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Title: The History of Philosophy: Volume Three (of 3)
Author: Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Language: English
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Giovanni Fini
HEGEL’S LECTURES ON THE
HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
VOLUME THREE
Hegel’s Lectures on
THE HISTORY OF
PHILOSOPHY
_Translated from the German by_
E. S. HALDANE
_and_
FRANCES H. SIMSON, M.A.
_In three volumes_
VOLUME THREE
[Illustration]
ROUTLEDGE & KEGAN PAUL LTD
Broadway House, 68-74 Carter Lane
London, E.C.4
_First published in England 1896
by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd
Reprinted 1955
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
Broadway House, 68-74 Carter Lane
London, E.C.4_
_Reprinted by lithography in Great Britain by
Jarrold and Sons Limited, Norwich_
CONTENTS
PART TWO
PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
1. The Idea of Christianity 1
2. The Fathers and Heterodoxies 10
3. Church and State 23
SECTION ONE
ARABIAN PHILOSOPHY 26
A. The Philosophy of the Medabberim 30
B. Commentators of Aristotle 34
C. Jewish Philosophers: Moses Maimonides 35
SECTION TWO
THE SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY 37
A. Relationship of the Scholastic Philosophy to Christianity 45
B. General Historical Points of View 60
1. The Building up of Dogmas on Metaphysical Grounds 61
_a._ Anselm 61
_b._ Abelard 67
2. Methodical Representation of the Doctrinal System of the
Church 68
_a._ Peter Lombard 69
_b._ Thomas Aquinas 71
_c._ John Duns Scotus 72
3. Acquaintanceship with Aristotelian Writings 73
_a._ Alexander of Hales 73
_b._ Albertus Magnus 75
4. Opposition between Realism and Nominalism 77
_a._ Roscelinus 78
_b._ Walter of Mortagne 80
_c._ William Occam 82
_d._ Buridan 85
5. Formal Dialectic 86
_a._ Julian, Archbishop of Toledo 87
_b._ Paschasius Radbertus 88
6. Mystics 91
_a._ John Charlier 91
_b._ Raymundus of Sabunde 91
_c._ Roger Bacon 92
_d._ Raymundus Lullus 92
C. General Standpoint of the Scholastics 94
SECTION THREE
REVIVAL OF THE SCIENCES 108
A. Study of the Ancients 109
1. Pomponatius 111
2. Bessarion, Ficinus, Picus 112
3. Gassendi, Lipsius, Reuchlin, Helmont 112
4. Ciceronian Popular Philosophy 113
B. Certain Attempts in Philosophy 115
1. Cardanus 116
2. Campanella 119
3. Bruno 119
4. Vanini 137
5. Petrus Ramus 143
C. The Reformation 146
PART THREE
MODERN PHILOSOPHY
INTRODUCTION 157
SECTION ONE
MODERN PHILOSOPHY IN ITS FIRST STATEMENT 170
A. Bacon 170
B. Jacob Boehme 188
SECTION TWO
PERIOD OF THE THINKING UNDERSTANDING 217
CHAPTER I.—THE METAPHYSICS OF THE UNDERSTANDING 220
A. First Division 220
1. Descartes 220
2. Spinoza 252
3. Malebranche 290
B. Second Division 295
1. Locke 295
2. Hugo Grotius 313
3. Thomas Hobbes 315
4. Cudworth, Clarke, Wollaston 319
5. Puffendorf 321
6. Newton 322
C. Third Division 325
1. Leibnitz 325
2. Wolff 348
3. German Popular Philosophy 356
CHAPTER II.—TRANSITION PERIOD 360
A. Idealism and Scepticism 363
1. Berkeley 364
2. Hume 369
B. Scottish Philosophy 375
1. Thomas Reid 376
2. James Beattie 377
3. James Oswald 377
4. Dugald Stewart 378
C. French Philosophy 379
1. The Negative Aspect 388
2. The Positive Aspect 392
_a._ Materialism 393
_b._ Robinet 394
3. Idea of a Concrete Universal Unity 397
_a._ Opposition between Sensation and Thought 398
_b._ Montesquieu 399
_c._ Helvetius 400
_d._ Rousseau 400
D. The German Illumination 403
SECTION THREE
RECENT GERMAN PHILOSOPHY 409
A. Jacobi 410
B. Kant 423
C. Fichte 479
1. The First Principles of Fichte’s Philosophy 481
2. Fichte’s System in a Re-constituted Form 505
3. The More Important of the Followers of Fichte 506
_a._ Friedrich von Schlegel 507
_b._ Schleiermacher 508
_c._ Novalis 510
_d._ Fries, Bouterweck, Krug 510
D. Schelling 512
E. Final Result 545
INDEX 555
CORRIGENDA IN VOLS. I. AND II. 570
PART TWO
PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
INTRODUCTION
The first period embraces a space of one thousand years—from Thales, 550
B.C., to Proclus, who died 485 A.D., and until the disappearance of pagan
philosophy as an outward institution, 529 A.D. The second period extends
to the sixteenth century, and thus again embraces a thousand years, to
pass over which we must provide ourselves with seven-leagued boots. While
Philosophy has hitherto found its place in the religion of the heathen,
from this time on it has its sphere within the Christian world; for
Arabians and Jews have only to be noticed in an external and historic way.
1. Through the Neo-Platonic philosophy we have come into quite familiar
acquaintance with the Idea of Christianity, as the new religion which
has entered into the world. For the Neo-Platonic philosophy has as its
essential principle the fact that the Absolute is determined as spirit in
a concrete way, that God is not a mere conception. Although the Absolute
is Thought, it must, in order to be true, be concrete in itself and not
abstract; in what we have just seen we have, then, the first appearance
of the absolutely existent spirit. But in spite of their profound and
true speculation, the Neo-Platonists still had not proved their doctrine
that the Trinity is the truth, for there is lacking to it the form of
inward necessity. The Neo-Platonists begin from the One that determines
itself, that sets a limit to itself from which the determinate proceeds;
this, however, is itself an immediate method of presentation, and it is
this that makes such philosophers as Plotinus and Proclus so tiresome.
Undoubtedly dialectic considerations enter in, in which the opposites
which are conceived as absolute are shown to be null; but this dialectic
is not methodical, but occurs only disconnectedly. The principle of
retroversion and comprehension found with the Neo-Platonists is that
of substantiality generally, but because subjectivity is lacking, this
idea of Spirit is deficient in one moment, the moment of actuality, of
the point which draws all moments into one, and which thereby becomes
immediate unity, universality, and Being. To them spirit is thus not
individual spirit; and this deficiency is made good through Christianity,
in which spirit is found as actual, present spirit, immediately existent
in the world here and now, and the absolute spirit is known in the
immediate present as man.
In order to grasp and apply the Idea of Christianity, the philosophic
Idea of which we have already spoken in connection with the
Neo-Platonists must have been comprehended for itself; but within
Christianity the basis of Philosophy is that in man has sprung up the
consciousness of the truth, or of spirit in and for itself, and then
that man requires to participate in this truth. Man must be qualified
to have this truth present to him; he must further be convinced of this
possibility. This is the absolute demand and necessity; the consciousness
must be arrived at that this alone is true. The first point of interest
in the Christian religion thus is that the content of the Idea should
be revealed to man; more particularly that the unity of the divine
and human nature should come to the consciousness of man, and that,
indeed, on the one hand as an implicitly existent unity, and, on the
other, in actuality as worship. The Christian life signifies that the
culminating point of subjectivity is made familiar with this conception,
the individual himself is laid claim to, is made worthy of attaining on
his own account to this unity, which is to make himself worthy of the
Spirit of God—Grace, as it is called—dwelling in him. Hence the doctrine
of reconciliation is that God is known as reconciling Himself with the
world, _i.e._ as we have seen in the Neo-Platonic philosophy, that He
particularizes Himself and does not remain abstract. Not external nature
alone, but the whole world pertains to the particular; above all must
human individuality know itself in God. The interest of the subject
is itself involved, and here it plays an essential rôle in order that
God may be realized and may realize Himself in the consciousness of
individuals who are spirit and implicitly free. Thus through the process
these accomplish that reconciliation in themselves, actualize their
freedom; that is to say, they attain to the consciousness of heaven upon
earth, the elevation of man to God. Thus the true intellectual world
is not a beyond, but the so-called finite is an element in it, and no
division exists between this side and that. The real concrete in regard
to the absolute Idea is the knowing of the mundane, the ‘other’ in God,
as implicitly divine, as universal, as the world of intellect, as having
its root in God, but only the root. In God man is accepted only in his
truth, and not in his immediacy, and thus this doctrine is not what we
call Pantheism, for that leaves the immediate just as it is. Man then
has himself to accomplish the process of reconciliation in himself in
order to attain to his truth. We have thus seen that man possesses the
determination and attributes of God as the first begotten son, Adam
Kadmon, the first man; we may call this unity the concrete Idea, which,
however, is still only implicit.
But the fact that because man is capable of the divine, the identity of
the divine and human nature must likewise be present for him, has in an
immediate way become known to him in Christ, as one in whom the divine
and human nature are implicitly one. In the world what has come to pass
is that the Absolute has been revealed as the concrete, and, further, not
only in thought in a general way as intelligible world, but because it
has in itself proceeded to its ultimate point of intensity. Thus it is
an actual self, an “I,” the absolute universal, the concrete universal,
that is God; and also the absolute opposite of this determination, the
clearly finite as it exists in space and time, but this finite determined
in unity with the eternal as self. The Absolute comprehended as concrete,
the unity of these two absolutely different determinations, is the
true God; each of them is abstract, and either of them taken by itself
is thus not the true God. The fact that the concrete is thus known to
men in this perfection as God, brings about the whole revolution that
has taken place in the world’s history. The Trinity is thereby not
only present in conception, which would not yet constitute the perfect
concrete, but actuality is perfectly united to it. In the consciousness
of the world it has consequently broken in upon men that the Absolute has
attained to this “culminating point” of immediate actuality, as Proclus
says; and that is the manifestation of Christianity. The Greeks were
anthropomorphic, their gods were humanly constituted; but the deficiency
in them is that they were not anthropomorphic enough. Or rather the Greek
religion is on the one hand too much, and, on the other hand, too little
anthropomorphic—too much, because immediate qualities, forms, actions,
are taken up into the divine; too little, because man is not divine as
man, but only as a far-away form and not as ‘this,’ and subjective man.
Thus man reaches this truth, because for him it becomes a sure intuition
that in Christ the λόγος has become Flesh. We thus first have man
through this process attaining to spirituality, and in the second place
we have man as Christ, in whom this original identity of both natures
is known. Now since man really is this process of being the negation of
the immediate, and from this negation attaining to himself—to a unity
with God—he must consequently renounce his natural will, knowledge,
and existence. This giving up of his natural existence is witnessed in
Christ’s sufferings and death, and in His resurrection and elevation to
the right hand of the Father. Christ became a perfect man, endured the
lot of all men, death; as man He suffered, sacrificed Himself, gave up
His natural existence, and thereby elevated Himself above it. In Him
this process, this conversion of His other-being into spirit, and the
necessity of pain in the renunciation of the natural man is witnessed;
but this pain, the pain of feeling that God Himself is dead, is the
starting point of holiness and of elevation to God. Thus what must come
to pass in the subject—this process, this conversion of the finite—is
known as implicitly accomplished in Christ. This constitutes the great
leading Idea of Christianity.
From what has been said it follows, in the second place, that the world
must not be left in its immediate naturalness. The original, implicitly
existent, is found only in the strictest conception of mind, or as its
determination: immediately, man is only a living being, who has indeed
the capacity to become actual spirit—but spirit does not pertain to
nature. Man is thus not by nature this particular in which the spirit
of God lives and dwells: man is not by nature what he ought to be. The
animal is by nature what it ought to be. But what has to be noticed in
this respect is that natural things merely remain in their implicit
Notion, or their truth does not enter into their sensuous life, for this
their natural individuality is only a fleeting fact that cannot look back
on itself. The misfortune in natural things is that they get no further,
that their essential nature is not for itself and independent; from this
it follows that they do not attain to infinitude, to liberation from
their immediate individuality, _i.e._ they do not attain to freedom, but
only remain in the necessity which is the connection of the “one” with an
“other,” so that when this other unites itself to natural things, these
last perish because they cannot bear the contradiction. But because the
truth exists for man as consciousness, and in it he has the qualities
necessary for freedom, he is capable of perceiving the Absolute, of
placing himself in a relation to the same, and having knowledge as an
end; and the liberation of mind depends on the fact that consciousness
does not remain in its natural condition, but becomes spiritual, _i.e._
that for it the eternal, that is the reconciliation of the finite as this
subject with the infinite, exists. Thus consciousness does not signify
remaining in the sphere of nature, but the existence of the process
whereby the universal becomes object or end to man. Man makes himself
divine, but in a spiritual, that is to say not in an immediate way. In
the ancient religions the divine is also united to the natural or human;
but this unity is no reconciliation, but an immediate, undeveloped, and
thus unspiritual unity, just because it is merely natural. But because
mind is not natural but only that into which it makes itself, the
spiritual is first met with in this very process of producing unity. To
this spiritual unity pertains the negation of nature, of the flesh, as
that in which man must not rest; for nature is from the beginning evil.
Man is likewise naturally evil, for all the wickedness that man does
proceeds from a natural desire. Now because man is in himself the image
of God, but in existence is only natural, that which is implicit must be
evolved, while the first natural condition must be abrogated. So much the
more is it true that man first becomes spiritual, and attains to truth
through rising above the natural, inasmuch as God Himself is a spirit
only in that He transformed the hidden unity into the other of Himself,
in order from this other to turn back again into Himself.
Now the fact that this is given as, or asserted to be the fundamental
Idea of Christianity, implies on the one hand an historic question;
at different times this idea has been grasped in different ways, and
now, for example, men again have their particular conceptions of it. In
order to bring about the conclusion that this is the historic idea of
Christianity, we should have to enter upon an historic disquisition;
but because we cannot deal with this here, we must accept it as an
historic axiom. On the other hand, in so far as this question falls
within the history of Philosophy, the assertion that this is the idea
of Christianity has another ground to stand on than that of history,
and this constitutes the third point of interest. In connection with
the preceding forms it has been shown that this Idea of Christianity
must have now come forth, and indeed become the universal consciousness
of the nations. The fact that it has come forth as the world-religion,
is the content of history; it is this necessity in the Idea which has
to be expounded more clearly in the philosophy of history. To this end
the conception of mind must be made fundamental, and it must now be
shown that history is the process of mind itself, the revelation of
itself from its first superficial, enshrouded consciousness, and the
attainment of this standpoint of its free self-consciousness, in order
that the absolute command of mind, “Know thyself,” may be fulfilled. The
recognition of this necessity has been called the _à priori_ construction
of history; there is no good in decrying it as inadmissible, and indeed
as arrogant. The development of history may be represented as contingent.
Or, if the providence and government of God are seriously accepted,
these are represented as though Christianity were so to speak ready made
in the mind of God; then, when thrust into the world, it appears to be
contingent. But the rationality and likewise the necessity of this decree
of God’s has now to be considered, and this may be called a theodicy,
a justification of God, _i.e._ a vindication of our Idea. It is a
demonstration that, as I have just said, things have happened rationally
in the world, and it implies the fact that the world-history represents
the process of mind partially as the history of mind, which has to be
reflected into itself in order to come to a consciousness of what it is.
It is this which is shown forth in temporal history, and as history,
indeed, just because mind is the living movement, proceeding from its
immediate existence to beget revolutions in the world, as well as in
individuals.
Since it is hereby presupposed that this Idea must necessarily become
universal religion, there is, in the fourth place, present in it the
source of a method of knowledge proper to the particular consciousness.
That is to say, the new religion has made the intelligible world of
Philosophy the world of common consciousness. Tertullian hence says:
“Even children in our day have a knowledge of God, which the wisest
men of antiquity alone attained to.” But in order that all may know
the truth, this Idea must come to them as an object, not for the
thinking, philosophic and cultured consciousness, but for the sensuous
consciousness which still adheres to uncultured methods of regarding
things. If this Idea were not to receive and to retain this form of
outward consciousness, it would be a philosophy of the Christian
religion; for the standpoint of Philosophy is the Idea in the form of
the merely universal thought, and not the Idea as it is for the subject
and directed to the subject. That through which this Idea appears
as religion, belongs, however, to the history of religion, and this
development of its form must here be passed over. Through these forms we
must however not mistake the content, much less reject it altogether, for
we must rather recognize its presence more completely; the forms must
likewise not be held to be absolute, and we must not try to maintain the
doctrines in this form alone, as was at one time done by an orthodoxy “of
straw.”
Only one example will here be given. The so-called doctrine of original
sin implies that our first parents have sinned, that this sin has thus
descended to all mankind as an hereditary disorder, and has come upon
posterity in an external way as something inherent in their nature, which
does not pertain to freedom of the mind, nor has its ground therein.
Through this original sin, it is further signified, man has drawn upon
himself the wrath of God. Now if these forms be adhered to, we have in
the first place there the first parents in time, and not in thought; but
the thought of these first parents is none other than man as he is in
and for himself. What is said of him as such, what every member of the
human race really is in himself, is represented here in the form of the
first man, Adam; and in this first man sin manifests itself as something
contingent, or, more particularly, in his allowing himself to be enticed
into eating of the apple. But it is again not merely represented that
he simply partook of the fruit, but that he ate of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil; it is as man that he must partake of it, and
not as beast. The fundamental characteristic, however, through which he
distinguishes himself from the animal, is the very fact that he knows
what good and evil are. For God likewise says, “Behold, Adam has become
as one of us, to know good and evil.” But it is only through man’s having
the power of thinking that he can make this distinction between good and
evil; in thought alone is there thus the source of good and evil, but the
healing of the evil which is brought about through thought is also there.
The second point is that man is by nature evil and transmits the evil.
On the other hand, it is said: “Why should the sinner suffer punishment
seeing that there is no responsibility for what is inborn in him?” As a
matter of fact the statement that man is implicitly or by nature evil
would seem to be a hard saying. But if we set aside this hard saying,
and do not speak of a divine punishment, but make use of milder general
expressions, in this idea of original sin the fact remains for us that
man as he is by nature is not what he ought to be before God, but has
the power of becoming explicitly what he only is implicitly; and the fact
that this rests in the determination of man as such is represented as
inheritance. The abrogation of mere naturalness is known to us simply as
education, and arises of itself; through education subjection is brought
about, and with that a capacity for becoming good is developed. Now if
this appears to come to pass very easily, we must recollect that it is of
infinite importance that the reconciliation of the world with itself, the
making good, is brought about through the simple method of education.
2. What concerns us now is to make the Principle of Christianity, which
has been explained at considerable length, into the principle of the
world; the task set before the world is to bring this absolute Idea
within itself, to actualize it in itself, and thereby to reconcile itself
to God. This task once more falls into three separate divisions.
In the first place we have the dissemination of the Christian religion
and the bringing of it within the hearts of men; this, however, lies
outside the limits of our consideration. The heart signifies the
subjective man as ‘this,’ and through this principle the latter has a
different position from before; it is essential that this subject should
be present. The individual subject is the object of divine grace; each
subject, or man as man, has on his own account an infinite value, is
destined to partake of this spirit which must, as God, be born within the
heart of every man. Man is determined for freedom, he is here recognized
as implicitly free; this freedom is, however, at first only formal,
because it remains within the principle of subjectivity.
The second point is that the principle of the Christian religion should
be worked out for thought, and be taken up into thinking knowledge, and
realized in this; and thus that it should attain to reconciliation,
having the divine Idea within itself, and that the riches of thought
and culture belonging to the philosophic Idea should become united to
the Christian principle. For the philosophic Idea is the Idea of God,
and thought has the absolute right of reconciliation, or the right to
claim that the Christian principle should correspond with thought. The
Fathers have rendered the service of thus elaborating the Christian
religion in thinking knowledge; but neither have we to consider further
this development of the Christian principle, since it belongs to the
history of the Church. We have only here to give the point of view
adopted regarding the relation of the Fathers to Philosophy. They for
the most part lived within the ancient Roman world and in Latin culture,
though the Byzantines likewise are included with them. We know that the
Fathers were men of great philosophic culture, and that they introduced
Philosophy, and more especially Neo-Platonic philosophy, into the Church;
in this way they worked out a Christian system by which the first mode
in which Christianity was manifested in the world was supplemented, for
system was not present in this first manifestation. The Fathers have
dealt with all questions respecting the nature of God, the freedom of
man, the relationship to God—who is the objective—the origin of evil,
and so on; and whatever thought decided regarding these questions was
by them brought into and incorporated with the Christian system. The
nature of spirit, the way of salvation, _i.e._ the various stages in the
spiritualizing of the subject, his growth, the process of spirit, whereby
it is spirit, the changes it has undergone, they have likewise treated in
its freedom, and recognized its moments in the depths to which it reaches.
We may thus describe the attitude of the Christian Fathers, and likewise
remark that this first philosophic development of the Christian principle
has been looked on as a crime on their part, and it has been said that
they have thus corrupted the purity of Christianity as originally
manifested. We must speak of the nature of this corruption. It is well
known that Luther in his Reformation made his aim the bringing of the
Church back to the purity of its first estate in the early centuries,
but this first condition already shows the fabric of an extensive and
closely interwoven system, an elaborate tissue of doctrines regarding
what God is and what is man’s relation to Him. Hence at the time of the
Reformation no particular system was built up, but what was originally
there was purified from later additions; it is a complicated erection,
in which the most intricate pieces of workmanship are to be found. In
modern times this elaborately woven system has been entirely pulled to
pieces, because men have wished to bring Christianity back to the simple
lines of the Word of God as found in the writings of the New Testament.
Men have likewise given up the propagation of the system, the doctrine
of Christianity as determined through the Idea and by the Idea, and have
returned to the manner of its first appearance (and that, indeed, in
eclectic fashion, and having regard to what will fit in with their own
notions), so that now only the original Gospel narrative is regarded as
forming the basis of Christianity. As regards the title of Philosophy and
the Fathers to bring Philosophy into Christianity we have the following
remarks to make.
Modern Theology on the one hand derives its formulas from the words of
the Bible, which are made to form their basis, so that the whole business
of the individual, as regards his thoughts and his conceptions, is merely
exegetical; religion must be retained in its positive form, and thus it
is from something received and given, something most evidently externally
posited and revealed, that a beginning must be made. These words and
this text are, however, of a nature such that they allow full latitude
to the will of the interpreter; hence the other side is also present, or
the application of the Bible saying: “The letter killeth, but the spirit
giveth life.” This must be assented to, and the spirit means none else
than the power which dwells within those who apply themselves to the
letter in order that they may spiritually apprehend and animate it. This
signifies that it is the conceptions which we bring along with us which
have in the letter to give efficacy to themselves. Now these reflections
brought along with us may be grasped by the most ordinary human
understanding, which is what is indicated in modern times when we say
that dogmas must be popular. In that way the right to act upon the letter
with the spirit is assumed, _i.e._ the right to approach it with our
individual judgment; but to the Fathers this is forbidden. They did act
upon it with the Spirit; and it is expressly said that the Spirit dwells
within the Church, directs, teaches, and illuminates it. The Fathers
have hence a similar right to relate themselves with the Spirit to the
positive, to what is given by the senses. Only it will depend absolutely
upon what the nature of the Spirit is, for spirits are very different.
The assertion that the spirit must give life to the mere letter is
certainly more definitely stated as that spirit has only to expound what
is given, _i.e._ it must leave the actual sense of what is immediately
contained in the words. We must, however, be far behind in culture if we
do not see the fallacy in the attitude here adopted. To expound without
the individual spirit, as though the sense were one entirely given, is
impossible. To elucidate signifies to make clear, and it must be made
clear to me; this can be done by nothing excepting what was already
present in me. It must be in conformity with my subjective judgment,
the necessities of my knowledge, of my apprehension, of my heart, &c.;
thus only is it for me. We find what we look for, and just because I
make it clear to myself, I make my conception, my thought, a factor in
it; otherwise it is a dead and external thing, which is not present for
me at all. It is hence very difficult to make clear to ourselves those
foreign religions which lie far below our spiritual needs; but yet they
touch a side of my spiritual necessities and standpoints, although it
is but a dim and sensuous side. Thus when we talk of “making clear,”
we conceal the real matter in a word; but if this word itself is made
clear we find nothing in it but the fact that the spirit which is in man
desires therein to recognize itself, and that it cannot know anything
which does not rest in him. Thus have men made of the Bible what may be
called a nose of wax. This man finds this thing, the other man that; what
was secure now shows itself as insecure, because it is considered by the
subjective spirit.
In this regard the nature of the text describing the method in which the
first manifestation of Christianity took place, must be remarked upon;
it cannot as yet expressly contain that which rests in the principle of
Christianity, but only somewhat of an anticipation of what spirit is and
will know as true. This also is expressly said in the text itself. Christ
says: “If I depart, I will send the Comforter, the Holy Ghost.... He will
guide you into all truth,” He—and not Christ’s earthly presence nor His
spoken words. It was only to be after Him, and after His teaching through
the text, that the Spirit was to come into the Apostles, and that they
were to become full of the Spirit. It might almost be said that when
Christianity is carried back to its first appearing, it is brought down
to the level of unspirituality, for Christ Himself says that the Spirit
will not come until He Himself has departed. In the text of the first
manifestation of Christianity we, on the other hand, see Christ only as
the Messiah, or under the more explicit designation of a mere teacher;
for His friends and apostles He is a present man whom they can perceive
by the senses, and who does not yet hold to them the relationship of
the Holy Ghost. His friends have seen Him, heard His doctrine, seen His
miracles, and have thereby been brought to believe in Him. But Christ
Himself sternly rebukes those who demand miracles of Him; if He thus be
made as God to man, God in the heart of man, He cannot have a sensuous
and immediate presence. The Dalai-lama, in the form of a sensuous man, is
God to the inhabitants of Thibet, but in the Christian principle, where
God dwells in the hearts of men, He cannot be present to them in sensuous
form.
The second point then is that the sensuous and present form must
disappear, so that it may be taken into the Mnemosyne, into the realm
of popular conception; then for the first time can the spiritual
consciousness, the spiritual relation, enter in. To the question of
whither Christ has gone, the answer is given, “He sits on the right hand
of God,” which signifies that it is only now that God can be known as
this concrete One, as the One who has the other moment, His Son (λόγος,
σοφία), in Himself. Thus to know what is the principle of Christianity as
truth, the truth of the Idea of spirit must be known as concrete spirit,
and this is the form peculiar to the Fathers of the Church. With this
the idea that the abstractly divine breaks up and has broken up within
itself, first began to appear. This other moment in the divine must
not, however, be grasped in the mode of an intelligible world, or, as
we certainly have it in the ordinary conception, of a kingdom of heaven
with many angels, who are also finite, limited, thus approaching closer
to humanity. But it is not sufficient that the concrete moment should be
known in God, for the further knowledge is requisite that Christ is an
actual present man. This moment of Christ’s actual present humanity is of
immense importance to Christianity, because it is the union of the most
tremendous opposites. This higher conception could not have been present
in the text, in the first manifestation; the greatness of the Idea could
only come in later on, after the Spirit had perfected the Idea.
That the revelation of Christ has this significance is the belief of
Christians, while the profane, immediate and direct significance of
this history is that Christ was a mere prophet and met the fate of
all the prophets in being misunderstood. But the fact that it has the
significance given by us is known through the Spirit, for the Spirit is
revealed in this history. This history is the Notion, the Idea of Spirit
itself, and the world-history has in it found its end, which is in this
immediate way to know the truth. It is therefore the Spirit which so
comprehends that history, and at the time of Pentecost this is shown in
an immediate and evident manner. For before this time the Apostles did
not know the infinite significance of Christ; they did not yet know that
this is the infinite history of God; they had believed in Him, but not
yet as seeing in Him this infinite truth.
This is the truth which the Fathers developed; the general relation of
the first Christian Church to Philosophy is hereby given. On the one
hand, the philosophic Idea has been transplanted into this religion; on
the other, this moment in the Idea—according to which the latter breaks
up within itself into wisdom, the active Logos, the Son of God, &c., but
yet in so doing remains in universality—has been brought to a culmination
in subjectivity, and further in the sensuous immediate individuality and
present existence of a human individual appearing in time and space.
These two elements are essentially intermingled in this Christian system,
the Idea itself, and secondly the form as it presents itself through its
connection with a single individuality present in time and space. To the
Fathers this history had thus the Idea as its principle; the true Idea
of the Spirit was consequently to them likewise in the determinate form
of history. But the Idea was not yet, as such, separated from history;
because the Church thus held to this Idea in historic form, it determined
the doctrines. This, then, is the general character of the time.
From this Idea as comprehended through the Spirit, many so-called
heresies arose in the first centuries after Christ. Among such heretics
must be included those of the Gnostics who take the Christian literature
as their basis, but give a spiritual significance to everything therein
present. For they did not remain at this historical form of the Idea
of Spirit, since they interpreted the history and deprived it of its
historical value. The reflections which they introduced are, as we
have seen (Vol. II., pp. 396-399), to a greater or less extent such as
are to be found in the philosophy of the Alexandrians or of Philo. In
conformity with their principles they adopted a speculative attitude, but
they proceeded into extravagances both of the imagination and morality,
although in this dim fantastic region the elements which we found in
history may always be recognized. But the form of immediate existence,
an essential moment in Christ, is by them etherealized into a universal
thought, so that the determination of the individual as a ‘this’
disappears. The Docetæ, for example, said that Christ had only a phantom
body, a phantom life; yet in such assertions thought still constituted
the background. The Gnostics were thus antagonistic to the Western
Church, and, like Plotinus and the Neo-Platonists, this last strove hard
against Gnosticism, because it remained in what is general, grasped
the conception in the form of imagination, and because this conception
was opposed to that of Christ in the Flesh (Χριστὸς ἐν σαρκί).[1] The
Church, on the contrary, held to the definite form of personality as the
principle of concrete actuality.
From the East other forms of opposition in the principles than those
we mentioned in connection with the Gnostics have been introduced,
namely, Light and Darkness, Good and Evil. But more particularly has
this Parsee opposition emerged in Manichæism, in which God, as the
Light opposes the evil, non-existent (οὐκ ὄν), the ὕλη, the material,
self-annihilating. Evil is that which contains contradiction in itself:
the powers of evil (ὕλη), given over to themselves and raging in blind
enmity against one another, were met by a gleam from the Kingdom of
Light and thereby attracted, and this light pacified the powers of
evil, so as to cause them to cease from strife and unite together in
order to penetrate into the Kingdom of Light. As an inducement to make
them so act, in order to weaken and mitigate their blind fury through a
power operating irresistibly, and in order to bring about their final
overthrow, and the universal supremacy of light, of life, of the soul,
the Father of Light delivered over one of the powers of good. That is
the world-soul (ψυχὴ ἁπάντων); it was swallowed up by the material,
and this intermixture is the basis of the whole creation. Hence the
soul is everywhere disseminated, and in the dead husk it is everywhere
working and striving in man, the microcosm, as in the universe, the
macrocosm, but with unequal power; for where beauty reveals itself,
the Light-principle, the soul, obtains the mastery over matter, but in
the ugly, the hateful, it is subordinate, and matter is the conqueror.
This captive soul Mani likewise called the Son of Man—that is, of the
primitive man, the heavenly man, of Adam Kadmon. But only a part of
the Light-principle which was destined to strive with the Kingdom of
Evil is in this manner delivered over; being too weak, it incurred the
danger of being vanquished, and had to deliver over to matter a part
of its armour, this soul. The part of the soul which had not suffered
through such intermingling with matter, but had raised itself freely to
heaven, works from above for the purification of the imprisoned souls,
its kindred portions of light; and that is Jesus, the Son of Man, in so
far as he has not suffered (ἀπαθής), as distinguished from the suffering
Son of Man, the soul confined within the universe. But that delivering
soul remains in the second and visible light which is still distinguished
from the first and unapproachable, having its seat there, and by means
of sun and moon exercising influence in the purification of nature. To
Mani the whole course of the physical as of the spiritual world appears
as a process of purification by means of this soul. The captive principle
of Light required to be raised from the cycle of metempsychosis to an
immediate re-union with the Kingdom of Light. Hence the pure heavenly
soul came down to earth and appeared in the semblance of human form
in order to reach to the suffering soul (to the νοῦς παθητικός of
Aristotle?) a helping hand. The Manichæans also express themselves to
the effect that God, the Good, goes forth, illumines, and thus produces
an intelligible world. What comes third is Spirit as turning round,
establishing the unity of the second and first, and experiencing feeling,
and this feeling is Love. This heresy fully recognizes the Idea, but
does away with the form of individual existence in which the Idea is
presented in the Christian religion. The crucifixion of Christ is
consequently taken as merely a semblance, as allegorical only, simply an
image. That merely phantom crucifixion of the non-suffering Jesus, the
fellow-suffering, only imaginary certainly, of the soul unmingled with
matter, shows forth the actual suffering of the captive soul. Thus as
the forces of Darkness could exercise no power over Christ, they must
also show themselves powerless over the soul allied thereto. With the
Manichæans originates the conception of a Jesus who is crucified in all
the world and in the soul; the crucifixion of Christ thus mystically
signifies only the wounds of our suffering souls. Through vegetation the
particles of light were held fast, and thus held fast they were brought
forth as plants. The earth becoming fruitful brings forth the suffering
(_patibilis_) Jesus, who is the life and salvation of men and is
crucified on every tree. The νοῦς which appeared in Jesus signifies all
things.[2] The Church has likewise made a principal point of asserting
the unity of the divine and human nature. But because this unity in the
Christian religion attained to conceiving consciousness, human nature was
in its actuality taken as ‘this,’ and not merely in an allegorical or
philosophic sense.
Now if, on the one hand, the essential matter with the orthodox Fathers
who opposed themselves to these Gnostic speculations, is the fact that
they held firmly to the definite form of an objectively conceived Christ,
on the other hand they attacked the Arians and all that pertain to them;
for these recognize the individual as manifested, but do not place the
Person of Christ in connection with the separation, with the breaking
up of the divine Idea. They took Christ to be a man, accorded to Him
indeed a higher nature, not, however, making Him a moment of God, of
Spirit itself. The Arians did not indeed go so far as the Socinians,
who accepted Christ merely as a man of noble nature, a teacher, and
so on; this sect hence did not form part of the Church at all, being
simply heathen. But still the Arians, since they did not recognize God
in Christ, did away with the idea of the Trinity, and consequently with
the principle of all speculative philosophy. The according to Him of a
higher nature is likewise a hollow mockery which cannot satisfy us; as
against this the Fathers accordingly asserted the unity of the divine
and human nature, which has come to consciousness in the individual
members of the Church, and this is a point of fundamental importance.
The Pelagians again, denied original sin, and maintained that man has by
nature sufficient virtue and religion. But man should not be what he is
by nature; he should be spiritual. And thus this doctrine is likewise
excluded as heretical. Therefore the Church was ruled by Spirit, to
enable it to hold to the determinations of the Idea, though always in
the historic form. This is the philosophy of the Fathers; they produced
the Church, as the developed Spirit required a developed doctrine, and
nothing is so out of place as the endeavour or desire of some men of the
present day to lead the Church back to her original form.
What follows thirdly is that the Idea permeates reality, is immanent
therein, that not only is there a multitude of believing hearts, but that
from the heart, just as the natural law rules over a sensuous world, a
higher life of the world, a kingdom, is constituted—the reconciliation
of God with Himself is accomplished in the world, and not as a heavenly
kingdom that is beyond. This community is the kingdom of God upon earth
in the Church; “Where two or three are gathered together in my name,”
says Christ, “there am I in the midst of them.” The Idea is only for
spirit, for subjective consciousness, in so far as it realizes itself
in actuality, and thus it not only has to bring itself to perfection
in the heart, but has to perfect itself also into a kingdom of actual
consciousness. The Idea which man, self-consciousness, should recognize,
must become altogether objective to him, so that he may truly apprehend
himself as spirit and the Spirit, and then that he may be spiritual in
a spiritual, and not in an emotional way. The first objectification
is found in the first immediate consciousness of the Idea, where it
appeared as an individual object, as the individual existence of a man.
The second objectivity is the spiritual worship and communion extended
to the Church. We might imagine a universal community of Love, a world
of piety and holiness, a world of brotherly kindness, of innocent little
lambs and pretty triflings with things spiritual, a divine republic, a
heaven upon earth. But this is not supposed to come to pass on earth;
that imagination is relegated to heaven, _i.e._ to some other place,
that is to say, it is put off until death. Each living actuality directs
his feelings, actions, and affairs in a very different way from this.
On the appearance of Christianity it is first of all said: “My kingdom
is not of this world;” but the realization has and ought to be in the
present world. In other words the laws, customs, constitutions, and
all that belongs to the actuality of spiritual consciousness should be
rational. The kingdom of rational actuality is quite a different one, and
must be organized and developed thinkingly and with understanding; the
moment of the self-conscious freedom of the individual must maintain its
rights against objective truth and objective command. This, then, is the
true and actual objectivity of mind in the form of an actual temporal
existence as state, just as Philosophy is the objectivity of thought
which comes to us in the form of universality. Such objectivity cannot be
in the beginning, but must come forth after being worked upon by mind and
thought.
In Christianity these absolute claims of the intellectual world and of
spirit had become the universal consciousness. Christianity proceeded
from Judaism, from self-conscious abjectness and depression. This feeling
of nothingness has from the beginning characterized the Jews; a sense of
desolation, an abjectness where no reason was, has possession of their
life and consciousness. This single point has later on, and in its proper
time, become a matter of universal history, and into this element of the
nullity of actuality the whole world has raised itself, passing out of
this principle indeed, but also into the kingdom of Thought, because that
nothingness has transformed itself into what is positively reconciled.
This is a second creation which came to pass after the first; in it Mind
became aware of itself as I = I, that is, as self-consciousness. This
second creation has first of all appeared in self-consciousness equally
directly in the form of a sensuous world, in the form of a sensuous
consciousness. As much of the Notion as has entered in was adopted by the
Fathers from the philosophers already mentioned; their Trinity, in so far
as a rational thought, and not a mere ordinary conception, comes from
these, and certain other ideas also. But what mainly distinguishes them
is the fact that for the Christian this intelligible world had likewise
this immediate sensuous truth of an ordinary course of events—a form
which it must have and retain for the majority of men.
