Endnotes. 189

Bibliography. 215

Preface

Your straightforwardness of thinking

Is the product of this transcendent regions;

The distortion in your thought, likewise,

Has its origin here.

                                       Hakim Sanai, Sair al-‘Ibad

The overall aim of this book is to examine whether the Sadraean school of transcendent philosophy can contribute to removing those crucial aspects of modern subjectivism which are problematically hidden in the ontological gap within the modern epistemology of the self. I will first delineate this gap, and then selectively retrace three main intellectual movements with regards to the self in Western thought, through a rapid study of Descartes, Hume, Kant and Husserl (Chapter One). I will then reconstruct the transcendent method to provide an entry to the ontetic field in which the subtle ontetic structure of the self is revealed as it is immersed in and, at the same time, present to Being (Chapter Two). This reconstruction obviously implies a step beyond the traditional boundaries of reading Sadra’s transcendent philosophy.

Reformulated in this way, and seeking to bridge the ontological gap by presenting a new vision of the self as presential cognition, the close relation of “Being” and the “being” of the self is exposed here as a performative, existential experience. This involves the claim that a subjectivism which is based upon the epistemology of the self cannot be legitimately detached from ontology, and consequently there is no subject in the modern subjectivistic sense. The subject is only a self as presential cognition.(Chapter Three) In this context, transcendent philosophy is also directed towards answering some immediate conclusions that arise from modern subjectivism.(Chapter Four)

In this book, I will confine myself to the onto-genesis of the self, and put aside several important and essential issues related to consciousness in general. I will focus on the fundamental aspect of subjectivistic ego-centrism. Only have I hinted, where applicable, to some relevant issues in current analytic philosophy of mind as well as phenomenology of consciousness without any detailed discussion.

Tehran

Winter 2001

CHAPTER ONE

Introducing the Problem

In this introductory chapter, I will try to elucidate the problematic aspect of the self by retracing three main movements in modern Western thought. Our aim is (i) to show how the modern idea of self has risen philosophically, (ii) how its crucial aspect is hidden in an ontological gap within the epistemology of the self, and (iii) to provide a proper background for my later conclusions as to how to remedy this gap.

1. 1.Primary Considerations

Among several interpretations of the nature of modern Western philosophy, there are those that would consider it to be a history of subjectivism.¹ There are different versions of this attitude, all of which intend to overcome the “subject” as it has risen in modern Western humanism.² Though we are not concerned here with these interpretations and their critical remarks on the nature of modern thought, we may define modern subjectivism by two characteristics: (i) it is ego-centric and (ii) it is epistemological.³ It would seem that those critics who find a crisis in the basis of modern thought agree that these two points are basic characteristics of modern Western subjectivism. We would go a step further, and (revising Heidegger⁴) remark that the crisis is crucially rooted in an ontological gap in the epistemology of the modern self.

Descartes, the father of modern Western thought, gave cogito priority over sum in his Meditations. This became a turning point for the movement that crystallised in Kant’s Copernican Revolution by which metaphysics was identified with epistemology. This was the official neglecting of “sum” which detached epistemology from ontology, implying that cogito can be considered without any need for “sum”, and ultimately dismissed. As a whole, existence became a category of our understanding along with and amongst many other categories. It becomes a mere copula picked up from judgement, and hence this doctrine have been followed in Western philosophy (excluding neothomism and existentialism), viewing existence in a nominalistic form.⁵

One of the immediate consequences of detaching epistemology from ontology has been the dismissal of the “being” of the self. Beginning with Descartes, the history of modern Western thought established on the Cartesian Cogito whose ego, at least as its historical fate testifies, ⁶ was uprooted from its being. The profound ontological gap felt in the basis of modern thought is hidden in this uprooted ego, in this Cogito detached from sum: the beingless self, or, in Heidegger’s term, the worldless subject. The Cartesian Cogito dismissed the realm of existence and reduced the self to a res cogitans that implicitly erased all properties traditionally assigned to the self as soul,⁷and placed it in contrast to res extensa.

 Contemporary thought has suffered from the weight of difficulties raised by such a dualism. Cogito, the turning point of Western thought, plunged into the maze of the subject-object dualism in which modern thought has been involved.⁸  

From this standpoint, and relying on the authority of these thinkers here, we can chart a dialectical line of thought concerning the self, beginning with Descartes’ Meditations and ending with Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations: (i) A thesis indicating that the self is a positive conscious thing, a res cogitans. (Cartesian rationalists). (ii) An anti-thesis indicating that such a self can not logically be found (Hume) and is void (Eliminationism), and that it is only psychologically (Hume) or verbally (Eliminationism) supposed.⁹ (iii) A synthesis indicating that such a self should be supposed over or beyond our thought and actions. Though we are not able to find this; it is a transcendental and logical condition for our thought and actions (Kant and Husserl).

 These three positions can be classified as the major lines of the subjectivistic theories of the self in modern thought. All these positions seem to be trapped within the ontological gap we mentioned above. All of them have neglected the “being” of the self, the sum, and devoted themselves to the order of conceptual reflective knowledge, the Cogito, presupposing the distinction between epistemology and ontology, and the priority of the former over the latter.

Thus considered, one may see the modern epistemology of the self as a continual challenge to the same problem: Descartes posited an isolated substance, a beingless subject, as “I”; and the epistemologists after him made challenges for or against this “I”. In this research we consider Husserl, whose Cartesian Meditations end up with a radical idealism on the self, as characteristic figure of this subjectivistic movement.

Meanwhile, my purpose is to see the possibility of bridging the ontological gap in the modern theories of the self by application of the insights gained from the transcendent tradition in Persian philosophy. Before expounding a transcendent account of the self, we will offer a brief analysis of the three major lines of Western subjectivism identified above. For convenience we term these (1) substantialising the self, (2) psychologising the self and (3) transcendentalising the self. These will be explored through the writings of Descartes, Hume, Kant and Husserl. The first aim of this analysis is to clarify the problematic within diverse and conflicting modern thoughts about the self. The second aim is to prepare a proper context for our later proposal that many of these apparently conflicts can be integrated and brought to completion on the basis of the apparently widespread experience of the self identified in the transcendent philosophy. We will suggest that these apparent conflicts can be resolved by underpinning them with a transcendent account of the self.

1. 2. Substantialising the Self

The substantialisation of the self has a history as old as that of philosophy. It is first presented by Plato, then systematised by Aristotle. In modern times it has gained fresh significance through Descartes’ methodological meditations. In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes engaged in a search for knowledge that would prove to be absolutely certain. He employed scepticism as a method, doubting everything he could in order to see if anything remained as certain and stable.

“Archimedes asked only for one fixed and immovable point so as to move the whole earth from its place; so I may have great hopes if I find even the least thing that is unshakeably certain.” ¹⁰  

Using this method, Descartes felt that he discovered an absolute, unshakeable foundation for knowledge in the knowledge of his own self-existence. He doubted everything, and then noticed that the very act of doubting was his act, and that even doubting his own non‑existence would therefore prove his existence. For “if I did convince myself of anything, I must have existed,” and similarly, if anyone else convinced him of anything, he must also still exist.

