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Publication Details

The Problem of the Existence Continuum as a Real Identity

(Original title: Problém existenčného kontinua ako reálnej identity)
Philosophica Slovaca, 1 (1946), 1, 104-137.
Type of work: Articles
Publication language: Slovak
Abstract
According to general recognition 'the development of philosophical scientific thinking is characterized already from the ancient Greek epoch by the influences of the antinomical conception of subject and object. The central point of antinomies was the abstract conception of identity, which included identity of object in time and space. This proiblem is the fundamental problem of philosophy, by which we understandas a theory-the scientific conceptions of general meaning for all the praxis of humanity and the doctrines of general meaning for theoretical system of kowledge. According to the general answer to that, the european philosophy ramified into four types: the classical idealism of Parmenides, the classical materialism of Demokrites, the dualism of Aristotle and the dialectial system of Heraclit. From the standpoint of development there are two turning-points: Descartes’ noetical standpoint and Hegel’s dialectical synthesis. But if there is no adequate principle of objective identity in the reflexive thinking, the abstract identity is necessary made active with all the antinomical consequences. The essential question is the principle of generalization, which is the centre of the development of history, philosophy and science at all. We do not look after a principle, which could of it’s own accord definitively pronounce something about the contains of reality, but after a principle, which is able to stipulate a creation of judgements adequate to the object. Positivism-paradoxically to it’s humanitary aims-prevented the approach to the very humanitary merits of the question, to the consciousness of thinking, in whose positive reality it is only possible to find the principle of generalization, which is different from abstract identity. Positivism applied only to the partial, sensual conception, with all the dangers, that are in it’s consequences. It is necessary to resolve 'the problem on the base of reflexion, of the clear consciousness of thinking. There is no need to generalize the primary intuition to the whole of knowledge. From the standpoint of critical certainty, that would be a superfluous theory, stipulated by tautologized concepts of the wholeness, which neglects the relative discontinuity and the qualtitative degrees including all the necessary paradoxes. That standpoint makes a conception of legality unable. The conceptions of legality founded on abstract certainty do not satisfie even in the sphere of physics. The tendency to conserve the conception of independent reality leads to the assumption of non-individual reality. It is a serious consequence of degenerated thinking, if the very hase of fictive thinking is not sulbmited to the proper critics. This fault is a type of antinomical prepossesion, which is totally disparate to science. Reflexion is evaded as a prosribed domain, or at least-as it is sincerely confessed-as a too difficult domain. But it is impossible not to deduce the consequences: science is concept, concept is conscience. On the contrary, we assert 'that the concept of 'the non-individual 'reality signifies the destruction of »reason«. The opinion 'that »ex nihilo nihil« indicates impossibility of change and quality is not correct; the truth is even in the contrary. The possibility of solution follows from that, that the general category of object includes the total subject, the consciousness of thinking, the process of knowledge, the concepts — the contains and the existence. On the other hand, the want of reflexion induces a way of thinking, which either generalizes or annihilates, either separates' or adds. The only key to concieve the relations of thinking is given in the reflexion by the identity of the object and the totality of his relations. If it is neglected, it induces confusion between tire formal identity and the real categories, the reality and the data of existencional relations. The error has it’s climax in the incapability to concieve the 'relation of absolute incontinuity between positive existence and nihility as untrue existence of the imagined object. This 'relation we call the reflexive R//N-relation. This 'reflexive R//N-relation necessarily leads to logically correct assertion, -that in the concrete minimum of existence is necessarily more then in the abstract minimum, which is the pure relation of datum and further, that the concrete minimum of existence contains in itself the necessary events in the contradiction to the constant unchageability of the relation concieved as it is; the cause of it is the very validity of R//N-relation. Quantity, events, causality, legality are further neccessary concepts in the category of the reflexive R//N-relation. In the contrary, the explicative principle of abstract identity in aplication o,n any subject (e. g. material line) must fail. But if we concieve that line in the category of R//N-relation, we concieve it as a wholeness of relative discontinuous qualitative moments. The concept of non-individual reality is thus totaly necessary and reasonable. The concept of identity in general agreemenet is deduced on the base of rude praxis and childish thinking without adequate consequenciality. There is no wonder if such abstract and fossil concept unconsciously used fails in exact observation and consequent thinking; but fern the standpoint of strict logics wc need' not be sorry. It’s extinction is not Burnet’s extinction of reason, but the very contradiction of it: the extinction of obsolete narrowmindedness, the final installement of reflexive thinkingthe principle of culture in praxis of men. But R//N-relation is not only a necessity of consequent thinking but an inevitable truth too. It is impossible to define surely the concepts, to limit the objects and to place them in relations in the objective process. The nihility in R//N-relation is nothing else than untrue existence of the thought object. The proof is very simple; it is based on the evidedent existence of a given abject and on necessary existencional relations of any assumed object. Thus the circle of evident truthfulness and the circle of the transcendentality of thinkableness necessarily meet in the circle of evident truth. Of course, the existentional relations are no confuse »conceptual« thinking, but an evidence as if the very things could think. In the case of reflexive concept of nihility we must add that the formal concept can never be false. The concept of reflexive nihility, to which is necessary related all that independently exists, is necessarily general. It’s definitions does not induce the rationalistic error, in the contrary it defeats it in ist’s fictitious dwellings. Which existentiomal moments contains the wholeness, we must preciveve on the base of sufficient intuition; we have here the rule: the better the intuition, the better the inteligence, the better the intelligence, the better the intuition. From the definition of R//N-relation follows, that the absolutization of contradictions in the frame of positive reality is an antinomizing activity. In the last consequences, contradiction is a consequence and no cause of evolution. Evolution through pure negations can not be an end of evolutions. On the contrary ithe relative contradiction is given by an escape from the absolute negation; it contains constantly the relation to the whole as a moment of a synthesis. A consequence of the R//N-relation is also the necessary denail not only ot Parmenides’ «idealism’ but of Democrat's and Epicure’s «materialisme: too-may it be completed by any »clinamen«. False too is the antinomozing dualism, false is the personal conception, in which dialectic comes forward as a substitute for physical mechanics without any other consequences. Critical phenomenon of sensible world cannot be held for fundamental contains of reality without false dogmatism. The indeterministic artbitrareness as a world-principle of creation is trough it exluded. We adnote, that the antinomical concepts are not so simple as to be refuted in general, but only trough complexes of judgements, which must be analysed, differenciated, synthetically verified or refuted. The R//N-.rektion exludes the antinomies from the sphere of biological interpretations and of ethics. Man especially is free from the relative purposeless, because he is not free from teleology. As a living, conscious psychophysical organism, he can not be unable to react purposefuly upon the needs of his whole being, of the PRODUCTION, guided by the living stream-line of humanitarian forming of life.
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