Notes on Kant's Prolegomena, Part II
Extuition, ambivacuous judgment, and the distinction between intellective and judgmental synthesis
Christ “measuring” creation, from the Bible of Saint Louis, 13th century
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“Analytic judgments express nothing in the predicate but what has been actually thought in the concept of the subject, though not so clearly and with the same consciousness”
(10)
Let us first see where things stand from the standpoint of analysis rather than analytic judgment (these are distinct, but precisely in what way they are distinct also must be worked out). In what way does analysis relate to subject and predicate? Analysis interposes a “grid of nothings” (for more on this see my series on “communist metaphysics”) into a whole (“synthesis”), bringing to the fore the parts to which it is susceptible of being broken down. These parts become for us that which can be predicated of the subject. Note what Kant says—“the concept of the subject”. The sort of subject analytical judgment deals with is “conceptual”. Analytic judgments do not act upon synthetic wholes, as such, in the intellective sense, but upon synthetic judgments. One conceptual judgment (analytic) acts upon another judgment (synthetic), from judgment to judgment. The subject of an analytic judgment, in other words, is always a synthetic judgment, rather than a “synthesis” unqualified. The subject of analysis (as distinct from analytic judgment) is a synthetic or intellective whole, whether of passive or active intellection. Analysis proper is a creative act which transforms the subject which it acts upon in the process of its analysis, as contrasted with the “automatic” fashion in which the analytic judgment proceeds out of the synthetic judgment. All that which analysis brings out of the subject can be said to be “retrospectively obvious”—all that which is predicated of the subject through analysis (note: not analytic judgment) is made to “have always been there” in retrospect. This has a certain analogy with the monumental mode of history, in which we reach back into the past and restructure (or reinterpret) it in such a way that it becomes obvious to us that “things were always like that”. In any case, returning to the question of analysis and analytic judgment—why is the action of analysis upon the synthetic whole said to be “creative”, whereas the action of analytic judgment upon a synthetic judgment is in a certain respect “automatic”? The former has been already addressed here and elsewhere (in relation to “mimesis”, for instance). As for the latter, it is precisely because of the “judgment” portion of the equation. Judgment is logos in its discursive mode, the mode characterized by formal definitions, by circularity, and the like. Judgment is rational and the most bareboned rationality is the law of identity—“A=A”. This seed out of which grows all rational judgment (wisdom or “qualitative judgment” is another matter) establishes, in advance, the tautological character of all subsequent judgments. “A=A” is the structure of “primordial demarcation”, the first act of the Moirai, the this-ing of the this. I have dealt with this elsewhere. Thus, the synthetic judgment, upon which analytic judgment always depends, is fundamentally demarcative—that is, analytic. It establishes, in advance, a “whole region” of discursive possibilities, a discursive horizon respecting some experience or whole, an experience which synthetic judgment renders present-at-hand for us. A synthetic judgment is itself of the tautological structure “A=A”, and this structure lends itself to indefinite repetition in conformity with the positive content of that “A”. This indefinite repetition is the analytic judgment. Put another way, the synthetic judgment is an indefinitude of analytic judgments established in advance. Synthetic judgment, then, acts upon a synthetic whole, just as analysis does—indeed, synthetic judgment is a type of analysis (not a type of analytic judgment, however). Synthetic judgment reduces a synthetic whole (intellective) into a discursive (or, perhaps more precisely, discurisble) or conceptual whole. This transformation is the most subtle (effectively a kind of “nothing”) demarcation of all—a demarcation which does not appear to be demarcative at all. We are, in both instances, dealing with the same whole, the same subject, now as intellective whole and now as conceptual one—but is there any question that the discursive whole is immeasurably “smaller” in scope than the intellective whole? And yet—where has the scission been made? What has been demarcated off [1]? It seems as though intellectivity itself has been demarcated away, while the original whole remains, now as a concept—but is it really possible to distinguish between the intellective whole and its intellectivity? The act of intellection itself does not allow such purely formal distinctions to carry any decisive weight. The intellective whole is its own self-intellection. Yet, here, we have succeeded in transposing this whole into a mode of conceptuality. Intellectivity is still here, then, but in disguise as a concept. Indeed, the conceptual is never divorced from the intellective. It always carries it with itself as a dependence. The conceptual is always conditioned by some intellective prior, otherwise it becomes a meaningless word. Synthetic judgment, therefore, both is and is not demarcative—that is, synthetic judgment is a type of mimesis. It is the imitation of an intellective whole as a discursive whole. It repeats the intellective whole as something other than itself. Now, then: how does analytic judgment differ from analysis? In contrast to analysis, analytic judgment has no retrospective power. It does not retrospectively transform its corresponding whole (the discursive whole of synthetic judgment), but draws out the tautological claims already established in advance. Is synthetic judgment creative with respect to the synthetic whole that it transposes (from intellective to discursive)? It both is and is not—that is, it is mimetic. It re-produces intellective whole as discursive whole, but this discursive whole then becomes “retrospectively obvious” vis a vis the intellective whole. It was always already possible to bring out just this discursive whole from out of that intellective one. It just precisely becomes possible only retrospectively. The synthetic judgment is, in reality, an impossible procedure—intellective whole cannot be “reduced”—though this in no way prevents us from audaciously doing it. It also bears mentioning here that the any given intellective whole can be re-produced as discursive whole in an indefinite multitude of ways.
