Experience

"That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt" (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason). But what then do we know of experience? Are we capable of approaching an understanding of experience, and if so, would that not necessarily implicate an endless regress, whereby to know experience is to have an experience of it, ad infinitum? Alternatively, is there anything more certain but that all talk of experience is insufficiently understood, and that experience itself is by and large left unknown? Is not experience itself largely understood as a mere placeholder, its meaning understood vaguely if it is understood at all, and therefore, isn't it philosophically irresponsible to make use of it as a conceptual tool? For, if we are to make use of experience in our philosophical discussions, we must first ground experience on a sure foundation, such that what comes of what is said amounts to more than a mere house of cards.

Unfortunately, with reference to the usage of the term, all experience is experience, and so although we would like best to delineate a narrow meaning and, as it were, speak of "true" experiences and "false" experiences, this cannot be the case. For all experience is experience if it is experience at all.

We could go on an ideatic journey and explore the growth of the term through history and how it has come to mean now what it does, but such an examination, however thorough, would only provide us with the confidence that we have come to an understanding, without getting at the real truth of the matter. There is also naturally the issue of the association and interaction of languages with each other in the development of the idea, and how Hume may have first popularized experience philosophically, while Kant followed in his path, and in this manner experience passed through English into German as both erfahrung and erlebnis, and then passed back into English. All of this is fascinating but insufficient. Also insufficient is to tie the notion of experience with a posteriori knowledge and the scientific revolution. For instance, we could take this as our jumping off point and retroactively define experience as a scientifically derivative term, and in this way show that it is improper to speak of all knowledge coming from experience if we are to also assert that there is knowledge outside of science and its mode of "experiencing" reality. This would clearly be inadequate, since experience has since been reappropriated to include non-scientific experience within it, for, as we have already said, all experience is experience.

There is a common root between experience and experiment. In this manner we can show right off that, though recourse to a word's origins can frequently be helpful in the unearthing of meaning, in this case it is very little help. To experience the world is not to experiment with it, even though experiments too are obviously experiences.

Linguistically, the truth of experience is buried deeply. It's truth lies beneath the English, beneath the German, beneath even the Latin. The descent of a word may be preserved in it without the users being aware of this hidden meaning in using it. Experience must be torn asunder, broken past the point at which most dictionaries of etymology stop, identifying experience with experientia, experiri, and periculum. None of these get to the root, for they are each all the hanging fruits from an even older stem. Allow me to admit straight off my status as a novice with both Latin and the study of etymology. But it seems clear to me that experience must be separated from the roots that modify (ex, per) before it can get at the core substance that is being affected (ientia, iri, iculum). Is experience a kind of entity (entitas, ens, esse)? Is it a kind of passion (ira) or an irruption (irruo)? Is it a kind of violence (ico, ictus)? Or, better yet, is it simply what is to be had for breakfast (iento, ientaculum)? It is clear that there is a lot of ambiguity on this level, and we could very quickly make fools of ourselves if we are careless. Although I would like very much to give the primary meaning of experience to the violence of a blow (ico, ictus), I think that perhaps the most likely root here is a much more common word, namely eo, ire. Unfortunately, even here the ambiguity is just as high, if not higher, than at the topmost level of our closest familiarity with the original term, experience. If experience is always a going through and out of, what is it going through, what is it coming out of, and most importantly, how does it proceed?