In the Humanistic immanence-philosophy, in its rationalistic as well as in its irrationalistic trends, this concept of the modal subject in its relation to the modal laws has been entirely lost and must necessarily be lost — to the incalculable injury of the philosophic analysis of reality.
The subject becomes sovereign — either in the metaphysical sense of "substance" (noumenon), or in a transcendental logical or phenomenological sense.
In KANT'S "theoretical" philosophy, for example, the subject is only subject in an epistemological sense, and as such ἀρχή of the form of the theoretical laws of nature; the "transcendental subject" is itself the law-giver of nature in a transcendental-logical sense.
The pre-psychical aspects [numerical, spatial, kinematic, physical, biotic] of reality were, after the destruction of the traditional metaphysics of nature, dissolved into a synthesis of logical and sensory functions of consciousness; their modal structural-laws were replaced by a-priori transcendental forms of theoretical understanding and of subjective sensibility in an apriori synthesis.
That numbers, spatial figures, energy-effects and biotic functions are really modal subjects, subjected to the laws of their own modal spheres, is a conception far removed from modern immanence-philosophy.
In KANT'S so-called "practical" philosophy, the subject in the metaphysical sense of homo noumenon (pure will) becomes the autonomous law-giver for moral life. In accordance with the dualistic conception of his transcendental ground-Idea he does not accept a radical unity of the order of creation above the polar opposition between laws of nature and norms.
Two features typify the theoretical concept of the subject in immanence-philosophy, since it gave up the earlier metaphysics of nature.
1 - It is conceived only in the special sense of the epistemological and ethical functions of consciousness. The empirical things and events are taken into consideration only as objects of sensory perception and of theoretical or practical thought. This was the necessary consequence of the resolution of so-called "empirical" reality into the logical and psychical aspects of consciousness abstracted by theoretical thought from the cosmic temporal coherence of meaning. This resolution was attended by the elimination of the cosmic order of time, and by the proclamation of the so-called critical „Satz des Bewustseins", to be discussed later on, according to which the possibility of our knowledge is limited to our subjective and objective contents of consciousness, received merely by sensory perception and formed by logical apperception.
2 - In this view, the subject lacks its original meaning of "sujet", being subjected to a law which does not originate from this subject itself. In the last analysis, in its function as a "transcendental subject" or "ideal subject" respectively, it has received the crown of autonomous, self-sufficient law-giver in accordance with the Humanistic ideals of science and of personality (to be discussed later).
In the classical rationalist conception, the empirical subject is reduced to a complex of causal relations by which it should be completely determined.
The "laws" are identified here with the "objective". Consequently the empirical subject is conceived of as an "object", which in its turn is identified with "Gegenstand" of the ultimate "transcendental subject of thought".
Modern so-called "realistic" positivism understands the concept of the lex (in relation to norms as well as to the so-called laws of nature) in the sense of a scientific judgment of probability. Here, too, this concept is completely dissociated from the modal structures of the different spheres of laws and from the typical structures of individuality, which are founded in the cosmic time-order.
This positivism conceives of laws as "autonomous" products of scientific thought, which tries to order by way of a "logical economy" the "facts", understood as merely sensory data.
Quite different from the rationalist concepts of the laws and their subjects are those of the irrationalist trends of Humanistic thought.
Rationalism as absolutizing of the general rule, irrationalism as absolutizing of individual subjectivity.
We have seen in an earlier context, that the rationalist types of immanence-philosophy tend to dissolve the individual subjectivity into a universally valid order of laws, the origin of which is sought in sovereign reason.
The irrationalist Humanistic types did not tamper with the conception of the "laws" as a product of thought or reason, but fell into the opposite extreme of seeing in this "theoretical order" merely a pragmatical falsification of true reality. The latter in its creative subjective individuality, is not bound to universally valid laws and mocks at all "concepts of thought". Thus the absolutizing of the laws in the rationalist types is replaced by the absolutizing of the subjective individuality in the irrationalist types of the Humanistic immanence-philosophy. This irrationalism is ruled by an irrationalist turn of the freedom-motive.
(Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol I, pp 108-111)
(Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol I, pp 108-111)
