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646
BURCH
The known content, although before the mind only as known, is understood as distinct from knowing, not necessarily related to knowing (II 131). But this realist theory is true merely by definition; the significant question is, what, if anything, is known? What is known is eternal truth; the object may be temporal, but what is known about it is formulated in eternally true judgments (II 132). But contingent judgments (“It is to me") are not independent of the knower. Only the self-evident (“It is.") is known as what need not be known. An elaborate analysis of self-evidence (II 132-136), “the consciousness that something must be without the consciousness that it is” (i.e., to me), shows that in reflective consciousness it is limited to logical implications (which strictly speaking are not judgments at all). The self-evident content is known only accidentally, and so is a content only accidentally. This is the element in all that is known which is known as what need not be known, and so satisfies the definition of knowledge. It "demands to be freed from its immanence in the implicational distinction of content and knowing." This is the absolute for knowing (II 136).
The willed content is constituted by willing, but it appears as limiting and foreign to the willing. Reflection does not comprehend, yet demands to comprehend, that this is self-limitation, that the will limits itself to realize itself and so become free. The idealistic view, Kant's, is that the good will is itself the value for which we will to act, that we act objectively in order to be free subjectively. The realistic view is that we act for an objective end. In the case of knowing the realistic view is to be accepted, but in willing the idealistic view, the realistic leading to an infinite regress of means and ends (II 137). Freedom of the will is consciousness free from its content, solely constituting its content, making the content a content, creating its distinction from itself. This is the absolute for willing (II 141).
The felt content, not definite in itself, is understood as though it were a unity of content and consciousness, and reflection demands such unity (II 138). Neither the realistic view (value as objective) nor the idealistic view (value as feeling) is preferable; their alternation is stopped only when the unity becomes definite (II 139). In reflection felt content and feeling consciousness are alternately distinguished from the value that is their unity; the demand is for them to be together distinguished from this unity (II 140). Just as we understand the possibility of known content not being known, and the possibility of willing without the act willed, so, in the appreciation of beauty, we understand the possibility of the self-subsistent unity of felt content and feeling-although these possibilities cannot be realized in reflec
