A PRIORI: from epistemology to ethics

So i shall have my last strike of vice before I get back into writing. After this, I'll just have Levinas and Merleau-Ponty (and occasions of sporting activities, that's for certain).

A priori is a mode of knowing that comes before experience. It obviously came from the word prior which means before. My first serious encounter of the term was with Immanuel Kant in the Preface of the Critique of Pure Reason where he extended this epistemic tool into metaphysics. We know numbers in an a priori sense, there is an immediate and internal experience of "number two" if one says "two." One does not necessarily need two trees nor bananas to think of "two" -- since this number comes to the mind prior than its representations. It means to say that when we speak of a priori, we do not just speak of how one knows but what one knows. Phenomenologists took the term seriously, while referring immediately to a kind of being that exists prior to experience. Instead of focusing on traditional mind-mechanisms like anamnesis (where one draws out what is essentially "his", i.e., had been internalized), a priori becomes a mode of existence -- a permanent and independent one. A good example of this is how we know about the existence of our nape. It takes a mirror, and not a direct encounter/experience to realize that we have one. Another would be the things that we are deprived from when we are invincibly ignorant -- we may know, yet we do not have the chance to do so. A thing is an a priori insofar as it is -- regardless of the knower, or of the mode of experience. Max Scheler, on the other hand, would talk of a priori values or fixed virtues that we strive to comply with in order to put up an ethical life. This means to say that even if we live according to experience, and according to our preferred order of values, we are always called to make things right -- to comply with an a priori, which is in accordance to our nature as human beings.

Traditionally , an a priori becomes an a priori because of its being fixed -- it is there, and is bound to exist because of its telos - reason or rationale. This should be easy when thinking of plain concepts. Epistemic products, plain mind-objects that are cold and abstract would be amenable to the fixed character of the a priori. However, this becomes a big problem when talking of human experience.

Nailing a friendship into a lifetime kind, for example, is putting a relation into a stable and fixed state. We could even say that friends who had been struggling to be good and worthy for each other are meant to be friends - the relation must have been fated -- and despite all the hardships, an implicit sense of commitment can always be seen that makes the link PERMANENT. For the thought that friendship shall last forever, these two persons could always believe that the link shall stay same -- through thick and thin, no matter what happens and no matter what they will. For every error, there is forgiveness. For allowing the other to grow, there's permissiveness. For the holy name of respect, there's proximity -- distance and space, while having in mind that friends shall always remain friends, if they truly are friends. There is then an a priori sense of friendship. Proof to this are the following lines, "No matter what happens, we remain friends. Regardless if you care or not, I would still accept you." (implicit: do whatever you want, you're a friend to me) OR "You'll always be a friend, regardless of what you say. I shall never betray you anyway." (implicit: you're a friend to me even if i disappoint you). Now I think these lines serve as threats.

I move that we should not be complacent with these wonderful a prioris. Sure I won't betray, but by my own doing I can always be turned away from. I can't keep human relations, and in this given example a wonderful friendship, just on my own. Being tired, feeling wounded and useless for being not listened to are heavy responses to complacency, because "friendship will always yet just be there -- no matter what". While a priori refers to the "relation" -- it cannot totally cover human experience. I am keeping not a linkage of ideas but of lived persons. Unfaltering love and concern does not mean "just being around", it means keeping up, saving things and values not because it allays my heavy heart within this particular moment but because it is slowly creating me as a person who is up to what is good. I think we should be reminded that flexing a priori to human experience calls for a sort of maintenance. We keep things that are fixedly good through an active sense of commitment. We are now called again to weigh, to understand values as how they come. To clear, this is not objectification, but a proper way of understanding a person in way he makes himself.

By friendship, we understand that there are things that we can always nail as fixed, hail as a priori or even fated, yet we may easily lose. Even if thought of, feelings may always make it slither away. And with that, one has to be careful. At this stance, we are not just dealing with concepts nor of cold commitments. We deal with reality.