Of the quadruple root of the principle of sufficient reason – Wikipedia

Of the quadruple root of the principle of sufficient reason
First cover of the French edition of 1882.
Author	Arthur Schopenhauer
Pays	Germany
Genre	Essay
Original version
Language	German
Title	About four times the root of the sentence from the sufficient reason
Release date	1813
French version
Translator	J. a. Cantacuzène
Editor	GRUMER-BALLIÈRE Bookstore
Place of publication	Paris
Release date	1882
modifier

Of the quadruple root of the principle of sufficient reason ( About four times the root of the sentence from the sufficient reason ) is the title of the doctoral thesis of Arthur Schopenhauer published in 1813. The German philosopher will give it a second edition revamped in 1847. Schopenhauer considered the reading of this work to which he will always refer his readers as the necessary starting point for A complete understanding of its entire system. The work consists of 8 chapters and 52 paragraphs.

Historical [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

In January 1813 , after having suffered a disastrous defeat in Russia, the remains of the great army of Napoleon arrived in Berlin. Hospitals were filled with patients and injured and the risks of high epidemic. A patriotic and militarist spirit seized the city and the population, including philosophers and students, hoped to end the French occupation. This situation quickly became intolerable to Schopenhauer who flees the city, withdrawing from the small town of Rudolstadt near Weimar. It was here, from June to November of this year 1813, that he wrote his thesis while he lived in an inn.

After presenting his thesis, Schopenhauer obtained a doctorate from the University of Jena In the abstance . He undertook to have an edition made of it privately. Only three reports made a condescending praise. We will hardly sell more than one hundred copies, the rest will be put back a few years later. Among the reasons for the mixed reception made to her thesis, one might think that she did not yet benefit from the masterful style that the author developed later and that neither the importance nor the scope of his reflection clearly appeared. All the lines leading to the main work are traced, the philosophical tradition is challenged there and Schopenhauer is not stingy with attacks against the spirit of time in philosophy.

A copy was sent to Goethe who replied by inviting the author to his home, officially to discuss philosophy, but in reality in order to recruit the young philosopher to work on his Treaty of Colors.

Schopenhauer resumed and developed his thesis in a new edition published in 1847 and comprising 70 more pages than the 1813 edition. It is this edition that is read today

Philosophical [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

Schopenhauer’s epistemology is based on the Kantian theory of knowledge. Schopenhauer proclaimed himself a Kantian having appropriated the most essential accomplishment of his predecessor in epistemology, and who then claimed to have simply extended and completed what Kant had botched or left unfinished.

From the point of view of Schopenhauer, Kant’s main merit is to have established a distinction between the thing in itself and the phenomenal world in which it appears, that is to say the world as we represent it same. What is crucial here is the consciousness that what first makes any experience possible – and that without exception no- It is our mind that perceives, which synthesizes the perceptions of raw sensation, and which therefore extracts the concepts of These perceptions. Schopenhauer appropriates Kant forms on sensitivity (space, time and causality) and transforms them into what he calls understanding:

“Understanding causality is the only function of understanding, its only power, but it is a power of a large range, multiple in its applications, and yet unequivocal in its identity through all its manifestations. Conversely, any causality – all the matter – and therefore the whole of reality, is understanding, by understanding, in understanding. The first, the simplest and permanent manifestation of all understanding is the perception of the real world. It is in every way the knowledge of the cause for the effect and any perception is therefore intellectual ”

Thus, understanding does not exist independently of our ability to perceive and determine relationships because it is the very foundation of experience. Not only what we think abstractly, but also our perceptions is entirely intellectual and subjectively determined.

Schopenhauer’s central proposal is the main idea of ​​all of his philosophy. He simply writes: “The world is my representation”. All his work is an elaborate analysis and the development of what this sentence announces, which begins with its Kantian epistemology but finds an in -depth development within its version of the principle of sufficient reason. This is responsible for providing adequate explanations for everything or object that appears in relation to an object of knowledge. To any possible representation, the question of “why?” Can always be installed. This is what Schopenhauer did, according to him, namely to extend and complete what Kant started with his criticism of pure reason.

