this problem has been the center of inquiry. The Greek language is a living witness to this state of affairs since it brings together the two basic questions: the question of thinking as well as that of speech into one expression. The unity of concept and word, of the thought and the spoken “logos,” forms in a certain sense the starting point, the terminus a quo of all Greek speculation; on the other hand, the sharp isolation and the methodological difference between them belong to a basic task whose clear apprehension made logic as a science possible.1 Only little by little, however, was this difference [Differenz] recognized and brought to a clear systematic expression in the history of logic. Time and again, the original view forged the path in this history – time and again, attempts were made to elucidate the complex relationship between thinking and speaking that transformed it back

234

244

235

the problem of representation

into a simple relation of identity. Medieval nominalism found no other way to solve the riddle of the logical concept than this reversion. All that the concept is and all that it signifies is not derived in and through itself; it bears, rather, its universality and significance exclusively by the grace of language. In the centuries-­long struggle of medieval logicians over the nature [Wesen] of universals, the modernists, the nominalists and terminists of the school of William of Ockham ultimately emerged victorious. And in modern philosophy, this victory seems to be decisive. Hobbes announced the principle Veritas non in re, sed in dicto consistit2 [truth resides not in things but in signs], and even Leibniz, in his very first work, De principio individui [The Principle of Individuation], took the side of the nominalist logicians, and his entire construction of the logical theory of forms is based on the principle that the cognition of things [Sachen] is dependent on the proper use of signs, so that the foundation of a general characteristic becomes the precondition for the acquirement of a theory of general science, a scientia generalis. Only much later than this problem of the inner relation and the reciprocal bond between speech and thinking did another closely related problem force itself on philosophical self-­determination – namely, the question of the significance of language for the construction of the world of perception. This is thoroughly understandable: it has, after all, always been held as the valid characteristic difference between thinking and perception that all thinking moves in the sphere of mere mediacy, whereas perception possesses an immediate certainty and reality. If we were to surrender this certainty and reality to the domination of words, signs, and symbols, we would be in danger of losing the solid ground soil [Boden] beneath our feet. Somewhere, so it seems, the signification of symbols must rest on something that is absolutely given and self-­significant. From the beginning, every significance of mere signs seems to be fraught with the curse of ambiguity – all presentation in symbols contains the danger of equivocation. Only a going back to the fundaments of knowledge, which are given to us in perception, can save us from this ambiguity; this alone will enable us to gain a foothold on a “well-­grounded . . . earth.” The sense and goal of the struggle against “conceptual realism” thus seemed to be to free up a path to true and original reality [Realität], to clearly and triumphantly assert the realism of perception. Hobbes, who let all truth be decided in the word and who ultimately allowed the two to merge with



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

245

each other, excluded one domain from this radical nominalist conclusion. All thinking and speaking, which by their nature are arbitrary and merely conventional, encounter their boundary ultimately in immediate sensible appearances, which must simply be accepted and recognized as such. If we were to take away the whole edifice erected by speech and thinking over this originary-­stratum, it would, nevertheless, remain intact in its unassailable certainty. Modern sensationalist psychology is constructed on this dogma of the autarchy and autonomy, of the self-­sufficiency and self-­intelligibility, of cognitive perception. Only here and there is an explicit attack on it ventured in the circle of psychology, and only gradually and relatively late could it be driven from that dominant position through a methodological transformation of psychology in the last decades. Nevertheless, much earlier, a breech had been made in this dogma from an entirely different angle. It was not empirical psychology but the critical philosophy of language that made the first decisive attack. Perhaps nothing is more remarkable about Wilhelm von Humboldt’s expansion and deepening of the philosophy of language than the fact that from the start Humboldt directed his inquiry not solely toward the world of concepts but also toward the world of perception and that of intuition. And here again, Humboldt found no confirmation of the view that language merely provides a phonetic designation of already-­perceived objects. According to Humboldt, the full and profound content [Gehalt] of language can never be exhausted by way of such a view. Not only does the human being think and comprehend the world through the medium of language, but also the way the human intuitively sees the world and lives in this intuition is conditioned by this medium: the human apprehension of an “objective” reality – it is how the human sets this reality before itself as a whole and forms, divides, and organizes it into something individual. Thus, everything is already a work [Werk] that cannot be carried out and completed without the cooperation [Mitwirkung], without the living “energy,” of language. In these basic and guiding principles of Humboldt’s philosophy of language, a significant task for psychology was posited. It was, however, a long time before psychology recognized this task in its full import. Admittedly, already the school of Herbart, already Lazarus and Steinthal, held that without a more profound insight into the nature [Wesen]

236

246

237

238

the problem of representation

of linguistic processes, a true foundation for psychology could not be acquired. In one and the same work, Steinthal attempted to provide an introduction both to psychology and to a general science of language.3 And this bond seemed to become even closer when Wundt began the construction of his “ethnopsychology” with a comprehensive theory of language. On the other hand, however, it was precisely from this theory that it became clear that although language was recognized as one of the most important objects [Objekte] of psychological consideration, it was given no decisive influence over the method of this consideration. According to Wundt, the analysis of language did not essentially modify the basic schema of psychology on which he based above all the explanation of particular psychic [seelisch] appearances; rather, it only extended it to one new object. Although this analysis of language would become an important chapter in psychology, it would in the end simply take its place beside those already available. The analysis of language is added to the objects of psychology without bringing about a fundamental transformation in the internal systematic constitution of psychology, in its view of the basic structure of the psychical itself. For when Wundt began his consideration into language, the foundation of psychology had already been well established for him. The concepts of “sensation” and “perception,” “representation” and “intuition,” “association” and “apperception” had already undergone their fixed determination in his Principles of Physiological Psychology. Far from attempting to reshape and re-­ coin these concepts, Wundt’s “ethnopsychology” merely sought to confirm and reinforce them on the strength of the new material derived from language, myth, religion, art, etc. It required a long and arduous labor before modern psychology succeeded in freeing the consideration of language from its confinement to a determinate schematism fixed from the outset and came to see it not only as a new domain of application but as a truly methodical core of psychology.4 However, while psychology, within its narrower ambit, had progressed only slowly and hesitantly along the new path that was opened up here, the problem that was given here found from another side a powerful impulse and a decisive support. The question of the interconnection between the configuration of language and the structure of the world of perception was asked only relatively late in the actual psychology of language; however, from the beginning, it inevitably forced itself on



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

247

the study of speech pathology. Admittedly, speech pathology had first to describe and analyze the disorders that were involved in certain pathological alterations of speech in the domain of pure mental processes. The further one progressed on this path, however, the clearer it appeared that the framework [Rahmen] was too narrow. The purely clinical picture [Bild] of individual linguistic disorders could not themselves be drawn with real sharpness as long as they were seen as mere “intellectual disorders.” Not just the “intelligence” but the total behavior and the entire mental [seelisch] “state” [Verfassung] of patients proved to be modified and impeded by the alteration in their language consciousness and in their capacity of linguistic performance. It seems that the true inner nexus between the linguistic world, on the one hand, and the world of perception and that of intuition, on the other, can be clearly apprehended only when, because of particular conditions, the bond between the two begins to slacken. Only in this slacking does the consistent existence that is affected by it emerge in its real sense and in its positive significance. In it, we see how much the world of “perception,” which one tends at first sight to take as a datum of the senses, owes to the spiritual medium of language and how every impediment or complication of the spiritual process of mediation that takes place in language also affects and alters the “immediate” constitution and “character” of perception itself. In this respect, the observation and exact description of pathological cases has proven immediately valuable for phenomenological analysis. The analysis of thoughts meets here, as it were, the analysis of nature; the elements that in normal consciousness are given only in close association, only in a kind of “concrescence,” begin in the patient to separate from one another, so to speak, and their different significations begin to be set off from one another. And with this it becomes fully apparent to what extent not only our thinking of the world but even the intuitive shape [Gestalt] in which reality is “available” [vorhanden] for us are subject to the law and to the rule of symbolic forming. The old scholastic principle forma dat esse rei [form gives being to the thing] acquires here a new validity. Perhaps the truth content of this principle and its relative justification become fully evident only when we decide to restore it from the domain of ontological metaphysics, in which it was originally coined, back into the sphere of the phenomenal – as soon as we understand “form,” taken not in a substantial sense but in a purely functional sense.

239

248

240

the problem of representation

The pathology of speech thus touches on a problem here whose significance goes far beyond its own borders and in fact exceeds the borders of any individual science as such. In the course of its development, the pathology of speech has become increasingly aware of this interconnection. In the recent systematic summary of the theory of aphasia in the work of Henry Head, the concept of the symbol is explicitly emphasized and moved to the center of inquiry.5 The disorders of consciousness in aphasic patients are designated by Head as disorders of symbolic formulation and expression. With this, he created a general conceptual problem, by virtue of which Head attempts to order the individual symptoms and around which he attempts to group them. As a result of this, however, there arises the necessity for the general philosophy of language to take into consideration the observations made by speech pathology and the questions they raise.6 For it is always a methodologically and systematically significant phenomenon when the truth of the Heraclitean saying that the way up is the same as the way down is confirmed in the domain of science. According to Jackson – whose seminal investigations carried over three decades from 1860 to 1890 formed the starting point for Head’s studies – the problem of speech pathology introduced a general framework [Rahmen] that was linked to certain basic questions in the phenomenology of sense perception. He discovered a close connection between speech disorders and certain disorders of optical and tactile recognition, which he described under the common title “imperception.” With this, the significance that language possesses not only for logical thinking but also for the configuration of the world of perception, for pure “perceptive” apprehending, was recognized in principle.7 Today such outstanding authorities in the domain as Goldstein and Gelb take the position that the true aphasic disorders never merely affect the speech act as an isolated act but rather that to every alteration in the linguistic world of the patient there always corresponds a certain characteristic change in their behavior as a whole – in their world of perception as well as in their practical, active attitude toward reality. From an entirely new angle, we thus find confirmation of the words with which Humboldt situated his philosophy of language.8 If we wish to obtain a clear overview of the complex of problems that here lies before us, we must not shun the labor of dividing it into its various threads and following each one separately. We begin here with a review of the historical development that



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

249

the symbolic concept gradually underwent within the theory of aphasia and by which it arrived at the central position that it currently occupies. As early as 1870, Finkelnburg introduced the term “asymbolia” in a 241 summary report on aphasic disorders and attempted to provide these disorders with a common denominator.9 He took the concept of the symbol, however, in a restricted sense, as he combined it essentially with the signification of an “artificial” and thus conventional sign. Finkelnburg held that the capacity to form and understand such artificial signs was a distinctive psychic capacity, an ability sui generis, and for this view, he invoked the authority of Kant, who treats the facultas signatrix [the faculty of sign use] in a special section of his Anthropology and distinguishes it from sensible cognition as well as from pure intellectual cognition. As Kant explains: “The gestalts of things (intuitions), so far as they serve only as means of representation through concepts, are symbols, and cognition through them is called symbolic or figurative.”10 In this sense, in addition to the mimetic signs of “gestures,” Kant speaks of written signs, musical signs (notes), digits as well as the signs of caste or service (coats-­ of-­arms and liveries), and signs of honor or disgrace (decorations and brandings) all as classes and subtypes of symbols.11 Finkelnburg saw the core of aphasic disorders in an inability to apprehend the significance of such symbols and make use of them, and he referred to experiences in which aphasiac patients were unable to recognize musical notes or coins or to make the sign of the cross. With the progress in the study of aphasia, however, the concept and term of “asymbolia” quickly grew beyond this narrow significance. “Asymbolia” was understood no longer as the missing or inadequate understanding of artificial signs but as the inability to recognize visible and tangible objects and make appropriate use of them, even where the sensible function was unimpaired. With this, a difference was made between “sensible” and “motor” asymbolia: in the former, the “inability to correctly recognize things” stands in the foreground from which the 242 inability to make proper use of them is subsequently derived, whereas the latter manifests itself essentially in certain disorders of the representation of movements that make it difficult or impossible to plan and properly carry out certain simple or complex movements. Wernicke uses the concept of asymbolia in his book on the “aphasic symptom complex” (l874) to designate the symptoms that Freud later termed (optical

250

243

the problem of representation

or tactile) “agnosia,” and Meinert spoke in his Klinische Vorlesungen über Psychiatric of a “motor asymbolia . . . of the upper extremities” in order to designate those appearances that Liepmann later grouped together under the concept of “apraxia.”12 There was, however, another parallel development that had already been initiated by Jackson. To apprehend the aphasic disorders and to find a feature common to all of them, Jackson began not from the use of the word but from the use of the sentence. Although it is almost certain that he had no detailed knowledge of Humboldt, he proceeded on the basis of Humboldt’s basic philosophical insight into language that in reality speech cannot be composed from words that precede it, but vice versa: words arise from the whole of speech.13 The analysis of the sentence and its function thus became for him the key to the study of aphasia. If in the clinical observation of people with aphasia, we begin from the establishment of their vocabulary, if we seek to determine what words they lack and what words they have the use of, this method, Jackson stresses, will lead to highly fluctuating and unreliable results. For clinical experience shows that performances in this domain vary exceedingly. A patient who has the use of a certain word today may be unable to use it tomorrow – or he may be able to use it without difficulty in one specific context and not at all in another. To penetrate the nature [Natur] and particular nature [Eigenart] of aphasic disorders, it is thus essential to determine the mode of these contexts more closely, to consider not so much the use of the word as such as the specific sense in which words are used, the function that they fulfill in the whole of speech. And Jackson begins here from an initial basic separation in that he lumps together into one group the pure emotional linguistic utterances [Äußerungen], on the one hand, and the “stating” [aussagend], the presenting utterances [Äußerungen], on the other hand. In aphasic disorders, the former tend to be affected far more rarely than the latter do, or are not damaged to the same degree. The observation of these disorders thus makes it clear that there are two different and relatively independent strata of linguistic utterances [Äußerungen]: the one in which only inner states are announced, the other in which objective states of affairs are “intended” and designated. It is these two strata that Jackson juxtaposes as “inferior” and “superior” speech.14 Only to the utterances [Äußerungen] of superior speech may we attribute “propositional value.”15 Our entire “intellectual” language moves among such propositional values and is



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

251

dominated and permeated by them; it does not serve the expression [Ausdruck] of feelings and emotions but is directed toward objects and the relations between objects. It is precisely this capacity to form and understand propositional values, and not the mere use of words, that is considerably and essentially impaired or entirely sublated in people with aphasic disorders: Single words are meaningless [bedeutungslos], and so is any unrelated succession of words. The unit of speech is a proposition. A single word is, or is in effect, a proposition, if other words in relation are implied. [The English tourist at a French table d’hôte was understood by the waiter to be asking for water when his neighbors thought he was crying “oh” from distress.] It is from the use of a word that we judge of its propositional value. The words “yes” and “no” are propositions, but only when used for assent and dissent; they are used by healthy individuals interjectionally as well as propositionally. A speechless patient may retain the word “no,” and yet have only the interjectional or emotional, not the propositional use of it; he utters it in various tones as signs of feeling only.16

According to Jackson, the whole, truly intellectual power of language, everything that it accomplishes for thinking, is contained in this power of “statement,” of predication: Loss of speech is, therefore, the loss of the power to propositionize. It is not only loss of power to propositionize aloud (to talk), but to propositionize either internally or externally, and it may exist when the patient remains able to utter some few words. We do not mean by using the popular term “power” that the speechless man has lost any “faculty” of speech or propositionizing; he has lost those words which serve in speech, the nervous arrangements for them being destroyed. There is no “faculty” or “power” of speech apart from words revived or revivable in propositions, any more than there is a “faculty” of co-­ordination of movements apart from movements represented in particular ways. We must here say, too, that besides the use of words in speech there is a service of words which is not speech; hence we do not use the expression that the speechless man has lost words, but that he has lost those

244

252

the problem of representation words which serve in speech. In brief, speechlessness does not mean entire wordlessness.17

245

246

Head begins from this determination. What Jackson had designated as the capacity of “statement,” as the “propositional” use of words, is designated by Head as the capacity of symbolic expression and symbolic formulation. He takes, however, a significant step beyond Jackson in that he does not limit this function of symbolism to language alone. To be sure, language is and remains the clearest exponent of this function, but it does not exhaust the entire range of its activities. Rather, according to Head, “symbolic” behavior is found in such human performances and activities that are not immediately linguistic performances. A more precise analysis of action shows that the whole sphere of doing is shot through with the same contrast that is observed in the domain of language. There is a form of action that consists in direct motor activity, which is, as it were, “mechanically” released by a given outward stimulus, and there are others that are possible only if a determinate representation of the goal is formed, only if the goal toward which the action aims is intellectually anticipated. And in this latter type of doing, a role is always played by a tendency of thinking that is closely related to linguistic thinking and that we can likewise group with this latter under the general title of symbolic thinking. According to Head, most of our “voluntary” movements and activities embrace such a “symbolic” element [Element], which must be clearly recognized and defined if we wish to understand their particular nature. In doing, as in speech, there is a mediated and an immediate, a superior and an inferior stratum. And again, it is the aphasic disorders that clearly show us the boundary between the two. A person with aphasia will be able to perform certain actions [Handlungen] if they are occasioned and necessitated by a certain concrete situation – he will not, however, be able to perform the same actions of his own free will, without such concrete stimuli. For this, Jackson had cited numerous examples: he had shown, for example, that certain patients were not able to show their tongue when asked to do so, though they readily perform the corresponding movement in order to moisten their lips. Head greatly multiplied these observations according to a systematic plan of observation – in a series of carefully prepared tests, he had the patients progress from easy, “direct” performances to those that were more difficult and



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

253

“indirect” and in every single case exactly noted their behavior. From his observations, he concluded that a common deficiency, an incapacity of the patient for “symbolic” behavior and symbolic formulation, lay at the root of the disorders of speech as well as the disorders of action. Head thus sums up his fundamental view as follows: By symbolic formulation and expression, I understand a mode of behavior, in which some verbal or other symbol plays a part between the initiation and execution of the act. This comprises many procedures, not usually included under the heading of the use of language, and the functions to be placed within their category must be determined empirically; no definition can be framed to cover all forms of action which may be disturbed at one time or another according to the nature and severity of the case. . . . But any act of mental expression, which demands symbolic formulation, tends to be defective and the higher its propositional value the greater difficulty will it present. . . . Any modification of the task, which lessens the necessity for symbolic representation, will render its performance easier.18

At a very early date, the theory of aphasia thus took a definite direction, leading toward the general problem of the symbol – admittedly, however, it did not always succeed in adhering to this basic direction in every phase of its development and in sharply and unequivocally recognizing them from the beginning. What repeatedly prevented it from doing so was the form of psychology that was for a long time accepted almost without restriction and reservations by both medical theorists and clinical observers. Aside from Jackson, almost all the leading researchers in the domain of aphasia can be said to have begun from the idea of the “mental” [Geistig] that came to them from the sensationalist psychology of elements. They believed that they had understood and explained a complex mental [geistig] act if they succeeded in breaking it down into its simple components – and they held it to be evident and dogmatically certain that these components themselves could consist in nothing other than simple sensible impressions or a sum of such impressions. This basic view, however, inevitably removed them in theory from the actual principle and problem of the “symbolic,” as close as they came to it in their observations. For there is no road leading from sensationalism

247

254

248

the problem of representation

to the center of the symbol problem: its basic view is characteristically “symbol-­blind.”19 Thus, as long as the students of aphasia followed the road map and guiding strings of sensationalist psychology, their only means of apprehending and determining the significance of the function of speech lay in an attempt to break it down into an aggregate of sensible “images.” Speech was “explained” as a deductive combination [Zusammenfassung] of such images, a combination of optical, acoustic, and kinesthetic sensations. And this psychological view had its counterpart in physiology: it was held that every specific domain of sense impression must have as its physical substrate its own center, a certain isolated region in the brain. In his work on the “aphasic symptom complex” (1874) and in his Manual of Brain Disorders, Wernicke identified a special center for “sound images” localized in the first temporal convolution; another was localized in the third frontal convolution for “motor images” that he believed to be crucial for the articulation of speech sounds; and finally, a “concept center” was another that he believed mediated between and connected the first two. These schemata were later considerably expanded and differentiated: every new advancement in clinical experience and observation brought a new, ever-­more-­complex “diagram.”20 The psychological concept of “impression,” as it was defined for example by Berkeley and Hume, was, as it were, elaborated here anatomically and physiologically. Every cell or group of cells in the brain was held to be endowed with a special capacity acquired by experience, to receive and preserve certain impressions, and then to compare these stored-­up visual, auditory, and tactile images with new sensible contents. The old metaphor of the tabula rasa reappears; Henschen, for example, in explaining how we learn to speak or read, declares that certain graphic characters, certain “engrams” are stamped on our brain cells, very much “as the form of the seal is imprinted upon wax.”21 If we consider this whole development only in its methodological aspect, it presents a strange and at the same time highly instructive anomaly. For all the researchers who have taken this path were without doubt convinced “empiricists”: they believed that as they advanced, they followed exclusively the facts themselves and that all their inferences were prescribed entirely by direct observation. Once again, however, the gulf between “empiricism” and the “empirical” clearly



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

255

manifested itself here. For what these researchers produced was by no means a pure “description” of phenomena; rather, the phenomena were subjected in advance to certain theoretical presuppositions and prejudices and interpreted accordingly. Head raised the reproach against the school of the diagram makers, as he calls them, for having built on a purely speculative ground, instead of giving an unbiased description of the facts guided by certain general and “a priori” considerations.22 Compared with this tendency, he points back to Jackson, who had first broken with this method and who had demanded and put into practice a strictly phenomenological mode of considering the symptoms of aphasia.23 A consideration of this kind can never favor a theory that sees the “ability” of speech as grounded in the possession of certain verbal and phonetic images, while the ability of writing and reading is grounded in the possession of certain literal images, and it attributes “agraphia” and “alexia” to the loss of such images. Such a theory never does justice to the variability and instability of clinical phenomena; it attempts to reduce to purely static elements [Elemente] an occurrence that can be grasped and described only dynamically. If, as clinical experience teaches, a patient in a particular situation can have the use of a certain word that he lacks in another situation, this difference [Differenz] in behavior cannot be explained if we begin from the destruction of the verbal image in question: once destroyed, this image could not under certain conditions be recovered.24 It was observations of this kind that little by little drove medical research itself away from “brain mythology” – as these attempts to establish definite anatomical centers for various psychic “abilities” have been called. In Germany, Goldstein in particular, in his works on the theory of aphasia, stressed from the beginning that the phenomenological framing of the question must be at the forefront of the interpretation of aphasic and agnostic disorders – that it is only after careful individual observation has established the specific form of the lived-­experiences of a patient that the question as to what material occurrences in the central nervous system correspond to a particular pathological change could be raised and answered. An attempt at localization, he declared, can be based only on a psychological and phenomenological analysis, which as such must be carried out uninfluenced by any localizing theories.25 Pierre Marie also started from a sharp methodological critique of the

249

250

256

the problem of representation

“image theory” when in 1906 he called for a “revision of the aphasia question,” thus opening up a new path of research: Let us therefore begin by saying how the fixation of those famous verbal images takes place. Is every word separately inscribed in this center for auditory images? But what an immense development of this center would then be needed, particularly in one who speaks many languages? Or is it rather the individual syllables of which the words consist that are fixed in this center? Then we should have a simpler performance and one for which a smaller number of images would be requisite; but then an intellectual effort would immediately be required to piece together these scattered syllables and reform them into words. . . . Why then should we suppose that there is a special phonetic image center for words, when nothing whatsoever provides evidence for its existence?26

251

Philosophically speaking, the essential progress of Marie’s basic view was that it signified the abandonment of any attempt to explain the spiritual function of speech by constructing it from purely material or “hyletic” elements. Speech was apprehended as a unitary whole, which according to Marie can have its origin nowhere other than in the unitary totality [Ganz] of the “intelligence.” Accordingly, every disorder in speech points back to a disorder of intelligence as its actual foundation. From the clinical standpoint, Marie distinguished between two different basic forms of disorder. On the one hand, there was, according to him, Wernicke’s “sensible aphasia,” the essential symptom of which is the sublation or grave impairment of the patient’s understanding of speech. This symptom, however, never stands alone but always goes hand in hand with a general intellectual defect. In contrast to this form of disorder stands, according to Marie, another that is characterized by the fact that the understanding of speech is retained; the capacity for written expression is not undiminished; but the use of the word is seriously impaired. According to him, we do not have here a disorder of intelligence but rather a purely articulatory disorder on a central foundation, an “anarthria,” which must be carefully distinguished from true “aphasia” (Wernicke’s aphasia). What had complicated this separation up to now was there being a complex syndrome in which the symptoms of true (Wernicke’s) aphasia and of anarthria



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

257

are mixed. A mixture, a “syndrome,” of this sort is the disorder that was commonly diagnosed as Broca’s aphasia or “subcortical motor aphasia”: Broca’s aphasia was Wernicke’s aphasia plus a fundamentally different disorder, an anarthria.27 Marie’s theory encountered, however, a twofold objection and difficulty. On the one hand, it turned out that a pure “anarthria” in Marie’s sense was not demonstrable as a clinical fact. Even where the patient’s understanding of speech seemed to be fully preserved, there proved to be no such thing as an isolated “motor” aphasia; rather, the articulatory defects in the expression of speech were always accompanied by certain alterations in the patient’s overall intellectual [geistig] behavior. Marie had stressed that The motor disorders of the anarthriac has nothing to do with true aphasia. The anarthriac understands, reads, writes. His thinking is not impaired, and it is possible for him to express his thoughts in every other way than by the word since his inner speech is not affected.

This theory did not, however, hold up under sharp observation: it turned out, rather, that even with those patients who could be described as pure anarthriac according to Marie’s criteria revealed certain deficiencies in the apprehension of speech as soon as the tasks were made more difficult. Although their understanding of speech and their capacity for written expression [Äußerung] seemed intact at first glance, in both of these respects, they lived on another “level” than an individual without anarthria. On the one hand, their written expression [Ausdruck] was restricted and included only a relatively small selection of words: the “abstract” expressions of speech had been replaced by more concrete expressions, closer to the purely sensible sphere.28 On the other hand, the diminution in intelligence that Marie regarded as the actual ground of “genuine” aphasia required a closer determination. Marie was anxious to provide such a determination – that is say, to clarify and complement the mere generic concept of “intelligence” by the addition of a specific difference [Differenz]; he repeatedly stressed that the “intellectual” [geistig] disorder that he took aphasia to be must not be confused with dementia. He expressly conceded, in his controversy with Gegner von Déjerine, that if the actions of everyday life are taken into account, people with aphasia can scarcely be distinguished from healthy individuals.

252

258

the problem of representation

“Intellectual degeneration” appears only in another domain and then only under sharp, methodical examination: The demented and the paralytics are no aphasiacs, even though in dementia and in paralysis there is a considerable diminution of the intellectual abilities – on the other hand, aphasiacs are not mentally ill in spite of the intellectual deficiencies they present.

For in people with aphasia, not the intelligence as a whole but only a certain side, a certain partial aspect of it, is impaired.29 If we ask for a closer characterization of this partial aspect, however, Marie and his disciple Montier merely speak of a deficiency in the “special linguistic intelligence” (un deficit intellectuel spécialisé pour le langage). L’aphasie n’est pas une démence; elle peut présenter comme celle ci un déficit intellectuel général, mais elle présente en plus, et c’est ce qui la distinguera toujours des démences banales, un déficit particulier du langage [Aphasia is not a dementia; it may present itself as a general intellectual deficit, but it also presents itself, and it is this that distinguishes it from the trivial dementia, a particular deficit of language].30

253

However, this explanation of course amounts to a mere tautology. What – it now became necessary to ask – is this “linguistic” thinking that is said to be disturbed or diminished in people with aphasia, and by what characteristics is it distinguished from other forms and tendencies of “thinking in general”? Is there perhaps a stratum of the everyday, of “practical” thinking, that does not yet require the “symbolic” thinking that governs language and that proves to be relatively independent of it? And how are the two strata to be delimited from each other? Such students of speech pathology as Jackson,31 Head, Goldstein, and Gelb posed these questions more and more insistently; in a sense, their solution did not attempt to begin from general speculative considerations on the relationship between “speech” and “thinking” – they had, rather, to seek their answer in the opposite way, by developing more and more precise means of clinical observation and phenomenological analysis of individual cases. It was, however, precisely this empirical path that ultimately led them to a problem that possessed a wholly universal



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

259

significance – to certain basic questions whose solutions could no longer be expected from the further accumulation of more facts of observation but that called for a renewal and a kind of reversal of the psychological way of thinking.

2.  THE ALTERATION OF THE WORLD OF PERCEPTION IN SYMPTOMS OF APHASIA To properly appreciate the significance of pathological experiences for the deeper cognition of the symbolic function, we must not limit ourselves to the narrow sphere of pure speech disorders. Clinical observation has long pointed to a close relationship between aphasic disorders in the restricted sense and disorders of a different kind that are usually designated as “agnostic” or “apractic.” We need not enter into a sharper demarcation of these domains here: such a demarcation can only be a matter for specialized research. Despite all the divergencies that still exist in the basic theoretical outlook and interpretation, the one thing that seems, however, to have been generally recognized in this research today is that the symptom complexes commonly designated 254 by the terms “aphasia,” “agnosia,” and “apraxia” are closely related. Heilbronner stresses in a comprehensive survey that he has undertaken of aphasic, apractic, and agnolic disorders that it is not possible to make a basic distinction between them; the aphasic symptoms do not form a particular group over against those of apraxia and agnosia but rather depict only a specific case of the syndrome.32 Thus, the singling out of aphasia as an independent pathological grouping may be explained and justified more by practical requirements than by any purely theoretical considerations.33 Even in the case of the patient of Goldstein and Gelb, who initially seemed to be afflicted with a purely optical “gestalt-­ blindness,” while the understanding of speech and spontaneous speaking at first sight appeared to be wholly intact, a more penetrating analysis revealed highly characteristic deviations from the speech of the healthy individual: thus, this patient could neither understand nor make use of “metaphoric” expressions. It would therefore seem justified that a reflection such as ours that is thoroughly determined by purely theoretical considerations, should not start with any sharp line between the individual pathological groups but rather seek to bring out a basic

260

255

the problem of representation

common factor. Of course, as we progress, this factor will require and be susceptible of a more precise determination and differentiation – however, perhaps the general findings that can be gained from an analysis of the “symbolic function” in general will help to prepare the ground [Boden] for a differentiation of this sort, by enabling us to survey more clearly the diversity and gradation of the individual symbolic performances that may be assumed to be the conditions of speaking, perceptual cognizing, and acting. The construction of the world of perception is grounded in the conditions that inherently organize the whole of the sensible phenomena – that is to say, that create certain centers, to which this whole refers and according to which it is, as it were, oriented and directed. The formation of such centers may be pursued in three different principal directions: it is just as necessary to constitute the ordering of phenomena according to the point of view of “thing” and “property” as it is to constitute their ordering in spatial togetherness and temporal succession. The execution and production of this ordering are always concerned with interrupting the constantly same fluid series of appearances in some way and emphasizing certain “outstanding points.” What was previously a homogeneous flow of events now coalesces, as it were, in the tendency of these outstanding points: amid of the stream form individual vortices, whose parts seem to be linked in a common movement. Through the creation of such dynamic rather than static totalities, through this formation of functional rather than substantial unities, the inner relatedness of phenomena is consecutively produced. For now, there is no longer any absolutely singular: rather, every element [Element] that is engaged with others in such a common movement bears in itself the law and form of the whole of that common movement and is able to represent it for consciousness. And now wherever we may plunge into the stream of consciousness, we find ourselves in certain living centers of the stream, at which all the individual movements aim. Every particular perception is a directed perception: aside from its mere content, it possesses a “vector” that it makes significant in a certain respect, in a certain “sense.”34 The experiences of speech pathology may serve to confirm this general structural law of the world of perception and to prove it from the negative side. For the basic spiritual potencies on which the structure of the world of perception is based stand out more clearly where their performance is in some



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

261

way altered or impeded than where they take place immediately without internal inhibitions or frictions. To carry on with our metaphor, we may think of the pathological cases as a kind of disintegration of those “vortices,” of those dynamic unities of movement in which normal perception takes place. This disintegration can never signify a total destruction: for with a total destruction, the life of sensible consciousness would be extinguished. But this life is conceivably enclosed within narrower boundaries, and, compared to the world of perception of healthy individuals, it conceivably moves in smaller and more restricted circles than in the case of normal perception. In this case, a movement that begins from the periphery of the vortex would no longer propagate itself to its center but in a manner of speaking remain within the original zone of stimulation or be transmitted only to its immediate surroundings. It would no longer arrive at the formation of truly comprehensive sense-­unities within the world of perception – however, within the more restricted regions that are now assigned to it, the perceptual consciousness could arguably still operate with a certain level of security. For the vibration of this consciousness itself would not be obstructed, but the amplitude of this vibration would only be diminished. The individual sensible impression would still be provided with a “vector of sense”; these vectors, however, would no longer possess a common direction toward determined unitary centers but would diverge to a far higher degree than is the case in normal perception. In particular, a pathological disorder of the function of speech can be adequately explained only by an approach of this sort and not by any such notion as the disappearance of certain “phonetic images.” Humboldt emphasized that human beings do not understand one another by relying on definite phonetic signs that produce the same sensible impression or identical or similar representational images in all the members of a linguistic community: rather, the same key of the instrument is struck in every single subject when the phonetic sign is heard, whereupon corresponding but not identical concepts arise. If the link in the chain, the key of the instrument, is touched in this fashion, the whole vibrates; and what issues from the soul as a concept is attuned to everything that surrounds the individual link, even to the remotest distance.35

256

262

257

the problem of representation

In the pathological disorders of the process described here by Humboldt, the older school of speech pathologists assumed that particular keys of the spiritual instrument that we call language must be annihilated; on the other hand, the modern outlook contents itself with establishing that they no longer respond [ansprechen] in the same sense, that they can no longer release the movement of the whole as they did before. To apprehend the context of the problem more sharply and describe it with greater precision, however, we must pass beyond the sphere of general considerations and turn to the pathological phenomena in their particularity. Goldstein and Gelb have described and analyzed in detail the case of a patient who suffered from a general amnesia of color names. He could neither spontaneously nor correctly employ the general names of colors – names such as “blue” and “yellow,” “red” and “green” – nor could he relate them to a fixed sense when they were presented to him by others. If, for example, he was asked to pick a red or yellow or green sample from a series of colored strips of wool or paper, he was utterly baffled before this task: the task had lost all sense for him. By contrast, there was no doubt that the patient “saw” the individual shades of color correctly and that he distinguished them from each other in the normal way. Every test of his color-­sense that he underwent showed that his ability for distinguishing colors was perfectly intact, that he was in no way “color-­blind.” Only when he attempted to classify different colors, to “sort” them in some way, was his characteristic disorder manifested. For it appeared that the patient had at his command no fixed principle with which he could accomplish this classification. Whereas a healthy individual considers all colors, which in any way belong to the base tone of a certain pattern, as “belonging” to one another, the patient only takes together such colors that possess a close sensible similarity, that were in exact agreement in respect to color tone, brightness, or some similar factor. And here again, he might suddenly slip from one form of classification into another, first grouping colors that resembled the model before him in tonality and then choosing the colors that resembled it in brightness. Nevertheless, the patient performed remarkably well when the general color names were not required in the context of a task but when he was asked to select from a group of samples a shade corresponding to the color of a definite object. Then he always chose with great certainty and precision: he always chose the color of a ripe strawberry, a



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

263

mailbox, a billiard table, chalk, violets, forget-­me-­nots, etc. provided that it was to be found among patterns that were present. The patient always responded perfectly to this form of test: he never seemed to point to a color that did not correspond to that of the named object. And this capacity made it possible for him under certain conditions to act differently from usual in respect to the general designation of colors. If, for example, he was given the task of choosing a “blue,” he was, at first, in line with his basic disorder, unable to connect a specific sense with it; sometimes, however, he solved the task by translating it, so to speak, into another problem that he could understand. Because he knew the verse “blue blossoms a little flower that are called forget-­me-­not,” he was able to provide himself, by reciting the verse, with a means of passing from the domain of general color names to that of concrete thing-­names – and so similarly with other rhymes which he knew purely by rote. He was thus able to point out a forget-­me-­not-­blue, provided it was among the present patterns – but, he never selected any other shade of blue, however close to it, because no other shade exactly corresponded to the “remembered color” of the forget-­me-­not that determined his choice. Not infrequently, the patient succeeded by the same detour in using a word such as “red” or “green” to correctly employ a color that had been shown to him. Nevertheless, this only succeeded for those colors for which he had available some ready-­made sayings of language to help – such idioms as white as snow, green grass, blue sky, blood red, etc. These common figures of speech were used like fixed linguistic formulas; a presented color shade awoke in the patient the representation of blood, and then, by an automatic linguistic act, he pronounced the word “red.” This still remained, however, an empty word for him to which there in no way corresponds the same intuition that a healthily individual would have connected with the term “red.” We must now ask, in what respect and by what specific characteristic trait did the world of intuition of the patient differ from that of a healthy individual? Gelb and Goldstein arrive at the conclusion that the real difference is that this patient is no longer provided with the principle of systematic organization through which the healthy individual has a command over the world of color. The process by which the patient indicates the classification of colors seems in this respect “more primitive” and “more irrational” than that of healthy individuals, since his choice is

258

264

the problem of representation

determined solely by the degree of sensible similarity and inattentive disregard of all other points of view. To look upon colors as related to one another in any way, he must have a determinate, concrete “lived-­ experience of coherence”; they must be given to him in their immediate appearance as “alike” or “identical”:

259

Every strip of yarn aroused a characteristic lived-­experience of color in the patient, according to its objective constitution was determined once through the colorfulness or another time through the brightness or delicacy, etc. If two colors, for example, the pattern and a strip from the pile, had objectively the same tone color but different degrees of brightness, then they did not necessarily seem related to the patient because brightness or warmth was the prevalent factor. . . . He could agree only on the basis of a concrete experience of coherence: which was really the case only with identical colors.

To look at colors as belonging to one another, the healthy individual does not require such an identity of impressions; rather, for him, color impressions, as different and remote from each other as they may be, nevertheless belong to one and the same “color category.” In a multiplicity of nuances of red, he beholds the identical species “red” and sees each particular nuance only as an example, only as an individual instance of this species. It is this consideration of the individuals as representatives [Repräsentant] of a specific color species that is denied the patient. In summing up, Gelb and Goldstein characterized the contrast as follows: In sorting the colors, the normal individual is impelled in a certain direction by the instructions given him. In accordance with the instructions, he only considers the basic color of the pattern, independently of its intensity, i.e. purity. The concrete color is not taken in its purely singular being-­a-­certain-­way, but more as a representative [Vertreter] of the concept red, yellow, blue, etc. The color is detached from the intuitively given association and accepted only as representing [Repräsentant] a determinate category of color, as representing redness, yellowness, blueness, etc. We designate this “conceptual” attitude . . . as a “categorial attitude.” The patient is more or less lacking any principle of classification because for him this categorial attitude is impossible or impeded.36



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

265

The examination of these cases of illness is of particular significant for us because it confirms from a new angle one of the most general conclusions of our investigation. In the course of this investigation, we have repeatedly seen that in the analysis and characterization of the pure lived-­experience of perception, a sharp difference must already be made between the immediate and the mediated, the presentative and the representative [repräsentativ] content [Gehalt] of these lived-­experiences – between that which is directly “given” by them and the presenting function that they fulfill. In the cases described here, what distinguishes the color phenomena of the patient from those of the healthy individual seems indeed not to be any purely contentual state that we can point to in them. The actual difference is, rather, based on the fact that they no longer function in the same way as means of presentation. They have ceased to be “vector magnitudes” and have become mere “states of values”: they lack the “being-­directed” toward certain outstanding points in the color series, through which normal color perception first acquires its characteristic form. Every optical lived-­experience remains here, as it were, in itself or can at most be related to lived-­experiences in its immediate vicinity. The presentative function [Darstellungsfunktion] remains confined within the narrowest limits: only what is directly similar is reciprocally able to “represent” [vertreten] and stand for the other. We can indeed, with Gelb and Goldstein, designate this whole attitude as more concrete, “closer to life,” but it pays for this closeness to life with the loss of its freedom to survey. For perception acquires this freedom only by progressively filling itself with symbolic content [Gehalt] – in that it interposes certain forms of spiritual vision and spontaneously transitions from one to another. This is possible only when the regard does not fasten on any single sense impression but merely uses the individual, so to speak, as a kind of signpost [Wegweiser] that shows [weisen] it the way [Weg] to the general, to certain theoretical centers of significance. By a highly characteristic and fortunate turn of phrase, the German language brings together this twofold process in the one word “Absehen.”37 In that we take a color of a certain brightness and tonality, not only as this individual lived-­experience of color that is given here and now, we determine it as a special case of the species red or green and direct ourselves toward this species by means of it. Our consciousness is focused not so much on the color itself as on the species for which the color serves as a

260

266

261

262

the problem of representation

representative [Repräsentant]. However, insofar as we have “aimed,” [abgesehen] in this way, at the species red and green, we must learn to disregard the abundance of individual circumstances that are discovered in the sensible-­presentation [sinnlich-­gegenwärtig] of impression. The patient can perform neither of these operations as fully as a healthy individual. He lacks the fixed centers in regard to which he can survey the color world as a unity, and at the same time, he lacks the possibility of extracting one element from the concrete whole of the lived-­experience of color while he disregards [absehen] other elements that are immediately fused with it. To be sure, he can also change the direction of attention: in classifying [Zuordnung] colors, the patient can, at one point, begin from an agreement in basic tone and at another from an agreement in brightness. He himself, however, is not free in this shift of direction: the patient slips into this or the other “direction of attention” without being able to spontaneously adhere to one and exclude the other. Even if we attempt to extraneously force the patient in a certain direction of attention, he may not be able to apprehend its characteristic “sense” – that is, be able to look steadily toward the point of fixation that has been shown him, and thus, he keeps losing sight of it.38 He therefore lives and breathes within the momentary impression, but he also remains confined and entangled within it.39 A basic capacity of normal perceptual consciousness is that it not only fills and permeates with determinate “vectors of signification,” but can in general vary them freely. We can, for example, consider an optical formation [Gebilde] that is presented to us from this or that “point of view”; we can apprehend and determine it with “regard” to one element or with regard to another. And whenever the form of determination changes, something different stands out as “essential”; thanks to our new “sight” [Sicht], something different always becomes “visible” [sichtbar].40 It seems pertinent here to ask once again whether the new “degree of freedom” that perception acquires in its purely representative performance is due to language or whether instead it renders language possible. Which here is the prior and which the posterior – which the original and which the derived-­factor? Goldstein and Gelb also posed these questions and decided that this was not a relationship of one-­sided dependency but rather a pure interrelationship. Although it seemed to them unquestionable “that language constitutes one of the most effective



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

267

means for turning away . . . from the primitive closer-­to-­life attitude toward the categorical attitude,” they still refused to regard language as the actual ground of this attitude. They thus stressed: The facts of pathology only teach us that name-­amnesia and the absence of the categorial attitude accompany one another, not however which of them is primary and which is secondary. . . . The categorial attitude and the having of language in its significatory relevance are expressions of one and the same basic attitude. Neither of them can be the cause or the effect. It seems to us that the disorders which gives rise to all the symptoms we find in our patients consists in an impairment of this fundamental attitude and a corresponding lapse into a more primitive closer-­to-­life attitude.41

And indeed, when we seek to demonstrate and understand the thoroughgoing interconnection between the structure of language and that of perception, it is not a question here of causal determinations [Feststellungen], of relationships of “cause” and “effect.” What essentially takes place is not a temporal relationship of “earlier” and “later” but an objective relationship of “grounding” [Fundierung]. In this sense, we sought to differentiate three distinct strata in the analysis of language, which we termed the phases of the sensible, intuitive, and purely conceptual expression.42 This demarcation was not meant as a history of language – as though we supposed that in the historical development of language, we could establish a succession of distinctive stages of language, one embodying the purely sensible “type,” the others the purely intuitive or conceptual “type.” That would be an absurdity, if only because the total phenomenon of language is first constituted by the whole of its constructive spiritual elements – so that this whole must be regarded as present [gegenwärtig] in the most “primitive” languages and the most highly developed languages. It therefore can be not a question of really isolating the different elements from one another but rather a question of considering the changing dynamic relationship into which they entered with each other. We must now ask ourselves to what extent this point of view, which we have used in the spiritual orientation in the world of language, is also possible and fertile in the world of perception. Are we justified in speaking of an ideal “stratification,” such as may be demonstrated in the structure of

263

268

264

the problem of representation

language? In its purely static state, in the solidification, in the whole of perception that is initially given to us that is always already differentiated according to distinct linguistic concepts and categories, it is difficult to recognize any such stratification. It stands out, however, far more clearly and plainly where the linguistic schematism is loosened and where with this perception confronts us not in a static state but rather in a kind of unstable equilibrium. And speech pathology has a methodological value for us because it presents cases of such “unstable” equilibrium. Speech pathology became aware at an early date that the “decomposition” [Abbau] of the functions that are observed here do not occur arbitrarily but seem to follow a definite plan. Jackson already pointed out that the alterations affect the domain of “higher language” far more than they do the domain of “lower language” – that they relate not so much to the emotional side of the life of language as to its purely “intellectual” aspect.43 One of the most reliable observations of speech pathology is that the patient is nevertheless able to properly use certain words and sentences that he no longer understands how to employ in a purely “objective” presentative intent, as soon as they have another sense in the whole of speech, as soon as they are to serve as the expression of affects and emotions.44 At the same time, a certain displacement [Verschiebung] occurs in the sphere of pure presentation itself: in that “abstract” expressions are replaced by “concrete” expressions, that “general” expressions give way to particular and individual ones; and thereby the whole of speech, compared to the language of the healthy individual, takes on a predominantly “sensible” coloration. Rather than such linguistic concepts that infer a purely intellectual relation and determination, others are used that in one way or another bear the imprint of the “evident” [Sinnfällig]; “picturesque” expressions prevail, while all purely semantic signification [Bedeutungsmäßige] is to a greater or lesser degree suppressed.45 In the domain of the world of perception this becomes particularly apparent in the change in the designations of color. Like Goldstein and Gelb’s patient with amnesia and aphasia, many of Head’s patients had lost all use of general color names – the names for “red” and “yellow,” “blue” and “green” – although their sense of color was quite intact. These general designations were replaced by the names for certain object colors: the patients indicated the color of a model set



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

269

before them by saying that it looked “like grass,” “like blood,” etc. Frequently even these object designations gave way to others referring to the use of the color: one of Head’s patients, for example, substituted for the word “black,” which he could not find, the word “dead,” because black is the color of mourning for the dead.46 We can recognize here the emergence of a certain tendency of perceptual consciousness that runs parallel to a basic tendency in linguistic consciousness. This is because language also did not arrive immediately at the fixation of general designations of color but began with concrete-­objective designations. The languages of natural peoples seem for the most part to possess no other means for the expression of different color qualities than to name the objects in which they are to be found.47 We can do justice to appearances of this sort only if we constantly bear in mind that the process by which the individual elements of perception obtain a purely representative [repräsentativ] character, by which they are filled with a determinate “presentative sense,” is inconclusive – that we can never fix its beginning or end but can only pick out individual total stages from it and order them in accordance with a certain ideal gradation. If we attempt to do this, there arises on both sides, the side of the intuitive organization as well as that of linguistic organization, a picture that corresponds in every principal feature. The consideration of linguistic “concept formation” repeatedly shows us that language begins with concrete-­sensible designations and then gradually opens a path to purely relational and abstract semantic [bedeutungsmäßige] expression. Hence, all linguistically “primitive” concept formation is distinguished from the higher stages chiefly by its manifold, exceptionally rich particularity of linguistic concepts that do not, as yet, crystallize around fixed points of unity. One and the same “species” of natural beings [Wesen] or one and the same occurrence – such as sitting or walking, eating or drinking, striking or breaking – is designated by a particular word, according to the special accompanying and modifying circumstances that may modify it respectively. In attempting to characterize this process, we wrote: If we represent the totality of the world of intuition as a uniform plane out of which certain individual gestalts are singled out and differentiated from their surroundings by the act of naming, this process of

265

270

266

the problem of representation

determination at first affects only a discrete, narrowly delimited portion of this plane. . . . For each word has only its own relatively delimited radius of action, beyond which its force does not extend. There is no possibility of grasping together a plurality and diversity of different spheres of signification into a new linguistic whole designated by a unitary form. The power of configuration and isolation [Absonderung] that is inherent in each individual word begins, but prematurely arrives at its end, and then a new ambit of intuition must be opened up by a new and independent approach. The summation of all these different individual impulses, each of which operates alone and independently, can form collective, but not truly generic unities. The totality of linguistic expressions forms here, insofar as it is achieved, only an aggregate but not an in itself organized system; the power of organization has exhausted itself in the individual naming and is not adequate to the formation of comprehensive unities.48

This state of affairs acquires for us a new unexpected confirmation from the considerations of the facts of speech pathology. The color world of a patient who suffers from a general color-­name amnesia differs from that of the normal individual precisely by the fact that it lacks the comprehensive unities that exist for the latter. In comparison to the normal color world, there prevails throughout it a character of diversity and shifting variegation. As Goldstein and Gelb stress, a normal individual can also gain such an impression of variegated color if he simply moves over the pile of color samples with the model and takes the most passive possible attitude: Then we do not have the lived-­experience of a very specific focusing on a specific color tone for example but feel ourselves delivered over to the coherent lived-­experiences that force themselves upon us. . . . With one stroke, the whole phenomenological course of events changes when we transition to sort in accordance with the instructions. The pile itself, which previously struck us as a multicolored hodgepodge, now undergoes a particular differentiation: the colors belonging to the category of the model’s base tone stand out against the others; those that do not belong to it become irrelevant in the relationship; they are simply not “observed.”49



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

271

We see here that there are differences of significance, of “relevance,” by which the world of perception as well as the world of language first gains its systematic organization. Whether the new form of perception precedes this process and the linguistic form merely follows it – or whether, conversely, the process precedes it, whether it is language that creates this form – need not trouble us. For us, it is a question of recog- 267 nizing that here an actual separation is not possible – that the “language of the senses” [Sinne] and the pure phonetic language develop in and through one another. There is no doubt that if the formations [Gebilde] of the world of perception or that of intuition are to be linguistically designated, they must first be grasped together in a determinate “sight” [Sicht] – on the other hand, this kind of sight [Sicht] acquires its stability and permanence only by being fixed in the linguistic sound. The unities thus created would at all times be exposed to destruction and disintegration if the bond of language did not hold them together. What “sensibility” purely in itself had begun is bought to completion by the “sense” [Sinn] of language – what was intended in sensibility is attained in the sense of language. These considerations controvert for the first time one of the chief arguments that have been raised by the skeptics of ancient as well as modern times against language and its specific cognitive value. It has repeatedly been asserted that true reality, the reality of immediate lived-­ experience, must remain closed to it, because it is not adequate to the abundance and individuality of this reality. How could a limited number or general signs grasp and portray this abundance? What is overlooked in this argument is that the tendency toward the “universal” that language is charged with does not belong to language alone; rather, it is already grounded and contained in the form of perception itself. If perception did not embrace an originally symbolic element [Element] in itself, it would offer no support and no starting point for the symbolism of language. The πρῶτον ψεῦδος [first falsehood] of the skeptical critique of language consists precisely in making the universal begin only in the concept and word of language, whereas perception is taken as something utterly singular, individual, and punctual. In this way, there remains of course an unbridgeable gap between the world of language, which is a world of “significations,” and the world of perception, which is regarded as an aggregate of simple “sensations.”

272

268

the problem of representation

The question takes on a different shape, however, once we realize that the cut that is made here between the world of perception and that of language should in truth be drawn between the world of “sensation” and that of perception. Every conscious, in itself organized, perception presupposes the great spiritual “crisis” that begins, according to the skeptics, with language. Perception is no longer purely passive but active, no longer receptive but “selective”; it is not isolated or isolating but oriented toward a universal. Perception thus signifies, intends, and means something – and language merely takes up this first significative function to carry it in all directions, toward realization and completion. The word of language makes explicit what, implicit in the presentative values, in the representative [repräsentativ] content [Gehalt], is located [gelegen] in perception itself. The absolutely individual, the merely singular perception that sensationalism and with it the skeptical critique of language believe to be able to advance as a supreme norm, as an ideal of cognition, is essentially nothing more than a pathological phenomenon – a phenomenon that occurs when perception begins to lose its anchor in language and when its most important access to the realm of the spiritual is thereby closed.

3.  TOWARD A PATHOLOGY OF THING PERCEPTION The concept of optical or tactile agnosia comprises the pathology of a series of disorders whose common characteristic trait is a grave impairment of the perceptual recognition of objects. In cases of this sort, the ability for sensible differentiation seems to have remained intact or in any event not to have been essentially impaired. When tested for his ability to apprehend optical and tactile qualities and distinguish between them, the patient does not seem to differ greatly from the healthy individual. He distinguishes “rough” and “smooth,” “hard” and “soft,” “bright” and “dark,” “colored” and “colorless” – without being able to use all this data in the same way as the healthy individual for the recognition of objects [Objekte]. If a patient who suffers from tactile agnosia is given an object familiar to him in daily life, he can indicate that it feels cold and smooth and heavy, but not that it is a coin; that it feels soft, warm, and light, but not that it is a piece of absorbent cotton; and so on. In this case, it is particularly striking that the disorders are usually limited to a



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

273

specific ambit of perceptual recognition, outside of which the process of recognition operates in precisely the same manner as in the healthy individual. Tactile agnosia, for example, usually affects only one hand: an object that the patient can designate only as hard, cold, and smooth when he holds it in his left hand is recognized and named as a “watch” as soon as it is put in his right hand. We may in general say that in disorders of this type, the data of certain sensible spheres are still supplied to the patient, though perhaps in a modified way, but that they no longer carry an index of objectivity as they do for a healthy individual.50 This character of the disorders is especially clear in the optical domain, in cases of “psychic [Seele] blindness.” For the sufferer of psychic [Seele] blindness still “sees”: he apprehends differences of brightness and color with normal sharpness and, at least in the lighter cases, also interprets simple differences of magnitude and geometrical forms correctly. Yet where he is dependent on optical data alone, he gains no cognition of objects [Objekte] and of what those objects objectively are and signify. There is here a constant danger of utter confusion: a patient on whom Lissauer reports at length once mistook an umbrella for a leafy plant and on another occasion for a pencil and thought a bright-­colored apple was the portrait of a lady. Often this patient seemed to “recognize” an object, but it soon developed that he had guessed its significance only by some individual characteristic trait, some “diagnostic sign,” and possessed no general optical image of it as an organized whole. In some cases, for example, an image was correctly identified as the presentation of a certain animal, but the patient was not able to say which end was the head and which the tail.51 We immediately apprehend here a common element that links these pathological cases with those considered above, regardless of how much, on the other hand, their individual features and general clinical views may differ. For here again, we have characteristic disorders in the domain of a lived-­experience of signification. Thus, pathology leads us to a question that extends far beyond its own ambit, which can be clarified and decided only by a more universal form of cognition. The analysis of the consciousness of objects forms one of the central and fundamental tasks of modern philosophy. No less a thinker than Kant regarded it as the most important concern of all theoretical philosophy. In his famous letter of 1772 to Markus Herz that contains in germ the

269

270

274

271

the problem of representation

whole problem of the critique of reason, he formulates the question of how the representation is related to the object as “the key to the whole mystery of metaphysics that has hitherto been concealed from itself.”52 Kant’s predecessors had, however, also been aware of this problem – in fact, they all regarded it as a truly radical problem and unremittingly brought new means to bear on its solution. As much as these individual attempts at a solution deviated from one another, they nevertheless retained an inner coherence: in them, a certain basic methodological difference was gradually, sharply and clearly singled out. Two fundamentally different solutions were possible, two typical answers to which all these attempts harked back. On the one hand, a clarification of the question is expected and demanded from “reason”; on the other hand, it is expected and demanded from “experience.” On the one side, it is a rationalistic theory and, on the other, an empiricist theory that is expected to close the gap separating mere “representation” from the “object” to which it points. In the first case, a purely logical function is held to strike a bridge between the two elements; in the second case, the desired connection is assigned to the faculty of the “imagination.” What should provide the representation its “objective” value, its objective significance, is either a pure thought-­process that attaches to it or an associative process that links it with others of its kind. In one case, it is an inference – most particularly an inference from the “effect” to the “cause” – that is expected to lead across to the realm of objectivity and in a sense to conquer it – in the other case, it is the object itself that seems ultimately to be nothing other than an aggregate of sensible individual details that are linked together according to certain rules. However, the basic lacuna of both theories, which persisted throughout the history of epistemology as well as psychology, consists in the fact that in order to acquire an explanation of the consciousness of objects, they had to transpose and arbitrarily modify the pure content [Gehalt] of this consciousness in some way. In the end, neither theory captures the pure phenomenon itself; rather, they tried to force it to comply with their own presuppositions. That an object “presents itself” in a specific perceptual lived-­experience – that in this perceptual lived-­experience, as a given here and now, a thing that is neither given nor present [gegenwärtig] “makes itself visible” – is not brought closer to our understanding by any number of sense impressions amalgamated with each other or by



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

275

the methods of discursive thinking, of theoretical inference and conclusions and going beyond what is immediately given. Far from providing an explanation, both attempted solutions merely neglect the matter of fact. Neither the bond of mere “association” nor the seemingly tighter and stricter bond of the syllogism proves strong enough to constitute the absolutely unique form of connection that is found in the relation of the representation to its object. Instead, there lies here another basic and originary relationship, which, as a purely symbolic relationship, belongs to a wholly other plane from all those relations that take place between empirical-­real objects [Objekte], between actual things. Instead of reducing this symbolic relationship to tangible determinations, we must rather recognize in it the condition of the possibility for the positing of such determinations. The representation is not related to the object as the effected and the effecting, or as the picture [Abbild] to its archetype [Urbild]; rather, its relation to the object is analogous to that of the means of presentation to the presented content [Gehalt], of the sign to the sense expressed in it. If we designate as “symbolic pregnance” that relation whereby something sensible [Sinnlich] includes in itself a sense [Sinn] and presents this sense for consciousness, the fact of this pregnance can be reduced neither to merely reproductive processes nor to mediated intellectual processes: it must ultimately be recognized as an independent and autonomous determination, without which neither an “object” [Objekt] nor a “subject,” neither a unity of the “object” [Gegenstand] nor a unity of the “self,” would be given to us.53 Once again, however, in pathological cases, this close-­knit unity is loosened or threatens to disintegrate entirely. The contents of certain sensible domains seem somehow to lose the power to function as the pure means of presentation: their existence and being-­a-­certain-­way no longer bear any representative character or objective “pregnance.” To make this clear, let us again consider a few characteristic examples. Lissauer’s case of “psychic [Seele] blindness” has already been mentioned. Lissauer, in accordance with the prevailing psychological view of his day – the work appeared in 1890 – interpreted the case as a “pathological disorder of the capacity for association”: the patient had command of the individual sense impressions corresponding to definite physical stimuli, but an “inhibition of association” prevented them from combining these impressions with others in the correct way. Lissauer further

272

276

273

the problem of representation

distinguished two different forms of psychic [Seele] blindness, which he designated as “apperceptive” and “associative.” In the apperceptive form – in philosophical usage, we should call it “perceptive” – sense perception is affected; in the associative form, perception is intact, the quality of the optical impressions is unchanged, and the association between the optical content of perception and the other components of the corresponding concept is broken off. In this case, the patients thus perceive without understanding the perceived; they possess the individual optical qualities without being able to effect the transition from them to other spheres of qualities, by which the transition first makes it possible to order any given perception into a determinate thing combination. Theoretically speaking, we thus have here an attempt to explain the act of “understanding” that breaks it down into a mere sum of impressions, a regulated sequence of sensible “images.” And this view was further developed by the physiological notion of a lesion of the optical “mnemonic field” or a lesion of the associative fibers connecting this field of recollection with the optical center of perception.54 In a monograph titled Über Seelenblindheit [On Psychic Blindness], which appeared in 1914, Von Stauffenberg distinguished between two basic forms of the disorder, which in their combinations, he believed, covered the known clinical cases: the one was “a disorder in the central elaboration of crude optical impressions, as a result of which the finer configurative forms can no longer be produced, or at most inadequately; in the other, there is a general impairment of the faculty of representation in the sense that the ecphorization of old stimuli complexes was eliminated or impeded, so that the more or less incomplete optic-­formal elements [Element] no longer set up a companion vibration in these old complexes.”55 This explanation once again subjects the clinical observations to a very definite interpretation that operates essentially within the framework [Rahmen] of certain fundamental physiological views on the occurrences in the brain and the channels of communication between the various centers. Over against efforts of this sort, the work of Goldstein and Gelb, which first appeared in 1918, signified above all a new methodological approach – quite aside from the fact that it was based on hitherto unobserved clinical phenomena. For the two authors started from the assumption that before one can venture a physiological explanation of a certain syndrome, a phenomenological analysis must be carried out in



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

277

every detail: one must inquire into what is actually found in the pathological alteration of the lived-­experience of the patient, and this question must be answered first, independently of all hypotheses regarding the “seat” of the ailment or its causes. This requirement, which had already been raised in principle by Jackson, was now carried through in connection with a case whose pure factual findings presented considerable difficulties for analysis. It concerned a patient whose optical recognition had been gravely impaired, so that by purely optical means, he was unable to apprehend even the simplest forms. He was neither able to understand the signification of the simple geometrical outlines and planes of figures nor able to explain gestalts that were formed from discontinuous elements [Elemente], such as, for example, a square indicated by its four corners. Goldstein and Gelb summarize the results of their investigation as follows: What the patient optically lacks is a specific characteristic structure. His impressions are not firmly configured like those of a normal person; they lack, for example, the characteristic stamp of the square, triangle, straight line, curve, etc. He has “patches” in which he can only apprehend optically such approximate qualities as height and breadth and their relationship that are together and similar.56

Accordingly, the patient’s optical recognition of objects was gravely impaired. However, here is the particularly striking and curious thing about this case: the patient undertook certain performances that, at first sight, were scarcely to be expected in a disorder of this sort. Not only did he find his way in his surroundings remarkably well, but also his behavior in practical life hardly deviated substantively from that of a normal person. Before he had been shot in the head, which was the cause of his ailment, he had been a capable miner. After his wound had healed and his general condition had improved, he was trained in a new occupation that he soon mastered without difficulty. Not only was he able to describe the content of colored images that were presented to him, but when corporeal objects were shown to him, he was also able with only minor difficulty to name them; as a rule, he “recognized” familiar, everyday objects at once. What was even more striking, he could draw these objects with considerable precision, and he could also read, though somewhat more slowly than is normal.

274

278

275

the problem of representation

The explanation for this anomaly was first found only when detailed observation, into the individual details of which we cannot enter here, showed that the patient did not undertake these performances on the basis of optical phenomena but in an entirely different way. The “recognizing” of flat pictures [Bilder] and of tangible objects, the reading of written and printed letters was possible only if the patient was able to accompany what was optically presented with certain movements. Everything he read he had, as it were, to cowrite in that in a peculiar way he followed the letters. And he proceeded in such a way that he followed in the individual letters that were given to him, as colored patches, their outline through corresponding movements of the head, and on the bases of the different kinesthetic impressions that he acquired in this way, he differentiated the letters and finally the word images as a whole. However, if he were prevented from making such movements, if, for example, his head were held still or his method of kinesthetic reading were rendered impossible by other means, the patient was no longer able to recognize a letter or a simple geometrical figure such as a circle or rectangle. Nevertheless, his sensations of light and color were as such intact or so little modified that their impairment could be regarded as irrelevant to optical recognition: The patient has colored and colorless patches distributed in a certain way through his field of vision. He also, it may be presumed, sees whether a certain patch is higher or lower, to the right or left of another, whether it is thin or thick, large or small, short or long, nearer or farther than another, but no more; all together, the different patches arouse a chaotic impression but not, as in the normal individual, the impression of a specific, characterized, identified whole.57

The patient’s optical lived-­experiences thus formed only individual fragments of sense, which could no longer be combined into a sense-­whole, into a unitary pregnance of signification. In normal perception, every particular aspect is always related to a comprehensive interconnection, an ordered and organized totality of aspects, and draws its interpretation and significance from this relation. The cases of optical and tactile agnosia show us, however, a kind of breakdown in this continuity. Whereas normally all individual perceptions stand in a kind of ideal



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

279

unity of sense, through which they are held together, very much as the significative lived-­experience of a sentence embraces the particular interpretations of its individual words and contains them as elements in itself, in these cases of agnosia, they, as it were, break asunder. More and more, the continuum of signification dissolves into a mere discretum. It is not as if the individual sensible appearance as such were disrupted but rather the syntactical framework [Gefüge] of these appearances – as if there prevailed a kind of “agrammatism” of perception analogous to what we can observe in so-­called “agrammatical speech disorders.”58 Thus considered, Goldstein and Gelb’s case of psychic [Seele] blindness, 276 no matter how much its general clinical picture differs from the case of color-­name amnesia also described by them, falls into the same theoretical line and can be embraced in a common perspective. In the case of color-­ name amnesia, the individual lived-­experiences of color existed for themselves but were no longer oriented toward certain favored points in the color series and were no longer able to represent these points. In the agnostic appearances, it is also a question of such disorders in the “representative” [repräsentativ] character in the presentation function of perception. The perception remains surface-­like, so to speak: it is no longer determined and directed toward the depth-­dimension of the “object.”59 And the fact that it is more than a question of a mere “inhibition of association” is unmistakably shown through an unbiased consideration and appreciation of the clinical facts. Gelb and Goldstein emphatically emphasize that these facts cannot without violence be squeezed into the schema of an associative-­psychological explanation, and actually run counter to any such explanation. Nor is it helpful to further suppose that we are dealing here with a disorder of “discursive” thinking, of judgments and inferences. If Gelb and Goldstein’s patient suffering from psychic [Seele] blindness showed certain “disorders of intelligence,” they lay in an entirely different domain: he was deficient not only in optical space but also in “numerical space”: he was unable to order numbers according to their pure positional value, their “greater” and “smaller,” and consequently did not understand how to count with them meaningfully.60 On the other hand, most of his processes of purely formal judgment and inference operated correctly. In my own frequent conversations with him, I was always surprised at the clarity and sharpness of his thinking, the

280

277

the problem of representation

aptness and formal soundness of his inferences. And it was precisely this highly developed activity of discursive “deduction” that enabled him in many cases to compensate almost entirely for his gravely impaired capacity for optical representation and recollection, so that for practical purposes, it scarcely made itself felt. For though he could not immediately “recognize” any object on the strength of its optical appearance, he used what sparse and indefinite optical data remained to him as markers from which he indirectly derived the significance of things. Of course, these markers did not have the force of the immediate “re-­presentation” [Vergegenwärtigung] that is inherent in any true, symbolically pregnant perception: they served, as it were, only as signals but not as symbols. From the relatively few spatial configurations that he was able to apprehend, from determinations such as “wide below and narrow on top,” or “evenly broad and narrow,” he could gain certain clues on which he based an assumption as to the kind of object or pictorial depiction [Darstellung] that was present before him. Closer investigation always showed, however, that in all these cases, it was not a question of a genuine perceptual recognition but only of a “guess” as to the object before him. It could have been no more than guesswork of this sort when Lissauer’s patient once “recognized” a portrait of Bismarck but was then unable to say where the eyes, ears, and cap were. And in the case of Gelb and Goldstein’s patient with psychic [Seele] blindness, the meticulous records that were kept with regard to his manner of recognizing objects [Objekte] clearly show the specific difference between true perceptual pregnance and any merely discursive knowledge of objects based on indicators. Pregnant perception “has” the object in the sense that the object is corporeally present [gegenwärtig] to it in one of its modes of appearance; knowledge includes a determinate indicator “toward” the object. There, it is a question of the unity of the look by virtue of which the manifold aspects appear as different perspectives of an object [Objekt] that is intuitively “meant” [gemeint] as the same in them; here, perception must grope its way slowly and cautiously from one appearance to another in order to ultimately establish the significance of the perceived. This is also expressed characteristically in the modality of perceptive judgment, because “pregnant” perception always leads to an assertive positing, whereas “discursive” perception usually stops at a problematic one. The former contains in itself an intuition of the whole,



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

281

whereas the latter leads, under the most favorable circumstances, to a correct combination of distinctive traits; the former is symbolically significant, whereas the latter is only symptomatically indicative.61 If one wants to describe this difference, then the difference [Differenz] between “reading” letters and merely spelling them out offers itself as an illustration. Goldstein and Gelb wrote of their patient:

278

He could correctly indicate the form of cardboard figures [Figuren], such as a rectangle, disc, oval, and rhombus, by feeling them. He arrived at the correct conclusions by recognizing the individual details (angles, straight lines, edges, bends, etc.) in the manner described above and from them, as it were, spelling the whole without having a simultaneous image [Bild] of the object [Objekt].62

We find in this feature, in this fragmentary nature of lived-­experience, a common characteristic trait that connects agnostic disorders with certain aphasic disorders. Some people with aphasia actually seem to have a feeling of this fragmentation: in the apprehension of spoken words or the reading a book, they complain about not understanding individual details, about these details not “coming together” quickly enough or correctly. “With me it’s all in bits,” said one of Head’s patients, “I have to jump . . . like a man who jumps from one thing to the next; I can see them, but I can’t express them.”63 It could scarcely be stated more clearly that every impairment of the presentative character, of perception, and of the significatory character of the word affects the continuity of lived-­experience in some way – that the patient’s world threatens “to go to pieces.” We cannot help being reminded of Plato, who replies to Protagoras’ sensationalist theory of perception, which breaks down perception into punctual individual details, by saying that it would be a sad state of affairs if diverse perceptions stood side by side in us like wooden horses instead of all being composed into one idea (εἰς μίαν τινὰ ἰδέαν [into one form]). For Plato it is this unity of the idea as a unity of “sight” [Sicht] that first constitutes the unity of the soul.64 The optical-­agnostic disorders are disorders not so much of “seeing” [Sehens] as disorders of this kind of “sight” [Sicht].65 Thus, with them all – as the best experts and the sharpest observers in this domain have repeatedly stressed – there are not only individual

279

282

the problem of representation

features of the “worldview” [Weltbild] that are distorted or obscured, but rather the worldview as a whole that has itself been altered: it takes on another total form, because its structure and the spiritual principle of its construction have been modified.

4.  SPACE, TIME, AND NUMBER

280

The disorders that are grouped together under the heading of optical agnosia, as clinical observations have shown, seem almost always to involve serious pathological alterations in the “sense of space” and in spatial perception. The ability to localize sensible stimuli is usually very much reduced; the patient’s representation of his own body and of the relative position of its individual limbs becomes extremely defective. One patient with psychic [Seele] blindness, named Schn., could not, with his eyes shut, orient himself in regard to the position of his head or any other part of his body. If one of his limbs were placed in a certain position, if, for example, his right arm were raised sideways into a horizontal position, then he could not immediately make any statement regarding the position of the arm, although by an arduous detour, by executing certain pendulum-­like movements of his whole body, he could ultimately come to certain conclusions about the position of the limb. Once again, the general conclusion had to be drawn from individual performances by a sort of “spelling-­out” process. Nor did the patient have any immediate feeling in regard to the general position of his body in space – for example, he could not state with certainty whether he was standing or was stretched out on a sofa horizontally or was at an angle of 45 degrees. As for the passive movements of his limbs – that is, movements effected by others – he could say nothing about their direction or extent except by the indirect method we have mentioned. And as long as the patient had his eyes shut, all voluntary movements were very difficult for him: when asked to move a specific limb of his body, he was at first completely at a loss. He succeeded reasonably well, however, in performing certain movements of daily life, which he executed more or less automatically: thus, for example, he could take a match from a box and light a candle with it reasonably quickly. From all this, it becomes evident that the patient could still, chiefly by means of certain kinesthetic sensations, more or less “find his way” in space, that he was able to conduct himself correctly in certain



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

283

situations, but that his “representation” of the whole of space was gravely impaired. Gelb and Goldstein believed that when his eyes were shut, the patient possessed no “spatial representations” at all.66 Once again, the pathology of perception confirms one of the most important conclusions of the pure phenomenology of space. For the difference between mere performance-­space and purely presentation space has repeat- 281 edly compelled the attention of the phenomenologist.67 In the one, space signifies a mere field of action; in the other, it signifies an ideal structure of lines. And the mode of “orientation” is specifically different in the two cases: in the one, it results from certain practiced motor mechanisms, and in the other, from a free survey that embraces the totality of possible directions in space and posits these directions together in a determinate relationship. “Above” and “below” and “right” and “left” are not designated solely by certain corporeal feelings, and through them provided with a qualitative index, a certain sensible token, rather they present a form of spatial relation that is connected with other relations in a systematic total plan. Within this total system, the starting point and zero point of the determination can be freely chosen and shifted at will. The individual basic and principal directions can have no absolute value, only a relative value: they are not fixed once and for all but can vary according to the standpoint of observation. For this reason, this space is no longer a rigid vessel that encloses things and events [Ereignisse] like a hard, substantial shell but rather it is an ideal ensemble of “possibilities,” as Leibniz calls it. Orientation in this space presupposes an ability of consciousness to re-­ present [vergegenwärtigen] these possibilities freely and to reckon with them in advance, in an intuitive and intellectual anticipation. When Goldstein, in an article “Über die Abhängigkeit der Bewegungen von optischen Vorgängen”68 [“On the Dependency of Movements on Optical Processes”], stresses the predominantly optical nature of this space, then this is no doubt true insofar as optical data form the most important material for its construction, so that where they are seriously curtailed, as in cases of optical agnosia, this construction can no longer be as successful as in the normal individual. In this respect, however, this clue needs a supplement, because the characteristic form of “symbolic space,” which signifies rather only a single element in its configuration, cannot be derived from optical impressions. Although it forms a necessary condition, it is not a sufficient condition in the bringing about of this configuration.

284 282

283

the problem of representation

Clinical experience seems to confirm this conclusion, since it shows that highly characteristic alterations in the patient’s “spatial intuition” may be observed even in those cases where the optical ability of the perception of the patient is not essentially altered. Nevertheless, some people with aphasia who are able to optically orientate themselves quite well by purely optical means without the help of movements, and who can distinguish the position of the objects given around them on the basis of their sense of sight, are baffled when asked to perform an operation requiring a kind of transposition into schematic space. They are unable to hold fast and present in a drawing what they have seen and what they have recognized in what they have seen. They cannot make a simple sketch of their room or indicate on the sketch the place in the room where objects are to be found. When they attempt to do so, they do not take the local [örtlich] relationships alone into account but add and even emphasize any detail that is irrelevant or disturbing to the pure order of space. The individual things – the table, the chairs, the windows – are concretely drawn, but the patient seeks to pictorially reproduce all their individual details instead of merely marking their location in space. This incapacity for schematism and marking seems to form one of the basic symptoms observed in aphasic as well as agnostic and apractic disorders: we shall have more to say about this in another context.69 We are considering this deficiency here only insofar as it throws light on the decisive difference [Differenz] between the space of “intuition” in contrast to the space of mere action and behavior. The space of intuition is not based on only the presence [Gegenwart] of certain sensible and particularly optical data, but it posits a basic function of “re-­presentation” [Vergegenwärtigung]. Its individual places, its “here” and “over-­there,” must be clearly differentiated, but precisely in this differentiation, they must be united in a total view, a “synopsis,” which first sets down the whole of space before us. At the same time, this process of differentiation includes within itself a process of integration. In many cases, a person with aphasia is often unable to effect this integration, even where his orientation in space – provided it is pieced together point for point and, one might say, step for step – is not essentially impaired. Head reports that many of his patients could follow a route that was familiar to them – for example, the way home from the hospital – but that they could not name the individual streets they had to pass through



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

285

or give any coherent presentation of the route as a whole.70 Indeed, this reminds us of that “more primitive” form of spatial intuition, not yet saturated with symbolic elements [Elemente], which we found for example among natural peoples who know every bend in a river but cannot draw a map of its course. And, at the same time, the aphasic disorders give us a new insight into the underlying cause of these difficulties. Many patients who are not able to draw a sketch of their room can orient themselves relatively well on such a sketch if the basic schema is already laid down. If, for example, the doctor prepares a sketch in which the position of the table where the patient usually sits is indicated by a point, then the patient often has no trouble indicating with his finger the position of the stove, the window, or the door on this sketch. The truly difficult performance thus consists in the beginning of and the approach to the process: in the spontaneous choice of a plane as well as the center of the coordinates. For precisely this choice unmistakably involves a constructive act and so to speak constructive exploit in itself. One of Head’s patients expressly stated that he could not undertake this performance because he could not correctly establish the “starting point,”71 but once it was given to him, everything was much easier.72 The true character of the difficulty presented here is made clear if we consider how difficult it was for science or for theoretical cognition to perform this same operation with clarity and determinacy. Science and theoretical physics also began with the positing of “thing space” and only gradually progressed to “systematic space” – they also had to conquer the concept of a system of coordinates and center of coordinates by persistent intellectual labor.73 Obviously it is one thing to apprehend the togetherness and apartness of objects [Objekte], of sensually perceptible objects [Gegenstände], and another to conceive of an ideal ensemble of surfaces, lines, and points that embody the schematic presentation of pure positional relations. Thus, those patients who were able to execute certain movements quite correctly were often confused if they were required to provide a description of these movements – that is to say, to provide a statement of their differences in general, linguistically fixed concepts. In certain people with aphasia, the correct linguistic use of “above” and “below,” “right” and “left” is very much impaired. The patient is often able to show through gestures that he has a feeling for the difference expressed in these general

284

286

285

the problem of representation

spatial terms; he is, however, unable to illustrate their sense, when, for example, requested to make a certain movement first with his right and then with the left hand.74 In general, pathological disorders of the spatial sense in people with aphasia point clearly to the boundary between “concrete” space, which is adequate for the correct performance of certain actions relating to a single concrete purpose, and “abstract,” purely schematic space. In grave cases of aphasia, it is true, especially in the clinical form that Head designated as “semantic aphasia,” there also seems to be a disorder of concrete orientation. The patients are no longer able to find their own way themselves: they mistake their room in the hospital or the position of their bed.75 In contrast to these cases, however, there are others in which one cannot speak of an actual spatial disorientation, in which the patients’ behavior clearly shows that they can “find their way” in space, whereas closer investigation reveals that they have lost the use of certain spatial concepts and the proper apprehension of certain fundamental spatial differences that are familiar to healthy individuals. One of these patients, whom I had occasion to see in the Neurological Institute at Frankfort,76 had lost all understanding for direction and the size of angles. If an object was set on his table before him, he was unable to lay another object parallel to it. Only if the two objects [Objekte] immediately touched was he able to solve the problem: he could stick the objects together, so to speak, but he could not recognize and retain directions in space. He had also lost the characteristic “sense” for the size of angles: when asked which of two angles was “larger” or “smaller,” he was baffled at first but then usually said that the angle with the longer sides was the larger. Similar disorders were observed in a person with aphasia on whom Van Woerkorn reported at length. Once again, the essential deficiency in the patient’s “spatial sense” seems to have been that he could not conceive a fixed axis in space and use it as a starting point for spatial differentiations. When, for example, the doctor sat across from him and placed a ruler between himself and the patient, it was not possible for the patient to place a coin down on the doctor’s side or his own side of the ruler; he was unable to apprehend the opposition between the two “sides.” Also, when the ruler was placed in a certain position, the patient was unable to lay down a second ruler in the same direction: instead of placing his ruler at some distance from the other and parallel to it, he moved the two together and finally placed one on top of the other: this



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

287

despite all efforts to explain the aim of the problem to him. Van Woerkom sums up the symptoms by saying that all the purely “perceptive” functions were unimpaired, since by means of his senses of sight and touch the patient was able to recognize the forms and outlines of things and handle them correctly; the feeling of direction as such had not suffered, since when the patient was blindfolded and his name was called, he always moved in the direction of the call; but he had lost all aptitude for spatial “projection.”

