I said earlier that one aim of meditation is to “to dis-cover the root of all thinking, that which is transcendentally-ontologically prior to all thinking.” Tom Carroll asked me about this and what, if anything, it has to to with what Kant and Husserl mean by ‘transcendental.’
1) The basic idea is that, below the surface of ordinary mind, with its chaos of thoughts, images, good and evil feelings, useful and useless memories, and other detritus, there lies a ‘depth dimension’ that some of us have experienced. It is ‘prior’ in some sense to ordinary mind and its discursive operations. The experience of this depth dimension cannot be brought about by one’s own effort. It occurs on its own initiative. Phenomenologically, the experience has a gift-character. It is as if one has been granted this experience by a Power external to oneself. Whether one has in reality been granted this experience by an external Power is a metaphysical question that goes beyond the phenomenology of the situation. But it is reasonable to take the experience as evidence of an external power that is prior to and deeper than anything on the phenomenal plane.
One can have this experience, or gain this glimpse, without any preparatory spiritual exercises whatsoever. Or one can make preparations. The preparations at most prepare the soul; they cannot of themselves initiate the growth. If one prepares with discursive prayer, one first touches upon this depth dimension in the transition from what Augustin Poulain calls the “prayer of simplicity” to the non-discursive “prayer of quiet.” If one experiences this transition, then one has reached the initial and lowest level of mystical experience, properly so-called. See here.
In addition to the planting metaphor, there is a metaphor for this preparation from al-Ghazali that I like very much. A desert-dweller is more likely to catch a cooling breeze at the top of a minaret than at its base. So he climbs to the top of the minaret. But whether he is granted a cooling breeze is not in his power. So the first step into the mystical cannot be achieved by own-power alone. It is not just that own-power is insufficient; own-power is neither necessary nor sufficient. Other-Power, however, is both necessary and sufficient. Preparations are merely ancillary or auxiliary.
2) By ‘thinking’ I mean discursive thinking. So a meditator qua meditator is not a thinker. Discipline thinking is at best a springboard beyond discursion toward the transdiscursive.
3) I said earlier that the root of all thinking is transcendentally-ontologically prior to all thinking. What sort of priority is this?
‘Prior’ has several senses, among them: temporal, logical, transcendental, ontological. If one event occurs before another in time, then the first is temporally prior to the second. The priority of the parts of a whole to the whole is in many cases logical but not temporal. This is especially clear in cases in which neither the whole nor its parts are in time. The numbers 2, 7, and 9 are logically but not temporally prior to the set, {2, 7, 9}. In this example there cannot be temporal priority because neither the parts (the elements) not the whole (the set) are in time.
In the case of a wall made of stacked stones, both whole (the wall) and the parts (the constituent stones) are in time. Moreover, the wall came to be at a time and will cease to be at a later time. Nonetheless, at any given time t in the wall’s career, the stones at t are logically, not temporally, prior to the wall at t.
A third example. The definitions and axioms in an axiomatic system are logically, not temporally, prior to the theorems that follow from the axioms. And note that ‘follow’ here does not have a temporal sense, despite the fact that the writing of a proof on a blackboard involves a temporally sequential series of steps.
A fourth example. Trump and the true sentence ‘Trump exists’ uttered or written by someone both exist in time. Does the man exist because the sentence is true, or is the sentence true because the man exists? The latter. The existing man, as the truth-maker of the true sentence, is logically prior to the true sentence.
4) Transcendental priority is different from both temporal and logical priority. It refers to the priority of consciousness over every object of consciousness, where ‘object’ is taken in a maximally broad way to cover concrete particulars, abstract particulars (tropes), events, event-sequences, abstracta (ideallia) of all sorts including Fregean propositions, mathematical sets of every cardinality, functions, series, finite and infinite, relations of consistency, inconsistency, and entailment, introspectible mental items whether intentional or non-intentional, Meinongian nonentities, concepts in minds, exemplified and unexemplified universals, all distinctions and differences between and among anything and anything else . . . , in short, everything that can be brought before consciousness as an object for consciousness.
Transcendental consciousness is thus the ultimate Other to every actual and possible object in the maximally broad sense of the term. It is the ultimate condition of the possibility of anything’s appearing. You can think of it as the transcendental Light of mind without which nothing would appear, including physically illuminated things such as yonder mesa, or physical sources of physical light such as the Sun, or the lambent spaces between them.
5) Ontologically prior to this transcendental Light stands its onto-theological Source. Augustine claims to have glimpsed this eternal Source of Transcendental Light upon entering into his “inmost being.” Entering there, he saw with his soul’s eye, “above that same eye of my soul, above my mind, an unchangeable light.” He continues:
It was not this common light, plain to all flesh, nor a greater
light of the same kind . . . Not such was that light, but
different, far different from all other lights. Nor was it above my
mind, as oil is above water, or sky above earth. It was above my
mind, because it made me, and I was beneath it, because I was made
by it. He who knows the truth, knows that light, and he who knows
it knows eternity. (Confessions, Book VII, Chapter 10)
6) I didn’t get around to Kant and Husserl. Tomorrow’s another day.
Two questions this time, Bill.
The first question is about how you arrived at your four senses of ‘prior.’ This is basically one of those have-I-got-it-straight questions. The second is a question about the implications of ontological priority.
First question.
I understand your distinction between ‘temporal’ and ‘logical.’ No problem there.