“Thus I. . . must at length conclude that this proposition “I am”, “I exist”, whenever I utter it or conceive it in my mind, is necessarily true.”¹¹ 

On this argument, then, “I exist” is a necessary truth whenever thought or uttered. It is true whenever conceived, and its contradiction “I do not exist” is false whenever conceived (for the very act of conceiving it implies its falsity).

 Having established self‑existence as beyond doubt Descartes asked “what is this “I” that necessarily exists?' ¹² He noted that his body and even the entire physical universe might conceivably be mere dreams, “nonentities” in themselves. As such they stand in sharp contrast to the certainty of his own consciousness. For while these possibly illusory objects of awareness might disappear from his consciousness, his own consciousness itself could not. Thus:

“At this point I come to the fact that there is consciousness…of this and this only I cannot be deprived.” ¹³ “What then am I? A conscious being.” ¹⁴ 

“That is, a being that doubts, asserts, denies, understands a few things, is ignorant of many, is willing or unwilling; and that has also imagination and sense. . . In these few words I have given a list of all the things I really know, or at least have so far observed that I know. . . I am certain that I am a conscious being.” ¹⁵ 

Thus, Descartes argued that his own existence as a conscious being is necessarily beyond doubt. From this beginning Descartes attempted to derive a knowledge about knowledge, God, and the world. Our concern here, however, is only with his theory of self. Let us turn to three major corollaries about the self which Descartes felt was established by the above line of reasoning.

(i) I am a thing that thinks, an “intelligent substance” that can exist “as a whole” being, independently of any of the various faculties of thinking or consciousness (e.g., imagination, perception, etc.) which I find in me.

(ii) I am “one and the same mind that wills, feels. . . understands,” etc.¹⁶ That is, I am the same person, the same “conscious being” throughout all of my activities and experiences, “a single and complete thing,” “non‑extended, without parts, and “wholly indivisible.” ¹⁷

(iii) I am non‑picturable and non‑imaginable, and “nothing I can comprehend by the help of imagination belongs to my conception of myself.” One’s nature as a conscious self, Descartes argued, is radically different and logically distinct from all the contents of perception and imagination, ¹⁸and

“The mind’s attention must be carefully diverted from these things, so that she may discern her own nature as distinctly as possible.” ¹⁹ 

These conclusions about the self have proven very troublesome. From Descartes’ time onwards philosophers have questioned them, asking:

(i) What reason do we have to infer the existence of some conscious thing or substance existing above and beyond the various contents of consciousness displayed by introspection?

(ii) What is meant by the “sameness” of self existing throughout its various activities, and what evidence (other than ordinary common‑sense intuition) do we have that there is one selfsame thing that persists?

(iii) What concept can we have of something absolutely unimaginable and unpicturable?

These three questions, about the self as a conscious thing, the same conscious thing, and unimaginable conscious thing, have dominated discussions of self for over three hundred years. Descartes’ meditations on the self, however plausible they might at first seem, have raised more questions than they settled, and his Archimedes” point is not yet at all secure and immovable.

We will later see if the transcendent theory we will be discussing provides us with a useful perspective for re-evaluating these difficult questions about the nature of the self. Rather than attempting to apply this transcendent knowledge here, however, let us continue our examination of modern philosophical theories and problems of self as they developed after Descartes.

1. 3. Psychologising the Self

 The substantialisation of the self was accepted not only by Cartesians, but also by some philosophers who objected to his philosophical system (e.g. Berkeley). Only Hume who pushed empiricism to its extreme, rejected the nature of the self as a substance. Due to his empiricist principles, he ultimately described the self as a merely psychological “I”. It does not mean that by such a position, he refused to consider the knowledge of the self; rather, like Descartes, he regarded knowledge of the self to be of supreme importance. In the introduction to his Treatise on Human Nature he declared:

"Here then is the only expedient, from which we can hope for success in our philosophical researches, to. . . march directly to the capital or centre of these [i.e., all the] sciences, to human nature itself, which being masters of we may every where else hope for an easy victory."20 

It is obvious that Hume was concerned with developing philosophical knowledge that was scientific. He subtitled his Treatise “An attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects,” that is, into subjects dealing with mind, knowledge, and human nature. By an “experimental method of reasoning,” he meant reasoning that was experiential in orientation. All concepts that could not be derived from experience, that is from our “impressions” (or perceptions) and the relations observed to hold among them, were to be discarded as unscientific. Only those concepts the meanings of which could be fully explicated in terms of experience were to be accepted as significant and useful for gaining knowledge.21 Let us now see how Hume applied his “experimental method” of analysis to the self.

Hume, responding to Descartes’ analysis, 22 noted that it is supposed certain that the self has a “perfect identity and simplicity,” is “invariably the same through the whole course of our lives,” and is neither an impression nor perception but rather “that to which our several impressions and ideas are supposed to relate.” 23 According to Hume, however, this notion of self, which at first seems to appear commonsensical, is not supported by the facts of our actual experience. For we have no impression that is constant and invariable, 24 and no experience of self (or anything else) as distinct from perceptions or impressions. 25Therefore, Hume argued, we have no experiential basis for any concept of self as single, simple, or continuing. This commonsensical concept of self that is supposed, therefore, according to Hume, is simply “fictitious.” 26 

Thus, on the basis of Hume’s analysis, if we remain true to our experience we are forced to acknowledge that the self in reality “is nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions which. . . are in perpetual flux or movement.” 27 For introspection only displays collections of such perceptions, and no perception or collection is perceived as constant. This observation, and its apparent conflict with our sense of self as constant and abiding naturally prompted Hume to ask:

“What then gives so great a propension to ascribe an identity to these successive perceptions [constituting one’s self], and to suppose ourselves possess of an invariable and uninterrupted existence through the whole of our lives?” 28 

Hume’s answer is that our various perceptions are so closely connected by two relations, “contiguity” (being “next to”) and “resemblance,” that our attention naturally passes among them so smoothly that we generally do not notice their separateness and distinctness, and that as a result we simply take them unreflectingly to be aspects of a single thing, namely, one’s self‑identical mind or self. Self-identity is only a (naturally occurring) fiction. 29 

"Hume at first considered this “relational” account of the genesis of our concept of the self “perfectly decisive.”30

He asserted:

“When I turn my reflection on myself, I never can perceive this self without some one or more perceptions. It is the composition of these, therefore, which forms the self." 31 

"We have no notion of it distinct from particular perceptions." 32

"And we have no impression of self or substance as something simple and individual. We have, therefore, no idea of them in this sense.” 33

Thus, Hume reasserted, there can be no sense to the idea of a single, abiding self to which our various individual perceptions and thoughts are related or connected.

