Chapter 11 Chapter 7 On the fourth class of objects of the subject and the forms in which the principle of sufficient reason governs

Section 40 General Instructions The last class of objects to be examined next is not only quite special but also very important in relation to our power of representation.It consists of only one object of each individual, the immediate object of the inner sense, the subject of will, which is the object of the knowing subject; it therefore manifests itself only in time (never in space), as we shall see, Even in time, it will be very strictly limited. § 41 Understanding Subjects and Objects All cognition presupposes subject and object.Therefore, even self-awareness is not absolutely unitary, but, like our awareness of all other things (that is, the intuitive ability), it is further divided into the known part and the knowing part.The known part manifests itself absolutely and without exception as will.

Thus, without exception, the subject knows itself as willing, not as knowing.For the ego, which represents the object, never itself becomes a representation or an object, since it is the condition of all representations which are necessarily related to one another; and a beautiful passage from the Upanishads is well suited to it: "See You don't see it, but it sees everything; you don't hear it, but it hears everything; you don't understand it, but it understands everything; you don't know it, but it knows everything. Except to see, To hear, to understand, to know, it is nothing." ①

Therefore, there can be no knowledge of the knowing, because that would mean that the subject would be separated from the knowing, while at the same time it would know that it knew - which is impossible. -------- ①See page 202 of Volume I of the Upanishads. There is the objection: "I not only know, but realize that I know;" to which I answer: "You realize that you know that differs only linguistically from you knowing." I realize that I know ' means nothing more than 'I know', and if it is not further defined, this shows that it is nothing but 'self'. If you are knowing and you are aware that you are knowing are two different things, try to separate them, first try Try to know without knowing that you know, and then try to know that you know without you knowing." No doubt, leaving aside all special knowing, we will end up with the phrase "I know." Proposition—this is the last abstraction we can make; but this proposition is identical with "The object is for me," which in turn is identical with "I am the subject," in which Nothing but the inclusion of a blunt "I" word.

That being the case, we still have to ask: If the subject is not known to us, how can the various cognitive abilities belonging to the subject, such as sensibility, understanding and rationality, be known to us?These faculties are known to us not because our knowledge has become our object, for if that were the case there would not be so many conflicting judgments about them; they are inferred, or rather They are, so to say, common expressions of established representations which can always be more or less clearly demarcated in these cognitive faculties.But with regard to the necessary relation which is the condition of these representations, namely the subject, these faculties are abstracted from them (representations), and are therefore related to them as subjects in general are to objects in general.Just as there is a subject, there is an object (because the word subject itself has no other meaning), and vice versa, there is an object and there is a subject—so that the meaning of being a subject is exactly the same as having an object, and the meaning of being an object is the same as being recognized by the subject. One thing - when the object is supposed to be determined in a certain way, we also assume the subject to know in that particular way, and the same is true.It therefore does not matter whether we say that the object is determined in this or that particular inner way, or that the subject knows in this or that particular inner way.It does not matter whether we say that objects are divided into certain kinds, or that certain different cognitive faculties are unique to the subject.From Aristotle's profound and simple works, we can find many traces that even he knew this truth, and the embryo of critical philosophy can also be found in his works.He said: "In a sense, the soul is everything." ① He also said: "The understanding is the form of the form, and the sensibility is the form of the perceived object."Therefore, whether we say: "Sensibility and understanding no longer exist;" or: "The world has come to an end," it is really the same.It is the same whether it is said: "There are no concepts" or: "There is no reason but animals."

-------- ①Aristotle, "On the Soul", Volume 3, Chapter 8. The debate between realism and idealism, more recently between dogmatists and Kantians, or between ontology and metaphysics on the one hand, and transcendental aesthetics and transcendental logic on the other, This controversy arose from a misunderstanding of this relation and of the representations of the first and third categories established by me, just as the dispute between realists and nominalists in the Middle Ages arose from a misunderstanding of the second. This relationship is the same for class representations.

Section 42 Subject of Will According to the foregoing, the knowing subject can never be known; it can never become an object or representation.Since, however, we have not only external self-knowledge (in sensuous intuition) but also internal self-knowledge; , then, what is known in our body is not the knower, but the will performer, that is, the subject of will: will.Starting from cognition, we can maintain that "I know" is an analytic proposition, whereas "I will" is a synthetic proposition, and an a posteriori proposition, that is, given by experience—in this case is given by inner experience (i.e. only in time).The subject of will thus becomes our object.Introspection always shows us that we are willing.However, we have innumerable grades in our will, from the faintest desire to passion, and I have often shown that not only all our emotions, but even all our human mental activities are also included in the broad concept of emotion. Under the name, see it as a state of will.

-------- ① See "Two Fundamental Questions of Ethics". In willing and knowing the subject are identical, so the word "I" contains and explains both; moreover, this identity is the knot of the universe, so it cannot be explained.For we can only make out the relation between objects; and two objects cannot be one except as parts of a whole.What is involved here is the subject, to whom the laws by which we know the object do not apply, and the de facto unity of the knower with the known as in will—that is, the unity of subject and object—is directly given of.In any case, this identity cannot be explained, and anyone who clearly recognizes it will agree with me in calling it an absolute miracle.

Just as understanding is the subjective connection to our first class of representations, reason to the second, and pure sensibility to the third, we now find that to the fourth is the inner sense, or the whole of self-consciousness. Section 43 The Law of Intentional Motivation (Final Cause) Just because the willing subject is given directly in self-consciousness, we cannot further determine or describe what willing is; rather, it is the most immediate knowledge we have, and this immediate knowledge is ultimately It must make other very indirect knowledge obvious. When we make a decision ourselves, or when we see someone else make a decision, we think we should ask "why."That is, we assume that some event must have taken place in the past from which the decision arose, and we call this event its ground, or, more precisely, the motive of the ensuing action.Without such a basis or motive, as inanimate objects can move without being pushed or pulled, such behavior is unimaginable to us.Motivation, therefore, belongs to reason, and in Section 20 we have regarded motivation as the third form of the law of causality and discussed its characteristics.But the whole law of causality is only the form of the principle of sufficient reason in objects of the first kind, that is, the form of the corporeal world given to us by external intuition, where it forms a link linking changes with one another, and causes arising from without are the conditions that constitute every change.On the contrary, the inner nature of such changes remains a mystery to us: because we are always outside.We can no doubt see that the cause produces the effect; but we do not actually know how the effect arises from the cause, or what happens within.Thus, we understand mechanical, physical, chemical effects, and that they are caused by stimuli, each time for their own reasons, but do not from this fully understand the process, the essential part of it. It is still a mystery to us; so we attribute it to the nature of things, to forces of nature, or vitality, but in any case they are incomprehensible qualities.If we have not been endowed with the ability to recognize an intrinsic part of the process of animal and human movements and behaviors, our understanding of these movements and behaviors is equally poor, because they also seem to us to be caused by causes (motives) in a certain way. in some incomprehensible way; that is to say, through our own inner experience, we know that it is an act of will caused by motives, which are mere appearances.Thus the effect produced by motives, unlike that produced by all other causes, is not only known to us from without in a quite indirect manner, but at the same time is known to us from within in a very direct manner. , so we know it in terms of its whole behavior.Here we seem to be behind the scenes, learning the secrets of the process from the innermost essence of the cause to the effect; for our knowledge here is obtained by quite different paths and methods.From here follows an important proposition: motivated actions (motives) are causal laws that we see from within.The law of causality thus presents itself here in an entirely different manner and medium, and as another kind of cognition; it must therefore appear in a special form of the principle of sufficient reason, that is, as the principle of sufficient reason for action. , or simply the law of motivation.

To give a clue to the understanding of my whole philosophy, I add the following: The fourth class of objects as subjects, that is, those containing the will realized in ourselves, is in the same relation as the first class of objects. The relationship between the law of motivation and the law of causality is the same, which I have made clear in Section 20.This truth is the cornerstone of my entire metaphysics. As for the way and inevitability of motivated behavior, and the fact that motivated behavior is based on experience and individual characteristics, and even depends on individual cognitive abilities, readers are referred to my award-winning paper "On Freedom of Will", which is more fully discussed here.

44. The influence of the will upon the intellect. The influence of the will on the intellect is not at all based on the law of causality, but depends on the unity of the knowing and willing subject, as stated in Section 42.This influence occurs when the will compels the intellect to reproduce the appearances which have occurred, and in general directs its attention in this or that direction, and satisfactorily produces a series of concrete thoughts.In this case even the will is determined by the law of motives, according to which it also secretly operates what we call the connection of ideas, to which I devote a chapter in the second volume of my magnum opus. (Chapter XIV) addresses this issue.The connection of ideas is in itself nothing but the application of the four forms of the principle of sufficient reason to a series of subjective thoughts, that is, to representations existing in our consciousness.The will of the individual requires the intellect to recall, together with existing representations, those representations which may be related to them either logically or by analogy, or by proximity in time or space, according to personal interest (i.e., personal purpose). make this whole process possible.Here, however, the act of will is so immediate that in most cases we have no clear awareness of it; and so swift that sometimes we are not even aware of the moment of appearance.In this case, it is as if something came directly into our consciousness without any connection with anything else; but this is impossible, and therein lies the root of the principle of sufficient reason, mentioned above in my magnum opus. It is fully explained in that chapter.Every picture that suddenly presents itself to our imagination, and even every judgment that does not follow directly from preceding grounds, must have been caused by an act of will motivated; Neglect, although such acts of will are often equally unnoticed because of the ease with which they occur, so that wishing and fulfillment occur almost simultaneously.

