Self-consciousness has become Reason. Having succeeded in reconciling itself as changeable and itself as unchangeable consciousness through the mediation of genuine thought, self-consciousness, as a particular consciousness inhabitting a living body in the flux of appearances, discovers that it itself as a self is the principle unity that determines the nature of reality. Self-consciousness must now provide an account for how this could be possible. Its certainty that it is all reality is true, but only in principle. It must show, rationally, that the principle root, the universal substrate of all reality, is itself. In other words, thought and action for Reason is Absolute, in principle. Thought, and willing, is confined to a particular individual, constrained within the limits of a living body that preserves itself and decays; in principle, its thought is universal. It applies to all things, in principle. Reason holds the conviction that all things are knowable, being is intelligible, as Plato remarked. Similarly, action is in fact confined to a particular individual living body, but is in principle universal; i.e. the effects of its acts ripple to the limits of being, turn inside out (they are inverted) and return to the initiating agent of said act.
The unhappy consciousness, recall, was aware of its internal self-contradictory nature; it was both changeable and unchangeable, but neither. These two poles it could not reconcile without the devotion, the self-feeling derived therefrom, and the self-surrender of desire through work, with the help of a mediator. With the mediator, who played flesh-image representative of genuine thought, the unhappy consciousness divested itself of inner and outer freedom. This divestment resulted in the actualization of what the unhappy consciousness all along thought itself to be: it became a thing. Once having experienced the life of a thing, the unhappy consciousness realized that it could not divest itself of the universality inherent in its self-hood, for even a thing and its many properties is a universal.
Reason emerged as the self-consciousness that is certain of the implicit universality of its self-hood. The fundamental and necessary assumption that makes self-consciousness Reason is its instinctive conviction that it itself is the universal substrate of both itself as subject, and the objective flux of appearances as substance. The objective flux of appearances, as well as itself, operates in perfect harmony to the activity of self-consciousness as Reason, like an octave. The world is inherently rational. Reason, furthermore, is at peace with itself. No longer does the otherness of objective reality require cancellation, its being consumed or rendered into a product, whether of thought or physical. No longer does self-consciousness, like the stoic, extract its thoughts from objective actuality, then, once the thought has been made, casts objective reality aside like an empty husk devoid of rational significance.
Actuality is an independent and self-related permanence that possesses truth and presence. It is distinct from self-consciousness, which itself is an independent and self-related permanence that possesses truth and presence. In each of their independent self-relation, Reason and the innately rational world are related to each other; both are being-for-another. Thus, they are absolutely distinct being-for-self. The rationality of both unites them. Again, as we have seen, Reason interprets objective reality as it interprets itself. In essence, Reason engages in an interpretive stance known as (ontological idealism), which holds that reality is a form of thought and the thought of self-consciousness participates in it.
Idealism proper can defined as "the belief in a spiritual principle at the basis of reality, without the reduction of the physical world to mere illusion"; in all its forms, idealism, has two fundamental, axiomatic, assumptions. First, something mental is the ultimate foundation of all reality, or even exhaustive of all reality. Second, even though the existence of something independent of the mind is conceded, everything that self-consciousness can (know) about this mind independent reality, (all claims to knowledge), must be considered to be a form of self-knowledge. Reality is permeated by the creative, formative, and constructive activities of the mind. Immanuel Kant holds this kind of rational, idealist, attitude, that our representations of space and time are not copies of independent vector spaces, but determinations that fundamentally belonged to the mind of self-consciousness.
The self is the universal substance. Rather than the sun orbiting the spectator on earth, the spectator on earth orbits the sun. The ultimate and inexhaustive foundation of all reality is a universal unchangeable consciousness, pure and simple. The ontological idealism of self-consciousness is supplemented by an epistemological idealism. Self-consciousness can make itself into an object for itself, it differentiates itself from itself and remains self-identical in thinking itself. The thought of itself is the Category, and this thought product is taken to be the universal substrate of reality. Reason holds that the structure of self-consciousness ineluctibly determines the structure of all reality, inner and outer. Thus, thought too is formal, rational, since its source is self-consciousness.
The Category
Both self-consciousness and objective reality, distinct and independent, are nevertheless related by the same identical essence, which is self-consciousness. This fundamental self-consciousness is absolutely, and unchangeably, self-related being-for-self. This absolute self-unity, in order to be a distinct and distinguishable unity, contains self-differentiation, like the thing and its many properties. In other words, the self and the thought product Category that expresses it is determinate. Its determinateness necessitates the presence of other selves and categories alike. Thus, there exist a multiplicity of rational selves and categories. We shall only concern ourselves with the multiplicity of categories inhering in a singular self, for every self navigates through reality with its own set of mass produced thought products, categories. We have covered these categories already in the, as of yet incomplete, section on Newtonian mechanics.