“So far I seem to be attended with sufficient evidence. But having thus loosened all our particular perceptions, when I proceed to explain the principle of connection, which binds them together and makes us attribute to them a real simplicity and identity; I am sensible, that my account is very defective.” 34

That is, Hume’s earlier attempt to unify the “loosened perceptions” and account for the “felt” unity of self by means of relations observed to hold between them is now explicitly rejected as “very defective.” 35 

The logic of Hume’s difficulty may perhaps require some explanation. Hume argued that each of our “perceptions” or “impressions” (that is, each component of our inner and outer experience) is a logically “distinct existence.” Each experience can be had independently of any and all of the others, in logic if not in actual fact. That is, there is nothing in any of our perceptions which necessarily connects it with any other. By recognising this we have, in Hume’s terms, (conceptually) “loosened” each of our perceptions from all the others. Thus if we reflect on the set of perceptions that comprise the experiences of our own lives we see that there is nothing within these “loosened” perceptions that can account for their connectedness. This means that there is nothing in them that can account for the fact that each of us “feels” that they are connected by being “bound together” as one’s own.

Hume’s argument here, of course, is only about perceptions as perceptions. Taken by itself, it does not imply anything about what we naturally take to be objects of and causal processes underlying the perceptions themselves. For example, the fact that the contents of the left and right portions of one’s visual (or auditory) field exist and are related in the way that they presently are (as left and right, being experienced now by oneself) presumably is the result of a long causal sequence of events. Given that objective causal sequence, what is experienced on the left must be experienced there. But on the basis of Hume’s analysis, 36 if we consider the perceptions just as perceptions, we can readily imagine, for example, seeing the left portion somewhere else, in a different context, or even entirely by itself. For each portion is “distinguishable, and separable, and may be conceived as separately existent, and may exist separately, without any contradiction or absurdity.” 37 

One might have dreamed of having perceptions that are connected, or disconnected, in the ways that are different from the ways that they actually are. But recognising that (considered purely as perceptions) there is nothing in them that requires them to be connected in the ways that they are, or even to be connected at all, makes it apparent that there is nothing in them which can account for the fact that they are connected together as one’s own. Hume accordingly felt constrained to conclude that

“All my hopes vanish, when I come to explain the principles, that unite our successive perceptions in our thought or consciousness. I cannot discover any theory, which gives me satisfaction on this head.” 38

 Hume’s introspective analysis and conclusion that he could find neither any constant perception nor anything distinct from perceptions, and therefore nothing which could correspond to the notion of a single, abiding self, has proven very influential since his time. His analyses of the varieties of perceptions and their relations and his attempt to construct a theory of self in terms of relations and collections of perceptions accordingly have prompted philosophers and psychologists alike to offer a variety of theories of the self as a bundle, collection or other association of perceptions related in various ways (such as continuity, similarity, or memory-connectedness). Hume himself, however, not only rejected his own collection theory of self, but also apparently felt that no such theory could succeed. For his rejection, as we saw, was formulated entirely in general terms, without even mentioning any of the specifics of his own earlier theory.

Hume’s rejection of bundle or collection theories of self was based on his observation that our perceptions, considered purely as perceptions, are separable and re-combinable. This observation also provides the basis for an explicit general argument against the possibility of any adequate “collection” or “relational” theory of self. The idea behind the argument seems to be simple. When we recognise, as Hume did, that any imaginable perception could, logically, be had independently of its relationships to other perceptions, it becomes apparent that any such perception (logically, if not in fact) could be had by anyone, including oneself. Perhaps the world would have to be very different (as in a dream, or in some science fiction narrative) for one to actually have a certain fanciful experience, but if one can imagine anyone’s having it, one can imagine (without logical contradiction) having it oneself. To this extent, then, it appears that we naturally conceive of ourselves as experiencers somehow independent of the restrictions imposed by particular experiences and their relationships. It seems obvious that neither collections of such experiences nor their relations can be expected to capture this independent aspect of our ordinary concept of self.

The full general argument, intended to cover all possible cases, is naturally highly abstract. 39 Its basic idea, however, is simply that when a relation R between perceptions is defined, it will be incapable of grasping the nature of one’s self. 40 This is because in attempting to specify the collection of perceptions that supposedly constitute one’s self, the relation will always imply that it is (logically) impossible for one to have perceptions that he (logically) could have. The following examples serve to make the significance of this general argument clear.

Suppose, as a variation of Hume’s original “contiguity” and “resemblance” theory, that for any thing to be a perception it must be experienced as associated with our own body, and in a place connected with those of our prior experiences. If the relation R is defined in this way, then any perception that is not experienced as (a) associated with our body and (b) in a place connected with those of our earlier experiences will be a perception that R excludes. This means that it is a perception which we cannot have. It is easy to see, however, that people not only can but actually do have such excluded perceptions. If our body is moved to a completely unfamiliar place while we are unconscious, our perceptions of surroundings upon waking will not be connected with those of our prior experiences. Furthermore it is obviously possible to have experiences where our body is not noticed at all, and in dreams we can not only not notice our body but even have experiences which are associated to all appearances with a different body, or even with no body at all. These are all common kinds of experiences. Yet the relation R defined above implies that we could not have any of them. Thus each of them shows that the relation being evaluated is incapable of defining the collection of perceptions that we can have.

The relation evaluated and rejected above was defined in the spirit of Hume’s original suggestion, in terms of the relationships between our perceptions. But the general argument against collection theories implies that relations which are expanded to refer to physical objects (such as our own bodies) as well will still always have counter examples. For example, it is often held that an experience must be had by means of (or at least in association with) our body, whether or not we notice this fact. Thus the relation R could require our body as a condition for a perception. Thus, any experience felt before our body existed or after it ceases to exist, cannot be an experience possibly had by ourselves. Now consider some logically possible experiences occurring after our body ceases to exist. Then the relation R now being examined implies that one cannot have this experience. While it may well be true in fact that we cannot have any experiences after our bodies cease to exist, the majority of the people in the world not only appear capable of imagining that they have such experiences, butane often even very concerned about having and/or not having them, as the history of the world’s religions (not to mention the texts of Plato and other philosophers) shows. Since this concern, held so deeply by so many ordinary people, is about their having such experiences themselves, it is clear that this relation R is incapable of capturing, and indeed is contradicted by, our ordinary concept of self as it is reflected in these widespread religious fears and aspirations. 41

The relations used in the above examples could of course be refined and revised to accommodate any given counter‑examples. The general argument, however, implies that every empirically significant relation will have such counter‑examples. It rejects all such relations at once, and implies that whatever relations may hold between our various perceptions, these relations are unable either to define the self by specifying the collection of perceptions proper to it, or to express what is involved in our perceptions being, for each of us, our own. Thus they cannot serve as the “principle of connection” uniting perceptions into a collection adequate to defining the self. Hume’s scepticism about the possibility of developing a bundle or collection‑theory of the self was thus well‑founded.

