Integral Philosophy E-Book

Johannes Heinrichs

• Herausgeber: ibidem
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

This cumulative course on Johannes Heinrichs’ philosophical works presents the essence of his previous publications: A rich, consistent, and novel monolithic system defying temptations by the zeitgeist. Starting with an emphasis on reflection as the basis of epistemology, Heinrichs also covers the mind-body dualism in an anthropology chapter, moves on to presenting summaries of his Theory of Democracy as well as of his Philosophical Semiotics, followed by an outline of structural and integral ontology. An overview of ethical positions in the final chapter proves the fertility of Heinrichs’ theoretical-reflection methods.

Leseprobe

ibidem-Verlag, Stuttgart

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction to the English/Indian Edition

Chapter 1 Epistemological Entry Lived self-reflection and methodical reflection

Philosophy as self- and sense-reflection

Consciousness of one’s own activity as a basic sense-experience

Dialectical unity of content and activity

The structured ensemble of sense-elements

The self-reflexive nature of the Ego: The knife that cuts itself

Necessary distinctions

It: The dialectic of subject and object

YOU: The I–You dialogic as the source of community

WE and the medium of sense

A summary of the structured ensemble of the sense-elements

Chapter 2 Philosophical Anthropology The multidimensional human being in logical reconstruction of Indian wisdom

Person as self-reference in external relation

The triad of body–soul–spirit

From Three to Seven: The anthropological three-circle-model

The three “pure” cutting surfaces

The district of the body circle as a whole

The soul circle as a whole

Summary of the seven fields

Views of tasks

Academic and esoteric philosophy

Lack of a theory of psychic faculties

A map of the unconscious

From the natural triad back to the Four of human activity

Chapter 3 Social Philosophy: Outlines of a Value Levels Democracy Reflection levels as fundamental law of the social system

From human actions to the social system

Interpersonal reflection as the principle of dynamic social systems

Self-organization of the social organism and system theory

The leap into the great organism: Differentiation of subsystems

Modern differentiation and social circuit capability

Four “heart chambers” of democracy

Communication as a key issue

Blood circulation and the four chambers of the heart

The chamber of fundamental values

The chamber of culture

Digression on culture and nations

Digression on patriarchy/matriarchy

The chamber of politics

The chamber of economics

Hierarchical and circular ratio of the chambers

Practical conclusions

Institutional approach or departure from the bottom?

Unlike Plato’s Politeia

Unlike the Indian caste system

Chapter 4 Semiotic Theory of Action An unknown period system

Is there an order in the types of human action?

“Reconstruction” as a dialog between concept and experience (methodological remarks)

The main subdivisions of the action genres

1. Object-related actions (elementaries of human history)

1.1 Object change

1.2 Movement action

1.3 Social object reference: Physical work

1.4. Trade with value objects (goods)

2. Inner-subjective actions (to a philosophical psychology)

2.1 Body-related actions

2.2 Self-determination (basic decisions)

2.3 Preliminary decisions to social actions

2.4 Sense-designs

3. Social actions

4. Expression actions

4.1 Expression objects

4.2 Gestures and face expressions

4.3 Community expression

4.4 Sign-actions

To the practiced conception of philosophy

Chapter 5 Semiotic Language Theory New deal of linguistics and philosophy

Survey

Language and action

1. Sigmatic or sign dimension

1.1 Sigmatic sigmatics: Idea and emergence of language signs

1.2 Semantic sigmatics: Meaning-imprinting of the material elements of language

1.3 Pragmatic sigmatics: The introduction of existing meanings

1.4 Syntactic sigmatics: The life of preferred language signs (cultural “memes”)

2. Semantics or meaning dimension

2.1 Sigmatic semantics: Pronouns and names

2.2 Semantic semantics: The conceptual word classes

2.2.1 Nouns

2.2.2 Adjectives

2.2.3 Verbs

2.2.4 Situators

2.3 Pragmatic semantics: predication types

2.3.1 The extent logical subsumption (connection in the objective)

2.3.2 The valuation (connection in the subjective)

2.3.3 Real relation (connection by dynamic relation)

2.3.4 Modification (connection in the medium language)

2.4 Syntactic semantics: Composite predication

3. Pragmatics or the action dimension of language

1. Information pragmatics or matter communications (sigmatic pragmatics)

2. Expression pragmatics or I-messages (semantic pragmatics)

3. Effect-pragmatics or You-messages (pragmatic pragmatics)

4. Role-pragmatics of already existing social relations (syntax pragmatics)

4. Syntax or connection dimension

Overview

Brief sketch of the reflection-logical model of grammar

Sentence structure formula

Chapter 6 Semiotic Theory of Arts The language beyond the languages

Linguistic stylistics as logical continuation of syntax

1. Repetition figures/rhythmic games

2. Analogy figures/parable games

3. Truth tropes/mask games

4. Reflection tropes/mirror games of language

Transition from language to language art

From “fine art” to the art of expression

The action-logical division of arts

1. Visual arts

2. Moving arts

3. Literature (language art)

4. Music

4.1 Objective level of performance: Hearing

4.2 Subjective level of performance: Composition

4.3 Intersubjective level of performance: Interpretation

4.4 Media level of performance: The media fixation of music

Concluding remarks on the division of arts

A theory of literal genera on the basis of language logic

4. Poetry as a special cultivation of the language syntax

3. Drama as cultivation of language pragmatics

2. Epic as cultivation of the language semantics

2.1 Sigmatic epic

2.2 Semantic epic

2.3 Pragmatic or dramatic epic

2.4 Lyrical epic

1. Literary matter texts as cultivation of language sigmatic

Chapter 7 Religious Philosophy Beyond orthodoxies and academic agnosticism

Historical situation

The big semiotic levels: Action-Language-Art-Mystic

Correspondence to Sri Aurobindo’s concept of the “Supramental”

