Chapter 7 Part I The World as Representation §7

In view of our previous investigations, the following matters should be explained.In this investigation, we start neither from the object nor from the subject, but from the appearance.Representation already contains these two aspects of subject and object and presupposes them, because the separation of subject and object is the primary and essential form of representation.So the subject-object separation as this form is what we have considered first, and then (although the main point of the question is here quoted from the Preface) other subordinate forms such as time, space, causality, etc.These subordinate forms are proper to the object, but they are essential to the object as object, and the object is essential to the subject as subject; they are therefore again discoverable from the subject, that is to say, a priori Get to know them.In this respect, these forms can be seen as the common boundaries of subject and object.All these forms, however, are reduced to a common name, to the principle of sufficient reason; and this has been pointed out at length in the Preface.

This approach is the fundamental difference between our mode of investigation and all previous philosophies.Because all those philosophies do not start from the subject, but from the subject, the two must be one of them, so the subject is always drawn from the subject, or the object is drawn from the subject, and the extension is always based on the basis.On the contrary, we have extracted the relationship between the object and the subject from the scope of the law of sufficient reason, and believe that the law of sufficient reason is only valid for the object.It may be thought that the philosophy of the same which has arisen in our modern times and is well known is not included in the above two opposite [philosophies]; since it has neither object nor subject as its true original point of departure, Instead, it starts from a third party, an "absolute" recognizable by "rational intuition". "Absolute" is neither an object nor a subject, but a combination of the two.I though due to a complete lack of any. "Rational intuition", and dare not praise this respectable "two-in-one" or "absolute", but I still have to use "rational intuition" to anyone, to us disrespectful heretics. On the basis of the open record, this philosophy is not exempt from the two opposing errors listed above.Because this kind of philosophy, although there is something unthinkable, it is the identity that can be "reasonably intuitive", or the identity of subject and object that can be experienced because one is immersed in it; but it cannot avoid the error of the two confrontations, It's just a mix of the mistakes of the two.This philosophy itself is divided into two disciplines, one is transcendental idealism, that is, Fichte's "self" theory, which produces or extracts objects from the subject according to the principle of reason.The second is natural philosophy, which holds that the subject gradually changes from the object; and the method used here is called "construction".Regarding "construction", although I know very little, it is enough to understand that "construction" is the process of moving forward in certain forms according to the law of sufficient reason.I am not sensitive to the profound wisdom contained in the "structure", because I completely lack that kind of "rational intuition", so the yanshu chapter based on this premise can only be a sealed heavenly book for me.It is strange to say that this metaphor is so true, even when I hear the doctrines of "great wisdom", I always seem to hear nothing but the most terrible and most boring nonsense. Didn't hear anything.

Those philosophical systems starting from the object, of course, always have the whole intuitive world and its order as their theme, but the object they start from is not the intuitive world or its basic element—matter.Rather, those systems can be classified according to the four possible classes of objects mentioned in the preface.Accordingly, it can be said that the Thales and Ionian schools, Democritus, Epicurus, Jordan Prono, and the French materialists started from the first category of objects or from the real world.Starting from the second class or abstract concepts62 are Spinoza (that is, starting from purely abstract concepts that exist only in their definition-substances) and the earlier Elijah school.Starting from the third category, that is, from time, and then also from numbers, is the Chinese philosophy of the Pythagorean school and Zhongzhong.Finally, from the fourth category, from the act of will initiated by cognition, are the scholastics, who advocate that an external and personal being can create the world out of nothing by an act of will of its own.

