Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 18:02:05 +0200
Subject: Re:   In dubium revocari


Cologne, 03 July 1998

continued...

Anthony Crifasi schrieb:

> We are in agreement that this shift occurred. Our point of disagreement, if I 
> understand you correctly, is whether this shift is what made possible the
>  more 
> "particular" arguments (such as the dream argument, Hume's arguments 
> against metaphysical causality, etc.), or whether it was those more
>  particular 
> arguments upon which the shift depended in the first place.
>

> I should point out that I don't think that our dispute here in any way
>  threatens 
> Heidegger's analytic. Whether subject/object metaphysics began with 
> Descartes or with Aristotle, Heidegger's shift to a non-metaphysical "ground" 
> remains what it is - a departure from subject/object metaphysics, and
>  therefore 
> a way out of the transcendental solipsism of Husserl's theory.



Yes, our disagreement seems to revolve around whether the shift is a consequence 
of the arguments explicitly presented, i.e. of what is said in the texts 
 (specifically: the dream argument), or whether the shift itself is something 
unsaid in the Aristotelean and Cartesian texts. The latter alternative would be 
the lethic (hidden, en-crypted) dimension of the history of the truth of being 
(alaetheia) to which Aristotle and Descartes only respond without mastering it 
argumentatively.

And so we are left in the _aporia_ once again, although having agreed that the 
shift to the conscious subject as the foundation of ontological knowledge is the 
metaphysical event inauguration modernity. 

But perhaps there is a way forward. Aristotle’s consideration was the difficulty 
(_aporia_) in distinguishing (_krinein_) between the observations of the sick 
and the healthy, and between the states of being awake and dreaming. There is in 
fact no access (no _poros_) to this latter difference, no _kriterion_, and 
neither Aristotle nor Descartes offer one. There is only a relative criterion, 
namely, from a waking state I can look back on past dreaming states, but there 
is no criterion to assure me that I am absolutely awake. Descartes’ argument via 
the “genium malignum” presupposes that there could be an intervening agent that 
prevents consciousness from being absolutely awake, thus enabling an absolute 
truth of reality. 

Kant dispenses with all such considerations by drawing a critical line for what 
is knowable, namely, intuited appearances (directly) and the (indirect) 
conceptually ordered representations of direct intuition. The appearances of the 
objects are the objects themselves -- and that is the limit to knowledge for any 
finite consciousness. It does not seem to makes any difference whether the 
intuitions are given in a waking or sleeping state, for the subject can only 
ever look on, i.e. intuit, what is given to it. 

Pure looking-on, however, is time, which does not rely on any empirically given 
sense impressions. Heidegger's Kant-interpretation aims at delineating more 
clearly than Kant the constitution of the horizon of time as a spontaneous 
achievement of the pure power of imagination. If Heidegger's interpretation 
holds water, then Kant's main work should be called "Critique of Pure 
Imagination". Is time the pivotal point that cannot be situated neatly on one 
side of the divide between subject and object? Can time be revoked in doubt?

Michael
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