286

The patient who can execute movements in their simplest form (as reactive movements in response to certain outward stimuli) is not able to evoke the principle of motion in the higher intellectual forms: that is, in projective acts. He cannot draw the main lines of orientation (to the right, to the left, upward, downward), nor place one stick parallel to another. . . . This disorder also affects his body: he has lost the schema (the imaginative representation) of his body and though he can localize his sense perceptions, he cannot project them.77

As we see, the pathology suggests a differentiation that empirical psychology long misunderstood and denied but that we have been repeatedly pointed to in establishing our general theoretical foundation: in Kantian terms, pathologists have found it necessary to distinguish between the image as a “product of the empirical faculty of the productive imagination” and the schema of sensible concepts as a “monogram of the pure imagination a priori.”78 Even Kant, however, did not limit this “faculty” of schematism to spatial intuition but related it above all to the concept of number and that of time. And in fact, pathological cases once again show particularly forcefully that a close interconnection exists here. Van Woerkom’s patient showed the same characteristic disorders in the form of his intuition of time and in his understanding of certain numerical tasks as he did in his apprehension of spatial relationships. Thus, for example, he could recite in so-­called “sequent speech” the days of the week and the months of the year; however, when given the name of a day or month, he could not correctly designate the day or month preceding or following it. He was also unable to count a concrete quantity of things, although he correctly mastered the sequential order of the numerals. Instead of progressing

287

288

288

the problem of representation

from one member to another, he frequently went back to one that had already been counted, and when in his counting he had arrived at a certain number, let us say “three,” he had no idea that in this word he possessed a designation for the “magnitude” of quantity, for its “cardinal number.” If two rows of sticks, one of four, the other of five, were placed before him and he was asked which of the two contained more sticks, the patient pointed to each stick in the second row and counted correctly to five but then became confused, pointed again to the last stick, counted, and said “six.” Often, he would go back to another, already-­ counted member of the first row or slip over into the second row, still counting in a loud voice. Every attempt to teach him the sense of the task remained as fruitless as the efforts to make him lay down one stick parallel to another.79 And even where a person with aphasia seems more or less capable of mere “counting,” the most elementary arithmetical operations create insuperable difficulties.80 The written arithmetic and the oral arithmetic were affected by this. Head reports that most of his patients could verbally count numbers properly up to ten and often beyond but that many of them were no longer able to solve the simplest arithmetical tasks. When, for example, two numbers of three digits were written one under the other and the patient was asked to add them, he did not take the numbers in their total value but added the digits individually. Thus, if his task was to add the numbers 864 and 256, the patient would successively perform the operations 4 + 6, 6 + 5, 8 + 2 and merely set the results side by side, and even in this, he often made mistakes.81 These mistakes accumulated particularly when the sum of two numbers situated under each other amounted to more than ten, so that the patient could not properly carry out the calculation simply by writing down the net result but had “to keep in mind” a certain number of units before adding them in the next column. And often in written addition and subtraction, the patients went from left to right instead of right to left; or in subtraction, they would subtract the upper from the lower number. For a better understanding of the basic feature by which all these details of clinical observations are connected with each other, we must theoretically return to the general conditions of the process of counting and calculation and seek to differentiate the individual phases of this process according to their involvement and their degree of basic difficulty. The



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

289

“counting” of a concrete quantity requires, on the one hand, an act of “discretion” and, on the other hand, an act of “correlation” – the individual elements [Elemente] of the quantity must be sharply distinguished, and in this distinguishing, the members of the “natural number series” would be clearly correlated [correlated zugeordnet]. This form of “discretion” in itself already includes an act of “reflection,” which is first completed in language and by means of it and which is necessarily affected in every serious impairment in the function of speech. If according to the Pythagoreans, the nature [Wesen] of number consists in the fact that it introduces the first intellectual “demarcation” into the “unlimited” of perception, then the same may be said of language. The two are allies, as it were, in this intellectual performance, and only together are they able to carry it out with true sharpness and clarity. Thus, as ungrounded as it is and despite the weighty arguments against it by such excellent mathematicians such as Frege, mathematical “nominalism,” which sees in numbers only “mere signs,” nevertheless embodies the sound idea that the support of language is indispensable for any adequate representation [Repräsentation] of the significance of pure numerical concepts. Only the separation into words leads to the fact that the “apartness” of elements [Elemente], as it is posited and demanded in the concept of number, fixes itself. As soon as the force of language wanes, as soon as numerical terms can be recited by a rehearsed motor sequence of sounds but can no longer be understood as meaningful [sinnvoll] signs, the sharp differences in the apprehension of quantity itself are effaced: its individual members are no longer set off sharply against one another but begin to blur together. And to this lack of differentiation is linked an analogous deficiency in the seemingly contrary but actually correlative act of unity formation. Where the quantity no longer stands before us as a sharply organized multiplicity, it cannot be strictly apprehended as a unity, as a whole that is constructed of parts. Even though thought may succeed in going through it in successive synthesis and in re-­presenting [vergegenwärtigen] its elements [Elemente] individually, after the process has concluded, all these individual details are no longer grasped together in one positing. What remains is a simple succession that never becomes a “synopsis” of this succession into one concept – the “magnitude” of a quantity. Even if, however, it is the case that this form of the formation of the “many” and the “one,” the “parts” and the “whole,” succeeds

289

290

290

the problem of representation

relatively well where it is a question of enumerating concrete quantities, the simplest act of arithmetical “reckoning” still requires new and difficult intellectual operations. For every such act is grounded only if the number is posited as this or that one, as a determination within a series, while at the same time this positing of unities can be freely varied. It not only requires a correlation with the numerical series as a fixed schema, but this schema, despite its stability, must be thought of as mobile. Every elementary example in addition or subtraction illustrates how this union of the two seemingly contrary requirements is to be thought and how it is achieved. Essentially, to find the sum of 7 and 5, or the difference between 7 and 5, means fundamentally nothing more than to count five steps forward from 7 or five steps backward. The decisive element thus lies in the fact that the number 7, although retaining its position in the original series, is at the same time nevertheless taken in a new “sense” that is valid as the starting point of a new series where it assumes the role of zero. Every number in the original series can in this way be made into the starting point of a new series. Now, the beginning is no longer an absolute beginning but a relative one: it is not given but must be posited case by case according to the conditions of the task.82 The difficulty is thus perfectly analogous to the difficulty we encountered in the case of space; it consists in the free positing and free sublation of a center of coordinates as well as in the transition between systems that are related to different centers of this sort. The basic relevant unities must not only be “established” but precisely in this establishment must be kept mobile, so that it is possible to alternate between them. In our previous example, the number 7 must retain its significance as seven and assume at the same time the significance of zero: it must be able to function as zero. As we see, all this requires a complex interpenetration of genuinely symbolic performances; and accordingly, we need not be surprised at a person with aphasia’s failures in this domain. For even where he has at his command the numerical series as a rigid series, he is, in spite of this, never able to use it differently than in this rigid sense. To grasp the significance of a certain number, to correctly infer its position within the total system, he must start from one and, as it were, grope his way to it step by step. When asked which of two numbers, for example 13 or 25, is larger, many people with aphasia, in so far as they can answer



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

291

the question at all, can only do so by counting through the whole series from 1 to 25 aloud, and then determining that in this process the word “twenty-­five” comes after the word “thirteen.” A true understanding for the relative magnitude of the two numbers is not, however, achieved by this process. For such an understanding presupposes something else and something more: it requires that taken in themselves, the two numbers, whose magnitude is being compared, can be taken in themselves and can be referred to zero as the common starting point of counting. And it is no less characteristic that the patient should become confused when, as in the problems of written addition and subtraction, they are expected not only to use individual figures as numerical signs but also to distinguish the positional value of these figures. For here again, it is a question of the same difficult change of “viewpoint.” The same sensible sign, such as the character for the figure 2, has at the same time a numerical value and a positional value. And it can vary in its significance: it can stand either for 2, 20, or 200. A similar difficulty arises when the patient is asked to undertake any other performance requiring him to move within a numerical system that is constructed of several unities standing in a fixed relation to one another. This is the case in regard to time when, for example, he is asked to indicate a certain hour of the day by setting a clock and, in respect to number, when within a certain system of values, a monetary system for example, he is asked to compare and contrast coins of different denominations. Head devised testing methods for both performances, which he systematically applied to all his patients. The clock test showed that even those patients who could read the time correctly from a clock were unable to set a clock at a given time. Often, they confused the significance of the big and little hands of the clock and were unable to distinguish between “to” and “after” in indications such as twenty minutes to or ten minutes after.83 Analogously, in the use of coins, many patients were found to have retained the ability to use them correctly in daily life but had lost all understanding for their “abstract” value. In general, they made no mistake as to the type and number of the coins given to them as change for a larger coin when they made a purchase; this performance, however, was not based on a definite reckoning or an estimation of the relative value of individual coins, since they were frequently able to indicate these relative values (for example, how many pennies to a shilling) only inaccurately if at all.84

291

292

292

the problem of representation

Thus, all these disorders of temporal and numerical consciousness point in the same direction as we have observed in disorders of spatial consciousness: they seem to be essentially grounded in the difficulty to create fixed systems of reference [Bezugssystem] for the apprehension of spatial, temporal, and numerical relationships and to transition freely from one to another. In regard to space, a person with aphasia is unable to posit planes of coordinates and to transition from one to another: the transformation of coordinates is impossible for him. And this again points back to our earlier reflections. For if we recall the case of color-­name amnesia, the actual basis of the disorder seemed to be that the patient was too closely involved with his individual, optical lived-­experiences given here and now to be able to confront and refer to certain outstanding points in the color series as centers. He clung, as it were, to the sensible coherence of lived-­experiences: he was able to advance from one member of the color series to the next but could not refer to far-­ removed color shades, to one another indirectly, through the medium of definite general color concepts. Moreover, he shifted between different “directions of attention” (between the correlation of colors according to their basic tone and according to their brightness) and could not keep the two sharply and securely apart from each other: he did not transition consciously from one to the other but slipped unaware from one into the other. This slipping, this inability to adhere to a specific manner of “sight” [Sicht] and, on the other hand, to freely distinguish between different modes of sight [Sicht] also seems to be the basic fundamental deficiency underlying the individual pathological deviations in a person with aphasia’s intuition of space and time as well as in their representation of number and from which they can be uniformly comprehended. We acquire a new confirmation of this view if we look back from the point we have now reached to the problems of “optical agnosia.” At first sight, to be sure, it seems to concern entirely different relationships: the case of “psychic [Seele] blindness” described by Gelb and Goldstein showed none of the more obvious aphasic disorders. The patient expressed himself fluently and often with striking clarity and sharpness, and his linguistic understanding demonstrated no clearly recognizable defects. And yet a closer examination revealed certain “disorders of intelligence,” which corresponded exactly to the observations made by Head and others in their studies of people with aphasia. He too had completely



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

293

lost all true sense of the concept of number, although he was able to “reckon” in a certain mechanical sense – that is, to perform certain elementary problems of arithmetic. He solved all these problems, however, by reducing them to a simple process of counting. He had, for example, relearned the multiplication table, which he had forgotten immediately after his injury; however, when asked how much 5 × 7 was, he could answer only by beginning with 1 × 7 = 7, 2 × 7 = 14, and continuing on in the form of serial speech until he reached 5 × 7. The same was true of addition: if, for example, he was asked to find the sum of 4 + 4, he counted on the fingers of his left hand from the little finger to the pointer and continued from the thumb of his left hand to the middle finger of his right hand. Then he folded in the ring finger and little finger and ran through the whole series of fingers again (from the little finger of his left hand to the middle finger of the right hand), until finally he arrived at the result, 8: Nevertheless, with this result, the patient had no cognitive “insight” into the relationships of number and magnitudes; he was unable to answer whether, for example, 3 or 7 was larger, except by the roundabout method of reciting the whole numerical series beginning from 1 and so establishing that 7 comes “after” 3. Nor had he the slightest insight into the interconnection between different numerical and arithmetical operations: if, for example, in finding the product of 2 × 6 and that of 3 × 4, he arrived at the result, 12, he was, nevertheless, unable to recognize a substantive connection between the two operations; he declared that they were “absolutely different.” By means of his “counting,” he is able to solve a problem such as (5 + 4 –­4); it was, however, impossible to make him understand that the result could be arrived at without all this counting, since the two operations of counting four steps forward and four steps backward canceled each other out. Confirming this, the patient explained that while he connected a definite intuitive sense [Sinn] with other words, such as with the word “house,” numerals possessed no such meaning [Sinn]: for him, they had become meaningless [bedeutungslos] signs.85 Aside from this impediment in the domain of reckoning, however, careful observation revealed another rather obscure disorder in the patient’s thinking and speech. Although his thinking and speech at first sight demonstrated no noteworthy deviation from the thinking and speech of a healthy individual, the patient’s thinking and speech broke

293

294

294

295

the problem of representation

down as soon as he was pressed to apprehend correctly an analogy or to apprehend correctly a linguistic metaphor. For the most part, he showed here a total disorientation – he neither made use of analogies and metaphors in his own thinking and speaking nor was it possible to explain their sense to him. He simply rejected them entirely. In every case, he lacked understanding for the true tertium comparationis [the third part of the comparison].86 And perhaps even more remarkable than this feature was another trait that could be observed in the patient’s linguistic behavior. He is unable to repeat anything other than the “actual” state of affairs that as such corresponded directly to his own concrete-­sensible lived-­experiences. In the course of a conversation that took place on a bright sunny day, I pronounced the sentence, “It is bad, rainy weather today” and asked him to repeat this sentence but he was unable to do so. He said the first words easily and surely, but then the patient faltered and paused, and nothing could induce him to complete the sentence in the form given him; each time he slipped into another form of the sentence that corresponded with the actual facts. Another “psychic [Seele] blindness” patient whom I saw in the Frankfurt Neurological Institute had suffered a serious hemiplegia and was unable to move his right arm. He could not repeat the sentence: “I can write well with my right hand”; he always replaced the wrong word “right” with the correct word “left.” At first sight, there seems to be no relation between these two disorders, between the impediment in reckoning and the disorders in the use of language, analogy, and metaphor – they seem to belong to entirely separate domains. And yet when we look back at the results of our previous investigation, do we not find a common factor? Is it not the same impairment and inhibition of “symbolic behavior” that is expressed in the counting disorder as in the speech disorder? We have already seen the importance of symbolic behavior for arithmetical reckoning, for meaningfully operating with numbers and numerical magnitudes. To solve such a simple problem as (7 + 3) or (7 –­3) not mechanically but with understanding, one must consider the natural number series in a twofold perspective. It is used at the same time as an “enumerating series” and as an “enumerated series.” In every such calculation, the numerical series undergoes a mirrored reflection, as it were, a kind of reflection in itself. The process of counting begins first with one and unfolds the series of “natural numbers” in a fixed and determinate



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

295

order. It does not, however, stop here; rather, at every point [Stelle] in this series, the same operation can and must begin again. When I construct the sum of 7 + 3, this means that the beginning of the “natural number series” is moved seven points [Stellen] and that a new enumeration begins at the new starting point thus gained. Now 0 corresponds to the former 7, 1 to the former 8, etc. – and the solution of the problem consists simply in the insight that the 10, or in subtraction the 4, of the first series corresponds to the 3 of the second series. To express it schematically, we have here beside the base series (a) two derived series (b and c) which are correlated with it in a definite and unequivocal way:

↓

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 . . . . . . (a) ↓          0 1 2  3  . . . . . .(b)       3 2 1 0 (c) ↓

↓

In every operation of arithmetic, a transition must be effected from the base series to one of these derived series and back again (as indicated by the arrows in our diagram). It is, however, precisely this placing of the “same” numerical value in different modes of counting that seems impossible for the patient. In order to perform the operation not mechanically but meaningfully, the patient would have to begin a new counting, either forward or backward from 7, in other words to “regard” 7 as 0, 8 or 6 as 1, etc. This regarding of 7 as 0 (while at the same time keeping it in mind as 7) is a difficult task, a purely representative [repräsentativ] performance. The 7 must remain what it is, and its relation to the original 0 must be retained; in the course of the calculation, however, the 7 can and must at the same time represent [vertreten] and stand in “for” the original 0 (and in the course of other operations for any other desired number). While continuing to be 7, it can nevertheless function as 0, as 1, as 2, and so on.87 It is this multiple function of one and the same number that the patient was unable to understand: the patient was not able to adopt the simultaneous and spontaneous attitude toward different focal points, in different lines of vision. We have already seen this in the case of color-­name amnesia, where the patient was likewise unable to regard an individual, concretely given color phenomenon as this particular phenomenon while at the same time considering it “in respect” to its base tone or brightness and

296

296

297

the problem of representation

to differentiate these directions of observation clearly and sharply from one another. Similarly, the psychic [Seele] blindness patient cannot comprehend that one may start a new numerical series with the number seven, thus treating this number as 0. “If the patient was given the problem of counting on from 7 and prevented from actually counting softly beginning with 1, he could not do so. He admitted ‘that he became confused, because he had no point of support.’ ”88 As we can see, this corresponds exactly – even the wording is similar – to the pronouncement [Äußerung] of Head’s patient who declared that he could not draw a schematic drawing of his room, because it was difficult or impossible for him to fix an arbitrarily selected point as a “starting point.”89 And from here, we can now understand the interconnection between the patient’s inability to use linguistic analogies and metaphors correctly and his general psychic-­intellectual [seelisch-­geistig] mindset. The performance required here is the same, or at least similar in principle. For a correct understanding and correct use of metaphors require that the same word be “taken” in a different significance. Aside from what it immediately and sensibly re-­presented [vergegenwartigen], it has another mediated and “transferred” sense [Sinn]: the understanding of the metaphor depends on successfully transitioning from one sphere of sense to another, to “adjust” to one significance and then to another. Again, it is this spontaneous change of “viewpoint” that has become difficult or impossible for the patient. He clings to what is present [Präsent], to the sensibly demonstrable and available that he cannot substitute at will with something else that is not available. His language follows the same basic tendency; he succeeds in forming a sentence when he has solid support in the given, in the immediately experienced [Erlebten]. Without this support, however, he is rudderless – he cannot venture out on the high seas of thinking, which is a thinking not only of realities but also of possibilities. The patient is thus able to “state” [aussagen] only what is factual and available, not what is merely imagined or possible.90 For this requires precisely that a present [gegenwärtig] content be treated as though it were not present [gegenwärtig], that one “disregard” [absehen] it and “look toward” [hinsehen] another purely ideal end point. This subsuming of one and the same element of experience in different, equally possible, contexts of relation [Relationszusammenhänge], and the simultaneous orientation in and through these relations, is a basic performance required for thinking in



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

297

analogies as well as for operating understandingly with numbers and numerical signs. The Greek language uses the word ‘analogy’ in precisely this twofold sense, to designate certain linguistic-­logical relationships as well as certain arithmetical relationships. Here analogy is still the general term for the concept of relationship, the concept of “proportion” in general: a linguistic usage that has been preserved down to Kant and his treatment of the “analogies of experience” in the Critique of Pure Reason. It expresses a basic tendency of relational thinking – which is equally indispensable for apprehending the “sense” of number and the “sense” of relational thought formulated in language – of a linguistic “metaphor.” Dedekind, a modern mathematician, reduces the whole system of “natural numbers,” in his book Was sind und was sollen die Zahlen? [What are Numbers and what Should They Be?], to a single basic logical function: he considers this system to be grounded in the “faculty of spirit . . . to relate things to things, to let a thing correspond to a thing, or to picture [abbilden] a thing in a thing.”91 Such a “picturing” [Abbildung] – not in an imitative sense but in a purely symbolic sense – is equally requisite for the analogous [sinngemäß] and meaningful accomplishment of an arithmetical operation as it is for the analogous comprehending of a linguistic analogy. In both cases, a positing that was previously understood in an “absolute” sense is transformed into a relative positing. It is with this transformation that the patient with “psychic [Seele] blindness” repeatedly encountered difficulties: just as he always took the number 7 as 7 and never at the same time as 0, so too could he understand language only when he could take everything that was said to him “literally.”92 Light is thrown on the interconnection between the individual slips in the domains of aphasic and agnostic disorders from still another, different side. We have so far sought to find, as it were, an intellectual denominator in the disorders of counting and reckoning as well as ones in the understanding and use of linguistic analogies – however, now we shall add other disorders that go hand in hand with these but that, theoretically speaking, seem unrelated to them at first sight. Head devised and systematically applied a series of tests in which the patient’s task was to repeat exactly the movements made by the doctor who sat facing him. The doctor pointed with his right hand to his right eye, with his left hand to his left ear – or in more difficult tests with his right hand

298

298

299

300

the problem of representation

to his left eye, etc. – and the doctor then asked the patients to perform the same movement. In most cases, mistakes and misunderstandings resulted: instead of making the symmetrically corresponding movements, the patient very often made movements that were merely congruous. If, for example, the doctor touched his left eye with his left hand, the movement as such was repeated but the patient used his right hand, which was directly opposite the doctor’s left hand. But except in those cases where a deficient understanding of language prevented the patient from clearly apprehending the nature of the task, the error vanished almost entirely as soon as the doctor, instead of sitting opposite the patient, sat beside him and had him observe in a mirror the movements he was to reproduce. Head’s explanation for this was that in the latter case, the patient performed a mere act of imitation: a perceived act was merely imitated, while in the former case, such an imitation did not suffice, and before it could be correctly reproduced, the movement had to be transposed into a linguistic formula. He could perform the action as long as it called for nothing more than a direct reproduction of a sense impression: he failed where an act of “inner speech,” of “symbolic formulation” was required.93 We do not contradict this explanation – however, we believe on the basis of our preceding theoretical considerations that we are able to grasp more generally the character and particular nature of this “symbolic” formulation and at the same time determine it more sharply. For if we look back at these considerations, we can see that the core of the difficulty lies not so much in the transposition of sense perception into words as, one might say, in transposition as such. If the patient is to correctly repeat the movements of the doctor facing him, it will not suffice to copy those movements mechanically; rather, he must have previously undertaken a kind of exchange of “sense” of those movements, as it were. What is “right” from the doctor’s point of view is “left” from the patient’s point of view, and vice versa; the correct movement can be made only when this difference has been clearly apprehended and in every individual case taken into account, when the action is “transposed” from the doctor’s system of reference to that of the patient. In the present case, as in the connection with arithmetical reckoning as well as in the endeavor to understand a metaphor as such, this conversion, this transposition and transformation, is unsuccessful.94



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

299

We are not imposing here an artificial interpretation on the clinical phenomena to make them fit into the unity and coherence of our “systematics”; rather, the phenomena themselves point entirely in the direction of this explanation. Not infrequently, patients stressed this character of the disorder with surprising sharpness and pregnancy by comparing the difficulty of the task before them with that of translating [Übersetzung] a text from a foreign language into their mother tongue.95 Here language was formed only gradually into an organ of purely relational thinking, and precisely this was one of its highest and most difficult achievements. It also begins from the presentation of individual concrete-­intuitive determinations, steadily transforming itself through various intermediate stages into a logical expression of relationship.96 The problem that concerns us here, however, does not belong, admittedly, exclusively to the sphere of language and linguistic concept formation, nor can it be fully elucidated within this sphere. The “pathology of symbolic consciousness” compels us to take a broader framing of this problem, because it is manifested in certain disorders of action no less than it is in disorders of speech and perceptual cognition. Alongside the symptoms of aphasia as well as optical and tactile agnosia occur the symptoms of apraxia. We shall now attempt to draw the symptoms of apraxia into the ambit of our general problem. We shall accomplish this by asking whether and to what extent the “apractic” disorders also give us a deeper insight into the structural laws of action, in much the same way as the agnostic and aphasic disorders helped us to apprehend more sharply the theoretical construction and distinctive articulation of the world of perception.

5.  THE PATHOLOGICAL DISORDERS OF ACTION It was observed early that the disorders of language that were grouped together under the concept of aphasia and the disorders of perceptual cognizing that have been designated as optical or tactile agnosia are connected to certain disorders of action. And these observations repeatedly brought forth the insight that in the symptom complex of aphasia and agnosia, it could not be any strictly defined individual performances that were damaged or destroyed but that the “intelligence” in general must be in some way impaired. If with Pierre Marie, we were

301

302

300

303

the problem of representation

to take this “intellectual deterioration” as the cause of aphasia, then it would seem not only understandable but even virtually necessary that this deterioration should make itself felt not only in the domain of the patient’s linguistic understanding and in his linguistic utterances [Äußerungen] but also in the domain of doing, in his practical behavior. And indeed, observation often showed grave impairments in this sphere. When asked to do so, patients were still able to carry out a certain simple action correctly; they were not, however, able to correctly perform a complex act that was composed of such partial actions. At the doctor’s bidding, a patient could, for example, show his tongue, close his eyes, or hold out his hand – his performance became uncertain and flawed, however, as soon as he was required to perform several such acts at once.97 Even greater disorders of this sort stand out even more clearly when the patient is confronted with a question involving choice – when in a concrete situation he must choose between “yes” or “no.” For example, he could correctly answer when asked whether he wants to go out or whether he wants to stay home if the questions were presented to him individually, whereas he could not properly apprehend the question when asked whether he preferred one or the other. In one of Head’s tests, a number of objects of daily use – a knife, a pair of scissors, a key – were set on the table before the patient, and he was asked to compare these objects with others that were either shown to him or placed in his hand. Many of the patients were able to carry out this task without error as long as it was merely a question of indicating the duplicate object [Objekt] on the table of the one tactically or optically presented to them; they became confused, however, as soon as two or more objects were held out to them at the same time. The act of comparison between the model and the duplicate was then performed hesitantly or faultily if at all.98 Indeed, in other cases, a patient could perform a certain action automatically but not produce it voluntarily: for example, he could stick out his tongue to moisten his lips, but he could not do so without such a cause when the doctor asked him to.99 In all, this it seems unmistakable that a person with aphasia’s disorder interferes with or transforms not only the form of his thinking and his perception but also of his will and voluntary action. With this, the question arises for us as to whether this transformation indicates a specific tendency that can be uniformly observed and as to whether the



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

301

investigation of this tendency can serve to provide further insights into the basic theoretical problem that is central to our consideration. Nevertheless, before posing the question in this general form, we must define more precisely the “symptom of apraxia” as it is established by clinical observations and examine it in its finer particularizations. Hugo Liepmann in the course of his seminal research in this domain first attempted a sharp conceptual separation compared to the diversity of clinical symptoms. Liepmann takes the general concept of “apraxia” to include every disorder in voluntary movements pursuing a definite purpose, provided that this disorder is conditioned neither by a lack of mobility in the pertinent limb nor by a deficient perceptual cognizing of the objects [Objekte] toward which the doing is directed. In apraxia, the mobility of the limbs is retained as such, the impairment is due neither to paralysis nor paresis, and the patient’s mistakes in action are not brought about by a miscognition of objects. In cases of miscognition, such as they occur in optical or tactile agnosia, we should not speak of an apraxia in the strict sense: Whoever uses an object wrongly because they miscognize it, their action, their πράττειν [doing], is obviously quite correct in itself but only turned about because of faulty presuppositions. The action itself is entirely in keeping with the presuppositions. Whoever takes a toothbrush for a cigar acts quite correctly when they attempt to smoke it.100

This general definition of apraxia can be further differentiated, according to Liepmann, into two basic forms of the disorder. The correct execution of an action can be impeded either by the misguided intent in the design [Entwurf] of the action, in the “idea” he initially had, or by the fact that, although the project [Entwurf] may have been correct, when the will attempts to carry out the project, one or another part of the limb did not obey its “command.” In the first case, Liepmann speaks of ideational apraxia and in the second case of motor apraxia. In ideational apraxia, the “intention” of the total action and the decomposition of this intention into individual parts of the act have been affected in some way. So that the parts of the act may intermesh in the right way, so that they come together into the whole of an action, they must be intended and performed in a certain order; it is this that seems to be disturbed in ideational

304

302

305

306

the problem of representation

apraxia. The individual components of a complex structure of an action are confused or temporally inverted here. If, for example, a cigar and a match box are put into the patient’s hand, he opens the box and presses it as though it were a cigar cutter; then, instead of taking out a match, he rubs the cigar on the side of the match box.101 The movements that are made here do in fact belong to the required movement pattern, but they are performed neither with the requisite completeness nor in the regular sequence. In the case of “motor apraxia,” there is no pathological change in the plan of movement; rather, in general, the plan of movement is comprehended correctly, but it cannot be translated properly into action as in the case of healthy individuals. The limb affected by the ailment refuses, as it were, to obey the will: it no longer takes the direction that the will prescribes. This manifested itself most conspicuously where an individual limb is excluded in this way, as it were, from the general organization of willing and performing, while the other limbs have preserved their ability to carry out purposeful movements. In the famous case of Liepmann’s “Regierungsrat” [senior civil servant], which has become a kind of classic in the literature on aphasia, the simplest movements went wrong when the patient attempted to perform them with his right hand, but he could, in general, perform the same actions faultlessly with his left hand. Thus, it cannot be said here that the patient’s “I” – that he himself as a unitary subject – lacked the proper understanding of the task or was deficient in any other psychological-­intellectual [geistig] conditions required for its solution. With his left hand, for example, the patient could remove the stopper from a bottle and pour himself a glass of water, so demonstrating that intellectually he mastered all the individual movements that enter into this action sequence and knew how to arrange them in the proper order. The whole “ideational process” proceeded quite normally; the fact that he nevertheless was unable to carry out the same performance with his right hand proves that the disorder was not in the ideational process but in its transference to the motor mechanism of the right hand. In this case, the apraxia is not a total psychic disorder but rather a “disorder by limbs” [Störung nach Gliedmassen]: it shows that the whole sensomotor apparatus of a certain individual limb can “split off” from the total psychological [seelisch] process.102 The patients themselves seem to sense this peculiar “splitting off.” One



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

303

person with left-­side aphraxia observed by Heilbronner complained that he could not trust his left hand; although his right hand would remain where he put it, he could never set his left hand down in the same way: from time to time, it performed certain movements that he had not intended. The patient never referred to the actions of this hand as his own: he felt that those actions did not belong to him in any way and linguistically spoke of those actions in the third person.103 There can be little doubt that pathological disorders of this kind are of crucial significance for the entire psychology of “action,” that they open up a deeper insight into the central problems of the “will” and of voluntary motion. In the context of our basic question, however, we must for the present disregard these appearances of “motor” or “kinetic” apraxia in order to turn toward the phenomena that Liepmann subsumes under the term “ideational apraxia.” For it is precisely here that “theory” and “practice” border on each other: here we find that the form of doing is inseparably bound up with the form of thinking and representing. And now a general question arises: What is the mode, what is the tendency and direction, of “representing” [Vorstellen] that characterizes our voluntary actions and specifically distinguishes them from actions of other kinds? Can we demonstrate here the difference that has been confirmed in the previous consideration – the difference between an “immediate” and a “mediated” form of action, between a “presentative” [präsentativer] and a “representative” [repräsentativer] attitude of spirit, between a clinging to the sense impression and to sensible objects and an attitude that detaches itself from this bond and transitions into a symbolic-­ideal sphere? One of the best-­known and thoroughly observed phenomenon in the domain of apractic disorders consists in the fact that the symptoms are also subject here to the most striking variations in as much as the observer contents themself with listing the individual performances of which the patient is capable. It soon becomes evident that here, as in the description of aphasic disorders, no sharp and unequivocal result can be achieved in this way. Just as the impairment of speech cannot be derived from the patient’s mere use of words and that under certain conditions a patient may have command of a word that is denied him under other conditions, so too is this valid for action and the carrying out of specific movements. There are situations in which such

307

304

308

the problem of representation

movements are accomplished without difficulty, whereas in other situations, they completely breakdown. A patient may not, for example, be able to act out a threatening movement – however, as soon as he himself is in a rage, he carries out the threatening movement absolutely correctly. Another patient cannot raise his hand as if to make an oath when asked to do so; however, he places it in the correct position as soon as the words of the oath are recited to him. To express differences [Differenzen] of this kind, a distinction has been made between “concrete” and “abstract” movements. Abstract movements refer to isolated, voluntary movements made on demand; concrete movements refer to those movements of everyday life that are made more or less automatically in certain situations. One of Goldstein’s patients, whose power to perform any “abstract” movements whatsoever was gravely impaired, was not seriously hampered by this impairment in his everyday performances: he washed himself alone, he shaved himself, he arranged all his things, he could operate a faucet, turn on the light, etc. All these activities could only be done, however, provided that they were carried out on the object [Gegenstand] itself, on the actual object [Objekt]. If the patient was asked to knock on the door, he could do so as long as the door was within reach; however, the knocking movement, though begun, was broken off at once if he was withdrawn one step from the door, which thus prevented him from actually touching it with his hand. Similarly, the patient could hammer in a nail if he stood directly by the wall with the hammer in his hand; however, as soon as the nail was taken away from him and he was asked merely to indicate the motion of hammering, he stopped still, or at best made an indeterminate movement that differed unmistakably from the one he had previously executed. If a scrap of paper was laid on the table, he could blow it away when asked to, but once the paper was taken away, he could not make the same motion of blowing. The same was true of the purely expressive movements; the patient was not able to laugh on request, but he laughed perfectly well when a comical remark was made in the course of the conversation.104 Even where the desired movement is performed for patients of this kind, they are seldom able to imitate it – or the imitation takes place in such a way that it does not repeat the movement as a whole but merely attempts to build it up piece by piece from the separate parts that are apprehended.



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

305

Even where the imitation seems to be relatively successful in its outward effect, the general type of the action is altered. If one drew a circle [for the patient], he kept looking back and forth between the doctor who made the movements and his own hand. It could be seen plainly that he imitated the movement part for part. . . . Thus, what he inscribed was not really a circle, but only short lines which he strung together, and which produced an effect somewhat similar to a circle, but which was, strictly speaking, a many-­sided polygon. How far he was from inscribing a circle was plainly shown by the fact that a sudden alteration in the movements that he was watching would make him abruptly transform the circular shape he had begun into an ellipse or any other figure.105

We have attempted here to give an account of only certain characteristic features of the symptoms of apraxia: we will now pause and ask how these features are to be theoretically assessed. Once again, as in connection with aphasic disorders, the loss of certain “mnemonic images” was customarily regarded as the actual cause of the altered behavior of the patient. Just as disorders in the understanding of words or the use of writing were explained by the loss of “phonetic images” or “graphic images,” these alterations in the doing were also explained essentially by way of the impairment of the “recollection,” of the ability to reawaken previous impressions, particularly impressions in the kinesthetic domain. Under the influence of Wernicke, who sought to apply this explanation to the whole domain of “asymbolic” disorders, Liepmann initially located the basic condition for the pathological alterations of action in the fact that for the patient, the recollection of certain learnt forms of motion was extinguished all together or was at the very least difficult to awaken, so that, in the handling [of objects [Objekte], for example,] it emerged only with the help of the optical-­tactile-­kinesthetic impressions flowing from the objects [Objekte] in question.

This inability to carry out movements from recollection – an inability that is by no means limited to expressive movements but is manifested in

309

306

310

the problem of representation

familiar manipulations of objects [Objekte] – appeared to Liepmann as the core of the “apraetic” disorders.106 It seems, however, that in the long run, this theory, by which apraxia was essentially reduced to an impairment of the purely reproductive occurrences, did not satisfy Liepmann, and so he sought to refine and modify it. The first thing that spoke against this view was the fact that he recognized and stressed107 that deficiencies quite analogous to those that manifested themselves in the “free” movement of the patient also tended to occur where it was a question of the simple imitation of movements. If the patient is unable to perform a certain movement merely because he cannot reawaken its mnemonic image, should he not at least be able to repeat it when someone else performs it for him and so recalls it directly to his memory? And in other respects, as well, this type of explanation seems unable to do justice either to the subtler features of the symptoms of apraxia that were observed by Liepmann or to the specific character of the anomalies at issue here. When Goldstein, in the Frankfurt Neurological Institute, demonstrated to me the case of his patient Schn., of whom we have spoken, one of the strangest and most remarkable features that struck me was the fact that after performing a movement perfectly correctly, the patient would interrupt it as soon as the objective “substrate,” as it were, was taken away from him. Standing by the door, he had just correctly carried out the movement of knocking with his left hand, but he stopped as soon as he was removed even one step from the door; the upraised arm remained in midair as though spellbound, and nothing the doctor could say could impel him to continue the corresponding movement. Are we really to suppose that in this case the mnemonic image [Erinnerungsbild] of the knocking movement, a movement that he had carried out only a few seconds before, had vanished from the patient’s memory? Or was the deficient kinesthetic mnemonic image [Gedächtnisbild] of blowing to blame if the patient who had blown the scrap of paper from the table a moment before could not repeat his movement when asked to do so without the object to blow, as it were, into the void? So peculiar a phenomenon obviously requires another and deeper explanation than can be provided by a mere return to mechanisms of association. Goldstein attempted to give such an explanation by pointing out the fundamental dependency of all movements and especially of all “abstract,” voluntary actions on optical occurrences. By means of the example of his two cases of



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

307

“psychic [Seele] blindness,” he was able to show how all deterioration of optical recognition and optical representing tended to be linked with a grave impairment in the ability to move and act in general. In the final analysis, the reason for this fact, he believed, was that every voluntary movement we perform occurs through a definite medium and against a certain “background.” “We do not effect our movements in an ‘empty’ space, unrelated [beziehungslos] to them, but in a space that stands in a very specific relation to them; actually, movement and background are only artificially separable elements of a unitary whole.” The fact that the patient with psychic [Seele] blindness, whose optical-­spatial lived-­experience was severely damaged, is no longer able to create for himself an optically grounded medium for his movements explains why these movements as a whole are bound to be gravely hampered or at least to show a “form” that is different from those of the healthy individual. Even when these movements seem relatively well preserved in terms of their effect, they nevertheless are constructed from an entirely different foundation: the “background” has shifted from the optical to the kinesthetic domain. Goldstein sees an important and dramatic difference [Differenz] between the optically grounded background and the kinesthetically grounded background above all in the fact that the latter is much less susceptible of free variation: While the optically grounded background is independent of my body and its movements – optically represented space does not move with 311 the alteration in the location of my body, it is outside, fixed, we can execute our movements in different ways in it – the kinesthetically grounded background is much more intimately bound up with our body. A kinesthetically grounded surface always stands in a determinate relationship to my body, the kinesthetic representative image of writing contains from the outset a writing surface in a very determinate location vis-­à-­ vis my body, whereas I bring my body to the optically grounded writing surface.

In one of Goldstein’s cases of psychic [Seele] blindness, the patient characteristically showed that his space was always oriented toward the actual location of his body. “Above” always signified for this patient the direction toward his head, “below” the direction toward his feet – if, for example, he was lying on a sofa, he could not correctly indicate

308

the problem of representation

the upper and lower parts of the room. All the movements he made in writing or drawing were always in approximately the same plane, which was not quite vertical but tilted a little backward. He had learned this location to be the most comfortable one in which to write when standing up: [However,] he was not able to transpose this plane, i.e. write on another plane. If he was requested to do so, he had to laboriously create a new plane for this desired movement. . . . When pressed, for example, to draw a circle on a horizontal plane, he pressed the upper part of both arms tight against his body, held his forearms at right angles . . . and made pendulum-­like movements of his trunk so that his forearms moved in an approximately horizontal direction. Then on the basis of his kinesthetic sensations, he identified the plane on which his forearms were moving as the horizontal and performed the circular movement108 in it as described. Since the kinesthetically grounded plane is firmly anchored, an alteration in the position of the body as a whole correspondingly altered the plane that was most comfortable for him. This we could demonstrate very simply by letting him write first in a standing and then in a recumbent position. The plane in which he wrote always took the same location relative to his body; the two planes were then of course at right angles to each other, and the two body positions as well.109 312

Once again, we have here a highly characteristic and significant feature for our purposes: it is precisely this difficulty or inability to “transpose,” to vary freely the system of reference, that we have encountered in the most diverse kinds of performances of people with aphasia or agnostics, that generally seemed to be a core part of their “intellectual” disorder. We repeatedly encounter this same inability in the doing of the patient, in their performance of arithmetic, in the form of their orientation in space, in their linguistic utterances [Äußerungen]. However – we must ask for this very reason – can this very general alteration that is exhibited in the patients’ behavior really be adequately explained by the altered form of their optical lived-­experience? Or must we not rather seek a more general cause in keeping with the generality of the disorder?



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

309

To begin with, Goldstein’s detailed clinical observations of his patient Schn. show that in performing certain actions, this patient required the help of tactile as much as optical experience. Even if he continued to look at the door, he could no longer carry out the same knocking movement once he was prevented from reaching the door, from actually touching it. The “projected action” broke down not only if its optical but also if its tactile support was taken away – if the door was hidden from his view or if it was removed from his immediately “graspable” vicinity. On the other hand, we have seen that the fundamental difficulty in “transposition” is not found only in those patients whose optical cognizing and imagining [Vorstellen] were in particular seriously impaired. We have also encountered this difficulty even in cases of people with aphasia whose optical representing is virtually intact. In Head’s hand, eye, and ear tests, the cause of the faulty solutions was not any deficiency in the patients’ optical lived-­experience: as soon as the doctor stood behind them and let them watch the doctor’s movements in the mirror, they were in general able to repeat the movements perfectly.110 We find here, it seems to me, a hint that shows us in which direction the alteration in action moves in the cases aphasia as well as in those of optical agnosia. I remember that the same patient of Goldstein whose “apraxic” disorder we have just considered also showed what seemed at first sight to be a highly remarkable speech disorder. He had some difficulty in repeating sentences said by others; the degree of disorder, however, depended on the content of what was said. He correctly repeated “I can write well with my left hand,” whereas he could not utter the same sentence if the word “right” were substituted for “left.” For then, he would have been saying something “unactual” [Unwirklich], since his one-­sided paralysis prevented him from moving his right hand.111 Is it not the same limitation, the same “attachment to the object” [Objekt] and to the concrete, objective “location of things” that is disclosed in the patient’s activity overall? In every case, he was able to effectively act [wirken] only toward an actual [wirklich], sensibly given and available object [Objekt], not toward a merely imagined object [Objekt]. As long as he had this support in the real object [Objekt], he carried out the performances that differed hardly at all from those of the healthy individual. He possessed an adequate orientation in space: in his usual surroundings, he oriented himself perfectly well, so that, for example, he could move around the hospital by himself, find the door

313

310

314

the problem of representation

to his room without difficulty, etc. All these capabilities, however, forsook him when, instead of moving in a fixed “thing-­space,” the patient was expected to move in a space of free fantasy. He hammered the nail into the wall properly; however, this movement, which had just been performed, was suddenly inhibited as soon as its sensible-­tangible foundation was removed. He could not repeat the movement by hammering into the “void.” Heilbrenner reports that many of his patients, when they were asked to perform movements without the requisite object [Objekt] – the gesture of counting money, opening a door, etc. – they first paused to reflect and then went through the strangest probing motions with their fingers and contortions of the joints, making all sorts of “grimaces of the extremities,” accompanied by evident anger and dissatisfaction. One of these patients, a pharmacist, who was asked to perform the movement of rolling pills with his apractic left hand, described this as a “puzzling task.”112 Another patient was able to handle all the objects of everyday use correctly as long as they were given to him in the customary way and under the usual circumstances; he failed, however, as soon as they were given to him under unaccustomed circumstances. At mealtime in the dining room, he handled spoons, glasses, etc. like any healthy individual, but at other times, he made perfectly senseless motions with these same objects [Objekte].113 We see here how the individual actions have preserved their sense within specific concrete situations but how they have at the same time become fused, as it were, with those situations, how they cannot be extracted from these situations and be used independently. What complicates this free use does not seem to be so much the patient’s inability to create a sensible, optical space as the medium and background for his movements, as the fact that he possesses no “scope” [Spielraum: play-­space] for them. For the latter is a formation [Gebilde] of the “productive imagination”: it demands that we can transpose the present [Gegenwärtige] with the nonpresent [Nichtgegenwärtige], the actual with the possible. A healthy individual can perform the movement of hammering a nail just as well into a merely “imagined” [vorgestellt] wall as into an actual wall, because in free activity he is able to vary the elements [Elemente] of the sensibly given, because he transposes “in thought” something available [Vorhanden] here and now with something else that is not available [Nichtvorhanden], and substitute the latter for the former.



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

311

As we have seen, however, this form of variation, this form of substitution, is seriously impeded in these patients. Their movements and actions have something stereotypical about them; they must be made only in fixed and customary channels and, as it were, in rigid combinations. The space in which they move relatively well and securely is the restricted space in which solid things [Sachen] meet – it is no longer the free and broad “symbolic space” of the imagination [Vorstellung]. The patient can wind a watch if it is put into his hand, even though this requires a highly complicated movement – he is not, however, able to “visualize” [vergegenwärtigen] this movement and perform it out of this pure visualization [Vergegenwärtigung] once its sensible substrate has been removed, once the watch has been taken from his hand.114 For this visualization [Vergegenwärtigung] presupposes more than a mere thing-­space: it requires a “schematic” space. This incapacity for schematization, for the movement not only within a spatial schema but also within an intellectual schema, was also manifested repeatedly in the linguistic performance of the patients, even when their ordinary understanding of words and sentences and their use of language in the framework [Rahmen] of everyday life was virtually unimpaired. Here again, the disorder is scarcely perceptible as long as the patient can hold fast to the object [Objekt] in his use of language, as long as he can progress from the designation of one concrete object [Gegenstand] to another; it becomes apparent, however, as soon as he is expected to substitute one object for another, to correctly apprehend or make use of a linguistic analogy or metaphor.115 This also gives a peculiar rigidity to his manner of speaking – it lacks the “scope” [Spielraum: play-­space] that first gives language its scope and mobility and makes it come to life. In both cases – in his speech as well as in his doing – it is precisely his power of “representation” [Repräsentation] that quickly fails, though he continues to be relatively successful in all the operations that can be accomplished by mere “presentation” [Präsentation].116 Accordingly, if we return to differences we made earlier, it is not so much the mode of “seeing” [Sehen] as the form of “sight” [Sicht] that seems to be impaired in these cases and that, once damaged, can affect the totality of the “project of movement [Bewegungsentwurf].” For every free project of movement requires a determinate kind of “sight” [Sicht] – a spiritual anticipation, a preview [Vorblick] into the to come

315

316

312

317

the problem of representation

[Künftig], into the merely possible. Sometimes it seems as if a patient suffering from apraxia correctly apprehends the representation of a specific goal; however, every new sensible stimulus offered him from outside can at once deflect him from his course and guide the action into a wrong direction. The thought of the goal – as Leprnann expresses it – is displaced by another “esthesiogenous” representation.117 In other cases, a more or less indeterminate representation of the goal seems to run through a certain sequence of the patient’s actions; it is, however, no longer apprehended sharply and clearly enough to place the whole action under one perspective and to organize it in accordance with this. The individual phases of the action form a mere aggregate; they are still executed vaguely “with one another,” but they are not interlocked “in one another” in the proper order. A teleological framework [Gefüge] is replaced by a mere flowing; the forming [Formung] by a purpose, which to each phase of action assigns its unequivocal place in the whole, its non-­ interchangeable temporal determination as well as a substantive [sachlich] determination is replaced here by a mere mosaic of partial acts, which slide into one another now this way and now that. The result is the form of loose action that Liepmann has described as “ideational apraxia.” “In the voluntary operations,” so early a writer as Jackson pointed out, “there is preconception.118 The operation is nascently done before it is actually done; there is a ‘dream’ of an operation as formerly doing before the operation.”119 The patient who in most cases can still correctly perform a certain action out of the immediate need and requirement of the moment [Augenblick] cannot “dream” in this way – cannot reach forward into the future with a mere projection [Entwurf]. Some patients who cannot pour themselves a glass of water when asked are able to do so when impelled by thirst.120 In general, the more the performance is immediately directed toward a specific goal, the more successful it will be, whereas it deteriorates in proportion as soon as the beginning and end are separated by a series of intermediary links that must be taken into account as such and evaluated in their significance for the action as a whole. This is strikingly shown, for example, by those of Head’s patients who complained that they were unable to effect “indirect” shots in billiards: they could hit a ball when they aimed directly at it but could not play “off the cushion” or from one ball to another through the intermediary of a third.121



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

313

For every such mediated performance is always a symbolic performance: it must tear itself away from the presence [Gegenwart] of the actual object [Objekt] and make evident in free visualization [Vergegenwärtigung] a mere thought, ideal goal. Here lies the same “reflective” attitude that characterizes language and is indispensable for its development. An impairment of this behavior impedes and inhibits the use not only of language but also of every other activity that – like the capacity to read or to write – deals with the “signs” for objects, with their signification rather than with these objects themselves. And we may observe here a similar gradation: in most cases it is not simply reading and writing that appear to be affected but also certain performances within them that most particularly disclose a deviation from the normal behavior. The more the performance requires a kind of “transposition,” a transition from one system to another to be executed correctly, the more evident the defects become. A text may be successfully copied if it can be straightforwardly copied, if it can be traced line for line; on the other hand, the transition from one kind of writing to another, the change for example from printing to handwriting, is difficult or impossible.122 Spontaneous writing may be gravely impeded, although the patient may still write relatively well from dictation. And once again, there may be remarkable differences here, according to whether the performance consists in the use of a well-­known or stereotypical formula or whether it consists in a free act of written utterance [Äußerung]. When asked, one of Head’s patients could write his own name and address correctly; however, he was unable to write his mother’s address, though she lived in the same house.123 Once again, it is not so much a question here of the matter of the performance as its form; once again, the criterion lies here not so much in the simple execution as in what this execution signifies when all the attendant circumstances and conditions are taken into consideration. At this point, however, we shall pause – for some time now, the impression has arisen in the philosophical reader that we have dwelled too long on our consideration of the pathological cases and gone into excessive detail. And yet this method could not be avoided if we wanted these cases to throw any real light on our general problem. The best and foremost authorities in this domain, whose guidance we have followed, agree that in the sphere of the described disorders, no general symptomology, no simple list of performances and deficiencies, can help us. Each

318

314

319

the problem of representation

case presents a new picture and demands to be understood out of its own particular center. For what is impaired is never any general “capacity” [Vermögen] – the capacity of speech or that of purposeful action, the ability to read or to write. As Head drastically formulated it, there are no such general faculties of this kind any more than there is a general faculty of eating or walking.124 Rather, such a substantial view must be replaced by a functional view: what we have here is not the loss of an ability but the change and transformation of a highly complex psychic-­ spiritual process. According to how the transformation affects this or that characteristic phase of the total process, different symptoms may arise, none of which need resemble the next in its unique and determinate individual traits and features but all of which are nevertheless linked together insofar as the alteration or deviation in all of them points in the same direction. We have sought to establish this general direction while laboring with the detail of individual cases as presented in the descriptions of the most thorough and precise observers: we have sought, in a manner of speaking, to reduce the aphasic, agnostic, and apractic disorders to a “common denominator.” This cannot signify, however, that we may regard the various representative-­symbolic performances that are the indispensable conditions for speech, perceptual cognizing, and action as manifestations [Äußerungen] of a “basic power,” that we may regard them as diverse activities of the “symbolic ability per se.” The “philosophy of symbolic forms” requires no such hypostases, nor, in view of its methodological presuppositions, can it admit of one. For what it is seeking is not so much similarities in being as similarities in sense. As a consequence, we must strive to bring the teachings of pathology, which cannot be ignored, into the more general problem of a philosophy of culture. Can the pathological alterations in speech and in the related basic symbolic performances provide a clue as to what these performances signify for the construction and the total structure [Gesamtgestalt] of culture? To distinguish the behavior of their patients from the “categorial” behavior of healthy individuals, Gelb and Goldstein have characterized it as “more primitive” and “closer to life.” And in fact, this term, “close to life,” applies if we include in the concept of life the totality of the organic-­ vital functions and compare this to the specifically spiritual functions. For what stands between these two spheres and what marks the sharp cut between them is precisely those spiritual formations [Gebilde] that may be



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

315

summed up in the unitary concept of “symbolic forms.” Long before it transitions into these forms, life is purposively configured in itself; it is oriented toward determinate goals. The knowledge of these goals, however, always implies a breach with this immediacy and “immanence” of life. All cognition of the world and all “spiritual” effective action [Wirken] on the world in the strict sense requires that the I thrust the world back from itself: in contemplation as in doing, the I acquires a certain “distance” from the world. Animal behavior does not know this distance: the animal lives in its environment [Umwelt] without confronting or, by virtue of this confrontation, “representing” the world in this way. This acquisition of the “world as representation” is, rather, the aim and product of the symbolic forms – the result of language, myth, religion, art, and theoretical cognition. Each of these constructs its own intelligible realm of intrinsic significance, which stands out sharply and clearly from any merely purposive behavior within the biological sphere. However, where this dividing line begins once again to be blurred – where consciousness in particular lacks the secure guidance of language or it no longer obtains this guidance with the same certainty as before – perceptual cognizing and action also take on a different character. A surprising light is thrown on many of the appearances in the symptoms of aphasia, agnosia, and apraxia when instead of measuring them by “healthy individuals” behavior, we choose rather a norm that is drawn from a relatively simpler biological stratum. When the patient uses his spoon or cup correctly if it is given him during a meal but fails to recognize the item or does not know how to use it appropriately at other times, the “images of action” of animals often provide striking analogies to this phenomenon. We recall the behavior of the spider that immediately attacks a mosquito or fly that flies into its net in the usual way but flees from them as soon as it encounters them under unusual circumstances. The sand wasp does not carry its prey directly into its hole but first drops it to inspect the hole and repeats the visit as many as thirty or forty times if this customary action sequence is interrupted by outside intervention;125 once again, we have here an analogy to the rigid, stereotypical action sequences that may be observed in the patient. In both cases, the representing as well as the action are forced, as it were, into fixed channels from which there can be no escape in order to independently visualize [vergegenwärtigen]

320

316

321

322

the problem of representation

either the individual “characteristic traits” of an object or those of the individual characteristic phases of an action. Doing is subject to an impulse from behind that drives and pushes it forward into the future; it is not determined by this future nor by the anticipation of this future but by the ideal “anticipatory preparing the way” [Vorwegnahme] of the future. When we follow the course of objective culture, this determination, this progress into the “ideal,” makes itself felt in two ways. The form of linguistic-­thinking and the form of instrumental-­ thinking [Werkzeug-­Denkens] seem here to be closely connected with one another and dependent on one another. With language as the tool [Werkzeug], the human conquered [erobert] the new basic tendency of “mediated” behavior that is specifically distinctive to the human. In its representations of the world as well as its effective actions upon it, the human now becomes free from the compulsion of the sensible drive and the immediate need. Direct grasping [Zugreifen] is replaced by new and different modes of acquisition, of theoretical and practical domination: the way from “grasping” [Greifen: apprehending] to “comprehending” [Befreifen] is pursued.126 A person with aphasia or apraxia seems to have been thrust one step backward along this path that humanity had to open up by a slow, steady endeavor. Everything that is purely mediated has in some way become unintelligible to him; everything that is not tangible, not directly existent, evades both his thinking and his will. Even though he can still apprehend and in general correctly handle what is “actually,” concretely lying before him and is “necessary” at the moment, he lacks the spiritual view into the distance, the sight [Sicht] of what is not before his eyes, of the merely “possible.” Pathological behavior has in a sense lost the power of the spiritual impulse that forever drives spirit beyond the sphere of the immediately perceived and immediately desired.127 Precisely in this step backward, however, the general movement of spirit and the inner law of its construction are rendered intelligible from a new angle. The value and signification of the process of spiritualization, the process of the “symbolization” of the world becomes comprehensible for us where it no longer operates freely and unhindered but where it has to struggle and make its way against obstacles. In this sense, the pathology of speech and action gives us a standard by which we can measure the breadth of the distance between the organic world and the world of human culture, the domain of life and the domain of “objective spirit.”



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

317

ENDNOTES 1 For further details, see Hoffman, “Die Sprache und die archaische Logik.” (Cf. 131ff.) 2 [Hobbes, De Corpore in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, part 1, chap. 3, §7, 31: “Veritas enim in dicto, non in re consistit. . . . ”] 3 Heymann Steinthal, Einleitung in the Psychologie und Sprachwissenschaft (Berlin: Dümmler, 1871). Lazaus, Das Leben der Seele. 4 The significance that the problem of language has acquired in contemporary psychology and most particularly for its methodology may be most clearly followed in the writings of Karl Bühler; cf. his summary in Die Krise der Psychologie (Jena: G. Fischer, 1929). On the position of the problem of language in Hönigswald’s “psychology of thought,” see 131–33. 5 Henry Head, Aphasia and Kindred Disorders of Speech (2 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926). Large sections of this book were previously published by Head in the periodical Brian, 43 (1920), 87–165; 46 (1923), 355–528. All the quotations in the text refer to the book publication. 6 I myself became acquainted with Head’s investigations only after the phenomenological and epistemo-­critical analyses of perception contained in the first volumes of this work were largely completed. This made me attach all the greater importance and greater significance to the indirect confirmation of my conclusions by Head’s observations and the general theoretical view that he developed solely on the basis of clinical experience. The purely philosophical significance of these observations was first stated by Henri Delacroix in his work La langage et la pensée (Paris: Alcan, 1924), cf. book. IV, 477ff. 7 Concerning Jackson’s work, see the penetrating presentation by Head, who also re-­edited the most important of these works: “Hughlings Jackson on Aphasia and Kindred Affections of Speech,” Brain, 38 (1915), 1–190. See also Head’s Aphasia, I, 30–53. 8 It was only after the completion of the first and second volumes of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms that the study of the work of Gelb and Goldstein drew my attention to this interconnection between the outlook of modern speech pathology and the basic view on which Humboldt builds his theory of language. However, I would scarcely have found the courage to go into it more deeply if aside from the literary stimulation of these works, I had not also received the personal encouragement of the two authors. Here I must particularly thank Goldstein for demonstrating to me a large number of the pathological cases to which his publications refer and so enabling me to gain a true understanding of them. 9 Karl Maria Finkelburg’s lecture at the Niederrheinische Gesellschaft der Ärtze in Bonn; cf. Berliner Klinische Wochenschrift, 7 (1870), 449f., 460ff. 10 [Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Robert Louden (London: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 84; trans. modified.]

318

the problem of representation

11 Kant, Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsich, in Werke, vol. 8, ed. Ernst Cassirer and Otto Schöndörffer, (Berlin: B. Cassirer, 1922) 78ff. [Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Robert Louden (London: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 85; trans. modified.] 12 Theodor Meynert, Klinische Vorlesungen über Psychiatrie (Vienna: W. Braumüller, 1890), 272. For the use of the word “asymbolia” in the older literature, cf. Karl Heilbronner, “Über Asymbolie,” Psychiatrische Abhand­ lungen, 3, no. 3 (1897), esp. 41ff. The term “agnosia” was first used by Freud, whereas the concept of “apraxia” was used by Steinthal as early as his Einleitung in die Psychologie und Sprachwissenschaft (1871), though it was first brought into general use by Hugo Liepmann in Das Krankheitsbild der Apraxie (“motorischen Asymbolie”) auf Grund eines Falles von einseitiger Apraxie (Berlin: Karger, 1900) and Über Störungen des Handelns bei Gehirnkranken (Berlin: Karger, 1905). Cf. also Arnold Pick, “Asymbolie, Apraxie, Aphasie,” Proceedings of the First International Congress of Psychiatry, (Amsterdam, 1908), 341–50; and Karl Heil­bronner, “Die aphasischen, apraktischen und agnostischen Störungen,” Max Lewandowsky, Handbuch der Nervenkrankheiten, 2 (1911), 1037. 13 Humboldt, Einleitung zum Kawiwerk, 72. [Humboldt, On Language, 69.] 14 [Originally in English.] 15 [Originally in English.] 16 Hughlings Jackson, “On Affections of Speech from Disease of the Brain” Brain. A Journal of Neurology, 38 (1915), 113f.; on the difference between “emotional” and “propositional,” “inferior” and “superior” language in Jackson, cf. Head, I, 34ff. 17 [Jackson, “On Affections of Speech,” 114.] 18 Head, Aphasia, I, 211 f. 19 See 227ff. 20 Highly characteristic of this general tendency of thinking are, in particular, the diagrams provided by Ludwig Lichtheim in his “Über Aphasie: aus der medicinischen Klinik in Bern,” Deutsches Archiv für klinische Medicin, 36 (1885), 204–68. 21 Salomon Eberhard Henschen, “Klinische und anatomische Beiträge zur Pathologie des Gehirns,” quoted from Head, Aphasia, vol. 1, 83f. 22 Head, Aphasia, vol. 1, 135. 23 Every worker on the affections of speech has claimed to deal with the ‘facts’ of each case; but no one expect Jackson recognized that all the phenomena are primarily psychical and only in the second place susceptible of physiological or anatomical explanation. (Head, Aphasia, vol. 1, 32.) 24 One of Goldstein’s patients, whom I had the opportunity to observe in the Frankfurt Neurological Institute, could not find the “name” for the watch [Uhr] that I showed him; but in answer to my question of what time it was, he



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

319

replied at once “one o’clock” [ein Uhr]. Thus, he had lost the word Uhr in its function as a “name for a thing,” while in other functions he used it freely. Similarly, Head tells of a patient who could use the words “yes” and “no” in answer to questions, but not when asked to repeat the word “no,” and then added: “No, I don’t know how to do it” (Head, Aphasia, vol. 2, 322). 25 Kurt Goldstein, “Einige prinzipielle Bemerkungen zur Frage der Lokalisation psychischer Vorgänge im Gehirn,” Meizinische Klinik, (1910); Gelb and Goldstein, Psychologische Analysen hirnpathologischer Fälle, 1, 5ff. Cf. their article in Psychologische Forschung, 6 (1925), 127–214. 26 Pierre Marie, “Revision de la question d’aphasie,” extract from La Semaine médicale, October 17, 1906 (Paris, 1906), 7f. 27 See Marie, 33ff. Cf. the penetrating exposition of Marie’s theory by his student François Moutier, L’aphasie de Broca (Paris: Steinheil, 1908), esp. 244ff. 28 For documentation, see Head, Aphasia, vol. 1, 200ff.; vol. 2, 252ff. 29 Marie, “Revision de la question d’aphasie,” 11f. 30 Mourtier, L’aphasie de Broca, 228; cf. esp. 205. 31 Jackson had already pointed out that the question raised by aphasia research must not be “how the general mind is damaged?” but “what aspect of the mind is damaged?” Cf. Head, Aphasia, vol. 1, 49. 32 Heilbronner, “Die aphasischen, apraktischen und agnostischen Störungen,” 1037. 33 Heilbronner, “Über Asymbolie,” 47. 34 For a detailed argument, see esp. part 2, chaps. 2–4. 35 Humboldt, Einleitung zum Kawi-­Werk, 170. Cf. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1, 93f. [Humboldt, On Language, 152.] 36 Adhémar Gelb and Kurt Goldstein, “Psychologische Analysen hirnpathologischer Falle,” Psychologische Forschung, 6 (1925), 149, 152f. 37 [“Absehen” means “to aim at” in the sense of “to intent” something, but it also means “to disregard” in the sense of to “look away.”] 38 Cf. Gelb and Goldstein, in Psychologische Forschung, 6, 150f. 39 I would like to cite another striking example of this. Professor Heinrich Embden – to whom I wish to express my warmest thanks – gave me an opportunity to observe a number of cases of people with aphasia in the Barmbecker Hospital in Hamburg. One of the patients as a test for his understanding of written signs was shown a slip of paper on which was written the name of the firm by which he had formerly been employed. The physician had written the firm name as “X and Y,” though the exact title was “X, Y, and Co.” The patient, who could hardly speak spontaneously, shook his head after reading the paper and indicated with gestures that something was missing at the end. However, even after the missing words were added, he showed that he was not fully satisfied and indicated that something was still missing between the names X and Y. It took some time before the physicians observing him discovered what was wrong and were able to satisfy the patient by correcting it: the comma between the two names had been omitted. Here it became clear

320

the problem of representation

that for the patient a circumstance that for a healthy individual would have been totally irrelevant was just as important as any other feature in the total experience: instead of turning toward the signification of the letters, he clung to the image as such. It seems to me that this case excellently elucidates the difference between what Gelb and Goldstein designate as a “mere lived-­ experience of coherence” and what they call a “categorial attitude”: the sensible experience of coherence is not complete without the comma, whereas the “categorial attitude,” for which the letters are mere means of presentation, can and must disregard it. 40 For further details, see 178ff. 41 Gelb and Goldstein, in Psyhologische Forschung, 6, 155ff. 42 For further details, see Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1, 126ff. 43 Cf. 215–16. 44 A wide variety of examples are given in Head. Cf., for example, Aphasia, vol. 1, 38f., 348f. 45 Examples for this prevalence of the “picturesque” term are frequent in Head’s case histories: cf. case history No. 17, in vol. 2, 252; see also vol. 1, 200. 46 See Head’s case history No. 2, in vol. 2, esp. 25, 28; another of Head’s patients (No. 22), who had been a house painter before his illness, could not name the color samples set before him but described exactly from what materials and by what method each color could be produced; cf. Head, Aphasia, vol. 1, 527; vol. 2, 337. 47 In the Ewe language, as Diedrich Westermann points out in his Wörterbuch der Ewe-­Sprache (Berlin: Reimer, 1907, 78), the phrase “unripe lemon” designates green, while the phrase “ripe lemon” designates yellow: this pre­ sents an exact analogy to the already-­cited usage of Head’s patient with aphasia. 48 Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1, 251. 49 Adhémar Gelb and Kurt Goldstein, “Über Farbennamenamnesie,” Psychologische Forschung, 6, 151f. 50 As far as I can see, writers disagree as to whether tactile agnosia can occur without any impairment of the sensibility of the hand. Heilbronner, in Lewandowsky, Handbuch, 2, 1046, sums up the findings of the most recent research by saying that in the typical cases of “tactile paralysis,” a certain impairment of the sensibility can be observed but that it is by no means proportionate to the impairment of tactile recognition. Hence, the latter cannot be reduced to and adequately explained by a disorder of the sensibility. 51 Heinrich Lissauer, “Ein Fall von Seelenblindheit nebst einem Beitrage zur Theorie derselben,” Archiv für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten, 21 (1890), 239. 52 [Kant, “Letter to Markus Herz on February, 21, 1772”, in Werke, vol. IX, ed. Ernst Cassirer (Berlin: B. Cassirer, 1918), 103.] 53 Cf. 141ff, 183ff. 54 Cf. Lissauer, “Ein Fall von Seelenblindheit,” 249ff. 55 Wilhelm von Stauffenberg, Über Seelenblindheit (Wiesbaden: Bergmann, 1914), 96.



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

321

56 Gelb and Goldstein, “Zur Psychologie des optischen Wahrnehmungs-­und Erkennungsvorganges,” in Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie 41 (1918), 76f. 57 Ibid., 128f. 58 For further details, see Pick, Die agrammatischen Sprachstörungen. Studien zur psychologischen Grundlegung der Aphasielehre. Part 1 (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1913). 59 Cf. 264ff. 60 Cf. §4 of this chap. 61 The difference between the “presentative pregnance” that characterizes the normal recognition of objects and the groping “discursively combining” method employed by the patient struck me forcefully every time I had occasion to see and speak with him. For a full understanding of the specific element at work here, one must read the records kept by Gelt and Goldstein. A brief, characteristic sample from these records gives one a good idea of the patient’s general approach to his environment and his manner of “recognizing” familiar objects. In the course of a walk in the park, various objects and happenings are pointed out to the patient.   (1) (The man sweeping at a distance of about 50 paces.) The patient says spontaneously, “That man is sweeping, I know it, I see him every day.” (What do you see?) “A long line, then something down below, something here, something there.” On this occasion, he relates spontaneously how he distinguishes people from cars on the street. People are all alike – narrow and long; cars are wide – you notice that at once, much thicker.   (6) (Lamp post with a large rock beside it.) Patient reflects at length, then says, “Lamp post.” According to his account, he had seen a long black line with something wide on top; afterward, he also said, “The thing on top is transparent and has four bars.” He identified the rock as an “elevation”; “or it might be earth” (Gelb and Goldstein, Zur Psychologie des optischen Wahrnehmungs-­und Erkennungsvorganges,108). 62 [Gelb and Goldstein, “Über den Einfluß des vollständigen Verlustes,” 194.] 63 Statement made by Head’s patient No. 2, an intelligent young officer. See Head, 2, 32. [The original quotation ends as follows: “Really it is that I haven’t enough names.”] Another patient (No. 8) reports, “I tried working out jigsaw puzzles, but I was very bad at them. I could see the bits, but I could not see any relation between them. I could not get the general idea” (Head, Aphasia, vol. 2, 113). 64 Plato, Thaetetus, 184D. 65 One of the patients of Gelb and Goldstein – unlike the patient with psychic blindness – could call up good visual images, but they were decidedly fragmentary: He could . . . only actualize separate pieces, parts of an object, but these were sometimes very clear. It mattered little whether the object was large or small; the essential was whether the object was poor or rich in detail.

322

the problem of representation If the latter were the case, he could only inwardly imagine the object in fragments, successively, part for part, and, as he himself spontaneously said, the moment he had one part clear, the others fell away.

When asked, for example, how a lion looked, this patient answered, “Brown, the head is large and has a mane. . . . But when I’m at the head, I’ve lost the legs.” (122) An analogous case is reported by Head. One of his patients is quoted as saying: “I can get the meaning of a sense if it’s an isolated sentence, but I can’t get all the words. I can’t get the middle of the paragraph, I have to go back and start from the proceeding full-­stop again” (“Aphasia and Kindred Disorders of Speech,” Brain. A Journal of Neurology, 43 (1920), 114). 66 Gelb and Goldstein, “Über den Einfluß des vollständigen Verlustes,” 206ff., 226ff. 67 Cf. 276ff. 68 Kurt Goldstein, “Über die Abhängigkeit der Bewegungen von optischen Vorgängen. Bewegungsstörungen bei Seelenblinden,” Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie, 54 (1923), 141–94. 69 Cf. §5 of this chap. 70 Cf. Head’s case history, No. 2, in Aphasia, vol. 2, 31: on this, see vol. 1, 264, 339, 393, 415f. 71 [Originally in English.] 72 Cf. Head’s case history No. 10, in Aphasia, vol. 2, 170: the patient who could not by himself draw a plan of his room said: When you asked me to do this first, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get the starting point. I knew where all the things were in the room, but I had difficulty in getting a starting point when it came to set them down on a plan. You made me point out on the plan, and it was quite easy because you had done it. 73 For further details, see my Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance, Studien der Bibliothek Warburg, vol. 10 (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1927), 183ff. [Ernst Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, trans. Mario Domandi (New York: Dover Publications, 2000), 158.] 74 One of Head’s patients (case history No. 2) had lost the abstract use of the concepts “right” and “left,” but in the course of a conversation with the doctor, he was able to indicate by gestures that the way in which cars passed one another in England was different from abroad – that in England they passed one another “from left to right” and abroad “from right to left.” (Head, Aphasia, vol. 2, 23f.) 75 Head’s case history No. 10, in Aphasia, vol. 2, 170, 178. Cf. Aphasia, vol. 1, 264f, 528. 76 The case has not yet been treated in the literature; in the following, I must therefore draw on Goldstein’s oral account of it.



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

323

77 Van Woerkom, “Sur la notion de l’espace (le sens géométrique), sur la notion du temps et du nombre,” Revue neurologique, 35 (1919), 113–9. 78 See 191. 79 Von Woerkom, “Sur la notion de l’espace (le sens géométrique), sur la notion du temps et du nombre,” 115. The aforementioned patient of Goldstein showed exactly the same disorders of his “understanding of numbers”: he could count in series, but he could not compare two given numbers as to their magnitude. 80 I refer here in particular to the material complied by Moutier, L’aphasie de Broca, 214ff. 81 Cf. Head’s case histories Nos. 7, 15, 19 (Aphasia, vol. II, 89ff., 227ff. and 278ff.). 82 In regard to the “relativization of zero” as the foundation of the elementary arithmetical operations of addition and subtraction, cf. Paul Natorp, Die logischen Grundlagen der exakten Wissenschaften (Leipzig and Berlin: Teubner, 1910), 131ff. 83 Head’s patient No. 8, when asked to set a clock at twenty minutes to 6:00, set it at 6:20. When the mistake was pointed out to him, he declared, “I can’t make out the difference between past and to six.” When asked to mark “a quarter to nine,” he set the clock at 9:00 and said, “I don’t know from which side to approach” (Head, Aphasia, vol. 2, 114). 84 For the details of the watch and coin test, see Head’s case history: cf. in particular, Aphasia, vol. 1, 210ff. and 335ff. 85 This “concrete” counting, in which the finger being counted always had to be looked at, recalls counting methods that are still in use among native peoples and that have also left their deposit in their language; cf. in particular the excellent exposition of the counting methods of natural peoples in Lucien Lévy-­Bruhl, Les fonctions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures (Paris: f. Alcan, 1910). German trans. by Wilhelm Jerusalem, Das Denken der Naturvölker (Leipzig and Vienna: Braumüller, 1921), part II, chap. 5. [How Natives Think, trans. Lilian A. Clare (New York: Knopf, 1926).] 86 For particulars details, the reader is referred to the detailed records in W. Benary, “Studien zur Untersuchung der Intelligenz bei einem Fall von Seelenblindheit,” Psychologische Forschung, 2 (1922), 209–97. 87 Let us represent the problems (7 + 3), (6+ 3), (5 + 3) in the form of the following diagram:

↓

↓

↓

   0  1  2  3  . . . . . . (a)    0  1  2  3    . . . . . . (b) 0 1 2 3      (c)

The number 7 of series (a) functions as zero in series (b), as 1 in series (c), as 2 in series (d), etc. 88 Benary, Studien, 217. 89 See 285 n. 71. [Originally in English.]

324

the problem of representation

90 We are reminded here of a similar behavior encountered in the “primitive” attitudes toward langauge. Karl von den Steinen reports in his book on the Bakairi language how difficult it was to make his native interpreter translate sentences whose content for any reason seemed senseless or impossible to him: he would shake his head and decline to render such sentences. Die Bakaïré-­Sprache (Leipzig: Koehler, 1892). 91 Richard Dedekind, Was sind und was sollen die Zahlen? (2nd ed., Braun­ schweig: f. Vieweg, 1893), viii. 92 For particulars, see the detailed records in Benary, Studien, 259ff. In one of these records, it becomes evident through logical detours – in his discursive, groping way – that the patient was gradually able to master the “relational comparisons” that he expressly termed “difficult” (Benary, Studien, 271). 93 For further details, see Head, Aphasia, vol. 1, 157ff., 356ff. See, in particular, vol. 1, 208: Most patients with aphasia imitate my actions extremely badly when we sat face to face, or if the order was given in the form of a picture; when, however, these movements or their pictorial representations were reflected in a mirror, they were usually performed without fail. For in the first case the words “right” or “left,” or “eye” or “ear,” or some similar verbal symbol, must be silently interposed between the reception and execution of the command; but, when reflected in the glass, the movements are in many instances purely imitative and no verbalization, is necessary. It is an act of simple matching and such immediate recognition presents no greater difficult than the choice from amongst those on the table of a familiar object laid before his sight or placed in his hand. 94 The difficulty of passing freely from one form of “orientation” to another is stressed also by Goldstein as an essential factor in aphasic disorders [Neurologische und psychiatrische Abhandlungen aus dem Schweizer Archiv für Neurologie und Psychiatrie, ed. C. Vonn Monakow (Zürich: Füssli, 1927)]. He writes: Many of the perseverations that we so often find in aphasiacs, and which observers so often attempt to explain or rather to explain away by an abnormal tendency to perseveration, become understandable – even as to content – once we take into account the factor of deficient orientation and particularly the impairment of the power to change orientation quickly. This accounts above all for the fact that the so-­called perseveration does not appear equally in all operations and in some may not appear at all. (298) I also believe that I have found confirmation of this fundamental view in an article by L. Bouman and A. A. Grünbaum, which became known to me only



95

96 97 98 99

toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

325

after the previous quotation was written: “Experimentell-­ psychologische Untersuchungen zu Aphasie und Paraphasie,” Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie, 96 (1925), 481ff. The patient observed by Bouman and Grünbaum was a former clerk. He could still master certain elementary rules of calculation, based on which he could correctly perform certain arithmetical operations. But from the fact that he could not clearly separate the various unities employed in a calculation and keep them apart in the course of the process, it was evident that he was not operating meaningfully with numbers and numerical concepts. When asked, for example, to figure out how much 5 pounds of apples cost if 1 pound costs 30 cents, the patient after some exertion arrived at the amount 150, but the “denomination” was lacking; he believed the answer to be “150 apples.” Again, when asked how long he could live for 100 gulden if he spent 5 gulden a day, the patient found the strictly arithmetical result but was totally at a loss to say whether this figure referred to days, weeks, years, or, for that matter, gulden (op. cit., 506f.). No less characteristic was his behavior in the presence of certain geometrical problems. A number of figures were set before him, e.g. triangles, squares, and circles, some of them inside one another or overlapping, so that various points in the enclosed surfaces belonged to several figures, while others belonged only to one. The patient could always indicate a point that belonged only to one figure, but when asked to indicate a point that was common to the triangle and square, to the triangle and circle, or to the triangle, square, and circle, he could do so only after much pondering and exertion and remained doubtful about the correctness of his solution (485). Thus, here again the main difficulty seems to lie in the need for placing one and the same “element” simultaneously in different relational contexts, in conceiving of it as “belonging” and referring to different geometrical totalities, because this presupposes precisely the free change of vision that is inhibited in the aphasic-­agnostic disorders. One of Head’s patients, a young officer, responded poorly at first to the hand, eye, and ear test. Much later, after his condition had considerably improved, he was able to perform these tests relatively well. In explaining his method, he said: “I look at you and then I say, ‘he’s got his hand on my left, therefore it’s on the right.’ I have to translate it, to transfer it in my mind” (case history No. 8, in vol. 2, 123). Another patient explained: “I’ve always said it is like translating a foreign language which I know, but not very well; it’s like translating from French to English” (case history No. 17, in vol. 2, 257). For further details, see Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1, 149ff., 160ff., 170ff. and 268ff. Cf. Head’s case history No. 9, in Aphasia, vol. 2, 139. Cf. Head’s case history No. 1, in Aphasia, vol. 2, 6. Cases of this sort are mentioned, for example, by Hughlings Jackson; cf. “Loss of Speech: Its Association with Valvular Disease of the Heart and with Hemiplegia on the Right Side. Defects of Smell. Defects of Speech in Chorea. Arterial Lesions in Epilepsy,” Brain. A Journal of Neurology, 38 (1915), 37;

326

the problem of representation

Jackson, “Remarks on Non-­Protrusion of the Tongue in some Cases of Aphasia,” Brain. A Journal of Neurology, 38 (1915), 104. 100 Liepmann, Über Störungen des Handelns bei Gehirnkranken, 10; on the following, cf. his Das Krankheitsbild der Apraxie (Berlin: Karger, 1900). For purposes of orientation, we have also drawn on the comprehensive reports of Karl von Kleist, “Der Gang und der gegenwärtige Stand der Apraxieforschung,” Ergebnisse der Neurologie und Psychiatrie, 1 (1911), §2; and Kurt Goldstein, “Über Apraxie,” Beihefte zur medizinischen Klinik, (1911). 101 Karl Bonhoeffer, “Casuistische Beiträge zur Aphasielehre,” Archiv für Psychiatrie, 37 (1903), quoted from Liepmann, Über Störungen des Handelns bei Gehirnkranken, 22f. 102 Liepmann, Über Störungen des Handelns bei Gehirnkranken, 36ff. 103 Heilbronner, “Die aphasischen, apraktischen und agnostischen Störungen,” 1043f. 104 For further details, see Goldstein’s article, “Über die Abhängigkeit der Bewegungen von optischen Vorgängen,” 147ff. (see 281.) 105 Ibid., 166. 106 Cf. Hugo K. Liepmann, Die linke Hemisphäre und das Handeln (1905); rep. in Hugo K. Liepmann, Drei Aufsätze aus dem Apraxiegebiet (Berlin: Karger, 1908), 26ff., 33. 107 Cf. Liepmann, Drei Aufsätze aus dem Apraxiegebiet, 27ff. 108 [Cassirer: writing movement.] 109 Goldstein, “Über die Abhängigkeit der Bewegungen von optischen Vorgängen,” 162ff., 169f. 110 See 298 n. 93. 111 Cf. 293. 112 Heilbronner, “Die aphasischen, apraktischen und agnostischen Störungen,” 1039f. 113 Heillbronner, “Über Asymbolie,” 16. 114 Cf. the case of patient “Sch.,” in Goldstein, “Über die Abhängigkeit der Bewegungen von optischen Vorgängen,” 153. 115 See 293ff. 116 This patient’s distinctive “stereotype” of doing could be observed in his general behavior as well as in his particular actions. If, for example, he was asked to perform the motion of a military salute, he first softly repeated the request, using it as a kind of fixed formula, in response to which his right hand, as by an automatic impulse, went up to his right temple. But if his right arm was held fast and he was asked to salute with his left hand, he could after some hesitation perform the desired movement: instead of rising to the corresponding place, though, his hand moved to the same place, to the right, not the left, temple. This place was fixed as the “goal” of the military salute and could not be voluntarily exchanged for another. This attachment to a fixed formula in the linguistic and motor sense appears also in cases where the patient can execute the movement of taking an oath but can raise his right hand only when the words of the oath are actually recited. Van Woerkom



toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

327

writes the following concerning the patient disclosing the characteristic disturbance in spatial understanding (see 285f.): Dans les épreuves ordinaires l’apraxie ne se manifest pas: il allume une bougie, plante un clou dans une planche, fait un serment, le geste manaçant, etc. Cependant au dédut d’une action, il y a toujours une période latente; pour le faire marquer le geste menaçant, la réaction ne vient qu’après que je lui ai dit: Comment ferais-­tu, si on t’avait volé quelque chose? Le geste du serment n’est exécuté qu’après que l’ai prononcé la formule réglementaire. [Aprazia does not manifest itself: he lights the candle, hammers a nail into the board, makes an oath, gestures with the hand, etc. However, at the beginning of these actions, there is always a latent period; he could only make a threatening gesture as a reaction to my question: what would you do if I stole something form you? He could make the gesture of an oath only after saying the prescribed formula.] (Revue neurologique, 26, 114.) 117 Cf. Liepmann, Über Störungen des Handelns bei Gehirnkranken, 27ff.; and cf. the examples cited there from Arnold Pick, Studien über motorische Apraxie und ihr nahestehende Erscheinungen (Leipzig: Deuticke, 1905). 118 [Originally in English.] 119 Hughlings Jackson, “On Affections of Speech from Disease of the Brain,” Brain. A Journal of Neurology, 38 (1915), 168. 120 Hugo Liepmann, “Kleine Hilfsmittel bei der Untersuchung von Gehirnkranken (1905),” Liepmann, Drei Aufsätze aus dem Apraxiegebiet, 15. In general, Liepmann stresses (28, 34) that only in a small fraction of the cases treated by him and under special conditions could a deficiency in the manipulation of objects be observed, that such actions were performed without important disturbances. “In at most one quarter of the cases does the disorder extend to an impairment of the ability to manipulate objects” (28). 121 Head’s case history No. 8 (Aphasia, vol. 2, 113, 122); No. 10 (vol. 2, 171). “A straight shot with two balls was not so bad,” says the patient in this latter case, “but the third ball confused me. I seemed to think of the three functions at the same time and got muddled.” 122 For further details, see Head, Aphasia, vol 1, 317ff. 123 Ibid., 38, 198. 124 Ibid., 143f. 125 Cf. Volkelt, Über die Vorstellungen der Tiere, 19, 29 (see 172ff.). 126 See Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1, 122ff. 127 How difficult it is for even the highest-­order animals to break through this circle is shown most instructively by Koehler’s observations of anthropoid apes. Among these animals, we find a certain primitive “use of tools.” Here again, the use of the tool becomes most difficult where its manipulation

328

the problem of representation requires some sort of “detour” – where, for example, the animal, instead of drawing a fruit directly toward itself, must first move it away and then bring it toward itself around an obstacle. Such an operation represents a kind of reversal of “natural,” biological behavior, and this precisely is what seems to create the greatest difficulties for people with apraxia, agnostic disorder, etc. A patient of Gelb and Goldstein, who was supposed to group a number of objects according to their relation to one another, declined to place a corkscrew with a bottle in which the cork was loose, on the grounds that the bottle was “already open.” In such a case, the “possible” purpose of the corkscrew is not regarded as a principle of correlation – the decision is based only on the real, concrete, particular case and its special requirements. Cf. Gelb and Goldstein, “Über Farbennamenamnesie,” 180.

Part Three The Function of Signification and the Construction of Scientific Cognition

I TOWARD A THEORY OF THE CONCEPT 1.  THE WHOLE OF THE “NATURAL WORLD CONCEPT” If we wish to apply a single, general name to the domain in which our considerations have moved so far, then we might designate it as the realm of the “natural world concept.” This domain, however, is disclosed throughout a definite theoretical structure, an intellectual forming [Formung] and construction [Fügung] – on the other hand, the general rules of this forming [Formung] seemed so bound to and deeply imbued in the contentual particularizations that they can be brought to presentation only together with them. At this stage in our consideration, what theoretical form itself “is” and wherein consist its specific significance and validity could be rendered visible in no other way than through its product. Its principles remained, one might say, fused with this product – they were not determined in abstracto, detached and “in themselves,” but could be demonstrated only through a certain order of “objects,” of objective formations [Gebilde] of intuition. Accordingly, reflection and reconstructive analysis were not yet directed here toward the function of form as such, but toward one of its particular achievements. In configuring the thought of a determinate image of objectivity, in producing it, so

323

332

324

the construction of scientific cognition

to speak, out of itself, thought nevertheless remains confined within this very image, which originates from its own ground – it can acquire knowledge of itself only through this medium, through the mediation of objective knowledge. Its regard is directed forward toward the “reality” of things, not backward toward itself and its own performance. In this way, it acquires the world of the “you” and the world of the “it” – and both worlds appear to it at first as unquestionable, utterly unproblematic certainties. In the form of the simple expressive lived-­experience or in the form of perceptive lived-­experience, the I grasps the existence of the other [fremd] subjects and the existence of the “objects outside us” – and it remains still in this existence and its concrete intuition. How this intuition itself is “possible” is not asked here and need not be asked; it stands for itself and bears witness to itself, requiring no support or confirmation in anything else. This unconditional trust in the reality of things undergoes, however, a transformation and an initial shock as soon as the problem of truth enters onto the scene. The moment [Augenblick] that the human not only stands in reality and lives with it but demands of itself a cognition of this reality, the human moves into a new and fundamentally other relationship to it. At first, to be sure, the question of truth seems to apply only to individual parts of reality and not to the whole of reality itself. Within this whole, different “strata” of validity begin to stand out from one another; “reality” [Realität] seems to separate sharply and clearly from “semblance.” It lies in the very nature [Wesen] of the problem of truth, however, that once it arises in this way, it never comes to rest. The concept of truth conceals in itself an immanent dialectic that drives it relentlessly forward and further. It presses beyond every boundary it reaches – it does not content itself with questioning the individual contents of the “natural world concept,” but instead engages its substance, its total form. All those witnesses to “reality” that have hitherto been taken as absolutely sure and reliable – “sensation,” “representation,” “intuition” – are now brought before a new forum and interrogated. This forum of the “concept” and “pure thinking” is not established in the moment that true philosophical mindfulness begins; it belongs to the beginnings of every scientific consideration of the world. For even here, thought no longer contents itself with simply translating into its own language what is given in perception or intuition but instead subjects it to a characteristic transformation



toward a theory of the concept

333

of form, a spiritual recasting. The primary task that the scientific concept has to fulfill seems in fact to be simply to set up a rule of determination that must be confirmed in what can be intuited and in the sphere of intuition. Precisely because and insofar as this rule should be valid for the world of intuition, however, it no longer simply belongs to it as a mere inventory [Bestand] or as an element of this world itself. In comparison with this world, it signifies a particular nature and something independent, even though its independent sense can be manifested at first only through the matter of the intuitive. The further scientific consciousness progresses in its development, the sharper and clearer this difference is expressed. Now the rule of determination is no longer simply posited but, in this very positing, apprehended and as such understood [durchschauen: see through] as a universal achievement of thought. And this vision [Schau] now creates a new form of view [Durchblick], of spiritual “perspective.” With it, we stand for the first time on the threshold of the truly “theoretical” consideration of the world. We have a classical example of this process in the emergence of Greek mathematics. For the decisive factor here is not that the significance of the basic motive of number is recognized and not that the cosmos is subjected to the law of number. This step had been taken long before the beginnings of truly theoretical, rigorous scientific thinking. Myth had already elevated number to a universal, truly world-­embracing significance; it already knew and spoke of its dominion over the whole of being, of its daemonic omnipotence [Allgewalt].1 The first scientific discoverers of number, the Pythagoreans, were still wholly dominated by this basic magical-­mythical view of number. And aside from this mythical bond, the Pythagorean concept of number discloses another, purely intuitive bond. Number [Zahl] is not comprehended as an essential being on to its own but rather thought of as the numerical amount [Anzahl] of a concrete quantity. It appears bound, in particular, with spatial determinations and configurations; it is originally of a geometrical as well as arithmetical nature. However, only to the extent that this bond loosens, as the purely logical nature of number is recognized, is the foundation laid for a pure science of number. Even then, to be sure, number is not separated from intuitive reality: it aspires to demonstrate nothing less than the basic law governing this reality, governing the physical cosmos. Number itself, however, ceases to be a physical thing-­like or to be definable by the

325

334

326

the construction of scientific cognition

analogy of any empirical objects [Objekte]. Although it has a consistent substantial existence only through concrete things that are ordered according to it, one must nevertheless attribute to it a form of cognition that is clearly separate from sensible perception or intuition. Only by virtue of this separation was the number of the Pythagorean theory able to arrive at the genuine expression of the truth of the sensible.2 And this relationship that emerges in the beginnings of pure theory remains a determining factor in its further development and continued formation. Time and time again, it becomes apparent that theory can achieve the desired closeness to reality only by placing a certain distance between itself and reality, by learning more and more to “look away” [absehen] from it. It is by virtue of this distinctive distancing that the gestalts within which the natural worldview dwells and through which it acquires its forming [Formung] are transformed into strict theoretical concepts. What lay, as it were, buried like undiscovered treasure within the intuitive formations [Gebilde] is now gradually unearthed and brought into the light through a conscious work of thinking. The prime achievement of the concept is precisely to apprehend as such the elements on which rests the organization and ordering of intuitive reality and to recognize their specific significance. It unfolds the relations that are implicit in intuitive existence, that are posited in the form of mere co-­givenness; it detaches these relations and sets them forth in their pure in-­itself-­ ness – in Plato’s words, as an αὐτὸ καθ’ αὑτό [itself by itself]. With this transition to the realm of pure signification and validity, however, thinking is, admittedly, confronted with an abundance of new problems and difficulties. For only now is the final break made with mere existence and its “immediacy.” Already the sphere that we designated as expression, and still more the sphere that we designated as presentation, reached out beyond this immediacy – for they did not remain within the sphere of mere “presence” [Präsenz] but arose from the basic function of “representation” [Repräsentation]. It is within the sphere of pure signification, however, that this function not only acquires great breadth but that the specificity of its sense first emerges in full clarity and sharpness. There now develops a kind of detachment, of “abstraction” that was unknown to perception and intuition. Cognition releases the pure relations from their involvement with the concrete and individually determined “reality” of things, in order to re-­present [vergegenwärtigen] them purely as such



toward a theory of the concept

335

in the universality of their “form,” in their relational character. It is no longer sufficient to construe being itself in the various directions of relational thinking; rather, cognition also demands and creates a universal system of measurement for this process. It is this system that is more and more firmly grounded and is more and more extensively configured in the progress of theoretical thinking. The “naïve” relationship between concept and intuition within the “natural world concept” is replaced by a new “critical” relationship. For the theoretical concept in the strict sense of the word does not content itself with surveying the world of objects and simply reflecting its order. The interconnection, the “synopsis” of the manifold, is not simply prescribed here to thinking by objects; rather, it must be fashioned through thinking’s own independent activity according to the norms and criteria within it. And while within the boundaries of the natural world concept, the activity of thought still shows a more or less sporadic character, it unfolds there in different directions beginning from this point, then from that point; here, the activity of thought undergoes an ever-­more strict condensation [Zusammenfassung], an ever-­more rigorous conscious concentration. All concept formation, regardless of the particular problem with which it may start, is ultimately oriented toward one basic goal and key objective, toward the determination of the “truth as such.” Every particular positing, all individual conceptual structures, must in the end fit into a unitary and all-­inclusive intellectual interconnection. This task would not be attainable if thought, in undertaking it, did not at the same time create a new organ for it. It can now no longer remain content with the configurations that come to it, as it were, prefabricated from the world of intuition; rather, it must transition to construct a realm of symbols in full freedom, in pure self-­activity. It constructively projects [entwerft] the schemata by which and toward which it orients the whole of its world. Of course, these schemata cannot remain in the empty space of sheer “abstract” thinking. They require a foundation and support – this is, however, no longer simply taken from the empirical world of things but rather is created by thought itself. The system of relations and of conceptual significations is now subjected to an ensemble of signs that is so constituted that the interconnection prevailing between the individual elements [Elemente] of the system can be surveyed and read from it. The further thinking progresses on its path, the closer this bond is drawn.

