Ⅲ．How is Metaphysics Possible?

Up to now, we have denied two possible paths. However, how can human beings, a curious species, give up their inquiry about the thing-in-itself? Kant pointed out, “Who can bear it: we have a clear awareness of the nature of our soul all the way to the subject, and we are convinced that we can't explain his image in a materialistic way, but we don't ask what the soul is?” Fortunately, this inquiry is possible, and it is open to human beings in a completely new way. How is it possible? In terms of attributes, it must avoid the transcendental judgment of pure rationality, and can't fall into the illusion of anthropomorphism. This is only possible by avoiding “all transcendental judgments of pure reason” and a seemingly opposite concept of “beyond the application scope of being inside”. More importantly, this apparent contradiction is only possible in life. The following discussion is very important:

“However, as long as we limit our judgment to the relationship between the world and a being whose concept itself is outside the knowledge that we can obtain in this world, we will stick to this boundary (* boundary can be understood as the boundary of reason or knowledge). Because in this case, we don't add any attribute of the object of our cogitatio experience to the supreme being in terms of itself, thus avoiding the dogmatism of anthropomorphism. However, we still give these attributes to the relationship between the supreme being and the world, and allow a symbolic theory of anthropomorphism, which in fact only involves language, not the object itself.”

In other words, when people are studying “life” that is both experienced and transcended, it will be possible to know the attributes and relationships of noumena in the presence of life from life and the world.This kind of exploration is meaningful. In order to further illustrate how this seemingly contradiction is unified in life, what Kant proposed here is a kind of analogy way to know noumena, “So, I actually just said: what is the relationship between a clock, a ship, an army and a watchmaker, a shipbuilder and a commander, what is the relationship between the sensory world and the person in this position.” Therefore, although people can't follow “what this unknown being is in terms of itself”, they can recognize it according to the way it is to me. This inevitably requires philosophers to return to the world. What we need to further explain is the attribute of analogy: the knowledge of analogy is not what we usually mean, that is,a similarity of two things, but a complete similarity of two relationships between two completely dissimilar things. Therefore, it is a transcendent attempt to know categories and intellectual table of judgment from an empirical perspective and analyze rational laws in life. Because “rationality is not transferred to the original being itself as an attribute, but only to its relationship with the world ... Here we only examine the reasons why rational forms are found everywhere in the world.”

Furthermore, when people use this rationality of experience, life, and analogy, it is not only for the function of knowledge or epistemology, but also for the purpose of practice. Its purpose is to use the attribute of rationality to prescribe everything to the highest degree in it. Practically, “Not to think about God with rational attributes, but to think about the world with it.”

In conclusion, “the expression suitable for our weakness will be: We imagine the world like this, as if it originated from a supreme reason in terms of its existence and internal regulations, so that we can know the inherent characteristics of the world itself on the one hand, and ignore the arrogant prescribed reasons. On the other hand, the basis of this trait is implanted into the relationship between the highest rationality and the world, and the world is not regarded as sufficient at this point.” Kant retained the lofty possibility, effectively limited the fantasy of dogmatism,and pointed out the knotty problem of metaphysics (at least in his historical space) that has been standing still since Aristotle. As he said, this kind of research is gratifying and satisfying enough.