Thought-Shaping, Reflection and the Refractive Element, #2.

Still from Gesaffelstein’s video clip for their song “Hard Dreams.” Dir. J. Hemingway/Division, J. de Chateleux, 2024

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction

2. Three Central Questions

3. Reflection and its Limits: A Historical Sketch

4. The Refractive Element

5. Conclusion: Refraction and Thinking as a Field of Action

The essay below will be published in four installments; this, the second, contains section 3.

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3. Reflection and its Limits: A Historical Sketch

As an exception in the Western canon, one of the most sustained and multifaceted treatments of reflection is provided by Immanuel Kant (Paans, 2023). Uncharacteristically, the concept is treated in a sprawling, protean manner. Scattered throughout his writings on anthropology, Kant provides multiple definitions, some of which bear directly on (artistic) creativity.[i]

First, reflection is posited as an evaluating state of mind in which we investigate the conditions under which we arrive at concepts (Kant, 1781/1797/1997: A260/B316). This evaluation is introspective: it consists in taking stock of the circumstances under which a concept was defined, tracing out the influences that were operative during its definition. If I were to perceive X under circumstance Y and form a corresponding concept Z of it, we might reasonably conjecture that the perceptual circumstances Y under which concept Z was formed played some efficacious role in its constitution. So, reflection is cast as a genealogical activity, tracing out the gestation of a concept.

Kant noted that reflective processes are gradual when he stated that “[w]e must explain and trace judgments which arise from obscure representations” (Kant, AF 25: 480). Representations that are initially half-formed (and thus obscure) give rise to preliminary judgments and speculations. The primary philosophical task is not only to obtain “clear and distinct ideas”, but equally to evaluate of the process through which they develop. This includes forms of self-awareness and critical vigilance towards constrictive thought-shaping, biases, or fallacious reasoning.

This suggestion somewhat pre-empts the developmental theory of cognition and cultural self-awareness that Hegel attempted in the Phenomenology of Spirit and his Logic. The idea of conceptual development already played a role during Kant’s own life in the establishment of taxonomic systems in the life sciences (Mersch, 2015: pp. 35–50). The core thought is that a concept (Begriff) has a clear genealogical history, so that we can examine its validity by analysing its gestation. Reflection develops the contents of a concept by situating it in a broader genealogy of experience.

Reflection as a process of gestation acquires additional depth when Kant positions reflection as a pre-conscious feedback loop coordinating physical and mental dispositions with a given intention in real-time (AF 25: 480). An example would be playing a musical instrument, where “mind and matter” must coordinate. As discussed, reflection involves a conscious and deliberative evaluation of the developmental history of arriving at concepts and thoughts. Simultaneously, reflection works in the opposite direction. This aspect is ingrained, embodied and preconscious. Or, it is automated to such a degree that it can be performed (almost) without conscious deliberation.

To render this process effective, we require a class of judgments that is pre-objective, open-ended and liable to further development. Indeed, Kant provides a description:

[P]reliminary judgments also belong to the obscure representations. Before an individual passes a judgment, which is determinate, he already passes in advance a preliminary judgment in obscurity. This leads him to search for something. For example, who searches for unknown lands, will not simply go to the sea, rather he judges beforehand. Each determinate judgment thus has a preliminary judgment. (AF 25: 482)

The term “preliminary judgment” (Vorurteil) may be somewhat misleading and might be more accurately rendered as “proto-judgment.” Kant usually reserves the term “judgment” for statements that are logically well-formed, assertoric, and determinate. Proto-judgments do not satisfy these conditions. Given Kant’s emphasis on the gradual nature of reflection, there is no need for fully formed judgments early in the cognitive process.

Throughout the third Critique, the notion of the “reflecting judgment” echoes this commitment: it dynamically creates a frame of reference to deal with a singular object that does not fit into a rigid taxonomy. It oscillates between sense-making and creation, between description and speculation. Concepts are made possible by this oscillating movement between what is known or established and what is apparent or open-ended (CPJ 20: 211).

