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METAPHYSICAL EMPIRICISM The lowest level of empiricism is one in which all knowledge is limited to experience through the senses, in which everything supersensible is either denied as such or as a possible object of knowledge. If one accepts philosophical empiricism in this sense, then it does not even share positive philosophy’s opposition to rationalism. For positive philosophy merely denies that the supersensible is knowable only in a rational manner, whereas empiricism maintains that it is not knowable in this or any other way, and that ultimately it does not even exist. A higher level of philosophical empiricism, however, is one that maintains that the supersensible can become an actual object of experience, whereby it goes without saying that this experience cannot be of the merely sensuous type but must have something about it that is inherently mysterious, mystical, and for which reason we can call the doctrines of this type doctrines of a mystical empiricism.To be found among these doctrines, again at the lowest level, is that doctrine that allows us to become certain of the existence of the supersensible only through a divine revelation, which is conceived thereby as an external datum. The next higher level is a philosophy that goes beyond all external facts but nevertheless relies on the inner fact of an irresistible feeling to convince us of the existence of God while holding that reason inevitably [116] leads to atheism, fatalism, and, thus, to a blind system of necessity. As is well known, this was the earlier teaching of Jacobi, which was widely attacked because of this type of mysticism. He later sought to make peace with rationalism , and in a very unique way indeed, in that he installed reason in the place of the earlier feeling (itself provided merely for the individual) and then proposed something quite peculiar: that reason in itself—in a substantive manner , devoid of all actus and, thus, even before all science—is that which posits and knows God. This was a position he believed to be able to prove through a very popular argument—in a formal syllogism—which reads: “Only man knows of God, the animal does not know of God.The only characteristic that distinguishes man from animal is reason. Thus, it is reason that immediately reveals God, or it is that faculty with whose mere presence a knowledge of God is posited within us.” —The proposition that reason possesses an immediate knowledge of God, and thus a knowledge of God that is not mediated 171 172 Grounding of Positive Philosophy through science, or that reason by its very nature posits God—this proposition found such approval from those who would gladly dismiss all science that it is more than worth the trouble to submit to a closer critique the manner in which Jacobi sought to prove, through the aforementioned syllogism, this immediate positing of God by reason. We would like to clarify first only the major premise of this argument: “Only man knows of God, the animal does not know of God.” Germans have an old proverb: “What I do not know does not affect me, that is, it moves me neither for nor against it, neither to affirm nor to deny it.” Now, if in the first clause of the major premise (“Only the human knows of God”) there is such an indifferent knowledge, a knowledge that is still neither affirmative nor negative , but permits both responses—if this is the type of knowledge implied by the major premise, then according to the rule that there should be no more in the conclusion than there is in the premise, in the conclusion, reason cannot be that which reveals God, that is, reason cannot, as the intent of the inference suggests, be that which affirms God. To [117] avoid this, the major premise (“Only the human…”) would have to imply an affirmative knowledge. Yet if one assumes this, then the word knowledge in the major premise is used in two different senses; for “the human knows of God” means the human affirms God,and “the animal does not know of God”means the animal neither affirms nor denies God. This equivocation is again a formal error. Moreover, the first clause of the major premise would then be false. For the knowledge or the affirmation of God should be a generic character of humans, just as reason is. But this generality contradicts Jacobi’s own assertion that all philosophy leads to atheism, according to which...

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