Participation

In mentioning our second natures’s “participation” in a transcendental field, I am falling back on a Platonic metaphor. Plato spoke of a thing’s “participation” in a separate Form. While a transcendental field is not per se a Platonic form, it is both generally on the side of form, and “separate” from the psyche in approximately the same sense that a Platonic form is separate from what participates in it. This separateness indicates that the psyche or a putative empirical subject could never have simple possession or mastery of it. A transcendental field is also not the immanent form of some matter in the Aristotelian sense; it is not even to be identified with second nature; rather, it is something the empirical psyche can indirectly participate in by virtue of acquired second nature’s participation in it. Conversely, the empirical psyche has its own more direct characteristics that are relatively independent of this participation. (See also Psyche, Subjectivity.)