The main divisions of mystic

3.1 Nature mystic

3.2 Subject mystic

3.3 Social mystic

3.4 Sign-mystic

The human sense of infinity

“Supermind” and “Self-consciousness of the universe”

Belief and insight

1. Belief as accepting for true on authority

2. Faith as trusting confidence

3. Faith by hearing: The message as a target for your own insight

4. Sense-belief: The Divine sense of human destiny

Final remarks to a new spiritual pedagogy

Chapter 8 Ontology Orientation in the fields of “Being”

Historical introduction

“Being” as the center in the structure of sense-elements

Two different pairs of opposites

Materialism versus Idealism

Realism versus Idealism

Reflection-theoretical sketch of regional ontologies

Sighting further ontological tasks in using the “wand of analogy”

1. The scale of visible beings of nature

2. The scale of the invisible beings of nature

3. The scale of the spiritual individualities

4. The scale of collective entities

Final comment on the question of immortality

Chapter 9 Meta-Ethics Making the value spectrum conscious

The knowledge dependency of ethical reflection

What means moral goodness? Where does obligation come from?

Where does the diversity of moral and ethical positions come from?

Firstly: Diversity of traditions

Secondly: The difference between knowledge and rating (valuation)

Thirdly: Diversity of action-theoretical and ontological preliminary decisions

The reflection-logical spectrum of moral principles

1. Nature-oriented ethics

1.1 Materialist ethic (Sam Harris)

1.2. The right of the fittest as ethical evolution principle (social Darwinism, neo-liberalism)

1.3 Morality of mutual “natural decency” (naturalists)

1.4 Ethic of “harmony with nature” and “awe for Life” (A. Schweitzer)

2. Subject-centered ethics

2.1 Pleasure and joy as a moral measure (Epicure vs. flat hedonism)

2.2 Purpose rationality of self-interest (Max Stirner, Josef Kirschner)

2.3 Value rationality or teleological preference-ethics (Aristotle, Max Weber)

2.4 Ethics of reason and duty (Kant)

3. Approach from intersubjectivity

3.1 Utilitarism (Jeremy Bentham)

3.2 Self-interest as common interest (A. Smith)

3.3 Ethics of responsibility (of replying) or dialogical ethics (F.H. Jacobi, L. Feuerbach, M. Buber, M. Scheler, K. Jaspers, G. Marcel, H. Jonas)

3.4 Common-wealth-ethics (communitarianism, common-wealth-economics)

4. Approach from the sense-medium

4.1 Traditional heteronomous law ethics: “God’s will”

4.2 The Sense (Tao, Logos) as a guiding principle of action

4.3 Theonomous social morality (Confucianism, Buddhism, Christian ethics of love)

4.4 Mystical and intuitive ethics

Material value ethics and value communication (instead of “discourse”)

Individual and social ethics

The hierarchy of human needs according to Abraham Maslow

Summary: Ethics of Enlightenment or of raising awareness

Appendix to the “Integral Theory” of Ken Wilber

Copyright

We dream of traveling through space: is the universe not in us? We do not know the depth of our mind. The mysterious way is inwards. In us, or nowhere, is eternity with their worlds, the past and the future. (Novalis, Blüthenstaub, 1798)

 

Acknowledgments

During my stay in Auroville, Tamil Nadu (an international community in southern India), Cosmo Bernd Haldenwang incited me to translate the German edition of this book myself; he gave a convincing argument that no one else could do that.

In spite of my strenuous schedule during the translation, my Tamil friends Prem and Raju helped me immensely in having a vivid experience of Auroville and India.

Douglas Irving-Erickson (Washington) was kind enough to have the first look at polishing my English.

Subsequently, the publisher’s editor was less merciful but hopefully a better advocate for the reader.

I appreciate much the trustful and competent cooperation from Christian Schön and Valerie Lange of ibidem Press.

Prior to this edition, Franz Fassbender published a brochure with a very short version of this book under the title Diamonds of Integral Philosophy in his Aurovillian Prisma edition ([email protected]; ISBN 9 78 8193 367513). I trust this low-cost, abbreviated Indian edition will serve as great help for nonprofessional students of philosophy.

Johannes Heinrichs(www.johannesheinrichs.de)

 

Introduction to the English/Indian Edition

The predecessor of this book appeared in 2014 in German and was titled Integrale Philosophie. But this book is not just a translation. The author has modified its content for Indian and English speaking readers. This adaption is based on his opinion that the decisive encounter between European, especially German, and Indian philosophy has not yet happened.

It is not the aim of this book to review the great waves of reception of Indian philosophy and wisdom in Germany since the end of the eighteenth century, which is marked by names such as Friedrich Schlegel, Franz Boas, Max Mueller, Arthur Schopenhauer, and many others.

Neither can it be the intention of the author to give any comparative survey of Indian and German or European philosophy. Such an ambition would completely alter and even falsify the central aim of the chapters of this book, which is a systematic and not a historical one. There is a central and fundamental thought that functions as the unifying bond of these nine chapters, and which is new in contemporary philosophy, in spite of great predecessors in the so-called German idealism. This thought can be labeled as reflection theory, the systematic evaluation of the human self-consciousness that is constituted by his faculty of self-reflection. We will discuss this fundamental point in the first chapter.

In the European history of thought, it was René Descartes who made a new beginning by the thinking Ego as the methodical point of departure. The “critical philosophy” of Immanuel Kant and his successors continued this way: All content of philosophy has to be justified before the instance of the critical thinker. Therefore, all “modern” philosophy in the Western sense begins with epistemology. The rich doctrines of ancient Greek philosophy, represented by Plato and Aristotle, as well as the great medieval synthesis of “Christian philosophy,” represented by Thomas Aquinas, were radically called into question by this way of departure into scientific philosophical thinking.

This calling into question happens in the encounter between Indian and modern Western philosophical thinking. It does not fall into the authors’ field of interest and competence, and it is not possible to give a strict proof of this parallel. I have heard about both positions from specialists of Indian thought: On the one hand, the history and doctrines of Indian philosophy are incomparably richer than their Western counterparts, while, on the other hand, all this rich stuff is “pre-critical” in the Western sense. If any decision between these opposite views on Indian philosophy is possible at all (which I doubt because the different points of view are decisive), it is outside my purview.

My intention is to present a systematic approach on Western philosophy, which includes modern and unified thinking on main issues of philosophy, covering the disciplines of epistemology, anthropology, social philosophy, theory of human action, philosophy of language, theory of art as a meta-language, a philosophy of mysticism and spirituality, the outlines of ontology, an ethical perspective, and, finally, all these disciplines in a unified view.

The main characteristic of contemporary Western philosophy is the denial of such a systematic approach, a denial that is nevertheless not well argued and proven, but a feeling of the “Zeitgeist” (spirit of the time). This is the place to confess that I see myself in strict opposition to the irrational “Zeitgeist.” Philosophy in Europe, as well as in Germany, has declined to be mere history of philosophy. A spiritual philosophy is taught only in the theological faculties of universities—faculties which, in a modern European understanding, have nothing to do at the universities because these Christian theologies are doctrines of religious faith and not philosophy in this critical understanding.

In the German-speaking countries (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), this “division of work” between philosophical and theological university faculties is especially strong because of the concordat between Hitler and the “Holy Chair” in 1933, which none of the political parties in Germany has dared to touch as they feared that ending such an arrangement would cost them electors among the Christian population. This situation will surely change during the next twenty years or so, but until now it is one decisive factor in the situation of philosophy in the German-speaking countries that there is not really free philosophy in these countries, even though a liberty of thought is reclaimed by those professors of philosophy who proclaim a materialistic (naturalistic), atheistic thinking or just so-called language analysis of the Anglo-Saxon type (inaugurated by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein). I will come back to the principal deficiency of that dominating type of “language analysis” in my chapter on language theory (Chapter 5). Even the Critical Theory of Society—which dominated after World War II (beside the Nazi philosopher Heidegger) and brought the great heritage of Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx into the public discussion, who were more brilliant historians and aphoristic than systematic thinkers. Their successors like Jürgen Habermas tried to change that, but in no convincing manner at all. There is—under the power of power-liberated “discourse” (an unclear notion)—no culture of real public dialog. Occasionally I will come back to these names, even though I do not intend to make this book a history of philosophy instead of philosophy. My critique has always been moderate, but it seems that the sharpest critique is constructive theory, and there is proof that it is possible. If you oppose the predominant relativistic “Zeitgeist” of one or the other color, you are not forgiven. Systematic thinking is associated with naivety, even more as one cannot refute its value.

This is the general situation of contemporary Western philosophy. In each of the following chapters, I will show its prime deficiencies, even if this is not my main intention. My main aim is to show that systematic philosophical thinking is not only possible but is also of the greatest importance for shaping of a “new age” of our societies and of mankind, to use an expression already of Sri Aurobindo.

Sri Aurobindo is by far the most important instance for the adaption of this book to Indian readers. Born in Kolkata in 1872, he was educated in London and Cambridge since the age of 7, learning not only the most refined English but also German to a certain extent. To read German philosophers in their language was important for his understanding of what he calls German “subjectivism” and the “subjective era” in general. I depict that the lasting essence of that “subjectivism” is the cultivation of self-reflection, not at least in a theory of reflection, which has already been mentioned as the unifying systematic essence of this book.

Before we delve deeper into that decisive issue, let us briefly recallthe dates of Sri Aurobindo’s later life.1

After returning to India in 1893 at the age of 21, he worked for the next 13 years in the princely state of Baroda in the service of the Maharaja and as a professor in the state’s college. He could not find in his wife an intellectual or spiritual partner; there was more uneasiness on both sides than happiness as a couple. In 1906, Aurobindo quit his service in Baroda and went to Calcutta, where he initiated the Indian nationalist movement. As an editor of the newspaper Bande Mataram,he putforward the idea of obtaining complete independence from Britain. Arrested three times of sedition or treason, he was released every time for lack of evidence. Sri Aurobindo began the practice of yoga in 1905. Within a few years, he achieved several fundamental spiritual realizations. In 1910, he withdrew from politics and went to Pondicherry in French India in order to escape from the British administration and to concentrate on his inner self and spiritual work. Over the next 40 years, he developed a new spiritual path, the Integral Yoga, whose ultimate aim was the transformation of life by the power of a “supramental” consciousness. In 1926, with the help of his spiritual collaborator, the Mother, he founded Sri Aurobindo Ashram. His vision of life is presented in numerous works of prose and poetry, among the best known of which are The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, Essays on the Gita, and Savitri. Sri Aurobindo passed away on 5 December 1950having had the satisfaction of the great day of India’s independence on his very birthday, 15 August 1947.

Remarkable, if not unique, is the deep connection of politics (which is often neglected in his biography), philosophy, and spirituality with Aurobindo. The reader need not expect in this book another account of Aurobindo’s teaching. What he or she can expect instead is a continuous, more or less explicit, demonstration of parallels between what has been elaborated in this book and Aurobindo’s teaching. We meet each other in Truth found on different paths. Sri Aurobindo is, in spite of the diligent elaboration of his thoughts, not a systematic thinker in the Western understanding. He proposes his insights thoroughly, but without taking into account methodological and epistemological questions. The mutual confirmation of insights from the point of view of a newly rethought Indian tradition on one hand, and of “critical” Western thinking (in the technical sense of this word since Kant), on the other hand, might be of mutual interest and enrichment. As far as I see, there is no contradiction between both approaches, in spite of the huge methodical differences, which a connoisseur of Aurobindo’s writings will notice from the very beginning.

