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Plurality of Souls :: 171
the monads by a process of integration. The process of integration terminates with the evolution of the queen monad-which may be taken to be the birth of the individual soul. This process of integration takes place at many centres giving rise to a plurality of queen monads. Kantian philosophy, so far as it is an objective idealism, must allow scope for plurality of souls. Kant thinks that we are not able to know things-in-themselves, but know them only as they appear to us. In the same manner the soul may also be comprehended as it may appear to us. The notion of the thing-in-itself is there to support the appearances we comprehend. Kant is very sure about the existence of the noumena. The psychic functions of others are also subject to our perceptions, hence there must be some noumena to support our perception of other selves. Watson observes: "...a noumenon is not a special kind of object for our understanding, namely, as intelligible object; on the contrary it is problematic whether there is any understanding that could have such an object before it. Such an understanding would not know its object discursively by means of categories, but intuitively in a non-sensuous perception; and how this is possible we cannot form even the faintest conception. Still, in conception of a noumenon our understanding gets a sort of negative extesion; for in calling things in themselves noumena, and viewing them as not objects of sense it rather limits the sensibility than is limited by sensibility.”l Kant mainly emphasizes the unknowability of the noumena by sensuous knowledge but is never seen to oppose a pluralistic attitude towards the conscious and the unconscious worlds. He agrees, in this respect, both with Berkeley and Descartes. The plurality of appearances must depend upon the plurality of the noumena, or the necessity of noumena will become utterly obsolete reducing Kant's philosophy only to a form of subjectivism.
1. Watson: The Philosophy of Kant, p. 133
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