A Guide to Philosophy in Six Hours and Fifteen Minutes (2 page)

Space is not an object, but the condition for every possible object.

The reasoning is the same for time.

Time
is not a thing that can be tested, but all things are
in
time.

One can very well imagine time without phenomena, but it is impossible to imagine a phenomenon without time.

Same argument for space.

One cannot imagine different time (like objects: table, chair).
Time is always the same.
It does not derive from our observation of the external world but is a direct intuition, an intuitive knowledge, that is, an immediate knowledge.

We need to add that time permits
a priori
synthetic judgments in arithmetic.
The impressions that we have of the external world follow each other in succession; this is what arithmetic is about: 1-2-3-4.
It is a sequence.

A priori
synthetic judgments are confirmed in experience because they are carried out in time.
In the same way, all judgments related to mathematics are
a priori
synthetic judgments, confirmed by experience.

Transcendental Analysis

Transcendental analysis takes the physical sciences as its object, since physics unites everything that we know about the world.

I repeat: Kant does not speak much about consciousness, but rather about pure reason.

Why?

Because it involves an organized, rational knowledge, which appears in science.
Here we arrive at a very beautiful Kantian inspiration which resembles the Copernican revolution.
Just as Copernicus immobilized the sun and made the earth move, Kant demonstrates that
only the co-relativity of subject and object can form a reality
.
The object must be seized by consciousness in order to form reality in time and space.
In physics (Newton), we have direct knowledge about
a priori
things.

Example, we can affirm forever (absolute) that all phenomena are subject to the law of causality and Newton’s famous law that action equals reaction, for instance [
sentence incomplete
].

Once again: how can
a priori
synthetic judgments be possible in physics?

Kant’s great coup: our knowledge pertaining to such things is expressed
by judgments
.

Kant took up the classification of judgments according to Aristotelian logic (which was valid in Kant’s day).

Aristotle’s judgments can be classified by the following criteria:
1.
Quantity
.
Example: individual judgments which relate to a single phenomenon.
But if you make a judgment like: certain men are white, then you express a particular judgment.

One can also express as judgment that all men are mortal.

2.
Quality
.
Affirmative judgments A.

negative ones B.

infinitive ones C.

(which lead to an infinite judgment: example, fish are not birds).

Kant’s discovery consists in deducing—in eliciting—
a category
from each of these judgments.

Example: A.
affirmative judgment: “You are French.”

(category:
UNITY
).

B.
particular judgment: “Certain men are mortal.”

(category of
MULTIPLE
)
C.
universal judgment: “All men are mortal.”

(category of the set:
TOTALITY
).

Consciousness is the fundamental thing.

Object-subject: nothing more.

1.
consciousness cannot be a mechanism, nor broken up into parts, because it has no parts.
It is a whole.

2.
consciousness cannot be conditioned by science.
It is what permits science, but science cannot explain something to us about consciousness.

Consciousness is not the brain, nor the body, because I am conscious of my brain, but the brain cannot be conscious.

TAKE CARE
not to imagine consciousness as an organism or an animal.

There is an important boundary between science and philosophy.
Science establishes its methods, its laws by experience.
But it is valid only in the world of phenomena.
Science can give us the connection between things, but not direct knowledge about the essence of things.

In appearance, there is a contradiction, because if consciousness is the basic element, how can it have categories?
How can one divide it like a scientifically analyzed mechanism?

Categories, judgments, cannot belong to consciousness.

In the Kantian corpus, consciousness judges itself.
Kant’s fundamental problem is:
How is our knowledge of the world possible?
It is precisely our consciousness that realizes the limits of our consciousness.
Here one could imagine that one takes a step back to form another consciousness, which judges the first.
In that case a third consciousness must judge the second one,
etc.
(Husserl).

But consciousness cannot be a judge.
Consciousness (following Alain’s definition) means
knowing what one knows
, and nothing more.
Even this definition is bad, because it divides consciousness.
Consciousness is indivisible and unconditional.
To tell the truth, in philosophy, one cannot say anything.

What are Kant’s categories?

Are these the conditions that make consciousness possible?

In Kant (as I see it) there is this process: consciousness is judged from a distance by another consciousness.
It is merely a question of establishing what the conditions of this first consciousness are for the second.

It is only a matter of knowing what the indispensable conditions for this second consciousness are, in order that the first consciousness may be thought about without its elements.
Consciousness is impossible for us to imagine.

Kantian categories are the condition for a subject to be conscious of an object.
But these conditions cannot have an absolute sense.
Categories seem to us like the condition for every judgment about reality.

It must be said (as with time) that the categories are within us.
It is we who can capture reality by injecting categories.

Nothing has remained of Kant’s fine theories, not even the most important category which comes from conditional judgment (hypothetical), for example:
if I...
therefore I...
did not stay.

But now philosophy deals with other things.
These were formal discoveries, but significant ones, because they absolutely revolutionized the notion of consciousness, of the subject-object connection, thus of man and the universe.

Third Lesson

April 30, 1969

Kant

Third part of the
Critique of Pure Reason
.
Possibility of synthetic judgments ………

………………………………………
metaphysical

Metaphysical: everything which is not physical, like the soul, the world, and God.

