Reconstruction Vol. 14, No. 2
Return to Contents»
Kant's Theory of Reason: Is it Metaphysics After All? Kant, Rousseau, Yoga, and the Operations of Reason in Light of Understanding and Knowing / Guillemette Johnston
Abstract
This paper defines steps in Kant's understanding of perception. A detailed account of Kant's transcendental aesthetics explains why philosophers associate Kant's theory of knowledge with the death of metaphysics. Kant's philosophy, a reaction to Hume's observations on cause/effect relations, determines the very nature of contemporary metaphysics. A review of Kant's interpretation of knowledge in light of reason and perception, however, reveals that for Kant, knowledge acquisition occurs via an introverted vision relating to inner and outer environment. This justifies interpreting his work as metaphysics, and supports comparison of Kant's views to Rousseau's perspectives, which are associated with yogic concepts of knowing and knowledge acquisition, especially as regards metaphysical dimensions of "knowledge." Psychological or bioenergetic reflection on both philosophers' theories reveals different interpretations of metaphysics that facilitate an understanding of how these ideas expose processes of learning. Clarification of the concepts of knowing and understanding gives a different perspective on how learning may occur in an integrated fashion. The processes and elements involved in knowing and understanding (mind and body) contribute to integrity and to the perception of unity in learning.
Keywords: Education, philosophy, psychoanalysis, reason, knowing, understanding, Kant, Rousseau, and yogic consciousness
<1> It is widely recognized that Immanuel Kant "was an admirer of the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on education and moral philosophy" (Hatfield xiii), and so it is likely that Rousseau's works influenced Kant's philosophical perspectives. For this reason, a study of the relation between Rousseau's philosophy and the critical ideas Kant presents, primarily in the Critique of Pure Reason, offers a basis for re-interpreting reason's role in 1) processing the understanding's way of applying concepts so as to give form to experience, and 2) approaching the metaphysical realms of the soul, the world, and God.
<2> I propose to define steps in Kant's understanding of the act of perception in order to distinguish that which stems from the concept of form from that which stems from the concept of matter. A detailed account of Kant's transcendental aesthetics will explain why some philosophers associate Kant's theory of knowledge with the death of metaphysics. Kant's philosophy largely arises from his reaction to Hume's observations on the nature of cause/effect relations, and so has come to determine the very nature of contemporary metaphysics [i]. Consequently, I will review Kant's interpretation of knowledge in light of reason and perception in order to clarify Kant's position on rational idealism, empiricism, and metaphysics. For Kant, knowledge acquisition occurs via an introverted vision relating to one's inner and outer environment. This justifies an interpretation of his work along the lines of metaphysics, and supports a comparison of Kant's views to Rousseau's perspectives, which I have elsewhere associated with yogic definitions of what is involved in knowing and also in the process of acquiring knowledge, especially as regards any metaphysical dimension of "knowledge" (see Johnston, "Matters of the Heart," "Understanding and Knowing," and "Rousseau and Yoga"). Furthermore, from a psychological and bioenergetic [ii] angle, I will reflect on both philosophers' theories on what knowing and understanding mean as far as human nature is concerned. This dimension will enable a comparison between the two systems and reveal different interpretations of metaphysics that facilitate our understanding of how these ideas impact the processes of learning that underlie and even permit education.
<3> To explain how Kant believes we perceive the world, we must analyze the terms that clarify the roots of the epistemological turn in metaphysics attributed to Kant. In his study of Kantian terminology, Jean-Marie Vaysse presents several definitions of the term "metaphysics." The first affirms the a priori function of reason. Metaphysics for Kant, Vaysse tells us, is "[t]he speculative knowledge of pure reason elevating itself beyond experience by the means of pure concepts" and "a natural and indestructible tendency in human reason. It has as its proper object three Ideas: God, Freedom and Immortality" (67-68; my translation). This definition, however, presupposes a modern standpoint toward metaphysics. In order to understand why metaphysics is necessary and critical to the process of understanding for Kant, it is best to draw from an ancient definition. Ivan Gobry tells us that "Métaphusika (ta) [was] a term never employed by the Greek authors [but rather] dates from the Arabic philosopher Averroès in the 12th century. It is the contraction of méta ta phusika ... 'what comes after physics' (i.e., the physics of Aristotle) ... a naming given by Andronicos from Rhodes in the first century B.C. to diverse works of primary philosophy from Aristotle in the first edition of Corpus Aristotelicum, or the ensemble of works that remain from Aristotle among the numerous lost works" (128; my translation).