3. This new world has therefore, however, to be adopted by a new race of
men, by Barbarians; for it is characteristic of barbarians to apprehend
the spiritual in a sensuous way. And it must be by northern barbarians,
for it is the northern self-containedness alone that is the immediate
principle of this new world-consciousness. With this self-consciousness
of the intelligible world as a world immediately actual, mind, having
regard to what it has in itself become, is higher than before, but, on
the other side, in respect of its consciousness it is thrown quite back
to the beginning of culture, and this consciousness had to commence
from the beginning again. What it had to overcome was on the one hand
this sensuous immediacy of its intelligible world, and secondly the
opposed sensuous immediacy of actuality, by its consciousness held as
null. It excludes the sun, replaces it with tapers, is furnished with
images merely; it is in itself alone, and inward, not reconciled for
consciousness—to self-consciousness a sinful, wicked world is present.
For the intelligible world of Philosophy had not yet completed in
itself the task of making itself the actual world—of recognizing the
intelligible in the actual, as well as the actual in the intelligible.
It is one thing to have the Idea of Philosophy, to recognize absolute
essence as absolute essence, and quite another thing to recognize
it as the system of the universe, of nature, and of individual
self-consciousness, as the whole development of its reality. The
Neo-Platonists had found that principle of realization—namely, this
real substance which again places itself in quite opposed, though in
themselves real determinations—but having got so far they did not find
the form, the principle of self-consciousness.
On the Teutonic nations the world-spirit imposed the task of developing
an embryo into the form of the thinking man. What comes first is the
mind as apprehended, and to that is opposed the subjectivity of will
which has not been taken up into mind; the kingdom of truth and that of
the world are bound together and at the same time evidently divided. An
intelligible world has thus in the conception of men established itself
in the mode of this same actuality, like a far-away land that is just as
really conceived of by us, peopled and inhabited, as the world we see,
but which is hidden from us as though by a mountain. It is not the Greek
or any other world of gods and of mythology—a simple, undivided faith;
for there is likewise present in it the highest negativity, that is, the
contradiction between actuality and that other world. This intellectual
world expresses the nature of real absolute existence. It is on it that
Philosophy tries its powers, and on it that thought also moils and
toils. We have in general outline to deal with these not very pleasing
manifestations.
Our first view of Philosophy, as revealed in Christianity (pp. 10-21)
is that of a dim groping which is carried on within the depths of the
Idea—as being the forms assumed by the same, which constitute its
moments; we see a hard struggle made by reason, which cannot force
its way out of the imagination and popular conceptions to the Notion.
There is no venture too rash for the imagination to undertake, because,
impelled by reason, it cannot satisfy itself with beautiful images, but
has to pass beyond them. There is likewise no extravagance of reason
into which it does not fall, because it cannot obtain the mastery of
the image, but within this element is merely in the act of warfare
with it. Later on than this Western self-immersion, there arose in the
East expansion, negation of all that is concrete, abstraction from
all determinations; this pure contemplation or pure thought present
in Mohammedanism corresponds to the Christian descent into self.
Within Christianity itself, however, the intellectual world is set in
opposition to that first Cabalistic principle; in it pure conceptions
rule which constitute the ideas present in thought, and with this we
enter upon the Scholastic philosophy. Philosophy, like the arts and
sciences, when, through the rule of the Barbarians of Germany, they
became dumb and lifeless, took refuge with the Arabians, and there
attained a wonderful development; they were the first sources from
which the West obtained assistance. Through the presupposition of the
immediately present and accepted truth, thought had lost its freedom and
the truth its presence in conceiving consciousness; and philosophy sank
into a metaphysics of the understanding and into a formal dialectic.
We have thus in this period first of all to consider philosophy in the
East, and secondly in the West; that is, the philosophy of the Arabians
first, and subsequently the philosophy of the Schools. The Schoolmen are
the principal figures in this period; they represent European philosophy
in the European Middle Ages. The third stage is the dissolution of what
is upheld in the scholastic philosophy; new meteor-like apparitions are
now seen, which precede the third period, the genuine revival of free
Philosophy.
SECTION ONE
ARABIAN PHILOSOPHY
In the West the Germanic tribes had obtained possession of what had
hitherto formed a section of the Roman Empire, and their conquests
were attaining to shape and solidity, when another religion dawned in
the East, namely the Mohammedan. The East purified itself of all that
was individual and definite, while the West descended into the depths
and actual presence of spirit. As quickly as the Arabians with their
fanaticism spread themselves over the Eastern and the Western world,
so quickly were the various stages of culture passed through by them,
and very shortly they advanced in culture much farther than the West.
For in Mohammedanism, which quickly reached its culminating point, both
as regards external power and dominion and also spiritual development,
Philosophy, along with all the other arts and sciences, flourished to an
extraordinary degree, in spite of its here not displaying any specially
characteristic features. Philosophy was fostered and cherished among the
Arabians; the philosophy of the Arabians must therefore be mentioned in
the history of Philosophy. What we have to say, however, chiefly concerns
the external preservation and propagation of Philosophy. The Arabians
became acquainted with Greek philosophy mainly through the medium of the
Syrians in Western Asia, who had imbibed Greek culture, and who were
under the Arabian sway. In Syria, which formed a Greek kingdom, at
Antioch, especially in Berytus and Edessa, there were great institutes of
learning; and thus the Syrians constituted the connecting link between
Greek philosophy and the Arabians. Syrian was the language of the people
even in Bagdad.[3]
Moses Maimonides, a learned Jew, gives further historical particulars
in his _Doctor Perplexorum_ of this transition of Philosophy to the
Arabians. He says: “All that the Ishmaelites have written of the unity
of God and other philosophic dogmas”—especially the sect of the Muatzali
(מעתוזלה, _i.e._ the Separated), who were the first to take an
interest in the abstract intellectual knowledge of such subjects, while
the sect Assaria (האשערייה) arose later—“is based upon arguments
and propositions which have been taken from the books of the Greeks and
Aramæans” (Syrians), “who strove to refute and deny the teachings of the
philosophers.” The cause of this is as follows: The Christian community
came to include within it these nations also, and the Christians defended
many dogmas which were contradictory of philosophic tenets; among these
nations, however, the teachings of philosophers were very widely and
generally diffused (for with them Philosophy had its origin), and kings
arose who adopted the Christian religion. The Christian Greeks and
learned Aramæans, therefore, when they perceived that their doctrines
were so clearly and plainly refuted by the philosophers, thought out
a wisdom of their own, the “Wisdom of the Words” (Devarim), and they
themselves received on that account the name of the Speakers (Medabberim,
מִדַבְרִים). They set up principles which served the purpose both
of confirming their faith and of refuting the opposite teaching of the
philosophers. When the Ishmaelites followed and attained supremacy, and
the books of the philosophers themselves fell into their hands, and along
with them the answers which “Christian Greeks and Aramæans had written
against the philosophic books, as for instance the writings of Johannes
Grammaticus, Aben Adi, and others, they eagerly laid hold of these and
adopted them bodily.”[4] Christians and Ishmaelites felt the same need
of philosophy; the Ishmaelites, moreover, strove all the more eagerly
after knowledge of this kind, because their first desire was to defend
Mohammedanism against Christianity, which was the religion of a large
proportion of the nations they had conquered.
The external sequence of events is this. Syriac versions of Greek
works were to be had, and these were now translated into Arabic by the
Arabians; or translations were made from the Greek directly into Arabic.
In the reign of Harun al-Raschid several Syrians are named who lived in
Bagdad, and who had been called upon by the Caliphs to translate these
works into Arabic. They were the first scientific teachers among the
Arabians, and were chiefly physicians; hence the works they translated
were on medicine. Among these translators was Johannes Mesue of Damascus,
who lived in the reigns of Al-Raschid (_d._ A.D. 786), Al-Mamun (_d._
A.D. 833) and Al-Motawakkil (_d._ A.D. 847), rather earlier than the rise
of the Turks to supremacy (A.D. 862); he was a hospital superintendent
in Bagdad. Al-Raschid appointed him to make translations from Syriac
into Arabic; he opened a public school for the study of medicine and all
the sciences then known. Honain was a Christian, as was also his master
Johannes, and belonged to the Arab tribe Ebadi; he applied himself to the
study of Greek, and made a number of translations into Arabic, and also
into Syriac, for example, Nicolaus _De summa philosophiæ Aristotelicæ_,
Ptolemy, Hippocrate and Galen. Another is Ebn Adda, an eminent
dialectician, who is quoted by Abulfaraj.[5] Among the works of the Greek
philosophers it was almost exclusively the writings of Aristotle which
were translated by these Syrians, and the later commentaries on the same.
It was thus not the Arabians themselves who translated the above works.
In the Arabic philosophy, which shows a free, brilliant and profound
power of imagination, Philosophy and the sciences took the same bent
that they had taken earlier among the Greeks. Plato with his Ideas or
universals laid the foundation of the independent world of intellect,
and established absolute existence as an existence which is manifestly
present in the mode of thought; Aristotle developed, completed and
peopled the realm of thought; the Neo-Platonic philosophy reached the
further conception of the intelligible world as Idea of the existence
which is independent in itself, of spirit; and then this first Idea,
which we have already met with in connection with Proclus, passed over
into a similar Aristotelian development and completion. Consequently
it is the Alexandrian or Neo-Platonic Idea which forms the essential
principle or basis of the Arabian as well as the Scholastic philosophy,
and all that Christian philosophy offers; it is on it that the
determinations of the Notion expend their strength, and around this that
they career. A particular description of Arabian philosophy has in some
parts but little interest; in other parts it will be found that the
main dogmas of this philosophy have much in common with those of the
Scholastics.
We may say of the Arabians that their philosophy constitutes no
characteristic stage in the development of philosophy. The principal
points in this, as in the later philosophy, were the question whether the
world is eternal, and the task of proving the unity of God and similar
dogmas. One great consideration in all this, however, was to defend the
doctrines of Mohammedanism, and owing to this all philosophizing had
to be carried on within the limits of these doctrines. The Arabians,
like the Christians of the West, were restricted by the dogmas of their
Church (if one may call it so), few though these dogmas were; yet this
last circumstance of the small number of the dogmas certainly gave
them greater liberty. But according to all that we know of them, they
established no principle of self-conscious reason that was truly higher,
and thus they brought Philosophy no further. They have no other principle
than that of revelation, therefore only a principle that is external.
A. PHILOSOPHY OF THE MEDABBERIM.
The Medabberim are specially mentioned by Moses Maimonides as a widely
extended philosophic school or sect of considerable eminence. He
speaks (More Nevochim, P. I. c. 71, pp. 134, 135) of the peculiarity
of their method of philosophy somewhat as follows: “The Ishmaelites,
however, have extended their discourses still further, and have aspired
to other wonderful doctrines, of which none of the Greek Medabberim
knew anything, because they were still on some points in agreement
with the philosophers. The main point to be remarked is that all the
Medabberim, whether among the Greeks who had become Christians, or among
the Ishmaelites, in the building up of their principles did not follow
the nature of the matter itself, or draw their arguments from it, but
only had in view how the subject must be regarded in order to support
their assertion, or at least not to refute it altogether: afterwards
they boldly asserted that these were the circumstances of the case, and
adduced further arguments and maxims in support of their object. They
insisted on that, and that alone, which concurred with their opinions,
even though it were in the most remote degree, through a hundred links
of reasoning. The earliest of their learned men adopted this practice,
though professing that they reached these reflections through speculation
alone, without reference to any preconceived opinion. Their successors
did not follow their example,” &c.
In the pure philosophy of the so-called “Speakers” was expressed the
principle, peculiar to the Oriental mind, of the dissolution of definite
thought in all its consequences as the dissolution of all connection
and relation. Maimonides says (P. I. c. 71, p. 135; c. 73, p. 149):
“The ground-principle of the Medabberim is that men can have no certain
knowledge of the nature of things, because in the understanding the
contrary may ever exist and be thought. Besides this they in the majority
of instances confound imagination with understanding, and give to the
former the name of the latter. They adopted as a principle, atoms and
empty space,” where all connection appears as something contingent.
“Production is nothing but a connection of atoms, and decay nothing but
a separation of the same; and time consists of many ‘nows.’” In this way
nothing but the atom really exists. They have thus in the more advanced
cultivation of thought brought to consciousness the main standpoint,
then as now the standpoint of the Orientals—that of substance, the one
substance. This pantheism, or Spinozism, if you like to call it so, is
thus the universal view of Oriental poets, historians and philosophers.
The Medabberim go on to say: “Substances, _i.e._ individuals, which,”
for the rest, “are created by God, have many accidental qualities, as in
snow every particle is white. But no quality can endure for two moments;
as it comes, it goes again, and God creates another and yet another in
its place.” All determinations are thus fleeting or perishable; the
individual alone is permanent. “If it pleases God to create another
quality in a substance, it continues; but if He ceases to create, the
substance perishes.” Thereby all necessary connection is done away with,
so that Nature has no meaning. “They therefore deny that anything exists
by nature, likewise that the nature of this or that body necessitates
that it should have certain qualities rather than others. But they say
that God creates all qualities instantaneously, without natural means
and without the help of anything else.” General permanence is substance,
and the particular is altered every moment, and so exists through the
substance. “According to this principle they say, for instance, that when
we think we have dyed a garment red with red dye we have not dyed it red
at all; for God created the red colour in the garment at the very moment
at which we thought we had brought about the result with the red dye. God
observes the invariable custom of not permitting that the colour black
should be produced except when the garment is dyed with that hue; and the
first colour which comes to pass on the occasion of the connection is
not permanent, but disappears on the instant, and every moment another
appears which is created in its turn. In the same way knowledge also
is an accident, which is created by God at every moment that I know
anything; to-day we no longer possess the knowledge which we yesterday
possessed. A man,” when writing, “does not move the pen when he thinks
he moves it, but the motion is an accident of the pen, created by God at
the moment.” In this way God alone is in truth the operative cause; but
He might have made everything differently. “Their eighth proposition is
to the effect that nothing but substance or accident exists, and natural
forms are themselves accidents; substances alone are individuals. The
ninth proposition is that accidents have nothing to do with one another;
they have no causal connection or other relation; in every substance all
accidents may exist. The tenth proposition is transition (אִפִשָׁרות,
_transitus_, _possibilitas_):” “All that we can fancy may also pass over
into the understanding, _i.e._ be possible. But in this way everything is
possible,” since there are no laws of the understanding; this transition
of thought is thus perfectly accidental. “A man as large as a mountain,
a flea as large as an elephant, are possible. Everything may just as
well be something else as what it is, and there is no reason at all why
anything should be one way rather than another. They term it a mere habit
that the earth revolves round a centre-point, that fire moves upward and
that it is hot; it is just as possible, they say, that fire should be
cold.”[6]
We thus see an utter inconstancy of everything; and this whirl of all
things is essentially Oriental. But at the same time this is certainly
also a complete dissolution of all that pertains to reasonableness, in
harmony of course with Eastern exaltation of spirit, which allows of
nothing definite. God is in Himself the perfectly undefined, His activity
is altogether abstract, and hence the particulars produced thereby are
perfectly contingent; if we speak of the necessity of things, the term
is meaningless and incomprehensible, and no attempt should be made to
comprehend it. The activity of God is thus represented as perfectly
devoid of reason. This abstract negativity, combined with the permanent
unity, is thus a fundamental conception in the Oriental way of looking at
things. Oriental poets are in a marked degree pantheists; the pantheistic
is their ordinary point of view. Thus the Arabians developed the sciences
and philosophy, without further defining the concrete Idea; their work
is rather the dissolution of all that is definite in this substance,
with which is associated mere changeableness as the abstract moment of
negativity.
B. COMMENTATORS OF ARISTOTLE.
The Arabians, moreover, made a point for the most part of studying the
writings of Aristotle very diligently, and of availing themselves more
especially both of his metaphysical and logical writings, and also of
his _Physics_; they occupied themselves particularly with multiplying
commentaries on Aristotle, and developing still further the abstract
logical element there present. Many of these commentaries are still
extant. Works of this kind are known in the West, and have been even
translated into Latin and printed; but much good is not to be got from
them. The Arabians developed the metaphysics of the understanding and a
formal logic. Some of the famous Arabians lived as early as the eighth
and ninth centuries; their progress was therefore very rapid, for the
West had as yet made very little advance in culture.
Alkendi, who wrote a commentary on the _Logic_, flourished in and about
A.D. 800, under Almamun.[7] Alfarabi died in 966; he wrote commentaries
on Aristotle’s _Organon_, which were made diligent use of by the
Scholastics, and was also author of a work “On the Origin and Division
of the Sciences.” It is related of him that he read through Aristotle’s
treatise _On Hearing_ forty times, and his _Rhetoric_ two hundred times,
without getting at all tired of them;[8] he must have had a good stomach.
The very physicians made a study of philosophy, and formulated theories;
among them was Avicenna (_b._ A.D. 984, _d._ A.D. 1064), who belonged
to Bokhara, to the east of the Caspian Sea; he wrote a commentary on
Aristotle.[9] Algazel (_d._ A.D. 1127 at Bagdad) wrote compendiums
of logic and metaphysics; he was a sceptic of great ability, with a
powerful mind of the Oriental cast; he held the words of the Prophet to
be pure truth, and wrote _Destructio Philosophorum_.[10] Tofail died in
Seville in A.D. 1193.[11] Averroës, who died A.D. 1217, was specially
distinguished as the commentator of Aristotle.[12]
The acquaintance of the Arabians with Aristotle has this interest in
history that it was thus that Aristotle first became known also in the
West. The commentaries on Aristotle and the collections of passages from
his writings become thus for the Western world a fountain of philosophy.
Western nations long knew nothing of Aristotle, excepting through such
retranslations of his works and translations of Arabian commentaries on
them. For such translations were made from Arabic into Latin by Spanish
Arabs, and especially by Jews in the south of Spain and Portugal and in
Africa; there was often even a Hebrew translation between.
C. JEWISH PHILOSOPHERS.
With the Arabians are closely connected the Jewish philosophers, among
whom the above-mentioned Moses Maimonides held a distinguished place. He
was born at Cordova, in Spain, A.D. 1131 (Anno Mundi 4891, or, according
to others, 4895), and lived in Egypt.[13] Besides _More Nevochim_, which
has been translated into Latin, he composed other works; of him and
other Jews much more of a literary character might be said. In their
philosophy a strong Cabalistic element, on the one hand, makes itself
felt throughout, in astrology, geomancy, &c.; on the other hand, we
find in Moses Maimonides, as in the Fathers, that the foundation is
laid in history. He deals with this in a strictly abstract system of
metaphysics, which is connected, in Philo’s fashion, with the Mosaic
books and their interpretation. We find in these Jewish philosophers
proofs brought forward that God is One, that the world was created, and
that matter is not eternal; Maimonides also speaks of the nature of God.
The unity of God is dealt with as it was among the ancient Eleatics
and the Neo-Platonists; to prove, namely, that not the Many, but the
self-begetting and self-abrogating One is the truth.[14]
SECTION TWO
THE SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY
All the Philosophy which we first encounter in the Middle Ages, when
independent states begin to rise, consists of bare remnants of the
Roman world, which on its Fall had sunk in all respects so low that the
culture of the world seemed to have come entirely to an end. Thus in
the West hardly anything was known beyond the Isagoge of Porphyry, the
Latin Commentaries of Boethius on the Logical works of Aristotle, and
extracts from the same by Cassiodorus—most barren compilations; there
is also what is just as barren, the dissertations ascribed to Augustine
_De dialectica_ and _De categoriis_, which last is a paraphrase of
the Aristotelian work upon the categories.[15] These were the first
make-shifts or expedients for carrying on Philosophy; in them the most
external and most formal reasoning is applied.
The whole effect of the scholastic philosophy is a monotonous one. In
vain have men hitherto endeavoured to show in this theology, which
reigned from the eighth or even sixth century almost to the sixteenth,
particular distinctions and stages in development. In this case as in
that of the Arabian philosophy, time does not allow—and if it did the
nature of things would not allow—us to separate the scholastic philosophy
into its individual systems or manifestations, but only to give a general
sketch of the main elements present therein which it has actually taken
up into thought. It is not interesting by reason of its matter, for we
cannot remain at the consideration of this; it is not a philosophy. The
name, however, properly speaking indicates a general manner rather than
a system—if we may speak of a philosophic system. Scholasticism is not
a fixed doctrine like Platonism or Scepticism, but a very indefinite
name which comprehends the philosophic endeavours of Christendom for the
greater part of a thousand years. However, this history which occupies
nearly a thousand years is, as a matter of fact, comprised within one
Notion which we propose to consider more closely; it has ever occupied
the same standpoint, and been grounded on the same principle; for it is
the faith of the Church that we catch sight of, and a formalism which is
merely an eternal analysis and constant re-iteration within itself. The
more general acceptance of the Aristotelian writings has merely brought
forth a difference of degree and caused no real scientific progress.
Here there is indeed a history of men, but speaking properly none of
scientific knowledge; the men are noble, pious, and in all respects most
distinguished.
The study of the scholastic philosophy is a difficult one, even if its
language only be considered. The Scholastics certainly make use of a
barbaric Latin, but this is not the fault of the Scholastics but of their
Latin culture. Latin forms a quite unsuitable instrument for applying to
philosophic categories such as these, because the terms which the new
culture adopts could not possibly be expressed by this language without
unduly straining it; the beautiful Latin of Cicero is not adapted for
use in profound speculations. It cannot be expected of anyone to know at
first hand this philosophy of the Middle Ages, for it is as comprehensive
and voluminous as it is barren and ill-expressed.
Of the great schoolmen we still have many works left to us which are
very lengthy, so that it is no easy task to study them: the later
they are, the more formal do they become. The Schoolmen did not only
write compendiums—for the writings of Duns Scotus amount to twelve,
and those of Thomas Aquinas to eighteen folios. Abstracts of them are
to be found in various works. The principal sources from which we
obtain our knowledge are: 1, Lambertus Danæus in the Prolegomena to his
_Commentarius in librum primum sententiarum Petri Lombardi, Genevæ_,
1580. (This is the best authority we have in abridged form); 2, Launoi:
_De varia Aristotelis in Academia Parisiensi fortuna_; 3, Cramer:
Continuation of Bossuet’s History of the World, in the last two volumes;
4, the _Summa_ of Thomas Aquinas. In Tiedemann’s History of Philosophy
extracts from the Scholastics are also to be found, as likewise in
Tennemann; Rixner also makes judicious extracts.
We shall limit ourselves to general points of view. The name finds its
origin in this way. From the time of Charles the Great it was only in
two places—in the great schools attached to the great cathedral churches
and monasteries—that a cleric, that is a canon who had the oversight of
the instructors (_informatores_), was called _scholasticus_; he likewise
gave lectures on the most important branch of science, theology. In
the monasteries he who was the most advanced instructed the monks.
We have not, properly speaking, to deal with these; but although
scholastic philosophy was something altogether different, the name of
Scholastics attached itself to those alone who propounded their theology
scientifically and in a system. In place of the _patres ecclesiæ_ there
thus arose later on the _doctores_.
The scholastic philosophy is thus really theology, and this theology is
nothing but philosophy. The further content of theology is merely that
which is present in the ordinary conceptions of religion; theology,
however, is the science of the system as it must necessarily be present
within every Christian, every peasant, &c. The science of theology
is often placed in an external historical content, in exegesis, in
the enumeration of the various manuscripts of the New Testament, in
considering whether these are written on parchment, cotton fabrics or
paper, whether in uncial letters or otherwise, and which century they
belong to; further matters for consideration are the Jewish conceptions
of time, the history of the Popes, Bishops and Fathers, and what took
place at the councils of the Church. All these matters, however,
do not pertain to the nature of God and its relation to mankind.
The one essential object of theology as the doctrine of God, is the
nature of God, and this content is in its nature really speculative;
those theologians who consider this are therefore nothing less than
philosophers. The science of God is nothing but Philosophy. Philosophy
and theology have hence here also been counted one, and it is their
separation that constitutes the transition into modern times, seeing that
men have thought that for thinking reason something could be true which
is not true for theology. Down to the Middle Ages, on the contrary, it
was held as fundamental that there should be but one truth. Thus the
theology of the scholastics is not to be represented as though, as with
us, it merely contained doctrines about God, &c., in historic guise, for
in fact it also has within it the profoundest speculations of Aristotle
and of the Neo-Platonists. Their philosophy, and much in them that is
excellent, is found in Aristotle, only in a simpler and purer form; and
to them too the whole lay beyond actuality and mingled with Christian
actuality as it is represented to us.
From Christianity, within whose bounds we now have our place, Philosophy
has to re-establish its position. In heathendom the root of knowledge
was external nature as thought devoid of self, and subjective nature
as the inward self. Both Nature and the natural self of mankind, and
likewise thought, there possessed affirmative significance; hence all
this was good. In Christianity the root of truth has, however, quite
another meaning; it was not only the truth as against the heathen gods,
but as against Philosophy also, against nature, against the immediate
consciousness of man. Nature is there no longer good, but merely a
negative; self-consciousness, the thought of man, his pure self, all this
receives a negative position in Christianity. Nature has no validity,
and affords no interest; its universal laws, as the reality under which
the individual existences of nature are collected, have likewise no
authority: the heavens, the sun, the whole of nature is a corpse. Nature
is given over to the spiritual, and indeed to spiritual subjectivity;
thus the course of nature is everywhere broken in upon by miracles. With
this surrender of natural necessity we have the fact associated that all
further content, all that truth which constitutes the universal of that
nature, is given and revealed. The one starting-point, the contemplation
of nature, is thus for knowledge undoubtedly not present. Then this fact
is likewise set aside that I am present as a self. The self as this
immediate certainty has to be abrogated; it must also merge itself in
another self, but in one beyond, and only there does it have its value.
This other self, in which the proper self is made to have its freedom,
is first of all likewise a particular self, that has not the form of
universality: it is determined and limited in time and space, and at
the same time has the significance of an absolute in and for itself. A
real sense of self is thus abandoned, but what self-consciousness on the
other hand gains is not a universal, a thought. In thought I have real
affirmative significance, not as an individual, but as universal ‘I’; the
content of truth is now, however, plainly individualized, and thus the
thought of the ‘I’ falls away. Thereby, however, the highest concrete
content of the absolute Idea is set forth, in which the opposites that
are plainly infinite are united; it is the power which unites in itself
what appears to consciousness infinitely removed from one another—the
mortal and the absolute. This absolute is itself ‘this’ first of all as
this concrete, not as abstraction, but as the unity of universal and
individual; this concrete consciousness is for the first time truth. The
reason of the former content being also true, comes to me as something
not pertaining to myself, but as a thing received outside of self.
The testimony of spirit, indeed, pertains thereto, and my inmost self
is present there; but the testimony of spirit is a thing concealed,
which does not further reveal itself, does not beget the content from
itself, but receives it. The Spirit which bears witness is further
itself distinguished from me as an individual; my testifying spirit is
another, and there only remains to me the empty shell of passivity.
Conditioned by this inflexible standpoint, Philosophy had to go forth
once more. The first working up of this content, the inward operation of
universal thought in the same, is the task scholastic philosophy has to
undertake. The opposition between faith and reason forms the end arrived
at; reason, on the one hand, feels the necessity of setting to work on
nature in order to obtain immediate certainty, and on the other hand of
finding in genuine thought, in specific production out of self, this same
satisfaction.
We must now speak of the methods and manners of the scholastics. In this
scholastic activity thought pursues its work quite apart from all regard
to experience; we no longer hear anything of taking up actuality and
determining it through thought. Although the Notion came into recognition
earlier than this, in Aristotle, in the first place, the Notion was not
apprehended as the necessity of carrying the content further; for this
was received in its successive manifestations, and there was present
merely an intermingling of actuality accepted as truth and of thought.
Still less, in the second place, was the greater part of the content
permeated by Notions, for this content was taken up superficially into
the form of thought—more especially with the Stoics and Epicureans.
The scholastic philosophy altogether dissociates itself from any such
endeavours; it leaves actuality to exist alongside itself as if it were
despised and had no interest. For reason found its true existence, its
actualization, in another world and not in this; the whole progress of
the cultivated world goes, however, to the re-instalment of a faith in
the present world. Nevertheless, at first all knowledge and action, and
whatever relates to an interest in this world, were entirely banished.
Branches of knowledge that pertain to such ordinary matters as sight and
hearing, restful contemplation and occupation with ordinary actuality
here found no place; nor did such sciences as recognize a definite
sphere of actuality after their own particular fashion, and constitute
the material for genuine philosophy, nor arts which give to the Idea a
sensuous existence. Likewise law and right, the recognition of the actual
man, were not esteemed as pertaining to the social relationships of life,
but to some other sphere. In this absence of rationality in the actual,
or of rationality which has its actuality in ordinary existence, is found
the utter barbarism of thought, in that it keeps to another world, and
does not have the Notion of reason—the Notion that the certainty of self
is all truth.
Now thought as sundered has a content, the intelligible world, as an
actuality existent for itself, to which thought applies itself. Its
conduct is here to be compared with that which takes place when the
understanding applies itself to the sensuous and perceptible world, makes
it as substance its basis, having a fixed object in it, and reasoning
respecting it; it is then not the independent movement of Philosophy
proper which penetrates existence and expresses it, for all it does is
to find predicates regarding it. The scholastic philosophy has thus the
intelligible world of the Christian religion, God and all His attributes
and works therewith connected, as an independent object; and thought is
directed to God’s unchangeableness, to such questions as whether matter
is eternal, whether man is free, &c.—just as the understanding passes to
and fro over the phenomenal and perceived. Now the scholastic philosophy
was here given over to the infinite movement of determinate Notions;
the categories of possibility and actuality, freedom and necessity,
constitution and substance, &c., are of this nature, they are not
fixed, but pure movements. Anything whatever, determined as potential,
transforms itself equally into the opposite, and must necessarily be
surrendered; and determination can only save itself by a new distinction,
because it must, on the one hand, be given up, and on the other retained.
The scholastics are thus decried on account of the endless distinctions
which they draw. For the sake of these determinations through the
abstract Notion the Aristotelian philosophy was predominant, though not
in its whole extent. It was the Aristotelian _Organon_ that was held in
such favour, and that indeed just as much for its laws of thought as
for its metaphysical conceptions—the categories. These abstract Notions
constituted in their determinateness the understanding of the scholastic
philosophy, which could not pass beyond itself and attain to freedom, nor
seize upon the freedom given by reason.
With this finite form a finite content is likewise directly associated.
From one determination we pass on to another, and such determinations,
as particular, are finite; the determination there relates itself
externally and not as self-comprehensive and self-embracing. The result
of this determination is that thought will really act as if it brought
about conclusions, for to draw conclusions is the mode of formal logical
progression. Philosophy thus consists of a methodical and syllogistic
reasoning. Just as the Sophists of Greece wandered about amongst abstract
conceptions on behalf of actuality, so did the scholastics on behalf of
their intellectual world. To the former Being had validity; it they had
rescued and delivered as against the negativity of the Notion, while
along with that they had justified it through the same. The principal
endeavour of the scholastics was in the same way to vindicate the
Christian intellectual world as against the confusion of the Notion,
and through the latter to demonstrate its conformity with the same. The
universal form of the scholastic philosophy thus consisted in this—that
a proposition was laid down, the objections to it brought forward,
and these contradicted through counter-propositions and distinctions.
Philosophy was hence not separated from theology, as it is not in itself,
for Philosophy is the knowledge of absolute existence, that is to say,
theology. But to that theology the Christian absolute world was a system
which was held to be an actuality, as was ordinary actuality for the
Greek sophists. Of Philosophy proper there thus remained only the laws of
thought and abstractions.
A. RELATIONSHIP OF THE SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY TO CHRISTIANITY.
Philosophy with the scholastics had consequently the same quality of
want of independence as it had before this with the Christian Fathers
and the Arabians. The Church as already constituted established itself
amongst the Teutonic nations, and through its constitution it conditioned
philosophy. The Christian Church had indeed spread itself abroad
throughout the Roman world, but, more especially in the beginning, it
merely formed a community of its own, by whom the world was renounced,
and which made no special claims to recognition—or if such claims were
made they were merely negative, because the individuals in the world
were simply martyrs, thus renouncing the world. But the Church in time
became dominant, and the Roman emperors, both of the East and of the
West, embraced Christianity. Thus the Church attained to a position
openly recognized and undisturbed, from which it exercised much influence
upon the world. The political world, however, fell into the hands of
the Teutonic nations, and thereby a new form arose, and to this the
scholastic philosophy pertains. We know the revolution by the name of the
Migration of the Nations (_supra_, pp. 23, 24). Fresh races inundated
the ancient Roman world and established themselves therein; they thus
erected their new world on the ruins of the old—a picture which Rome in
its present aspect still presents. There the splendour of the Christian
temples is due in part to the remnants of the ancient, and new palaces
are built on ruins and have ruins all around.
1. The principal feature in the Middle Ages is found in this disunion,
the two sides here present; there are revealed in it two nations, two
manners of speech. We see people who have hitherto ruled, a previous
world having its own language, arts, and sciences, and on this to them
foreign element the new nations grafted themselves, and these thus
started upon their course internally dissevered. In this history we
have thus before us not the development of a nation from itself, but
one proceeding from its opposite, and one which is and remains burdened
by this opposite, and which takes it up into itself and has to overcome
it. Hence these people have in this way represented in themselves the
nature of the spiritual process. Spirit is the making for itself a
presupposition, the giving to itself the natural as a counterpoise, the
separating itself therefrom, thus the making it an object, and then for
the first time the working upon this hypothesis, formulating it, and from
itself bringing it forth, begetting it, internally reconstructing it.
Hence in the Roman as in the Byzantine world, Christianity has triumphed
as a Church; but neither of these worlds was capable of effectuating
the new religion in itself and of bringing forth a new world from this
principle. For in both there was a character already present—customs,
laws, a juridical system, a constitution (if it can be called
constitution), a political condition, capacities, art, science, spiritual
culture—in short, everything was there. The nature of spirit, on the
contrary, requires that the world thus constituted should be begotten
from it, and that this process of begetting should take place through
the agency of reaction, through the assimilation of something which has
gone before. These conquerors have thus established themselves in a
foreign sphere, and have become the rulers over it; but at the same time
they have come under the dominion of a new spirit which has been imposed
upon them. Although on the one hand predominant, on the other they have
come under the dominion of the spiritual element, because they conducted
themselves passively in regard to it.
The spiritual Idea or spirituality has become imposed upon the dulness,
both in mind and spirit, of these rough barbarians; their hearts were
thereby pricked. The rough nature has in this way become immanent in the
Idea as an eternal opposition, or there is kindled in them infinite pain,
the most terrible suffering—such that it may even be represented as a
crucified Christ. They had to sustain this conflict within themselves,
and one side of it is found in the philosophy which later on made its
appearance amongst them, and was first of all received as something
given. They are still uncultured people, but for all their barbaric
dulness they are deep in heart and mind; on them, then, has the principle
of mind been bestowed, and along with it this pain, this war between
spiritual and natural, has necessarily been instituted. Culture here
begins from the most terrible contradiction, and this has to be by it
resolved. It is a kingdom of pain, but of purgatory, for that which is
in the pain is spirit and not animal, and spirit does not die, but goes
forth from its grave. The two sides of this contradiction are really thus
related to one another in such a way that it is the spiritual which has
to reign over the barbarians.
The true dominion of spirit cannot, however, be a dominion in the sense
that its opposite is in subjection to it; spirit in and for itself
cannot have the subjective spirit to which it relates confronting it
as an externally obedient slave, for this last is itself also spirit.
The dominion that exists must take up this position, that spirit is in
subjective spirit in harmony with itself. The universal is thus that
opposition in which the one can only have supremacy by the subjection
of the other, but which already contains the principle of resolution in
itself because mind must necessarily bear rule. And hence the consequent
development is only this, that mind as reconciliation attains the
mastery. To this it pertains that not the subjective consciousness, mind
and heart alone, but also the worldly rule, laws, institutions, the
human life, in so far as these rest in mind, must become rational. In
the Republic of Plato we have met with the idea that the philosophers
are those who ought to reign. Now is the time in which it is said that
the spiritual are to govern, but this talk about the spiritual has been
made to bear the significance that ecclesiasticism and the ecclesiastics
ought to govern. The spiritual is thus made a particular form, an
individual, but the real meaning that it bears is that the spiritual as
such ought to be the determining factor; and this has passed current
until the present day. Thus in the French Revolution we see that abstract
thought is made to rule; in accordance with it constitution and laws are
determined, it forms the bond between man and man; and men come to have
the consciousness that what is esteemed amongst them is abstract thought,
and that liberty and equality are what ought to be regarded; in this the
subject also has his real value, even in relation to actuality.
One form of this reconciliation is likewise this, that the subject is
satisfied with himself and in himself as he stands and moves, with
his thoughts, his desires, with his spirituality; and thus that his
knowledge, his thought, his conviction, has come to be the highest, and
has the determination of the divine, of what holds good as absolute.
The divine and spiritual is thus implanted in my subjective spirit,
is identical with me; I myself am the universal, and it has efficacy
for me only as I directly know it. This form of reconciliation is the
newest, but the most one-sided. For the spiritual is not there determined
as objective, but is only comprehended as it is in my subjectivity,
in my consciousness: my conviction as such is taken as ultimate, and
that is the formal reconciliation of subjectivity with itself. If the
reconciliation has this form, the point of view of which we spoke before
has no longer any interest; it is past and a mere matter of history. If
the conviction as it immediately reveals itself within every subject
is the true, the absolute, this process of mediation between God, as
the true and absolute, and mankind, is no longer in us a necessity.
The doctrines of the Christian religion have likewise the position of
something foreign, pertaining to a particular time, that with which
certain men have occupied themselves. The conception that the Idea is
absolutely concrete, and is as spirit in a relation of opposition to the
subject, has disappeared, and only shows itself as having passed away.
In so far that which I have said about the principle of the Christian
system, and shall still say of the scholastics, has interest only from
the standpoint which I have given, when the interest is in the Idea in
its concrete determination, and not from the standpoint of the immediate
reconciliation of the subject with himself.