To give a sort of “genealogy” of the analytic judgment, as accounted for above: one begins with a synthetic whole. This whole is not conceptual (yet), is not a synthetic judgment. It has an intellective character. This whole is susceptible of being analyzed (which is not yet an analytic judgment). One sort of analysis which can be applied to it is the synthetic judgment. This synthetic judgment re-produces the intellective (synthetic) whole as a conceptual whole. This whole, in turn, can now be broken down into the elements implied in its peculiar discursive (or discursible [2]) structure. This “break down” is the analytic judgment.
1: The answer is everything. An intellective whole includes principially every other intellective whole. Every star of intelligibility is an image of its constellation. The judgmental whole, on the other hand, includes only itself, an A which cuts itself off through the surrounding barrier of its own announced self-identity.
2: The synthetic a prior judgment is not always manifestly “discursive” at the first. The transcendental apprehension of space and time is not initially a collection of formulas and measurements, but it is, as it were, readied for discourse. Its very structure prepares it for rational discourse and measurement. It is “meant” to be discussed and assessed in speech. Such is the character of all synthetic judgment, by the very nature of what is implied in a transcendental “judgment”. There is, however, also such a thing as judgment in a transcendent sense, e.g. of which the “yawm al-qiyāmah” is a type. “Judgment”, then, is generically ambiguous, and in this case it is judgment in its transcendental sense which is also its eminent sense.
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“That a body is extended is a judgment [analytic] which holds a priori, and is not a judgment of experience”
(11)
Proceeding from the ideas considered in the last note, and giving some demonstration of them—the a priori analytic judgment that “body is extended” is dependent on the synthetic judgment which discloses body “intuitively” (or, as we will see, “extuitively”) in the form of “res extensa”, which in turn depends on the intellection (synthesis proper) of some whole. Body as discursible concept depends on body as intelligible “vision”. What is this intelligible-body on which the concept of body as res extensa depends? This must be answered from at least two standpoints (though, the answers furnished by each standpoint might be multiple—intellect speaks in a multitude of symbols), that of active intellection and that of passive intellection. For instance, from the standpoint of active intellection, one origin of the concept body might be the symbol and intelligible reality “man”; as that which is measured (i.e. relating to extensa) by the mutual action of heaven and earth (see Guenon's “Great Triad”). To give another, more obvious, instance, “earth” as a natural element presents (as distinct from re-presentation) the intelligibility of corporeality in symbolic mode. From the standpoint of passive intellection, the intelligible “origin” of res extensa may lie in the phenomenon of care (“sorge”; see: Heidegger), as that which “measures”, in a primordial and pre-quantitative sense, the distance of things from our concern. Body, therefore, spans a number of different senses, from intelligible reality (which, moreover, is ontologically twofold) to the discursive “atoms” of analytic judgment. That which renders these different senses of “body” transposable onto one another, derivable out of one another, and therefore in some measure indistinct, despite their distinction, is the nothing which is judgment itself, a nothing which is non-different from the transcendental condition generally, and, indeed, from every other “nothing”. We therefore come to posit also an empty concept of body, or body in its sheer generic ambiguity. This generically ambiguous concept is neither an a priori nor an a posteriori judgment, and yet it is a kind of judgment, an empty judgment. It is posterior to (intellective) synthesis and prior to judgment, and yet it establishes itself as prior to intellection by re-conditioning it, e.g. as in the “terraformation of being” or the “discursive preliminary to intellection” (see my notes on De Anima). Likewise, it establishes itself as posterior to judgment (that is, in the usual sense) by taking our already prevailing concepts and emptying them through questioning (a process which I discuss in my series on “communist metaphysics”). It is an impossible judgment, a judgment which is not and yet asserts itself. It is an ambiguous judgment, a judgment which “drives both ways”. It is an empty judgment, a judgment whose concept is so pure that it seemingly contains no real content at all. As such we might call it an “ambivacuous judgment”, a nothing which “goes both ways”, though “ambiguous judgment” might be just as serviceable (likewise, we could just as well refer to generic ambiguity as “generic ambivacuity”). “Going both ways” here simultaneously indicates the two ways of “judgment / intellection” and of “a priority / a posteriority”.