“Did our perceptions either inhere in something simple and individual, or did the mind perceive some real connection among them, there would be no difficulty in the case. For my part, I must plead the privilege of a sceptic, and confess that this difficulty is too hard for my understanding." 42 

The “capital or centre” of knowledge clearly has not yet been captured.

1. 4. Transcendentalising the Self

Descartes’ and Hume’s theories posited a third possibility in the history of modern thought: transcendentalisation of the self. This possibility is firstly examined by Kant and followed by the majority of philosophers in post-Kantian period. Here we summarise two outstanding figures in this line: Kant and Husserl whose positions on transcendentalisation seem to arise differently from a tension between Cartesian and Humean trends.

a) Kant: Hume’s critical analyses had a profound impact on Kant. Reading Hume, Kant wrote, woke him from his “dogmatic slumber"43 and caused him to re-evaluate the foundations of what he had formerly taken to be knowledge. Hume’s analyses convinced Kant that the relationships we observe in experience are always contingent, and that experience therefore cannot display necessary, universal truth. 44 This forced Kant to question his earlier dogmatic convictions radically, and ask how, and even whether, knowledge which is certain and universal could even be possible. In his Critique of Pure Reason he responded that we can in fact have knowledge which is certain and universal, and that universal certainty is a reflection of the invariant aspects of the nature of the knower, rather than of the changing contents of whatever one may know or experience. 45

 Kant offered an analysis of the self as “the original synthetic unity” of all knowledge and experience, a unity which serves as “the Supreme Principle of all Employment of the Understanding.” 46 Kant’s analyses of these concepts are detailed and quite sophisticated, but a few basic observations can usefully be made here. Kant noted that our experience is always in space and/or time, and, furthermore, it is always of extensions in space and/or time, never of isolated points. 47 Any isolated point, having no extension, would be too (infinitely) small ever to be perceived). Every experience, then, is composed of a synthesis of parts, and all the parts must be experienced by a single experiencer. 48 Otherwise they would not be parts of an experience, and the original experience would simply not exist. In order for the letter “I” at the beginning of this sentence to be seen, various parts must be seen together in specific relations. If each different part was seen in isolation by a different person, the letter would be seen by no one. Thus the very existence of seeing the letter implies that various parts are seen together (synthesised) by a single experiencer. Similarly, for any thought to be thought, its parts, too, must be synthesised in the experience of a single thinker. 49 Thus, Kant concluded, for any thought or experience to exist, its parts must already have been synthesised and presented to a single conscious self. The individual self according to Kant thus represents “the original synthetic unity” underlying all thought and experience, and, as underlying all thought and experience, its unity is the “supreme principle of all employment of the understanding.” In Kant’s terminology the “identity of the self,” 50 the unity of “transcendental apperception” or “pure original unchanging consciousness,” 51 is thus the universal condition presupposed by all experience and thought. Being presupposed by experience it is not given by it; it represents the supreme unifying contribution of the self. Furthermore, Kant argues, since our analysis has shown that this must be true of all experience, independent of all particulars of content, we know it with a priori certainty, that is, with a certainty which is logically prior to and independent of all the changing contents of experience.

Kant thus appears here to have located a fundamental truth about the self and its relation to experience, namely that the self must be a unitary, synthesising referent for all of one’s experiences.

“It must be possible for the “I think” to accompany all my representations; for otherwise something would be represented in me which could not be thought at all, and that is equivalent to saying that the representation would be impossible, or at least nothing to me.” 52 

But, Kant adds, there is an important way in which even this knowledge gives no knowledge about the self itself, for

“The perception of self. . . this inner perception is nothing more than the mere apperception “I think”. . . in which no special distinction or empirical determination is given.” 53

Our concept of the self thus appears to be “empty,” for we seem to know nothing about the self other than that it plays the role of the conscious synthesising or unifying pole of our experiences. As Kant puts it:

“The simple, and in itself completely empty, representation “I”. . . we cannot even say that this is a concept, but only that it is a bare consciousness which accompanies all concepts. Through this I or he or it (the thing) which thinks, nothing further is represented than a transcendental subject of the thought = X. It is known only through the thoughts which are its predicates, and of it, apart from them, we cannot have any concept whatsoever.”54

Kant’s conception of self thus raises two important, related questions:

 (a) Why according to Kant, must the “I” be a completely empty representation? And (b) why is it that the self cannot be known as it is in itself?

 We can readily extract answers to these two questions from within Kant’s system. The answer to the first question emphasises the relation of the self to experience, and the second emphasises the nature of the self in itself. I say “extract” two answers because while Kant’s conclusions are clear, his reasoning here seems to be not spelled out. 55 We can nevertheless fairly see how his conclusions follow from his general position.

(a) First let us see why Kant would hold that the “I” is in itself simple and empty, and that it is obvious that in attaching “I” to our thoughts we designate the subject of inherence transcendentally, without noticing in it any quality whatsoever. 56

Kant’s point is not that we simply do not notice any quality, but that there is no quality to be noticed. Whether or not this is “obvious,” it can readily be shown to follow within Kant’s system: My having an experience implies that it is my experience that is already subject, in Kant’s terminology, to the “transcendental unity of apperception.” Therefore if we add “I” it doesn’t mean that we add what was not there already. Since this is true for every possible experience, there is no quality the “I” can ever add to any experience; therefore it has no quality of its own to add, that is, “no special distinction or empirical determination” which can serve to distinguish it within the field of experience. We thus see how Kant could reasonably maintain that the universal applicability of the “I” (of “I think,” “I experience,” “I am,” etc.) precludes it from having “any admixture of experience,”57 from being characterised by any “empirical data”58 or “special designation,” 59 and from being “accompanied by any further representation.”60

(b) Now let us see what the representation of “I”, empty as it may be, is supposed to be of (namely the self which combines or synthesises experiences and thoughts into its own unified whole). In the first place, it is clear that Kant thought of the self as (somehow) outside the whole field of experience. For insofar as the self is that which combines or synthesises experiences, it must lie outside of them, for “combination does not lie in objects [that are combined], and cannot be borrowed from them.”61

 The self as the unity of apperception is thus, in Kant’s terminology, “transcendental,” ever associated with, yet never to be found in, the field of appearances. Furthermore, Kant’s analysis of experience and the unifying activity of the self leads necessarily, according to his arguments, to the concept of the self as a self‑identical thing‑in‑itself independent of space and time -- in Kant’s terminology a “noumenon.” For the self, using space and time as its matrices to integrate all of its experiences, must somehow be independent of these matrices it uses (as well as of objects it integrates). 62 But, Kant argued, if the self (as noumenon) must be outside of time, there can be absolutely no possibility of experiencing the self as it is in itself, for it is a given (although unexplainable) fact of human nature that absolutely all of our experience is of appearances in space and/or time. 63

 In short, for Kant (a) the “I” (of “I think,” “I am conscious,” etc.) is an empirically empty concept precisely because it is necessarily compatible with and presupposed by every possible experience, and (b) we can have no knowledge of the self (the “I”) as it is in itself, because it is (necessarily thought of as) outside of appearances in space and time, and our experience, the basis of knowledge of particular things, is always and only of appearances in the field of time.