Perhaps the followers of Aurobindo will even ask what at all the followings chapters of reflection theory have to do with their leader’s thinking. However, Aurobindo is not taken here as a master of wisdom who drew from the well of Vedic tradition or personal revelation, but just as a philosopher.

Here I come back to Aurobindo’s announcement of a “subjective era,” which is not far from the “new age” he proclaimed as the first one, more than half a century before the new-era wave in the seventies of the twentieth century:

Meanwhile, the nascent subjectivism preparative of the new age has shown itself not so much in the relations of the individuals or in the dominant ideas and tendencies of social development, which are largely rationalistic and materialistic and only vaguely touched by the deeper subjective tendency, but in the new collective self-consciousness of man in that organic mass of its life which he has most firmly developed in the past, the nation.2

What follows in Aurobindo’s text is Chapter IV of The Human Cycle,entitled “The Discovery of the Nation Soul.” We will come back to this notion in our chapter on social philosophy (Chapter 3). For the moment, our attention should only be directed to the thesis that the lasting essence of that “subjectivism” is the cultivation of self-reflection, not at least in a theory of reflection, which has already been announced as the unifying systematic essence of this book, and as a result of the best of German intellectual history. Aurobindo sees both sides of German subjectivism, the gift and the danger of political misuse of which all the world knows better than of the gift:

Germany was for the time the most remarkable present instance of a nation preparing for the subjective stage, because it had, in the first place, a certain kind of vision—unfortunately intellectual rather than illuminated—and the courage to follow it—unfortunately again a vital and intellectual rather than a spiritual hardihood,—and, secondly, being master of its destinies, was able to order its own life so as to express its self-vision. We must not be misled by appearances into thinking that the strength of Germany was created by Bismarck or directed by the Kaiser Wilhelm II. Rather the appearance of Bismarck was in many respects a misfortune for the growing nation because his rude and powerful hand precipitated its subjectivity into form and action at to early a stage; a longer period of incubation might have produced result less disastrous to itself, if less violently to humanity. The real source of this great subjective force which has been so much disfigured in its objective action, was not in Germany’s statesmen and soldiers—for the most part poor enough types of men—but came from her great philosophers, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Nietzsche, from her great thinker and poet Goethe, from her great musicians, Beethoven and Wagner, and from all in the German soul and temperament which they represented. A nation whose master achievement has lain almost entirely in the spheres of philosophy and music, is clearly predestined to lead in the turn to subjectivism and to produce a profound result for good or evil and the beginnings of the subjective age.

This was one side of the predestination of Germany; the other is to be found in her scholars, educationalists, scientists, organizers. It was the industry, the conscientious diligence, the fidelity to ideas, the honest and painstaking spirit of work for which the nation has been long famous. […] In Germany the bridge was there, though it ran mostly through a dark tunnel with a gulf underneath; for there was no pure transmission from the subjective mind of the thinkers and singers to the objective mind of the scholars and organizers.3

A short analysis of gifts and dangers of the German “soul” was never so clear as this one, though we cannot pursue it into all the implications of collective psychology in the given context. This context is the gift of reflexivity, of the discipline and culture of self-reflection. It is this very reflexivity in which lies the connection between philosophy and “the industry, the conscientious diligence, the fidelity to ideas, the honest and painstaking spirit of work” of Germany’s “scholars, educationalists, scientists, organizers.” German philosophy after Immanuel Kant was nothing else but the progressive self-explication of the human gift of self-reflection: Fichte, a great disciple of Kant, discovered what was lacking in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason—the intellectual intuition (intellektuelle Anschauung). Hegel discovered the inner reflection as the great principle of all conscious life; the role of outer, theoretical reflection is to make that implicit reflection explicit.

This path of self-discovery of the individual in general and of the philosopher in particular is paved with difficulties. It is even a battlefield of errors and insights until today. We will enter this battlefield from the very first chapter and will inspect it in detail, even if a historical investigation is not my main objective. The main objective is to recognize the important alternatives from the very beginning.

Therefore, what Sri Aurobindo calls the spirit of subjectivism in German culture is nothing else but the spirit and gift and danger of self-reflection.4 Having recognized this, although in different terms, is what makes Aurobindo an ideal negotiator or mediator between this very German book and the Indian spirit.

 

1 I paraphrase slightly the short biography which is to be found in the work edition of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, especially of the collection The Human Cycle,The Ideal of Human Unity,War and Self-Determination, third impression (Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry 2012).

2 The Human Cycle (see footnote 1), p. 33.

3Human Cycle, p. 40 s.

4 The author has interpreted the famous complaint against the Germans by Hegel’s youth friend Friedrich Hoelderlin in his novel Hyperion from this very point of view (see Revolution aus Geist und Liebe (Revolution by Spirit and Love), Munich 2007).

Chapter 1Epistemological Entry Lived self-reflection and methodical reflection

Subjectivism is a road of return to the lost knowledge. First deepening man’s inner experience, restoring perhaps on an unprecedented scale insight and self-knowledge to the race, it must end by revolutionising his social and collective self-expression.

(Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, p. 33)

Philosophy as self- and sense-reflection

Recognize yourself (in Greek: ΓνῶΘι σεαυτόν/Gnōthi seautón). This saying is engraved since 550 BC to a column of the lobby at the temple of Apollo in Delphi. The nuances of its meaning have greatly transformed over the history of Greek and Western philosophy: Recognize your life limits; recognize your limits of knowledge; recognize humanity as the measure of all things; and so on. Today we would say: Come to the senses of yourself. Self-reflection (in German Selbstbesinnung, a rather current expression in daily life) is at the same time sense-reflection—one of the simplest but most relevant to modern definitions of →philosophy,1 where sense-reflection must be performed not only amateurish spontaneously but methodically and even →scientifically, which means a continued methodical progress in cognition.