<4> Thus metaphysics can be seen as addressing all that exists outside of, beyond, above, or apart from the physical, a problematic area of discourse for reasons made clear by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. On this view, if "Ancient and Medieval philosophers might have said that metaphysics was, like chemistry or astrology, to be defined by its subject matter," i.e., as "the 'science' that studied 'being as such' or 'the first causes of things' or 'things that do not change,'" metaphysics can no longer be defined this way, for two reasons:
"First, a philosopher who denied the existence of those things that had once been seen as constituting the subject-matter of metaphysics-first causes or unchanging things-would now be considered to be making thereby a metaphysical assertion. Secondly, there are many philosophical problems that are now considered to be metaphysical problems (or at least partly metaphysical problems) that are in no way related to first causes or unchanging things; the problem of free will, for example, or the problem of the mental and the physical." (Van Inwagen)
<5> Consideration of "the problem of the mental and the physical" is central to Kantian philosophy, and so situates Kant's discourse in the heart of contemporary metaphysics, if not in the traditional metaphysical concern with "first causes" or "being as such." Using the distinctions between Sensibility, in Greek aïsthêsis (hê) (Gobry 14), and the Understanding, logos, or (in one of its definitions) the reasoning and conceptualizing intelligence (Gobry 123-125), Kant tries to prove that what we perceive is not appearances, but a reality that one has to look for in the very relation of the object to the subject and not in the object itself. As Kant points out in his Critique of Pure Reason when describing the relationship between subject and object, "the reality of the object of our inner sense (of myself and my state) is... immediately clear to consciousness. External objects may well seem merely to be appearances, but the [object of my internal perception] is incontestably something real." ( Critique 94; my translation)
<7> Kant adds,
"The phenomenon is something that one must not look for in the object itself, but always in the relation of this object to the subject and what is inseparable from the representation that we make of it." (Critique 103, Note 1; my translation)
<8> Kant thinks that knowledge is relative to perceptive and intellectual functions. Above all this knowledge is intuitive, yet this intuition can only be triggered if an object presents itself to us. According to Kant, the faculty of intuition is the capacity of receiving representations. Intuitions therefore stem from the sensible and not from the intellectual realms. Our mind has the faculty of being affected by objects and of receiving impressions. Hence, the point of departure for knowledge is the sensation of the impression produced by an object on our sensibility. This is the empiric intuition. On the other hand, the understanding can only think objects that are provided through sensibility. If receptivity defines the role of sensibility, spontaneity defines understanding in that it produces representations that are concepts: "The knowledge of all understanding, at least human understanding, is a knowledge through concepts, non intuitive, but discursive" (Kant, Critique 129; my translation).
<9> Here we come to a significant difference between Rousseau and Kant. Whereas for Rousseau, understanding is seated in the biological, the physiological, and the mental realms, as the idea of "sensitive reason" shows, for Kant, understanding is decidedly mental in operation. Hence, understanding for Kant involves ideas projected as forms in a hierarchy of knowledge that is essentially Platonic, but for Rousseau, understanding does not exist in a hierarchical relation organized as a priori mental categories, but involves a spontaneous assimilating process working in all aspects of the body that aims at reaching full potential as the faculties develop, i.e., as perfectibility (see Dent 189-191; Trousson and Eigeldinger 712-13).
<10> Returning to Kant, his deduction regarding the understanding leads him to call the object of intuition the phenomenon:
"What corresponds to the sensation in the phenomenon, I call the matter of this phenomenon; but what makes it so that the diversity that is in it is organized according to specific rapports, I call the form of the phenomenon. Since what in sensations alone can organize itself, or what alone allows [sensations] to bring themselves to a specific form could not be a sensation itself, it follows that, if the matter of any phenomenon is given to us a posteriori, the form must be a priori in the mind, ready to be applied to all, and consequently, one must consider it independently from any/all sensation." (Critique 81-82; my translation)
<11> According to Kant, the content of the sensation relates to the matter of the phenomenon; form organizes this phenomenological matter that Kant calls a sensation. Yet it is not just in the faculty of thinking, the understanding, that Kant finds forms, but also in the faculty of sensing, or in sensibility:
"When, in the representation of a body, I put aside what is thought through/by the understanding, such as substance, force, divisibility, etc., as well as what relates to the sensation, such as the impenetrability, the hardness, and the color of it etc., something is left to me of this empiric intuition, that is the extension and the figure." (Critique 82; my translation)
<12> Since neither the extension nor the figure is given from the sensation or forms of the understanding, they are pure forms stemming from the forms of the sensibility in which one does not encounter anything that belongs to the sensation (Kant, Critique 82). These pure forms, being forms from the intuition, can be called pure intuitions that are a priori in the mind. These forms are Kant's object of study in his transcendental aesthetics:
"We shall isolate the sensibility, putting aside all that the understanding adds to it and thinks of it via its concepts, so that only empiric intuition remains. We will then put aside all that belongs to sensation, so as to have only pure intuition and the simple form of the phenomena, the only thing that sensibility could offer a priori. What will result from this research will be that there are two pure forms of sensible intuition, as a priori knowledge; that is: space and time." (Critique 83; my translation)
<13> If Kant tries to reduce the modes of perception and understanding to "two pure forms," it remains nonetheless that his attempt leads him to situate the origin and production of the capacity for knowledge and understanding within a two-dimensional plane. Kant's system can be seen as an extension of experience at an intuitive level that he would call intuitive empiricism. Yet however reduced to the bare minimum these forms may be, the two concepts of time and space remain in a domain that belongs to relativity and history. Indeed, the notions of matter and form belong to the experience of the sensation (matter) and to its organization into "specific rapports" (form), thereby incorporating within man's way of translating the world a mechanism that prompts the mind to create upon exposure to the outside world a form of a priori language, a tendency to classify symbolically any perception.