The structure implied in these considerations should look something like the following:
The seeming circularity of the movement represented in diagram A is a deceptive since that which effects it, namely, ambivacuous judgment, is a nothing and therefore is not. The circle of this hermeneutic is therefore broken, and thus may be represented as a horseshoe, as in diagram B. The significations of the horseshoe of hermeneutic, of its regions and aspects, are addressed elsewhere (see, for instance, my series on “communist metaphysics”).
We may also wish to represent all that which has been said above in terms of the split between passive and active intellect, in which case it might look something like the following:
Here no differentiation is made between judgment in its “ordinary” sense (i.e. synthetic and analytic judgment) and ambivacuous judgment, that is, judgment in its sheer emptiness. Comparatively, from the standpoint of intellect, all judgment appears “empty”. It lacks the “suchness” (Sankrit: tathata) of intellect, its flavor-full and textured taste (dhawq, gnosense). What is decisive here, in these diagrams, is that judgment is taken as polarized, as “going both ways” (this is more obvious in diagram C). Whether we call these poles synthetic-analytic or prior-posterior is of secondary interest. They may be taken either way. Another note: judgment, as represented in diagram D, does not appear “polarized”. In this case I have deliberately omitted as certain alternative polarization of the horseshoe (these “alternate” poles being the nothing beyond the extremes of the horseshoe and the mean between the extremes), for the sake of preventing the present discussion from becoming overly complex, but this aspect is addressed later on in these notes.
Note: Though we sometimes speak in these notes of intellection as “a priori synthesis” (which we also distinguish from synthetic judgment a priori), intellect, “in itself”, has nothing “a priori” about it, any more than “a posteriori”. This is because, arguably, intellection defies the dichotomy of prior and posterior. It has a certain timelessness and freedom from succession (though it may be diagramatically represented, or symbolically presented, as a succession of intellects, e.g. as in al Farabi's succession of intellects). This was not always clearly apparent to ancient philosophy because of their one-sided emphasis on active intellection. When both sorts of intellection are taken side by side, it becomes clearer that positing the intelligible as either prior or posterior to thought and experience (that is, to the transcendental condition) is inadequate, because, at least from a diagramatic standpoint, we represent the transcendental condition as situated between the passive and active poles of intellection, a representation which has its corresponding explanatory elaboration in the accounts (given elsewhere) of ontological inversion and the double-derivation of the transcendental condition. Whereas the synthetic a priori judgment presents itself as prior to experience for the transcendental subject, as the which conditions the possible forms of that subject's experience, intellection presents itself as the primordial structure of “experience” (in this case, in the gnosensiential sense of “experience”), a ground which cannot be truly separated from that which emerges from out of it (to paraphrase the Isha Upanishad, “take whole from whole, whole remains”). Intellect can be conceptually and virtually distinguished from thought and experience. Certainly, nearly every philosopher of intellect, East and West, has done so. However, within the act of intellection itself, such a separation has little relevance, whatever relevance it might have for thought about intellect. From the one-sided standpoint of ancient and medieval philosophy, the standpoint of active intellection, the intelligible has a tendency to appear as something higher than or beyond the world of the senses. From the standpoint of passive intellection, the intelligible has the character of a being-in-the-world—and this “immanence” of being-in-the-world, too, is transcendence (phrased another way, “ecstatic temporality”). Being-in-the-world is transcendent with respect to the transcendental subject.
