Goudeli, Kyriaki (1999) Logic and logogrif in German idealism : an investigation into the notion of experience in Kant, Fichte, Schelling. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

In this thesis I investigate the notion of experience in German Idealist Philosophy. I focus on
the exploration of an alternative to the transcendental model notion of experience through
Schelling's insight into the notion of logogrif.
The structural division of this project into two sections reflects the two theoretical
standpoints of this project, namely the logic and the logogrif of experience.
The first section - the logic of experience - explores the notion of experience provided in
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Judgement and Fichte's Science of Knowledge. I
argue that Kant's fundamental question about the possibility of synthetic a priori judgements
succeeds in thematising the aporia of cognitive experience but results in a subject-oriented,
representational model which radically confines the notion of experience to the constitutive
laws of the understanding or to the normative precepts of Reason. Experience is founded
upon a sharp division between faith and knowledge, will and logic, desire and reflection,
absolute and finitude. Fichte's endeavour to articulate a non-representational account of
experience, does not succeed in extricating itself from the representational model, so long as
experience is reduced to the ever-producing deeds of the self-positing ego.
Despite the serious differences between Kant's and Fichte's notions of experience, both
accounts, so long as they unfold from a transcendental standpoint, attempt to resolve
experience into conceptual laws or determinations of the ego's absolute will. Experience is
transformed into an object of the subject's cognitive or volitional faculties. The paradoxes of
man's interaction with the world are intended to be accommodated either by the law-giving
spontaneity of the understanding and the Architectonic of Pure Reason or by the overpowerful
primordial act of the self-positing ego. This implies the conceptualisation of the self
in terms of constant identity-through-time, or sheer self-determination. However, this
conceptualisation remains at the normative or prescriptive level, which in turn is projected
upon the world. The latter, though appears as the subject's property, essentially remains alien
and opaque, confirming the radical limitations of the ego rather than its order-giving
authority. Moreover, this notion of experience is ultimately founded upon a radical expulsion
of the divine from the world, the de-spiritualisation of the sensual and the de-sensualisation
of the spiritual, the sharp juxtaposition between absolute and finitude. This results in a self-defeating
subjectivity, whose firm identity and rule-giving authority does not rescue it from
its perennial unattainability to 'organise the conditioned' or 'conquer the unconditioned'.
In Kant's and Fichte's thought, however, I detect elements that potentially transgress their
transcendental account of experience. These are found in Kant's concept of spontaneity and
free play between understanding and imagination, and Fichte's concept of productivity. I
argue that these elements lose their potential dynamism, so long as they are absorbed by the
transcendental demands for the solution of the aporias of logic. However, these elements
point to the need for a radical re-conceptualisation of the notion of experience. This is
provided by means of Schelling's logogriflic approach, which constitutes the theme of the
second section.
The second section - the logogrif of experience - attempts to articulate a different approach
towards the notion of experience, through an exploration of Schelling's versatile and
provocative thought. This section focuses on Schelling's original insight into the notion and
act of logogrif, which opens the dialogue between logos and mythos, cosmic becoming and
human soul, cosmic imagination and human reflection, faith and knowledge. This section
attempts to illuminate Schelling's fascinating philosophical investigations and discoveries
that have been rather overlooked, possibly, due to Hegel's overwhelming critique. This
section, after a brief critical examination of the Identity Philosophy, attempts to elucidate
Schelling's notion of experience through his middle works, Of Human Freedom, Ages of the
World, The Deities of Samothrace, which are treated as a self-developing trilogy.
Schelling re-addresses the aporias of logic not as part of Reason's self-interrogation but as
part of the cosmic paradoxes and living experiences. In this way, Schelling resets the scene of
the debate on the conditions of possibility for cognitive experience by putting on the stage the
enigmas of the cosmos and life rather than the Tribunal of Reason.
Logic itself is conceived as a potency in the cosmic becoming, and consequently can no
longer attempt to establish the transcendental conditions for the possibility of cognitive
experience.
Cosmic becoming, in which man is an active part, is conceived as the process of the
movement, the interaction, the transformations and transmutations of multiple potencies.
These, far beyond any mechanical conceptualisation, appear as self-moving and yet
interdependent, unknown yet familiar, inscrutable and yet manifest powers, describing the
mystery of life itself. The latter is depicted as an ever-recurrent act of longing for self-expression
as active unity. Experience is conceived as the lived process of a network of living
potencies, which may not only resist rational powers but may also puzzle and seize them. In
this context, reflection acquires a plastic dimension, as opposed to its rigidity in the
representational model of experience. Reflection depicts cosmic longing's self-formation,
whose man is part. This self-bending formation partially illuminates the nature of longing,
and from this standpoint is the logic of the longing. However, this formation is movable,
transmutable and mostly ineffable, and from this standpoint is the logic of a riddle: a
logogrif.
Logogrif is the transitive term that attempts to describe the transition of experience from its
enacted phase to its allusive conceptual utterance, and in this sense the term itself participates
in both phases, as both form of thought and form of life. The logogrific approach to
experience in turn transposes us as from the realm of pure concepts to the realm of the
mystery of life, from pure thought to acts of longing, from the Architectonic of Pure Reason
to Cosmic Theurgy. The latter term attempts to grasp the paradox and dynamism of cosmic
and non-cosmic becoming by means of multiple, vanishing and ever-recurring, transmutable
potencies, or in Schelling's terms 'the magic of insoluble life'. Schelling's logogrific account
consists in a powerful voice for the re-enchantment of the world, the introduction into the
notion of experience of the imminence of the divine. This is not suggested in terms of the
adoption of old religious doctrines but by means of the discovery and re-discovery of the
theurgy of life, through the intensification of our artistic mood, the creative expansion of our
deeds.
This notion of experience allows for the reconsideration of the notion of the self, in terms of
a dynamic, conflictual process between conscious and unconscious powers and the critical
revaluation of the accounts of subjectivity which reduce it to the sphere of self-consciousness.
The thesis concludes with the need for an investigation into the relation between logos and
mythos, which only tangentially has been introduced by the present project. In this context it
will be possible to re-appraise the potential that the logogrific approach opens for an
alternative to both logical and traditional mythological patterns of thinking.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BC Logic
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Idealism, German, Logic -- Germany, Experience, Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804 -- Criticism and interpretation, Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 1762-1814 -- Criticism and interpretation, Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von, 1775-1854 -- Criticism and interpretation
Official Date:	March 1999
Dates:	Date Event March 1999 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Sociology
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Rose, Gillian ; Caygill, Howard ; Fine, Robert, 1945-
Extent:	288 leaves
Language:	eng

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