Agonistic World Projects: Transcendentalism Versus Naturalism

Kantian transcendental philosophy has shown that we can never decide the question of whether or not the world is infinite in space and time, because, in the field of appearance, the world as a totality of concordant experience "does not exist as [an unconditioned] whole, either of infinite or of finite magnitude."¹ However, appearances are encountered in a world, in which one aspect of a thing always invites us to consider others, indicating thereby a road to infinity. According to a discovery of transcendental phenomenology, every single thing contains in itself "a continuum of appearances," which exhibits an "all-sided infinity."²

From this an important consequence can be drawn: although the world as a physical universe may turn out to be finite, the world as the totality of concordant experience must be regarded as an infinite—or, more precisely, as a "transfinite"—set of things that encompass, in each case, an all-sided infinity of aspects. It is in this sense that, in his Cartesian Meditations, Edmund Husserl defines the world as "an infinite idea, related to infinities of harmoniously combinable experiences."³ It is clear, however, that we can draw only upon a finite quantity of concordant experiences in order to exemplify this infinite idea.

That is why philosophy as a world project necessarily exhibits a deeply paradoxical structure: although it relies upon a finite quantity of concordant experiences, it projects an infinite idea into being. This paradoxical structure makes it clear why there are always different possible world projects. This is the case because a finite quantity of concordant experiences is reconcilable with different infinite ideas. It is, therefore, no accident that different world projects often enter into conflict with one another. In their conflicts they give rise to ever new world projects. There is no exaggeration in saying that the last source of historicity is the intertwinement of finitude and infinity in the paradoxical structure of world projects.

The following considerations are devoted to a conflict of world projects that are predominant in our epoch. First, I will sketch a world project that is characterized by a purely methodological kind of transcendentalism. Second, I will indicate how a naturalistic outlook is opposed to this world project. Finally, some reflections on the conflict of these two world projects and an argument in favor of the transcendental option will be presented.

1. Metontological Transcendentalism

By "transcendental philosophy" we usually mean the result of a "Copernican revolution" in metaphysics, which, in his Reflections on Metaphysics, Kant characterizes by the concise formula: "The subject instead of objects."⁴ Indeed, in all of its different versions, transcendental philosophy is aimed at a world project in which an appropriate place is assigned to subjectivity. Yet it would be a fatal error to reduce transcendental philosophy to a metaphysics of subjectivity.

It cannot be denied, however, that a transcendental approach is always menaced by subjectivism and idealism. In my view, transcendental philosophy succumbs to the former danger whenever it tries to impose on experience certain conditions of possibility that are not so much discovered in the sphere of appearance as deduced a priori from the nature of some faculties of mind. Thus, Kant's doctrine of transcendental apperception may be said to lead up to a subjectivism in metaphysics. For, according to this doctrine, the very structure of self-consciousness decides a priori on the question of what an experience has to look like in order to be able to emerge. It is in this sense that, in the Critique of Pure Reason, the following thesis is to be taken: "There is one single experience in which all perceptions are represented as in thoroughgoing and orderly connection. . . . When we speak of different experiences, we can only refer to the various perceptions, all of which, as such, belong to one and the same general experience."⁵ Here, a universal concordance of experiences is deduced a priori from a transcendental requirement formulated on the basis of an inquiry into the structure of self-consciousness. As to the danger of idealism, it can be retraced to a basic insight expressed...