Chapter 12

On the Meaning of 'Universals'

Let us imagine an objection: while it may be true that alienation must be experienced for us to find things of the external world, the same can hardly be said for discovering the content of numerous general concepts such as virtue, governance, diversity, uniformity, multiplicity.

Someone engaged in analyzing the thought process could in no way believe that their thinking mind and the thought object are spatially separate, since the latter has no spatial existence at all. It would be highly doubtful whether this is ever the case and whether the "opposite" of an object-finding act can be equated with the spatial opposite we all experience.

Perhaps the reader already notices the misunderstanding in this objection. But there is no better way to develop what we still need than through rebuttal.

The perceiver and the perceived as such are never spatially separate. Yet there is only apprehension insofar as both the mind and the object have their place in space-time events. This paradox requires clarification.

If only the experience is alienated, then we must more precisely define the performance of judgment: to set the determining point regardless of the reality of a separating layer and equally blind to it.

It required disregarding the flow of time to find time. It required disregarding the change of image appearance to find the thing. Finally, it required disregarding the experienced opposite to find the object itself.

If the mind must disregard the separation to find the relevant point, it has already disregarded the separation where it itself occupies a position, and thus also the interaction of both positions.

As certain as the "disregarding" itself is an experience or rooted in one, so certain is the opposite nevertheless experienced.

This finding completes our insight into the essence of understanding and concepts through sharpest illumination of what—previously noticed only in so-called universals, primarily generic concepts, but fundamentally in general concepts altogether—is truly inherent in every concept: its abstractness in relation to the real.

First, everyone recognizes it is fundamentally the same whether one states that the concept is something abstract, that the thought object is separated from the real, or that reality is separated from the object of thought. We cannot separate fact B from fact A without also having separated fact A from fact B.

The separation equally affects both: what is grasped by the mind, which became its own through grasping, as well as that which it had to disregard for the sake of grasping. The previously called co-relation of the real approaches us in new form as a separate presence.

Insofar as what is experienced by the life-bearer does not dictate to the mind the direction of its relation, but does prescribe what must be omitted to establish the intended relationship, there is a reality present in the object of thought, even if separate.

I am free to think of the shape of a surface or its color. However, if I think of the shape of the surface, I must look away from the color of the surface. Therefore, in the concept of surface shape, the color of the surface is involved through detachment.

Just as in the concept of shape the color is separately embedded, so in every concept is separately embedded the external differentiation between the object of thought and the thinking mind.

The line connecting the I-point and the It-point in our schema is thus only symbolic, as evident from the consideration that otherwise the nonsensical question about the distance between the two points would arise.

Stripped of metaphor, the schema states: only by disregarding the external separation of the experiencer and an experienced does the mind come to grasp the object.

The separate external differentiation, however, is indeed what the line exemplifies: spatial separation.

Consequently, in any arbitrary act of thinking, space is involved as a separate entity. This is evidenced not only by the sense of direction during thinking but also, upon closer introspection, by the fact that any arbitrary object of thought—even if called identity—is perceived as something vaguely residing in the space of intuition.

This explains what expression researchers have carefully tested and described but not sufficiently understood: that the mimicry of thinking, despite great diversity and possible involvement of almost all facial muscles as well as numerous muscles of the torso, arms, and legs, has its center in the mimicry of the eyes. This occurs regardless of whether optical or acoustic phenomena attract attention, and regardless of whether external or internal objects are considered.

Without knowledge of the separate presence of spatial experiences, the psychology of thinking is hopeless.

Even the most abstract thinking—even pure mathematics—operates through spatial separation that has been disregarded but remains separately present. The mind cannot function without this spatial dimension, even when thinking objects that have no spatial existence.

Since Plato's theory of ideas, dispute has notoriously not come to rest about whether "universals" exist only in thinking consciousness or are driving and shaping forces of reality itself. Modern times have picked it up where scholasticism left it.

It is an illusion to believe the question has been settled—the question that divided all thinking minds into two major camps: "realists" and "nominalists."

The medieval dispute predominantly revolved around whether the determining power of all reality, indeed reality itself, must be sought in universal concepts, especially generic concepts, or in individual things.

In contrast, the contemporary logician will point out the conceptuality of what the name "individual thing" means. The "realistic" way of thinking, according to which the content of generic terms was basically the only thing that existed, is so little recognized by its contemporary followers that even its inventor, still considered worthy of divine honor, is not acknowledged.

Nevertheless, it is much more a matter of changing the appearance of words than the matter itself, when instead one responds to the question about the unconditional validity of true propositions with establishment of a "timeless realm of ideas" and advocates for the assumption of thinking contents that, although not existing, nonetheless independently subsist.

The question remains: Do universals—general concepts—possess independent reality? Or are they merely products of the thinking mind?

We will examine this position through the work of Lotze, a highly educated thinker of the recent past, in whom must be seen the serious immediate instigator of today's logic.

In his "Logic," Lotze discusses the difficulty that arises when one should state what a sound is apart from being heard, or a color apart from being seen. He notes that not every language possesses an abstract expression of desirable purity for what is thus meant.

"For the German designation, the word reality serves here. For real, we call a thing that is, in contrast to another that is not. Also real is an event that happens or has happened, in contrast to that which does not happen. Real is a relationship that exists, in contrast to one that does not exist. Finally, we call a proposition truly real if it is valid, in contrast to one whose validity is still questionable."

Furthermore: "Just as little as anyone can say how it is made that something is or something happens, just as little can it be specified how it is made that a truth holds. This concept must also be regarded as a fundamental concept that rests entirely on itself, which we cannot create through construction from components that do not already contain it themselves."

