2 4 S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 8 - 2 Fa l l 2 0 2 2 2 Finite and Projective: The Case of Human Understanding In this section, we will provide a conceptual hermeneutical framework for arguing that the incorporation of the spiritual dimension, as well as the concepts and ideas it brings forth, allow us to provide practical tools for an effective and fruitful pursuit of human happiness. We intend to achieve this task through the investigation of the distinction between what something is and how it appears, along with thematization of human understanding as projective. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant distinguishes between how something appears to a human being (Gr. phaenomena) and how it actually is (Gr. noumena). In his words (2009, A 249–250), for if the senses merely represent something to us as it appears, then this something must also be in itself a thing, and an object of a non-sensible intuition, i.e., of the understanding, i.e., a cognition must be possible in which no sensibility is encountered, and which alone has absolutely objective reality, through which, namely, objects are represented to us as they are, in contrast to the empirical use of our understanding, in which things are only cognized as they appear. According to Kant, thought, the human mind is like a software that processes the raw data that is supplied by intuition, and therefore that the ideas of the world that are presented to the human mind are not reliable reflections of reality. The human mind, then, plays an active role in the process of understanding, which means that it contributes some elements to what is perceived by the senses. Kant claims (2009, B1) that “there is no doubt whatever that all our cognition begins with experience… But although our cognition commences with experience, yet it does not on that account all arise from experience.” Simply put, in every act of understanding we can distinguish between what the world presents to the senses (sensory data) and what the human mind contributes to it for a concept to emerge (pure intuitions and categories of understanding). Kant (2009, A19/B33 –A49/B73) argues, for example, that space and time are not actually things that we perceive through our senses, but a priori concepts that the human mind attaches to the raw data that is provided by intuition for us to make sense of it. In other words, it is not that reality is permeated by space and time, but rather that our humanness spatializes and temporalizes what it perceives so that our finite mind, which can only know under spatial and temporal contexts, can understand what it is being presented to it. Heavily influenced by the ideas set forth by Kant, the contemporary philosopher Martin Heidegger thematizes human understanding as hermeneutic. His argument is somewhat similar to the one of Kant, but he adds another dimension to it: that of meaning. In Being and Time Heidegger (2008) claims that when the Dasein (that is how he conceptualizes human being) approaches reality, he does not do it as a “blank sheet” that is ready to receive that, which is presented to the senses in an “unpolluted” manner. We already possess a series of concepts that allow us to elucidate what is presented to our intuition so that those same concepts set a horizon from which understanding operates. As Wrathall (2013, 181–182) explains, “to understand is to be in the world in such way that everything is projected upon, that is, makes sense in terms of particular possibilities.” In other words, with the concepts that we already possess in our mind (and that have been acquired and transmitted by humanity throughout history) we interpret the world and its phenomena. Therefore, understanding the world is at the same time receptive (we need something to present itself to our intuition) and productive (we give meaning to the world from a set of concepts that we already possess) [1]. Simply put, Heidegger argues that in every act of understanding the agent who apprehends what is presented to his senses does so from a series of previous concepts (horizon of meaning). That is, what explains, for example, that a subject interprets a tree as a divine creation that sustains life and must be protected at all costs, while an entrepreneur understands the same tree as an entity from which it is possible to obtain some economic gain. The tree, which is presented to the senses of both subjects, is the same. What differs is the worldview, the series of concepts that form a horizon from which said tree is apprehended. This in turn generates that the world that both subjects of the example perceive, even though based on the perception of the same phenomena, is radically different from one another. The Kantian and Heideggerian approaches to human understanding revolutionized the perspective from which we philosophically approach to human understanding. They emphasized what the subject contributes to the act of knowledge, and not so much on what reality presents to the senses for human understanding to operate. On the one hand, we see this as something positive. It allows us, humans, to understand that the image of the world that we perceive in our mind is not identical or even remotely similar to the actual reality of the world. It is just an image and not the real deal, and as such it can only portray some limited aspects of what it represents. On the other hand, it is an epistemologically
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