327

336 328

the construction of scientific cognition

And now it would actually seem to be one of the ideal goals of thinking to provide every connection among the contents toward which it is directed with a corresponding connection or determinate operation in signs. The scientia generalis now calls for a characteristica generalis. In this characteristic, the work of language continues; at the same time, however, it enters into a new logical dimension. For the signs of the characteristic have cast off everything that is merely expressive or vividly representative: they have become pure “signs of signification.” With this, we have a new mode of “objective” semantic reference [Sinnbezug] that differs specifically from every kind of “relation to the object” that exists in perception or empirical intuition. Apprehending the elements of this difference must be the first task of any analysis of the function of the concept. In every concept, however it may be individually constituted, there may be said to live and prevail, as it were, a unitary will to cognition, whose direction and tendency as such must be determined and understood. Only once the nature [Wesen] of this universal form of the concept has been clarified, only once it has been sharply set off from the particular nature of perceptual and intuitive cognition, can we progress to particular tasks and transition from the function of the concept as a whole to its individual repercussions and configurations.

2.  CONCEPT AND LAW: THE POSITION OF CONCEPTS IN MATHEMATICAL LOGIC: CLASS CONCEPTS AND RELATION CONCEPTS [RELATIONSBEGRIFF]: THE CONCEPT AS PROPOSITIONAL FUNCTION: CONCEPT AND REPRESENTATION The analysis of intuitive cognition has shown us that the form of intuitive reality rests essentially on the fact that the individual elements from which it is constructed do not stand by themselves but that a peculiar relationship of “co-­positing” [Mitsetzung] takes place between them. Nothing is isolated and detached here. Even what seems to belong to a determinate and individual point in space, or to an individual temporal moment [Augenblick], does not remain confined to the mere here and now. It reaches out beyond itself – it points toward the totality [Gesamt­ heit] of the contents of experience and joins together with them into determinate totalities of sense [Sinnganzheiten]. In the construction of every



toward a theory of the concept

337

spatial intuition, of every apprehension of spatial forms, of every judgment as to the location, magnitude, and distance of objects [Objekte], the individual experiences “weave themselves into the whole [Ganze].” To be spatially determined in relation to the whole, every individual content must be referred to and interpreted according to certain typical spatial configurations. These interpretations, as undertaken in the sign language of sensible perception, may be regarded as the primary achievements of the “concept.” For indeed, they contain one element that tends wholly in the tendency of the concept [Begriff] and its truly fundamental achievement. They order the individual and particular into a determinate “ensemble” [Inbegriff] and see in it a presentation of this ensemble itself. As intuitive cognition progresses along this path, each of its particular contents gains greater power to represent [vertreten] the totality of the others and to make it indirectly “visible.” If we take this representation [Vertretung] as determinant and characteristic of the function of the concept in general, then there can be no doubt that the world of perception and that of spatiotemporal intuition can nowhere dispense with this function. In the modern theory of perception, this view was advocated above all by Helmholtz, who made it the basis for the entire construction of his “physiological optics”: If “to comprehend” [begreifen] means to form concepts [Begriffe] and if . . . we grasp together [zusammenzufassen] in the concept of a class of objects [Objecte] the same characteristic traits they inherently bear, then it follows analogously that the concept of a number of appearances that changes in time must seek to grasp together [zusammen­ zufassen] what remains the same in all their stages. What remains the same without dependency on another through all the changes of time, we call substance; the invariable relationship between variable magnitudes we call the connecting law. It is only the latter that we perceive directly. . . . The first product of the intellectual comprehending of appearances is the lawful. . . . What lies within our reach in appearances is the lawfulness. . . . What we . . . can reach is the acquaintance [Kenntniß] of the lawful order in the realm of the actual, [and] this, admittedly, only as depicted in the system of signs of our sense impressions.

329

338

330

the construction of scientific cognition

In this view, the logical concept accomplishes nothing other than to fix the lawful order that already lies in the appearances themselves: to establish consciously the rule that perception follows unconsciously. In this sense, Helmholtz holds, for example, that the mere intuitive representation that we furnish with the stereometric form of a corporeal object [Objekt] entirely fills the role of a concept grasping together a large series of sensible-­intuitive images. This concept, however, is not necessarily held together by definitions expressible in words such as a geometrician can construct them, but only by the “living representation of the law” in accordance with which the manifold perspective images of this particular corporeal thing follow one another. Hence, the representation of an individual object [Objekt] must as such already be designated as a concept, because this representation “embraces all the possible individual aggregates of sensation that this object [Object] can call forth when regarded, touched, or otherwise examined from different sides.”3 Helmholtz saw and stressed that this view, which transfers the function of the concept into the midst of the process of perception, does not correspond to the usual linguistic usage of traditional logic, which customarily considers “universality” [Allgemeinheit] as the proper and salient characteristic trait of the concept; however, the general [Allgemein] appears as that which is “common [Gemeinsam] to many.” How can such a commonality [Gemeinsamkeit] prevail where it is not a question of the comparison [Vergleichung] of one object with another but rather of its constitution, of the acquisition of the thought of an individual object [Objekt]? Yet Helmholtz would have been justified in dismissing this objection, because on closer scrutiny, it contains within it a petitio principii. Precisely that universality that is regarded here as the necessary condition of the concept signifies not so much a secure result of logical analysis as a latent postulate to which logic as “formal” logic has been subordinated since its first beginnings. The modern development of logic has increasingly recognized and illuminated the questionable nature of this very postulate. The view that the concept must necessarily embrace the representation of a “species” and that all relationships that can prevail between concepts must ultimately be reducible to a single basic relationship of the “subsumption,” of the superordination and subordination of genera and species, has been contested from the most diverse sides in modern logic.4



toward a theory of the concept

339

If we abandon this view and, with Kant, interpret the concept as noth- 331 ing other than the “unity of a rule”5 by which a manifold of contents are held together and connected with one another, then the construction of our perception and intuition of the world clearly cannot dispense with such a unity. For only through this unity are certain formations [Gebilde] singled out within intuition itself; only through it is a fixed belonging-­ togetherness created by virtue of which manifold and qualitatively different from one another appearances are taken as determinations of one and the same object [Objekte]. What is decisive here is obviously not that something common [Gemeinsam] is detached from the appearances and that they are subsumed under a general representation but that they fulfill a common function – that precisely in their thoroughgoing diversity they are nevertheless directed toward a definite goal and point to it. However, the form of this “pointing to” is of course different in the sensible-­ intuitive world than it is in the world of the “logical” concept in the restricted sense. For the ‘pointing to’ that is merely employed in perception or intuition becomes conscious in the concept. It is this new mode of consciousness that first truly constitutes the concept as a formation [Geiblde] of pure thinking. Even the contents of perception and those of pure intuition cannot be thought as determinate contents without a characteristic form of determination – without a “viewpoint,” under which they are placed and in regard to which they are looked upon as belonging to one another. The regard of perception or intuition rests, however, on the elements [Elemente] that are compared with one another or in some way correlated to one another, not on the manner, the mode, of their correlation. It is with the logical concept that this mode of correlation itself first emerges. It first effects that turning around by which the I turns from the objects [Objekte] that stand in sight [Sicht] and by virtue of which it becomes apprehended, toward the manner of the seeing [Sehen], the character of the sight [Sicht] itself. Only where this specific mode of “reflection” is practiced do we stand in the true realm of thinking and in its center and focal point. And this is the source of the pregnant significance that the concept assumes within the problem of “symbolic forming [Formung].” For now, this problem not only presents itself from a new 332 side but it also enters into a new logical dimension. The boundary between “intuition” and “concept” is usually drawn in such a way as to distinguish intuition as an “immediate” relation to the

340

333

the construction of scientific cognition

object from the mediated “discursive” process of the concept. Intuition itself, however, is already “discursive” in the sense that it never stops with the individual but strives toward a totality that it never achieves in any other way than by running through a manifold of elements [Elemente] and finally gathering them into one regard. Yet over against this form of intuitive synthesis, the concept establishes a new and higher potency of the “discursive.” It does not simply follow the fixed directives provided by the “similarity” of appearances or by any other intuitively graspable relation between them – it is not a cleared path [Weg] but a function of way-­making [Bahnung] itself. Intuition follows certain paths of connection, and herein consists its pure form and schematism. In this sense, however, the concept not only reaches out beyond these paths that it knows but shows them: it not only treads an already cultivated and known path but helps to prepare it. Of course, from the standpoint of strict “empiricism” this basic power of the concept makes it seem to be tainted once and for all with the blemish of “subjectivity.” This suspicion and this reproach run through the entire positivist and empiricist theory of cognition. This is already the essential objection that is raised by Bacon against all conceptual thinking that it does not content itself with the reality of experience as something purely given: instead of solely receiving this reality, it transforms it in one way or another and in this transformation falsifies it. Thus, the freedom and spontaneity of the concept are understood as mere caprice. The deeper reason for this reproach, however, lies in the fact that empiricism in no way takes this freedom itself in its full significance and in its full scope but understands it as a mere freedom of combination. The concept can posit and produce no new content of cognition; it can only displace in various ways and connect and separate at will the simple ideas presented by sensation. Phenomena are thus generated from the true originary-­data of cognition which, however, are nothing more than results of mixture and accordingly have all the instability of simple products of the mixture. “Mixed modes”6 – so Locke formulates this basic view – arise wherever the understanding does not content itself with apprehending what is present in inward or outward perception but from it forms new combinations which belong solely to itself. For these modes there are no prototypes, no originals in sense sensation or in the world of actual objects: But if we attentively consider these ideas I call mixed modes, we are now speaking of, we shall find their original quite different. The mind



toward a theory of the concept

341

often exercises an active power in making these several combinations; for it being once furnished with simple ideas, it can put them together in several compositions, and so make a variety of complex ideas, without examining whether they exist so together in nature. And hence I think it is that these ideas are called notions [Begriffe], as if they had their original and constant existence [Bestand] more in the thoughts of men than in the reality of things. . . . [Such a notion] has its unity from an act of the mind combining those several simple ideas together, and considering them as one complex one, consisting of those parts.7

This recognition of the concept in Locke’s system of empiricism places it of course on so narrow and insecure a footing that the first attack will suffice to shatter its whole consistent existence and validity. Berkeley proceeds here more acutely and consistently when he takes back even this limited concession – when he declares the concept to be not so much an independent source of cognition as the source of all illusion and error. If the ground of all truth lies in simple sense data, only mere formations of semblance [Scheingebild] can arise as soon as this ground is abandoned. In this verdict, which Berkeley pronounces upon the concept in general, concepts of every kind and of every logical rank are included – in fact, it is primarily directed against the very concepts that would seem to be 334 “most exact,” those of mathematics and mathematical physics. No concept is a path [Weg] to reality [Realität], to truth and to the essential being of things; rather, every concept is a going astray [Abweg: detour] from them. Concepts do not sharpen the mind [Geist] but blunt it to the single true reality that is given to us in immediate perceptions. Even in this radical renunciation of the concept, however, a peculiar reversal, a genuine peripety of thought is historically as well as systematically prepared for. Berkeley believed that through his critique he had struck the concept in its root – however, if we think this critique through to the end, it proves instead to be one of the most fertile, positive elements for the understanding and appreciation of the concept. For it is not the concept as such that cuts the thread of life – rather, what is eliminated by a sharp cut is the affiliation with the “general representation,” with the “general idea”8 that had hitherto been upheld by a centuries-­ old logical and psychological tradition. This is what has been decisively eliminated, what has been recognized as an internally inconsistent formation [Gebilde]. The “general” idea, the image of a triangle that is not

342

335

the construction of scientific cognition

right angled, acute angled, or obtuse angled but rather all these at once, is an empty fiction. However, in combating this fiction Berkeley, contrary to his own basic purpose, instead prepared the ground [Boden] for another and deeper view of the concept. For he too, with all his opposition to the general representation [allgemeinen Vorstellung], leaves the universality of the representative [Allgemeinheit der repräsentativ] function in place. A single concrete, intuitive formation [Geblide], a triangle with a definite magnitude of sides and angles, can nevertheless stand for all other triangles, can represent [vertreten] them for the geometrician. Thus, from the intuitive representation of a triangle arises its “concept” – not because we simply erase certain determinations that are contained in it but because we posit them as variable. What holds together the various formations [Gebilde] that we regard as “instances” of one and the same concept is not the unity of a generic image but the unity of a rule of alteration – on the basis of which one instance can be derived from another and ultimately the totality of the generally “possible” instances. If Berkeley rejects the unity of the generic image, he does not as such contest this “unity of the rule.”9 With this, however, the question must immediately be raised as to whether and to what extent this admitted unity can be grounded on the ground [Boden] of a pure “psychology of representation.” The rule is and is valid – unless the mode of its validity is rendered visible in a concrete representative image, in any direct “perception.” Therefore, when Berkeley seeks some sort of sensible-­intuitive substrate for it, he can find this substrate nowhere other than in the word, in the name. This nominalism, however, does not solve the problem of the concept but only moves it one step further back, because the name first becomes a name only through the fact that it possesses the capacity to designate and to “signify” something. If we take away from it this function of signification, then we have destroyed its character as a name and have reduced it to a mere sensible sound – if we leave it this function, then the riddle of nominal signifying merely revives the whole riddle of the “concept.” Instead of apprehending the problem of signification indirectly through the name, we may and must move it directly into the center and focus of our investigation; we must pose the question as to what this kind of “representation” [Repräsentation], what this kind of “substitution,” means, which even the outlook and critique of empiricism had to give to the concept.



toward a theory of the concept

343

And here it seems for the moment to apprehend this basic relationship in that it reduces this basic relationship to a quantitative relationship. The determination of the concept as the “one in the many” seems in itself to call for a quantification of this sort. This determination goes back to the first beginnings of the problem of the concept, to its basic discovery in Socratic “induction” and in the Platonic dialectic. And ever since then, it has been a classical, basic, and originary component of logic and of philosophy in general. To distinguish the concept from pure intuition, Kant also defines it as a representation that is contained in an infinite quantity [Menge] of different possible representations as their common characteristic trait and that therefore encompasses these representations in subordination to itself.10 The surest, if not the only way to determine this characteristic trait, to recognize its significance, would seem to be to effect the discursus, actually to run through the quantity [Menge] from which the common factor is expected to stand out. We simply set the elements [Elemente] of this quantity [Menge] side by side, and we will immediately discover in their simple enumeration the form of their unity. In and through them, we shall apprehend at the same time the logical “bond” that holds them together. A sensationalist psychology of the concept cannot but adopt such a view, since for it, the unity of the concept, like the unity of the I, breaks down into a mere “bundle of representations.” The same reduction is, however, demanded and favored by still another camp, from what would seem to be a diametrically opposite point of view. The further the mathematization of logic progressed, the more it aspired to apprehend the “content” of the concept through its extension and ultimately to replace content by extension. For only insofar as this seemed possible could the goal of mathematical logic be achieved – namely, that the qualitative elements of the concept were subjected to the dominance of a quantitative consideration. The concept seemed to be accessible to an exact theoretical quantitative consideration only if it were defined as an “ensemble” in the strict sense, only, that is to say, if it were taken as a “class” of elements [Elemente] forming a purely collective unity. Only in this way, it was supposed, could logic accomplish that achievement that natural science had accomplished long before in its domain and through which it had first been raised to the rank of rigorous cognition. The homogenization of logic was achieved: the reciprocal relationship and determination of concepts had been reduced to the basic rules of

336

344

337

the construction of scientific cognition

a general calculus of classes. In this sense Schroder, in particular, in his Algebra der Logik, sought to construct logic as a pure “logic of domains” [Gebietslogik]. Logic only has to test whether or not classes coincide with one another [Ineinanderfallen], whereas it is for the class to think an aggregate of the elements [Elemente] that it encompasses. What connects these elements [Elemente] with each other is precisely the mere and-­relation [Und-­Relation]: a relation that, according to Russell, may equally well connect a teaspoon with the number three and a chimera with four-­ dimensional space.11 Admittedly, even among mathematical logicians, grave critical objections were soon raised against this view and treatment of the concept. No less a logician than Frege argued in opposition to Schroder that the calculus of domains, whose basic relation is that of the part to the whole, must be regarded as wholly distinct from logic. Frege writes: Indeed, I hold that the concept logically precedes its extension and regard as a fallacy any attempt to base the extension of the concept as a class not on the concept but on individual things. In this way one may arrive at a calculus of domains but not at a logic.

The relationship between mathematics and logic is seen and grounded here in a fundamentally different direction than it was in Schroder: the interconnection between the two is apprehended not in the class concept but in the function concept, and the concept itself is understood and defined according to its nature [Wesen] as a function.12 The modern logic of mathematics has taken this view into account: even where it has adhered to the basic concept of the class and to the presuppositions of the calculus of classes, it has recognized, side by side with the calculus of classes, a wholly independent member, a calculus of relation. In Russell’s treatment of the principles of mathematics, the relation concept [Relationsbegriff] gradually achieves a clear and determined logical primacy over class concept. Thus, in the Principles (1903), he writes: A careful analysis of mathematical reasoning shows . . . that types of relations are the true subject-­matter discussed, however a bad phraseology may disguise this fact; hence the logic of relations has a more



toward a theory of the concept

345

immediate bearing on mathematics than that of classes or propositions, and any theoretically correct and adequate expression of mathematical truths is only possible by its means . . . it has always been customary to suppose relational propositions less ultimate than class-­ propositions (or subject-­ predicate propositions, with which class-­ propositions are habitually confounded), and this has led to a desire to treat relations as a kind of class.13

Once, in this sense, relation [Relation] has thus been recognized as the basic and essential element of mathematical concepts and concepts in general, the attempt to render intelligible the content of a concept by its extension becomes untenable. Russell goes on to determine the concept purely as a class of elements [Elemente]; however, in so doing, he must explicitly distinguish between two definitions of class. There are, he stresses, two ways to arrive at the determination of class: one by pointing out their members individually and connecting them together as a mere aggregate, by a simple “and,” the other by stating a general characteristic trait, a condition that all members of the class must satisfy. Russell opposes this latter generation of the class as the “intensional” over against the former, which is explained by means of “extension.” And he does not stop at this mere juxtaposition; rather, it becomes gradually clearer that the definition by intension has precedence over the definition by extension. First of all, it has the advantage of greater logical universality: it alone makes it possible to integrate classes embracing an infinite quantity [Menge] of elements [Elemente]. Russell, admittedly, seems at first to level down this difference and mitigates its significance in that he considers it as a purely psychological difference. Thus, he explains: Classes may be defined either extensionally or intensionally. That is to say, we may define the kind of object which is a class, or the kind of concept which denotes a class: this is the precise meaning of the opposition of extension and intension in this connection. But although the general notion can be defined in this two-­fold manner, particular classes, except when they happen to be finite, can only be defined intensionally, i.e. as the objects denoted by such and such concepts. I believe this difference to be purely psychological; logically, the extensional definition appears to be equally applicable to infinite classes, but

338

346

the construction of scientific cognition

practically, if we were to attempt it, death would cut short our laudable endeavor before it had attained its goal.14 339

340

As far as I can see, however, Russell’s logic was not able, in its further construction, to maintain the equivalence proclaimed here. As a result, the definition by intension assumes more and more not only a subjective but also an objectively valid priority – it constitutes not only a πρότερον πρὸς ἡμᾶς [first according to us] but also a genuine πρότερον τῇ φύσει [first according to nature]. For it is evident that before one can proceed to group together the elements [Elemente] of a class and indicate them extensively by enumeration, a decision must be made as to which elements [Elemente] are to be regarded as belonging to the class, and this question can be answered only on the basis of a class concept in the “intensional” sense of the word. What seems to hold together the members that are united in the class is that they all meet a certain condition that can be generally formulated. And now the ensemble itself no longer appears as a mere sum of individuals but is defined by this very condition, whose signification can be apprehended and stated explicitly [für sich], without having to ask in how many individuals it is realized or even whether it is realized in any individual at all. “When I pronounce a sentence with the grammatical subject ‘all humans,’ ” Frege had argued against Schroder, “I do not by this mean to say anything about an unknown chief in Central Africa. Thus, it is absolutely false to say that in using the word ‘human’ I am in any way designating this chief.”15 In line with the same basic view, Russell expressly declares in his Principia Mathematica that an extension is an incomplete symbol whose use acquires sense only through its relation to an intension.16 What holds the class together, according to the theory developed here, is the circumstance that all the members united in it are to be thought of as variables of a determined propositional function;17 it is, therefore, this propositional function and not the mere thought of a quantity as a pure collective that appears as the core of the concept. The propositional function must as such be strictly distinguished here from a certain individual proposition, from a judgment in the usual logical sense. For what it primarily gives us is only a pattern for judgments but in itself is no judgment: it lacks the decisive characteristic trait of a judgment, since it is in itself neither true nor false. Truth or falsity attach only



toward a theory of the concept

347

to the individual judgments in which a determinate predicate is referred to a determinate subject, whereas the propositional function contains no such determination but only sets up a general schema that must be filled with determinate values in order to achieve the character of an individual statement. “A propositional function,” Russell defines, in fact, is an expression containing one or more undetermined constituents, such that, when values are assigned to these constituents, the expression becomes a proposition. In other words, it is a function whose values are propositions.

In this sense, every mathematical equation is an example of such a propositional function. Let us take the equation x2 -­2x -­8 = 0: this statement is true if for the wholly indefinite value of x, we substitute the two roots of the equation, whereas for all other values, it is false.18 Given these determinations, we may give a general, purely “intensional” definition for the concept of “class.” If we consider all xs so constituted that they belong to the type of a certain propositional function φ(x) and group together the values of x that prove to be “true” values for this function, then we have defined a specific class by means of the function φ(x). In this sense, every propositional function yields a class: the class of x constituted so that they are φ(x) – and precisely this “so that” cannot be broken down into other determinations but must be recognized as a signification sui generis, as a “logical indefinable.” Each class becomes definable only through the statement of a propositional function that is true for the members of that class and false for all other things.19 With this, however, what logic calls a “concept” has by no means been broken down into a collective quantity [Menge]; on the contrary, the quantity [Menge] is once again grounded in the concept. Accordingly, pure logical calculus as such has led us no further here: it becomes apparent that it cannot replace the pure analysis of signification – it can never do any more than state it in the strictest and simplest formula. From the perspective of this point of logic, mathematics may be expected to pave the way to furnish an analytical clarification but no truly “genetic definition” of the concept; yet in another respect, it seems to pave the way toward this point of logic. For although, as Kant argued in his “methodology of pure reason,”20 philosophy can expect no salvation

341

348

342

the construction of scientific cognition

from an “imitation of the methods” of mathematics, mathematics nevertheless provides it with those contents through which the specific sense of the pure function of the concept can most clearly be discerned and most adequately apprehended. The concept seems to stand out with full clarity only in its “exact” mathematical framing: here and only here do we seem to find what it is, signifies, and achieves, written in “large letters.” I took this path in an earlier investigation, where I attempted to arrive at a general determination of the function of the concept through the paradigm of mathematical and mathematical-­physical concepts. Of course, it can be argued against such a consideration that it takes the part for the whole. One might interject that a truly logical and phenomenological analysis of the concept must attempt to grasp it in the totality of its signification [Bedeutungstotalität], in the totality [Gesamtheit] of its individual performances and phases of performances, whereas mathematics and exact science disclose it, to be sure, in perfection but by that very token only at the end of its development. Must not this end, so the argument goes, be linked with the beginning, and must we not survey and pass through the whole of the mediate and intermediate stages if we are to arrive at an exhaustive determination of the concept? Some logicians have in fact gone so far as not only to distinguish what they called the “logical concept” from the “scientific concept” but to actually regard them in a sense as polar opposites. According to Wundt, the logical concept and the scientific concept form the opposite end points in the development of thinking, because it begins with the logical concept and concludes every determinate direction of activity with the scientific concept. The logical concept is bound by only two basic conditions: its contents must be determined, and it must stand in a logical interconnection with other concepts. The scientific concept demands in addition that cognition must have arrived at a certain, at least relative, conclusion, that it must have justified its validity on all sides and so raised itself to the level of universal validity.21 Consequently, any attempt to read off and derive the structure of the “logical” concept as such from that of the “scientific” concept seems to amount to a confusion of genus and species. And what makes it harder to escape the force of this objection is that one of the most important findings of our investigation consists precisely in that we must recognize certain types of spiritual forming [Formung] that, though differing sharply in their imprint [Prägung] and



toward a theory of the concept

349

their particular nature from that of the scientific concept, nevertheless can in no way dispense with intellectual determinateness.22 Should this insight not have an effect on the conception of logic itself? Should we not expect to also find here a complex and differentiated totality [Ganze] of forms of thought and cognition instead of a single and unitary type of “concept in general”? Indeed, our entire preliminary consideration has repeatedly shown us that what we called the symbolic forming [Formung] of the worlds of perception and intuition does not begin with the “abstract” concept, and certainly not with one of its highest manifestations [Ausprägungen], the concept of exact science. To understand this mode of forming [Formung] and its basic tendency, we must begin our inquiry at a much lower level: we must return from the dimensions of the scientific world concept to that of the “natural world concept.” From this going back [Rückgang], however, there arises for us a further lesson that, far from altering the results of the previous analysis of the “exact” concept, confirms it from a new angle. For it has 343 shown us, on this occasion, that the broader problem domain that we had undertaken nevertheless left untouched the pure problem of existence [Problembestand], as we sought earlier to demonstrate by the example of the relation concepts [Relationsbegriff] of mathematics. Wherever we attacked this problem, whether at the highest or lowest levels of cognition, whether we inquired into intuition or pure thinking, into linguistic or logical-­mathematical concept formation, we always found that “one in many” that constituted and expressed its sense identically in the most diverse stages of concretion. And in all these instances, this “overarching-­ one” is not so much a unity of the genus under which the species and individuals are to be subsumed as a unity of the relation by virtue of which a manifold is determined as inwardly belonging together. Outstanding mathematicians have designated this basic form of relation as the core of the numerical concept and hence of mathematical thinking;23 it is, however, by no means limited to this realm. It is at work both in the smallest and the largest phenomena: it dominates the whole of cognizing from the simplest sensible retrieval [Wiederfinden] and recognition up to those highest conceptions of thought in which thought transcends everything given, in which, surpassing the mere “reality” of things, it establishes its free realm of the “possible.” Consequently, here the “concept” [Begriff] must be grounded and anchored. For a

350

344

the construction of scientific cognition

close logical and epistemo-­critical analysis, “to comprehend” [Begreifen] and “to relate,” always proves to be correlates, genuine reciprocal concepts.24 This correlation as such continues to exist, regardless of which “world concept” we move in – regardless of whether we are dealing with the empirical “things” of our worlds of perception and intuition, with the “hypotheses” of natural science, or with the “constructions” of pure mathematics. The content of thought does not affect or alter here the pure form of thought any more than, in Descartes’ well-­known metaphor, the light of the sun becomes something else or different by the different objects it illumines. For the construction of a “world” – whether it is taken as an ensemble of sensible or logical or of real or ideal objects – is possible only in accordance with determinate principles of organization and configuration. And the concept does nothing other than to make apparent these configured elements and fixate them for thought. It sets up a determinate direction and a determinate norm of discursus: it indicates the “point of view” under which a manifold of contents, whether belonging to perception, intuition, or pure thinking, are grasped and by virtue of which are “seen together.” The errors in the logical and epistemo-­critical theory over the nature [Wesen] of the concept ultimately go back to the fact that we do not take it in this way as a pure viewpoint but as a visible thing: as something that was supposed to have its home in the sensible world, alongside it or above it. The two parties that confronted each other over the concept in this “battle of the giants” have erred in the same sense: the one by striving to apprehend the concept as though with their hands, the other in that it expelled the concept to a suprasensible place while continuing to think of it in this place as something substantially available [Vorhanden]. Characteristically, where Plato comes closest to a cognition of the pure relational nature of the concept, where he deepens the original form of his theory of ideas through the thought of and demand for a κοινωνία τῶν γενὼν [community of forms], he rejects both views: here, in the Sophist, he is driven to turn against the concept blindness of the sensationalists and materialists as well as against the conceptual realism of the “friends of ideas.”25 Even the counter movement against this conceptual realism, the “nominalism” of the Middle Ages and modern times, however, is itself by no means free from the fetters it scoffs. For where it attempts to determine the nature of the concept, it is also fundamentally grappling with



toward a theory of the concept

351

shadows. Because it is not able to find the concept as a thing, it makes it into a mere sound, a flatus vocis [breath of the voice]. Nevertheless, it also treats this mere sound, this word of language, like an essential secondary kind of existence, instead of exposing the pure function of signification in it and grounding its “objective” content [Gehalt] precisely therein. Time and time again, when materialists and spiritualists as well as realists and nominalists attempt to ascertain and hold fast to the sense [Sinn] of the concept, they do so by attempting to reach back into some sphere of being [Sein]. In this way, however, they miss the deeper insight into the symbolic content [Gehalt] of language as well as that of cognition: this insight consists in the fact that all being is graspable [faßbar] or accessible only from sense and by means of sense. Hence, if we wish to comprehend [begreifen] the concept [Begriff], we must not attempt to grasp [greifen] it like an object. Accordingly, we find here the point in which the inner contradiction in the sensationalist view of knowledge is most clearly revealed to us. There have been idealist logicians who suppose that they are able to concede and surrender the world of appearance, the world of the senses, to the sensationalist view, in order to more securely defend the “intellectual” world from all admixture with the sensible and confirm it as an independent sphere that is subject to its own laws. From the beginning, however, our basic problem has led us along the opposite path; it has increasingly shown us plainly that sensationalism is unable to acquire a unitary and uncontradictory view even of the sensory world itself. It is valid here to meet the sensationalists on the field that they have always claimed as their own inalienable domain – to discredit them not from the perspective of the content [Gehalt] of the “idea” but from that of the content [Gehalt] of the sensible appearance itself. For the analysis of sensible appearance showed that its very appearing, its “presentation” [Präsentation], is impossible without a gradated and organized system of purely representative [repräsentativ] functions. In order for it to be constituted as a whole, as the totality of an intuitive cosmos, the ensemble of the visible [Sichtbaren] required certain basic forms of “sight” [Sicht] that, even though they may be exhibited through visible [sichtbaren] objects, are nevertheless in no way mistaken for them and cannot be taken as visible objects [Objekt]. Without the relations of unity and otherness, of similarity and dissimilarity, of sameness and difference, the world of intuition can acquire no fixed

345

352

346

the construction of scientific cognition

shape [Gestalt]: these relations themselves belong, however, to the consistent existence [Bestand] of this world as the conditions for it, not as a part of it. This relationship, which has shown itself to us in the basic and originary-­stratum of intuitive cognition, now finds its demonstration and confirmation when we go on to other and “higher” levels of thinking and comprehending. The world of pure “signification” adds nothing here that is fundamentally foreign to the world of “presentation”: it only unfolds what is already contained in this “according to possibility” [der Möglichkeit nach]. On the other hand, this very progress from “potency” to “act” is, to be sure, the most difficult achievement of cognition. For now, it is a question of freeing the functions of “pointing to” that are contained in the formations [Gibilde] of intuitive reality from this containment and comprehending them purely as modes of functional validity. A theory of this validity is demanded: a theory of forms that, on the one hand, isolates the various kinds of relations that already prevail in the intuitive and are here demonstrable in concreto and that, on the other hand, comprehends them in their reciprocal determinacy, in their interdependence from one another. We have thus seen, for example, that certain basic norms prevail in the construction of the world of space and that this construction is possible only because the individual spatial perceptions continuously “orient” themselves by certain basic shapes [Gestalten].26 It is geometrical cognition, however, that first apprehends the law to which these shapes [Gestalten] are subjected and expresses it as such with objective determinacy. Here again, the theory of the concept must avoid confusing the form of determination with the contents that are first made determinable through it: it must avoid confusing the sphere of law [Gesetz] with the posited [Gesetzt]. Although both must constantly reference one another, the two must remain sharply separated in their significance. The symbolic language of logical calculus can be of assistance here in an analysis of significance, since in a sense, such a logical calculus places, as it were, the intellectual differentiation on which it depends immediately before our eyes. If we do not think the concept through the enumeration of what falls under it but rather purely and intensionally define it by the statement of a determinate propositional function, this propositional function φ(x) contains two elements that are obviously dissimilar to each other. The general form of the function, as it is designated by the letter φ, stands



toward a theory of the concept

353

out sharply against the values of the variable x, which may enter into this function as a “true” value. The function determines the interconnection of these values but is not itself one of them: the φ of x is not homogeneous with the series of x, x1, x2, x3, etc. In his theory of the propositional function, Russell stresses: It is to be observed, that according to the theory of propositional functions here advocated, the φ in φx is not a separate and distinguishable entity: it lives in the propositions of the form φx, and cannot survive analysis. . . . If φ were a distinguishable entity, there would be a proposition asserting φ of itself, which we may denote by φ(φ); there would also be a proposition not-­φ(φ): denying φ(φ). In this proposition we may regard φ as variable; we thus obtain a propositional function. The question arises: Can the assertion in this propositional function be asserted of itself? The assertion is non-­assertibility of self, hence if it can be asserted of itself, it cannot, and if it cannot, it can. This contradiction is avoided by the recognition that the functional part of a propositional function is not an independent entity.27

A difficulty that has not only always troubled logic but has also affected deeply the whole development of metaphysics is rekindled here in the form of a familiar logical paradox: none other than the old problem of universals, which now confronts us in an altered shape. Regardless of how this problem has been solved – whether the universals were thought of as preceding or following individual things, or as “contained in them,” all these supposed solutions disclose the same methodological fallacy. They substitute for a pure relationship of significance one that exists between empirical things or occurrences. For it is only between empirical things or occurrences that a statement of “before” or “after” or “inner” or “outer” can be made. Nearly all the parties in this struggle over universals were destined to take these metaphors of before and after, inner and outer, for valid and logical, if not metaphysical, determinations. All these metaphorical figures of speech, however, can no longer deceive us as soon as we have made it clear that the “universal” and the “particular” are distinguished from each other not in their being but in their sense and that a difference [Unterschied] in dimensions of sense can never be reduced to such differences [Differenzen] as those that prevail between the dimensions

347

348

354

349

the construction of scientific cognition

of the spatial and temporal or be adequately traced back and adequately expressed in terms of them. Of all the solutions attempted here, the most relatively satisfactory still seems to be the one that sought the being of the universals in individual things: uniuersalia non sunt res subsistentes, sed habent esse solum in singularibus [the universal are not subsisting, rather they have a being only in individuals].28 For at least the external separation is avoided here; although the image is borrowed from space, the strict correlation, the reciprocal relation between the universal and the particular, is rightly maintained. Meanwhile, this very correlation immediately involves new difficulties and drawbacks, in that it is in danger of being confounded with the homogeneity of the elements that are related to each other. The conceptual universal [Allgemein] then becomes a mere commonality [Gemeinsamen]: something that admittedly is not an independent and new thing but that nevertheless expresses a similarity that is present in things. The significance of the universal would now seem to be reduced to this category of similarity, of similitudo. With this, however, the sense of the concept as a purely relational concept [Relationsbegriff] suffers an unwarranted restriction: in the system of relations [Relationen], similarity functions only as a special instance that cannot be raised to the rank of the “type” of the conceptual relation [Beziehung] as such. It is not in respect to similarity alone that a manifold can be compared and combined; rather, this form of combination [Zusammenfassung] is confronted by others, equal in rank, which are oriented according to totally different perspectives, which are determined by other kinds of “aspects.” And every such aspect, every relation [Relation] – R1, R2, R3, etc.– may raise the same claim: each of them defines a fully legitimate “concept.”29 In view of the universal element of signification that the concept sets up and stresses, everything that falls under this element is not only similar but the same: to be thought of as a particular “instance” of a concept, the individual exemplar must satisfy the whole concept – that is, the totality [Gesamtheit] of the conditions it embraces. This equality of the aspect, however, in no way requires that the elements [Elemente] of a multiplicity that are to be consolidated by the concept exhibit any common consistency [Bestand], because the aspect itself is nothing tangible that can in whole or part be contained in these elements, that by some sort of spatial analogy can be “stuck” in them. Does the functional equation, for example, in any way lie in the various



toward a theory of the concept

355

values of the variables that we can insert in it as the “true values”? The equation of a plane curve may be designated as the “concept” of this same curve: in it we have a propositional function that is true for all values of the coordinates of the points in the curve but false for other values.30 Through this condition, the individual points of the curve are grasped together into a unity, which, however, designates in them no other commonality than that which consists in this form of correlation. Once the law of such a correlation has been established, the totality [Gesamtheit] of “possible” spatial points immediately breaks down into two classes that are sharply separated from each other: the points that fulfill the relation stated in this law and those which do not fulfill it. What intuition apprehends as a particular shape [Gestalt] with certain spatial characteristics and properties now seems to be reduced, by the analysis of thinking, to a general rule of affiliation. And this not only is valid for mathematical concepts but constitutes an essential feature of all true conceptual structures. For it always seems as if the basic task of the concept is to gather together – συνάγειν εἰς ἕν, as Plato called it – what is scattered in intuition, even what is from the standpoint of intuition completely disparate, by establishing a new, ideal reference point for them. Through this unity of direction, the particulars, which were directed toward this reference point prior to diverging from one another, are stamped with a new unity of “being” [Wesen] – and this very “being” [Wesen] is not to be taken ontically but logically, as a pure determination of signification. The convergence by which the sensible or intuitive strangeness [Fremdheit] is overcome does not come about by the fact that a substantial equality or accord is demonstrated in the elements [Elemente] of the manifold but that, however different they may be from one another, they are taken as elements [Momente] of an interconnection of sense [Sinnzusammenhang], that each in its own place [Teil] and its particular position [Stelle] constitutes the totality [Gesamtheit] and function of this sense. If we take the unity of the concept in this way, then admittedly it can never be – to employ a term that Kant coined in a different context – anything other than a “projected unity.” This is because the concept only establishes a standpoint of comparison and correlation, without implying whether or not something in “existence” is encountered that meets the determination it provides. For this reason alone, it is obvious that and why its adequate explanation can never be gained from the

350

356

351

the construction of scientific cognition

consideration of its mere extension, from the consideration of the individual or individuals. For it is by no means certain that an individual corresponds to the unity it establishes, that any particular “falls under it.” In the way of handling mathematical logic that sought to reduce the concept to the “class,” the introduction and integration of the “null-­ class” has always been conjoined with particular difficulties. The “null-­ class” was indispensable to a complete logical theory of the concept or number, but on the other hand, it was burdened with paradoxes and contradictions for every purely “extensional” view. Precisely these paradoxes initiated a turnabout that led Russell, for example, to regard a purely extensional view as inadequate and to supplement and deepen it with an “intensional” approach. For a class that has no elements [Elemente] cannot be defined by indication of its elements – it can be designated intensionally only by virtue of a certain propositional function.31 One of the limitations of the usual abstraction theory of the concept is that it must assess as given the elements [Elemente] from which the concept is constructed, from which it is supposedly “abstracted.” If the concept is to bring out the common in a series of individuals and leave aside the distinct, then it must first set out these individuals themselves – must “have” them as sensible or intuitive determinations – before it can stamp them with its own form. According to this theory, it can designate only what it is – not what it “is not.” It is thus also this postulate that stands at the beginning of all logic – it constitutes the basic thought of the Eleatic logic. Parmenides is, however, followed by Dernocritus and Plato: both of whom give to nonbeing a new justification and sense, the former in the realm of physics, the latter in the field of dialectics. The system of knowledge, the community and interweaving of concepts – we learn in Plato’s Sophist – is not achieved until we resolve to recognize being and nonbeing as equally justified and equally necessary elements. Every single concept embraces, side by side with a statement about being, an abundance of statements about nonbeing: every “is” in a predicative sentence can be fully understood only if we think of an “is not” as correlative with it.32 Indeed, the concept cannot attain an ideal determination of the actual as long as it remains exclusively within the boundaries of this actual itself. Its true and supreme achievement requires that it progress from the consideration of the “actual” to that of the “possible,” and it cannot



toward a theory of the concept

357

do this if it shrinks back from its opposite, the “impossible.” The whole history of science teaches us how eminently significant the conception of the “not-­possible” can be and how in many instances this conception opens up a free survey of the realm of the possible and of its systematic configuration and organization. If the concept is a mere “point of view” of relation and correlation, it must also be free to link conflicting antagonisms with each other: so that through this connection it may learn to recognize the conflictual antagonism and to penetrate its ground. It is thus wholly fruitful and meaningful to grasp such a concept as that of the “regular decahedron,” because precisely the nonbeing [Nichtsein] that is contained within it opens up to thinking a new insight into the being of the geometric world, into the structure of the spatial. We said earlier that the concept is not so much a ready-­made path [Weg] along which thinking progresses as rather a method, a process of way-­making [Bahnung] itself. In this way-­making [Bahnung], thinking can proceed entirely independently; it does not bind itself to fixed goals that are already finished and given but sets up new goals and asks whether there is a path leading to them, and if so, what path. In the language of symbolic logic, this means that neither truth nor falsity is imputed to the “propositional function” in which the concept is grounded, that it remains open for the time being whether there are determinate values of the variable x for which this function is valid. Such a propositional function intends a determinate signification, but it does not yet fulfill it: it gives no fixed and ready answer but only establishes the direction of the question. All cognition, however, must be preceded precisely by such an establishment [Feststellung] of the question if a clear and secure answer is to be found. Before certain lines of sight of cognition have been set up, as is done in the concept, research cannot begin – the valid relations in the realm of empirical as well as in ideal being cannot be determined. In this respect, in the history of philosophy, the “concept” itself, characteristically first emerges in the form of a question. Aristotle designates Socrates as the “discoverer” of the universal concept. This very discovery in Socrates presents itself not so much as a new kind of knowing [Wissen] as a kind of not-­knowing [Nichtwissen]. The Socratic question concerning “what is” (τί ἔστι) contains within it the method of Socratic “induction” of the λόγοι ἐπακτικοί [inductive arguments]. And thus, it remains true, even in developed cognition, that each newly acquired

352

358

353

the construction of scientific cognition

concept is an attempt, a starting point, a problem: its value consists not so much in that it “pictures” [abbilden] a determinate object as in that it opens up new logical perspectives and by virtue of this makes possible a new penetration and survey of the whole of a certain problem complex [Fragekomplex]. If, therefore, under the basic logical functions the judgment possesses a closing [abschließend] character, the concept, by contrast, has essentially the function of opening up [Aufschließen]. It raises the questions, the final decision of which falls to the judgment; it is only the starting point of an equation whose solution is expected from analyzing a definite ideal realm of objects or from advancing experience. In this sense, a concept can be effective and fruitful for cognition long before it is itself exactly “defined,” i.e. is brought to a complete and definitive determination. For one of its essential tasks does not consist in bringing the problems of cognition prematurely to rest but in preserving them in a steady flux while it guides them toward new goals that it must for the moment hypothetically anticipate. Once again, we find here that the concept is far less abstractive than prospective; it not only fixes the already known, establishing its general outlines but also maintains a consistent outlook for new and unknown connections. It not only takes up the similarities or interconnections that experience offers it but also strikes new connections: it is a free guideline that must always be attempted anew if the inner organization of the realms of empirical intuition and of the logical-­ideal object is to be brought out clearly. With this, it immediately becomes evident why every theory of the concept that seeks to explain it through purely reproductive tendencies and to reduce it to such tendencies must necessarily fail. This limitation has already proved impossible in the domain of intuition and the pure “presentative function”; even here, every theory of perception and every theory of empirical cognition in general must call on the aid of the function of the “productive imagination” at every step. In the concept, the achievement of the productive imagination stands before us in a heightened and intensified form. We thus fall into a misunderstanding of its simple “what” if we attempt to transform it into a sum of reproductions, a mere ensemble of remembered images. For simple phenomenological reflection raises the objection here: if we take the “concept” as it is immediately given, it stands over against the mnemonic representation as something totally different, as something interchangeable with it. We



toward a theory of the concept

359

must go behind the sphere of consciousness, must pass from pure logic and phenomenology to physiology, in order to maintain an equivalence between concept and the remembered image. The concept then appears as a product of “unconscious” traces and residues that have been left behind in the brain by earlier sense perceptions. Aside from the fact that this notion distorts the simple sense of the logical question, transforming logic into a brain metaphysics, the concept would, however, be inadequate to its task if this were its actual task. We should have a true application here of Bacon’s quip that anyone who supposed he could apprehend reality through conceptual thinking seemed to him to be like a man who, to gain better knowledge of a distant object, climbed a high tower and looked out from it even though he was perfectly free to approach the object itself and observe it close at hand. One thing is seen correctly here: the concept, in accordance with its characteristic “attitude” must, in difference to direct perception, move its object [Objekt] off into the distance, into a kind of ideal distance, in order to bring it within its perspective. The concept must sublate “presence” [Präsenz] in order to arrive at “representation [Repräsentation].” However, this transformation that the concept carries out no longer has for us the purely negative sense that it must have for strict positivism. For the analysis of both perception and intuitive cognition have shown us that even here this transition is required and carried out within determinate boundaries. The function of the concept does not bring about a break in the whole of cognition – it only continues a basic tendency that already proved to be at work in the first stages of sensible cognition and perceptual knowledge. Precisely in this continuation, this tendency is truly authenticated and justified. It has been argued that my critique of the theory of abstraction applies if one starts from the most highly developed concepts, those of mathematics and mathematical physics, but that it falls down as soon as we consider the preliminary stages of scientific cognition, as soon as we take as our basis those concept formations that are already found – far from the aims of science – in our “natural” image-­world that is not yet altered and encumbered by theories. It is maintained that the theory of abstraction remains in full force here: the “intuitive concept” is in fact developed from the “general mnemonic image” that has been deposited in us by a series of concrete-­sensible perceptions. It seems to me that this rehabilitation, as it was attempted

354

360

the construction of scientific cognition

by Max Brod and Felix Weltsch in their book Anschauung und Begriff [Intuition and Concept], reveals – precisely through the sharpness and pregnance with which the essential features of the “abstractive” view of the concept are elaborated – the dialectic in which the view must always ultimately become entangled. For according to this basic view, the true and, for cognition, essential achievement that the concept carries out is that it transforms the sharp, individual, determined images provided by sensation and perception into unclear and blurred representations. This vagueness is regarded as the necessary condition for the concept – the element of existence in which it should exist and, so to speak, the life air in which alone it can breathe. Through detailed psychological analyses, Brod and Weltsch seek to demonstrate how the perception and the intuitive representation gradually enter into this element [Element]. The stage of recollection functions as a medium here in that in it begins that blurring of boundaries between the individual sense impressions that are taken up and continued by the concept:

355

Indeed, self-­ observation shows how rare truly, specific recollected images are, i.e., images in which the memory of a unique, formally punctual lived-­experience has remained securely free from the influence of similar ensuing lived-­experiences. A recollected image almost always represents [repräsentieren] a whole series of impressions. The recollection of a friend presents him to me in many relations at once. If I think of a landscape, it stands before me as I have seen it time and time again, in varying extension, illumination, mood. However, these images, which represent a considerable deviation from one another, do not for that reason cease to be intuitive. Thus, in fact, the general recollected image actually corresponds . . . to the condition: to rescue the world from its infinitely progressing pulverization; representations thus arise that bring back to a higher unity what is crumbling into disparate, detailed images. This mission is accomplished by the general recollected image . . . as a blurred representation, which by virtue of it can be interpreted into many sharp, deviating representations, embraces these representations. . . . In the alternately sharp and blurred parts of this general recollected image, there is a kind of impression of all the representations we have lived; they all appear as



toward a theory of the concept

361

represented through the special stratification of the vagueness in the general recollected image.

To designate this state of affairs, Brod and Weltsch introduce a specific symbol: A + x. A signifies here what was common to the manifold lived representations – that is, for example, to the landscape in different illuminations and moods – whereas the divergent blurs into x. In the blur we have thus found the instrument by which two seemingly opposed attributes, hitherto regarded as crass contradictions, are brought into one: the ‘intuitive’ and the ‘abstract.’ For some intuitive representations are at the same time abstract; these are the blurred representations of the form (A + x).

And here, it is claimed, we have for the first time a foundation for a true psychology of thinking – insofar as we do not arbitrarily restrict thinking to the domain of scientific cognition but seek to apprehend it in the totality of its living manifestations. It consists, then, in nothing other than “the living play of the (A + x)-­formations [Gebilde]”: “It seems . . . certain that we think in blurred general intuitions.”33 With this, however, the Gordian knot of the problem of the concept is not untied but cut. For is it really a “rescue” from the infinite diversity and fragmentation of individual impressions if we flee from them into the bleariness of a total representation? Do we want and, in fact, are we able to renounce this multiplicity in general? Or does not the sense of concept formation consist precisely in the fact that it gives us an Ariadne’s thread within the labyrinth of the many and the particular? The genuine concept turns away from the world of intuition only to lead back to it with all the greater certainty: it serves for the regulation, the determination [der Bestimmung, der Determination] of the particular itself. It cannot be argued here that this function resides only in the highest, strictly scientific concepts. For although it is in the scientific concepts that this function of the concept first stands out with full pregnance, although it is here most clearly apprehended and immediately accessible to logical analysis, it is still not limited to the scientific concepts. Rather, it already belongs to those preliminary stages, those germ cells of the theoretical-­scientific concept that Brod and Weltsch designate as

356

362

357

the construction of scientific cognition

“intuitive concepts.” For these, too, are not so much generic concepts as rather concepts of connection. They do not set out blurred total-­images of things but strike bridges between the things that are given in perception as merely singular and relatively isolated. Thus, for example, the intuitive concept of color is no generic image in which red, blue, yellow, and green fade into each other in some vague way; rather, through the concept of color, a characteristic domain is lifted out from the whole of sensible experience and “defined” by a definite relational element [Relationsmoment], the relations [Beziehungen] to light and to the eye. How would such an insight into the order, into the organization, into the concrete differences [Differenzen] of a multiplicity be possible if the concept consisted essentially in a turning away from them, if it consisted in the leveling down of these differences [Differenzen]?34 And is it not a leveling down when, understanding the differences [Unterschiede] through the concept and deriving them from it, we suppose them rather to be blurred in it? If, however, instead of remaining with the systematic oppositions in the view of the concept as such, we inquire into the underlying grounds of these oppositions – then, we find ourselves once again brought back to our central problem, to the problem of representation [Repräsentation]. For it is the view of representation [Repräsentation] and the “conditions of its possibility” that dominates and determines the view of the concept. If in their theory, Brod and Weltsch have recourse to a “blurred representation” [Vorstellung], this explicitly happens because only such a blurred representation, only a representation that is not thoroughly determined but seems, as it were, to possess, in all the colorful play of representation, the power to advocate for a multiplicity of contents. This relative indeterminacy of a representation would seem to be the sole ground for their interpretability – would, in fact, alone seem to give it the possibility of being taken now in this and now in that “sense.” The following can therefore be concluded: The property of blurriness, to be interpretable, gives the (A + x) in germ the primary characteristic of the concept, which has created so much difficulty for theoreticians, namely the extension of the concept alongside the content of the concept. . . . How . . . must a single representation be conditioned in order to name many objects? – On the basis of all the foregoing we may answer as follows: in that an (A + x), within



toward a theory of the concept

363

the boundaries that its A imposes on its x, can transform itself into different representations, in that it connects itself without difficulty with these recent, disparate representations through a judgment of identity, it can name the objects corresponding to these representations. The property of the (A + x) can be the subject of different identity judgments making it possible for the function of the concept “to name.”

Thus, two distinctly disparate individual images – the image of the dog lying (L) and that of the dog standing (S) – may be given to me. However, if from L and S, and the other positions of a certain dog that are known to me now, I form its (A + x); that is, if I detach from them a blurred total-­representation of “the” dog, then the representation of lying (X1) or that of standing (X2) may be added to this representation and accordingly the (A + x) can “designate” for me now an (A + Xl) and now an (A + X2).35 However, if we now look back over our previous considerations, the opposition between our view of representation [Repräsentation] and the view that is represented here is brought to its sharpest expression. For we have had to continuously struggle against this very assumption that the symbolic content [Gehalt] of a representation, what lends it a definite significance, may be demonstrated as something in itself, as a real, distinguishable part of it. “Signifying” and “existence” are not homogeneous in the sense that they may be disclosed as components of a representation from which it is “composed [zusammensetzen].” The formula that is here chosen as the expression of the concept must already appear questionable insofar as it connects the A and the x, the expression of the “universal” and the expression of the “particular” or “individual,” by a simple plus sign. Can the universal and the particular, the content of the concept and its extension, what is “meant” in the concept and what is “given” in perception or sensible intuition, really be added together in this sense? Through the representation of such an addition, the “organic” unity that characterizes and distinguishes the concept is transformed into a pure aggregative togetherness. In the propositional function φ(x) that designates a certain concept, the expression for the function itself and the expression of the individual values that are grouped together by it do not stand on the same lines: the “elements” [Momente] that are referred here to each another cannot be thought of as elements [Elemente] of a sum.

358

364

359

the construction of scientific cognition

There is an inherent contradiction in attempting to make the expression φ(x) graspable by dissecting it into separately existing components, by making the φ(x) into a φ + x. For the function sign φ is not the expression for a single numerical quantity that might be combined with other quantities of the variable by elementary arithmetical operations. We have earlier compared the “concept” with the “general member” of a series, which designates the rule of the succession of its individual members. This law of the series restricts the individual elements [Elemente] that belong to it to definite conditions; however, it does not itself form a member of the series. If an arithmetical series of the form 21 23 43 45 etc. is n n designated by the general expression n+1 , then this n+1 no longer presents an individual magnitude; it stands rather for the whole of the series, insofar as this series is taken not as a mere sum of parts but as a characteristic relational framework [Relationsgefüge]. In a similar way, in order to choose a geometrical example, the “general concept” of the conic section is not gained through images of individual circles, ellipses, parabolas, and hyperbolas flowing together and forming a blurred total-­image – what happens rather is that circle and ellipse, hyperbola, and parabola are retained as thoroughly determinate and determined geometrical forms, but at the same time, they are moved into a new relational interconnection: they all obtain the tendency and characteristic “sight” [Sicht] toward the right cone, from which they may arise as results of the various cuts that may be made in it. And the same is true in principle of the simplest “intuitive concepts.” They too never form a mere conglomerate of sense impressions and recollected representations but contain a distinctive “articulation” of these impressions and representations; they constitute a form of their organization. In them, the separate is “seen together” – not in the sense that its components are mingled with one another but in the sense that their interconnection is retained in view of some connecting element. When the Greek language names the moon as the “measurer” (μήν), and the Latin language as the “shining” (luna), different “intuitive concepts” underlie these different denominations – however, these intuitive concepts act in both cases only as a motive of comparison and correlation, as a “point of view,” which is not itself given as a distinct or blurred visibility. And it is here largely immaterial whether this point of view asserts itself in the further progress of cognition or is sublated in its objective construction by



toward a theory of the concept

365

another mode of seeing. Such alterations give to the content of the concept and its scientific validity nothing but its sheer form. If, for example, certain individual languages designate the butterfly as a “bird,” then the connection that is expressed must of course be severed as soon as thinking progresses to describing the order of living beings systematically in accordance with definite “natural-­scientific,” morphological or physiological criteria – however, the original point of view of the correlation that focuses not on such criteria but solely on the intuitive element of “flying” is not thereby declared to be absolutely senseless but merely constitutes another standard of sense that from the standpoint of scientific synopsis must be replaced by another, more complete one. The circumstance that such a change of standard proves to be necessary in the transition from intuitive to scientific concepts does not prove that the operation of measurement as such is not already practiced in the “prescientific” concepts – that they too do not already follow determined basic rules of relational thinking. In the theory of Brod and Weltsch, however, at least the prescientific concept – for in connection with the scientific concept they restrict their thesis in very important and even crucial respects36 – is produced by a mere flowing together of representations and recollected images. In this theory, consciousness resembles a photographic plate, on which various images are produced over the course of time, which overlap one another and mix with one another, until they finally become a single blurred total-­image.37 However, even if we accept this comparison as an expression for the genetic process of concept formation, it remains impossible to see how it can elucidate the logical function of the concept, its capacity to “name” and designate various individual intuitions. For the fact that it has arisen from individual impressions could never in itself bestow on the concept the power to represent [repräsentieren] exactly that from which it has emerged. Admittedly, a total-­image of this sort is formed on the photographic plate: still, the plate will never be able to know it as such, to refer it back to the individual elements [Elemente] from which it grew. Such a relation would require that the process in which the concept was acquired be made, as it were, retrogressively, that the elements [Elemente] from which it is put together to be freed from the mixture into which they have entered and separated from one another. If we attribute to the photographic plate the activity of mixing all the individual impressions that

360

366 361

the construction of scientific cognition

are made on it, shall we also impute to it the power of separating them? Yet precisely this is presupposed and required in “representation” [Repräsentation] in the strict sense. Every function of “presentation” implies an act of identification and an act of differentiation [Unterscheidung] of this sort, and both must be thought of not as a mere succession but as a genuine interpenetration – the positing of identity must be undertaken in differentiation and that of differentiation in the positing of identity. For this kind of “systole” and “diastole,” or “syncrisis” and “diacrisis,” of concepts, all analogies that are drawn from the world of things and from the events and effects in this world are inadequate. Only the opposite formulation of the problem guides us further here: we must begin with what the concept signifies to then proceed to what it proves to be in objective cognition and what it performs for the construction of this cognition. Conversely, we can never understand the basic spiritual act of “representation [Repräsentation],” of intending a “universal” in the individual, by dissecting it into parts and in a sense crushing it into bits. When we do this, we do not retain the fragments, the broken bits of representation [Repräsentation]; rather, we pass altogether from the ambit of their sense in general to an empty existence, from which no path leads back into the sphere of sense.38

ENDNOTES 1 For further details, see Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 2, 173ff. 2 For further details concerning this twofold position of the Pythagorean number, see my “Die Geschichte der antiken Philosophie,” in Max Dessoir, ed. Lehrbuch der Philosophie (Berlin: Ullstein, 1925), 1, 29ff. 3 Helmholtz, Handbuch der physiologischen Optik, 591ff., 948. 4 Cf., for example, Wilhelm M. Wundt, Logik. Eine Untersuchung der Prinzipien und der Methoden Wissenschaftlicher Forschung (2nd ed., Stuttgart: Enke, 1893– 95), 1, 99ff. Christoph Sigwart, Logik (2nd ed., 2 vols., Freiburg: Mohr, 1889), 1, 319ff. 5 [Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 105.] 6 [Originally in English.] 7 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, book II, chap. 22, secs. 2–4. 8 [In English in the original: Cassirer translates this here as “Allgemeinvorstellung,” a “general representation.”] 9 In regard to this positive core of Berkeley’s theory of the concept, see the account of this theory in my Erkenntnisproblem, 2, 297ff.



toward a theory of the concept

367

10 Cf. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 39f. 11 Cf. Bertrand Russell, Principles of Mathematics, Cambridge, 1903 (2nd ed., New York: W. W. Norton, 1938), 71. 12 That Frege himself did not adhere strictly and consistently to his own basic view but replaced it with a purely quantitative view of the concept has been aptly shown by Wilhelm Burkamp in his Begriff und Beziehung, Studien zur Grundlegung der Logik (Leipzig: f. Meiner, 1927); cf. esp. the fourth study, “Klasse und Zahl in der Begriffslogik.” The quotation from Gottlob Frege is to be found in his “Kritische Beleuchtung einiger Punkte in E. Schröder’s “Vorlesungen über die Algebra der Logik,” Ärchiv für systematische Philosophie, new ser. 1 (1895), 433–56. Cf. Burkamp, Begriff und Beziehung, 198. 13 Russell, Principles of Mathematics, chap. 2, §27, 23f. 14 Ibid., chap. 6, §71. 15 [Frege, “Kritische Beleuchtung einiger Punkte in E. Schröders Vorlesungen über die Algebra der Logik,” 454.] 16 Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, Principia Mathematica, Cambridge, 1910 (2nd ed., 1925), 2, 75. Cf., for greater detail, Burkamp, Begriff und Beziehung, 186f. 17 [Originally in English.] 18 Cf. Bertrand Russell, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, 1919 (2nd ed., London and New York: Macmillan, 1920), 155f. 19 Cf. Russell, The Principles of Mathematics, chap. 7, §80, §84; Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, chap. 17, 181ff. 20 [Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 754f.] 21 Wundt, Logik, 1, 95ff. A similar view that has recently been put forward by Gerard Heymans, “Zur Cassirerschen Reform der Begriffslehre” and my response to it are both in Kant-­Studien, 33 (1928), 109–28, 129–36. 22 Cf. my Die Begriffsform im mythischen Denken, Studien der Bibliothek Warburg, 1 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1922). [Ernst Cassirer, “The Form of the Concept in Mythical Thinking” in The Warburg Years (1919–1933). Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology, trans. S. G. Lofts with A. Calcagno (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 1–71.] 23 Cf. Dedekind, Was sind und was sollen die Zahlen? (see 298). 24 This thesis, which I have advocated and more thoroughly established in my Substance and Function (1910), is confirmed in all its essential points by the most recent investigations into the problem of the concept made in Wilhelm Burkamp’s work, Begriff und Beziehung. In a detailed critique of the theories of Schröder, Frege, and Russell, he definitely takes the step from a mere logic of classes to a pure logic of relation. For him, too, the intellectual functions of positing, identity, difference, and relation that form the basic presupposition for the form of number are the presuppositions for all pure form in general: “They are the deeper foundation on which form of any kind can first constructed” (Burkamp, Begriff und Beziehung, 4, 5. Studie, §80, §86 and §95ff.). 25 Cf. Plato, Sophist, 245ff. 26 Cf. 180ff.

368

the construction of scientific cognition

27 Russell, Principles of Mathematics, chap. 7, §88. 28 Thomas Aquinas, Contra gentiles, 1, 65. 29 Cf. my more detailed remarks in Substance and Function, chap. 1, esp. 14ff. 30 Cf. Russell, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, 156. 31 In Russell’s logic, the empty class is defined as the class of all xs that satisfy any function φ(x) but that is false for all values of x: For further details, see The Principles of Mathematics, chap. 2. §25. 32 Cf. Plato, Sophist, esp. 248Eff. 33 Max Brod and Felix Weltsch, Anschauung und Begriff. Grundzüge eines Systems der Begriffsbildung (Leipzig: K. Wolff, 1913), 72ff., 144. 34 Cf. my Substance and Function, 18ff. In agreement with the view there put forward, Burkamp has recently written thus: From individual things we rise to concepts such as “chair” and “dog,” and then to still higher concepts such as “living creature,” “body,” “mass.” From individual states we rise to concepts of “quantity of electricity,” “strength of current,” “energy.” From the individual numbers we rise to the concepts of the prime number and of “number” in general. Between these concepts we set the connecting law. . . . But this lawgiving acquires meaning only through the fact that we can return downward to the basic stages. The law that applies to body and mass will now, on the strength of the law of the logical concept, also be valid for “chair” and “carpet,” and finally also for the individual chair that may lie in my path. This individual chair is now enriched in its being for me by the interweaving of all the concepts under which it stands. . . . In all this the enrichment of the individual is grounded in the knowledge of the general, of the law that apply to the general concept. This enrichment in the knowledge of the particular and especially of the individual is the purpose of the whole hierarchy of concepts. . . . It is for the sake of the lower levels that we work in the higher levels. (Burkamp, Begriff und Beziehung, first study, 2f.) 35 Brod and Weltsch, Anschauung und Begriff. Grundzüge eines Systems der Begriffsbildung, 77ff. 36 Cf. esp. the critical engagement with my Substance and Function in Brod and Weltsch, Anschauung und Begriff. Grundzüge eines Systems der Begriffsbildung, 234ff. 37 Ibid., 74f. 38 For a more complete treatment of this context, I refer the reader to my article “Erkenntnistheorie nebst den Grenzfragen der Logik und Denkpsychologie,” 55ff.

II CONCEPT AND OBJECT One of the most important achievements of the Critique of Pure Reason is to have given the problem of the relationship between “concept” and “object” an entirely new framing and a fundamentally different methodological sense. What made this transformation possible was that at just this point Kant brought about the decisive transition from “general” logic to “transcendental” logic. Through this transition, the theory of the concept was thereby freed from the paralysis into which it had fallen in the traditional treatment. The achievement of the concept now no longer appears as merely analytical and formal but as productive and constructive. It is no longer a more or less remote and pale picture [Abbild] of some absolute, existing reality; it has become a presupposition of experience and with this a condition of the possibility of its objects [Objekte]. The question of the object has become for Kant a question of validity, a question of the quid juris; however, the quid juris of the object cannot be decided before the other question, the quid juris of the concept, has been answered. For the concept is the last and highest stage to which cognition rises in the progress of objective consciousness. In the construction of “objective” cognition, the synthesis of “apprehension in intuition” and of “reproduction in the imagination” must be completed by the “synthesis of recognition in the concept.”1 To recognize an “object” means nothing other than to subject the manifold of intuition

362

370

the construction of scientific cognition

to a rule that determines it with respect to its order. The concept is, however, nothing other than the consciousness of such a rule and of the unity that is posited through it. A transcendental ground must therefore be found for the unity of consciousness in the synthesis of the manifold of all our intuitions, hence also the concepts of objects [Objekte] in general, consequently also of all objects [Gegenstände] of experience, without which it would be impossible to think of any object for our intuitions; for the latter is nothing more than that something for which the concept expresses such a necessity of synthesis.2 363

Through this common referring of the problems of the concept and the object back to the problem of the synthetic unity, the concept is now placed from the outset on another basis than in “general logic.” It no longer suffices to take it as a mere generic concept, a conceptus communis. For such a generic concept is lacking in precisely the characteristic and decisive element: it is a mere expression of the analytical unity of consciousness, but not of the synthetic unity of consciousness. It is, however, only by virtue of the possibility of the synthetic unity thought in advance [vorausgedacht] that the analytical unity can be represented.3 A representation that is to be thought of as common to several must be regarded as belonging to those that in addition to it also have something different in themselves; consequently, they must antecedently be comprehended in synthetical unity with other (even if only possible representations) before I can think of the analytical unity of consciousness in it that makes it into a conceptus communis.4

And from this, there immediately follows a far-­reaching and fruitful insight respecting the character of the thing-­concept. The older metaphysics and ontology take the unity of the thing as a “substantial” unity: the thing is what remains identical amid the change of states. It thus stands over against these states, over against the “accidents,” as something independent, as being for itself [für sich Seiende]; it is the solid core that the accidents approach only from the outside. Once again, however, the transcendental logic transforms here the analytical unity of the thing into a



concept and object

371

synthetic unity. The thing is no longer, so to speak, a substantial thread on which the variable determinations are arranged; in it, rather, the process, the form of the sequence itself, is expressed. If we investigate what new character is given to our representations by the relation to an object, and what is the dignity that they thereby receive, we find that it does nothing beyond making the combination of representations necessary in a certain way and subjecting them to a rule; and conversely that objective significance is conferred on our representations only insofar as a certain order in their temporal relation is necessary.5

Thus not the “object” [Objekt] as an absolute object [Objekt] but the “objective signification” now forms the central problem; the question is no longer directed toward the constitution of the object as a “thing in itself” but toward the possibility of the “relation to an object.” This relation arises through and only through the fact that cognition does not stop with the individual appearance as given in an individual here and now but weaves it into the “context” of experience. And it is the concept that is unremittingly at work on this web, that strikes the thousands of connections on which rests the possibility of experience. Its first activity is to overcome the discreteness of the individual empirical data, to unite them in a continuum, the continuum of space and time. It is able to do this, however, only by creating fixed and generally valid rules of correlation between them, by subjecting the togetherness in space and the succession in time to definite laws. The merging that the individual perceptions undergo in and through the concept constitutes for us the thought of “nature”: this idea means nothing other than the existence of things, insofar as this existence is determined according to general laws. With this, the object is removed from “transcendence” in the metaphysical sense of the word; however, at the same time – and this is what characterizes the critical theory of cognition – it is determined as something absolutely and fundamentally unintuitive. For just as, according to the opening sentences of the transcendental aesthetic, that in which sensations are merely arranged cannot in turn itself be a sensation, so too can the rule that connects the manifold intuitions together not in turn itself be an intuition. The constant values of intuition over against

364

372

the construction of scientific cognition

what we call the “object” thus becomes a mere X, a purely thought point of unity: What does one mean, then, if one speaks of an object corresponding to and therefore also distinct from cognition? It is easy to see that this object must be thought of only as something in general = X, since outside of our cognition we have nothing that we could set over against this cognition as corresponding to it.6

365

This framing of the thought of the object was required to provide a strict and exact correlation between “concept” and “object.” A concept of the object is no longer possible, in the sense that the object is tangibly encompassed by thinking, apprehended and contained by the concept. In place of such graphic descriptions of the basic relation of cognition there now emerges a purely ideal relationship: a relationship of conditioning [Bedingen]. The concept relates to the object [Objekt] because and insofar as it is the necessary and indispensable presupposition of objectivization itself, because and insofar as it constitutes that function for which alone there can be objects, for which there can be constant and basic unities amid the changes of experience. Once this insight has been achieved, all the presentations of cognition that seek to transpose the general logical relationship of condition that is shown here back into a specific relationship of things and to elucidate it through them lose their validity and their sense. Cognition and object no longer stand over against each other as spatial objects [Objekte], as an “over-­here” and an “over-­there,” an “on this side” and an “on the other side.” Rather, all such designations, which have dominated the framing and formulation of the problem of cognition for centuries, are recognized as absolutely inadequate, as mere metaphors. The object is neither outside nor inside, neither on that side nor this – for the relationship to it is not an ontic-­real relation [Relation] but a symbolic relation [Relation]. Among modern psychologists and theoreticians of cognition, it is above all Theodor Lipps who, by roads far removed from those taken by Kant, arrived once again at a sharp and pregnant formulation of this basic problem. Admittedly, at first glance, the relationship between “consciousness” and the “object” is also presented by him in the language of spatial imagery by virtue of which both appear as “spheres” separated



concept and object

373

from each other. To confront an object and relate itself to it, consciousness must “reach out beyond” itself, and this progress and transition, this reaching into the “transcendent,” is its distinctive function. The proper nature [Wesen] of consciousness is to be sought in this “jumping over its own shadow.” Lipps, however, soon corrected his initial description by expressly admitting its purely metaphorical character. For the fact that the content of consciousness is directed toward something objective and that it represents [repräsentieren] this objective must not, as he now stresses, be mistaken for a relation [Relation] between cause and effect. “Designation” can never and at no time be interpreted as a special case of effective cause [Bewirken] or derived from the general form of effective action [Wirken]: The relation between the appearance in the strict sense of the word (e.g., between the sensation-­content of sound) and the real underlying it (the sound wave in the physical sense) is no causal relation but it is a relation of an entirely different kind, a relation of the symbol to what is symbolized in it. And this symbolic relation [Beziehung] or relation [Relation] consists not in the fact, which is susceptible to no further description; but rather in or through the sensation-­content called sound, I can think an object similar to it and regard it as actual, and then rethink this actual object in accordance with the law of causality. In this rethinking the distinctive symbolic relation, the thinking of an actual object in a content, the relation of representation [Repräsentation] . . . continues to exist. This is not surprising, since in this rethinking the sound waves have taken the position what was initially for the actual contents [Gehalte], or precisely because this latter was rethought into them.7

We have quoted these lines because they indicate with particular clarity and particular emphasis the cardinal point in both the history of philosophy and the philosophical systems around which the problem of the concept as well as that of the object have been handled. Both have often been treated as merely parallel problems: the order of “ideas” was held to move side by side along with the order of “things” and to correspond to it point for point. Yet these apparent parallelisms determined one common point: they focus on the basic phenomenon of “representation” [Repräsentation].

366

374

367

the construction of scientific cognition

At the same time, however, there is a still sharper difference to be made within this general phenomenon. It has already been seen how the concept, even before undergoing its explicit, properly logical forming [Formung], already carries out its achievement within the domain of intuition. It grasps together the basic elements of intuition; it connects them and relates them to one another. However, all the relations that arise in this way are realized over and over again in individual concrete formations [Gebilde] and emerge in them as their determinations. They are not merely abstract relations [Relationen] apprehended in pure “knowledge”; rather, they thicken into shapes [Gestalten] of intuitive reality and stand before us as such. We have seen that Helmholtz, in his theory of perception, stressed the participation [Mitwirkung] of the concept in precisely this primary shape [Gestalt] formation and actually regarded this as one of its essential achievements.8 However, in its stricter and more restricted forming [Formung], in its specifically logical character, the concept must of course be distinguished from “intuitive concepts,” which are nothing other than the “living representations of the law” of a concrete sequence of intuitive images. The signification of the concept no longer adheres here to any intuitive substrate, to any datum or dabile – rather, it is thought as such in a determinate relational framework [Relationsgefüge], within a system of “judgments” and “truths.” And precisely to this twofold sense, this potentization that can be disclosed in the concept, there now corresponds a twofold configuration of object consciousness. The first phase of object formation takes objective being as purely intuitive – as a being that belongs to and is integrated into the basic orders of intuition, the orders of space and time. It “stands” in these orders – it possesses a determinate spatial outline and a fixed temporal duration. As scientific cognition progresses and creates its own methodological implements, however, the bond that immediately connects the concept with intuition is progressively loosened. The concept no longer remains bound to the “reality” of things but rises to the free construction of the “possible.” It draws precisely what has never and at no time happened into the sphere of consideration and sets it up as a norm and intellectual standard. This feature separates “theory” in the strict sense of the word from mere intuition. Theory fulfills itself as pure theory only when it breaks through the barriers of intuition. No theory, and particularly no exact one, no mathematical theory of the natural event, is possible unless pure



concept and object

375

thinking detaches itself from the soil of intuition, unless it progresses to formations [Gebilde] that are of a fundamentally non-­intuitive nature. And now the last decisive step is taken – now these very formations [Gebilde] become the proper bearer of “objective” being. It is only through them that the lawfulness of being can be expressed: for they now constitute a new kind of object [Objekt] that may be designated as an object [Objekt] of a higher order over against those of the first phase. As soon as science arrived at a critical insight into its own procedures, as soon as it not only practiced this procedure but also understood it, it had to ward off any attempt to create a similarity or resemblance between its objects and those of “immediate” perception or intuition. It recognizes that although its objects are thoroughly related to the objects of intuition, they can never be reduced to them. For any such reduction would negate the specific achievement of scientific thinking, would transform the comprehension [Begreifen] of the world and the interconnectedness of the world into a mere reduplication of the given. However, admittedly, the cognition of difference [Differenz] that is given here likewise contains a logical dilemma. For, it can now be asked, does the inner polymorphism that has thus been disclosed in object consciousness not contradict its actual task? Must not the object, if at all, be thought of absolutely unambiguously? The multiplicity, the movement, and the transition from one stage to another all these seem to enter into consciousness itself, but not to pertain to the being toward which it is directed and which it strives to express. Being, at least, can be understood only as the counter-­pole and opposite of movement, its fixed, unchanging and immovable goal. Thus, being would seem to be susceptible of no further differentiations and gradations; rather, only the simple alternative of Parmenides would seem to apply here: ἔστι ἢ οὐκ ἔστι [it is or it is not]? Mere “thoughts” may readily dwell side by side, gradated according to the varying degrees of their universality – however, no such compatibility prevails in the realm of the “things” [Sachen] that clash in space. Here, where one thing takes a place, another must give way: it is important to make a clear decision here between what makes a claim to “reality” and what, in every such decision, is at the same time sacrificed. We have to choose between the “immanent” contents of consciousness – between reality as it presents itself to immediate sensation, to perception and intuition – and that other “transcendent” being that reaches out beyond

368

376

369

the construction of scientific cognition

it: the being to which theory, the scientific concept, leads us. If we hold to this being as the proper and truthful one, then the initial world threatens to dissolve into a mere phantasmagoria of senses. In the “real” world of natural-­scientific objects, nothing is left of the “subjective” qualities of color, tone, etc. On the other hand, if the weight of “reality” is laid in the other pan of the scales, the “objects” [Objekte] of theory, the atoms and electrons, become mere abstractions: the matter [Materie] of natural science cannot justify itself in the presence of pure perception and in a manner of speaking shatters against it. And yet this either/or, which we encounter over and over again in the history of the problems of cognition, already contains within it a hidden dogmatic presupposition, since it simply postulates what was to be proven; it contains a petitio principii. The substantial view of the world, of course, seeks in “being” something absolutely permanent: it takes being as a property, as a predicate, which is to be imputed to certain subjects and not to others. For a “critical” view of cognition, however, this alternative is no longer valid: here being in general has altogether ceased to designate a “real predicate.” What is here called the “object” of cognition acquires its determinate significance only in that it is referred to a certain form or function of cognition. And these functions themselves are not engaged in a mere contest or conflict but stand to one another in a relationship of correlative correspondence and correlative supplementation. Each does not simply negate or destroy the other; rather, it takes it up and sets it in another systematic interconnection, where it will be configured and determined anew. And it is this kind of combination [Zusammenfassung] in which alone the explanation and grounding of the “object” of cognition can be found. If, to speak with Kant, this object is nothing other than “the something for which the concept expresses such a necessity of synthesis,”9 then the question of its being cannot be answered independently of the question of what this necessity of synthesis signifies and on what conditions it rests. In the framework [Rahmen] of this basic view, there is no contradiction in the fact that this significance as such “is there” [da ist] not with one blow. Instead, it is constituted only in a gradation of approaches – it passes through a series of different phases of sense before it achieves its true and adequate determination. In the realm of validity, there thus rules an entirely other complexity and “interpenetration” of the various elements and possibilities of validity than the one at the level of pure “being.” That



concept and object

377

“the” object must be thought of as one does preclude this unity, as a functional unity, being progressively constructed. It must run through a series of determinations, and it is taken up in none of them. It is taken up in no single member of the series, not even in the final member of the series, in which it is completed: it is, nevertheless, the all-­embracing principle of the series, according to which the progression from member [Glied] to member [Glied] is determined. We have accordingly seen that even the mere object of perception is in no way immediately given but that it can only be presented by means of perception, that it can be only “represented” [repräsentiert] in it. The unity of a “thing” can initially be spoken of from the standpoint of such a presentation. In its continuous flow, actual perception as a process knows of no such unity. Every content that emerges in it is immediately replaced by another content – every gestalt that it seems to form is caught up in the vortex of the process and carried away with it. Notwithstanding this, the always variable, incomplete, and fragmentary data of perception join into the whole of an “object”: this is possible only because instead of being taken as mere fragments, they are seen as “belonging” together and considered as different expressions of a determinate sense-­ whole [Sinnganzen]. The path of this view transcends the directly given in a double direction: the first in that the contents of perception are situated under the perspective of continuity and the second in that they are situated under the perspective of coherence. Even strict sensationalism could not avoid recognizing this state of affairs: even Hume wrote that the “thing” is not simply a bundle of individual perceptions but that the thought of an object identical with itself first arises through the concepts of constancy and coherence. In accordance with his basic view, he had to explain this concept as a mere fiction – a deception of the imagination to which it must necessary be subjected to general psychological laws but to which we may ascribe no objective-­logical value.10 This is, however, to misunderstand the proper dignity and actual grounding force that is inherent in pure synthesis: this has above all been proven in the Critique of Pure Reason, particularly in the section in which “reality” is explained as a “postulate of empirical thinking.”11 It is a postulate of this kind when, as it were, we bid the transient and fleeting sensible impressions to stand still – when we ascribe to them a consistent existence that goes beyond the time span of their immediate existence and their immediate

370

378

371

the construction of scientific cognition

givenness. In a purely qualitative sense, this consistent existence does not extend beyond the purview of perception as such; it is the content of perception itself that is as such repeated and endowed, so to speak, with a certain index of “duration.” However, thought does not stop at this kind of temporal “supplement” and integration. It does not simply extend the content beyond itself and beyond the time span in which it is actually given; it also considers its transformations and inquires into their law. Where these transformations occur, it is not arbitrary; they are thought as subject to definite rules. With this requirement, however, thinking now feels compelled to take a further step. For it appears that the establishment [Aufstellung] of the exact rules of alteration cannot be achieved as long as we limit ourselves to defining the elements [Elemente] for which these rules are valid, by the very same determinations as emerge in mere perception. The definition must be amplified and deepened: the particular quality, the being-­a-­certain-­ way [Sosein] of perception must not form a barrier to the determination of the being [Sein] of its object. If appearances are to be interpretable and form an intelligible whole, cognition must undertake a further transformation that is fraught with grave consequences. It must not only institute [stiften] new connections between the contents of perception themselves, but in order to give these connections a strictly conceptual expression, it must alter the constitution of the former contents. The sensible world is now supported [unterbaut] by an “ideal” world, a world of significance and pure theory, because it is only for the formations [Gebilde] of such an ideal world that we can formulate those laws of interconnection that are necessary if the individual appearances are to be read as experiences. Only now has cognition gained “objects” in the strict sense – contents that really stand firm and fit into an unequivocal order. Thus, if we are to penetrate the domain of pure knowledge, the content [Gehalt] of perception must necessarily be reconfigured, must be “transcended” in the strict sense. This transcendence of signification must not, however, be confused with an ontic transcendence, because it is subject to an entirely different principle than this. This transition is a transition in sense, not in being, and as such, it cannot be apprehended or adequately explained on the basis of the fundamental relation [Relation] that governs and regulates relations [Beziehungen] within being. The symbolic relation of “meaning” [Meinen], the way in which the “appearance” relates to the



concept and object

379

“object” and expresses it in this relation, is lost as soon as we attempt to think of it as a special case of a causal relation, as soon as we seek to adapt and subordinate it to the “principle of sufficient reason.” What has impeded an insight into this specific difference [Differenz], what has again and again beguiled thinkers into reducing pure relationships of signification to those of causality and explaining the former by the latter, is, above all, an equivocation that resides in the concept of the “sign” itself and in its use. Husserl has stressed that a fundamental difference must be made between genuinely symbolic, truly significative signs and merely “indicative” signs. All signs do not embody signification in the same sense as we think of, for example, a word as a bearer of signification. In the sphere of natural existence or events [Geschehen], a thing or an event [Ereignis] can also become a sign for something other as soon as it is connected with this other by some constant empirical relation, particularly the relation of “cause” and “effect.” In this way, smoke, for example, can designate fire and thunder can “designate” [bezeichnen] lightning. However, such signs [Zeichen], as Husserl stresses, express nothing unless, side by side with their function of indication [Anzeigen], they also fulfill a function of signification: “To signify is not a particular way of being a sign [Zeichenseins] in the sense of indication.”12 This basic difference, however, is always in danger of being blurred and leveled down as soon as the function of the sign, instead of being understood as a primary and universal function, is regarded from some special point of view of reflection – in particular, as soon as it is regarded from the beginning exclusively as a sub specie of natural-­scientific concept formation. Because this latter is subject to the norm and domination of causal thinking, it also tends to transpose involuntarily all the problems it grasps into the language of causality and by way of this transposition render them comprehensible. This process of transposition stands out with particular clarity in Helmholtz’s theory of cognition. Of all the modern physicists, it is perhaps Helmholtz who has most sharply stressed that the concepts of mathematical physics may lay no claim to resemble real objects [Objekte] but that they can function only as signs for these objects [Objekte]. In support of this view, he writes: Our sensations are . . . effects that have been produced in our organs by outward causes, and how such an effect is manifested depends of

372

380

373

the construction of scientific cognition

course essentially on the type of apparatus that is affected. Insofar as the quality of our sensation informs us regarding the peculiarity of the outward stimulus by which it is aroused, it can pass as a sign for it, but not as a picture [Abbild]. For of an image [Bild] we demand some kind of similarity [Gleichheit] with the pictured [abgebildet] object, from a statue similarity of form, from a drawing similarity of perspective projection upon the field of vision, from a painting, also, similarity of color. A sign, however, need have no manner of resemblance [Ähnlichkeit] with that for which it is a sign. The relation between the two is limited to the fact that the same object [Object], acting under the same circumstances, will produce the same sign, and that dissimilar signs always correspond to dissimilar influence.13

In this use of the sign concept, however, two different views and approaches suddenly and imperceptibly transition into one another. On the one hand, we have the sign in its purely “deictic” function; as a something that points to an object, that intends and means [meinen] it. On the other hand, however, this something is transformed into a determination that is effected [bewirken] by this same object. The “intentional” object [Objekt], to which perception relates itself and which it presents in itself, has thus become a real thing that conceals itself somehow “behind” it and that is ascertainable by cognition only indirectly, by means of an inference from the effect to the cause. With this, we leave the sphere of pure “signifying” for that of mediated reasoning and inference, and at the same time, of course, we find ourselves committed to all the uncertainty that inheres in such merely mediated processes. On closer scrutiny, it becomes evident that in Helmholtz’s theory of perception and in the construction of his theory of cognition, the causal function has to fulfill a twofold and fundamentally contradictory function. It is the “condition of . . . the comprehensibility of nature,” because it first makes possible the joining together of the manifold of empirical observations into a strictly unitary order and so enables us to arrive at concepts of empirical “objects.” The form of causal thinking, however, impels us to take an entirely different path: instead of apprehending the pure interconnection of phenomena as such, we are now expected to infer from them as effects their unknown and intrinsically forever-­unknowable grounds.



concept and object

381

And the concept of the “sign” is used in Helmholtz’s theory for these two utterly different motives. Sensation serves as a sign: first, in the sense that what it points to is nothing other than the context of experience itself. “To call an appearance a real thing prior to perception” and independently of it, as Kant formulated this state of affairs in the Critique of Pure Reason, means either that in the continuation of experience we must encounter such a perception, or it has no meaning at all. . . . If we do not begin from experience, or proceed in accordance with laws of the empirical interconnection of appearances, then we are only making a vain display of wanting to discover the existence of any thing.14

We may say that Helmholtz, in the whole grounding of his Physiologischen Optik [Physiological Optics], took these Kantian sentences as a methodological model and in a sense as his motto. For Helmholtz, the only character of “reality” that we can state with certainty about appearances also consists in the proof of their connection according to thoroughgoing empirical laws. Directly beside this, however, stands the other view, which throws Helmholtz back into all the difficulties of the “projection theory.” The signs that signify an object to us are themselves now held to be effected by the object, and the task of cognition now seems to consist in nothing other than reversing this very process of effective action. The path of effective action runs from the “outer” to the “inner”; the path of knowledge must turn the inward back into something outward, must infer from the given sensation something that is not-­given and not-­givable, something “beyond” sensation. The starting point of this inference is, however, already problematic. For the causal dependency in which the “sensation” is said to stand to the “thing” would in no way in itself enable sensation to act as a sign for the thing. The real relation that is assumed here contains as such no adequate ground for the representative [repräsentativ] relation it is held to explain. To be able to indicate, to present, an object, sensation must not only be an effect of it but also know that it is an effect of it. And the very possibility of such knowledge remains unintelligible as long as we have not left the sphere of merely “indicative” signs and entered into the sphere of genuine truly and originally “significative” signs.