<14> For Rousseau, on the contrary, any perception that gets translated into concepts as opposed to being directly experienced contributes to the disfiguration of the transparent core and state of human nature (for substantiation of this reading of Rousseau see Starobinski). Any process aimed at classifying or categorizing detracts from the innate human essence and the unifying mode of relating to the self and to the environment. Knowledge as it appears through the movement of time and space cannot with certainty be called a priori, for the recognition of these two dimensions in the development of human consciousness is what has enabled the shifting of a potential natural lucidity or potential bliss in timelessness into the world of culture. In nature, Rousseau tells us, man's "soul, agitated by nothing, is given over to the sole sentiment of his present existence" ("Discourse" 28)-a condition that bears some comparison to descriptions of certain meditative states, even if it is disrupted sometimes by bodily reactions of emotions such as fear and willful compulsions toward survival. This condition or state contrasts sharply with the figure of man who has fallen from the clear state of nature:
"Like the statue of Glaucus, which time, sea, and storms had so disfigured that it looked less like a God than a wild Beast, the human soul, altered in the bosom of society by a thousand continually renewed causes, by the acquisition of a mass of knowledge and errors, by changes that occurred in the constitution of Bodies, and by the continual impact of the passions, has, so to speak, changed its appearance to the point of being nearly unrecognizable." (Rousseau, "Discourse" 13)
<15> For Kant, space and time are the forms in which the diversity given by the sensations is organized. Space becomes the form of the external sense, that is the property that the mind has to represent the object to us as being outside of ourselves, and time is the form of the intimate sense, a property that the mind has to perceive itself intuitively, or more precisely to perceive its internal states (Critique 83). Time allows for a translation of the phenomenon. Thus any object outside of us is situated in space, and all determinations from within ourselves are situated in time. One represents external objects to oneself through rapports in space, and one represents internal states to oneself through temporal rapports: "Time cannot be perceived externally any more than space can be perceived as something within us" (Critique 83; my translation). Likewise, space cannot be a concept formed from an external experience since any external experience on the contrary supposes space. Time and space, as a result, depend solely on our intuition, on the subjective constitution of our mind-which takes us to metaphysics.
<16> It is Kant's preoccupation with metaphysics and his desire to rehabilitate it in opposition to empiricist skeptical arguments about the non-a priori aspect of reason that led him to question the true nature of reason and its role within the uncertain science of metaphysics. In his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Kant writes, "there is as yet no metaphysics at all. Since, however, the demand for it can never be exhausted, because the interest of human reason in general is much too intimately interwoven with it, the reader will admit that a complete reform or rather a rebirth of metaphysics, according to a plan completely unknown before now, is inevitably approaching, however much it may be resisted in the meantime" (6-7). In the Prolegomena Kant reflects on Locke's and Leibniz's contributions to human understanding and their perspective on the history of metaphysics, but he ponders more specifically Hume's assertion that only experience could have engendered the notion of cause, and that consequently Reason does not possess the faculty of thinking causal relations. He writes:
"Since the Essays of Locke and Leibniz, or rather since the rise of metaphysics as far as the history of it reaches, no event has occurred that could have been more decisive with respect to the fate of this science than the attack made upon it by David Hume. He brought no light to this kind of knowledge, but certainly struck a spark from which a light could well have been kindled, if it had hit some welcoming tinder whose glow was carefully kept going and made to grow."
