Understanding Destiny Transcendentally

   I have been inquiring into 'destiny' as part of a general study of 'problematic' concepts and how they are grounded in the human experience in such a way that can provide insight into the human condition, as well as works of thought in the history of philosophy.  The result is an understanding how we are destined transcendentally.  These reflections should serve as a starting point rather than an end.  In order to understand our transcendental destiny it will be good to start with a more familiar picture of destiny.

   Where there is destiny there is a story wherein something or someone is destined.  The nature of the destined is such that it is established towards something.  Sometimes things are at the end of their destiny, and the story surrounding the thing is arranged by the destiny; other times the destiny is still to be fulfilled and stretches forward arranging and canceling possibilities.

   Destiny does not mean that something will happen according to mere mechanism, but rather according to a purpose or plan; such purposes or plans are thought on analogy with something willed by an intelligence.  (This is mentioned not to say that we must grant ourselves knowledge of some intelligence that is determining destiny, but simply to characterize the way we think destiny.)  When I meet my beloved, it may feel like some being intended for this to happen; when things are shaping up poorly I may wonder if it was planned that the difficulties would emerge at precisely the decisive moment.  

   We may feel like we are being rewarded, or punished by destiny, or even that we no longer have a destiny (that we are abandoned by the gods).  But no matter what specific case of being destined, we can be sure that there is also a pure mechanism that accounts for the entire sequence of appearances, and so the destiny is not necessary for the occurrence of the events that we feel are destined.  But we may still ask what it would be for a destiny to be necessary, and from that take a view to what things may count as such a destiny.

   For a destiny to be necessary it is not enough to just say that the destiny corresponds with whatever happens in nature mechanically.  Instead, what is destined must be thought apart from the mechanism of nature.  This is why any destiny in nature is also not necessary, since it always can defer to mechanism.  This tells us that in order for a destiny to be necessary, it cannot refer to beings as natural (where nature is understood as the Kantian 'sum total of appearances').  But what can be said to happen outside of nature that is purposive?

   Kant's aesthetic and moral judgments appear to be instances where destiny is at work transcendentally.  With the aesthetic judgment (judgment of taste) we find ourselves with the purpose of thinking a specific yet undetermined thing under a concept; with the moral judgment we are commanded to act in a certain specified way, but the command is given by us, and we are revealed as free.  Destiny in the case of the judgment of taste is the reflection off of the satisfaction in an object which at the same time makes us into thinking beings; destiny in the moral judgment is the reflection off of the moral law which at the same time reveals us as free and self-governing.

   There is a peculiarity of the aesthetic and moral judgments which defy the common view of destiny which makes man appear insignificant and only playing a role set out for them.  With the aesthetic and moral judgment, the human being is first free - free to act in relation to things according to his nature as an intellect, and as an agent.  (Perhaps it is only because the human is transcendentally destined to be free that these weighty elements of our life stories can weigh on us as they do and usurp destiny transcendentally understood.)

   We can also consider Heidegger's question concerning the essence of technology.  What is destining us to order beings in terms of standing reserve?  Well, this destiny is not necessary for us transcendentally speaking - we came into our technological 'frame' only at a certain point in history - but we can understand how a certain blindness to the limitations our 'frame' puts on the world ultimately has a restriction on the way in which we come into contexts with things, and are fated to operate in certain modes with them.  How can we best understand our capacity to conceal the nature of things?

Sentimentality and the Difficulty of Returning to the Things Themselves

(This is a revision of part of a correspondence.)

     'Sentimentality' is something that I would like to address, as it frequently comes to mind (since I read Schiller's distinction between simple and sentimental poetry). To frame this topic in a new, and experimental way (for me), I will begin by saying that sentimentality is being captive to our reflections. This captivity is recognized in the symptom of taking reflective judgments to be determining of objects. 

     The terms that I employ here in my understanding of sentimentality are of two groups, the shocking (captivity) and the Kantian (reflections, determining). The captivity is related to a risk of our being reflective. The risk is clarified by explaining what confusions between reflective and determinative judgments are.

     (For Kant, all judgments involve a universal to a particular. Determinative judgments relate a universal to a particular, while reflective judgments take a particular and request, in a certain way, that there be a universal put on it. For more information on this distinction see the introduction to the Critique of Judgment. I will discuss reflection below as well in different terms.)

     The a priori is a discovery for us, yet not as something empirical; rather we find the a priori in reflection.  (Here I allow myself to depart from Kantian  terminology, but may find myself right back at the Kantian position.) Reflection is a process where another 'image' is produced in the likeness of what is reflected; the 'image' is not an actual duplicate. My account of reflection here is being used as a metaphor for the process of reflection, which takes what we encounter, and, instead of producing another encounter (as a pool of water, or glass or bronze mirror does) produces something else that we do not encounter but that we also understand. The reflected image is more complete than what we originally encounter because it does not itself need content to be full - yet without content it only makes a place where something is revealed, or towards which we are directed. The results of this reflection as spoken word is formal terminology.  By formal here I mean that which deals with the form rather than matter; terms that deal with the form of experience, or possibility of experience, and transcendental terms generally are formal.

     In my estimation, the essence of logic is simply this sway that reflection has over us, and Logic as a body of knowledge is guided by the goal of understanding reflection as it underlies dialogue. (Logic already presupposes all that is possible for dialogue - a considerable amount.) Logic is, in my parlance, the essence of, 'hearing' and 'being heard', and dialogues in formal terms are communications that try to make reflectivity itself an object to reflect on. This (present writing) is a formal account of these formal dialogues, which can become illustrative of my concerns with sentimentality. The sort of captivity we can fall into when we speak formally is in taking the formal language to be material, or otherwise being taken (either by speaker or listener) as determinative rather than reflective. Taken as determinative we are forced to see the formal as matter, and we will fail to do this, requiring us to go beyond appearance, but in the mode of objects still.

     This first way of confusing the formal and material leads to taking the formal as referring to the 'beyond': the "true" world. As a result of trying to reject this "true" world in a formal discussion, the "true" world butts up against the apparent world. This apparent world is itself purely formal - we never encounter the apparent world, it only arises in our reflecting on reflecting, and analogizing on analogy. One place we can become captive to reflection is in the apparent world.

     Another source of captivity from reflection is from idols. We can formally express Socrates through the ideals he presents to us immediately in his actions, and then, not having the courage of Socrates, merely become professors of the merit of these values while not living a Socratic life.

     It is not enough to just point out the difference between the reflective and determinative in formal terms, but the next step is much harder: finally looking back through the formal (wherever, and however, and through whoever it appears) into being itself. What formality can we express to achieve this again? This may be the use of the shocking, even as it man open opportunity for new confusion and hesitation.