Lecture of the Winter Semester 1775–1776 based on the transcriptions Friedländer 3.3 (Ms 400), Friedländer 2 (Ms 399) and Prieger

Summary

PREAMBLE

In the end, all skill which one possesses requires knowledge of the way in which we are to make use of it. The knowledge basic to application is called knowledge of the world. Knowledge of the world is knowledge of the stage upon which we can apply all skill. It is a twofold kind of knowledge, of theoretical and pragmatic perfection. The theoretical consists in our knowing what is required for certain final purposes and thus concerns the understanding. The pragmatic consists in the power of judgment to avail ourselves of all skill. It is needed to seal all our skill. The basis of pragmatic knowledge is knowledge of the world, where one can make use of all theoretical knowledge. By world we here understand the sum total of all relations into which human beings may enter, where they can exercise their insights and skills. The world as an object of outer sense is nature, the world as an object of inner sense is the human being. Thus human beings can enter into twofold relations, into relations in which they need knowledge of nature, and into relations in which they need knowledge of the human being. The study of nature and of the human being constitutes the study or knowledge of the world. The person who has much theoretical knowledge, who knows a great deal, but has no skill to make use of it, is instructed for school but not for the world. And this skill is pedantry. One can have skill for some relations, for example one does well in school, yet we lack a general skill for all relations that we come across. Since human beings just do not know what relations they may enter into, it is thus necessary to acquire knowledge in all relations indeterminately. Knowledge of all relations 25:470is knowledge of the world. In order to have world knowledge, one must study a whole, out of which whole the parts can subsequently be determined, and this is a system, insofar as multiplicity has arisen out of the idea of the whole. The one who knows how to situate multiplicity in the whole of cognition has a system, which differs from an aggregate, in which the whole does not originate out of the idea, but through composition. If I now study the relations of things, and am in a position to assign a place to the multiple parts in the whole, then I have a knowledge of nature. I can however assign things a place in concepts; then this would be a system of nature. Or I can assign things a place in localities, and this is done in physical geography.