2. We have now to consider further the character of the opposition to
any agreement with Philosophy; and to do this we must shortly call to
mind the historical aspect of the case, although we need only treat of
the main points therein. The first matter to consider is the opposition
that exists in the world. This form of opposition as it appears in
history is as follows. Spirituality as such should be the spirituality
of the heart; spirit, however, is one, and thus the communion of those
who have this spirituality is asserted. Hence a community arises,
which then becomes an external order, and thus, as we have seen (pp.
21, 22), expands into a church. In as far as spirit is its principle,
it is, as spiritual, immediately universal, for isolation in feeling,
opinion, &c., is unspiritual. The Church organizes itself, but yet it
goes forth into worldly existence, attains to riches, possesses goods,
and even becomes worldly and imbued with all the brute passions; for
the spiritual is merely the original principle. The heart that is
set on ordinary existence, on the world, and the whole of such human
relationships as are hereby involved, is guided by these inclinations,
desires and passions, by all this grossness and vulgarity. Thus the
Church merely has the spiritual principle within itself without its
being truly real, and in such a way that its further relationships are
not yet rational; for such is their character before the development
of the spiritual principle in the world. The worldly element without
being conformable to the spiritual, is present as existence, and is the
immediately natural worldly element; in this way the Church comes to have
in itself the immediately natural principle. All the passions it has
within itself—arrogance, avarice, violence, deceit, rapacity, murder,
envy, hatred—all these sins of barbarism are present in it, and indeed
they belong to its scheme of government. This government is thus already
a rule of passion, although it professes to be a spiritual rule, and thus
the Church is for the most part wrong in its worldly principles, though
right in its spiritual aspect.
Hence the new religion separated our whole conception of the world into
two different worlds, the intellectual but not subjectively conceived
world, and the temporal world. Therefore life as a whole fell into two
parts, two kingdoms. Directly opposite the spiritual worldly kingdom
there stands the independent worldly kingdom, emperor against pope,
papacy and Church—not a state, but a worldly government; there the world
beyond, here the world beside us. Two absolutely essential principles
conflict with one another; the rude ways of the world, the ruggedness of
the individual will, beget an opposition most terrible and severe. The
culture which now begins to show itself is confronted by this incomplete
reality, as an actual world in opposition to its world of thought; and
it does not recognize the one as present in the other. It possesses two
establishments, two standards of measure and of weight, and these it does
not bring together but leaves mutually estranged.
The spiritual kingdom likewise has as Church an immediate present of
ordinary actuality, but the worldly kingdom, both as external nature and
as the real self of consciousness, has no truth or value in itself; for
truth, as lying beyond it—the measure of truth that shines in it—is given
to it from without as something inconceivable and in itself complete. The
worldly kingdom must thus be subject to the spiritual become worldly;
the emperor is hence defender and protector of the Church (_advocatus
ecclesiæ_). The worldly element, in a certain sense, takes up a position
of independence, no doubt, but it is still in unity with the other
in such a way that it recognizes the spiritual as dominant. In this
opposition a war must arise both on account of the worldly element which
is present in the Church itself, and likewise on account of the directly
worldly element of violence and of barbarism in worldly rule as it exists
_per se_. The war must at first, however, prove disastrous to the worldly
side, for just as its own position is asserted, the other is likewise
recognized by it, and it is forced humbly to submit to this last, to
the spiritual and its passions. The bravest, noblest emperors have been
excommunicated by popes, cardinals, legates, and even by archbishops and
bishops; and they could do nothing in self-defence, nor put their trust
in outward power, for it was internally broken; and thus they were ever
vanquished and finally forced to surrender.
In the second place, as regards morality in the individual, we see on
the one hand religion in its truly noble and attractive form in a few
isolated individuals alone. I refer to those solitary spirits who are
dead to the world and far removed therefrom, who find in their emotions
what satisfies them, and, living in a little circle, can limit themselves
to the sphere of religion. This is the case with women in the Middle
Ages, or with the monks or other solitaries who were able to preserve
themselves in a restricted and contracted state of fervour such as this,
in which the spiritual side makes itself infinitely felt, although it
lacks actuality. The one truth stood isolated and alone in man, the whole
actuality of mind was not yet penetrated by it. On the other hand it
is, however, essential that mind as will, impulse and passion, should
demand quite another position, another mode of venting and realizing
itself, than any such solitary and contracted sphere affords, that the
world should require a more extended sphere of existence, an actual
association of individuals, reason and thought coming together in
actual relations and actions. This circle in which mind is realized—the
human life—is, however, at first separated from the spiritual region of
truth. Subjective virtue partakes more of the character of suffering and
privation on its own account, morality is just this renunciation and
self-surrender, and virtue as regards others merely has the character
of benevolence, a fleeting, accidental character destitute of relation.
All that pertains to actuality is hence not perfected by the truth,
which remains a heavenly truth alone, a Beyond. Actuality, the earthly
element, is consequently God-forsaken and hence arbitrary; a few isolated
individuals are holy, and the others are not holy. In these others we
first see the holiness of a moment in the quarter of an hour of worship,
and then for weeks a life of rudest selfishness and violence and the most
ruthless passion. Individuals fall from one extreme into another, from
the extreme of rude excess, lawlessness, barbarism, and self-will, into
the renunciation of all things without exception, the conquest of all
desires.
The great army of the Crusaders gives us the best example of this. They
march forth on a holy errand, but on the way they give free vent to all
the passions, and in this the leaders show the example; the individuals
allow themselves to fall into violence and heinous sin. Their march
accomplished, though with an utter lack of judgment and forethought,
and with the loss of thousands on the way, Jerusalem is reached: it is
beautiful when Jerusalem comes in view to see them all doing penance in
contrition of heart, falling on their faces and reverently adoring. But
this is only a moment which follows upon months of frenzy, foolishness
and grossness, which everywhere displayed itself on their march. Animated
by the loftiest bravery, they go on to storm and conquer the sacred
citadel, and then they bathe themselves in blood, revel in endless
cruelties, and rage with a brutal ferocity. From this they again pass on
to contrition and penance; then they get up from their knees reconciled
and sanctified, and once more they give themselves up to all the
littleness of miserable passions, of selfishness and envy, of avarice and
cupidity: their energies are directed to the satisfaction of their lusts,
and they bring to nought the fair possession that their bravery had won.
This comes to pass because the principle is only present in them in its
implicitude as an abstract principle, and the actuality of man is not as
yet spiritually formed and fashioned. This is the manner in which the
opposition in actuality manifests itself.
In the third place, we reach the opposition existing in the content of
religion, in the religious consciousness; this has many forms, though
we have here only to call to mind those that are most inward. On the
one hand, we have the Idea of God—that He is known as the Trinity; on
the other, we have worship, _i.e._ the process of individuals making
themselves conformable to spirit, to God, and reaching the certainty of
entering the kingdom of God. A present and actual church is an actuality
of the kingdom of God upon earth, in such a way that this last is present
for every man—every individual lives and must live in the kingdom of
God. In this disposition we have the reconciliation of every individual;
thereby each becomes a citizen of this kingdom, and participates in the
enjoyment of this certainty. But this reconciliation is allied to the
fact that in Christ the unity of the divine and human nature is shown
forth, that is to say, the way in which the spirit of God must be present
in man. This Christ thus cannot be one who is past and gone, and the life
of reconciliation cannot be a mere recollection of that past. For as the
just behold Christ in heaven, so must Christ be an object on earth which
may likewise be beheld. In that case this process must be present—the
individual must be united to this to him objective form, and it becomes
identical with him; the history of Christ, that God reveals Himself as
man, sacrifices Himself, and through this sacrifice raises Himself to
the right hand of God, is in the individual always being accomplished
in the culminating point which is called the sacrifice of the mass. The
mediating element to which the individual relates himself in worship, is
ever present in the mass as the objective of which the individual must be
made to partake, as the Host and the act of partaking of the same. This
Host, on the one hand, as objective, is held to be divine, and, on the
other, it is in form an unspiritual and external thing. But that is the
lowest depth of externality reached in the Church; for in this perfect
externality it is before the thing that the knee must be bowed, and not
in as far as it is an object that may be partaken of. Luther changed
this way of regarding matters; in what is called the Supper, he has
retained the mystical fact that the subject receives the divine element
into himself; but he maintains that it is only divine in so far as it is
partaken of in this subjective spirituality of faith, and ceases to be
an external thing. But in the Church of the Middle Ages, in the Catholic
Church generally, the Host is honoured even as an external thing; thus
if a mouse eats of the Host, both it and its excrements are reverenced;
there the divine element has altogether the form of externality. This
is the central point of intense opposition which is on the one hand
dissolved, and on the other remains in perfect contradiction, so that the
Host, still held to be a merely external thing, must nevertheless be thus
high and absolute.
With this externality the other side is connected—the consciousness
of this relation—and here we then have the consciousness of what is
spiritual, of what is the truth, in the possession of a priesthood.
Thus as thing it is naturally also in the possession of another, from
whom, since it is something distinguished by itself, it has to receive
its distinction—or it must be consecrated—and this last is likewise an
external action only, performed by individuals. The power to give this
distinction to the thing is in the possession of the Church; from the
Church the laity receive it.
But besides all this, the relationship of the subject in himself, the
fact that he belongs to the Church and is a true member of the same,
must be considered. After the admission of individuals into the Church
their participation therein must likewise be brought about—that is,
their purification from sin. To this it is, however, essential, in the
first place, that it should be known what evil is, and secondly, that
the individual should desire the good and that pertaining to religion;
and thirdly, that sin should be committed from an innate and natural
sinfulness. Now since what is inward, or conscience, must be of a right
nature, the sins that are committed must be removed, and made as though
they had not happened; man must ever be purified, baptized anew, so to
speak, and received back again: the negation that shuts him out must
ever be removed. Against this sinfulness positive commands and laws are
now given, so that from the nature of spirit men cannot know what is
good and evil. Thus the divine law is an external, which must hence
be in someone’s possession; and priests are separated from others, so
that they are exclusively acquainted both with the particular details of
doctrine and the means of grace, _i.e._ the mode whereby the individual
is religious in his worship and comes to know that he participates in
the divine. In the same way that the administration of the means of
grace belongs as an outward possession to the Church in relation to
worship, so is the Church also in possession of a moral estimate for
judging of the actions of individuals; it is in the possession of the
conscience, as of knowledge as a whole, so that man’s inmost essence, his
accountability, passes into other hands and to another person, and the
subject is devoid of individuality even in his inmost self. The Church
also knows what the individual ought to do; his faults must be known,
and another, the Church, knows them; the sins must be taken away, and
this also is effected in an external way, through purchase, fasting and
stripes, through journeyings, pilgrimages, &c. Now this is a relation of
self-suppression, unspirituality and deadness both of knowledge and will,
in the highest things as well as in the most trivial actions.
These are the main facts as regards externality in religion itself, on
which all further determinations depend.
3. We have now obtained a better idea of the elements present in this
philosophy; but in barbaric nations Christianity could have this form
of externality alone, and this pertains to history. For the dulness
and frightful barbarism of such nations must be met by servitude, and
through this service must their education be accomplished. Man serves
under this yoke; this fearful discipline had to be gone through if the
Teutonic nations were to be raised into spiritual life. But this severe
and wearisome service has an end, an object; infinite spring and infinite
elasticity, the freedom of spirit, is the prize. The Indians are in equal
servitude, but they are irrevocably lost—identified and identical with
nature, yet in themselves opposed to nature. Knowledge is thus limited
to the Church, but in this very knowledge a positive authority is firmly
rooted, and it is a prominent feature of this philosophy, whose first
quality is consequently that of lack of freedom. Thought thus does not
appear as though it proceeded from itself and was grounded in itself, but
as being really independent of self and depending on a given content, the
doctrine of the Church—which, although speculative itself, also contains
the mode of the immediate existence of external objects.
In theological form it may be said that, in general, the Middle Ages
signify the dominion of the Son and not of Spirit; for this last is still
in the possession of the priesthood. The Son has differentiated Himself
from the Father, and is regarded as remaining in this differentiation,
so that the Father in Him is only implicit; but in the unity of both we
first reach Spirit, the Son as Love. If we remain a moment too long in
the difference without likewise asserting the identity, the Son is the
Other; and in this we find the Middle Ages defined and characterized. The
character of Philosophy in the Middle Ages is thus in the second place
an attempt to think, to conceive, to philosophize under the burden of
absolute hypotheses; for it is not the thinking Idea in its freedom, but
set forth in the form of an externality. We thus find here in Philosophy
the same character as is present in the general condition of things,
and for this reason I before called to mind the concrete character that
prevails; for on every period of time one special characteristic is
always imprinted. The philosophy of the Middle Ages thus contains the
Christian principle, which is the highest incentive to thought, because
the Ideas therein present are thoroughly speculative. Of this one side is
that the Idea is grasped by the heart, if we call the individual man the
heart. The identity of the immediate individuality with the Idea rests
in this, that the Son, the mediator, is known as _this_ man; this is the
identity of spirit with God for the heart as such. But the connection
itself, since it is likewise a connection with God in God, is hence
immediately mystical and speculative; thus here there is the call to
thought which was first of all responded to by the Fathers, and then by
the scholastics.
But since, in the third place, there exists the opposition between
the doctrine of the Church and the worldly man—who has indeed through
thought worked his way out of this same barbarism, but who in his
healthy human understanding has not yet penetrated to reason—the mode
in which Philosophy was treated at this time for the setting forth of
formal thought, has still no concrete content. We may appeal to the
human concrete mind; in it we have a living present as thinking and
feeling; a concrete content such as this has its root in the thought of
man, and constitutes the material for his independent consciousness.
Formal thought directs its course by this; the wanderings of abstract
reflection have in such consciousness an aim, which sets a limit upon
them, and leads them back to a human concrete. But the reflections of the
scholastics on such a content depend unsupported on the determinations
of formal thought, on formal conclusions; and all the determinations
regarding natural relationships, laws of nature, &c., that may issue,
receive as yet no sustenance from experience; they are not yet
determined by the healthy human understanding. In this respect the
content likewise is unspiritual, and these unspiritual relationships are
inverted and carried into the spiritual in so far as advance is made to
determinateness of a higher kind. These three points constitute the main
characteristics of this philosophy.
More particularly we would shortly deal with the chief representatives
of this philosophy. Scholastic philosophy is considered to begin with
John Scotus Erigena who flourished about the year 860, and who must
not be confused with the Duns Scotus of a later date. We do not quite
know whether he belonged to Ireland or to Scotland, for Scotus points
to Scotland, and Erigena to Ireland. With him true philosophy first
begins, and his philosophy in the main coincides with the idealism of the
Neo-Platonists. Here and there stray works of Aristotle were likewise
known, even to John Scotus, but the knowledge of Greek was very limited
and rare. He shows some knowledge of the Greek and Hebrew tongues, and
even of Arabic as well; but we do not know how he attained to this. He
also translated from Greek to Latin writings of Dionysius the Areopagite,
a later Greek philosopher of the Alexandrian school, who more especially
followed Proclus: namely, _De cœlesti hierarchia_, and others which
Brucker calls (Hist. crit. phil. T. III. p. 521), _nugæ et deliria
Platonica_. Michael Balbus, Emperor of Constantinople, had in the year
824 made a present of these works to the Emperor Louis the Pious; Charles
the Bald caused them to be translated by Scotus, who long resided at his
court. In this way something of the Alexandrian philosophy became known
in the West. The Pope quarrelled with Charles, and complained to him of
the translator, against whom he made the reproach that “he should have
first sent the book to him in conformity with the general usage, and
asked his approval.” John Scotus afterwards lived in England as head of a
school at Oxford, which had been founded by King Alfred.[16]
Scotus was also the author of some original works, which are not without
depth and penetration, upon nature and its various orders (_De naturæ
divisione_), &c. Dr. Hjort, of Copenhagen, published an epitome of
the writings of Scotus Erigena, in 1823. Scotus Erigena sets to work
philosophically, expressing himself in the manner of the Neo-Platonists,
and not freely, and as from himself. Thus in the method of expression
adopted by Plato, and also by Aristotle, we are rejoiced to find a new
conception, and on bringing it to the test of philosophy, to find it
both correct and profound; but here everything is ready to hand, cut and
dry. Yet, with Scotus, theology is not yet built on exegesis, and on the
authority of the Church; the Church in many cases rejected his writings.
Thus Scotus is reproached by a Lyons church council in these words:
“There have come to us the writings of a boastful, chattering man, who
disputes about divine providence and predestination, in human fashion,
or, as he himself boasts, with philosophic arguments, and without
relying on the holy scriptures and bringing forward the authority of the
Fathers. And he dares to defend this on its own merit, and to establish
it on its own laws, without submitting himself to the holy scriptures
and the authority of the Fathers.”[17] Scotus Erigena hence even said:
“The true Philosophy is the true Religion, and the true Religion is the
true Philosophy.”[18] The separation came later on. Scotus then made a
beginning, but properly he does not belong to the scholastics.
B. GENERAL HISTORICAL POINTS OF VIEW.
All further scholastic philosophy attaches itself more to the doctrines
of the Christian Church; the ecclesiastical system which it thereby made
its necessary basis, became early established through church councils,
while the faith of the Evangelical Church already prevailed before
the time of these councils from which the Catholic Church derives its
support. The most important and most interesting thoughts which pertain
to the scholastics, are, on the one hand, the strife between nominalism
and realism; and, on the other, the proof of the existence of God—quite a
new manifestation.
1. THE BUILDING UP OF DOGMAS ON METAPHYSICAL GROUNDS.
The efforts of the scholastics were further directed, firstly, to the
building up of the dogmas of the Christian Church on metaphysical bases.
After this, the collected doctrines of the Church were systematically
treated. Then the scholastics had branches or modifications of these
dogmas, which were not determined by the doctrinal system. Those grounds
themselves, and then these further and special points of view, were
objects handed over for free discussion. Neo-Platonic philosophy was what
lay before the theologians first of all; the manner of this school is
recognized in the older and purer scholastics. Anselm and Abelard are the
more distinguished of those who follow later.
a. ANSELM.
Amongst those who wished to give additional proof of the doctrines of
the Church through thought, is Anselm, a man of great distinction and
high repute. He was born at Aosta, in Piedmont, about 1034; in 1060 he
became a monk at Bec, and in 1093 was raised to the rank of Archbishop
of Canterbury; in 1109 he died.[19] He sought to consider and prove
philosophically the doctrines of the Church, and it has even been said of
him that he laid the basis for scholastic philosophy.
He speaks as follows of the relation of faith to thought: “Our faith
must be defended by reason against the godless, and not against those
who glory in the name of Christian; for of these we may rightly demand
that they should hold firm to the obligations which they came under in
baptism. Those others must be shown through reason how irrationally
they strive against us. The Christian must go on through faith to
reason, and not come from reason to faith; but if he cannot attain to
comprehension, he must still less depart from faith. For if he is able to
press on to knowledge, he rejoices therein; when he is unable so to do,
he humbly adores.”[20] He makes a noteworthy remark, which contains his
whole philosophy, in his work _Cur Deus homo_ (I. 2), which is rich in
speculative thought: “It appears to me great negligence if we are firm
in the faith, and do not seek also to comprehend what we believe.” Now
this is declared to be arrogance; immediate knowledge, faith, is held to
be higher than knowledge. But Anselm and the scholastics maintained the
opposite view.
Anselm may be regarded from this point of view as quite specially the
founder of scholastic theology. For the thought of proving through
a simple chain of reasoning what was believed—that God exists—left
him no rest day and night, and tortured him for long. At first he
believed his desire to prove the divine truths through reason to be a
temptation of the devil, and he was in great anxiety and distress on
that account; finally, however, success came to him by the grace of God
in his _Proslogium_.[21] This is the so-called ontological proof of
the existence of God which he set forth, and which made him specially
famous. This proof was included among the various proofs up to the time
of Kant, and—by some who have not yet reached the Kantian standpoint—it
is so included even to the present day. It is different from what we
find and read of amongst the ancients. For it was said that God is
absolute thought as objective; for because things in the world are
contingent, they are not the truth in and for itself—but this is found
in the infinite. The scholastics also knew well from the Aristotelian
philosophy the metaphysical proposition that potentiality is nothing by
itself, but is clearly one with actuality. Later, on the other hand, the
opposition between thought itself and Being began to appear with Anselm.
It is noteworthy that only now for the first time through the Middle
Ages and in Christianity, the universal Notion and Being, as it is to
ordinary conception, became established in this pure abstraction as these
infinite extremes; and thus the highest law has come to consciousness.
But we reach our profoundest depths in bringing the highest opposition
into consciousness. Only no advance was made beyond the division as
such, although Anselm also tried to find the connection between the
sides. But while hitherto God appeared as the absolute existent, and the
universal was attributed to Him as predicate, an opposite order begins
with Anselm—Being becomes predicate, and the absolute Idea is first of
all established as the subject, but the subject of thought. Thus if
the existence of God is once abandoned as the first hypothesis, and
established as a result of thought, self-consciousness is on the way to
turn back within itself. Then we have the question coming in, Does God
exist? while on the other side the question of most importance was, What
is God?
The ontological proof, which is the first properly metaphysical proof
of the existence of God, consequently came to mean that God as the Idea
of existence which unites all reality in itself, also has the reality
of existence within Himself; this proof thus follows from the Notion of
God, that He is the universal essence of all essence. The drift of this
reasoning is, according to Anselm (Proslogium, c. 2), as follows: “It is
one thing to say that a thing is in the understanding, and quite another
to perceive that it exists. Even an ignorant person (_insipiens_) will
thus be quite convinced that in thought there is something beyond which
nothing greater can be thought; for when he hears this he understands
it, and everything that is understood is in the understanding. But that
beyond which nothing greater can be thought cannot certainly be in the
understanding alone. For if it is accepted as in thought alone, we may go
on farther to accept it as existent; that, however, is something greater”
than what is merely thought. “Thus were that beyond which nothing greater
can be thought merely in the understanding, that beyond which nothing
greater can be thought would be something beyond which something greater
can be thought. But that is truly impossible; there thus without doubt
exists both in the understanding and in reality something beyond which
nothing greater can be thought.” The highest conception cannot be in
the understanding alone; it is essential that it should exist. Thus it
is made clear that Being is in a superficial way subsumed under the
universal of reality, that to this extent Being does not enter into
opposition with the Notion. That is quite right; only the transition is
not demonstrated—that the subjective understanding abrogates itself.
This, however, is just the question which gives the whole interest to the
matter. When reality or completion is expressed in such a way that it is
not yet posited as existent, it is something thought, and rather opposed
to Being than that this is subsumed under it.
This mode of arguing held good until the time of Kant; and we see in it
the endeavour to apprehend the doctrine of the Church through reason.
This opposition between Being and thought is the starting point in
philosophy, the absolute that contains the two opposites within itself—a
conception, according to Spinoza, which involves its existence likewise.
Of Anselm it is however to be remarked that the formal logical mode of
the understanding, the process of scholastic reasoning is to be found
in him, the content indeed is right, but the form faulty. For in the
first place the expression “the thought of a Highest” is assumed as
the _prius_. Secondly, there are two sorts of objects of thought—one
that is and another that is not; the object that is only thought and
does not exist, is as imperfect as that which only is without being
thought. The third point is that what is highest must likewise exist.
But what is highest, the standard to which all else must conform, must
be no mere hypothesis, as we find it represented in the conception of a
highest acme of perfection, as a content which is thought and likewise
_is_. This very content, the unity of Being and thought, is thus indeed
the true content; but because Anselm has it before him only in the form
of the understanding, the opposites are identical and conformable to
unity in a third determination only—the Highest—which, in as far as
it is regulative, is outside of them. In this it is involved that we
should first of all have subjective thought, and then distinguished from
that, Being. We allow that if we think a content (and it is apparently
indifferent whether this is God or any other), it may be the case that
this content does not exist. The assertion “Something that is thought
does not exist” is now subsumed under the above standard and is not
conformable to it. We grant that the truth is that which is not merely
thought but which likewise is. But of this opposition nothing here is
said. Undoubtedly God would be imperfect, if He were merely thought and
did not also have the determination of Being. But in relation to God
we must not take thought as merely subjective; thought here signifies
the absolute, pure thought, and thus we must ascribe to Him the quality
of Being. On the other hand if God were merely Being, if He were not
conscious of Himself as self-consciousness, He would not be Spirit, a
thought that thinks itself.
Kant, on the other hand, attacked and rejected Anselm’s proof—which
rejection the whole world afterwards followed up—on the ground of its
being an assumption that the unity of Being and thought is the highest
perfection. What Kant thus demonstrates in the present day—that Being
is different from thought and that Being is not by any means posited
with thought—was a criticism offered even in that time by a monk named
Gaunilo. He combated this proof of Anselm’s in a _Liber pro insipiente_
to which Anselm himself directed a reply in his _Liber apologeticus
adversus insipientem_.[22] Thus Kant says (Kritik der reinen Vernunft,
p. 464 of the sixth edition): If we think a hundred dollars, this
conception does not involve existence. That is certainly true: what is
only a conception does not exist, but it is likewise not a true content,
for what does not exist, is merely an untrue conception. Of such we do
not however here speak, but of pure thought; it is nothing new to say
they are different—Anselm knew this just as well as we do. God is the
infinite, just as body and soul, Being and thought are eternally united;
this is the speculative, true definition of God. To the proof which Kant
criticizes in a manner which it is the fashion to follow now-a-days,
there is thus lacking only the perception of the unity of thought and of
existence in the infinite; and this alone must form the commencement.
Other proofs such, for example, as the cosmological, which argues from
the contingency of the world to an absolute existence, have thereby
not reached the idea of absolute essence as spirit, and are without
consciousness of the fact that it is an object of thought. The old
physico-theological proof, which even Socrates possessed, from beauty,
order, organic ends, indeed implies an understanding, a richer thought
of absolute existence, and not alone an indeterminate Being, but in this
proof it likewise remains unknown that God is the Idea. And then what
sort of an understanding is God? A different and immediate one; then
this spirit is independent. Further, disorder likewise exists, and thus
there must be something else conceived of than this apparent order of
nature only. But from asking about the existence of God, from making his
objective mode a predicate and thus knowing that God is Idea, to pass to
making the absolute existence I = I, thinking self-consciousness, not as
predicate but in such a way that each thinking I is the moment of this
self-consciousness—is still a long stride. Here, where we see this form
first emerge, absolute existence is clearly to be taken as the Beyond of
finite consciousness; this is to itself the null and void, and it has
not yet grasped its sense of self. Its thoughts regarding things are
manifold, and the mere fact of being a thing is to it likewise just such
a predicate as the rest; but it is thereby not yet turned back within
itself, it knows of existence, but not of itself.
In this, says Tennemann (Vol. VIII. Sec. I. p. 121), “Anselm has laid
the first formal ground of scholastic theology;” but even before this
the same was present, only to a more limited extent, and merely for
individual dogmas—as is also the case with Anselm. His writings bear
witness of great penetration and mental ability; and he gave rise to
the philosophy of the scholastics, inasmuch as he united theology to
philosophy. The theology of the Middle Ages thus stands much higher than
that of modern times; never have Catholics been such barbarians as to
say that there should not be knowledge of the eternal truth, and that it
should not be philosophically comprehended. This is one point which has
to be specially noted in Anselm, the other is that he apprehended in its
unity that highest opposition between thought and Being spoken of above.
b. ABELARD.
With Anselm Peter Abelard is associated, both being mainly concerned
in the introduction of philosophy into theology. Abelard lived about
1100—from 1079 to 1142—and is famed for his learning, but still more
famed in the world of sentiment and passion for his love to Heloise and
his after fate.[23] After the days of Anselm he attained to great repute,
and he followed him in his treatment of the doctrines of the Church, more
especially seeking to give a philosophic proof of the Trinity. He taught
at Paris. Paris about this time was to the theologians what Bologna was
to the jurists, the central point of the sciences; it was at that time
the seat of philosophizing theology. Abelard often delivered his lectures
there before a thousand listeners. Theological science and philosophizing
regarding it, was in France (as was jurisprudence in Italy) a matter
of great importance, which, as most significant in the development of
France, has hitherto been too much neglected. The conception prevailed
that philosophy and religion were one and the same; which they absolutely
speaking are. But the distinction was soon reached, “that much may be
true in philosophy and false in theology:” this the Church denied.
Tennemann (Vol. VIII. Sec. II. pp. 460, 461) quotes as follows from a
rescript of the Bishop Stephen: “They say that this is true according to
philosophy, and not according to the Catholic faith, just as if there
were two contradictory truths, and as if in the doctrines of the accursed
heathen a truth contradictory to the truth of the holy scriptures could
be present.” While then undoubtedly, through the separation of the four
faculties in the University of Paris which came about in 1270, philosophy
became separated from theology, it was yet forbidden to it to subject
theological beliefs and dogmas to disputation.[24]
2. METHODICAL REPRESENTATION OF THE DOCTRINAL SYSTEM OF THE CHURCH.
We now go on to the more definite form which the scholastic theology
reached; for in a second development of scholastic philosophy the main
endeavour became to make the teaching of the Christian Church methodical,
while still keeping its connection with all previous metaphysical
arguments. These and their counter-arguments were placed side by side in
stating every dogma, so that theology became represented in a scientific
system, while before this the ecclesiastical teaching in the general
education of the clergy was limited to the propounding of successive
dogmas, and the writing down of passages from Augustine and other Fathers
bearing on each proposition.
a. PETER LOMBARD.
Peter of Novara in Lombardy was the first of those who brought this
to pass; he dates from the middle of the twelfth century, and was the
originator of this method. He died in the year 1164. Petrus Lombardus set
forth a whole system of scholastic theology which remained for several
centuries the basis of the doctrine of the Church. He composed to that
end his _Quatuor libros sententiarum_, and hence he likewise received
the name _Magister sententiarum_. For in those times every learned
schoolman had some predicate such as _Doctor acutus_, _invincibilis_,
_sententiosus_, _angelicus_, &c. Others also availed themselves of the
same title for their works; thus Robert Pulleyn wrote _Sententiarum
libros octo_.[25]
Lombard collected the principal points in church doctrines from councils
and Fathers, and then added subtle questions respecting particular items;
with these the schools occupied themselves, and they became a subject
of disputation. He himself, indeed, answered these questions, but he
caused counter-arguments to follow, and his answer often left the whole
matter problematical, so that the questions were not properly decided.
The arguments are thus enumerated on either side; even the Fathers
contradicted themselves, and numerous passages from them were quoted by
both the opposed sides in support of their respective views. In this way
_theses_ arose, then _quæstiones_, in reply to these _argumenta_, then
again _positiones_, and finally _dubia_; according as men chose to take
the words in this sense or that, and followed this or that authority. Yet
a certain degree of method began to enter in.
Speaking generally, this middle of the twelfth century forms the epoch
in which scholasticism became more universal as a learned theology.
The book of Lombard was all through the Middle Ages commentated by the
_doctores theologicæ dogmaticæ_, who were now held to be the recognized
guardians of ecclesiastical doctrine, while the clergy had charge of the
soul. Those doctors had great authority, they held synods, criticized and
condemned this or that doctrine and book as heretical, &c., in synods or
as the Sorbonne, a society of such doctors in the University of Paris.
They took the place of assemblages of the Church, and were something like
the Fathers in reference to the Christian doctrine. In particular they
rejected the writings of the mystics like Amalrich and his disciple David
of Dinant, who, resembling Proclus in their point of view, went back to
unity. Amalrich, who was attacked as a heretic in 1204, for instance
said, “God is all, God and the Creature are not different, in God all
things are, God is the one universal substance.” David asserted, “God
is the first matter and everything is one in matter, and God is just
this unity.” He divided everything into three classes, bodies, souls,
eternal immaterial substances or spirits. “The indivisible principle of
souls is the νοῦς, and that of spirits is God. These three principles
are identical and hence all things in essence are one.” His books were
burned.[26]
b. THOMAS AQUINAS.
The other individual who was equally famous with Peter Lombard, was
Thomas Aquinas, born in 1224 of the noble race Aquino, in his paternal
castle Roccasicca, in the province of Naples. He entered the Order
of Dominicans, and died in 1274 on a journey to a church council at
Lyons. He possessed a very extensive knowledge of theology, and also of
Aristotle; he was likewise called _Doctor angelicus_ and _communis_, a
second Augustine. Thomas Aquinas was a disciple of Albertus Magnus, he
wrote commentaries on Aristotle and on Petrus Lombardus; and he also
himself composed a _summa theologiæ_ (that is, a system) which with his
other writings obtained for him the greatest honour, and which became
one of the principal text-books in scholastic theology.[27] In this book
there are found, indeed, logical formalities—not, however, dialectical
subtleties, but fundamental metaphysical thoughts regarding the whole
range of theology and philosophy.
Thomas Aquinas likewise added questions, answers and doubts, and he gave
the point on which the solution depended. The main business of scholastic
theology consisted in working out the _summa_ of Thomas. The principal
point was to make theology philosophic and more widely systematic; Peter
Lombard and Thomas Aquinas are best known in respect of this endeavour,
and for long their works formed the basis of all further learned
elaborations of doctrine. With Thomas, Aristotelian forms constitute
the basis—that of substance (_forma substantialis_) is, for instance,
analogous to the entelechy (ἐνέργεια) of Aristotle. He said of the
doctrine of knowledge, that material things consist of form and matter;
the soul has the substantial form of the stone in itself.[28]
c. JOHN DUNS SCOTUS.
In respect of the formal development of philosophic theology a third
individual is famous, namely, Duns Scotus, _Doctor subtilis_, a
Franciscan, who was born at Dunston in the county of Northumberland,
and who little by little obtained thirty thousand disciples. In the
year 1304 he came to Paris, and in 1308 to Cologne, as a doctor in the
university newly instituted there. He was received with great rejoicings,
but he died there of apoplexy soon after his arrival, and is said to
have been buried alive. He is supposed to have been only 34, according
to others 43, and according to others again 63 years old, for the year
of his birth is not known.[29] He wrote commentaries on the _Magister
sententiarum_, which procured for him the fame of a very keen thinker,
following the order of beginning with the proof of the necessity of a
supernatural revelation as against the mere light of reason.[30] On
account of his power of penetration he has been likewise called the _Deus
inter philosophos_. He was accorded the most excessive praise. It was
said of him: “He developed philosophy to such an extent that he himself
might have been its discoverer if it had not already been discovered; he
_knew_ the mysteries of the faith so well that he can scarcely be said to
have _believed_ them; he knew the secrets of providence as though he had
penetrated them, and the qualities of angels as though he were himself an
angel; he wrote so much in a few years that scarcely one man could read
it all, and hardly any were able to understand it.”[31]
According to all testimony it appears that Scotus helped the scholastic
method of disputation to reach its height, finding the material for
the same in arguments and counter-arguments arranged in syllogisms;
his manner was to add to each _sententia_ a long succession of
_distinctiones_, _quæstiones_, _problemata_, _solutiones_, _argumenta pro
et contra_. Because he also refuted his arguments in a similar series,
everything fell once more asunder; hence he was held to be the originator
of the quodlibetan method. The _Quodlibeta_ signified collections of
miscellaneous dissertations on individual objects in the every-day manner
of disputation, which speaks of everything, but without systematic order
and without any consistent whole being worked out and set forth; others,
on the other hand, wrote _summas_. The Latin of Scotus is exceedingly
barbarous, but well suited for exact philosophic expression; he invented
an endless number of new propositions, terms and syntheses.
3. ACQUAINTANCESHIP WITH ARISTOTELIAN WRITINGS.
We must further remark a third development, which proceeded from the
external historical circumstance that in the end of the twelfth and in
the thirteenth century the Western theologians became more generally
acquainted with the Aristotelian writings and their Greek and Arabian
commentators, in Latin translations from the Arabic. These now became
much used by them, and were made the subject of further commentaries
and discussions. The veneration, admiration and respect which Aristotle
received, now reached its height.
a. ALEXANDER OF HALES.
The familiar acquaintance with Aristotle and the Arabians became first
evident in Alexander of Hales (died 1245), the _Doctor irrefragabilis_.
The earlier stages by which this familiarity came about has been shown
above (p. 35). Hitherto the acquaintance with Aristotle was very slight,
and through many centuries it was limited, as we saw above (p. 37), more
especially to his Logic, which had survived from the earliest times and
was transmitted in the works of Boethius, Augustine and Cassiodorus. It
was only when we came to Scotus Erigena that we found (p. 59) a knowledge
of Greek, although it was quite unusual in his day. In Spain, under the
Arabians, the sciences flourished greatly. In particular the university
of Cordova in Andalusia was a centre-point of learning; many from the
lands of the West journeyed thither, just as even the Pope Sylvester
II., so well known in his earlier days as Gerbert, escaped as a monk to
Spain for the purpose of studying with the Arabs.[32] The sciences of
medicine and alchemy were diligently pursued. Christian doctors there
studied medicine under the Jewish-Arabian teachers. It was principally
the Aristotelian metaphysics and physics which were then known, and from
these abstracts (_summæ_) were constructed. The logic and metaphysics of
Aristotle were spun out with extreme fineness into endless distinctions,
and brought into genuine syllogistic forms of the understanding, which
constituted for the most part the principle for the treatment of the
subject dealt with. In this way dialectic subtlety was much increased,
while the properly speculative side in Aristotle remained for the spirit
of externality, and consequently also of irrationality, in the background.
The Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick II. then sent for Aristotelian books
from Constantinople and had them translated into Latin. At first,
indeed, on the first appearance of the Aristotelian writings, the Church
made difficulties; the reading of his metaphysics and physics and the
abstracts prepared therefrom, as also the exposition of the same, was
forbidden by a church synod held at Paris 1209. Likewise in 1215 the
cardinal Robert Corceo came to Paris and there held a visitation of the
university, on which occasion he ordained that regular lectures on the
dialectical writings of Aristotle should be held while he forbade the
reading of and lecturing on the metaphysics and natural philosophy of
Aristotle, and the abstracts prepared from them; he also condemned the
doctrines of the heretics David of Dinant and Amalrich and likewise the
Spaniard Mauritius. Pope Gregory, in a bull issued to the University
of Paris in 1231, without mentioning metaphysics, forbade the books of
the Physics to be read until they had been examined and purified from
all suspicion of error. But later on, in 1366, it was on the other hand
ordained by two cardinals that no one could be made a _magister_ unless
he had studied the prescribed books of Aristotle—amongst which were
the Metaphysics and some of the Physics—and had proved himself capable
of explaining them.[33] It was only much later on, however, when Greek
literature in general had again become widely diffused, that men became
better acquainted with the Greek text of the Aristotelian writings.
b. ALBERTUS MAGNUS.