But where do we methodically begin? Just where we are already: Self-reflection has already begun in this conversation, be it oral or written!

We intend to reflect simultaneously on ourselves and on our philosophical foundations. “Philosophy” means literally “love of wisdom,” “love of the truth,” “quest for truth,” if possible, a methodical quest: whether we find the wisdom in question, even though most of us forget our original aspirations or are satisfied with fact-truths of our personal lives. For the rest of the questions, we must satisfy ourselves with an unscientific and pious, if not superstitious, way of thinking, which is often called belief, and cling to one of the traditional religions. But in a world that is so deeply shaped by the sciences, there must be a link between scientific thinking in the deeper questions of the individual life in the universe. Methodical philosophy should be able to provide this very link.

More people than ever are dedicated to truth in form of the so-called exact sciences. That would certainly be a historic step forward for humanity, if it were not accompanied by worrying indifference to truth and if not for the dominance of its oblivion among the “intellectuals.” Wittgenstein noted in his Tractatus logico-philosophicus (1921):

We feel that even if all possible scientific questions are answered, our life problems are not even touched(§ 6.5.2).

The right method of philosophy would actually be: nothing to say, what to say can be, so rates of natural science—something, what philosophy has nothing to do, and then whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical to demonstrate to him that he gave no importance to certain characters in his movements. This method would be unsatisfactory for the other—he would not have the feeling that we taught him philosophy—but it would be the only correct (§ 6.5.3).

Here it is still clear what Wittgenstein means by →metaphysics (what is not at all the case in the fashionable negative use of this word ever since)—any science that is not a natural science, or, according to Aristotle, ta meta ta physika: “what comes after physics.” In contrast to the Zeitgeist (“spirit of the time”) articulated by Wittgenstein, in the following, a metaphysical source for philosophy will be inferred: human self-reflection. This self-experience is the first and all-decisive metaphysical instance, what Aristotle, an empiricist himself, probably still did not think about: The prefix “meta”is excellently suited to mark the reflective setting “above” the knowledge of all other things. It has become a methodological standard for all modern philosophy since Immanuel Kant, and what is, curiously enough, denied by Wittgenstein and most of his “empiricist” colleagues of the Circle of Vienna in the critical time between the two world wars. The subjective condition of all experience was paradoxically denied—at least for methodical reasons.

Philosophy as a scientific pursuit of truth as a whole (i.e., holistic, integral context) is wholehearted and methodically clean. It must, therefore, at least to the same extent as the “exact” sciences and the humanities, develop as the discipline of unprejudicedness, and this in a particular and explicit way. Therefore a somewhat spiritual cult of sincerity belongs to its subjective conditions (irrespective of what the philosophical truth-seekers may think of spirituality for the rest).

Even what we know from the history of philosophy is nothing but a huge collection of prejudices. I am reminded often of the earlier philosophers whose life-dates are collected in the end of this book (see index of names). But never shall they serve as authorities in place of one’s own insight. This is by no means obvious. I draw a limit to that historicist philosophy that today constitutes the very vast majority of academic philosophy, but which is basically →philology, namely more or less “scientific” evaluation of previous texts. I call upon other philosophers, either for defining them or for mutual confirmation of arguments, for which I and hopefully we together are responsible. Only in this sense should the history of philosophy be of interest for us, merely as a quarry and aid for one’s own thoughts, never as an authority argument, that would have to be accepted credibly.

Our discussion of earlier thinkers must not serve as a subterfuge in educational “knowledge,” as a substitute for our own insight and as a mere matter of prestige. Paradoxically, one can make a greater impression with such educational knowledge—not only in his or her time—than with own insights. But philosophy is thus abandoned and denied, even if it has appearances for others.

The sentences which were said before, are they used, at least refuted? Is everything verifiable? Through experience? Through what kind? (Bertolt Brecht, The Doubter, poem)2

I will certainly take up with what has been said earlier by others. Therefore, the works of those others, whose work we can exploit, would help us. This, however, is never a substitute for the knowledge we gain from our own experience. Yes, philosophy is also an empirical science! Experience and logic alone are decisive in this as in any other science, except that philosophy—as a total self-reflection of its actions—must still justify the logic as well, if possible. The progress made by our ancestors is not decisive—helpful only partially—but it inspires our own insight and with that attitude alone we remain in philosophy.

Before evaluating the criticality of experience in philosophy, a word on the natural sciences: All of the natural sciences avoid in their objective research with all diligence and method to examine the subject for which those objects appear. This exclusion works very well, except for Heisenberg’s blur-relations, in which the measuring subject interferes at once with the observation of the object. The exclusion of the subject is the basis for the success of natural sciences. But to do philosophy with the same methodological exclusion would be redundant and cannot lead the examiner far. Also, a philosophy that runs after the natural sciences and “reflects upon their results” is fundamentally late. It cannot be holistic. At the beginning I mentioned the question as to how far psychology can be treated as a natural science and how far it is a philosophical discipline. What is decisive for the moment is the fact that philosophy has its own source of cognition and evidence—otherwise it would be a rather superfluous endeavor.

Consciousness of one’s own activity as a basic sense-experience

Critical philosophy relies mainly on a basic self-experience and →sense-experience, that is, on the experience of one’s own self-consciousness, more exactly on the consciousness as activity, which means not on any special content but on the consciousness of inner activity purely as such. Activity-consciousness is also the mirror of all contents or objects. It is however, as we will see, the mirror of itself and of its own activity.

When I speak of →sense-experience (Sinnerfahrung), I intend the dual aspect of activity and content. The elementary definition of →sense is togetherness of activity and content; there is content in each word and also the activity of pronouncing or thinking it.But the very first content of self-conscious activity is the activity itself, reflecting itself or being its own mirror.

