Wednesday, August 21, 2019

Knowledge, Anthropomorphism, Principle of Sufficient Reason

Parmenides can be excused more easily than Bergson for not considering Kant's Anthropomorphic thesis that Knowledge of Being is mediated by the conditions of Knowledge, a thesis that could explain why the Monism of each begins in Reflection, previously discussed.  Now, according to Kant, those conditions are the Forms of Intuition, and the Temporalized Categories of Understanding.  But, despite his eventual establishment of the primacy of Practice over Theory, he does not revise his concept of Experience accordingly, so he does not recognize that the Form of the Objects of Knowledge are, instead, that of Action determined by a Rational principle.  Such Anthropomorphization is plain in ordinary experience whenever, for example, Intention is attributed to a barking dog.  So, if the Knowledge of Being is structured in terms of the conditions of Human Experience, and the primary Form of Human Experience is Rational agency, then Being is Known in terms of a Principle of Sufficient Reason.  But, Parmenides and Bergson alike abstract from the Corporeal expressions of such Rational agency, thereby each arriving at a quasi-Dualist Monism, differing in respect of Rest vs. Motion, but not in respect of Unity vs. Multiplicity.  Implicit in such Monism is a severing of the Principle of Sufficient Reason from what it grounds.  Much of the subsequent history of Philosophy continues that abstraction effected by Parmenides.

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