Amongst those who distinguished themselves through their commentaries
on Aristotle’s writings, we must specially mention Albertus Magnus, the
most celebrated German schoolman, of the noble race of Bollstadt. Magnus
either was his family name, or it was given him on account of his fame.
He was born in 1193 or 1205 at Lauingen on the Danube in Swabia, and
began by studying at Padua, where his study is still shown to travellers.
In the year 1221 he became a Dominican friar, and afterwards lived at
Cologne as Provincial of his Order in Germany: in 1280 he died. It is
said of him that in his youth he showed himself very dull and stupid,
until, according to a legend, the Virgin Mary appeared to him in company
with three other beautiful women, incited him to the study of Philosophy,
liberated him from his dulness of understanding, and promised him that
he should enlighten the Church, and, in spite of his science, should
still die in the faith. What happened was in accordance with this
prophecy, for five years before his death he forgot all his philosophy
as quickly as he learned it, and then actually died in the dulness and
orthodoxy of his earlier years. Hence there is current regarding him an
old saying: “Albert changed quickly from an ass into a philosopher, and
from a philosopher into an ass.” His learning was generally understood
to consist largely of magic. For although natural objects have nothing
to do with scholasticism proper, which was really perfectly blind to
nature, he occupied himself much therewith; and amongst other devices
he manufactured a talking machine which alarmed his pupil Thomas of
Aquino, who even aimed a blow at it, thinking he saw therein a work of
the devil. Likewise the fact that he received and entertained William
of Holland[34] in the middle of winter in a garden full of blossom, is
counted as magic.[35] While as for us—we find the winter-garden in Faust
quite natural.
Albert wrote a great deal, and twenty-one folios remain to us of his
writings. He wrote on Dionysius the Areopagite, commentated the _Magister
sententiarum_, was specially conversant with the Arabians and the
Rabbis, as he was also well acquainted with the works of Aristotle,
although he himself understood neither Greek nor Arabic. He likewise
wrote on the Physics of Aristotle. There is found in him a remarkable
instance of deficient knowledge of the history of Philosophy. He derived
the name Epicurean (Opera, T.V. pp. 530, 531) from the fact that they
idled away their time [auf der faulen Haut lagen] (ἐπὶ _cutem_) or else
from _cura_ because they concerned themselves with many useless things
(_supercurantes_). He represents the Stoics as being something like our
choir-boys; he says that they were people who made songs (_facientes
cantilenas_), and roamed about in porticoes. For, as he here remarks
in a very learned way, the first philosophers clothed their philosophy
in verses, and then sang them in halls and porches, and hence they
are called standers in the porch (_Stoici_). Gassendi relates (_Vita
Epicuri_, I. c. 11, p. 51) that Albertus Magnus mentioned as the first
Epicureans, Hesiodus, Athalius or Achalius (of whom we know nothing),
Cæcina, or, as others call him, Tetinnus, a friend of Cicero, and
Isaacus, the Jewish philosopher. How that is arrived at we do not know
at all. Of the Stoics Albertus, on the contrary, mentions Speusippus,
Plato, Socrates and Pythagoras. These anecdotes give us a picture of the
condition of culture in these times.
4. OPPOSITION BETWEEN REALISM AND NOMINALISM.
In the fourth place we must mention an important matter, to which
much attention was devoted in the Middle Ages, namely that particular
philosophic question which formed the subject of controversy between the
Realists and the Nominalists, and the discussion of which was continued
through very nearly the whole of the Scholastic period. Speaking
generally, this controversy is concerned with the metaphysical opposition
between the universal and the individual; it occupies the attention of
Scholastic philosophy for several centuries, and reflects great credit
upon it. A distinction is drawn between the earlier and later Nominalists
and Realists, but otherwise their history is very obscure; and we know
more of the theological aspect of the subject than of this.
a. ROSCELINUS.
The beginning of the controversy dates back to the eleventh century,
Roscelinus being the earliest Nominalist. The famous Abelard, although
he professes to be an opponent of Roscelinus, is himself nothing more or
less than a Nominalist. Roscelinus wrote also against the doctrine of the
Trinity, and was pronounced guilty of heresy in 1092 at an ecclesiastical
council which met at Soissons. His influence was, however, but small.[36]
The matter in question is the universal as such (_universale_), or the
genus, the essence of things, what in Plato was called the Idea—for
instance, Being, humanity, the animal. The followers of Plato asserted
that these universals exist; their existence was individualized, and
thus ‘tableness’ was said to be also a real existence (_supra_, Vol. II.
p. 29). We make representations of a thing to ourselves, and say “it is
blue;” this is a universal. The question now is whether such universals
are something real in and for themselves, apart from the thinking
subject, and independent of the individual existing thing, so that they
exist in the individual things independently of the individuality of
the thing and of each other; or whether the universal is only nominal,
only in the subjective representation, a thing of thought. Those who
maintained that the universals had a real existence apart from the
thinking subject and distinct from the individual thing, and that the
Idea alone constitutes the essence of things, were termed Realists—a
use of the term in quite an opposite sense to that which passes current
now. I mean that this expression has for us the signification that
things as they are in their immediacy have an actual existence; and
to this idealism is opposed, that being a name which was given later
to the philosophy which ascribes reality to ideas alone, and asserts
that things as they appear in their individuality have no truth. The
realism of the Scholastics in the same way maintained that the Universal
has an independent, absolute existence, for Ideas are not liable to
destruction, like natural things, therefore they are immutable and the
only true existence. In opposition to this, the others, the Nominalists
or Formalists, asserted that if generals or universals are formed,
these are only names, matters of form, representations which we make to
ourselves, a subjective generalization, a product of the thinking mind;
the individual alone is the real.
This is then the matter in question; it is of great interest, and is
founded upon a much higher opposition than any the ancients knew of.
Roscelinus made universal conceptions arise only from the necessities
of language. He maintained that ideas or universals, like Being, life,
reason, are in themselves nothing but mere abstract notions or generic
names, which, as such, have in and for themselves no universal reality
of their own: that which has Being and life is found in the individual
alone. Against these assertions arguments are brought forward by which
one can see that the manner in which the Christian world was taken as
basis, often became in the highest degree ridiculous. For instance,
Abelard reproaches Roscelinus for having asserted that no thing has
parts, that only the words which denote the things are divisible.
Abelard proved that according to Roscelinus, Christ did not eat a real
part of the broiled fish, but only a part—I do not know which—of the
word “broiled fish,” since according to him there were no parts—which
interpretation would be preposterous and highly blasphemous.[37] Our way
of reasoning from “healthy human understanding,” is not much better.
b. WALTER OF MORTAGNE.
Walter of Mortagne (d. 1174) aimed at the union of the particular and the
universal, saying that the universal must be individual, that universals
must be united with individuals in accordance with their essence.[38]
In later times the two rival factions were known to fame as Thomists,
from the Dominican Thomas Aquinas, and Scotists, from the Franciscan
Johannes Duns Scotus. Nevertheless, the original question as to whether
universal notions have reality, and, if so, to what extent they have
it, underwent a great variety of modifications and gradations, just as
the opposing parties received very various names. Nominalism, in its
crude form, declared universal notions to be mere names, which have
reality only in speech, and it ascribed reality to individuals alone;
Realism followed the exactly opposite course of attributing reality only
to universals, while it considered that what distinguished individual
things was an accident only or a pure difference. Neither of these two
theories was correct in the manner of passing from the universal to the
particular. There were some, however, among the Schoolmen who grasped
the true conception that individuation, the limitation of the universal,
and indeed of what is most universal, Being and entity, is a negation.
Others said that the limit is itself something positive, but that it is
not one with the universal by union with it, for it rather stands in a
metaphysical connection with it, that is, in a connection such as that
which binds thought with thought. This implies that the individual is
only a clearer expression of what is already contained in the general
conception; so that these conceptions, in spite of their being divided
into parts and differentiated, still remain simple; Being or entity,
moreover, really is a Notion.[39]
Thomas, who was a Realist, declared the universal Idea to be
indeterminate, and placed individuation in determinate matter (_materia
signata_), _i.e._ matter in its dimensions or determinations. According
to him, the original principle is the universal Idea; the form, as _actus
purus_, may, as with Aristotle, exist on its own account; the identity of
matter and form, the forms of matter, as such, are further removed from
the original principle,—while thinking substances are mere forms.[40] But
for Scotus the universal is rather the individual One, the one he thinks
may appear also in the other; he maintained therefore the principle of
individuation, and the formal character of the universal. In his view
indeterminate matter becomes individual through an inward positive
addition; the substantial forms of things are their real essence. Occam
thus represents the views of Scotus: “In the thing that exists outside of
the soul the same Nature exists _realiter_ with the difference limiting
(_contrahente_) it to a determinate individual, being only formally
distinguished, and in itself neither universal nor individual, but
incompletely universal in the thing, and completely universal in the
understanding.”[41] Scotus racked his brains much over this subject. To
universals the Formalists allowed only an ideal reality in the divine and
human intellect beholding them.[42] We thus see how closely connected
with this is the thought which we first meet with in the Scholastics,
namely the seeking and giving of so-called proofs of God’s existence
(_supra_, pp. 62-67).
c. WILLIAM OCCAM.
The opposition between Idealists and Realists appeared at an early stage,
it is true, but it was not until later, after the time of Abelard, that
it became the order of the day, and was invested with general interest.
This was brought about chiefly by the Franciscan William Occam, of the
village of Occam in the county of Surrey in England, who was surnamed
_Doctor invincibilis_, and flourished in the beginning of the fourteenth
century: the year of his birth is unknown. He is greatly celebrated for
his skill in handling the weapons of logic; he is keen in discrimination
and fertile in devising arguments and counter-arguments. Occam was a
leading champion of Nominalism, which up to this time had found only
here and there a defender, like Roscelinus and Abelard; his numerous
followers received the name of Occamists and were Franciscans, while
the Dominicans retained the name of Thomists. The conflict between
Nominalists and Realists raged with a burning vehemence, and was carried
to the greatest extremes; a pulpit is still shown which was separated by
a wooden partition from the platform of the opponent, in order that the
disputants might not come to blows. Henceforth theology was taught under
two forms (_theologia scholastica secundum utramque partem_). Owing to
the civil wars in France, politics also began gradually to affect the
relationship between the orders, and this lent increased importance to
the conflict into which jealousy had plunged the rival factions. In 1322,
at a convention of his order, and also on other occasions, Occam and his
order defended to the utmost of their power the claims of the different
princes, such as the King of France and the Emperor of Germany, Louis
of Bavaria, against the pretensions of the Pope. Among the words of
William to the Emperor were these, “Do thou defend me with the sword,
and I will defend thee with the pen.” Interdicts of the Paris University
and Papal bulls were issued against Occam. The Paris University forbade
his doctrines to be taught or his works quoted. A special prohibition
was issued in 1340: “No teacher shall venture to assert plainly, or in
so many words, that some familiar maxim of the author on whom he is
lecturing is false, but shall either assent to it, or distinguish the
true and the false significance; otherwise the dangerous result is to
be apprehended that the truths of the Bible might be in like manner
rejected. No teacher shall assert that a maxim cannot be thus explained
or further defined.” Occam was excommunicated in 1328, and died at Munich
in 1343.[43]
Occam asks in one of his writings (_in libr. I. Sentent. Dist. II.
Quæst. 4_), “Whether what is immediately and proximately denoted by the
universal and by the generic name is a real thing outside of the soul,
something intrinsic and essential in the things to which it is common
and which are called by its name, and yet in reality distinguished from
them.” This definition of the Realists is given more in detail by Occam
as follows: “As to this question, one opinion is that each generic
designation or universal is a thing really existing outside of the soul
in each and every individual, and that the Being (_essentia_) of each
individual is really distinguished from each individual” (_i.e._ from
its individuality), “and from each universal. Thus man, the universal,
is a true thing outside of the soul, which exists in reality in each
human being, but is distinguished from each human being, from Universal
living nature, and from the universal substance, and in this way from
all species and genera, those that are subordinate as well as those that
are not subordinate.” The universal, the common designation of all the
individuals, is therefore, according to this, not identical with the
Self, the ultimate point of subjectivity. “As many universal predicables
as there are of any individual thing”—_e.g._ humanity, reason, Being,
life, quality, &c.—“so many really different things there are in nature,
each of which is really distinct from the other and from that individual,
and all these things are in no wise multiplied in themselves, however
much the separate predicables are multiplied, which are in every
individual of the same kind.” That is the most uncompromising way of
stating the independence and isolation of every universal quality in a
thing. Occam refutes this, saying: “Nothing which is one in number can,
without being changed or multiplied, be present in several subjects
or individuals. Science invariably restricts itself to propositions
regarding the known; it is, therefore, a matter of no moment whether the
terms of the propositions are known things outside of the soul, or only
in the soul; and therefore it is not necessary for the sake of science to
assume universal things, really distinct from individual things.”
Occam proceeds to state other opinions opposed to that first given; he
does not exactly give his own decision, yet in this same passage (Quæst.
8) he, in the main, argues in favour of the opinion “that the universal
is not something real that has explicit subjectivity (_esse subjectivum_)
neither in the soul nor in the thing. It is something conceived, which,
however, has objective reality (_esse objectivum_) in the soul, while
the external thing has this objective reality as an explicitly existent
subject (_in esse subjectivo_). This comes to pass in the following
manner. The understanding, which perceives a thing outside the soul,
forms the mental image of a similar thing, so that, if it had productive
power, it would, like an artist, exhibit it in an absolutely existing
subject, as numerically an individual distinct from any preceding. Should
anyone be displeased by this manner of speaking of the mental image as
being _formed_, it may be said that the mental image and every universal
conception is a quality existing subjectively in the mind, which by its
nature is the sign of a thing outside of the soul, just as the spoken
word is a sign of the thing, arbitrarily instituted for marking out that
thing.” Tennemann says (Vol. VIII. Section II. p. 864): “One result of
this theory was that the principle of individuation, which had occupied
to such an extent the attention of the Scholastics, was cast aside
as utterly unnecessary.” Thus the main question with the Scholastics
concerns the definition of the universal, and this was in itself highly
important and significant for the culture of more modern times. The
universal is the One, but not abstract; it is conceived or thought of as
comprehending all things in itself. With Aristotle the universal was, in
a judgment, the predicate of the subject in question; in a syllogism it
was the _terminus major_. With Plotinus, and especially with Proclus, the
One is still incommunicable, and is known only by its subordinate forms.
But because the Christian religion is a revelation, God is no longer
therein the unapproachable, incommunicable, a hidden mystery: for the
various stages of the progression from Him are verily His manifestation,
and the Trinity is thus the revealed. In this way the triads and the
One are not distinguished, but these three Persons in the Godhead are
themselves God and One, _i.e._ One as it is for another, as in itself
relative. The Father, the God of Israel, is this One; the moment of the
Son and of the Spirit is the Most High in spiritual and bodily presence,
the former in the Church, the latter in Nature. With the Neo-Platonists
the universal is, on the contrary, only the first condition of things
which then merely opens out and develops; with Plato and Aristotle it is
rather the Whole, the All, the All in One.
d. BURIDAN.
Buridan, a Nominalist, inclines to the view of the Determinists that the
will is determined by circumstances. Against him is cited the case of
the ass which, being placed between two equal bundles of hay, perforce
perished from hunger.
Louis XI., in 1473, confiscated the books of the Nominalists and
interdicted the teaching of their doctrines, but in the year 1481 this
interdict was removed. In the theological and philosophical faculty
Aristotle is said to have been interpreted and studied, as were also his
commentators, Averroës, Albertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas.[44]
5. FORMAL DIALECTIC.
The study of dialectics was carried to a very great height, but it
was quite formal in character; this constitutes the fifth point for
consideration. With this is closely connected the interminable finding
out of _termini technici_. This formal dialectic was very ingenious in
devising objects, problems and questions, destitute of all religious and
philosophic interest, on which to practise its method of procedure. The
last remark that we have, however, in this connection to make regarding
the Scholastics is this, that it was not only into the ecclesiastical
system that they introduced all possible formal relations of the
understanding, but that also objects intelligible in themselves—the
intellectual conceptions and religious ideas—they represented as
immediately and sensuously real, as brought down into the externality
of altogether sensuous relations, and in these relations subjected
to systematic investigation. Originally, it is true, the basis was
spiritual, but the externality in which it was at once comprehended,
made of the spiritual something perfectly unspiritual. It may therefore
be said that, on the one hand, the Scholastics showed great profundity
in their treatment of Church dogma; and, on the other hand, that they
secularized it by placing it in quite inappropriate external relations;
thus here we have the worst kind of secularity. For the dogma of the
Church explicitly contains, in the historical form of the Christian
religion, a number of ordinary conceptions determined in an external
way, which are connected with the spiritual, it is true, but trench
upon sensuous relationships. If a network of such relationships is then
contrived, there arises a host of oppositions, contrasts, contradictions,
which have not the very slightest interest for us. It is this aspect of
the matter that the Scholastics have taken up and handled with finite
dialectic; and it is on this account that the Scholastics in later times
were so much ridiculed. Of this I have some examples to give.
a. JULIAN, ARCHBISHOP OF TOLEDO.
Julian, Archbishop of Toledo, sought, with as great earnestness as if
the salvation of the human race depended on it, to answer questions
which contain an absurd assumption. In doing so he no less gives himself
up to petty triflings than do the philologists when they institute
investigations regarding Greek accents, metres, and verse-divisions.
For instance, there arises a question of this kind as to the dead. It
is a dogma of the Church, that man will rise again; now if to this it
be added that he will be clothed with the body, we thereby enter the
sensuous sphere. The following were inquiries which arose in connection
with this question: “What will be the age of the dead when they rise?
Will they rise as children, youths, grown men, or aged? In what form
will they rise? What will be the constitution of their bodies? Will the
fat be again fat, and the lean again lean? Will the distinction of sex
continue in that future life? Will those who rise again recover all
that they lost here in the way of nails and hair?”[45] Thus a special
distinction was drawn between the actual dogma, which was indisputable,
and the various aspects of the supersensuous world which are connected
with that dogma. These were regarded, though often only for the time
being, as detached from the doctrinal system of the Church. For the
system was not so definitely formulated but that anything in it might
have to be proved from the Fathers, until a council or a special synod
decided the point. Disputes were also possible regarding the proofs which
were given of the content of this system; and besides there was quite a
large amount of matter which was open to discussion, and respecting which
the Scholastics—with the exception, of course, of the noble men, renowned
as _Doctores_ and writers,—expressed themselves in finite syllogisms
and forms, which degenerated into an utterly empty and formal craze for
disputation. The Scholastic Philosophy is thus the direct opposite of the
empirical science of the understanding, with which curiosity is largely
mingled, and which, careless of the Notion, follows after facts alone.
b. PASCHASIUS RADBERTUS.
About 840 another subject of discussion was raised, namely, the birth of
Christ, whether it was natural or supernatural. This led to a protracted
controversy. Paschasius Radbertus wrote two volumes, _De partu beatæ
virginis_; and many others wrote and argued on the same topic.[46] They
went so far as even to speak of an accoucheur, and to discuss this
subject; and many questions were raised, to which our sense of what is
fitting forbids us even to turn our thoughts.
God’s wisdom, omnipotence, foresight, and predetermination led in the
same way to a host of contradictions in abstract, meaningless, local
and trivial particulars, which concern not God. In the works of Petrus
Lombardus, where the Trinity, the Creation, and the Fall are dealt with,
as also angels and their orders and ranks, questions are found such as
whether God’s providence and predetermination would have been possible,
had nothing been created; and where God was before the Creation. Thomas
of Strasburg answered: _Tunc ubi nunc, in se, quoniam sibi sufficit
ipse_.[47]
Lombardus goes on to ask “If God can know more than He knows?” as if
potentiality and actuality still remained distinguished; “If God retains
at all times all power that He has once possessed? Where the angels were
after their creation? If the angels have always existed?” A multitude
of other questions of this kind are raised regarding the angels. Then
he asks: “At what age was Adam created? Why was Eve made from the rib,
and not from some other part of the man? Why during sleep, and not when
the man was awake? Why did the first human pair not have intercourse in
Paradise? How the human race would have been propagated, if man had not
sinned? If in Paradise children would have been born with limbs fully
grown, and the complete use of their senses? Why it was the Son, and not
the Father or the Holy Ghost, who became man?” To do this rests in the
very Notion of the Son. “If God could not have also become incarnate in
female form?”[48]
Additional examples of _quæstiones_ of this kind are given by those
who ridiculed such dialectic, for instance by Erasmus in his _Encomium
moriæ_: “Could there be several sonships (_filiationes_) in Christ? Is
the proposition possible that God the Father hates the Son? Might God
not have also taken the form of a woman, or have passed into the devil?
Might He not also have appeared in the form of an ass or of a pumpkin? In
what manner would the pumpkin have preached and wrought miracles, and how
would it have been crucified?”[49] Thus were intellectual determinations
combined and distinguished in a manner altogether without sense or
thought. The main point is that the Scholastics were like barbarians
in their way of handling divine things and bringing them into sensuous
determinations and relations. They thus introduced a completely sensuous
rigidity and these altogether external and senseless forms into the
purely spiritual, thus bringing it to a lower and unspiritual level;
Hans Sachs similarly made a Nürnberg version of sacred history [die
göttliche Geschichte vernürnbergert]. In such representations as are
given in the Bible of the wrath of God, or of the history of God’s work
of creation, it is said that God did this or that, naming some human and
homely action. God is certainly not to be looked on as something alien
and unapproachable; on the contrary, we are to come to Him with courage
and with all our heart. But to bring Him into the province of thought,
and strive in earnest after a knowledge of Him, is a very different
matter. The reverse of this is to bring forward arguments _pro_ and
_contra_, for they decide nothing, and are of no use; they are no more
than the assumptions which are only sensuous and finite determinations,
and therefore infinite differences and distinctions. This barbarous use
of the understanding is utterly irrational; it is like putting a golden
necklace on a sow. The One is the Idea of the Christian religion, and it
is also the philosophy of the great and noble Aristotle; neither of the
two could have been more bedraggled and besmirched, to so low a pass had
the Christians brought their spiritual Idea.
6. MYSTICS.
In the above sketch we have mentioned the principal heads which come
under our consideration in studying Scholastic philosophy. With regard
to this intrusion of distinctions of the understanding and sensuous
relations into that which in and for itself and by virtue of its very
nature is spiritual, absolute and infinite, it is to be remarked that
to this craze for reducing everything to the finite, some noble spirits
here and there opposed themselves. As such we must here, in the sixth
place, make honourable mention of the many great Scholastics who have
been named Mystics, for although they are to be distinguished from the
real ecclesiastical Scholastics, they followed upon identical lines, and
are closely connected with them. They took but little interest in these
discussions and arguments, and maintained their purity in regard to
Church doctrines and philosophic speculation. Some of them were pious and
spiritual men, who carried on their philosophic studies upon the lines of
the Neo-Platonic philosophy, as Scotus Erigena had done in earlier times.
Among them genuine philosophy is to be found—termed also Mysticism; it
tends to inwardness and bears a great resemblance to Spinozism. They also
derived morality and the religious sentiment from actual feelings, and
the meditations and maxims we have from them embody these views.
a. JOHN CHARLIER.
John Charlier, more generally known as Von Jerson or Gerson, was born in
1363; he wrote a _theologia mystica_.[50]
b. RAYMUNDUS OF SABUNDE.
Very similar were the views expressed by Raymundus of Sabunde or Sabeyde,
a Spaniard of the fifteenth century, and professor at Toulouse about
the year 1437. In his _theologia naturalis_, which he handled in a
speculative spirit, he dealt with the Nature of things, and with the
revelation of God in Nature and in the history of the God-man. He sought
to prove to unbelievers the Being, the trinity, the incarnation, the
life, and the revelation of God in Nature, and in the history of the
God-man, basing his arguments on Reason. From the contemplation of Nature
he rises to God; and in the same way he reaches morality from observation
of man’s inner nature.[51] This purer and simpler style must be set off
against the other, if we are to do justice to the Scholastic theologians
in their turn.
c. ROGER BACON.
Roger Bacon treated more especially of physics, but remained without
influence. He invented gunpowder, mirrors, telescopes, and died in
1294.[52]
d. RAYMUNDUS LULLUS.
Raymundus Lullus, the _Doctor illuminatus_, made himself famous chiefly
by the art of thinking which he invented, which was called the _ars
magna_. He was born at Majorca in 1234, and was one of those eccentric,
unsettled natures whose activity finds vent in all directions. He had a
strong inclination towards alchemy and great enthusiasm for the sciences
in general, as well as a fiery, restless power of imagination. In his
youth he led a reckless life, throwing himself headlong into a round of
pleasures; then he retreated to a desert, and had there many visions
of Jesus. At this time the impulse shaped itself in his ardent nature
to dedicate his life to spreading the blessings of Christianity among
the Mohammedans in Asia and Africa. In order to carry on this work of
conversion he learned Arabic, travelled through Europe and Asia, sought
for assistance from the Pope and all the crowned heads of Europe,
without giving up, for all that, his interest in his ‘Art.’ He suffered
persecution and passed through many hardships and strange adventures,
perils of death, imprisonments, cruelties. He lived long in Paris at the
beginning of the fourteenth century, and was the author of well-nigh
four hundred works. After a life of the utmost restlessness, he died in
1315, revered as a saint and martyr, his death being the result of cruel
treatment which he had suffered in Africa.[53]
The chief object aimed at in this man’s ‘Art’ was an enumeration and
arrangement of the various concepts under which all objects fall, or
of the pure categories according to which they can be determined, so
that it may be possible in regard to every object to indicate with
ease the conceptions applicable to it. Lullus is so systematic that he
becomes at times mechanical. He constructed a diagram in circles, on
which were marked triangles through which the circles pass. In these
circles he arranged the various concepts, and strove to give a complete
catalogue of them. Some of the circles were fixed, others movable, and
they were six in number, two of them indicating the subjects, three the
predicates, while the outermost circle represented possible questions.
For each class he had nine qualities, to indicate which he chose nine
letters, B C D E F G H I K. Thus in the first place he wrote round the
diagram nine absolute predicates, goodness, greatness, duration, power,
wisdom, volition, virtue, truth, splendour; then he wrote nine relative
predicates, diversity, unanimity, opposition, beginning, middle, end,
the qualities of being greater, equal, or less; in the third place
he set down the questions Whether? What? Whence? Why? How great?
Of what nature? When? Where? How and wherewith? the ninth of which
contains two determinations; in the fourth place he put nine substances
(_esse_), viz. God (_divinum_), angel (_angelicum_), heaven (_cæleste_),
man (_humanum_), _imaginativum_, _sensitivum_, _vegetativum_,
_elementativum_, _instrumentativum_; in the fifth place were nine
accidents, _i.e._ natural relations, viz. quantity, quality, relation,
activity, passivity, possession, position, time, place; and sixthly
nine moral relations, the virtues, viz. justice, prudence, courage,
temperance, faith, hope, love, patience, piety; and the vices, viz. envy,
wrath, inconstancy, covetousness, falsehood, gluttony, riotousness,
pride, sluggishness (_acedia_). These circles had to be placed in a
certain way, in order to give proper combinations. By turning them round
according to certain rules, by which all substances received the absolute
and relative predicates which fitted them, it was supposed that there
would be obtained in every possible combination universal science, truth,
and the knowledge of concrete objects in general.[54]
C. GENERAL STANDPOINT OF THE SCHOLASTICS.
After thus dealing with the subject in detail, we must pronounce judgment
on the Scholastics, and give an estimate of them. Though the subjects
which they investigated were lofty, and though there were noble, earnest
and learned individuals in their ranks, yet this Scholasticism on the
whole is a barbarous philosophy of the finite understanding, without
real content, which awakens no true interest in us, and to which we
cannot return. For although religion is its subject matter, thought
here reached such an excessive point of subtlety that, as a form of
the mere empty understanding, it does nothing but wander amongst
baseless combinations of categories. Scholastic philosophy is this utter
confusion of the barren understanding in the rugged North German nature.
We see here two different worlds, a kingdom of life and a kingdom of
death. The intellectual kingdom, which is outside and above, while in
the popular conception, is thereby brought within the sphere of the
mere understanding and the senses, even though by nature it is purely
peculative; and this does not take place as in art, but, on the contrary,
after the fashion of ordinary reality. As the relationship of Father
and Son, to begin with, appealed to the senses, so the divine world was
furnished for the imaginative faculty and for purposes of devotion (in a
way unknown to the disciples of Plato) with angels, saints and martyrs,
instead of with thoughts;—or the thoughts are nothing but a rubbishy
metaphysic of the understanding. In the supersensuous world there was no
reality of the thinking, universal, rational self-consciousness to be met
with: in the immediate world of sensuous nature, on the other hand, there
was no divinity, because nature was but the grave of God, in the same
way that God was outside of nature. The existence of the Church, as the
government of Christ upon earth, is higher, it is true, than the external
existence which stands in contrast to it; for religion must rule our
temporal affairs, and through the subjection of worldly power the Church
became a theocracy. But the divine kingdom, the dwelling-place of the
dead, was to be reached only through the gate of death; yet the natural
world was dead to an equal degree—all that lived in it was the vision
of that other world, and hope—it had no present. It was of no avail to
introduce mediators as a connecting link, the Virgin Mary, or the dead
in a world beyond. The reconciliation was formal, not absolute; for it
was nothing but the longing of man for a satisfaction to be found only
in another world. What purpose does all this serve? It lies behind us as
a thing of the past, and must continue useless to us on its own merits.
There is no good, however, in calling the Middle Ages a barbarous period.
It is a singular kind of barbarism, and is not simple and rude; for the
absolute Idea and the highest culture have sunk into barbarism, and that
through the agency of thought. Thus we have here, on the one hand, the
most hideous form of barbarism and perversion, but, on the other hand,
the never-failing source of a higher reconciliation.
If we seek an immediate contrast to scholastic philosophy and
theology and their methods, we may say that it is to be found in the
“healthy human understanding,” in outward and inward experience, in
the contemplation of nature, and in humanity. The character of Greek
humanity, for instance, was that everything concrete, everything that
possessed interest for mind, had its place in the human breast, and its
root in the feelings and thoughts of man. Intelligent consciousness,
cultured science, has in such content its real material—that in which it
is and remains at home with itself; knowledge busies itself on all sides
with that which concerns it, and remains true to itself, while both on
its serious and its playful side it finds in this material, in Nature and
its uniform laws, a standard and a guide by which to direct its course
aright. Even should we go astray on ground like this, our errors keep in
view the fixed centre-point of the self-consciousness of the human mind,
and as errors even they have a root therein, which as such forms the
justification for them. It is only a one-sided withdrawal from the unity
of this root with the altogether concrete ground-work and original, that
is really faulty. What we see here, in contrast with the above, is the
infinite truth, expressed as spirit, committed to a nation of barbarians
who have not the self-consciousness of their spiritual humanity—they
have a human breast, it is true, but not yet a human spirit. The absolute
truth does not yet make itself real and present in actual consciousness,
but men are torn out of themselves. They still find this content of
spirit within themselves, introduced as into a strange vessel full of the
most intense impulses and desires of physical and intellectual life, but
it is like a ponderous stone, whose enormous pressure they only feel,
but which they neither digest nor assimilate with their own impulses or
desires. Thus they can only find rest and reconciliation when they come
absolutely out of themselves, and they have become fierce and savage in
the very circumstances and by the very means which ought to have rendered
their spirit peaceable and mild.
Just as truth was not yet the foundation of reality, so science was
likewise destitute of firm basis. The understanding, when it comes to
think, applies itself, it is true, in the first place to the mysteries
of religion, which, as an altogether speculative content, exist for the
rational Notion only. But as Spirit, the rational element in question,
has not yet taken its place in thought, thought is still God-forsaken, it
is still only abstract, finite understanding, a manner of thinking which
is in itself quite formal and devoid of content, which is a stranger
to subjects of such profundity as this, even when it is ostensibly
occupying itself with the same. This understanding therefore draws its
content entirely from things to which it remains altogether alien,
and which remain altogether alien to it; yet it is not thereby at all
circumscribed, for it observes no bounds in its determinations and
distinctions. It is just as if one were to arbitrarily form and connect
propositions, words and tones—without making the presupposition that they
should by themselves express a concrete sense—which need be only capable
of being uttered, without having any restriction except possibility, that
is, that they must not contradict each other.
In the second place, in so far as the understanding keeps to the given
religious content, it can prove this content; one can demonstrate that
it must be so, just as if it were a geometrical proposition. But there
still remains something to be desired, in order that the satisfaction may
be complete; the content is proved, but I nevertheless do not understand
it. Thus Anselm’s excellent proposition (_supra_, pp. 63, 64) in which
we may perceive the general character of the scholastic understanding,
is a proof, it may be admitted, of the existence of God, but it shows no
comprehension of it. Though I see the truth of the proposition, I have
not attained to the final point, the object of my desire; for there is
lacking the I, the inner bond, as inwardness of thought. This lies only
in the Notion, in the unity of the particular and the universal, of Being
and thought. For the comprehension of this unity, without which there
could be no true proof, it was implied that further progress should not
take place after the manner of the understanding. It was necessary that
from the nature of thought itself it should become evident how, taken on
its own account, it negates itself, and how the determination of Being
itself rests therein, or that the manner in which thought determines
itself into Being should be shown forth. On the other hand it must in
like manner be demonstrated in the case of Being that it is its peculiar
dialectic to abrogate itself, and from itself to make itself a universal
Notion. The determination of itself into Being is certainly an object of
thought, whose content is thought itself. This is inwardness, not a mere
conclusion drawn from presuppositions. Here in scholastic philosophy,
however, the object is not the nature of thought and Being, for what they
are is a mere matter of assumption.
The understanding may take its start from experience, a given concrete
content, a determinate contemplation of nature, the human heart, right,
duty, which are just exactly what inwardness means. It may find its
determinations, so to speak, on behalf of this content, and starting
from this point it may come to abstractions, such as matter and force
in physics. In this case, although a general form such as this does not
satisfy the content, it has at any rate therein a fixed point, by which
it can regulate itself, and a boundary line for speculation, which would
otherwise have no limit set to its roaming. Or when we have the concrete
perception of state and family, reasoning has in this content a fixed
point which gives it guidance—a conception, which is the main thing; the
deficiency in its form becomes concealed and forgotten, and emphasis is
not laid on it. But in scholastic philosophy, in the third place, a basis
was not sought in such objects as direct the course of reflection; with
this understanding of the Scholastics it was rather the case that they
received in the categories the external culture of the understanding as
tradition, and enlarged upon it. Because there was no standard set up
for this scholastic understanding, either by concrete intuition or by
the pure Notion, it remained unregulated in its externality. In later
times this spirit-forsaken understanding came across the philosophy
of Aristotle, in an external way; but that philosophy is a two-edged
sword, a highly determinate, clear understanding, which is at the same
time speculative Notion; in it the abstract determinations of the
understanding, taken by themselves, and powerless thus to stand, pass
away by means of dialectic, and have truth only when taken in their
connexion. The speculation that we find in Aristotle has this condition,
that such thought never abandons itself to free reflection, but keeps
ever before it the concrete nature of the object; this nature is the
Notion of the thing, and this speculative essence of the thing is the
ruling spirit, which does not leave the determinations of reflection
free on their own account. But the Scholastics laid down hard and fast
the abstract determinations of the understanding, which are always
inadequate to their absolute subject, and in like manner they took
every example from life as subject, and since the concrete contradicts
them, they could hold fast by these determinations of the understanding
only by defining and limiting. In so doing, however, they involved
themselves in an endless web of distinctions, which could themselves
be held in the concrete, and maintained thereby alone. There is thus
no “healthy human understanding” in such procedure of the Scholastics;
the former cannot oppose itself to speculation, but it can very well
take up a position hostile to ungrounded reflection, seeing that it
contains a basis and a rule of guidance for abstract determinations of
the understanding. The Aristotelian philosophy is quite opposed to this
Scholastic procedure, but it became therein alienated from itself. The
fixed conception of the supersensuous world with its angels and so on
was a subject which the Scholastics elaborated without any regulating
standard, in barbaric fashion, and they enriched and embellished it with
the finite understanding and with the finite relationships of the same.
There is present no immanent principle in the thinking itself, but the
understanding of the Scholastics got into its possession a ready-made
metaphysic, without the need of making it relate to the concrete; this
metaphysic was killed, and its parts in their lifelessness were separated
and parcelled out. It might be said of the Scholastics that they
philosophized without conception, that is, without a concrete; for _esse
reale, esse formale, esse objectivum, quidditas_ (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι) they
made their subjects of discussion.
This crude understanding, in the fourth place, made everything equal,
reduced it all to the same level, and that in virtue of its abstract
universality, which was held to be valid. In politics also the
understanding aims at making all alike equal. This crude understanding
did not make away with itself and its finitude, but in its dealings
with them simply reduced to finite relations Heaven, the Idea, the
intellectual, mystic, speculative world; for it makes no difference (and
can make none) whether its finite determinations are valid here or not.
Hence arose these senseless questions, and the endeavours to decide them;
for it is senseless, I may even say it is distasteful and revolting,
although it may be logically correct, to carry over determinations into
a field where they are utterly out of place, as soon as it comes to be
a matter of comprehending a concrete content in its universality. This
understanding in its operations furnishes no bridge from the universal
to the particular, and the conclusions which it draws it leaves up in
the clouds as conceptions of its fancy. If, for instance, law is divided
into canonical law, criminal law, and so on, the ground of division is
not taken from the universal itself; and it is thus left vague which
particular determination is in accordance with the universal object. If
this object is God,—for instance, such a determination as that He became
man—the relation between God and man is not derived from their nature.
