APPENDIX V

On Odebrecht’s and Cassirer’s Critiques of the Kantbook

Basic Question: The Essence and Grounding of the Finitude of Human Knowledge; the Problem of Finitude in General

1. The Finitude of Knowing
(Cassirer, Odebrecht)
(On Their Critiques of My Kant Interpretation)

1) What ought we to find, or do we want to find, from the comparison of our knowing with the absolute? Simply to explain what is meant by the finitude of our knowing, wherein its finitude can be seen.

Absolute knowing is merely a constructed idea (see p. 17), that is, it comes from our knowing, in which the specifically finite has been separated and its essence has been freed. The actual knowledge of the actual Being-at-hand of absolute knowledge — which is to say, the being of God himself — is not needed here. Moreover, we have proven its finitude in the first place precisely by only bringing it to the construction of the leading idea.

2) In absolutely no way is finite knowing “deduced” by me from absolute intuition, as Odebrecht claims (Blätter für Deutsche Philosophie, V, 1, 1931) when he says “the intuitional character of thinking [can be said to] follow necessarily from the broad concept of intuitus originarius.”

Furthermore: in absolutely no way does this follow from anywhere through deduction, but rather it manifests itself to us in the fundamental experience of the dependency upon what is given. Everything remains as it was for the ancients, even if we conceive of designating this as finite knowing (to be sure, the finite must then necessarily be explained differently, as “earthly” — the perspective and level of this interpretation). Thus it must have been composed and named together with and in reference to Kant’s design (see Phenomena and Noumena! Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, p. 23f.!; see Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics: finitude — elucidated, wherein it consists with reference to our knowing, with a view toward same).

Thrownness (Geworfenheit), the ground for the finitude of knowing (see Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, p. 19), at first grasped as dependency upon beings other than ourselves. Finitude is primarily not that of knowing; rather, that is but an essential consequence of thrownness. And it is precisely therein that the necessity of thinking as in service to intuition is grounded, assuming that interpretation and determinacy is necessary to the experience of beings (if it was shown to be necessary for finite intuiting qua primary, finite knowledge, then at the same time the appointment [Dienststellung] and the serving [Dienen] are shown to be intrinsic to the understanding (see Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, p. 19f.)).

“Thinking” is the index of finitude, i.e., dependency upon intuition, which itself is dependency upon what is given — thrownness springs forth. This springing-forth, or grounding, means essential relationships. Thinking is not reduced to intuiting (Odebrecht), but is maintained as representing, and to understand the representing from something in general, [is to understand] that for it finite intuition is necessarily required if it is to be knowledge.

“Knowing is primarily intuiting” (Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, p. 15, see notes there), i.e., the grounding character in knowing is intuiting. For finite knowing, however, this character as foundational in a primordial sense is indeed necessary, but — precisely because [the knowing] is finite — it is not sufficient.

The formal and apophantic-veritative essences of judgment, then, are shown from the subordinate character of thinking.

The understanding is essential for finite knowing, i.e., it itself surpasses intuition, namely in its character of finitude.