Sunday, January the 13th, 2008

"The term principle ... signifies merely a cognition that may be employed as a principle" (p.190, Immanuel Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason", 2003, Dover Publications, New York). If you employ something as a principle, it will be a principle, and if you don't, it won't. If we employ something as a principle in common, it will be a common principle. If you employ something as a sense, it will be a sense, and if we employ something as a sense in common, it will be a common sense. So there will never be a universal common sense.
As Kant put it: "(R)eason endeavors to subject the great variety of the cognitions of the understanding to the smallest possible number of principles (general conditions), and thus to produce in it the highest unity." (p.193, ibid.) When we think logically, we usually try to "subject the great variety of the cognitions of the understanding to the smallest possible number of principles." The harder we think; the higher unity we can obtain.