This is excellent Tim, I'm so glad you are doing this.
It is worth lingering on this to bring out more the object of judgment:
"But I do not merely know myself to be judging (as an instance of a general activity) but I know myself to be judging this, what I so judge. Still more, I judge myself to be correct in so judging. but this self-comprehension of my judgment “things are so” is nothing other than this judgment itself. My judgment is its own self-comprehension and the thought of its own validity."
*In* judging p I know myself to judge just this, p. But in judging, and only *in* judging I also know that what I judge is the measure of the judgment itself - only what I judge determines whether the judgment is correct. But judging I understand myself to judge correctly. I understand therefore, what Wittgenstein and McDowell call "thought going all the way to the thing." Not an aspect or a perspective is what determines the truth of my judgment, but the thing itself, since we have not reflected merely a part of it because of the limitations of our nature. No, judgment goes all the way to the thing. This is *why* it must be self-consicous!
Further the object of judgment is always that which provides in its being for its being thought, for *that* is judgment: an account of judgment shows why what it is is its being thought - it is the concept of itself. Rödl mentions that the name for such an object can be "world" "what is" "the facts" "what is the case" etc. These are names for that which is the concept of itself. It is not that judgment is locked up inside itself, no: being self-conscious, it is immediately unlimited in scope, it is the opening to all things, for unlike an organ of sense, it has no character that limits what it can think, what is internal to it. (This is what the a priori forms of intuition are for Kant: a given character of the subject that forces a perspective even on thought, making it like a sense organ).
Nice! Thank you for this summary. I'm trying to think through this account and how various nineteenth century Idealists would modify it. Fichte, Schlegel, Schelling, Novalis, Holderlin, and Hegel could all sign on to the broad claim that objectivity cannot be found apart from the union with first-person judgement (and conversely that first-person judgement is part and parcel of how objectivity is actually constituted). This is more obvious for Fichte and Hegel, but I think Beiser is right when he characterizes Romantic metaphysics as the search for total union of Spinoza plus Fichte, the subjective and objective. (And Bulgakov says the same thing at the end of Tragedy of Philosophy). For me, the question is always how and by what form is this union taking place as a community within history? Does the realism of conceptual judgement allow for the continued role of artistic production and ritual action in actually acquiring new knowledge or are we subtly narrowing the genres of acceptable uses of reason as human activity. But broadly speaking, Romanticism could be explicated as one answer within a tradition and spectrum of post-Kantian Absolute Idealism(s). A higher view of reason, not a derogation of it.
Well, I have two main thoughts. One is that conceptual judgment includes practical judgment/knowledge since action is also according to concepts. So that would include ritual and art.
But more importantly, an account of judgment is the only way to account for the status of any of these activities as knowledge.
Your suspicion of a narrowing via the focus on conceptual judgment imo assumes that the concept is one mental act among others.
To respond further. Artistic production is or at least contains conceptual judgment (it is practical knowledge). Conceptual self-conscious judgment is as simple as my buttering bread in order to make toast. My knowledge of what I am doing as making toast is self-conscious (there could be other reasons for making similar movements with a knife and butter).
Again, Rödl has articles on how self-consciousness can be dyadic or communal and remain a single self-consciousness which would seem highly relevant here.
It is because judgment is self-consicous that you, performing a ritual or painting a portrait, know it is you that is doing it; it is not as if someone were performing that ritual and only on reflection do you realize, because of some external marks, that that one is you.
Without judgment being what it is, we could only know what we are doing by inferring it from some external data! Now that would be "intellectualistic" or "abstract"! But we would be forced to think this way if what is thought in judgment were not itself!
Well, you also have the fascinating question of selves. My friend Elyn Saks has studied multiple personality disorder and one woman was proposed to many times, once in agreement with each personality!
This is excellent Tim, I'm so glad you are doing this.
It is worth lingering on this to bring out more the object of judgment:
"But I do not merely know myself to be judging (as an instance of a general activity) but I know myself to be judging this, what I so judge. Still more, I judge myself to be correct in so judging. but this self-comprehension of my judgment “things are so” is nothing other than this judgment itself. My judgment is its own self-comprehension and the thought of its own validity."
*In* judging p I know myself to judge just this, p. But in judging, and only *in* judging I also know that what I judge is the measure of the judgment itself - only what I judge determines whether the judgment is correct. But judging I understand myself to judge correctly. I understand therefore, what Wittgenstein and McDowell call "thought going all the way to the thing." Not an aspect or a perspective is what determines the truth of my judgment, but the thing itself, since we have not reflected merely a part of it because of the limitations of our nature. No, judgment goes all the way to the thing. This is *why* it must be self-consicous!
Further the object of judgment is always that which provides in its being for its being thought, for *that* is judgment: an account of judgment shows why what it is is its being thought - it is the concept of itself. Rödl mentions that the name for such an object can be "world" "what is" "the facts" "what is the case" etc. These are names for that which is the concept of itself. It is not that judgment is locked up inside itself, no: being self-conscious, it is immediately unlimited in scope, it is the opening to all things, for unlike an organ of sense, it has no character that limits what it can think, what is internal to it. (This is what the a priori forms of intuition are for Kant: a given character of the subject that forces a perspective even on thought, making it like a sense organ).
I think this is, re: objectivity, indeed a fuller and more adequate elucidation than I gave. Very helpful.
Great book, those opening pages are hard to read though lol
Nice! Thank you for this summary. I'm trying to think through this account and how various nineteenth century Idealists would modify it. Fichte, Schlegel, Schelling, Novalis, Holderlin, and Hegel could all sign on to the broad claim that objectivity cannot be found apart from the union with first-person judgement (and conversely that first-person judgement is part and parcel of how objectivity is actually constituted). This is more obvious for Fichte and Hegel, but I think Beiser is right when he characterizes Romantic metaphysics as the search for total union of Spinoza plus Fichte, the subjective and objective. (And Bulgakov says the same thing at the end of Tragedy of Philosophy). For me, the question is always how and by what form is this union taking place as a community within history? Does the realism of conceptual judgement allow for the continued role of artistic production and ritual action in actually acquiring new knowledge or are we subtly narrowing the genres of acceptable uses of reason as human activity. But broadly speaking, Romanticism could be explicated as one answer within a tradition and spectrum of post-Kantian Absolute Idealism(s). A higher view of reason, not a derogation of it.
Well, I have two main thoughts. One is that conceptual judgment includes practical judgment/knowledge since action is also according to concepts. So that would include ritual and art.
But more importantly, an account of judgment is the only way to account for the status of any of these activities as knowledge.
Your suspicion of a narrowing via the focus on conceptual judgment imo assumes that the concept is one mental act among others.
To respond further. Artistic production is or at least contains conceptual judgment (it is practical knowledge). Conceptual self-conscious judgment is as simple as my buttering bread in order to make toast. My knowledge of what I am doing as making toast is self-conscious (there could be other reasons for making similar movements with a knife and butter).
Again, Rödl has articles on how self-consciousness can be dyadic or communal and remain a single self-consciousness which would seem highly relevant here.
It is because judgment is self-consicous that you, performing a ritual or painting a portrait, know it is you that is doing it; it is not as if someone were performing that ritual and only on reflection do you realize, because of some external marks, that that one is you.
Without judgment being what it is, we could only know what we are doing by inferring it from some external data! Now that would be "intellectualistic" or "abstract"! But we would be forced to think this way if what is thought in judgment were not itself!
Well, you also have the fascinating question of selves. My friend Elyn Saks has studied multiple personality disorder and one woman was proposed to many times, once in agreement with each personality!