"Hume started mainly from a single but important concept in metaphysics, namely, that of the connection of cause and effect (and of course also its derivative concepts, of force and action, etc.), and called upon reason, which pretends to have generated this concept in her womb, to give him an account of by what right she thinks: that something could be so constituted that, if it is posited, something else necessarily must thereby be posited as well; for that is what the concept of cause says. He indisputably proved that it is wholly impossible for reason to think such a connection a priori and from concepts, because this connection contains necessity; and it is simply not to be seen how it could be, that because something is, something else necessarily must also be, and therefore how the concept of such a connection could be introduced a priori. From this he concluded that reason completely and fully deceives herself with this concept, falsely taking it for her own child, when it is really nothing but a bastard of the imagination, which, impregnated by experience, and having brought certain representations under the law of association, passes off the resulting subjective necessity (i.e., habit) for an objective necessity (from insight). From which he concluded that reason has no power at all to think such connections, not even merely in general, because its concepts would then be bare fictions, and all of its cognitions allegedly established a priori would be nothing but falsely marked ordinary experiences; which is so much to say that there is no metaphysics at all, and cannot be any." (Prolegomena 7-8. Emphasis in original)
<17> This erroneous conclusion regarding the contamination of the mind by or through experience, Kant thought, only demonstrated the contamination of the mind by experience, but was nonetheless based on inquiry:
"fate, ever ill-disposed toward metaphysics, would have it that Hume was understood by no one ... [and after him] everything remained in its old condition, as if nothing had happened. The question was not, whether the concept of cause is right, useful, and, with respect to all cognition of nature, indispensable, for this Hume had never put in doubt; it was rather whether it is thought through reason a priori, and in this way has an inner truth independent of all experience, and therefore also a much more widely extended use which is not limited merely to objects of experience: regarding this Hume awaited enlightenment. The discussion was only about the origin of this concept, not about its indispensability in use; if the former were only discovered, the conditions of its use and the sphere in which it can be valid would already be given." (Prolegomena 8-9. Emphasis in original)
<18> According to Kant, metaphysics as understood via the use of reason cannot be limited solely to experience since it unavoidably functions beyond the boundaries of experience once it starts dealing with transcendental realities such as notions of the soul and of God, and our natural preoccupation with the existential predicament. "This type of knowledge must unquestionably be considered a given, and metaphysics must be thought of as really existing, if not as a science, nevertheless as a natural disposition of the human mind (metaphysica naturalis). In fact, human reason, with no instigation attributable to the simple vanity of great knowledge, elevates itself irresistibly toward questions that cannot be resolved by any empirical practice of reason, or by any principle that emanates from it. This is why a form of metaphysics genuinely develops among all men as soon as their reason rises to speculation" (Critique 70; my translation).
<19> Metaphysics is difficult to define because the definition depends on how one chooses to delineate its boundaries and validate its necessity and purpose. The problem Kant faced was that even though, according to him, metaphysics is among the oldest forms of understanding, it cannot be verified by a progressive and absolute science. Metaphysics, unlike mathematics, does not belong to the realm of certitude. Indeed, it is Kant's reflections about the progress of such sciences as math, logic, and physics that led him to transpose the source of the processes for registering experience away from the hard sciences. For Kant, as an example, mathematical knowledge does not derive solely from external experience, but also derives from an a priori process of conceptualization that enables one to establish givens and conclusions a priori that may also be demonstrated in the realm of experience a posteriori. Such science, Kant thought, offered what he called synthetic judgments. By thus applying critical judgment to the way reason operated, Kant sought to validate metaphysics even though he admitted that it relied merely on speculation rather than on certitude.
<20> As pointed out, Jean-Marie Vaysse connects Kantian "metaphysics" to the role played by reason as an a priori function. It involves the "speculative knowledge of pure reason elevating itself beyond experience by the means of pure concepts, [which] is a natural and indestructible tendency in human reason. It has as its proper object three Ideas: God, Freedom and Immortality" (Vaysse 67-68; my translation). If in the Kantian interpretation the objects of metaphysics cannot be known, the processes by which metaphysical questions are broached, and indeed the aspirations that such questions pertain to, still exist a priori within the individual, or within reason as we know it. Metaphysical questions are, in fact, essential components of a transcendental empiricism predetermined by processes of intuiting, understanding, and reasoning.
<21> The way Kant reduces metaphysics to a science is by giving the mental process abstract intuitive qualities or attributes which, combined with the categories of knowledge, also provide a synthetic form of knowledge that in turn will activate understanding once its a priori qualities are triggered by or exposed to experience, i.e., the phenomenon. If intellectual intuition cannot come from experience, it becomes a way of thinking as opposed to a way of knowing. To know and to think can be separate functions. Insofar as thinking does not pass the test of the analytic of concepts and the analytic of understanding in relation to sensibility and intuition, thinking intuitively does not imply reality because it is not outer-directed. This philosophical approach to understanding relies on a series of operating systems reflective of definite landmarks that must connect to a definite form of logic or pre-conceptual ability to express and to prove a reality linked to an idea of consciousness of the self that is defined by the outside. If Rousseau's je sens, donc je suis reflects the Cartesian cogito, ergo sum with its corollary of grounding in the body and concomitant spiraling between self and world, both Rousseau's and Descartes' postulates remain introverted in that they center in the self and in its self-knowing or self-sensing. Kant's implicit postulate, by contrast, starts with an introverted stance-one that in many ways reverses Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" into a statement such as "I am because I think"-and develops it into an extraverted statement. All the attributes are in place, and they all await an outside trigger. The implicit Kantian postulate is as follows: I am because I think the world, and to think the world, my faculties have to function according to unifying principles based on both sensibility and understanding, the pre-conditions of apprehending and translating a totality that goes beyond the subjective. However, as long as the mind operates and speculates, as long as it does not try to integrate all faculties, it participates in opacity-or what in yogic philosophy is called the movement of the mind-waves, or vrttis-a Sanskrit word that translates variously as fluctuation, movement, function, operation, and as citta-vrtti to "the totality of mental processes-conscious, subconscious, and hyperconscious" (Stoler Miller 30).
