My usual experience of looking at the world involves getting a hold of of object which I can study or ignore, understand or err about. The object is extremely peculiar: it stays the same regardless of whether the particular thing I am studying dies, or is replaced by another of the same kind, or even if all the particulars vanish. The object simply presents itself as different and other than the particular thing existing here and now. Since my thought deals best with things that are particular, here in place, and now and then in time, I am forced to understand this object by negations of particularity, spacial location, and temporal subordination of it. I grasp what it is by affirming what it is not. And since I am the one who contains this thing- it’s my thought after all- I conclude that I possess and am proportionate to the unchanging, the universal, the ubiquitous, the eternal.
It follows also from the argument that the “I” I am speaking of is any “I”. But if you can read this, you already knew that. In this respect, your experience is the same as my own. Let me explain.
My usual experience of looking at the world involves getting hold of an object which I…
Niggardly Phil said,
January 14, 2009 at 6:13 am
“Since my thought deals best with things that are particular, here in place, and now and then in time, I understand this object better by denying particularity, spacial location, and temporal subordination of it.”
It’s funny because it captures the confusion so well – thought as both object and alternately, and without warning, as subject (it “deals … with things”); both terms end being interchangeable, perfectly confused. When you introduce thought as a lens through which we experience the world (and that “through” can have many meanings which is the core of the issue), madness follows, one sees only lenses of lenses of lenses of ….
Kant seems to want to dig to the origin of this object. That’s the trajectory of his opera. Space madness!