Unless
it is clear without this clarification, a clarification is in order that this
entry is in fact a meditation on Hobbes’s Leviathan (#1:3), which I
relate to Kant’s synthetic a priori propositions. The transmigration
of concepts is a rather mystical concept, akin to Nietzsche’s Commonwealth
of concepts, as I present it. What it suggests is that the Kantian a
prioris cannot be that much innate, as they may have transmigrated
into us from the outside. A soul is not just “born” with them. It is
born perhaps with the natural curiosity to acquire them, but it will acquire
them only on the condition that this curiosity has been developed above the
average, and that the said acquisition as such occurs when our intellectual
curiosity attracts these concepts from the outside, like a magnet, in which
case the process of acquisition can be called transmigration of concepts. Of
course, I would never relate such transmigration to metempsychosis, that
is, the so-called transmigration of souls, because these are two very different things, and they
must be kept separate. Besides, I do not believe in reincarnation of souls,
whereas the transmigration of concepts, which I subscribe to, fits in nicely with the phenomenon
observed by Nietzsche, which I have discussed in my entry The Mysterious
Commonwealth Of Concepts.---
Once
again, Hobbes pulls me into the murky waters of metaphysics, where Kant rules,
and where, frankly, I do not want to be swimming. But the question is
intriguing nevertheless, whether our mind in fact possesses any preconceived
ideas, in the sense that they have not been conceived by us, but have arrived
in us kind of prepackaged with the soul that is uniquely ours.
[Transmigration, in this context, is by no means equivalent to “reincarnation,” the latter being not so
much a “fabrication,” which would be rather impossible to prove either
way, but an absolutely irrelevant proposition within the bounds of a reality
determined not by some “objective criteria,” but by our own choice. Therefore,
my philosophical acceptance of transmigration, already expressed elsewhere, has
to be totally consistent with my rejection of reincarnation, by a simple Nolo
Credere.]
Our
soul being unique, thus sweeps away any suggestion of traces of past
experiences, but, even genetically, it has been proven not to be a tabula rasa.
It is therefore easier to agree with Kant, even if he may have failed to prove
his big theory of preconceptions, than with Hobbes, who assumes the role of the
materialist here, in the following passage from Leviathan (#1:3): “…When a man thinks, his next thought is not so casual as it
seems. Not every thought succeeds another indifferently.” (Come to think
of it, what can be the definition of a single thought, except when taken
in its continuity, and then, the question of its interruption or succession by
another, “unrelated” thought becomes an inconclusive puzzle.) “But as we have no imagination whereof, we have not
formerly had sense, (note my aphoristic question: “Does our soul,
like our body, really consist of only the food we have eaten?” in the Apte Dictum section), so we have no transition from one imagination to another,
whereof we never had the like before in our senses.” Kant is of course
of a different opinion, and I wonder if today someone could solve his puzzle
mathematically, like Russia’s genius Grigori Perelman has been able to solve
the Poincaré theorem?
But,
as far as I am concerned, I am inclined to think that our soul does not come
to us prepackaged with a priori concepts, but only with certain
characteristics, like the genetic code, but deeply personalized, which include
a desire for philosophical learning and deep comprehension, which, as it
develops within us, starts acting like a magnet, attracting those hordes of
wandering concepts which may have left the souls of great thinkers at the time
of their death, and, as we receive them through the process of attraction, that
explains our affinity and kindred spirit with the souls of those departed
philosophers,...
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