The principle of sufficient reason arises in four aspects corresponding to the four roots of the title. Thus four classes of objects occur “always and already (in) », Only in relation to a knowing subject and according to a correlative capacity in this subject:

1. The principle of reasoning : This is the sufficient principle of reason for the becoming of understanding. This is physical necessity;
2. The principle of reasoning ability to know : This is the sufficient principle of reason for knowledge that is due to reason. This is the logical necessity;
3. The principle of reason : This is the principle of reason for being that is pure sensitivity. This is mathematical necessity;
4. The principle of reasonable action : This is the principle of the motivation law which is a matter of the will. This is moral need.

Different rules govern the possible explanations of representations of the four classes and “any explanation given in accordance with this guideline is only relative. The principle of sufficient reason explains things in reference to each other, but it always leaves unexplained something he presupposes “, and the two things that are absolutely inexplicable are the principle itself and the” thing in itself “that Schopenhauer identifies with the will. From another point of view, the principle provides the general form of any given perspective which supposes both the subject and the object. The thing in itself remains therefore forever unknowable, because all the qualities attributed to it are simply perceived, that is to say constructed in the mind from the sensations given in time and space. Furthermore, because the concepts that we form from our perceptions can in no case refer with any validity to something beyond the limits of experience, all the proofs of the existence of God or what Whether beyond the possibility of experience fall under the razor of Kantian criticism. This is what Kant calls critical or transcendental idealism. Recall that “transcendental” does not refer to the knowledge of the unknowable but relates to the a priori conditions of intellectual experience. This intuition of understanding first is a modern anticipation of post-modern expression “always and already” concept created by Paul Ricœur. Time and space, always and already, determine the possibilities of experience. In addition, Schopenhauer distinguishes with what he calls “a priori falsification”. In addition to the forms of space and time, the cultural context (ideology) determines relationships to experience [6] It considers them falsified because it is possible to investigate and discover their foundations, leading to a Reorientation which considers experience as a source material of new knowledge, but which does not destroy prejudices relating to phenomena.

“Our knowing consciousness … is divisible only as a subject and object. Being an object for the subject and being our own representation, or mental image, are one and the same thing. All our representations are objects for the subject, and all the objects of the subject are our representations. These are to each other in a necessary report which is determinable first In its form and, by virtue of this connection, nothing existing and independent by yourself, nothing alone and detached can become an object for us. … The first aspect of the principle of sufficient reason is that of becoming, in other words the law of causation, and only applies to changes. Thus, if the cause is given, the effect must necessarily follow. The second aspect relates to abstract concepts or representations which are themselves drawn from representations of intuitive perception. In this case, the principle of sufficient reason stipulates that some premises given, the conclusion must follow. The third aspect of the principle applies to being in space and time and shows that the existence of a relationship necessarily implies the other, as the equality of the angles of a triangle necessarily implies equality on his side and vice versa. Finally, the fourth aspect relates to actions, in other words the law of motivation, which stipulates that a specific action course inevitably results from a given character and a reason. »»

E. F. J. Payne

Full text on the Schopenhauer.fr site , free both in pdf form and epub.

Notes and references [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

• (in) This article is partially or entirely from the Wikipedia article in English entitled ‘ On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason » ( See the list of authors ) .
• Rüdiger Safranski , Schopenhauer and the Roaring Twenties of Philosophy , Presses Universitaires de France – PUF, coll. “Critical perspectives”, 1990 , 456 p. (ISBN  978-2-13-042861-9 )
• Arthur Schopenhauer , Of the quadruple root of the principle of sufficient reason , Vrin edition, coll. “Library of philosophical texts – pocket”, 1997 , 224 p. (ISBN  978-2-7116-1325-0 , read online )