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"It would make no difference if there had been no Reason there, just as with physicists it is a matter of perfect indifference whether, for instance, there is such a thing as magnetism or not."

— Hegel, G. W. F. (1770-1831)

Author

Hegel, G. W. F. (1770-1831)

Work Title

Lectures on the History of Philosophy

Date

1805-6, published 1833-6

Metaphor

"It would make no difference if there had been no Reason there, just as with physicists it is a matter of perfect indifference whether, for instance, there is such a thing as magnetism or not."

Metaphor in Context

c. The third faculty Kant finds in reason, to which he advances from the understanding after the same psychological method; that is to say, he hunts through the soul's sack to see what faculties are still to be found there; and thus by merest chance he lights on Reason. It would make no difference if there had been no Reason there, just as with physicists it is a matter of perfect indifference whether, for instance, there is such a thing as magnetism or not. "All our knowledge begins from the senses, thence proceeds to the understanding, and finishes up with reason; nothing higher than this is to be found in us, for it signifies the working up of the material of perception, and the reducing of it to the highest unity of thought." Reason is therefore, according to Kant, the power of obtaining knowledge from principles, that is, the power of knowing the particular in the universal by means of Notions; the understanding, on the contrary, reaches its particular by means of perception. But the categories are themselves particular. The principle of reason, according to Kant, is really the universal, inasmuch as it finds the unconditioned involved in the conditioned knowledge of the understanding. Understanding is hence for him thought in finite relations; reason, on the contrary, is thought which makes the unconditioned its object. Since Kant's time it has become customary in the language of philosophy to distinguish understanding and reason, while by earlier philosophers this distinction was not drawn. The product of reason is, according to Kant, the Idea -- a Platonic expression -- and he understands by it the unconditioned, the infinite. It is a great step forward to say that reason brings forth Ideas; with Kant, however, the Idea is merely the abstract universal, the indeterminate.