work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
3400,"","Reading Stafford, Barbara Maria. Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 1993). p. 127.",2006-06-08 00:00:00 UTC," Allein gehört denn unser Körper der Seele allein zu, oder ist er nicht ein gemeinschaftliches Glied sich in ihm durchkreuzender Reihen, deren jeder Gesetz er befolgen, und deren jeder er Gnüge leisten muß? So hat jede einfache Steinart im reinsten Zustand ihre eigne Form, allein die Anomalien, die die Verbindung mit andern hervorbringt, und die Zufälle, denen sie ausgesetzt sind, macht, daß sich auch oft der Geübteste irrt, der sie nach dem Gesicht unterscheiden will. So steht unser Körper zwischen Seele und der übrigen Welt in der Mitte, Spiegel der Wirkungen von beiden; erzählt nicht allein unsere Neigungen und Fähigkeiten, sondern auch die Peitschenschläge des Schicksals, Klima, Krankheit, Nahrung und tausend Ungemach, dem uns nicht immer unser eigner böser Entschluß sondern oft Zufall und oft Pflicht aussetzen. [...]",,8687,"","""So steht unser Körper zwischen Seele und der übrigen Welt in der Mitte, Spiegel der Wirkungen von beiden. [Thus our body stands between soul and ambient world, in the middle, mirror of the effect of both.]""",Mirror,2013-08-22 20:54:20 UTC,""
5613,"",Reading,2003-08-14 00:00:00 UTC,"A good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes, because of its fitness to attain some proposed end, but only because of its volition, that is, it is good in itself and, regarded for itself, is to be valued incomparably higher than all that could merely be brought about by it in favor of some inclination and indeed, if you will, of the sum of all inclinations. Even if, by a special disfavor of fortune or by the niggardly provision of a stepmotherly nature, this will should wholly lack the capacity to carry out its purpose--if with its greatest efforts it should yet achieve nothing and only the good will were left (not, of course, as a mere wish but as the summoning of all means insofar as they are in our control)--then, like a jewel, it would shine by itself, as something that has its full worth in itself. Usefulness or fruitlessness can neither add anything to this worth nor take anything away from it. Its usefulness would be, as it were, only the setting to enable us to handle it more conveniently in ordinary commerce or to attract to it the attention of those who are not yet expert enough, but not to recommend it to experts or to determine its worth.
(4:394, p. 50)",,15001,"• Reading: my reading group preparation (for Fichte)
•Moving toward the proposition that the highest good is a will that is good in itself.
•Nature may be the will's stepmother?
•The simile is extended in what follows: usefulness is this jewel's setting. The setting attracts notice to the jewel and allows us ot handle it more conveniently.","""Even if, by a special disfavor of fortune or by the niggardly provision of a stepmotherly nature, this will should wholly lack the capacity to carry out its purpose--if with its greatest efforts it should yet achieve nothing and only the good will were left (not, of course, as a mere wish but as the summoning of all means insofar as they are in our control)--then, like a jewel, it would shine by itself, as something that has its full worth in itself.""","",2011-12-21 18:31:24 UTC,Section 1
5613,Dreams,My reading group preparation (for Fichte),2003-08-28 00:00:00 UTC,"Hence everything empirical, as an addition to the principle of morality, is not only quite inept for this; it is also highly prejudicial to the purity of morals, where the proper worth of an absolutely good will--a worth raised above all price--consists just in the principle of action being free from all influences of contingent grounds, which only experience can furnish. One cannot give too many or too frequent warnings against this laxity, or even mean cast of mind, which seeks its principle among empirical motives and laws; for, human reason in its weariness gladly rests on this pillow and in a dream of sweet illusions (which allow it to embrace a cloud instead of Juno) it substitutes for morality a bastard patched up from limbs of quite diverse ancestry, which looks like whatever one wants to see in it but not like virtue for him who has once seen virtue in her true form.
The question is therefore this: is it a necessary law for all rational beings always to appraise their actions in accordance with such maxims as they themselves could will to serve as universal laws?
(4:426, p. 77)",2003-10-23,15002,•Another personification. What to do with my protocol? Ignore it when the personification is complex enough to merit inclusion?,"""One cannot give too many or too frequent warnings against this laxity, or even mean cast of mind, which seeks its principle among empirical motives and laws; for,human reason in its weariness gladly rests on this pillow and in a dream of sweet illusions (which allow it to embrace a cloud instead of Juno)""","",2009-09-14 19:42:31 UTC,Section II
6675,"","Reading Allen W. Wood's Kantian Ethics. Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2007. p. 184.",2010-02-04 22:21:31 UTC,"Conscience is practical reason holding the human being's duty before him for his acquittal or condemnation in every case that comes under a law.