 This, for Kant, results in a highly unsatisfactory situation: (i) reasoning about thought and experience leads to the conclusion that a simple, self identical, absolutely unconditioned64 self, a thing‑in‑itself beyond the field of appearances, must be presupposed, yet (ii) reasoning about this concept shows that it is vacuous and gives us no factual knowledge, for it has no empirical content, and there is no possibility of experiencing any object corresponding to it. While logical coherence requires thinking of the self as the simple, self‑identical subject65 of our experiences, “such a way of speaking has no sort of application to real objects, and therefore cannot in the least extend our knowledge.” 66 

And in particular it yields “nothing whatsoever towards the knowledge of myself as an object.” 67 We thus are here involved in what Kant calls a “transcendental illusion,” an “inevitable illusion. . . [springing] from the very nature of reason.” 68 

“I think myself on behalf of a possible experience, at the same time abstracting from all actual experience; and I conclude there from that I can be conscious of my existence even apart from experience and its empirical conditions.” 69

But this is an error, for

“In so doing I am confusing the possible abstraction from my empirically determined existence with the supposed consciousness of a possible separate existence of my thinking self,” 70

And inner awareness can “furnish nothing to the object of pure consciousness for the knowledge of its separate existence. 71

This dilemma, according to Kant, is inescapable:

“Even the wisest of men cannot free himself from [this] illusion which unceasingly mocks and torments him.” 72 

The unity of the self, the “supreme principle of all employment of understanding,” thus, according to Kant, inevitably involves us in illusion.

b) Husserl: Descartes discovered the self as the un-doubtable subject of all thinking. He clearly saw that the self is not a person but only that which did the thinking which he then called a res cogitans. Hume denied that there was any such self to be discovered through experience or reason; but he could not avoid referring to himself while writing to explain this theory. Kant tried to reply to both Hume and Descartes. He suggested a “self” which is non-empirical but which captures the insight of the Cogito, a transcendental self.73 Husserl once again tries to introduce a transcendental self, a non-psychological “I”. He says that Descartes falls into an inconsistency in regard to establishing his own ego as transcendental.74 The transcendental which is as a pre-condition for the object of enquiry to exist (perception in this case), Husserl thinks, is what escapes from the field of consciousness:

“As a natural man, can I ask seriously and transcendentally how I get outside of my island of consciousness.” 75

The answer to this question, according to him, is positive:

“By the method of transcendental reduction each of us, as Cartesian meditator, was led back to his transcendental ego.” 76

“If I put myself above all this life and refrain from doing any believing . . . I thereby acquire myself as the pure ego.” 77

This is indeed so because:

“The transcendental ego emerged by virtue of my paranthesing of the entire Objective world and all other (including all ideal) Objectivities. In consequence of this parenthesising, I have become aware of myself as the transcendental ego.” 78

and finally:

“In such [self-] experience the ego is accessible to himself originally. But at any particular time this experience offers only a core that is experienced with strict adequacy, namely the ego’s living present.” 79

 Since Husserl insists that phenomenology should be restricted to pure description, we can easily see why the notion of a transcendental self puts him in trouble. This is because the transcendental self who is the subject of all experiences cannot be the object of any possible experience; if so, then there is nothing which can be described.

In his early works, 80 thanks to his faithfulness to the idea of pure description, Husserl rejects the notion of the pure or transcendental self. In this stage he, following Hume, identifies consciousness simply as a bundle of acts, and there is no need for a “referential centre”. Later, in Ideas, he speaks of Cogito in a somewhat Cartesian manner and regards it as “necessary”. Applying the epoche, the method of withdrawing, the Cogito remains unbracketable, and he says that this Cogito is the self. In this stage Husserl still maintains that we can not describe the self. With Descartes, Husserl argues that the self remains after any doubting or reduction and that it is the pure ego which performs the acts of constitution which yield the world.

“The experiencing ego is still nothing that might be taken for itself and made into an object of inquiry on its own account. Apart from its “way of being related “or ways of behaving”, it is completely empty of essential components, it has no content that could be unravelled. It is in and for itself indescribable." 81

Later, 82 Husserl ignores the notion of the self in the form of “Ego” and describes it as “soul” which is passive for the most part. The self here is described as a functional centre, and as a polarity to which intuition happens. Thus understood, Husserl says, the self constitutes itself. The idea that the self is a mostly passive centre which constitutes itself, puts Husserl’s thesis in line with Kant’s thesis of Cogito. This self is not a substance, and indescribable apart from its necessary role in perception. It is as necessary for the existence of (its) objects as its objects are necessary for it. In formulating the self here, Husserl seems to follow Kant in his “refutation of idealism” in the first Critique. 83 The self and its objects are polarities, each necessary for the other. The self is active so far as it provides the forms of intuition and categories of understanding within which objects can be known. The self, however, is passive so far as intuition is concerned and can not be said to create its objects.

In his later works, Husserl, relying on Descartes, seems to regard the self as an Archemidian point. He speaks of the self as “absolute,” meaning that all objects exist only by relation to it but not vice versa. He introduces the transcendental reduction which reduces all objects of intuition to products of this self. Ultimately, Husserl describes this self as a “monad,” an absolute ego, a total self which “includes also the whole of actual and potential conscious life." 84 It is for this monad that all things exist:

“Objects exist for me, and are for me what they are, only as objects of actual and possible consciousness.” 85

This ultimate result, of course, leads Husserl to a kind of solipsism86 and idealism87 -- as accepted by him in Cartesian Meditations:

“Phenomenology is eo ipso "transcendental idealism".”88

“Without doubt . . . [phenomenology] condemns us to a solipsism.” 89

Husserl’s theory of self also leads to a radical subjectivism, instead of a transcendental empiricism.90 What Husserl builds in his later works is a castle for the transcendental subjectivity to which all true knowledge belongs. 91 The idea of an absolute self, a monad, also threatens Husserl with scepticism, for the idea that everything is relative to the self and all knowledge is knowledge of the transcendental subjectivity entails this consequence that we can not know anything except our own subjectivity.

1.5. Final Considerations

 The analyses of Descartes, Hume, Kant and Husserl have raised serious problems for our ordinary notion of self. Descartes, reflecting common sense, argued that the self is single, simple, abiding, and different from its varying perceptions. Hume rejected this characterisation on the grounds that we have no corresponding experience. Yet he concluded that this rejection, along with the consequent attempt to account for our concept of self by means of collections of perceptions, leads to a “labyrinth” of inconsistencies. 92 Kant, on the other hand, argued that we necessarily have to think of the self as single, simple and abiding, but he also argued that the fact that we have no corresponding experience necessarily renders this concept problematic. The result is a concept of self which, as vacuous, “unceasingly mocks and torments” even “the wisest of men.”