374

382

375

the construction of scientific cognition

The deeper systematic ground for the difficulties that arise here, however, lies in the fact that generally the attempt is undertaken to explain a fundamentally unintuitive relationship by resorting to analogies taken from the world of intuitive objects [Objekte] and the relations prevailing between them. The particular nature and specific sense of the pure category of signification, through which the “relation of the representation to its objects” is constituted, cannot be rendered intelligible by attributing to them some determination of being – whether it is a question of the determinations of causality or the determinations of similarity or resemblance between things, or those of the relationships of the “whole” to the “part.”15 We must go back here not to any particularities of given things, not to the image of an already available [vorhanden] reality, but to the pure conditions of positability [Setzbarkeit] of a “reality” in general. Because and insofar as the pure concept belongs to these conditions, thinking can relate to objects [Objekte] in it and by virtue of it, can claim objective significance for itself. This stands out most clearly when we grasp the concept in the strict logical sense as a propositional function and define it as such. The formula for such a propositional function φ(x) is used to indicate all those theoretical oppositions in the view of the problem of the concept and in that of the problem of the object and to give these oppositions sharp and pregnant expression. The sensationalist’s point of view believes it is able to apprehend the functions of the concept and the object by apprehending those values of the variable that enter into this function and simply coordinating them. They take the φ as though it were itself an x, or as though it were at most the mere sum of the x’s, an x1 + x2 + x3 etc. The other view starts from the differentiation of the connected elements in the propositional function: it attributes an independent logical validity to the concept, just as it attributes an independent “transcendent” reality [Realität] to the object and therefore sharply isolates it from the “immanent” givenness of consciousness. In the end, however, this view believes that it is able to secure both the concept and the object only by cutting the function φ(x), as it were, in half. Not only did it concede a distinctive “dignity” to the relation [Relation] φ, but it has raised to the level of an absolute, detached, and unconditional being. Nevertheless, this very relation [Relation] possesses its whole sense and content [Gehalt] only in that it singles out the element in respect to which the individual values of the variable are regarded as determinable and determined.



concept and object

383

Surely, the function φ and the values of the variable still belong to different types of thinking, and the two can never be reduced to one another; however, this irreducibility does not mean that they are strictly 376 separable from one another. Thus, for example, the unity of the “thing” never dissolves into an individual “appearance,” such as a particular spatial view – rather, it is determinable only through the totality [Totalität] of the possible views and through the rule of their connection. Each individual appearance “represents” [repräsentiert] the thing without ever, as individual, being able to truly coincide with it. In this sense, it also holds for “critical” idealism that the mere “appearance” necessarily points beyond itself, that it is an “appearance of something.” This something does not, however, signify a new absolute, a new ontic-­ metaphysical being. For even though the presenting and the presented, the present and represented [Präsent und Repräsentiert] are far from identical with one another, only by reference to one another is an intelligible sense produced. The function “is valid” for the individual values precisely because it “is” no individual value – on the other hand, the individual values “are” only insofar as they stand to one another in the connection expressed by the function. The individual, the discreet itself consists only in respect to the interconnection that it possesses with some form of the universal, whether by this we mean a universality of the “concept” or that of the “object.” And similarly, the universal can be manifested only in the particular and can then be authenticated and proven in no other way than as the order and rule for the particular. To understand the specific validity of the concept and the character of empirical objectivity, we thus must see ourselves referred back in the end to the significative function – which, without being split in itself, constructs itself from fundamentally different elements of sense. For no true sense is as such perfectly simple; rather, it is both one and twofold. And this polarity that lies in it does not divide and destroy but instead presents its initial actual fulfillment.

ENDNOTES 1 [Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 98–110.] 2 Ibid., A 106. 3 [Kemp Smith translates “vorausgedachten” as “presupposed.” Paul Guyer and Allen Wood have translated “vorausgedachten” as “antecedently conceived.”

384

the construction of scientific cognition

Kant has just said in the preceding sentence that “the analytical unity of apperception is possible only under the presupposition [Voraussetzung] of a certain synthetic unity.” The point made here is that this synthetic unity is pre-­ thought, that is antecedent to thought – and thus before anything conceived.] 4 Ibid., B 133f. 5 Ibid., B 242f. 6 Ibid., A 104. 7 Theodor Lipps, “Inhalt und Gegenstand; Psychologie und Logik,” Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-­philologischen und der historischen Klasse der K.B. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu München, (1905), 594. Cf. the section “Das Denken und die Gegenstände,” in Theodor Lipps, Leitfaden der Psychologie (Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1909), 12. 8 Cf. 337ff. 9 [Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 106.] 10 Cf. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Pt. IV, §2. 11 [Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 265ff.] 12 Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 2, 23ff. 13 Helmholtz, Handbuch der physiologischen Optik, 586. 14 [Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 493, B 274.] 15 Cf. 116–18 and 365f.

III LANGUAGE AND SCIENCE: THING SIGNS AND ORDINAL SIGNS The previous considerations into the interconnection between the problem of the concept and the problem of the object have led us back to the general fundamental question of logic and the critique of cognition. However, we may seem to have almost deviated from our path and lost sight of our proper systematic goal. For our question should not be directed toward the logical problem of signification or with the epistemo-­critical problem as such, but both should be apprehended only in their relation to a third problem, that of the sign and that of designation. The deeper we go into the structure of the concept and into that of objective cognition as such, the further this last problem seems to recede into the distance. For however far we may have engaged in the thought of nominalism, it always proves impossible to dissolve the problem of signification simply into the problem of designation and to derive the one entirely from the other. Signification remains a logical essential, a true πρότερον τῇ φύσει [first according to nature]. It proves to be the core and center, while beside it, designation is forced more and more into a merely “peripheral” position. The more resolutely the content [Gehalt] of the concept

377

386

the construction of scientific cognition

as a pure relational framework [Relationsgefüge] is worked out in modern logic, the more sharply the inference tends to be drawn that the name remains something secondary and “external” over against the ideal sense of this framework [Gefüge]. Burkamp, for example, writes: A concept is a relational framework [Relationsgefüge] that can be related to an indeterminate multiplicity. For our thinking this concept becomes a unity and, in important cases, is designated by a name. The name, the word is, however, no more the concept than my name is myself. The name is something external to the concept and has nothing to do with the being [Wesen] of the concept. . . . If I understand a new mechanical arrangement, then it is a concept for me, even if I do not give it a name. The functional interconnection, transferable to an indeterminate multiplicity, is the concept. The name is a convenient appendage. It serves primarily as abbreviation [Kurzzeichen] and means of expression for the concept.1 378

An “abbreviation” of this kind can – it would appear – claim no independent value, no “autonomy” for itself. Its task is solely one of substitution, and all cognition must at some time learn to dispense with such substitution and face things themselves in their pure “in-­itselfness” [An-­ sich]. It becomes cognition in the strict sense only insofar as it succeeds in doing this – insofar as it casts off the covering in which language and the word threaten to envelop it. The relationship between linguistic and scientific concept formation presents here, however, the same dialectic we have encountered in a wholly other spiritual domain – in the progress from the mythical to religious consciousness. The religious consciousness, as we have seen, could also not do without the mythical image-­world from which it struggled free and which it faced and opposed itself. Rather, it had to make its way through the midst of this image-­world; it could not overcome the mythical figures [Gestalten] in that it denied and discarded them, but only in that it held onto them and thereby permeated them with a new sense.2 In the relation of science and its “pure logic” to language, the same opposition can again be recognized. All rigorous science demands that thought free itself from the constraint of the word, that it become mature and independent of it. Once again, however, this act of liberation



language and science

387

cannot be achieved by a mere turning away from the world of language. The path pursued in language cannot be abandoned; rather, it must be followed to its end and continued beyond this end. Thought presses beyond the sphere of language; however, precisely in doing so, it takes up a tendency that is originally contained in language and that from the beginning was effective as a living motive in its own development. This tendency is now worked out in full force and purity; it is freed as it were from mere potentiality and translated into its full efficacy. At the same time, however, it is implicit in this tendency that the new spiritual reality that now emerges, that the highest energy of the pure scientific concept also remains connected through a secret bond with language. As high as the pure concept may rise above the world of the senses into the realm of the ideal and “intelligible,” in the end it always turns back in some way to that “worldly, earthly organ” that it possesses in language. The act of detachment from language, which is indispensable, shows itself to be conditioned and mediated by language itself. For the progress from the linguistic concept to the scientific concept consists not in a negation, in a simple reversal of the spiritual process on which the formation of language rests, but in a continuation [Fortsetzung] and ideal heightening of that process. The same fundamental spiritual force that brought forth linguistic concepts from “intuitive” concepts ultimately refashions these into the form of “scientific” concepts. We have seen how the function of representation [Repräsentation] prevails even in the domain of the “natural view of the world.” Only through representation [Repräsentation] could the world of the senses form itself into a world of “intuition” and “representation” [Vorstellung]. This process of forming [Formung], however, shows itself here to be thoroughly confined within the matter [Materie] of the sensible. Even if it were used as a pure means of presentation, the representation [Vorstellung], viewed in a purely substantial [stofflich] sense, seemed to consist of the same matter [Stoff] as that of the world of the senses. And from this ambivalent relationship arises anew the danger of a leveling regression: no sooner than the separation between content and function had been achieved was it in danger of being lost. For as long as representation [Repräsentation], the presentation as such, still requires a definite intuitive image as its bearer, it cannot detach itself sharply and fundamentally from its substrate. The regard of spirit is only too easily caught in the details of this same image,

379

388

380

the construction of scientific cognition

instead of taking it only as a starting point and transition, as a medium of “signification.” It is language that first brings about a new and crucial turn here. The word of language is distinguished from the sensible, intuitive image precisely in that it is no longer burdened, so to speak, by a sensible matter [Materie] of its own. If we consider it in its mere sensible consistent existence, then it appears as something dissipating and indeterminate: it is the play of a breath of air. From the standpoint of the pure presentative function, however, precisely this intangible and ephemeral quality is at the same time the basis of its superiority over the immediate, sensible contents. For the word possesses for itself, as it were, no consistent, independent “mass” with which it might offer resistance to the energy of relational thinking. The word is open to every form that thought wishes to imprint onto it: after all, it is itself no being-­in-­ itself, no concrete and substantial being, but first takes its sense from the predicative sentence and from the context of speech.3 It is only in the living dynamic of speech [Rede] that the word receives its distinctive content [Gehalt], that it first becomes what it is. Language repeatedly shows itself here to be the powerful and indispensable “vehicle” of thought – a flywheel, as it were, that assimilates thought into the circle of its own incessant movement and sweeps it away. This free mobility is denied to the individual sensible intuition, because of its concrete abundance and static determination. Thus, admittedly, such a “thinking without words” cannot be denied: this thinking, however, always remains in far greater measure captured by the singular [Einzelne], the given here and now, than is the case with linguistic thinking. Only in linguistic thinking is the real equipotential surface concept clearly and decisively set apart from the sphere of the perceptible and that of the intuitively representable. To speak in Platonic terms, the pure nominal function of the word makes the first sharp cut between the realm of the λόγοι [logos] and the realm of the πράγματα [things].4 The word thus does not create the concept, but neither is it a mere external appendage to the concept. It forms, rather, one of the most important medians for its actualization – for its detachment from the immediately perceived and intuited. This detachment may seem like a kind of fall of cognition, whereby it is expelled from the paradise of the concrete and the individual. Still, by this very token, it is in the same moment: the



language and science

389

beginning of that boundless progressing work of spirit in which cognition conquers and configures its world. When we attempt to clarify the type and direction of this process from a genetic standpoint, we find that the facts of developmental psychology accord fully with the results of our purely systematic analysis. It would also seem that in the development of the individual, we can still discern the point where the two worlds separate, where the turn from the “merely” intuitive “general representations” to linguistic “concepts” takes place. The former may be described psychologically as “schematized representations,” which are indeed still “representations,” that is to say, they still have intuitive determinacy; however, their mode of appearance is no longer so detailed and individualized as individual representations of memory. They are, as it were, sensible abstractions, simplifications, which, however, still remain within the sphere of sensible intuition.

The progressive development, however, now reaches out beyond this stage: The schema still has a certain, though ever so vague, resemblance to the intuition, which it still recalls. Gradually the need of representing what is meant by something similar vanishes, and an intuitive vestige of this sort suffices to designate the reference to the object, that is the intention: the schema becomes a mere sign.

It is with this turn that we first enter into the domain of language and of actual conceptual thinking.5 We are led to an analogous conclusion if we seek to delimit the particular nature of human language from those forms and types of “semantics” that we find more or less clearly developed in the animal kingdom. In the life of animal communities, it can also be recognized how the individual animal communicates with his fellow species through certain “signs.” A bee, for example, returns from the food source that it has discovered to the hive in order to enlist its companions for a new flight with the help of certain movements, a kind of “rallying dance.” In this way, each one receives a sample of the specific nectar that has gathered from the source, and this serves the swarm as a

381

390

the construction of scientific cognition

means of “orientation,” as a “sign of recognition” by which they are led to the source of the scent. If we attempt to distinguish this mode of bestowing of signs and “communication” [Verständigung] by signs from the “presentative function” of human language, then we encounter two essential determinations. Buhler writes:

382

Let us concentrate our critical thinking on the function of the sign of this giving of the scent. When the bees fly off searching the food source following their instincts, it may operate very much like a sign of recognition imprinted on the memory. On closer scrutiny, however, the whole arrangement lacks two elements that are essential for the incomparable degree of freedom and the almost unlimited scope of human linguistic designations. First, there is the dematerialization of the signs. For it is and remains the real scent of the flowers that provides the communication of the bees, whereas the distinguishing marks provided by the human bestowing of names make possible a communication without material samples. . . . Only if (the receiver of the material sample) were able to convey its mnemonic impression to other bees without further need of something from the actual material sample, only such independence . . . would provide a basis of comparison with human speech.

In addition to this, the further condition is the element of “detachability.” The “names” of which human speech makes use are no longer a part of the thing [Sache] to which they point: they no longer attach to it as real properties, as “accidents,” but belong to an independent, purely ideal domain. The two are held together: the step from the material sample to the genuine sign and the fundamental detachability of the sign from the things for which it functions as a sign initially determine the particularity and the characteristic sense and value of human speech.6 And it is on these same two elements that the further progress, the progress from the “verbal signs” of language to the pure “conceptual signs” of theoretical science, is essentially based. In science, the process that was devised and initiated in language is completed. For although the word is clearly separated from the individual contents of intuition and confronts them as something independent, endowed with a certain “logical” content [Gehalt] of



language and science

391

the given, it nevertheless never ceases to hold fast, with clinging organs, to the intuitive world as a whole. This bondage becomes evident even where the word functions as a pure expression of relation, where it no longer serves in any sense as a pointing to a given, where it fulfills no deictic but only a purely predicative performance. In studying the construction of language, we have repeatedly seen how the predicative function grew out of the deictic function and only gradually and with great difficulty unfolded from it. All logical determinations of relationship derive at least the means of their linguistic forming [Formung] from the sphere of intuitive relationships and in particular from that of spatial relationships. Even the copula of judgment, even the “is” of the purely predicative sentence, appears in this sense saturated with intuitive content [Gehalt]: logical “being” [Sein] and “being-­a-­certain-­way” [Sosein] could be expressed only in that it is transposed into some kind of intuitive “existence” [Dasein]. Thus, language, as though by an inner pressure, is impelled over and over again to efface the boundary between “essence” [Essenz] and “existence,” conceptual “being” [Wesen] and intuitive “reality.”7 The development of certain linguistic suffixes has shown us clearly how the kernel of the formal “signification” of these suffixes must gradually be freed from the sensible matter [Materie], how the sense of the formal relation is to be apprehended in no other way than through material words [Stoffworte].8 Scientific concept formation and scientific “terminology” go one step further here. The use of signs is freed from all its restrictive sensible conditions. As the processes of “dematerialization” as well as that of “detachment” progresses, the sign tears itself away from the sphere of things, in order to become purely relational sign and ordinal sign. Now it is no longer directed toward any single formation [Gebilde] that it immediately “represents,” that it set before the mind’s eye in its intuitive contours. Its aim [Absehen], rather, is to mark out the singularization of a universal, of a form and structure determination that appears in the individual example but can never be exhausted in it. To apprehend this universal, it is not enough to take up the particular contents as they present themselves in immediate perception or intuition and provide them with a linguistic mark, a “name”; nor in the sense of linguistic class formation does it suffice to gather larger groups of appearances into unities. Rather, the grouping together must follow a

383

392

384

the construction of scientific cognition

definite systematic plan: it must progress methodically from the “simple” to the “complex.” This requirement drives the “semantics” of science out beyond the domain of “natural” language. Science can no longer take its designations from this domain but must begin to fashion them for itself, giving them their required completeness and unambiguousness. The “activity” of the sign that is originally established in it and that already gave the word of language its distinctive spiritual imprint9 emerges now for the first time in full force and purity: the act of spiritual forming [Formung] does not work with random and accidental matter [Stoff] given from outside but gives itself the matter [Stoff] that it requires, the matter [Stoff] on which it can set the stamp of its own determination. On the one hand, difference [Differenz] between linguistic and scientific concept formation sharply and clearly shows itself – on the other, this difference [Differenz] does not interrupt the continuity between them. For as far removed as the scientific concept may be from the linguistic concept and raised above it, the transition from one to the other signifies no actual μετάβσις εἰς ἄλλο γένος [transformation into a wholly other genus]. It is the same “logos” that was effective in language formation itself from the beginning; that in the progress to scientific cognition, frees itself from the qualifying bond in which it is initially inherent; and that transitions from its implicit shape [Gestalt] to its explicit shape [Gestalt]. This relationship surely must present itself differently as long as we look upon language not as a logical but as a purely aesthetic formation [Gebilde] – as long as we do not let it rise out of the sphere of pure “intuition” but think of it as permanently and essentially confined within this sphere. For a philosophy of language, which places in this way the aesthetic and not the logical element at the center, the difference between linguistic and logical thinking must appear as a sheer difference – as a true gulf. Accordingly, Voßler thus stresses: From linguistic to logical thinking, there are no comfortable, gentle, imperceptible transitions; in fact, there is no progress at all, no ascending or descending gradation; there is only reversal. . . . What is to come alive in logical thinking must die away and become inert in linguistic thinking. The thought cannot become a concept without slipping out of the larva of its linguistic past life and casting off the dead cocoon. These . . . remnants or shells are no longer immediate, meaningful



language and science

393

linguistic forms, but only a kind of trace or footprint that the logos has left behind in its leap. In their formula-­like, pallid, and rigid outlook, in their grammatical schematism, we can still study and recognize the work that logical thought had to perform in order to free itself from linguistic thought.10

As apt as this picture is, a different systematic conclusion lies, however, inherent in it from the one that Voßler has drawn. For admittedly a true transformation is carried out in the progress from language to the logical concept. However, is not this transformation itself still an evolution? Logos may appear in language as if in a cocoon, but even so, are not the forces that will one day enable it to burst through the shell in which it lies confined not already at work within it? It seems to me that in pursuing his own basic idea, Voßler is himself led to a view of this sort. For as sharply as he stresses the opposition and the tension between language and science, he nevertheless, at the same time, based on the vast distance and estrangement of both, points to the onset of a reversal – the admission of a “speculative or reflective turning point.” In this turning point, the abstract concept becomes dialectical; thus, logical thinking first discovers its own nature [Wesen] and at the same time its unity with the linguistic. How could thinking discover this unity, however, if in some way, albeit latently, it did not “lay the ground” for it? Voßler himself speaks here of a return of thinking to itself, namely in the way that the linguistic direction of thought, which at first glance was free from doubt and was outwardly . . . is startled from its dream and critically illumined by the logical concept. This does not destroy and negate it; it merely stops it in its somnambulistic course, in order to orientate it on the way.11

On the basis of the findings of our systematic investigation, we have no need to contest this formulation of Voßler’s thesis. We must stress only one point: although the “reflective turning point” of which Voßler speaks is indeed achieved only beyond language, it is nevertheless recognizable in itself, within language and is, in a certain sense, prepared and anticipated in language. For the spoken word should never be thought of as a mere product of intuition; rather. it contains in itself an act of

385

394

386

the construction of scientific cognition

“reflection.” The first characteristic trait of mindfulness, as Herder stresses, was the “word of the soul,” an awakening from the “hovering dream of images,” of mere sensible lived-­experiences.12 It is implicit in the very nature of spirit itself that its “return to itself” does not occur in a single isolated climax of its development but dominates and determines the whole of this development. The same characteristic process repeatedly begins at a different elevation, and this process brings about the separation between the world of “immediate” intuition and that of linguistic concepts as well as the detachment of logical-­scientific concepts from linguistic concepts. For the process of “finding characteristic traits,” the process of qualifying concept formation, begins in language, although surely only in science is it guided into fixed and systematic channels. What began in language by chance is directed methodically toward a determinate goal in science. Even the linguistic concept, even the primary function of “naming,” is not possible unless a “one in the many” is apprehended and is fixed with the spiritual regard. A manifold of perceived or intuited contents are moved into a determinate “perspective” and by virtue of this are seen together as a unity. Every single linguistic concept thus establishes in this way a determinate center and focal point in which the rays from the various domains of intuitive being come together and, as it were, permeate one another. All these centers, however, are still separate; they do not form a unitary and homogeneous whole. The space of speech and thinking presents itself at first more as an aggregate than as a system: it consists of individual places and positions, which as yet stand in no thoroughgoing, enduring connection with one another. To the extent that language progresses in its development, this lacuna is more and more redressed. For the process of speech does not consist simply in coining more and more new “names,” in acquiring new individual significations. Rather, these significations must also enter into a relation with each other and mutually determine each other. Every predicative sentence is the beginning of such a determination. In it, the subject is related to a predicate and vice versa, and one is determined by the other. Each individual concept first obtains its full sense by this unremitting work of determination. The unpredictable manifold of interconnections into which it enters in the whole of speech [Rede] first gives it its content [Gehalt] and its shape [Gestalt].



language and science

395

Of course, precisely because this shape [Gestalt] can never be thought of as absolutely stable and permanent, as fixed once and for all, it subsists only by producing and asserting itself in the river of speech [Rede], in its to and fro, in its ebb and flow. Language does not float along tranquilly in a predetermined stream, but rather, at every turn it must dig out its channel anew – the living flow itself produces the ever-­new and more highly developed shapes [Gestalten]. Herein lies its true and original strength; however, from the standpoint of the concept and conceptual thinking, this is also its weakness. For the concept in the strict sense tends to posit a goal for this surge and flow: it demands stability and unambiguousness. In its being, it seeks to transcend and negate all indeterminacy and vagueness that language must tolerate in its becoming. Thus, although the concept requires and demands presentation in a symbolic “sign,” it does not make do with any arbitrary sign but sets up determinate requirements that the world of signs into which it immerses itself must satisfy. The first of these requirements is the postulate of identity: the “same” sign must always be chosen for the “same” content. The “scope” [Spielraum] of signification that is essential for language and that renders possible its movement, the state of affairs that a word can be taken sometimes in one “sense” and sometimes in another, must now be deliberately abolished. A strict, unambiguous correlation is intended between “sign” and “signification.” And this fundamental postulate implies another: every new concept that is set up in scientific thinking is related from the outset to the totality [Ganze] of this thinking, to the totality [Ganze] of possible concept formations. What it is and what it signifies depends on its validity within this totality [Ganze]. Any “truth” that can be attributed to it is bound to this constant and thoroughgoing verification of the totality [Gesamtheit] of the contents and positing of thought [Denksetzung]. From this requirement of the concept arises the demand for the concept signs that they must form a self-­contained system. It is not enough that individual signs be arbitrarily correlated with individual contents of thought; rather, they must all stand in a fixed order, so that the total ensemble of the signs is organized in accordance with a rule. Just as one thought content is conditioned by and “grounded” in another, so too must one sign be grounded in another: that is to say, it must be possible to derive one sign from another in accordance with a determinate law of construction. This requirement, to be sure, can be

387

396

388

the construction of scientific cognition

fulfilled with true strictness only where the concept itself satisfies all the requirements of “precision,” where it is susceptible of a “definition” that delimits and determines it from all sides. The tendency toward such a determination, however, prevails in the concept even where the nature of the objects toward which it is directed posits barriers to its complete implementation. Even where the concept still remains close to the concrete individual intuition and seeks to exhaust it, it is never oriented toward this intuition as something singular but seeks to gather it into the continuum of its forms and to understand it through this continuum. The particular concept strives toward the “community of concepts” – the particular eidos or genos aims, to speak with Plato, toward the κοινωνία τῶν γενῶν [community of forms]. This striving cannot content itself with a mere manifold of signs such as the words of language; rather, it requires that the signs themselves possess a determinate structure, that they must not only stand alongside one another but must unfold from one another and be surveyed through a determinate principle. If the sign is to fulfill this new task that it is given here, then it must of course disengage itself from the sphere of intuitive existence far more sharply and energetically than it had in the domain of language. The word of language also had to rise above this sphere; however, it kept returning to it over and over again. Although it unfolded its force in the pure function of “pointing to,” in the end it still strove here to find a way to immediately re-­present [vergegenwärtigen] the object to which the pointing to referred. We have already seen how in the formation of its deictic particles, which became for it the starting point of certain basic originary grammatical forms, language repeatedly proceeded in this way. Where these particles – designating the “here” and the “over-­there,” the spatial near or distance from the one who is speaking, the direction from the speaker to the one spoken to or vice versa – first appear, a wholly sensible tonality still clings to them. They are intimately fused with the direct gesture of showing, whereby an individual object is raised up out of the sphere of the immediately perceived. The first formation of the spatial words of language – the formation of the demonstrative pronouns, the article, etc. everywhere reveals this primary unity of language and gesture. Originally, all these words are nothing other than phonetic metaphors, which first receive their signification from the whole of the intuitive situation in which they are uttered.13 And



language and science

397

even where language has long since broken free from this bond to the sensible-­present [Sinnlich-­Gegenwärtige], even where it has raised itself to the relation of pure intellectual and “abstract” concepts, this tendency [Zug] toward the pictorial [Bildhaft] continues to exist. Here too it strives to give the concept a body, to apprehend it through certain corporeal features. Sensationalism tends to point out this “metaphoric” character of all speech in order to conclude that basically in its root all thinking is sensibly determined and bound.14 This conclusion, however, would be valid only if the symbolism that thinking makes use of, and that even “pure” thinking cannot dispense with, depended solely on language. The development of thinking, however, suggests rather the contrary: it shows not only that thought uses the signs that language offers it already stamped but that whenever thought enters into a new form, it creates and gives itself an appropriate form of signs. And what distinguishes these pure “concept signs” from the words of language is precisely that no intuitive “associative sense” adheres to them, that they no longer bear any sensible color [Farbe], any individual “atmosphere” [Kolorit]. From the means of “expression” and the means of intuitive “presentation,” they have become pure bearers of signification. What is “meant” [gemeint] and intended in them stands outside the sphere of actual or even of possible perception. Language can never definitively leave and break through this sphere: even where speech [Rede], as objective “logos,” is directed toward something absolutely nonsensible, it can designate this nonsensible something only from the standpoint of the speaking [Redend]. It is never a pure statement [Aussage]; rather, at the same time, there lives in it a mode, an individual form of saying [Sagen], in which the speaking [sprechend] subject expresses themself. All living speech [Rede] contains within it this duality, this polarity of subject and object [Objekt]. Living speech not only points to certain states of affairs but also expresses the position of the subject toward these states of affairs. This inward participation of the I in the content of the spoken comes to expression in countless subtle nuances, in changes of dynamic accents, in changes of tempo, rhythm, in the transformations and beats of the “sentence melody.” To divest discourse of this “feeling tone” would annihilate its heartbeat, pulse, and breath. Admittedly, however, there is a stage in the development of spirit at which this very sacrifice is demanded of it. Spirit must progress to

389

398

390

the construction of scientific cognition

a pure apprehension of the world, in which all the particularities resulting out of a deference to the apprehending itself are effaced. As soon as this demand arises, as soon as its necessity is consciously recognized, the intellect must pass beyond the pillars of Hercules erected by language. And it is this transition that opens up the domain of true, rigorous “science.” In its symbolic signs and concepts, everything that possessed any sort of mere expressive value is extinguished. It is no longer any individual subject here but simply the thing [Sache] itself that “comes to language.” On the one hand, this seems to signify an immense impoverishment: the movement of language now seems to have been stopped; its “inner form” seems to have frozen into a mere formula. On the other hand, however, what this formula lacks in closeness to life and individual fullness it makes up for through its universality, through its scope and general validity. In this universality, national as well as individual differences are sublated. The plural concept of “languages” loses its justification: it is repressed and replaced by the thought of a characteristica universalis, which enters the scene in the form of a lingua universalis. With this, we now stand at the birthplace of mathematical and mathematical-­natural-­scientific cognition. From the viewpoint of our general problem, we may say that this cognition exerts itself precisely at the point where thought breaks through the cloak of language – not to appear absolutely unclothed, bereft of all symbolic dress, but to enter into a fundamentally different symbolic form. The word of language, with its variability, mutability, and iridescent ambiguity, must now make way for the pure “sign” with its determinacy and constancy of significance. Thus, Voßler also stresses: In the presence of mathematical and natural-­scientific concepts, all languages are outwardly equal; these concepts are capable of making themselves at home in every language, since they not only dwell in the outward form of the language but consume and hollow out the inward form. The mathematical concepts of the circle, the triangle, the sphere, of number etc., or the natural-­scientific concepts of force, matter, the atom etc., only become fully and strictly scientific when everything intuitive, everything imaginative, all mythical and linguistic thinking that may still haunt them is eradicated.15



language and science

399

And yet, this eradication signifies no break in the life of spirit; rather, it manifests the unity of the law that it follows in its development. For the very same process of “dematerialization” and “detachment” that proved effective in the beginnings of language now returns at a new stage and undergoes a dialectical intensification, an accentuation, and a potentization. Admittedly, there seems to be an abyss [Abgrund] between the scientific concept and the linguistic concept – however, on closer scrutiny, this abyss is the same gulf that thinking must have already leaped over before it could arrive at linguistic thinking. If we look back at the examples of animal “semantics” discussed earlier, their essential limitation seems to lie in their remaining confined to a singular moment [Augenblick] and to a singular present [gegenwärtig] situation of perception. This bondage [Gebundenheit] to the here and now is characteristic of all forms of “communication” [Mitteilung] in the sphere of animal life. When the individual bee gives its companions an account of the flowery scent it has discovered, its giving of an account takes place through the medium of a real material “communication.” The scent must be displaced from the place where it is found into the perceptual field of the fellow bees who are to be enlisted for flight; it must, in the literal sense of the word, be “carried over”16 there, in order to serve as a signal and impulse for the swarm. Even though more complicated forms may gradually join this simple form, even though a “contact of a higher order” may be created by the interpolation of middle links, still it is the sensible-­intuitive presence [Anwesenheit] of the object [Objekt] that first creates this contact, that gives the sign its “intelligibility” [Verständlichkeit].17 Only human language overcomes this bond to the immediately given and present [vorhanden] sensible situation: only it is truly able to reach into the spatial or temporal distance. This reaching [Greifen] into the distance becomes the beginning of all conceiving [Begreifen] in general.18 Thought ultimately comes to a point, however, where this striving into the expanse of space and time no longer suffices, where, rather, a progress and transcending of a fundamentally different and more difficult kind is required of it. It must now not only tear itself away from the here and now, from the present place and moment [Augenblick], but must reach out beyond the whole of space and time, beyond the boundaries of intuitive presentation and of all presentability. Thus, it must detach itself from the native soil not only of intuition but also of language.

391

400

392

the construction of scientific cognition

And yet thought could not have accomplished this ultimate and highest endeavor if it had not previously gone through the school of language. In language, it gathered and concentrated the power that ultimately raised it beyond language itself. Language taught it to pace off the sphere of intuitive existence and to raise it from the sensible individual to the whole, the totality of intuition. Now, it no longer contents itself with this totality [Ganzheit] but goes beyond it to put forward the requirement of necessity and universal validity. Language is no longer sufficient for it: however much the original powers of “reason” prevail in its construction, every particular language constitutes its own “subjective view of the world” from which it cannot and will not detach itself. Rather, this very diversity, this differentiation, is the medium in which it enables them to unfold – it is like the air in which alone they can breathe. If, on the other hand, we progress from the words of language to the characters of pure science, particularly to the symbols of logic and mathematics, a kind of vacuumous space, as it were, would seem to envelop us. At the same time, however, it would appear that the movement of spirit is not obstructed and destroyed thereby but rather that spirit for the first time truly discovers itself as that which contains within itself the principle, the beginning of movement. The “vehicle” of word language on which it had so long relied can carry it no further, but spirit now feels strong enough and powerful enough to risk the flight that will carry it to a new goal. If we attempt to follow the individual stages in this path, we must begin with a process that at first sight seems to belong wholly to the domain of language formation itself or at least is deeply rooted in it. All exact concept formation starts from the realm of number, from the determination and designation of the “natural number series.” The sequence of numerical signs is the first example and enduring prototype of all pure “ordinal signs.” If, however, the pure form of science begins in this way with the form of the number, then the beginning of number, on the contrary, begins in a different and far earlier stratum than that of strict scientific concept formation. There is, after all, no phase of language formation in which some impulse toward number formation cannot be disclosed, in which, though with ever so “primitive” means, the difference between unity and multiplicity is not apprehended and fixed through definite linguistic means. The form of the number and of enumeration is therefore the actual connecting link in which we can



language and science

401

clearly re-­present [vergegenwärtigen] the interconnection between linguistic and scientific thinking as well as the characteristic opposition between them. The origins of number carry us back then to a domain in which language does not yet seem to have attained its independent significance, its “autonomy.” Phonetic language and gesture have not yet separated from one another but are still closely intertwined in each another. The sense of the enumerative act can be apprehended only in the carrying out of a corresponding corporeal movement, a specific “number gesture.” Consequently, the sphere of numbers and the enumerable does not extend beyond the sphere of these movements. At this stage, the number thus appears far more as a “concept of the hand” [Handbegriff] than as a “concept of thinking” [Denkbegriff]. We were able to demonstrate this bond everywhere in the configuration of numerals in the languages of “natural peoples.” It was shown that it was precisely in them that the pure objective “sense of presentation” [Darstellungssinn] receded the most: they no longer serve the designation of an “objective” state of affairs but serve, rather, as determinate directives or one might say imperatives for certain motor movements. The word [Name] for “five,” for example, means [besagt] that the hand used in counting should be closed – the word [Name] for “six” means [besagt] that a “jump” should be made from one hand to the other.19 It scarcely seems able to go beyond the “bond to the subject” and the partiality in it: after all, the subject must be present [gegenwärtig] and sensibly apprehensible not only as an individual I but even as a determinate material lived body, before the individual stages of the enumerative act can be differentiated from one another. And yet, even in this most primitive mode of counting, closer analysis reveals a motif that points in a new and different direction. For as sensible and “material” as the original numerical terms may seem in their linguistic configuration, this does not detract from the function they have to fulfill. They are closely dependent on noun substantives [Dingwort: thing-­word]; the names for the hand, for the fingers and toes, etc. are employed at the same time as the proper names for certain numbers. Even so, it is not the hand itself or the fingers themselves that is “meant” [gemeint] when the numeral in question is spoken and toward which the linguistic intention is directed. Rather, everything depends on the fact that the individual thing-­names [Dingnamen] are repeated

393

402

394

the construction of scientific cognition

respectively in a determinate sequence that as such must be firmly fixed in the mind, so that the individual names always recur in the same order. Once this condition is fulfilled, each element [Element] belonging to this sequence grows beyond its initial significance: although it started out as a mere thing-­sign, it has now become a sign of position. When the natives of New Guinea count, they first name the fingers of the left hand, then the wrist, the elbow, the shoulder, the neck, the breast; nevertheless, this pronouncing of the names of the individual parts of the body does not have the intention of pointing them out as sensible objects; rather, it serves in the differentiation of the individual stages in the act of enumeration itself. The thing-­name functions as an “index” of enumeration: it indicates an “earlier” or “later” step within the whole series. The extension in which such a differentiation is possible may be extremely limited; thus, for example, an independent name may be given only to the first and second, or at most to the third and fourth, member [Glied] of the series, but beyond this limit, there is only a vague expression for “indefinitely many.” Even in this extreme limitation, however, a new approach and application of thought is recognized. For the word of language has now become the expression of a spiritual operation, however simple. It still leans, almost anxiously as it were, on the intuition of individual sensible objects for support; however, in them, though at first unclearly and uncertainly, it apprehends an element of their “form” that refers not to the simple “what” of these objects but to the manner in which they are ordered and in which they may in turn be coordinated [zuordnen] to each other. The scientific concept of number arises when this first beginning is freed from all accidental barriers and raised to the level of the absolutely universal. It requires a universal system of ordinal signs that progresses from an initial positing according to a determinate, generally valid principle. No outward boundaries may be set to this progress: the quantity of “things” that can be distinguished for us in sense perception or in intuitive representation may no longer be the measure for the formation of ordinal signs. Rather, these signs now possess a purely ideal character: they designate, to speak with Leibniz, orders of the possible, not of the actual. The consideration of language has surely taught us what difficulties stand in the way of this “turn toward the idea,” what obstacles and setbacks thought must face on this way to itself. The transitions and



language and science

403

intermediaries may be disclosed here step for step. Number has at first no independent, no purely “abstract,” sense; rather, it can appear only in the enumerated and is still tainted with all its particularization, its particularity. It does not refer to “objects in general” without difference but in each instance only to an individual class of objects, so that different numerical terms must be employed for different types of objects. Each class – such as persons and things [Sachen], animate and inanimate things [Dinge], flat or long or round objects [Objekte] – requires a special group of numerical terms to designate it. The mathematical concept of number, however, distinguishes itself from the numerical terms of language precisely in the fact that it has freed itself from all these entanglements and involvements. It has overcome the heterogeneity that seems to be imposed and forced on thought by the manifold of objects [Objekte] and penetrated to the homogeneity, to the genus and eidos of “the” number.20 Now, individual numbers have no detachable being apart from their positional value, no “individuality” in the sense of a concrete givenness. And while thought in this way distinguishes the pure form of the numerical relation from everything that can enter into it, it can make unlimited use of this form. The outcome is what we may call a qualitative and quantitative infinity of number: quantitative, because the operation from which the individual numbers arise can be applied over and over again to its result, and qualitative, because the principle by virtue of which the order and series ensued is independent of the particular constitution of the content in which the serial relation constitutes itself. Thus, in a fragment on the universal characteristic, Leibniz writes:

395

It is an old saying that God created all things according to measure, weight, and number. Nevertheless, there are things that cannot be weighed, namely those that possess no potency or force; there are things that are without parts and thus admit of no measurement. But there is nothing that evades number. Hence number in a manner of speaking is a metaphysical figure [Figur] and arithmetic is a kind of statics of the universe, in which the forces of things are investigated.21

This ontological universality of number is rooted in the fact that in it an absolutely general and ideal standard of contemplation is acquired. This standard is applicable wherever any manifold of contents, however

396

404

397

the construction of scientific cognition

constituted in other respects, fulfills one condition, namely that it fixates elements [Elemente] that may be ordered and organized according to a determinate viewpoint. In his natural philosophy, Plato designated space as the originary-­form of all material being, because it provides the “receptive principle,” the πρῶτον δεκτικόν [the first that can receive] for all material stuff, because all material configurations are only particular determinations of the general form of space. In a similar way, the realm of numbers forms a kind of receptacle for all comprehension and apprehension of concrete orders. Through the universal system of signs provided by number, thought first acquires the possibility to apprehend all being toward which it is directed as a thoroughly determinate being and to comprehend it under the perspective of the universal and necessary. One of the most striking features in the picture [Bild] of modern mathematics is that it recognizes this logical universality of the pure concept of number and that it has constructed a system of analysis on it. Surely even today, the attempts at grounding the number concept differ greatly in terms of the details. However, in the work of Cantor and Dedekind, of Frege and Russell, of Peano and Hilbert, the characteristic methodological tendency in which this grounding is sought stands out clearly. While only a few decades ago, a thinker of the stature of Helmholtz could attempt a derivation of the number concept along essentially empiricist lines, today it can be said that strict empiricism has progressively lost ground [Boden] in this domain. Since Frege’s classical argument against Mill’s “arithmetic of gingerbread biscuits and pebbles,” a final purification seems to have been achieved here. As Frege defines and derives “cardinal number,” it can no longer be designated as the property of a “thing” in general, let alone a sensibly perceivable object; rather, it may be determined only as the property of a concept. “When I say: ‘The Emperor’s carriage is drawn by four horses,’ ” writes Frege in The Foundations of Arithmetic, “I attribute the number four to the concept of the ‘horse that draws the Emperor’s carriage.’ ”22 Dedekind, however, goes a different way here, though for him too, it is settled that the number concept is to be regarded as an “immediate emanation of the pure laws of thinking.”23 And Russell’s whole theory of the principles of mathematics aims to prove that in order to determine and establish the sense of the numerical concept, we need presuppose nothing other than purely “logical constants.” Even mathematical “intuitionism” [Intuitionismus] presents no



language and science

405

opposition to this basic tendency of contemplation. For as sharply as it differs from the formalistic and logistic tendency in its view of the relationship between mathematics and logic, the “originary intuition” [Urintuition] from which it sets up as the source of number is anything but an intuition [Anschauung] of empirical objects [Objekte]. Even Brouwer, in his attempt at grounding a purely intuitionistic [intuitionistisch] mathematics, does not begin with the representation of things but from the positing of a basic relation, from which he derives the concept of order and with it the concept of number: A species P is said to be virtually ordered if an asymmetrical relation [Relation] which we shall designate as an ordering relation is defined for the element pairs (a, b) of P within it. This relation – which we express by a < b, or a before b, or a to the left of b, or a lower than b, or b > a, or b after a, or b to the right of a, or b higher than a – possesses very definite “ordering properties,” which must be designated universally and exactly.24

If we compare this development of the problem of number in pure mathematics to its apprehension and shape in philosophy and in the critique of cognition, there thus emerges here, admittedly, another picture. More sharply than before, the systematic opposition in the basic outlook manifests itself. Even within the sphere of “critical philosophy,” the opposition would seem irreconcilable. According to the systematic organization of the Critique of Pure Reason, the theory of number belongs neither to the transcendental aesthetic nor to the transcendental logic. It forms, rather, an intermediary and binding link that connects the two with one another. Kant defines number as the pure schema of magnitude as a concept of the understanding, because it grasps together the successive addition of one (homogeneous) to another. It is thus nothing other than the “unity of the synthesis of the manifold of a homogeneous intuition in general,” in that consciousness generates time itself in the apprehension of the intuition.25 This basic view is able to develop further in two different directions, according to weather the stress is laid on the element of “understanding” or on the element of “sensibility,” on the motive of synthesis or on that of intuition. In the first case, number appears not merely as a formation [Gebilde] of pure thinking but virtually as its prototype and

398

406

the construction of scientific cognition

origin. It not only arises from the pure lawfulness of thinking, but designates the primary and originary act to which it is ultimately traced back. Accordingly, an exponent of logical idealism stresses: For thinking there can be nothing more original than itself, thinking: that is, the positing of relation. Whatever else we might claim as the ground of number would include this positing of relation, and it could appear as the ground of number only because it contains the true ground, the positing of relation, as a presupposition.26

399

Opposed to this view is the one developed by Rickert in his book Das Eine, die Einheit und die Eins [The One, the Unity, and One]. For according to Rickert, number not only cannot be dissolved into the elements [Elemente] of logic but forms the example par excellence of the “alogical” whose nature [Wesen] can be apprehended most purely and indicated most clearly by the critique of cognition. Thus, any attempt to derive even the most elementary arithmetical concept or even the most elementary arithmetical truth from purely logical premises remains hopeless. “Even a proposition such as 1 = 1 presupposes an experiential or intuitable element, an element that is barely encompassed in the logical form of ‘unity’ and remains alogical.”27 This thesis seems to cut the ground from under any effort to penetrate the essence of number through the presuppositions of pure logic. And nevertheless, the problem acquires a different character here as soon as we consider not simply the conclusion but also the methodological and substantive [sachlich] grounds of Rickert’s theory. For it appears then that the element in which this theory separates sharply from the basic view of “logical idealism” and by virtue of which it resists it lies far less in Rickert’s view of number than in his view of the nature [Wesen] of “logos.” As far as number is concerned, Rickert clearly and decisively rejects any attempt at an “empiricist” grounding, any derivation of its sense and content [Gehalt] from the “things” of empirical reality. Its independence of experience, its “apriority” and “ideality” remain intact. If he nevertheless designates it as an “alogical” formation [Gebilde], this in his language means only that over against the logical object that is constituted by “unity” and “alterity,” by “identity” and “diversity” [Verschiedenheit], the object of “number” constitutes a content sui generis. Identity and difference [Unterschied] form the logical minimum without



language and science

407

which no sort of objectivity is thinkable; however, this minimum does not suffice to construct the concept of the numerical “one,” the concept of “quantity” and of the numerical series as an ordered sequence of elements [Elemente]. Rickert stresses: The insights of mathematics, like all purely theoretical insights are certainly “logical” in the broader sense of the word. However, nevertheless, there must be something special that is added to the pure logos and makes it into a specifically mathematical logos. Or does mathematical ratio . . . coincide with the purely logical ratio? Is the mathematical procedure not, rather, ‘rational” only in a very special sense?28

Grasped in this way, the problem posed by Rickert is no doubt justified, but of course, it is not a clear and adequate expression of the problem to say that because number is not absorbed by logic that it must be designated as something “alogical.” For this expression repeatedly makes it seem not only as if in the nature [Wesen] of number something else was posited that goes beyond pure logical identity and diversity [Verschiedenheit] but also as if this something else were in some way “foreign to thinking,” as if it were opposed to the logical. Mere particularization in no way includes, however, any such opposition; the specific difference [Differenz] does not depart from the genus or negate the genus but rather contains its closer determination. Logical idealism itself is also far from asserting a simple coincidence of number with the “logical”; rather, it only regards number as a determination of the logical.29 If we take the logical in Rickert’s sense, if we regard identity and diversity [Verschiedenheit] as the sole, in the strict sense, “logical” categories, then there can be no doubt that these categories are in themselves insufficient to produce the realm of number and of mathematics in general. Insofar as it aimed merely to substantiate this proposition, Rickert’s demonstration would have been greatly simplified and sharpened if he had made use of the instruments provided by modern logical calculus, particularly by relational calculus. For, expressed in the language of this calculus, identity and diversity [Verschiedenheit] are symmetrical relations [Relationen], whereas for the construction of the series of number and for the concept of ordered sequence in general, an asymmetrical relation is indispensable.30 If on the other hand, however, we understand the concept of “logical form” in its full universality, if

400

401

408

402

the construction of scientific cognition

we take it as an expression of “relatedness in general” – under which all individual varieties of relation, the “transitive” as well as the “intransitive,” the symmetrical as well as the nonsymmetrical and asymmetrical, are subsumed as special cases – then number cannot be denied admittance into this universal system. Number no more exhausts the system than it falls outside of it – rather, it forms a foundation and cornerstone that cannot be extracted from the whole structure without endangering its stability and security. For precisely because number presents the schema of order and series in general, thinking always sees itself brought back to it as soon as it seeks to apprehend the content of being as ordered. Thinking possesses here the fundamental means of its “orientation”: the ideal axis around which it rotates the world. Wherever it is confronted by a manifold of “given” contents, thinking attempts this transposition into its own ideal norm. The Pythagoreans expressed this basic relationship in their first enthusiasm over the philosophical and scientific discovery of number by saying that number is being. For being cannot be thought except in the form of determinacy, of “harmonious order,” but there is determinacy and harmonious order only where number reigns. However, in addition to the basic formula that expresses the metaphysical identity of being and number, there is found in the Pythagoreans another methodologically sharper and more cautious formula. In it, number is designated no longer as being as such but now as the “truth of being.” The nature of truth and that of number are essentially related to each other: the one can be known only in and through the other. The subsequent development of theoretical cognition shows of course that logical form as such is not restricted to the domain of number and the enumerable. Rather, the realm of this form extends to the domain and law of necessary connection. The realm of numbers provides the clearest example of a manifold that is constructed in accordance with strict law, that arises in an unequivocal way and in systematic completeness from a fundamental and originary positing and from a principle that regulates the advance from it to a second positing and thence to a third, etc. From now on, wherever thought is confronted by a construction of the same conceptual type, it possesses an analogy of number. In his earliest basic philosophical conceptions, Leibniz started with a project [Entwurf] for a universal arithmetic, but he soon extended this to a project



language and science

409

for a general combinatorics. This need not be limited to numbers as such, as it could equally as well extend to formations [Gebilde] of a completely other kind – for example, to points – and for this, Leibniz provided an example in the configuration of his analysis situs, which is a pure point calculus. Whenever and wherever there is an original generative relation [Relation], and where it is such that the whole of a domain is completely determined, we have the essential presupposition for the dominance of logical form. The condition for this dominance is that by repeated application of the basic relation, every element [Element] of the manifold may be reached in a regulated sequence of steps of thought and be “defined” by means of this sequence. The form, taken in its most general sense, is never exhausted in the positing of the “one” and the “other” and in the differentiation of both but requires the determinability of one by the other. Wherever this determinability not only is empirically “given” but follows from a necessary law that is valid for all elements [Elemente], a strictly deductive progress from member to member and a synopsis – a single synthetic survey of the allness [Allheit] of the members – becomes possible. This specific mode of vision [Blick], not any particular quality of content [Inhaltlichkeit] that might be expressed in an individual element or characteristic trait, determines the object as a logical-­mathematical object. Step by step, modern logic and modern mathematics have approached the fulfillment of this ideal – however, the establishment [Aufstellung] of the ideal had been accomplished by systematic philosophy long before its concrete fulfillment. The fundamental conception was expressed by Descartes with surprising universality and a positively prophetic clarity.31 At the age of twenty-­two, he wrote in his diary: “Larvatae nunc scientiae sunt, quae larvis sublatis pulcherrimae apparerent; catenam scientiarum pervidenti non difficilius videbitur eas animo retinere quam seriern numerorum” [The sciences are currently masked, if the masks were lifted, they would appear in all their beauty; to him who perceives the chain uniting them, they will be no more difficult to keep in one’s mind than a series of numbers].32 The sciences, which had hitherto formed a coexistence, an aggregate, should now be forged into a “chain,” each single link of which reaches over into the next and is connected with it in accordance with a strict rule. From this concept of the “chain,” which in Descartes contains in general the germ of a new form of scientific

403

410

404

the construction of scientific cognition

theory, Dedekind was to derive his new fundamental foundation of arithmetic. However, with Descartes, on the basis of the methodological perspective that is acquired here, the thought advances in the direction of a newer and deeper insight into the object of exact science. Arithmetic and geometry, statics and mechanics, astronomy and music seem to deal with very different objects [Objekte], and yet, on closer scrutiny, they are only elements, diverse aspects and manifestations of one and the same cognitive form. The general scientific theory, the mathesis universalis, treats this cognitive form. It does not relate to number, to spatial form, to motion as such, but extends to everything that is determined according to “order and measure.” As early as Descartes, the concept of order appears as the more general and the concept of measure as the more specialized motive in this determination. Every measurement we undertake in a manifold is ultimately grounded in a determinate function of order – however, without particular additional presuppositions not everything that is ordered is measurable. Thus, the real decisive characteristic of the “object” of mathematics is increasingly concentrated in the one basic concept of order. In Leibniz, this intellectual process is completed, and at the same time, a further requirement is clearly formulated, namely that an exactly determined order of signs must correspond to the order of thoughts. Only by virtue of this order of signs does thought acquire a truly systematic survey of the whole of its ideal objects. Every single operation of thinking must be expressible by an analogous operation in signs and must be verifiable through the general rules that have been established for the connection of signs. With this postulate, the standpoint of the modern mathesis universalis is achieved. Although this mathesis universalis demands a thoroughgoing “formalization” of the entire process of mathematical thought, it by no means abandons the “relation to the object”: the objects themselves, however, are no longer concrete “things”; they are rather pure relational forms [Relationsformen]. It is not the “what” of the connected but the “how” of the connection that decides whether a certain manifold belongs to the sphere of “mathematical objects.” A modern mathematician writes in summing up this basic view: If we have a certain class of relations [Relationen] and if the only question we ask is whether or not certain ordered groups of objects [Objekte]



language and science

411

satisfied these relations [Relationen], then the results of these investigations are called mathematical.33

In this version of the concept, the mathematical is fundamentally extended beyond its initial, “classical” domain, beyond the domain of “quantity” and “magnitude.” Leibniz defined combinatorics as the “scientia de qualitate in genere” and equated quality in the most general sense with “form.” As a matter of fact, modern mathematics also discloses a whole series of disciplines in which there can no longer be any question of the consideration or comparison of extensive “magnitudes.” In geometry, for example, “metric” geometry stands alongside projective geometry as an independent and autonomous formation [Gebilde], whose construction has no need of the specific relation of magnitude, of the standpoint of the larger-­being or smaller-­being. The same is true of analysis situs and of the geometrical characteristic, as it was founded by Leibniz and developed by Hermann Grassman, who directly expanded on Leibniz’s basic ideas. Even in the domain of arithmetic, determination by the concept of magnitude proves to be too narrow. The theory of substitutions takes its place side by side with the theories of number as they are developed by elementary arithmetic, but it develops that the basic theorems of elementary arithmetic can be strictly deduced only on the basis of this theory of substitutions.34 And from here, the path leads further to that concept that has been said to be perhaps the most characteristic concept in nineteenth-­century mathematics.35 For investigations of groups of letter substitutions give rise to the general concept of a group of operations and the new discipline of group theory. With this discipline, not only was an important domain “adjoined” to the system of mathematics, but it soon became increasingly clear in its further construction that a new, far-­reaching motive of mathematical thinking was founded here. Felix Klein’s famous Erlanger program shows how the “inner form” of geometry changes under the influence of this motive. Geometry now becomes subordinated to the theory of invariants as a special case. What links the various geometries together is that each of them considers certain basic properties of spatial formations [Gebilde], which prove invariant in relation to certain transformations; what distinguishes them from one another is the fact that each one of these geometries is characterized by a particular transformation

405

406

412

407

the construction of scientific cognition

group.36 To convince ourselves that the group theory has in this way encroached on the overall conception of geometry and the configuration of other basic mathematical disciplines, we need only recall the significance that Lie’s theory of transformation groups had for the theory of differential equations: this already suggests the supposition that a general epistemo-­critical sense is to be assigned a special status. Indeed, an inner methodological interconnection between the basic concept of number and that of group can also be shown. From an epistemo-­critical point of view, the latter, as it were, elevates to a higher stage of consideration the same problem from which the concept of number began. The creation of the series of natural numbers begins by fixating a first “element” [Element] and stating a rule, through whose repeated application more and more new elements [Elemente] can be produced. They are all joined in a unitary whole by the fact that every connection that we make with elements [Elemente] of the numerical series defines in turn a new “number.” If we form the “sum” of the two numbers a and b or their “difference” [Differenz], their “product,” etc., then the values a + b, a – b, a × b do not fall out of the basic series but belong to it as determinate positions, or at least can be indirectly related to the positions of the basic series in accordance with fixed rules. Thus, however far we progress in ever-­renewed syntheses, we are still certain that the logical framework [Rahmen] in which our consideration moves, much as it may be extended, will never be totally broken. The thought of the self-­contained, unitary “realm of numbers” means precisely that the connection of ever so many arithmetical operations always leads back ultimately to arithmetical elements [Elemente]. In group theory, this same aspect is now raised to true and strict universality. For in it, the dualism of the “element” [Element] and “operation” is, so to speak, sublated: the operation itself has become an element [Element]. A totality [Gesamtheit] of operations forms a group when any two transformations that we have successively undertaken lead to a determinate result that may also be arrived at through a single operation belonging to the totality. The “group,” accordingly, is nothing other than an exact expression for what is understood by a “self-­contained” operational field, or system of operations. The theory of transformation groups – whether we think of it in reference to finite discrete groups or to continuous transformation groups – can thus, logically considered, be



language and science

413

designated as a new “dimension” of arithmetic: it is an arithmetic that refers no longer to numbers but to “forms,” to relations [Relationen] and operations. And we see once again that a deeper penetration into the world of forms and its inner lawfulness signifies here at the same time a new step in the direction of the “real,” in the progress of our cognition of reality. Leibniz’s words hold true on this point: “le réel ne laisse pas de se gouverner par l’idéal et l’abstrait.”37 Kepler has said that number is the “eye of the mind” through which reality becomes visible [sichtbar] to us, and this is valid also for group theory, which has been designated as the most striking example of purely intellectual mathematics.38 Kepler added that only through number can certain physical interconnections be interpreted. It is through the concept of the group that Minkowski was able to translate the complex of problems in the special theory of relativity into purely mathematical form and so elucidate them from an entirely new angle. And again, the group theory of “space-­metrics” led to important insights in modern physics by divesting certain observed facts of their merely “accidental” character and making it possible to consider them from a general systematic standpoint.39 If on the basis of these general theoretical considerations, we now attempt to determine the position of number in the system of mathematics as a whole, we find that for this determination, it is necessary to differentiate clearly two elements that have often crossed and intertwined with one another in the course of the historical development of the problem. We already find in the Pythagorean theory a peculiar wavering in the expression of the basic idea. Side by side with the basic and central formula, according to which every being [Seiende] is its nature [Wesen] according to number, stand other formulas according to which all being [Sein] “imitates” number and by virtue of this imitation participates in it. In the fragments of Philolaus, it is said not only that things are numbers but that everything knowable, incidental as to how it is conditioned, has its number.40 This “having” of number appears at first sight as an illusive and curiously conflicting relationship. For it embraces unity and otherness, identity and difference [Verschiedenheit], and it distinguishes “being” and “number” from one another [auseinander] and at the same time measures one against each other [aneinander] and indissolubly connects them with one another [miteinander]. Time and time

408

414

the construction of scientific cognition

again, this original tension of motives has threatened to break out into a dialectical conflict. Only modern mathematics has created the means by which to maintain the tension and at the same time to intellectually master it. Modern mathematics has comprehended the polarity that opens here; at the same time, however, it has developed it into a pure correlation. Now it becomes evident that the realm of objects with which mathematics deals cannot be reduced to mere quantity, to number or magnitude; on the other hand, however, the continuous referring back [Rückbeziehung: dependence; relating back] of all mathematical objects to number and its fundamental form of order is preserved. Thus, the way that leads beyond number always leads back to it. One must take both tendencies together in order to gain an insight into the intellectual structure of modern mathematics. However far its object [Objekt] may go beyond the realm of numbers, it still remains attached to number in its method. Hermann Weyl writes:

409

The modern development of our science has shown the old explanation of mathematics as the theory of number and space to be too narrow; yet there is no doubt that even in such disciplines as pure geometry, analysis situs, group theory, etc., the natural numbers are brought from the very start into relation with the objects treated.41

Thus, precisely in the broadening that modern mathematics has undergone, the tendency [Zug] toward “arithmetization” is preserved and in fact stands out with particular sharpness. Every great thinker who has given the mathematics of the nineteenth century its spiritual imprint has contributed to the steady progress of this work. Gauss, who called mathematics the queen of the sciences, designated arithmetic the queen of mathematics.42 In the same sense, Felix Klein called for a thoroughgoing “arithmetization of mathematics.”43 In this way, the definitive securing of mathematical cognition also appears to be grounded. Thus, for example, Hilbert proved that geometry was free from contradiction by demonstrating a procedure by which the elements [Elemente] and theorems of geometry could in an unequivocal manner be mapped [abbilden] onto a purely arithmetical manifold. If it can be shown



language and science

415

that and why such a manifold is free from contradiction, then likewise the “coherence” of the geometrical domains would seem to have been secured. Hilbert thus regards the numerical order as the ultimate and fundamental stratum of the “axiomatic thinking” that is characteristic of mathematics as such. In general, the procedure of the axiomatic method consists in continuously sinking the foundations of the various domains of knowledge to a deeper level – however, a truly radical grounding and consolidation can be achieved only if we succeed in anchoring the domain axioms in number axioms. Hilbert concludes his exposition thus: Everything that can as such be the object of scientific thinking falls to the axiomatic method and thus indirectly to mathematics, as soon as it is ripe for the formation of a theory. By penetrating to deeper and deeper strata of axioms . . . we also gain ever deeper insights into the nature [Wesen] of scientific thinking itself and become increasingly aware of the unity of our knowledge. Under the sign of the axiomatic method, mathematics seems to be called upon to play a leading role in all science in general.44

We recognize in all this that it is not so much number as the content of thinking so much as number as a type of thinking that determines the specific nature of modern mathematics. If in this way, however, “pure mathematics” is thus defined as the “science of numbers” and numbers as “signs manufactured by us for the ordering faculties of our understanding,”45 then the question of the truth content [Gehalt] of these signs itself becomes all the more urgent. Are they mere signs, befit no objective significance? Or have they a fundamentum in re? And if the latter is true, where shall we seek this foundation? Is it provided ready-­made by “intuition,” or must it, aside from and independently from all givenness of intuition, be acquired and secured in independent acts of reason, in a pure spontaneity of thinking? With these questions, we stand at the center and spiritual focal point of the methodological battle that is now being waged again over the sense and content [Gehalt] of the basic concepts of mathematics. We cannot go into the details of this battle or into its origins here: we shall merely inquire into its significance for our own basic problem: the problem of “symbolic thinking.”

410

416

the construction of scientific cognition

ENDNOTES 1 Burkamp, Begriff und Beziehung, first study, 7. 2 Cf. the last part of Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 2: “The Dialectic of Mythical Consciousness.” 3 Strictly speaking, to be sure, this becomes true only at a stage in which the word is clearly and sharply apprehended in its purely representative and symbolic character – and at which consequently the name is no longer taken, as in mythical thought, as a real part of the thing it designates. As long as this last is the case, the name retains its fixed, substantial character and bondage; the mythical “hypothesis” even fashions it into a daemonic entity. (cf. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 2, 53ff.). 4 Plato, Phaedo, 99Dff. 5 For further details, see William Stern, Die Psychologie der Frühen Kindheit, 301ff. 6 Bühler, Die Krise der Psychologie, 51ff. 7 Cf. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1, 273ff. 8 Ibid., 261ff. 9 Ibid., 18ff. 10 Karl Voßler, “Geist und Kultur in der Sprache,” (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1925), chap. 8, Sprache und Wissenschaft, 220ff. 11 Ibid., 227ff. 12 Herder, Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache, 35. Cf. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1, 86. 13 Cf. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1, 125ff., 130ff., 144ff., 153ff. 14 Cf. ibid., 69ff. 15 Voßler, Geist und Kultur in der Sprache, 225. 16 [übertragen: Translate, transcribe, broadcast, assigned, transferred.] 17 Cf. the remarks of Bühler, Die Krise der Psychologie, 40ff. 18 Cf. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1, 122f. 19 For further details, see Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1, 170ff. Cf. Lévy-­Bruhl, Das Denken der Naturvölker, 155ff. 20 For further details, see Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1, 174ff. 21 Leibniz, Philosophische Schriften, 7, 184. 22 Gottlob Frege, Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Breslau: W. Koebner, 1884), 59. 23 Cf. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1, 169. 24 Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer, “Zur Begründung der intuitionistischen Mathematik, II,” Mathematische Annalen, 96 (1927), 453. 25 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 182. 26 Natorp, Die logischen Grundlagen der exakten Wissenschaft, 99. 27 Hienrich Rickert, Das Eine, die Einheit und die Eins, Heidelberger Abhandlungen Zur Philosophie und ihrer Geschichte, I, ed. Ernst Hoffmann and Heinrich Richert (2nd ed., Tübingen: Mohr, 1924), 87.



language and science

417

28 Ibid., 4. 29 Here, to be sure, it must be admitted that in Natorp, against whom Rickert’s demonstration in the revised version of his article on the “logos” is chiefly directed, the two viewpoints are not sharply differentiated. When Natorp attempts to derive the concept of number purely from the “synthesis of the manifold” – i.e., to show that the mere containment of different “species” in a “genus” is a numerical difference – the objections raised by Rickert strike me as wholly justified (Cf. Rickert, Das Eine, die Einheit und die Eins, 27ff.). The “numerical” difference indubitably means something more and something other than the “generic” difference. On the other hand, it cannot be inferred from the non-­coincidence of “quantity” and “concept” that quantity brings into the concept an “alogical” element [Element] that is alien to it. Rather, the synthesis of number, like that of concept, rests on the same basic act of “positing relation” – a positing that is at the same time a differentiation – except that this logical act “specifies” itself differently in the number than in the concept, i.e. it proceeds from a different determining viewpoint, the viewpoint of the series and the serial order. For further details, cf. my later remarks. 30 It has been shown, particularly by Russell, that the concept of an “order among elements [Elemente]” can be reduced analytically to the existence of an asymmetrical, transitive relation among them and necessarily presupposes a relation of this form; cf. esp. chaps. 24 and 25 of the Principles of Mathematics and chap. 4 of the Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. Aloys Müller in his Der Gegenstand der Mathematik mit besonderer Beziehung auf die Relativitätstheorie (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1922) also works with Rickert’s terminology and his basic assumption: identity and difference exhaust “the characteristic of the specifically logical, the logical originary phenomenon” (31). He logically, under this condition, comes to the conclusion that in the logical sphere there is and can be no “series” and that it consequently lacks the important and absolutely indispensable element for the construction of number (34). It is not this conclusion as such but the premises from which it flows that are questioned in “logical idealism”: its concept of “logic” is different and thus essentially richer than it is for Rickert and Aloys Müller. Admittedly, it would seem as if with this insight the whole issue leads back to a merely terminological difference and with it essentially becomes infertile. After all, must not every thinker be free to use the term “logical” in any sense he pleases”? Indeed, this right is not questioned. But one thing should be borne in mind: if Rickert’s terminology is accepted, then logic itself, in its “classical” form as well as the modern configuration given to it by Peirce and Boole, Frege and Peano, Schröder and Russell, can no longer be designated as the theory of the “logical object.” For, from a historical point of view, there has never been a science of logic limited to what Rickert calls the “purely logical object.” Such a limitation is found at most in the beginning of logic, in Parmenides, for whom in fact the whole problem of logic is exhausted in identity and difference, in “being” and “nonbeing.” Even Plato in his Sophist goes far beyond this “originary phenomenon” of the One and the Other. For here it is the notion of the

418

31 32 33

34

35

36 37 38 39 40

the construction of scientific cognition “community” of ideas, the κοινωία τῶν γένων, that is central and that first makes possible a science of logic. Thus, community is based on the relation of systematic dependency of concepts and judgments, on the relationship of “ground” and “consequence” that exists between them. This logical “consequence” can, however, no more be derived from sheer identity and difference than can that of the numerical series. Like the numerical relationship, the basic relationship of “implication” is itself something new and distinct over against mere unity and otherness. The disparity becomes still more evident if we start from the new form of logic, which historically goes back to Leibniz. For this logic aspires to comprehend the totality of “pure forms,” of connections possessing a priori validity, to establish the specific ways governing each of them and fixate these laws through a symbolic calculus. For this, the logical minimum that Rickert finds in the “purely logical object” can never suffice. And one can gain a lively impression of how far one must go beyond it by studying the modern shape of this logic as epitomized, for example, in the systematic work of Russell and Whitehead. On the following, cf. my Erkenntnisproblem, 3rd ed., I, 445ff. René Descartes, Œuvres inédites de Descartes (Paris: Foucher de Careil, 1895), 4. M. Bôcher, “The Fundamental Conceptions and Methods of Mathematics,” Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 11 (1905), 115–35. Cf. also Gregor Itelson’s definition of mathematics as the “science of ordered objects,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 12 (1904), 1037ff. For further detail see Aurel E. Voss, Über das Wesen der Mathematik (3rd ed., Leipzig and Berlin: B. G. Teubner, 1922), 26f. Cf. moreover the presentation of arithmetic by Otto Stolz [Vorlesungen über allgemeine Arithmetik. Nach den neueren Ansichten (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1885) and Alfredo Capelli, “Sulla genesi combinatoria dell'aritmetica,” Giornale di matematiche di Battaglini per il progresso degli studi nelle università italiane, 39 (1901), 81–102]. For further details, see, for example, Otto Hölder, Die mathematische Methode. Logisch erkenntnistheoretische Untersuchungen im Gebiete der Mathematik, Mechanik und Physik (Berlin: J. Springer, 1924), 173ff. Cf. Hermann Weyl, “Philosophie der Mathematik und Naturwissenschaft,” in Handbuch der Philosophie, eds. A. Baeumler and Manfred Schröter (Munich and Berlin: Oldenbourg, 1927), 23. Cf. Felix Klein, “Vergleichende Betrachtungen über neuere geometrische Forschungen,” Mathematische Annalen, 43 (1893), 63–100. [Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Brief an Pierre Varignon vom 2. Februar 1702, in Leibnizens gesammelte Werke, vol. IV (Halle and Berlin,1859), 93.] Cf. Weyl, Philosophie der Mathematik und Naturwissenschaft, 23. For further details, see Hermann Weyl, Raum, Zeit, Materie; Vorlesungen über allgemeine Relativitätstheorie (4th ed., Berlin: Springer, 1921), §18, 124ff. Cf. Philolaus, Fragment 4 (Diels, 32B). [“Actually, everything that can be known has a Number; for it is impossible to grasp anything with the mind or to recognize it without this (number).” Ancilla to the Pre-­Socratic Philosophers, 74.]



language and science

419

41 Hermann Weyl, Das Kontinuum, Kritische Untersuchungen über die Grundlagen der Analysis (Leipzig: Verlag von Veit & Comp., 1918), 17. 42 Wolfgang Sartorius von Waltershausen, Gauss Zum Gedächtnis, 79; quoted from Voss, Über das Wesen der Mathematik, 113. 43 Felix Kein, “Über die Arithmetisirung der Mathematik,” in Nachrichten von der königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1895), 82–91. 44 David Hilbert, “Axiomatisches Denken,” Mathematische Annalen, 78 (1918), 405–15. 45 Cf. Voss, Über das Wesen der Mathematik, 29ff. and 106ff.

IV THE OBJECT OF MATHEMATICS 1.  THE FORMALIST AND INTUITIONIST GROUNDING OF MATHEMATICS 411

Before we consider the opposition between “formalism” and “intuitionism” [Intuitionismus] in its present methodological intensification, let us look back at its historical presuppositions and preparations. This retrospective is decisive not only for historical interests but also for systematic ones. For it appears that much misunderstanding between the contending tendencies might have been avoided, that the crux of the opposition might have been made to stand out more clearly, if both camps had been aware of the long preliminary history of the problem in both logic and philosophy. As early as Aristotle, we find a remark suggesting that he found the essence of geometrical definition not in a mere conceptual explanation but in an explanation that contained a theorem and proof of existence [Existenz]. The geometer assumes the significance of the word “triangle,” but he must prove that there are triangles.1 As for the rest, the concept of geometrical “construction,” in the framing it received in the philosophical and mathematical theory of antiquity, is closely connected with the problem of the proof of existence [Existenz].2



the object of mathematics

421

And the “renaissance” of mathematical thinking as it took place in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries started from this very point. Spinoza, Hobbes, Tschirnhaus, and Leibniz worked here in the same direction: for them, all the problems of genetic, or as they call it “causal,” definition take on a systematic-­philosophical significance extending far beyond the domain of mathematics.3 It was Leibniz with his methodological clarity and mastery who gathered all these considerations into one and determined their place in the general structure of logic. The strife between “nominalism” and “realism” that had dominated all medieval logic now took on a new form: redeemed, as it were, from sterile speculation, it entered into the heart of the concrete work of the exact sciences. Hobbes had endeavored to demonstrate that the truth of basic mathematical concepts as well as their universality were simply a verbal truth and a verbal universality. According to him, they were grounded not in the object [Sache] but in the word; they rested solely on a convention regarding linguistic signs. In opposition to this view, Leibniz suggests the idea that the sign itself, insofar as it is to be a meaningful [bedeutungsvolle] sign, is subject to certain objective conditions. The symbols and characters of mathematics cannot be formed haphazardly, nor can they be connected according to subjective convenience; rather, they obey certain norms of connectability that are stipulated by the necessity of the object [Sache]. Yet this “object” [Sache], by which these norms must constantly orient themselves and whose inner truth they seek to bring to expression, is to be thought of not as an empirical “thing” [Ding] but as the consistent existence of certain relations that prevail among pure ideas. It is here that all mathematical concept formation and all mathematical sign-­bestowing find their support and inner measure. The connection of characters must correspond to the objective relations [Relationen] of ideas.4 Ars characteristica est ars ita formandi atque ordinandi characteres, ut referant cogitationes, seu ut eam inter se habeant relationem, quam cogitationes inter se habent. Expressio est aggregatum characterum rem quae exprimitur repraesentantium. Lex expressionum haec est: ut ex quarum rerum ideis componitur rei exprimendae idea, ex illarum rerum characteribus componatur rei expressio. [The art of characteristics is the art of forming and ordering characters in such a way that they relate to thoughts, or, in other words, have

412

422

the construction of scientific cognition

to each other that relation which the thoughts have to each other. An expression is the ensemble of the characters representing the thing which is expressed. The law of expressions is this: the expression of a thing is composed from the characters of things in the same way that the idea of the thing to be expressed is composed from the ideas of these things].5

413

The relationship between the mathematical “formula” and the state of affairs toward which it is directed is unambiguously established. The formula first acquires its significative function through its intention toward the state of affairs; on the other hand, it should be so constituted as to embrace all the essential features of the latter and give them a pregnant and exact expression. Thus, the construction of the world of mathematical signs, the creation of the individual characters and their combination, are for Leibniz bound up from the outset with a definite qualifying condition: the “possibility” of the object of connection must be secured. For not every connection of the elements [Elemente] of thinking and every connection of the correlated signs yields a possible object [Objekt] of thought. Among the contents of thought are some that, when one seeks to unite them synthetically, do not define and determine one another more closely in this synthesis but instead sublate each other. Thus, to every actually executable combination of signs, there does not correspond an “in itself” possible, logically determined and logically grounded formation [Gebilde]. Rather, this “ground,” the “fundamentum in re” must be established and demonstrated for each concept formation. The definition may not be taken, therefore, as finished and ready-­made so that it designates the object toward which it is directed only by indicating a characteristic trait or a sum of characteristic traits. For there always exists here the danger that this sum will be made up of components that reciprocally negate one another. This danger becomes particularly acute if we enter into the domain of an infinite manifold. It may be the case, then, that on the way from concept formations, which are perfectly reliable and innocuous in the realm of the finite, to determinations, a contradiction to the structural principle of the manifold is included. Thus, for example, if we are given a finite series of numbers, we can always state a “largest number” in this series; however, transferred to the infinite totality [Ganz] of



the object of mathematics

423

numbers, the concept “largest” contains a contradiction. The situation is analogous for concept formations such as the “smallest fraction” or the “smallest velocity.” Leibniz does not, however, stop at such isolated examples of concepts whose elements [Elemente] are incompatible with one another; rather, he uses them to develop a general conclusion: every concept that attempts to designate and determine a mathematical object [Objekt] only by naming a single one of its properties stands on shaky ground. For the mere declaration of such characterizing attributes provides no guarantee that something corresponds to them in the domain of thought contents. If, for example, we define a circle as a plane curve so constituted that a given circumference will enclose a maximum area, the question always remains open whether, under the presuppositions of our geometry, “there is” such a curve and, if so, whether the given condition indicated can be fulfilled only by one kind of curve. In the first case, no geometrical formation [Gebilde] is determined by our explanation in general; in the second case, the formation [Gebilde] is not fully and unequivocally determined. We can dispel our doubts here in no other way than by indicating a modus generandi, a definite manner of producing the curved line and proving by strict deduction that the desired property is necessarily contained and postulated in this mode of production. Only now does the definition, which formerly had a purely nominal character, become a genuinely “real definition”: that is, one that constructs the object from its constitutive elements [Elemente]. According to Leibniz, however, the coherence [Geschlossenheit] and inner consistency of this construction can be certain for us only if an analogous operation in signs corresponds to every step of thought that is undertaken here. If with each simple “idea” we correlate a simple sign, and if we set up certain general rules for the connection of these signs, then we acquire a symbolic language that has its own laws. The violation of these laws, such as results in the formation of “impossible” object concepts, would then inevitably be betrayed in the form of the signs themselves, so that we should be able to discern and disclose the latent logical contradiction through the direct, sensibly tangible symptom. A relationship belonging to the world of pure concepts thus becomes discernible in an image – we have, as it were, compelled thought to come forth from its inner workshop and manifest itself in its involvements and complexities.6

414

424

415

the construction of scientific cognition

This theory of mathematical definition and of the mathematical object establishes a sharply determined, precise relationship between “sensibility” and “reason.” The two regions are clearly divorced from one another: they cannot mix with each other or merge into each other at any point. No mathematical content arises as such from sensibility, because sensibility lacks the characteristic attributes, the constitutive principle, of the mathematical. To be valid as mathematical content, a content must be apprehended distinctly: it must be constructed from simple, intrinsically certain basic elements of cognition. In the same way that every number can be constituted in an unequivocal manner as a product of prime numbers, sensible lived-­experiences are not susceptible to such thoroughgoing analysis; we must ultimately stop here at some totalities that can no longer be further subdivided into their constitutive elements, into their determining “grounds,” but that we can apprehend only “confusedly.” The direct consequence of this separation of “distinct” and “confused” cognition is that, for Leibniz, no single, truly mathematical object is grounded in sensibility. This applies not only to number but also no less strictly to geometrical extension. It too is in no way a datum of perception but an idea of the pure understanding (une idee de l’entendement pur).7 Even though the “understanding” is thus declared to be the origin and source of all mathematics, Leibniz is certain that human cognition finds its home in the region of “intelligible” mathematical objects and can gain secure footing in this region only if it does not spurn the help of sensible signs. All human cognition is based on the original insights of pure reason; however, it can master and retain these originary intuitions [Urintuitionen] of reason only by making them tangible in images, in symbols. Thus, the intuitive [Intuitive] always remains the first “according to nature [Wesen],” the πρότερον τῇ φύσει; on the other hand, the symbolic proves indispensable, since it represents the “first according to us,” the πρότερον πρὸς ἡμᾶς. Our finite understanding is and will remain an understanding in need of images: it would unquestionably lose itself in the labyrinth of the thinkable without the Ariadne’s thread of a universal characteristic. Thus, in the purely logical order, in the order of “objects,” it is always the intuitive [Intuitive] that forms the actual foundation; we are, however, unable to expel this foundation from us, because we make our way through the medium of sensibility, through the intermediary layer of symbolism.8



the object of mathematics

425

Yet this essentially so clear and simple relationship between mathematical “reason” on one hand and “sensibility” on the other becomes more difficult and complex as soon as we take the step from Leibniz to Kant. In one point, to be sure, the Kantian theory of mathematics seems to be an immediate and direct continuation of Leibniz – it also makes the constructibility of basic mathematical concepts the necessary condition of their truth and validity. Even in the precritical period, this view was central to Kant’s mathematical methodology. No mathematical concept can be gained through mere “abstraction” from the given; a mathematical concept always comprises a free act of connection, an act of “synthesis.” Proof of the “possibility” of this synthesis is necessary; however, at the same time, it is also a sufficient condition for the truth of the mathematical object. “Elsewhere a cone may signify what it will; in mathematics it arises from the voluntary representation of a right-­angle triangle rotating around one of its sides. As in all other cases, the explanation obviously arises here through synthesis.”9 Thus, all mathematical demonstration is ultimately grounded in construction. Philosophical cognition is rational cognition through concepts – mathematical cognition is rational cognition through the construction of concepts. Although Kant thus looks on the element of constructive production as a basic and originary characteristic in all concept formation, for him the organization of cognition that is brought about and grounded by this element takes on a different shape than it does for Leibniz. The cut is now made at a different point in the total system. For Leibniz, it is a question sharply separating pure rational cognition from sensible cognition according to their legal ground [Rechtsgrund], but at the same time, he strove to bind them closely together in application through the middle link of the “universal characteristic.” Mathematical and logical thinking stand on the same side here: they belong to the world of the pure understanding, of the intellectus ipse. Over against both of them stands the world of perception, the world of mere “factual truths.” At no point, however, can this difference become an opposition, a true conflict between them. For the basic metaphysical principle of Leibniz’s philosophy, the principle of “pre-­established harmony,” applies also to the relationship between reason and experience. No pure rational truth can be gained from experience, from the contemplation of sensible individual examples; every such truth, however, applies without restriction for [für]

416

417

426

418

the construction of scientific cognition

experience. Thus, a conflict can never arise between logic and mathematics on the one hand and empirical-­physical cognition on the other: the problem of the applicability of mathematics has no place in the construction of Leibniz’s system. It is, however, precisely this problem that Kant puts forward more sharply than ever before, and out of which grew the final shape of his “critical” theory. Rejecting the dogmatic decision of “pre-­established harmony,” he inquires into the ground of the possibility of agreement between a priori concepts and empirical facts. And he gains the answer to this question from the insight that even the empirical object as object is not simply given but contains within it an element of mathematical construction. Empirical objectivity comes into being only on the ground of an ordering of the empirical; this ordering itself, however, is possible only by virtue of the pure sensible intuition of space and time. This concept of pure intuition is equally far removed from Locke’s “sensification” of cognition as it is from Leibniz’s “intellectualization.” The mathematical no longer possesses an absolutely autonomous logical dignity; rather, its significance, its quid juris, now stands out fully in what it accomplishes for the construction of empirical cognition. Without this constant relation, without regard to this achievement, the theory of “pure space” and “pure time” would be nothing more than and nothing better than a “preoccupation with a mere chimera.” Kant now goes so far as to declare that there can be no cognition of pure mathematical concepts in themselves, except insofar as we assume that there are things that can be presented to us only in accordance with the form of pure sensible intuition.10 For this reason, the truth of mathematical ideas is closely connected with their empirical fulfillment, indeed in this fulfillment. Thus, the method of constructive construction has conquered a new domain; it is introduced, as it were, into the realm of experiential cognition itself. At the same time, however, this entails that the gap between logical and mathematical cognition has substantially grown compared to Leibniz’s epistemology. Thinking, provided that it does not relate to the pure intuitive forms of space and time, becomes an ensemble of mere analytical propositions that, though they contain no contradiction, can lay no claim to any content [Gehalt], to positive fruitfulness for knowledge as a whole. This makes it apparent, however, that the requirement of “constructibility” in the Kantian system embodies a twofold



the object of mathematics

427

significance. On the one hand, it states and asserts nothing more than the same element that we found effective in Leibniz’s theory of the “genetic definition”: every “given” must always be understood and derived through a “productive rule.” On the other hand, however, to “define” a concept means for Kant to present it immediately in intuition – that is, to apprehend it in a spatial or temporal schema. The “sense” of mathematical concepts now appears to be bound to this form of schematization. “Pure sensibility” has thus acquired here an entirely other position in the total structure of mathematics than it had with Leibniz. Sensibility has ceased to be a mere means of presentation, as it was for Leibniz and has become an independent ground of cognition: intuition has now achieved a grounding and legitimizing value. For Leibniz, the domain of intuitive cognition, which relates to the objective connection of ideas, is separate from the domain of symbolic cognition, in which we are not concerned with the ideas themselves but with the signs that represent them; however, the intuition [Intuition] to which he goes back does not stand in opposition to the logical but rather comprises both the logical and the mathematical as particular forms. For Kant, by contrast, the boundary passes not between intuitive [intuitive] and symbolic thinking but between the “discursive” concept and “pure intuition” [Anschauung], where the content [Gehalt] of mathematics can ultimately be provided by and grounded in only symbolic thinking. If we consider the methodological opposition that is given here from the standpoint of modern mathematics, then it must be said that modern mathematics follows not the road indicated by Kant but the way shown by Leibniz. This has followed particularly from the discovery of non-­Euclidean geometry. The new problems arising out of this discovery turned mathematics more and more into a “hypothetical-­deductive system,” whose truth-­value is grounded purely in its inner logical coherence and consistency, not in any material, intuitive statements. Mathematics no longer appealed to intuition as a positive means of proof and grounding; rather, it used intuition only to give a concrete representation [Repräsentation] to the general relational interconnections that it constructed in pure thinking. And, as it demonstrates, there is not only one such representation [Repräsentation] but in general infinitely many of them: thus, a determinate system of “axioms” is in no way fulfilled in only a single domain of intuitive data but is susceptible of different kinds of fulfillments. The

419

428

420

the construction of scientific cognition

diversity of these presentations is not contested; it has, however, ceased to be a mathematically significant fact. For from a mathematical point of view, all the diverse intuitive domains designate only one object [Objekt] and one form: they are all “isomorphous,” insofar as the same relations R′, R″, etc. are equally valid in them all, and regarding this validity of pure relations – according to the new view that has gained general validity and acceptance in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries11 – it is the only one that constitutes a mathematical form as such. George Boole, one of the founders of modern “symbolic logic,” determined the concept of “formal science” precisely in the sense that was later fully confirmed through the development of “abstract” mathematics. He stressed that the validity of processes of analysis is dependent not on the interpretation of the symbols that occur in them but only on the laws of their connection. Thus, it must appear all the more surprising at first sight that all the difficulties that come together in the concept and problem of “intuition” should have reappeared in mathematics itself over the course of the last few decades and that they acquired ever-­greater importance. The controversy today is once more critical, and with it, the relationship between mathematics and logic seems to have become once again ambiguous and questionable. On the one side stand those who not only ground pure mathematics in logic but wish to reduce mathematics to logic – who in principle deny the possibility of drawing a dividing line between them.12 Opposed to this view, we find, however, those who stress the inherent right and the proper sense of mathematics so strenuously and vigorously that not only does the “object” of mathematics become independent of the object of logic but also the fundamental principles of “classical logic,” such as the “principle of the excluded third,” are even attacked from the standpoint of mathematics. From this standpoint, logic in its usual form [Gestalt] no longer appears as the foundation of all thinking, since there are fully autonomous operations of thought that cannot be derived from it. It is not logic that lays the actual ground of truth – rather, ultimately it bears what significance and truth it has inherited from another authority [Instanz], from the certainty of an originary mathematical intuition [Urintuition]. For Brouwer, who represents this basic view in its sharpest form, the thinking of numbers stands at the beginning of all thinking and the elementary rules of logic have been abstracted from the theory of



the object of mathematics

429

number, from arithmetic. Mathematics as well as logic, however, refer here originally to nothing other than finite quantities. They set up rules for such quantities and admit of no processes other than those that can be brought to a determined “conclusion,” a final decision. As soon as this barrier is surpassed and thinking proceeds to conceptions that contain within them the concept of the infinite, it faces an entirely new problem, for which its old instruments are inadequate. According to Brouwer, modern analysis has attempted in vain to master this problem; the further it advanced, the more entangled it became in paradoxes and contradictions. A remedy for these contradictions cannot be expected from the working out of new means of thinking, only from a critical limitation of the possible objects of thinking. Set theory will acquire a form free from contradiction only when it no longer attempts to drive thinking artificially beyond its natural boundaries and instead restricts itself consciously and explicitly to finite processes.13 Modern mathematics thus faces a true methodological dilemma here. However, it decides, something must be sacrificed. If mathematics intends to uphold its old claim to “evidence,” then it would seem to be compelled to return to the primal source of this evidence, to the basic intuition [Grundintuition] of the whole number. On the other hand, however, this return would seem to call for a heavy intellectual sacrifice, which threatens to close wide and fruitful domains that classical analysis has conquered step by step. The final solution of this conflict within mathematics itself is not in sight.14 Regardless of how it turns out, however, the fact of such a conflict already signifies an important and fertile problem from the standpoint of the pure critique of cognition, because in the shifting balance between these two views, the critique of cognition can with particular clarity make us aware of the diverse intellectual forces that have contributed to the construction of modern mathematics and that have determined its current shape [Gestalt].

