When I posit myself, I posit myself as a limited; in consequence of the contemplation of my self-positing, I am finite.
This, my limitedness—since it is the condition which makes my self-positing possible—is an original limitedness. Somebody might wish to explain this still further, and either deduce the limitedness of myself as the reflected, from my necessary limitedness as the reflecting; which would result in the statement: I am finite to myself, because I can think only the finite;—or he might explain the limitedness of the reflecting from that of the reflected, which would result in the statement: I can think only the finite, because I am finite. But such an explanation would explain nothing, for I am originally neither the reflecting nor the reflected, but both in their union; which union I cannot think, it is true, because I separate, in thinking, the reflecting from the reflected.
All limitedness is, by its very conception, a determined, and not a general limitedness.
From the possibility of an Ego, we have thus deduced the necessity of a general limitedness of the Ego. But the determinedness of this limitedness cannot be deduced, since it is, as we have seen, that which conditions all Egoness. Here, therefore, all deduction is at an end. This determinedness appears as the absolutely accidental, and furnishes the merely empirical of our knowledge. It is this determinedness, for instance, by virtue of which I am, amongst all possible rational beings, a man, and amongst all men this particular person, &c., &c.
This, my limitation, in its determinedness, manifests itself as a limitation of my practical power (here philosophy is therefore driven from the theoretical to the practical sphere); and the immediate perception of this limitation is a feeling (I prefer to use this word instead of Kant’s “sensation,” for feeling only becomes sensation by being related in thinking to an object); for instance, the feeling of sweet, red, cold, &c.
To forget this original feeling, leads to a bottomless transcendental idealism, and to an incomplete philosophy, which cannot explain the simply sensible predicates of objects. Now, the endeavor to explain this original feeling from the causality of a something, is the dogmatism of the Kantians, which I have just shown up, and which they would like to put on Kant’s shoulders. This, their something, is the everlasting thing per se. All transcendental explanation, on the contrary, stops at the immediate feeling, from the reason just pointed out. It is true, the empirical Ego, which transcendental idealism observes, explains this feeling to itself by the law, “No limitation without a limiting;” and thus, through contemplation of the limiting, produces extended matter, of which it now, as of its ground, predicates the merely subjective sensation of feeling; and it is only by virtue of this synthesis that the Ego makes itself an object. The continued analysis and the continued explanation of its own condition, give to the Ego its own system of a universe; and the observation of the laws of this explanation gives to the philosopher his science. It is here that Kant’s Realism is based, but his Realism is a transcendental idealism.
This whole determinedness, and hence also the total of feelings which it makes possible, is to be regarded as a priori—i. e. absolutely, without any action of our own—determined. It is Kant’s receptivity, and a particular of this receptivity is an affection. Without it, consciousness is unexplainable.
There is no doubt that it is an immediate fact of consciousness—I feel myself thus or thus determined. Now, when the oft-lauded philosophers attempt to explain this feeling, is it not clear that they attempt to append something to it which is not immediately involved in the fact? and how can they do this, except through thinking, and through a thinking according to a category, which category is here that of the real ground? Now, if they have not an immediate contemplation of the thing per se and its relations, what else can they possibly know of this category, but that they are compelled to think according to it? They assert nothing but that they are compelled to add in thought a thing as the ground of this feeling. But this we cheerfully admit in regard to the standpoint which they occupy. Their thing is produced by their thinking; and now it is at the same time to be a thing per se, i. e. not produced by thinking.
I really do not comprehend them; I can neither think this thought, nor think an understanding which does think it; and by this declaration, I hope I have done with them forever.