Among the systems starting from the object, the one that emerges as pure materialism is the most consistent and justifiable.Materialism affirms that matter, and time and space together with matter, exist unconditionally as such; this skips the relation [of these things] to the subject, in which in fact all these things exist only of.Materialism, then, grasps the law of causality as the clue to progress, and regards the law of causality as the ready-made order of things, as an eternal truth.This skips comprehension, and causality exists only in comprehension, only for comprehension.Therefore, materialism wants to find the initial and simplest state of matter, and then deduce all other states; from purely mechanical to chemical, to magnetic polarization, to vegetable, to animal, etc. .Assuming all of this is done.But there is still a final link in this chain—animal sensibility, cognition; and this cognition can only appear as a determination of the state of matter, as a state of matter produced by causality.If we have followed the materialist point of view with intuitive appearances up to this point, then, when materialism reaches its apex with materialism, we will perceive the sudden, irrepressible laughter of the gods of Olympus. Voice.Because we are like waking up from a dream, and in an instant, our hearts are clear: it turns out that the final result of materialism, the cognitive function, has been assumed to be pure matter in its original starting point. It is an indispensable condition, and when we think that we are thinking about matter together with materialism, in fact, what we are thinking about is nothing else, but the subject that represents this matter; The hand is the perception to understand matter.This great beggar's word (petitio principii) unexpectedly reveals itself, because the last link suddenly appears again as the fulcrum on which the first link is tied, and the long chain [from mechanism to cognition] suddenly appears. for a circle.Thus, the materialist is like Baron Münchhausen, riding a horse and swimming in the water, holding the horse between his legs, while he himself grabs the braid on his forehead and tries to pull the horse and man out of the water.From this point of view, the fundamental absurdity of materialism lies in the fact that it starts from the object of things and uses an object of things as the final basis for explanation.And this object can be a substance that is only thought and is in the abstract, or it can be a substance or element that has entered the form of cognition and is given by experience, such as the basic elements of chemistry and primary compounds.Materialism regards such and such things as existing in themselves and absolutely, so that organic nature can be produced from them, and finally the cognitive subject can also be produced; and this is used to fully explain nature and the subject.As a matter of fact, all objective things, since they are object-theoretic, are determined in many ways by the knowing subject through the forms of its "knowledge", and these forms have already been assumed as presuppositions.Therefore, if one puts aside the subject, all objective things disappear completely.Therefore, the attempt of materialism is to explain the direct giving from the indirect giving.Materialism regards all objective, extended, and functional things as the basis for its explanation; it thinks that such a solid foundation, all explanations only need to be reduced to it (especially when the final outlet for explanation is action and reaction). time), then everything is enough, and there is nothing left for him to ask for.In fact, all these things, I say, are only the most indirect, most conditioned giving, and thus only relatively appearing things; because all these things are composed and produced by the human brain, that is, It is in the forms of time, space, causality, etc., that enter into this comprehension, making; and only by virtue of these forms does it appear as something extended in space and active in time.Now materialism wants to explain the direct giving, the appearance (in fact, all that is also in the appearance) and finally the will from such a giving.In fact, it should be said the other way around, that all those basic dynamics that regularly appear on the thread of cause after cause can only be explained from the will.Contrary to the statement that cognition is also a stereotype of matter, which often has equal rights, it is said that all matter, as the representation of the subject, is, on the contrary, a schema of the subject's cognition.But the goals and ideals of all natural sciences are still fundamentally materialistic.The obvious impossibility of materialism is a conclusion that we will come to in our subsequent investigations; here is another truth that also confirms [our] view.It turns out that all science in the narrow sense, which is what I understand, is systematic knowledge guided by the law of sufficient reason, and can never reach a final goal, nor can it provide a complete and complete explanation; because this kind of knowledge can never reach the world. The innermost essence can never go beyond appearances; rather, it has nothing at all except to teach people to recognize the interrelationships between appearances.