421

2.  THE CONSTRUCTION OF SET THEORY AND THE “CRISIS IN THE FOUNDATION” OF MATHEMATICS The “paradoxes of set theory,” which gave the first impetus to a revision of the fundamental principles of modern analysis, have opposed themselves to mathematical thinking in various forms. Considered

422

430

423

the construction of scientific cognition

purely methodologically, however, they may be reduced to a unitary conceptual formula. Each of these paradoxes contains the question whether and to what extent it is permissible to mark off a sphere of objects by mere indication of a conceptual “characteristic trait” and declare that the thought totality of these objects [Gegenstände] will represent an unequivocally determined and valid mathematical “object” [Objekt]. When set theory was first developed, mathematical thinking still believed itself justified without harm in abandoning this mode of object [Objekt] formation: a set seemed to be determined as a unitary and inherently clear object if some criterion were given on the basis of which one could decide whether any thing whatsoever was an element [Element] belonging to this set or not. Through this one requirement, the set seems to be “defined” and its “existence” [Existenz] as a legitimate mathematical object secured. As far as the membership of the “element” [Element] in the set was concerned, it was sufficient if this could be decided in principle; an actual decision was not demanded in each individual instance; the set of “transcendent numbers,” for example, “exists” [existiere] in the sense just mentioned, even if, in the present state of mathematical cognition, we cannot say whether the number ππ belongs to it or not.15 According to this basic view, a set is “given” in a pure inventory [Bestand] if, through any defining determination from the sphere of the thinkable, a certain domain is singled out and all its elements [Elemente] comprehended as united in one ensemble. The mode of this union is subject to no limiting conditions. Equality in reference to the defining property is the sole interconnection that is demanded of the members of the set. If it is present, no other “inner bond” that connects the members is required. The set is characterized from the outset by the form of a mere “aggregation,” not by that of a specific “system”: fundamentally, it implies that regardless of any consideration of qualitative “affinity” of sense, anything can be grouped together with anything and united into a whole, into a conceptual totality. If we keep in mind this point of departure of set theory, then it cannot be surprising that the application of set theory was ultimately bound to encounter certain limits that might be designated as limits of “specific sense.” If we generally assume that in the realm of the thinkable, some specific laws of sense are valid, then these laws will sooner or later have to set a boundary for the arbitrary interconnection of “everything with



the object of mathematics

431

everything.” Certain basic laws of connection will manifest themselves, on the strength of which certain unitary formations will be recognized as legitimate, as objectively [sachlich] valid, while in others this validity must be contested. The mathematical thinking of the nineteenth century found the antinomies of set theory in formations of this latter kind. At first, there was a wide divergence of opinions over the solution to these antinomies as well as to the path that must be forged toward their solution. One thing was certain, however: going forward, the current “loose” definition of sets had to be abandoned. It lies here in the tendency of “axiomatic thinking” that the bond that was now recognized as indispensable was at first understood in a purely “formal” sense. The arbitrariness in the definition of sets as well as the admission of statements regarding their elements [Elemente] were now limited by the formation of certain axioms that were able to prevent contradictions within set theory, whereas the scope and application of this theory remained unimpaired despite the restrictions imposed on it.16 By such logical safeguards, it seemed possible to satisfy all the technical requirements of mathematics. Zermelo’s “Investigations into the Foundation of the Set Theory” and Russell’s “Theory of Types” have pursued this path. In the latter, for example, a certain procedure of set formation – the so-­called “nonpredicative” procedure, in which a concept that belongs as a member to a certain totality is characterized such that the totality enters as a whole into its definition – is denied admittance into legitimate mathematics.17 No totality may contain members that are definable only through the totality itself. However, even if contradictions can be avoided through the installation of such prohibitions, there nevertheless remains a fundamental question for this procedure. For while the axiomatic provides the pure content of a specific prohibition before us, it tells us nothing about its own methodological “ground.” The validity of a certain axiom – for example, of the validity of proposition introduced by Russell as the “axiom of reducibility” – proves its validity by its favorable consequences, by the exclusion of “paradoxical” set formations; it does not, however, understand itself in its own inner necessity. We apprehend “that” it applies, but not “why.” Thus, as it were, only the appearance of a certain symptom of the illness is avoided through axiomatics: a doubt remains, however, whether the illness behind the symptom has been truly diagnosed and cured. And as long as we have no certainty of this,

424

432

the construction of scientific cognition

we may expect it to break out in another place. This relationship has been drastically expressed by Fraenkel: The fence of axiomatics, to speak with Poincaré, preserves the legitimate sheep of the unexceptionable set theory from an incursion of the paradox-­tainted wolves. As to the enduring quality of the fence no doubt is possible. Who guarantees, however, that some wolves have not been left inadvertently inside the fence, and that, though today they still pass unnoticed, they will not one day burst in upon the flock and devastate the fenced-­in field as they did at the beginning of the century? In other words, how shall we safeguard ourselves against the possibility that the axioms bear within themselves germs which, once set in motion by inferences, will produce still unknown contradictions?18

425

426

The endeavor to achieve not a temporary but permanent assurance has inevitably led modern mathematics back into the center and core of the controversy, to the problem of mathematical definition and mathematical “existence” [Existenz]. With this the difference between nominal and real definitions, as clearly and sharply established by Leibniz,19 regained its justification. Not every association of characteristic traits that can be expressed in words suffices to determine a mathematical object and guarantee its “possibility.” In every case, rather, this possibility can be guaranteed only if sense is substituted for words and the decision is made through the criteria of this sense.20 In particular, we cannot operate with infinite totalities without previously inquiring into how and by what means such totalities can be “given” to thinking. The “paradoxical” sets show with particular clarity that this “giving” is never a merely collective act, that it can never occur through the “bundling together” of random elements [Elemente] that are determined only by some common “property.” For the requirement that everything that shares in this property should be grouped together is a mere postulate without any guaranteed satisfiability [Erfüllbarkeit]. The doubts about the possibility of its satisfiability can in principle be overcome not by a mere collective unity but only by a “constitutive” unity of a law through which the construction of the set is determined: the law not only embraces an infinite number of possible applications but produces them out of itself. With this insight, however, modern mathematics essentially returns, from new paths that



the object of mathematics

433

are entirely its own, to the point from which Leibniz as a methodologist of mathematical thinking took his departure. Once again, the interconnection between genuine “real definition” and “genetic definition” is recognized. In this sense, Weyl also stresses that to arrive at a truly secure and tenable foundation for analysis, one must start from the pure process of “iteration.” Pure number theory becomes the core of mathematics again, so that the category of “natural number” together with the relevant original relation [Relation] by which the relation [Beziehung] of “immediate inference” is expressed in the order of numbers and determines the “absolute operational field” of mathematics. From the process of iteration, of an infinitely possible progress in a series, we can derive the fundamental insights regarding natural numbers on which all pure mathematics is logically constructed.21 What is epistemo-­critically essential and decisive in this foundation is that with it the primacy of the functional concept over the thing concept is for the first time recognized in its full extension. If mathematics is led back to the “originary intuition” [Urintuition] of number, this intuition [Intuition] no longer signifies an intuition [Anschauung] of concrete things; rather, it is grasped as an intuition [Anschauung] of a pure process. The starting point is a determinate domain of operations, and these operations initially lead only toward the individuals that we designate as “numbers.” The “consistent existence” [Bestand: inventory] of these individuals can be demonstrated and is demonstrable only through the disclosure of a principle, in accordance with which they are positable ad infinitum according to a predetermined rule. This mode of positing alone allows for their full intellectual mastery: here knowledge of the “law” [Gesetz] is in the strict sense prior to knowledge of the “posited” [Gesetzten]. From the operational sphere of number, the thing-­sphere of the countable and the counted first unfolds. Only if it is permeated with this idealistic idea and is understood as an expression of it can modern “intuitionism” [Intuitionismus] fully develop and prove its power for the critique of the foundation of mathematics. Idealism surely must be understood here as a strictly “objective” idealism: the object-­sphere of mathematics must be grounded not in the psychological act of counting but in the pure idea of number. If I am not mistaken, it is its sharper apprehension and emphasis on this element that gives Weyl’s framing of “intuitionism” [Intuitionismus] its preeminence over that of Brouwer’s version. Even Brouwer’s foundation

427

434

428

the construction of scientific cognition

of analysis starts from the process of “iteration.” According to Brouwer, analysis begins with the positing of a multiplicity that is constituted so that it is fully determined by a single ordering relation [Relation].22 In this case, the principle of intuitionist mathematics is that all objective realms to which it extends must indirectly be referred to this basic and originary-­schema and configured according to its model. From this, it follows that wherever mathematics speaks of “existence” [Existenz] and wherever it states a specific existential theorem, it is not this theorem as such that has value but the construction effected in the proof. In this sense, Brouwer says that all mathematics is “far more a doing than a theory.” A closer explanation, however, is required here as to what is to be understood in the field of mathematics and within its borders by the concept of doing itself. Mathematical doing is a purely intellectual doing that does not occur [verlaufen] in time but rather first makes possible a basic element on which time itself is based, the element of “sequencing” [Reihung]. The basic operation on which the realm of numbers is grounded may not therefore be dissolved into an ensemble of individual actions that stand to one another in a relationship of empirical “succession,” so that they are able to construct a whole only “bit by bit.” Rather, here the whole is strictly “before” the parts: in the sense that the principle of the operation, the generating law that stands at the beginning and before individual positing takes only its sense from it. The progression from member to member within the series does not create this principle but only explicates it; it is, as it were, the interpretation [Auslegung: laying out] of what it is and signifies. Accordingly, mathematical “doing” is always an absolutely universal doing, which in one single fundamental positing grasps an infinitude of possible partial acts and makes them completely assessable. The ordering relation [Relation] that is assumed marks off once and for all a total realm of possible objects, but to win and secure this realm, it is not necessary to disclose the particular objects in their individuality and to “construct” them in this sense. In Brouwer’s representation of “intuitionism,” these two points of view do not seem to be sharply differentiated from one another. He requires, it would seem, that every mathematical statement be of the following form: “there is” [es gibt: it gives] grounding [Begründung] in a single act of “giving” [Geben] – however, this threatens to blur the boundaries between the purely ideal giving and the empirical giving.



the object of mathematics

435

To designate these boundaries, we may go back to a difference made and implemented by Leibniz in another connection. In his critique of the Newtonian concepts of absolute space and time, he assumes the fact that these concepts are denied objective-­physical significance because they can never be demonstrated in actual observation. A concept that cannot be legitimized in concrete experience, he contends, remains empty – no determinate and unambiguous physical “object” can be correlated with it. To speak, for example, of an alteration that the universe has undergone in respect to its “absolute motion,” then, every hypothesis of such an alteration is physically meaningless insofar as we are given no means of verifying its being or nonbeing. The boundaries of observation are accordingly at the same time the boundaries of what we are able and permitted to designate as physical reality. As for the objection that there can be processes in the world without their needing to be verified for us through our empirical research, Leibniz counters it by a methodological refinement of his original thesis. The elements [Elemente] from which the reality of nature, the reality of the physical object world, is constructed for us need not be such that they can be apprehended singly through immediate perception; they must, however, nevertheless be susceptible to direct confirmation through some datum of experience. What is decisive here is possible observation more than actual observation, “observabilité” rather than “observation.”23 In the same sense, one might say that for the validity of a mathematical object, it is not its actual construction but its possible construction, its “constructability,” that is decisive. Once thinking, on the basis of a general law, on the basis of an insight into the a priori structure of a certain domain, has assured the possibility of construction, it does not require that the actual construction be carried out. In the language of set theory, the basic difference we are attempting to make here can most clearly be designated if we recall the diverse significations that the concept of the “definite set” has assumed in the course of the development of set theory. In the beginnings of the theory, this concept was grasped so broadly that a set was regarded as adequately determined if it could be established with certainty whether or not any random object [Objekt] of thinking should be counted among the elements of the set or not. Each, in this sense, elementary definite totality presents for us the inventory [Bestand] of a set. Paradoxes in set theory soon made it necessary to drop this unrestricted use of the concept of

429

436

the construction of scientific cognition

the set: the requirement of elementary definiteness was now replaced by that of extent definiteness. Not every ensemble defined by a specification of a property or a law constitutes as such a valid mathematical object; rather, we must additionally demand of this ensemble that it be ideally self-­contained so that all the elements of the set must be comprised in a circumscribed sphere of things, which may be delimited by a certain constructive principle. Brouwer then went a step further by admitting only decisive-­definite [Entscheidungsdefinite] totalities, so that the question of whether they include elements [Elemente] with a prescribed property can always be decided by purely finite processes.24 The requirement of “extent definiteness,” but not necessarily that of “decisive definiteness,” would correspond to the concept of “constructability” as we have attempted to grasp it. For decisive definiteness requires that the construction be actually carried to its conclusion, while extensive definiteness is satisfied with the ideal possibility of construction. Weyl notes the nuances in the difference between his view and Brouwer’s:

430

Let us assume that E is a meaningful property in the domain of natural numbers such that it is established whether, if n is any such number, E belongs to the number n or not. Brouwer says that the question “Is there a number property E or not?” should be placed in the same class with the number sequence; and this in spite of the fact that the concept of natural number, in contrast to that of sequence, . . . is extensively definite. . . . Brouwer grounds this view by saying that we have no ground for believing that every such existential question is susceptible to a decision . . . . In considered opposition to this view, I have maintained, in my attempt to provide a foundation for analysis, that the essential is not whether we are able with certain means, for example, the inferences of formal logic, to decide a question, but how the matter [Sache] stands in itself; that the natural numerical sequence and the existential concept relating to it are the foundation of mathematics, in the sense that for a meaningful property E in the domain of numbers it is always intrinsically established whether or not numbers of the E type exist?25

In fact, we cannot renounce the possibility and justification of such “in themselves” valid statements without dissolving the objective “idea” of



the object of mathematics

437

number into the subjective act of enumeration and hence submerging the principle of idealism into that of psychologism. Weyl seems to go too far in his underestimation of the general and “abstract” when he refuses to recognize statements of the general form “there is” as judgments in the strict sense but at most admits them as “abstract judgments.” According to him, the proposition “2 is an even number” is a real judgment, expressing a state of affairs, whereas the statement “there is an even number” is only an abstract judgment, derived from this judgment. Such an abstract judgment might be compared to a piece of paper that indicates the being presence [Vorhandensein] of a treasure without revealing the place where it is to be found. Actual cognitive value cannot be attributed to such a piece of paper: only the immediate, the absolutely singular, has real value comparable to that of foodstuffs in economics; the general partakes only indirectly of this real value.26 The image used here, however, might be carried further and reversed – Do “real” economic values include only what is tangibly present in a given moment [Augenblick], what is present as an immediately available and useful commodity? Must we not also here make a distinction between what is in this sense really given and what is realizable under certain conditions? The critique of cognition cannot attempt to challenge or unsettle the credit of the “general” [Allgemeinen]: it has only to pose the question as to how the general can be properly grounded. It is possible that the “general” [Generelle], in Weyl’s sense, can be seen not as hard cash but as being only a representative [Repräsentativ] and a manager, as a simple order of payment: after all, this detracts in no way from its value, inasmuch as there is a guarantee and assurance of its being “redeemed.” Mathematics at least can nowhere dispense with such purely representative [repräsentativ] values – it cannot restrict itself to individual statements; it constitutes, rather, a system of purely functional determinations. For the validity of its general propositions, it never demands the fullness [Erfülltheit] with determinate, singular content, only satisfiability [Erfüllbarkeit]. This satisfiability is, however, assured for the truly universal basic judgments of mathematics; they are concretely general in the sense that they enable us to embrace a comprehensive rule and at the same time its infinitely diverse applications in one and the same intellectual view. And here the singular case of application does not ground the rule but merely attests to it; in it, the rule depicts [darstellen] itself without absorbing its significance

431

438

432

the construction of scientific cognition

in the singular case. In this respect, general judgments that relate to existential states of affairs are not, as Weyl asserted, “an empty invention of the logicians.” For if, as he himself admits and stresses, the general “judgment instructions” conceal within them an infinite abundance of actual judgments, if indeed they “formulate the justification [Rechtsgrund] for all the to be ‘redeemed’ singular judgments,” then this justification [Rechtsgrund] surely cannot originate in a mere nothing but must possess an “objective” foundation. However, modern mathematical intuitionism [Intuitionismus] also seems, not infrequently, to succumb to the danger that has so often arisen in the philosophical controversy over the “problem of universals.” Its grounded critique of the pseudo-­universal, of the universal of the “abstract concept,” carries over into an attack on the genuine-­universal, on the universal of the constructive principle. The two must, however, be strictly separated from one another, particularly if we are to arrive at a strict grounding of mathematics and “exact science.” Such a grounding can never be successful if we impugn the significance of the universal, if we absorb it in the singular: the only thing that we can and must demand is that this significance not simply be “abstracted,” that it not be made into a separate being, but rather that it be kept in constant contact with the particular and comprehended in a thoroughgoing relation to it. This form of the “concrete-­universal” is even misjudged or missed if we regard it as something merely secondary and derived, which must in some way be reduced to the reality of “things.” The attempt at such a reduction is characteristic not only of certain empiricist derivations of the numerical concept but also of a certain tendency of pure “logicism.” Empiricism and logicism meet here in a common “realistic” assumption: they both believe that the pure validity of number can be secured only if it is grounded in some pre-­given stratum of a really available existence [Vorhanden]. Empiricism reverts here to the existence [Existenz] of concrete-­sensible quantities: it seeks to interpret the purely numerical statements in such a way that they become nothing more than statements about the immediate givenness of perception or intuition. If we think this view through to its end, arithmetic becomes a part of physics. As a consequence, Mill is entirely consistent when he goes on to regard arithmetical truths as dependent on the material and “milieu” of experience – when he concludes that the statement 1 + 1 = 2 need have no



the object of mathematics

439

necessary validity for, say, the inhabitants of Sirius, who perhaps live under different empirical conditions. Today, since Frege’s incisive critique, such “grounding” of arithmetic has been generally abandoned. However, the construction of the pure theory of numbers, which Frege and the logicians who followed in his footsteps have provided, is no less removed – though in an entirely different direction – from the ideal of a truly “autonomous” arithmetic. For once again, the ultimate and proper truth of number rests here not in itself but in something else; statements about numbers retain their objective sense and their objective validity only in that they are recognized as statements about classes. The existence [Existenz] of such classes, which surely are now taken no longer as sensible but as purely conceptual manifolds, forms the foundation for all the propositions of the pure theory of numbers. Just as Mill starts from the stratum of empirical things, so too does Frege start from certain conceptual things, which he regards as the absolutely necessary substrate of the realm of pure numbers. Without such a substrate, he maintains, number would, as it were, lose its support in being and hover utterly in the void.27 However, the purely functional basic sense of number is equally misjudged, regardless of whether we seek to derive it from the empirical “existence” [Existenz] of things or from the logical “essence” [Essenz] of concepts. For in both cases, number no longer signifies an original form of positing but calls for something that is pre-­given and pre-­posited. This realism is characteristic also for Russell’s derivation of the number concept from the class concept. For him, the first thing is not the concept of number but the concept of numerical equivalence, which can be defined only as a property of certain classes, namely as the property of their elements [Elemente] that can be unequivocally correlated with one another. Thus, for example, the concept “2” expresses nothing other than a determination that is found immediately in certain groups of things, in the things that we ordinarily designate as “pairs” and that can be abstracted from them, while the number “12” designates a common property of all “dozens.” The significance of “12” depends on the being of the “dozens,” since the number as such can be thought only as a “class of classes,” which are bound up with one another by the relation of equivalence. Once again, the relation here follows “being”; however logically composed and logically purified this being may be – it is not the being,

433

440

434

the construction of scientific cognition

order, and organization that derive from it, from the basic consistence [Grundbestand].28 It is to the merit of “intuitionism” [Intuitionismus] over and against all such theories that it has restored the primacy of the relation and has brought about its basic recognition. Any attempt to deepen the foundations of the pure theory of numbers by thinking of this theory as a mere special case of a general set theory and logically “deducing” the series of natural numbers from the concept of classes and sets is now consciously abandoned. Such deduction is replaced by “complete induction.” This name, it is true, may arouse concerns; it seems to want to draw mathematics closer to empirical science rather than to logic and to anchor it in one of the basic methods of this science. The “induction” of which it is a question is, however, sharply separated from the procedures of “empirical generalization” that otherwise tend to be referred to by this term. It has preserved the original-­historical sense of the word: the sense of ἐπαγωγή [introduction], of “leading to.” The “leading” would not be worthy of this name; it would remain a mere groping in the dark if it did not possess a general standard. True mathematical induction does not seek the way to the universal but rather shows [Weisen] it the way [Weg]; indeed, it is itself the way. And its actual way-­showing [Wegweiser: sign posting, guide] is not that “inductive inference” that progresses from a given multiplicity of instances to a hypothetical assumption or assertion regarding the allness [Allheit] of the instances but rather the “inference from n to n + 1.” In this inference, determinations that have been found and proven through singular instances, through individual numbers, are not collected together and transferred to other, equally singular instances, but rather, there is a kind of return to the absolute principle of number: the same basic relation that combines one member of the numerical series with its “immediate successor” continues through the whole of the series and determines it in all its parts. In light of this fact, a genuine “a priori synthesis” – as Poincaré, in particular, repeatedly stressed – actually underlies the principle of “complete induction.”29 For Weyl, too, this principle is neither in need nor capable of further grounding [Begründung], because there is nothing in it other than the originary mathematical intuition [Urintuition], the intuition [Intuition] of the “yet one more.”30 All the “recurrent proofs”31 in mathematics pursue no other aim than to redirect a certain mathematical



the object of mathematics

441

problem back to its ultimate cognitive source and to bring it to a point where it can be resolved with certainty. No thing-­relationships, only pure positing-­relationships – relationships that go back to the functions of the positing of unity and the positing of difference, of series and correlations – can ground the apriority of mathematical judgments and the distinctive, their proper specific “evidence.” In their attempts to derive the concept of number from the concept of sets, the logicians have always argued with particular vigor against any imputation of a petitio principia. They have pointed out that the sense in which logic speaks of “identity” and “difference” in no way includes the numerical one and the numerical many and that it therefore signifies a decided advance in cognition if it succeeds in reducing the “numerical” sense to a purely logical sense.32 Regardless of the formal justification of this reproach of a petitio principii, it is difficult to deny that the deduction of the numerical concept from the class concept contains, in the epistemo-­critical and strictly “transcendental” sense, a ὔστερον πρό τερον [latter former]. For in order to fill the class concept with a certain content [Gehalt], one must have always already [immer schon] inserted into it the thought functions of positing, identity, and difference – thus, these thought functions are the same relations that are prerequisites to the constitution of the numerical concept and out of which the numerical concept can be derived directly, without detour through the “class.”33

435

3.  THE POSITION OF THE “SIGN” IN THE THEORY OF MATHEMATICS If we now look back once again at the various attempts at grounding number that came forth in modern mathematics, the most striking feature in all these attempts is perhaps that they all seem ultimately to lead to a point in which the competence of pure mathematics threatens to be denied. Ultimately, the mathematical problematic encounters a problematic of an entirely different sense and origin: the decision seems to be taken out of the hands of pure mathematics and left to the “Weltanschauung” of the individual mathematician. Paul du Bois-­Reymond had already drawn this paradoxical inference in his work General Theory of Functions, in which he explains that the conflict between the “idealist” and the “empiricist” could not be decided according to strictly objective,

436

442

437

the construction of scientific cognition

generally valid criteria but that here a domain had been reached where the philosophical credo of the individual entered into its rights. And indeed, Brouwer’s theory has sometimes been designated as “idealism thought to its end in mathematics”34 – while the theories of Frege and Russell bear an unmistakable affiliation with certain tendencies in scholastic “realism.” In medieval universalism, the problem entered into a new phase as the emergence in the philosophy of Wilhelm von Ockham of a new theory, the theory of the so-­called “terminism,” and an analogous development seems to be taking place today in the camp of pure mathematics. In the battle for the “objectivity” of mathematics, a virtual about-­face occurs as soon as the question is directed at mathematical signs rather than at mathematical objects. “Formalism” now rises beyond “idealism” and “realism” as an independent power. And for the first time, the danger that mathematics will overstep its domain, the danger of a methodological μετάβασις εἰς ἄλλο γένος [transition to another genus], seems definitely overcome. It seems that mathematics can save and regain its threatened autonomy only by becoming a pure theory of “signs.” Among the present-­ day mathematicians, it is Hilbert who has drawn this conclusion most decisively. In sharp conflict with intuitionism [Intuitionismus], he attempts to rehabilitate the “classical” form of analysis and set theory against it. On the other hand, however, his own theory grew out of an extreme critical caution concerning the “free” formation of sets and distrust of the “transfinite” modes of inference in set theory. Hence, he rejects not only intuitionism [Intuitionismus] but also the “extreme conceptual realism” that he finds embodied in Frege’s theory. And although Dedekind’s idea of grounding the finite number in the infinite, in the “system of all things,” strikes him as brilliant and fascinating, he stresses that this road has been shown to be untenable by the paradoxes of set theory.35 Nevertheless, it would be to misjudge the particular nature of Hilbert’s theory if we were to view it solely as a compromise and middle road between two intellectual extremes. What it aspires to provide is, rather, a new general intellectual orientation. The abstract operation with general conceptual scope and contents has, Hilbert emphasizes, repeatedly led mathematical thinking astray; the essential, then, is to break resolutely with this method and find a way by which thinking can not



the object of mathematics

443

only progress according to a definite, prescribed plan but also submit to verification at every step. It is a critical authority [Instanz] of this sort that Hilbert strives to create in his “theory of proof.” The basic idea of Leibniz’s “universal characteristic” is taken up and given pregnant and acute expression here. The process of “verification” is shifted from the side of content-­oriented thinking to that of “symbolic” thinking. As the precondition for the application of logical inferences and for the practice of logical operations, certain sensible-­intuitive characters must always be given to us in representation. It is in them that thinking first acquires a secure guiding thread, which it must follow if it wishes to remain free from error. Thus, Hilbert sums up his basic insight: In diametrical opposition to Frege and Dedekind, I hold the position that the objects of the theory of numbers are found in the signs themselves, whose shape [Gestalt] we can recognize universally and surely, independently of place and time and of the particular conditions attending the production of the signs as well as of insignificant differences in their elaboration. Here lies the firm philosophical attitude that I regard as requisite to the grounding of pure mathematics – as to all scientific thinking, understanding, and communication: in the beginning, we may say here, was the sign.36

If we take this attitude seriously, all pure mathematics seems to dissolve into a mere game. For if the signs do not merely play a mediating role, representing [repräsentieren] determinate ideal states of affairs – if, instead, they themselves and the manner of their putting together [Zusammenstellung], the manner in which they unite into intuitive groups and “formulas,” become the object of mathematical consideration – then this consideration must henceforth remain entangled in itself. It moves with perfect certainty within its sphere – however, this movement has no reference point by which to orient itself. In support of his basic view, Hilbert believes himself able to invoke none other than Kant. For Hilbert, the sense of the “transcendental aesthetic” seems to consist in the fact that mere logic can never produce mathematics but that for this the support of “intuition” [Anschauung] is necessary and indispensable. He does not, however, take intuition itself

438

444

the construction of scientific cognition

in the sense of Kant’s “pure intuition” [Anschauung] – it is not taken as an “a priori form” but as a totality [Ganz] of concrete-­sensible data. If logical inference is to be certain, it must be possible to survey . . . the objects [Objekte] fully in all their parts, and their demonstration, their differentiation, their succession or juxtaposition are at the same time immediately and intuitively given with the objects [Objekte], as something that cannot be further reduced to something else and requires no such reduction. . . . In mathematics, the objects of our consideration are the concrete signs themselves, whose shape [Gestalt], in our view, is immediately distinct and recognizable.37

439

On the strength of these sentences, Hilbert has on occasion been branded a kind of “intuitionist” [Intuitionist]. This seeming analogy disappears, however, as soon as we look more closely into the presuppositions of Hilbert’s system. For here, the position that intuition [Anschauung] holds in this system and the use that is made of intuition are entirely different from those in the case of the intuitionist [intuitionistisch] grounding of mathematics. The role intuition [Anschauung] plays is not active, as in intuitionism, but passive – it is a kind of “givenness” and not a kind of “giving.” For the intuitionist [Intuitionist], the “originary intuition” [Urintuition] of the whole number signifies a constructive principle, whose continued application produces an infinite manifold of numerical individuals – for Hilbert, the task of intuition [Anschauung] exhausts itself in that it provides us with certain extra-­ logical discrete objects [Objekte] that we have simply to accept as immediately lived-­experience prior to all thinking.38 Of course, the signs in Hilbert’s symbolic mathematics cannot be understood simply as singular things, demonstrable by a simple act of pointing to, as a “this” and “that,” as a τόδε τι [a this, fully specified particular]. After all, they may vary greatly in certain determinations – for example, the material out of which they are formed, their color, size, etc. – without, in this way, ceasing to be the “same” signs. Inherently different sensible contents can, thus, function as the “same” sign: their recognition is not sublated by the fact that they may differ in subordinate particulars. Nevertheless, it very much remains the case that mathematical thinking need not substitute some abstract “signification” for the signs but that it holds



the object of mathematics

445

fast to them as concrete-­intuitive formations [Gebilde] and orients itself by these formations [Gebilde]. According to Hilbert, the “formalization” of the processes of mathematical inference must be carried through to the degree that every contradiction in thinking will immediately betray itself in the appearance of certain constellations of signs. Once the general “theory of proof” has advanced to this point, thinking is relieved of the need of contentual consideration. Possible contradictions in which it may have become entangled now need no longer be discovered as such through a difficult “discursive” process; rather, they immediately catch our “eye.” Wherever formulas of a kind prohibited by the general theory appear in a demonstration, there the appearance of a contradiction may be ascertained through them – if, on the other hand, it turns out that however far a chain of inferences is carried, no such “forbidden” formulas occur in it, then we know this chain to be free from contradiction. Modern mathematical “terminism” thus seems to be driven here in the same direction that was determinative for the development of the logical terminism of the Middle Ages. Just as medieval terminism looked on the words of language as mere sounds, flatus vocis, so too does our mathematical terminism look on signs as mere intuitive figures [Figuren] with no inherent independent “sense.” The opponents of Hilbert’s theory have repeatedly attacked it at this point. Even if the truth of mathematics is secured by Hilbert’s theory of proof – so they argue – it is at the same time transformed into a monstrous tautology: the validity that is now allowed it is no longer the validity of objective cognition but only that of a conventional rule of the game, quite comparable to the rules governing the game of chess. For the intuitionist, an essential basic tendency and character of the human intellect is expressed in mathematical symbols; for the formalist, they are nothing more than “signs on paper.”39 Weyl, who raises this objection, once again finds himself, however, in difficulties as soon as he seeks to overcome the negative thesis of conventionalism and replace it with a positive statement. He seeks to secure the objective significance of mathematical symbols in two ways: on the one hand, he considers them in respect to their physical applications, and on the other hand, he regards them as a subspecies of metaphysics. If mathematics is to remain “a serious cultural affair,” he argues, it must be possible to link some sense together with Hilbert’s play of formulas.

440

446

the construction of scientific cognition

Where then, however, is the beyond [Jenseits], toward which the symbols of mathematics are directed? I do not find it unless I let mathematics fuse entirely with physics and assume that the mathematical concepts of number, function, etc. (or Hilbert’s symbols) fundamentally partake in the theoretical construction of the actual world, in the same way as do the concepts of energy, gravitation, the electron, etc.

However, this is not enough: an independent signification must also be attributed to the transfinite components of mathematics, which go far beyond the requirements of physics. If we cannot renounce the thought of such a signification, though, then we must not conceal the fact that with this we have entered into a domain that can no longer be seen but only believed in: In theory, consciousness succeeds in “jumping over its own shadow,” in leaving given matter [Stoff  ] behind it and in presenting the transcendent; however, as is self-­evident, it does so only in the symbol. Theoretical configuration is something other than intuitive insight; its aim is no less problematic than that of artistic configuration. Over the idealism that is destined to destroy epistemologically absolutized naive realism, there rises a third realm. . . . If I designate phenomenal insight as knowledge, then theoretical insight rests on faith – faith in the reality of one’s own I and the I of others, or in the reality [Realität] of the outside world or the reality of God.40

441

We have here before us in its greatest intensification the opposition that dominates the methodological controversy within modern mathematics. Either the mathematical signs may be regarded as an end in themselves, as the real objects of mathematical cognition, or else some sort of intellectual life must be breathed into them. And it seems possible to give this life only if they are covered by something other, something outside themselves, and understand them as symbolic presentations of this other. Nevertheless, if this path is taken, once a “transient” sense is attributed to the mathematical formations [Gebilde], then no further boundary seems to be given for thought – it



the object of mathematics

447

is driven inexorably from transient signification to transcendent signification. Now, however, after a consideration of the intellectual situation in mathematics today up to this point, let us pause to consider our own systematic framing of the problem. What this framing of the problem has taught us is precisely that the disjunction we encounter here is not unequivocal or complete. Over and over again, in the course of our investigation, we have been brought to the insight that the true and genuine concept of the “symbolic” does not fit into the traditional metaphysical classifications and dualisms but that it demolishes this framework [Rahmen]. The symbolic never belongs to the sphere of “this world” [Diesseits] or “beyond” [Jenseits], the region of “immanence” or of “transcendence”; its value, rather, consists precisely in its overcoming this opposition, which arises from a metaphysical theory of two worlds. It is not the one or the other; rather, it constitutes the “one in the other” and the “other in the one.” Thus, language, myth, and art each constitutes an independent and characteristic framework [Gefüge], which does not achieve its value from an outward, otherworldly existence that is somehow “reflected” in it. What gives each of these forms their content [Gehalt] is that they construct a distinctive, independent, self-­contained world of sense according to their own inherent law of formation. Thus, as we have seen, a principle of “objective” forming [Formung] and configuration is at work in all of them. They are modes of “coming into being” [Werden zum Sein] – of γένεσις εἰς οὐσίαν, as Plato called it. If we now apply this general insight to the world of mathematics, we find ourselves once again raised above the alternative of dissolving the symbols of mathematics into “mere” signs, into intuitive figures [Figuren] without sense, or of subjecting them to a transcendent sense that only metaphysical or religious “faith” can reach. For in either case, we should be missing their distinctive significance. This significance does not consist in what these signs “are” in themselves, nor in something that they “reproduce” [nachbilden], but in a specific tendency of ideal forming [Bilden] itself – not in an outward object [Objekt] toward which they aim but in a determinate mode of objectivization. The world of mathematical forms is a world of forms of order [Ordnungsformen], not forms of things. Hence, its “truth” cannot be determined by divesting the signs in which it presents itself of their significative meaning [signifikative Bedeutung] and

442

448

443

the construction of scientific cognition

leaving, as it were, nothing but their factual-­physical content [Gehalt]41 – nor can we do it by exhibiting any existing individual objects to which the numbers immediately correspond. Rather, we can recognize the specific value of the mathematical and can disclose its quid juris only by assigning to it a position in the whole objectivization process of cognition. Whether this be viewed as physical or metaphysical, it is a necessary element in this process, not a part or picture [Abbild] of a transcendent reality. If we hold fast to this point of view, which is imposed on us by the whole of our consideration, then the difficulties that, as we have seen, surround the relationship of the mathematical to the logical and the mathematical to “intuitive” being are clarified. The differences here stand out in true sharpness only if we understand and evaluate them not as tangible differences but as functional ones. The logical world, the mathematical world, and the empirical-­ objective world all have a common foundation insofar as they are all rooted in one and the same originary-­stratum of pure relational forms. Without these forms, without categorial determinations such as unity and otherness, equality and difference [Unterschied], it would be equally impossible to think of a totality [Ganze] of logical objects, an ensemble of mathematical objects, or an order of empirical objects [Objekte]. There is, however, a definite gradation from the logical to the empirical, from the pure thought-­form to the object of experience, in which the mathematical appears as an indispensable transition point. In contrast to the logical object, the mathematical object discloses an abundance of new “concrete” determinations; for the form of positing, of differentiation, of relation in general, the mathematical object adds a determinate mode of positing, adds the specific mode of positing and ordering that constitutes itself in the system of numbers and in the “natural numerical series.” On the other hand, however, this new mode proves to be the indispensable preparation and precondition for the achievement of an order in the world of perception and hence of that object that we call the object of “nature.” Here too, however, the objective significance of the mathematical is not that it possesses any immediate correlates in nature, in the physical world, but that it constructs this world according to its structure and so teaches us to understand it through its lawfulness. In this sense, the logical object points to the mathematical and the mathematical to the empirical-­physical object – not because one might in any



the object of mathematics

449

intelligible sense be regarded as a copy [Kopie] or reproduction of the other but because each of them represents a definite stage in the positing of the object and because the principle of the unity of cognition contains within it the demand that we comprehend all these stages not separately but in reciprocal relation to one another. Only if we set out from this fundamental insight can we acquire a completely satisfactory answer to the question of the “truth-­value” of mathematical symbols. For now, to arrive at such an answer, we no longer need to measure the mathematical concepts directly by the “absolute” reality of things; rather, the comparison concerns only the mathematical cognitive form, on the one side, and the logical and physical cognitive form, on the other side. And the outcome of this comparison ultimately consists in the fact that none of these forms in themselves alone construct objective “being” and the sphere of objective-­theoretical validity but that they construct it only in their interconnection and their reciprocal interwovenness – that consequently an absolutely isolated truth and validity may be attributed to none of them; rather, they possess such truth and validity only within the whole, within the hierarchy and system of cognition. Thus, we cannot, with Weyl, draw a sharp line between the domain of “intuitive insight” and that of “theoretical configuration,” assigning the one to “knowledge” and the other to “belief.” For us, there are no detached, self-­subsistent intuitive “lived-­experiences” that are not already permeated with theoretical significative functions [Bedeutungsfunktionen] of some sort and configured accordingly – on the other hand, there is no such thing as a sheer commensurate signification [Bedeutungsgemäßes] that must not somehow seek and find its fulfillment in the intuitive. We can apprehend “signification” only by referring back [Rückbeziehung] to “intuition” – just as the intuitive can never be “given” to us otherwise than in “regard” to signification. If we hold fast to this insight, we escape the danger that the symbolic factor of our cognition will itself split, that it will break asunder into an “immanent” and a “transcendent” component. The symbolic is, rather, immanence and transcendence in one: insofar as in it a fundamentally supraintuitive content [Gehalt] is expressed in intuitive form. Now the value that a rigorous “formalistic” construction of mathematics possesses appears in a new light. In itself, this value can scarcely be overestimated: indeed, it would scarcely be too much to assert that

444

450

445

the construction of scientific cognition

mathematics can justify and preserve its old rank as a “rigorous science” only if the task of its “formalization,” as understood by Hilbert, can really be carried to its end. For this would once again produce the logical miracle that is grounded in the essence of the mathematical: the question of the infinite would be made accessible to finite resolution, to resolution through finite processes. Hilbert described it as the principle merit of his theory: through it, the idea of the infinite is methodologically grounded and secured by means of the finite.42 As masterfully as the completion of mathematics may require the accomplishment and the pure separation of the strictly formalistic viewpoint, this mathematical-­technical interest is nevertheless not collapsed together with pure epistemo-­critical interests. Once again, the critique of cognition ultimately requires establishing the unity between two basic elements that mathematical abstraction rightly sets apart. Indeed, “formalism” and “intuitionism” are by no means mutually exclusive from an epistemo-­critical point of view, and they are not mutually disparate. For precisely what is apprehended of its signification in pure intuition [Intuition] must be fixed and preserved by the process of formalization, must be annexed as a constantly available possession of thinking. In this sense, even Leibniz, one of the most consistent proponents of the strictly formalist standpoint, did not separate “intuitive” [intuitive] and “symbolic” cognition from one another but indissolubly connected both. Intuitive cognition, according to Leibniz, creates the foundation of mathematics – symbolic cognition guarantees that we may progress through unbroken chains of proof, from this foundation to the conclusions. In this process, thinking does not require a constant view of the ideal state of affairs themselves: it can, to a great extent, content itself with substituting an operation with “signs” for an operation with “ideas.” Ultimately, however, it must come to a point where, admittedly, it inquires after the “sense” of the signs, where it demands a substantive interpretation of what is expressed and depicted in them. Leibniz thus compares mathematical symbolism to the telescope or microscope. However much these two may aid the human to see, they cannot replace seeing. Mathematical cognition, as a form of intellectual seeing, rests on an original and independent function of reason, which uses the symbolic characters only as an instrument. Even Hilbert’s vastly broadened and deepened mathematical formalism never compels us, as far as I can



the object of mathematics

451

see, to reverse this fundamental verdict. For the construction and development of Hilbert’s system of signs would not have been possible if he had not based it on the concepts of order and sequence as “originary concepts.” Even when Hilbert’s numbers are taken as mere signs, they are always positional signs: they are understood with a definite “index” that makes the mode of their sequence discernible. Even if we regard the individual signs as nothing more than intuitively given, extra-­logical discrete objects [Objekte], these objects [Objekte] in their totality never stand simply side by side as independent elements [Elemente] but possess a determinate organization. We start from 0 as the initial sign, then we arrive by a definite progression at a “next” sign, 0′, and then at 0″, etc. Ultimately this means only that in order to be securely differentiated, the individual signs must be distinguished from one another in a determinate order, and this distinguishing is basically already a “counting” in the substantive sense of the word. The strokes that we use to separate 0 from 0′ and 0′ from 0″ etc. function already as numbers in the sense of a purely “ordinal” derivation of the numerical concept. On the whole, we may say that “intuitive” [intuitiv] thinking provides the foundation for the mathematical edifice, while symbolic thinking provides for its construction and its securing. Considered from the perspective of a critique of cognition, the two tasks, as it were, may be said to belong to different levels. For Hilbert, the proposition “in the beginning was the sign,” is valid because he sees the essential task of his theory to be that of avoiding error, of safeguarding mathematical thinking against contradiction. What serves to ward off error, however, is not necessarily the full and adequate ground of truth. Ultimately, this ground can be discovered only in definite synthetic connections of thinking that ground the construction of a determinate objective region and render possible the governing of these regions through general laws. Along with an analytical logic that provides a complete and unbroken survey of the found and its systematic interconnections, Leibniz called for a logica inventionis, a logic of inventing [Erfinden]. For the purposes of this differentiation, one might say that formalism is an indispensable instrument for the logic of the found, that it does not uncover the principle of mathematical “finding.” Hilbert occasionally speaks about the fact that his theory aims to safeguard the power of mathematics for all time from all “rebellions,” such as those that have been attempted against

446

452

447

the construction of scientific cognition

classical analysis.43 Even if his theory of proof should fully achieve this aim, the logician and epistemo-­critic may be permitted to ask, however, whether the forces that there are enlisted here for the protection of the mathematical power [Staatsmacht] are the same as those that have grounded the rule of mathematics in the realm of spirit and that are constantly expanding and enhancing it. Formalism is an incomparable means for the “discipline” of mathematical reason – however, it cannot in itself explain the existence [Bestand] of mathematics nor justify it in a “transcendental” sense. On the other hand, it signifies one of the essential achievements of formalism: it has taken up once again a problem that the philosophy of mathematics has persistently struggled with since its revival by Descartes, and it has made great strides toward a final solution of this problem. Descartes distinguishes two basic sources of mathematical certainty: intuition [Intuition] and deduction. The former supplies the principles that are neither needful nor susceptible of any further grounding because they are immediately elucidated by the “light of reason.” This light admits of no diminution or darkening; what it apprehends as such, it apprehends completely and undividedly, with unconditioned clarity and certainty. In contrast to it stand those propositions that are not self-­evident but are derived by a mediated process of proof from the self-­evident axioms. For here, thinking is compelled to proceed purely “discursively”: it does not survey at one glance the ideas that it connects together; rather, it connects them by way of a greater or lesser number of middle links that it places between them. However, because these middle links never present themselves “at once” to spirit in true unity, which is because spirit can progress successively only from one to the other, it is subject in this successive process to the uncertainty that attaches to all becoming. In progressing from one link in the proof to the next, it must not lose sight of the preceding links but rather reproduce them, but it can never be fully certain of the exactitude of its reproduction. Now it no longer depends on the certainty of intuition [Intuition] but on the security and fidelity of the memory, and for this reason, it is at the mercy of a cognitive function that, as a matter of principle, is open to every doubt. For Descartes’ methodological doubt culminates in the rule that one must not trust a faculty of the mind [Geist], if we have even once observed that it can lead us into errors and fallacies.



the object of mathematics

453

What faculty, however, is more likely to yield fallacies than the merely reproductive certainty of recollection? Thus, deduction, and with it the core of the method of mathematical proof, is in danger of falling prey once and for all to skepticism. This is the occasion for the Cartesian fiction of the “evil genius” who can deceive us and lead us astray even in the seemingly most certain conclusions. For there always remains, even with the formally correct application of the rules of thinking, a possibility that the contents of thinking, instead of being repeated with identical determination, are unnoticeably changed and transposed. As we know, there is for Descartes no epistemological but only a metaphysical way out of this labyrinth: his invocation of “God’s veracity” does not appease or resolve the doubt but simply suppresses it. However, here precisely lies the point of departure for Leibniz’s development of the technique and methodology of mathematical proof. It can be shown historically that Descartes’ skepticism about the certainty of the deductive process became the actual moving and driving force for Leibniz’s “theory of proof.” If a mathematical proof is to be truly stringent, if it is to embody a real force of conviction, it must be detached from the sphere of mere recollective certainty and raised above it. The succession of the steps of thinking must be replaced by a pure simultaneity of synopsis. Only symbolic thinking is able to accomplish this achievement. For its nature consists in the fact that it does not operate with the thought contents themselves but correlates a definite sign with each thought content and by virtue of this correlation achieves a thickening by which it is possible to concentrate all the links of a complex chain of proof in a single formula and embrace them in one glance as an organized totality [Gesamtheit]. It is this basic idea of the Leibnizian characteristic that underwent its resurgence in Hilbert’s “formalization” of the processes of logical and mathematical inference and, thanks to the broadening of the domain of mathematics and the extraordinary refinement and deepening of its conceptual means, seems at last to have become ripe for actual fulfillment. We now understand why Hilbert stresses that the objects [Objekte] to which mathematical inferences refer must be so constituted that they can be fully surveyed in all their parts and can be generally and certainly recognized. It is not things but signs alone that make such a “recognition” possible and that thus emancipated thinking from the dangers and ambiguities of mere reproduction.

448

454

the construction of scientific cognition

4.  THE “IDEAL ELEMENTS” [ELEMENTE] AND THEIR SIGNIFICATION FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF MATHEMATICS

449

If we now turn back from the theory of mathematical proof to the region of mathematical objects and inquire into the intellectual forces that have proven effective in the construction of this region, then it is, in particular, the development of the boundary concept [Grenzbegrif] and the theory of ideal elements [Elemente] that stand out as important basic methodological motives. As for the boundary concept, it too is one of those fundamental concepts that before finding access to the region of science was discovered and first determined in the sphere of philosophical thinking. Number and boundary appear as reciprocal concepts in the philosophy of the Pythagoreans. Insofar as one may speak in general of an “earlier” or “later,” the boundary must here be accorded logical and metaphysical primacy over the number. What gives number its decisive position and basic significance in the Pythagorean system is that it alone constitutes the satisfiability of the postulate that is presented in the concept of the boundary. “Boundary” and “the unbounded,” πέρας [limit] and ἄπειρον [unlimited], are the two poles of being and the two poles of knowing. The power of number over being lies in its striking a bridge between these poles. In entering into the order of number, the indeterminate and infinite become subject to the forceful power of form. The whole harmony of the all [All] emerges out of this synthesis and consists in it. For the Pythagoreans, the certainty of this harmony is unassailable by any doubt: it forms, rather, the originary-­factum on which all philosophical as well as all mathematical cognition rests. It lies in the nature [Wesen] of philosophical cognition itself, however, that it cannot sustain itself in the long run on this factum without transforming it into a problem. This transformation took place with Plato. For him, too, the boundary and the unbounded form the two basic determinations around which his entire thinking circles. In the late works of Plato, the binary opposition of πέρας [limit] and ἄπειρον [unlimited] are designated as the point of origins [Ursprungsstelle] of everything “logical,” as the eternal and immortal “pathos of the concept” itself. The tension between the two opposing poles has, however, now become considerably exacerbated.



the object of mathematics

455

For the opposition between “determination” and “the indeterminate” now embraces that other opposition that according to Plato’s basic theory subsists between the world of ideas and the world of appearances. Between these two worlds, a true “harmony” in the strict sense of the word is never possible: it is implicit in the sense of the idea that no appearance can be given that is “congruent” with it in a truly rigorous way. Thus, the relation between the two always involves the necessary distance between them, their fundamental “alterity.” And no “participation” of the appearance in the idea can bridge this abyss [Abgrund], can efface the element of ἑτερότης [difference]. For Plato, the opposition between the world of knowledge and the world of empirical existence arises over and over again out of this originary opposition. In its form and nature [Wesen], all knowledge is directed toward determination, while all existence as such is abandoned and delivered over to indeterminacy: in knowledge, thought comes to rest in a fixed and definite being, whereas in existence, there prevails the flux of becoming, which can never be halted nor contained in sharp boundaries.44 It is historically remarkable and systematically noteworthy how for many centuries this Platonic verdict not only dominated the framing of the problem of metaphysics but also exerted its influence anew within 450 scientific mathematics. As late as the nineteenth century, Paul du Bois-­ Reymond, in his General Theory of Functions, positions the question of the truth of mathematical objects almost entirely in a Platonic sense. He no longer, however, ventured a definitive and unequivocal answer to the question but instead left open the choice between two basic opposing tendencies of contemplation, between “idealism” and “empiricism.” According to him, the former goes the way of “transcendence,” the latter the way of “immanence.” Empiricism sees number as a means of determination; however, it carries the determination no further than the nature of the object [Objekt] of experience permits. For empiricism, the number always remains bound to the limitations that are posited by every factual and concrete measurement. The process of measuring can always be more sharply and more subtly formed, but it cannot, without losing its comprehensible “sense,” be carried beyond the boundaries within which an intuitive differentiation is still possible. The “idealist” begins, however, from the apprehension and definition of mathematical “sense” as free, as fundamentally independent of all conditions of empirical verification.

456

451

the construction of scientific cognition

Not only is a formation [Gebilde] – for example, an infinite, non-­periodic decimal fraction – determined to the degree in which its value has actually been “computed,” but also the idealist speaks of it as a consistent and fully objective determination, as a being “in itself.” According to the theory of Du Bois-­Reymond, the opposition raised here can be resolved, if at all, not by any purely mathematical decision: it belongs to a domain in which it is not mathematical knowledge but rather philosophical “faith” that has the last word.45 As strange and paradoxical as this judgment may appear at first sight, it seems to have been largely confirmed by the development that the theory of mathematical cognition has undergone in the last decades. For within the inquiry into the truth and validity of the ideal elements [Elemente], mathematicians still appear divided into two camps: a “nominalistic” view and a “realistic” view, without a way to indicate how to decide between the two based on purely mathematical criteria. Some outstanding mathematicians speak as though an answer to a question could be supplied not by the logical conscience of mathematics but only by the ethical conscience of the mathematician and their “Weltanschauung.” On the other hand, this displacement of the main emphasis in the question of mathematical truth is, epistemo-­critically considered, more worrisome the greater the range and importance that the “ideal elements” [Elemente] have acquired in the construction of modern mathematics. Of course, there have been numerous attempts to restrict the ideal elements or to suppress them entirely. Kronecker’s remark that the whole number was created by God and that everything else is the mere work of humans is well-­known. And yet if we follow the development of mathematical thinking from antiquity to the present, this thinking seems to owe its supreme triumphs precisely to this “work of humans.” Out of this problem, the desire repeatedly arose, not to deny the use and fertility of the ideal elements [Elemente] but to secure their logical foundation [Fundament] and to anchor them in the ultimate foundation [Grundlagen] of mathematical thinking. Thus, in particular, Hilbert has recently reiterated most sharply that an actual carrying through of the theory of mathematics would never be possible unless we decided to “adjoin” “ideal” propositions to the “finite” propositions of mathematics. The right to such an “adjoint” is sufficiently secured for the mathematician if he can show on the one hand that the new objects that he takes up obey the same formal laws of



the object of mathematics

457

connection that had been established for the old ones and if he is able furthermore to prove that the addition of the new, ideal elements [Elemente] can never give rise to contradictions in the old, restricted sphere – that the relations that prevail among the old formations [Gebilde] when the ideal formations [Gebilde] are eliminated are still valid.46 The philosophical critique of cognition must, however, raise here still another and sharper demand. For it is not enough that the new elements [Elemente] should prove equally justified with the old, in the sense that the two can enter into a combination that is free from contradiction – it is not enough that the new should take their place alongside [neben] the old and assert themselves in this juxtaposition [Nebeneinander]. This merely formal compatibility would not in itself provide a guarantee for a truly inner merger, for a homogeneous logical construction of mathematics. Rather, such a construction is produced and secured only if we show that the new elements [Elemente] not only are “adjoined” to the old ones as formations [Gebilde] of a different kind and origins but also are a systematically necessary unfolding of the old. And the proof of this interconnection can be undertaken only through the demonstration that there exists an originary logical kinship between the new and old elements [Elemente], then the new elements [Elemente] will bring nothing to the former, nothing other than what is already contained and implicitly decided in their original sense. It must be expected that the new elements [Elemente], instead of fundamentally changing this sense and replacing it by another, will rather first bring it to its full development and clarification. And when we survey the particular nature of the ideal elements [Elemente] in the history of mathematics, this expectation is never disappointed. Every step that has enlarged the domain of mathematics and the sphere of its objects also steps along the way toward a deeper fundamental grounding, to the foundations of its fundamentals. It is only because and insofar as the two tendencies of reflection support one another that the inner coherence of mathematics is not endangered by the continuous growth of its formations [Gebilde] but rather always more clearly and strictly confirmed. For every new extension, every extensification amounts at the same time to a logical intensification. The consistence [Bestand], once secured, does not merely spread out on the surface; rather, in each new sphere of objects, a growing stabilization and a more radical grounding of the total-­consistence, of mathematical “truth” as such, is

452

458

453

the construction of scientific cognition

achieved. It is from this point of view that the decisive achievement of the ideal elements [Elemente] must in the end be posited and from it that they must be understood and justified. This brings with it, however, a strange reversal of our epistemo-­critical task. For, considered more closely, this task no longer consists in reducing the new elements [Elemente] to the old nor in “explaining” the new through the old but rather in using the new as an intellectual medium by which the actual significance of the old is alone truly apprehended, by which it can be recognized in the universality and depth of its nature [Wesen] that was previously not reached. In this sense, we may say that the logical path of mathematics is not directed toward winning the ideal elements [Elemente] their own rights [Recht] and space alongside the others – rather, we should say that in the ideal elements [Elemente], mathematics first achieves the actual goal of its concept formation and comes to a critical understanding of what this concept formation is and of what it is capable. Even if we assume that the ratio essendi of the ideal formations [Gebilde] lies in the realm of the old formations [Gebilde], the ratio cognosccndi of the latter is nevertheless found in the ideal elements [Elemente]. For this signifies the discovery of an originary-­stratum of mathematical thinking in which not only this or that individual domain of mathematical objects [Objekte] but the intellectual process of mathematical objectivization itself is rooted. In positing the ideal elements [Elemente], this process does not forge an absolutely new path – rather, it frees itself only from certain “accidental” limits that hampered it at first, thus becoming truly conscious of its full power and scope. In all the individual domains in which the introduction of ideal elements [Elemente] has proven their significance, this characteristic process of detachment, of logical emancipation may be followed. Thinking could not shun here the path through the seemingly “impossible”: only by taking this path could it arrive at a truly free and all-­around survey of its own possibilities, which had hitherto been closed up within it. The discovery of the “imaginary” in mathematics and the various attempts that have been made to justify it logically represent a classical example of this basic tendency in mathematical thinking. Where it first appears in the history of mathematics, the imaginary seems very much of a stranger and intruder – however, not only does this stranger gradually achieve full rights of citizenship, but also through it, a far deeper knowledge of



the object of mathematics

459

the principles and foundations of the mathematical constitutional state is now acquired. Hermann Grassmann has thus created, with his use of arbitrarily chosen numbers, a new concept of geometry as a truly general “theory of extension.” On the other hand, it appears that the approach to a true systematization of algebra could be found only by way of the introduction of imaginary magnitudes: only after this introduction was the proof for the “fundamental theorem” of algebra rigorously conducted. In all these cases, the logical touchstone for the justification of the new elements [Elemente] was found not only in the fact that the new dimension of reflection in which we entered did not further displace the relationships that were valid within the former dimension but also in the fact that it essentially sharpened our view of them. Looking back from the newly developed domain upon the old domain allows us to intellectually appropriate this older region in its entire extension, which helps us to know and understand its subtler structural forms. Thus, it was the concept of the complex number that enabled us to discover an abundance of hitherto-­unknown relations between “real” magnitudes and to demonstrate them with true universality. Thus, with this concept, not only was a new domain of mathematical objects opened up, but also a new intellectual “perspective” that made the lawfulness of real numbers identifiable and transparent in an entirely new and different way was also established. Mathematics confirmed here Goethe’s dictum that every new object, correctly considered, opens up at the same time a new organ of seeing. In a like fashion, for example, Kummer’s discovery of ideal numbers had the same effect within the theory of numbers. Among whole algebraic numbers now arose certain laws of divisibility from an astonishingly simple form by means of which it was possible to unite number formations [Gebilde] that at first sight possessed no inner “affinity” with one another, into ideal totalities, into determinate “numerical bodies.” And it furthermore appeared that the theory of the divisibility of whole numbers, as it was justified here, not only applied to this original field of application but also could be transferred almost in its entirety to another domain, to the theory of rational functions. Thus, when we look back over the history of mathematics, the introduction of ideal elements [Elemente] proves everywhere to be “justified by the factum.” However, the critique of knowledge cannot, of course, stop with this mere factum; rather, it must inquire into the possibility of this factum. For the relation

454

460

455

the construction of scientific cognition

revealed here between the various regions of mathematical objects is in no way a simple, at first glance, transparent relationship. That the new objects do not simply enter into mathematics alongside the old ones but inwardly change and transform their aspect, that they imprint on them another cognitive form, is and remains a peculiar intellectual phenomenon that can find its interpretation and explanation only if we go back to the original motive of all mathematical object formation in general. Indeed, the key to a true understanding of the “ideal” formations [Gebilde] must be sought in the fact that the ideality by no means begins with them; rather, it is in them that it first emerges in pregnant sharpness and with particular emphasis. For there is no single truly mathematical concept that refers simply to pre-­given and pre-­encountered objects; rather, in order to find its position in the sphere of the mathematical in general, each object must contain within it a principle of “synthetic production.” Here, it is always the positing of a general relation [Relation] that comes first, and it is only from its carrying out from all sides that the particular sphere of objects develops, in the sense of the “genetic definition.” Thus, essentially, the introduction of even-­more-­complex formations [Gebilde] only continues a process that was already begun and anticipated in the first “elements” [Elemente] of mathematics. Hilbert also points out that the method to which the ideal formations [Gebilde] owe their origin can be followed back to elementary geometry.47 For in both cases, the same fundamentally identical logical act of thinking is required. It consists in the fact that a plethora of possible relations are grasped together in one single “object” and represented [repräsentiert] through this object. Without such ideal representation [Repräsentation], no single mathematical object [Objekte], however simple, would be possible. The “ideal” formations [Gebilde], in the specific sense of the term, may be designated as “objects of a higher order”; however, there is no radical cleavage between them and “elementary” objects. The same process is at work in both – the difference is merely that in the ideal elements [Elemente] the process stands out, as it were, in an extract, in its pure quintessence. For even in the “simplest” conceivable object of pure mathematics, in the construction of the “natural number series,” the ordering relation [Relation] proves to be the first, while what is ordered in it and through it proves to be secondary and derived. Once we have perceived this, nothing prevents us from extending this ordering relation [Relation] beyond the domain



the object of mathematics

461

where it was first active. Now it becomes evident that its significance and its creative energy is not exhausted in this work and does not cease with it. The process in which number formation is ultimately grounded is not exhausted in the simple formation [Gebilde] of whole numbers – although even this itself presents an infinite and infinitely varied framework [Gefüge]. Rather, each new system of relations found within this framework [Gefüge] – that is to say, derived from the originary productive relation [Urrelation] – can itself become a point of departure for a new positing and for groups of postings as a whole. The object is subjected here to no other conditions than those of mathematical synthesis itself: it is and exists insofar as the mathematical synthesis is valid. No external, transcendent “reality” of things decides this validity; rather, the immanent logic of the mathematical relations [Relationen] themselves uniquely decides this validity. With this we have apprehended the simple principle to which the validity and truth of the ideal elements [Elemente] can ultimately be traced. If even the elementary formations [Gebilde] of mathematics, if even the simple arithmetical numbers as well as the points and straight lines of geometry are understood not as individual “things,” but only as links in a system of relations [Relation], then the ideal formations [Gebilde] form, as it were, a “systems of systems.” They are composed of no intellectual matter [Stoff] other than these elementary objects but distinguish themselves from them only in the mode of their integration, in the increased refinement of their conceptual complexion. Accordingly, the judgments that we make concerning the ideal elements [Elemente] can always be grasped in a way that permits them to be transformed back into judgments concerning the first class of objects, except that now it is not individual objects but groups and totalities that function as the subjects of these judgments. Thus, for example, instead of taking an “irrational number” as a simple mathematical “thing,” existing in itself and determined for itself, one can define it as a “cut” in the sense of Dedekind’s well-­known derivation, as a complete division [Einteilung] in the system of rational numbers, whereby this system is taken as a whole and enters as a whole into the explanation of the irrational number. The “extension” of the original realm of numbers does not ensue in the sense that new and different individuals are added to the old ones but rather in the sense that instead of reckoning with these individuals, we reckon with infinite manifolds, with numerical segments, and in the

456

462

457

458

the construction of scientific cognition

sense that these segments constitute the new concept of the “real number.”48 In general, we find that every “new” kind of number that mathematical thinking is impelled to bring to formation can always be defined by a system of number of an earlier kind and replaced in its application by this system.49 This is apparent even in the introduction of fractions: the fraction – as particularly Jules Tannery has stressed – cannot be explained as a unification of equal “parts of the unity,” since the numerical unity as such admits of no division and fragmentation; it must rather be taken as an ensemble50 of two whole numbers that stand together in a determinate order. Such an “ensemble” then forms a new kind of mathematical object, for which equality, the greater or lesser, as well as the individual arithmetical operations of addition, subtraction, etc. can be defined.51 The introduction of the ideal elements [Elements] in geometry also rests on the same principle. In Staudt’s “geometry of position” the “unreal” elements [Elements] are introduced as follows: in a cluster of parallel straight lines, an element [Moment] is initially singled out, in reference to which all the individual formations [Einzelgebilde] belonging to the cluster agree, and this element [Moment] is fixed as their common “direction.” In this same way, an identical property, a common “position,” is ascribed to all superimposed parallel planes. Concept formation then advances so that a straight line is now regarded as fully determined not only by two points but equally well by one point and one direction – a plane not only by three points but also by two points and one direction, by one point and two directions, or finally by one point and one position. In this way, Staudt is led to the logical equivalence of a direction with a point, of a position with a straight line.52 Thus, here again, it is unnecessary to introduce the “unreal” elements [Elemente] as individuals leading some sort of mysterious “existence” [Existenz] beside “real” points – rather, whatever is predicated of them, what can be said of them, in the sense of a logically and mathematically significant truth, is nothing other than the inventory [Bestand] of just those relations they embody and express in themselves. However, of course, the symbolic thinking of mathematics does not content itself simply with apprehending these relations in abstracto; rather, it demands and creates a specific sign for the logical-­mathematical state of affairs that is present in them, and it ultimately treats this sign itself as a fully valid, legitimate, mathematical object. This transposition is



the object of mathematics

463

unquestionably justified – if only we remember that from the outset the “objects” of mathematics are not an expression of something thing-­ like, something substantially existing but that they are intended to be, and can be, nothing other than functional expressions, “ordinal signs.” Every advance to a new, more-­complex ordering of relations basically creates a new genus of mathematical “objects,” which are not connected with the old ones by any kind of intuitive “similarity,” not because they possess any common “characteristic trait” that can be indicated in isolation but because they are logically related and homogeneous, because they are formed and constructed according to an essentially identical intellectual principle. However, another and deeper “sameness” [Gleichartigkeit], a stricter “homogeneity,” than is here guaranteed can neither be demanded nor expected: the “mode” of every mathematical object is not established before the principle of its production but is first determined by the productive relation [Relation] on which it rests. That this concentration of a whole system of mathematical statements into one point is possible is one of the most fruitful, one of the most truly decisive, elements in all mathematical concept and theory formation in general. For it is only with this that the mathematical method is able to master the abundance of shapes [Gestalten] that are produced from its own ground and to stand its ground vis-­à-­vis those shapes, as well as their ever-­increasing diversity and richness. Mathematical method need no longer evaporate this abundance in a vague generic universality; rather, it can now take it in as a concrete totality and concrete determinacy, as it is certain that it can master and prevail over this concretion. Every science that does not synthetically and constructively produce the region of its objects but that somehow empirically “already finds [vorfinden]” these objects can gather the manifold of its objects [Objekte] into a methodological focus in no other way than by examining them, as it were, step by step. Such a science must grasp this manifold as it presents itself immediately to empirical knowledge; it must arrange perception to perception, observation to observation, and the union of these individual details into a systematic whole is invariably required. The requirement itself will, however, remain an intellectual anticipation, a kind of petitio principii. Each new aspect of empirical research opens up a new “aspect” of the object. Here too, the tendency toward the whole [Ganze] must be preserved,

459

464

460

the construction of scientific cognition

insofar as empirical thinking is understood not as a mere groping but as thinking, as a function requiring and positing unity, proves itself in that the individual parts ultimately “complete” [ergänzen] one another to form some total-­image [Gesamtbild] – however, here this completion [Ergänzung] itself always retains a preliminary character. Nevertheless, what is given here ultimately remains a “piece in pieces”: thinking does not begin from the original apprehension of a whole so as to generate its individual determinations; rather, it attempts to construct a whole, bit by bit, while it clings to the separate empirical data. Mathematics, too, would not be a synthetic-­progressive science if its total field lay before it from its inception in a complete and surveyable glance. Its intellectual progress also consists in an unremitting advance into new, previously unknown, and inaccessible domains. Every new instrument of thinking that it creates for itself opens up new determinations of its region of objects. Thus, it is never simply a question of a mere laying asunder, an analytical “unfolding” of the known, but a genuine discovery. And yet, on the other hand, this discovery itself presents a peculiar methodological feature. The path does not lead simply from determinate beginnings, established once and for all, to ever-­more richly diversified conclusions; rather, each new domain that is opened up and conquered through these inceptions casts a new light on the inceptions themselves. The progress of thinking always contains its own reversal into itself here: it is at the same time a decline into itself. For the consistent existence and meaning, the intellectual content [Gehalt], of the mathematical “principles” first stands out fully in their achievement, so that every enrichment of this achievement always discloses a new depth in the principles themselves. We may thus say that the entire development that the concept of number undergoes in the course of the history of mathematical thinking, in the transition from the whole number to the fraction, from the rational to the irrational number, from the real number to the imaginary number, is in no way based on a merely arbitrary “generalization,” but that in it the “nature” [Wesen] of number explicates itself and is apprehended more and more deeply in its objective universality.53 As Heraclitus said of physis, of active nature, the “way up” is itself the “way down,” so in the ideal concept world of mathematics, the way to the periphery and the way to the center is the same. There is no real conflict and opposition here between a centripetal tendency and a centrifugal tendency of thinking;



the object of mathematics

465

rather, the two require and promote one another. And in this intellectual union of polar oppositions lies the true and epistemo-­critically significant achievement of the ideal elements [Elemente] of mathematics. They are not so much new elements [Elemente] as new syntheses. The pendulum of mathematical thinking takes place, as it were, in a double movement: it swings toward the relation [Relation], and it swings toward the “object.” This thinking continuously dissolves all being into pure relations [Beziehungen]; on the other hand, it at the same time unites a totality of relations into the concept of one being. This is true not only for the classes of objects [Objete] with which mathematics deals but also for its individual disciplines. For it always transpires that the introduction of a new, genuinely fruitful ideal element [Element] in mathematics results in an entirely new reciprocal relationship among these disciplines and a closer and profounder union among them. Their rigid apartness, their differentiation according to objects [Objecte] that are relatively alien to one another, proves now to be an illusion [Schein]: the thought of the mathesis universalis triumphs over all attempts to split this whole into mere departments. Thus, to cite an outstanding example, the profound cognition of the imaginary has not only proven fruitful for specialized mathematical inquiry but also done away with one of the partitions that had complicated and deterred insight into the systematic interconnections between the individual domains. For the imaginary does not stop at these individual domains but permeates them all with the new thought-­form that they contained within themselves. In its first historical application, it seemed to be limited to arithmetic and algebra, particularly to the theory of equations, and since Cauchy, it has been included in the logical inventory of algebraic analysis. Its development did not stop here, however. With Poncelet’s construction of projective geometry, the imaginary captured the theory of space, producing an entirely new form of geometrical consideration. And it no longer appeared here incidental or extrinsic; rather, it was consciously moved into the center of geometrical concept formation in that Poncelet bases his use of imaginary on a thoroughly general principle, which he defined as the principle of the “permanence of mathematical relations [Relationen].”54 The supreme triumph of the imaginary consists, however, in that it inexorably made inroads into physics, into the theory of the “cognition of reality”: here too, the use of the functions of complex variables proves to be an indispensable aid of mathematical determination. An entirely

461

466

462

the construction of scientific cognition

new bond is now woven between the diverse contents and the diverse provinces of mathematical knowledge: their more or less arbitrary separateness is replaced by a relationship of reciprocal illumination that not only places the disciplines themselves in a new light but makes possible a deeper and stricter apprehending of the “absolute” nature of the mathematical as such, which precedes and underlies all its particularizations. If we adhere to this insight, then with it all “fictionalism” in the judgment and evaluation of the ideal elements [Elemente] is cut off at the root. The core of their objectivity can now no longer be sought in the individual given contents corresponding to them; rather, it can be sought only in a purely systematic inventory [Bestand]: in the truth and validity of a definite complex of relations [Relationen]. Once this truth has been secured, the only possible objective foundation for it is disclosed: another foundation for it cannot be found but also cannot be meaningfully and justifiably be searched for. The sense of the ideal elements [Elemente] can never be given in individual “representations” that are directed toward a concrete, intuitively tangible object [Objekt]; rather, it can be rendered identifiable and comprehensible only in a complex framework of judgments [Urteilsgefüge]. The form of mathematical objectivization surely implies that this framework [Gefüge] is itself made into the object and as object treated as such – however, the strict partition between it and empirical “things” is not thereby annulled, but rather, it continues to exist as before. This partition is not situated within the domain of mathematics, separating a sphere of “unreal” formations [Gebilde] from “real” ones – rather, it separates the whole of the mathematical world from the empirical world of things. Thus, we must either decide to brand all mathematics as a fiction or, in principle, endow the whole of it, up to its highest and “abstractest” postulations, with the same character of truth and validity. The division into authentic and inauthentic, into allegedly “real” and allegedly “fictive” elements [Elemente], always remains a half measure that, if taken seriously, would destroy the methodological unity of mathematics. And on the other hand, this methodological unity is always attested and guaranteed anew by the positing of the ideal elements [Elemente] and the position that they acquire in the whole of mathematics. We have already seen this in the introduction of imaginary magnitudes; however, this is only a paradigm, an individual example for a far more general state of affairs. For wherever mathematical thinking – usually after long preparations and



the object of mathematics

467

uncertain gropings – decides to gather a rich concept of relations, which it had previously considered and investigated separately, into one spiritual focus and designate them with one symbol, then, by virtue of this basic intellectual-­symbolic act, factors that had previously been far removed from one another and seemingly unconnected join to form a whole – a whole that initially is usually nothing more than the whole of a problem but that as such contains within it the pledge of a future solution. It has been from such a logical process that the analysis of the infinite has grown as its fruit ripened. Neither Newton’s discovery of fluxional calculus nor Leibniz’s discovery of infinitesimal calculus contributed to such an entirely new content to the list of mathematical problems of their time. The decisive concepts of fluxion, of the differential, and of differential quotients were in fact prepared by preceding developments down to the last detail. It operated in the most various domains in the grounding of dynamics by Galilee, in Fermat’s theory of maxima and minima, in the theory of the infinite series, in the “inverse tangents problem,” etc., before it was universally recognized and fixed. At first, Newton’s sign x and Leibniz’s sign dydx accomplish nothing more than to effect this fixation: they designate a common point of orientation for investigations that hitherto had moved along separate paths. The moment [Augenblick] that this point of orientation had been determined and fixed in a symbol, a kind of crystallization of problems followed: they poured from all sides into one logical-­mathematical form. Once more, the symbol demonstrated a power that we can find in it always and everywhere, in the most diverse domains, from myth to language and theoretical cognition: the power of thickening. It is as if through the creation of a new symbol an immense energy of thinking is transferred from a relatively diffuse form into a concentrated form. The reciprocal tension between the concepts and problems of algebraic analysis, geometry, and the general theory of motion had long been present: however, only through the creation of the algorithm of Newton’s fluxional calculus and Leibniz’s differential calculus was this tension discharged and did the spark bridge the gap. The road was then opened up and the path marked out for future development; what was indicated and implicitly posited in the newly created symbols had only to be raised to full explicit cognition. It was through this very achievement that the Leibnizian form of analysis ultimately proved its preeminence over the Newtonian form.

463

468

464

the construction of scientific cognition

Newton in his fluxional calculus also strived for a free survey of all the problems involved, for a truly universal framing of the concepts of magnitude and continuous alteration. From its inception, however, certain limits were imposed on this effort. For Newton’s thought derived from mechanics and in the final analysis he always had mechanics as his objective. The consequence of this was that even where his thinking seems to move in wholly abstract channels, it always required and held onto mechanical analogies. As a consequence, his general concept of becoming is wholly oriented toward the phenomenon of motion. Thus, the concept of fluxion underlying Newton’s analysis is modeled on Galileo’s concept of moment of velocity and still bears certain characteristic individual features. Leibniz’s method seems by comparison formal and abstract. For it, too, derives from dynamics – however, for him, dynamics only served as a preliminary stage and gateway to a new metaphysics. He is thus compelled from the start to take it in full universality and to exclude from the concept of force all intuitive, secondary notions derived from physical motion. Consequently, his concept of alteration, on which he constructed his analysis, is not filled and afflicted with a determinate, concrete-­intuitive content [Gehalt]; rather, it rests on the “principle of general order” (principe d’ordre général), which he defines as the “principle of continuity.” The basic problems of analysis are thus not translated into the form of the problem of motion as is the case in Newton’s method of “first and last relationships”; rather, the theory of motion is from the beginning regarded merely as a special case, which – like the theory of the series or the geometrical problems of the quadratures of curves – is subordinated to a universal logical rule. In this sense, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and dynamics as such ceased for Leibniz to be independent sciences: they have become mere “samples” (echantillons) of the universal characteristic.55 From the standpoint of this characteristic, which aspires to be the general and universally valid language of mathematics, what were formerly regarded as individual regions are merely particular idioms. The logic of the sciences can and must transcend this mere idiomatics, because it has the power to penetrate to the ultimate foundational relations [Relationen] of thinking, which are contained implicitly in all the connections between particulars and which provide the justification for these connections. The true universality of thinking thus emerges from the universality of the sign.



the object of mathematics

469

When Leibniz gestures toward a justification of his introduction and use of infinitesimal magnitudes, he often makes use of the example of imaginary numbers, and it is only in the context of our problem that we can understand the logical foundation of this analogy. The common and connecting factor lies in the theory of the symbol that Leibniz has created as an idealist logician and that he generally presupposes in the construction of mathematics. This is the ultimate junction of all the threads that connect his configuration of the individual sciences with his general science of knowing [Wissenschaftslehre] and this in turn with his total system of philosophy. Looking back once again over mathematical concept formation as a whole, we find that its entire development has followed the path that Plato, at the beginnings of scientific mathematics, pointed out with truly prophetic clarity. The goal that it has steadily pursued and approached is that of “determination” – the overcoming of the ἄπειπον [apeiron, limitless] by the πέρας [limit]. The beginning of all mathematical concept formation is that thought, while not absolutely detaching itself from the intuitively given and intuitively representable, still strives to liberate itself from the fluidity and indeterminacy of intuition. It replaces the mutual reflection and the imperceptible transition into one another of sensible-­intuitive data with sharp and clear divisions. As long as we remain within the sphere of mere perception or intuition, such divisions are nowhere available [vorhanden]. There are no “points,” no “lines,” no “surfaces,” in the sense that mathematics associates with these concepts. It is the axiomatic thinking of mathematics that first posits the possible subjects for all genuinely mathematical propositions. In this sense, Felix Klein has gone so far as to define the axioms as the requirements by means of which we rise above the imprecision of intuition, or above its limited precision, to unlimited precision.56 Weyl similarly points out, in his difference between the “intuitive” and the “mathematical” continuum, that the latter can be achieved only if thinking injects exact elements [Elemente] into the flow of intuition, if it injects the rigorous concept of the “real number” into the indeterminate multiplicity of the intuitive. And this, as he expressly stresses, is not a “schematizing violence” or a simple achievement of the practical economy of thinking but instead an act of reason that reaches through and

465

470

466

the construction of scientific cognition

beyond the given.57 The actual intellectual miracle of mathematics, however, consists in that this process of “reaching through,” which already determines its beginning, in itself never finds an end but is repeated over and over, always at a higher level. It is this alone that prevents mathematics from freezing into an ensemble of merely analytical propositions and degenerating into an empty tautology. The basis of the unity and coherence [Geschlossenheit] of the mathematical method is that the originary creative function to which it owes its emergence never comes to rest but continues to operate in ever-­new forms, and in this operation, it proves itself to be one and the same, an indestructible totality.58

ENDNOTES 1 τἱ μὲν γὰρ σημαἰνει τὸ τρἰγωνον ἔλαβεν ὁ γεωμέτρης, ὅτι δ’ ἔστιν δείνκνυσιν (Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, II, 7, 92b, 15). 2 For further details, see Hieronymus Georg Zeuthen, “Die geometrische Construction als ‘Existenzbeweis’ in der antiken Geometrie,” Mathematische Annalen, 47 (1896), 222ff. 3 Cf. my Erkenntnisproblem, 2, 49ff., 86ff., 127ff., 191f. 4 Cf. G. W. Leibniz, “Meditationes de Cognitione, Veritate et Ideis,” in Philosophische Werke, eds. A Buchenau and E. Cassirer (Leipzig, 1875–1906), I, 22ff. 5 Ars characteristica est ars ita formandi atque ordinandi characteres, ut refer inter se habent. Expressio est aggregatum characterum rem quae exprimitur repraesentantium. Lex expressionum haec est: ut ex quarum rerum ideis componitur rei exprimendae idea, ex illarum rerum characteribus componatur rei expressio. Die Leibniz-­Handschriften der Königlichen öffentlichen Bibliothek zu Hannover, ed. Edward Bodemann (Hanover and Leipzig, 1895), 80f. 6 See my Leibniz’s System in seinen wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen, chap. 1. On the position and importance of the symbolic concept in Leibniz, cf. Dietrich Mahnke, “Leibniz als Begründer der symbolischen Mathematik,” Isis, 9 (1927), 279ff. 7 Cf. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Nouveaux Essais sur l’entendement humain (Paris: Charpentier, 1842), book II, chaps. 13ff. 8 Cf. the following passage from a manuscript dated 1675, quoted by Mahnke, 286: Habemus ideas simplicium, habemus tantum characteres compositorum. . . . Non possumus facile judicare de rei possibilitate ex ­cogitabilitate ejus requisitorum quando singula ejus requisita cogitavimus atque in



the object of mathematics

471

unum conjunximus . . . etsi ope characterum unir possimus . . . quod non potest fieri nisi sentiendo sive imaginando simul characteres omnium. 9 Emmanuel Kant, “Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral,” in Werke, ed. Ernst Cassirer (2nd ed., Berlin: B. Cassirer 1922), 2, 176. 10 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 147. 11 Concerning this historical course of this development, cf. the examples and proofs in Federigo Enriques, Zur Geschichte der Logik, 159ff., 165ff. [Eng. trans. by Jerome Rosenthal, The Historic Development of Logic (New York: Holt, 1929), 110ff.] 12 Cf., for example, the characteristic remarks of Russell, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, 194: Mathematics and logic, historically speaking, have been entirely distinct studies. Mathematics has been connected with science, logic with Greek. But both have developed in modern times: logic has become more mathematical and mathematics has become more logical. The consequence is that it has now become wholly impossible to draw a line between the two; in fact, the two are one. They differ as boy and man: logic is the youth of mathematics and mathematics the manhood of logic. This view is represented by logicians who, having spent their time in the study of classical texts, are incapable of following a piece of symbolic reasoning, and by mathematicians who have learnt a technique without troubling to inquire into its meaning or justification. Both types are now fortunately growing rarer. 13 Cf. Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer, “Intuitionism and Formalism,” Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 20 (1913). On the significance of the principle of the excluded third in mathematics, in particular in the theory of functions, see, Jounal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik, 154 (1925), 1ff. 14 Here we cannot go into the details of the struggle between “intuitionism” and “formalism”; for particulars, cf. H. Weyl, “Die heutige Erkenntnislage in der Mathematik,” Symposion. Philosophische Zeitschrift für Forschung und Aussprache, I (1925), 1ff. 15 On this and the following, cf. Adolf Fraenkel, Zehn Vorlesungen über die Grundlegung der Mengenlehre (Leipzig and Berlin: B. G. Teubner, 1927), Lectures 1, 2. 16 Ernst Zermelo, “Untersuchungen über die Grundlagen der Mengenlehre, I,” Mathematische Annalen, 65 (1908) 261–81. Cf. Hilbert, “Axiomatisches Denken,” 411ff. 17 Bertrand Russell, “Mathematical Logic as Based on Theory of Type,” American Journal of Mathematics, 30 (1908), 222–62; Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, chap. 13. 18 Frenkel, Zehn Vorlesungen über die Grundlegung der Mengenlehre, 153.