I think I follow your explanation of ‘transcendental priority,’ too. But to be clear, the path we take to arrive at our understanding of transcendental priority is (broadly) ‘experiential,’ right? More or less the epoche, the phenomenological reduction path, correct? E.g., I see the cup, I am conscious of the cup, but I am not the cup. I remember Christmas 1967, but I am not that memory. I contemplate the Pythagorean Theorem, but I am not the theorem. And so on. At the end of the road, we arrive at an understanding of ‘transcendental priority,’ tightly related to the transcendental ego you talk about elsewhere. Am I reading you correctly?
Next, ‘ontological priority.’ Ontological priority in some sense ‘grounds’ transcendental priority. It is ‘prior to’ transcendental priority. Do I have that right?
On the assumption I am reading you correctly, I’d like to ask about the interesting way you to took to reach ontological priority.
I suppose one cannot *argue* for ontological priority here (appealing to, e.g., the principle of causation, or the principle of sufficient reason), because such logical tools are themselves elements within the ‘field’ of transcendental priority. If one appeals to them to support the idea of ontological priority — on which transcendental priority depends — one would sort of beg the question, or argue in a circle, or at least get the cart before the horse. (Words are failing me here, obviously, but I’m sure you know what I mean.)
So instead of argumentation, it seems you went the intuitive (or, perhaps better, the mystical) route. That is what you are doing with the Augustine quote, isn’t it?
You said Augustine “glimpsed” the “onto-theological Source,” and you offered no argumentation beyond that. I therefore presume you see this mystical insight — leaving aside questions of its veracity — as ultimate and grounding. Am I right on that? Or at least that you see it as the only game in town, when one reaches this level of ultimacy?
Second question.
Does your discussion of ontological priority and the ‘onto-theological Source’ answer (or address, or shed light on) the problem you discussed in the *Aporetic Conclusion* section of your (long and endlessly interesting), “Why Did I Move Away from Phenomenology” of October 2020?
In that *Aporetic Conclusion*, you said:
“One problem: Just what is this transcendental ego if it is the purely subjective source of all ontic validity, Seinsgeltung? Does it exist? And in what sense of ‘exist’? It cannot exist as a constituted object for it is the subjective source of all constitutive performances (Leistungen). But if it is not an indubitable piece of the world, then it cannot exist at all.”
Do you believe the onto-theological Source solves (or at least addresses) that “[o]ne problem” you raised in 2020 and which I quoted above? Do you *intend* it to be a solution? Or, perhaps less ambitiously, do you see it as a reasonable resolution?
In short, can one reply to your *Aporetic Conclusion* like this:
“Yes, it (the transcendental ego) *can* exist, even if it is not an indubitable piece of the world. It is exists in virtue of its being grounded in the onto-theological Source, grounded by ontological priority.”
Finally, please forgive me for once again tossing out the Kant-and-Husserl business you mentioned at the end of this post. I do hope you will say a few words about their use of ‘transcendental ego.’ I suspect each uses it in slightly different, but related, ways.
Thanks so much. I hope you are enjoying your Sunday. I’m off for a bike ride, then it’s the pool for the rest of the day. The California life.
Hi Tom,
So you live in California! Whereabouts? I am a native Californian who grew up in the San Gabriel Valley about eight miles east of Los Angeles.
You are on the right track WRT transcendental priority. I see a cup. But note the ambiguity of ‘see.’ It can be used as a ‘verb of success’ in which case, necessarily, if a subject S sees x, then x exists. It can also be used phenomenologically, in which case that entailment fails. In dreams, for example, we sometimes see objects that don’t exist. As I use the term, an object is an intentional object. Some such objects are merely intentional while other intentional objects are also real, i.e., existent in themselves, apart from intentional (object-directed) acts of consciousness.
Consciousness is consciousness of something. How should we read the genitive construction? Objectively, obviously. But it could also be read as both objective and subjective in which case acts of consciousness emanate from a subject and terminate in an object. Sartre denies that there is any such transcendental subject. Husserl with his talk of the pure ego (reines Ich) commits himself to a transc. subject. This is an intramural debate within the the phenomenological camp.
But one thing strikes me as undeniable: there is a difference — call it the transcendental difference — between consciousness and its objects. This leaves open whether transc. cs. is or is not subjectless. Either way it is prior to the objects whose apparentness (objectuality if you will) it makes possible. So it it the ultimate transc. condition of the objectuality of objects.
This transc. priority is neither temporal nor logical since every temporal and logical priority is on the side of the object.
We can now ask whether transc. cs. has an ontological ground. You could think of transc. cs. as the non-physical Light in which everything appears including illuminated things, the physical light we see with our eyes, and physical light as understood by physics (photons, etc.) Does this non-physical Light have a Source?
Suppose it does. Can one argue to this Source using tools, distinctions, principles (e.g., sufficient reason) that are on the side of the object? You see the problem. Discursive methods can only take you to the limit of the discursive. Only mystical insight can take one beyond that limit.
So much for my answer to your first question. Feel free to press me on any point that seems weak.
I live east of Sacramento, toward the foothills. My extended family was in So Cal for a couple generations, but moved north (San Joaquin Valley and beyond) in the 1960s and 70. I still have relatives in the LA area. My late Uncle Roger was the dam keeper at San Gabriel Dam, probably when you were growing up. You say you never lost your boyhood home in a flash flood? Thank Uncle Roger.
Uncle Roger and the absence of Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass. Go to my Facebook page for my political ‘rantage.’ My father spent his last years in Bishop, on the other side of the Sierra Nevada, one of the great mountain ranges of the world.
As for your second question, I should address the differences between Kant and Husserl in separate posts. And what of the differences between ‘transcendental’ as used by the Medievals and as used by the Moderns? That requires a separate post — or ten.