Transcending in Speculative Metaphysics

Abstract

In the previous two sections we delineated world and self as the extrinsic and intrinsic modalities of transcending-thinking. In each of these moments we noted the decisive role of “disjunction” and “recoil” whereby the subject is driven to a more comprehensive mode of philosophical integration. These processes have both a positive and a negative aspect. They are positive insofar as the transcending-subject is driven to question the coherence of mere outwardness or mere inwardness as autonomous regions of experience capable of answering the question of Being. But they are also potentially negative if, in either region, the transcending subject grows weary of the task of integration, resigning himself to apathia in the face of an insurmountable dualism, or if one absolutizes either object or subject as the key to Being. In the former case, the subject becomes oblivious to the call of Being, and in the latter case reaps the consequences of reductionism where, as in the case of the logical positivist, metaphysical and religious questions are consigned to mere value and relativity, or, in the case of the subjectivist, when everything becomes a matter of the intensity of emotion and “feeling” and questions of structure and logic are not even entertained. In either case, the dialectical nature of reality is lost, and freedom (which provides the basis for transcending) is nullified.