The third preliminary problem for every theory of reality is that of the experience of transcendence. We saw in the case of Berkeley that his erroneous principle *percipi est esse*, and his assertion that any being which we think, just for the reason that it is thought, cannot at the same time be regarded as subsisting independently of thinking, incorporate a failure to recognize the consciousness of transcendence peculiar to all intentional acts. This is an instance of the failure to recognize that not only all thinking in the narrower sense, in the sense of grasping an object on the basis of “meanings” and grasping a state of affairs through judgments, but *every* intention in general, whether perception, representation, remembering, the feeling of value, or the posing of ends and goals, points beyond the act and the contents of the act and intends something other than the act [*ein Aktfremdes*], even when what is thought is in turn itself a thought. Indeed, *intentio* signifies a goal-directed movement toward something which one does not have oneself or has only partially and incompletely. Berkeley (following Locke, who was the first to make the basic philosophical error which introduced “psychologism” into epistemology) arrived at the principle *esse est percipi* by making the idea [*Vorstellung*] (and even the sensation) into a thing, an immaterial substance, and by failing to distinguish between the act, the content of an act, and the object. Furthermore, Berkeley confused the being of objects with the fact of being-an-object, even though the latter has only a loose and variable connection with the former. On the other hand, the transcendence of the intentional object with respect to both the *intentio* and its present content is common to every instance of being-an-object. It is, for instance, proper to objects of pure mathematics which are certainly not real but ideal (for example, the number 3). These are produced from the *a priori* material of intuition in accordance with an operational law governing the steps of our thought or intuition. Transcendence is further proper to all fictitious objects and even to contradictory objects, for instance, a square circle. All these sorts of objects, e.g., the golden mountain or Little Red Riding Hood, satisfy the basic principle of the transcendence of objects over and above that aspect of them which is, at any moment, given in consciousness, just as much as do real objects existing independently of all consciousness and knowledge."―from_ Idealism and Realism_ . Max Scheler
Some Similar Quotes
  1. The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. - Elie Wiesel

  2. Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another? We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We... - Haruki Murakami

  3. The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace. - Mahatma Gandhi

  4. He suddenly recalled from Plato's Symposium: People were hermaphrodites until God split then in two, and now all the halves wander the world over seeking one another. Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost. - Milan Kundera

  5. It does not matter how long you are spending on the earth, how much money you have gathered or how much attention you have received. It is the amount of positive vibration you have radiated in life that matters, - Amit Ray

More Quotes By Max Scheler
  1. Man is encased, as though in a shell, in the particular ranking of the simplest values and value-qualities which represent the objective side of his *ordo amoris*, values which have not yet been shaped into things and goods. He carries this shell along with him...

  2. Certainly, what Kant calls the transcendental reference, experience and object of experience are in a sense present in both opposed views of the nature of the subjective *a-priori*. In both cases the object must 'order itself' according to the rules of the knowing mind or...

  3. What is gained by the transcendence of the object is the identifiability of the object in a plurality of acts and the identifiability of what is thought by several individuals. This identifiability is not restricted to ideal objects, which are generated according to a definite...

  4. It is very important to note that the transcendence of the object is by no means a primitive component necessarily ingredient in all knowledge. It is missing in all ecstatic knowledge. In ecstatic knowledge the known world is still not objectively given. Only when the...

  5. The third preliminary problem for every theory of reality is that of the experience of transcendence. We saw in the case of Berkeley that his erroneous principle *percipi est esse*, and his assertion that any being which we think, just for the reason that it...

Related Topics