Subject-Object
Table of Contents
A subject is that which knows all things and is known by none.
Thus it is:
- the supporter of the world
- the condition of all phenomena, of all objects which is always pre-supposed throughout experience
For all that exists, exists only for the subject.
Every one is the subject, yet only in so far as he knows, not in so far as he is an object of knowledge.
But his body is object.
Therefore from this point of view, we call it idea.
For the body is:
- an object among objects
- conditioned by the laws of objects, although it is an immediate object.
The subject, on the contrary, is always the knower, never the known.
It therefore is singular.
So the world as idea has 2 fundamental, necessary, and inseparable halves:
- The object
The forms of this are:
- space and time
- multiplicity, through space and time
- The subject
This is in every percipient being.
If this disappeared, the whole world as idea would cease to be.
These halves are therefore inseparable even for thought.
Each of the 2 has meaning and existence only through and for the other.
Each appears with the other and vanishes with it.
They limit each other immediately; where the object begins the subject ends.
The universality of this limitation is shown by the universal forms of all objects, space, time, and causality can be discovered and known from a consideration of the subject, without knowledge of the object
In Kantian language, they lie a priori in our consciousness.
This is one of Kant’s great principal merits.
I maintain that the principle of sufficient reason is the general expression for all these forms of the object of which we are a priori conscious.
Therefore all that we know purely a priori, is merely the content of that principle and what follows from it.
In it all our certain a priori knowledge is expressed.
Every possible object comes under a priori knowledge.
My principle of sufficient reason is in between:
- the determined object
- the determining subject
Its relation appears in other forms corresponding to the classes of objects according to their possibility.
This can be applied to so many things.
By these forms the proper division of the classes is tested.