Alisaca, Ryan Vincent F.

Metacritique of the Purism of Pure Reason

Summary and elaboration:

Hamann opens the essay with Hume’s reiteration of Berkeley’s idea, i.e. that ideas which we have
always thought to be universal are actually just particulars brought to us by certain terms or words. This
term or word causes the universalization of that idea. There is, in here, a clear relationship between our
thinking and language itself.

Now, as it is reason which Hamann concerns himself with in this essay, we are then told of the
first purification of reason, the purification of Descartes. In an effort to rebuild the foundations of reason
and free it from the biases and presuppositions of traditions, he doubted everything, and the rest, we all
know, is history. Reason, however, following the Cartesian line of thinking, has been used independently
of experience. Thus, at the second purification, reason is seen as hopeless and despairing in illusions. The
third purification, and the highest purification at that, involves purification from language.

The third purification, however, is, like the second purification, is a purification which lead to
illusions. Indeed, all of reason’s operations including judgments and doubts is no pure activity of reason
at all. The relationship of language and reason, after all, is the source of reason’s operations. Indeed, if
Kant wanted to make a complete critique of pure reason, he should have criticized reason when it sought
to operate beyond it very foundations. No, not experience, but language. Reason, when it goes beyond
the limits of language, goes beyond its own limitations.

We are then given the understanding that a metaphysics removed from the limits of language is
no real metaphysics at all any more than a metaphysics removed from experience is any metaphysics at
all. Metaphysics, at this point becomes ambiguous. If then, language is the ultimate foundation of reason,
perhaps it would be fair if we would try to go back to an etymological understanding of metaphysics.
‘Meta’ in ancient Greek would mean beyond or behind, and ‘physica’ (or even physis) in Greek would
mean change or, in a broader frame-work, the real world (which is indeed riddled with all sorts of
changes), which apparently is material in constitution.

Now, analytic judgments are not at all concerned with matter. Analytic judgments are more
concerned and are more closely related to form, i.e. that analytic judgments speaks of form. But when we
speak of judgments, we actually speak of a mathematical relation, i.e. that the nature of judgments in
general is always mathematical. The middle term in judgments are actually operations which describe
how a certain judgment should be understood.

In mathematics, signs and symbols bear strongly upon the meaning of equations and formulas.
These symbols are obviously empirical but simple, and are universal and not easily misunderstood.
Metaphysics, however, as it tries to do away with matter, tries also to do away with empirical signs and
symbols, reducing them to mere hieroglyphs and types of relations. But is this is so, without the
mathematical nature of language operating in a judgments, then all speech would be meaningless and
pointless.

But indeed Mathematics is a priori. Thought and reason is therefore possible even without
experience. What is it that allows thought and reason to be possible? Here, I believe Hamann tells is that
Alisaca, Ryan Vincent F.

language is what makes all thought and reasoning possible. Indeed, even mathematics can be reduced to
language. Sounds and letters are therefore the condition sine qua non for any reasoning. They are, just
like space and time, pure forms of intuition. Sounds and letters, however, are even what makes our
intuition of the pure forms of space and time possible. Sound as music as an early language gives us that
temporal feeling between harmonies and rhythms perceived through the sense of hearing. Letter as
writing pictures as an early language also gives us that knowledge of depth and dimensions in space.
Hence, language as both sounds and letters are actually the origin of the pure forms of intuition.

Now Kant tells us that the two faculties of reason is sensibility and understanding. Both, however,
share one common root. Words. As composed of sounds and letters, (and as thought of as composed of
sounds and letters) is that common root. As perceptible entities, words belong to sensibility and intuition.
However, as something instituted and given meaning, they belong to understanding and concepts.

Now, words as empirical and sensible, are merely meaningless appearances. However, by virtue
of their being instituted, though arbitrarily, it becomes a sign, a word-sign if you will. It is in here that we
see that words are, as Hume reiterated Berkeley, what allows for the universalization of ideas.

Short Commentary:

It must be admitted that thinking and reason, and in fact Philosophy, cannot be divorced from
language. Indeed, Philosophizing can only be done in and through language. While this might seem to be
problematic because of all the ambiguities present in language, we might still actually communicate
universal truths effectively if we are able to uncover the universal nature of language. In other words, we
must reduce language to its most simple and obvious operation, which I think is its powers to allow us to
speak of and emphasize existence and different modes of existence.

It must be noted also that in this essay, the empirical nature of language is observed. I am
therefore reminded of Derrida’s problem of language. How does something empirical function as a
universal? Here, I see that Hamann’s clarification on the dual function of words allows for this
universalization and particularness. Now, when judgments employ words, it must also employ words with
mathematical operations, i.e. the universal function of words can only give us new knowledge, can only
allow us to think, can only enable us to philosophize, if we allow words to relate themselves in a
mathematical way. This can only be achieved through the operations admitted by the copula of the
judgment.