<22> Here we start to approach the ways in which Kantian philosophy links up to and, as we shall see, differs from Rousseau's insights, which I argue relate to yogic philosophy and to psychology, or more specifically bioenergetics. In the process of learning about and discovering the world, reason relies on a system or dynamic that speculates within the givens that it provides itself with. Thus we are dealing with an enclosure or circularity of ideas that indicates possible directions and aspects that the understanding might overlook, being caught up as it is in its own mechanism and in the adoption of its own concepts. For Rousseau, on the other hand, the faculty of complex reasoning is built up through an organic process that starts at birth. One could say that Rousseau identifies sensitive reason as a primary way of reaching the child and his potential qualities, thus relating to him through a language of feelings (see Rousseau, Emile 64-66) [iii]. Rousseau is describing a developmental dynamic in Emile, unlike the static system Kant explores in his metaphysics. Coming back to our earlier definitions of metaphysics and the aspects that are included in it, one can analyze Kant's and Rousseau's endeavors in light of psychology. There is no doubt that for Rousseau, the best knowledge is knowledge of the self as well as the capacity of relating in a grounded and unifying fashion to oneself, the other, and the world, such as occurs with the force of pity, which Rousseau calls "the pure movement of Nature prior to all reflection" ("Discourse" 36). The most valid knowledge lies in being what one is and feels as a human being, acting synchronically with nature and with the other.
<23> Kant's project, influenced though it may in part be by ideas Rousseau introduces in Emile, the second Discourse, and elsewhere, aims at rehabilitating metaphysics as a science. Borrowing from mathematics, physics, and logic the notion of the a priori synthetic judgment as a form of knowledge that can be applied practically to reality, Kant reduces the world of knowledge, as we have suggested, to the equation "I am because I think," a sphere that is completely mental in nature, and that fundamentally differs from the sphere Rousseau traces. We can see the difference by referring to the work of the late psychiatrist and bioenergeticist Alexander Lowen, who approaches this complex aspect of knowledge and understanding through his interpretation of ideas developed by Julian Jaynes in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Jaynes, Lowen claims, sees understanding as part of the "function of the right hemisphere, which is concerned with wholes ... in contrast to knowledge, which could be a function of the analytic power of the left hemisphere" (Lowen 246). (Note that paradoxically, Kant tries to attribute as an overriding principle a sense of wholeness to reason.) Lowen continues, "...understanding is related to the feeling process of the body, [and] knowledge is related to the thinking process of the mind.... ...understanding is a sensing from below, from the body, whereas knowing is seeing from above, from the mind or head" (246). Lowen thus concludes, "knowing is a function of the ego, which, as it develops, will eventually take an objective and superior position with regard to the body." This description of knowing as an ego function that assumes superiority recalls Rousseau's description of amour-propre, in which the self-consciousness that develops in society or in sophisticated social contexts comes to dominate the individual's innate interior sense of well being, or amour de soi. Lowen adds:
"...it would be nice if our knowledge grew as our understanding deepened, but unfortunately this rarely happens. Very often, what we think we know contradicts our understanding, and in the conflict between the two we tend to rely heavily upon knowledge and deny our understanding." (Lowen 247)
<24> What Lowen describes as the understanding of the body is very similar to what Rousseau identifies as our relationship to our ecological core and natural feelings. As we know, Rousseau claims that "To exist, for us, is to sense: our sensibility is incontestably anterior to our intelligence, and we had sentiments before ideas" (Emile 290). While Rousseau emphasizes the necessity of not giving sensibility a position subordinate to our mind, he nevertheless recognizes the need of preserving that aptitude as the major means of relating to the self and to the other:
"if ... man is by nature sociable, or at least made to become so, he can only be so by means of ... innate sentiments relative to his species... It is from the moral system formed by this double relation to oneself and to one's fellows that the impulse of conscience is born" (Emile 290).
Note that Rousseau does not use the word "conscience" in isolation, but precedes it with the word "impulse," just as he elsewhere unites the seemingly paradoxical words "divine" and "instinct" (Emile 290). He defines the "impulse of conscience" within the context of innate sentiments that move outward. This emotional and moral core, based in sensitive reason, might be attached to the sense of aspiration that lies at the heart of Kantian metaphysics. It is also, for Rousseau, the building block on which all knowledge is founded. Seen from Lowen's perspective, its description surprisingly eliminates the opposition between understanding and knowledge, since it conveys at once the notion of knowledge of the self within the other as well as the concept of understanding in that it presupposes a response. As Lowen writes, "understanding is an emphatic process that depends on the harmonic response of one body to the other" (248).
