In the summer of 2008, I spent two weeks doing
environmental clean-up work with Landmark Volunteers, a non-profit community
service program that brings high school students together from across the
country to work for historical, cultural, environmental or service
institutions. I was assigned to the
Trustees of Reservations, an organization that preserves the landscape in
Lenox, Massachusetts. I was part of a group of thirteen volunteers who worked
to maintain and improve the natural beauty of the landscape by cleaning and
weeding the grounds that had overgrown at nationally certified historic
properties. I chose to participate in
this program because of my love and respect for the environment and belief in
the importance of preserving it. I
gained valuable experience working in a different part of the country, meeting
new people and being part of a team not afraid to work hard for a good cause.
Explain the relation of reason to the notion of the unconditioned, and give examples of some objects that are
traditionally conceived as unconditioned.
Kant’s critique is centered on pure theoretical
reason. Pure theoretical reason is the
faculty of principles and, more specifically, unconditioned principles. The notion of the “unconditioned” arises in
his critique and can be connected to the pure reason that Kant is
investigating. A condition is simply, as
stated in class, a connection between two states of affairs. There are necessary conditions and sufficient
conditions but Kant here is looking into the unconditioned. The
unconditioned is a total state of affairs that constitutes the connections
among all subordinate, conditioned states of affairs and depends on no other
state of affairs distinct from itself.
Some examples that are traditionally conceived as unconditioned would be
a supreme, all-being god, the soul, and the totality of the world. The unconditioned plays a big role in Kant’s
critique because he found that human reason naturally and ultimately attempts
to find a condition for every condition.
Humans seek an absolute and ultimate explanation for the cause of these
conditions. Therefore, it is instinctive
of human reason to get wrapped up in the search for an unconditioned. There is a direct link between reason and the
notion of the unconditioned because we inherently hunt for an unconditioned
through reason in order to find an answer to everything! Kant quoted that “reason demands we find, for
the understanding’s conditioned cognition, the unconditioned whereby the
cognition’s unity is completed”.
However, Kant also argues that the “unconditioned” cannot be known due
to the limits of human knowledge. This
is where Kant’s “Transcendental Dialectic” or “logic of illusion” comes into
play. The problem with the connection
between reason and the unconditioned is that the mind sets out to understand
concepts beyond possible experience.
This problem brings forth transcendental illusions. Since we can never fully know if an
unconditioned is true or false, an antinomy (paradox) arises when proving one
or the other. For Kant, this is the
illusion and he uses the Transcendental Dialectic to prove that knowledge of
objects that cannot be experienced is illusionary. Further on, Kant goes on to basically put
forth that special metaphysics is an illusory science. He deduced that these illusions are
unavoidable and that metaphysics as a science is impossible. In conclusion, human reason logically
investigates the unconditioned. As a
result, reason it-self is the prime producer of transcendental illusion as the
mind seeks out knowledge that cannot possibly be experienced.