Self-conscious activity is the same that I-consciousness is in the basic philosophical understanding, which means the activity that is never object, in difference to any psychological Ego-image (Me). We will come back later to this difference. The philosophical I am is the expression of self-consciousness as the unity of activity and content. I is nothing else but the self-reflexive activity.

The basic philosophical I am has nothing to do with any artificially generated Ego-solitude (Edmund Husserl), because the I is from the very beginning in relation to things and, more basically, in relation to the You, that is, to other self-reflexive beings. I is a relational entity as well, in terms of self-relation, as in the sense of relation to others, as we shall analyze further.

A methodological remark is in order: All these statements belong to a fundamental phenomenology of the self-conscious activity-experience. Their only possible proof is precise and careful observation, which is the first step in any methodical philosophy. As Aristotle knew, the first step cannot be proof in the sense of deduction, but in the sense of reference to first evidence, a point that has been forgotten and refuted in contemporary philosophy (the pretended, erroneous “Muenchhausen-trilemma”3 of contemporary rationalists).

The only “text” that we assume in philosophizing is not on paper but in our very consciousness—in mine and yours—if we share it with each other. While the philological textual sciences operate upon the interpretation (hermeneutics) of texts, philosophy operates upon my/our own consciousness: Our own sense of performance with its contents is the primary and specific object of interpretation. She can be called not only “science of sense”4 but also in regard to the necessary work of interpretation of the conscience data: →sense hermeneutics and universal sense hermeneutics. Its object is not the meaning of a given text but the sense (meaning) of the given dual understanding—primarily the meaning of consciousness itself. We are only at the very beginning of that work.

The universality that philosophy claims is a strange one, in dialectical contrast to the character of philosophy, which I am now getting into: the “mere” self-reflexivity of the philosophizing subject—a dialectic of specific self-centering and universality, which is at least implicitly aimed at. It is a strange thing that the strictest recollection on itself opens just universality. This will need further explication. Only the negation of all special design objects is clear till now: The only text is the own consciousness and self-consciousness, yet as the mirror of all you can reflect about. Or has someone spoken once of something that was not reflected in his consciousness? Philosophy as a hermeneutics of meaning in general would have to claim, and provide, that the connection between the reflecting instance, that is, the philosophizing conscience, and the mirrored (reflected) contents will as far as possible methodically become clear.

Dialectical unity of content and activity

Although the words “activity-consciousness” and “activity-experience”emphasize the side of activity, the expression “sense-experience” means the same from the side of content. The latter expression shows more clearly that we already have a duality: on the one hand, the activity, doing the enforcement, and on the other hand, a content, such as a word, which must nevertheless be exercised. This duality of activity and content constitutes the two sides of the word “sense” in a philosophical understanding. Our entire mind is constituted by this duality of activity and content. This duality structures →sense-activity and should apply only as defined for this word.

The duality of content and activity is a basic phenomenon (Urphänomen): There is no awareness activity that does not have any content—I think something—I want to get or I feel something. Even with fairly diffuse feelings and body sensations, it is a something, even if just a diffuse, indefinite content. This need not be sharply defined. It needs not be a representational, objectified content. On the contrary, we will see that the un-objectified content of I think, I feel, I am aware, and so on, is primary. The objectifying, representational cognition comes later, which is a further product of objectivation and self-objectivation. We will return to this important point later.

On the other hand, it is evident that no content is possible without the activity of consciousness. In that sense of indispensability for one another, we can say that these two sides of consciousness or sense-activity belong together dialectically. →Dialectic meansan essential (inseparable) unity of what is nevertheless essentially (significantly) different. It is apparent that “dialectic” in this understanding is a basic characteristic of reflexive relations, like those of activity and content. What “reflexive” means would now be gradually clarified further. At any rate, it is the most significant character of consciousness and self-consciousness.

The structured ensemble of sense-elements

Self-reflexivity has many aspects. One of the most challenging is that the full methodical self-reflection, which makes the distinction of philosophy, is not done by any other discipline. For this reason, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the great successor to Immanuel Kant, has called his reflection philosophy Wissenschaftslehre, which means “fundamental science.” This is an important aspect not only of the above characterization of philosophy as universal sense hermeneutics but also of her as →reflection theory. This new twentieth-century term5 shall be understood progressively in the following: as the form of thinking that is the content itself—or the content that provides itself the methodical way of thinking. Now, in what sense is I the basic principle of philosophy?6

After these rather methodological remarks, let us go back to the substantive source of philosophy, the self-consciousness as the activity of I am. But it is important to see and spare many detours that have been made abundant in recent history of philosophy, that at no moment we extrapolate from an isolated “I.” We see the Ego (I) from the very beginning as one element in the ensemble of several other elements, which I call →sense-elements, using an expression of the German American Paul Tillich.7 Tillich, however, thematized only two elements of meaning: completion and content, knowledge and knowledge, to supplement: also willing and wanted, felt and felt, as a modification of the original duplication of activity and content. However, if we look at the contents, they are so fundamentally different that we have to expand the concept of sense-elements. For all human actions—at first instance, the inner actions, the “acts of the mind” (Kant), play between the poles of consciousness or just sense-elements. They describe nothing else than our general, permanent situation of inner or outer action:

I talk to you about something in the medium of language.8

This pattern of speech happens under physical conditions, which I do not lose sight of, but what is important here is the following ensemble of elements: I, You, It, and the Medium.

I do a small switchboard jump over your Ego to explain each item one-by-one in detail. In this way, we avoid the risk of burying ourselves in one of these elements and losing the overview of the fabric of the relationship in which they always occur (see also Figure 1):

I as the activity-experience and active origin of action, in the following schema called Ss, subjective subject

One or more You, that is, subjects in the position of the other, of the objective subjectSo

Objects that do not act themselves, the passive matters of acting, thinking and speaking: These objects are not necessarily physically expanded, but an objectified Id

M isthe sense-medium of our interaction, normally by linguistically expressed acts of consciousness. We will further discuss the relationship between language and sense.