<25> In Emile's education, three forces intervene: Nature, Things, and Man (see Emile 38-39). We might compare these forces to the objects of metaphysical speculation laid out by Kant: The Soul, the World, and God. Comparatively we could make the following links: 1) Man to the Soul (bearing in mind of course that in Emile, the subjective knowing individuality of the Self is also Man); 2) The World to Things (insofar as the objects of the world become determinants of or obstacles to learning); and 3) God to Nature (since for Rousseau, it is the "gentle voice of nature" that introduces forces such as pity to the "things" of nature, including animate things, and since Nature is the source of divine revelation, "divine instinct," and the "impulse" of "conscience"). Metaphysics becomes a condition rather than a state or a space for Kant, because in his system one can never escape being inclined toward metaphysics. In this light we can consider Rousseau's entire philosophical system as being centered on relating to oneself and the other and nature in a transparent way, in which to be transparent is to make sure you are educated to an ability of thinking without being betrayed via the perception of adulterated senses, and without the corrupting influence of pre-established knowledge. It is this aspect of his teaching that links Rousseau's work to yogic philosophy.
<26> In Rousseau's educational system, Nature, Things, and Man are the driving factors, as we have seen. Of these factors, man is the least reliable. For Rousseau, what makes man unreliable is that he went from the state of bliss and unity characterized as amour de soi to a state of division and pride, or amour-propre, which in modern philosophical terms we could link to the development of conscious identity in relation to the world. Emile describes Rousseau's envisioning of the processes of creating a person whose Ego (amour-propre) is held in check by forces associated with need, necessity, and language. The teaching starts with feelings and sensations (i.e., the developing of intuition), but is mainly based on creating a person whose emotions and intellectual functions are in check [iv]. Emile relates to himself and to others because he is someone who is essentially grounded in the universal working aspects of nature operating in the person, i.e., through the self. By nature here we mean the functions that make the person what he or she is while ensuring that no interferences impair the mode of understanding and relating. A sense of identity is built upon the balanced attributes of nature as they appear in man, i.e., in the faculties, from the senses to the emotions and feelings (sensitive reason), and then in the monitoring of imagination, memory, and adult reason, which is achieved through an external process that involves a shaping of the intellectual apparatus.
<27> There is as such recognition on behalf of Rousseau of a sense of reason (raison sensitive) that is prior to the acquired reason that makes up initial experience if it is not adulterated, unifying and fulfilling the longing for wholeness: hence the role of negative education (Dent 102; Trousson and Eigeldinger, 275-278) and control of the environment in Emile. By contrast, for Kant Reason involves a hierarchy in the process of experiencing both the world and the human predicament. It becomes a final tool of discrimination and operates via ideas rather than concepts like understanding. These nearly Platonic ideas are what prompt human beings to relentlessly look for a unity or an unconditional primary state. To demonstrate this propensity, Kant gives it synthetic attributes and inclinations that move it toward wholeness and trigger in human beings the capacity of reaching for a point that goes beyond a deterministic state and understanding of experience. Thus, if the other modes of thinking such as sensation and intuition are outer directed via the understanding and the primary perceptions of the outside world, Kant reserves a specific unifying role for Reason as an inner-directed function that does not operate in relation to the object (the outside world), but in relation to the diverse mechanisms at work when the understanding and the intuition translate the external experience felt by human beings. Reason is an empirical intuitive tool. It moves the external stage of the world into the working functions of reason, which, though unifying in the realms of knowledge, do not automatically belong to the tangible realm, but remain directed inwards toward a compulsive inclination to think of the soul, God, and the world.
<28> In eastern philosophy, metaphysics is not a science that extends beyond the self to deal with idealistic givens. What the science of yoga calls metaphysics is what we would call the actions of being, seeing, and knowing-the "cessation of the turnings of thought" through which "the spirit stands in its true identity as observer to the world" (Stoler Miller 29; see also Zimmer 280-332 and Eliade 3-46). Paradoxically these actions could be called states insofar as they occur within the awakening consciousness that enables the subject to be no longer trapped in the limits of matter and the ensuing predispositions that the senses create when one operates in the realms of subjectivity, time, and language, one of the "forces of corruption" mentioned in the Yoga Sutra (Stoler Miller 31). By questioning the role of metaphysics in western philosophy and the role of reason within this subject, Kant tries to rehabilitate metaphysics as a limited science, yet a science that can have a certain degree of veracity and necessity in the human condition. Kant's strategy, which offers a critique of reason in the very realm of metaphysics by presupposing functions that have proved themselves adequate in hard sciences such as capacities to think in space and time and to translate a priori analytical or synthetic sensible judgments as well as a priori analytical concepts, finds a way of bringing some clarity to how our understanding operates in the least subjective fashion when dealing with notions of god, the soul, and so on. Yet because it deals mainly with processes of knowledge acquisition, it puts an emphasis on what we could call the language of the faculty of reason and representation [v] within the boundaries of time and space. In this respect, Kant's philosophy belongs to the west.