(MS 6:400)",,17698,"Note, Wood says Kant's court metaphor is not ""as metaphorical as it might seem"" (184).","""Conscience is practical reason holding the human being's duty before him for his acquittal or condemnation in every case that comes under a law.""","",2010-02-04 22:21:31 UTC,""
6675,"","Reading Allen Wood's Kantian Ethics. Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2007. p. 184.",2010-02-04 22:24:13 UTC,"Every concept of duty involves objective constraint through a law (a moral imperative limiting our freedom) and belongs to a practical understanding, which provides a rule. But the internal imputation of a deed, as a case falling under a law (in meritum aut demeritum), belongs to the faculty of judgment (iudicium), which, as the subjective principle of imputing an action, judges with rightful force whether the action as a deed (an action coming under a law) has occurred or not. Upon it follows the conclusion of reason (the verdict), that is, the connecting of the rightful result with the action (condemnation or aquittal). All of this takes place before a judicial proceeding (forum). — Consciousness of an inner court in the human being (""before which his thoughts accuse or excuse one another"") is conscience.
(MS 6:437-8)",,17699,"","""Consciousness of an inner court in the human being ('before which his thoughts accuse or excuse one another') is conscience.""",Court,2010-02-04 22:24:38 UTC,""
6676,"","Reading Allen W. Wood's Kantian Ethics. Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2007. p. 184.",2010-02-04 22:34:59 UTC,"The inner judicial proceeding of conscience may be aptly compared with an external court of law. Thus we find within us an accuser, who could not exist, however, if there were no law; though the latter is no part of the civil positive law, but resides in reason ... In addition, there is also at the same time in the human being an advocate, namely self-love, who excuses him and makes many an objection to the accusation, whereupon the accuser seeks in turn to rebut the objections. Lastly we find in ourselves a judge, who either acquits or condemns us.
(VE 27:354)",,17700,"","""The inner judicial proceeding of conscience may be aptly compared with an external court of law.""",Court,2010-02-04 22:34:59 UTC,""
7369,"","Reading Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind, pp. 100-1.",2013-04-01 02:17:53 UTC,"In truth, it is not images of objects, but schemata, which lie at the foundation of our pure sensuous conceptions. No image could ever be adequate to our conception of a triangle in general. For the generalness of the conception it never could attain to, as this includes under itself all triangles, whether right-angled, acute-angled, etc., whilst the image would always be limited to a single part of this sphere. The schema of the triangle can exist nowhere else than in thought, and it indicates a rule of the synthesis of the imagination in regard to pure figures in space. Still less is an object of experience, or an image of the object, ever to the empirical conception. On the contrary, the conception always relates immediately to the schema of the imagination, as a rule for the determination of our intuition, in conformity with a certain general conception. The conception of a dog indicates a rule, according to which my imagination can delineate the figure of a four-footed animal in general, without being limited to any particular individual form which experience presents to me, or indeed to any possible image that I can represent to myself in concreto. This schematism of our understanding in regard to phenomena and their mere form, is an art, hidden in the depths of the human soul, whose true modes of action we shall only with difficulty discover and unveil. Thus much only can we say: ""The image is a product of the empirical faculty of the productive imagination--the schema of sensuous conceptions (of figures in space, for example) is a product, and, as it were, a monogram of the pure imagination a priori, whereby and according to which images first become possible, which, however, can be connected with the conception only mediately by means of the schema which they indicate, and are in themselves never fully adequate to it."" On the other hand, the schema of a pure conception of the understanding is something that cannot be reduced into any image--it is nothing else than the pure synthesis expressed by the category, conformably to a rule of unity according to conceptions. It is a transcendental product of the imagination, a product which concerns the determination of the internal sense, according to conditions of its form (time) in respect to all representations, in so far as these representations must be conjoined a priori in one conception, conformably to the unity of apperception.
(A141-3/B180-2, cf. pp. 273-4 in Cambridge UP edition)",,20077,"","""This schematism of our understanding in regard to phenomena and their mere form, is an art, hidden in the depths of the human soul, whose true modes of action we shall only with difficulty discover and unveil.""","",2013-04-01 02:22:28 UTC,Doctrine of Elements. Pt II. Div. I Bk. II. Ch. I.