Every science proceeds from two main sources.One of them is the principle of sufficient reason, which is always in a certain form, which is the instrument of demonstration of science, and the other is the proper object of this science, which is its subject matter.For example, geometry takes space as its subject and uses the basis of existence in space as its tool.Logic takes conceptual connection in a narrow sense as its theme and cognition basis as its tool; history takes human beings’ past large-scale and extensive deeds as its theme and the law of motivation as its tool; natural science takes matter as its theme and the law of causality as its tool; therefore, The index and purpose of natural science is to use causality as a clue to reduce all possible states of matter to each other, and finally restore to one state; and to extend each other, and finally lead to all other states from one state.In the natural sciences, then, two states confront each other as poles, the two states of matter which are farthest from the immediate object of the subject and which are nearest, that is, the most inanimate, the most primitive matter or the first fundamental. The elements and the human organism confront each other.Natural science as chemistry seeks the former, as physiology the latter.Until now, neither extreme has been reached; only something has been gained in the middle.As far as future prospects are concerned, it is difficult to have any hope.Chemists always want to reduce the total number of chemical basic elements (about 60 kinds) under the premise that the qualitative analysis of substances is not as infinite as the quantitative analysis; the assumption has been reduced to only two If so, they also want to reduce the two to one.This is because the law of homogeneity leads to the assumption that matter has an initial chemical state prior to all other states; The essence of "matter as matter".On the other hand, it is precisely incomprehensible how a chemical change can take place in this initial state without a second state acting on it there.In this way, the embarrassment that Epicurus encountered in mechanics also appeared here in chemistry.This situation was encountered by Epicurus when he wanted to explain how an atom initially deviates from its original direction of motion.Yes, this spontaneously developed contradiction, both unavoidable and insoluble, could have been raised as a chemical antinomy.Having found this contradiction in [chemistry] at one of the extremes sought by the natural sciences, we shall find a corresponding contrast at the other extreme.There is likewise little hope of reaching the other extreme of natural science; for one has only to see more clearly that what is chemical can never be reduced to mechanical, nor organic to chemical or electrical.Those who today return to the old wrong way will soon slip back, as shyly and stealthily as their predecessors.Regarding these, I will comment on the next article.What is mentioned here in passing is only the [situations] encountered by the natural sciences in their own field.Natural science as philosophy is, despite these difficulties, materialism; and materialism, as we have seen, was at its birth pregnant with death in its own heart.This is because materialism has skipped over the subject and the form of knowledge, which are already predetermined presuppositions in the primordial matter from which it departs, as well as in the organism it aims to reach.It should be noted that "There is no object without a subject" is a law that makes all materialism impossible.The sun and the planets have no eyes to see them, no understanding to know them, and although words can be used to describe them, these words are only "iron trees" [unseen] to appearances.On the other hand, the law of causality and the observations and investigations of nature in accordance with this law necessarily lead us to the reliable assumption that in time every higher state of organization of matter is always followed by a more primitive state of organization. Animals are prior to human beings, fish are prior to land animals, plants are prior to fish and land animals, and inorganic matter is prior to all organic matter.And so the primordial lump must go through a long series of changes before it reaches the moment when the first eye opens.However, the actual existence of the whole world depends on this first opened eye, even if it belongs to only an insect; exist in awareness.Without cognition, the world cannot be imagined at all; and this is because the world is simply representation; in representation theory, it needs the subject of "knowledge" as the branch of its actual existence.Yes, the long series of time itself, filled with innumerable changes, through which matter rose from form to form, until the first conscious animal appeared; It can only be thought in the identity of a consciousness, it is the order of the representation of this consciousness, it is the cognitive form of consciousness; if it is outside the identity of consciousness, it completely loses all meaning and is nothing.Thus we see, on the one hand, that the whole world necessarily depends on the first knowing being, however imperfect it may be; The animal is only a small link in the long chain of cause and effect before it.These two contradictory opinions, each of which we arrive at with virtually the same necessity, may indeed be called an antinomy in our cognitive faculties, and be compared with that found in the first extreme of natural science. Antinomies are identified as controls.At the same time, in the criticism of Kant's philosophy in the appendix of this book, it will be proved that Kant's four antinomies are just groundless and aimless.As for the contradiction that inevitably arises here at the end, there is still a solution to it, that is, in Kant's words, time, space and causality do not belong to things in themselves, but only to their phenomena, which are the forms of phenomena.In my words, it is the objective world, that is, the world as appearance. It is not the only side of the world, but only the outer side of the world; it also has a completely different side, which is its innermost essence, Its core, that is "things in themselves".This essence, which we shall examine in the next chapter, will be called will in its most immediate form of objectification.The world as representation, the only thing we have here to consider, began with the opening of the first eye; it cannot exist without the medium of knowledge, and therefore does not precede the opening of the first eye. open to exist.And without the eye, that is, outside of knowing, there is no prior ["after"], no time.But time does not therefore have a beginning, all beginnings are in time.And because time is the most common form of the possibility of cognition, and all phenomena are embedded in it through causality, so it (time) exists at the same time as the first and first cognition, and at the same time it has a forward and backward relationship. The total infinity of both.The phenomenon that fills this first present must at the same time be considered, in the series of causes, ascending and attached to the series of phenomena extending infinitely into the past.And this past itself is determined by the first present in the same way that the latter is determined by the former.So, like the first present, the past from which it emerges depends on the knowing subject; without this subject it cannot be anything.This leads again to the corollary fact that this first present does not appear as the original, not as the beginning of time without the mother of the past, but as the continuation of the past according to the ground of its existence in time; A present phenomenon also appears causally as a consequence of those circumstances which filled the past earlier.Whoever likes to attach mythology to his work may symbolize the moment of the birth of the smallest Titan, Kronos, at the beginning of time, which is actually beginningless; since Kronos castrated His own father, the rough germs of the creation of heaven and earth ceased, and now the race of gods and men stepped onto the stage.