<29> As such, Kant establishes a hierarchy of perception in which reason becomes equated with what we could call a necessary transcendental function. This function generates overall principles aimed at monitoring the mechanism of understanding at a low level while also working with what he identifies as the understanding and the power of sensation. Reason is willingly enclosed within another dimension in the processes of perception and sensation, which Kant identifies with a realm of intuition that always aims at searching for a truth beyond the mechanisms involved in the relations of subject and object in empirical experience, though this quest is only limited to an unavoidable yearning in the human constitution.
<30> While for Kant the realm of intuition as it relates to reason ultimately generates a longing in man that appears as a wish for wholeness, Rousseau's system and the yogic system offer a more concrete definition of what one could associate with the metaphysical urge to unity and integration in the revelation of God or Godhead. Insofar as yoga aims at reintegrating the different levels of spirit and matter by helping any level of the body and the mind to function lucidly without becoming prisoner of the meandering of mind triggered by polluted memory, dysfunctional imagination and distorted interpretations of experience-forms of the "forces of corruption" and "obstacles" discussed in the Yoga Sutra (Stoler Miller 31-38), the role of intuition no longer expresses itself as a "longing" but rather becomes an integrated aspect of the complete anatomy of body, mind, and soul. It becomes both instinct and intelligence at work, i.e., the mind and body combined (see Iyengar, Light on Life 162-165). When Rousseau wrote that "the state of reflection is a state contrary to Nature and ... the man who meditates is a depraved animal" ("Discourse" 23), he did not use the term meditate to refer to a state of clarity, but rather to address a state of thinking involving cluttered knowledge. Emile's education aims at synchronizing the anatomical, physiological, and mental bodies (Sanskrit koshas) [vi] so that any thought and decision involves clarity and groundedness as well as godlike bliss.
<31> In the discipline of yoga, intuition is a state of supra-conscious knowing that can only occur if the unconscious intelligence of the cells and the body at large operate without distortion or misconceptions; thus the necessity of the purification and the withdrawal of the senses (pratyahara; see Stoler Miller 59) in the quest for inner knowledge and consciousness. (Recall that to write his Discourse on Method, Descartes felt he had to withdraw from all sensual stimulation by locking himself in a room.) The ultimate wisdom is the clarity of perception as it can be achieved in the proper functioning and ecology of the body and the mind of the individual. We know from our body, our brain, our heart, and our intelligence, all of which connect to this spark of lucidity that it is our soul, which unites with universal intelligence or insight. Far from answering the existential predicament by establishing categories of hierarchies that separate our understanding from our knowing, yoga and Rousseau's system rely on a circular, auto-included structure, a microcosm belonging to the macrocosm that we can equate to a type of metaphysical knowing.
<32> Though Kant seemed to be on the right track when he attempted to locate unity, in his profound desire to make metaphysics scientific by applying abstract synthetic judgments and modes of understanding to patterns acknowledged by, or used in mathematics, he fell into the trap of dividing knowledge by reducing it to the concepts of time and space. Let us not forget that even if mathematics has recourse to hypotheses and equations to demonstrate theories, these structures are only substructures of the unifying pattern of the number one.
Notes
[i] On this point, see Frédéric Nef's assertions regarding the contribution Kant made to metaphysics: «On comprend, à partir de ce qui précède, que la vision de la place de Kant dans l'histoire de la métaphysique et donc la compréhension de son projet critique s'en soient trouvés modifiées. Tout d'abord, la critique de Kant ne s'adresse pas, dans la Dialectique transcendantale, à la metaphysica generalis ou ontologie (la partie de la métaphysique qui traite de l'être en général), mais à la metaphysica specialis (c'est-à-dire à ses trois composantes: psychologie rationnelle, théologie rationnelle, cosmologie rationnelle-Kant leur substituera les Idées de la raison, respectivement le Moi, Dieu et le Monde)» (121).
[ii] The term "bioenergetics" was coined by Alexander Lowen, M. D., a former patient and student of Wilhelm Reich. According to the "Preface" to Lowen's book The Voice of the Body, Bioenergetic Analysis is "a pioneering approach to psychotherapy that combines physical with psychological interventions. In this psychotherapy, information from patients' bodies, such as muscle tension patterns, is used diagnostically, while physical interventions are used to facilitate changes in patients' bodies and to increase their psychological awareness of conflicts that manifest in their bodies. Psychological information likewise guides the diagnostic process, while psychological interventions are used to facilitate physical changes in patients' bodies and to solidify psychological changes made through physical interventions" (i).
[iii] Rousseau's recognition of the importance of the feeling function can also be seen in an early passage from his Confessions where he recalls his precocious reading aptitude and its consequences: "I felt before thinking; this is the common fate of humanity…. I do not know how I learned to read; I remember only my first readings and their effect on me... By this dangerous method [of reading late at night with his father until dawn]," Rousseau explains, "I acquired in a short time not only an extraordinary facility in reading and understanding, but also an intelligence about the passions that was unique for my age. I had no idea whatsoever about matters whose feelings were all known to me already. I had conceived nothing; I had felt everything. These confused emotions which I experienced one after the other did not at all impair my reason which I did not yet have" (7-8).