The reflecting judgment is a somewhat strange beast in Kant’s philosophy: in a philosophical system focused on the boundaries of sense and reason, it represents a possibility that the Kantian architecture of the mind is not closed after all.

In Hegel, the term philosophy of reflection (Reflexionsphilosophie) is mostly treated negatively (Adorno, 1993: p. 71; Pippin, 2002: p. 232). Hegel was critical of Kant’s attempt to provide a critique of human reason by means of reason. If Kant postulates a horizon dividing things-in-themselves and appearances, is this demarcation not itself a product of reason? By postulating a region beyond the horizon, reason limits itself, erecting an arbitrary structure of what it can and cannot know (Gadamer, 1976: pp. 56–58). For Hegel, the notion of reflection represented the myth of the distanced observer surveying the possibilities of reason, while the idea of a horizon represented an untenable Jenseitsphilosophie or philosophy-of-the-beyond (Pippin, 2002: 226). But if reason surveys its own workings, can we say that we achieved a deeper understanding of it—or are we caught in the mirror palace of the mind, as our questions above suggest? Hegel’s solution was to postulate a process of moments in which reason becomes gradually acquainted with itself, dialectically working out its inner structure (Hegel, 1977). In the final instance, Absolute Spirit regards itself and grasps its own situatedness in the world

Hegel only partially escaped the predicament that he diagnosed. One of the most insidious features of Hegel’s philosophy is that it integrates every objection levelled against it. It can easily accommodate the fact that it is in fact a “philosophy of reflection on reflection” by invoking reflection or self-consciousness (and even recognition) as one of the necessary moments of its fulfilment. From inside the Hegelian framework of thinking, its premises cannot be refuted. Its integrative character ceaselessly envelops and subdues all objections. We find ourselves in a similar predicament—as the three questions I formulated above indicate (Gadamer 2013: 352-353).

Yet, Hegel succeeded in effectuating a shift in thinking about reflective agency: instead of conceiving philosophy as mapping out the boundary conditions of human cognition, Hegel invokes the importance of experience in thought. Thinking is essentially an experiential process, with understanding as a result. Continuously, the mind posits concepts (Begriffe) to deal with reality and with itself. The entire idea of science (Wissenschaft) is to investigate the unavoidable gap between reality and what concepts grasp and circumscribe. While concepts are “probes” to explore inner and outer reality, they necessarily fall short of what they describe. Experience unfolds in the tension between the world and its description (Adorno, 1993: pp. 70–71).

Just as Gadamer did after Hegel, invoking the notion of experience to escape the prison of reflection is in equal measure innovative and dubious. For Gadamer, the historical experience of understanding can be used to avoid the emphasis on reflective and indeed discursive thought. What he calls the “hard edge of positivity,” driving a wedge between mind and world, can be overcome not by situating the reflecting agent outside reality, as Kant had done, but instead by more deeply immersing oneself in it (Gadamer 2013: 355).

Gadamer draws on Husserlian phenomenology to show how experience is composed of the new and the recognized. A person who is experienced recognizes how to do things, how to act, and so-on. But gaining experience is an essentially negative phenomenon: it consists in pushing and pulling away at the frontiers of what is correct or not; what works or not; and it is thoroughly practical. Inherent in experience is its historical character: it integrates the past in a more-or-less continuous tapestry through which consciousness moves.

This historical movement is not only directed towards the past: not only do we integrate past experiences. As apprehension, they influence our thinking and orientation towards the future as well. Marcus Aurelius’s acute observation that thoughts become “dyed” by thinking in the same patterns is one of the crucial cognitive mechanisms that makes experience—and thought-shaping—possible (Aurelius, 2006: 41). The apprentice who executes and rehearses an action over and over again etches it into his body, so much so that it becomes an inextricable part of his self-experience. So, we can no longer think of experience as something that is “pasted onto” a receiving subject. Instead, the subject is constituted through experience. The experienced bricklayer cannot leave his experience home one day while bringing it to his job the day after.