The narration here is the [result] obtained from our discussion following materialism, the most thorough philosophical system starting from the volume.This narrative also helps to make apparent the inseparable interdependence of subject and object.While the opposition between subject and object cannot be eliminated, the result of this recognition is that [people] can no longer seek the innermost part of the world in either of the two factors of appearance, but only in something completely different from appearance. The essence of nature, seeks the thing in itself; and the thing in itself is not burdened by the original, essential, and at the same time irresolvable [subject-object] opposition.

Contrary to the above starting from the object and deriving the subject from the object, starting from the subject and finding the object from the subject.Among the philosophies of the past, the former is common and frequent; the latter, on the contrary, has only one example, and a very recent one, namely Fichte's pseudo-philosophy.In this "unique" and "new" sense, it must be pointed out here that his doctrine, although it has so little real value and inner meaning, can be said to be nothing more than a gimmick; It is stated with restrained tone of emotion and passionate enthusiasm; and it can beat back imbecile enemies with eloquent rebuttals, so it can also shine as if it were really great.But the true seriousness, the steadfast pursuit of one's own goal, the pursuit of the truth in one's mind, free from any external influence, is completely absent from him and all philosophers like him who adapt to the present situation.Of course, he couldn't help it.A man becomes a philosopher always [because of] a problem which he seeks to solve for himself.This doubt is Plato's wonder and doubt, which he also called a philosophical emotion.This is what distinguishes the authenticity of philosophers: for a real philosopher, his doubts arise from observing the world; on the contrary, for a fake philosopher, his doubts arise from a book or a ready-made system.This is the case of Fichte, who became a philosopher on Kant's thing-in-itself.Had he not had this thing in his own right, he would have probably achieved far greater success with his rhetorical genius in other occupations.This book made him a philosopher.As long as he really gets into the meaning of the book69, he will understand that the spirit of the main thesis of the book is this: unlike the scholastics, the principle of sufficient reason is not an eternal truth.The law of sufficient reason does not have unconditional validity before, outside, and above the whole world; whether it is the necessary relationship between space and time, the law of causality, or the "law of sufficient reason for cognition", it only It is only relatively effective in phenomena and under conditional constraints.Therefore, the inner essence of the world, the thing-in-itself, can never be discovered by taking the principle of sufficient reason as a clue; Moreover, the principle of sufficient reason does not touch the subject at all, but only the form of the object; for this reason the object is not a thing in itself.And at the same time as the object, the subject is at once present, and vice versa; so that the relation from effect to cause cannot be placed either in the relation of object to subject, or in the relation of subject to object.But nothing of this kind of thought smells at all in Fichte.In this matter, his only interest is to set off with the main body.The reason why Kant chooses this starting point is to point out the mistake of considering the object as a thing-in-itself in the past starting from the content.Fichte, on the other hand, regards starting from the subject as the only relevant thing; and, as all imitators do, he thinks that he has surpassed Kant if he goes further than Kant on this point.The mistakes he made again in this direction were the mistakes made by previous dogmatism in the opposite direction.It is the latter that invites Kant's criticism.Therefore, there is still no improvement on the fundamental problem, and the basic error of ascertaining the relationship between cause and effect between the object and the subject remains the same; the idea that the law of sufficient reason has unconditional validity is also the same; but in the past, the thing in itself was placed in the object. , and now it is merely displaced in the knowing subject.Moreover, the complete relativity between subject and object, and the inner essence of the thing-in-itself or the world pointed out by this relativity, must not be sought in the subject and object, but only outside it, outside everything that exists only in relation. To seek [the reason] is still unknowable, and