Reading Notes: January 6th, 2022

“I should not like to say it in public, but I am convinced that Stirling never understood Hegel.” (Bosanquet, A Letter to Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison, dated Jan. 4, 1886) 

“If consciousness is an empty transparency that makes no difference to its objects, its objects, presumably, must make a difference to it. But it is hard to see how anything can make a difference to an empty transparency. Either objects are the content of consciousness or they are not. If they are, they cannot be said to be either outside or independent of consciousness. If they are not, consciousness remains an empty, meaningless transparency.” (Sinclair, The New Idealism, 42) 

“If the external object exists, it is either an aggregate of simple atoms or a complex body with an existence over and above that of the constituent atoms. It cannot be an aggregate of simple atoms, since their existence cannot be proved either by perception or by inference. We never perceive atoms. We perceive only gross objects like jars, posts, and the like….The existence of atoms cannot be established by inference. Inference depends upon an observation of invariable concomitance of the middle term and the major term. Atoms are to be inferred: they constitute the major term. They are imperceptible. So their invariable concomitance with the middle term or the ground of inference can never be perceived. Thus the existence of atoms can neither be perceived nor inferred….The external object cannot be a complex body which has an existence over and above that of the constituent atoms. If a single atom cannot be established, a complex body which is made up of many atoms cannot be established. Without atoms the gross body, which is a mere aggregate of atoms, is a mere name.” (Sinha, Indian Realism, 62-63) 

“A cognition and its object are two distinct realities. They are distinct from each other because they possess opposite qualities. Firstly, cognition is internal while its object is external. Secondly, cognition is posterior to its object while the object is prior to its cognition. The object exists before its cognition is produced by it. It is independent of its cognition. Its existence is not affected by its cognition….Hence an object can never be regarded as identical with its cognition.” (Sinha, Indian Realism, 63) 

“The relation of cognition to its object cannot be reduced to identity or co-essentiality. Identity is denial of relation. The cognitive relation is a unique relation which makes the cognitive act apprehend the object…Kumārila is a realist. He emphatically denies identity of the cognitive act with the cognized object like any modern realist. Laird also emphatically denies identity of the knower and the known….“According to the realists, the process of knowledge always implies that the mind is confronted with an object, and always implies that we are never under any conceivable circumstances identical with that object. Even when we apprehend our own experiences, the process of apprehension cannot be identical with the experience which is apprehended.” Thus knowledge presupposes the distinction between knower and known, knowledge and known. Identity between them makes knowledge impossible.” (Sinha, Indian Realism, 137-138) 

“Professor G. Watts Cunningham has described...the [Idealistic] argument a contingentia mundi…[as] the advance from…the essential relativity of all forms of experience (whether intellectual, aesthetic, or volitional), to the idea of an absolute reality, revealing itself with varying degrees of completeness in these, but transcending even the highest of them in the fullness and harmony of its contents.” (Muirhead, Bernard Bosanquet and His Friends, 26) 

“[Bosanquet] saw in [the argument a contingentia mundi] a restatement in modern and brilliant language at once of the Platonic doctrine expounded in the Republic and the Symposium of the different degrees of truth and reality that belong to our experience at its different levels and of the criterion which Plato himself had clearly enunciated of their relative values, namely, the degree to which they are “filled with reality”.” (Muirhead, Bernard Bosanquet and His Friends, 26-27) 

“Thought, in so far as it is itself life (that is to say, the life which is thought, and therefore life of life), and in so far as it is reality (that is to say, the reality which is thought, and therefore reality of reality) has in itself opposition; and for this reason it is also affirmation and negation; it does not affirm save by denying, and does not deny save by affirming. But it does not affirm and deny save by distinguishing, because thought is distinction, and we cannot distinguish…save by unifying.” (Croce, Logica, 99)