The self-conscious gaze of Reason oscillates restlessly between the particularities of objective reality which it apprehends via its senses and perception, with diverse sense-data expressed by the multiplicity of categories, and the tranquil unity of self-consciousness expressed by the single universal category - which is supposed to be the universal substrate of all inner and outer reality. When it oscillates restlessly, self-consciousness is utterly distinct from the tranquil unity it is supposed to be in; the converse is true. It treats the multiplicity of its categories with which is supposed to grasp something alien in the external world of appearances as if possessed a genuine, independent objectivity.
Reason must provide a rational and sufficient account for how it is possible for it as self-conscious Reason to grasp objective reality rationally, while preserving the independence of objective reality, accounting for it in its totality independent of the effects of the activity of self-consciousness. That self-consciousnes ineluctably determines the structure is necessary to account for why self-consiousness is capable of rationally grasping an utterly distinct objective reality, this account is not sufficient to account for how self-consciousness is capable of rationally comprehending objective external actuality objectively. Either reason genuinely grasps an alien and objective external actuality via its multiple categories, or it grasps at the empty clouds of dreams which pass for the light of waking reality.
Thus, we have arrived at the motivating premise, and conclusion, of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason:
"We here propose to do just what Copernicus did in attempting to explain the celestial movements. When he found that he could make no progress by assuming that all the heavenly bodies revolved round the spectator, he reversed the process, and tried the experiment of assuming that the spectator revolved, while the stars remained at rest. We may make the same experiment with regard to the intuition of objects. If the intuition must conform to the nature of objects, I do not see how we can know anything about that nature a priori. If, on the other hand, the object (qua subject of the senses) conforms to the nature of our faculty of intuition, I can easily conceive the possibility of such an a priori knowledge." Preface to the Second Edition
Self-consciousness experiences external reality filtered through the categories, according to Kant. But as we have already stated, Kant can only show that self-consciousness represents the categories to itself as objects. He cannot show that these thought objects grasp, in their turn, the true mind-independent objects of external reality, the unconditioned thing-in-itself. Any object, once it is thought, loses its unconditioned state of being mind-independent. We are, of course, referring to the observer effect mentioned in the first article. Kant acknowledged this difficulty:
"For we come to the conclusion that our faculty of knowledge is unable to transcend the limits of possible experience; and yet this is precisely the most essential object of this science...For that which of necessity impels us to transcend the limits of experience and of all appearances, is the unconditioned, which reason absolutely requires in things as they are in themselves...Now, if it appears that when,..., we assume that our knowledge conforms to its objects as things in themselves, the unconditioned cannot be thought without contradiction, and that when, on the other hand, we assume that our representation of things as they are given to us does not conform to these things as they are in themselves, but that these objects, as appearances, conform our mode of representation [via the categories], the contradiction disappears: we shall then be convinced of the truth of that which we began by assuming for the sake of experiment; we may look upon it as established that the unconditioned does not lie in things as we know them, or as they are given to us, but in things as they are in themselves, beyond the range of our knowledge."
It is on these grounds that Kant holds that no knowledge can be had about things beyond what can be affirmed by the sense experience, and perception, of self-consciousness; the metaphysics of Aristotle, as well as theology, are fundamentally flawed. However, self-consciousness as Reason, i.e. Kant, cannot demonstrate the unconditional mind-independent externality of ordinary sensual experience of self-consciousness either. Reason, unaware of the trap it has set for itself, sets out to provide a sufficient account for how self-consciousness is able to grasp external actuality by means the schema.
The Schema
Reason conflates the objective, mind-dependent category with the objective external reality that category is supposed to grasp. At one time, Reason is a restless oscillation between categories, while simultaneously being a tranquil unity certain of its being the basis of all reality, proclaiming each category as being distinct from the external objects they are supposed to grasp, then asserting its self-certitude of being the basis of all reality by identifying and conflating the previously distinct category and external alien object. The category is not the real, unconditioned, external object of experience, but a thought product derived from it - an abstraction.
An abstraction can grasp nothing more than another abstraction, hence, even the sense impressions that self-consciousness senses and perceives have no reality on their own account, but are the solipsistic, dogmatic creations of self-consciousness. But, Kant, as Reason, wants to claim the opposite - that the sense-impressions it receives through the categories have a mind-independent, abiding, empirical, reality. It assigns to the schema the task of sufficiently accounting for the metamorphosis of the unconditioned external reality to the category.