To make our difficulty even worse, the above discussion of Kant led to the conclusion that the self, the “I” that we necessarily think of as present throughout all of our experiences, cannot properly be characterised by any empirical quality. And the above discussion of Hume led to the related conclusion that the self cannot be properly characterised even by collections of or relations between our perceptions. It thus appears that it is not possible to characterise the self in terms of empirical qualities, their collections, or their relations. Our analysis so far thus seems to imply that our concept of self is, as Hume suggested and Kant insisted, meaningless.

Husserl seems to remain in a continuous tension between Humean and Kantian demands, from one side, and Cartesian demand from the other side, and ultimately ends up in a radical subjectivism.

It could be said, on the basis of the above discussion, that it is the ontological gap in the epistemology of the self in modern thought that raises the lack of any experience corresponding to our ordinary concept of self as single, simple, and abiding. This lack appears to make it impossible to develop any philosophically satisfactory notion of self. But if epistemology of the self is the “Archimedes’ point,” the “capital or centre” of all knowledge, and the “supreme principle of all employment of the understanding”, as Descartes, Husserl, Hume, and Kant respectively indicate, then the absence of a satisfactory ontology of self points to a profound gap at the basis of modern thought. That is to say, the “being” of the self is repeatedly ignored from Cartesian meditations to Husserlian meditations. This is what we mean by the “ontetic gap”.

Now, if there is such a gap in the basis of modern theories of the self, how could we fill it? There are, of course, a few suggestions offered by Western critics to fill this gap -- either by appealing to the far eastern schools, as we see in early Geunon93 who detected a moral self in Hinduism, or by reconsidering traditional Western philosophy, as we see in existentialism. (We will consider existentialism as an example of such efforts throughout this research).

Though all these efforts to fill the gap are praiseworthy, we will however present a new perspective, originally drawn from an old tradition in Persian philosophy: the transcendent tradition. As we depicted the problematic of the modern notion of the self as an ontetic gap, we would argue for returning to the “being” of the self to bridge this gap. 94 To remove the ontetic gap, one should consider the self’s ontology: Instead of reflectively and epistemologically theorising about the nature of the self as a concept, we need a living, performative, factual and existential notion to indicate the experience of the self. Such a notion is exactly what will be suggested in this research.

We would suggest that the transcendent theory can bridge the ontetic gap in the epistemology of the self because it assigns to the self a special kind of “being” that remains apart from (and prior to) any distinction between ontology and epistemology, and so, as we will see, automatically removes the modern subjectivistic self.

CHAPTER TWO

The Transcendent Method: A Reconstruction

In the previous chapter I suggested that the problematic of the modern subjectivistic self is rooted in an ontetic gap, and one may remove the subjectivistic self by reconsidering the self as it is ontetic. However this  ontologising approach needs a method, and to this end, I will try in this chapter to reconstruct the outline of a method tacitly employed by Sadr al-Din Muhammad Shirazi (hereafter: Sadra)¹ in his doctrine of the illuminative existentialism. Historically speaking, this idea is rooted in Avicenna’s idea of Hekmat al-Mashreqhyyin; ² Avicenna hinted that he desires to establish a philosophy that was purely orientalized/illuminative in principle. His commentators understand this to be a hint towards a philosophy drawn from ancient Persian wisdom. Because of his death, he could not elaborate such a philosophy. This task was only later fulfilled by another Persian philosopher, Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi³, who established a new philosophical system on the notions of Illumination (ishraagh) and Light (nour) ⁴.

Thus rooted, Sadra’s transcendent philosophy -- a name picked up from Daavoud Ghaysari, the great commentator of Ibn 'Arabian contemplative mysticism, and used as part of the title of Sadra's major work, Transcendent philosophy through the Four Intellectual Journeys of the Self⁵ -- followed the doctrine of sayr wa sulook, which is widely developed within the transcendent mystical literature, to put together the elements of transcendent philosophy through "four journeys of the self". The phrase "four journeys of the self" that is brought in the title of his book is symbolically employed here, to depict an intellectual process whereby the self gains true knowledge following its existential transformation. Interpreting this symbolism, we would try here to "extract"⁷ a descriptive illustration of the transcendent method that is often hidden from the eyes of investigators and orientalists. The chief aim of this reconstruction is to present, through a comparative description of the transcendent method, the transcendent notion of reduction that is crucial for our discussion of the ontetic structure of the self, because it is through this reduction that transcendent philosophy brings the ontology and epistemology of the self together, and this is what we need to bridge the gap at the basis of modern notions of the self. This will concern us in detail -- though it is not, of course, our intention here to study all doctrinal applications of this method or to evaluate its various aspects.

2.1 Primary Considerations

Transcendent philosophy has different philosophical, theological and mystical aims. As for these aims the transcendent school has chosen a synthetic method. For this school, philosophy, as an investigation and interpretation of every kind of phenomena, natural, inward-human, and metaphysical, seeks the profound foundations of these phenomena. Therefore, as can be inferred from the transcendent tradition as a whole, philosophy should conduct its search by having at its disposal all methods of obtaining knowledge. Philosophical activity implies the presence of a problem or a variety of problems in need of a solution; and since a method is "a device or a procedure, to solve a problem or answer a question"^8, and since problems or questions vary in kind, the methods for solving them will also vary.

The multiplicity of problems confronting man’s intellect demands the use of a multiplicity of methods. To have such an idea of method implies that man must have been greatly impressed by the empirical scientific approach; this is why he commences his philosophic investigation by it and continued its application until the disclosure of the Being is achieved. This, however, does not force him into a slavish adherence to the scientific approach, nor to give up the results derived from other methods.

The free manner in which transcendent philosophy utilizes these methods compels us to believe that this school does not believe that philosophy has only one distinct method of its own. On this point transcendent philosophy completely agrees with Marvin Farber who writes in this respect:

"[The plurality of methods] signifies that no one type of procedure is to be regarded as the correct method exclusively.... An unlimited number of methods restricted at a given time only by human ingenuity and the extent of knowledge, is the response to an unlimited number of types of problem. The principle of the co-operation of methods applies, whether the methods be objectivistic or subjectivistic, "longitudinal” [historical or evolutionary] or “cross-sectional” [conceptual and formal]."⁹

This is the transcendent point of view as well, especially when the word “historical” is replaced by “existential”.

