Peantadh Clasaigeach [guó huà 国画] Sìonach
"Fèin-bhreugnachadh sgeipteachais" lùghdaichte do a fhìor mheud.
The "self-refutation of scepticism" reduced to its true proportion.
So the self-refutation of scepticism, in which RICKERT and LITT alike focus the force of their argument, can actually have nothing to do with a pretended self-guarantee of merely theoretical truth.
Let us try to reduce it to its true proportions. Then the state of affairs appears to be that logical thought in its subjectivity is
necessarily subjected to the logical laws, in casu — the "principium contradictionis" (principle of contradiction).
If anybody is to think theoretically, he ought to begin by recognizing the validity of this principle, which is in no sense absolute and "unconditioned", but rather of a cosmic-temporal character. Does this mean, that other creatures, or God Himself, could set aside the principle of non-contradiction in their thought? If this question is to have a meaning, one must proceed from the supposition that God Himself, or e.g. the angels, also would have to think in a cosmic temporal fashion. For, as a matter of fact, human thought is able to proceed in setting aside the principle of non-contradiction; e.g. the whole "dialectic logic" does so. But whoever would suppose this "thought" in the case of God and the angels, supposes at the same time, that they are included in the cosmic temporal order and that they are subjected to the laws that rule therein, although they can transgress them in so far as they have a norm-character. Quod absurdum! and with respect to the sovereign God: Quod blasphenium!
From the time of Greek Sophism, sceptical relativism has been characterized by its primary denial that thought is subjected to a norm of truth. It is an irrationalism in the epistemological field.
Actually this denial must necessarily lead to antinomy, so far as the judgment: "There is no truth" must itself be tested by the norm of verity. Does, however, this judgment in its claim to truth, imply the validity of an absolute, self-sufficient theoretical verity? In no way! He who says: "There is no truth", intends this statement in the first place against the validity of a norm of verity in the temporal coherence of meaning. Furthermore, he directs it in the most absolute sense also against the supratemporal totality and Origin of truth. Thereby, he necessarily entangles himself in the antinomy, that his very judgment makes claim to a verity, which must be the full one.
LITT's proclamation of the self-sufficiency of theoretical truth, however, must lead to the same sceptical relativism and consequently to the same antinomy. Consistently thought out, it can recognize no norm which dominates the absolutized "transcendental-logical subject", since it declares the subjective 'cogito' to be sovereign and proclaims it to be the ἀρχή of all meaning and order.
How could subjective theoretical thought still be viewed as self-sufficient, if it were acknowledged, that it is subject to a law, which it has not itself imposed?
In LITT's line of thought, the "transcendental cogito" does not belong to the full temporal reality in its indissoluble correlation of cosmonomic side and subject-side. Reality in the "Gegebenheitskorrelation" [i.e. the datum-correlation] is seen only in the absolutized individuality, which is ascribed to the "concrete ego" itself. It is as little subjected to laws, as the "transcendental ego", but is understood as the absolute irrational which can be objectivized only in the "Erkenntniskorrelation" (correlation of knowledge) and conceived by the "transcendental-logical ego" in universally valid thought forms.
Nowhere in LITT's philosophy does the cosmic law really have a place in its original inseparable correlation to the individual subjectivity that is subjected to it. The "pure thinking subject" with its reflective and objectivizing thought-forms is itself the "universally valid" and the origin of all universal validity.
The "theoretical universal validity" originating from the "autonomous" selfhood (which identifies itself with its transcendental-logical
function in the will to "pure thought") is the substitute for the cosmic order and its different modal law-spheres to which all individual subjectivity is subjected according to God's law of creation.
However, here arises a dialectical tension, a veritable antinomic relation between universal validity and individuality; between absolutized theoretical thought with its would-be self-sufficient absolute truth and individual subjectivity in the 'datum correlation' ("Gegebenheitskorrelation") ; between "thinking ego" and "living (experiencing) ego"; between philosophy as a universally valid theory, and a life- and world-view as an entirely individual impression of life on the part of the sovereign personality, not subjected to any norm of truth!