Figure 1: The always-existing elements of human consciousness acts and the general situation of human action

I give an explanation of each of these sense-elements relatively briefly. Each of these elements would deserves its own treatise, but only if it always remains integral to all the other elements in view. Beside the poles or corner points of the rhombus there are the connecting lines. They stand mainly for the sense-element of subjective activity. These connections are not mere thought ones but real relations. But for the moment we have enough to do with the poles, the single sense-elements.

The self-reflexive nature of the Ego: The knife that cuts itself9

The →I has already been featuredas the experience of activity (I am) and at the same time as its origin: where it comes from. It is the entity that remains constant in the diversity of my conscious activities. I is a being which is constituted by →self-reference or self-reflection, two expressions that speak of the same in this context. The ability to reflect totally differentiates itself from the series of natural and technical things, because it creates or “puts” in a certain sense itself, to use Fichte’s expression. I is, at its core, not anything else than an activity putting itself by referring to and thus knowing itself, a self-activation and self-reference which is totally unique.

The self-reference of a human being is expressed in his or her ability to say “I.” The ability to say this exists in potentia, as a still, dark sense or feeling of the self, and lies already in the child, before it expressively says “I.” This latent possibility exists for an adult as well, whenever he does not say or think “I,” because he has objective things in mind. As Kant formulated, “The I think must possibly be able to accompany all my thoughts.”10

The ability for at least partial, not all-exhaustive, self-cognition by reflection distinguishes a human being even from the higher animal, whose knowledge of itself is marked by incomplete reflection, which makes it so very interesting particularly for children, who are just detecting and exploring their faculty of self-cognition.

In the wake of Kant, only Johann Gottlieb Fichte has recognized the nature of the self and systematically evaluated it: It is not identified as happenings (what you might say also of a river), but by returning back to oneself through one’s activity. At the same time, returning back to oneself means “knowing” oneself, and means “self.” The circle is the symbol (Figure 1), which passes through other elements of sense.

Thomas Aquinas writes on this topic—but without being a methodical reflection-philosopher before the time—of reditio completa, the full return of human conscience in itself, in contrast to the reditio incompleta, the partial return of the beast in itself.11 Even the animal consciousness is already based on reflection or self-reference, but not to the degree of a structurally complete self-reflection. Consciousness in any form (also in the sense of incomplete animal conscience) is based on self-reference: being one’s own mirror. There has never been another explanation for consciousness—whatever the physical, brain-physiological conditions for this self-reference may be. The question of physiological conditions is a different one, and could better be answered by physiologists of the brain, if the point of view of self-reference were pursued.

Thomas Aquinas marks the original or →constitutive reflection (how I call it, in difference to the subsequent reflection) asaccompanying awareness, or reflexio concomitans in actu exercito (“reflected in the action itself”), that is, as a concomitant awareness.12 Even if the medieval thinker by no means had evaluated reflection as a system-forming principle, he was ahead, probably by drawing from ancient tradition, in large part of today’s thinking about reflexivity and awareness with the insight of the accompanying character of the original, natural, or constitutive human reflection.

We may put it briefly: The mystery of conscience is self-accompaniment, and that of self-conscience is a structurally complete one, which, however, does not yet mean a complete self-cognition (which would be the faculty of a Divine).

A basic error inherent in current philosophy (or rather the current history of philosophy) is that it understands reflection only as a subsequent and objectifying one and, consequently, the self-conscience as not constituted by natural self-reference.13 Reflectivity appears then only as a subsequent performance of the Ego. However, the subsequent and theoretical reflection (what we mean when saying that we must reflect upon something) has the existence of a spontaneously lived self-reference as a prerequisite: Better, it has the necessary “condition of possibility,” a very characteristic expression of Kant’s transcendental thinking.14

For this transcendental, that is, reflexive attitude is associated with a certain method or step called →transcendental method, even though it accounts only for a part of the entire transcendental or reflection thinking. This specific transcendental argumentation consists of the development of a necessary →condition of possibility for a given sense-activity. One might speak of an implication in a given phenomenological activity, which is admitted in argumentation.

The first methodical step is indication and description of something evident. In our present basic example, there is the phenomenon of self-consciousness, and there is also the explicit verbal reflection of it.

The second step consists of the concluding of the transcendental method: if there was no implicit self-reflection in what was first described, there could not be a subsequent reflection. The implicit, spontaneous self-reflection is the condition of the possibility ofits explicitness.

Logically speaking, this important figure of the transcendental method is the so-called modus tollens, the “rising mode” of logical argumentation: if not A, then it would not be B. Now, however, B is evident. So also is A—as a condition of possibility of B.

With regard to self-consciousness, the transcendental method shows the following: Subsequent self-reflection, and thus even the talk of a Self, would not be possible without the prior, accompanying familiarity of consciousness with itself. But this “accompanying familiarity” is nothing else than a form of self-reference or reflection, but not in the objectifying form. The original familiarity of the consciousness can only be reflected subsequently, if this familiarity is already an implicit accompanying self-reference, not an unstructured brightness—by which the possibility of subsequent reflection could not be explained. Vice versa, the explicit reflection indicates the existence of an implicit one.

We can speak of a lived or spontaneous reflection (or reflexive life), in contrast to the later, after-thinking (nachdenkende), or theoretical reflection. Both fundamentally different types of reflection are generally not distinguished today because spontaneous consciousness and life are not captured as forms of active, but implicit reflection—which is consequential and leads to numerous difficulties and obstacles, not least into theoretical infertility.