 Let us now read this in the context of the transcendent terminology. The literature of the transcendent school, which covers its meditative as well as the speculative aspects, is full of dissertations and letters discussing the methods for achieving the truth. The general title used for such a methodological discussions is called sayr wa sulook. There are two interrelated kinds of sayr wa sulook in general: Afaqi which belongs to the horizon of Being, and Anfusi which is vertically directed toward the purest point (or the source) of Being. These two kinds of sayr wa sulook are realised for a Truth-seeker (talib al haqq) in four stages of an existential experience which indicates four ek-stasis of the self to achieve the presential cognition.10 Generally considering, however, we may summaries their wide discussions on these stages by philosophically depicting them in the following form:

Each stage implies a reduction: (a) Reduction from appearances (dawaher) to their essences (mahyyat); (b) Reduction from essences to the knowing self (nafs al 'aref); (c) Reduction from the knowing self to the self as presential cognition (al nafs ‘ayn o ma'refateh); (d) Reduction of the presential cognition to Being which implies a new return to the things (the phenomenal world) through Being itself, with a different outlook; considering neither their appearance (as phenomenalism says) nor their essence (as phenomenology says); rather, their reality as the emanative entities.

The reductions (a) and (b) belong, in their terminology, to the horizontal lines in the structure of Being, and we can classify them as the eidtic reduction (in Husserlian sense) because they belong to essences and the eidetic field. The reductions (c) and (d), on the other hand, belong to the vertical line in the structure of Being and we can classify them as the ontetic11 reduction because they are concerned only with pure being. This eidetic-ontetic distinction is based on Sadra’s special understanding of the essence-existence distinction, which we will discuss later. In the eidetic reduction, in which we are reflectively seeking the essences and their interrelations as they appear in our reflective constituting consciousness, the transcendent school employs a plurality of methods: induction, deduction and other logical methods. In the ontetic reduction, in which there is no reflection but a pure presence in the mythical symphony of Being, it employs methods of ontetic “touch” and contact.

Transcendent philosophy, methodologically speaking, intends to bestow objectivity, inevitability, freedom from presuppositions, and a radical beginning for its philosophy. By such a method, and so far as the transcendent epistemology of presence is concerned, the transcendent school suggests a radical beginning in which the Truth-seeker (talib al haqq) returns to freshly know himself, God, the world, and the whole system of Being. Such a starting implies a passing from appearances or phenomena (dawaher) to their real truth. However, their real truth is still conceptually constituted as essences within our mind. This is because we still remain on the horizontal line of Being, that is, in the eidetic field in which we reflectively journey (al sayr al afaqi). Though this is one dimension of Being constituted as essences for us, one cannot claim that he reached the reality in this level, by merely reducing the appearances to their essences. This is because their realities, Sadra argues, are equal their being and existence, and not their essence. and this is crucial for him to reduce essence to existence as we will see later. But on the vertical lines of Being, that is, in the ontetic field, we are non-reflectively absorbed, and existentially experience ourselves, beings and God as a single Being. This brief description of the transcendent method suggests a triple discussion. We start with the ideal of a radical beginning, and then continue with the eidetic reduction in which the logical and reflective rules and methods are employed, and end with the ontetic reduction by which the existential aspects of the Sadraean discussion are revealed. On this, then, we would now describe the transcendent idea of a radical beginning.

2.2 The Radical Beginning

As hinted above, the transcendent method starts with an ideal for a beginningless commence. This can easily be seen in its emphasis on tawbah, meaning return as suggested by the transcendent doctrine, of tahzib al nafs, the purification of the self. This means for them to be released from what is done as yet; and to start again with a hope to achieve the truth. To this Sadra points when writing: "Oh, my friend! Begin [to philosophise]... first of all by purifying your self." 12

 Transcendent philosophy suggests that in order to grasp the truth and to identify with being, the Truth-seeker (talib al haqq) should practically purify himself from what has occupied him through his personal, environmental and social history. 13 The mystical aspect of the transcendent epistemology is hidden in this point, because there are systematic rules and norms that should be practiced in order to achieve ultimate truth and identify with Being. The first step is to give up all educated and learned issues, to purify from what occupied the self, to abandon the past and the future and to pick up the present moment. We would be, in this mystical outlook, alone in our existence, in order to have a new look. Unmolded by human conventions or by the social values, manners and philosophical systems of history, we must be free of all the prejudices, misconceptions, and assumptions characteristic of socially-bred humans. This means that one must disembody the human personality from the entire cultural, social, and political complex of traditional society. The transcendent school advices us to start from the fundamentals.

For Sadra, this doctrine philosophically indicates a radical beginning and a non-presupposed commencement. This is so because this doctrine has direct bearing on the method of philosophising, the beginning of a fresh outlook on philosophical problems, and the explanation of man’s encounter with his environment.

Nobody can grasp it [the truth] except those who have been alone, isolated from the others, variously mediating, and absolutely withdrawn from their ordinary culture, social customs, habits and worldly behaviours and concerns, fully suspending traditional beliefs and the common morality. 14

Sadra advises us to avoid taking “traditionally accepted thoughts, because...such a taking is imitation and formal, keeping the way to the truth closed up." 15

By arguing for such a separation from man’s social situation, Sadra has done what Descartes, Hume and Husserl intended to do. Resemblance to these thinkers should not be overstretched; for to excessively render transcendent philosophy in modern garb more leads to a methodological blunder. When done within legitimate limits, however, a comparison between this school and certain modern schools would show that what some consider to be the revolutionary attempts of the later schools are not entirely new, and that previous masters were aware of the importance of such attempts, though in less detail.

The transcendent school attempts to raise sense of doubt (maqam al hayrah) that is just prior or along with "return" (tawbah). This doubt (hayrah) can be used to complete the ideal of beginningless. For this school doubt implies a hypothetical destruction of the surrounding world of tradition and early education. This shattering “the mould” captures the very fabric of the self at the moment of birth and fashions it according to the patterns of the past and the present. In this, the transcendent school was trying to give a fresh and radical beginning to its philosophy. We use the word “radical” in a Husserlian sense, as a radical emancipation from all presuppositions. This means beginning with the ambitious task of knowing things without any a priori adoption of epistemological, metaphysical, ontological, or value principles.

Man, the truth-seeker (talib al haqq), is exists with no instruments except the givenness of his primeval impulses and his curious mind heading for truth. By allowing his existential capacities to unfold, excluding any intervention from without, and by exploring the freshness of a puzzling world filled with puzzling phenomena, the transcendent school is proclaiming to philosophers the Husserlian maxim before Husserl: "back to the things themselves," means to see, perceive, observe and describe phenomena afresh. For transcendent philosophy, this maxim means a return to their beings and not, as Husserl meant, a return to their essences. It urges man to overthrow the artificial and sophisticated barrier of schemes and values between man and the "life world" developed by humanity throughout the ages. The "things in themselves" are "beings" with which we are in touch. In this sense, everybody is a radical and naive empiricist at the beginning of their life. In his everyday life, he is in touch with the environing world as it appeared to him, or as he encountered it in immediate experience. This is the Husserlian world, the "life world," the ordinary world in which one lives, works, and plays. Like phenomenology, the transcendent school judges things on their own terms, as they are experienced. From the beginning of consciousness of facts until cognisance of Being, the transcendent method is partly descriptive and phenomenological. It advises us to experience before theorizing.