Because God only manifests Himself, He can do so in any way whatever;
then, because nothing is impossible with God, the pumpkin idea is easily
introduced (p. 90), since it is a matter of indifference in which
determination the Universal is supposed to be. Regarding the apple in
Paradise the understanding asks to what species of apple it belonged.
We must go on to indicate the principles which have been adopted and
stand opposed to one other, and the development of the same, in order to
comprehend the transition into modern history and the present standpoint
of philosophy. For this reason we must speak of the further progress of
universal spirit. For thought was distorted by reason of its being bound
to an externality, and spirit was in it no longer acting for spirit.
Because then in this and similar ways the Idea of spirit had, as it
were, its heart pierced through, the parts remained without spirit and
life, and were worked upon by the understanding. Amongst the learned
ignorance of the rational was displayed, a complete and unnatural lack of
spirituality; and in the same way there was the most utter and terrible
ignorance amongst the others, the monks. This destruction of knowledge
brought about the transition to a different state of affairs; while
heaven and the divine were thus degraded, the lofty aspirations and high
spiritual claims of the clerical element rose above the secular. For we
saw that the supersensuous world of truth, as the world of religious
conceptions, was ruined by the understanding making all things equal. We
saw, on the one hand, a handling of dogma in philosophic fashion, but
we saw also a development of formal logical thought, the secularization
of the absolutely existent content. In the same way the existing
Church, this presence of heaven upon earth, brought itself down to the
level of the secular, by entering upon the possession of riches and
lands. In this way the distinction between the world and the Church is
blotted out, not in a rational manner as regards the Church, but in a
way that is altogether revolting, and which amounts to destruction: it
is a reality, I grant, but one most terrible and barbarous. For state,
government, right, property, civil order, all these enter into religion
as rational differences, that is, laws on their own account fixed. The
acknowledgment of ranks, classes, divisions, their different occupations,
the stages and degrees of evil, as well as of good, are an entering into
the form of finitude, actuality, existence of the subjective will, while
what is religious has only the form of infinity. But the Church in its
outward existence is inviolable, it can throw over all the laws of the
good; every offence against it is a violation of sanctity. Evil and its
penalties are made eternal, divergences of opinion are punished even with
death: so are heresy and also heterodoxy in respect of the most abstract
and empty determinations of an endless system of dogmas. Abominable
practices and evil passions, utter wantonness, voluptuousness, bribery,
dissoluteness, avarice, crimes of all kinds found their way into
the Church, because it was unrestrained by laws; and it founded and
maintained the system of government. The secular ought to be only
secular; but this whole secular government of the Church claims at the
same time the dignity and authority of the divine. This mingling of the
sacred, divine, inviolable, with temporal interests, begets, on the one
hand, fanaticism, as among the Turks, and on the other hand, the humility
and _obedientia passiva_ of the laity against this dread power. It was
this ruin of the supersensuous world, as represented in knowledge and as
the actual Church, that inevitably forced man out of a temple such as
this, the Holy of Holies degraded into finitude.
Against this disunion, on the other hand, the secular element has
spiritualized itself in itself; or it has established itself firmly in
itself, and that in a manner which the Spirit justifies. To religion was
lacking the presence of its culminating point, the present reality of
its head; to the present secularity there is lacking the presence in it
of thought, reason, spirit. In the tenth century there was manifested
in Christendom a general impulse to build churches, although it was not
possible to regard God Himself as present therein. It was thus that
Christianity rose up, in her longing to take to herself the principle
of reality as absolutely her own. But neither these buildings, nor
external wealth, nor the power and dominion of the Church, nor monks,
nor clergy, nor Pope, are the principle of real actual presence in
her; they were insufficient for the spiritual. The Pope or the Emperor
is not Dalai-lama, the Pope is only the Vicar of Christ; Christ, as
a past existence, is in memory and hope alone. Impatient at the lack
of reality and at the want of holiness, Christendom goes to seek this
true Head; and this is the ruling motive of the Crusades. Christendom
sought Christ’s outward presence in the land of Canaan, the traces of
Him, the mount where He suffered, His grave; they took possession of
the Holy Sepulchre. What they represent to themselves as real they also
take possession of in fact as real; but a grave is a grave—all that they
find is a grave, and even that is torn from them. “Because Thou wilt not
leave my soul in hell, neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see
corruption.” Christians made the mistake of thinking that they would find
satisfaction in this; this was the true object of their search; but they
did not understand themselves. These holy spots, the Mount of Olives,
the Jordan, Nazareth, as external sensuous presence of place without
presence of time, are things of the past, a mere memory, no perception
of the immediate present; the Christians found only their loss, their
grave, in this present. Barbarians all the time, they did not seek the
universal, the world-controlling position of Syria and Egypt, this
central point of the earth, the free connection of commerce; Bonaparte
did this when mankind became rational. The Crusaders were by the
Saracens and by their own violence and repulsiveness, as also by their
own misery (p. 53), brought to confess that they had in this deceived
themselves. This experience taught them that they must hold to the actual
reality which they despised, and seek in this the realization of their
intelligible world. What they sought for they were to find in themselves,
in the present of the understanding; thought, personal knowledge and
will constitute this present. Because their acts, their aims and their
interests are upright, and thus are constituted the Universal, the
present is rational. What pertains to the world has thus become fixed in
itself, that is, it has received into itself thought, justice, reason.
With reference to the general aspect of the period, from an historical
point of view, it may be remarked that as on the one side we see the
selflessness of spirit, the fact that spirit is not at home with itself,
the torn and rent condition of man, on the other side we see the
political condition becoming more consolidated, in the establishment
of an independence which is no longer merely selfish. In the first
independence there is contained the moment of barbarism, which has need
of fear in order to be held within bounds. Now, however, we see justice
and order enter in; it is true that the ruling order is the feudal
system with its servitude, but everything therein has certainly a firm
basis in justice. Justice, however, has its root in freedom, and thus
the individual therein brings himself into existence, and is recognized;
nevertheless relationships which properly belong to the state are here
still made the concern of private individuals. Feudal monarchy, which now
emerges in opposition to the self-abnegation of the Church, determines
essential rights, it is true, according to birth; ranks are not, however,
like the system of caste among the Indians, for in the ecclesiastical
hierarchy, for instance, anyone might from the lowest class rise to the
very highest position. Even under the feudal system, moreover, justice,
civil order, legal freedom gradually emerged. In Italy and Germany
cities obtained their rights as citizen republics, and caused these to
be recognized by the temporal and ecclesiastical power; wealth displayed
itself in the Netherlands, Florence and the free cities on the Rhine. In
this way men gradually began to emerge from the feudal system; an example
of this is seen in the case of the Capitani. The fact that the _lingua
volgare_ became the language used may also be looked on as a springing up
of self-abnegation of spirit: as in Dante’s _Divina Commedia_.
The spirit of the times took this new direction; it forsook the
intellectual world, and looked upon its present world, this hither side.
The finite heaven, the content which had lost its religious character,
drove it to the finite present. With this revolution the scholastic
philosophy sinks and is lost, as its thoughts are outside of reality.
While the Church heretofore believed itself to be in possession of
divine truth, so now the temporal government, as it received into itself
order and right, and worked its way out through the hard discipline
of service, felt itself to be a divine institution, and consequently
considered that it had the divine element here present in it, and that
it was justified in having an independent existence in opposition to
the divine element in the Church, which takes up an exclusive position
as regards the laity. Since in this way the temporal power, the worldly
life, self-consciousness, has taken into itself the higher and more
divine ecclesiastical principle, the harsh contrast has disappeared. The
power of the Church appeared as the violence of the Church, not aiming
at operating in accordance with reality and in reality, but at being
mighty in the spirit. There at once came into the secular element the
consciousness that abstract Notions were filled with the reality of the
present, so that this was no longer a nullity, but had truth also in
itself.
With this commerce and the arts are associated. It is implied in the
arts that man brings what is divine out of himself; as artists were
at one time so pious that as individuals they had self-abnegation as
their principle, it was they from whose subjective abilities these
representations were produced. With this is connected the circumstance
that the secular knew that it had in itself the right to hold to such
determinations as are founded on subjective freedom. In his handicraft
the individual is taken in reference to his work, and is himself the
producer. Thus men came to the point of knowing that they were free,
and insisting on the recognition of that freedom, and having the power
of exercising their activity for their own objects and interests. Thus
spirit came again to itself; it drew itself together again, and looked
into its reason, as if looking into its own hands. This new birth is
pointed out as the revival of the arts and sciences which were concerned
with present matter, the epoch when the spirit gains confidence in
itself and in its existence, and finds its interest in its present. It is
in reality reconciled with the world, not implicitly, far away in mere
thought, at the last day, at the world’s transfiguration, _i.e._ when
the world is reality no more, but it has to do with the world as not by
any means annihilated. The man who was moved to seek what was moral and
right, could no longer find it on such soil, but looked round about him
to seek it elsewhere. The place which was pointed out to him is himself,
his inner life, and external Nature; in the contemplation of Nature the
spirit begins to have a sense of being present therein.
SECTION THREE
REVIVAL OF THE SCIENCES
The deeper interest of the subject had been lost sight of, as we have
seen, in the dryness and dulness of the content of thought, and in
speculations which went wandering off into endless details. But now
spirit gathered itself together, and rose to claim the right to find
and know itself as actual self-consciousness, both in the supersensuous
world and in immediate nature. This awakening of the self-hood of
spirit brought with it the revival of the arts and sciences of the
ancient world. This looked like a falling back into childhood, but it
was really a spontaneous ascent into the Idea, a movement originating
with self—while up to this time the intellectual world had been rather
something given from without. From this proceeded all efforts and all
inventions, the discovery of America and of the way to the East Indies.
Thus in a very special way the love for the old, so-called heathen
sciences once more awoke, for men turned to the works of the ancients,
which had now become objects of study, as _studia humaniora_, where man
is recognized in what concerns himself and in what he effects. These
sciences, though at first they were placed in opposition to the divine,
are rather themselves the divine, as living, however, in the reality of
spirit. Men, because they are men, find it interesting to study men as
men. With this a further consideration is intimately connected, namely,
that when the formal culture of the mind, found among the Scholastics,
became transformed into the Universal, the result necessarily was that
thought knew and found itself in itself; from this the antithesis between
the finite understanding and ecclesiastical dogma or faith consequently
arose. The idea became prevalent that the understanding can recognize
something to be false which the Church affirms to be true; and it was of
importance that the understanding did so apprehend itself, although it
was in opposition to the positive in general.
A. STUDY OF THE ANCIENTS.
The first way in which the desire to find the human element in reference
to what pertains to science manifested itself, was that an interest in
such matters sprang up in the West, a receptive power where the ancients
in their definiteness and beauty are concerned. But the revival of the
arts and sciences, and especially of the study of ancient literature
bearing on Philosophy, was at first in some measure a simple revival of
the old philosophy in its earlier and original form, without anything new
being added; this working up of old philosophies, to which a great number
of writings were devoted, was thus the restoration of something forgotten
only. The study of the Greeks was more especially revived; the knowledge
of the Greek originals which the West acquired is connected with external
political events. The West kept up constant intercourse with the Greeks
through the Crusades, and Italy did so by means of commerce; yet there
were no special diplomatic relations. Even the Roman laws were brought
back from the East, until a code of the _corpus juris_ was by chance
discovered. But the West was again, and more effectually, brought into
touch with the Greek East when, on the disastrous fall of the Byzantine
Empire, the noblest and most distinguished of the Greeks fled to Italy.
Earlier than this even, when the Greek Empire was being harassed by the
Turks, ambassadors had been sent to the West in order to solicit help.
These ambassadors were men of learning, and by their means—for as a rule
they settled in the West—there was transplanted thither that love for
antiquity to which we have referred. Petrarch in this way learned Greek
from Barlaam, a monk in Calabria, where dwelt many belonging to the order
of St. Basil; this order had monasteries in the south of Italy, and used
Greek ritual. In Constantinople Barlaam had made the acquaintance of
Greeks, particularly of Chrysoloras, who from 1395 chose Italy as his
permanent dwelling-place. These Greeks made the West familiar with the
works of the ancients, especially of Plato.[55] Too much honour is done
to the monks when it is asserted that they preserved for us the writings
of the ancients; these works, at least such as were in Greek, came rather
from Constantinople, while the Latin portion of them, it is true, were
preserved in the West. Acquaintance was now also for the first time
made with Aristotle’s own writings (_supra_, p. 75), and thereby the
old philosophies were again revived, although mingled with intellectual
vagaries of the utmost wildness.
Thus it was partly the old Platonic philosophy that was sought out,
and partly the Neo-Platonic, as also the Aristotelian and Stoic, the
Epicurean as far as it regarded physics, and the popular philosophy of
Cicero in its first form; these were brought forward as authorities
against Scholasticism, being in direct contradiction to it. Such
endeavours are, however, connected rather with the history of literature
and culture, and with the advancement of the same; we do not find
originality in this philosophic work, nor can we recognize therein
any forward step. We have still writings of that period, by which we
find that each school of the Greeks found its adherents, and that
Aristotelians, Platonists, and so on appeared on the scenes, though
they were of a very different stamp from those of olden times. For true
instruction in philosophy we must, however, go to the original sources,
the ancients.
1. POMPONATIUS.
Pomponatius was one of the most remarkable of these Aristotelians; among
other subjects he wrote in 1534 on the immortality of the soul, and in
so doing he showed—following a practice which was specially in vogue
at that time—that this dogma, which he believed as a Christian, was
according to Aristotle and reason incapable of proof.[56] The disciples
of Averroës alleged that the universal νοῦς, which is present in thought,
is immaterial and immortal, while the soul as numerically one is mortal;
and Alexander Aphrodisiensis also maintained its mortality. Both of
these opinions were condemned in 1513 at the Council of Benevento, under
Leo X.[57] The vegetative and sensitive soul Pomponatius asserted to be
mortal (c. VIII. p. 36; c. IX. pp. 51, 62-65): and he maintained that
it is only through thought and reason that man partakes of immortality.
Pomponatius was summoned before the Inquisition; but as cardinals
protected him, no further notice was taken of the matter.[58] There were
many other pure Aristotelians; especially among the Protestants at a
later time were they general. The Scholastics were erroneously termed
Aristotelians; therefore the Reformation was opposed to Aristotle only in
appearance, but to the Scholastics it was opposed in fact.
2. BESSARION, FICINUS, PICUS.
Men now began to form acquaintance more especially with Plato, when
manuscripts of his works were brought from Greece; Greeks, refugees from
Constantinople, gave lectures on Plato’s philosophy. Cardinal Bessarion
of Trapezunt, at one time Patriarch of Constantinople, was specially
active in making Plato known in the West.[59]
Ficinus, who was born in Florence in 1433, and died in 1499, the
accomplished translator of Plato, was a man of note; it was mainly due
to him that the study of Neo-Platonism, as presented by Proclus and
Plotinus, was again revived. Ficinus wrote also a Platonic Theology. One
of the Medici in Florence, Cosmo II., went so far as to found a Platonic
Academy even in the fifteenth century. These Medici, the elder Cosmo,
Lorenzo, Leo X., Clement VII., were patrons of all the arts and sciences,
and made their court the resort of classical Greek scholars.[60]
Two counts of the name of Pico della Mirandola—Giovanni, and Giovanni
Francesco, his nephew—were influential rather by virtue of their marked
personality and their originality; the elder propounded nine hundred
theses, fifty-five of which were taken from Proclus, and invited
philosophers one and all to a solemn discussion of the same; he also in
princely fashion undertook to pay the travelling expenses of those at a
distance.[61]
3. GASSENDI, LIPSIUS, REUCHLIN, HELMONT.
Somewhat later, and specially by Gassendi, the opponent of Descartes, the
atom theory of Epicurus was again revived. As a development therefrom
the theory of molecules maintained its place thenceforth in physical
science.
The revival of Stoic philosophy due to Lipsius was not so clearly
evidenced.
In Reuchlin (Kapnio), who was born at Pforzheim in Swabia in 1455, and
who was himself the translator of several comedies of Aristophanes,
the Cabalistic philosophy found a defender. He endeavoured also to
reconstruct the Pythagorean philosophy proper; but he mingled with it
much that is vague and mysterious. There was in hand a project to destroy
all Hebrew books in Germany by an imperial decree, as had been done in
Spain; Reuchlin deserves great credit for having prevented this.[62]
On account of the entire lack of dictionaries, the study of the Greek
language was rendered so difficult that Reuchlin travelled to Vienna for
the purpose of learning Greek from a Greek.
Later on we find many profound thoughts in Helmont, an Englishman, who
was born in 1618, and died in 1699.[63]
All these philosophies were carried on side by side with belief in
Church dogmas, and without prejudice thereto; not in the sense in
which the ancients conceived them. A mass of literature exists on this
subject, containing the names of a multitude of philosophers, but it is
a literature of the past, without the vitality characteristic of higher
principles; it is in fact not a true philosophy at all, and I shall
therefore not dwell any longer upon it.
4. CICERONIAN POPULAR PHILOSOPHY.
Cicero’s mode of philosophizing, a very general mode, was revived in an
especial degree. It is a popular style of philosophizing, which has no
real speculative value, but in regard to general culture it has this
importance, that in it man derives more from himself as a whole, from his
outer and inner experience, and speaks altogether from the standpoint of
the present. He is a man of understanding who says,—
“What helps a man in life, is what life itself has taught him.”
The feelings, &c., of man obtained due recognition, we must observe,
as against the principle of self-abnegation. A very large number of
writings of this kind were issued, some of them simply on their own
account, others aimed against the Scholastics. Although all that great
mass of philosophical writings—much, for instance, that Erasmus wrote
on similar subjects—has been forgotten, and though it possesses little
intrinsic value, it was still of very great service, as succeeding
the barrenness of the Scholastics and their groundless maunderings in
abstractions:—groundless I say, for they had not even self-consciousness
as their basis. Petrarch was one of those who wrote from himself, from
his heart, as a thinking man.
This new departure in Philosophy applies in this regard to the reform of
the Church by Protestantism also. Its principle is simply this, that it
led man back to himself, and removed what was alien to him, in language
especially. To have translated for German Christians the book on which
their faith is grounded, into their mother-tongue, is one of the greatest
revolutions which could have happened. Italy in the same way obtained
grand poetic works when the vernacular came to be employed by such
writers as Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch; Petrarch’s political works were
however written in Latin. It is not until a thing is expressed in my
mother tongue that it becomes my own possession. Luther and Melancthon
cast the Scholastic element quite aside, and drew their conclusions from
the Bible, from faith, from the human heart. Melancthon presents to us
a calm popular philosophy, in which the human element makes itself felt,
and which therefore forms the most striking contrast to the lifeless and
jejune Scholasticism. This attack against the Scholastic method was made
in the most different directions and in the most various forms. But all
this belongs rather to the history of Religion than to that of Philosophy.
B. CERTAIN ATTEMPTS IN PHILOSOPHY.
A second series of writers who now appeared have mainly to do with
particular attempts made in Philosophy which remained attempts merely,
and are only found while this terrible time of upheaval lasted. Many
individuals of that period saw themselves forsaken by what had hitherto
been accepted by them as content, by the object which up to this time had
formed the stay and support of their consciousness—by faith. Side by side
with the peaceful reappearance of the ancient philosophy there displayed
itself, on the other hand, a multitude of individuals in whom a burning
desire after the conscious knowledge of what is deepest and most concrete
was violently manifested. It was spoilt, however, by endless fancies,
extravagances of the imagination and a craze for secret, astrological,
geomantic and other knowledge. These men felt themselves dominated, as
they really were, by the impulse to create existence and to derive truth
from their very selves. They were men of vehement nature, of wild and
restless character, of enthusiastic temperament, who could not attain
to the calm of knowledge. Though it cannot be denied that there was
in them a wonderful insight into what was true and great, there is no
doubt on the other hand that they revelled in all manner of corruption
in thought and heart as well as in their outer life. There is thus to
be found in them great originality and subjective energy of spirit;
at the same time the content is heterogeneous and unequal, and their
confusion of mind is great. Their fate, their lives, their writings—which
often fill many volumes—manifest only this restlessness of their being,
this tearing asunder, the revolt of their inner being against present
existence and the longing to get out of it and reach certainty. These
remarkable individuals really resemble the upheavals, tremblings and
eruptions of a volcano which has become worked up in its depths and has
brought forth new developments, which as yet are wild and uncontrolled.
The most outstanding men of this nature are Cardanus, Bruno, Vanini,
Campanella, and lastly Ramus. They are representative of the character of
the time in this interval of transition, and fall within the period of
the Reformation.
1. CARDANUS.
Hieronymus Cardanus is of their number; he was remarkable as an
individual of world-wide reputation, in whom the upheaval and
fermentation of his time manifested itself in its utmost violence. His
writings fill ten folio volumes. Cardanus was born in 1501 at Pavia, and
died at Rome in 1575. He recounted his own history and described his
character in his book _De vita propria_, where he makes an extraordinary
confession of his sins, passing the severest possible judgment upon them.
The following may serve to give a picture of these contradictions. His
life was a series of the most varied misfortunes, external and domestic.
He speaks first of his pre-natal history. He relates that his mother,
when pregnant with him, drank potions in order to produce abortion. When
he was still at the breast, there was an outbreak of the plague; the
nurse who suckled him died of the pestilence, he survived. His father
was very severe in his treatment of him. He lived sometimes in the most
crushing poverty and the utmost want, sometimes in the greatest luxury.
Afterwards he applied himself to science, became a Doctor of Medicine,
and travelled much. He was celebrated far and wide; summons came to him
from every quarter, several times he was called to Scotland. He writes
that he cannot tell the sums of money that were offered to him. He was
professor at Milan, first of mathematics and then of medicine; after that
he lay for two years in Bologna in the strictest imprisonment, and had to
undergo the most frightful tortures. He was a profound astrologer, and
predicted the future for many princes, who on that account held him in
the greatest awe and reverence.[64] He is a name of note in mathematics;
we have from him still the _regula Cardani_ for the solution of equations
of the third degree, the only rule we have had up to this time.
He lived his whole life in perpetual inward and outward storms. He says
that he suffered the greatest torments in his soul. In this inward agony
he found the greatest delight in inflicting torture both on himself and
others. He scourged himself, bit his lips, pinched himself violently,
distorted his fingers, in order to free himself from the tortures of
his spiritual disquietude and induce weeping, which brought him relief.
The same contradictions were to be seen in his outward demeanour, which
was sometimes quiet and decorous, while at other times he behaved as if
he were crazy and demented, and that without any external provocation
whatever, and in matters the most indifferent. Sometimes he put on decent
clothes and made himself neat and trim, at other times he went in rags.
He would be reserved, diligent, persevering in his work, and then would
break out into excesses, wasting and squandering all that he had, his
household goods and his wife’s jewels. Sometimes he would walk quietly
along, like other men; at other times he would rush on as if he were mad.
The upbringing of his children, as was quite to be expected under the
circumstances, was very bad. He had the unhappiness of seeing his sons
turn out ill; one of them poisoned his own wife and was executed with the
sword; he had his second son’s ears cut off, to chastise him for being
dissipated.[65]
He himself was of the wildest temperament, brooding deeply within
himself, and yet breaking out into violence in the most contradictory
manner; within him there also raged a consuming restlessness. I have
epitomized the description which he gives of his own character, and now
quote it: “I have by nature a mind of philosophic and scientific cast; I
am witty, elegant, well-bred, fond of luxury, cheerful, pious, faithful,
a lover of wisdom, reflective, enterprising, studious, obliging, emulous,
inventive, self-taught. I have a longing to perform prodigies, I am
crafty, cunning, bitter, versed in secrets, sober, diligent, careless,
talkative, contemptuous of religion, vindictive, envious, melancholy,
malicious, treacherous, a sorcerer, a magician, unhappy; I am surly to my
family, ascetic, difficult to deal with, harsh, a soothsayer, jealous, a
ribald talker, a slanderer, compliant, inconstant; such contradictoriness
of nature and manners is to be found in me.”[66]
His writings are in parts just as utterly unequal as his character.
In them he gave vent to the wild vehemence of his nature; they are
disconnected and contradictory, and were often written in the direst
poverty. They contain a medley of all kinds of astrological and
chiromantic superstition, yet lit up here and there with profound and
brilliant flashes; there are Alexandrine and Cabalistic mysteries side
by side with perfectly lucid psychological observations of his own. He
treated astrologically the life and deeds of Christ. His positive merit
consists, however, rather in the stimulus which he gave to original
production, and in this direction he exercised an important influence
on his times. He boasted of the originality and novelty of his ideas,
and the craze to be original drove him to the strangest devices. This
represents the first form taken by the newly awakened and energizing
reason in its spontaneous activity; to be new and different from others
was regarded as tantamount to possessing a private claim to science.
2. CAMPANELLA.
Tommaso Campanella, a student of Aristotle, represents just such another
medley of all possible dispositions. He was born at Stilo, in Calabria,
in 1568, and died at Paris in 1639. Many of his writings still remain
to us. For seven-and-twenty years of his life he was kept in strict
imprisonment at Naples.[67] Such men as he aroused enormous interest and
gave great offence, but on their own account they were productive of very
little result. We have still to make special mention of Giordano Bruno
and Vanini as belonging to this period.
3. BRUNO.
Giordano Bruno was of an equally restless and effervescent temperament,
and we see in him a bold rejection of all Catholic beliefs resting
on mere authority. In modern times he has again been brought into
remembrance by Jacobi (Werke, Vol. IV. Section II. pp. 5-46), who
appended to his letters on Spinoza an abstract of one of Bruno’s
works.[68] Jacobi caused great attention to be paid to Bruno, more
especially by his assertion that the sum of Bruno’s teaching was the One
and All of Spinoza, or really Pantheism; on account of the drawing of
this parallel Bruno obtained a reputation which passes his deserts. He
was less restless than Cardanus; but he had no fixed habitation on the
earth. He was born at Nola in the province of Naples, and lived in the
sixteenth century; the year of his birth is not known with certainty. He
roamed about in most of the European states, in Italy, France, England,
Germany, as a teacher of philosophy: he forsook Italy, where at one time
he had been a Dominican friar, and where he had made bitter reflections
both upon various Catholic dogmas—for instance, on transubstantiation and
the immaculate conception of the Virgin—and upon the gross ignorance and
scandalous lives of the monks. He then lived in Geneva in 1582, but there
he fell out in the same way with Calvin and Beza, and could not live with
them: he made some stay in several other French cities, such as Lyons;
and after a time he came to Paris, where in 1585 he formally challenged
the adherents of Aristotle, by following a practice greatly in favour
in those days (_supra_, p. 112), and proposing for public disputation
a series of philosophic theses, which were specially directed against
Aristotle. They appeared under the title _Jord. Bruni Nol. Rationes
articulorum physicorum adversus Peripateticos Parisiis propositorum,
Vitebergæ apud Zachariam Cratonem, 1588_; he was not successful in them,
however, as the position of the Aristotelians was still too well assured.
Bruno was also in London; he visited Wittenberg in the year 1586; he
likewise stayed in Prague and other universities and towns. In Helmstedt
he was high in the favour of the Dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg in 1589;
after that he went to Frankfort-on-Main, where he had several of his
works printed. He was a wandering professor and author. Finally he came
back to Italy in 1592, and lived in Padua for some time undisturbed, but
at last he was seized in Venice by the Inquisition, cast into prison,
sent on to Rome, and there in the year 1600, refusing to recant, he
was burned at the stake as a heretic. Eye-witnesses, and amongst them
Scioppius, recount that he met death with the most unflinching courage.
He had become a Protestant when in Germany, and had broken the vows of
his order.[69]
Among both Catholics and Protestants his writings were held to be
heretical and atheistic, and therefore they were burned and destroyed, or
kept in concealment. His complete works are hence very seldom met with;
the greatest number of them are to be found in the University Library at
Gottingen; the fullest account of them is given in Buhle’s History of
Philosophy (_supra_, Vol. I. p. 113). His works are for the most part
rare, and in many cases interdicted; in Dresden they are still included
among prohibited writings, and are therefore not to be seen there.
Lately[70] an edition of them in the Italian language was prepared,[71]
which possibly has never yet been issued. Bruno also wrote a great deal
in Latin. Wherever he took up his abode for a time, he gave public
lectures, wrote and published works; and this increases the difficulty
of making complete acquaintance with his books. Many of his writings are
for the above reason very similar in their matter, the form only being
different, and in the evolution of his thoughts he never consequently
advanced very much nor attained to any results. But the leading
characteristic of his various writings is really to some extent the grand
enthusiasm of a noble soul, which has a sense of indwelling spirit, and
knows the unity of its own Being and all Being to be the whole life of
thought. There is something bacchantic in his way of apprehending this
deep consciousness; it overflows in becoming thus an object of thought,
and in the expression of its riches. But it is only in knowledge that
spirit can bring itself forth as a whole; when it has not yet attained
to this point of scientific culture, it reaches out after all forms,
without bringing them first into due order. Bruno displays just such an
unregulated and multiform profusion; and on that account his expositions
have frequently a dreamy, confused, allegorical appearance of mystical
enthusiasm. Many of his writings are in verse, and much that is fantastic
finds a place in them, as for instance when he says in one of his works,
entitled _La Bestia Trionfante_, that something else must be put in
place of the stars.[72] He sacrificed his personal welfare to the great
enthusiasm which filled him, and which left him no peace. It is easy to
say that he was “a restless being, who could get on with nobody.” But
whence did this restlessness come to him? What he could not get on with
was the finite, the evil, the ignoble. Thence arose his restlessness.
He rose to the one universal substantiality by putting an end to this
separation of self-consciousness and nature, whereby both alike are
degraded. God was in self-consciousness, it was admitted, but externally,
and as remaining something different from self-consciousness, another
reality; while Nature was made by God, being His creature, not an image
of Him. The goodness of God displayed itself only in final causes, finite
ends, as when it is said: “Bees make honey for man’s food; the cork tree
grows to provide stoppers for bottles.”[73]
As to his reflections, Jacobi has by his recent[74] exposition of them
made it seem as if it were a theory specially characteristic of Bruno
that one living Being, one World-Soul, should penetrate all existence,
and should be the life of all. Bruno asserted, in the first place, the
unity of life and the universality of the World-Soul, and, in the second
place, the indwelling presence of reason; but Bruno in so saying is far
from being original, and in fact this doctrine is a mere echo of the
Alexandrian. But in his writings there are two specially marked features.
The first is the nature of his system, based as it is on his leading
thoughts, or his philosophic principles generally, namely the Idea as
substantial unity. The second, which is closely connected with the first,
is his use of the _Art_ of Lullius; this is specially emphasized and
highly esteemed by him, the art of finding differences in the Idea: it he
wished to bring into special recognition.
a. His philosophic thoughts, to express which he sometimes made use of
Aristotle’s concepts, give evidence of a peculiar, highly strung and
very original mind. The substance of his general reflections is found
in the greatest enthusiasm for the above-mentioned vitality of Nature,
divinity, the presence of reason in nature. His philosophy is thus on
the whole certainly Spinozism, Pantheism. The separation of man from God
or the world, all such relations of externality, have been superadded
to his living idea of the absolute, universal unity of all things, for
the expression of which idea Bruno has been so greatly admired. In his
conception of things the main points are that, on the one hand, he gives
the universal determination of matter, and, on the other hand, that of
form.
α. The unity of life he thus determines as the universal, active
understanding (νοῦς), which manifests itself as the universal form of
all the world, and comprehends all forms in itself; it bears the same
relation to the production of natural objects as does the understanding
of man, and moulds and systematizes them, as the human understanding
moulds the multitude of its concepts. It is the artist within, who shapes
and forms the material without. From within the root or the seed-grain
it makes the shoot come forth; from this again it brings the branches,
and from them the twigs, and from out of the twigs it calls forth the
buds, and leaves, and flowers. All is planned, prepared and perfected
within. In the same way this universal reason within calls back their
saps from the fruits and blossoms to the twigs, and so on. The universe
is thus an infinite animal, in which all things live and move and have
their being in modes the most diverse. The formal understanding is
thus in no wise different from the Final Cause (the Notion of end, the
entelechy, the unmoved principle, which we meet with in Aristotle); but
these are just as truly also active understanding, the efficient cause
(_causa efficiens_), this same producing force. Nature and Spirit are not
separated; their unity is the formal understanding, in which is contained
the pure Notion, not as in consciousness, but as free and independent,
remaining within itself, and at the same time exercising activity and
passing beyond itself. The understanding working towards one particular
end is the inward form of the thing itself, an inward principle of the
understanding. What is continually produced is in accordance with this
form, and contained within it; what appears is determined as the form is
in itself determined.[75] With Proclus in the same way the understanding,
as substantial, is that which includes all things in its unity: life
is the outgoing, the producing force: and the understanding as such
similarly includes the returning force, which brings all things back into
unity. In dealing with Kant’s philosophy we shall have again to mention
this determination of final purpose. That which has organic life, whose
principle is formative, which has its efficacy in itself, and in the same
only remains at home with itself and maintains itself, is nothing but the
end, the activity determined in itself, which in its relation to what is
different does not comport itself as mere cause, but returns upon itself.
β. Bruno, who asserts the final cause to be immediately operative, and
the life immanent in the universe, asserts it also to be existent,
as substance; he is therefore opposed to the conception of a merely
extra-mundane understanding. To a certain extent Bruno distinguishes
form and matter in substance, which itself, as the aforesaid activity
of the Idea, is the unity of form and matter; thus matter has life in
itself. The permanent element in the endless changes of existence is,
he says, the first and absolute matter; although without form, it is
nevertheless the mother of all forms, and receptive of all forms. Because
matter is not without the first universal form, it is itself principle
or in itself final cause. Form is immanent in matter; the one simply
cannot exist without the other; thus matter itself brings about these
changes of form, and the same matter runs through them all. What was at
first seed becomes blade, then ear, then bread, chyle, blood, seed of
animal, an embryo, a human being, a corpse, then once more earth, stone,
or other substance; from sand and water frogs are produced. Here then
we can perceive something which, although it transforms itself into all
these things in turn, yet still in itself remains one and the same. This
matter cannot be a body, for bodies have form; nor can it belong to the
class which we term properties, attributes, or qualities, for these are
liable to change. Thus nothing seems to be eternal and worthy of the name
of a principle, except matter. Many have for this reason held matter to
be the only reality, and all forms to be accidental. This error arises
from the fact of their recognizing only a form of the second kind, and
not that necessary first and eternal form, which is the form and source
of all forms. In the same way the aforesaid matter, on account of its
identity with the understanding which causes form beforehand, is itself
intelligible, as the universal presupposition of all corporeality.
Because it is everything in general, it is nothing in particular, neither
air nor water, nor anything else, abstract or otherwise; it has no
dimensions, in order to have all dimensions. The forms of matter are the
inward power of matter itself; it is, as intelligible, the very totality
of form.[76] This system of Bruno’s is thus objective Spinozism, and
nothing else; one can see how deeply he penetrated.
Bruno here asks the question: “But this first universal form and that
first universal matter, how are they united, inseparable? Different—and
yet one Being?” He answers by making use of the Aristotelian forms of
δύναμις and ἐνέργεια: Matter is to be regarded as potentiality; in this
way all possible forms of existence in a certain sense are included
in the Notion of it. The passivity of matter must be regarded as pure
and absolute. Now it is impossible to attribute existence to a thing
which lacks the power to exist. Existence has, however, such an express
reference to the active mode, that it is at once clear that the one
cannot exist without the other, but that each of them presupposes the
other. If therefore at all times a capacity of working, producing,
creating, was there, so must there also have been at all times a capacity
of being worked upon, produced, created. The perfect potentiality of
the existence of things (matter) cannot precede their actual existence,
and just as little can it remain after that is past. The first and
most perfect principle includes all existence in itself, can be all
things, and is all things. Active power and potentiality, possibility
and actuality are therefore in it one undivided and indivisible
principle.[77] This simultaneousness of acting and being acted upon is a
very important determination; matter is nothing without activity, form
is therefore the power and inward life of matter. If matter were nothing
but indeterminate potentiality, how would the determinate be arrived at?
This simplicity of matter is itself only one moment of form: in wishing
therefore to tear asunder matter and form, matter is at once established
in one determination of form, but in so doing there is immediately
established also the existence of the Other.
Thus the Absolute is determined for Bruno: it is not so with other
things, which may exist and also may not exist, and which may be
determined in one way or in another way. In regard to finite things and
in finite determinations of the understanding the distinction between
form and matter is thus present. The individual man is at every moment
what he may be at that moment, but not everything which he may be in
general and with reference to substance. The things which appear to be
different are only modifications of one single thing which includes in
its existence all other existence. The universe, unbegotten Nature, is,
however, everything which it can be in reality and at one time, because
it includes in itself the whole of matter, as well as the eternal,
unchangeable form of its changing forms. But in its developments from
moment to moment, its particular parts, qualities, individual existences,
in its externality as a whole, it is no more what it is and may be;
but a part such as this is only a shadow of the image of the first
principle.[78] Thus Bruno wrote also a book, _De umbris idearum_.
γ. This is Bruno’s fundamental idea. He says: “To recognize this unity
of form and matter in all things, is what reason is striving to attain
to. But in order to penetrate to this unity, in order to investigate all
the secrets of Nature, we must search into the opposed and contradictory
extremes of things, the maximum and the minimum.” It is in these very
extremes that they are intelligible, and become united in the Notion; and
this union of them is infinite Nature. “To find the point of union is
not the greatest matter; but to develop from the same its very opposite,
this is the real and the deepest secret of the art.”[79] It is saying
much if we speak of knowing the development of the Idea as a necessity
of determinations; we shall see later how Bruno proceeded to do this.
He represents the original principle, which is elsewhere known as the
form, under the Notion of the minimum, which is at the same time the
maximum—One, which at the same time is All; the universe is this One in
All. In the universe, he says, the body is not distinguished from the
point, nor the centre from the circumference, nor the finite from the
infinite, nor the maximum from the minimum. There is nothing but centre
point; or the centre point is everywhere and in everything. The ancients
expressed the same by saying of the Father of the gods, that he really
had his dwelling-place in every point of the universe. It is the universe
that first gives to things true reality; it is the substance of all
things, the monad, the atom, the spirit poured out on all things, the
innermost essence, the pure form.[80]
b. The second object to which Bruno devoted himself was the so-called
Lullian Art, which received its name from its first inventor, the
Scholastic Raymundus Lullus (_supra_, pp. 92-94). Bruno adopted this
and carried it to completion; he termed it also his _ars combinatoria_.