This is now used to justify Plato. "Plato wanted to teach nothing else than what we went through above: the validity of truths aside from whether they are confirmed by any object in the external world, as their way of being. The eternally self-same meaning of ideas, which are always what they are, regardless of whether there are things that bring them into appearance in this external world through participation, or whether there are spirits that give them the reality of an occurring state of mind by thinking them."

According to Lotze, Greek language lacked an expression for this concept of validity that does not include being. Thus Plato had to speak of ideas as having being, when he really meant their validity.

"It was not Plato's opinion that they should only be independent of things, but dependent on the spirit that thinks them. They enjoy reality not merely in the moment in which they become components of this world of events. We are all convinced in that moment in which we think the content of a truth not to have just created it, but merely to have recognized it. Even when we did not think it, it was valid and will remain valid, separated from all beings, from things as well as from us, and regardless of whether it ever becomes the object of knowledge."

Lotze's position is clear: truths possess a peculiar kind of reality called "validity" that exists independently of both things and thinking minds.

We need only illuminate these sentences with the ray of light ignited by our own findings to soon discover therein a self-contradiction.

Lotze himself admits that the distinction between a reality of being and a reality of validity cannot materially eliminate the wonder that contains the impulse to mix both. But therein reveals the delicate point of this reworded Platonism and its essential identity with the "realism" of medieval scholasticism.

Anyone who speaks of a reality of truth can no longer explain why this reality should depend on another reality—in Lotze's case even on two other realities: being and happening.

However, if he strikes out the aforementioned dependency, not even the miracle postulated by Lotze could preserve the word "validity" from complete meaninglessness.

Since Leibniz's truths of reason, which solidified in Kant's apriorism, philosophy professors have repeated tens of thousands of times that mere empirical truths are fundamentally inferior to logical and mathematical truths, which, according to their peculiar apparatus, are brought forth by reason in and of itself without the interference of extra-rational reality.

Such celebratory proclamations of legitimate reason about its bestowed omnipotence leave unmoved those convinced that absolutely no concept—regardless of what—can be thought without the detachment of a corresponding reality.

Yet even if we set aside that ultimately it is always a reality of which the valid holds, said validity would still be deprived of meaning without the actual existence of entities for which it would take place. The validity and invalidity of a judgment require, in order to be thought of as somehow existing fact, judging and judgment-receiving selves.

Validity cannot float free. It requires minds to validate for, realities to validate about. The attempt to grant universals independent existence collapses under its own weight.

In order for no trace of uncertainty about the conviction represented to remain, we provide this in the form of a three-part explanation.

First thesis: There is a conceptual counterpart to reality, but not a reality of the conceptualized. Between reality and conceptual knowability, there is not the relationship of members of a mathematical equation—both are non-interchangeable.

The claim should be made: if one were to remove the thinking being from reality, one would not only eliminate the thought processes, but also the objects intended to be thought of by means of them.

"If there were no thinking, there would also be no truth." The metaphysical "place" of reality lies just as much on this side of true and false as it lies on this side of subject and object. Thought objects exist only for a thinking consciousness, not without it in reality itself.

Second thesis: People have asked: what is truth? And have learned the impossibility of an answer because every answer would presuppose belief in a method of thinking suitable for finding truth.

Instead, one must ask: how does truth relate to reality?

First: a valid judgment content is a matter of fact realized only in the thinking of a thinking being. But what constitutes validity?

To be correct, the judgment must obey the law of spirit—the law of identity or law of contradiction—and the drive to make a judgment must come from an experienced reality.

We judge truly if our spirit is compelled by the experience of reality to make a judgment and, in doing so, follows its law of identity. Otherwise, it is false.

Truth means a transfer of reality into a completely incomparable unreality, whose sign language guarantees each thinking individual the conceptual reproduction of what is meant by it.

We offer a particularly fruitful analogy: Truth relates to reality as a score does to a musical piece. The musical piece would remain what it is, even if there were no notes. The notes would still be points and lines, but completely meaningless if there were no sounds. Both have not the slightest similarity with each other. This does not prevent a score from being correct, but also wrong.

Third thesis: Nietzsche states: "What can be thought must certainly be a fiction." The remark is as profound as it is true if it means to express the complete incomparability of judgment content and reality. It is dangerously misleading if it intends to assert the impossibility of finding truth.

"What can be thought," it should continue, "certainly has no reality." It is not the note head that sounds, and truth is not reality. But just as knowledge of musical notation allows the correct transfer of the musical piece into the completely tonally different score, so too does adherence to certain internal demands ensure the correct transfer of reality into the reality-alien medium of judgment contents.

This thesis suffers one exception, though only one.

When I think of myself as an existing entity, I imagine a reality that exists exactly as it is thought. Because otherwise, the fact of my thinking could not have occurred.

Thus, there is indeed a reality of the thought, namely the reality of the I conceived as capable of thinking.

The "realists" of scholasticism taught the reality of general and ultimately universal concepts. Today's logician teaches a non-being reality of conceptual contents, which essentially amounts to the same thing.

Not by pointing out the long-recognized difference between being and thinking of being, but only through critique exercised on the thinkable itself, is this uprooted.

With establishment of either concrete or abstract objects, the same timeless spirit responds to the necessities of experiencing reality in the personal life carrier always in the same manner, thus projecting into reality the reality-foreign being.

In the thinking self, however—the sole enabling basis of mental acts—the thinking coincides with the thought, reality with being. The self belongs to the reality of events as a being that nevertheless endures.

The reality of the self thus becomes the central problem of metaphysics. It alone is worth questioning—not the "timeless realm of ideas," which arises from it entirely by itself. Universal concepts have no independent existence. They exist only as products of thinking selves. But those thinking selves—those paradoxical entities that are both temporal and timeless, both living and conceptualizing—they alone possess the unique reality that makes all conceptual truth possible.