Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 24, 2025
It consists in remembering that which in practice we understand by the subject of cognition; or rather, metaphorically we represent this subject to ourselves as an organ the eye that sees or the hand that touches and we represent to ourselves the relation subject-object in the shape of a material relation between two distinct bodies which are separated by an interval and between which some action is produced which unites them.
But there need be little apprehension on this score, if it be clearly understood and carefully remembered, that the philosophy of the absolute, as taught in Germany and applied in support of Pantheism, rests ultimately on the theory of Idealism and the doctrine of Identity, by which all is resolved into one absolute "subject-object," and existence is identified with thought.
For a subject, let it be noted, a subject which feels, is an object of cognition it forms part of the other group of elements, the group of sensations. In practice we represent by mind a fragment of our own biography, and by dint of pains we attribute to this fragment the faculty of having a consciousness; we make it the subject of the relation subject-object.
There are two cases, particularly, which may serve to illustrate, if they cannot suffice to prove, it. The first is that of the Supreme Intelligence, conceived as existing before the production of a created universe, when He was himself the sole "subject" and the sole "object" of thought; in other words, the absolute "Subject-Object."
The question whether the "object" be the generative principle of the "idea," or vice versâ, is thus superseded; for there is no longer any distinction between "object" and "subject;" existence is identified with thought; the Ego and the Non-ego unite in one absolute existence; and Self becomes the sole Subject-object, the percipient and the perceived, the knowing and the known.
A subject-object knowing itself as a seamless unit, while yet its two items show a real distinction: this passes all understanding." But the whole of idealism goes to the proof that the two sides cannot succeed one another in a time-process.
There are cases, then, in which mind may be regarded as a "subject-object;" the case of human consciousness, when the mind takes cognizance of its own states or acts, and the case of the Divine consciousness, while as yet the created universe had not been called into being.
Or, finally and still more frequently, we represent the subject to ourselves by confusing it with our own personality; it is a part of our biography, our name, our profession, our social status, our body, our past life foreshortened, our character, or, in a word, our civil personality, which becomes the subject of the relation subject-object.
One is from Schelling and I extract the quotation from the work of the Russian philosopher Lossky which has recently been so excellently translated into English 'In the "Philosophy of Nature" I considered the subject-object called nature in its activity of self-constructing. In order to understand it, we must rise to an intellectual intuition of nature.
It occupies, therefore, among the objects of cognition a privileged place, which renders it more intimate and more dear to us than other objects. There is no need to inquire here whether, in absolute reality, I am lodged within it, for this "I" is an artificial product manufactured from memories. I have before explained what is the value of the relation subject-object.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking