The Monist, Vol. 1, 1890-1891 - Various

PHILOSOPHISCHE MONATSHEFTE. Vol. XXVII. Nos. 3 and 4.

The conclusion of Prof. P. Natorp's article on Quantity and Quality in Concept, Judgment, and Objective Cognition appears to be the most important part of the essay. Professor Natorp is a transcendentalist. He understands Kant in a dualistic sense where the latter says that "the unity of apperception (Einheit der Apperception) is the radical faculty of all our cognition" (Radical-Vermögen aller unserer Erkentniss). Cognition is defined as "limitation of that which is per se infinite." It is natural that for a transcendentalist the greatest difficulty arises when he attempts to let his a priori face the facts of reality. Professor Natorp shows great skill and ingenuity in this respect. It is but consistent with his premisses to arrive at an "invincible dualism," yet he adapts his transcendentalism sufficiently to fulfil the demands of experience. Thus he does not come to a real solution but to a modus vivendi, which is after all the purpose of philosophy.

Professor Natorp considers the synthetic unity not as given, but as to be realised; a concept is created through definition. The data of experience on the other hand are not the defined, but the definable. They are to be defined by the forms of the concepts, and their fundamental forms are quantity and quality. He says: "The definition as this and as that (as something identical) is a function of the concept, but the concept presupposes sensation as the material to be defined. To consider sensation as given in this its absolute identity which is demanded by the concept, is after all an illusion. Therefore positivism and not idealism confounds the demands of cognition with the given reality, thus adjusting facts to our wants of knowledge. Sensation conceived as a datum and not as a postulate is and remains the infinitely definable and never absolutely defined…. It appears easy thus to reduce the dualism of form and matter, concept and sensation, the defined and the definable to one ultimate unity. In one respect positivism succeeds, attributing full definedness, and not mere definableness, to the data; and then, it finds no difficulty in letting the defining function of the concept in its peculiarity disappear by reducing it to a quality of the data."

We do not know to what kind of positivism Professor Natorp refers; yet it seems that it cannot be applied either to Comte's or to Littré's views. Nor does it dispose of the positivism editorially set forth in The Monist. Positivism, according to Professor Natorp, is at fault in dropping the definite function of the concept. But he endeavors to avoid the opposite mistake also, viz. "to entirely drop the definable, which might be supposed to be a mere X, scarcely representable in clear concepts, or to deduce it from the defining function. This other exaggeration is that of idealism which has found its purest expression in Fichte's philosophy." Professor Natorp by keeping aloof from both errors declares dualism to be insuperable; "dualism," he says, "'is a hard fact'—eine starre Thatsache."

The trouble with transcendentalists, it seems to us, originates in their method of starting with cognition, with the synthetic unity of apperception, with the forms of concepts. Experience means to them the sense-element of sensation, the contents of concepts without their form. They start with a dualism. When they have completed their system of transcendental forms, they find it hard to explain how to change their rigid laws into the constant flux of reality as presented to us by experience. Should the philosopher not rather start from the function of cognising, which in itself is a unity? He will find that cognition, concept, the synthetic unity of apperception, and all the complex laws of transcendental thought are products of the cognising function. If these laws are rigid, we have made them so. We have made them stable, we have fixed them for a certain purpose. Their rigidity is a legitimate fiction for that purpose, but beyond it it finds no application. Pure logic draws distinctions which do not exist in reality; pure mathematics operates with lines which considered as real things are mere nonentities. The dualism between concept and sensation, between the a priori and the a posteriori, between thought and thing, between form and matter, is not given in experience, for in experience the formal and the material are one inseparable whole; it is the product of cognition. The cognising function differentiates the data of experience into formal and material aspects; the formal being always of a general character serves as a help for systematising and classifying the material. This appears to us the only way of realising a monistic positivism, and no philosophy can be considered as satisfactory until it represents the data of experience or positive facts in a unitary view, i. e. a harmonious conception free of contradictions.

CONTENTS:

RECENSIONEN.

LITTERATURBERICHT.