Status Updates From Über die vierfache Wurzel d...

"Ist es doch mit dem Licht der Offenbarung wie mit anderen Lichtern: einige Dunkelheit ist die Bedingung."

As soon as S. began speaking of causality as an a priori concept, I started thinking of Piaget, and was surprised when he immediately began describing close observation of infants in support of his theory, and even referenced the behavior of Stupor, which is what developmental psychologists would today call "dishabituation," and he used the concept in precisely its currently-understood sense.

Schopenhauer's polemics against Hegel get old real fast. I think they're somewhat obtuse, and question-begging in the extreme. You can't criticize Hegel for not rigorously upholding a distinction between subject and object, when problematizing that distinction is the whole point of departure for his project, and for sound philosophical reasons.

The principle of sufficient reason, that all things must have a cause, by virtue of which they are what they are and not otherwise, leads to the heart of idealism in the most stimulating way; for if we grant it (and who could deny it?), then we also grant that all things are the effect of some set of causes. The question of which causes are thus constitutive carries the whole rest of philosophy with it.