This art is in some respects like what we met with in Aristotle under
the name of the Topics (Vol. II. pp. 217, 218), seeing that both give an
immense number of “places” and determinations which were fixed in the
conception like a table with its divisions, in order that these headings
might be applied to all that came to hand. But the Topics of Aristotle
did this in order to apprehend and determine an object in its various
aspects, while Bruno rather worked for the sake of lightening the task
of memory. He thus really connected the Lullian Art with the art of
mnemonics as practised by the ancients, which has come into notice again
in recent times, and which will be found described in greater detail in
the _Auctor ad Herennium_ (Libr. III. c. 17, _sqq._). To give an example:
one establishes for oneself a certain number of different departments in
the imagination, which are to be chosen at pleasure; there may be perhaps
twelve of these, arranged in sets of three, and indicated by certain
words, such as Aaron, Abimelech, Achilles, Berg, Baum, Baruch, etc., into
which divisions one inserts, as it were, what has to be learnt by heart,
and forms it into a succession of pictures. In this way when we repeat
it, we have not to say it from memory or out of our head, as we are
accustomed to do, but we have only to read it off as if from a table.
The only difficulty lies in making some ingenious connection between the
content in question and the picture; that gives rise to the most unholy
combinations, and the art is therefore not one to be commended. Bruno
also soon abandoned it, since what had been a matter of memory became a
matter of imagination; which was, of course, a descent. But since with
Bruno the diagram is not only a picture of external images, but a system
of universal determinations of thought, he certainly gave to this art a
deeper inward meaning.[81]
α. Bruno passes over to this art from universal ideas which are given.
Since namely one life, one understanding is in all things, Bruno had the
dim hope of apprehending this universal understanding in the totality
of its determinations, and of subsuming all things under it—of setting
up a logical philosophy by its means, and making it applicable in all
directions.[82] He says: The object of consideration therein is the
universe, in so far as it enters into the relation of the true, the
knowable and the rational. Like Spinoza he distinguishes between the
intelligible thing of reason and the actual thing: As metaphysics has for
object the universal thing, which is divided into substance and accident,
so the chief matter is that there is a single and more universal art
which knits together and compasses round the thing of reason and the
actual thing, and recognizes them both as harmonizing with one another,
so that the many, be they of what kind they may, are led back to simple
unity.[83]
β. For Bruno the principle in all this is the understanding generally:
None other than the understanding whose activity extends beyond itself,
which brings into existence the sensuous world. It is related to the
illumination of the spirit as the sun is related to the eye: it relates
therefore to a phenomenal manifold, illuminating this, not itself. The
Other is the active understanding in itself, which is related to the
objects of thought in their various classes, as the eye is to things
visible.[84] The infinite form, the active understanding which dwells
in reason, is the first, the principle, which develops; the process in
some respects resembles what was met with in the Neo-Platonists. Bruno’s
great endeavour is really now to apprehend and demonstrate the modes of
organizing this active understanding.
γ. This is presented more in detail as follows: To the pure truth itself,
the absolute light, man approaches only; his Being is not absolute Being
itself, which alone is the One and First. He rests only under the shadow
of the Idea, whose purity is the light, but which at the same time
partakes of the darkness. The light of substance emanates from this pure
First Light, the light of accident emanates from the light of substance.
This we met with also in Proclus (_supra_, Vol. II. p. 446) as the third
moment in the first triad. This absolute principle in its unity is for
Bruno the first matter, and the first act of this principle he names the
original light (_actus primus lucis_). But substances and accidents,
which are many, cannot receive the full light, they are therefore only
included in the shadow of the light; in like manner the ideas also are
only shadows thereof.[85] The development of Nature goes on from moment
to moment; created things are only a shadow of the first principle, not
the first principle itself.
δ. Bruno continues: From this super-essential (_super-essentiale_)—an
expression which is also met with in Proclus (_supra_, Vol. II. p.
441)—advance is made to the essences, from the essences to that which
is, from that which is to their traces, images and shadows, and that in
a double direction: both towards matter, in order to be produced within
her (these shadows are then present in natural fashion), and also towards
sensation and reason, in order to be known by means of these. Things
withdraw themselves from the First Light towards the darkness. But since
all things in the universe are in close connection, the lower with the
middle, and those with the upper, the compound with the simple, the
simple with those which are more simple, the material with the spiritual,
in order that there may be one universe, one order and government of the
same, one principle and aim, one first and last; so, following the sound
of the lyre of the universal Apollo (an expression which we saw used by
Heraclitus, Vol. I. pp. 284, 285), the lower can be led back step by
step to the higher, as fire was condensed and transformed into air, air
into water, water into earth. Thus One Being is in all. That process is
the same as this return, and they form a circle. Nature within her limits
can produce all from all, and so the understanding can also know all from
all.[86]
ε. The unity of opposites is explained more in detail as follows: The
diversity of shadows is no real opposition. In the same conception the
opposites are known, the beautiful and the ugly, the appropriate and the
inappropriate, the perfect and the imperfect, the good and the evil.
Imperfection, evil, ugliness, do not rest upon special ideas of their
own; they become known in another conception, not in one peculiar to
themselves, which is nothing. For this that is peculiarly theirs is
the non-existent in the existent, the defect in the effect. The first
understanding is the original light; it streams its light out of the
innermost to the outermost, and draws it again from the outermost to
itself. Every Being can, according to its capacity, appropriate somewhat
of this light.[87]
ζ. The real element in things is just that which is intelligible, not
that which is perceived or felt, or what is peculiar to the individual;
whatever else is termed real, the sensuous, is non-Being. All that
comes to pass beneath the sun, all that dwells in the region of matter,
falls under the notion of vanity (finitude). Seek to take from Ideas
a firm basis for thy conceptions, if thou art wise. The pure light of
things is nothing but this knowableness, which proceeds from the first
understanding and is directed towards it; the non-existent is not known.
What is here contrast and diversity, is in the first understanding
harmony and unity. Try therefore if thou canst identify the images thou
hast received, if thou canst harmonize and unite them; thus thou wilt not
render thy mind weary, thy thoughts obscure, and thy memory confused.
Through the idea which is in the understanding a better conception of
anything will be formed than by means of the form of the natural thing
in itself, because this last is more material: but that conception is
reached in a supreme degree through the idea of the object as it exists
in the divine understanding.[88] The differences which are here given,
are therefore no differences at all; but all is harmony. To develop this
was therefore Bruno’s endeavour; and the determinations, as natural in
that divine understanding, correspond with those which appear in the
subjective understanding. Bruno’s art consists only in determining the
universal scheme of form, which includes all things within itself, and in
showing how its moments express themselves in the different spheres of
existence.
η. The main endeavour of Bruno was thus to represent the All and
One, after the method of Lullus, as a system of classes of regular
determinations. Hence in the manner of Proclus he specifies the three
spheres: First, the original form (ὑπερουσία) as the originator of all
forms; secondly, the physical world, which impresses the traces of the
Ideas on the surface of matter, and multiplies the original picture in
countless mirrors set face to face; thirdly, the form of the rational
world, which individualizes numerically for the senses the shadows of the
Ideas, brings them into one, and raises them to general conceptions for
the understanding. The moments of the original form itself are termed
Being, goodness (nature or life), and unity. (Something similar to this
we also met with in Proclus, Vol. II. p. 445) In the metaphysical world
the original form is thing, good, principle of plurality (_ante multa_);
in the physical world it manifests itself in things, goods, individuals;
in the rational world of knowledge it is derived from things, goods and
individuals.[89] Unity is the agent that brings them back once more; and
Bruno, while distinguishing the natural and metaphysical world, seeks to
set up the system of the above determinations, in order to show at once
how the same thing is in one way a natural appearance, and in another way
an object existing for thought.
Since Bruno sought to apprehend this connection more closely, he
considers thinking as a subjective art and activity of the soul,
representing inwardly and in accordance with the ordinary conception, as
it were through an inward writing, what Nature represents externally, as
it were, through an outward writing. Thinking, he says, is the capability
both of receiving into one’s self this external writing of nature and
of imagining and substantiating the inward writing in the outward. This
art of thinking inwardly and organizing outwardly in accordance with the
same, and the capacity to reverse the process—an art possessed by the
soul of man—Bruno places in the closest connection with the art of the
nature of the universe, with the energy of the absolute World-principle,
by means of which all is formed and fashioned. It is one form which
develops; it is the same world-principle which causes form in metals,
plants and animals, and which in man thinks and organizes outside
himself, only that it expresses itself in its operations in an endlessly
varied manner throughout the entire world. Inwardly and outwardly there
is consequently one and the same development of one and the same
principle.[90]
In his _Ars Lulliana_ Bruno made the attempt to determine and systematize
these various writings of the soul, by means of which also the organizing
world-principle reveals itself. He assumes therein twelve principal
kinds of writing, or classes of natural forms, to form a starting-point:
“_Species, Formæ, Simulacra, Imagines, Spectra, Exemplaria, Indicia,
Signa, Notæ, Characteres et Sigilli_. Some kinds of writing are connected
with the external sense, like external forms, pictures and ideals
(_extrinseca forma, imago, exemplar_); these painting and other plastic
arts represent, by imitating Mother Nature. Some are connected with
the inner sense, where—with regard to mass, duration, number—they are
magnified, extended in time and multiplied; such are the products of
fancy. Some are connected with a common point of similarity in several
things; some are so divergent from the objective nature of things that
they are quite imaginary. Finally, some appear to be peculiar to art, as
_signa, notæ, characteres et sigilli_; by means of these the powers of
art are so great that it seems to be able to act independently of Nature,
beyond Nature, and, when the matter in question involves it, even against
Nature.”[91]
So far all, on the whole, goes well; it is the carrying out of the same
scheme in all directions. All respect is due to this attempt to represent
the logical system of the inward artist, the producing thought, in such
a way that the forms of external Nature correspond thereto. But while
the system of Bruno is otherwise a grand one, in it the determinations
of thought nevertheless at once become superficial, or mere dead types,
as in later times was the case with the classification of natural
philosophy; for Bruno merely enumerates the moments and contrasts of
the system, just as the natural philosophers developed the three-fold
character in every sphere, regarded as absolute. Further or more
determinate moments Bruno has done nothing more than collect together;
when he tries to represent them by figures and classifications, the
result is confusion. The twelve forms laid down as basis neither have
their derivation traced nor are they united in one entire system, nor
is the further multiplication deduced. To this part of his subject he
devoted several of his writings (_De sigillis_), and in different works
it is presented in different ways; the appearances of things are as
letters, or symbols, which correspond with thoughts. The idea is on the
whole praiseworthy compared with the fragmentariness of Aristotle and the
Scholastics, according to whom every determination is fixed once for all.
But the carrying out of the idea is in part allied with the Pythagorean
numbers, and consequently unmethodical and arbitrary; and in part we find
metaphorical, allegorical combinations and couplings, where we cannot
follow Bruno; in this attempt to introduce order, all things are mingled
together in the wildest disorder.
It is a great beginning, to have the thought of unity; and the other
point is this attempt to grasp the universe in its development, in the
system of its determinations, and to show how the outward appearance is a
symbol of ideas. These are the two aspects of Bruno’s teaching which had
to be taken into consideration.
4. VANINI.
Julius Cæsar Vanini has also to be mentioned as belonging to this
period; his first name was really Lucilius. He has many points of
similarity with Bruno, and, like him, he suffered as a martyr on account
of philosophy; for he shared Bruno’s fate, which was to be burned at
the stake. He was born in 1586 at Taurozano in the province of Naples.
He wandered from country to country; we find him in Geneva, and then
in Lyons, whence he fled to England in order to save himself from
the Inquisition. After two years he returned to Italy. In Genoa he
taught Natural Philosophy on the system of Averroës, but did not bring
himself into favour. In his travels he met with all manner of strange
adventures, and engaged in many and various disputations on philosophy
and theology. He became more and more an object of suspicion, and fled
from Paris; he was summoned before the tribunal on a charge of impiety,
not of heresy. Franconus, his accuser, stated on oath that Vanini had
uttered blasphemies. Vanini protested that he had remained faithful to
the Catholic Church, and to his belief in the Trinity; and in answer to
the charge of atheism he took up a straw from the ground in the presence
of his judges, and said that even this straw would convince him of
the existence of God. But it was of no avail; in 1619 at Toulouse in
France he was condemned to the stake, and before the carrying out of
this sentence his tongue was torn out by the executioner. How the case
was proved against him is not, however, clear; the proceedings seem to
have been in great part due to personal enmity, and to the zeal for
persecution which filled the clergy in Toulouse.[92]
Vanini derived his chief stimulus from the originality of Cardanus. In
him we see reason and philosophy taking a direction hostile to theology,
while Scholastic philosophy went hand in hand with theology, and theology
was supposed to be confirmed thereby. Art developed in the Catholic
Church, but free thought broke off from, and remained alien to it. In
Bruno and Vanini the Church took her revenge for this; she renounced
science, and took up a position of hostility to it.
Vanini’s philosophy does not go very far; he admires the living energy
of Nature; his reasonings were not deep, but were more of the nature of
fanciful ideas. He always chose the dialogue form; and it is not evident
which of the opinions stated are his own. He wrote commentaries on
Aristotle’s works on Physics. We have two other works by Vanini, which
are very rare. The one is styled: _Amphitheatrum æternæ providentiæ
divino-magicum, christiano-physicum, nec non astrologo-catholicum,
adversus veteres philosophos, Atheos, Epicureos, Peripateticos et
Stoicos. Auctore Julio Cæsare Vanino, Lugd. 1615_; in this he gives a
very eloquent account of all these philosophies and their principles, but
the manner in which he refutes them is rather feeble. The second work is
entitled “On the Wonderful Secrets of Nature, the Queen and Goddess of
Mortals” (_De admirandis Naturæ, reginæ Deæque mortalium, arcanis libr.
IV., Lutetiæ 1616_); it was printed “with the approval of the Sorbonne,”
which at first found in it nothing “which contradicted and was hostile
to the Catholic Apostolic and Roman religion.” It contains scientific
investigations into various matters belonging to physics and natural
history, and is also in dialogue form, without definite indication being
given as to which of the characters is made the mouthpiece of Vanini’s
own opinions. What one finds is assurances from him that he would believe
this or that doctrine if he had not received Christian teaching. Vanini’s
tendency, however, was towards naturalism; he showed that it is Nature
that is the Deity, that all things had a mechanical genesis. He therefore
explained the whole universe in its connection by efficient causes alone,
not by final causes; but the statement of this is made in such a way
that the writer does not give it as his own conclusion.[93]
Thus Vanini placed reason in opposition to faith and church dogma, as
had already been done by Pomponatius (_supra_, p. 111) and others.
Yet all the time that they were proving by reason this or that dogma
which is in direct contradiction to the Christian belief, they were
declaring that they submitted their conviction to the Church—a course
which was always adopted by Bayle afterwards in the reformed church.
Another practice of these philosophers was to bring forward all sorts of
arguments and theories contradictory of theological dogmas, as so many
insoluble difficulties and contradictions brought about by reason, which
were, however, by them submitted to faith. Thus, for instance, Bayle
says in the article “Manichæans” found in his critical _Dictionnaire_—in
which he touches on many philosophic conceptions—that the assertion of
the existence of two principles cannot be disproved, but that we must
submit herein to the Church. In this fashion all possible arguments
were advanced against the Church. Vanini thus states objections against
the Atonement, and brings forward arguments to prove that Nature is
God. Now men were convinced that reason could not be contradictory of
the Christian dogmas, and no faith was placed in the sincerity of a
submission which consisted in giving up what one was convinced of by
reason; therefore Galileo, because he defended the system of Copernicus,
had to recant on his knees, and Vanini was burned at the stake. Both of
them had in vain chosen the dialogue form for their writings.
Vanini certainly made one of the speakers in the Dialogues prove (_De
naturæ arcanis_, p. 420) even “out of the text of the Bible, that the
devil is mightier than God,” and that therefore God does not rule the
world. Among his arguments are the following: It was against the will
of God that Adam and Eve sinned, and thus brought the whole human race
to ruin (_ad interitum_): Christ also was crucified by the powers of
darkness. Moreover it is the will of God that all men should be saved.
But of Catholics there are very few in comparison with the rest of the
world, and the Jews often fell away from their faith; the Catholic
religion extends only over Spain, France, Italy, Poland and a part of
Germany. If there were to be deducted also the atheists, blasphemers,
heretics, whoremongers, adulterers, and so on, there would be still fewer
left. Consequently the devil is mightier than God. These are arguments
of reason; they are not to be refuted; but he submitted himself to the
faith. It is remarkable that no one believed this of him; the reason
thereof being that it was impossible for him to be in earnest with the
refutation of what he asserted to be rational. That the refutation was
but weak and subjective does not justify anyone in doubting Vanini’s
sincerity; for poor reasons may be convincing for the subject, just as
the subject holds to his own rights in respect of objective matters. What
lies at the bottom of the proceedings against Vanini is this, that when a
man by means of his reason has come to perceive something which seems to
him incontrovertible, he cannot but adhere to these definite perceptions,
he cannot believe what is opposed to them. It is impossible to believe
that faith is stronger in him than this power of perception.
The Church in this way fell into the strange contradiction of condemning
Vanini, because he did not find her doctrines in accordance with reason,
and yet submitted himself to them; she thus appeared to demand—a demand
which she emphasized with the burning pile—not that her doctrines should
be considered above reason, but in accordance with it, and that reason
should have merely the formal function of explaining the content of
theology, without adding anything of her own. This susceptibility of the
Church is inconsistent, and entangled her in contradictions. For in
earlier times she certainly admitted that reason could not grasp what
was revealed, and that it was consequently a matter of little importance
to refute and solve by reason the objections which reason itself brought
forward. But as she now would not permit the contradiction of faith
and reason to be taken seriously, but burned Vanini at the stake as an
atheist for professing so to do, it was implied that the doctrine of the
Church cannot contradict reason, while man has yet to submit reason to
the Church.
There is kindled here the strife between so-called revelation and reason,
in which the latter emerges independently, and the former is separated
from it. Up to this time both were one, or the light of man was the
light of God; man had not a light of his own, but his light was held to
be the divine. The Scholastics had no knowledge having a content of its
own beyond the content of religion; philosophy remained entirely formal.
But now it came to have a content of its own, which was opposed to the
content of religion; or reason felt at least that it had its own content,
or was opposing the form of reasonableness to the immediate content of
the other.
This opposition had a different meaning in former times from what it
bears now-a-days; the earlier meaning is this, that faith is the doctrine
of Christianity, which is given as truth, and by which as truth man has
to remain. We have here faith in this content, and opposed to this stands
conviction by means of reason. But now this faith is transferred into the
thinking consciousness itself; it is a relation of self-consciousness
itself to the facts which it finds within itself, not to the objective
content of the doctrine. In respect to the earlier opposition a
distinction must be drawn in the objective creed; the one part of it is
the teaching of the Church as dogma, the teaching as to the nature of
God, that He is Three in One; to this pertains the appearing of God in
the world, in the flesh, the relation of man to this divine nature, His
holiness and divinity. That is the part which has to do with the eternal
verities, the part which is of absolute interest for men; this part is
in its content essentially speculative, and can be object only for the
speculative Notion. The other part, belief in which is also required, has
reference to other external conceptions, which are connected with that
content; to this pertains the whole extent of what belongs to history,
in the Old and New Testament as well as in the Church. A belief in all
this finite element may be demanded also. If a man, for instance, did
not believe in ghosts, he would be taken for a free-thinker, an atheist:
it would be just the same if a man did not believe that Adam in Paradise
ate of the forbidden fruit. Both parts are placed upon the one level; but
it tends to the destruction of Church and faith, when belief is demanded
for these parts alike. It is to the external conceptions that attention
has been chiefly directed by those who have been decried as opponents of
Christianity and as atheists, down to the time of Voltaire. When external
conceptions such as these are held to firmly, it is inevitable that
contradictions should be pointed out.
5. PETRUS RAMUS.
Pierre de la Ramée was born in 1515 in Vermandois, where his father
worked as a day-labourer. He early betook himself to Paris, in order
to satisfy his desire for learning: he was, however, obliged on two
occasions to leave it on account of the difficulty he experienced in
procuring a subsistence, before he obtained employment as a servant at
the _Collége de Navarre_. Here he found an opportunity of extending his
knowledge; he occupied himself with the Aristotelian philosophy and with
mathematics, and he distinguished himself in disputation by extraordinary
oratorical and dialectical readiness. In a disputation for obtaining the
degree of _magister_, he came publicly forward with a thesis that caused
a great sensation: “All that Aristotle taught is not true;” and the
honour fell to him. Having became _magister_, he attacked so bitterly and
violently the Aristotelian logic and dialectic, that the government took
notice of it. He was now accused of undermining by his anti-Aristotelian
opinions the foundations of religion and science; this accusation was
brought before the parliament of Paris by the enemies of Ramus, as a
criminal case. But because the parliament appeared disposed to act in a
judicial way, and seemed favourably inclined to Ramus, the complaint was
withdrawn, and brought before the council of the king. The latter decided
that Ramus should hold a disputation with his opponent Goveanus before a
special commission of five judges, two of whom Goveanus was to choose,
and two Ramus, while the king was to appoint the president; these judges
were to lay their opinion of the result before the king. The interest
of the public was intense, but the contest was conducted in the most
pedantic way. On the first day Ramus maintained that the Aristotelian
logic and dialectic were imperfect and faulty, because the _Organon_ did
not begin with a definition. The commission decided that a disputation or
a dissertation requires indeed a definition, but in dialectic it is not
necessary. On the second day Ramus criticized the Aristotelian logic for
its want of arrangement; this, he asserted, is essential. The majority
of the judges, consisting of the commissioner of the king and the two
nominees of the opponent Goveanus, now wished to annul the investigation
as far as it had gone, and to set to work in another way, since the
assertions of Ramus put them in a difficulty. He appealed to the king,
who, however, refused to hear him, and decided that the decision of
the judges should be considered final. Ramus was hence condemned, but
the other two took no share in the matter, and, indeed, resigned. The
decision was publicly placarded in all the streets of Paris, and sent
to all the academies of learning throughout Europe. Plays aimed against
Ramus were performed in the theatres, greatly to the delight of the
Aristotelians. The public generally took a very lively interest in such
disputes, and a number of contests of this kind had already taken place
on similar questions of the schools. For example, the professors in a
royal _Collége_ disputed with the theologians of the Sorbonne whether
_quidam_, _quisquis_, _quoniam_ should be said or _kidem_, _kiskis_,
_koniam_, and from this dispute a case before parliament arose, because
the doctors took away his benefice from a theologian who said _quisquis_.
Another hot and bitter controversy came before the magistrates as to
whether _ego amat_ was as correct as _ego amo_, and this dispute had
to be suppressed by them. Finally Ramus obtained a public educational
appointment, a professorship in Paris; but because he had become a
Huguenot he had to vacate this office several times in the internal
disquietude that prevailed; on one occasion he even went to travel in
Germany. On St. Bartholomew’s Eve in 1572, Ramus finally fell, murdered
through the instrumentality of his enemies; one of his colleagues who was
among his bitterest enemies, Charpentier, had engaged assassins for the
purpose, by whom Ramus was frightfully maltreated, and then thrown down
from an upper window.[94]
Ramus aroused great interest, more especially by his attacks on the
Aristotelian dialectic as it had hitherto existed, and he contributed
very greatly to the simplification of the formal nature of the rules
of dialectic. He is specially famed for his extreme hostility to the
scholastic logic, and for having set up in opposition to it a logic of
Ramus—an opposition which has spread so far that even in the history
of literature in Germany we find various factions of Ramists and
anti-Ramists and semi-Ramists mentioned.
There are many other remarkable men who come within this period and who
are usually mentioned in the history of Philosophy, such as Michael
of Montaigne, Charron, Macchiavelli, etc. The popular writings of
the first two contain pleasing, refined and spiritual thoughts on
human life, social relationships, the right and good. The efforts
of such men are counted as philosophy in as far as they have drawn
from their consciousness, from the sphere of human experience, from
observation, from what takes place in the world and in the heart. It
is in a philosophy of life that they have comprehended and imparted
such experiences; they are thus both entertaining and instructive. In
accordance with the principle on which they worked, they entirely forsook
the sources from which Scholastic knowledge had up to this time been
derived, and also the methods hitherto prevalent of acquiring it. But
because they do not make the question of highest interest to Philosophy
the object of their investigation, and do not reason from thought, they
do not properly belong to the history of Philosophy, but to general
culture and to the healthy human understanding. They have contributed
to man’s taking a greater interest in his own affairs, to his obtaining
confidence in himself; and this is their main service. Man has looked
within his heart again and given to it its proper value; then he has
restored to his own heart and understanding, to his faith, the essence of
the relationship of the individual to absolute existence. Although still
a divided heart, this division, this yearning, has become a disunion
within itself; and man feels this disunion within himself, and along with
that his rest in himself. But here we must notice a transition, with
which we are concerned, on account of the universal principle which in it
is known in a higher way and in its true authority.
C. THE REFORMATION.
It was in the Lutheran Reformation that the great revolution appeared,
as, after the eternal conflicts and the terrible discipline which the
stiff-necked Germanic character had undergone and which it had to
undergo, mind came to the consciousness of reconciliation with itself,
a reconciliation whose form required that it should be brought about
within the mind. From the Beyond man was thus called into the presence
of spirit, as earth and her bodily objects, human virtues and morality,
the individual heart and conscience, began to have some value to him. In
the church, if marriage was not held to be immoral, self-restraint and
celibacy were considered higher, but now marriage came to be looked on as
a divine institution. Then poverty was esteemed better than possession,
and to live on alms was considered higher than to support oneself
honestly by the work of one’s hands; now, however, it becomes known that
poverty is not the most moral life, for this last consists in living by
one’s work and taking pleasure in the fruits thereof. The blind obedience
by which human freedom was suppressed, was the third vow taken by the
monks, as against which freedom, like marriage and property, was now also
recognized as divine. Similarly on the side of knowledge man turned back
into himself from the Beyond of authority; and reason was recognized
as the absolutely universal, and hence as divine. Now it was perceived
that it is in the mind of man that religion must have its place, and
the whole process of salvation be gone through—that man’s salvation is
his own affair, and that by it he enters into relationship with his
conscience and into immediate connection with God, requiring no mediation
of priests having the so-called means of grace within their hands. There
is indeed a mediation present still by means of doctrine, perception, the
observation of self and of one’s actions; but that is a mediation without
a separating wall, while formerly a brazen wall of division was present
separating the laity from the church. It is thus the spirit of God that
must dwell within the heart of man, and this indwelling spirit must
operate in him.
Although Wycliffe, Huss, and Arnold of Brescia had started from
scholastic philosophy with similar ends in view, they did not possess
the character requisite to enable them modestly, and without any learned
scholastic convictions, to set aside everything but mind and spirit.
It was with Luther first of all that freedom of spirit began to exist
in embryo, and its form indicated that it would remain in embryo. This
beginning of the reconciliation of man with himself, whereby divinity
is brought into man’s actuality, is thus, at first principle alone. The
unfolding of this freedom and the self-reflecting grasp of the same was a
subsequent step, in the same way as was the working out of the Christian
doctrine in the Church in its time. The subjective thought and knowledge
of man, which enables him, being satisfied in his activity, to have joy
in his work and to consider his work as something both permissible and
justifiable—this value accorded to subjectivity now required a higher
confirmation, and the highest confirmation, in order to be made perfectly
legitimate, and even to become absolute duty; and to be able to receive
this confirmation it had to be taken in its purest form. The mere
subjectivity of man, the fact that he has a will, and with it directs
his actions this way or that, does not constitute any justification: for
else the barbarous will, which fulfils itself in subjective ends alone,
such as cannot subsist before reason, would be justified. If, further,
self-will obtains the form of universality, if its ends are conformable
to reason, and it is apprehended as the freedom of mankind, as legal
right which likewise belongs to others, there is therein only indeed
the element of permission, but still there is much in the end being
recognized as permitted, and not as absolutely sinful. Art and industry
receive through this principle new activity, since now their activity is
justified. But we always find the principle of personal spirituality and
independence at first limited to particular spheres of objects merely,
in accordance with its content. Not until this principle is known and
recognized in relation to the absolutely existent object, _i.e._ in
relation to God, and is likewise grasped in its perfect purity, free from
desires and finite ends, does it receive its highest confirmation, and
that is its sanctification through religion.
This, then, is the Lutheran faith, in accordance with which man stands
in a relation to God which involves his personal existence: that is, his
piety and the hope of his salvation and the like all demand that his
heart, his subjectivity, should be present in them. His feelings, his
faith, the inmost certainty of himself, in short, all that belongs to
him is laid claim to, and this alone can truly come under consideration:
man must himself repent from his heart and experience contrition; his
own heart must be filled with the Holy Ghost. Thus here the principle
of subjectivity, of pure relation to me personally, _i.e._ freedom,
is recognized, and not merely so, but it is clearly demanded that
in religious worship this alone should be considered. The highest
confirmation of the principle is that it alone has value in the eyes of
God, that faith and the subjection of the individual heart are alone
essential: in this way this principle of Christian freedom is first
presented and brought to a true consciousness. Thereby a place has been
set apart in the depths of man’s inmost nature, in which alone he is
at home with himself and at home with God; and with God alone is he
really himself, in the conscience he can be said to be at home with
himself. This sense of being at home should not be capable of being
destroyed through others; no one should presume to have a place therein.
All externality in relation to me is thereby banished, just as is the
externality of the Host; it is only in communion and faith that I stand
in relation to God. The distinction between the laity and the priests
is by it removed; there are no longer any laymen, for in religion each
by himself is enjoined to know personally what it is. Responsibility is
not to be avoided; good works without spiritual reality in them are no
longer of avail; there must be the heart which relates itself directly to
God without mediation, without the Virgin, and without the Saints.
This is the great principle—that all externality disappears in the
point of the absolute relation to God; along with this externality,
this estrangement of self, all servitude has also disappeared. With
it is connected our ceasing to tolerate prayer in foreign tongues, or
to study the sciences in such. In speech man is productive; it is the
first externality that he gives himself, the simplest form of existence
which he reaches in consciousness. What man represents to himself, he
inwardly places before himself as spoken. This first form is broken
up and rendered foreign if man is in an alien tongue to express or
conceive to himself what concerns his highest interest. This breach with
the first entrance into consciousness is accordingly removed; to have
one’s own right to speak and think in one’s own language really belongs
to liberty. This is of infinite importance, and without this form of
being-at-home-with-self subjective freedom could not have existed; Luther
could not have accomplished his Reformation without translating the
Bible into German. Now the principle of subjectivity has thus become a
moment in religion itself, and in this way it has received its absolute
recognition, and has been grasped as a whole in the form in which it can
only be a moment in religion. The injunction to worship God in spirit
is now fulfilled. Spirit, however, is merely conditioned by the free
spirituality of the subject. For it is this alone which can be related
to spirit; a subject who is not free does not stand in an attitude
of spirituality, does not worship God in spirit. This is the general
signification of the principle.
Now this principle was at first grasped in relation to religious objects
only, and thereby it has indeed received its absolute justification,
but still it has not been extended to the further development of the
subjective principle itself. Yet in so far as man has come to the
consciousness of being reconciled to himself, and of only being able to
reconcile himself in his personal existence, he has in his actuality
likewise attained another form. The otherwise hearty and vigorous man may
also, in as far as he enjoys, do so with a good conscience; the enjoyment
of life for its own sake is no longer regarded as something which is to
be given up, for monkish renunciation is renounced. But to any other
content the principle did not at first extend. Yet further, the religious
content has more specially been apprehended as concrete, as it is for
the recollection, and into this spiritual freedom the beginning and the
possibility of an unspiritual mode of regarding things has thus entered.
The content of the _Credo_, speculative as it is in itself, has, that is
to say, an historical side. Within this barren form the old faith of the
church has been admitted and allowed to exist, so that in this form it
has to be regarded by the subject as the highest truth. The result then
follows that all development of the dogmatic content in a speculative
manner is quite set aside. What was required is man’s inward assurance of
his deliverance, of his salvation—the relation of the subjective spirit
to the absolute, the form of subjectivity as aspiration, repentance,
conversion. This new principle has been laid down as paramount, so
that the content of truth is clearly of importance; but the teaching
respecting the nature and the process of God is grasped in the form in
which it at first appears for the ordinary conception. Not only have all
this finality, externality, unspirituality, this formalism of scholastic
philosophy, been on the one hand discarded, and with justice, but, on
the other, the philosophic development of the doctrines of the church
has been also set aside, and this is done in connection with the very
fact that the subject is immersed in his own heart. This immersion, his
penitence, contrition, conversion, this occupation of the subject with
himself, has become the moment of first importance; but the subject has
not immersed himself in the content, and the earlier immersion of spirit
therein has also been rejected. Even to this present day we shall find
in the Catholic Church and in her dogmas the echoes, and so to speak
the heritage of the philosophy of the Alexandrian school; in it there
is much more that is philosophic and speculative than in the dogmatism
of Protestantism, even if there is still in this an objective element,
and if it has not been made perfectly barren, as though the content were
really retained only in the form of history. The connection of Philosophy
with the theology of the Middle Ages has thus in the Catholic Church
been retained in its essentials; in Protestantism, on the contrary, the
subjective religious principle has been separated from Philosophy, and
it is only in Philosophy that it has arisen in its true form again. In
this principle the religious content of the Christian Church is thus
retained, and it obtains its confirmation through the testimony of spirit
that this content shall only hold good for me in as far as it makes
its influence felt in my conscience and heart. This is the meaning of
the words: “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine
whether it be of God.” The criterion of truth is how it is confirmed in
my heart; the fact that I judge and know rightly—or that what I hold
to be true is the truth—must be revealed to my heart. Truth is what it
is in _my_ mind; and, on the other hand, my spirit is only then in its
proper attitude to truth when truth is within it, when the spirit and
its content are related thus. One cannot be isolated from the other.
The content has not thus the confirmation in itself which was given to
it by philosophical theology in the fact that the speculative Idea made
itself therein effectual; neither has it the historic confirmation which
is given to a content in so far as it has an outward and historic side
in which historic witnesses are heard in evidence, and in which its
correctness is determined by their testimony. The doctrine has to prove
itself by the condition of my heart, by penitence, conversion and joy
in God. In doctrine we begin with the external content, and thus it is
external only; but taken thus, independently of the state of my mind,
it properly speaking has no significance. Now this beginning is, as
Christian baptism and education, a working upon the nature in addition to
an acquaintance with externals. The truth of the gospel and of Christian
doctrines only, however, exists in true relation to the same; it is
really so to speak a use of the content to make it educative. And this is
just what has been said, that the nature is reconstructed and sanctified
in itself, and it is this sanctification for which the content is a true
one. No further use can be made of the content than to build up and
edify the mind, and awaken it to assurance, joy, penitence, conversion.
Another and wrong relation to the content is to take it in an external
way, _e.g._ according to the great new principle of exegesis, and to
treat the writings of the New Testament like those of a Greek, Latin or
other author, critically, philologically, historically. Spirit is alone
in true relation to spirit; and it is a wrong beginning of a wooden and
unyielding exegesis to prove in such an external and philological way
the truth of the Christian religion. This has been done by orthodoxy,
which thereby renders the content devoid of spirituality. This, then, is
the first relation of spirit to this content; here the content is indeed
essential, but it is as essential that the holy and sanctifying spirit
should bear a relation to it.
This spirit is, however, in the second place really thinking spirit
likewise. Thought as such must also develop itself therein, and that
really as this form of inmost unity of spirit with itself; thought
must come to the distinction and contemplation of this content, and
pass over into this form of the purest unity of spirit with itself. At
first thought, however, reveals itself as abstract thought alone, and
it possesses as such a relation to theology and religion. The content
which is here in question, even in so far as it is historic merely and
externally accepted, must yet be religious; the unfolding of the nature
of God must be present therein. In this we have the further demand
that the thought for which the inward nature of God is, should also
set itself in relation to this content. But inasmuch as thought is at
first understanding and the metaphysic of the understanding, it will
remove from the content the rational Idea and make it so empty that only
external history remains, which is devoid of interest.
The third position arrived at is that of concrete speculative thought.
According to the standpoint which has just been given, and as religious
feeling and its form are here determined, all speculative content as
such, as well as its developments, are at first rejected. And as for the
enrichment of the Christian conceptions through the treasures of the
philosophy of the ancient world, and through the profound ideas of all
earlier oriental religions, and the like,—all this is set aside. The
content had objectivity; but this merely signified that the objective
content, without subsisting for itself, was to constitute the beginning
only, on which the mind had spiritually to build up and sanctify itself.
All the enrichment of the content whereby it became philosophic, is thus
abandoned, and what follows later simply is that the mind, as thinking,
again immerses itself in itself, in order to be concrete and rational.
What forms the basis of the Reformation is the abstract moment of a mind
being within self, of freedom, of coming to self; freedom signifies the
life of the spirit in being turned back within itself in the particular
content which appears as another; while spirit is not free if it allows
this other-being, either unassimilated or dead, to exist in it as
something foreign. In as far as spirit now goes on to knowledge, to
spiritual determinations, and as it looks around and comes forth as a
content, so far will it conduct itself therein as in its own domain,
as in its concrete world, so to speak—and it will there really assert
and possess its own. This concrete form of knowledge which, however, in
the beginning remains but dim, we have now to consider, and it forms
the third period of our treatise, into which we properly step with the
Reformation, although Bruno, Vanini and Ramus, who lived later, still
belong to the Middle Ages.
PART THREE
MODERN PHILOSOPHY
INTRODUCTION
If we cast a glance back over the period just traversed, we find that
in it a turning-point had been reached, that the Christian religion
had placed its absolute content in the mind and will of man, and that
it was thus, as a divine and supersensuous content, separated from the
world and shut up within itself in the centre-point of the individual.