-------- ① See "The World as Will and Representation", Volume II, Chapter Fourteen. Chapter 45 Memory The more often representations are presented to the cognitive subject, the more smoothly the cognitive subject can repeat these representations according to his own wishes. This ability of the cognitive subject—in other words, the trained ability—is what we call memory.I disagree with the traditional view of memory as a sort of storehouse in which we keep ready-made representations that are always at our disposal, although we are not always aware of their existence.Pre-existing representations are easily reproduced at will by habit, so that the appearance of a link in a series of representations immediately, and often even spontaneously, awakens all the others.If we look for a metaphor for this peculiar quality of our faculty of representation (as Plato compared it to a sponge capable of absorbing and retaining impressions), I think the best metaphor is a piece of cloth which, after being folded several times in its folds, It's as if the cloth automatically went into this folded state.Just as the human body learns to obey its will by habit, so does the faculty of representation.The usual view conceives of memory as always the same representation, as if we were taking it out of the storeroom again and again; the fact is that, on the contrary, a new representation is produced each time, but habit makes it particularly easy to form. .It thus happens that the imaginary picture which we thought to be stored in our memory has actually been slightly altered: we look at a familiar object after a long interval and find that it is not the same as We have this experience when the images in our minds are not exactly the same.If the representations we preserve are ready-made and do not change, the above-mentioned situation will not occur.It is for this reason that acquired knowledge, if we leave it unused, gradually fades from our memory, as it is the result of the exercise of habit and skill; thus, for example, most Scholars forgot their Greek, and most artists forgot their Italian when they returned from Italy.This is why a familiar name or a line of poetry is so difficult to recall after years of neglect; .Therefore, a person who is proficient in several languages ​​can ensure his mastery of the language as long as he pays attention to reading each language occasionally. This also explains why the circumstances and past events of our childhood leave such deep impressions on our memories; for in childhood we have few representations, and when we do, they are mainly intuitive: so that for amusement we always is repeated.Men who are scarcely capable of creative thinking do so all their lives (and constantly repeat concepts and language as well as intuitive representations); therefore, when intellectual dullness and sluggishness do not prevent them, they sometimes have strange unusual memory.Men of genius, on the contrary, are not always endowed with the best memories, as, for example, Rousseau said of himself.Perhaps this can be explained by the fact that they are always so full of new ideas and associations that they have little time to reproduce them.On the whole, however, geniuses are seldom found to have a poor memory; for what they lack in constant habit is more than compensated for by the great energy and flexibility of their whole mental faculties.We shall never forget that the Mother of Muses is the personification of memory.We may therefore say that our memory is affected by two competing factors, that it is affected on the one hand by the energy of the faculty of representation, and on the other by the number of representations which occupy this energy.The less energy this capacity contains, the less appearance there is, and vice versa.This explains why people who are used to reading novels have memory loss, because they are like geniuses: a large number of appearances pass by quickly one after another, and there is no time and patience to reproduce and repeat them; Thoughts and associations, not the reader's own, but those of others, occur in rapid succession, and the reader himself lacks the new ideas and associations which, in genius, counterbalance the repetition.In addition, the entire memory must be corrected. We remember the most interesting things and forget the most uninteresting things.Therefore great men are apt to forget for a very short time the insignificant and insignificant affairs of everyday life, and the mortals with whom they come in contact, but if the thing is important in itself and has significance to them, then they remember it. very clear. On the whole, however, it is not difficult to understand why it is easier for us to remember such a series of representations strung together by a thread or the above-mentioned grounds and inferences than it is for us to remember each other independently and only through Representations which are connected with our will by the law of motive; that is to say, those which are assembled at will.For the former, the fact that we know the formal part a priori, already solves half the trouble; and this perhaps contributed to Plato's doctrine that any learning is but memory. We shall try as far as possible to convert into an intelligible impression of what we wish to incorporate in our memory, either directly, or as an example, a pure simile, or an analogy, in any Other methods will do; for intuitive cognition is much stronger than any abstract thought, let alone pure language.That's why we can remember things we experience, but not things we read.