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“...the necessity of judgment, which experience could not at all teach us”
(11)
Experience as “purely ontic”, as “staring”, cannot teach us this. However, the analytic judgment, here, depends on the quasi-experiential synthetic judgment of body as res extensa. This, in turn, depends on the “intellective experience” (gnosense) of body. This intellective experience is either passive—a being-in-the-world among bodies—or it is active—the “intellectual perception” or “contemplation” of those intelligibles which pertain to body, such as the above mentioned symbol of man, but also materia, earth, quantity, etc. So, ultimately, the analytic judgment depends on some sort of “experience”, but not experience as the empiricists understand it as more-or-less “purely ontic” sensory input.
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“If the a priori concepts which constitute the materials and building blocks of metaphysics have first been collected”
(14)
Such a definitive collection, a “philosophia definitiva” as Kant calls it, is not possible precisely for the reason that it consists in such “pure concepts” or synthetic a priori judgments. Such judgments are necessarily indefinite in their multitude, and proceed by means of analysis (not analytical judgment), or fractalysis, or lusynthesis (on the meaning of these “hermeneutic procedures” see my series on “communist metaphysics”), out of some intellective whole, or perhaps even “directly” out of some generically ambiguous concept. The point being that synthetic concepts depend on and proceed out of some intellective synthesis, and that the scope of possible concepts which can proceed in this way from out of such a synthesis is indefinite in its extent. In other words, Kant is not constructing a philosophia definitiva but a philosophia indefinitiva—a perpetual wandering across abstract seas. It is through a heroic and revolutionary reappropriation of active (Guenon) and passive (Heidegger) intellection that the transcendental subject can be rendered heroic and revolutionary (Marx), a wanderer and terraformer of the imaginal earth, not only of abstraction, a builder of real and lasting edifices in defiance of time, not only abstractly “timeless” ideas.
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“...and so it is manifest that the predicate belongs to this concept necessarily indeed, yet not directly but indirectly by means of a necessarily present intuition”
(12)
I think, basically, what Kant is trying to say here is that such apodeictic statements (as are dealt with in analytic judgment) require that a synthetic a priori judgment be already furnished for us, in the first place. If the subject (in the grammatical sense) was not intuitively constituted, in its peculiar way, the predicates which “self-evidently” follow from it would indeed not appear so self-evident to us. Another way to put this is that the predicates do not follow from the discursive content of the subject but from its intuitive content (an intuitive content which, even if not directly discursive, is nevertheless peculiarly discursible, made ready for discursion, as it were). This, I think, is the salient point. If the subject was a mere discursive proposition we could not intuit anything from out of it as “self-evidently” there. This self-evidence in the predicates follows from out of the intuitive content of the subject. Self-evidence is established in advance through an intuition. Kant identifies this intuition with synthetic a priori judgment. What Kant refers to as an intuition, however, might more appropriately be referred to as an “extuition”, a projective “seeing” which follows after an intuition. The actual “intuition”, the synthesis in the proper sense, belongs to intellect (whether passive or active), and the synthetic a priori judgment (or “extuition”) converts this intellection into one of its possible conceptual prolongations—it projects it, “outwardly”, as it were, in the form of a concept. The transcendental subject does not “do” this in an active sense, so much as it “happens” to it. The transcendental subject is the indirectly (or accidentally) intellected subject.
