Reality is incomprehensible, since by comprehension we mean the direct perception of the being known in the form of a concept. For reality is in its very essence something different from any particular content caught in a concept; Its essence consists precisely in its concreteness – in the fact that it is a concrete, full-weight, self-sufficient fullness – in contrast to the abstract content, in which the object of thought is defined as something particular by distinguishing it from the "other" and seeing its relation to this other. But when we say that reality is something other than the content of a concept, we must beware of taking this very idea of "otherness" in its ordinary, logical sense; For if we take it in this sense, we would fall into the contradiction just indicated: we would thereby transform reality again into a special concept, i.e., into an abstract particular content (which exists wherever one differs from the other in the ordinary, logical sense).

But how can one have anything in thought at all without having it as a definite particular content, i.e., as an abstract concept? Earlier, at the beginning of this reflection, we started from the assumption that our experience is broader than our thought. This, of course, is quite indisputable, and it is only by virtue of this fact that we can have something at all which does not fit into the form of a concept. But should this experience remain mute, inexpressible, and thus unaccountable, uncomprehensible, absolutely inaccessible to thought? We have at least one factual evidence to the contrary – precisely in the person of art, in particular in the person of poetry as the art of words. Poetry is a mysterious way of expressing that which is inexpressible in another, namely abstract and logical form. But what does this mean? Poetry expresses a certain concrete reality, not decomposing it into a system of abstract concepts, but taking it precisely as such, i.e. in its concreteness. This is possible because the purpose of a word is not exhausted by its function to be the designation of concepts; At the same time, the word is an instrument of the comprehensive spiritual mastery of experience in its supralogical, concrete essence. The fact of poetry testifies to the fact that experience is not doomed to remain mute and uncomprehended, but has a specific form of its "expression," i.e., "understanding" precisely from that aspect of itself in which it transcends abstract thought.

But does it not follow from this that the expression of reality in its concreteness, i.e., in its distinction from concepts, must be the work of poetry alone, and that philosophy, as a purely intellectual comprehension, must distance itself from this task, as clearly exceeding its possibilities? A more attentive and in-depth understanding of this problem leads to just the opposite conclusion. If poetry is the highest, most adequate form of the use of the supra-rational, directly "expressive" function of the word, then it follows (as has long been seen by linguists) that all speech, all use of the word to a certain extent participates or can participate in this nature of poetry, and that the difference between "poetry" and "prose" is not some impassable border, but has only a relative significance. Everything that we call the "expressiveness" of speech is a poetic element in it. True, poetry – in the specific, narrow sense of the word – uses the expressive power of the purely irrational element of the word – the involuntary associations of ideas, images, emotions associated with shades of meaning and even with the very sound flesh of the word, i.e., as if with its "aura". But poetry also includes another element of the expressiveness of the word, which is also accessible to prose speech, namely: concepts and thoughts expressed in words are combined in it in such a way that in their combination their purely rational, abstract meaning is already overcome and concrete reality is expressed precisely in that in which it surpasses concepts and is fundamentally different from them. This is the meaning of what we can call the description of concrete reality, as opposed to its logical analysis. Such a description is therefore accessible to philosophy. [21]

In addition to this general way of describing the superlogical nature of reality, in which the combination of words and concepts provides a kind of hinting, ineffable cognition of concreteness directly in an individual thought, philosophy also possesses a special, peculiar way of overcoming the limitations and inadequacy of abstract knowledge. Namely, by directing thought to the logical form itself, i.e., by surveying the form, scope, and conditions of the sphere of logical rational knowledge as a whole, we can cognize its limitations. In doing so, we use the power of abstract logical knowledge against itself, i.e., against its impoverishing and distorting nature; We use it as an antidote to himself, as if on the homoeopathic principle of similia similibus curantur. [22] By fixing the limitation of the sphere of abstract knowledge, in contrast to it, we indirectly catch the uniqueness of that which goes beyond its limits, namely, reality itself. Thus, in order to take the basic and most essential example, which leads us at once to the desired goal, by grasping the principle of definition in an abstract way through logical distinction and the opposition of one thing to another, we, by comprehending its conditions, thereby go beyond its limits, i.e., beyond the limits of abstract knowledge, and thereby indirectly cognize the concrete reality itself, which transcends it (this is the above-mentioned positive significance of the application of the principle of negation to the logical form of knowledge itself). But the contrast between reality itself and the sphere of rational knowledge, which is seen in this case, will no longer be a logical relation, i.e., it will not be a negation in the logical sense, in which, as we have seen, it constitutes only the world of concepts. This contrast, on the contrary, will itself be superlogical. In this form we shall have indirect knowledge precisely through the medium of ignorance, i.e., the opposition of reality to the sphere of the logically knowable. This is the form of knowledge that the main theoretician of this line of thought, Nicholas of Cusa, called docta ignorantia – wise ignorance.