These three components are not direct perceptions (like a chair) but syntheses.
Yet the soul is the synthesis of all impressions, because it is man’s self (the soul) which assimilates all impressions.
The soul is that which receives the perceptions.

The second synthesis, that is, that of the world, is the synthesis of everything.
Yet the critique of the idea of the soul consists in demonstrating that all our perceptions are in time, while the soul is not in time.
The soul is immortal.

Then Kant moves to the idea of the Cosmos, that is, of the world.
He shows that there are four antinomies of pure reason, which exclude each other.

First antinomy
.
The world has a beginning in time and limits in space.
This has no meaning, because when the collective world (of things) finishes, we still have space and time.
But as the world is the synthesis of everything, it cannot be limited to a limited whole.
One must see here a certain philosophical idea which consists of reducing things to obvious facts.

Second antinomy
.
The cosmos is made up simultaneously of divisible and indivisible elements.
One can reduce this antinomy to what could be called the limitation of the thing.
The thing (or object) must inevitably be limited in order for it to be a thing.
That is why time and space cannot be considered things.
Yet the concept of thing, in order to reach fullness, must inevitably insert time and space, since the Cosmos signifies absolutely everything that exists.
We see a contradiction here, since the Cosmos must be unlimited in time and space in order to include absolutely everything.
It is this way when you take an object; you can divide it endlessly.
There are no limits for it.
The idea of an object therefore contains a contradiction because it must be limited and unlimited at the same time.

Third antinomy
of the idea of the Cosmos.
For
us, the Cosmos must have a cause because [
sentence incomplete
] internally contradictory idea.

Fourth antinomy
.
God must exist for
us
, and at the same time he
cannot exist
.
Kant lists three theological arguments here to demonstrate the existence of God.
Now, [
sentence incomplete
].

First argument: ontological
.
Ontological means everything that concerns the being.
We have an idea of God as a perfect being.
But a perfect being, to have perfection, must also have the quality of
existing
.
This argument seems too sophisticated to me.
Kant says that the category of existence is a perception.
Yet God cannot be perceived.

Second argument: cosmological
.
The world must have a cause since, according to the category of causality, each thing must have a cause.
If this is so, God must also have a cause.

Third argument: teleological. Telos
means
purpose
.
Everything that is in the world must have a purpose, must be the work of God.
But if God is teleological, then he himself should be created for an end.

Kant emphasizes that the errors of metaphysics originate in what it implements beyond the limits of experience and its use of categories.

We arrive at the last thesis of the
Critique of Pure Reason
.
Kant demonstrates that our reason is not sufficient to discover what he calls the
noumenon
.
*
For example, if you see an object, you have the impression that it is a white object made in a certain way,
etc.
But if you just put on yellow-tinted glasses, everything changes.
Imagine an ant that looks at the same object and sees it only in two dimensions and not three.
Now, whether for an ant or for a person donning yellow-tinted glasses, the object will change.

Kant wonders whether pure reason can discover the
object in itself
, objectively, independently of our ways of perceiving it.
He notices that this is impossible, and we can never know what the
noumenon, the absolute
, is in itself, independent of our own perceptions.
We are limited to the phenomenological world.
This is important, because you will find this problem in Husserl, Hegel,
etc.
Our reason must be limited to the phenomenological world.

The
phenomenon
is what I see according to my faculties, and my way of seeing things: Psina,
^†
for
me, is white, in time and space.
That is the phenomenon.
The
noumenon
(the absolute) consists in asking oneself, “How is Psina, not for me, but
in itself?
” The Kantian critique is a
limitation of thought
.
Human thinking would consider itself capable of understanding everything.
But since Kant, not to mention Descartes, thinking has undergone a reduction and this reduction is extremely important.
It demonstrates that thinking reaches a certain maturity, it begins to know its limits, and you will find in all later philosophy, for example, in Feuerbach, in Husserl, in Marx, etc., the same tendency to reduce thought.
Today philosophy does not consist of seeking an absolute truth, like the existence of God, but is more limited, limiting itself only to the phenomenological world, where it replaces the question, “What is the world?”
with “How to change the world?”
(Marx) and it finds the purest expression in the phenomenological method of Husserl, who is not at all interested in the
noumena
, but in phenomena.

Critique of Practical Reason
, Kant’s second great work.

Today this work is outdated, although it has very authentic passages.
Kant wanted to make of it
something akin to the
Critique of Pure Reason
.
But if the
Critique of Pure Reason
speaks about judgments by which one can know the world, the
Critique of Practical Reason
deals with judgments which
qualify things
(the quality of things).
Example: this man pleases me, this bread is good.

Here we perceive judgments as imperative judgments.

Critique of Pure Reason:
it is about understanding, about knowing.

Critique of Practical Reason:
it is about what I must do, to act (morals).

Now, imperatives can be hypothetical or categorical.

Imperatives
when the will is autonomous, conditioned by nothing.
Example: “One must be moral” is categorical.
It does not depend on any condition.
If I say that I must be moral in order to go to heaven or to have people’s respect, this is already a hypothetical imperative.
This is important because, in our era, we confuse these things.

For Kant, the moral imperative must be disinterested.

Now morality depends entirely on will.
Be careful: these are Kantian laws which are interpreted
in a confused way.
Example: if my mother is ill and I, with the best intentions of curing her, by mistake give her medicine which kills her, from the moral point of view, I am in order.