What then furnishes for us the conceptual content of the synthetic a priori judgment? Why this conceptual possibility and not another? To answer this question, we must look jointly to Heidegger and Guenon, on one side, in their intellectivity, and to Marx, on the other, in his scientific modernity, or in various combinations of these factors. The prevailing and most widespread conceptual modifications of properly intellectual intuition have their roots in our being-in-the-world as it develops socially and historically, on the one hand (here we account for Marx and Heidegger in conjunction), and, on the other, are furnished by tradition in its eminent sense (Guenon) which, having provided us with intellective points of reference, is then discursively “reduced” into a field of scientific concepts (here we account for Guenon, or rather metaphysics generally, and Marx in conjunction). Thus, the conceptual stamp which forms the particular character of the transcendental subject is, as it were, formed by the friction between passive and active intellection, the friction between our historical being-in-the-world (the Marx-Heidegger side of the “equation”) and certain fundamental symbols and intelligible realities which are always with us, accounted for in the context of living traditions, and which we discursively specify in an indefinite multitude of ways (the Guenon-Marx side of the “equation”). In a certain measure, the transcendental subject appears to us as a passive phenomenon. It is passive in its knowing (its mere knowing). The intellect projects its light through the subject, as through a semi-transparent veil. This “passivity” is what we have called its “indirection”. Thus, we link this “indirection”, by analogy with passive intellect. In another respect, however, the transcendental subject appears to us as active and heroic—through this subject's unknowing. Thus, we link, by an analogy, the theoretical and conceptual audacity of the transcendental subject with active intellect—it is a contemplation directed “downwards” and “outwards”, which, by comparison with knowing-activity of active intellection can be characterized as an unknowing-activity. It is precisely an “act” of unknowing which produces the transcendental subject, an imposition of nothing into the midst of primordial intellection. The modification of pure intellective knowing into restrictive concept is an instance of unknowing, the unknowing of that which is most eminently knowable. This unknowing activity, on the part of the transcendental subject, happens between two sorts of knowing, or rather between two poles of the Gordian knot of knowing and being—being-in-the-world (Dasein's passive intellection; knowing as care) and active intellection (contemplative knowing, a being-what-is-known). Hitherto, the transcendental subject has been examined in terms of the products of its unknowing, as though some particular set of products was fixed for all time as part of the transcendental subject's essence as “philosophia definitiva” (this is, in any case, true of Kant and his tradition, though I suppose this fixedness of the subject is precisely what Hegel aimed to get away from). Consequently, the transcendental subject has been neglected in its unknowing, in its productive activity rather than some particular set of finished products (e.g. a priori forms of possible experience)—indeed, the unknowing of the transcendental subject is a fecund unknowing, the chastity of Artemis. The “transparency” of the transcendental subject, the degree to which passive and active intellection mingle in the subject or round and about it, has varied historically. Among the Greeks, this subject began the process of acquiring greater opacity, greater conspicuity—it was under Kant, however, that this conspicuity of the transcendental subject reached its apex of development. Hegel is the denouement of the transcendental subject, its relaxing into dialectical flow. With Kant, the transcendental subject is subjected to the severest Prussian military discipline. With Hegel, this subject takes a leave of absence in order to travel and see the world—but only after it has acquired the aforementioned discipline. With Kant, the subject is still in the barracks. With Hegel, it is a colonizer, the proudest and most vile specimen of European modernity.
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“...the construction of concepts”
(130)
The synthetic a priori judgment constructs concepts for us, a sort of knowing-in-advance, an establishing that which is to be self-evident in advance (for the transcendental subject). This self-evidence of a concept's predicates is like a chain or series of chains bundled in a heap, and it is the work of the analytic a priori judgment to unravel this chain, to draw it out bit by bit. The synthetic a priori judgment provides the heap, and the analytic a priori judgment can but take from what is given to it. The analytic a posteriori determines at which point we cease to unravel the chain, the point at which we determine that we should not continue to unravel, that to do so would verge into incoherence. That is, it determines the “atom of analysis”. This is discussed in my series on “communist metaphysics”.
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“...for both contain propositions which are everywhere recognized as apodeictically certain, partly by mere reason, partly by universal agreement from experience”
(17)
The “self-evident” (whose barebones structure is A=A) is that which is constrained to draw attention to its own evidentiality, thereby casting some doubt on itself—it still requires the invocation of evidence, even if that evidence is taken to be its own “self”. The self-evident is never just A but always A=A, and this evinces the structure of the most abstract and most basic hermeneutic circle, the interpretation of a thing by its self in the most direct way possible—or, rather, the closest to being direct that indirection can aspire to. It is a sort of knowing whose mediation is so tightly bound that it is almost immediate. This most abstract form of mediation is the closest approximation possible of the immediacy of intellection that is possible for rational thought—but self-evidence is the basis of rational thought, and therefore the very basis of rational thought is an approximation of intellection, and to be an approximation of something is to be that something and not to be it, at one and the same time; consequently, rationality both is and is not intelligible (Mercury, buddhi in Sanskrit, the symbol of intellect, is also the symbol of reason, of cunning dissimulation). As for this immediacy of intellection, it is not an immediacy which excludes mediation, but one which includes it. The intellective “experience” includes imaginal content through which it also (crucial word) mediates itself in addition to its intellective immediacy—this is to say, the intellective experience is the “ontological master” (see my notes on Chittick's Sufi Path) of mediation, because it does not respect the boundaries of mediation, immediate through a mediation, that is, the symbol mediates the immediacy of intellection, and mediating through its immediacy, that is, it acts as the central pole through which we orient ourselves in the world; its immediate centrality mediates our movement. Like the master-slave relation, the relation of intellect-reason (in this case, either passive or active, but not primordial intellect, which is another matter) or immediacy-mediation, is a reciprocal and co-dependent one, but not on equal terms. In intellect, immediacy is master. “Autonomous” (a highly relative designation, in this case) reason is the slave rebellion of mediation. To see this slave rebellion through to its logical conclusion is to establish a proletarian dictatorship where mediation sets itself up as lord over immediacy (this lordship, in practical terms, is the “terraformation of being”) without ceasing to be a slave. Reason's rule over the earth is a Saturnalia.
