Notes on <On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason> - Chapter 7
Chapter 7. On the Fourth Class of Objects for the Subject, and that form of the Principle of Sufficient Reason which predominates in it
§ 40. General Explanation.
The last Class of Objects for our representative faculty comprises but one object for each individual: that is, the immediate object of the inner sense, the Subject in volition, which is Object for the Knowing Subject; wherefore it manifests itself in Time alone, never in Space, and as we shall see, even in Time under an important restriction.
§ 41. Subject of Knowledge and Object.
All knowledge presupposes Subject and Object. Even self-consciousness (Selbstbewusstsein) therefore is not absolutely simple, but, like our consciousness of all other things (i.e., the faculty of perception), it is subdivided into that which is known and that which knows. Now, that which is known manifests itself absolutely and exclusively as Will.
The Subject accordingly knows itself exclusively as willing, but not as knowing. There can therefore be no knowledge of knowing, because this would imply separation of the Subject from knowing, while it nevertheless knew that knowing—which is impossible.
It may still be asked how the various cognitive faculties belonging to the Subject, such as Sensibility, Understanding, Reason, are known to us, if we do not know the Subject. It is not through our knowing having become an Object for us that these faculties are known to us, for then there would not be so many conflicting judgments concerning them; they are inferred rather, or more correctly, they are general expressions for the established classes of representations which, at all times, have been more or less clearly distinguished in those cognitive faculties.
Just as the Object is at once posited with the Subject (for the word itself would otherwise have no meaning), and conversely, as the Subject is at once posited with the Object—so that being the Subject means exactly as much as having an Object, and being an Object means the same thing as being known by the Subject—so likewise, when an Object is assumed as being determined in any particular way, do we also assume that the Subject knows precisely in that particular way.
§ 42. The Subject of Volition.
According to what has preceded, the Subject of knowledge can never be known; it can never become Object or representation. Nevertheless, as we have not only an outer self-knowledge (in sensuous perception), but an inner one also; and as, on the other hand, every knowledge, by its very nature, presupposes a knower and a known, what is known within us as such, is not the knower, but the willer, the Subject of Volition: the Will. The Subject of volition would be an Object for us. Introspection always shows us to ourselves as willing. However, the identity of the willing with the knowing Subject, in virtue of which the word “I” includes and designates both is inexplicable. The actual identity of the knower with what is known as willing—that is, of Subject and Object—is immediately given.
Just as the Understanding is the subjective correlate to our First Class of representations, the Reason to the Second, and pure Sensibility to the Third, so do we find that the correlate to this Fourth Class is the inner sense, or Self-consciousness in general.
§ 43. Willing. The Law of Motives (Motivation).
It is just because the willing Subject is immediately given in self-consciousness, that we are unable further to define or to describe what willing is.
The effect produced by the motive, unlike that produced by all other causes, is not only known by us from outside, in a merely indirect way, but at the same time from inside, quite directly, and therefore according to its whole mode of action. Here causality presents itself in quite a different way, in quite a different medium, and for quite another kind of knowledge; therefore it must now be exhibited as a special and peculiar form of our principle, which consequently here presents itself as the Principle of the Sufficient Reason of Acting, or, more briefly, as the Law of Motives (Law of Motivation).
As a clue to my philosophy in general, I here add, that this Fourth Class of Objects for the Subject, that is, the one object contained in it, the will which we apprehend within us, stands in the same relation towards the First Class as the law of motives towards the law of causality, as I have established it in § 20. This truth is the corner-stone of my whole Metaphysic.
§ 44. Influence of the Will over the Intellect.
It is not upon causality proper, but upon the identity of the knowing with the willing Subject, as shown in § 42, that the influence is based, which the will exercises over the intellect, when it obliges it to repeat representations that have once been present to it, and in general to turn its attention in this or that direction and evoke at pleasure any particular series of thoughts. And even in this, the will is determined by the law of motives.
§ 45. Memory.
That peculiar faculty of the knowing Subject which enables it to obey the will the more readily in repeating representations, its capacity for being exercised is what we call Memory. As far as possible we ought to try and reduce all that we wish to incorporate in our memory to a perceptible image, either directly, or as an example because intuitive perceptions take a far firmer hold than any abstract thoughts, let alone mere words. This is why we remember things we have ourselves experienced so much better than those of which we read.