Institutes of Metaphysic; The Theory of Knowing and Being

by James Frederick Ferrier

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1856 edition. Excerpt: ...itself. 7. When it is said, however, that the ego can The mind know itself only in or along with some particular must always., -' '. know itself modification, this position must be carefully dis in, hut not 'r J determinate tinguished from the assertion that it can know condition. itseif as that particular modification. This assertion would be quite as contradictory as the other--quite as irrational as the supposition that it could Prop. know itself in no determinate state. Because if the ego could know itself as any one particular state, it could never know itself in any other particular state. It would be foreclosed against all variation of knowledge or of thought; and thus its intelligent nature would be annihilated. In fact, this opinion would be equivalent to the contradictory supposition that the particular could be known without the universal, the determinate state without the ego with whom the state was associated. Therefore the ego, although it can be cognisant of itself only in or along with some determinate modification, never knows, and never can know, itself as any, or as all of these modifications. It can only know itself as not any of them--in other words, as the universal which stands unchanged and unabsorbed amid all the fluctuating determinations or diversified particulars, whether things or thoughts, of which it may be cognisant. Through an inattention to this distinction between the knowledge of ourselves in some particular state, and the knowledge of ourselves as that particular state, Hume was led into the monstrous paradox noticed above; and other philosophers (especially Dr Brown) have run their systems aground, and have foundered on the rocks of ambiguity, if not of positive error, in consequence of the same..

Genres: Philosophy

126 pages, Paperback

First published August 2, 2010

About the author

James Frederick Ferrier was a Scottish metaphysical writer and philosopher. He introduced the word epistemology in philosophical English.

In 1842 he was appointed professor of civil history at Edinburgh University, and in 1845 professor of moral philosophy and political economy at the University of St Andrews. He was twice an unsuccessful candidate for chairs in Edinburgh, for that of moral philosophy on Wilson's resignation in 1852, and for that of logic and metaphysics in 1856, after Hamilton's death. He remained at St Andrews till his death.