Over against the religious life an external world stood as a natural
world—a world of heart or feeling, of desire, of human nature—which
had value only in as far as it was overcome. This mutual independence
of the two worlds had much attention bestowed on it throughout the
Middle Ages; the opposition was attacked on all quarters and in the end
overcome. But since the relation of mankind to the divine life exists
upon earth, this conquest at first presented the appearance of bringing
with it the destruction of the church and of the eternal through the
sensuous desires of man. The eternal truth was likewise grafted upon the
dry, formal understanding, so that we might say that the separation of
self-consciousness has in itself disappeared, and thereby a possibility
has been given of obtaining reconciliation. But because this implicit
union of the Beyond and the Here was of so unsatisfactory a nature that
the better feelings were aroused and forced to turn against it, the
Reformation made its appearance, partly, no doubt, as a separation from
the Catholic Church, but partly as a reformation from within. There
is a mistaken idea that the Reformation only effected a separation
from the Catholic Church; Luther just as truly reformed the Catholic
Church, the corruption of which one learns from his writings, and from
the reports of the emperors and of the empire to the Pope; if further
evidence be required, we need only read the accounts given even by the
Catholic bishops, the Fathers of the councils at Constance, Basle, &c.,
of the condition of the Catholic priesthood and of the Roman Court. The
principle of the inward reconciliation of spirit, which was in itself the
very Idea of Christianity, was thus again estranged, and appeared as a
condition of external, unreconciled alienation and discord; this gives
us an example of the slow operation of the world-spirit in overcoming
this externality. It eats away the inward substance, but the appearance,
the outward form, still remains; at the end, however, it is an empty
shell, the new form breaks forth. In such times this spirit appears as
if it—having so far proceeded in its development at a snail’s pace, and
having even retrograded and become estranged from itself—had suddenly
adopted seven-leagued boots.
Since thus the reconciliation of self-consciousness with the present is
implicitly accomplished, man has attained to confidence in himself and
in his thought, in sensuous nature outside of and within him; he has
discovered an interest and pleasure in making discoveries both in nature
and the arts. In the affairs of this world the understanding developed;
man became conscious of his will and his achievements, took pleasure
in the earth and its soil, as also in his occupations, because right
and understanding were there present. With the discovery of gunpowder
the individual passion of battle was lost. The romantic impulse towards
a casual kind of bravery passed into other adventures, not of hate or
revenge, or the so-called deliverance from what men considered the
wrongs of innocence, but more harmless adventures, the exploration of the
earth, or the discovery of the passage to the East Indies. America was
discovered, its treasures and people—nature, man himself; navigation was
the higher romance of commerce. The present world was again present to
man as worthy of the interests of mind; thinking mind was again capable
of action. Now the Reformation of Luther had inevitably to come—the
appeal to the _sensus communis_ which does not recognize the authority of
the Fathers or of Aristotle, but only the inward personal spirit which
quickens and animates, in contradistinction to works. In this way the
Church lost her power against it, for her principle was within it and no
longer lacking to it. To the finite and present due honour is accorded;
from this honour the work of science proceeds. We thus see that the
finite, the inward and outward present, becomes a matter of experience,
and through the understanding is elevated into universality; men desire
to understand laws and forces, _i.e._ to transform the individual of
perceptions into the form of universality. Worldly matters demand to be
judged of in a worldly way; the judge is thinking understanding. The
other side is that the eternal, which is in and for itself true, is also
known and comprehended through the pure heart itself; the individual mind
appropriates to itself the eternal. This is the Lutheran faith without
any other accessories—works, as they were called. Everything had value
only as it was grasped by the heart, and not as a mere thing. The content
ceases to be an objective thing; God is thus in spirit alone, He is not a
beyond but the truest reality of the individual.
Pure thought is likewise one form of inwardness; it also approaches
absolute existence and finds itself justified in apprehending the same.
The philosophy of modern times proceeds from the principle which ancient
philosophy had reached, the standpoint of actual self-consciousness—it
has as principle the spirit that is present to itself; it brings the
standpoint of the Middle Ages, the diversity between what is thought
and the existent universe, into opposition, and it has to do with the
dissolution of this same opposition. The main interest hence is, not so
much the thinking of the objects in their truth, as the thinking and
understanding of the objects, the thinking this unity itself, which is
really the being conscious of a presupposed object. The getting rid of
the formal culture of the logical understanding and the monstrosities
of which it was composed, was more essential than the extension of it:
investigation in such a case becomes dissipated and diffused, and passes
into the false infinite. The general points of view which in modern
philosophy we reach are hence somewhat as follows:—
1. The concrete form of thought which we have here to consider on its own
account, really appears as subjective with the reflection of implicitude,
so that this has an antithesis in existence; and the interest is then
altogether found in grasping the reconciliation of this opposition in its
highest existence, _i.e._ in the most abstract extremes. This highest
severance is the opposition between thought and Being, the comprehending
of whose unity from this time forward constitutes the interest of all
philosophies. Here thought is more independent, and thus we now abandon
its unity with theology; it separates itself therefrom, just as with the
Greeks it separated itself from mythology, the popular religion, and did
not until the time of the Alexandrians seek out these forms again and
fill the mythological conceptions with the form of thought. The bond
remains, but for this reason it is clearly implicit: theology throughout
is merely what philosophy is, for this last is simply thought respecting
it. It does not help theology to strive against philosophy, or to say
that it wishes to know nothing about it, and that philosophic maxims
are thus to be set aside. It has always to do with the thought that it
brings along with it, and these its subjective conceptions, its home and
private metaphysics, are thus frequently a quite uncultured, uncritical
thought—the thought of the street. These general conceptions are, indeed,
connected with particular subjective conviction, and this last is said to
prove the Christian content to be true in a sense all its own; but these
thoughts which constitute the criterion are merely the reflections and
opinions which float about the surface of the time. Thus, when thought
comes forth on its own account, we thereby separate ourselves from
theology; we shall, however, consider one other in whom both are still
in unity. This individual is Jacob Boehme, for since mind now moves in
its own domains, it is found partly in the natural and finite world, and
partly in the inward, and this at first is the Christian.
While earlier than this, moreover, the spirit, distracted by outward
things, had to make its influence felt in religion and in the secular
life, and came to be known in the popular philosophy so-called, it
was only in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that the genuine
Philosophy re-appeared, which seeks to grasp the truth as truth because
man in thought is infinitely free to comprehend himself and nature, and
along with that seeks to understand the present of rationality, reality,
universal law itself. For this is ours, since it is subjectivity. The
principle of modern philosophy is hence not a free and natural thought,
because it has the opposition of thought and nature before it as a
fact of which it is conscious. Spirit and nature, thought and Being,
are the two infinite sides of the Idea, which can for the first time
truly make its appearance when its sides are grasped for themselves in
their abstraction and totality. Plato comprehended it as the bond, as
limiting and as infinite, as one and many, simple and diverse, but not as
thought and Being; when we first thinkingly overcome this opposition it
signifies comprehending the unity. This is the standpoint of philosophic
consciousness generally; but the way in which this unity must be
thinkingly developed is a double one. Philosophy hence falls into the two
main forms in which the opposition is resolved, into a realistic and an
idealistic system of philosophy, _i.e._ into one which makes objectivity
and the content of thought to arise from the perceptions, and one which
proceeds to truth from the independence of thought.
a. Experience constitutes the first of these methods, viz. Realism.
Philosophy now signified, or had as its main attribute, self-thought and
the acceptance of the present as that in which truth lay, and which was
thereby knowable. All that is speculative is pared and smoothed down in
order to bring it under experience. This present is the existent external
nature, and spiritual activity as the political world and as subjective
activity. The way to truth was to begin from this hypothesis, but not to
remain with it in its external self-isolating actuality, but to lead it
to the universal.
α. The activities of that first method operate, to begin with, on
physical nature, from the observation of which men derive universal
laws, and on this basis their knowledge is founded; the science of
nature, however, only reaches to the stage of reflection. This kind of
experimental physics was once called, and is still called philosophy,
as Newton’s _Principia philosophiæ naturalis_ (Vol. I. p. 59) show.
This work is one in which the methods of the finite sciences through
observation and deduction are alone present—those sciences which the
French still call the _sciences exactes_. To this, the understanding
of the individual, piety was opposed, and hence in this respect
philosophy was termed worldly wisdom (Vol. I. p. 60). Here the Idea in
its infinitude is not itself the object of knowledge; but a determinate
content is raised into the universal, or this last in its determinateness
for the understanding is derived from observation, just as is, for
instance, done in Keppler’s Laws. In Scholastic philosophy, on the
other hand, man’s power of observation was set aside, and disputations
respecting nature at that time proceeded from abstruse hypotheses.
β. In the second place, the spiritual was observed as in its realization
it constitutes the spiritual world of states, in order thus to
investigate from experience the rights of individuals as regards one
another, and as regards rulers, and the rights of states against states.
Before this popes anointed kings, just as was done in Old Testament
times to those appointed by God; it was in the Old Testament that the
tithe was commanded; the forbidden degrees of relationship in marriage
were also adopted from the Mosaic laws. What was right and permissible
for kings was demonstrated from Saul’s and David’s histories, the rights
of priesthood from Samuel—in short, the Old Testament was the source of
all the principles of public law, and it is in this way even now that
all papal bulls have their deliverances confirmed. It may easily be
conceived how much nonsense was in this manner concocted. Now, however,
right was sought for in man himself, and in history, and what had been
accounted right both in peace and in war was explained. In this way books
were composed which even now are constantly quoted in the Parliament of
England. Men further observed the desires which could be satisfied in
the state and the manner in which satisfaction could be given to them,
in order thus from man himself, from man of the past as well as of the
present, to learn what is right.
b. The second method, that of Idealism, proceeds from what is inward;
according to it everything is in thought, mind itself is all content.
Here the Idea itself is made the object; that signifies the thinking
it and from it proceeding to the determinate. What Realism draws from
experience is now derived from thought _à priori_; or the determinate is
also comprehended but not led back to the universal merely, but to the
Idea.
The two methods overlap one another, however, because experience on its
side desires to derive universal laws from observations, while, on the
other side, thought proceeding from abstract universality must still give
itself a determinate content; thus _a priori_ and _a posteriori_ methods
are mingled. In France abstract universality was the more predominant;
from England experience took its rise, and even now it is there held in
the greatest respect; Germany proceeded from the concrete Idea, from the
inwardness of mind and spirit.
2. The questions of present philosophy, the opposites, the content which
occupies the attention of these modern times, are as follows:—
a. The first form of the opposition which we have already touched upon in
the Middle Ages is the Idea of God and His Being, and the task imposed is
to deduce the existence of God, as pure spirit, from thought. Both sides
must be comprehended through thought as absolute unity; the extremest
opposition is apprehended as gathered into one unity. Other subjects
which engage our attention are connected with the same general aim,
namely, the bringing about of the inward reconciliation in the opposition
which exists between knowledge and its object.
b. The second form of opposition is that of Good and Evil—the opposition
of the assertion of independent will to the positive and universal; the
origin of evil must be known. Evil is plainly the “other,” the negation
of God as Holiness; because He is, because He is wise, good, and at the
same time almighty, evil is contradictory to Him; an endeavour is made to
reconcile this contradiction.
c. The third form of opposition is that of the freedom of man and
necessity.
α. The individual is clearly not determined in any other way than from
himself, he is the absolute beginning of determination; in the ‘I,’
in the self, a power of decision is clearly to be found. This freedom
is in opposition to the theory that God alone is really absolutely
determining. Further, when that which happens is in futurity, the
determining of it through God is regarded as Providence and the
fore-knowledge of God. In this, however, a new contradiction is involved,
inasmuch as because God’s knowledge is not merely subjective, that which
God knows likewise is.
β. Further still, human freedom is in opposition to necessity as the
determinateness of nature; man is dependent on nature, and the external
as well as the inward nature of man is his necessity as against his
freedom.
γ. Considered objectively, this opposition is that between final causes
and efficient causes, _i.e._ between the acts of freedom and the acts of
necessity.
δ. This opposition between the freedom of man and natural necessity has
finally likewise the further form of community of soul and body, of
_commercium animi cum corpore_, as it has been called, wherein the soul
appears as the simple, ideal, and free, and the body as the manifold,
material and necessary.
These matters occupy the attention of science, and they are of a
completely different nature from the interests of ancient philosophy.
The difference is this, that here there is a consciousness of an
opposition, which is certainly likewise contained in the subjects with
which the learning of the ancients was occupied, but which had not come
to consciousness. This consciousness of the opposition, this ‘Fall,’ is
the main point of interest in the conception of the Christian religion.
The bringing about in thought of the reconciliation which is accepted in
belief, now constitutes the whole interest of knowledge. Implicitly it
has come to pass; for knowledge considers itself qualified to bring about
in itself this recognition of the reconciliation. The philosophic systems
are therefore no more than modes of this absolute unity, and only the
concrete unity of those opposites is the truth.
3. As regards the stages which were reached in the progress of this
knowledge we have to mention three of the principal.
a. First of all we find the union of those opposites stated; and to prove
it genuine attempts are made, though not yet determined in purity.
b. The second stage is the metaphysical union; and here, with Descartes,
the philosophy of modern times as abstract thought properly speaking
begins.
α. Thinking understanding seeks to bring to pass the union, inasmuch as
it investigates with its pure thought-determinations; this is in the
first place the standpoint of metaphysics as such.
β. In the second place, we have to consider negation, the destruction of
this metaphysics—the attempt to consider knowledge on its own account,
and the determinations which proceed from it.
c. The third stage is that this union itself which is to be brought
about, and which is the only subject of interest, comes to consciousness
and becomes an object. As principle the union has the form of the
relationship of knowledge to the content, and thus this question has been
put: ‘How is, and how can thought be identical with the objective?’ With
this the inward element which lies at the basis of this metaphysic is
raised into explicitude and made an object; and this includes all modern
philosophy in its range.
4. In respect to the external history and the lives of the philosophers,
it will strike us that from this time on, these appear to be very
different from those of the philosophers of ancient times, whom we
regarded as self-sufficing individualities. It is required that a
philosopher should live as he teaches, that he should despise the
world and not enter into connection with it; this the ancients have
accomplished, and they are such plastic individualities just because the
inward spiritual aim of philosophy has likewise frequently determined
their external relations and conditions. The object of their knowledge
was to take a thoughtful view of the universe; they kept the external
connection with the world all the further removed from themselves
because they did not greatly approve of much therein present; or, at
least, it ever proceeds on its way, according to its own particular
laws, on which the individual is dependent. The individual likewise
participates in the present interests of external life, in order to
satisfy his personal ends, and through them to attain to honour, wealth,
respect, and distinction; the ancient philosophers, however, because
they remained in the Idea, did not concern themselves with things that
were not the objects of their thought. Hence with the Greeks and Romans
the philosophers lived in an independent fashion peculiar to themselves,
and in an external mode of life which appeared suitable to and worthy of
the science they professed; they conducted themselves independently as
private persons, unfettered by outside trammels, and they may be compared
to the monks who renounced all temporal goods.
In the Middle Ages it was chiefly the clergy, doctors of theology,
who occupied themselves with philosophy. In the transition period the
philosophers showed themselves to be in an inward warfare with themselves
and in an external warfare with their surroundings, and their lives were
spent in a wild, unsettled fashion.
In modern times things are very different; now we no longer see
philosophic individuals who constitute a class by themselves. With the
present day all difference has disappeared; philosophers are not monks,
for we find them generally in connection with the world, participating
with others in some common work or calling. They live, not independently,
but in the relation of citizens, or they occupy public offices and take
part in the life of the state. Certainly they may be private persons,
but if so, their position as such does not in any way isolate them from
their other relationships. They are involved in present conditions, in
the world and its work and progress. Thus their philosophy is only by
the way, a sort of luxury and superfluity. This difference is really
to be found in the manner in which outward conditions have taken shape
after the building up of the inward world of religion. In modern times,
namely, on account of the reconciliation of the worldly principle with
itself, the external world is at rest, is brought into order—worldly
relationships, conditions, modes of life, have become constituted and
organized in a manner which is conformable to nature and rational. We
see a universal, comprehensible connection, and with that individuality
likewise attains another character and nature, for it is no longer the
plastic individuality of the ancients. This connection is of such power
that every individuality is under its dominion, and yet at the same time
can construct for itself an inward world. The external has thus been
reconciled with itself in such a way that both inward and outward may be
self-sufficing and remain independent of one another; and the individual
is in the condition of being able to leave his external side to external
order, while in the case of those plastic forms the external could only
be determined entirely from within. Now, on the contrary, with the
higher degree of strength attained by the inward side of the individual,
he may hand the external over to chance; just as he leaves clothing to
the contingencies of fashion, not considering it worth while to exert
his understanding upon it. The external he leaves to be determined by
the order which is present in the particular sphere in which his lot is
cast. The circumstances of life are, in the true sense, private affairs,
determined by outward conditions, and do not contain anything worthy of
our notice. Life becomes scholarly, uniform, commonplace, it connects
itself with outwardly given relationships and cannot represent or set
itself forth as a form pertaining only to itself. Man must not take up
the character of showing himself an independent form, and giving himself
a position in the world created by himself. Because the objective power
of external relationships is infinitely great, and for that reason
the way in which I perforce am placed in them has become a matter of
indifference to me, personality and the individual life generally
are equally indifferent. A philosopher, it is said, should live as a
philosopher, _i.e._, should be independent of the external relationships
of the world, and should give up occupying himself with and troubling
himself concerning them. But thus circumscribed in respect of all
necessities, more especially of culture, no one can suffice for himself;
he must seek to act in connection with others. The modern world is this
essential power of connection, and it implies the fact that it is clearly
necessary for the individual to enter into these relations of external
existence; only a common mode of existence is possible in any calling
or condition, and to this Spinoza forms the solitary exception. Thus in
earlier times bravery was individual; while modern bravery consists in
each not acting after his own fashion, but relying on his connection with
others—and this constitutes his whole merit. The calling of philosopher
is not, like that of the monks, an organized condition. Members of
academies of learning are no doubt organized in part, but even a special
calling like theirs sinks into the ordinary commonplace of state or class
relationships, because admission thereinto is outwardly determined. The
real matter is to remain faithful to one’s aims.
SECTION ONE
MODERN PHILOSOPHY IN ITS FIRST STATEMENT
The first two philosophers whom we have to consider are Bacon and
Boehme; there is as complete a disparity between these individuals as
between their systems of philosophy. None the less both agree that mind
operates in the content of its knowledge as in its own domain, and
this consequently appears as concrete Being. This domain in Bacon is
the finite, natural world; in Boehme it is the inward, mystical, godly
Christian life and existence; for the former starts from experience and
induction, the latter from God and the pantheism of the Trinity.
A. BACON.
There was already being accomplished the abandonment of the content
which lies beyond us, and which through its form has lost the merit
it possessed of being true, and is become of no significance to
self-consciousness or the certainty of self and of its actuality; this
we see for the first time consciously expressed, though not as yet in a
very perfect form, by Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Albans.
He is therefore instanced as in the fore-front of all this empirical
philosophy, and even now our countrymen like to adorn their works with
sententious sayings culled from him. Baconian philosophy thus usually
means a philosophy which is founded on the observation of the external
or spiritual nature of man in his inclinations, desires, rational
and judicial qualities. From these conclusions are drawn, and general
conceptions, laws pertaining to this domain, are thus discovered. Bacon
has entirely set aside and rejected the scholastic method of reasoning
from remote abstractions and being blind to what lies before one’s eyes.
He takes as his standpoint the sensuous manifestation as it appears to
the cultured man, as the latter reflects upon it; and this is conformable
to the principle of accepting the finite and worldly as such.
Bacon was born in London in 1561. His progenitors and relatives held
high office in the state, and his father was Keeper of the Great Seal
to Queen Elizabeth. He in his turn, having been educated to follow the
same vocation, at once devoted himself to the business of the state, and
entered upon an important career. He early displayed great talent, and
at the age of nineteen he produced a work on the condition of Europe
(_De statu Europæ_). Bacon in his youth attached himself to the Earl of
Essex, the favourite of Elizabeth, through whose support he, who as a
younger son had to see his paternal estate pass to his elder brother,
soon attained to better circumstances, and was elevated to a higher
position. Bacon, however, sullied his fame by the utmost ingratitude
and faithlessness towards his protector; for he is accused of having
been prevailed upon by the enemies of the Earl after his fall to charge
him publicly with High Treason. Under James I., the father of Charles
I. who was beheaded, a weak man, to whom he recommended himself by his
work _De augmentis scientiarum_, he received the most honourable offices
of state by attaching himself to Buckingham: he was made Keeper of the
Great Seal, Lord Chancellor of England, Baron Verulam. He likewise made a
rich marriage, though he soon squandered all his means, and high though
his position was, he stooped to intrigues and was guilty of accepting
bribes in the most barefaced manner. Thereby he brought upon himself the
ill-will both of people and of nobles, so that he was prosecuted, and
his case was tried before Parliament. He was fined 40,000_l._, thrown
into the Tower, and his name was struck out of the list of peers; during
the trial and while he was in prison he showed the greatest weakness of
character. He was, however, liberated from prison, and his trial was
annulled, owing to the even greater hatred of the king and his minister
Buckingham, under whose administration Bacon had filled these offices,
and whose victim he appeared to have been; for he fell earlier than his
comrade Buckingham, and was deserted and condemned by him. It was not
so much his innocence as the fact that those who ruined him had made
themselves hated to an equal degree through their rule, that caused the
hatred and indignation against Bacon to be somewhat mitigated. But he
neither recovered his own sense of self-respect nor the personal esteem
of others, which he had lost through his former conduct. He retired into
private life, lived in poverty, had to beg sustenance from the king,
occupied himself during the remainder of his life with science only, and
died in 1626.[95]
Since Bacon has ever been esteemed as the man who directed knowledge
to its true source, to experience, he is, in fact, the special leader
and representative of what is in England called Philosophy, and beyond
which the English have not yet advanced. For they appear to constitute
that people in Europe which, limited to the understanding of actuality,
is destined, like the class of shopkeepers and workmen in the State, to
live always immersed in matter, and to have actuality but not reason as
object. Bacon won great praise by showing how attention is to be paid
to the outward and inward manifestations of Nature, and the esteem in
which his name is thus held is greater than can be ascribed directly
to his merit. It has become the universal tendency of the time and of
the English mode of reasoning, to proceed from facts, and to judge in
accordance with them. Because Bacon gave expression to the tendency,
and men require to have a leader and originator for any particular
manner of thinking, he is credited with having given to knowledge this
impulse towards experimental philosophy generally. But many cultured men
have spoken and thought regarding what concerns and interests mankind,
regarding state affairs, mind, heart, external nature, &c., in accordance
with experience and in accordance with a cultured knowledge of the world.
Bacon was just such a cultured man of the world, who had seen life in
its great relations, had engaged in state affairs, had dealt practically
with actual life, had observed men, their circumstances and relations,
and had worked with them as cultured, reflecting, and, we may even say,
philosophical men of the world. He thus did not escape the corruption
of those who stood at the helm of the state. With all the depravity of
his character he was a man of mind and clear perception; he did not,
however, possess the power of reasoning through thoughts and notions
that are universal. We do not find in him a methodical or scientific
manner of regarding things, but only the external reasoning of a man of
the world. Knowledge of the world he possessed in the highest degree:
“rich imagination, powerful wit, and the penetrating wisdom which he
displays upon that most interesting of all subjects, commonly called
the world. This last appears to us to have been the characteristical
quality of Bacon’s genius.... It was men rather than things that he
had studied, the mistakes of philosophers rather than the errors of
philosophy. In fact he was no lover of abstract reasoning,” and although
it pertains to philosophy, we find as little as possible of it in him.
“His writings are indeed full of refined and most acute observations, but
it seldom requires any effort on our part to apprehend their wisdom.”
Hence mottoes are often derived from him. “His judgments,” however,
“are commonly given _ex cathedra_, or, if he endeavours to elucidate
them, it is by similes and illustrations and pointed animadversions
more than by direct and appropriate arguments. General reasoning is
absolutely essential in philosophy; the want of it is marked in Bacon’s
writings.”[96] His practical writings are specially interesting; but we
do not find the bright flashes of genius that we expected. As during
his career in the state he acted in accordance with practical utility,
he now, at its conclusion, likewise applied himself in a practical
way to scientific endeavours, and considered and treated the sciences
in accordance with concrete experience and investigation. His is a
consideration of the present, he makes the most of, and ascribes value to
it as it appears; the existent is thus regarded with open eyes, respect
is paid to it as to what reigns pre-eminent, and this sensuous perception
is reverenced and recognized. Here a confidence on the part of reason
in itself and in nature is awakened; it thinkingly applies itself to
nature, certain of finding the truth in it, since both are in themselves
harmonious.
Bacon likewise treated the sciences methodically; he did not merely
bring forward opinions and sentiments, he did not merely express himself
regarding the sciences dogmatically, as a fine gentleman might, but he
went into the matter closely, and established a method in respect of
scientific knowledge. It is only through this method of investigation
introduced by him that he is noteworthy—it is in that way alone that
he can be considered to belong to the history of the sciences and of
philosophy. And through this principle of methodical knowledge he has
likewise produced a great effect upon his times, by drawing attention
to what was lacking in the sciences, both in their methods and in
their content. He set forth the general principles of procedure in
an empirical philosophy. The spirit of the philosophy of Bacon is to
take experience as the true and only source of knowledge, and then to
regulate the thought concerning it. Knowledge from experience stands
in opposition to knowledge arising from the speculative Notion, and
the opposition is apprehended in so acute a manner that the knowledge
proceeding from the Notion is ashamed of the knowledge from experience,
just as this again takes up a position of antagonism to the knowledge
through the Notion. What Cicero says of Socrates may be said of Bacon,
that he brought Philosophy down to the world, to the homes and every-day
lives of men (Vol. I. p. 389). To a certain extent knowledge from the
absolute Notion may assume an air of superiority over this knowledge; but
it is essential, as far as the Idea is concerned, that the particularity
of the content should be developed. The Notion is an essential matter,
but as such its finite side is just as essential. Mind gives presence,
external existence, to itself; to come to understand this extension, the
world as it is, the sensuous universe, to understand itself as this,
_i.e._ with its manifest, sensuous extension, is one side of things.
The other side is the relation to the Idea. Abstraction in and for
itself must determine and particularize itself. The Idea is concrete,
self-determining, it has the principle of development; and perfect
knowledge is always developed. A conditional knowledge in respect of the
Idea merely signifies that the working out of the development has not
yet advanced very far. But we have to deal with this development; and
for this development and determination of the particular from the Idea,
so that the knowledge of the universe, of nature, may be cultivated—for
this, the knowledge of the particular is necessary. This particularity
must be worked out on its own account; we must become acquainted with
empirical nature, both with the physical and with the human. The merit
of modern times is to have accomplished or furthered these ends; it was
in the highest degree unsatisfactory when the ancients attempted the
work. Empiricism is not merely an observing, hearing, feeling, etc., a
perception of the individual; for it really sets to work to find the
species, the universal, to discover laws. Now because it does this, it
comes within the territory of the Notion—it begets what pertains to the
region of the Idea; it thus prepares the empirical material for the
Notion, so that the latter can then receive it ready for its use. If
the science is perfected the Idea must certainly issue forth of itself;
science as such no longer commences from the empiric. But in order that
this science may come into existence, we must have the progression from
the individual and particular to the universal—an activity which is a
reaction on the given material of empiricism in order to bring about its
reconstruction. The demand of _a priori_ knowledge, which seems to imply
that the Idea should construct from itself, is thus a reconstruction
only, or what is in religion accomplished through sentiment and feeling.
Without the working out of the empirical sciences on their own account,
Philosophy could not have reached further than with the ancients. The
whole of the Idea in itself is science as perfected and complete; but
the other side is the beginning, the process of its origination. This
process of the origination of science is different from its process in
itself when it is complete, just as is the process of the history of
Philosophy and that of Philosophy itself. In every science principles are
commenced with; at the first these are the results of the particular,
but if the science is completed they are made the beginning. The case
is similar with Philosophy; the working out of the empirical side has
really become the conditioning of the Idea, so that this last may reach
its full development and determination. For instance, in order that the
history of the Philosophy of modern times may exist, we must have a
history of Philosophy in general, the process of Philosophy during so
many thousand years; mind must have followed this long road in order
that the Philosophy may be produced. In consciousness it then adopts the
attitude of having cut away the bridge from behind it; it appears to be
free to launch forth in its ether only, and to develop without resistance
in this medium; but it is another matter to attain to this ether and
to development in it. We must not overlook the fact that Philosophy
would not have come into existence without this process, for mind is
essentially a working upon something different.
1. Bacon’s fame rests on two works. In the first place, he has the
merit of having in his work _De augmentis scientiarum_ presented to
us a systematic encyclopedia of the sciences, an outline which must
undoubtedly have caused a sensation amongst his contemporaries. It is
important to set before men’s eyes a well arranged picture such as
this of the whole, when that whole has not been grasped in thought.
This encyclopedia gives a general classification of the sciences; the
principles of the classification are regulated in accordance with the
differences in the intellectual capacities. Bacon thus divides human
learning according to the faculties of memory, imagination, and reason,
for he distinguishes what pertains (1) to memory; (2) to imagination; (3)
to reason. Under memory he considered history; under imagination, poetry,
and art; and finally, under reason, philosophy.[97] According to his
favourite method of division these again are further divided, since he
brings all else under these same heads; this is, however, unsatisfactory.
To history belong the works of God—sacred, prophetic, ecclesiastical
history; the works of men—civil and literary history; and likewise the
works of nature, and so on.[98] He goes through these topics after the
manner of his time, a main characteristic of which is that anything can
be made plausible through examples, _e.g._ from the Bible. Thus, in
treating of _Cosmetica_, he says in regard to paint that “He is surprised
that this depraved custom of painting has been by the penal laws both
ecclesiastical and civil so long overlooked. In the Bible we read indeed
of Jezebel that she painted her face; but nothing of the kind is said
of Esther or Judith.”[99] If kings, popes, etc., are being discussed,
such examples as those of Ahab and Solomon must be brought forward. As
formerly in civil laws—those respecting marriage, for instance—the Jewish
forms held good, in Philosophy, too, the same are still to be found. In
this work theology likewise appears, as also magic; there is contained in
it a comprehensive system of knowledge and of the sciences.
The arrangement of the sciences is the least significant part of the work
_De augmentis scientiarum_. It was by its criticism that its value was
established and its effect produced, as also by the number of instructive
remarks contained in it; all this was at that time lacking in the
particular varieties of learning and modes of discipline, especially in
as far as the methods hitherto adopted were faulty, and unsuitable to the
ends in view: in them the Aristotelian conceptions of the schools were
spun out by the understanding as though they were realities. As it was
with the Schoolmen and with the ancients, this classification is still
the mode adopted in the sciences, in which the nature of knowledge is
unknown. In them the idea of the science is advanced beforehand, and to
this idea a principle foreign to it is added, as a basis of division,
just as here is added the distinction between memory, imagination and
reason. The true method of division is found in the self-division of the
Notion, its separating itself from itself. In knowledge the moment of
self-consciousness is undoubtedly found, and the real self-consciousness
has in it the moments of memory, imagination and reason. But this
division is certainly not taken from the Notion of self-consciousness,
but from experience, in which self-consciousness finds itself possessed
of these capacities.
2. The other remarkable feature in Bacon is that in his second work,
his _Organon_, he sought at great length to establish a new method in
learning; in this regard his name is still held greatly in honour by
many. What chiefly distinguishes his system is his polemical attitude
towards scholastic methods as they had hitherto existed, towards
syllogistic forms. He calls these methods _anticipationes naturæ_; in
them men begin with presuppositions, definitions, accepted ideas, with a
scholastic abstraction, and reason further from these without regarding
that which is present in actuality. Thus regarding God and His methods
of operating in nature, regarding devils, &c., they make use of passages
from the Bible, such as “Sun, stand thou still,” in order to deduce
therefrom certain metaphysical propositions from which they go further
still. It was against this _a priori_ method that Bacon directed his
polemic; as against these anticipations of nature he called attention
to the explanation, the interpretation of nature.[100] “The same action
of mind,” he says, “which discovers a thing in question, judges it;
and the operation is not performed by the help of any middle term, but
directly, almost in the same manner as by the sense. For the sense in
its primary objects at once apprehends the appearance of the object, and
consents to the truth thereof.”[101] The syllogism is altogether rejected
by Bacon. As a matter of fact, this Aristotelian deduction is not a
knowledge through itself in accordance with its content: it requires a
foreign universal as its basis, and for that reason its movement is in
its form contingent. The content is not in unity with the form, and this
form is hence in itself contingent, because it, considered on its own
account, is the movement onwards in a foreign content. The major premise
is the content existent for itself, the minor is likewise the content
not through itself, for it goes back into the infinite, _i.e._ it has
not the form in itself; the form is not the content. The opposite may
always be made out equally well through the syllogism, for it is a matter
of indifference to this form what content is made its basis. “Dialectic
does not assist in the discovery of the arts; many arts were found out by
chance.”[102]
It was not against this syllogism generally, _i.e._ not against the
Notion of it (for Bacon did not possess this), but against deduction as
it was put into operation, as it was to the scholastics—the deduction
which took an assumed content as its basis—that Bacon declaimed, urging
that the content of experience should be made the basis, and the method
of induction pursued. He demanded that observations on nature and
experiments should be made fundamental, and pointed out the objects
whose investigation was of special importance in the interests of human
society, and so on. From this there then resulted the establishment of
conclusions through induction and analogy.[103] In fact it was only to
an alteration in the content that, without being aware of it, Bacon
was impelled. For though he rejected the syllogism and only permitted
conclusions to be reached through induction, he unconsciously himself
drew deductions; likewise all these champions of empiricism, who followed
after him, and who put into practice what he demanded, and thought they
could by observations, experiments and experiences, keep the matter
in question pure, could neither so do without drawing deductions, nor
without introducing conceptions; and they drew their deductions and
formed their notions and conceptions all the more freely because they
thought that they had nothing to do with conceptions at all; nor did
they go forth from deduction to immanent, true knowledge. Thus when
Bacon set up induction in opposition to the syllogism, this opposition
is formal; each induction is also a deduction, which fact was known even
to Aristotle. For if a universal is deduced from a number of things, the
first proposition reads, “These bodies have these qualities;” the second,
“All these bodies belong to one class;” and thus, in the third place,
this class has these qualities. That is a perfect syllogism. Induction
always signifies that observations are instituted, experiments made,
experience regarded, and from this the universal determination is derived.
We have already called to mind how important it is to lead on to the
content as the content of actuality, of the present; for the rational
must have objective truth. The reconciliation of spirit with the world,
the glorification of nature and of all actuality, must not be a Beyond,
a Futurity, but must be accomplished now and here. It is this moment of
the now and here which thereby comes into self-consciousness. But those
who make experiments and observations, do not realize what they are
really doing, for the sole interest taken by them in things, is owing
to the inward and unconscious certainty which reason has of finding
itself in actuality; and observations and experiments, if entered upon
in a right way, result in showing that the Notion is the only objective
existence. The sensuous individual eludes the experiments even while it
is being operated upon, and becomes a universal; the best known example
of this is to be found in positive and negative electricity in so far
as it is positive and negative. There is another shortcoming of a formal
nature, and one of which all empiricists partake,—that is that they
believe themselves to be keeping to experience alone; it is to them an
unknown fact that in receiving these perceptions they are indulging in
metaphysics. Man does not stop short at the individual, nor can he do
so. He seeks the universal, but thoughts, even if not Notions likewise,
are what constitute the same. The most remarkable thought-form is that
of force; we thus speak of the force of electricity, of magnetism,
of gravity. Force, however, is a universal and not a perceptible;
quite uncritically and unconsciously the empiricists thus permit of
determinations such as these.
3. Bacon finally gives the objects with which Philosophy mainly has
to deal. These objects contrast much with that which we derive from
perception and experience. “In the summary which Bacon gives of what
he conceives ought to be the objects of philosophical inquiry, are the
following; and we select those which he principally dwells upon in his
works: ‘The prolongation of life; the restitution of youth in some
degree; the retardation of old age, and the altering of statures; the
altering of features; versions of bodies into other bodies; making of new
species; impression of the air and raising tempests; greater pleasures of
the senses, &c.’” He likewise deals with objects such as these, and he
seeks to direct attention upon whether in their regard the means could
not be found to carry out their ends; in such powers we should be able
to make some progress. “He complains that such investigations have been
neglected by those whom he designates _ignavi regionum exploratores_.
In his Natural History he gives formal receipts for making gold, and
performing many wonders.”[104] Bacon thus does not by any means take
the intelligent standpoint of an investigation of nature, being still
involved in the grossest superstition, false magic, &c. This we find
to be on the whole propounded in an intelligent way, and Bacon thus
remains within the conceptions of his time. “The conversion of silver,
quicksilver, or any other metal into gold is a thing difficult to
believe, yet it is far more probable that a man who knows clearly
the natures of weight, of the colour of yellow, of malleability and
extension, of volatility and fixedness, and who has also made diligent
search into the first seeds and menstruums of minerals, may at last
by much and sagacious endeavour produce gold, than that a few grains
of an elixir may so do.... So again a man who knows well the nature
of rarefaction, of assimilation, and of alimentation, shall by diets,
bathings, and the like prolong life, or in some degree renew the vigour
of youth.”[105] These assertions are thus not as crude as they at first
appear. In dealing with Medicine Bacon speaks amongst other things of
maceration (_Malacissatio per exterius_)[106] and so forth.
Bacon emphasizes what has reference to the formal aspect of
investigation. For he says, “Natural philosophy is divided into two
parts, the first consists in the investigation of causes; the second
in the production of effects; the causes to be investigated are either
final or formal causes, or else material or efficient causes. The former
constitutes metaphysics; the latter physics. This last Bacon looks
upon as a branch of philosophy very inferior in point of dignity and
importance to the other and accordingly to ascertain the most probable
means of improving our knowledge of metaphysics is the great object of
his _Organon_.”[107] He himself says: “It is a correct position that
‘true knowledge is knowledge by causes. And causes, again, are not
improperly distributed into four kinds: the material, the formal, the
efficient, and the final.’”[108] (Vol. I. p. 174, Vol. II. p. 138.)