7369,"","Reading Hannah Arendt's The Life of the Mind, pp. 100-1",2013-04-01 02:20:46 UTC,"In truth, it is not images of objects, but schemata, which lie at the foundation of our pure sensuous conceptions. No image could ever be adequate to our conception of a triangle in general. For the generalness of the conception it never could attain to, as this includes under itself all triangles, whether right-angled, acute-angled, etc., whilst the image would always be limited to a single part of this sphere. The schema of the triangle can exist nowhere else than in thought, and it indicates a rule of the synthesis of the imagination in regard to pure figures in space. Still less is an object of experience, or an image of the object, ever to the empirical conception. On the contrary, the conception always relates immediately to the schema of the imagination, as a rule for the determination of our intuition, in conformity with a certain general conception. The conception of a dog indicates a rule, according to which my imagination can delineate the figure of a four-footed animal in general, without being limited to any particular individual form which experience presents to me, or indeed to any possible image that I can represent to myself in concreto. This schematism of our understanding in regard to phenomena and their mere form, is an art, hidden in the depths of the human soul, whose true modes of action we shall only with difficulty discover and unveil. Thus much only can we say: ""The image is a product of the empirical faculty of the productive imagination--the schema of sensuous conceptions (of figures in space, for example) is a product, and, as it were, a monogram of the pure imagination a priori, whereby and according to which images first become possible, which, however, can be connected with the conception only mediately by means of the schema which they indicate, and are in themselves never fully adequate to it."" On the other hand, the schema of a pure conception of the understanding is something that cannot be reduced into any image--it is nothing else than the pure synthesis expressed by the category, conformably to a rule of unity according to conceptions. It is a transcendental product of the imagination, a product which concerns the determination of the internal sense, according to conditions of its form (time) in respect to all representations, in so far as these representations must be conjoined a priori in one conception, conformably to the unity of apperception.
(A141-3/B180-2, cf. pp. 273-4 in Cambridge UP edition)",,20078,"","""Thus much only can we say: 'The image is a product of the empirical faculty of the productive imagination--the schema of sensuous conceptions (of figures in space, for example) is a product, and, as it were, a monogram of the pure imagination a priori, whereby and according to which images first become possible, which, however, can be connected with the conception only mediately by means of the schema which they indicate, and are in themselves never fully adequate to it.'""",Writing,2013-04-01 02:22:01 UTC,Doctrine of Elements. Pt II. Div. I. Bk. II. Ch. I
7369,"","Reading Hans Blumenberg, Paradigms for a Metaphorology, trans. Robert Savage (Cornell UP, 2010), 27.",2013-08-09 22:15:15 UTC,"When Galilei experimented with balls of a definite weight on the inclined plane, when Torricelli caused the air to sustain a weight which he had calculated beforehand to be equal to that of a definite column of water, or when Stahl, at a later period, converted metals into lime, and reconverted lime into metal, by the addition and subtraction of certain elements; a light broke upon all natural philosophers. They learned that reason only perceives that which it produces after its own design; that it must not be content to follow, as it were, in the leading-strings of nature, but must proceed in advance with principles of judgement according to unvarying laws, and compel nature to reply its questions. For accidental observations, made according to no preconceived plan, cannot be united under a necessary law. But it is this that reason seeks for and requires. It is only the principles of reason which can give to concordant phenomena the validity of laws, and it is only when experiment is directed by these rational principles that it can have any real utility. Reason must approach nature with the view, indeed, of receiving information from it, not, however, in the character of a pupil, who listens to all that his master chooses to tell him, but in that of a judge, who compels the witnesses to reply to those questions which he himself thinks fit to propose. To this single idea must the revolution be ascribed, by which, after groping in the dark for so many centuries, natural science was at length conducted into the path of certain progress.
[Als Galilei seine Kugeln die schiefe Fläche mit einer von ihm selbst gewählten Schwere herabrollen, oder Torricelli die Luft ein Gewicht, was er sich zum voraus dem einer ihm bekannten Wassersäule gleich gedacht hatte, tragen ließ, oder in noch späterer Zeit Stahl Metalle in Kalk und diesen wiederum in Metall verwandelte, indem er ihnen etwas entzog und wiedergab; so ging allen Naturforschern ein Licht auf. Sie begriffen, daß die Vernunft nur das einsieht, was sie selbst nach ihrem Entwurfe hervorbringt, daß sie mit Prinzipien ihrer Urteile nach beständigen Gesetzen vorangehen und die Natur nötigen müsse auf ihre Fragen zu antworten, nicht aber sich von ihr allein gleichsam am Leitbande gängeln lassen müsse; denn sonst hängen zufällige, nach keinem vorher entworfenen Plane gemachte Beobachtungen gar nicht in einem notwendigen Gesetze zusammen, welches doch die Vernunft sucht und bedarf. Die Vernunft muß mit ihren Prinzipien, nach denen allein übereinkommende Erscheinungen für Gesetze gelten können, in einer Hand, und mit dem Experiment, das sie nach jenen ausdachte, in der anderen, an die Natur gehen, zwar um von ihr belehrt zu werden, aber nicht in der Qualität eines Schülers, der sich alles vorsagen läßt, was der Lehrer will, sondern eines bestallten Richters, der die Zeugen nötigt, auf die Fragen zu antworten, die er ihnen vorlegt. Und so hat sogar Physik die so vorteilhafte Revolution ihrer Denkart lediglich dem Einfalle zu verdanken, demjenigen, was die Vernunft selbst in die Natur hineinlegt, gemäß, dasjenige in ihr zu suchen (nicht ihr anzudichten), was sie von dieser lernen muß, und wovon sie für sich selbst nichts wissen würde. Hierdurch ist die Naturwissenschaft allererst in den sicheren Gang einer Wissenschaft gebracht worden, da sie so viel Jahrhunderte durch nichts weiter als ein bloßes Herumtappen gewesen war.]