The transcendent school suspends all preconceived commitments and holds the entire world of conventions and traditions in abeyance. This school’s ideal of freedom from presuppositions is like Descartes’, Hume’s, and Husserl’s. For the transcendent school as for these thinkers, this ideal is a preparatory stage to examine all beliefs and noetic processes for evidence, validity, and consequences. The examination of these is accomplished by breaking away from them and, thus, dislodging them temporarily in order to find out whether philosophy in its fresh start from "things" in experience to reach certain truth, confirms or disconfirms these beliefs. Moreover, through this radical method, this school pushes its search and enquiry to its extreme consequences. Sadra, for example,16 depicts our "blank" and receptive mind as constituting and perfecting itself, and struggling to obtain far-reaching conclusions entirely on its own. Our progressive ascension, Sadra holds, has a tint of inevitability and necessity. Seemingly without any preconceived notions we achieve cognisance of causality, God, eternity of the world, and mysticism. It appears as though any mind will reach the same truths if it took, as its point of departure, the unsophisticated given of experience and then followed the canons of consistency. The transcendent school might consider true Alfred North Whitehead’s well-known dictum, namely that in philosophy there is no method that surpasses common sense and real insight.

Such an approach places the transcendent school amongst those early pioneers whose ideal was to establish philosophical propositions on a radical freedom from presuppositions. Had this school been philosophically more prolific and had it utilized such a method to its fullest, we would have been in a better position to pronounce more emphatic and elaborate assertions concerning this important and valid method. 17 

Behind the new words and expressions of Descartes, Hume and Husserl, which intended to give a radical start for philosophy, stands the old philosophical and methodological practice of the transcendent school. In comparison with the ancients, this method seems to be entirely novel and was not a familiar item in the household of ancient philosophy. Plato could not even conceive of philosophy or philosophers operating outside the social order. Philosophising must begin with the already presupposed concepts and values available in the polis; given ideas can be changed and moulded to establish a better life in the polis and to improve the moral life of the individual. However, such concepts as justice, courage, and virtue were taken for granted by Plato, although he examined their lexical meanings and formulated his own. Aristotle, in spite of being a ruthless examiner of the beliefs of his predecessors and an empiricist rationalist in his approach to philosophical problems, did not conceive of a method for suspending of the traditional world of conventions and values, in favour of the "natural view of the world."

From a methodological point of view, the resemblance between the transcendent school, Descartes, Hume, and Husserl perhaps is not so much in the details of their outlook as it is in the insistence of these authors upon the ideal of a radical beginning. Our intention is not to identify the ideas of the three modern European thinkers and the transcendent school, but to show that the transcendent school was aware of and had attempted to apply "radicalism" in beginning its philosophy, a view that has been correctly and emphatically endorsed by more modern schools.

The transcendent school was as acutely aware of the impossibility of reversing or annulling the cultural achievements and beliefs of humanity by such a method, as were Descartes, Hume, and Husserl; but it was, as they were, more than certain that this method furnishes man with a new perspective in his outlook on things. The suspension of any kind of belief by these writers was only theoritical, in order to free their philosophising from any preconceived prejudice. The mystical and practical aspects of the transcendent philosophy furnish such a possibility. 18 

It may be remembered that Hume disregarded all beliefs and metaphysical assertions and "bracketed" all the assumptions of scientific procedure (such as causality) placing in abeyance the epistemological investigations of former philosophers and the sophisticated framework of the world of tradition. He started from the very fundamentals and questioned all habits of the mind and the conceptions of the phenomenal world. His ideal was an assumption-free description of appearances or impressions. Through his rigorous descriptive method, he found out that there is no reason or guarantee in experience for the necessary connections between ideas. Demonstrations depend on the relations of ideas, and prove only what is conceivable or inconceivable and not what is in fact the case. Apart from relations of ideas, all that we perceive and all we can demonstrate is the existence of our perceptions. There is no reason to suppose that our impressions are supported by a material world, or a subjective self.19 Thus, Hume’s attempt at a presuppositionless beginning led him to a universal scepticism in all knowledge. At best our impressions can yield probable knowledge, and certain knowledge is an unattainable goal. In his caution to keep his assumptions to the minimum, Hume could not re-establish the natural world, the everyday world. His remained a chaotic world of approximations. Hume did not suspend beliefs and all traditional facts in order to reinstate them again at the end of his analysis. He tried to go as far as his radical method permitted him to go in tracing his source of evidence in experience.

On the other hand, by removing man from the context of traditional beliefs, however, the transcendent school practically "bracketed" these beliefs20 for examination by leaving nothing except the self and its confrontation with experience and Being. Like Hume, this school examines the means knowing surrounding phenomena, in order to lay control over the human environment (sayr al afaqi). Its unsophisticated radical empiricism advises us, in the first instance, to study the connections and relationships of items of experience and to study the sources and evidence for changes in phenomena. It, of course, did not explore phenomena with the same epistemological rigor as Hume. But the fact that it started with an assumption-free attitude in exploration and a method in first instance similar to Hume’s seems to be certain. However, the transcendent philosophy does not remain in the state of ignorance or suspension of belief. It achieves perfection in knowledge and establishes its view of reality. The world of beliefs, conventions, and values that is temporarily shattered (through tawbah) by removal from the traditional environment is rebuilt and established by an independent enquiry. Hume was not willing to assert a certain proposition about any external or internal entity outside or inside the mind except the proposition: only impressions exist; whereas transcendent philosophy, as is clear from its mystical aims, arrives at the questions about the very foundations of things: Who am I ? Are there beings like me? Where am I going? What purpose is there for my life? What is my relationship to the surrounding world? Starting with an unbiased background it tries to find answers for these questions. By these questions, one is supposed to have known that he had accepted many false opinions as a result of adhering to tradition and that were he to attain truth and certainty for himself he should momentarily paralyse the effect of all inherited dogmas and previously held opinions.

The transcendent school is like Descartes, who also sought a temporary release from the engulfing world of misty tradition:

"I would have to undertake once and for all to set aside all opinions which I had previously accepted among my beliefs and start again from the very beginning... I have found a serene retreat in peaceful solitude. I will therefore make a serious unimpeded effort to destroy generally all my former opinions. In order to do this, however, it will not be necessary to show they are all false." 21

 As Descartes found peaceful solitude conducive to the application of his methodical doubt, so did the illuminative thinkers.

Again, like Descartes, a transcendent philosopher does not have to prove that all the opinions of his predecessors are false. The extrication of the mind from the corpus of available beliefs through presence is not a mark of scepticism or agnosticism but a means of searching for truth and certainty. By the same token, methodical doubt does not mean that Descartes was either a sceptic or an agnostic; but instead, wishing to find certainty, he was forcibly led to break his old opinions down to their very foundations, because he realised how untrustworthy these opinions were. A transcendent philosopher in his practical philosophising provisionally wishes to suspend every concept and judgment about God, the world and the body by making himself begin his search without any such conceptions. Descartes also wished to "bracket" concepts and judgments about God, the world and the body.