Ok. Thank you. You have put me on track re Noumena.
Is there a "direct reality" for Kant? Does he even get into that? — ENOAH
For Kant, I believe, this could be many objects, a plurality of various objects. However, it cannot be known, what, if any, "being" stands behind empirical understanding. It is "X" for lack of better term for Kant. For Kant as well, it is only a concept that is gotten to by negation. It is the "not-empirical thing". — schopenhauer1
For Schopenhauer, he thinks he can go "beyond Kant" by not just proposing that there are "things-in-themselves" behind the empirical, that we can never know (X), but rather, we CAN KNOW and very INTIMATELY what X actually IS.. and that is a monism, Will.. The very fact that we have an "inner being" (subjective experience) is for Schopenhauer proof that Will exists as this double-aspected thing that strives. — schopenhauer1
I don't think he is actually identifying the subject as Will. — schopenhauer1
While it is true we think in images, as soon as we present to ourselves a representation of a triangle in general, it is a particular instance of a universal idea. In no other way than by means of principles, is it possible to think things in general, the backbone of pure transcendental cognitions. — Mww
is therefore the most ultimate reality for S the Will? Or is there a Being of all Beings which is merely manifesting as the Will? — ENOAH
Hegel and Schleiermacher thought that Kant had missed something important—namely, that the self which experiences the world is also a part of the world it is experiencing. Rather than there being this sharp divide between the experiencing subject and things-in-themselves, with phenomena emerging at the point of interface, the experiencing subject is a thing-in-itself. It is noumenal—or, put another way, the self that experiences the world is part of the ultimate reality that lies behind experience.
So: the self that has experiences is a noumenal reality. Both Schleiermacher and Hegel believed that this fact could be made use of, so that somehow the self could serve as a wedge to pry open a doorway through the wall of mystery, into an understanding of reality as it is in itself. ...
... Schleiermacher dealt with this conundrum by privileging a distinct mode of self-consciousness, one in which all attempts to make the self into an object of consciousness—that is, all attempts to come to know the self—are set aside. When the self is made an object of study it becomes a phenomenon, and as such is divorced from the noumenal self. But it is possible to simply be—to become quiescent, if you will, and simply be what one is rather than attempt to know what one is.
And in this place of cognitive stillness, one discovers in a direct experiential way an ultimate reality that cannot be conceptualized or made into an object of study. This is the domain of mystical experience—and even though it is ineffable (that is, even if it cannot be made into an object of knowledge) it brings with it a kind of insight or enlightenment. One may not be able to adequately put this experience into propositional terms that can be affirmed as true, but that doesn’t mean one hasn’t in some sense encountered noumenal reality. One hasn’t encountered it as an object of experience (since that would turn it into a phenomenon). Rather, one encounters it in the way one experiences.
The challenge, then, is to attempt to articulate this encounter in a way that is meaningful to us--in other words, in a way that our cognitive minds can grasp and affirm. The encounter itself is what Schleiermacher calls “religion.”
Is there a "direct reality" for Kant? Does he even get into that? — ENOAH
What were the "opposing" "realities" in his dualism? — ENOAH
I'm not sure if Mww is trying to convey this but..
Noumena is a speculative notion that are the "objects-themselves" or the "things-in-themselves" - a reference to the "entity" non-cognized, but as it is "in itself". — schopenhauer1
the only realism is empirically conditioned, as opposed to that pseudo-realism which is technically only logical validity, — Mww
Direct reality”, then, reduces to a metaphysical non-starter. — Mww
a universal, from which follows that this form of the real, first, belongs to reason rather than sensibility, and second, is real only insofar as without it all a priori cognitions become impossible. — Mww
we understand that thing still remains as it is in itself. — Mww
Noumena is a speculative notion that are the "objects-themselves" or the "things-in-themselves" - a reference to the "entity" non-cognized, but as it is "in itself". — schopenhauer1
….either extremely honest or extremely convenient. — ENOAH
….that which really is unknowable…. — ENOAH
How do we distinguish between the unknowable and the really unknowable? — Mww
My thinking emerges from these very categories I have been grappling with, in some "points" intersecting across philosophers, in other places, divergent only superficially, in still others, clearly divergent. — ENOAH
Me, I think the argument can be made that he was 'the last great philosopher' (although I'll leave it to someone else to actually write it ;-) )
I could be wrong but, I don’t think Schop makes the distinction between Thing in Itself and noumenal. For schop Will is Thing itself is Noumena… — schopenhauer1
….the noumenal as still mediated reality; though posited as unknowable because its constructed source is ambiguous; that which remained unspoken of by Kant — ENOAH
that which remained unspoken of by Kant (…) as really real…. — ENOAH
….though neither philosopher made compelling arguments for how they described/why they "ignored" it.) — ENOAH
If noumena are mediated reality, why do we have phenomena? — Mww
Really real in Kant is the affect of things on our senses. — Mww
The guy who does the Great Courses' modern phil survey course makes this point. He is talking about Hegel, but the two were contemporaries and even taught across the hall from one another for a period. He says Hegel was the last great philosopher in terms of creating an all encompassing system (aesthetics, ethics, politics, metaphysics, epistemology, etc.) — Count Timothy von Icarus
If noumena are mediated reality, why do we have phenomena? We know….theoretically…..what phenomena are mediated by, re: sensation, but what mediates noumena when we don’t even know what a noumenon would be? And whatever it may be, it certainly isn’t a sensation for us. — Mww
Kant's introduced the concept of the “thing in itself” to refer to reality as it is independent of our experience of it and unstructured by our cognitive constitution. The concept was harshly criticized in his own time and has been lambasted by generations of critics since. A standard objection to the notion is that Kant has no business positing it, given his insistence that we can only know what lies within the limits of possible experience. But a more sympathetic reading is to see the concept of the “thing in itself” as a sort of placeholder in Kant's system; it both marks the limits of what we can know and expresses a sense of mystery that cannot be dissolved, the sense of mystery that underlies our unanswerable questions. Through both of these functions it serves to keep us humble.
key to the 'noumena' issue is Kant's criticism of the rationalists including Liebniz and Descartes, both of whom believed the existence of God could be proven by rational principles. — Wayfarer
Viewed in that light, and resisting the urge to 'peek behind', I think it's quite a reasonable idea. — Wayfarer
But their "thing in itself" is as unknowable as that of an apple. — ENOAH
Both are known already mediated, and there is no inherent difference in what they are in our experience. — ENOAH
We" as in the particular form human Mind took, constructed logic no more or less than it constructed apple. — ENOAH
And what these two are independent of our constructions are equally not knowable. — ENOAH
Really real in Kant is the affect of things on our senses.
— Mww
Is that a settlement he necessarily reaches given his empirical approach? — ENOAH
That is, is he saying, What things are, I cannot know…. — ENOAH
…..so I can only express positions on them as appearances — ENOAH
Or, is he saying reality is its effects? (…) reality was the affecting. — ENOAH
it sounds more like Schopenhauer's Will being that which drives all activity of being. And perhaps Kant just stayed clear of that — ENOAH
It's well-known that Schopenhauer despised Hegel…. — Wayfarer
'noumena' and 'ding-an-sich' (which are not the same but often confused with each other) — Wayfarer
In traditional (pre-modern) philosophy, wasn't it the case that 'intelligible objects' were known immediately, i.e. knowledge of them was unmediated by sense? That when you know an arithmetical principle or proof, you 'see' it in a way that you can't see a sense-object? — Wayfarer
That object which was initially unknown became “apple”, hence to say that object is unknowable, is a contradiction. The thing-in-itself, on the other hand, never becomes anything at all, so can be said to be, and remain, unknowable. — Mww
The thing-in-itself is not mediated, — Mww
Yesbecause logic cannot be independent of our constructions, — Mww
Yes, understood.This seems to mistreat appearance as “what it looks like” when it should be “when it makes its presence felt”. — Mww
I'm not a Schopenhauer scholar, so I'm just shooting in the dark here. His description of WILL --- "a blind, unconscious, aimless striving {random erratic motion?} devoid of knowledge {unintentional ; indeterminate?}, outside of space and time {supernatural?}, and free of all multiplicity {singular ; monistic?} " --- sounds like a natural mechanical energetic force, except for the "outside" and "monistic" modifiers, which sound more like a deity. Yet it's not an individual object or person, but more like an impersonal energy field or Causal Essence.In the OP, ↪Shawn found Schop's "denial of the will to live" unacceptable. — Gnomon
Yes, I would like to elaborate on why I find it unacceptable. How is one to deny the will to live? Doesn't this imbue a persons life or deny their adaptability to the environment they are in?
Compare and contrast the Darwinian notion of the survival of the fittest with Schopenhauer's notion of the denial of the will to live? — Shawn
I'm not a Schopenhauer scholar... — Gnomon
Thanks. But it's a bit late in life for me to begin a scholastic study of "German idealists". I have a pretty good foundation in the pioneering Greeks. But I've never read any of Kant or Hegel or Schop --- other than popular quotes, Wiki articles and Wayfarer posts. So, all those famous philosophers are, for me, mainly symbols of specific concepts (Hegelian Dialectic) or general worldviews (Transcendental Idealism) that I may, or may not, want to use in what's left of my own real life. :smile:All his works are freely available online. Granted, a fair amount of reading, but the World as Will and Representation Vol 1 is a good start. In respect of the nature of the will, and why everything should be seen as its manifestation, read the paragraphs beginning here. Not easy reading, but then which of the German idealist were? — Wayfarer
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