is the same as ever.As if there had never been such a person as Kant, the principle of sufficient reason is in Fichte as it is in all the scholastics, the same thing, eternal truth.Over the gods of antiquity reigned eternal fate; likewise, above the God of the scholastics reigned eternal truths, that is, metaphysical, mathematical, and superlogical truths; [Besides this,] some people add moral propriety. [They say] only these "truths" do not depend on anything, and by their necessity there is God and the world.In Fichte, the law of reason is regarded as this eternal truth; according to the law of reason, the self is the ground of the world or not-self, the ground of the object; the object is the consequence of the self, the product of the self.He therefore guards against further checks and restrictions on the principle of reason.Fichte makes the self produce the non-self, just like a spider weaves a web; if I want to point out which form of the law of reason his clue is, then I think it is the law of reason of existence in space.Only in relation to this law can Fichte's difficult deduction have any meaning and interpretation. [Notice] These and other deductions, such as the generation of the self and the making of the non-self, actually constitute the content of the most meaningless, and in this regard, the most boring book.Fichte's philosophy is of no value in itself, [however] it is a late and true antithesis to the old materialism; it is interesting only in this respect, because the one side is the most radical from the object. [System], on the one hand, is the most thorough [system] starting from the subject.Materialism ignores that when it specifies the simplest object, it immediately specifies the subject.Fichte also neglects that in designating the subject (what title he gives to this subject is up to him), he not only designates the object (without an object there is no conceivable subject), but also Neglecting this point means that all transcendental extensions, basically all arguments, must be based on necessity [this fact]; and all inevitability is only based on the law of sufficient reason, because the so-called "necessarily is" and "Inference from known grounds" is a synonymous concept that is interchangeable.He also neglects that the principle of sufficient reason is nothing but the form of "the object being an object"; thus the principle of sufficient reason presupposes the object, and does not have any effect before or outside the object. By eliciting the object, one can make it come into being according to one's own decree.Therefore, starting from the subject and starting from the object as mentioned above have a common error. Both sides assume from the beginning what they claim to prove later, that is, they have already assumed the indispensable correspondence of their starting point [ thing].

Our method is completely different in kind from the above-mentioned two opposite fallacies. We start neither from the object nor from the subject, but from the appearance.Representation is the first fact in consciousness, and the first essentially all basic form of representation is the separation of subject and object.The form of the object is in turn the principle of substantiality contained in the various forms; and each form, as has been pointed out, so completely dominates the class of representations to which it belongs, that with the knowledge of the form the essence of the whole class of representations is also was recognized.This is because the class (as representation) is nothing but the form itself; for example, time itself is nothing but the ground of existence in time, that is, succession, and space is nothing but the ground of existence in space. Apart from the principle of ground, i.e. parts, there is nothing else, matter is nothing but causality: concepts (as will be shown) are nothing but relations to grounds of cognition.The world as representation has its complete and consistent relativity, whether viewed in its most general form (subject and object) or in its subordinate form (principle of sufficient reason), which, as stated above, points out the world for us. The innermost essence can only be found on the other side of Yaoquan, which is different from the appearance.The next article will point out this other aspect in the fact that all living creatures are equally definite.

There is still a class of representations that is specific to humans that has yet to be examined.The material of such representations is the concept, and its subjective counterpart is reason, just as the representations previously considered had understanding and sensibility as their subjective counterparts; but understanding and sensibility are possessed by every animal. That's all.