(Preface to second edition of 1787)",,22133,"","""They learned that reason only perceives that which it produces after its own design; that it must not be content to follow, as it were, in the leading-strings of nature, but must proceed in advance with principles of judgement according to unvarying laws, and compel nature to reply its questions.""","",2013-08-09 22:17:55 UTC,Preface
7369,"",Reading,2013-08-09 22:20:42 UTC,"When Galilei experimented with balls of a definite weight on the inclined plane, when Torricelli caused the air to sustain a weight which he had calculated beforehand to be equal to that of a definite column of water, or when Stahl, at a later period, converted metals into lime, and reconverted lime into metal, by the addition and subtraction of certain elements; a light broke upon all natural philosophers. They learned that reason only perceives that which it produces after its own design; that it must not be content to follow, as it were, in the leading-strings of nature, but must proceed in advance with principles of judgement according to unvarying laws, and compel nature to reply its questions. For accidental observations, made according to no preconceived plan, cannot be united under a necessary law. But it is this that reason seeks for and requires. It is only the principles of reason which can give to concordant phenomena the validity of laws, and it is only when experiment is directed by these rational principles that it can have any real utility. Reason must approach nature with the view, indeed, of receiving information from it, not, however, in the character of a pupil, who listens to all that his master chooses to tell him, but in that of a judge, who compels the witnesses to reply to those questions which he himself thinks fit to propose. To this single idea must the revolution be ascribed, by which, after groping in the dark for so many centuries, natural science was at length conducted into the path of certain progress.
[Als Galilei seine Kugeln die schiefe Fläche mit einer von ihm selbst gewählten Schwere herabrollen, oder Torricelli die Luft ein Gewicht, was er sich zum voraus dem einer ihm bekannten Wassersäule gleich gedacht hatte, tragen ließ, oder in noch späterer Zeit Stahl Metalle in Kalk und diesen wiederum in Metall verwandelte, indem er ihnen etwas entzog und wiedergab; so ging allen Naturforschern ein Licht auf. Sie begriffen, daß die Vernunft nur das einsieht, was sie selbst nach ihrem Entwurfe hervorbringt, daß sie mit Prinzipien ihrer Urteile nach beständigen Gesetzen vorangehen und die Natur nötigen müsse auf ihre Fragen zu antworten, nicht aber sich von ihr allein gleichsam am Leitbande gängeln lassen müsse; denn sonst hängen zufällige, nach keinem vorher entworfenen Plane gemachte Beobachtungen gar nicht in einem notwendigen Gesetze zusammen, welches doch die Vernunft sucht und bedarf. Die Vernunft muß mit ihren Prinzipien, nach denen allein übereinkommende Erscheinungen für Gesetze gelten können, in einer Hand, und mit dem Experiment, das sie nach jenen ausdachte, in der anderen, an die Natur gehen, zwar um von ihr belehrt zu werden, aber nicht in der Qualität eines Schülers, der sich alles vorsagen läßt, was der Lehrer will, sondern eines bestallten Richters, der die Zeugen nötigt, auf die Fragen zu antworten, die er ihnen vorlegt. Und so hat sogar Physik die so vorteilhafte Revolution ihrer Denkart lediglich dem Einfalle zu verdanken, demjenigen, was die Vernunft selbst in die Natur hineinlegt, gemäß, dasjenige in ihr zu suchen (nicht ihr anzudichten), was sie von dieser lernen muß, und wovon sie für sich selbst nichts wissen würde. Hierdurch ist die Naturwissenschaft allererst in den sicheren Gang einer Wissenschaft gebracht worden, da sie so viel Jahrhunderte durch nichts weiter als ein bloßes Herumtappen gewesen war.]
(Preface to second edition of 1787)",,22134,"","""Reason must approach nature with the view, indeed, of receiving information from it, not, however, in the character of a pupil, who listens to all that his master chooses to tell him, but in that of a judge, who compels the witnesses to reply to those questions which he himself thinks fit to propose.""",Court,2013-08-09 22:21:38 UTC,Preface