From this essentially embodied perspective, reflection is no longer a kind of distanced consideration. Instead, one is entangled and immersed in experience. As Hegel recognized, at a given point, experience experiences itself. In an ultimate reflexive loop, “substance becomes subject,” whether an individual or historical subject. For Gadamer, this moment indicates the presence of a wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein or “historically effectuated consciousness” (Gadamer, 2013: pp. 349-355). Only when our horizon of understanding fuses with the past, do we properly situate ourselves in a tradition or contexture of understanding. Only then do we fully glimpse our historical (or genealogical) situation as an object for investigation. Unfortunately, this is where Gadamer’s argument falls exactly into the same trap as Hegel’s: by singling out a given situation as an object, we cannot help but circumscribe it, and once more assume the distanced, Archimedean viewpoint of reflection. Doing so, we slide back into the “philosophy of reflection.” Once this happens, the specter of relativism rears its ugly head yet again: are we not condemned to map out partial positions forever, wandering the labyrinth of possibilities in the reflective mirror palace?

It’s a crucial fact that Kant’s transcendental subject, Hegel’s dialectical understanding, and Gadamer’s historically situated subject all assume the “ideal viewer” surveying his or her own thinking from an external position—the position that cannot be assumed because it is itself a postulate of reason. Yet, if we deny this, and claim that one can fully immerse oneself in experience, we get stuck in the endlessly reflective mirror palace. Either way, we end up with reflexio ad infinitum. Every time we attempt to break through its confines, we repeat the mistakes we sought to avoid.

We must observe that the manner of posing the question already leads into error: if reflection is defined as external observation of human reason, the totality of one’s experience, or the properties of an individual experience, then we set ourselves up to fail. We expect to gain access to a new domain of discursive understanding by means of reason itself. Reflection, as discussed, is often equated with conceptualization. As Kant and Hegel both realized, there is a generative moment in reflection that opens a broader field of insight, and that is not limited to either familiar notions or conceptual contents alone. The mistake was to absolutize this insight, as if one could move one rung up the “ontological ladder” and finally behold the entire field below.

This assumption was inherited from the reflective philosophy of the Greeks, transmitted via the “God’s eye” viewpoint in Christian theology, which was secularized in the Marquis de Laplace’s Mécanique Céleste and 20^th-century positivism alike. The entire thrust of Enlightenment objectivity was to put the sensible, immersed aspect of human cognition out of play. The eye of the omnipresent God fused with Cartesian doubt about the trustworthiness of the senses, because they were embodied, fluctuating and thus perspectival. Kant repeated the Cartesian gesture of attempting to secure the conditions of knowledge, largely ignoring the reflexive loop that it was reason itself setting its own limits.

That cognition has a reflexive aspect need not be denied. Gadamer’s account of experience illustrates how mental and bodily events lead to a historically informed and situated understanding, assuming reflexivity throughout. We must, however, be realistic about our expectations of reflection. What it cannot deliver is an absolute insight into our own cognition, our thinking processes, or our experience, for reasons spelled out above. It can, however, open a new view of the world that is neither total nor relativistic. The distance of reflection is not absolute, but relative; not enduring, but instant-based. This brings us to Henri Bergson’s treatment of refraction, insofar as he noted this temporal aspect inherent in reflective thinking and opened up a way to foreground its refractive element.

NOTE

[i] I cite Kant’s works in parentheses. The citations include an abbreviation of the English title and the corresponding volume and page numbers in the standard “Akademie” edition of Kant’s works: Kants gesammelte Schriften, edited by the Königliche Preussischen (now Deutschen) Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: G. Reimer [now de Gruyter], 1902—). The English translations included here are cited from the Cambridge University edition of Kant’s works.

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