Abstract
The relevance of Kant to Plessner’s work was long all but ignored and there is hardly any mention of Plessner in the Kant literature. The Plessner renaissance beginning in the 1990s, however, has brought with it a stronger focus on the methodological construction of his theory, so that the Kant connection has at least been acknowledged, but the particular relevance of Kant’s Critique of Judgement (Kant 1790/2007) has not been systematically explicated. In this essay, I investigate the connection between Kant’s notion of reflective—specifically teleological—judgment and Plessner’s theory. I begin by setting out the characteristics of teleological judgment, with two points being of particular importance: the temporal structure of the final cause and Kant’s reference to an understanding other than the human, that is, to an ordering power other than the human. In a second step, I work out Plessner’s conceptualization of the spatiotemporal appearance of organisms and the way he understands the other of human understanding as nature’s—or history’s—historically evolved and mutable capacity for self-order. He arrives at these conclusions by way of a methodologically controlled process of questioning derived from Kant, which he calls the “principle of the open question.”
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Notes
Note on the translation: “Anschauung” is generally translated as “intuition.” The term “Anschaung” allows for a distinction between “intuitiver Anschauung” (intuitive intuition) and “diskursiver Anschauung” (discursive intuition). The latter is enacted by a discursive understanding to which mechanistic coherence is intuitively given (anschaulich gegeben). “Intuitive intuition” would be enacted by an intuitive understanding (intuitiver Verstand) that grasps parts as parts of a whole.
See fn. 2.
McLaughlin (1990: 46) points out that this two-step procedure already figures in Kant. Plessner is listed in McLaughlin’s references, but he does not refer to him in the body of the text.
“The questions of natural science contain the guarantee of their answerability because they have been narrowed down to alternatives: experiments conceived in view of the projected problem confirm or refute a hypothesis regardless of whether they turn out positively or negatively. In every case, the occurrence or non-occurrence of a particular phenomenon is an answer to the question, since from the outset, the enhanced precision of the question in the form of an alternative has been bought at the price of restricting the object being investigated to a spatio-temporally determined phenomenon, i.e., a phenomenon that can be measured and comprehended by measuring. […] Ideally, the guarantee of answerability offered by the way the natural sciences frame problems thus simultaneously offers the guarantee of answers in the form of confirmed or refuted hypotheses. Science obtains this guarantee by consciously restricting its cognitive aims to an unambiguous determination of its objects according to the principles of measurement” (Plessner 1931/1981: 180f). (Translator’s note: Thanks to Nils F. Schott for allowing me to consult his unpublished translation of Macht und menschliche Natur).
On the one hand, the findings of empirical science studies can be taken as late empirical evidence for the validity of these assumptions. On the other, Plessner could have learned from science studies that constructing a closed question is a complicated and time-consuming process. It is the result rather than the start of empirical research. Cf. Pickering’s (1993) analyses of experimental physics, which I consider to be an interesting development of Plessner’s original insight.
As Brandt (2007: 458) points out, Kant’s notion of teleological reflection is ambiguous, with several passages lending it a constitutive character.
“While the humanities’ approach to asking questions need not relinquish the guarantee of answerability—the aim, after all, is to ask in a way that is rational and allows for decisions—it does have to relinquish that of the answer. Its objects cannot be regarded as phenomena, that is, variables exhausted by determining points in space and time. The impossibility of freely disposing of its objects (as in an experiment) and the non-measurability of their non-spatial and non-temporal character, however, is positively counterbalanced by their … comprehensibility. These objects express themselves and communicate something to those concerned with them” (Plessner 1931/1981: 181). (Translator’s note: Thanks to Nils F. Schott for allowing me to consult his unpublished translation of Macht und menschliche Natur). As I have pointed out elsewhere, Plessner (1928/1975, 1931/1981) takes a third position between constructivism and realism (Lindemann 2010, 2014).
Plessner refers mainly to Georg Misch's interpretation of Dilthey's hermeneutics (Misch 1929-1930/1967).
Plessner does not refer to other authors by name in his development of his ideas on time and space, and the literature on Plessner has not made explicit these references either. It is important to realize that Plessner published his work on the time and space of living beings in 1928. Husserl (1928/1980) and Heidegger (1927/1979) published their famous contributions to the theory of time nearly simultanously. Unlike Plessner, Husserl and Heidegger focus on the conscious living human, whereas Plessner is interested in the time of living beings in general. Unfortunately, no study exists which contrasts these different theories of time. It would also be interesting to compare Plessner’s concept of time to McTaggart’s (1908). The latter distinguishes different concepts of time which he refers to as A series, B series, and C series. The A series (McTaggart 1908: 458) focuses on the modal differences of time (present, past, and future) and the problem of the reality of time itself. Schmitz (1980: §276) has argued that McTaggart (1908) goes one step further than this in that he analyzes the relation between the present and reality in general. But Schmitz does not take into account Plessner’s concept of space and time. This is surprising, as it seems quite obvious that Schmitz’ subtle and highly elaborated phenomenological analysis in many respects corroborates Plessner’s theory (Lindemann 2014: 126–172).
Plessner’s approach shows a close similarity to the concept of “autopoiesis” (Maturana and Varela (1984/1987). Nevertheless, I see two differences: Maturana and Varela (1984/1987: chap. 2) focus on the autopoietic reproduction of the organism and interpret the boundary as a part of the organism’s self-organization. Plessner focuses on the boundary and on the organism as it actively takes a position in time and space. He thus interprets the self-organization and reproduction of the organism as being a part of the organism drawing its own boundary. Second, Plessner systematically develops different forms of how different organisms relate to their environment: first, the basic form of positionality; second, centric positionality; and, third, excentric positionality, which allows for the analysis of social communication (Plessner 1928/1975: chap. 7). This systematic form of theory construction was inherited from Kant. Maturana and Varela do not systematically work out the differences between the autopoiesis of the organic and that of consciousness and the social. Making these differences explicit is a major advantage of Plessner’s approach (Lindemann 2010, 2014: chap. 2 and 3).
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Lindemann, G. From the Critique of Judgment to the Principle of the Open Question. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 18, 891–907 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-014-9503-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-014-9503-2