A schema, in Kantian philosophy, is the procedural rule by which a category or pure, non-empirical, concept is associated with a sense impression by means of a series of ineluctible steps, where a subjective intuition of empirical sense impressions is discursively ascribed as a representation of an external mind-independent object. But the sense impressions qua sense impressions belong to consciousness, and so are categories, thought products, masquerading as real external objects.
Reason ignores this discrepancy, but notices that the unifying element from the first to final step of the schema is a unified and tranquil self-consciousness. Self-consciousness, taking itself to be the universal substrate of all reality, ascribes to the ontology of transcendental idealism. Simultaneously, Reason ignores itself as a unifying element of every step involved in the schema, and notices the discrepancy involved in the relation between category and sense impressions, oscillating restlessly among the varigated categorical content which is a one time conditioned by thought, another time unconditioned. Self-consciousness ascribes to empiricism - every concept that is knowable must be verifiable by mind independent experiences.
The Empirically Idealistic Consciousness
That self-consciousness is able to entertain both idealism and empiricism as rational accounts of external reality is a sign of its incoherence. Its supposed philosophizing is nothing more than empty and abstract rambling, producing concepts that do not correspond to the external reality they profess to account for. Reason shifts from restless empiricism to tranquil idealism, failing to recognize their incongruability. Rambling, its account of external reality lacks truth, amounting to a solipsistic projection of its inner activity which passes for an objective account existing independently of the activity of self-consciousness.
Rather than cease its vulgar rambling, it carries on, clothing it with the regal and priestly garments of scientific sounding jargon: the unity of transcendental apperception. Transcendental apperception brings together the disparate and mutually exclusive doctrines of idealism and empiricism, transitioning from one the other via a sequence of six schematic steps that can be expressed as logical propositions:
- All experience is the temporal succession of a variety of contents organized spatially.
- To be experienced at all, the successive data must be combined or held together in a unity of consciousness
- Unity of experience implies unity of self.
- The unity of self is an element of the unity of experience.
- Therefore, experience both of self and its objects rests on acts of synthesis that, because they are conditions of any experience, are not themselves experienced.
- These prior syntheses are made possible by the categories. The categories allow us to synthesize the self and its experience of external objects.
This list looks impressive. It is senseless rambling. Consider the first step; that all experience is the temporal succession of a variety of contents organized spatially. It appears that self-conscious Reason, i.e. Kant, has accounted for the unconditioned empirical object of external experience. This ruse relies for its plausibility on the forgetfulness of the reader. Kant himself states in the Transcendental Aesthetic that the primacy of self-consciousness must be assumed in apprehending space and time:
"In whatsoever mode, or by whatsoever means, our knowledge may relate to objects, it is at least quite clear, that the only manner in which it immediately relates to them, is by means of intuition, thought being only a means aiming at intuitions...
"Space is not an empirical concept which has been derived from outward appearances. For, in order that certain sensations may relate to something outside me (that is, to something that occupies a different part of space from that in which I am); in like manner, in order that I may represent them not merely as outside of and next to each other, but also in separate places, the representation of space must already exist as a [mental] foundation. Consequently, the representation of space cannot be borrowed from the relations of external phenomena through experience...
"Space then is a necessary representation a priori, which serves for the foundation of all intuitions."
The only access that self-consciousness has to external objects is through intuition. Objects furnish themselves to intuitions by means of sensation alone. Space, as pure intuition, is the foundation of all intuitions, yet cannot possibly access and grasp any object external to self-consciousness. Self-conscious Reason, i.e Kant, continues:
"Space does not represent and property of objects as things in themselves, nor does it represent them in their relations to each other; in other words, space does not represent any determinations of objects such as attaches to the objects themselves..."
"Space is nothing else than the form of all appearaces of the external sense, that is, the subjective condition of sensibility, under which alone external intuition is possible."
Kant's space fails to be intuition, for it fails to grasp any empirical object abiding in the external flux of appearances. Self-conscious Reason, i.e. Kant, does not even allow the possibility for mind-independent objects to be known:
"Objects are quite unknown to us in themselves, and what we call outward objects are nothing else but mere representations of our sensibility, whose form is space, but whose real correlate, the thing-in-itself, is not known by means of these representation, nor can ever be."
Self-consciousness has the godlike power of creating everything it experiences for itself. Nothing external is ever grasped by the pure intuition of space; the only way to know empirical objects is by way of intuition, which consciousness senses. Empirical objects are external to self-consciousness. Since the foundation of all intuitions can never grasp anything empirical, it follows that nothing external to self-consciousness can ever be known by self-consciousness. Th same would be true for time, another, pure intuition:
"The concept of change, and with it the concept of motion, as change of place, is possible only through and in the representation of time."