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“...need not ask whether it be possible (for it is actual), but how it is possible”
(17)
This is the point where Kant has undermined his own case against metaphysics (that is, his rejection of “intellectual intuition”), for one could say the same thing with regard to intellection—“we need not ask whether it is possible (for it is actual)”. Therefore, since intellection need not be doubted (moreover, who is it that doubts intellection?—the transcendental subject), it being manifestly actual [1], metaphysics (in the sense of exposition) also, being the product of intellection, need not be doubted as a whole, though perhaps occasionally in the manner of its discursive exposition. Granted, the metaphysics that Kant primarily takes his stand against (or rather the stand which he is best known for) is the dogmatic metaphysics which follows in the wake of Descartes, not the antique metaphysics of intellect, though Kant's system leaves no more room for this latter than it does for the former (indeed, there is a prevailing conflation of dogmatic and antique metaphysics, as if they were a metaphysics of the same kind). As for the question of how metaphysics (or intellection) is possible, this question can be approached in two different ways reflected by two different senses of the word “how”. The first way pertains to the conditions of intellection, that is, it asks “what are the principles which render metaphysics possible?” [2], a task of inquiry which is precisely left to intellection itself, for it is its function to perceive “fundamental intelligible structures”. Intellect, therefore, furnishes its own proof for this question through its own activity, an activity which is itself an identity with its own principles, an identity with the conditions of its own possibility. It needs no outside authority to adjudicate its “right” to be and to proclaim itself. The content of its metaphysical researches it can then communicate to us through myth, through a more or less labyrinthine esoteric exposition, e.g. as in the rather abstruse texts of the alchemists, or through a predominately discursive exposition, as in the Platonic tradition. As an aside, intellection's capacity for embodiment in discursive exposition can be characterized as a process beginning in the ineffable and noetic Logos (the theme of a “silent Word” is present in a number of “mystical” traditions), which communicates itself through the effable symbolic Logos, which, in turn, expresses itself in rational and discursive Logos. In any case, this is the first “how” of intellection—i.e. intellection is its own “how”, and necessarily so. The second “how” of intellection is not “how is this possible?” (a question which establishes fundamental conditions and structures, and therefore finds its natural complement in the theoretical exposition of intellection) but “how does this possibility manifest itself to us?”—in other words, the second “how” is phenomenological, which is precisely the method of exposition adopted by Heidegger, for instance, in examining being-in-the-world (i.e. passive intellection). The second “how” does not seek out the meaning or reason for its own possibility, in a principial sense, but seeks to describe the contours of that possibility's actual manifestation. It describes what the possibility looks like. Theoretical exposition of intellection seeks out the roots and causes (though not in a mechanistic sense), and phenomenological exposition describes the topography of intellective “experience”. Given the very nature of intellection, however, a hard and fast distinction between theoretical and phenomenological exposition is not possible. They overlap considerably. The topography of intellection which a phenomenology of intellect would seek to describe necessarily includes the contemplation of principles, especially a phenomenology of active intellect, and a phenomenology of passive intellect (as in Heidegger's Being and Time) is still very much a logos (phenomeno-logy), an account of the rigorous structure of this being in the world, and is therefore meaningfully “principial”.
