The Ordering And Differentiating Of Particulars

Conversation In Thin Air Continues
July, ’80

“And, what principles did Cassirer take to be a priori anyway,” I said. “Obviously Kant’s space and time had to go, but causality and relation, I suppose, they could stay. Right?”

Woe, too many questions too fast,” responded Noel. “We need to back up a little here. First, no individual can claim to grasp absolute ‘reality.’”

“That’s what you say,” Tony replied, “Don’t tell that to my Harvard buddies.”

“Give it a break Tony,” Noel shot back, “and listen up.”

“Testy, testy, fellows,” Stan, the English Professor, interrupted, “after all this is not a stuffy conference. Mountain air is moving through our lungs, so lets try to keep it civil, shall we.”

“As I was saying,” Noel continued, “nobody has a claim on absolute reality, so we make do with approximations, and those approximations result from symbolic representation. And further, the pre-conditions for those representations are what make Cassirer a neo-Kantian philosopher. Expressed in the mind’s capacity for representation is the ordering and differentiating of particulars, the opposing of being to non-being. That was the source of expression early on in cave paintings and idol worship, and that is still the source of expression in today’s artwork. In fact, that is the source of expression in all symbolic forms, in literature, in science--the abstract and identifiable nature of that capacity drives the transmission of culture. At the cutting edge of symbolic representation is found the activity of ‘interrogation and reply,’ as well as the interplay of the understanding with our creative imagination, and the rules we use to extend and restrict that imagination. But here I am getting ahead of myself.”