Leabhar Cheanannais: litir mhaisichte
Breith thàbhachdach uile-choitcheann sam bith an eisimeil air tàbhachd os-shuibseigeach laghan structarail an fhiosrachaidh dhaonna.
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The possibility of universally valid judgments depends on the universal supra-subjective validity of the structural laws of human experience.
The possibility of universally valid judgments rests only and exclusively on the universal validity (raised above all individual subjectivity) of the structural laws of human experience.
"Universal validity" is a normative qualification, which supposes, that the judging subject is subjected to laws which can never take their origin from a so-called transcendental-logical subject, and with which the judging subject can come into conflict. As such it is connected very closely with the structure of truth.
Consequently, we can investigate the problem of universal validity in an all-sided manner only in the more particular treatment of the problem of knowledge. In the present connection we must still be content with introductory observations.
In the first place, then, we observe, that universal validity cannot he limited to the judgments of theoretical thought, for the very reason that the laws of theoretical thought do not hold "an sich", but only in the cosmic coherence of meaning and in dependence on the religious root-unity of the divine law.
Universal validity is ascribed to every judgment to which each judging subject ought to assent, so not to a judgment that has meaning only for the individual subject who judges. The judgments, "I do not believe in God" and "I do not think the Night Watch of REMBRANDT beautiful", can never have universal validity, because they express only a subjective opinion, which is restricted in the subjective function of the judgment to the individual ego.
On the other hand, it is indifferent for the universal validity of a judgment, whether it makes an assertion about a concrete individual state of affairs beyond the subjective function of the judgment, or indeed about abstract theoretical states of affairs.
The judgment of naïve experience, "This rose which stands on my table is red", if it is to be taken seriously, at once lays claim to concrete truth and universal validity for every human subject of judgment perceiving at this moment, since it is not restricted in the subjective function of the judgment to the individual ego, but has an objective sense.
Its universal validity depends, however, on the structural laws of pre-theoretical experience, in which thought lacks the intentional "gegenstand-relation".
Undoubtedly, there are structural differences in the universal validity of judgments. In the first place, between theoretical and pre-theoretical ones.
The universal validity of a correct judgment of perception.
The validity of a judgment of perception, as formulated above, does not depend on the concrete hic et nunc (here and now) of the subjective-sensory aspect of perception.
If this were the case, then indeed, as KANT taught, the judgment of perception would be of merely subjective validity, and could not lay claim to universal validity. As we observed previously, however, the structural laws of naïve experience (at the same time structural laws of temporal reality itself, as will appear to us in the discussion of the problem of knowledge) are the laws that guarantee the universal validity of a correct judgment of perception.
These structural laws also regulate the subject-object relations in naïve experience, which we have to investigate more amply in a later context. They guarantee the plastic structure of the experience of things, also with respect to its subjective-objective sensory and logical aspects, and only make the universal validity of a concrete judgment of perception possible.
That KANT can ascribe only subjective validity to these judgments, finds its ground in his construction — which falsifies the entire structure of naïve experience — of the datum of experience as a chaotic sensory material, which must first be formed by a transcendental consciousness to an objective coherent reality, ordered in a universally valid manner. It is further grounded on the old — indeed metaphysical — prejudice that the so-called secondary qualities of things (i.e. the sensory qualities which cannot be measured and weighed) are merely subjective in character and do not belong to the "objective" reality of things. [Cf. Prolegomena (Ed. cit.) §19 Note, where KANT observes with reference to the examples of judgments of perception given by him: "I gladly confess, that these examples do not represent such judgments of perception as could ever become judgments of experience, even if a concept of the understanding were to be added, since they are related merely to feeling, which everyone recognizes to be merely subjective and which consequently can never be attributed to the object, and so can never become objective." ("Ich gestehe gern, dass diese Beispiele nicht solche Wahrnehmungsurteile vorstellen, die jemals Erfahrungsurteile werden könnten, wenn man auch einen Verstandesbegriff hinzu täte,
weil sie sich bloss auf Gefühl, welches jedermann als bloss subjektiv erkennt und welches also niemals dem Objekt beigelegt werden darf, beziehen und also auch niemals objektiv werden können.") This subjectivistic view of the so-called secondary qualities we cannot refute until in the 2d Book we deal more closely with the subject-object relation.] Above all it is rooted in the circumstance that, from his criticistic standpoint, KANT has totally wiped out the structural differences between theoretical knowledge and naïve experience.
In the nature of the case, we cannot elaborate all these points in detail until later.
The criterion of universal validity of a judgment concerning supra-theoretical states of affairs and the unconditional validity of the religious law of concentration of human experience.
There is, in the second place, a fundamental difference between a judgment concerning a supra-theoretical religious state of affairs as: "God is the Creator of the world" or "All laws are grounded in absolute Reason", on the one hand, and the judgments which make an assertion about cosmic or cosmological states of affairs within the temporal boundary of the universe, on the other hand.
The universal validity to which the first judgments lay claim, depends on their agreement or disagreement with the central religious unity of the divine law, as it is revealed in the Word of God, and to which the judging self-hood in the heart of its existence is subjected, as to the religious concentration-law of its temporal existence.
All universal-validity to which a judgment lays claim depends, in the final instance, upon the universal, unconditional validity of this religious law of concentration. No single modal law, not even the cosmic order of time itself (which maintains the coherence of meaning between the modal law-spheres) is self-sufficient to guarantee the universal validity of any human judgment, since the universal validity of these laws has meaning-character and the law is nothing apart from the bond with its Origin. It must consequently be clear, in the light of the Christian cosmonomic Idea, that the universal validity of a religious judgment of the Christian life- and world-view cannot be dependent upon the greater or smaller circle that assents to it; nor can it be derogated from by the circumstance that through apostasy, human thought is withdrawn subjectively from the fulness of meaning of truth and that man is incapable by himself of directing his thought again toward the absolute verity.
(Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol I, pp 160-163)