In its dialectical thought philosophy has, according to LITT, eventually to establish this lawlessness of individuality. In the irrationality of life, it has to recognize its dialectical other which possesses no universal validity. It has to establish in a "universally
valid manner" the individual law-lessness of personality in its life- and world-view, in order eventually to understand its dialectical unity-in-the-opposition with that life- and worldview! For actually, dialectical "purely theoretical thought" and a "life- and world-view" as a norm-less "individual impression of life" are, in the light of LITT's transcendental ground-Idea, two dialectical emanations from the same ego, which lives in a relativistically undermined Humanistic ideal of personality.
The absolutizing of the "transcendental cogito" to a self-sufficient, "unconditioned", "sovereign" instance implies, that "pure thought" is not subjected to a cosmic order, in which the laws of logical thought too, are grounded. Since theoretical reason also tries to create the coherence of meaning between its logical aspect and the other modal aspects of our cosmos, the result is a dialectical mode of thought, which relativizes in an expressly logical way the basic laws of logic as norms and limits of our subjective logical function.
How can such "dialectical thought" subject itself to a veritable norm of truth that stands above it? The absolutizing of theoretical truth, which amounts to the dissolution of its meaning, is the work of the apostate selfhood, that will not subject itself to the laws established by the Ἀρχή of every creature, and therefore ascribes to its dialectical thought a sovereignty surmounting all boundaries of laws. To LITT, the criterion of all relativism resides in the denial of the self-sufficiency of "purely theoretical" truth. By this time, we have seen how the proclamation of this self-sufficiency is in truth nothing but the primary absolutizing of theoretical thought itself, which is the fountain of all relativism, since it denies the fulness of meaning of verity and up-roots theoretical thought.
The "self-refutation of scepticism" is at the same time the self-refutation of the neutrality-postulate and of the conception of theoretical thought as self-sufficient !
But that self-refutation may not be overestimated in its proportion. For, in the last analysis, it proves no more than that whoever will think theoretically has to subject himself to a theoretical norm of truth which cannot have originated from that thought itself ; for this norm has meaning only in the coherence of meaning and in relation to the totality of truth, to the fulness of verity, which, exactly as fulness, must transcend theoretical thought itself, and thus can never be "purely theoretical".
That self-refutation which manifests itself in the contradiction, in which logical thought turning against its own laws necessarily entangles itself, cannot of itself lead us to the positive knowledge of verity.
It is merely a logical criterion of truth, which is not selfsufficient.
For in the conception of the full material meaning of truth, philosophy exhibits its complete dependence upon its transcendental basic Idea as the ultimate theoretical expression of its religious ground-motive.
Theodor Litt (1880-1962)
The test of the transcendental ground-Idea.
In applying the test of the transcendental ground-idea to LITT's philosophical system, we come to the surprising result, that there is still less question of an authentic rationalistic bent with him than with RICKERT. In his dialectical thought, LITT rather inclines to the pole of the irrationalist philosophy of life, which he has simply brought under dialectical thought-forms. The absolutizing of dialectical thought that is considered to be elevated above a "borniertes gegenständliches Denken" (a narrowly restricted kind of objective thought holding itself to the principle of noncontradiction) points, in the light of LITT's conception of individuality, to the opposite of a rationalistic hypostatization of universal laws. In this respect LITT actually exhibits a strong kinship with HEGEL, whose so-called "pan-logism" is as little to be understood rationalistically, but discloses its true intentions only against the background of the irrationalist turn of the Humanistic ideal of personality in Romanticism! In general, dialectic thought has an anti-rationalist tendency.
LITT's dialectical philosophy, measured by its own criterion, is an "irrationalist life- and world-view" in the would-be universally-valid forms of dialectical thought, an irrationalistic logicism, oriented historically.
But we, who apply another criterion, can recognize no dialectical unity of philosophy and a life- world-view, but rather find the deeper unity of the two in their religious ground-motive. The content of LITT's transcendental ground-Idea is determined by an irrationalist turn of the Humanistic freedom-motive in its dialectical tension with the motive of scientific domination of nature, which has undergone a fundamental depreciation in his philosophy.
(Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol I, pp 144-148)