Thus, the concrete experience of reality is not doomed to remain "mute", inexpressible. Being mentally attainable through "description," i.e., through such a combination of concepts in which the complex of concepts in its unity gives hinting knowledge of reality itself, experience is also indirectly expressible through a potentized form of thought which may be called transcendental thought. In it, thought, directed towards itself and cognizing the general formal nature of the sphere of being of particular, logically determined contents, thereby goes beyond its limits and mentally takes possession of the concrete essence of reality as such, which is beyond it.

True philosophy, i.e., the mental comprehension of the whole as such, being, like all knowledge, directly rational knowledge, i.e., expressed in concepts, in its orientation towards the description of concrete reality and at the same time in its reflective character of the logical comprehension of the logical element of knowledge itself, has the possibility of going beyond the boundaries of abstract thought, intuitively seeing and expressing the super-rational. In contrast to any particular knowledge aimed at abstractly isolated particular material elements of being, philosophy is a rational overcoming of the limitations of rational thought. It is mental life, nourished by the living intuition of super-rational reality and grasping its immediately incomprehensible being.

And this indirect knowledge – knowledge through ignorance – is not at all limited to a general grasp of the super-rational nature of reality. In contrast to the variety of moments constituting the sphere of rational knowledge, we can catch and indirectly fix the diversity of the structure of reality itself. And this same diversity in its concrete manifestations can be the subject of the concrete mental description of reality outlined above.

We begin with a more detailed consideration of the nature of "learned ignorance" or transcendental thinking. The area that we must understand in this case by its very nature requires a special strain of thought, in which it goes beyond its usual forms and habits, beyond the limits of what is called "common sense." No matter how disgusting this may be to lazy thought, accustomed to moving only along the usual track, determined by the practical needs of philistine, everyday life, or even to an unreflective and in this sense naïve, sensible and clear scientific thought, working with the help of simple abstract distinctions and definitions, we must have the courage to say, meeting the natural ridicule: philosophy, in its distinction from positive (practical and scientific) knowledge, it begins only where "common sense" ends. It is a sound philosophy, i.e., one that is adequate to its subject, that must necessarily go beyond what is commonly called "common sense." In this respect, our exposition requires some patience from the reader. We will then supplement this abstract analysis with a more comprehensible, concretely intuitive description of the experimental discoveries of reality.