472

the construction of scientific cognition

19 See 422f. 20 As far as I can see, certain paradoxes in set theory are nipped in the bud by insisting on such a substitution of meaning. Let us, for example, consider Richard’s well-­known paradox. This paradox starts with natural numbers that meet this condition: they must be “definable” in a minimum number of syllables – i.e., at most thirty syllables in the German language. Then it is shown that a concept such as the “concept of the smallest natural number which cannot be defined in thirty syllables or less” contains a contradiction – since this same combination of words has defined the number in fewer than thirty syllables (cf. Fraenkel, Zehn Vorlesungen über die Grundlegung der Mengenlehre, 22ff.). Against this “antinomy” – which its author, Richard, set up as a reductio ad absurdum of certain mathematical concept formations and not as a serious difficulty – one might argue that it can contain no actual “contradiction,” if only because it does not move in the sphere of “possible” mathematical meaning. For obviously a mathematical object can be meaningfully defined in words only if for the mere words we substitute their significative intention and define the object thereby – and not by counting the words or syllables out of which the definition, as a purely linguistic structure, is composed. 21 Cf. Weyl, Das Kontinuum, §3, §5, §6; §8ff., §17ff. 22 Brouwer, “Zur Begründung der intuitionistischen Mathematik, II,” 463. Cf. 397. 23 Leibniz’s Correspondence with Clarke, Fifth Letter, 72, ed. Gerhardt, 7, 403. Cf. my Leibniz’s System, 246ff. 24 On this threefold generation of the concept of the set, cf. Oskar Becker, “Beiträge zur phänomenologischen Begrünung der Geometrie und ihrer physikalischen Anwendungen,” Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, 6 (1923), 403ff. See also Fraenkel, Zehn Vorlesungen, 38ff. 25 Hermann Weyl, “Über die neue Grundlagenkrise der Mathemtik,” Mathematische Zeitschrift, 10 (1921), 53. 26 Ibid., 54. 27 On this purely methodological analogy between Mill’s and Frege’s respectively derivations of the concept of number, cf. the apt remarks of Burkamp, Begriff und Beziehung, §77, 208f. 28 That “realism” of the class concept forms the true core and basic condition of Russell’s theory of number has rightly been emphasized by Recht von Léon Brunschvicg in his critique of the logical [Les étapes de la philosophie mathématiques (Paris: f. Alcan, 1922), 394ff. and 412ff.]. 29 Henri Pioncaré, La Science et l’hypothèse (Paris: Flammarion, 1902), and Science et méthode (Paris: Flammarion, 1909). German ed.: Wissenschaft und Hypothese, trans. f. Lindemann (Leipzig: Teubner, 1906) and Wissenschaft und Methode, trans. f. Lindemann (Leipzig: Teubner, 1914). [English Edition: Science and Hypothesis, trans. George Bruce Halsted (London and New York: Scott, 1905), and Science and Method, trans. Francis Maitland (New York: Dover Publications, 1952).] 30 Cf. Weyl, “Über die neue Grundlagenkrise der Mathematik,” 58.



the object of mathematics

473

31 On the methodological results of “yes one more,” cf., for example, the presentation by Hölder, Die Mathematische Methode. Logisch Erkenntnistheoretische Untersuchungen im Gebiete der Mathematik Mechanik und Physik, 298 and 304. 32 Cf., for example, Louis Couturat, Die philosophischen Prinzipien der Mathematik (German ed., Leipzig: A. Kröner, 1908), chap. 2; Russel, Principles of Mathematics, 132ff. 33 Cf. Burkamp, “Klasse und Zahl in der Begriffslogik,” Begriff und Beziehung, 182ff. 34 [Weyl, “Die heutige Erkenntnislage in der Mathematik,” 24.] 35 David Hilbert, “Neubegründung der Mathematik,” Abhandlungen aus dem mathematischen Seminar der Hamburgischen Universität, 1 (1922), 157ff., 162. 36 Ibid., 163. 37 D. Hilbert, “Über das unendliche,” Mathematische Annalen, 95 (1926), 170ff. 38 Cf. Hilbert, “Neubegründung der Mathematik,” 162. 39 Cf. Weyl, “Philosophie der Mathematik und Naturwissenschaft,” 44ff., and Weyl’s article “Die heutige Erkenntnislage in der Mathematik,” 1, 24ff. 40 Cf. Weyl, “Philosophie der Mathematik und Naturwissenschaft,” 50ff., Weyl, “Die heutige Erkenntnislage in der Mathematik,” 30ff. 41 Cf. for example, Hilbert, “Neubegründung der Mathematik,” 163: The science of the theory of numbers must come into being on this purely intuitive basis of the concrete signs. . . . These numerical signs, which are numbers and which fully constitute numbers, are themselves an object of our contemplation, but otherwise have no significance of any kind. 42 Cf. D. Hilbert’s article “Über das Unendliche,” Mathematische Annalen, 95 (1926). 43 Cf. Hilbert, “Neubegründung der Mathematik,” 160. 44 Cf. in particular Plato, Philebus, 15Bff. 45 For details about the theory of Du Bois-­Reymond and an epistemological critique of this theory, see my Substance and Function, 122. 46 Cf. Hilbert, “Über das Unendliche,” 174ff., 179. 47 Ibid., 166. 48 On the conceptual determination of the “real number” as a numerical segment, cf. Russell, Principles of Mathematics, 270ff. and Russell, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, 72ff. 49 Cf. Hölder, Die Mathematische Methode. Logisch Erkenntnistheoretische Untersuchungen im Gebiete der Mathematik Mechanik und Physik, 209. 50 [Originally in English: Cassirer translates “ensemble” as Inbegriff.] 51 Jules Tannery, Introduction à la théorie des fonctions d’une variable (Paris: A. Hermann, 1886), viii. Cf. Voss, Über das Wesen der Mathematik, 36 n. 1.

474

the construction of scientific cognition

52 Georg Karl Christian von Staudt, Geometrie der Lage (Nurenberg: Bauer und Raspe, 1847). 53 For further details, see Substance and Function, chap. 2. 54 Jean Victor Poncelet, Traité des propriétés projectives des figures. Ouvrage utile a ceux qui s’occupent des applications de la géométrie descriptive et d’opérations géométriques sur le terrain (Paris: Bachelier, 1822). Cf. also Dimitry Gawronsky, “Das Kontinuitätsprinzip bei Poncelet,” Philosophische Abhandlungen. Hermann Cohen zum 70sten Geburtstag (4.Juli 1912), Berlin 1912, 65ff. 55 Cf. Brunschvicg, Les étapes de la philosophie des mathématiques, 199. 56 Flelix Klein, Vorlesungen über nicht-­Euklidische Geometrie (Göttigen, 1892; Berlin: J. Springer, 1928), 355. 57 Cf. Weyl, Das Kontinuum, esp. 37ff., 65ff. 58 This chapter on mathematical concept formation had already been completed in the autumn of 1927, when the work of Oskar Becker on “mathematical existence” appeared [“Mathematische Existenz. Untersuchungen zur Logik und Ontologie mathematischer Phänomene,” Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, 8 (1927), 441–809]. It would not be doing justice to the significance of Becker’s work if I were to undertake, in a brief postscript and in passing, an attempt at a critical engagement [Auseinandersetzung] with it. Such a critical engagement could be provided only on another basis than that of our own systematic problem. Hence, I would like to make only a few remarks: I thoroughly grant Becker the starting point of his investigation, the principle which he calls the “principle of phenomenological approach”: To all objectivity there is (in principle, i.e. ‘technical’ difficulties aside) an approach. It is this that first characterizes all objectivity as a phenomenon and satisfies the absolutely universal claim of transcendental phenomenology (for which all being is synonymous with being constituted). (502 n.) I also agree fully with the consequence that Becker draws from this principle, namely his assertion of the primacy of the concept of number over the concept of quantity (cf. 559ff.). However, what strikes me as not demonstrated by Beeker’s argumentation, and moreover seems to me indemonstrable in the present state of mathematics, is the necessity and the justification for connecting the general “serial principle,” on which the region of number is constructed, with the phenomenon of time, as Becker does throughout his work. Even if we recognize “the decisive role of temporality [Zeitlichkeit] for the being-­character [Seinscharakter] of mathematical objects,” this temporality that is questioned signifies nothing other than the general schema of “order in progression” (to use William Rowan Hamilton’s term). This “objective” time of mathematics must not be confused with “historical” time or with the “time of lived-­experience” of the mathematician (cf. Becker, 657ff.). As far as I can see, mathematics today offers no more justification than ever before for an attempt to anthropologize “transcendental” idealism. The “subject” to which the pure constructive principles of mathematics and hence the realm



the object of mathematics

475

of mathematical objectivity must he referred remains the “I think” of Kant’s “transcendental apperception,” hence the “pure I,” the “I-­pole,” which is also Husserl’s original starting point. Becker, however, seeks rather to refer the substantive content and invistory [Bestand] of mathematics to a definite mode and tendency of “factual life phenomena”: he sees mathematical “existence” [Existenz] as ultimately grounded in certain “modes of factual life” (621ff.). Mathematics, I believe, will always have to resists this grounding in a mere facticity of existence [Daseinsfaktizität], because of the fundamental demand for “objectivity” inherent in it. In a recent work, “Über den sogenannten ‘Anthropologismus’ in der Philosophie der Mathematik,” Philosophischer Anzeiger, 3 (1929), 369ff., which became accessible to me only while I was correcting the present volume, Becker says that the Marburg neo-­Kantians had rightly attempted to approach the problem of the philosophical foundation of mathematics from an “idealistic” point of view, but he goes on to say that they failed because “they formulated the idea of the subject of cognition too indeterminately, or rather, they did not even bring the already achieved determinacy of subjectivity to bear in their formulation of the problem” (381). If this reproach of “indeterminacy” means merely that “logical idealism” rejects a mixture of “pure” subjectivity with determinations of the subjectivity of “human beings,” I believe that it is based on a petitio principii. Logical idealism starts from an analysis of mathematical “objects” and seeks to apprehend the peculiar determinacy of these objects by explaining them through the peculiarity of the mathematical “method,” the mathematical concept formation, and the formulation of its problem. As to what this method itself “is,” the logical idealists derive their answer solely from its immanent achievement. However, in this achievement, subjectivity, insofar as it is understood as the concrete subjectivity of the mathematician, is not present [vorhanden]; as a constitutive moment, rather, this subjectivity is consciously eliminated. When Becker attempts to deny this state of affairs – when he puts forward the thesis that the mere definition of mathematic (as the science that strives to master the infinite with finite means) points immediately and necessarily to the mathematician (379), such a conclusion, it seems to me, is nowhere justified by the “existence” [Bestand] of mathematical cognition; it can stem only from an artificial interpretation of this existence [Bestand]. For even in the cited definition of mathematics, the emphasis is not on the fact that mathematics uses “finite means” but on the fact that through these finite means, it masters the infinite. If we start from the problem of this mastery and go on to ask how it is “possible,” we are led to an entirely different “time form” than that in which the “existence [Existenz] of human beings,” as a necessarily finite existence [Existenz], moves. As far as I can see, no path leads either from the object of mathematics or from its method to the “very determinate and concrete structures” (death, historicity [Geschichtlichkeit], “freedom,” “guilt”) that Becker’s analyses seek to disclose: it seems to me that the “essential and evident relation . . . between the meaning structure of mathematical” as such and the “meaning of being [Seinsinn] of the finite nature [Wesen] of the human” (cf. 383) can be found no more in the present stage of mathematics than in any previous stage.

V THE FOUNDATIONS OF NATURAL-­S CIENTIFIC COGNITION 1.  EMPIRICAL AND CONSTRUCTIVE MANIFOLDS 468

The construction of the realm of numbers shows us, in typical purity and perfection, the example of a domain of objects that takes shape from a basic originary relation [Urrelation] and that is entirely assessable and determinable through it. Thought starts from a pure relation, which at first seems to be of the simplest conceivable form – which comprises nothing other than a string of intellectual elements [Elemente] through a law of sequence that is imposed on them. From this elementary law, however, flow ever-­broader and more-­complex determinations, which in turn are interwoven with one another in a strictly lawful way, until from the totality [Ganze] of these interweaving emerges the ensemble of the “real numbers,” in which the wonderful edifice of analysis is grounded. There is never any danger here of reaching the absolute limits of cognition or the internal contradictions as long as mathematical cognition remains true to its own constructive principle – as long as it admits of no other “objects” than those that it can gain and derive directly from this principle. It is the basic form of relation itself that posits and delimits a



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

477

determinate domain of objects and that in this determination it makes them into a whole [Ganze] for cognition that can be theoretically mastered. This kind of intellectual mastery seems to be frustrated, however, if we step beyond the domain of the mathematical – if we take the step from the “ideal” to the “real.” For here begins the realm of “matter” as opposed and contrary to that of pure “form.” In place of an original unity, which lawfully unfolds and disassembles [auseinanderlegen] itself into a multiplicity, we now have a manifold that lies before us purely as such, an existing multiplicity. This manifold – at least in the mode in which it immediately presents itself – is not “constructible”: we must accept it as a simple givenness. Precisely this givenness seems to be the specific, the distinctive characteristic that distinguishes the “physical” from the purely “mathematical.” An objective world is not constructed here for us in the consequence and inner consistency of pure thinking; rather, an outward “existence” is given here to us through the intermediary of sensations and sensible intuition. And this kind of appropriation can be only fragmentary and patchy. We must move – not according to a predetermined plan but according to the dictates of planless, accidental “observation” – from one point in this existence to another. And we may be well pleased if, at the end of our road, we can connect all these points into a line whose form can be described and expressed in general terms. At every moment, we must be prepared to replace this form with another as soon as the newly flowing “material” demands it, as soon as the “data” on which our intellectual synthesis rests changes. In opposition to this kind of empirical constraint, theoretical thought seems, as such, powerless. Natura non uincitur nisi parendo [Nature is not conquered except by obeying her] – it is not by forcing its general form on nature but only by immersing itself in its individual configurations and seeking to copy them feature for feature that thought is able to acquire knowledge of these configurations. The survey of these configurations no longer takes place in a delimited and, from the beginning, coherent horizon [Horizont]; rather, every extension of the content horizon [Gesichtskreis] seems to compel a change in the mode of our consideration, a shift in our “line of sight.” What we call “nature,” what we call the “existence of things,” confronts us at first as a mere “rhapsody of perceptions.” It may be possible to line up these perceptions as if on a

469

478

470

the construction of scientific cognition

string and describe them in their togetherness and succession – however, this mode of enumeration nevertheless remains radically different from the basic characteristic form of succession [Reihung] that we found expressed in the progression of whole numbers. For here one member does not follow on another, as it follows at once from another: the second can be derived from the first in accordance with a general rule that is valid and can be determined for the whole of the series [Reihe]. The path, the progression, the method has become a mere progress, a mere empirical succession [Sukzession]. With this, however, the relation between “individuality” and “universality” is altered from the ground up. Each single number is also an individual concept: an object with its own determinations and characteristic traits pertaining to it alone. This peculiarity, however, does not belong to it as such, but only in the system of numbers: it is grounded in pure order relations in which an individual number stands to the totality [Gesamtheit] of possible numbers. Thus, the individual is also thought and fixed here as a pure place value. The individual perception wants, however, to be something else and something more than a mere position in a series. It stands, as it were, for itself and in itself – and its significance resides precisely in this particularity. Of course, it also fits into those wholes that we designate as the whole of space and time. However, it fills this whole: it fills the individual “point” of space in which it finds itself and the individual “moment” of time with a unique and singular content that cannot be reduced to a mere determination of “where” and “when.” It is here that the character of the mere “givenness” is once again revealed. Every perception is as such immediately given only to one observer and under their particular spatiotemporal conditions. It is by no means self-­evident – indeed, it is incomprehensible at first sight – how perception can emerge from this isolation, how it can be “connected” with other perceptions. For it is just this connection that seems to lay claim to an interconnection of elements [Elemente] that must be thought of as being not only accidental but fundamentally dissimilar. Without its inherent heterogeneity, perception would not seem to be perception, because then it would lose the qualitative particularity pertaining to its essence. And with this heterogeneity, it does not seem to fit into the form of the system, which is a condition of possibility for knowledge and theoretical comprehending.



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

479

This antinomy contains the first beginning, the dialectical germ, of all natural-­scientific concept formation. For sure enough, as soon as thinking passes from the domain of mathematical objects to that of “physical” objects, it does not, of course, cast off its own form and its own presuppositions – rather, it now seeks confirmation of these presuppositions in the resistance presented by the “given.” And through this resistance, thought discovers in itself a new power that had hitherto seemed locked within it. It now aspires to perform the impossible: to treat and regard the “given” as though it were not alien to thought but instead posited by thinking itself and produced by its constructive conditions. The form of the merely factual manifold, in which perception first presents itself, must now be transformed into the form of a conceptual manifold. Concrete physical thinking, as it constitutes itself and operates in the history of the cognition of nature [Naturerkenntnis], does not inquire into whether such a transformation is possible but directly turns the problem into a postulate. It translates the conceptual aporia into an act. All natural-­scientific concept formation begins with such an act of thinking. The “discursive” nature of thinking proves itself in that it does not content itself simply to accept and to assume the series of the given but in that it seeks to actually “run through” this series. And it can run through it only by seeking at the same time a rule of transition that will lead from one link to another. This rule, which is not immediately given but is solely postulated and sought, remains the characteristic by which the distinctive “facticity” of natural-­scientific thinking differs from every other form of mere factual cognition. Even the vérités de fait, as they are discovered and established in physical thinking, are determined by the particularity of the physical “ratio” and as it were impregnated with it. This immediately becomes strikingly evident if we compare the “facts” [Tatsachen: data] of physics with those of another domain, such as the facts [Fakten] of history. We find here an immediate confirmation of the truth and profundity of Goethe’s saying: “The highest thing would be to recognize that everything factual is already theory.” There is no factuality [Faktizität] in itself as an absolute, an eternal and immutable datum; rather, what we call a factum must always be theoretically oriented in some way, must be seen in reference to a definite conceptual system, which implicitly determines it. The theoretical means of determination are not subsequently added to the sheer fact [Tatsächlichen] but enter into the definition of the fact itself.

471

480

the construction of scientific cognition

The “facts” [Fakta] of physics are thus distinguished at the outset from those of history by their specific intellectual perspective. Henri Poincaré writes in La science et l’hypothèse: Carlyle says somewhere that the factum alone is decisive. John Lackland has passed by here: that is noteworthy, that is a reality [Realität] for which I would give all the theories in the world. . . . That is the language of the historian. The physicist would say on the contrary: John Lackland has passed by here: that is a matter of indifference to me, because he will not pass by again.1 472

In this pregnant formulation, we can immediately apprehend the basic opposition between the two methodological originary significations of factuality [Tatsächlichkeit]. Even where the physicist describes a single occurrence that is confined to a definite place in space and to a determined moment in time, he is not concerned with the singularity as such; rather, he considers it sub specie to their repeatability. He does not want to establish that something has happened here and now but rather to inquire into the conditions of the event. His question is whether in establishing these conditions, the same occurrence can be observed in other places and at other times or how it will change under determinate variations of these conditions. Even where a single matter of fact is investigated and confirmed, the consideration aims not at this matter of fact alone but at the rule according to which it is comprehended as recurring. At the start, the form of this rule is still an open question, and we must take care not to make any definite statement about it prematurely. There was a period in physics when it looked as though this form had been definitively established. Helmholtz set forth in the introduction to his seminal article “On the Conservation of Energy” (1847) the general principle of causality as this originary-­form of physical thinking. For him, it is the conditio sine qua non [indispensable condition] for the natural-­scientific framing of the problem itself – the condition for the “conceivability of nature.” In the present state of physics, the critique of cognition must judge more cautiously and with reserve. The question of whether all explanation of nature must necessarily lead to “causal” laws of a certain type or whether it must content itself with mere “laws of probability”



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

481

cannot, however it may be decided, be resolved by a simple edict of thought. Here only immersion in the conceptual ordering framework [Ordnungsgefüge] of physics itself can bring a decision, can teach us how, within natural-­scientific thinking, the realm of the purely “dynamic” lawful regularities [Gesetzmäßigkeiten] can be marked off from the domain in which only “statistically” lawful regularities [Gesetzmäßigkeiten] are valid.2 However, even where physical thinking does not lay claim to comprehend an occurrence in a strictly causal sense but contents itself with establishing statistical rules, its essential goal is and remains not the occurrence itself but the rule-­governedness [Regelhaft] of the occurrence. And the judgment that establishes this regularity [Regelhaftigkeit] can never be dissolved into a mere sum, into an aggregate of statements about individual instances. Of course, in accordance with its basic tendency, strict “empiricism” must attempt such a dissolution. For Mach, for example, the establishment of the law of gravity seems in fact to signify nothing more than the combination [Zusammenfassung] of a large number of concrete individual observations that undergo no further alteration in this summation than that they are grasped in a common linguistic expression. The form of Galileo’s law s = ½ gt2 is valid here as an abbreviation for a table in which certain individual values of s are correlated with certain individual values of t. Only the economy of thought, which requires that we make the most sparing use of signs, can ground and justify that we choose a general formula instead of applying this table explicitly to all hitherto observed cases; but it receives its concrete significance only if we use determinate numerical values in place of indeterminate variables. If this point of view were valid, then physical factuality would be reduced to a mere historical factuality: the difference between the two would reside not in the things [Sache] themselves but solely in the signs that we employ to present the prevailing state of affairs [Sachverhalte]. However, even if we follow radical empiricism in this point of view, a new question arises at this point within the context of our general problem.The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms has shown us everywhere that the “sign” is never a merely accidental and outward garment for thought but that in the use of the sign a certain turn, a basic tendency and form of thinking, takes shape. The question still remains open: which tendency in physical thought necessitates emphasizing one determinate sign

473

482

474

475

the construction of scientific cognition

language, the sign language of the mathematical “formula,” and favor it over all others? In view of the insight we have gained in regard to language itself and its spiritual constitution, we can no longer suppose that mere grounds of “convenience” prevail here; we cannot but suppose a deeper and more intimate relation [Bezug] between the form of thinking and the form of language. Whether this presumption or, if one wants, this systematic “prejudice,” is confirmed: this can be shown, of course, only by a penetrating analysis of the formation and sign-­bestowing in physics itself. Once again, the way leads here from an apprehension of the signs to an apprehension of the things [Sache], of what is designated: an investigation and analysis of the symbols in which physical judgments are expressed and in which they first take on their appropriate form, will, it is to be hoped, make intelligible the mode and character of physical “objectivity.” It was the merit of Pierre Duhem that he first took this road, in his work on the theory of physics. With extraordinary sharpness and clarity, this work discloses all the ideal mediations through which we must pass if we are to gain physical theorems and judgments from a mere observation of individual appearances. Duhem shows that it is the construction of a determinate world of symbols that first opens up access to the world of physical “reality” [Realität]. Each particular symbol that is created here presupposes, however, the originary symbol of “real number” as its actual foundation.3 What at first sight appears as a purely factual manifold and as a factual diversity of sense impressions takes on physical sense and value only in that we “picture” [abbilden: to map] it in the realm of number. Of course, we shall not do justice to this picturing [Abbildung: mapping] and the highly complex law of form [Formgesetz] under which it stands if we understand it in a purely contentual sense – if we start from the assumption that to enter into the world of physics, it suffices that we substitute the contents of a different mode and imprint for the contents given in perception. Every particular perception class is simply assigned to a particular substrate, which is only the complete expression of its genuine, its truly physical “reality.” What presents itself to the sense of temperature as a sensation of heat would then be recognized in its physical “truth” as molecular motion – what is given to the eye as color would be defined as vibration of the ether.



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

483

However, this mode of transference, in which the content of immediate perception is transformed, piece [Gleid] by piece [Gleid] as it were, into another, mediated content, is far from exhausting the basic sense of physical method. For the physical method is concerned, rather, with relating the reality of sensible appearances – color, tone, tactile, and temperature sensations – as a whole, to a new spiritual standard and in this relation elevating them to a new dimension of consideration. In principle, therefore, we can never compare the individual “sensation” with its determinate objective-­physical “substrate”; what can be compared to each other, what can be “measured” against each other, is rather, on the one hand, the totality of the phenomena of observation and, on the other hand, the total system of concepts and judgments in which physics expresses the order and lawfulness of “nature.” There was a period in the history of physics when it was believed that we could overcome scientific “materialism” by substituting the representation of a unitary elementary matter [Grundstoffes] with another representation that was also tangibly-­substantially grasped. Substantial matter [Materie] was replaced by substantial energy or substantial ether. However, an actual epistemo-­ critical deepening was never achieved in this way. This comes about only when the concept of the physical “picturing” [Abbildung: mapping] is analyzed more closely and its significance and its capability are determined. For it now became evident that picturing [Abbildung: mapping] can never leap immediately from an element [Element] in the “perceptive series” to an element [Element] in the series of “physical concepts” and examine both for their direct “similarity” or “correspondence.” Rather, such a correspondence may be sought only between the totality of the data of empirical observation and the totality of the theoretical conceptual means, the physical laws and hypotheses. Through an increasing awareness of this state of affairs and its logical consequences, modern physics has overcome materialism, not only in an ontological sense but in a more comprehensive methodological sense. More and more, it has abandoned the form of the “explanation” of the appearances of nature, which consisted solely in replacing certain groups of concrete-­sensible phenomena by their abstract-­geometrical representatives [Repräsentanten] or mechanical “models.” The turn away from this form of explanation signifies, however, only an apparent step 476 toward the positivism that sees in physical laws nothing more than a

484

477

the construction of scientific cognition

mere “description” of the natural events. The difference immediately became evident as soon as we, instead of stressing only the negative element, turned toward a positive determination, as soon as we reflected on the specific particular nature of their means of description. These means are far removed from the kind of “factuality” [Tatsächlichkeit] that positivism regards as the sole criterion of “reality”: they belong to the same sphere as the formations [Gebilde] of pure mathematical thinking. The recognition of this original duality is the necessary condition for an understanding of the “harmony” that the natural-­scientific concept demands and institutes. This harmony signifies something more than and something fundamentally different from mere agreement: it is a genuinely synthetic act, which connects opposites together. Such a “synthesis of opposites” is included in every genuine physical concept and in every basic physical judgment. For physical concepts and judgments are always concerned with relating two different forms of manifold to each other and, as it were, permeating them with each other. The starting point is a merely empirical, a simply “given” multiplicity; however, the aim of theoretical concept formation is to transform such a given multiplicity into a rationally comprehensible, “constructive” multiplicity. This transformation is never concluded – it is always begun anew, with increasingly complex means. The basic epistemological question concerning the possibility of “applying” mathematical concepts to nature goes back ultimately to this state of affairs and to the problem it comprises. The difficulty of this application is based on the fact that it seems possible on the basis of a conscious μετάβασις εἰς ἄλλο γένος [transition to another genus], – that it may be said to force the phenomena into another type of order than that to which they originally belong. Yet if we take the standpoint not of a realistic metaphysics but that of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, then this transformation that we have before us loses a large part of its paradoxical character. For what The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms has shown, and what it has confirmed from the most diverse angles, is that all spiritual life and development operate through transformations and intellectual metamorphoses of this kind. The beginning and possibility of language was conditioned by such a metamorphosis: language too cannot simply “designate” given impressions or representations; rather, the act of mere naming always at the same time comprises at the same time an alteration of form, a spiritual



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

485

transposition. We have seen how this transposition becomes more and more accentuated as language progresses, to the degree that language, as it were, “comes into its own.” Language gradually breaks away from its confinement to the given, its “similarity” to the given: from the phase of “mimetic” and “analogical” expression, it progresses to purely symbolic forming [Formung].4 Scientific cognition repeats the same process in a different dimension of contemplation. It too gains “nearness” to nature only by learning to renounce it, by moving the given into an ideal distance. Here too, the problem does not lie as such in this distancing [Entfernung], in this spiritual positing of distance [Distanzsetzung] – it is, however, a matter of clearly determining the particular direction in which the work of physical thinking progresses and distinguishing it sharply from other basic directions of forming [Formung]. Insight into this difference can be acquired only by apprehending in its universality the goal toward which this thinking strives but, in addition, by breaking down the path that leads to it into its individual stages. We should not be put off from pursuing this path, as it were, step by step: only “by measuring” it in this way will we be able to describe it. In speaking of the presentation of great human beings, Goethe once said that the source can be described only in that it flows; in a general sense, this is valid of any living movement of spirit. The nature of its progress cannot be defined simply in stereotypes and abstractions but rather must be seized in its actuality, in the energy [Energie] of the movement itself. The methodological law of “procedures” can be rendered explicit only through the concrete process itself, through its inception and subsequent development, its turn and transformations, its spiritual crises and peripeteia. Dogmatic empiricism as well as dogmatic rationalism both end in failure because they cannot do justice to this actuality, this pure process character of cognition. They sublate this character in that they disown the polarity that is the true driving force [Kraft] of cognition, the principle of its movement. This polarity is annihilated if, instead of relating the opposing moments [Momente] to one another and connecting them intellectually with one another, we seek to ascribe the one to the other. Empiricism does this by merging the constructive concepts into the “given”; rationalism, conversely, does it by reducing every givenness as such to the form of its conceptual determination. In both cases, however, we have a leveling down of the basic oppositions whose conflict truly

478

486

479

the construction of scientific cognition

constructs the objective domain of physical cognition. Fruitful correlativity is replaced by naked coincidence. This is to misunderstand the generative, truly creative factor of the concept as well as that of experience, because concept and experience develop the forces inherent in them only by measuring themselves one against the other. The sequence of “perceptions,” the empirical serial form of coexistence and succession, presents the question that is to be solved by means of the conceptual, constructive serial form. Experience sets up a coexistence and succession that will progressively be transformed into each other. A totality of members a, b, c, d . . . that are at first given solely in their “thatness” [Daß], in the factuality [Tatsächlichkeit] of their spatiotemporal being-­together [Zusammensein], are to be recognized as “belonging” [zugehörig] together, are to be connected by a rule on the basis of which the “merging” [Hervorgehen] of the one from the other can be determined and foreseen. This law of emergence is never immediately co-­given [mitgegeben] in the same immediate way that perceptions “are there” [da sind]: it must be injected into them in a purely intellectual, hypothetical way. We attempt to order the elements [Elemente] a, b, c, d . . . in such a way that they can be thought of as members in a sequence x1, x2, x3, x4 . . . that is characterized by a determinate “general member.” When particular magnitudes are appointed for this general member, the individual case “results” in the strictest sense. This result, however, never exists absolutely; rather, it must always be gained and ascertained anew through increasingly refined methods of sequencing [Reihung]. The process of relating the empirical serial form to the mathematical-­ideal form is a process that never ceases. However, at no point do they ever transition immediately into each other; rather, in their structure, both remain clearly separated from each other. In this interconnection, we once again discern in what sense the form of mathematical-­physical concept “commences” [anheben: arise] with experience but does not “arise” [entspringen] from it. Experience comes first in that it formulates the task. However, the solution to this task cannot be expected from experience; rather, the solution must follow from the basic tendency of mathematical-­constructive thinking. Platonically speaking, perception is and remains the “Paraclete” of this thinking; however, it does not produce the forces that it awakens. The object world of physics arises and is affirmed through such an interplay of forces. Time and time again,



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

487

the contact with empirical intuition and its immediate “reality” has led the mathematical-­physical concept to its own development, compelling it to yield up its own latent “possibilities.” And in this process of self-­ unfolding, the concept is soon carried beyond the boundaries of the initial question. It not only provides a scaffolding for present empirical problems but also reaches out into the future; it prepares the intellectual means for “possible” experiences and points the way by which this purely theoretical comprehended possibility can be translated into reality. This twofold movement is already evident even in the construction of the realm of numbers itself, which we have considered as the prototype of a purely constructive groundable order. The realm of “real numbers” could not have been constituted in the form it has taken in modern analysis if the whole number, comprehended by the Pythagoreans as the originary principle of thinking and being, had not pressed continuously beyond its own boundaries, if it had not been progressively “extended.” The necessity of such an extension of the original posited numerical concept arose from the fact that this concept attempted to answer questions that had not originated from within its own sphere but that were propounded by the intuitive world, the world of magnitudes. It was primarily the problems connected with the measurement of distances that compelled number to burst its original limits and lead to the discovery of the irrational. The irrational itself, as the term suggests, was at first regarded as something alien to number and to its inherent logos; it is an ἄλογον [absurd] and ἄρρητον [unspeakable]. It was through this opposition, however, that number discovered its own intellectual force and inner wealth. The subsequent development consisted not merely in juxtaposing the world of magnitudes to the world of numbers as a new and different world but in transforming the progress that was initially provoked by an outward impetus into an inward necessity, into a required conceptual progress. 480 Modern analysis stands at the end of this logical process. As the foundation of his entire theory of irrational numbers, Dedekind states the proposition that it is possible, without any representation of measurable magnitudes, to create the pure, continuous realm of number by a finite system of simple logical operations, and he states that this intellectual auxiliary means first makes possible the development of the representation of continuous space.5 This view also constitutes the principle and

488

481

the construction of scientific cognition

driving motive for the construction of Cantor’s theory of the continuum.6 It is, thus, characteristic of the number concept as it was formed in modern analysis that it preserves its unconditioned “autonomy” over against the domains of concrete-­intuitive being, with which number would seem to have been closely interwoven throughout its spiritual history. Henceforth, so far as its grounding is concerned, number ought to stand entirely by itself. The same relation, which emerges here in a classical example, governed the relationship between constructive and empirical concept formation, between experience and mathematical-­ physical “theory.” Empirical intuition has repeatedly proven to be the element [Elemente] that fertilizes theory – on the other hand, however, the process of fertilization requires a vigorous germ in theory itself. Contact with the world of intuition does not drive thinking outside of itself but rather leads it deeper within itself, into its own “ground.” And out of this foundation, it develops the new forms that can do justice to the complex framework [Gefüge] of intuitive being. The history of exact natural science teaches us by ever-­new examples that only that which has in this way emerged out of the ground of thinking has ultimately proven equal to experience. We may say, with an image borrowed from the language of chemistry, that sensible intuition performs as an essential “catalyst” performance for the development [Ausbildung] of natural-­scientific theory. It is indispensable for the process of exact concept formation – however, it is no longer contained or discoverable as an independent component in the product that emerges from this process, that is in, as it were, the logical substance of the exact concept. The further this concept progresses, the more the sensible-­intuitive determinations from which it started, though not forgotten or annihilated, seem, however, to be taken up into an entirely new kind of “forming” [Formung]. And this change of form is not merely an outward relation between the otherwise unaltered elements [Elemente] of sensible intuition; rather, it seizes the elements [Elemente] themselves at their root and gives them a new significance and in this a new “being.” To render this path of intellectual-­symbolic forming [Formung] visible, we will take up an example in which the general tendency of the path can, as it were, be immediately seen. Physics cannot construct its distinctive object world without the help of another basic constitutive concept beside the basic concept of number: the concept of space. Both elements



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

489

[Elemente] can be effective only in their reciprocal penetration, and the interpenetration between them is so close that even the original discovery of the scientific concept of number takes place entirely in their signs. For the Pythagoreans, the motive of number is still inseparable from that of space: the relationships of numbers themselves can be developed and depicted in no other way than by being exhibited as spatial relationships, as relations between points. However, as significant and fruitful as this synthesis of space and number has proven for the history of mathematical and natural-­scientific thinking, it contains within it, considered purely logically, the germ of a problem and dialectic that in Greek philosophy had already burst forth in the aporias of Zeno.7 For even if we assume that space, that the form of “outward” intuition, submits to the sovereignty of logos, the logos of space is still necessarily different from that of number. In their intellectual structure, both are sharply and clearly separated from each other. The manifold of spatial points and positions does not immediately confront consciousness as a freely produced, synthetically constructed manifold. We cannot, as with number, start here from the determination of a general form of order, with the form of order of “sequence,” and from it derive the whole wealth of particular relations, in a strict and unbroken interconnection of mental steps. Compared with this kind of derivation, space always seems rather to retain a character of the “alogical”: it cannot be exhausted through the pure activity of ordering, distinguishing, and relating. There remains an indissoluble residue: the specific “form” of space cannot be produced constructively but can only be accepted as a mode of givenness. We thus have a barrier here that no “rationalization,” however far it is carried, can surmount but that must necessarily be recognized at some point in its development. And even the tendency toward a thoroughgoing logicalization of mathematics that dominates the modern development of analysis does not seem to have eliminated this barrier but only more sharply recognized it as such. For Russell, who admits of no dividing line between the realm of numbers and that of purely logical form, whose whole effort is instead directed toward proving that the concept of number can be constructed from purely logical constants, a kind of logical hiatus opens the moment that the problem of space appears. “Abstract” geometry is for him a purely mathematical and hence strictly logical

482

490

483

the construction of scientific cognition

formation [Gebilde]: its object is distinguished from that of the pure theory of numbers only insofar as it investigates more-­complex serial forms, investigates the series of two or more dimensions. This purely conceptual, hypothetical-­deductive system of geometry contains, however, no determination with regard to real, “actual space.”8 Rather, this determination can be taken only from experience, so that the science of space becomes, understood in this ultimate sense, a branch of physics, of empirical natural science. However, precisely where the two domains part, where “pure thinking” seems, as it were, to have come to the end of its forces, its sense and goal are manifested in a new direction. For the same basic relationship that we have generally found to be valid between “constructive” and “empirical” manifolds now prevails in the problem of space. The law of an empirical manifold cannot be established, cannot be “found” by experience, except insofar as it has already been sought theoretically and in a specific respect anticipated theoretically. Without such an ideal anticipation of the manifold, empirical perception would never concentrate into a spatial “form.” The experience in the spatial and of the spatial is itself possible only if we underpin this particular experience in certain general systems of order and measure. We possess such systems of order and measure, of diverse intellectual types, in the various kinds of “projective,” “descriptive,” and “metric” geometries. All these systems initially contain no statement of any kind concerning “actual” things or factual states of affairs – they state nothing other than pure “possibilities,” other than the ideal readiness for the order of the factual. Experience as such contains in itself no principle for the production of such possibilities; rather, its role is limited to effecting a choice between them in order to apply them to each concrete individual case. Its actual achievement lies not in constitution but in determination. The larger the realm of possibilities that thought has independently and spontaneously constructed becomes, the less thought is immured, so to speak, in itself and the more it stands open to experience and its determining function. The hypothetical-­deductive systems of geometry thus stand as such on the same logical plane as the pure numerical concepts. Experience, as a constitutive factor, no more enters into its foundation, into the setting up of its “axioms,” than it does, for example, into the creation of the realm of complex numbers.9



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

491

If these systems, independent of experience, are to be made fruitful for experience – if a relation is to be created between the conceptual elements [Elemente] of geometry and the data provided by observation – then a definite intellectual mediation is first of all required. For one series cannot be immediately compared with the other or examined for “similarities.” Between empirical and ideal elements [Elemente] – as the discoverer of the ideal, Plato, clearly recognized and stated – there is no possible relationship of “similarity,” of total or partial coincidence. Whatever community, whatever κοινωνία [sharing] or παρουσία [presence], can be promoted between them does not negate the fundamental character of “alterity,” of ἑτερότης [difference] between them. Here, similarity or congruence is replaced by the specifically proper and new basic determination of “participation.” This participation of the physical in the arithmetical and geometrical can be achieved and grounded in only one way: with certain physical “things” or occurrences, we correlate [zuordnen] certain mathematical concepts, in such a way that this correlation does not imply a relationship of identity [Identität] between them. Once the general basic concepts and axioms of certain geometries have been established, we may ask whether there are any elements [Elemente] of physical experience and which ones are in agreement with these concepts and axioms. Thus, for example, a certain process, the process of the propagation of light, is used to acquire a physical “analog” to what is defined as a straight line in a certain hypothetical-­deductive system of “pure” geometry. It is through such analogical relations that the concept of “measurability” first achieves an almost unrestricted sense: it is through them that a determinate order of measure first follows from the ideal arithmetical order of number and the general geometrical order of space. This order of measurement arises at exactly the point where, through the linking of geometrical concepts to physical experiences, these concepts depart from the stage of abstract detachment and enter into a definite “bond” with the “actual,” with the existence of physical phenomena. This bond, however, has no bearing on the validity of the concepts and axioms as such; it applies only to the use we make of them in the determination of the elements [Elemente] of experience. We do not base the presuppositions and principles of Euclidean geometry on the experiences of rigid bodies – rather, we make use of these experiences to gain physical

484

485

492

the construction of scientific cognition

“correspondences” for the ideal statements of this geometry. According to the mode of these correspondences, according to an altered decision as to which bodies we wish to regard as rigid and which motions as rectilinear, our basic determination of measure changes and with it the form of geometry. In this sense – but only in this sense – every “concrete” geometry, every geometry that is characterized by a fixed determination of measure, comprises certain physical presuppositions and postulates; however, the fact that it can be filled with empirical content only [Gehalt] by way of such requirements in no way signifies that it is logically grounded in this content [Gehalt]. There must first be progress toward the universal order of number and a universal geometry as the science of “possible” spatial forms in general, before a determinate physical order of measurement can be constituted. It was in this way that Leibniz determined in the most pregnant and clearest sentences the methodological relationship between the “abstract” and the “concrete.” Arguing against Locke, he wrote: quoiqu’il soit vrai qu’en concevant le corps, on conçoit quelque chose de plus que l’espace, il ne s’en suit point qu’il y a deux étendues, celles de l’espace et celle du corps; car c’est comme lorsqu’en concevant plusieurs choses à la fois, on conçoit quelque chose de plus que le nombre, savoir res numeratas, et cependant il n’y a point deux multitudes, l’une abstraite, savoir celle du nombre, l’autre concrète, savoir celle des choses nombrées. On peut dire de même qu’il ne faut point s’imaginer deux étendues, l’une abstraite, de l’espace, l’autre concrète, du corps; le concret n’étant tel que par l’abstrait. [Even though it may be true that in conceiving body one conceives something more than space it does not follow that there are not two extensions, that of space and that of body; for it like when conceiving many things at once one conceives something more than number, namely the res numeratas, and yet is not two multiplicities: the one abstract – namely that of number – and the other concrete – namely that of the things numbered. One can even say that one must not imagine two extensions, the one, abstract, of space, and the other concrete, of body – the concrete existing as such only through the abstract.]10



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

493

The strict idealist inference is drawn here: the realm of the “idea” is recognized in its independence, in its original significance without that the recognition of the content [Gehalt] of this significance implies that “pure” space leads to some separated existence [Existenz] alongside the empirical-­corporeal world. Once again, we have here a confirmation of the fact that the relation between the world of “pure forms” and the world of “things” never produces a correspondence of an individual “form” to an individual “thing,” but rather, the two frameworks [Gefüge] can be related to each other and measured by each other only as a whole. This seems to make for an almost arbitrary freedom in the determination and stipulation of individuals. Whether in order to give a determinate physical content [Gehalt] to the concept of the “rectilinear” we connect it with the process of the propagation of light or whether we select another stipulation seems at first sight to be purely a matter of choice, of free association. Even this association must be “grounded” in some way: it must, to speak in scholastic terms, have a fundamentum in re. The foundation, however, cannot be disclosed in any individual thing, in an individual “this” or “that,” but rather follows only from the totality [Gesamtheit] and the synthetic connection of experiences. We select those assumptions on the basis of which we can formulate a “simple” and systematically complete explanation of natural appearances. And since both the “simplicity” and the systematic completeness are always relative, there always remains the possibility that we may arrive at another and more satisfactory result through a suitable variation of the original assumption. This renunciation of “absolute” validity does not, however, deprive the intellectual symbols of mathematics and of the exact science of nature of any of their objective significance. For this significance is acquired not from transcendent objects [Objekte] that stand behind them and that they picture [abbilden] but through their achievement, their function of “objectivization.” Even though this function may never achieve its end, may never arrive at a non plus ultra, its direction is established. The interminability of the path does not negate the determinacy of the direction: it is precisely through their relation to “infinitely distant” points that directions are defined. In this interconnection, we see again how all our cognition of nature – insofar as it is a question of a cognition of nature, that is, of an ideal goal and an ideal task – rests ultimately on an

486

494 487

488

the construction of scientific cognition

act of freedom, on a “standpoint that reason gives itself.” True freedom, however, is not the opposite of obligation but rather its beginning and source. The first act, the choice of certain empirical elements [Elemente] that we take as correspondences to certain constructive formations [Gebilde], is free – however, in the second act and all subsequent acts, we are servants, unless thought, by a new act, sublates the whole fabric of inferences and begins with a new assumption. For of course it lies in the nature [Wesen] of the empirical manifold itself that it can never, in a strict sense, be sublated into a pure constructive manifold. It is never “constructed” to the end – however, it must always be thought of as indefinitely “constructible.” Thus, in its relation to the empirical “givenness,” the thread of thought never breaks off, nor can it be spun to its end: such a conclusion would not signify the completion of the fabric but its veritable destruction, because it would run counter to the “sense” of experience as a progressive process of determination.11 At the same time, the dimension of thought in which we are moving here may be elucidated and distinguished from other dimensions in reference to the problem of natural space, the space of objective-­physical measurement. Space as such, comprehended as a mere “possibility of togetherness,” has no determined and unambiguous form but stands equally open to the most diverse modes of forming [Formung]. In his philosophy of nature, Plato called space the πρῶτον δεκτικὸν [the first that can receive]: for him, space is absolutely receptive and plastic, the substratum [Unterlage] of all determination, which receives shape [Gestalt] and determinacy only through the law bestowing of the “idea.” The construction of the philosophy of symbolic forms has given us a still broader notion of this inner plasticity that inheres in the motif of space. For while in its basic principle, the philosophy of symbolic forms does not limit the sphere of the ideal to the domain of theoretical cognition, in that it traces the force and efficacy of the ideal back into other, deeper strata, particularly the domains of linguistic and mythical thinking, and it finds that a distinctive mode of “spatiality” corresponds to each of these domains. The form of “togetherness” is always subject to a configuring law, without which it could not be constituted, but in each instance the process of configuration takes a different path. At the present juncture, we are concerned with understanding the transition leading from empirical “intuitive space” to the “conceptual space” of theoretical physics. We recall that this empirical “intuitive space” proved



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

495

to be already imbued and permeated with certain symbolic elements [Elemente] – that the form of linguistic thinking in particular played a role in its configuration and how deeply it determined its whole structure. With intuitive space, we have left the sphere of mere “givenness” far behind us; once language has coined [prägen] its first indicative [hinweisend] adverbs for the “here” and the “over-­there,” the near and the far, the process of construction has already begun. With the progress to the space of abstract geometry and the space of objective cognition of nature, however, this coinage [Prägung] assumes a new character. Here too, we start from certain elementary differences of togetherness, which characterize space as a system of purely “topological” determinations. We apprehend relationships of “proximity” of points, of the “apartness,” of the bisection of lines, of the “incidence” of surfaces or segments of space. From this manifold and complex fabric, however, thought gradually detaches definite threads. It brings its own presuppositions and own demands to intuition, and in this way it creates a new system of “orientation.” According to the modality of these presuppositions, a “projective” or a “metric” space develops from the original topological space. The form of metric space is contingent on a positing of measure that appears freely chosen in the sense considered earlier. We determine a body considered as “rigid,” as being invariable in its measurements; we ascribe the character of “straightness” to an empirically existing “line.” Through such a positing of measure and straightness, different “spaces” arise, each being distinguished by a particular framework [Gefüge]. Even the purely topological view comprises a theory of the connections of spatial formations [Gebilde]; here too, a simply interconnected surface is distinguished from a multiple interconnected surface, and definite mathematical criteria are given for this difference. Our consideration dwells, however, exclusively on the relations of contiguity or of unbroken interconnection between the spatial formations [Gebilde], without forming a definite concept of their magnitude or shape [Gestalt]. Both size and shape [Gestalt] become determinable only with the appearance of a new positing of thinking, a new “hypotheses,” whose particular nature constitutes each particular form of “geometry.”12 If we now look back once again over the whole development of the motif of space, we perceive the whole extent of the oppositions that must be traversed. There is no single basic tendency or basic force of spirit that has not participated in some way in this vast process of formation and dominated it in certain

489

496

490

the construction of scientific cognition

phases. Sensation and intuition, feeling and fantasy, and productive imagination and constructive conceptual thinking are all equally at work, and in each instance, the manner in which they interlock and condition one another creates each time a new shape [Gestalt] of space. At the same time, however, we find that with all its inner multiformity, this whole process always preserves a certain constant direction – in it, the “confrontation” [Auseinandersetzung] between the I and the world becomes ever clearer and more vivid in consciousness. The mythical consciousness of space still remains wholly enclosed in the sphere of subjective feeling and spun into it as it were. And yet already in it, an image [Bild] of certain oppositions of being [Seingegensätzen], an opposing [Gegeneinander] and asundering [Auseinander] of the cosmic forces, unfold from the elementary oppositions in the primary life-­feeling. Language carries this separation further and deepens it: mythical “expressive space” transform through its mediation into “presentation space.” However, only conceptual, geometrical, and physical thinking effects the last, decisive step. All the purely “anthropomorphic” components are more and more energetically suppressed and replaced by strictly “objective” determinations that result from a general valid method of counting and measuring. And with this repression not only are all the elements [Elemente] that arise from the sphere of feeling and willing neutralized but even the images, the pure schemata of intuition are progressively eliminated. A transition takes place from “expressive space” and “presentation space” to a pure “signification space.”13 The possibility of this transition requires a whole series of other important mediations. The history of mathematics and the mathematical science of nature show that this process of transformation, though consistent, has been gradual. We shall not follow the historical course here but shall attempt, through the system of the cognition of nature presented in modern physics, to select and point out the individual moments that throw light on the goal toward which this process strives and the means it employs.

2.  THE PRINCIPLE AND METHOD OF PHYSICAL SERIES FORMATION Physical concept formation does not begin with a wholly amorphous material, with a “manifold” in general that is given to it only as such, without any kind of order. As long as we remain in general within the



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

497

sphere of phenomena, we never encounter any such wholly structureless manifold. Even the most elementary sensible stratum to which we can go back offers us a multiplicity determined by some sort of serial principle. The physical concept would possess no point of attack for the work it has to perform if it could not start from this series in the sensible phenomena themselves. True, it does not stop at the form of the series that it finds here; it does not content itself with a descriptive fixation of this series but instead transforms and refashions it. This refashioning, however, would not be possible if perception did not already contain certain structural elements [Elemente] within itself. It splits up into certain spheres of perception, within which there exists no mere “togetherness” [Beieinander: near or with one another] but rather an original “togetherness” [Zueinander: to one another] of the individual determinations. Relations of similarity or dissimilarity, of affinity or contrast, of gradation and organization crystallize. Thus, not only is the sensible manifold, purely as such, given as an aggregate of diverse individual elements [Elemente], but in their simple consistent existence, they also express a certain type of manifold. The world of colors, for example, shows itself to be organized into three respects, inasmuch as tone, brightness, and saturation may be distinguished in every color. The totality [Gesamtheit] of the relationships that can exist between colors on the basis of these original relational elements, can, as we know, be represented by certain geometrical schemata, for example by the color octahedron. The sense of these schemata does not lie in a reduction of the phenomenon of the color manifold to something different and wholly outside its sphere, to a system of geometrical forms: such schemata give us, rather, a purely symbolic presentation of relations that are distinctive to color as such, that are implicit in its basic constitution, in its sensible-­intuitive being-­a-­certain-­way. For us, there is no single “sensible” datum that does not, though in varying degrees of shaping, stand in such interweaving with others, and that is not thereby inserted in a general, though at first purely sensible-­intuitive, order. In this sense, it is a prejudice – from which the traditional theory of “rationalism” suffers no less than “sensationalism” – to suppose that the sphere of “universality” begins with the concept, which is here taken as the logical generic concept. For even within the concrete particularity of sensible phenomena, certain connecting threads run back and forth from one particular to another, and through these threads, the

491

498

492

the construction of scientific cognition

particulars are “woven into a whole.” Even strict sensationalism, whose basic epistemological intention is directed toward breaking down the world of perception and intuition into its individual elements [Elemente], into the atoms of “sensation,” was unable to disregard this original totality in the factum. In Hume’s first statement and grounding of his main guiding epistemological principle that no “idea” can be given that is not grounded in an original “impression,” he found himself compelled to recognize a circumstance that provides a scarcely controvertible argument against this basic principle of all sensationalist psychology. If this principle [Satz] were valid to the full extent, then consciousness would be reduced to a mere reproduction; every power of construction would be denied it once and for all. And yet this radical inference does not seem to be confirmed by experience, even if we remain within the ambit of merely sensible consciousness. For sensible “representations” can be shown that are not simply copies [Kopien] and reprints of previous sensations but that comprise a “production,” however modest, of new impressions. If two color tints are set before us and we are asked to imagine a third that lies “between” them, we are able to project an image of this intermediary color quality, even if we have never before experienced this quality as an immediate sense impression. This makes it evident that the manifold of impressions comprises a kind of “inner form” – a rule of connection that permits us within this manifold not only to line up “actual” to “actual,” one actual sensation to another, but also to reach out from the “actual” to the “possible.” By a pure achievement of the “imagination,” we are also able to inject a determinate content into parts of a sensible totality that have been left empty by direct experience. Hume brings up this problem merely to thrust it aside; the single exception that forces itself on his attention, and which he admits, cannot, in his opinion, controvert the validity of the general principle that representations are nothing other than copies [Kopien] of impressions.14 However, the historical continuation of the psychology of elements, which ultimately led to its systematic overcoming, began at precisely this point. This was the starting point of the theory of “indirect representing,” developed by the school of Brentano, and here too lie the germs of a new and deeper “psychology of relations” [Relationen], in which the basic forms of relation [Beziehung] are apprehended in their independent significance and recognized as “objects of



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

499

a higher order.”15 Psychology achieved a true clarification of the basic content [Gehalt] of relations [Relationen] only to the extent that it achieved the insight that pure relations [Beziehungen] present a problem sui generis – that the elements of form that they include in themselves can never be reduced to mere elements of content but rather form the constitutive presuppositions on the bases of which this content, as determinate content, can be “given” to us.16 It is with the simple basic relationships of “similarity” and “dissimilarity,” of “nearness” and “remoteness,” as they can be shown in the sensible phenomena themselves, that the formation of linguistic concepts begins. On the other hand, we have seen in the course of our investigation that with these concepts, a new change of the total point of view [Gesamtauffassung] sets in. For the act of naming signifies at the same time a new organization that the phenomena undergo: linguistic designation goes hand in hand with an inner reconfiguration of the world of perception. Now one certain, concrete “impression” does not simply stand beside another; rather, the flowing, always-­identical series is divided in a characteristic way. It develops certain centers to which the manifold is referred and around which it is grouped. The name “red” or “blue” functions as a name only in that it points to such a center – it does not mean this or that individual nuance of red or blue but rather expresses a specific way in which an indeterminate multiplicity of such nuances is posited into one that is seen and thought. The red and the blue are no longer names for individual lived-­experiences of color; rather, they are designations for determinate color categories. As we have seen, the distance between this “categorial” framing and formation on the one hand and immediate sensorily “coherent lived-­experiences” on the other becomes particularly sharp and pregnant when we consider the alterations brought about in the structure of the world of perception by pathological disturbances of the linguistic function.17 Nevertheless, language does not as such reach out beyond the sphere of the intuitively representable. It singles out and fixes certain basic elements in intuition itself, without, however, transcending them. To be sure, “the” red or “the” blue no longer possess any correlate directly corresponding to them in the world of sensible impressions; however, there are nevertheless an indeterminate number of color impressions that concretely fulfill the significance of red or blue, that can be disclosed as particular “instances” of what the general name intends.

493

500

494

495

the construction of scientific cognition

Even this bond between the “general” and the “particular” dissolves, however, as soon as we enter into the domain of mathematical-­physical concepts. The very approach of these concepts displaces us into another sphere. The given itself is not only divided here in a determinate way and gathered around fixed centers but is recast in a form that is directly opposed to its original mode of givenness. For nowhere in the sensible phenomena as such can we arrive at truly “exact” determinations; rather, a certain vagueness lies in the very nature [Wesen] of these phenomena. If we distinguish and isolate them from one another, every difference we encounter here nevertheless has a “difference-­threshold” – a boundary beyond which it cannot be carried without becoming unrecognizable and insignificant. The mathematical-­physical concept begins by eliminating this fact of the threshold. It posits and demands sharp boundaries, where perception discloses only fluid transitions. The new ordinal form that thus arises is by no means a “picture” [Abbild] of the former but belongs to an entirely different comprehensive type. This divergence is manifested in distinctive paradoxes, which appear as soon as we attempt to translate the relations that prevail in a sensible manifold immediately into the language of mathematical-­physical concepts. If, for example, we designate those elements [Elemente] of the manifold as “equal” that are not distinguishable in the manifold itself provided that it is taken as a sensible manifold, then this determination of equality is separated by a gulf from the “ideal” sense of the concept within mathematics. The “equality” that can be stated concerning sensible contents fails to fulfill the decisive condition under which mathematical equality stands and by which it is first truly constituted. A perceived content a may be indistinguishable from another content b and the latter in turn from a content c such that a and b and c would then have to be designated as “equal” [gleich] in the earlier-­mentioned sense, without concluding from this that a and c are indistinguishable. The validity of “equations” [Gleichung] a = b and b = c does not imply here that a = c: the equality [Gleichheit] is not, as in the realm of numbers and in the domain of “exact” thinking in general, a transitive relation [Relation]. From this one example, we may see that in the transition from mere perception to mathematical-­physical determination, we do not merely replace differences in the “given” by differences of “thought,” but rather, the total point of view, the measure of observation as such, undergoes a transformation.



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

501

Wherein consists this transformation, and through what individual phases does it pass? The first step was already designated when it was a question of apprehending the aim and tendency of purely mathematical concept formation. We have seen it to be characteristic of this concept formation that even where it relates to intuition, it does not stop at intuition. Here lies the core of the “axiomatic” method whose specific significance and central importance have been increasingly recognized in the modern development of mathematics. Axioms are not valid for given intuitive elements [Elemente]; rather, in accordance with the earlier-­mentioned formulations of Felix Klein, they are “postulates . . . by means of which we raise ourselves above the imprecision or the limited precision of intuition to an unlimited precision.” This character of postulates is not borrowed from intuition; rather, it forms an original determination of thinking, which is held up to intuition as a norm. The validity of an axiom is not based on a pre-­given constitution of elements [Elemente]; rather, it is in accordance with the axioms that the elements are posited and determined in their nature and essential being. Thus, in Hilbert’s axiomatics, for example, there are no longer any independent contents that we determine as points or straight lines and that later turn out to be valid for certain basic geometrical relations [Relationen]; rather, what precisely a point or a straight line is, is first established through these relations [Relationen] themselves. The sense of the elements [Elemente] does not enter into the axiom but is first constituted by the axiom. Thus, in setting up [Aufstellung] an individual axiom or a system of axioms, we do not merely designate the “how” of the connection between previously known and in some way intuitively “given” contents; rather, it is through the axioms that we acquire and logically ascertain the “what” of the elements to be connected. The logical character of the postulate inherent in the axiom cannot be directly fulfilled in any sensibly or intuitively available [vorhanden] content; however, the lacuna is compensated for by the fact that this same postulate determines and literally “defines” a content appropriate to it. Although this kind of implicit definition may suffice for pure mathematics, this does not, however, answer the question of how it can be made fruitful for physics. Mathematics may content itself with the separation, the χωρισμός of the purely intellectual from the intuitive – however,

496

502

497

the construction of scientific cognition

physics demands a relationship of “participation,” of μέθεξις [the one in the other], between the two. This participation is possible only if we can see the “given” itself sub specie of the postulated. True, there can never be a simple relationship of congruence between them; however, it must be possible to draw up a certain series in the “given,” which when continued will lead to those elements that thought, in its purely constructive work, has established as the foundation of determination in general. This relation becomes possible only in that in place of the individual “serial values” that we can establish by observation or empirical measurement, we substitute the value-­boundary toward which the series as a whole converges. No physical “law” can be stated and strictly grounded without such a process of substitution. The “classical” theories of natural science offer us instances of this process of “transition to the boundary” at every step. As examples of the prevailing methodology, we need only mention such concepts as those of the “rigid body,” the “ideal gas,” the “incompressible liquid,” the “perfect circular process,” etc.18 It is only through the spiritual metamorphosis that they undergo in this method that the contents of immediate observation first become possible subjects for physical judgments. In respect to space, the space of mere perception or representation – in which there are still no clearly delimited “elements” [Elemente], no “points,” “lines,” or “surfaces” – must first of all be grounded in and replaced by a freely produced schema. The geometrical logos reaches through and beyond the given.19 It is this logical act that also conditions and makes possible the concept of the “physical” body and the “physical” event – insofar as these concepts are taken not in their substantial sense but in their functional sense – that is, not primarily as an expression of a simple existence or event but as an expression of a determinate order, a specific mode of observation. Thus, for example, classical mechanics cannot arrive at strict laws of motion except by creating the limiting idea of the “material point.” The rules it sets up no longer are concerned with the “actual” movements of given “bodies” but relate to this limiting idea and only through it to a concrete empirical content. And what is valid for mechanics is no less valid for all other branches of theoretical physics. Newton’s law of the attraction of masses roughly corresponds in the theory of electricity to Coulomb’s law, according to which electrical or magnetic masses, comprehended as point shaped, act on each other in direct relationship to their mass and in inverse relationship



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

503

to the square of the distance between them. Obviously, a statement of this sort is not “experienceable” in the strict sense: it cannot be verified by immediate observation.20 Transformations of this sort enable us to posit a genuine continuum in place of the pseudo-­continuum given to us in sense perceptions themselves. And through the relation to such a genuine continuum – ultimately to the basic series that analysis defines as the “continuum of all real numbers” – perception is made ripe for a mathematical-­ physical treatment and determination. As rich and many-­sided, complex and intricate as the physical method may seem, it is always determined by this essential aim. From this standpoint, the abrupt opposition between “induction” and “deduction,” traditionally asserted and formulated in the quarrel between epistemological schools, loses its force. Instead, “induction” and “deduction,” “experience” and “thinking,” “experiment” and “computation” appear as different but equally indispensable elements in physical concept formation – elements that ultimately meet and combine in the solution of a single task: in the transposition of the given into the form of the pure numerical manifold. The necessary preparation for this general intellectual process requires first of all the separation of the individual spheres of perception that are presented to us by empirical intuition, but also that the fluid transitions within each of these spheres be replaced by an exact determination that can be strictly fixed in number. The world of the physicist is also divided and organized at first according to the differences that sensation immediately hands us. At the outset, the physicist preserves the differences [Differenzen] that are already found [vorfinden] here and constructs an architectonic schema of scientific cognition in accordance with them: optics is the theoretical authority correlated with sensations or light and color, thermodynamics with sensations of heat, and acoustics with sensations of tone. However, once again, before the sensible contents can enter here into the newly created schema, they must undergo a thorough transformation. The indeterminate “more” or “less,” “nearer” or “farther,” “stronger” or “weaker” that we can immediately apprehend in the sensations themselves must be replaced with a scale of numerical values, a gradation of degree. Sense sensation as such is not capable of any such strict separation into “degrees” but must first undergo an intellectual transposition. Through such a transposition, for example, the concept of temperature takes form from the mere sensation of heat, the concept of

498

504

499

the construction of scientific cognition

pressure from mere tactile and muscular sensation. The vast intellectual work that is contained in such transformations is unmistakable, and it cannot be overlooked even by a strictly “empiricist”-­oriented epistemology. The example of such a work as Ernst Mach’s Principles of Thermodynamics shows clearly how wide a difference there is between the simple “sensation” of heat and the strict concept of temperature developed by modern thermodynamics. Complex as this achievement is and as difficult as the intellectual mediations it requires may be, theoretical physics does not stop with this achievement. Its specific and most difficult task does not consist exclusively in raising sensible “qualities” to mathematical, exactly definable magnitudes. Rather, it is only after this preparatory work has been done that its specific question arises: the question of the interconnection and functional connection of the individual spheres of qualities. They must not be apprehended in their mere apartness or juxtaposition but rather be thought of as a lawfully determined and dominated unity. Planck followed, in his lecture on the unity of the physical worldview, the historical course by which physics has progressively approached this goal, and he showed how this decisive methodological advance could be achieved only insofar as theoretical thought progressively freed itself from the limits that were set by its initial connection with the immediate content of sense sensation and the organization prevailing in this domain. Only to the degree that it cast off these accidental bonds was theory able to progress to its true essential form. Planck summed up his conclusions in this way: The signature of the whole development of theoretical physics up to now is a unification of its system, which has been achieved through a certain emancipation from anthropomorphic elements [Elemente]. . . . If we consider, on the other hand, that sensations, as has been generally recognized, form the starting point of all physical research, then this conscious turn away from the basic presuppositions must seem astonishing and even paradoxical. And yet in the history of physics there is no more evident fact. Beyond a doubt there must be inestimable advantages to compensate for so fundamental a self-­alienation [Selbstentäußerung].21



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

505

The paradox indicated here is mitigated if we consider that it is not inherent in physical concept formation alone but rather that it discloses an essential and basic feature of “logos” in general. To come to itself, logos must always go through such a seeming process of self-­alienation [Selbstentäußerung]. The development of language has already shown us how speech can penetrate to its own essential form, the form of symbolic presentation, only by turning away from the sensible image.22 However, from the epistemo-­ critical perspective, the essential benefit of this turning away for physics consists in the fact that through it physics arrives at its specific subject matter [Gegenstandsproblem] and its specific concept of the object [Gegenstandsbegriff]. Here lies the boundary line separating the “object” [Objekt] as defined by physics from the mere “thing” of sense perception. Indeed, even the object of perception is of course as such sharply divided from the mere content of perception: it is itself never felt or perceived but comprises an act of purely intellectual synthesis. The synthesis that holds together its diverse determinations is, however, of another and, as it were, more modest kind 500 than the form of the unification that is undertaken in the physical concept of the object [Objekt]. In the “thing” of naïve intuition, the individual elements [Elemente], the individual “properties,” are indeed related to one another, but they still form in this relation a relatively loose framework [Gefüge]. One property stands beside another – they are related by no other bond than that of accidental empirical being-­together, particularly being-­ together at a determinate point in space. Hegel, in his Phenomenology of Spirit, regards this outwardness and looseness of association of properties as the characteristic of the empirical-­phenomenal thing: This salt is a simple Here, and at the same time manifold; it is white and also tart, also cubical in shape, also of a specific gravity, etc. All these many properties are in a single simple Here, in which, therefore, they interpenetrate; none has a different Here from the others, but each is everywhere, in the same Here in which the others are. And, at the same time, without being separated by different Heres, they do not affect each other in this interpenetration. The whiteness does not affect the cubical shape, and neither affects the tart taste, etc.; on the contrary, since each is, itself a simple relating of self to self it leaves the others alone, and is connected with them only by the indifferent Also.

506

the construction of scientific cognition

This Also is thus the pure universal itself, or the medium, the thinghood, which holds them together in this way.23

501

Strict empiricism has always attempted to hold the thing concept at its first stage. Just as the I appears to it as a “bundle of perceptions,” so too does the thing appear to it as a mere bundle of separate and dissimilar properties. And the empiricists also stress that the object [Objekt] concepts of strict science do not sublate this state of affairs, that they are never able to transgress the set limit. Locke finds herein the fundamental and unsublatable difference between the world of pure mathematical objects and the world of physical objects. Mathematics, according to him, is governed by the principle of necessary connection: the simple ideas [Ideen] from which a complex formation [Gebilde] is constructed do not merely stand next to one another here; rather, we conceive in full rigor and with intuitive certainty how the one issues from the other and is grounded in the other. A grounding and a coherent interconnection of this sort are denied us, however, when it comes to determining an empirical object. No matter how much we may enhance and refine our intellectual instruments of apprehension, no matter how much we may advance from immediate sense perception to general concepts and theories, we are in the end left with a statement about mere coexistences, which we must simply accept as such. The fact that the substance that we are in the habit of designating by the name “gold” possesses, along with its yellow color, a certain degree of hardness, a certain specific weight, etc.; that it reacts in a certain way to other substances; and that it is, for example, soluble in aqua regia must be taken simply from experience, with no way of understanding the ground for this connection. Locke writes: I deny not but a man accustomed to rational and regular experiments shall be able to see farther into the nature of bodies, and guess righter at their yet unknown properties, than one that is a stranger to them: but yet, as I have said, this is but judgment and opinion, not knowledge and certainty. This way of getting and improving our knowledge in substances only by experience and history, which is all that the weakness of our faculties in this state of mediocrity we are in this world can attain to, makes me suspect that natural philosophy is not capable of being made a science. We are able, I imagine, to reach very little general



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

507

knowledge concerning the species of bodies, and their several properties. Experiments and historical observations we may have, from which we draw advantages of ease and health, and thereby increase our stock of conveniences for this life; but beyond this, I fear, our talents reach not, nor are our faculties, as I guess, able to advance.24

If we inquire whether and to what extent this prediction of Locke’s has been fulfilled and confirmed in modern theoretical physics, then we can, on this point, once again make it clear just how far removed the statements of “empiricism” are from the facts of real, concrete “empirical evidence.” True, they do agree on one purely negative element: the rejection of a certain metaphysical ideal of cognition. Modern physics has also given up the aspiration of penetrating the “inwardness of nature,” if by this “inwardness” we understand the ultimate substantial originary-­ground [Urgrund] from which empirical phenomena are derived. It sets for itself no higher and no other task than the task of “spelling out appearances in order to be able to read them as experiences.”25 On the other hand, it draws a far sharper boundary between sensible “appearance” and scientific “experience” than did the systems of dogmatic empiricism whether we have in mind Locke and Hume or Mill and Mach. In the pure factuality [Tatsächlichkeit], the “matter of fact,”26 described by these systems, there is no essential methodological difference between the “factical” [Faktisch] of the theoretical science of nature and the “factical” [Faktisch] of history [Geschichte]. In the passage we have just quoted from Locke, the two determinations mingle with each other and merge into one another. This leveling down, however, cuts at the root of the true problem of physical factuality [Tatsächlichkeit]. The facts of physics are not on the same footing as the facts of history [Historie], because they rest on entirely different presuppositions and intellectual mediations. If we set aside the ensemble of these mediations, we do not disclose the pure core of physical factuality [Tatsächlichkeit] but instead destroy it by taking away its specific signification. Here we find a distinctive dialectic in the development of empiricism itself. For the blow that empiricism thought it was striking against the “rational” falls back on itself. Empiricism believed that there was no other and no better way to establish the right of experience as the actual foundation of all cognition than to ground it purely in itself. Experience – Locke

502

503

508

the construction of scientific cognition

once declared – must no longer rest on a borrowed or begged ground but must be recognized as a fully independent and autonomous source of cognition. However, this declaration, which was intended to liberate the sphere of the “a posteriori” sharply and clearly from that of the “a priori” strikes not only at the a priori elements but also at the form of empirical concept formation itself. In view of the thoroughgoing correlation between the “particular” and the “universal,” the “factical” [Faktisch] and the “rational,” any attempt to separate one of these factors from the general intellectual association in which it stands is equivalent to destroying its positive significance. For the “factical” [Faktisch] never consists “in itself” as a pre-­given, fully undifferentiated material of cognition; rather, it enters as a categorial element into the process of cognition. And this element receives its sense only through the other pole to which it refers – through the structural form at which it aims and which it plays a part in constructing. It is from this point of view that the whole wealth of determinations that are grasped in the concept of the “factical” [Faktisch]” clearly emerges, that the abundance and subtle differentiations that it contains within it clearly emerge. According to the form with which it is integrated, the basic signification of pure “factuality” [Tatsächlichkeit] changes. The rational is not the logical opposite to the factual but one of its essential means of determination – the factual itself is filled with a different spiritual content [Gehalt] according to the transformations of these means of determination. It becomes a factum of physics, a factum of descriptive natural science, and a factum of history according to the theoretical question that is asked of it and according to the particular presuppositions that enter into each of these characteristic forms of the question. If we limit ourselves here to the physical framing of the problem, it becomes immediately evident that the “given” of sense perception undergoes a thoroughgoing transformation through the original and basic trend of physics. For the “data” of physics are no longer simple sensations as such any more than the objects [Objekte] that it deals with and whose “existence” [Existenz] it asserts can be dissolved into mere associations of sensible qualities. As long as we stand on the ground [Boden] of the mere perceptual consciousness, there seems to be no serious development of the thesis: there is no serious objection to esse = percipi. Within this sphere the “object,” though it can never be disclosed in



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

509

the form of a single perception, it nevertheless appears to be definable as a mere aggregate of “simple ideas.” Accordingly, the unity of the object appears here to be no more than a nominal unity. As Berkeley says:

504

By sight I have the ideas of light and colours with their several degrees and variations. By touch I perceive hard and soft, heat and cold, motion and resistance, and of all these more and less either as to quantity or degree. Smelling furnishes me with odours; the palate with tastes, and hearing conveys sounds to the mind in all their variety of tone and composition. And as several of these are observed to accompany each other, they come to be marked by one name, and so to be reputed as one thing. Thus, for example, a certain colour, taste, smell, figure and consistence having been observed to go together, are accounted one distinct thing, signified by the name apple. Other collections of ideas constitute a stone, a tree, a book and the like sensible things.27

However we may judge this nominalistic dissolution of the “object” of perception, it does not affect the “object” of physics, because in it something entirely different from a simple interconnection of sensible ideas [Ideen] is intended and posited. It, too, forms a complex whole – however, this is not a whole of impressions but an ensemble of determinations of number and measure. Every component of this object must, before it can be used for its construction, undergo a kind of transubstantiation: it must be transformed from a mere “impression” of the senses into a pure value of measure. It is not tastes or smells, auditory or visual sensations, that form the building blocks of the object here; rather, such sensations have been replaced by elements [Elemente] of an entirely different kind. The thing as individual thing has ceased to be a concrete togetherness of sensible properties; it has become a totality of “constants,” each of which characterizes it within a determinate system of magnitudes. It no longer “consists” in smell or taste, in color or tone; rather, its consistent existence and individual difference from other things are grounded in such pure values of magnitude. The “nature” of a body, in the physical sense of the word, is determined not by the manner of its sensible appearance but by its atomic weight, its specific heat, its exponents of refraction, its index of absorption, its electrical conductivity, its magnetic susceptibility, and so on.

505

510

506

the construction of scientific cognition

Surely, this transformation in the predicates of the thing seems at first sight to have no bearing on the subject itself to which all these determinations are comprehended as adhering. For the mode of combination between the individual physical and chemical constants would appear at first sight to be no more firmly “grounded” than the combination among sensible properties. Once again, it would seem that we must content ourselves here rather with the simple acceptance of a coexistence and togetherness without being able to look more deeply into the “why” of it. And yet the entire development of physics and chemistry, particularly in the last few decades, shows that they have not given up inquiring into this “why.” They have not contented themselves with the pure empirical establishment of the togetherness of constants, but they have gone on to setting up of general systematic interconnections, through which they attempted to render the appearance [Auftreten] of certain complexes “intelligible.” This intelligibility does not mean, in the sense of a dogmatic concept of substance, that “accidents” and “modes” are to be derived and comprehended from the “nature [Wesen] of substance” but that certain universal laws are to be sought that determine the interconnection of different kinds of constants. On the basis of such laws, domains that had previously been regarded as utterly dissimilar were now seen and configured from a single point of view – the seemingly most heterogeneous was recognized not only as analogous but as virtually identical. Hesitant at first and limited to individual problems, this basic intellectual tendency in modern physics soon emerged more consciously and more decisively with the turn into the general and most general [Allgemeine und Allgemeinste]. At first, the constants that described the physical and chemical behavior of the particular matters [Stoffe] moved closer to each other: it is possible to connect one of them with another through fixed relations. As early as 1819, Dulong and Petit, for example, found that there exists a completely determined relation between the atomic weight of a fixed element [Element] and its specific heat: the specific heat of an element [Element] is inversely proportional to its atomic weight. This relation [Relation] found its theoretical confirmation and explanation when Richards succeeded in deriving it from the kinetic theory of heat. Nevertheless, there still seemed to remain a tension between “theory” and “experience” when it was discovered that certain solids of low



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

511

atomic weight show a deviation in the product of their atomic weight and specific heat, which according to the law of Petit and Dulong should have been identical for all elements [Elemente]. These deviations became comprehensible only when Einstein situated the observation given here in a new theoretical general context in that he applied the basic view of the quantum theory to that of the thermic theory of solid bodies. Based on this approach, a new interconnection arose between the specific heat of solid body and “absolute temperature,” as formulated in Debye’s theorem. An analogous “moving together” of constants occurred when Maxwell established the relation between the constants characterizing the optical behavior of certain substances and those governing their electrical behavior. Based on the electromagnetic theory of light, the dielectric constant of a medium was found to be equal to the square of its exponent of refraction. At first, however, this relation [Relation] also had only a limited empirical validity: exact empirical confirmation was attainable, for example, only for gases and not for alcohol or water. Yet once again, the “exceptions” that experience seemed to offer here could not invalidate the rule established on the strength of general theoretical considerations, but instead, it actually promoted a more exact determination of the rule itself. The seeming deviations were explained when the concept of the dielectric constant was more sharply framed and determined through the electron theory of dispersion.28 Another particularly striking and, in a purely methodological respect, informative example of the progress that has been achieved by the identification of constants that had customarily been regarded as disparate is to be found in the interconnection that Einstein’s theory of gravitation established between the concept of weight and that of the inertia of masses. The purely empirical interconnection had long been recognized and confirmed by the experiments of Eötvös and Zeemann with the torsion balance. The decisive factor in Einstein’s theory, however, was that it brought an entirely new intellectual interpretation to the equivalence of inertial mass and gravitational mass, which had hitherto been regarded as an uncomprehended factum, a kind of “curiosity.” The equivalence of inertial mass and gravitational mass, which in the old theory appeared to be a mere “accident,” was raised by Einstein to the level of a strictly valid principle, and through this principle, he arrived at a basic law that embraces the appearance of inertia and that of gravitation.29

507

512

the construction of scientific cognition

In all these relations and connections, it is the general schematism of the numerical concept that plays the decisive role of mediation. Number functions, so to speak, as the abstract medium in which the diverse sensible domains encounter one another and in respect to which they cast off their specific heterogeneity. Thus, for example, the phenomenon of light is identified with electrical phenomena in Maxwell’s theory, because the same relation is manifested in both phenomena once we attempt to express them and exactly formulate them in numbers. The gulf that seems to exist between optical appearances and electrical appearances as such closes as soon as we recognize that a definite constant c, which appears in Maxwell’s equations, is exactly identical to the measure of the velocity of light in a vacuum. It is through the form of this purely numerical relation [Relation] that the heterogeneity of sensible properties is bridged and a homogeneity of physical “nature” [Wesen] established. Planck thus notes:

508

Admittedly the nature [Wesen] of electromagnetic processes is no way more comprehensible to us than that of optical. Anyone who counts it as a disadvantage of the electromagnetic theory of light that it replaces one riddle by another fails, however, to understand the significance of this theory. For its achievement consists precisely in uniting two domains of physics, which had previously been treated separately, so that now all statements which are valid for the one domain are directly applicable to the other – an advance which the mechanical theory of light did not and could not accomplish.

