a pilgrim’s trace

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.