when they dare to show themselves nakedly, that is, untransformed and in a way unfalsified by language, in our everyday world and in everyday communication.
It is perhaps for the same reason that he equates what we have here called meaning with Purpose and even Intention (
Zweck
and
Absicht
): The "highest formal unity, which rests solely on concepts of reason, is the
purposive
unity of things. The
speculative
interest of reason makes it necessary to regard all order in the world as if it had originated in the [intention] of a supreme reason." 92 Now, it turns out, reason pursues specific purposes, has specific intentions in resorting to its ideas; it is the need of human reason and its interest in God, Freedom, and Immortality that make men think, even though only a few pages later he will admit that "the mere speculative interest of reason" with respect to the three main objects of thoughtâ"the freedom of the will, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God"â"is very small; and for its sake alone we should hardly have undertaken the labor of transcendental investigations ... since whatever discoveries might be made in regard to these matters, we should not be able to make use of them in any helpful manner
in concreto.
" 93 But we do not have to go hunting for small contradictions in the work of this very great thinker. Right in the midst of the passages quoted above occurs the sentence that stands in the greatest possible contrast to his own equation of reason with Purpose: "Pure reason is in fact occupied with nothing but itself. It can have no other vocation." 94
II. Mental Activities in a World of Appearances
9. Invisibility and withdrawal
Thinking, willing, and judging are the three basic mental activities; they cannot be derived from each other and though they have certain common characteristics they cannot be reduced to a common denominator. To the question What makes us think? there is ultimately no answer other than what Kant called "reason's need," the inner impulse of that faculty to actualize itself in speculation. And something very similar is true for the will, which neither reason nor desire can move. "Nothing other than the Will is the total cause of volition"
("nihil aliud a voluntate est causa totalis volitionis in voluntate"),
in the striking formula of Duns Scotus, or "
voluntas vult se velle
" ("the will wills itself to will"), as even Thomas, the least voluntaristic of those who thought about this faculty, had to admit. 1 Judgment, finally, the mysterious endowment of the mind by which the general, always a mental construction, and the particular, always given to sense experience, are brought together, is a "peculiar faculty" and in no way inherent in the intellect, not even in the case of "determinant judgments"âwhere particulars are subsumed under general rules in the form of a syllogismâbecause no rule is available for the
applications
of the rule. To know how to apply the general to the particular is an additional "natural gift," the want of which, according to Kant, is "ordinarily called stupidity, and for such a failing there is no remedy." 2 The autonomous nature of judgment is even more obvious in the case of "reflective judgment," which does not descend from the general to the particular but ascends "from the particular ... to the universal" by deciding, without any over-all rules, This is beautiful, this is ugly, this is right, this is wrong; and here for a guiding principle, judging "can only give [it] as a law from and to itself." 3
I called these mental activities basic because they are autonomous; each of them obeys the laws inherent in the activity itself, although all of them depend on a certain stillness of the soul's passions, on that "dispassionate quiet"
("leidenschaftslose Stille")
which Hegel ascribed to "merely thinking cognition." 4 Since it is always the same person whose mind thinks, wills, and judges, the autonomous nature of these activities
It is perhaps for the same reason that he equates what we have here called meaning with Purpose and even Intention (
Zweck
and
Absicht
): The "highest formal unity, which rests solely on concepts of reason, is the
purposive
unity of things. The
speculative
interest of reason makes it necessary to regard all order in the world as if it had originated in the [intention] of a supreme reason." 92 Now, it turns out, reason pursues specific purposes, has specific intentions in resorting to its ideas; it is the need of human reason and its interest in God, Freedom, and Immortality that make men think, even though only a few pages later he will admit that "the mere speculative interest of reason" with respect to the three main objects of thoughtâ"the freedom of the will, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God"â"is very small; and for its sake alone we should hardly have undertaken the labor of transcendental investigations ... since whatever discoveries might be made in regard to these matters, we should not be able to make use of them in any helpful manner
in concreto.
" 93 But we do not have to go hunting for small contradictions in the work of this very great thinker. Right in the midst of the passages quoted above occurs the sentence that stands in the greatest possible contrast to his own equation of reason with Purpose: "Pure reason is in fact occupied with nothing but itself. It can have no other vocation." 94
II. Mental Activities in a World of Appearances
9. Invisibility and withdrawal
Thinking, willing, and judging are the three basic mental activities; they cannot be derived from each other and though they have certain common characteristics they cannot be reduced to a common denominator. To the question What makes us think? there is ultimately no answer other than what Kant called "reason's need," the inner impulse of that faculty to actualize itself in speculation. And something very similar is true for the will, which neither reason nor desire can move. "Nothing other than the Will is the total cause of volition"
("nihil aliud a voluntate est causa totalis volitionis in voluntate"),
in the striking formula of Duns Scotus, or "
voluntas vult se velle
" ("the will wills itself to will"), as even Thomas, the least voluntaristic of those who thought about this faculty, had to admit. 1 Judgment, finally, the mysterious endowment of the mind by which the general, always a mental construction, and the particular, always given to sense experience, are brought together, is a "peculiar faculty" and in no way inherent in the intellect, not even in the case of "determinant judgments"âwhere particulars are subsumed under general rules in the form of a syllogismâbecause no rule is available for the
applications
of the rule. To know how to apply the general to the particular is an additional "natural gift," the want of which, according to Kant, is "ordinarily called stupidity, and for such a failing there is no remedy." 2 The autonomous nature of judgment is even more obvious in the case of "reflective judgment," which does not descend from the general to the particular but ascends "from the particular ... to the universal" by deciding, without any over-all rules, This is beautiful, this is ugly, this is right, this is wrong; and here for a guiding principle, judging "can only give [it] as a law from and to itself." 3
I called these mental activities basic because they are autonomous; each of them obeys the laws inherent in the activity itself, although all of them depend on a certain stillness of the soul's passions, on that "dispassionate quiet"
("leidenschaftslose Stille")
which Hegel ascribed to "merely thinking cognition." 4 Since it is always the same person whose mind thinks, wills, and judges, the autonomous nature of these activities
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