The identity toward which theoretical physics aims is not an identity of the substantial “originary ground” [Urgrund] of appearances but rather an identity in their mathematical presentation and thus its symbolic representation [Repräsentation]. Therefore, the more it perfects its system of signs, the more completely it succeeds in encompassing the totality of appearances in this system and assigning to each individual phenomenon a specific place in it, the further it has advanced in its own distinctive method of “explanation.” This progress in explanation, which is based on nothing other than a strict serial connection and presentation, is today demonstrated by the fact that there actually seems to be one basic series by which the manifold



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

513

of everything that may be designated as a physical event is apprehended and encompassed. The concept and modern theory of radiation has enabled us to group together domains and processes that were previously far apart. First of all, it was recognized that all the laws that are valid for light rays – the laws of reflection and refraction, interference and polarization, emission and absorption – are applicable in the exact same way to heat rays: then, within the sense of the general conditions previously considered, an intellectual “union” was founded between the two sets of radiations through which the qualitative difference [Differenz] of sensations known as heat and light was overcome. Since then, the two have been distinguished – in the “objective” sense of the physical judgment – by nothing other than a pure numerical and positional value, by a determinate index that designates the “wave length” of the two kinds of rays. This union between light rays and heat rays was then augmented, at the other end of the spectrum, by the chemically effective ultraviolet rays, and finally, through the discovery of Hertz’s waves at the one end and of X-­rays and gamma rays at the other, the domain of radiation processes underwent a new broadening, which brought with it a deeper and more significant unification.30 As a result, the totality of radiation processes can be represented in a strictly unitary form; all cases of radiation involve electromagnetic waves that are distinguished from one another only in their magnitudes or periods. The process domain that is immediately attested to by sense perception and immediately accessible to it appears as a mere segment within this total system and a small segment relative to the whole. The visible spectrum that embraces the colors of the rainbow from red to violet occupies the space of a single octave within the total spectrum, whereas the sphere of the X-­rays begins only eight to sixteen octaves beyond the violet, while the domain of radio waves begins only some thirty octaves beyond the red.31 It is the consequent working out of the specifically physical thought-­form and of the symbolism that this form has created as its appropriate language through which this immense broadening has been achieved, through which the boundaries of sensation as merely accidental “anthropomorphic” boundaries can be recognized and as such eliminated. The independent part played by symbolism in this whole development, the significance of the formation of a scientific language of formulas to

509

514

510

the construction of scientific cognition

the establishment of a universal systematization of natural objects and processes, can also be shown from another angle. What has made chemistry an “exact” science is not only the steady refinement of its methods but above all the sharpening of its intellectual instrument, its progress from the simple chemical formula to the structural formula. Generally speaking, the scientific value of a formula consists not only in its grasping together given empirical facts but also in its eliciting, as it were, new facts. The formula sets up problems of interconnection and of connections and the formation of series that far outdistance immediate observation. Thus, it becomes one of the most outstanding means of what Leibniz called the “logic of discovery,” the logica inventionis [a logic of inventing]. Even the simple chemical formula that merely points to the type and number of atoms contained in a certain molecule seems to be filled with fruitful systematic indications. In the language of this formula, for example, certain known combinations of chlorine, hydrogen, and oxygen were designated as CI O H, CI 03H, CI O4H: thus, this mere arrangement already raises the question as to the “missing member” [Glied] in the series, the missing combination ClO2H, and the empirical discovery of this combination became possible only after its place, as it were, had been determined in advance. We have here proof of the cognitive value that inheres in every methodically constructed scientific language as such. It is never a mere designation for the given and present [Vorhanden] but also a way-­ showing [Wegweiser] to a new, hitherto-­unexplored domain: it leads to a process of “interpolation” and “extrapolation.” André Job, from whom I have taken the just-­mentioned example, writes: From this we see step by step how the language of chemical formulas creates a closer accord between symbols and reality, and how this language, which was originally intended to describe only the composition of matter [Stoff  ] in accordance with their weight relations, now describes, and urges us to an insight into, the manner of their production. It no longer concerns a process of designation, but rather a guide to discovery and a method of synthesis. . . . Our classification takes on a new look: it no longer signifies an order that we accept just as it is presented by nature or the accident of observation but becomes an order created by ourselves, a deductive order. And this contributes to giving chemistry its distinctive character.32



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

515

This character becomes still clearer when we consider the chemical formula at the stage of its development when it becomes an actual “constitutive formula.” A constitutive formula, such as that given by Baeyer for indigo, replaces mere empirical description with a genuinely genetic construction; it becomes a statement not of the “that” but of the “how,” in that it, as it were, lets the compound in question rise up before our inner eye. That this turn toward “genesis” is not merely an isolated motif that appears sporadically in particular domains of science, that it must, rather, be regarded as a basic feature in physical and chemical concept formation itself, becomes clear as soon as we consider the greatest systematic achievements of this concept formation in the course of the last century. The setting up of the “natural system of elements,” as it was attempted in 1870 by Lothar Meyer and Mendelejeff, intellectually and methodologically forms an important turning point. For here, the requirement was stated more sharply and more consciously than ever before that we not simply accept the manifold of elements [Elemente] and the diversity that is expressed in their physical and chemical properties but that we discover a point of view from which this manifold can be surveyed and organized according to a fixed principle. As such, atomic weight was first chosen as an ordering principle. If we list all the known elements [Elemente] according to ascending atomic weight, each element [Element] in this series is assigned to a certain position, which is designated by its characteristic number, its “atomic number” [Ordnungszahl]. With this grouping of the elements [Elemente] according to their atomic number, a distinctive periodicity is disclosed in the most important properties of the elements [Elemente]; they are not scattered promiscuously over the whole domain but rather follow a fixed rule of recurrence. The well-­known curve of atomic volumes set up by Lothar Meyer shows with intuitive clarity the consistence and the mode of this rule. The elements [Elemente] that occupy analogous positions on this curve – on its rising or descending branch, at its maxima or minima – also prove to be analogous in their most important chemical and physical properties, in their valence, volatility, ductility, electrical and thermic conductivity, etc. From the beginning, the discoverers of the periodic system presupposed that this dependence of the properties on the “atomic number” must have a deeper systematic “ground,” that it must in some way be

511

512

516

513

the construction of scientific cognition

rooted in the “nature” of the atom itself, and this presupposition served them as a real motive, as a heuristic maxim of their research. At first, however, this maxim was far from a real “constitutive” significance. For the interconnection between the atomic weight or the atomic volume of an element [Element] and its chemico-­physical behavior had itself been established merely as a fact without providing this fact with a satisfactory theoretical account. Thus, in the tabular presentations of the natural system, the atomic numbers that were assigned to each element [Element] functioned simply as conventional marks by which within certain boundaries the properties of the elements [Elemente] were read off but which conveyed no definite physical sense. The further progress of the theory consisted, however, in recognizing and working out this “sense” in ever-­greater detail and of the conventional order being transformed into a systematic order. The first step in this direction was the acquisition of a new, more-­accurate ordering principle, which was provided by roentgen spectroscopy. If one ordered the various elements according to their characteristic roentgen spectra, then within this series the shift of individual lines from one element [Element] to another in the direction toward an increasing index of vibration disclosed a regularity far surpassing that of the classification by atomic weight. According to the law formulated by Moseley in 1913, the square of the vibration number of a characteristic roentgen line is almost exactly proportional to the atomic number of the chemical element [Element]. From the outset, this fact led researchers to suppose a profound physical significance of the atomic number: according to the basic intuition of modern theory, the roentgen spectrum originates in the place of the nucleus of the atom, whereas the optical spectra and chemical properties spring from more “external,” peripheral properties of the atom.33 The acquisition of further empirical facts, particularly the discovery of “isotopes” and the working out of the isotope theory, soon led to the fact that the concept of atomic weight, which had served as the starting point for the organization of the natural system, lost its dominant position in chemistry, which now passed to another concept: the “nuclear charge.” Moseley had already set this concept at the heart of his systemization; he had interpreted the “atomic number” simply as that number that gave the positive charge of the atom’s nucleus. The magnitude of the nuclear charge appears now as the real and final



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

517

serial principle. The “number” [Nummer] that an element [Element] in the periodic system bears, its “atomic number” [Ordnungszahl], was now simply replaced by the number [Zahl] of its nuclear charge, and this in turn was indicated by the number [Zahl] of electrons surrounding the nucleus (van den Brock, 1913). The physical significance of the “atomic number” was now found in the assumption that formed the foundation of Bohr’s atomic theory, namely that the positive electrical charge of the atomic nucleus increases by one unit from element to element: “The atomic structure is uniformly regulated by electrical agency from the inside outward to the periphery of the atom, by the magnitude of the nuclear charge.”34 Sommerfeld sums up, in his work Atombau und Spektrallinien [Atomic Structure and Spectral Lines], the spiritual gain of this development: “We have reached a goal which ten years ago still seemed nebulous and remote; a theory of the periodic system.”35 If we consider the purely logical character of this theory, we recognize that although this achievement holds strictly to the sphere of what can be observed and empirically established, it nevertheless goes far beyond the resigned “empiricism” put forward by Locke in his theory of substances.36 It does not define the substance as a mere aggregate of properties that possess no connecting “inner bond”; on the other hand, it does not take this inner bond in the sense of the vinculum substantiale [a substantial chain] in the sense of a dogmatic metaphysics but rather inquires solely into the “necessity” of the connection in the sense of a thoroughgoing universality and lawfulness. This lawfulness can never be arrived at by the observation of isolated “facts,” however far such observation is carried; rather, it can be found only through clearly determined constructive presuppositions and principles. These principles cannot be imposed on the empirical material, nor can they be directly derived from it. Accordingly, the concept formation of physics and chemistry proves to be just as genuinely “genetic” as the concept formation of pure mathematics. This genesis may be said, however, to be of a hypothetical rather than categorical character. We do not start with a general serial law and produce the manifold of the elements [Element] from it; rather, we content ourselves with experimentally introducing an ordering principle into the “given” manifold in various intellectual approaches and thus, step by step, transform the mere empirical multiplicity into a “rational” multiplicity.37 This principle is never simply “given” to us, but arguably,

514

518

the construction of scientific cognition

it is continuously “given up.” And one of the essential achievements of all natural theory consists in the ever-­perfect solution of this task. The historical development of the modern form of this theory throws clear light on how the transition from “individual constants” to “universal constants” constitutes one of the most important and fruitful motives in the whole process of natural-­scientific cognition. Thus, for example, the beginning of modern spectroscopy is marked by the law that Balmer established in 1885 for the hydrogen spectrum. This law states that the wave lengths of the different lines in this spectrum can he expressed in the formula 1n  R 41  n12 in which R signifies a constant and n a whole number. Balmer still regarded the magnitude R that appears in this formula as a basic number peculiar to hydrogen, and he made it the future task of research to find analogous numbers for other elements [Elemente]. Meanwhile, subsequent research into the problem showed that the same basic number that had been established here for hydrogen recurs in the spectra of all other elements [Elemente]. Balmer’s formula now appeared as a mere special case of a generally valid law that, in the form [Gestalt] given it by Rydberg and Ritz, became the foundation of all spectroscopy. In Rydberg’s formula 1n  A  ( n R2)2 – or in the more general formula of Ritz, 1  R n12  n12 – the number R means a universal constant, which 1 2 applies to the spectra of all elements [Elemente]. Thus, this “Rydberg-­Ritz number” no longer designates any particularity of hydrogen but points to a general interconnection. The nature of this interconnection could be determined, however, only by a further broadening of the whole problem context. When Niels Bohr, in his article “Über das Wasserstoffspektrum” [On the Hydrogen Spectrum] (1913),38 proceeded to investigate the laws of the spectrum not only in themselves but above all in their interconnection with other properties of the elements [Elemente], he was led to a view of atomic structure that linked the experiences gained through the study of heat radiations and the study of radioactive phenomena with the data of spectroscopy, and this view enabled him to interpret all these experiences from a single fundamental viewpoint. We arrive here at a strict theory of Balmer’s series, whose greatest success consisted in the fact that not only was Balmer’s formula derived but also the universal constant R was exactly calculated.39 With this calculation, the constant lost all its “contingency”: from then on, it was recognized as “necessary” – within



515









the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

519

the hypothetical presuppositions on which Bohr’s theory is based. And in the end, this “necessity” only signifies that from now on it does not stand for itself and on itself but is carried back to other numerical magnitudes of universal significance. Balmer’s number, as well as 516 the Rydberg-­Ritz number, became, strictly speaking, “intelligible” only when they were fitted into the general intellectual framework [Rahmen] of the quantum theory and linked with the magnitude h of the so-­ called Planck energy quantum. Contrary to this, a dogmatic empiricism will perhaps argue that next to nothing has been gained by this whole development, that Planck’s quantum itself is a mere factum [Faktum] – a fact [Tatsache] that we can only accept and cannot in any profound sense “comprehend.” Apart from the fact that such an objection would prejudge the future development of physical theory and set an arbitrary limit to it, this argument completely misconstrues the characteristic logical trait of physical theory. For although this physical theory cannot surpass the factual in general, its sense and value nevertheless consist in the fact that it teaches us to know and finely distinguish varying degrees and levels of facticity within this domain. Theory loses all its gains when we allow all these differences to flow together.40 It is theoretical thought that determines the different “levels” of the individual appearances and that by virtue of their differences [Differenzen] in level enables us to order and organize them. What still lies close together in the synthesis, which the popular “thing concept” carries out, is clearly and sharply differentiated in the object [Objekt] concepts of theoretical science, which are based on the exact concepts of law. This increasing separation is everywhere the essential outcome of the seemingly antithetical process, the process of progressive “generalization” [Verallgemeinerung]. As to the question of wherein consists the real “objective” of nature, the modern physicist can give no other answer than that he makes notable the “universal constants” arrived at by his research and, on the other hand, that he traces the path leading from these universal constants to the individual constants, to the particular thing-­constants. At the summit of the physicist’s system stand certain invariable magnitudes, such as the velocity of light in a vacuum, the elementary quantum of energy, etc., which are free from any merely “subjective” conditionality, since they prove to be independent of the constitution and standpoint of the individual observer.41 The path of physical objectivization of appearances 517

520

518

the construction of scientific cognition

consists in ascent from mere material constants, from the particularity of thing-­unities to the universality of comprehensive lawful unities. The course that modern quantum theory has taken is especially typical of this. Planck himself, in a general survey, “On the Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory,”42 has pointed out how his first basic considerations and his first experiments were connected to Gustav Kirchhoff’s law of heat radiation. This law established that in a vacuum bounded by emissive and absorptive bodies at a constant temperature, heat radiation is unaffected by the special properties of these bodies, and he thus proved the consistent existence of a universal function depending only on temperature and wave length and not on the specific properties of any substance. Further investigation of the physical problem involved, however, the determination of two other important universal constants. According to the law of Stefan and Boltzmann, according to which the emissivity of a body is proportional to the fourth power of its absolute temperature, the ratio between these two values is identical for all bodies. This ratio was designated as Stefan’s constant, and the law of displacement, formulated by Wien in 1893, disclosed a new constant, defined as the product of wavelength and absolute temperature. All these questions, which had thus far been taken up separately, were, however, joined together and given a surprising solution through which the seminal conception of quantum theory as developed by Planck in 1900. The general law of radiation that Planck developed on the basis of his fundamental theory provided two equations that connected the empirically ascertained values of Stefan and the constant of Wien with two fundamental magnitudes: the elementary energy quantum and the mass of the hydrogen atom.43 A wealth of particular domains and problems were thus interpreted and understood on the basis of one theoretical motive. It is only if we understand the foundational physical concepts as expressions not of mere “facts” but of such a motive that we can appreciate their achievement in an epistemo-­critical sense: in particular, in that we can recognize the primacy of these concepts over the thing concepts of the “naïve” view of the world. Whereas thing concepts can at most “combine,” physical concepts can “connect” – whereas thing concepts create a togetherness of properties as mere particulars, concepts of physics go on to posit truly universal unities. This synthesis, this new ordinal form, first opens up to us the world that we call the world of physical bodies



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

521

and events, and it indicates the vantage point from which we can survey them as a whole, as a self-­contained framework [Gefüge].

3.  “SYMBOL” AND “SCHEMA” IN THE SYSTEM OF MODERN PHYSICS Let us now pause in our analysis of the natural-­scientific concept forma­ tion to look back and connect the results of this analysis to our general basic problem. We have seen how the form of physical series formation and the new order that is created through it posit and ground at the same time a new “relation to the object.” The basic physical concepts are genuinely synthetic concepts in the sense defined by Kant: they are “concepts of connection and thereby of the object [Objekt] itself.”44 If, however, the demonstration [Aufweisung] of this reciprocal relation between concept form and object form, between “nature” in the formal and material significance, is sufficient for the critique of cognition, the philosophy of symbolic forms must, from the start, envisage this problem in a far wider ambit. If we inquire into the possibility of the mathematical science of nature, we look upon this science only as a special case of objectivization in general. For the philosophy of symbolic forms, the world of exact science does not appear as the beginning but as the end of a process of objectivization, whose roots reach down into other and earlier strata of configuration. The task now arises for us to compare the ideal “consistent existence” [Bestand] of the physical world with the “consistent existence” [Bestand] of those earlier strata – to inquire into their connections and separation, their community and the specific difference [Differenz]. Is there any common originary motive in the construction of the three form worlds that we have examined up to now, and what are the spiritual transformation and transmutation, the characteristic metamorphoses that this motive undergoes in the transition from mythical concepts to linguistic concepts and from these in turn to the physical concepts of law? In all spiritual becoming, we can discern a twofold determination. It is related to natural, purely “organic” becoming insofar as both are subjected to the law of continuity. The later phase does not signify over against the former something absolutely estranged; rather, it is only the fulfillment of what was intimated and laid out in the former phase. On

519

522

520

the construction of scientific cognition

the other hand, this intertwining of individual phases does not exclude a sharp and clear opposition between them. For each new phase raises a distinctive and pregnant requirement and sets up a new norm and new “idea” of the spiritual itself. Continuous as the progress may be, the spiritual accents of significance are forever shifting within it, and each of these displacements gives rise to a new “total sense” of reality. We may characterize the tendency of this shift of accent in the process of symbolic configuration in a short formula in which we distinguish three stages and as it were three dimensions.45 We have already distinguished the sphere of presentation from the sphere of expression. A third domain, however, is now affiliated with both: just as the world of presentation disengaged itself from that of mere expression and set up a new principle in opposition to it, so too ultimately does a world of pure signification grow out of the world of presentation. It is through this transition, as we shall now attempt to show, that the form of scientific cognition is first truly constituted, that its concept of truth and reality definitively breaks away from that of the “naïve view of the world.” Once again, however, the separation – as in the progress from “expression” to “presentation” – does not occur all at once here. Rather, as with clutching organs, thought clings desperately to the domain of presentation even though driven beyond it by the inner law and necessary tendency of its own unfolding. The world of the natural-­scientific concept is constructed in this conflict of two movements, in this dialectic. This concept does not immediately break away from the sphere of “intuition” and that of linguistic presentation; however, to the degree that it permeates them with its own form, it likewise imprints [prägen] another character on them. The mode of this transformation [Umprägung] emerges most clearly when we do not content ourselves with considering its mere results. Rather than demonstrating it through its mere product, we must search the heart of its producing itself and pursue it from within the mode and direction of this producing. The separation becomes truly visible and comprehensible only when we look beyond all the mixed and transitional forms that are presented to us by what is finished, by the worked [Gewirkte] to the formative forces themselves, and situate them in their work [Wirken] before us – if we direct our question not toward the mere ergon but rather toward the “energies” on which the new form of configuration rests.



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

523

The first form in which a sensing and feeling subject “has” an environmental world [Umwelt] consists in the possession of this world [Welt] as a manifold of “expressive lived-­ experiences.” The environmental world [Umwelt] was structured in this way long before it was given to the subject as a complex of “things” with objective characteristic traits, with fixed qualities and properties.46 Whatever we call “existence” [Existenz] or “reality” is initially given to us in no other way than in the pure determinacies of expression. Thus, even here we are beyond the abstraction of “sheer” sensation, which dogmatic sensationalism tends to assume as its starting point. For the content, which the subject experiences [erleben] as “confronting” it, is in no way a mere external one, such that it, to speak with Spinoza, resembles a “mute picture [Bild] on a slate.” It is, as it were, transparent; in its existence [Dasein] and its being-­a-­certain-­way [Sosein], it immediately gives us tidings from an inner life that shines through it. The forming [Formung] effected in language, art, and myth starts from this originary-­phenomenon of expression; indeed, both art and myth remain so close to it that one might be tempted to restrict them wholly to this sphere. High as myth and art may rise in their configurations, they remain on the soil of primary, wholly “primitive” expressive lived-­experiences. Language makes the new turn, the transition into a new “dimension” recognizable more clearly than the other two, though we cannot doubt its connection with the world of expression. There is always a certain expressive value, a certain “physiognomic” character in words, even in those of highly developed languages.47 This designates, however, only a single motive, and language must reach out beyond it in order to constitute its proper spiritual existence [Bestand]. For not the word but the sentence is the truly fundamental formation [Grundgebilde] of language, in which the form of linguistic “statement” is fulfilled. And every purely declarative sentence includes within it a certain positing: it aims at a certain “objective” state of affairs that it strives to describe and arrest. The “is” of the copula is the purest and most pregnant manifestation [Ausprägung] of this new dimension of language, of its pure “presentation function.” It is also true, of course, that, however high we must also measure its purely intellectual value, it too in the beginning still remains, as it were, imprisoned in bodies. All linguistic presentation remains bound to the world of intuition and returns to it again and again. There are intuitive

521

524

522

the construction of scientific cognition

“characteristic traits” that the process of linguistic naming singles out and holds fast to. Even where language progresses to its highest, specifically intellectual achievements, even where, instead of naming things or properties, occurrences or actions, it designates rather pure relations and relationships, this purely significative act does not, by and large, surpass certain limits of concrete-­intuitive presentation. Over and over again, an image, a schema of intuition imposes itself on the logical determination. Even the “is” of the predicative declarative sentence is for the most part designated linguistically in such a way that it preserves a secondary intuitive sense: the intellectual relationship is replaced by a spatial one, a “being-­here” [Da-­sein] or “being-­over-­there” [Dort-­Sein], and the validity of relation is replaced by a statement of existence [Existenz].48 Thus, all logical determination belonging to language is originally contained in its capacity and power of “demonstration.” The linguistic process of objectivization begins with the demonstrative pronouns, the designation of a specific place, of a “here” or a “over-­there.” The object toward which it aims is a τόδε τι [a this, fully specified particular] in the Aristotelian sense: a something that stands in the presence of the speaker and can be pointed out with a finger. At this stage, even substantivization, the positing of things, makes use of linguistic formations – such as the definite articles – which are nothing other than a continuation of the demonstrative pronouns.49 Language may be said to gain its first foothold in the domain of space, whence it progressively extends its sway over the whole of intuitive reality. In this progress, we have distinguished three stages. In the first stage, language holds fast to the relation [Bezug] to the intuitive world in that it fills itself immediately with its content, which it allows, as it were, simply to flow into itself. Sometimes, it attempts to recall a certain objective occurrence in onomatopoeic formations; at other times, it holds fast to certain physiognomic characters that it encounters and makes them known through certain elementary phonetic differences, through the sharper or duller consonant, or through the higher or lower intonation of the vowel. And even where language renounces such direct proximity to sensible values of impression and feeling, even where it treats the phonetic world as a world in its own right, an aspiration is still inherent in it to express relationships between outward objects by relationships between sounds. “Mimetic” expression transitions into “analogical” expression. However,



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

525

the true intellectual conclusion of the process of language formation leads beyond this phase. It is only here that language becomes purely symbolic expression, where even the appearance of any direct or indirect “similarity” between its world and the world of immediate perception has vanished. Only where it has gained and holds onto this sharp and clear withdrawal, this distance, has language completely come into its own; only now can it prove itself as an autonomous formation of spirit and as such understand itself.50 If to this development of linguistic form we now compare the development of the conceptual form in natural-­scientific thinking, we find ourselves from the outset on a different level. The most evident difference is that natural-­scientific concept formation, even in its earliest stage, has fundamentally surpassed the world of mere “expression.” The task of a cognition of nature already includes, with the imperfect means it has at its disposal, a conscious detachment from this world. “Nature,” as an object of knowledge, an object of thoughtful consideration and investigation, is given to the human being only once the human has learned to execute a cut between nature and its own world of “subjective” feeling. “Nature” is the constancy and uniformity that is experienced in its recurrence, that is detached from the stream of lived-­experiences and that confronts them as a being [Wesen] with its own consistent existence. At first, however, the detachment from the sphere of subjective affectivity leaves the sphere of immediate sensation intact. The subject seems unable to break away from the sphere of sensation without at the same time losing all contact with reality and any hold on it. Once the distance between the “I” and the “world” has been posited, once it has been recognized as such, there seems to remain no other way of surpassing it than the way shown by sense perception. It is “perception” insofar as we do not see in it only our own constitution but become aware of the objective form, the being of the object itself. In its beginnings, the theoretical concept thus clings to perception as though to exhaust it, as though to gain possession of all the content [Gehalt] of reality contained in it. The progress toward this goal leads, however, to the distinctive peripeteia that Plato experienced and that he described as the necessary fate of all theoretical cognition. Rather than turning toward the things, toward the πράγματα, there occurs the return to the ideas, the return to the λόγοι.51 The gulf is once again torn open: the bond between “concept”

523

526 524

525

the construction of scientific cognition

and “reality” is consciously cut. A new realm arises beyond reality as the reality of “appearance”: the realm of pure “signification”; and, henceforth, it is in this realm that all the certainty and consistency, all ultimate truth of cognition, are grounded. On the other hand, the world of “ideas,” of “significations,” although it renounces all “similarity” to the empirical-­sensible world, cannot dispense with all relation to it. The modern founders of exact science, the modern Platonists like Galileo and Kepler, not only insisted on this relation but instituted it in a new way. They started from certain basic concepts, from presuppositions and “hypotheses,” which as such possess no immediate “correspondence” in the sensible-­actual but which nevertheless claim to disclose the “framework” [Gefüge], the thoroughgoing order of this reality. This achievement falls not to the individual concept and to the individual presupposition but to the system of these presuppositions. Once again, we find here that modern science becomes truly systematic only by resolving to become symbolic in the strict sense. The more it seems to lose sight of the “similarity” with things, the more clearly and tangibly aware it becomes of the lawfulness of being and events. However, even the founders of “classical” mechanics, even Galilee, Kepler, Huyghens, and Newton, stand only at the beginning and not at the end of this development. Their achievement consists essentially in taking the step from empirical intuition to “pure intuition”: in taking the world not as a manifold of perceptions but as a manifold of shapes [Gestalten], figures [Figuren], and magnitudes. There was still inherent in this “figurative synthesis” a certain limitation: that of the “givenness” of pure space. It is pure space that serves as the model and schema for the construction of all the geometrical and mechanical models to which classical physics reduces the multiplicity of empirical appearances and in which it sees the actual prototype of all scientific explanation of nature. The progress from the mechanical view of nature [Naturanschauung] to the modern “electrodynamic” world­ view takes us one step further. It creates a type of comprehension of nature in which the particular sense data are excluded but in which the dependency on the world of “intuition” [Anschauung] in its earlier form is also abandoned. The supreme universal concepts of nature are now configured so as to evade any possibility of direct intuitive illustration [Veranschaulichung]. The function they fulfill, their specific “sense,” resides in the general and most universal principles of correlation, whose content



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

527

[Gehalt] is not capable of any immediate presentation in intuition. Thus, if we turn to the development of the form of the natural-­scientific concept, the categories to which our consideration of the form of language has led us – though this can of course be done only with a certain methodological reservation – we find at the beginning a kind of “mimetic” phase, which is followed by a transition through an “analogical” phase, until at length the truly symbolic form of concept formation is achieved. Admittedly, however, we have gained with this nothing more than an abstract schema which stands in need of confirmation and concrete fulfillment. We will not attempt this fulfillment here by following the historical course of the cognition of nature,52 but only by considering, as it were, its reflection in philosophical systems. We can summarize the progress of the general theory of nature and its logical form with three great names: Aristotle, Descartes, and Leibniz. Aristotelian physics is the first example of a true science of nature in the strict sense. Admittedly, one could think that this difference might be claimed not by him but more rightly by the founders of atomism. Although atomism, with its concepts of the atom and of “empty space,” created a seminal conception and a methodological framework [Rahmen] for all future explanations of nature, it was not destined to fill in this framework [Rahmen]. For atomism in its ancient form [Gestalt] was not able to master the true and fundamental problem of nature, the problem of becoming. Atomism solved the problem of the body by reducing all sensible “properties” to purely geometrical determinations, to the form [Gestalt], position, and arrangement of atoms. It possessed, however, no general means of thinking for the presentation of transformation – no principle by which the reciprocal effect of the atoms could be made intelligible and lawfully determined.53 Aristotle, for whom nature, φύσις [phusis], was characterized and distinguished from the mere product of art by the fact that it possessed an inherent principle of motion, was the first to advance to a true analysis of the phenomenon of motion. Considered methodologically, however, this analysis bears a twofold and distinctive contradictory character. Its orientation is wholly logical: it explains becoming by reducing it to the ultimate and most general conceptual determinations in Aristotle’s metaphysics, to “matter” [Stoff] and “form.” On the other hand, to make these supreme categories applicable to the concrete natural phenomena and fruitful for their explanation, it must everywhere link them with

526

528

527

the construction of scientific cognition

observations and experiences that are taken simply from the sensible sphere. Essentially, the Aristotelian theory of elements [Elemente] does not fundamentally go beyond this domain. It orders and classifies the sensible data, and it collects them together into groups, but it undertakes no true gestalt-­switch, no intellectual transformation of them. In this respect, the basic concepts of Aristotelian physics scarcely go further in their function and achievement than the pure linguistic concept of characteristic traits. Language already partitions the manifold of sensible phenomena into certain spheres of characteristic traits: it creates pairs of oppositions between “heavy” and “light,” “cold” and “warm,” “moist” and “dry,” etc. Aristotelian physics is tied throughout to these binary oppositions. For it, they are valid as ultimate determinations, neither needful nor susceptible of any further analysis, and on them, it constructs a theory of basic components, the στοιχεῖα. The combination of the qualities of warm and dry produces fire; that of warm and moist produces air; that of cold and moist produces water; and that of cold and dry produces earth. And to each of these elements [Elemente] corresponds a definite type of motion, which is not merely accidental to it but arises from its inner nature [Wesen], its substantial form. Fire, as the absolutely light element [Elemente], tends upward by nature; earth, as the absolutely heavy element, downward; while to the ethereal substance, from which the unchanging and imperishable heavenly bodies are formed, Aristotle attributes an eternal circular motion, without beginning and without end. In this physics, as we see, sensible experiences, which are taken up from direct observation, logical determinations, and teleological principles and norms, still form a relatively undifferentiated unity. Perhaps it was this indifference, this immediate “concretion” of the empirical and the purely intellectual, that for centuries assured Aristotle’s system of nature its leading position and its centuries-­long supremacy. It represented something other and more significant than a merely individual accomplishment – in it, a certain thought-­form through which natural-­ scientific concept formation had to necessarily pass in order to arrive at its typical, truly “classical” manifestation. Modern philosophy begins by dissolving this thought-­form, by challenging not its results but its presuppositions. The new criterion of truth on which Descartes’ philosophy is constructed destroys the domination of the worldview of “substantial forms.” Truth, genuine cognitive value,



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

529

can be claimed only by what can be seen “clearly and distinctly” – clear and distinct insight, however, can never be gained from the sensible as such. Sensible content as such can thus no longer enter into the formation of the genuine concepts of nature. It must be eradicated down to the last trace and replaced by purely mathematical determinations – that is, the determinations of number and magnitude. The way Descartes set out to accomplish this is well-­known. All qualities of sensation are banished from the objective picture [Bild] of nature: they express solely the state of the perceiving subject, not the state of the object. Not only are smell, taste, color, and tone thus eliminated as objective characteristic traits, but also such states such as hardness or heaviness have ceased to be necessary and constitutive properties of the natural body. What we attest to with these names stands in principle on one and the same lines as all the other sensible qualities that we tend to grant the natural body on the direct testimony of perception. If we exclude subjective tactile sensation and muscular sensation, we must also exclude heaviness and hardness. In a world where all bodies that we attempted to touch ceded from us with the same velocity at which our hands approached them, we could gain no representation of hardness or resistance. And yet even in this world, the “objective” definition of a body would be the same as in ours, since this definition includes only the purely geometrical determinations of length, breadth, and depth.54 The pure character of being of what we habitually call matter is thus reduced to space, to extension. And with this, a new norm has been established for all exact knowledge of nature. We can speak of a comprehension of nature, of a true insight into its being and lawfulness, only where we succeed in rendering present the fullness and diversity of its content by a manifold of form, through a geometrical schematism. All the elements [Elemente] of sensation are replaced in this schematism by elements of pure intuition. In Descartes’ first methodologically seminal work, in the Regulae ad directionem ingenii [Rules for the Direction of the Mind], he called for this replacement of “sensation” by purely intuitive schemata.55 And his whole physics – from Le monde to the Principia philosophiae – may be said to be nothing other than the pursuit and consequent development of this one main basic and guiding idea. The path to a “rational” analysis of natural phenomena leads through spatial intuition – where spatial intuition forsakes us, where the geometrical constructability of phenomena ends, our insight into them ceases.

528

530

529

the construction of scientific cognition

It is precisely at this point, however, that Leibniz’s critique of Cartesian physics sets in. For Leibniz originally came not from geometry but from arithmetic, and he regarded the arithmetic itself as only a special branch of “combinatorics.” From this standpoint, the concept of form assumed a new and universal content [Gehalt] for him. It is by no means essential to “form” that it must manifest itself as spatial form; rather, it is fundamentally and primarily logical form. A strict lawfulness of form, which may serve as a basis for exact apprehension, exists wherever a manifold is governed and determined by any ordering relation, however it is conditioned. To establish the ensemble of these relations [Relationen] with systematic completeness and to determine the structure, the general logical “type” of each one of them, becomes the task of Leibniz’s theory of science [Wissenschaftslehre]. This places from the beginning the problem of the natural object and of cognition of nature in a far broader intellectual framework [Rahmen]. The “reality” [Realität] of the phenomenon, its “objective” state, no longer rests on merely geometrical determinations but is achieved by a far more complex mode of determination: In the phenomena we neither possess nor are justified in demanding any other criterion of reality [Realität] than that they should accord with one another and with the eternal truths. . . . To seek any other truth or reality [Wirklichkeit] than what this contains is vain, and skeptics ought not to demand any other, nor dogmatists promise it.56

Among these “eternal truths,” the axioms of geometry form only a special branch, which we are not justified in making into a touchstone or norm of cognition of nature in general. From this newly gained standpoint, Leibniz subjects the foundation of the Cartesian system of nature to a critique no less sharp than that to which Descartes himself had subjected the physics of Aristotle. Whereas Descartes had criticized the Aristotelian explanation of nature for failing to recognize the limits of sensible sensation as such and to transcend them in principle, Leibniz attacks the Cartesian definition of substance for remaining wholly within the boundaries of that which can be presented intuitively and for making the “imagination” [Einbildungskraft] (the “imagination” [Imagination]) into a judge over the understanding. A true theory of nature, however, could be achieved only if we learned to disregard both limits: the sensible as



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

531

well as the intuitive. From mechanics we must progress to dynamics, from mere “intuition” to the concept of force that eliminates not only all sensualization but also all immediate visualization:

530

Let no one suppose that he has correctly apprehended the nature of the body until he has recognized that the crude, purely imaginative concept of corporeal substance, according to which it consists in mere extension, is incomplete, not to say false. . . . For in addition to magnitude and impenetrability, we must assume the existence of something in the body, upon which the consideration of force is based. . . . Thus, aside from the purely mathematical foundations accessible to intuition, we must also recognize other, metaphysical foundations, which can be apprehended only through the pure understanding, and to the material mass we must add a higher, as it were a formal, principle. For the totality of truths about corporeal things cannot be derived from merely arithmetical and geometrical principles, from the axioms of the whole and the parts, of big and little, of figure and position; rather, we need other theorems about cause and effect, doing and undergoing.57

As a consequence, Leibniz’s reproach is that the Cartesian theory is still confined to bodies, to the image of extensive mass. His physics should have taken the last decisive step: it should have freed thought from the constraints of sense perception and from the inhibition of the figurative [Bildlich]. In this way, the way to a universal cognition of nature would have been opened. This would have proven the merit of the basic principle of Leibniz’s theory of cognition: “Nihil est in intellectu, quod non [antea] fuerit in sensu, excipe: nisi ipse intellectus” [There is in the intellect nothing which would not have been previously in sensible perception: except the intellect]: the ultimate statements about the “nature” [Wesen] of reality would be grounded in purely “intelligible” truths. The philosophical requirement that was posited here, however, initially had no great effect in the history of physics. What Leibniz gave to empirical physics was essentially limited to his formulation of the principle of the “conservation of active force,” which prepared the way for the discovery of the principle of the conservation of energy.58 As for Leibniz himself, however, his concept of force led him in a different direction: it brought him not to the problems of “matter” [Materie] and

531

532

532

the construction of scientific cognition

to that of the physical body but to the problem of the “monad.” This metaphysical turn could have no immediate profit for the progress of the scientific thinking of nature. This thinking in its historical course followed rather the stricter methodology of “induction” as it was taught by Newton in his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. And the next great philosophical systematist of the cognition of nature invoked Newton and not Leibniz. This initially meant a peculiar reversal in the progress of philosophical principles: the Leibnizian tendency toward “intellectualization” was confronted by Kant’s concept of “pure intuition.” The unconditional rule of geometrical construction which Leibniz had contested, seems to be rehabilitated here. For no concept of the understanding can lay claim to empirical truth, to objective validity, unless it is “schematized” in intuition. And this “realizing” schema is at the same time a “restricting” schema: it confines the concept within the limits of spatiotemporal presentability. There now arises the reciprocal relation and determination between the transcendental aesthetic and the transcendental logic, which determined the whole construction of the critique of reason. On the other hand, however, Kant, as a logician, as an analyst of the pure understanding, could not fail to define the function of the pure concepts of the understanding in such a way that they received a broader and more general sense, that they seemed limited in their use, but not in their significance, to the domain of intuition. The concept of substance, for example, comprises only the form of an intellectual synthesis that as such is of a non-­intuitive nature. It is supreme among the pure concepts of relationships, which constitute the object of experience; it belongs to the “analogies of experience,” through which alone the totality of sensible phenomena can be joined into a unitary framework [Gefüge], into a “context.” However, to be able to accomplish this achievement, a connection with certain spatiotemporal schemata is required. Thus, persisting – in the form of spatial constancy and thing-­constancy – becomes the necessary condition under which phenomena alone can be determined as objects in a possible experience. A philosopher was asked: How much does the smoke weigh? He replied: If you take away from the weight of the wood that was burnt the weight of the ashes that are left over, you will have the weight of the smoke. He thus assumed as incontrovertible that even in fire the



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

533

matter (substance) never disappears but rather only suffers an alteration in its form.59

However, this equating the basic systematic principle of substantiality with the assumption of matter [Materie] as a permanent something by which all its temporal transformations can be recognized as “the same,” as identical with itself, represents one of the internal difficulties of the critical system. For the principle on which Kant supports his “transcendental deduction of the categories” does not in itself suffice to ground this equation. According to him, nature, as appearing nature, consists of nothing other than relationships; however, “among these there are persisting [and abiding] relationships, through which an object is given to us.”60 In itself, this kind of constancy requires nothing more than the possibility of singling out certain consistent relations in the flow of becoming, of fixating certain universal “invariants.” And this requirement is by no means synonymous with the positing of a material substrate that we must regard as the foundation for all alterations: the representation of something permanent in existence, as Kant himself often pregnantly said, is not identical with the permanent representation.61 If Kant was nevertheless able without difficulty to transpose the formal principle of substance into the concept of “matter,” into the assumption of something spatially invariable, it is essentially because of his historical relationship to the Newtonian theory. Wholly in line with this theory, he declared material substance to be that substance in space that can be moved independently: separately from everything else that exists in space.62 The axiom that space itself and what fills space, what is materially [stofflich] actual in it, are in this way detached from one another, that they may be split conceptually, as it were, into two sharply divided modes of being, is taken from the system of “classical mechanics.” However, with this, of course, Kant’s theory of pure intuition and with it the entire relationship that he assumes between the “transcendental analytic” and the “transcendental aesthetic,” runs into a difficulty that was clearly bound to become apparent as soon as this axiom itself began to be questioned – as soon as the transition from classical mechanics to the general theory of relativity was carried out. Up until now, we have contented ourselves with an indirect consideration of our methodological problem whose development we have

533

534

534

the construction of scientific cognition

pursued here: we have attempted to apprehend its reflection in the philosophical systems. If, however, we follow the problem into the nineteenth century, this guiding thread forsakes us. For in the nineteenth century, there is no longer any great representative philosophical system of thought in which we can discern the status of the theory of principles and methodology of natural science. A philosophical synthesis has now been replaced by a profusion of individual approaches that at first sight disclose no direction toward a common goal. And, on the other hand, it was theoretical physics, in its own immanent progress, that gained as it were a new line of sight, through which it gradually and more and more clearly worked out a new norm for a total view over and above the splintering of individual theories. This norm is characterized primarily by the fact that in it the relationship between “concept” and “intuition” receives a new determination and undergoes an essential displacement away from the ideal of natural-­scientific cognition established by classical mechanics. At first, of course, the requirement of the intuitive maintained its primacy in every respect. The comprehension of a natural phenomenon was equated with its presentation in an intuitive model. And physics seemed concerned far more with the extension of all the individual models than with the inquiry into their connection and their systematic compatibility. Not infrequently, one and the same thinker, in attempting to explain the same phenomena or closely related spheres of phenomena, simply set totally different figurative [bildlich] presentations side by side. In a fundamental respect, even such a seminal work as Maxwell’s Electricity and Magnetism does not shun such a listing of wholly heterogeneous images, which in a colorful sequence pass before us in an almost kaleidoscopic array.63 Maxwell himself continues to follow here a tradition even though his own work contains the initial and important germs of its fundamental overcoming. The true sense of William Thomson’s question, “Do we understand a process of nature or do we not understand it?” which he writes concisely and sharply in formulating this traditional view, “seems to me to be tantamount to the other question as to whether we can construct a mechanical model that will render this process in all its parts.”64 There was no lack of intellectual forces in nineteenth-­century physics that were antagonistic to this view from the very start. If one wants to designate the total spiritual structure of this physics, then one would



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

535

have to call them less a physics of images and models than a physics of principles. The true and essentially methodological issue concerned principles, not images; it concerned the combination [Zusammenfassung] of the different forms of the lawfulness of nature into one supreme, all-­embracing rule. In this respect, a definite and unmistakable intellectual line of development runs from the principle of the conservation of energy to the general principle of relativity. A principle, however, has from the start an entirely different status than a mere concept of nature vis-­à-­vis the possibility of its purely intuitive grounding and interpretation. As pertains to the latter, the attempt can always be made to interpret such a concept as a mere “abstraction” from immediately given sensible-­intuitive data and thus, in accordance with the prevailing view of such abstractions, to dissolve it into a mere sum of such data. However, a principle for the explanation of nature, however it may be provided in details, belongs, in terms of its universal logical dimension, to another sphere of validity. It expresses itself not in a concept but in a judgment: it is initially expressed in a general proposition [Satz]. And every such proposition comprises a specific mode of positing. Its relation to the world of intuitive phenomena is mediated throughout – that is, it passes through the medium of “signification.” The sense of a principle must ultimately be fulfilled empirically and therefore intuitively; this fulfillment is, however, never possible directly; rather, it can occur only in such a way that other propositions are derived by a hypothetical deduction from the assumption of the principle’s validity. None of these propositions, none of these individual stages in a logical process, need be susceptible of direct intuitive interpretation. Only as a logical totality can the series of inferences be related to intuition and confirmed and justified by intuition. If we want to compare physical thinking to linguistic thinking, we might say that the progress from “model” to “principle” accomplishes an analogous intellectual achievement similar to that of language when it advances from the word to the sentence: it is with the recognition of the primacy of the principle over the model that physics begins, as it were, to think in sentences [Sätzen: principles] rather than in words. In nineteenth-­ century physics, the competition between the two motives can be shown in immediate clarity in a number of isolated concrete cases. It is, above all, the diverse tendencies in the apprehending and grounding of the principle of energy that most clearly reveal

535

536

536

the construction of scientific cognition

this competition. In Helmholtz, the principle of the “conservation of energy” appears as a simple inference from the basic presuppositions of the mechanical view of the world. This is fixed a priori: it is a “condition of . . . the comprehensibility of nature.” The task of physical science, in this view, is to reduce natural phenomena to invariable attractive and repellent forces, whose intensity depends on the distance between masses. If we start from this postulate as well as from the validity of Newton’s general laws of motion, then the essential content [Gehalt] of the principle of the conservation of energy seems to be reduced to the mechanical principle of the conservation of living force [lebendige Kraft].65 This reduction, however, is not the goal that Robert Mayer sets for himself in his presentation and proof of the principle of the conservation of energy. This law signifies for him nothing other than a universal relation that connects all the diverse domains of physical appearances, which makes them quantitatively comparable and commensurable. The validity and truth of this relation does not depend on a reduction of all particular phenomena to mechanical processes. The principle states the fixed numerical relationships according to which heat is transformed into motion and motion into heat; however, it in no way asserts that heat in its physical nature [Wesen] is nothing other than motion. According to Mayer, the value of the law of the conservation of energy consists, rather, in that it enables us to draw an exact comparison between different things, without sacrificing their differentness. Motion is transposed into gravitational force and gravitational force into motion, but we cannot infer that the two are identical; and the same is true for the domains of phenomena that the law of the conservation of energy teaches us to connect by fixed numerical measurements, by definite equivalences.66 As we know, nineteenth-­century energetics started from this observation of the first discoverer of the principle of energy and went on to unleash what might be called an iconoclastic [Bildersturm] controversy in the domain of physics. However, the critique that is directed, for example, by Wilhelm Ostwald in this context against the kinetic theory of heat67 – quite aside from the physical significance of this theory – misses, in a purely epistemo-­critical respect, the real core of the question. For this question relates not so much to the content of the theory of nature as to its form, its construction and logical framework [Gefüge]. There can be no question of excluding mechanical hypotheses in general or denying



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

537

their fruitfulness in certain individual cases; the question is, rather, what position we should accord these hypotheses in the total system of physics and what logical rank should be ascribed to them. Are they necessary conditions of physical concept formation and necessary general principles [Obersätze] of all physical theorizing in general, or are there still higher principles by which they must be measured? The long controversy over this question can, generally speaking, be regarded as decidedly settled today. Perhaps the change in the basic view that has been gradually and steadily effected can best be illustrated by the example of Planck. In his first work, “The Principle of the Conservation of Energy” (1887), Planck remained wholly within the “mechanical view of the world.” He still regarded it as the regulative principle of all physical research in general. Nevertheless, Planck has already renounced here any actual mechanical derivation of the principle of energy. When it was a question of establishing the hierarchy of principles and their position in the progress of deduction, he decided on the primacy of the principle of conservation in its most general form, a form unrestricted by any special interpretation: When we consider that the mechanical view of nature played for ages a significant role long in natural philosophy before the discovery of the principle of energy, . . . when we further survey how very plainly the definition of the concept of energy, the formulation and finally the proof of the principles were given from the mechanical standpoint, it is quite understandable that this proof should have gained preeminence among the deductive methods. . . . And nevertheless it seems to me that we should be more justified in making the principle of the conservation of energy the basis for the mechanical view of nature, than conversely in making the latter the foundation for the deduction of the principle of energy, since after all this principle is far more securely grounded than the assumption, however plausible, that all transformations in nature can be reduced to motion.68

A quarter of a century later, Planck determined the relationship even more sharply than here. In his lecture “The Place of Modern Physics in the Mechanical View of Nature” (1910), the decisive methodological conclusion is drawn and the primacy of “principles” over “models”

537

538

538

the construction of scientific cognition

is recognized and carried out from every angle. The true standard for the evaluation of a physical hypothesis – it is now expressly emphasized – can never be sought in its vividness, only in its efficiency. It is not the simplicity of the image [Bild] that is decisive but the uniformity of the explanation, the subsumption of the totality of natural phenomena under supreme comprehensive rules. From this consideration now arises a construction of the theory of nature whose universality exceeds not only the postulates, on which the mechanical view of the world was grounded, but even the principle of the conservation of energy. The first step toward such a theory was implied by the principle of relativity, according to which the four “dimensions” of the physical world are fundamentally equivalent to and interchangeable with one another. As the supreme physical law, as the crown of the whole system of nature, it then proves to be the principle of least effect, which contains the four world coordinates in a perfectly symmetrical arrangement: From this central principle four fully equivalent principles radiate in four directions, corresponding to the four dimensions of the world: to the spatial dimensions corresponds the (threefold) principle of dynamic magnitude; to the temporal dimension corresponds the principle of energy. Never before was it possible to trace the underlying significance and common origin [Ursprung] of these principles so far back toward their roots.

And indeed the “principle of least effect” gives a new and comprehensive aspect of the totality of nature, since the principle of the conservation of energy may be inferred from it, whereas conversely the principle of least effect cannot be derived from the principle of the conservation of energy. Both in its significance and in its application, it proves wholly independent of the relationship to the mechanical worldview. It has been particularly fruitful in its application to the domain of extra-­mechanical physics – Larmor and Schwarzschild, for example, were able to derive the basic equations of electrodynamics and electronics from the principle of least effect.69 The physics of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century could not have achieved this advance to principles of ever-­increasing breadth and universality, could not have attained its present intellectual heights, if it had not steadily freed itself from the limits



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

539

not only of sensible sensation but also of intuition and geometrical-­ mechanical “presentation.” The fact that this liberation did not involve a turning away from the world of intuition in itself is self-­evident, in that of course in intuition all physical theory must seek its ultimate confirmation. Physical thinking, however, can arrive at this confirmation, 539 this enrichment and fertilization of intuition, only because it does not confine itself a priori to intuition but learns to know and assert its own self-­legislation, its distinctive “autarchy,” with ever-­increasing depth and purity. There is, in the history of modern physics, perhaps no clearer example of this state of affairs than the development of the theory of ether. Almost every phase that physical thought has passed through here likewise constitutes a characteristic stage in a general methodological process. Newton’s emission theory explains the process of light propagation by directly relating it and reducing it to the process of material motion. Light “consists” of infinitesimal material particles that are emitted by the light source in all directions with set velocities that are different for each color. New observations showed this form of explanation to be untenable: the phenomena of interference necessitated a reversion from the emission theory to the “undulation theory,” which had already been formulated by Christian Huyghens. The general tendency, however, continued to search for a clue for an explanation for the unknown in the empirically known in the intuitively tangible processes that was manifested in the phenomenon of light. The game of the forming of analogies was repeatedly brought to bear at this point. It seemed possible to “comprehend” the motion of light only by comparing it with the spreading of a wave on the surface of water or the vibrations of an elastic string. Meanwhile, the more “comparisons” of this kind were adopted – that is, the more they were spun out – the greater the difficulties they encountered. The more refined the intuitive descriptions that were given to its constitution, the more paradoxical light ether appeared. In time, it became a veritable “wooden iron”: a formation [Gebilde] that should unite properties that appear to conflict with each other based on all other experiences. Every attempt to eliminate these contradictions by introducing new ad hoc fabricated supporting assumptions led only deeper into the labyrinth; the ether became the “problem child of mechanical theory.” And yet, basically, the Ariadne’s thread that would ultimately lead out of this 540

540

541

the construction of scientific cognition

labyrinth was found once Maxwell had defined light as an electrodynamic process. For the most important fundamental step had now been taken: the transition from the physics of matter to pure “field physics.” The reality [Realität] that we designate as a “field” is no longer thought of as a complex of physical things; rather, it is the expression for an ensemble of physical relations [Relationen]. If we extract certain elements [Elemente] from these relations [Relationen], if we consider individual positions of the field for themselves, this nevertheless never signifies that we can also factually separate them in intuition and disclose them as isolated intuitive formations [Gebilde]. Each of these elements [Elemente] is instead conditioned by the whole to which it belongs; in fact, it is first “defined” through this whole. It is no longer possible here to detach an individual “part,” a substantial particle, from the field and follow the movement of these particle for a certain time. The method of defining a determinate physical “object” by a mode of “pointing,” a τόδε τι [this, fully specified particular], however refined, is precluded from the beginning. This form of “demonstration” fails – and must be replaced by a far more complex form of physical “deduction.” In the ether of modern physics – as Eddington expressed this state of affairs – we can no longer set our finger on a definite place and maintain that this or that one of its parts was in this place a few seconds ago.70 Accordingly, the numerical identity that we otherwise regard here as one of the essential determinations of the “thing” – including those of “immediate” experience and mechanical masses as the substantial “bearer” of motion – can no longer be maintained. On the other hand, the objective validity and objective significance of the physical concepts is in no way jeopardized by this abandonment of this form of thingness; rather, it is now grounded in a deeper and more general sense. True, the single position in the ether can no longer be designated and distinguished from others by any sort of concrete “characteristic traits.” Rather, each of these positions is defined abstractly by two “coordinates,” by the magnitude and direction of the electrical and magnetic vector. And the “nature” [Wesen] of light no longer consists of something comparable to an “undulation” or a “vibration” in the intuitive sense of the word but in the periodic alterations of a vector, whose direction is always to be comprehended as perpendicular to the direction of propagation. It was this “formalistic theory of light” that first succeeded in eliminating the contradictions that inevitably clung to



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

541

every picture [Bild] of the ether.71 Only once physics renounced in principle this intuition of ether as a kind of “elastic solid body”72 was the way laid open for a new view that would change the concept of matter from the ground up. And this transformation shows once again an inner consequence, a strict methodological continuity. It seemed at first as though physics could content itself with simply setting the newly acquired concept of ether alongside the concept of matter. There arose a dualism between “matter” and “field”; ether and matter form two different and separate essential beings, which, however, are connected by a continuous interaction. This dualism was sublated, however, by the theory of relativity. Now matter no longer appears as a physical existence alongside the field but is reduced to the field: it became a “product of the field.”73 Faraday already prepared the way for this turn; already for him, the “reality” [Realität] of matter ultimately dissolves into lines of force. In Mie’s theory of matter, the opposition of “body” and “field” is eliminated altogether: the body itself is constructed purely of electricity.74 If in this way matter appears, as it were, to be a product of ether, then it would obviously be a ὕστερον πρότερον [latter former] if we were to attribute any properties analogous to those of matter to the ether itself. We must think of it, relative to matter, as “propertyless,” in order to arrive at a true derivation of the material properties.75 If we still wish to continue to speak of a particular “object,” then this object must be thought of not as a substantial “background” for determinate relations [Relationen] but solely as their expression and embodiment [Inbegriff]. Einstein declared in his Leyden lecture “Ether and the Theory of Relativity” that even the general theory of relativity did not have to abandon the concept of ether: it must only cease to attribute any definite state of motion to the ether, since the ether may justly be said to be at rest in any system, however moved. An ether of the sort, that it may be said neither to be at rest nor to move with a determinate velocity is, however, obviously no longer an individual “thing” that can in any way be realized in representation and endowed with certain intuitive characteristic traits and properties. The ether in this sense has no other determinations than those belonging to the field itself and thus is distinguished from the field only by name. With this, a distinctive dialectical process in physics reached its conclusion: the consequent construction of the representation of ether has

542

542

543

the construction of scientific cognition

led to the sublation of this very representation. Physics has with this definitively left the realm of “presentation” and of presentability in general for a more abstract realm. The schematism of images has given way to the symbolism of principles. Of course, the empirical origins [Ursprung] of modern physical theory has not been affected in the least by this insight. Physics, however, no longer deals directly with the existent as the materially actual; rather, it deals with its “framework” [Gefüge], its formal condition. The tendency toward unification has triumphed over the tendency toward illustration: the synthesis, which is accomplished by the pure concepts of law, has shown itself superior to combination [Zusammenfassung] in thing concepts. Order has thus become the actual, “absolute” basic concept of physics: the world itself is no longer depicted as a togetherness of thing-­unities but as an order of “events” [Ereignisse].76 According to Weyl, Intuitive space and time may not serve as the medium in which the physics of the external world is constructed, but are replaced by a four-­ dimensional continuum in the abstract arithmetical sense. Whereas for Huyghens the colors were “in reality” vibrations of the ether, now they appear only as mathematical, functional processes of a periodic character; and in the functions four independent variables appear as representatives of the spatiotemporal medium related to coordinates. Thus, what remains is ultimately a symbolic construction in the exact sense as that carried out by Hilbert in mathematics.77

And in another respect as well, Huyghens may provide a deeper insight into the mode and direction of the development that leads from classical mechanics to the worldview of modern relativistic physics. For Huyghens embodies a certain methodological summit within the classical theory: he was the physical thinker who first carried through a purely kinetic view of world events with true universality and scientific rigor. All the phenomena of nature were subjected to this viewpoint. For Huyghens, there was no opposition between the realm of “living forces”78 and of “forces in tension,” between “kinetic” and “potential” energy. Rather, for him, all natural events merge into the actual motion of infinitesimal material particles, which themselves are regarded as invariable substantial individual beings [Einzelwesen]. The physics of the ether that he



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

543

projected and the physics of “ponderable” masses were identical in this respect. According to Huyghens, we can explain light and gravitation only if they are reduced to motions, to spatial translations of the smallest independently existing particles of ether. And he regarded the law of the conservation of living force as the fundamental principle that determines and regulates the interaction between moving particles. All actuality in nature consists of a change in the spatial distribution of kinetic energy, whose sum remains invariable. To gain a complete picture of the world events, intuitable in all its components, we must, as it were, follow this translation of energy from place to place. Where immediate observation shows us – as in the phenomena of inelastic collision – a loss of living force, we are compelled, in order to obtain a satisfactory systematic explanation, to regard this loss as illusory. The energy that is lost in sensible perceptible bodies is transformed into another form, into the motion of the ether atoms, whence under certain conditions it is transferred back to corporeal masses. The supply of kinetic energy [Bewegungsenergie] that has gathered in the ether as in a great reservoir flows back from it into the atoms of bodies. Thus, it is in the law of collision that Huyghens finds the model and prototype of all natural laws. And the collision itself is not regarded and described simply as a sensible phenomenon but is carried back to purely “rational,” mathematically formulable general principles. The validity of such principles, along with the hypothesis that the atoms as the ultimate parts of matter must be invariable and absolutely solid, forms the necessary condition in which alone a science of nature can be grounded. In his “history of atomism” Lasswitz gives an excellent exposition of Huyghens’ basic theory and also connects this presentation to a general consideration in which he attempts to give an epistemo-­critical legitimization, a “transcendental deduction,” of this theory. According to him, the kinetic theory of atoms does not represent one particular basic physicalistic view, which can be set alongside other explanations as relatively equal in right, but rather, it is the norm and prototype of the exact comprehension of nature in general. Here, for the first time, the diverse means of thinking that are indispensable for detaching a permanent physical being, an “objective” nature, from the flux of our conscious lived-­experiences are placed in a perfect ideal balance. The first of these means of thinking is the category of substantiality. It expresses the first

544

544

545

the construction of scientific cognition

basic relation of unity, which consists in the predicate’s adherence to a subject as a close determination and makes it a perceptible individual thing with given properties. The scientific expression for this individual-­ thingness is the concept of the atom as the fixed, indestructible bearer of all transformations. So far, however, the transformations themselves are not yet posited and determined. The event in its true sense is not so much grounded as negated by substance. Another principle is thus required here before changes and variation of determinations as such can be objectified. Just as substance relates to space, so too does this new principle relate to time. It establishes a lawfulness that connects the various successive states of one and the same substance. We require a means by which to think the given as becoming. Science discovered this new means of thinking, that of “variability,” only when, by means of the basic concept of the analysis of the infinite, it rigorously defined the concept of variable magnitude and learned how to give exact mathematical expression to the relation between diverse variable magnitudes: “Here we are dealing with that unitary relation of consciousness that connects the sensible given in such a way that it does not, as in the substance, obtain identity with itself through its predicate, however detached from the interconnection with all other givens; rather, it is comprehended as a fulfillment of time, though it is marked as a unitary element [Element] in a continuum, however it is not separate from that continuum as a position that independently contains within it a law of becoming, of continuation [Fortsetzung], by which the further lawful fulfillment of time is guaranteed.” It is through this new means of thinking that a relation is established between substances, that a causality between them becomes definable. And Huyghens’ theoretical construction of kinetic atomics strikes Lasswitz as one of the high points of the modern scientific thinking of nature, because here the two basic requirements of this thinking, which are separated in the epistemo-­critical analysis, work together in an exemplary way in their achievement. Huyghens objectified the sensible fact of the transformation of bodies into the principles of mechanics as a continuous and reciprocal causal determination. The invariable bearer of motion is provided by the concept of the rigid atom, and the reciprocal effect between the individual elements of the corporal world is supplied by the law of the conservation of the algebraic sum of kinetic magnitudes and



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

545

by the law of the conservation of energy. There is no more talk here of the sensible representation that had accompanied atomic theory throughout the whole course of its history, the representation of atoms as small, hard bodies. Huyghens made the corpuscular theory into a science by this advance, by overcoming this sensible representation and replacing it with rational, mathematically formulated concepts. The absolute atom and the totality of moving atoms are conceptual formations [Gebilde]; their coincidence in space no longer signifies the anthropomorphism of a collision, but the geometrical determination of a place at a given time; and their behavior after the so-­called collision is not derived according to the analogy of the bouncing back of sensible bodies, but determined by the mathematical formula that regulates the distribution of velocities.79

The epistemo-­critical deduction that is given here of the system of physics is a hypothetical deduction: it goes back to a certain historically given state of research and takes it as the basis of the “factum of science.” Lasswitz himself, as a strictly critical thinker, is far from regarding this factum as immutable and definitive: Never may critical philosophy presume to determine the conditions [of experience] and the principles of physics a priori; rather, it can do this only through the historical process; and just as physical cognition [changes], so does the theory historically change what the content of the transcendental conditions of experience are. The essential difference between the transcendental principles and the changing theories lies not in how the principles of scientific cognition are formulated in the consciousness of human beings of a given epoch but in the fact that they must be formulated, that there is an eternal determination for the direction of consciousness, a supreme law of objectivization. . . . What means of thinking will be newly discovered, which ones will vanish from the consciousness of human beings, is an insoluble question; it suffices if each cultural epoch becomes conscious of its own means of thinking as the synthetic unities which guarantee the possibility of scientific experience amid the vacillations and gropings of the special investigations and hypotheses, by showing the shifting theoretical

546

546

the construction of scientific cognition

content to be dependent not only on empirical accident but also on an enduring tendency of consciousness.80

547

548

If we approach modern relativistic physics with the general philosophical attitude that is expressed in these lines and compare it to the picture [Bild] of kinetic atomics as Laswitz historically sketched it and as he had tried to establish it epistemo-­critically, then the basic motives of the theoretical transformation, which physics had undergone in the last decades, stand out in a particularly incisive and instructive manner. Modern physics can also not do without the two “means of thinking” that Lasswitz applies: “substantiality” and “variability.” In making use of these means of thinking, it at the same time moves them, however, into a new systematic relationship. It can no longer separate them from each other by relating substance essentially and primarily to space and alteration essentially to time. For this separation would imply that space and time can themselves be sharply separated from one another in the description of the physical world, that they confront each other as independent basic forms in the construction of physics. The contesting of this assumption forms, however, the beginning of relativistic physics. According to Minkowski’s well-­known formulation, space for itself and time for itself sink here into shadows, and only a kind of union of the two proves independence. What is given by phenomena is only the four-­ dimensional world in space and time, a world in which the projection in space and time can still be undertaken with a certain freedom.81 It follows from this that we may not, as Huyghens does in his derivation of kinetic atomics, simply take the motives of permanence and alteration as contrary motives, which can indeed complement one another but must remain sharply separate in their basic significance. There is, rather, one principle here that determines permanence as well as alteration and connects the two in a thoroughgoing correlation with each other. The world is no longer taken as a world of constant “things” whose “properties” change in time; rather, it has become a self-­contained system of “events,” each of which is determined by four equivalent coordinates.82 And now, there is no longer an independent world-­content that is simply taken up into the finished “forms” of “the” space and “the” time; rather, space, time, and matter are indissolubly linked and are definable only in respect to one another. In the physical sense, we may now regard



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

547

as really valid only the synthesis, the reciprocal relation and reciprocal determination between space, time, and matter, whereas each taken for itself has ceased to be anything more than a mere abstraction. Spatiality, temporality, and materiality are still elements in physical reality; however, these elements can no longer be treated, as in the older outlook, like pieces from which reality is pieced together. There is no longer, as in the Newtonian theory, an “empty” space into which the materially [stofflich] real moves “as into a ready-­made apartment house.” The concept of the “metric field” has provided a unitary and supreme concept that draws together the particular viewpoints of space, time, and matter [Materie] in an entirely new way. The world is defined in a systematic unity as a (3 + 1) dimensional metric manifold; all physical field phenomena are manifestations of world metrics.83 Energy is also no longer the “indestructible object” as Robert Mayer has, for example, described it, and that as such formed a kind of counterpart to a likewise indestructible mass. The dualism between mass and energy is sublated by Einstein’s principle of the “inertia of energy.” The principles of the conservation of mass and the conservation of energy are united into a single principle by the theory of relativity.84 The principle of energy is indissolubly connected to the principle of the conservation of impulse: it is only the time component of a law that is invariant with respect to Lorentz’s transformations, and whose spatial components state the conservation of impulse. This framing of the law of conservation discloses a “substance” of an entirely new kind and order. And this perhaps is the supreme triumph of the pure thought of substance over the mere representation of substance. What we define as the ultimate physical real has cast off all semblance of thingness: there is no longer any sense in speaking of one and the same matter at different times.85 And yet, once again, this abandonment of thingness does not impair the “objectivity” of physics here but rather grounds it in a new and deeper sense. For this objectivity is not a problem of presentation; rather, it is a problem of pure signification. What we call the object is no longer a schematizable, a realizable “something” in intuition with definite spatial and temporal predicates; rather, it is a point of unity to be apprehended in a purely intellectual way. The object as such can never be “represented”: in accordance with the definition that Kant worked out clearly in principle, it is a mere X “in relation to which representations have synthetic unity.”86

549

548

550

the construction of scientific cognition

In an earlier investigation, I set out to show that this progress from thing-­concepts to relation-­concepts [Relationsbegriffen], from the positing of constant thing-­unities to that of pure lawful constancy, is characteristic of the whole natural-­scientific worldview of modern times, beginning with Galileo and Kepler, and to show that this universal logical tendency was already at work in the system of “classical mechanics.” The last phase of physics, which was ushered in by Einstein’s special theory of relativity, was not included in this investigation. We may say today that this phase drew the ultimate consequences from the preceding development, which in a purely methodological sense may in a way be said to form its conclusion. Everything “substantial” is purely and completely transposed here into the functional: true and definitive “permanence” is no longer imputed to an existence propagated in space and time, but rather, those magnitudes and relations of magnitudes now form the universal constants for every description of physical events. It is the invariance of such relations and not the existence [Existenz] of any particular entities that forms the ultimate stratum of objectivity.87 There remains only one domain of modern physics that at first sight seems to stand opposed to this basic view of the inner law of its progress. Although atomics, in the form that the classical system has given it, has been abandoned, although the purely kinetic worldview, as it was constructed by Huyghens, has been given up, the concept of the atom as such has experienced a brilliant resurrection. The theory of the atomic structure of matter has been confirmed on all sides and is among the most certain conclusions of modern physics. Since the findings of spectroscopy made possible an insight into the “interior” of the atom, since Laue, for example, using crystals as a “point lattice,” obtained his well-­known “diffraction patterns,”88 there has been a growing impression that the world of the atom has been unlocked and made accessible to direct intuition. Even the extraordinary fruitfulness of Bohr’s atomic theory seemed to be due above all to the fact that it united a vast wealth of empirical facts into one view and presented them in a simple model of supreme intuitive clarity. Nevertheless, it is precisely in the difference between Bohr’s atomic model and the manner of representing it that had prevailed in the “classical” form of atomics, that one can appreciate the change in the general methodological approach. For as it has rightly been pointed out, the atom has now become a “thoroughly extensible relative concept.”



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

549

“The old concept of a rigid little ball with a determinate mass . . . and invariable properties has once and for all totally disappeared. Instead we have a highly complicated system of electrical charges and fields in continuous motion and change.” This is a completely dynamic worldview; matter has become a “process,” and what we habitually designate as its fixed “properties” are a function of processes. Even the most fundamental properties of all matter, such as inertia and weight, are regarded and derived as pure field phenomena.89 While, for the older theory, the atom was absolutely indivisible, while it signified a non plus ultra of analysis, it has now become a system that is comparable in its inner diversity and complexity to the great cosmic systems. The atom is a planetary system, the planets are electrons that circle around the nucleus as a center. And the electron has become the actual element [Element] of physical reality, though it cannot, like the “absolutely hard” atom of the older theory, “arm itself in rigidity.” For it continues to be thought of as an individual being [Einzelwesen]; it is bound to the field and cannot be detached from it as an independent substance. Essentially, the electron appears to be nothing other than a point distinguished in a field, a position into which electrical force lines flow from all sides.90 For atomics in its original form [Gestalt], the dualism between matter and the space in which it is situated and moves is unsublatable and necessary. Democritus differentiated the παμπλῆρες ὄν [absolutely full being] of the atom from “empty” space and contrasted the two as irreducible modes or being. Even where atomics passes over from its mechanical form to its dynamic form, this opposition was generally retained. Even the “simple” atom, in the sense of Boscovich’s theory, remains in this simplicity a being [Seiende] in itself and as it were enclosed in itself. It is and exists only in order to subsequently enter into relation with other equally independent physical individuals, with other simple points of force. Such a view does not apply to the electron as defined by modern physical theory: the electron does not precede the field but is first constituted by its relations to the field. Accordingly, even mechanics, compared to the strictly kinetic view, must also adopt another form. The development of quantum mechanics discloses a tendency to adopt an increasingly “abstract” shape [Gestalt], and in its most recent form, it seems to renounce altogether every “presentation” of the processes within the atom and every spatial picture [Bild]. Even this

551

550

552

553

the construction of scientific cognition

renunciation, however, in no way signifies a purely negative achievement; it is rather the beginning, the first and necessary step toward a new form of an intellectual unity formation [Einheitsbildung].91 However, it is of course implicit in the character of this unity formation that the objectivity toward which it progresses and aims can never be conclusively determined. Although the “thing” of naïve intuition may appear as a fixed sum of definite “properties,” it belongs to the very nature [Wesen] of the physical object [Objekt] that it can be grasped only in the form of a “limit idea” [Grenzidee].92 For here, it does not concern the demonstration of the ultimate, “absolute” elements [Elemente] of the actual, in the contemplation of which thought may rest, as it were, but of a never-­ending process through which the relatively “necessary” takes the place of the relatively accidental and the relatively invariable take the place of the relatively variable. We can never claim that this process has attained to the ultimate “invariants of experience,” which would then replace the invariant consistent existence of “things”; we can never claim to grasp these invariants with our hands, so to speak. Rather, the possibility must always be held open so that a new synthesis will instate itself and so that the universal constants, in terms of which we have designated the “nature” of certain large realms of physical objects, will come closer together and prove themselves to be special cases of an overarching lawfulness. This forms, then, the true core of objectivity; it must, however, also expect to be prepared to be recognized in its merely contingent universality and be replaced by a still broader universal relation. I have attempted to formulate this basic relationship in another context: The one reality can only be indicated and defined as the ideal boundary of the many changing theories; however, the positing of this boundary itself is not arbitrary, but indispensable, insofar as it is only through it that the continuity of experience is established. No single astronomical system, the Copernican as little as the Ptolemaic . . . rather only the whole of these systems as they continuously unfold a certain interconnection can be taken as an expression of the “true” cosmic order. . . . [Physical] concepts are valid, not in that they picture a fixed, given being, but in so far as they contain a design [Entwurf] for possible positings of unity, which must be progressively verified in practice, in application to the empirical material. However, the instrument itself



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

551

that leads to the unity and thus to the truth of thought, must be in itself fixed and secure. If it did not possess a certain stability, in itself, no sure and permanent use of it would be possible; it would break at the first attempt and be resolved into nothing. We do not need the objectivity of absolute things, but rather the objective determinateness of the paths of experience itself.93

It is precisely this basic character of theoretical-­physical thinking that demonstrates how requisite, how inwardly necessary to such thinking, is its bond with determinate symbols – it thus follows from this, however, in what way these very symbols themselves permeate one another in a way and are constructed on one another, how they render visible the objective framework [Gefüge] of the physical world as a pure ordering framework [Ordnungsgefüge]. The most striking evidence of this interconnection lies before us in the construction of the general theory of relativity.94 Physical thinking has risen here step by step to ever-­higher spheres; in so doing, however, it has not loosened but rather tightened its bond with physical “reality.” Every new sight [Sicht] that this thinking achieves proves, of course, to depend on the specific “viewpoint” [Gesichtspunkt], on the intellectual horizon from which it has been acquired. The different modes of this sight [Sicht], however, follow one another according to an immanent lawfulness and not accidentally: they are conditioned and determined in their succession not only by the empirical material that flows in “from outside” but also by the development of the physical thought-­form itself.95 Each higher stage of objectivization delimits the preceding stage. However, in this demarcation, it does not annihilate the earlier phase; rather, it encompasses it and takes it up into its own perspective. The aim followed here consists precisely in increasingly “disregarding” the particularity of the perspective, in progressively excluding everything that belongs not so much to the object [Objekte] itself as to the accidental standpoint from which it is regarded. The worldview of the older physics shows itself to be not absolutely valid but comprehended from a determinate standpoint, the standpoint of observers who are relatively at rest in relation to one another. If instead of this standpoint, we introduce systems of reference that are in motion relative to one another, all the fixed “property concepts” that were valid for this worldview must undergo a shift, a variation. Not only do the so-­called sensible qualities

554

552

555

the construction of scientific cognition

show this kind of dependency on the state of the perceiving subject, but according to the special theory of relativity, the magnitude, shape [Gestalt], mass, and energy content of the thing also change with the observer’s state of motion. This process of relativization draws in broader and broader spheres, and over and over again, the center of the physical concept of reality is shifted to another position. The ancient physicists regarded the “place” of a thing as a physical “property”: certain effects emanate out of certain individual places that belonged to no other place. Thus, from the center of the world, in which rests the earth, radiate forces that drew heavy bodies to this point as to their “natural place.” This view was overcome by Copernicus, who stated the “relativity principle of place.” The relativity principle of “classical mechanics” drew the same inference for velocities, and finally, the general theory of relativity went still further, relativizing motion as such and showing that one can always “transform any point in a mass to a state of rest.”96 Thus, we see time and time again that certain determinations that we attribute to the object [Objekt] as “its” states are in general definable only if we add a certain index, if we indicate the system of reference according to which they are thought to be valid. Now “motion” and “force,” “mass” and “energy,” and “length” and “duration” are no longer “in themselves”; rather, they only signify something, and in general, they signify different things for observers who are in motion relative to one another. With this, admittedly, the question inevitably arises as to whether it is not possible to eradicate this last remnant of “contingency,” of “subjectivity,” from the description of the natural events. Is there not some world concept which is free from all particularities, which will describe the world as it is, not from the standpoint of this individual or that individual but from the “standpoint of no one”?97 However, insofar as this question is admissible to begin with, it is in any case directed toward an “infinitely distant” point that is attainable at no given stage of science. We are dealing here with a genuine “transcendental idea” in the Kantian sense, and no definite individual experience can accord with it. We shall also have to impute to this idea “an excellent and indispensably necessary regulative use”: directing the understanding to a certain goal respecting which the lines of direction of all its rules converge at one point, which, although



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

553

it is only an idea (  focus imaginarius) – i.e., a point from which the concepts of the understanding do not really proceed, since it lies entirely outside the boundary of possible experience – nonetheless still serves to obtain for these concepts the greatest unity alongside the greatest extension.98

Physics acquires this unity and extension by advancing toward ever-­ more universal symbols. In this process, however, it cannot jump over its own shadow. It can and must strive to replace particular concepts and signs with absolutely universal ones. It can, however, never dispense with the function of concepts and signs as such: this would demand an intellectual representation [Repräsentation] of the world without the basic medium of representation [Repräsentation]. The concept of 556 reality [Realität] of physics should ultimately be grasped in such a way that it unites the totality [Totalität] of aspects as they arise for different observers and in such a way that it explains them and renders them intelligible; however, in precisely this totality, the particularity of the viewpoint is not effaced but preserved and “sublated.” In this whole movement, natural-­scientific cognition confirms and fulfills, in its own sphere, a universal structural law of spirit. The more it concentrates in itself that which it is and wills, the more clearly does there emerge the element in which it differs from all other forms of comprehending and understanding the world – and the element that binds it with them all.

ENDNOTES 1 Poincaré, La science et l’hypothèse, 168. 2 Cf. esp. Max Planck, Dynamische und statistische Gesetzmässigkeit (Leipzig: Barth, 1914); reprinted in Physikalische Rundblicke. Gesammelte Reden und Aufsätze (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1922), 82-­102. 3 For further details on Duhem’s Theorie der physikalischen Gegenständlichkeit, see 22ff.; also, Substance and Function, 142ff. 4 For further details, see Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1, 130ff. 5 Richard Dedekind, Stetigkeit und irrationale Zahlen (2nd ed., Braunschweig: F. Vieweg, 1892). [Essays on the Theory of Numbers, trans. Wooster Woodruff Breman (Chicago: Open court, 1909).] Cf. the preface to Dedekind’s Was sind und was sollen die Zahlen?, xiii. 6 See Georg Cantor, Grundlagen einer allgemeinen Mannigfaltigkeitslehre (Leipzig: Teubner, 1883), 29.

554

the construction of scientific cognition

7 For the connection between Zeno’s aporias and the problem of Pythagorean mathematics see my “Geschichte der antiken philosophe” in Dessoir’s Lehrbuch der Philosophie. 8 Cf. Russel, Principles of Mathematics, Ch. 44, §352, 372ff. 9 In this basic view of the relationship between “geometry” and “experience,” I stand, as far as I can see, closest to Max Theodor Felix von Laue, among modern physicists. Cf. vol. 2 of his Die Relativitätstheorie (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1921): In 1864 Riemann took the step which later assumed fundamental importance for the general theory of relativity: he established (in place of the simple Euclidean formula for distance ds = dx12 + dx 22 + dx 32 ) a homogeneous quadratic function of dxi with any desired functions of xi as coefficients ds2 = ∑ γik dxi dxk, as the square of the linear elements. This step may be ik

called the universlaized Pythagorean theorem. Every choice of the function γik determines a particular kind of geometry. . . . At this point we should like only to state that nothing physical ever entered into this whole development of geometry from Euclid to Riemann. Deductions were drawn solely from certain axioms. These axioms themselves, to be sure, are not the only possible ones: the human mind can create others. But in establishing them it need borrow from experience no more than in creating the concept of complex number: geometries are therefore all a priori. 10 Leibniz, Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain, II, 4 and Philosophische Schriften, 5, 115. 11 For a more detailed treatment, cf. my Substance and Function, 309ff. 12 The most succinct and likewise the most acute epistemo-critical analysis of this state of affairs has, I believe, been given by Rudolf Carnap, Der Raum. Ein Beitrag zur Wissenschaftslehre, in Kant-Studien, ­ Ergänzungshefte 56 (Berlin, 1922). Carnap distinguishes sharply between “formal” space, which is a pure structure of relation and order; “intuitive” space; and “physical” space in order to show how within each of these three spaces, a definite “difference” must be made between “topological” “projective” and “metric” space. I shall not enter here into these differences – since in the framework of our problem, we are concerned only with the principle of differentiation as such, not with the concrete differences themselves. But I refer the reader to Carnap’s penetrating exposition. 13 Cf. the more detailed treatment in my “Das Symbolproblem und seine Stellung im System der Philosophie,” Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, 21 (1927), 295ff. [“The Problem of the Symbol and Its Place in the System of Philosophy,” in Warburg Years, 254ff.] 14 Cf. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, part I, §1. 15 Cf. esp. Alexius Meinong, “Hume-Studien,” Sitzungsbericht der Wiener Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-historische Klasse (1877), and his articles



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

555

“Zur Psychologie der Komplexionen und Relationen” and “Über Gegenstände höherer Ordnung und deren Verhältniss zur inneren Wahrnehmung,” Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 2 (1891), 245–65; and 21 (1899), 182–272. 16 For more detailed treatment, see the last chapter of my Substance and Function, 326ff. 17 Cf. part II, chap. 6. 18 Concerning “Idealizations in Physics,” cf., for example, Hölder, Die Mathematische Methode. Logisch Erkenntnistheoretische Untersuchungen im Gebiete der Mathematik Mechanik und Physik, 398ff. 19 Cf. the words of Weyl in Das Kontinuum, quoted at 465. 20 Cf. the apt remarks of Henri Pierre Maxime. Henri Bouasse, “Physique générale,” in De la mèthode dans les sciences (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1909), 73ff. 21 Max Planck, “Die Einheit des physikalischen Weltbildes,” in Physikalische Rundblicke (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1922), 6. 22 Cf., for example, Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1, 129ff. 23 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, 84. [Eng. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 68ff.] 24 Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, book IV, chap. 12, §10. 25 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 334 and Prolegomena, §30. 26 Originally in English. 27 George Berkeley, The Principles of Human Knowledge (London and New York: T. Nelson and Sons, 1945), Pt. I, §1. 28 On the facts in this connection, cf., for example, Arthur E. Hass, Das Naturbild der neuen Physik (2nd ed., Berlin and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1924), first, third, and fourth lectures. 29 For further details, see the well-­known presentation of the general theory of relativity: cf., for example, Laue, Die Relativitätstheorie, 2, 2ff.; Erwin Freund­ lich, Die Grundlagen der Einsteinschen Gravitationstheorie (Berlin: J. Springer, 1920), 35ff. [Einstein’s Theory of Gravitation, trans. Henry L. Brose (Cambridge: The University Press, 1920).] 30 See the succinct survey of the general development given by Max Planck in Das Wesen des Lichts (1919), rep. in Physikalische Rundblicke (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1922), 129ff. 31 Cf. Hass, “Das Naturbild der neuen Physik”, 15ff.; and Bernhard Bavink, Ergebnisse und Probleme der Naturwissenschaft (2nd ed., Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1921), 98ff. 32 André Job, “Chimie,” in De la Méthode dans les Sciences, 126f. 33 For all the particulars of this development in thought, which we need not follow in detail here, I refer the reader to Arnold Sommerfeld, Atombau und Spektrallinien (4th ed., Braunschweig: F. Vieweg, 1919), chap. 3; and Fritz Paneth, “Das Natürliche System der Chemischen Elemente” in Handbuch der Physik, 22, eds. Hans Geiger and Karl Scheel (Berlin: J. Springer, 1926), 520ff. 34 For further details, see Paneth, “Das natürliche System der chemischen Elemente,” 551ff.; Sommerfeld, Atombau und Spektrallinien, 73ff., 168ff. 35 Sommerfeld, Atombau und Spektrallinien, 179.

556

the construction of scientific cognition

36 See 507f. 37 How cognizant modern theoreticians are of this character of physical method and concept formation is, for example, shown in Sommerfeld’s comments: We need scarcely stress that with this speculation” on the new theoretical perspective opened up by the theories of radioactive displacement and the isotope theory “we depart at first from the field of facts. . . . Nevertheless, such speculation is indispensable today. The demonstration of the isotopes in non-­radioactive substances challenges us to look for genetic interconnections in the periodic system and to extend the theories of displacement to the whole system and make it seem highly probable that the nuclei too are composed and constructible. With this a new field of investigation opens up to us . . . nuclear physics. (Sommerfeld, Atombau und Spektrallinien, 167.) 38 Rep. in Niels Bohr, Drei Aufsätze über Spektren und Atombau, Braunschweig (2nd. ed., Braunschweig: F. Vieweg, 1924). 39 For further details, see Bohr’s theory cf. esp. Sommerfeld, Atombau und Spektrallinien, chap. 2, §4. 40 Cf. 478ff. 41 For particulars, see Max Planck, “Die Stellung der neueren Physik zu mechanischen Naturanschauung,” Versammlung Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte in Königsberg (1910), rep. in Physikalische Rundblicke: gesammelte Reden und Aufsätze (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1922), 38ff. 42 Planck, “Die Entstehung und bisherige Entwicklung der Quantentheorie,” a Noble Prize lecture reprinted in Physikalische Rundblicke: gesammelte Reden und Aufsätze, 148ff. 43 For further details, see, for example, Fritz Reiche, Die Quantentheorie. Ihr Ursprung und ihre Entwicklung (Berlin: Springer, 1921) as well as A. Haas, Das Naturbild der neuen Physik (Berlin: W. De Gruyter, 1920). 44 Cf. Kant, Prolegomena, §39, 79. 45 On the following, see the detailed exposition in my “Das Symbolproblem und seine Stellung im System der Philosophie,” Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, 21, 191ff. [“The Problem of the Symbol and Its Place in the System of Philosophy,” in Warburg Years, 254–71]: several passages from it have been incorporated into the following. 46 Cf. 69ff. 47 Cf. esp. Heinz Werner, “Über allgemeine und vergleichende Sprachphysiognomik,” Kongressbericht des 10. Kongresses der Gesellschaft für experimentelle Psychologie in Bonn vom 20.-­23. April 1927, ed. Erich Becher (Jena, 1928), 184– 86; and “ Über die Sprachphysiognomik als einer neuen Methode der vergleichenden Sprachbetrachtung,” Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, 109 (1929), 337–63. 48 Cf. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1, 270ff. and 76–78. 49 Ibid., vol. 1, 144ff.



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

557

50 Ibid., vol 1, 135ff. 51 Plato, Phaedo, 99Dff.; cf. 380. 52 For the actual history of the modern concept of nature, into which we cannot enter here in detail, the reader is referred to my Erkenntnisproblem. 53 How this deficiency impeded the scientific development of the atomic theory for centuries may be seen from the excellent exposition of Kurd Lasswitz, Geschichte der Atomistik vom Mittelalter bis Newton (2 vols., Hamburg; Leipzig: L. Voss, 1890). 54 Cf. Descartes, Principia Philosophiae, 1, 53; 2, 4ff. 55 Cf. Descartes, Regulae ad directionem ingenii, xiv: Ex quibus facile concluditur non parum profuturum, si transferamus illa, quae de magnitudinibus in genere dici intelligemus, ad illam magnitudinis speciem, quae omnium facillime et distinctissime in imaginatione nostra pingetur: hanc vero esse extensionem realem corporis abstractam ab omni alio, quam quod sit figurata . . . per se . . . est evidens, cum in nullo alio subjecto distinctius omnes proportionum | differentiae exhibeantur. . . . Maneat ergo ratum et fixum, quaestiones perfecte determinatas . . . facile posse et debere ab omni alio subjecto separari, ac deinde transferri ad extensionem et figuras [Nam] certum est omnes proportionum differentias, quaecumque in alijs subjectis existunt, etiam inter duas vel plures extensiones posse inveniri. [It is easy to conclude from this that it will be very useful if we transfer what we understand to hold for magnitudes in general to that species of magnitude which is most readily and distinctly depicted in our imagination. But it follows from what we said in Rule Twelve that this species is the real extension of a body considered in abstraction from everything else about it save its having a shape . . . per se. . . . That indeed is self-­evident, since no other subject displays more distinctly all the various differences in proportions. . . . Let us then take it as firmly settled that perfectly determinate problems present hardly any difficulty at all, . . . and also that everything in which we encounter just this difficulty can easily be, and ought to be, separated from every other subject and then expressed in terms of extension and figures. . . . Thus, it is certain that whatever differences of proportion obtain in other subjects, the same differences can also be found to hold between two or more extensions.] [René Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dogald Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), vol. I, 58, 62.] For more detailed treatment of this concept of geometrical “reproduction” and its significance for the Cartesian system of physics, see my Erkenntnisproblem, 2, 457ff. 56 Leibniz, Philosophische Schriften, 2, 282 f,; 4, 356ff.

