Autor: Schindler, David C., Jun

Buch: The Catholicity of Reason

Titel: The Catholicity of Reason

Stichwort: Nichtwissen - Anmaßung 5; sokratisches Nichtwissen als umfassendstes Wissen - Hegel: Geist als vollkommener Selbstbezug, Vernunft kann nicht "mehr" sein; falsche "epistemologische" Bescheidenheit; Vernunft als katholische - "mehr" u. beim andern

Kurzinhalt: [Hegel] ... the object must come to reason's terms, but reason is incapable of coming to terms with the object...

Textausschnitt: 30a We are now in a position to see why knowing that one doesn't know is not a skeptical self-limitation of reason a priori, but is rather the most comprehensive — most catholic — conception of reason possible. It might seem at first that one would be claiming more for reason to say that it knows that it knows, to say, in other words, that reason is (or can be) in full possession of the truth. But in fact this collapses reason back into itself. As we mentioned at the beginning of this section, Hegel is no doubt the best example of this apparently extreme claim for reason — better, for example, even than Descartes with his project of a universal mathesis, insofar as Descartes assumed consciousness as a sort of sphere outside the world whereas Hegel affirmed Geist as a kind of self-transcendence inclusive of the world — and he illustrates the problem that arises when reason prematurely limits itself. For Hegel, "an out-and-out Other simply does not exist for spirit,"3 by which he means that, no matter how transcendent its object, reason can grasp that object ultimately without leaving itself. Spirit is perfect self-relation, which can be, as it were, "at home" (bei sich) no matter where it is. But in this conception of reason, Hegel rejects the possibility of reason being "more." In other words, he rejects a priori the possibility of reason being genuinely more than itself, being capable of leaving its home, so to speak, and entering the home of another. Hegel does not claim too much for reason, in this regard, but too little: he limits reason specifically to itself, which means that it can relate to its object as reason only to the extent that the object enters into it; the object must come to reason's terms, but reason is incapable of coming to terms with the object. In a word, Hegel's conception of reason is less than catholic, and it is precisely this failing of the whole, which he himself says is the truth of truth,4 that makes Hegelian reason "totalizing." (Fs) (notabene)

31a With this last point, we have reached our conclusion. A great deal of postmodern thought is driven by a kind of nostalgia for "epistemic humility," which in its best sense means a respect for the deep mystery of things. This nostalgia becomes urgent to the point of desperation as the sense for mystery grows weaker, to the point that the human spirit feels compelled in the end simply to fabricate its own mysteries, to play ever more hysterically with its own fictions.5 The phenomenon gives rise to the suspicion that there is a deep pathology at work here, that the response to the problem is itself a function of the problem, which thus causes it to worsen rather than improve: far from bringing any peace, it only generates a greater need, so that one is prompted to answer with an even more intensified version of the same, and so on. Can one in fact make the claim, without embarrassment, that reason's embrace of a radical modesty in the birth of modern science, for example, ushered in a reverence for the mystery of the natural world and respect for its integrity that the world had never before seen? Our argument has been that there is in fact nothing more presumptuous than reason's "modest" self-limitation. We will flesh out this argument in a variety of directions over the course of this book. What we are proposing here, and what is presupposed by all of the chapters to follow, is that reason is essentially catholic, and that it is only by recognizing this and being faithful to it that we will be able to recover the sense of mystery, the loss of which has been justly mourned in much postmodern thinking. We will recover humility only if we recover at the same time a robust sense of truth, and of the reason that grasps it. To say that reason is catholic is to say, not that it encompasses the whole in itself, but that it grasps the whole only in being called constantly beyond itself to what remains ever greater. Catholicity means that reason is responsible to the whole, and cannot absolve itself of this responsibility through protests of modesty. Only one who is open to the whole as such is vulnerable to the claims of truth. (Fs) (notabene)