1: Though not to all—its scope being universal without being generally available in its active form—which is to say, it is, on the one hand, the “unadorned being of all that is”, and therefore “publicly” available and manifest to all, and, on the other hand, the realization of this intelligible being through contemplation (which is not the same as the discursive thought of the modern “philosopher”), and in that capacity “privately” manifest only to a few, an “intellectual elite” as Guenon calls them. It is the being that all that is, but not every being has realized it in contemplation. This analogy between the general availability of intellection to all, instantiated especially in reference to “the masses”, and its private availability to an elite, is dealt with by Guenon in an essay from the collection titled “Initiation and Spiritual Realization”. In that essay, he essentially argues for a kind of special link between this “intellectual elite” (and “intellectual”, in this case, is taken in the sense of intellection, not of erudition—for instance, an illiterate person, with no formal education whatsoever, could just as well belong to this “elite” as a person with an extensive educational background) and the masses, a link which precisely excludes the middling variety of “bourgeois intellectuals”.
2: Here we can also draw a distinction between the multiple senses of the word “possibility”, namely, the generic ambiguity of possibility, its transcendental sense and its transcendent sense. “Possibility” in its transcendental sense, the same sense in which Kant uses it, is that of a “precondition”, related to the “principle of sufficient reason” which seeks out reasons and preconditions in a successively linked fashion. “Possibility” in its transcendent sense (dealt with by Guenon in a number of places, most notably in The Multiple States of the Being; also see my notes on Chittick's Sufi Path), its “metaphysical” sense, is timeless possibility, not possibility which “precedes” the manifest (except in our presentations and re-presentations of it in symbolism and exposition, respectively) but which is simultaneous with manifestation and eminently “contains” it. This metaphysical sense of “possibility” transcends the distinction between actuality and potentiality (both of which are equally “possible”). It is not a reason or precondition, but the non-manifest and ultra-intelligible reality of things (in Guenon's terms, “the possible and the real are the same”). This simultaneity of the possible, nevertheless, and as already stated, presents itself in symbolism and myth as a succession (for instance, the cosmological genesis of the created world from out of the uncreated gods), and re-presents itself in our chains of reasoning which seek out the causes and meaning of things through inquiry. Therefore, these two senses of “possibility”, transcendent and transcendental, though distinct, are genuinely linked. The pure genera of “possibility”, an empty concept, “drives both ways”—that is, “possibility” is ambiguous or ambivacuous.
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“This is the search for sources of given science in reason itself, so that its faculty of knowing something a priori may by its own deeds be investigated and measured”
(21-22)
“Reason itself” is made manifest through the study of the sciences which it makes possible. Now, a question—does this constitute a mediate study of reason (through the “proxy” of some particular science) or an immediate study? Direct or indirect? It seems the answer must be both—reason, and the transcendental subject who “embodies” it (the transcendental subject is, in a sense, the avatara of reason, the personhood of reason), is a mediate phenomenon as such—that is, reason mediates and consists, essentially, in mediation. The most immediate study of reason, therefore, is precisely a mediate one—we study the mediating function of reason in a mediated way, through that which it mediates, namely scientific activity and theorizing. Reason itself is a kind of indirection, and therefore to look at reason “directly”, presuming such a thing were possible [1], would be besides the point. Reason is a nothing, and should be know by the something which it nothings [2]—that is, known and unknown at one and the same time. To know reason through something else (some mediate phenomenon) is to know it and unknow it at one and the same time. We “look away” from reason (unknow it) in order to know it through something else (e.g. through scientific activity). Reason's double-sidedness (knowing-unknowing) can be summed up as “calculated unknowing” (there is also an “ecstatic unknowing” which is beyond the summit of active intellect, but that is something else). It renders measurable the object of inquiry through its incisively directed unknowing. In its analytical questioning, it penetrates into its subject matter, and to penetrate is to open up an empty space in the midst of something. When such a space is opened, that which flanks the space on either side becomes comparable and quantified (comparable to each other—that which they initially have in common is precisely this “empty space” shared in common between them), hence “calculable”. Reason renders calculable or comparable through its unknowing inquiry, through its analytical questioning. This I have dealt with elsewhere (chiefly my essays on “communist metaphysics”). A consequence of the foregoing in relation to quantity and quality—quantity is quality sundered. Quality, as intellective unity, hence as symbolic (sym-bole), is a coincidentia oppositorum. When the indefinite multitude of interpenetrating significations (interpenetrating = inter-interpreting) are rendered separate through a questioning inquiry and analysis of this quality, these significations become separate “quantities” for us, that is, comparable and measurable. This quantification, however, never excludes quality. Thus, this analytical procedure of sundering quality is, in some measure, a procedure of fractalysis. These new qualities, sundered from their former whole (at least in some measure) continue to image that whole and recall it to mind (that is, continue to render the original whole noetically available through the new sundered quality). Now, in light of the foregoing considerations, what is the relation of reason to the transcendental subject? In what sense is the transcendental subject a reason (an instance of the generic ambiguity of reason, a conceptual transposition of reason onto subjectivity—which is to say, in a manner of speaking, that “if” reason “were” a subject then it “would” be the transcendental subject in its most rigorous Kantian expression)? In the sense that the transcendental subject is that nothing which sunders (primordial) intellection itself and renders passive and active intellection distinctive and measurable “quantities”, renders them separate and comparable. The more empty the transcendental subject becomes (that is, the less passive and active intellection mingle in it, as in an empty space), the more separate and comparable the intellective poles become [3]. Whereas, the more the transcendental subject becomes the imaginal space of their intermingling, the harder it is to distinguish between passive and active intellection (this intermingling to the point of indistinction is a state we may call “primordial intellection”, but to the extent that this intermingling is a kind of “mixture” we may call it “the imaginal”). This is why it is only after the apotheosis of transcendental subjectivity in Kant, that the possibility of separate philosophies for active and passive intellection can emerge, in Guenon and Heidegger, respectively. Antique metaphysics was biased toward the pole of active intellect, but it did not “surgically” isolate it, in the manner that Guenon's theorizing seems to do. Buddhist thought generally seems biased toward the pole of passive intellect, but it did not “secularize” it in the manner that Heidegger seems to, a “secularization” which is the same as to say a surgical isolation of passive intellect from its sacral associations. It is only now that these “flanks” of the transcendental subject have come into the light of day (as flanks of the transcendental subject) that we can begin to see the extent of analogy between them, the ways in which passive and active intellection mirror one another. This analogy between the intellects is called “ontological inversion”.
1: Such a direct study of reason is, in fact, possible. However, what it unveils is not the rationality of reason but its irrationality. This direct look at the topography of the rational is the study of psychology or psychoanalysis. See, for instance, the second part of my notes on Kojeve. If we wish to study reason in its rationality, we must study it indirectly, through various sciences, including the science of logic.
2: To say that reason “nothings” a something is both to say that it interposes itself (a nothing) between things, the basis for their comparison, and that through questioning and inquiry reason both empties the intellective content of a thing (its something-ness), making it into a space for concept production, and “reduces” its dimensions into conceptual flatness, a re-produced image, from hermenoetic sphere into hermeneutic circle.
3: And the maximum of this emptiness, its most conspicuous form, is in the Kantian account of the transcendental subject—this is the historical juncture (in the history of human inquiry, scientific and philosophical) at which transcendental subjectivity announces itself most openly, asserts its own rights, eminently “liberal” rights, its right to speak and think and criticize, not haphazardly but rationally and scientifically, in conformity with the synthetic a prior judgments which render the world readied-for-discourse. Initially, in the Kantian account, the relation of the transcendental condition to its intellective flanks, is not apparent, because Kant also excludes “intellectual intuition” from his thinking (an exclusion also maintained by Hegel). The transcendental subject, here, is conspicuous theoretically, but not yet fully audacious practically. This practical audacity of the transcendental subject entails its open confrontation with these intellective flanks, its seizure of these flanks, and the attendant expansion of scientific activity that this implies—that is, science for the transcendental subject, no longer just means science in a transcendental sense (“modern science” but also science in a transcendent sense (“traditional science”, metaphysics). This fully Promethean subject has stolen the fire of Heaven and even dares to make use of it. The just mentioned theoretical conspicuity of this subject is the historical precondition for this practical audacity of the subject. First we must maximally assert the subject in its emptiness, and only then do these “flanks” emerge in their theoretical separation. That is, thanks to the Kantian philosophy, as a theoretical precondition, we can now think of passive and active intellection as fully separate (a separation which, nevertheless, is still “merely” a virtual one) philosophies and “worldviews”. The eminent representatives of these “worldviews”, after the historical fact of Kantian philosophy, are Martin Heidegger and Rene Guenon, respectively.