558

the construction of scientific cognition

57 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, “Specimen dynamicum,” part 1 of Mathematische Schriften, ed. C. I. Gerhardt (Halle: Schmidt, 1849–63), 6, 235, 240. 58 For particulars, see my Leibniz’s System, 302ff. 59 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 228. 60 [Ibid., B 341.] 61 Cf. Ibid., Preface to the 2nd ed., B XLI. 62 Cf. Immanuel Kant, “Metaphysiche Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft: Dynamik,” in Werke, ed. Ernst Cassirer (2nd ed., Berlin: B. Cassirer, 1922), 4, 407. 63 Cf. the presentation and critique of Pierre Duhem in Les théories électriques de J. Clerk Maxwell. Étude historique et critique (Paris: A. Hermann, 1902). 64 William Thomson, Notes of Lectures on Molecular Dynamics and the Wave Theory of Light (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1884), 131; quoted from Duhem, La théorie physique, 112. 65 Cf. Helmholtz, Über die Erhaltung der Kraft eine physikalische Abhandlung, 6ff. [what was called “living force” by Leibniz and others is now called “kinetic energy.”] 66 Cf. R. Mayer, “Bemerkungen über die Kräfte der unbelebten Natur (1842),” in Die Mechanik der Wärme (3rd ed., Stuttgart: J. C. Cotta, 1893), 28; and Mayer’s letters to Griesinger of December 5, 1842, and July 20, 1844, in Kleinere Schriften und Briefe, ed. Weyrauch (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1893), 187, 225. 67 Cf. Wilhelm Ostwald, Vorlesungen über Naturphilosophie (Leipzig: Veit & comp., 1902), 210ff. 68 Max Planck, Das Prinzip der Erhaltung der Energie (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1887), 136. 69 For further details, see Planck, “Die Stellung der neueren Physik zur mechanischen Naturanschauung,” Königsberger Naturforscher-­Versammlung (1910); and his “Prinzip der kleinsten Wirkung,” in Die Kultur der Gegenwart (1915), reprinted in Physikalische Rundblicke, 38ff., 103ff. 70 Cf. Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, Space, Time, and Gravitation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1923), 40. 71 On the development of the “formalistic theory of life,” cf. Bovine’s presentation in Ergebnisse und Probleme der Naturwissenschaft, 89ff. 72 On the path that finally brought physics to abandon this view, cf. Max Born, Die Relativitätstheorie Einsteins und ihre physikalischen Grundlagen (Berlin: J. Springer, 1921), 78ff., 158ff. 73 For further details, see Weyl, Raum, Zeit, Materie, 181ff. 74 For further details of Mie’s theory of matter, see ibid., §26, and Laue, Die Relativitätstheorie, 2, §8. 75 Cf. the remarks of Eddington in Space, Time, and Gravitation, 39: Mathematicians of the nineteenth century devoted much time to theories of elastic-­solid and other material aethers. Waves of light were supposed to be actual oscillations of this substance; it was thought to have the familiar properties of rigidity and density. . . . The real death-­blow to



the foundations of natural-­s cientific cognition

559

this materialistic conception of the aether was given when attempts were made to explain matter as some state in the aether. For if matter is vortex motion or beknottedness in aether, the aether cannot be matter " some state in itself. . . . If physics evolves a theory of matter which explains some property, it stultifies itself when it postulates that the same property exists unexplained in the primitive basis of matter. 76 Cf. Ibid., 12ff., 184ff. 77 Weyl, “Philosophie der Mathematik und Naturwissenschaft,” Handbuch der Philosophie, 80. 78 [Tr. note: Historically what is generally called today “kinetic energy” was called by Leibniz “living force.”] 79 Lasswitz, Geschichte der Atomistik vom Mittelalter bis Newton, vol. 2, 374f.; cf. 1, 43ff., 269ff.; and 2, 341ff. 80 Ibid., 2, 393. 81 Cf. Hermann Minkowski, Raum und Zeit (Leipzig und Berlin: Druck und Verlag von B. G. Teubner, 1909), reprinted in H. A. Lorentz, A. Einstein, H. Minkowski and H. Weyl, Das Relativitätsprinzip: Eine Sammlung von Abhandlungen (Leipzig and Berlin: B. G. Teubner, 1920), 54ff. 82 Here I refer the reader in particular to Alfred North Whitehead, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925), in which this character of the relativisitic “world of events” is clearly worked out. 83 On the concept of the metric field, cf. Weyl, Raum, Zeit, Materie, §12, 35. 84 Cf. Albert Einstein, “Ist die Trägheit eines Körpers von seinem Energieinhalt abhängig?” Annalen der Physik, 18 (1905), 639–41, for further particulars see Haas, Naturbild der neuen Physik, Lecture 6. 85 Cf. Weyl, Raum, Zeit, Materie, §20, §24f., and passim. 86 [Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, §16, B 131–6.] 87 Cf. my Substance and Function; for the general epistemological foundations of the already mentioned exposition, I refer the reader esp. to chaps. 4, 7. Here I have not wished to repeat what was there set forth but have contented myself with applying the basic thesis of this work to the present situation of theoretical physics and its development in the last decades and with bringing out certain details more sharply. 88 For further details, see Max Theodor Felix von Laue, “Zur Theorie der Kontinuierlichen Spektra,” Jahrbuch für Radioaktivität und Elektronik, 1 (1904), 400–13; and Sommerfeld, Atombau und Spektrallinien, chap. 4, §1. 89 Cf. Bavink, Ergebnisse und Probleme der Naturwissenschaft, eine Einführung in die moderne Naturphilosophie, 120, 150, and passim. 90 Cf. Sommerfeld, Atombau und Spektrallinien, 8. 91 For the fundamental concept of the quantum theory, the concept of the “elementary action quantum,” Planck himself, in an article written in 1915, stresses that the meaning of the elementary action quantum, the central

560

the construction of scientific cognition concept of his theory, “has thus far almost entirely defied representation.” He continues by saying: Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that a time will come when, like the atomic weights of chemistry, the elementary action quantum, under some name or form, will constitute an integral part of general dynamics. For physical research cannot rest until the theory of static and radiant head has been welded into a unitary theory with mechanics and electrodynamics.

(Planck, “Verhältnis der Theorien zueinander,”128). Even Niels Bohr stresses, in “Atomtheorie und Mechanik,” Die Naturwissenschaftenu, 14 (1926), that the general problem of the quantum theory involves a “profound failure of the spatiotemporal images” by means of which one had previously sought to describe natural phenomena. 92 Cf. Weyl’s remarks in the introduction to his Raum, Zeit, Materie: It lies in the essence of a real thing to be something inexhaustible in content, which we can approach only through ever new, partly contradictory observations, whose interplay is unlimited. In this sense the real thing is a limit-­idea. Thereupon rests the empirical character of all knowledge of reality. Precisely this inconclusive character of empirical-­physical object formation was sharply stressed by Galileo. For particulars, see my Erkenntnisproblem, 2, 402ff. 93 Cassirer, Substance and Function, 321f. 94 How the structure of the theory of relativity may serve to confirm and illustrate the epistemological view put forward here has been excellently shown by Karl Bollert in Einsteins Relativitätstheorie und ihre Stellung im System der Gesamterfahrung (Dresden and Leipzig: T. Steinkopf, 1921). 95 I have tried to demonstrate this in detail in my Zur Einstein’schen Relativitätstheorie. [Cassirer, Substance and Function and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity]. 96 For further details, see Laue, Die Relativitätstheorie, 2, 18ff. 97 Eddington, for example, frames the logical problem of the theory of relativity in this way. According to him, the aim of the theory is “to obtain a conception of the world from the point of view of no one in particular.” Cf. Space, Time, and Gravitation, 30ff. 98 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 644/B 672.

A ppendix “ ‘Spirit’ and ‘Life’ in Contemporary Philosophy” (1930) 1 Among the minor works of Heinrich von Kleist may be found a brief essay in which Kleist has succeeded in setting forth one of the philosophical problems of his era with all the brevity and succinctness, all the force and penetration, that mark his incomparable prose style. Kleist attains this pregnancy of thought by capturing its content [Gehalt] in the form of a tale, by disclosing the whole art of the epic poet in its recitation and configuration. He begins from the recollection of an incident that he depicts as one experienced by himself. A youth, who is distinguished by physical beauty as well as by the natural grace of his gestures, loses this grace the moment [Augenblick] that he accidentally becomes aware of it, and once lost, it is lost for good and can be retrieved by no act of the will, through no conscious effort. The implication that Kleist draws from this is that nature and consciousness as well as grace and reflection belong to different worlds and stand in a relationship of polar tension and opposition to each other. Insofar as the one element comes to the fore, the other must give way. Before the bright daylight of consciousness, before the ray of reflection that it meets, grace must become pale and vanish. We see in the organic world that as reflection grows dimmer and weaker, grace emerges more brilliantly and more decisively. But just as the section of the two lines arrives from one side of the punct, suddenly

185

562 appendix it reappears again on the other side after the passageway through the infinite; or just as the image in a concave mirror suddenly emerges again directly before us after it has gone off into the infinite. Thus, so too, once cognition has, so to speak, gone through the infinite, grace once again returns; so that it will at the same time appear in its purest form in that human physique that either is without consciousness at all or has an infinite consciousness, i.e., it will appear in the marionette or in God.1 186

For the human being, who has been banished from the paradise of immediacy, who has eaten from the tree of knowledge [Erkenntnis] and therewith has forever left behind the limits of mere natural existence, of life (which is unconscious of itself), it follows that the human must traverse its particular sphere in order at the end of its passage to find its way back again to its beginning. That is the fate imposed by our “ring-­shaped world”: “Paradise is bolted fast, and the cherub far behind us; we must travel around the world and see whether perchance an entrance can be found somewhere from the rear.”2 Kleist’s essay, “On The Marionette Theatre,” appeared in the Berliner Abendblatter in 1810 and is thus well over one hundred years old. However, if someone came upon it today who did not know its original author, he might well imagine that the writer belongs to our own time so clearly does he mirror the problematic character of our “anthropology” today, of our philosophical theory of the human. At once, all the well-­known names and works of the philosophical literature of the present cry out for comparison. In this feature, we see once again how much our “modern” and most contemporary philosophical thoughts are rooted in Romanticism, and how, consciously or unconsciously, they all depend on Romantic prototypes. Today, the great antithesis of “nature” and “spirit,” the polarity of “life” and “cognition,” stands anew at the very center of philosophical contemplation. And yet it is still in terms of the conceptual means created by Romanticism, in terms of the categories it coined, that the framing of the problem as well as its solution operate. Admittedly, however, the conflict seems to have intensified since that time – the oppositions seem to stand before us even more definitively and inexorably than in the days of Romanticism. For Romantic philosophy already possessed a definite metaphysical solution and reconciliation for this opposition, however

appendix

563

sharply it might be set forth. In the end, by way of various mediations, it also leads into the basic view of “identity philosophy.” “What we call nature,” as Schelling puts it in his System of Transcendental Idealism, “is a poem that lies locked up in a mysterious, wondrous script. Yet the enigma could unveil itself if we would recognize the Odyssey of spirit within it, which, in seeking itself, wondrously deceived [getäuscht], flees from itself.”3 From any such solution to the enigma, from any such aesthetic harmonizing of the opposition between nature and spirit, modern philosophy is far removed. It recognizes and tolerates, on this point, no purely aesthetic compromise, but rather, it seeks to apprehend and to tear open for us the chasm between the two worlds in all its yawning depth. Thus, especially in the writing of Ludwig Klages, where the problem has been given its sharpest expression, spirit appears as a power that in the ground of its being [Wesen] is anti-­divine and hostile to life. In their deepest root, “consciousness” and “life,” “cogitare” and “esse,” remain separated. While the human is left to the domination of spirit, it has fallen out with life and entrusts itself to vampiric forces that enter into the music of the spheres as a piercing note of discord. It almost seems like a redemption from this magic-­mythical influence in which Klages’ theory of consciousness progressively threatens to entangle us, when we shift our attention from this to the basic ideas of Max Scheler’s “anthropology,” as Scheler developed them in his latest philosophical writings, particularly in his book, Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos [The Human Place in the Cosmos].4 A presentation, interpretation, and critical examination of these basic ideas remains indeed an audacious undertaking. For Scheler’s anthropology remained fragmentary. And we still do not know whether we shall ever possess it in all the breadth and fullness in which he had originally planned and conclusively envisaged it. Only one short sketch of the project as a whole was published by Scheler; only a few of the major guidelines of reflection were expounded and established by him. We must try to hold to these guidelines in order to use them as way-­showing [Wegweiser] to the new world of ideas that had opened up to Scheler in the last few years of his life. What makes Scheler’s solution so distinctive and, at first glance, so paradoxical and foreign is that in no way does he attempt to overcome or reconcile the dualism between “life” and “spirit,” that he nevertheless does sketch out from the signification and sense of this dualism a completely other

187

564 appendix 188

picture [Bild] of this original diremption of being within itself than does traditional Western metaphysics. From this tradition, he parts company in two respects. On the one hand, he absolutely forswears any and all attempts at a monistic identity philosophy – be it of the speculative or of the empirical-­scientific variety. According to Scheler, there is no development leading from bare life to spirit; there is no gradual emergence of the latter sphere out of the former. He thus emphasizes: The new principle which makes the human truly human stands beyond what can be called life . . . in the broadest sense of the term. That which makes the human human is a principle opposing all life in general, the human as such cannot in general be traced back to ‘the natural evolution of life.’5

That this is so, that in all the performances that we usually encompass with the term “spirit” there is found no simple continuation of the functions of life as such nor, as it were, a tranquil emergence from them but rather a resolute reversal of life’s basic direction. According to Scheler this much is shown, above all, in that just these performances, measured in terms of bare life, are not positive but negative in kind. What makes itself felt in them is no intensification of the natural forces of life but rather their inhibition: a giving pause and a turning aside from everything toward which life is oriented, when life is comprehended purely as impulse, purely in its own sphere and according to the principle of its own dynamic motion. The human is wholly human only where it carries out this turning away [Abkehr], where the human is no longer harnessed and bound fast to the wheels and engines [Triebwerk] of purely vital events but is able to behold it outwardly and downwardly. The basic determination of a spiritual being [Wesen], according to Scheler, is consequently its existentiell disengagement [existentielle Entbundenheit], its freedom, its release [Ablösbarkeit] from the spell of, the pressure of, and its dependence on the organic: Such a “spiritual” being [Wesen] is no longer bound to impulse or to the environmental world [Umwelt], but is “free from the environment world” [umweltfrei] and, as we should like to call it, world-­open

appendix

565

[weltoffen]. Such a being [Wesen] has a “world” [Welt]: it is able to raise to the status of “objects” those centers of “resistance” and reaction originally given to it by its environment (in which the animal is ecstatically absorbed), is able to grasp fundamentally itself the being-­ a-­certain-­way [Sosein] of these “objects,” without the limitations experienced by this world of objects or its givenness through the vital system of impulses and the sensible functions and organs. Hence, spirit is objectivity [Sachlichkeit], determinacy through the being-­a-­certain-­way [Sosein] of the things [Sachen] themselves. And such a being [Wesen] is a “bearer” of spirit, whose principal communion [Verkehr] with reality outside itself has dynamically reversed [umgekehrt] itself completely in 189 its relationship to the animal.6

In his highly original and epistemologically weighty and fruitful trains of thought, Scheler seeks to show how precisely the fundamental cognitive functions – those functions to which we are indebted for the construction of an “objective” world in any proper sense, which are measured purely by reference to life’s system of reference, exhibit a negative sign [Vorzeichen: omen]. “Pure” space and “pure” time, for example, are nothing but schemata i.e., empty forms of cognition. Manifestly, neither one has any positive content – neither are they “objects” in the sense that effects flow from them or that effects can be exerted upon them. On the other hand, they are clearly not absolute-­nothing: rather, in their negativity, in their basic opposition to anything actual, they possess an entirely determinate significance, a necessary function for the theoretical configuration and for the theoretical cognition of reality. This function depends on the fact that empty space and time are pure forms of order – pure forms of order that not only apply to the actual but also extend beyond that to the possible. Space – as Leibniz already defined it – is the order of all possible togetherness, just as time is the order of all possible succession. This concept of the possible, already for Leibniz, actually first opens the region of the ideal, the region of “eternal truths,” and it from the standpoint of philosophical anthropology now reveals itself as a quite distinctive, a specifically human, concept. What perhaps separates the human most clearly from the animal, according to Scheler, is that the human is not bound to the specific reality that surrounds it

566 appendix

and that the human is not captivated by it but instead is capable of the free intuition of the possible: The animal is no more able to separate the empty form of space and time from the specific congenial nature [Inhaltlichkeit] of environmental things, as it is able to abstract ‘number’ from the greater or lesser “quantity” of things themselves. It lives entirely in the concrete reality of its current present [Gegenwart]. Only when the drive expectations, transforming themselves into impulses of motion, gain the ascendancy over everything that is the factual fulfillment of the drive in perception or sensation, does there take place in the human the exceedingly unique phenomenon that spatial emptiness and analogously temporal emptiness appear as preceding and as “underlying” all possible contents of perception and of the whole world of things.7 190

Thus, once again, we see that the opposition between “life” and “spirit” stressed as sharply as possible and rigorously carried out, in the determination of the basic relationship of the two to each other – the sign [Vorzeichen], so to speak – has nevertheless now been changed. For Scheler has not the slightest doubt concerning the superiority and superordination of spirit in the metaphysical hierarchy and order of values. He emphasizes only one thing: this superiority in point of value be in no way equated with superiority in point of being and effective action. Rather, we encounter here another peculiar opposition, one that seems at last destined to trace the dualism of spirit and life down to its deepest roots. Scheler most resolutely opposes the theory that the higher value, in the totality of being and events, must also be endowed with the greater power. Over against this optimistic outlook, he sets the sharply opposite thesis: spirit, the idea in which a supreme value seems condensed and concentrated, is precisely because of this fact by no means commensurable in terms of power, of immediate reality and effect, with life and with the purely vital forces. As we have seen, the human was defined by Scheler as the living being [Lebewesen] who is capable of assuming a fundamentally ascetic attitude toward its own life. Compared to animals, who always say “yes” to being-­actual [Wirklichsein], even when they abhor and flee it, the human is “the being who is able to say ‘no’ ” [Neinsagenkönner], “the ascetic of life,” the everlasting protesting against all mere reality:

appendix

567

Here, however, arises the decisive question: does spirit first arise out of asceticism, repression, and sublimation or does it merely derive its energy from these? In the answer to this question there lies, in a decisive sense, a parting of the ways. It is my own conviction that the being of spirit is in no way conditioned by this negative activity, this no to reality, but only, as it were, gains its supply of energy and therewith its ability to manifest itself.8

Thus, spirit, as Scheler understands it, is originally absolutely powerless. All the power [Kraft] of which it can avail itself in its struggle [Kampf] with life stems not from itself; it must rather, in a unique roundabout way, wrest it from the realm of life itself, step by step, through just that act of asceticism and impulse-­sublimation. Erroneous, according to Scheler, is that theory that originates in the Greek conception of spirit and of the idea: the theory of the “inherent power of the idea,” its inner force and activity, its independent effective capacity. True, spirit may gradually acquire power [Macht] to the degree that the drives of life enter into its lawfulness: “however, from the outset and originally, spirit has no energy of its own.”9 Thus, spirit must be content with pointing the forces of life toward a particular goal, in terms of the structures of its own ideas and sense; however, it is not spirit’s own task to produce this goal. The promised land to which it points is and remains a land of mere promise. At no other point, perhaps, does Scheler’s theory diverge so clearly from that of Hegel’s, which comes to a focus precisely in this one thought, the conviction that the idea is not merely a task but also a “substantial power [Macht].” “Human spirit and human volition,” Scheler emphasizes in contrast, “can . . . never signify more than guidance and direction.”10 And this signifies simply that spirit, as such, holds [vorhalten] ideas up before the powers of the drive but not that it introduces any original potency [Kraft] of its own for the realization of these ideas. Consequently, this is how the goal and the true sense of the development of the human now appear: the mutual penetration of the originally impotent spirit and the originally daemonic impulses (i.e., one which, as over against all spiritual ideas and values, is blind) . . . and the simultaneous empowering, i.e., enlivening, of spirit is the final end and goal of all finite being and events that Theism mistakenly posits as the point of departure.11

191

568 appendix

2

192

Two questions, however, arise here to which, as far as I can see, this firmly joined and internally coherent system of Scheler’s anthropology no longer affords any answer. First of all, if life and spirit belong to entirely different worlds, if they are completely foreign to each other in their being [Wesen] as well as in their origin, how is it possible that they can nevertheless accomplish a perfectly homogeneous achievement, that they cooperate and interpenetrate in the construction of the specifically human world, the world of “sense”? Is this interpenetration – to use a word that Lotze once coined in another epistemological context – nothing more and nothing less than a “happy accident”? How can it be understood that the forces of life, the purely vital driving forces in Scheler’s sense, permit themselves to be diverted from their own paths and to take that other, precisely opposite direction, that the decree of spirit demands of them? Scheler emphasizes the fact that spirit by no means directly breaks in or infringes on the world of life; that it has no forceful power of its own to set over against the forceful power of life; but that it is content with a merely symbolic function, with the function of pointing and showing. The ideas are not effective – they merely lead and direct; they illumine the path of life, but they do not compel life to take a certain path. However, in spite of all this, how is life capable of even seeing the ideas that spirit holds up to it and of directing its way by them, as by starry constellations, if its original nature [Wesen] be defined as mere drive, i.e., as spiritually blind? If we are to gain an answer to this question within the framework of Scheler’s anthropology, we must, it seems, risk a leap [Sprung] into the dark – we must refer back to the unity of the metaphysical world-­ground, the ground that nevertheless connects what for us is and remains absolutely heterogeneous and unites it into a single whole. Scheler himself, at one point in his essay on “Die Stellung des Menschen” [The Place of the Human], has pointed the way toward such a solution. He stresses that spirit can absolutely never be derived from life or explained in terms of life, since it is rather a principle standing in opposition to all life as such, so that it must fall back, if on anything at all, on the supreme ground of things. No matter how divergent spirit and life may be for us, in all their phenomena and forms of appearance, there always remains nonetheless

appendix

569

the possibility that the two may meet at some infinitely distant point, that they may, in some manner unknown to us, be held together in that X which is the ultimate ground of the worlds [Weltengrund]. With such an answer, however, the Gordian knot is not so much untied as cut. It is remarkable that Scheler, with all the originality that marks and characterizes his last philosophical works, is thrown back here on problems that belong to the oldest stratum of metaphysical thinking and the metaphysical self-­determination of the human. Already his concept of spirit as such, in its whole framing, in its original definition, is unmistakably reminiscent of Aristotle’s. And Scheler confronts us with the same internal difficulties in which the Aristotelian theory of spirit finally ensnares us: Aristotle’s spirit, νοῦς [nous] is related to the lower mental forces [Kräften], to the forces of the purely vital sphere, to sensible perception, memory, and representation not as a member belonging to the same developmental series but rather as superordinate to them all. That is, it enters into the world of life and into the world of psychic existence “from without.” Here, however, burst into us all of those questions with which the entire metaphysics and the whole psychology of the Middle Ages, and thereafter the psychology of the Renaissance, wrestled on and on and which even today, as the construction of Scheler’s anthropology shows, does not as yet seem to have been definitively silenced. How is spirit able to effectively act on a world to which it does not itself belong, and how can the transcendence of the idea be reconciled with the immanence of life? For Aristotle himself, the answer to this question is given in his system of teleology. The Aristotelian God, who is comprehended as pure spirit without an admixture of the material stuff [Stofflich], as actus purus, as a “thinking of thinking,” nevertheless moves the world: he does not, however, move it in a mechanical way nor through any external impetus, but rather, he moves it because, as the supreme form, he also constitutes the purpose toward which the world itself is striving as the goal of its own self-­realization. God thus moves the world not through physical force but “as the beloved object moves the lover.”12 As profound and beautiful as it is in itself, this view of the relationship between God and the world, between idea and life, is, however, no longer useful to Scheler in the last phase of his philosophy; it is, for him, antiquated and overcome. He charges the “classical theory” of spirit, as developed in ancient Greece, with precisely this: in its consequences, it has led “to the untenable

193

570 appendix

194

nonsense of a so-­called teleological Weltanschauung”13 as it has dominated the whole theistic philosophy of the Occident. But failing this classical, theistic-­teleological solution of the problem, what other solution remains? How is it to be understood that life follows the model set before it by the idea if there did not exist in life itself an immanent “tendency toward the idea” [“Zug zur Idee”] if (to speak in Platonic terms) a yearning for the idea and striving toward it were not already prevalent in the world of appearances? Rather, is not life something other and something more than mere urge, more than a drive into the indeterminate and the aimless? Does there not exist originally within life itself the will to attain its own self-­presentation, its own objectivity, its own “visibility”? And on the other hand, even if we ascribe to spirit no original energy of its own, even if we confine its performance merely to the inhibiting of the natural, purely vital forces, must spirit not, even in this inhibiting, still be something positively determinate and something positively effective? How could even this stoppage, this unique damming up of life’s forces and life’s impulses ever succeed, if spirit was from the beginning entirely impotent? The problem of the opposition between life and spirit, as posed in modern metaphysics, is strikingly reminiscent in more ways than one of that set of problems in the older metaphysics that centered on the mind-­ body-­problem [Leib-­Seele-­Problem]. As greatly different as is the mere content of the questions in these two cases, the essential, purely methodical motives repeat themselves in both instances in a distinctive way. Thus, immediately alongside Scheler’s answer to the question concerning the unification of life and spirit, we may place Descartes’ answer to the question of the unification, the “unio” [union] of body and mind [Seele]. Descartes assumes that the mind [Seele] can neither beget any new force in the field of corporeal events nor destroy any force already extant: the corporeal world forms a uniform, tightly closed, causal nexus, which is determined by a strict law of conservation, by the law of the constancy of momentum in the cosmos [Weltall]. Thus, the mind [Seele], of itself, can neither create any kinetic energy [Bewegungsenergie] nor destroy the kinetic energy already in existence. Only one possibility remains to the mind [Seele], according to Descartes, and this is that it may determine and, under certain conditions, alter the direction of these movements [Bewegungen] operating in the corporeal world, and it is supposed to be precisely this change

appendix

571

of direction that marks the mind’s [Seele] influence on the lived body and to which this effect is limited. The objection that remained standing against this solution of the mind-­body-­problem [Leib-­Seele-­Problems], and that was at once raised by Leibniz, lay just in the fact that even this mere change of direction necessarily demands a certain positive expenditure of energy, without which it is unimaginable. Quite analogously, even that process of mere inhibition that, with Freud, Scheler calls the sublimation of life would be incomprehensible and impossible, were spirit, which is to effect this result, in its essence to be thought of as totally impotent. Even this inhibition must ultimately go back to some positive element and to a positive impulse. If we take “spirit” exclusively in the sense of Scheler’s original definition, it will never be able in any form to effect anything beyond itself. Of it, Faust’s saying would hold strictly true: The god that dwells within my heart Can stir my inmost depths, I cannot hide – Rules all my powers with relentless art, But cannot move the world outside.14 Once life has been determined as the absolutely other, as the contradictory opposite of spirit, it becomes impossible to see how this opposition can ever be sublated – how the call of spirit is not to fade away into emptiness but is still to be heard [gehört: belong] in the sphere of life and to be understood there.

3 And with this, we now likewise arrive at a general question that must be put to Scheler’s projected [Entwurf] philosophical anthropology. Does there really exist a relationship of a strict opposition, a completely logical disjunction between the “classical” theory that Scheler combats and his own basic point of view – between the view that grants spirit absolute substantial power [Macht] over all actuality and the view that sees in from the beginning an “impotent” [ohnmächtig] principle? Such would be the case only if the concept of “power” [Macht] were a completely distinct and in every respect logically determined concept, so that we could be quite certain that it was being taken in exactly the same strictly

195

572 appendix

196

circumscribed sense in both theses of the disjunction. However, precisely this presupposition seems not to be fulfilled here. A sharper analysis of Hegel’s, as well as of Scheler’s concept of power [Macht] seems to me to indicate that an equivocation exists that must first be cleared up if we wish to lay bare the real basic problem here. Scheler does not distinguish between the energy of effective action and that energy, which might be called the energy of forming [Bilden], that of pure configuring [Gestalten]. And yet between the two, there is an essential and specific difference [Differenz]. The energy of effective action [Wirken] is directed immediately at the environment [Umwelt] of the human, whether it be to apprehend it as it actually is and take possession of it or to alter its course in some definite direction. The energy of forming [Bilden], however, is not directed at this environment but rather remains self-­contained within itself: it moves within the dimension of the pure “image” [Bild] and not in that of “reality” [Wirklichkeit]. The human spirit does not directly turn here against things but rather weaves itself into a world of its own, a world of signs, of symbols, and of significations. And with this, it really forfeits that immediate unity [Einheit] that links “observing” and “effecting” in animals. This is perhaps one of the most characteristic features of the animal world, of its organic steadfastness and its inner organic health: in it, this unity is most strictly preserved. The world of spirit, on the contrary, arises only when the flood of life no longer merely flows on but instead is held back at certain points – when life, instead of unceasingly giving birth to new life from itself and consuming itself in its own births, gathers itself together into enduring shapes [Gestalten] and sets forth these shapes out of itself and before itself. Herein seems to me to lie the truth of Scheler’s basic outlook: by no mere quantitative augmentation, by no mere enhancement or potentization of life, can we ever attain the sphere of spirit, but to gain entrance into this sphere a turnabout and return, a change of “sense” and of direction are necessary. From this, however, it by no means follows that in its distinctive, constitutive principle spirit would have to be understood as absolutely powerless [kraftlos], as utterly static and as “the ascetic of life.” Indeed, spirit would not be capable of bringing life to this relative standstill, which in a certain sense marks the inception of all “understanding” [Verstehens], if it did not have some power [Kraft] of its own to set over against life, power that it does not borrow from life but

appendix

573

draws from its own depth. The mediated [mittelbar: indirect] activity of forming [Bilden] is distinguished from the immediate [unmittelbar: direct] effective action and doing in the direction that it strikes out on and in the goal at which it aims; however, it is pure activity, actus purus, no less than the other. Genuine “ideas” – Spinoza thus says, and this is valid not only for the ideas of pure cognition but also for the creations of language and art, of myth and religion – do not stand there [da] like silent pictures [Gemälden] on a blackboard but bring themselves forth into being [hervorbringen]. In this, their act of procreation, they afford at the same time an emergence of a new intuition of “objective” reality. From this functional character of pure form – from the fact that it exists only ever insofar as it continually recreates itself anew – it first becomes entirely clear that and why each form is antithetical in itself – why a necessary polarity must be inherent in it. It is always a double movement that works itself out here: a continuous interplay of the forces of affinity and rejection, of attraction and repulsion. “There is no surer way of evading the world than through art,” so says Goethe, “and there is no surer way of connecting oneself to it than through art.” This double determination applies to every kind of configuration, every kind of “symbolic forming [Formung].” This act of forming [Formung] always begins by moving the world, as it were, off into a distance and by erecting a barrier between the I and the world. In the purely vital domain, such a separation does not yet exist. Here, action immediately follows action; effect is followed by countereffect, from which again a new effect arises. Even relatively complicated instinctive actions of animals appear to be nothing other than such “reflex chains.” However, with the first dawning of the spiritual world [Welt] in the human, this kind of immediacy is gone. Henceforth, the tension between the I and its environment [Umwelt] is not discharged with a single stroke, and the spark between the two no longer leaps over directly; rather, it is mediated in a way that instead of leading through the world of events and effective action, leads through the world of forming figures [bildend Gestalten]. Only at the end of this long and difficult path [Weg] of inner configuring [Gestalten] does reality again come into the purview of the human. Köhler has shown in his research into anthropoid intelligence that perhaps the highest achievement of which the animal can be expected is the art of the “detour” [Umweg] – and that

197

574 appendix

198

even the highest animals learn this art only with great difficulty and to a limited degree. Compared to this, the world of the human spirit, as it is constructed in language and in the use of tools, in artistic presentation and conceptual cognition, is nothing other than the persistent, continuously expanding, and refined “art of the detour.” More and more, the human learns to set the world aside to draw the world to itself, and more and more, these two basic antithetical directions of effective action come to merge, for the human, into one uniform activity, both sides of which, like inhaling and exhaling, reciprocally condition one another. The human must retreat into the world of “unreality,” into the world of semblance and of play in order, in and through it, to conquer the world of the actual. In the theory of aesthetics, this basic insight was set forth above all by Schiller and developed by him in all its ramifications. From this point of view, Schiller’s “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Humanity” looms up as one of the seminal works on which modern philosophical anthropology is also constructed. Here is the root of that famous clarification of a conceptual definition in which Schiller seeks to express the proper nature [Wesen] of the human: “The human plays only where, in the fullest significance of the word, it is human, and the human is only fully human there where it plays.” This pregnant explanation of the being of the human [Menschentum] is, however, expressly limited by Schiller to the aesthetic sphere: according to him, the human should only play with beauty, but also the human should play only with beauty. If, however, we take the concept of play as broadly as possible, this limitation proves that what this concept is capable of is not as conclusive or as necessary. One may venture, rather, the paradox that not only the sphere of beauty but also that of truth is first wholly disclosed to the human through the function of play. In one of the deepest and most fruitful sections of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, the function of the pure understanding, if it is not to remain empty, has need of another function as its completion and necessary correlative – a function that Kant designates by the name of the “productive imagination.” And he went on to infer that everything we are accustomed to call simple sensible “perception” is most closely connected with this function – that the productive imagination also forms an “ingredient of every possible perception.” If this is so, then what we call the intuition of “the actual” does not occur without the foresight

appendix

575

[Vorblick] and outlook [Ausblick] into “the possible” – what is more, then, the construction of the “objective” world of experience depends on the original forming forces of spirit and the basic laws according to which these forces act.

4 We cannot enter into the important and decisive epistemological consequences that follow from this basic view.15 If we once more return, instead, to our starting point, to the framing of the problem by Scheler’s philosophical anthropology, we shall then be able to determine more sharply the basic thesis of this anthropology, both positively and negatively. What Scheler saw and what – even in the brief sketch of his anthropology that is all we possess – he had succeeded in working out with his extraordinary dialectical power and mastery is precisely that tension, that unsublatable difference [Differenz], that antithesis between the region of spirit and that of life. He successfully dismisses here every attempt at a comfortable “monistic” solution. Scheler does not stop, however, at the methodical and fundamental opposition that is proven here. Rather, he immediately goes on to another metaphysical opposition that for him arises out of the former: an opposition not between functions but between real potencies of being. The metaphysical concept of being is marked, however, by this peculiarity, that it possesses a strongly absolutistic character. Within it, there is basically no room for a being [Sein] of a different stamp and type of significance. Rather, we are led sooner or later to a simple either/or – to that “crisis” between being and nonbeing before which the first great thinker of Western metaphysics, Parmenides, already found himself confronted. In Scheler’s philosophical anthropology, as well, this fate of metaphysics repeats itself in a rather strange and peculiar way. What Scheler gives to spirit he must take away from life; what he allots the latter he must deny the former. Thus, for him originally, a spirit estranged from life and a life blind to ideas stand confronting [gegenüberstehen: face] one another only in order then to be drawn to each other after all and, as if by a miracle, to “find their way back to each other.” Spirit, powerless in itself, and without a contingent of its own forces, through its mere existence [Dasein] and its being-­a-­certain-­way [Sosein], ultimately

199

576 appendix

200

steers life into its sphere, and life yields itself to spirit, it follows the ideas that are held up before it, even though these ideas, seen purely from the standpoint of life itself, signify nothing more than a diversion from its own goal and consequently a definite weakening and inhibition. The highest, indeed the only power [Kraft] that the human can bring to bear, in order to rise up beyond the merely vital sphere and attain its specific being and its specific value, is accordingly the power [Kraft] of asceticism. The fact that Scheler should impute to asceticism this moral-­spiritual power [Kraft] is perhaps the only, but at the same time an extremely significant, symptom of the fact that even the final “ascetic” form [Gestalt] that his theory is given is related, as if by invisible threads, to the earlier period of his philosophizing. However, it is just here, it seems to me, that the inner substantive consequence of Scheler’s basic thought clearly points even beyond the point to which he had pursued it in his last works on anthropology. For while it can indeed be understood that asceticism clears, as it were, the path for already existing and autonomous forces; it cannot be understood that it calls these forces forth as if out of nothing, that it is able to endow an inherently impotent principle with force. For in truth, that asceticism that is viewed by Scheler as the precondition and as the point of departure for all basic phenomena of spirit, when more closely considered, bears not so much an absolute as a definitely relative character. Plainly, it is no turning away [Abkehr] from life as such but rather an inner transformation and turning back around [Umkehr] that life undergoes in itself. This turning back around [Umkehr] – in the pathway from “life” to “the idea” – does not mean that rest stands over against motion; there is no quietistic, inherently inactive principle over against a restless becoming. Rather, it is energies of a different order and, as it were, of a different dimension that here stand confronting one another. The most comprehensive concept of “spirit” set down by Scheler consists in the fact that for him spirit signifies objectivity [Sachlichkeit], “determinability through the being-­a-­certain-­way of things themselves [Sachen selbst].” In its actions, the human is presumed to be determined not like the animals, which is by the mere sentient of resistances, but rather by the intuition of objects, and this elevation above the circumstantial to the objective, this pure object-­being is the most formal category of the logical side of spirit.

appendix

577

However, as soon as this definition has been agreed to, a further question must at once be raised: How precisely is this basic act of objectification possible, and by what is it conditioned? The totality of its conditions, it seems to me, can be surveyed and exhibited only by entering into the realm of the in-­between [Zwischenreich] of the “symbolic forms,” by considering the diverse image-­worlds that the human interposes between itself and reality: not to remove and thrust the latter from the human but, in this moving away, to bring it into the field of vision – to raise it from the merely tangible, which demands immediate proximity, to the visible [Sichtbarkeit]. Language and art, myth and theoretical cognition all collaborate, each according to its own inner law, in this process of spiritual positing of distance: they are the great stages on the path that leads from the space of grasping and effective activity, in which the animal lives and remains, as it were, spellbound, to the space of intuition and thinking, to the spiritual “horizon.” Viewed from this perspective, the polarity of spirit and life that forms the basic thought of Scheler’s anthropology is by no means canceled; however, methodologically considered, it now appears in a different light. Even in his last works, however radical a transformation of his views they may contain, Scheler still speaks the language of a certain realistic metaphysics. He sets spirit and life over against one another as originary potencies of being – as real forces that, as it were, contend with one another for dominion over the whole of reality. In doing this, however, a purely functional opposition is reinterpreted into a substantial one, and a difference, which is demonstrable in phenomena, is thereby immediately advanced to an assertion about the transcendental originary-­ground [Urgund]. To be sure, Scheler even remains here far removed from Klages’ mythicizing and demonizing of spirit. For Scheler, spirit is demarcated and distinguished precisely by the fact that it can be exhibited never as a substantial existence but only in its pure enactment [Vollzug], in its living actuality. Just because the principle of objectification [Vergegenständlichung] can never itself become objective [gegenständlich] does not mean that it cannot be grasped and apprehended in the manner of any objective existence. However, in spite of this disclaimer and this critical demarcation, spirit, even for Scheler, still remains, as it were, a kind of substantive. For him too, the metaphysical interest in the end takes precedence over the purely phenomenological: spirit becomes a being sui generis that stands over and above the being

201

578 appendix

202

of mere life. If, instead, we apprehend life and spirit not as substantial essential beings set over against one another and take both of them in the sense of their pure enactment [Vollzug], then the antithesis between the two immediately acquires a different significance. Spirit need no longer be considered as a principle foreign or hostile to all life; rather, it may be understood as a turning [Wendung] and turning back around [Umkehr] of life itself – a transformation it undergoes within itself, insofar as it passes from the sphere of merely organic forming and configuring into the sphere of “form,” the sphere of ideal configuration. Thus, at this point, the basic view of “objective idealism” maintains its full rights over against the critique that the Lebensphilosophie of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has urged against it. Especially as concerns Hegel, it would be a complete misunderstanding of his system to bring against it the reproach that by reason of its panlogistic tendency, it denies the rights of life, that it has sacrificed the vital sphere to that of logic. Even a glance at the historical development of the Hegelian theory is sufficient to invalidate this reproach, because it is precisely in the writings of Hegel’s early period that, in connection with his considerations in the philosophy of history and the philosophy of religion, a new, systematically – in the highest sense of the term – most fruitful concept of life is coined. In the introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit, however, Hegel then, in propositions of a truly classical character, carries out the progress and final breakthrough. He now demands that the self-­contained and closed substantiality of life open up, that it spread out and expose itself [auslegen: interpret], because only in this process and by virtue of it can mere substance acquire its being-­for-­itself, can it become a “subject.” “The force [Kraft] of spirit is only as great as its expression and manifestation [Äußerung], its depth is only as deep as it dares to spread out and lose itself in its exposition [Auslegung: interpretation].”16 The realization of this principle demands not only that spirit and life come to know themselves as opposites but that, at the same time, on account of this very opposition, they seek and require each other. The polarity between the two remains, but it loses its semblance of absolute estrangement [Entfremdung]. Indeed, if we pass in review the whole series of accusations that the modern Lebensphilosophie has raised against the usurped supremacy of spirit, one objection immediately obtrudes itself. Who exactly, it must

appendix

579

be asked, is the plaintiff and who the defendant in the trial here getting under way? It seems as if life were here brought to the bar against spirit, in order to defend itself against the latter’s encroachment, against its violence and its conceit. And yet this appearance [Schein] is deceptive, for life as such is self-­enclosed [in sich verschlossen], and in this closed reserve [Verschlossenheit], life is mute. It has no language other than that which spirit lends it. Hence, wherever it is summoned against spirit, the latter, in truth, is always both assailant and defendant; it is plaintiff and judge in one. The real drama plays out not between life and spirit but rather in the midst of the domain of spirit itself, indeed at its focal point. For every accusation is a form of testimony; every condemnation is a form of judgment. Testimony and judgment, however, are the basic and originary functions of logos itself. In Greek, it is one and the same word, one and the same term – the term κατηγορεῖν and κατηγορία – that expresses accusation as well as testimony in general. All of the passionate speeches of accusation against spirit, in which modern philosophical literature is so rich, cannot make us forget the fact, therefore, that here in truth it is not life striving against spirit but the latter striving against itself. And this conflict is really its own fate, its everlasting pathos that it cannot escape. Spirit exists only insofar as it turns itself against itself in this manner; its own unity is thinkable only in such contrariety [Zwiespältigkeit]. Spirit, therefore, is not only – as Scheler defines it – the ascetic of life, not only that which is able to say “no” to all organic reality but also the principle that within itself may negate [verneinen: deny, say no] itself. And the paradox of its nature [Wesen] consists precisely in the fact that this negation [Verneinung: denial, no saying] does not destroy it but first truly constitutes it. Only in the “no” with which it opposes itself does spirit break through to its own self-­affirmation and self-­assertion: only in the question that it presents to itself does it become truly itself. Montaigne said once that the human being is the enigmatic animal who is capable of hating itself: an anomaly and an absurdity for which no precedent exists anywhere else in the realm of nature. Nature knows suffering and death, destruction and annihilation; however, it knows nothing of that self-­destruction whereby the human turns against itself. As the being [Wesen] who alone is capable of questioning, the human is also the being [Wesen] who is and who remains thoroughly problematic to itself: the being [Wesen] forever worthy of questioning [fragwürdige]. In this sense, those

203

580 appendix

who, in the name of life, bring the idea before the court remain, to speak with Hegel, the “agents of the idea,” since just this passing of judgment on itself is nothing but an originary-­phenomenon and an imperative, a categorical requirement of spirit. And from this setting of the problem, it necessarily follows that precisely spirit’s own accusers must in the end become its custodians and its witnesses.

5

204

This basic relationship emerges most clearly and most definitely, perhaps, if we endeavor to apprehend it by way of language and to throw light on its basic and distinctive spiritual structure. As long as there has been a philosophy of language, there has also been a critique of language that the insight into the positive force [Kraft] and the positive sense of language has always been followed by skepticism, as by a shadow. And this doubt about language, indeed this despair regarding it, remains by no means limited to philosophy; it is not even foreign to the great poets and to the greatest coiners of language in the realm of poetry. In a well-­known Venetian epigram, Goethe complained of the fact that, bound as he was to the medium of the German language, he unfortunately had to corrupt both life and art by having to use this “worst of matter [Stoff].” Among his works, however, there is also to be found another poem, “Language,” which, compared with this epigram figures as its polar opposite and palinode: What rich and poor! What strong and weak! Is rich what buried in the urn bowels? Is strong the sword in the arsenal? Grasp gently, then, and benign fortune Flows, Godhead, out from Thee! Grasp on to victory, power, the sword, And fame over neighbors.17 Here again, the feeling of the true creator of language breaks through: the feeling that, essentially, language is only what the momentary impulse, the animating and life-­giving moment, makes out of it. Its sense and value depend not on what it may be “in itself,” in its metaphysical nature

appendix

581

[Wesen], but on the manner of its use, its spiritual employment. For it is not the rigid substance of language, but its living, dynamic function that determines this sense and value. Language is misjudged if it is taken in some way or other as thing-­like [Dinghaft], as a substantial medium that interposes itself between the human and its surrounding reality. However, even if we were then to define this medium more precisely, it would always appear, nevertheless while wanting to be the connecting link between two worlds, as the limit that separates the one from the other. However clear and however pure a medium we may then see in language, it always remains true that this crystal-­clear medium is also crystal hard; however transparent it may be for thought, it is still never wholly penetrable. Its transparency does not remove its impenetrability. This misgiving vanishes, however, as soon as we remember that basically we are dealing here with a self-­created difficulty – that the antinomy is grounded not so much in the nature of language itself as in an inadequate metaphorical description of its nature [Wesen]. If, instead of likening language to an existing thing, we understand it in the sense of what it really does, if we take it, in accordance with Humboldt’s injunction, not as an ergon [work] but as energeia [activity], then the problem immediately assumes a different shape [Gestalt]. Language then is no longer a given, rigid form [Form] but now becomes a form-­creating, which at the same time has to be a begetting of form and, admittedly, which at the same time must be a destroying of form, a breaking of form. Even the world of grammatical and syntactical forms is not merely a kind of firm dike and dam, against which the forming, the truly creative forces of language continually break. It is, rather, the original, creative force [Schöpferkraft] of language that also floods through this world and that supplies it with ever-­new momentum. In this process, the hardened melts down again, so that it cannot “clothe itself in rigid armor”; on the other hand, it is only in this process that even the momentary impulse, the creation of the moment [Augenblick], receives its continuity and stability. This creation would, like a play, have to dissolve before every breath of air if it did not, in the midst of its emerging [Entstehen] and becoming, encounter earlier formations [Gebilde] already originated [Entstanden] and having become to which it may cling and hold fast. Thus, even this emerging is for language not simply matter [Stoff], against which foreign and ever-­stranger matter [Stoff] is ever pressing, but also the product and

205

582 appendix

attestation of the same formative forces [Kräfte] to which even language itself owes its existence. Every single act of speech flows again back into the great riverbed of language itself, yet without being entirely lost and perishing therein. Rather, the stronger its own individuality borrowed from the individuality of its creator, the more it maintains itself and the more strongly it transmits itself in such a way that, through the new momentary impulse, the current as a whole may be altered in its direction and intensity, in its dynamics and rhythm. To be sure, it is evident that all these turns of expression can be nothing other and nothing more than metaphors. But, if at all, only in dynamic metaphors like these and not in any images [Bilder] borrowed from the static world – the world of things and thing-­relationships that the interconnection between the “particular” and the “universal” in language, the relationship between “life” and “spirit” therein – can they be properly described. And the same basic relationship demonstrated here in language is repeated in every other genuine “symbolic form.” The inner antithetical opposition, the polarity that necessarily dwells within every such form, does not rend or demolish it; rather, it forms the condition whereby its unity may again be established out of that opposition and may thus again present itself to the outside world.

ENDNOTES 1 [Heinrich von Kleist, “Über das Marionettentheater,” Berliner Abendblätter, (1810), 12–15.] 2 [Ibid., 249.] 3 [Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, “System des transscendentalen Idealismus,” in Sämmtliche Werke, ed. Karl Friedrich August Schelling, vol. III (Stuttgart and Augsburg: J. G. Cotta, 1858), S. 628.] 4 First appearing under the title, “Die Sonderstellung des Menschen,” Der Leuchter, 8 (1927), 161–254; now published separately Max Scheler, Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos (Darmstadt: Reichl, 1928). 5 [Scheler, Sonderstellung des Menschen, 192.] 6 [Ibid., 193.] 7 [Ibid., 201.] 8 [Ibid., 210.] 9 [Ibid., 221.] 10 [Ibid., 223.] 11 [Ibid., 226.]

appendix

583

12 [Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1072 b.] 13 [Scheler, Sonderstellung des Menschen, 219.] 14 Goethe, Faust: “Der Gott, der mir im Busen wohnt,/Kann tief mein Innerstes erregen;/Der über allen meinen Kräftenthront,/Erkannnachaußennichtsbewegen[.]” [Goethe, Faust, trans. Walter Kaufmann (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1963).] 15 I have attempted to demonstrate these consequences in volume 3 of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. 16 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 6. 17 “Was reich und arm! Was stark und schwach! Ist reich vergrabner Urne Bauch?/Ist stark das Schwert im Arsenal?/Greif milde drein, und freundlich Glück Fließt, Gottheit, von Dir aus!/Faß an zum Siege, Macht, das Schwert, Und über Nachbarn Ruhm.”

G lossary

of

G erman T erms

German English Abbild picture Abbilden picturing Absicht intention Abzeichen emblem Affeckt affect, emotion Ähnlichkeit resemblance Aktualität actuality Allgemeine universal Allgemeinheit universality Allheit allness Alltäglich everyday Anschauung intuition anzeichen indicate Aufbau construction aufbauen construct Auffassung apprehension, view Aufgabe task, problem aufheben sublate Aufhebung sublation Augenblick moment



glossary of german terms

Ausdruck expression Ausdruckswahrnehmung expressive perception Auseinanderlegung interpretative laying out Auseinandersetzung confrontation, setting asunder, Ausprägung expression Aussage proposition, statement Äußerung manifestation, utterance bedeuten signify Bedeutsamkeit significance Bedeutung significance, signification begreifen comprehend Begriff concept Begründung grounding, justification Beieinander togetherness Beieinandersein being together Benennung naming, denomination Beschaffenheit constitution, state Besinnung mindfulness besondere particular Besonderung particularization Besonnenheit reflective awareness Bestand consistent existence Bestandteil component bestehen subsist Bestimmtheit determinacy Bestimmung determination Betrachtung consideration, contemplation Bewußtheit state of consciousness Bewußtsein consciousness Beziehung relation Bezirk region, precinct Bezogenheit relatedness Bild image bilden form Bildung formation Bildwelt image-world

585

586

glossary of german terms

Boden ground, ground soil Dämon daemon darstellen present, exhibit Darstellung presentation Dasein existence Denken thinking Denkform thought-form Differenzierung differentiation Ding thing dinglich tangible Dingwahrnehmung thing perception Distanzierung distanciation Eigenart particular nature Eigenschaft property eigentümlich distinctive Einbildungskraft imagination Eindruck impression Einerleiheit one-and-the-sameness Einfühlung empathy Einheit unity Einheitlichkeit homogeneity Einordnung subordination Einteilung classification, division Einzelheit individuality Einzelne individual Element element Empfindung sensation Entäußerung alienation Entfernung distancing Entfremdung estrangement Entsprechung correspondence Entstehung emergence Entwicklung development entworfen project Ereignis event erfahren undergoes



glossary of german terms

Erfahrung experience Erfahrungsdenken experiential thinking Erfahrungserkenntnis experiential cognition erfassen apprehending Erfassung apprehension Erfüllbarkeit satisfiability ergreifen seize Erinnerung recollect erkennen recognize Erkenntnis cognition Erkenntnistheorie theory of cognition, epistemology Erklärung explanation Erlebnis lived-experience Erscheinung appearance, phenomenon Erschließung opening up erschlossen disclosed Erzeugung production Faktizität facticity Faktum factum fassen grasp Fassung framing, version Figure figure Form form Formenlehre morphology Formung forming Fragestellung framing the question Fügung construction, coincident Ganze whole, entirety, totality Ganzheit whole, totality Gebiet domain, region Gebilde formation Gedächtnis memory Gedanke thought, idea Gefüge framework Gefühl feeling Gegebenheit givenness

587

588

glossary of german terms

Gegenstand object Gegenwart present Gehalt content Geist spirit Geisteswissenschaft science of spirit Geisteswissenschaften human sciences geistig spiritual Gemeinschaft community Gepräge imprint, stamp Gesamtheit whole, totality Geschehen event, occurrence Geschick destiny Gesellschaft society Gestalt gestalt, figure, shape gestalten configure Gestaltgebung gestalt-bestowing Gestaltung configuration Gewalt forceful power, violent power Glied member gliedern organize Gliederung organization Grenzbegriff boundary concept Grenze boundary Grund ground, basis grund- basic, fundamental Grundlegung foundation Handlung action Herausbildung forming emergence hervorbringen bringing forth Hervortreten emergence hinstellen set out, posit Hinweis pointing to, indicate Idee idea Inbegriff ensemble Ineinandersein mutual interpenetration Inhalt content



glossary of german terms

inhaltlich contentual Kausalität causality Kennen know köperlich corporeal Körper body Kraft force, power Kreis circle, sphere Kulturbewußtsein cultural consciousness Kulturvölker cultural people Künftig coming Lage situation Lebensform life-form Leib lived body Leiden undergo, suffer Leistung achievement, performance Macht power Mannigfaltigkeit manifold Materie matter Mensch human being Moment element, moment Naturvölker natural people Nivellierung leveling down Objekt object Objektivität objectivity Offenbarung revelation Ordnung order Ort place örtlich local Phänomen phenomenon Prägnanz pregnance Quelle source Rahmen framework Realität reality Rede speech Reflexion reflection Relation relation

589

590

glossary of german terms

Repräsentant representative Repräsentation representation Repräsentative representative Richtung tendency, direction Sache thing sachlich factual, substantive Schau vision, showing Scheidung separation Schein semblance Scheinbild simulacrum Schema schema Schicksal fate Seele soul, psyche, mind Sehen seeing Sein being Seinde being, entity Selbsttätigkeit autonomous Setzen posit, set Setzung positing Sicht sight Sinn sense Sinnbild emblem Sinngebung sense-bestowing So-Sein being-a-certain-way Stelle position Stimmung mood Stoff stuff, matter, material stuff Struktur structure Tätigkeit activity Totalität totality Tun do, doing, activity Umfang extent Umgestaltung reconfiguration Umkreis ambit Unaufheblich unsublatable Unterscheidung differentiation



glossary of german terms

Unterschied difference Ur- originary Urbild archetype Urform originary form Urphänomen originary phenomenon Vergegenwärtigung re-presentification Verhältnis relationship Verknüpfung connection Verstand understanding Verständlichkeit intelligibility Verstehen understand [Verstehen] Vielheit multiplicity Voraussetzung presupposition, assumption Vorbild model Vorgang process, event Vorhanden present, available Vorhandenheit objectively present Vorstellung representation, idea Wahrnehmung perception Wechsel change Wechselbestimmung reciprocal determination Weltansicht view of the world Weltbild worldview Wesen essence, nature, being Wesenheit essential being Wiederholung repetition Wirken effective action Wirklich actuality Wirklichkeit reality Wirksamkeit effectiveness Wirkung effect Wissen knowledge Wissenschaft science wissenschaft Philosophie systematic philosophy Zerlegen break down Zerlegung analysis, decomposition

591

592

glossary of german terms

Zug trend Zuhandenheit at hand Zukünft future Zuordnung correlation, classification zusammenfassen concentrating, grasping together Zusammenfassung combination Zusammenghörigkeit belonging-togetherness Zusammenhang interconnection, coherence, context Zustand state, condition

I ndex

abstract universality xxii action 31, 178 – 9, 566, 572 – 4; action space 178, 188nn11 – 12, 212; elementary action quantum 559 – 60n91; pathological disorders of 299 – 304, 305, 309, 312, 314 – 16, 327n116; space, time, and number 283 – 4; the theory of aphasia 252 – 3; see also effective action Adam, Margarete 47nn20 – 1 Ahlmann, Wilhelm 188n12 amnesia, color-name 262, 267 – 8, 270, 279, 292, 295 aphasia 281, 284 – 92, 299 – 303, 308 – 9, 315 – 16, 324n93; and the problem of the symbolic 248 – 58; and the world of perception 259 – 72 Aristotle 19, 59, 157, 235, 357, 420, 569; and the expressive function 111 – 12, 121; and the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 524, 527 – 8, 530

atoms 20, 29, 32 – 4; concept and object 376; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 498, 514 – 17, 527, 543 – 5, 548 – 9; language and science 398; space 168 Aufbau (construction) xxiv, 168 Augustine 192, 196, 209, 216, 221nn10 – 11 Ausdruck (expression) xxiii, 251, 257 Ausdrucksfunktion (expressive function) xxiii – xxiv; see also expressive function Ausdruckswahrnehmung (expressive perception) xxv, xxxv Auseinandersetzung xix – xx, xxv, xxxvi, 37, 43, 60, 81; the intuition of time 220, 220n3 Bavink, Bernhard 555n31, 559n89 Becker, Oskar 474 – 5n58 Bedeutung (signification) xxiii, xxvii – xxviii, xxixn9, 129, 142, 268, 447

594

index

Bedeutungsfunktion (significative function) xxiii – xxiv, xxvii, xxixn9; see also significative function Begreifen (comprehending) xx, 6, 40; concept and object 375; the intuition of time 220; language and science 399; toward a theory of the concept 289, 350 – 1 Benary, Wilhelm 323n86, 324n92 Bergson, Henri 40 – 4, 47n21, 214 – 20, 225n41 Berkeley, George 3 – 4, 25 – 7, 170 – 4, 184, 254, 341 – 2, 509 Bestimmung, der xxiii, 361 Bild (image) xvii, xxvi, 35, 44, 564, 572; concept and object 336; the expressive phenomenon 68, 74; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 496, 523, 529, 538, 541, 546, 549; language and science 404; toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness 247, 281; the problem of representation 127; symbolic pregnance 233 Bilden (forming) xvi, 6, 447, 572 – 3 Bildung (formation) xvi, xxvi Bildungsbürgertum (educated classes) viii Bohr, Niels 517 – 19, 548, 560n91 Bollert, Karl 560n94 Bonhoeffer, Karl 324n101 Born, Max 558n72 Bouasse, Henri Pierre Maxime 556n20 Bouman, Leendert 324 – 5n94 boundary xxiv, 82, 192, 454, 502, 550 Brentano, Franz 232, 498

Brouwer, Luitzen Egbertus Jan 405, 428 – 9, 433 – 4, 436, 442 Brunschvicg, Recht von Lèon 472n28, 474n55 Budge, Ernest Alfred Wallis 105n8 Bühler, Karl 105n3, 136n5, 137n12, 164n25, 269n4, 390 Burkamp, Wilhelm 367n12, 367n24, 368n34, 386 Cantor, Georg 404, 488 Capelli, Alfredo 418n34 Carnap, Rudolf 554n12 Cassirer, Ernst viii, ix – xiv, xvi – xviii, xx – xxviii, xxixn6, xxixn9 characteristica universalis 398 cognition see intuitive cognition; metaphysics of cognition; phenomenology of cognition color 37 – 9; the expressive phenomenon 98 – 9; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 482 – 3, 497 – 500; toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness 262 – 70, 278 – 9, 292, 295, 320n46; the problem of representation 134; space 178 – 82; symbolic pregnance 235 – 9; toward a theory of the concept 362; thing and property 144 – 8, 150 – 4, 156 – 61, 165 – 6n36 consciousness see philosophy of consciousness copies x, 23, 210, 449, 498 Cornelius, Hans 223 – 4n29 Couturat, Louis 473n32 Danzel, Theodor Wilhelm 187n8 Darstellung (presentation) xxiii, xxvi – xxvii, 54 – 5, 78, 139, 179, 280

index Darstellungsfunktion (presentative function) xxiii, xxv, xxixn8, 65, 136n5, 265; see also presentative function Dedekind, Richard xxviii, 297, 404, 411, 442 – 3, 461, 487 Delacroix, Henri 317n6 Descartes, René xxiii, 570; and the expressive function 112, 121; and the expressive phenomenon 73; and the foundations of naturalscientific cognition 527 – 30, 557n55; and language and science 410 – 11; and the object of mathematics 452 – 3; and space 170 – 4; and a theory of the concept 350; and thing and property 148 Determination, der xxiii, 361 Diels, Hermann 220n7 Dilthey, Wilhelm 94, 106n20 Ding (thing) 69, 422 Dinghaft (thing-like) 581; see also thing-like Dingnamen (thing-names) 401; see also thing-names Dingwahrnehmung (thing perception) xxv, xxxv du Bois-Reymond, Paul 442 – 3, 455 – 6 Duhem, Pierre 23, 482 Eddington, Arthur 540, 558 – 9n75, 560n97 effective action 81; concept and object 373, 381; the intuition of time 191, 211 – 12, 215 – 18, 225n41; toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness 315 Einstein, Albert x, xiv, 511, 541, 547 – 48, 560n94

595

Einzelne, das (the individual) xviii, 388 Elemente (ideal elements) 27 – 31, 34, 39; concept and object 378; the expressive function 118; the expressive phenomenon 77, 96, 103; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 476 – 8, 486 – 91, 494 – 505, 509 – 11, 515 – 18, 528 – 9, 540, 550; the intuition of time 219; language and science 404, 406 – 7, 409, 412, 417n30; the object of mathematics 422 – 3, 430 – 2, 435 – 6, 439, 451, 454 – 62, 465 – 6, 469; toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness 255, 277, 285, 289, 310; the problem of representation 127, 129, 132; space 173 – 5; symbolic pregnance 226 – 7, 230, 240; toward a theory of the concept 335, 339 – 40, 343 – 6, 354 – 6, 363 – 5; thing and property 139, 147, 154, 156, 161, 164 – 5n36 empiricism 23 – 4, 32 – 4, 38 – 9, 60; the expressive phenomenon 73 – 4; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 481, 506 – 7; the intuition of time 202 – 3; language and science 404 – 6; the object of mathematics 438, 455; toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness 254 – 5; space 170, 173 – 4; toward a theory of the concept 340 – 4; thing and property 147, 153 – 4 Enlightenment viii, xi – xiii, xxviii Enriques, Federigo 471n11

596

index

Ereignis (event) 191, 199, 283, 379, 542 Essay on Man, An (Cassirer) xxii expressive function xxiii – xxvii, 93, 100 – 1, 109, 111, 119 expressive phenomenon 72, 119, 142 – 3 extension 170 – 4; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 492, 553, 557n55; the object of mathematics 457 – 61; toward a theory of the concept 343 – 6, 356, 360 – 3 Finkelnburg, Karl Maria 249 formalism 405, 420, 442, 449 – 52, 540 Formung (symbolic forming) 6 – 8, 15 – 17, 28, 31, 573; concept and object 374; the expressive phenomenon 71, 73, 82, 100; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 485, 488, 494, 523; the intuition of time 212; language and science 387, 391 – 2; the object of mathematics 447; toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness 312; space 169, 183, 187n6; subjective and objective analysis 64; toward a theory of the concept 331, 334, 339, 348 – 9; thing and property 154 – 6, 161 Fraenkel, Adolf 432 France, Anatole 80, 105 Frege, Gottlob xxviii; and language and science 404, 417n30; and the object of mathematics 439, 442 – 3; and the pathology of symbolic consciousness 289;

and a theory of the concept 344, 346, 367n12, 367n24 Freundlich, Erwin 555n29 Freyer, Hans 187 – 8n10 Galileo 20, 23, 29, 468, 526, 548, 560n92 Gawronsky, Dimitry 474n54 Geiger, Lazarus 139 Gelb, Adhèmar: aphasia 248, 258 – 9, 268, 281, 321 – 2n65; “closer to life” 265, 314; coherence 320n39; color 262 – 6, 270; orientation 283; psychic blindness 189n16, 276 – 7, 279 – 81, 292; recognition of objects 277, 280, 321n61; spatial gestalts 188n12; theory of language 317n8; understanding of numbers 279; use of tools 328n127 genuine concept xxii – xxiii, 361, 447, 529 German Idealism viii, xvii, xxvii Gestalt (gestalt, figure, shape) xvii, xxiii – xxiv, xxvii; the expressive phenomenon 81 – 2; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 494 – 6, 527 – 8; language and science 392 – 3; the object of mathematics 428 – 9, 443 – 4; symbolic pregnance 237; thing and property 147 – 8 Gestalten (to configure) xvii, xviii, 44, 572 – 3; the expressive function 116; the expressive phenomenon 99; the intuition of time 212; the object of mathematics 463; subjective and objective analysis 54 – 5

index Gestaltung (configuration) xvii – xxiii, xxvii, 44, 99 givenness 39; co-givenness 84, 165n36, 334, 486; the expressive function 108; the expressive phenomenon 104; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 477 – 8, 490, 495, 526; the intuition of time 214; the object of mathematics 444; space 169; symbolic pregnance 235, 239 – 40 Glied xxiii, xxixn6, 3, 377, 402, 514 Gliederung (organizational whole) xxiii, xxixn6, 70, 133 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von ix, 28, 38, 573, 580; and the expressive function 108 – 9; Faust 583n14; and the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 479, 485; and the object of mathematics 459; quoting xiv – xv, xxi; and symbolic pregnance 238; Theory of Colors 18; and thing and property 155 Goldstein, Kurt: “abstract” movements 304, 306; aphasia 248, 255, 258 – 9, 268, 281, 318 – 19n24, 321 – 2n65; “apraxic” disorder 309; “closer to life” 265, 314; coherence 320n39; color 262 – 6, 270; orientation 283, 324n94; psychic blindness 189n16, 276 – 7, 279 – 81, 292, 306 – 8; recognition of objects 277, 280, 321n61; spatial gestalts 188n12; theory of language 317n8; understanding of numbers 279, 323n79; use of tools 328n127

597

ground xxvii, 56 – 60, 568 – 9; concept and object 381 – 2; and consequence 117, 418n30; the expressive function 110 – 11, 115 – 17; the expressive phenomenon 72 – 3; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 488, 506 – 8; the intuition of time 194, 196, 216 – 17, 220n3; the language and science 406; object of mathematics 425 – 8, 436 – 7, 451, 463; space 184 – 5; toward a theory of the concept 341 – 2; thing and property 147 – 8 Grünbaum, Anton Abraham 324 – 5n94 Haas, Arthur 556n43, 559n84 Hamilton, William Rowan 474 Hartmann, Nicolai 112 – 16 Head, Henry 148, 254 – 5, 258, 268 – 9, 312 – 14, 319n24; fragmentation 281, 322n65; mirrors 298, 309, 324n93; numbers 288, 292 – 3, 296, 323n83; orientation in space 284 – 6; tests 252 – 3, 291, 297 – 8, 300, 309, 325n95 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich xi, xx – xxiii, xxxiii – xxxiv, 567, 572, 578, 580; the expressive function 115; the expressive phenomenon 90; the foundations of naturalscientific cognition 505 – 6 Heidegger, Martin xii – xiv, 187n6, 220n3, 222n19, 225n41 Heilbronner, Karl 259, 303, 320n50 Helmholtz, Hermann von 23; concept and object 374, 379 – 81;

598

index

the foundations of naturalscientific cognition 480, 536; language and science 404; space 170, 173 – 4; toward a theory of the concept 337 – 8; thing and property 152 – 4, 164n25 Henning, Hans 163n18 Henschen, Salomon Eberhard 254 Herder, Johann Gottfried 35 – 8, 131 – 2, 140, 394 Hering, Ewald 144, 151, 153 – 4, 158 – 9, 161, 170 Hertz, Heinrich 22 – 3, 513 Heymans, Gerard 367n21 Hilbert, David: the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 501, 542; language and science 404 – 5; the object of mathematics 442 – 6, 450 – 3, 456 – 7, 460 – 1, 473n41 Hobbes, Thomas 33 – 4, 206 – 8, 244, 421 Hoffmann, Ernst 162n1, 416n27 Hölder, Otto 418n34, 473n31, 473n49, 555n18 Hönigswald, Richard 162 – 3n3 Hornbostel, Erich Moritz von 189n20 Humboldt, Wilhelm von 17, 57 – 8, 145, 248 – 50, 261 – 2, 317n8, 581 Hume, David 32; concept and object 377; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 498, 507; the intuition of time 202, 206 – 8, 222n18; toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness 254 Husserl, Edmund xxi, 222n19, 232 – 5, 379, 475n58

immediacy 25 – 39, 40, 45, 53 – 4, 334 inner experience xxv, 25 – 39, 100 intuitionism 404 – 5, 420, 433 – 4, 438 – 45, 450 intuitive cognition 39 – 46, 5, 139, 336 – 7, 352, 359, 427, 450 intuitive world xxiv – xxvi, 133 – 5, 144, 339, 391, 487, 524 Jackson, Hughlings 248 – 55, 258, 268, 277, 312, 318n23, 319n31 Jaensch, Erich Rudolf 185 James, William 161, 181, 210 Job, Andrè 514 Kaila, Eino 189n13 Kant, Immanuel ix – x, xxii – xxiii, xxvi, xlii – 14, 27, 44, 574; concept and object 369, 372, 376, 381, 384n3; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 521, 532 – 3, 547, 552; the intuition of time 191 – 2, 195, 199 – 200, 223 – 4n29; language and science 405; the object of mathematics 425 – 7, 443 – 4, 475n58; toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness 249, 273 – 4, 287, 297; subjective and objective analysis 54 – 9, 65; symbolic pregnance 229 – 32; toward a theory of the concept 339, 343, 299 – 348, 307; thing and property 154; space 184 Katz, David 151, 154, 158, 164 – 6n36, 180 Keller, Helen 131, 136 – 7n11 Klages, Ludwig 77, 92 – 3, 117, 130, 136n9, 563, 577 Klein, Felix 182 – 3, 411, 414, 469, 501

index Kleist, Heinrich von 45, 561 – 2 Kleist, Karl 326n100 Koffka, Kurt 74 – 5 Köhler, Wolfgang 75 – 6, 128, 573 – 4

livingness in general xxv, 101 Locke, John 340 – 1, 426, 492, 506 – 7, 517 Lotze, Hermann 134, 170, 174, 568

Lasswitz, Kurd 543 – 4, 557n53 Laue, Max Theodor Felix von 548, 554n9 Lazarus, Moritz 162n3, 245 – 6 Lebensphilosophie xxi, 578 Leib (lived body) xxv Leib-Seelen-Frage (mind-bodyquestion) 112, 115 Leib-Seelen-Problem (mind-bodyproblem) 111 – 12, 114, 118, 570 – 1 Leib-Seelen-Verhältnis (mind-bodyrelationship) 112, 117 Leib-Seelen-Zusammenhang (mindbody-interconnection) 114 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 35, 52 – 3, 112, 115, 190n21, 565, 571; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 492, 514, 527, 530 – 2, 558n65, 559n78; the intuition of time 195, 199 – 200, 209, 224n31; language and science 402 – 3, 408 – 11, 413, 418n30; the object of mathematics 421 – 7, 432 – 3, 435, 443, 450 – 4, 467 – 9; toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness 244, 283; symbolic pregnance 239 Lèvy-Bruhl, Lucien 323n85, 416n19 Lichtheim, Ludwig 318n20 Liepmann, Hugo 250, 301 – 6, 312, 318n12, 327n120 lingua universalis 398 Lipps, Theodor 96, 372 – 3 Lissauer, Heinrich 273 – 6, 280 Litt, Theodor 224 – 5n41

Mach, Ernst 27 – 33, 202, 223n29, 481, 504, 507 magnitude: the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 486 – 7, 509, 516 – 20, 544, 548, 557n55; the intuition of time 195 – 6; language and science 405, 411; toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness 265, 288 – 94; space 168; symbolic pregnance 237 Mahnke, Dietrich 470n6, 470 – 1n8 Major, David R. 163n7 Marie, Pierre 255 – 8, 299 – 300, 319n27 Materie (matter) 26 – 39, 387 – 8, 531 – 3; of cognition 1 – 18 mathesis universalis 410, 465 Maxwell, James Clerk 512, 534, 540 Mayer, Robert 536, 547 Meinong, Alexius 554n15 Mensch, der (the human, the human being) xviii metaphysics ix – xiv, xx – xxiv, 5 – 6, 25 – 8, 55 – 6, 562 – 70, 575 – 7; the expressive function 111 – 17, 119 – 21; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 531 – 2; the intuition of time 192 – 6, 198 – 201, 214, 217 – 18; intuitive and symbolic cognition in 39 – 46; the object of mathematics 445 – 8, 453 – 5; space 168 – 70; thing and property 148 – 9

599

600

index

metaphysics of cognition xxi, 112 Meynert, Theodor 318n12 mind-body-problem see Leib-SeelenProblem mots et les choses, Les (Foucault) xii Moutier, François 319n27, 323n80 Müller, Aloys 417n30 Myth of the State, The (Cassirer) xi nativism 170, 174, 181 Natorp, Paul 58 – 65, 241 – 2n17, 417n29 natural-scientific cognition xxviii, 398, 518, 534, 553 natural world concept xix, xxvi – xxvii, 13, 30, 331 – 6, 349 natural worldview xxxii, 31, 115, 334 Newton, Isaac 22, 27; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 502, 526, 532 – 3, 536, 547; the intuition of time 194 – 5, 199; the object of mathematics 435, 467 – 8; space 172 number 7, 14 – 15, 19, 566; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 478, 481 – 2, 487 – 92, 509, 514 – 19, 529, 554n9; the intuition of time 195; language and science 400 – 8, 410 – 15, 417nn29 – 30; the object of mathematics 424, 429 – 34, 436 – 46, 452 – 6, 459 – 64, 469, 472n20, 474n58; toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness 287 – 97, 323n87; toward a theory of the concept 333 – 4, 344, 356, 367n24, 368n34 objects see Objekte; world of objects Objekte (object) 7, 13, 22, 25 – 6; concept and object

369 – 73, 376, 379, 382; the expressive phenomenon 72; the foundations of naturalscientific cognition 493, 508, 551; the intuition of time 203; language and science 403 – 5, 410; the object of mathematics 444, 448, 451 – 3, 458 – 60, 463; toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness 246, 272 – 5, 280, 285 – 6, 301, 305 – 6, 310; toward a theory of the concept 334, 337 – 9; thing and property 141, 151; see also world of objects Objekterkenntnis (objectcognition) 61 Order of Things, The (Foucault) see mots et les choses, Les ordinal signs 391, 400 – 2, 463 Ostwald, Wilhelm 536 Paneth, Fritz 555nn33 – 4 Parmenides 2, 3, 20, 356, 417n30, 575; the intuition of time 194, 199, 204, 214 perception 9 – 17, 19 – 20, 30 – 6, 53 – 5; and aphasia 260 – 1, 265 – 72; concept and object 374 – 8, 380 – 1; the expressive phenomenon 67 – 73, 76 – 7, 82 – 5, 87 – 8, 90 – 2, 96 – 7, 99 – 100; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 478 – 9, 482 – 3, 497 – 500, 502 – 3, 505 – 6, 508 – 9; the intuition of time 197 – 8, 204 – 9, 215 – 16; toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness 244 – 8, 282 – 3, 298 – 300; space 168 – 75, 180 – 6; symbolic pregnance 226 – 30, 239 – 40; toward a theory of the

index concept 337 – 9, 349 – 50, 358 – 60; thing perception 272 – 82; thing and property 139 – 40, 143 – 6, 151 – 6 perceptual consciousness 261, 266, 269, 508 phenomenology of cognition xx – xxii Phenomenology of Cognition, The (Cassirer) xi Philolaos 413, 418n40 philosophy of consciousness xiii – xiv philosophy of symbolic forms xx – xxi, 1, 14 – 15, 56, 60, 314; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 481, 484, 494, 521 Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, The (Cassirer) viii – xv, xvi, xix, xxx, xxxii – xxxvi, 136n5, 220n3 physics ix – x, 22 – 35, 68; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 479 – 83, 486 – 9, 501 – 2, 504 – 5, 507 – 12; the intuition of time 194 – 5; the object of mathematics 446; “symbol” and “schema” in 526 – 31, 534 – 43, 545 – 48, 551 – 3, 556n37, 559n75 Pick, Arnold 136n7, 318n12, 321n58, 327n117 Planck, Max 21, 28, 504, 512, 519 – 20, 537, 559 – 60n91 Plato 18; the expressive phenomenon 103; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 491, 494, 525 – 6; the intuition of time 204, 217 – 18; language and science 396, 404, 417 – 18n30; the object of mathematics 447, 454 – 5, 469; toward a pathology of symbolic

601

consciousness 281; space 178; toward a theory of the concept 334, 350, 355 – 6 Poincaré, Henri 432, 440, 480 Poncelet, Jean Victor 465 presentative function xxiii, xxv – xxvi; the expressive phenomenon 75 – 6; language and science 388; toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness 265; the problem of representation 128, 131; toward a theory of the concept 358; thing and property 141 – 3, 146, 161 primacy of the relation 240, 241 – 2n17, 440 “Problem of the Symbol in Philosophy, The” (Cassirer) xxiii – xxiv property 144, 151, 153 – 4, 159 – 60; the foundations of naturalscientific cognition 505; language and science 404; the object of mathematics 430, 432, 436, 439; toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness 260; property concepts 551 – 2; space 167; thing-property-category 69; thing-property-order 226, 240; thing-property-perception 88; thing-property-problem 168; thing-property-relation 174, 179 psychology 25 – 39, 54 – 6. 58 – 65, 569; developmental 38, 71, 130, 140, 389; the expressive phenomenon 68, 71 – 3, 76 – 7; the foundations of naturalscientific cognition 498 – 9; gestalt xxi; the intuition of time 208 – 9; toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness

602

index

245 – 6, 253 – 4; sensationalist 76, 144, 227, 230, 245, 253 – 4, 343, 498; symbolic pregnance 230; toward a theory of the concept 342 – 3; thing and property 153; of thinking 162 – 3n3, 198, 361 rationalism 2, 73, 112, 147 – 8, 170, 485, 497 Reiche, Fritz 556n43 reines Ausdrucksphänomen (expressive phenomenon) 72 relation see primacy of the relation; Relationsbegriffen Relationsbegriffen (relationconcepts) 548 relativity, theory of x; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 533, 541, 548, 552, 554n9, 560n94, 560n97; language and science 413 Repräsentation (representation) xxiv, xxvi – xxvii; the concept and problem of 125 – 35; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 553; the intuition of time 199 – 200, 203; language and science 387; symbolic pregnance 241n17; toward a theory of the concept 362 – 3, 366; thing and property 147 – 9 res (thing) 52; forma dat esse rei (form gives being to the thing) 247; notae rerum (notes of things) 52; res cogitans xxiii; res numeratas 492 Rickert, Heinrich 406 – 7, 417n29, 418n30 Russell, Bertrand 53; the foundations of natural-scientific

cognition 489 – 90; the intuition of time 204 – 5; language and science 404, 417 – 18n30; the object of mathematics 431, 439, 442, 471n12, 472n28; toward a theory of the concept 344 – 7, 353, 356, 367n24, 368n31 Sache (thing) xxvi, 54; the expres�sive function 109; the expressive phenomenon 79 – 80, 93; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 481 – 2; the intuition of time 211; language and science 390, 398; the object of mathe�matics 421, 436 Schapp, Wilhelm 145 – 7 Scheler, Max 103, 106n24, 563 – 72, 575 – 9 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph 42, 71, 563 Schiller xiv, 574 Schröder, Ernst 344, 417n30 scientific cognition xx – xxi, xxiv – xxviii, 11, 16 – 22, 63 – 5; concept and object 374; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 485, 503, 522, 545; language and science 392, 398; mathematical-natural-scientific cognition 398; natural-scientific cognition xxviii, 534, 553; theoretical-scientific cognition 16, 70, 101; toward a theory of the concept 361 Sehen (seeing) xxi, 144 – 5, 153 – 5, 228, 311, 339 Semon, Richard 204 sensationalism 4; the expressive phenomenon 76 – 7; the

index foundations of naturalscientific cognition 497 – 8; the intuition of time 223n29; toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness 253 – 4; space 170 – 1; symbolic pregnance 227 – 31; toward a theory of the concept 350 – 1 set theory 429 – 40, 442, 472n20 Sicht (sight) xxi, xxixn4; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 551; the intuition of time 212 – 14; toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness 271, 281, 292; space 183 – 5; toward a theory of the concept 339; thing and property 143, 155 – 7 signification xxiii – xxiv, xxvii – xxviii; concept and object 378 – 9; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 507 – 8; and the “ideal elements” (Elemente) 454 – 76; language and science 395 – 7; the object of mathematics 444 – 50; toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness 266 – 70, 278 – 9; the problem of representation 129 – 31; space 174 – 5, 179 – 80; symbolic pregnance 231 – 3; toward a theory of the concept 334 – 6, 346 – 8, 351 – 2; thing and property 139 – 42 significative function xxiii – xxiv, xxv, 65, 272, 383, 422 Sigwart, Christoph 366n4 Sinn (sense) xxii; the expressive function 109, 117; the intuition of time 216; toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness 271, 275, 293, 296; the problem of

603

representation 128 – 9; space 169; symbolic pregnance 236, 239; toward a theory of the concept 351 Sinnen (musing) xxi, 18 Sommerfeld, Arnold 517, 555nn33 – 5, 556n37 Sosein (being-a-certain-way) xx, 4, 26, 565, 575; concept and object 378; the expressive function 109; the expressive phenomenon 85; the foundations of naturalscientific cognition 523; language and science 391 sound 36 – 7, 74 – 5, 197 – 8, 351, 373; sound images 254 space 11, 167 – 86, 187n6, 188nn11 – 12, 565 – 6; concept and object 371; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 478, 488 – 96, 502, 526 – 8, 533, 544 – 9, 554n12; the intuition of time 212, 216 – 17; language and science 404, 413 – 14; the object of mathematics 426, 465; toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness 279, 282 – 6, 290, 292, 307 – 10; symbolic pregnance 237 – 8; thing and property 146 – 7, 152 speculative reason xxii Spieth, Jakob 107n26 Spinoza, Baruch de 2, 573; the expressive function 112; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 523; the intuition of time 194, 199, 201, 214; the object of mathematics 421 Staudt, Georg Karl Christian von 462, 474n52

604

index

Stauffenberg, Wilhelm von 276, 320n55 Steinen, Karl von den 324n90 Steinthal, Heymann 246, 317n3, 318n12 Stenzel, Julius 136n6 Stern, Clara 105n3, 122n9, 136n4, 136 – 7n11, 163n7 Stern, William 105n3, 122n9, 136n4, 136 – 7n11, 163n7 Stolz, Otto 418n34 substance x; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 510, 530 – 4, 544 – 9; the intuition of time 200 – 1; soul substance 82; space 170; toward a theory of the concept 332, 337; thing substance 82 Substance and Function (Cassirer) xix – xxiii, 367n24, 559n87 symbolic character 24, 108 symbolic cognition xxvii, 18 – 24, 39 – 46, 427, 450 symbolic consciousness 141 – 2, 189n18, 299 symbolic form x – xiv, xvii, xxiv, 62, 577, 582; the expressive phenomenon 85, 102; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 527; language and science 398; toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness 315 symbolic forming 31, 54, 100, 247, 573; the foundations of naturalscientific cognition 485, 488; space 169, 187n6; toward a theory of the concept 339, 349; see also Formung symbolic function xix, xxii – xxv, xxixn6, 51 – 5, 223n29, 568; the expressive function 118;

toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness 259 – 60; space 182 symbolic pregnance xvii, xxi – xxiii, 239, 275 Symbolische Prägnanz see symbolic pregnance Tannery, Jules 462 theory of the concept 184 – 5, 369; class concepts 289, 343 – 6, 356, 368n31, 439, 441, 472n28; concept and law 337 – 8, 351 – 2, 355, 364, 368n34; concept as propositional function 346 – 7, 352 – 3, 355 – 7, 363; and the “natural world concept” 331 – 6; position of concepts in mathematical logic 341, 343 – 50, 356, 359; relation concepts (Relationsbegriff ) 344, 349, 354, 548 thing xxvi – xxxv; absolute thing 196; concept and object 370 – 1, 375 – 85; Ding (thing) 69, 421; the expressive function 111; the expressive phenomenon 81 – 2, 98; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 493, 505 – 6, 509 – 10, 519 – 20, 540 – 4, 550 – 2, 560n92; the intuition of time 210, 218; the object of mathematics 421 – 2, 433; toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness 260, 297; the problem of representation 126; and property 140 – 2, 144, 146 – 8, 153 – 4, 156 – 61, 162n3; space 167 – 86, 179 – 81; symbolic pregnance 232 – 3; toward a theory of the concept 350 – 1;

index thing-category 86; thingcharacter 73; thing concept 22, 43, 98, 111, 433, 506, 519 – 20, 542, 548; thing-connections 118; thing-constancy 88, 532; thingform 31; thing-in-itself 115, 371; thing-like 102, 333, 463, 581; thing-names 263, 319n24, 401; thing perception xxv, 91 – 2, 97, 272 – 82; thing-property-category 69; thing-property-order 226, 240; thing-property-perception 88; thing-property-problem 168; thing-property-relation 174, 179; thing-relation 118; thingrelationships 441, 582; thing signs 390, 398, 401 – 2, 404; thing space 285, 310 – 11; thing substance 82; thing-unity 168, 183, 520, 542, 548; thing-world 31, 74, 84, 101, 118, 140, 142, 169, 171, 233, 238; useful thing 187n6; see also res; Sache thing-like 102, 333, 463, 581 thing-names 263, 319n24, 401 thing perception xxv, 91 – 2, 97, 272 – 82 Thomson, William 558n64 Thorndike, Edward Lee 140 time xiii, xxvii, 7, 25, 31, 45, 565 – 6; concept and object 371, 374; the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 478, 544 – 8; the intuition of 191 – 209, 211 – 20, 220n3, 221nn10 – 11, 221 – 2n13, 222n19, 223n29, 224 – 5n41; language and science 399, 405; the object of mathematics 426, 434 – 5, 474 – 5n58; toward a pathology of symbolic consciousness 287, 291 – 2;

605

the problem of representation 133; subjective and objective analysis 57, 59; symbolic pregnance 239 transcendence 108, 121, 371, 378, 447 – 9, 455, 569 understanding see Verstanden; Verstehen Unding (existing non-thing) 195 universalism viii, xiv, 442 Unterbau (substructure) xix, xxxiii, 12 Usener, Hermann 104, 126 variability 398, 544, 546 Verstanden xxiv – xxv Verstehen (understanding) xxii, xxiv – xxv, 15; the expressive function 111; the expressive phenomenon 75, 85; the intuition of time 212; symbolic pregnance 237 Vignoli, Tito 86 – 8 Volkelt, Hans 140, 188n11 Volkelt, Johannes 222n16 Voss, Aurel 418n33 Waltershausen, Wolfgang Sartorius von 419n42 Weltbegreifen (worldcomprehending) xx, 14 Weltverstehen (worldunderstanding) xx, 15 Werner, Heinz 38 – 9 Wernicke, Carl 249 – 50, 254, 256 – 7, 305 Westermann, Diedrich 320n47 Weyl, Hermann: the foundations of natural-scientific cognition 542, 560n92; language and science

606

index

414; the object of mathematics 433, 436 – 8, 440, 445, 449, 469 Whitehead, Alfred North 367n16, 418n30, 559n82 wissenschaftliche Erkenntnis (scientific cognition) xxiv, xxvii; see also scientific cognition Woerkom, Willem van 287, 326 – 7n116

world of expression 86, 97 – 8, 523 world of objects 5, 18 – 24, 25, 101, 335, 565 Wundt, Wilhelm 170, 185, 246, 348 Zermelo, Ernst 431 Zeuthen, Hieronymus Georg 470n2