[iv] For further clarification of the etymology and meaning of intuition and related terms, see the entries on Intuitus in Fontanier (83-85) and on dianoïa, noêsis, and noûs in Gobry (53-54, 132, and 135-138 respectively).
[v] See the diagram "Représentation" in Henriot 136.
[vi] Mind, ego, and intelligence, in Sanskrit, respectively, translate as manas (associated with the manomaya kosha), ahamkar, and buddhi (associated with the vijnamaya kosha). Yoga describes human faculties in terms of sheaths, bodies,
or (in Sanskrit) kosas (pronounced "co-shahs"). Iyengar describes these sheaths as follows: "the layers, or sheaths, are the
anatomical, skeletal, or structural sheath (anamaya kosa); the physiological or organic sheath (pranamaya kosa); the mental or
emotional sheath (manomaya kosa); the intellectual or discriminative sheath (vijnamaya kosa); and the pure blissful sheath (anandamaya kosa). These kosas represent the five elements of nature, or prakriti: earth, water, fire, air and ether. Mahat, cosmic consciousness, in its individual form as citta, is the sixth kosa, while the inner soul is the seventh kosa. In
all, man has seven sheaths, or kosas, for the development of awareness" (Light on the Yoga Sutras 10).
Works Cited
Dent, N. J. H. A Rousseau Dictionary. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.
Eliade, Mircea. Yoga: Immortality and Freedom. Tr. Willard R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1958.
Fontanier, Jean-Michel. Le vocabulaire latin de la philosophie. 2nd ed. Paris: Ellipses, 2005.
Gobry, Ivan. Le vocabulaire grec de la philosophie. Paris: Ellipses, 2010.
Hatfield, Gary. "Introduction." In Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic. Ed. and trans. by Gary Hatfield. Cambridge: U Cambridge P, 1997.
Henriot, Patrice, ed. Critique de la raison pure: Première préface. By Immanuel Kant. Paris: Bordas, 1988.
Iyengar, B. K. S. Light on Life. [N.p.]: Rodale, 2005.
---. Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patañjali. London: Aquarian/Thorsons, 1993.
Jaynes, Julian. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976.
Johnston, Guillemette. "Matters of the Heart: Emile and Yoga. 2006-2007 Proceedings of the Society for the Philosophical Study of Education. Ed. Jason Helfer. Bloomington, IN: Authorhouse, 2009. 161-171.
---. "Rousseau and Yoga: Re-evaluating the Development of Complex Faculties as Presented in Rousseau's Emile." Journal for the Philosophical Study of Education 1 (2012): 115-133.
---. "Understanding and Knowing: The Yogic Language of the Senses and of Pity in Emile." 2006-2007 Proceedings of the Society for the Philosophical Study of Education. Ed. Jason Helfer. Bloomington, IN: Authorhouse, 2009. 147-171.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique de la raison pure. Trans. Jules Barni. Rev. P. Archambault. Paris: Flammarion, 1976.
---. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. Trans. Gary Hatfield. Cambridge: U Cambridge P, 1997.
Lowen, Alexander. Fear of Life. New York; Collier, 1980.
---. The Voice of the Body. Alachua, FL: Bioenergetics Press, 2005.
Nef, Frédéric. Qu'est-ce que la métaphysique? Paris: Folio, 2004.
Pascal, Georges. Pour connaître la pensée de Kant. 2nd ed. Paris: Bordas, 1957.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. "Confessions." The Confessions and Correspondence, Including the Letters to Malesherbes. Trans. Christopher Kelly. Ed. Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters, and Peter J. Stillman. Collected Writings of Rousseau 5. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College/UP New England, 1995. 1-550.
---. "Discourse on the Origin of Inequality." Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (Second Discourse), Polemics, and Political Economy. Trans. Judith R. Bush, Roger D. Masters, Christopher Kelly, and Terence Marshall. Ed. Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly. Collected Writings of Rousseau 3. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College/U P New England, 1992. 1-95.
---. Emile, or On Education. Tr. Allan Bloom. [N.p.]: Basic Books, 1979.
Starobinski, Jean. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: La transparence et l'obstacle. Paris: Gallimard, 1971.
Stoler Miller, Barbara, trans. and ed. Yoga: Discipline of Freedom: The Yoga Sutra Attributed to Patanjali. Berkeley: U California P, 1995.
Trousson, Raymond, and Frédéric S. Eigeldinger. Dictionnaire de Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2006.
Van Inwagen, Peter. "Metaphysics." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Ed. Edward N. Zalta. Winter 2012. <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphysics/>. 12 Feb. 2014.
Vaysse, Jean-Marie. Le vocabulaire de Kant. Paris: Ellipses, 2010.
Zimmer, Heinrich. Philosophies of India. Ed. Joseph Campbell. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1951.
Return to Top»