"Time is nothing else than the form of the internal sense, that is, of the intuitions of ourselves and of our internal state. For time cannot be any determination of outward appearances. It has to do with neither shape nor position; it determines the relation of representations in our internal state."
The force that causes and solicits the motion of objects in the thought produced external world of appearances is the godlike power of the inner activity of self-conscious thought. Any contradiction that exists is resolved by the motion of time, i.e. time heals. Thus, Reason states that "it is only in time that it is possible to meet with two contradictorily opposed determinations in one thing, that is, after each other." Mutually contradictory thoughts can be "synthesized" by the pure intuition of time. In the Analytic of Concepts:
"The supreme principle of the possibility of all intuition in relation to sensibility [is] ... that all the manifold of intuition be subject to the formal conditions of space and time [and] ... that all the manifold in intuition be subject to conditions of the originally synthetic unity of apperception."
Self-conscious Reason identifies the unity of apperception the unity of self-consciousness, which is alone in its tranquil self-unity is the common denominator and unifier of the disparate elements of experience. Let us now consider point three; that the unity of experience implies the unity of self. As we have seen, the unity of experience also assumes and relies on the unity of self, since experience can only unfold in space and time, pure intuitions. But the immediate experience of self assumes and relies upon the self-same independent unity and reality of experience, the truth of which Reason has denied the demonstrability of actually existing. In other words, self-conscious Reason can never absolutely know with certainty that a reality exists outside of self-consciousness. By Reason's own reasoning, it pulls the rug from under itself, denying the necessary existence of the self-same independent unity and reality of experience which the immediate experience of self-consciousness qua self-consciousness requires. Without experience, there is no self-consciousness. Without self-consciousness, there is no experience. The relation between self-consciousness and the objective experience of external reality is, therefore, absolutely necessary. One cannot be had without the other.
"If knowledge is to have objective reality, that is, to relate to an object, and possess sense and meaning in respect to it, it is necessary that the object be given in some way or another. Without this, our concepts are empty, and we may indeed have thought by means of them, but by such thinking we have not, in fact, known anything, we have merely played with representation."
Self-conscious Reason, being certain of itself as the universal substrate of reality, where the unity of self-consciousness "is alone objectively valid", has precluded itself from ever knowing with certainty that objective reality independent of self-consciousness is real. Thus, it can only say that the reality of the flux of appearances is only a possibility. Taking the unity of self-conscious Reason for granted, it reasons that "we can only infer the existence of external things ... [which] is always unreliable" calling such an affair, which it itself engages in, an empty play of words, a game.
Astonishingly, Reason does not deny the truth of external mind-independent reality, but rather turns around and takes it for granted. It is now necessary to infer the unity of self-consciousness from experience; an inference which it took to be unreliable. It has reversed that which is demonstrated and that which demonstrates without knowing it. Like becomes unlike and unlike becomes like. When at one moment it clings to the truth of idealism, at another, it discards in favor of empiricism. Invoking the inverted law, it does so without knowing that it does. Engaging in mere word play, while denying that it does this, Reason fails to express objective knowledge, when really it only expresses its own activity, taking its subjective inner self, confusing it with the universal category of self, not being the self but a thought product of the self, to be the only objective truth.
Oscillating in a single breath between empiricism and idealism, self-conscious Reason writes that "the mere concept of a thing does not contain any mark of its existence...[Since] the concept of [experience] precedes the perception [of experience] merely indicates the possibility of its existence, it is perception which [provides] the material to the concept, that is the sole mark of reality." Experience and perception precede each other simultaneously. In other words, two is less than two. Amidst this ridiculous wordplay masquerading as objective truth, which has the reputation of being serious philosophy at the time of this writing, Reason produces the necessary condition that would make inferences regarding external reality rationally valid.
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Self-conscious Reason, as the self-conscious transcendental unity of apperception, operates according to schematizing rules that precede, yet discursively account for with absolute precision, the activity of self-consciousness. These rules can be extended beyond the activity of self-consciousness to the empirical objects of external appearances. By means of this rules, and taking the truth of its self-unity for granted, Reason would be able to establish not merely the possibility of the reality of external appearances, but the truth of the given reality of external appearances. Reason, in search of these schematizing rules that universally apply to the totality of external appearances, seeks knowledge of the external reality as it is in itself, unconditioned by the activity of self-consciousness. These universally applicable schematizing necessary rules would a fortiori apply to the activity of self-conscious Reason. Since these universally applicable schematizing necessary rules emanate from Reason, they are rational. In attempting to establish the rationality, i.e. true self-certain knowledge, of the external appearances, Reason observes.
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