2. REALITY AS THE UNITY OF THE OPPOSITE AND AS THE CONCRETE UNITY OF DIVERSITY

We proceed from the fundamental general difference between reality and any particular definite content, which has been outlined by all the preceding events. The latter is constituted, as we have seen, by the relation of negation. Any separate definite content is a certain "this"; and this property of being "this" is determined by the fact that it is different from the "other"; The general formal essence of every "this" consists in the fact that it is "this, and not the other" and is inconceivable outside of this negative relation to the other. In the language of formal logic, definiteness is constituted by the law of contradiction. [23] Therefore, by virtue of the principle of contrast between reality and logically determined content, established above, the first and most general thing we can say about reality is that it is not something definable, precisely because it is an all-embracing superlogical unity; everything that is "something else" in relation to a particular, logically determined content, i.e., that which is outside of it, outside it, is inside reality in relation to it, is embraced by it; In this sense, reality, having everything in itself, is something defined only as "this and the other." But we obviously cannot confine ourselves to this judgment; We cannot regard it as an exhaustive definition of reality. It is not only we, as mentioned above, who oppose reality to particular, logically determined contents, thereby unwittingly limit it itself to a particular definite content. But at the same time, on the other hand, we would lose all distinct meaning of what we mean by reality; it would dissolve into something completely formless and meaningless: the boundless and indefinite "everything" is nothing. All our reasoning would be meaningless if the word "reality" did not mean something definite. Thus what we mean by reality must at the same time transcend all that is logically determined, and yet be something definite (evidently in some other, supralogical sense). If the uniqueness of reality consists in the fact that it is always "this and the other," then it is precisely its uniqueness by which it differs from everything else, and by virtue of which, therefore, at some other stage of existence or in some other form, it is itself "this and not the other." Thus, we can grasp reality in its peculiar superlogical essence only in a form which, when expressed logically, assumes the character of antinomian knowledge, the coincidence of opposites, which is the essence of "wise ignorance." We must say "coincidence," not a mere combination of opposites. The simple combination of different and opposite definitions is a well-known property of all diversity, since we synthetically subsume it under a certain unity (external to it). Reality, on the other hand, must be thought of as a kind of primary unity; therefore, the opposites that are combined in it coincide.

This consideration is not at all some artificial contrivance of abstract thought, burdensome to the legitimate need of our mind to think clearly, simply, and concretely. For it is only by means of this apparently excessive and unnatural refinement of thought, what the Germans call Haarspalterei (splitting a hair), that we achieve true concreteness of thought, i.e., the overcoming of the inevitable inadequacy of the abstract approach to our subject.

Namely, the obvious conclusion from what has been said is that we can truly grasp the reality we are looking for only by grasping it at once with a single mental eye, in its two opposite aspects: both as something different from all particular, definite contents, and as something that embraces and permeates them. But it is precisely in this duality that the true originality of reality consists, namely its super-logic. On the one hand, reality is revealed as that ineffable remnant, that absolutely simple "something" that remains minus all its particular contents, all the variegated variety of positive qualitative determinations of being; and, on the other hand, the concrete essence of what we outline and grasp as such a residue is not something separate, which could be thought separately from all particular contents; it is precisely the bearer of these contents, it possesses them itself, i.e., it embraces and permeates them, and in this sense they belong to it. And these two different meanings of reality are only two inseparably linked moments of reality, in the combination of which, a combination that is abstractly and logically contradictory, the inseparably integral, genuinely concrete unity of reality as such is revealed.

What we call reality obviously has a close affinity with the concept of the "absolute" (as distinct from the "relative") generally known in philosophy. But it has long been discovered that the "absolute" has a peculiar dialectic: being "something else" than the "relative," it cannot have this relative outside of itself, for then it would not be truly absolute, i.e., all-embracing, but would only be particular along with the other half of being, the "relative." The absolute, on the contrary, in order to be truly absolute, must also include that which is its opposite: only the absolute, as the unity of itself and the relative, is truly absolute. The absolute, on the one hand, is "detached" (such, as we know, is the literal sense of the word: ab-solutum), i.e., fundamentally qualitatively alien to everything relative; but it can only be so if it includes all that is relative; Its originality and uniqueness, in contrast to everything relative, lies precisely in its inherent character of a concretely all-encompassing and all-pervading whole. The same antinomian duality forms the concrete essence of reality.

This immediately reveals the sterility and inadequacy of the two opposite, but formally related, constant tendencies of the human mind. One of them has its expression in what may be called rational metaphysics (which Kant understood when he spoke of "dogmatic metaphysics"). Rational metaphysics is an attempt to penetrate into the hidden "essence of things," to uncover the "riddle of being," i.e., to logically determine the inner, self-sufficient qualitative content of reality in its distinction from all that is given by experience, from the entire external, visible picture of being. Human thought imagines that it is "discovering" this hidden, detached "essence of things," defining it now as "matter," now as "spirit" or "soul," now as the duality of these two determinations, now as "idea" or "thought," now as "will," and so on. to reveal this creature as something definite.