However, one could not choose quite different expressions for the two types of reflections so different, for example, to call the lived reflection simply “consciousness life” or something similar in order to avoid the communication difficulties. This would not be a solution because the structure of all self-consciousness (resp. the incomplete self-reference of all animal consciousness) must be recognized, namelyas a condition of possibility for explicit self-reflection.

In addition, there are constant transitions from the implicit to the explicit reflection and vice versa: What we have worked out “consciously” may become our accompanying practical knowledge or automatized ability. This is the principle of exercise and automation. What constantly mediates between these two levels is language. The first I-saying of a child may represent an explicit achievement of self-objectification, but then this faculty becomes constantly associated with the implicit awareness of I. Whenever this is in future expressly pronounced as I, which becomes the normal way of saying I, expressive reflection is no longer needed. But it would be a mistake to think that all implicit self-reflection is only an automatized explicit reflection! This way, the explicit reflection cannot be explained. The implicit reflection must be first.

(There is a subtle distinction, which I have neglected so far linguistically, between explicitness and theoretical objectification, so in such existentially important situations, meanings can get to full awareness without theoretical objectification.)

The border between the two reflection types is basically a flowing one: what, however so little, abolishes the significance of their difference as the boundary between river and shore will not lapse, because it is versatile. The important differentiation between spontaneously active and explicit theoretical reflection is not fixed: There are important transitional forms, similar to the normal pondering and considering, which are not fully explicit or theoretical objectivations.

All explicit reflection and especially its full theoretical expression would be useless if it could not be applied to life. This is in normal pondering obviously the case: It regulates the spontaneous life stream and is distinguishable from this only if it brings it to a noticeable halt. So, one might expect from good theory that it represents only a temporary pause in the stream of life to regulate and enrich it. “I love him who has a free spirit and a free heart: thus his head is only the entrails of his heart”: This is how Zarathustra described the ideal relation between reflection and life.15

For the area of human action reality, theory is the conceptual form of the non-conceptual contents of the same nature, namely reflexive contents. Theory is only then applicable and practical in the sense of live promoting, if it is able to lift the structures of lived reflection up into the theoretical consciousness, and thus can carefully regulate the life performance. This is true of all personal self-reflection and of all social theory.

All theories, social theory in particular, should compete to meet this ideal: to be only a temporary helpful stop in the exercise of life, to better regulate and correct it, if necessary.

Necessary distinctions

Some necessary differentiations concerning the I am must be added with regard to many possible objections and difficulties, without extensive discussion.

If we understand the Ego as the implicit reflective instance (Kant’s →transcendental Ego), which remains always in the background of all what is intended, this is sharply to be distinguished from any objectified Ego: the →empirical Ego in Kant’s terminology (Me in American tradition since William James, so with George H. Mead). In the second sketch of the elements of sense (see Figure 2), small circular loops I and You implying this objectification, include our philosophical objectification of the Ego

The big circle refers, however, to the transcendental or great I (in Fichte’s language the absolute Ego). What is called self-consciousness in the psychological sense belongs to the objectified self-image of the empirical Ego (Me)! So, the psychological use of self-consciousness is well distinguished from the philosophical one.

This great I or Self can never be adequately objectified because it is the unconscious, hidden subject of each objectification. However, what we call →unconscious is for a big part that what is only implicitly known. This self-consciousness is the life stream for all what is known explicitly, that is, in an objectified form. Here is not the place to deal about the psychology of the unconscious in its many forms. Nearly all forms of the unconscious (except the purely physical unconscious) are forms of consciousness!16

As mentioned already, the structural full return to oneself, which is the essence of self-consciousness in the philosophical sense, does not mean at all that human beings have full knowledge about themselves. The self-awareness of self-consciousness is only a formal and partial one. A human being wins contentful self-knowledge only in time and in action, especially in cooperation actions, not least through the mirror of the others—and only with the sincere will and courage to know itself. The great German poet Goethe has often ironized mere self-reflection and its infertility, partially misunderstanding the methodical self-reflection of his philosopher-friends Jacobi, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. He vehemently pointed out: One gets a concrete (empirical) knowledge of oneself only in worldly and interpersonal actions. But that is again the difference between the transcendental (philosophical) and the empirical, psychological meaning of self-consciousness and self-knowledge.

With regard to Kant, his unresolved fundamental problem is that, for him, the transcendental Ego is only a necessary idea, not also experienced in the activity of implicit reflection. He combines with this point the weaknesses of the two thought-currents, which he overcame otherwise in a new synthesis: rationalism and empiricism. Knowledge must be an objectified one for both currents; he did not know the accompanying implicit self-awareness and misinterpreted it by the model of objective representation. Kant’s successors (Fichte, Schelling, and so on) speak of—rightly criticizing Kant on that point of halfway overcoming empiricism and rationalism—→intellectual intuition, the intellectual self-awareness of a knowledge, which is not objectifying: no representation. Such an intellectual intuition has of course many levels and modifications, as we will see. It can never replace the conceptual care (what Hegel has especially insisted against Schelling). If the formal self-knowledge (that I am) has a certain timelessness, because it is always the same, the opposite can be said of the material (content-related) self-recognition: →Time in the subjective sense is caused by the repetition of self-reflection on the material world and the environment, through the wing beats of consciousness across his world. We can talk of an iterative (repeated) reflection, in contrast to the timeless constitutive reflection. So under the time-aspect, we can distinguish the following:

The constitutive reflection of the pure transcendental Ego.

The iterative or repetitive, time-creating reflection, which means not only the formal repetition of the same transcendental act but also the changing experiences of the world reflected in the Ego and the changing self-objectifications of the empirical self (Me).

We will also see that the transcendental Ego or Self is the one that participates in the Infinite sense-medium: what constitutes its own infinity. This is the ever-individual participation in the Infinite. I discuss this idea here provisionally in the context of Ego as a being of self-reflection