Three Dimensions Of The Cognitive Subject

Cognitive subject is a historical category, and its meaning becomes rich along with the development of the history and evolution. Sorting through the evolution of the meaning of the cognitive subject concept, we find that since the dawn of modern subjective philosophy, whether the subject view of Descartes’and Locke’s substantive subject, or the subject view of Kant’s transcendental subject, they all essentially explore the cognitive subject without considering social practice, they individualize and abstract the concrete cognitive subject which has a wide range of social attributes under a certain space-time. They hold the view that cognitive subject is an isolated, abstract, transcendental, widespread and existential individual which is unsocial, non-historical, non-linguistic, apathia, non-value judgment, non-religious, and not affected by the factors such as social context, historical situation, cultural background, traditional ideas, ethics and religion which situates.With this as a starter, based on the exploring of the religious epistemology of Merold Westphal who is a famous scholar of nowadays American continent philosophy, soaked up the latest research results of virtue epistemology of Linda Zagzebski, a noted scholar of current American analytic philosophy, this article attempts to reveal that cognitive subject is by no means an isolated, abstract, transcendental, widespread and existential individual which is pulling away from all kinds of social factors as traditional epistemology mentioned. Cognitive subject is deeply rooted in the factors such as social context, historical situation, cultural background, traditional ideas, ethics and religion which situates, and its cognition will also be affected by the above-mentioned situational, historical and diversified factors that situates, these factors function together to constitute the context of the cognition.Combining with these two scholars’concrete epistemology while hinging around the problem of cognitive subject, this article is divided into three parts, it discusses the influence of finitude factors, the ethical factors and the religious factors of cognitive subject on the cognition of cognitive subject respectively from the finitude, ethical and religious dimensions. The first part of this article explores the finitude dimension, i.e. the influence of finitude factors on the cognition of cognitive subject, through the account of Westphal’s hermeneutics of finitude; The second part explicates the ethical dimension, i.e. the influence of ethical factors on the cognition of cognitive subject, through the account of Zagzebski’s virtue epistemology; The third part elaborates the finitude dimension, i.e. the influence of religious factors on the cognition of cognitive subject, through the account of Westphal’s hermeneutics of sinfulness or the hermeneutics of suspicion. In this process, the cognitive subject goes from the one-dimensional person in the finitude dimension, gradually to the two-dimensional person in the ethical dimension, then to the three-dimensional person in the religious dimension.