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Authors: Hannah Arendt
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Appearance is true to the phenomenon of Life, but the same cannot be said of the evaluation of Being
versus
Appearance which is at the bottom of all two-world theories. That traditional hierarchy arises not from our ordinary experiences with the world of appearances, but, rather, from the not-at-all ordinary experience of the thinking ego. As we shall see later, the experience transcends not only Appearance but Being as well. Kant himself explicitly identifies the phenomenon that gave him the actual basis for his belief in a "thing in itself' behind "mere" appearances. It was the fact that "in the consciousness of myself in the sheer thinking activity
[beim blossen Denken],
I am the thing itself
[das Wesen selbst,
i.e.
das Ding an sich]
although nothing of myself is thereby given for thought." 42 If I reflect on the relation of me to myself obtaining in the thinking activity, it may well seem as though my thoughts were "mere representations" or manifestations of an ego that itself remains forever concealed, for thoughts of course are never anything like properties that can be predicated of a self or a person. The thinking ego is indeed Kant's "thing in itself": it does not appear to others and, unlike the self of self-awareness, it does not appear to itself, and yet it is "not nothing."
The thinking ego is sheer activity and therefore ageless, sexless, without qualities, and without a life story. Etienne Gilson, asked to write his autobiography, responded: "A man of seventy-five should have many things to say about his past, but ... if he has lived only as a philosopher, he immediately realizes that he has no past." 43 For the thinking ego is not the self. There is an incidental remarkâone of those on which we are so dependent in our inquiryâin Thomas Aquinas that sounds rather mysterious unless we are aware of this distinction between the thinking ego and the self: "My soul [in Thomas the organ for thought] is not I; and if only souls are saved, I am not saved, nor is any man." 44
The inner sense that might let us get hold of the thinking activity in some sort of inner intuition has nothing to hold on to, according to Kant, because its manifestations are utterly unlike "the appearance confronting external sense [which finds] something still and remaining ... while time, the only form of inner intuition, has nothing permanent." 45 Hence, "I am conscious of myself, not as I appear to myself, nor as I am in myself, but only that I am. This
representation
is a
thought,
not an
intuition.
" And he adds in a footnote: "The 'I think' expresses the act of determining my existence. Existence is already given thereby, but the mode in which I am ... is not thereby given." 46 Kant stresses the point repeatedly in the
Critique of Pure Reasonâ
nothing permanent "is given in inner intuition insofar as I think myself" 47 âbut we will do better to turn to his pre-critical writings to find an actual description of the sheer experiences of the thinking ego.
In the
Träume eines Geistersehers, erläutert durch Träume der Metaphysik
(1766), Kant stresses the "immateriality" of the
mundus intelligibilis,
the world in which the thinking ego moves, in contrast to the "inertia and constancy" of dead matter that surrounds living beings in the world of appearances. In this context, he distinguishes between the "notion the soul of man has of itself as mind [
Geist
] through an immaterial intuition, and the consciousness through which it presents itself as a man by means of an image having its source in the sensation of physical organs and conceived in relation to material things. It is, therefore, indeed always the same subject that is both a member of the visible and the invisible world, but not the same person, since ... what I as mind think is not remembered by me as man, and, conversely, my actual state as man does not enter my notion of myself as mind." And he speaks in a strange footnote of a "certain double
versus
Appearance which is at the bottom of all two-world theories. That traditional hierarchy arises not from our ordinary experiences with the world of appearances, but, rather, from the not-at-all ordinary experience of the thinking ego. As we shall see later, the experience transcends not only Appearance but Being as well. Kant himself explicitly identifies the phenomenon that gave him the actual basis for his belief in a "thing in itself' behind "mere" appearances. It was the fact that "in the consciousness of myself in the sheer thinking activity
[beim blossen Denken],
I am the thing itself
[das Wesen selbst,
i.e.
das Ding an sich]
although nothing of myself is thereby given for thought." 42 If I reflect on the relation of me to myself obtaining in the thinking activity, it may well seem as though my thoughts were "mere representations" or manifestations of an ego that itself remains forever concealed, for thoughts of course are never anything like properties that can be predicated of a self or a person. The thinking ego is indeed Kant's "thing in itself": it does not appear to others and, unlike the self of self-awareness, it does not appear to itself, and yet it is "not nothing."
The thinking ego is sheer activity and therefore ageless, sexless, without qualities, and without a life story. Etienne Gilson, asked to write his autobiography, responded: "A man of seventy-five should have many things to say about his past, but ... if he has lived only as a philosopher, he immediately realizes that he has no past." 43 For the thinking ego is not the self. There is an incidental remarkâone of those on which we are so dependent in our inquiryâin Thomas Aquinas that sounds rather mysterious unless we are aware of this distinction between the thinking ego and the self: "My soul [in Thomas the organ for thought] is not I; and if only souls are saved, I am not saved, nor is any man." 44
The inner sense that might let us get hold of the thinking activity in some sort of inner intuition has nothing to hold on to, according to Kant, because its manifestations are utterly unlike "the appearance confronting external sense [which finds] something still and remaining ... while time, the only form of inner intuition, has nothing permanent." 45 Hence, "I am conscious of myself, not as I appear to myself, nor as I am in myself, but only that I am. This
representation
is a
thought,
not an
intuition.
" And he adds in a footnote: "The 'I think' expresses the act of determining my existence. Existence is already given thereby, but the mode in which I am ... is not thereby given." 46 Kant stresses the point repeatedly in the
Critique of Pure Reasonâ
nothing permanent "is given in inner intuition insofar as I think myself" 47 âbut we will do better to turn to his pre-critical writings to find an actual description of the sheer experiences of the thinking ego.
In the
Träume eines Geistersehers, erläutert durch Träume der Metaphysik
(1766), Kant stresses the "immateriality" of the
mundus intelligibilis,
the world in which the thinking ego moves, in contrast to the "inertia and constancy" of dead matter that surrounds living beings in the world of appearances. In this context, he distinguishes between the "notion the soul of man has of itself as mind [
Geist
] through an immaterial intuition, and the consciousness through which it presents itself as a man by means of an image having its source in the sensation of physical organs and conceived in relation to material things. It is, therefore, indeed always the same subject that is both a member of the visible and the invisible world, but not the same person, since ... what I as mind think is not remembered by me as man, and, conversely, my actual state as man does not enter my notion of myself as mind." And he speaks in a strange footnote of a "certain double
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