But in this connection an important point is that Bacon has turned
against the teleological investigation of nature, against the
investigation into final causes. “The investigation of final causes is
useless; they corrupt rather than advance the sciences except such as
have to do with human action.”[109] To Bacon the important matter is to
investigate by the study of _causæ efficientes_. To the consideration
of final causes such assertions as these belong: “That the hairs of the
eyelids are for a protection to the eyes; that the thick skins and hides
of living creatures are to defend them from heat and cold; that the trees
have leaves so that the fruit may not suffer from sun and wind”[110]:
the hair is on the head on account of warmth; thunder and lightning are
the punishment of God, or else they make fruitful the earth; marmots
sleep during the winter because they can find nothing to eat; snails
have a shell in order that they may be secure against attacks; the bee
is provided with a sting. According to Bacon this has been worked out in
innumerable different ways. The negative and external side of utility is
turned round, and the lack of this adaptation to end is likewise drawn
within the same embrace. It may, for example, be said that if sun or
moon were to shine at all times, the police might save much money, and
this would provide men with food and drink for whole months together.
It was right that Bacon should set himself to oppose this investigation
into final causes, because it relates to external expediency, just
as Kant was right in distinguishing the inward teleology from the
outward. As against the external end, there is, in fact, the inward end,
_i.e._ the inward Notion of the thing itself, as we found it earlier
in Aristotle (Vol. II. pp. 156-163). Because the organism possesses an
inward adaptation to its ends, its members are indeed likewise externally
adapted as regards one another; but the ends, as external ends, are
heterogeneous to the individual, are unconnected with the object which
is investigated. Speaking generally, the Notion of nature is not in
nature itself, which would mean that the end was in nature itself; but as
teleological, the Notion is something foreign to it. It does not have the
end in itself in such a way that we have to accord respect to it—as the
individual man has his end in himself and hence has to be respected. But
even the individual man as individual has only a right to respect from
the individual as such, and not from the universal. He who acts in the
name of the universal, of the state, as a general does for instance, does
not require to respect the individual at all; for the latter, although an
end in himself, does not cease to be relative. He is this end in himself,
not as excluding himself and setting himself in opposition, but only in
so far as his true reality is the universal Notion. The end of the animal
in itself as an individual is its own self-preservation; but its true end
in itself is the species. Its self-preservation is not involved in this;
for the self-preservation of its individuality is disadvantageous to the
species, while the abrogation of itself is favourable thereto.
Now Bacon separates the universal principle and the efficient cause,
and for that reason he removes investigation into ends from physics to
metaphysics. Or he recognizes the Notion, not as universal in nature, but
only as necessity, _i.e._ as a universal which presents itself in the
opposition of its moments, not one which has bound them into a unity—in
other words he only acknowledges a comprehension of one determinate
from another determinate going on into infinity, and not of both from
their Notion. Bacon has thus made investigation into the efficient cause
more general, and he asserts that this investigation alone belongs to
physics, although he allows that both kinds of investigation may exist
side by side.[111] Through that view he effected a great deal, and in
so far as it has counteracted the senseless superstition which in the
Germanic nations far exceeded in its horrors and absurdity that of the
ancient world, it has the very merit which we met with in the Epicurean
philosophy. That philosophy opposed itself to the superstitious Stoics
and to superstition generally—which last makes any existence that we
set before ourselves into a cause (a Beyond which is made to exist in a
sensuous way and to operate as a cause), or makes two sensuous things
which have no relation operate on one another. This polemic of Bacon’s
against spectres, astrology, magic, &c.,[112] can certainly not be
regarded exactly as Philosophy like his other reflections, but it is at
least of service to culture.
He also advises that attention should be directed to formal causes, the
forms of things, and that they should be recognized.[113] “But to give
an exact definition of the meaning which Bacon attaches to the phrase
formal causes is rather difficult; because his language upon this subject
is uncertain in a very remarkable degree.”[114] It may be thought that
he understood by this the immanent determinations of things, the laws
of nature; as a matter of fact the forms are none else than universal
determinations, species, &c.[115] He says: “The discovery of the formal
is despaired of. The efficient and the material (as they are investigated
and received, that is as remote causes, without reference to the latent
process leading to the forms) are but slight and superficial, and
contribute little, if anything, to true and active science. For though
in nature nothing really exists beside individual bodies, performing
pure individual acts according to a fixed law, yet in philosophy this
very law, and the investigation, discovery and explanation of it, is the
foundation as well of knowledge as of operation. And it is this law, with
its clauses, that I mean when I speak of Forms.... Let the investigation
of Forms which are eternal and immutable constitute metaphysics.
Whosoever is acquainted with Forms embraces the unity of nature in
substances the most unlike.”[116] He goes through this in detail, and
quotes many examples to illustrate it, such as that of Heat. “Mind must
raise itself from differences to species. The warmth of the sun and
that of the fire are diverse. We see that grapes ripen by the warmth of
the sun. But to see whether the warmth of the sun is specific, we also
observe other warmth, and we find that grapes likewise ripen in a warm
room; this proves that the warmth of the sun is not specific.”[117]
“Physic,” he says, “directs us through narrow rugged paths in imitation
of the crooked ways of nature. But he that understands a form knows the
ultimate possibility of superinducing that nature upon all kinds of
matter; that is to say, as he himself interprets this last expression,
is able to superinduce the nature of gold upon silver,” that is to say
to make gold from silver, “and to perform all those other marvels to
which the alchymists pretended. The error of these last consisted alone
in hoping to arrive at these ends by fabulous and fantastical methods;”
the true method is to recognize these forms. “One leading object of
the _Instauratio Magna_ and of the _Novum Organon_ is to point out the
necessity of ascertaining the formal causes and logical rules.”[118] They
are good rules, but not adapted to attain that end.
This is all that we have to say of Bacon. In dealing with Locke we shall
have more to say of these empirical methods which were adopted by the
English.
B. JACOB BOEHME.
We now pass on from this English Lord Chancellor, the leader of the
external, sensuous method in Philosophy, to the _philosophus teutonicus_,
as he is called—to the German cobbler of Lusatia, of whom we have no
reason to be ashamed. It was, in fact, through him that Philosophy first
appeared in Germany with a character peculiar to itself: Boehme stands in
exact antithesis to Bacon. He was also called _theosophus teutonicus_,
just as even before this _philosophia teutonica_ was the name given to
mysticism.[119] This Jacob Boehme was for long forgotten and decried as
being simply a pious visionary; the so-called period of enlightenment,
more particularly, helped to render his public extremely limited.
Leibnitz thought very highly of him, but it is in modern times that his
profundity has for the first time been recognized, and that he has been
once more restored to honour. It is certain, on the one hand, that he
did not merit the disdain accorded him; on the other, however, he did
not deserve the high honour into which he was elevated. To call him an
enthusiast signifies nothing at all. For if we will, all philosophers may
be so termed, even the Epicureans and Bacon; for they all have held that
man finds his truth in something else than eating and drinking, or in
the common-sense every-day life of wood-cutting, tailoring, trading, or
other business, private or official. But Boehme has to attribute the high
honour to which he was raised mainly to the garb of sensuous feeling and
perception which he adopted; for ordinary sensuous perception and inward
feeling, praying and yearning, and the pictorial element in thought,
allegories and such like, are in some measure held to be essential in
Philosophy. But it is only in the Notion, in thought, that Philosophy
can find its truth, and that the Absolute can be expressed and likewise
is as it is in itself. Looked at from this point of view, Boehme is a
complete barbarian, and yet he is a man who, along with his rude method
of presentation, possesses a deep, concrete heart. But because no method
or order is to be found in him, it is difficult to give an account of his
philosophy.
Jacob Boehme was born in 1575 of poor parents, at Altseidenburg, near
Görlitz, in Upper Lusatia. In his youth he was a peasant boy who tended
the cattle. He was brought up as a Lutheran, and always remained such.
The account of his life which is given with his works was drawn up by
a clergyman who knew him personally, from information given by Boehme
himself. Much is there related as to how he attained to more profound
knowledge and wisdom by means of certain experiences through which he
passed. Even when a herd tending the cattle, as he tells of himself, he
had these wonderful manifestations. The first marvellous awakening that
occurred to him took place in a thicket in which he saw a cavern and a
vessel of gold. Startled by the splendour of this sight he was inwardly
awakened from a dull stupor, but afterwards he found it was impossible
for him to discover the objects of his vision. Subsequently he was
bound apprentice to a shoemaker. More especially “was he spiritually
awakened by the words: ‘Your heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit
to them that ask Him’ (Luke xi. 13), so that, desiring to come to a
knowledge of the truth, and yet retaining the simplicity of his mind, he
prayed and sought, and knocked, fervently and earnestly, until, while
travelling about with his master, he was, through the influence of the
Father in the Son, spiritually transported into the glorious peace and
the Sabbath of the soul, and thus his request was granted. According to
his own account, he was then surrounded with divine light, and for seven
days he remained in the supremest divine contemplation and joy.” His
master for this dismissed him, saying he could not keep in his service
“house-prophets such as he was.” After that he lived at Görlitz. In 1594
he rose in his trade to be master, and married. Later on, “in the year
1600, and in the twenty-fifth year of his age, once more” the light broke
upon him in a second vision of the same kind. He tells that he saw a
brightly scoured pewter dish in the room, and “by the sudden sight of
this shining metal with its brilliant radiance” he was brought (into a
meditation and a breaking free of his astral mind) “into the central
point of secret nature,” and into the light of divine essence. “He went
out into the open air in order that he might rid his brain of this
hallucination, and none the less did he continue all the more clearly
as time went on to experience the vision in this way received. Thus by
means of the signatures or figures, lineaments, and colours which were
depicted, he could, so to speak, look into the heart and inmost nature
of all creatures (in his book _De signatura rerum_ this reason which
was impressed upon him is found and fully explained); and for this he
was overwhelmed with joy, thanked God, and went peacefully about his
affairs.” Later on he wrote several works. He continued to pursue his
handicraft at Görlitz, and died at the same place in 1624, being then a
master shoemaker.[120]
His works are especially popular with the Dutch, and for that reason
most of the editions are issued from Amsterdam, though they were also
surreptitiously printed in Hamburg. His first writing is the “Aurora” or
“Morgenröthe im Aufgange,” and this was followed by others; the work “Von
den drei Principien,” and another “Vom dreifachen Leben des Menschen,”
are, along with several others, the most noteworthy. Boehme constantly
read the Bible, but what other works he read is not known. A number
of passages in his works, however, prove that he read much—evidently
mystical, theosophic, and alchemistic writings for the most part, and he
must certainly have included in his reading the works of Theophrastus
Bombastus von Hohenheim, known as Paracelsus, a philosopher of a somewhat
similar calibre, but much more confused, and without Boehme’s profundity
of mind. He met with much persecution at the hands of the clergy, but he
aroused less attention in Germany than in Holland and England, where his
writings have been often printed.[121] In reading his works we are struck
with wonder, and one must be familiar with his ideas in order to discover
the truth in this most confused method of expression.
The matter of Jacob Boehme’s philosophy is genuinely German; for what
marks him out and makes him noteworthy is the Protestant principle
already mentioned of placing the intellectual world within one’s own
mind and heart, and of experiencing and knowing and feeling in one’s own
self-consciousness all that formerly was conceived as a Beyond. Boehme’s
general conceptions thus on the one hand reveal themselves as both deep
and sound, but on the other, with all his need for and struggle after
determination and distinction in the development of his divine intuitions
of the universe, he does not attain either to clearness or order.
There is no systematic connection but the greatest confusion in his
divisions—and this exists even in his tables,[122] in which three numbers
are made use of.
I.
What God is beside nature and creation.
II.
Separability: _Mysterium The first _Principium_.
God in Love. magnum._ God in Wrath.
III.
God in wrath and love.
Here nothing definite to hold the moments asunder is shown, and we
have the sense of merely doing it by effort; now these and now other
distinctions are set forth, and as they are laid down disconnectedly,
they again come into confusion.
The manner and system which Boehme adopts must accordingly be termed
barbarous; the expressions used in his works prove this, as when, for
example, he speaks of the divine Salitter, Marcurius, &c. As Boehme
places the life, the movement of absolute existence in the heart, so
does he regard all conceptions as being in a condition of actuality; or
he makes use of actuality as Notion, that is to say he forcibly takes
natural things and sensuous qualities to express his ideas rather than
the determinations of the Notion. For instance, sulphur and such like are
not to him the things that we so name, but their essence; or the Notion
has this form of actuality. Boehme’s profoundest interest is in the Idea,
and he struggles hard to express it. The speculative truth which he
desires to expound really requires, in order to be comprehended, thought
and the form of thought. Only in thought can this unity be comprehended,
in the central point of which his mind has its place; but it is just
the form of thought that is lacking to him. The forms that he employs
are really no longer determinations of the Notion at all. They are on
the one hand sensuous, chemical determinations, such qualities as acid,
sweet, sour, fierce, and, on the other, emotions such as wrath and love;
and, further, tincture, essence, anguish, &c. For him these sensuous
forms do not, however, possess the sensuous significance which belongs
to them, but he uses them in order to find expression for his thought.
It is, however, at once clear to us how the form of manifestation must
necessarily appear forced, since thought alone is capable of unity.
It thus appears strange to read of the bitterness of God, of the
_Flagrat_, and of lightning; we first require to have the Idea, and
then we certainly discern its presence here. But the other side is that
Boehme utilizes the Christian form which lies nearest to him, and more
especially that of the Trinity, as the form of the Idea: he intermingles
the sensuous mode and the mode of popularly conceived religion, sensuous
images and conceptions. However rude and barbarous this may on the one
hand be, and however impossible it is to read Boehme continuously, or to
take a firm grasp of his thoughts (for all these qualities, spirits and
angels make one’s head swim), we must on the other hand recognize that
he speaks of everything as it is in its actuality, and that he does this
from his heart. This solid, deep, German mind which has intercourse with
what is most inward, thus really exercises an immense power and force in
order to make use of actuality as Notion, and to have what takes place
in heaven around and within it. Just as Hans Sachs represented God,
Christ and the Holy Ghost, as well as patriarchs and angels, in his own
particular manner and as ordinary people like himself, not looking upon
them as past and historic, so was it with Boehme.
To faith spirit has truth, but in this truth the moment of certainty
of self is lacking. We have seen that the object of Christianity is
the truth, the Spirit; it is given to faith as immediate truth. Faith
possesses the truth, but unconsciously, without knowledge, without
knowing it as its self-consciousness; and seeing that thought, the
Notion, is necessarily in self-consciousness—the unity of opposites
with Bruno—this unity is what is pre-eminently lacking to faith. Its
moments as particular forms fall apart, more especially the highest
moments—good and evil, or God and the Devil. God is, and the Devil
likewise; both exist for themselves. But if God is absolute existence,
the question may be asked, What absolute existence is this which has not
all actuality, and more particularly evil within it? Boehme is hence
on one side intent on leading the soul of man to the divine life, on
inducing the soul to pay attention to the strife within itself, and make
this the object of all its work and efforts; and then in respect of this
content he strives to make out how evil is present in good—a question
of the present day. But because Boehme does not possess the Notion and
is so far back in intellectual culture, there ensues a most frightful
and painful struggle between his mind and consciousness and his powers
of expression, and the import of this struggle is the profoundest Idea
of God which seeks to bring the most absolute opposites into unity, and
to bind them together—but not for thinking reason. Thus if we would
comprehend the matter, Boehme’s great struggle has been—since to him
God is everything—to grasp the negative, evil, the devil, in and from
God, to grasp God as absolute; and this struggle characterizes all
his writings and brings about the torture of his mind. It requires a
great and severe mental effort to bring together in one what in shape
and form lie so far asunder; with all the strength that he possesses
Boehme brings the two together, and therein shatters all the immediate
significance of actuality possessed by both. But when thus he grasps
this movement, this essence of spirit in himself, in his inward nature,
the determination of the moments simply approaches more nearly to the
form of self-consciousness, to the formless, or to the Notion. In the
background, indeed, there stands the purest speculative thought, but it
does not attain to an adequate representation. Homely, popular modes of
conception likewise appear, a free out-spokenness which to us seems too
familiar. With the devil, particularly, he has great dealings, and him he
frequently addresses. “Come here,” he says, “thou black wretch, what dost
thou want? I will give thee a potion.”[123] As Prospero in Shakespeare’s
“Tempest”[124] threatens Ariel that he will “rend an oak and peg him in
his knotty entrails ... twelve winters,” Boehme’s great mind is confined
in the hard knotty oak of the senses—in the gnarled concretion of the
ordinary conception—and is not able to arrive at a free presentation of
the Idea.
I shall shortly give Boehme’s main conceptions, and then several
particular forms which he in turn adopts; for he does not remain at one
form, because neither the sensuous nor the religious can suffice. Now
even though this brings about the result that he frequently repeats
himself, the forms of his main conceptions are still in every respect
very different, and he who would try to give a consistent explanation of
Boehme’s ideas, particularly when they pass into further developments,
would only delude himself in making the attempt. Hence we must neither
expect to find in Boehme a systematic presentation nor a true method
of passing over into the individual. Of his thoughts we cannot say much
without adopting his manner of expression, and quoting the particular
passages themselves, for they cannot otherwise be expressed. The
fundamental idea in Jacob Boehme is the effort to comprise everything
in an absolute unity, for he desires to demonstrate the absolute divine
unity and the union of all opposites in God. Boehme’s chief, and one may
even say, his only thought—the thought that permeates all his works—is
that of perceiving the holy Trinity in everything, and recognizing
everything as its revelation and manifestation, so that it is the
universal principle in which and through which everything exists; in such
a way, moreover, that all things have this divine Trinity in themselves,
not as a Trinity pertaining to the ordinary conception, but as the real
Trinity of the absolute Idea. Everything that exists is, according to
Boehme, this three-fold alone, and this three-fold is everything.[125]
To him the universe is thus one divine life and revelation of God in all
things, so that when examined more closely, from the one reality of God,
the sum and substance of all powers and qualities, the Son who shines
forth from these powers is eternally born; the inward unity of this light
with the substance of the powers is Spirit. Sometimes the presentation is
vague, and then again it is clearer. What comes next is the explanation
of this Trinity, and here the different forms which he uses to indicate
the difference becoming evident in the same, more especially appear.
In the _Aurora_, the “Root or Mother of Philosophy, Astrology and
Theology,” he gives a method of division in which he places these
sciences in proximity, and yet appears merely to pass from one to the
other without any clear definition or determination. “(1) In Philosophy
divine power is treated of, what God is, and how in the Being of God
nature, stars and _Elementa_ are constituted; whence all things have
their origin, what is the nature of heaven and earth, as also of angels,
men and devils, heaven and hell and all that is creaturely, likewise what
the two qualities in nature are, and this is dealt with out of a right
ground in the knowledge of spirit, by the impulse and motion of God. (2)
In astrology the powers of nature, of the stars and elements, are treated
of, and how all creatures proceed from them, how evil and good are
through them effected in men and animals. (3) In theology the kingdom of
Christ is dealt with, as also its nature, and how it is set in opposition
to hell, and how in nature it wars with the kingdom of darkness.”[126]
1. What comes first is God the Father; this first is at once divided
in itself and the unity of both its parts. “God is all,” he says, “He
is the Darkness and the Light, Love and Anger, Fire and Light, but He
calls Himself God only as to the light of His love. There is an eternal
_Contrarium_ between darkness and light; neither comprehends the other
and neither is the other, and yet there is but one essence or substance,
though separated by pain; it is likewise so with the will, and yet
there is no separable essence. One single principle is divided in this
way, that one is in the other as a nothing which yet exists; but it is
not manifest in the property of that thing in which it is.”[127] By
anguish is expressed that which we know as the absolute negativity—that
is the self-conscious, self-experienced, the self-relating negativity
which is therefore absolute affirmation. All Boehme’s efforts were
directed towards this point; the principle of the Notion is living in
him, only he cannot express it in the form of thought. That is to say,
all depends on thinking of the negative as simple, since it is at
the same time an opposite; thus anguish [Qual] is the inward tearing
asunder and yet likewise the simple. From this Boehme derives sources or
springs [Quellen], a good play on the words. For pain [die Qual], this
negativity, passes into life, activity, and thus he likewise connects it
with quality [Qualität], which he makes into Quallity.[128] The absolute
identity of difference is all through present to him.
a. Boehme thus represents God not as the empty unity, but as this
self-separating unity of absolute opposites; one must not, however, here
expect a clearly defined distinction. The first, the one, the Father, has
likewise the mode of natural existence; thus, like Proclus, he speaks of
this God being simple essence. This simple essence he calls the hidden;
and he therefore names it the _Temperamentum_, this unity of what is
different, in which all is tempered. We find him also calling it the
great Salitter—now the divine and now the natural Salitter—as well as
Salniter. When he talks of this great salitter as of something known to
us, we cannot first of all conceive what it means. But it is a vulgar
corruption of the word _sal nitri_, saltpetre (which is still called
salniter in Austria), _i.e._ just the neutral and in truth universal
existence. The divine pomp and state is this, that in God a more glorious
nature dwells, trees, plants, &c. “In the divine pomp or state two things
have principally to be considered; salitter or the divine power, which
brings forth all fruits, and marcurius or the sound.”[129] This great
salitter is the unrevealed existence, just as the Neo-Platonic unity is
without knowledge of itself and likewise unrecognized.
b. This first substance contains all powers or qualities as not yet
separated; thus this salitter likewise appears as the body of God, who
embraces all qualities in Himself. Quality thus becomes an important
conception, the first determination with Boehme; and he begins with
qualities in his work “Morgenröthe im Aufgang.” He afterwards associates
with this the conferring of quality, and in the same place says: “Quality
is the mobility, boiling, springing, and driving of a thing.” These
qualities he then tries to define, but the account he gives of them is
vague. “As for example heat which burns, consumes and drives forth all
whatsoever comes into it which is not of the same property; and again
it enlightens and warms all cold, wet, and dark things; it compacts and
hardens soft things. It contains likewise two other kinds in it, namely
Light and Fierceness” (Negativity); “of which the light or the heart of
the heat is in itself a pleasant, joyful glance or lustre, a power of
life ... and a source of the heavenly kingdom of joy. For it makes all
things in this world living and moving; all flesh, trees, leaves, and
grass grow in this world, as in the power of the light, and have their
light therein, viz. in the good. Again, it contains also a fierceness or
wrath which burns, consumes and spoils. This wrath or fierceness springs,
drives, and elevates itself in the light, and makes the light movable. It
wrestles and fights together in its two-fold source. The light subsists
in God without heat, but it does not subsist so in nature. For all
qualities in nature are one in another, in the same manner as God is all.
For God” (the Father) “is the Heart.” On another occasion (Vom dreifachen
Leben des Menschen, chap. iv. § 68, p. 881) the Son is the heart of God;
and yet again the Spirit is called the heart (Morgenröthe, chap. ii.
§ 13, p. 29) “or fountain of nature, and from Him comes all. Now heat
reigns and predominates in all powers in nature and warms all, and is one
source or spring in all. But the light in the heat gives power to all
qualities, for that all grow pleasant and joyful.” Boehme goes over quite
a list of qualities: cold, hot, bitter, sweet, fierce, acid, hard, dense,
soft qualities, sound, etc. “The bitter quality is in God also, but not
in that manner as the gall is in man, but it is an everlasting power, in
an elevating, triumphing spring or source of joy. All the creatures are
made from these qualities, and live therein as in their mother.”[130]
“The virtues of the stars are nature itself. Everything in this world
proceeds from the stars. That I shall prove to you if you are not a
blockhead and have a little reason. If the whole _Curriculum_ or the
whole circumference of the stars is considered, we soon find that this
is the mother of all things, or the nature from which all things have
arisen and in which all things stand and live, and through which all
things move. And all things are formed from these same powers and remain
eternally therein.” Thus it is said that God is the reality of all
realities. Boehme continues: “You must, however, elevate your mind in
the Spirit, and consider how the whole of nature, with all the powers
which are in nature, also extension, depth and height, also heaven and
earth and all whatsoever is therein, and all that is above the heavens,
is together the Body and Corporeity of God; and the powers of the stars
are the fountain veins in the natural Body of God, in this world. You
must not conceive that in the Body of the stars is the whole triumphing
Holy Trinity, God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. But we must not so
conceive as if God was not at all in the _Corpus_ or Body of the stars,
and in this world.... Here now the question is, From whence has heaven,
or whence borrows it this power, that it causes such mobility in nature?
Here you must lift up your eyes beyond nature into the light, holy,
triumphing, divine power, into the unchangeable holy Trinity, which
is a triumphing, springing, movable Being, and all powers are therein,
as in nature: of this heaven, earth, stars, elements, devils, angels,
men, beasts, and all have their Being; and therein all stands. When we
nominate heaven and earth, stars and elements, and all that is therein,
and all whatsoever is above the heaven, then thereby is nominated the
total God, who has made Himself creaturely in these above-mentioned” many
“Beings, in His power which proceedeth forth from Him.”[131]
c. Boehme further defines God the Father as follows: “When we consider
the whole nature and its property, then we see the Father: when we behold
heaven and the stars, then we behold His eternal power and wisdom. So
many stars as stand in the whole heaven, which are innumerable, so
manifold and various is the power and wisdom of God the Father. Every
star differs in its quality.” But “you must not conceive here that every
power which is in the Father stands in a peculiar severed or divided part
and place in the Father, as the stars do in heaven. No, but the Spirit
shows that all the powers in the Father,” as the fountainhead, “are one
in another as one power.” This whole is the universal power which exists
as God the Father, wherein all differences are united; “creaturely” it,
however, exists as the totality of stars, and thus as separation into
the different qualities. “You must not think that God who is in heaven
and above the heaven does there stand and hover like a power and quality
which has in it neither reason nor knowledge, as the sun which turns
round in its circle and shoots forth from itself heat and light, whether
it be for benefit or hurt to the earth and creatures. No, the Father
is not so, but He is an All-mighty, All-wise, All-knowing, All-seeing,
All-hearing, All-smelling, All-tasting God, who in Himself is meek,
friendly, gracious, merciful, and full of joy, yea Joy itself.”[132]
Since Boehme calls the Father all powers, he again distinguishes these
as the seven first originating spirits.[133] But there is a certain
confusion in this and no thought-determination, no definite reason for
there being exactly seven—such precision and certainty is not to be
found in Boehme. These seven qualities are likewise the seven planets
which move and work in the great Salitter of God; “the seven planets
signify the seven spirits of God or the princes of the angels.” But they
are in the Father as one unity, and this unity is an inward spring and
fermentation. “In God all spirits triumph as one spirit, and a spirit
ever calms and loves the others, and nothing exists excepting mere joy
and rapture. One spirit does not stand alongside the others like stars
in heaven, for all seven are contained within one another as one spirit.
Each spirit in the seven spirits of God is pregnant with all seven
spirits of God;” thus each is in God itself a totality. “One brings forth
the other in and through itself;” this is the flashing forth of the life
of all qualities.[134]
2. As what came first was the source and germ of all powers and
qualities, what comes second is process. This second principle is a very
important conception, which with Boehme appears under very many aspects
and forms, viz. as the Word, the Separator, Revelation—speaking generally
the “I,” the source of all difference, and of the will and implicit Being
which are in the powers of natural things; but in such a way that the
light therein likewise breaks forth which leads them back to rest.
a. God as the simple absolute existence is not God absolutely; in Him
nothing can be known. What we know is something different—but this
“different” is itself contained in God as the perception and knowledge
of God. Hence of the second step Boehme says that a separation must have
taken place in this temperament. “No thing can become manifest to itself
without opposition; for if it has nothing to withstand it, it always
goes forward on its own account and does not go back within itself. But
if it does not go back into itself as into that from which it originally
arose, it knows nothing of its original state.” Original state [Urstand]
he makes use of for substance; and it is a pity that we cannot use this
and many other striking expressions. “Without adversity life would have
no sensibility nor will nor efficacy, neither understanding nor science.
Had the hidden God who is one solitary existence and will not of His
own will brought Himself out of Himself, out of the eternal knowledge
in the _Temperamento_, into divisibility of will, and introduced this
same element of divisibility into an inclusiveness” (Identity) “so as
to constitute it a natural and creaturely life, and had this element of
separation in life not come into warfare, how was the will of God which
is only one to be revealed to Himself? How could a knowledge of itself
be present in a solitary will?”[135] We see that Boehme is elevated
infinitely above the empty abstraction of the highest reality, etc.
Boehme continues: “The commencement of all Beings is the Word as the
breath of God, and God has become the eternal One of eternity and
likewise remains so in eternity. The Word is the eternal beginning and
remains so eternally, for it is the revelation of the eternal One through
and by which the divine power is brought into one knowledge of somewhat.
By the Word we understand the revealed will of God: by the Word we
mean God the hidden God, from whom the Word eternally springs forth.
The Word is the efflux of the divine One, and yet God Himself as His
revelation.” Λόγος is more definite than Word, and there is a delightful
double significance in the Greek expression indicating as it does both
reason and speech. For speech is the pure existence of spirit; it is a
thing which when once heard goes back within itself. “What has flowed
out is wisdom, beginning and cause of all powers, colours, virtue and
qualities.”[136]
Of the Son Boehme says: “The Son is” of the Father and “in the Father,
the heart of the Father or light, and the Father beareth him ever, from
eternity to eternity.” Thus “the Son is” indeed “another Person from
the Father, though no other,” but the same “God as the Father,” whose
image he is.[137] “The Son is the Heart” or the pulsating element “in
the Father; all the powers which are in the Father are the propriety of
the Father; and the Son is the heart or the kernel in all the powers in
the whole Father, and he is the cause of the springing joy in all powers
in the whole Father. From the Son the eternal joy rises and springs
in all the powers of the Father, as the sun does in the heart of the
stars. It signifies the Son, as the circle of the stars signifies the
manifold powers of the Father; it lightens the heavens, the stars and
the deep above the earth, working in all things that are in this world;
it enlightens and gives power to all the stars and tempers their power.
The Son of God is continually generated from all the powers of his Father
from eternity, just as the sun is born of the stars; He is ever born and
is not made, and is the heart and lustre shining forth from all powers.
He shines in all powers of the Father, and his power is the moving,
springing joy in all the powers of the Father, and shines in the whole
Father as the sun does in the whole world. For if the Son did not shine
in the Father, the Father would be a dark valley; for the Father’s power
would not rise from eternity to eternity, and so the divine Being would
not subsist.”[138] This life of the Son is an important matter; and
in regard to this issuing forth and manifestation Boehme has likewise
brought forward the most important assertions.
b. “From such a revelation of powers in which the will of the eternal
One contemplates itself, flows the understanding and the knowledge of
the something [Ichts], since the eternal will contemplates itself in the
something [Ichts].” “Ichts” is a play upon the word “Nichts” (nothing),
for it is simply the negative; yet it is at the same time the opposite of
nothing, since the Ich (Ego) of self-consciousness is contained in it.
The Son, the something, is thus “I,” consciousness, self-consciousness:
God is not only the abstract neutral but likewise the gathering together
of Himself into the point of Being-for-self. The “other” of God is thus
the image of God. “This similitude is the _Mysterium magnum_, viz. the
creator of all beings and creatures; for it is the separator” (of the
whole) “in the efflux of the will which makes the will of the eternal One
separable—the separability in the will from which powers and qualities
take their rise.” This separator is “constituted the steward of nature,
by whom the eternal will rules, makes, forms and constitutes all things.”
The separator is effectuating and self-differentiating, and Boehme calls
this “Ichts,” likewise Lucifer, the first-born Son of God, the creaturely
first-born angel who was one of the seven spirits. “But this Lucifer has
fallen and Christ has come in his place.”[139] This is the connection
of the devil with God, namely other-Being and then Being-for-self or
Being-for-one, in such a way that the other is for one; and this is
the origin of evil in God and out of God. This is the furthest point
of thought reached by Jacob Boehme. He represents this Fall of Lucifer
as that the “Ichts,” _i.e._ self-knowledge, the “I” [Ichheit] (a word
which we find used by him), the inward imagining of self, the inward
fashioning of self (the being-for-self), is the fire which absorbs all
things. This is the negative side in the separator, the anguish; or it is
the wrath of God. This divine wrath is hell and the devil, who through
himself imagines himself into himself. This is very bold and speculative;
Boehme here seeks to show in God Himself the sources of the divine
anger. He also calls the will of the something [“Ichts”] self-hood;
it is the passing over of the something [“Ichts”] into the nothing
[Nichts], the “I” imagining itself within itself. He says: “Heaven and
hell are as far removed from one another as day and night, as something
and nothing.” Boehme has really here penetrated into the utmost depths
of divine essence; evil, matter, or whatever it has been called, is the
I = I, the Being-for-self, the true negativity. Before this it was the
_nonens_ which is itself positive, the darkness; but the true negativity
is the “I.” It is not anything bad because it is called the evil; it is
in mind alone that evil exists, because it is conceived therein as it
is in itself. “Where the will of God willeth in anything, there God is
manifested, and in that manifestation the angels also dwell; but where
God in any thing willeth not with the will of the thing, there God is
not manifested to it, but dwelleth” (there) “in Himself without the
co-operating of the thing;” in that case “in that thing is its own will,
and there the devil dwelleth and all whatever is without God.”[140]
Boehme in his own way sets forth the form further assumed in this process
in a pictorial manner. This “_Separator_ deduces qualities from itself,
from which the infinite manifold arises, and through which the eternal
One makes itself perceptible” (so that it is for others) “not according
to the unity, but in accordance with the efflux of the unity.” Implicit
Being and the manifold are absolutely opposed through the Notion, which
Boehme did not have: Being-for-self implies Being-for-another and
retrogression into the opposite. Boehme sways backwards and forwards
in apparent contradictions, and does not well know how to find a way
out of the difficulty. “But the efflux is carried on to the greatest
extreme possible, to the generation of fire”—dark fire without light,
darkness, the hidden, the self;[141]—“in which fiery nature,” however,
since this fire rises and shoots up, “the eternal One becomes majestic
and a light,” and this light which there breaks forth is the form which
the other principle assumes. This is the return to the One. “Thereby”
(through fire) “the eternal power becomes desirous and effectual
and” (fire) “is the original condition” (essence) “of the sensitive”
(feeling) “life, where in the Word of power an eternal sensitive life
first takes its origin. For if life had no sensitiveness, it would have
no will nor efficacy; but pain”—anguish, suffering—first “makes it”
(all life) “effectual and endows it with will. And the light of such
kindling through fire makes it joyous, for it is an anointment,” joy and
loveliness “of painfulness.”[142]
Boehme turns this round in many ways in order to grasp the something
[Ichts], the Separator, as it “rises”[143] from the Father. The qualities
rise in the great Salitter, stir, raise, and move [rügen] themselves.
Boehme has there the quality of astringency in the Father, and he then
represents the process of the something [Ichts] as a sharpness, a drawing
together, as a flash of lightning that breaks forth. This light is
Lucifer. The Being-for-self, the self-perception, is by Boehme called
the drawing together into a point. That is astringency, sharpness,
penetration, fierceness; to this pertains the wrath of God, and here
Boehme in this manner grasps the “other” of God in God Himself. “This
source can be kindled through great motion or elevation. Through the
contraction the creaturely Being is formed so that a heavenly _Corpus_
may be” intelligibly “formed. But if it”—the sharpness—“be kindled
through elevation, which those creatures only can do which are created
out of the divine Salitter, then it is a burning source-vein of the wrath
of God. The flash is the mother of light; for the flash generates the
light, and is the Father of the fierceness; for the fierceness abides in
the flash as a seed in the father, and that flash generates also the tone
or sound”—the flash is, speaking generally, the absolute generator. The
flash is still connected with pain; light is what brings intelligence.
The divine birth is the going forth of the flash, of the life of all
qualities.[144] This is all from the Aurora.
In the _Quæstionibus theosophicis_ Boehme makes particular use of the
form of Yes and No for the separator, for this opposition. He says:
“The reader must know that in Yes and No all things consist, whether
divine, devilish, earthly, or what they may be called. The One as the
Yes is pure power and life, and it is the truth of God or God Himself.
He would be unknowable in Himself, and in Him there would be no joy nor
elevation, nor feeling”—life—“without the No. The No is a counterstroke
of the Yes, or of the truth” (this negativity is the principle of all
knowledge, comprehension), “that the truth may be manifest and be a
something wherein there is a _contrarium_ in which there is the eternal
love, moving, feeling, and willing, and demanding to be loved. And yet
we cannot say that the Yes is separated from the No, and that they are
two things in proximity; for they are only one thing, but they separate
themselves into two beginnings and make two _centra_, where each works
and wills in itself. Without those two, which are continually in strife,
all things would be a nothing, and would stand still without movement.
If the eternal will did not itself flow from itself and introduce itself
into receptibility, there would be no form nor distinction, for all
powers would” then “be one power. Neither could there be understanding
in that case, for the understanding arises” (has its substance) “in the
differentiation of the manifold, where one property sees, proves and
wills the others. The will which has flowed out wills dissimilarity, so
that it may be distinguished from similarity and be its own something—and
that something may exist, that the eternal seeing may see and feel.
And from the individual will arises the No, for it brings itself into
ownness, _i.e._ receptivity of self. It desires to be something and
does not make itself in accordance with unity; for unity is a Yes which
flows forth, which ever stands thus in the breathing forth of itself,
being imperceptible; for it has nothing in which it can find itself
excepting in the receptivity of the dissentient will, as in the No which
is counterstroke to the Yes, in which the Yes is indeed revealed,
and in which it possesses something which it can will. And the No is
therefore called a No, because it is a desire turned inwards on itself,
as if it were a shutting up into negativity. The emanated seeking will
is absorbent and comprehends itself within itself, from it come forms
and qualities: (1) Sharpness, (2) Motion, (3) Feeling. (4) The fourth
property is Fire as the flash of light; this rises in the bringing
together of the great and terrible sharpness and the unity. Thus in the
contact a _Flagrat_ [Schrack] results, and in this _Flagrat_ [Schrack]
unity is apprehended as being a Flash or Gleam, an exulting joy.” That
is the bursting forth of the unity. “For thus the light arises in the
midst of the darkness, for the unity becomes a light, and the receptivity
of the carnal will in the qualities becomes a Spirit-fire which has its
source and origin out of the sharp, cold astringency. And according to
that, God is an angry” and “jealous God,” and in this we have evil.
“(_a_) The first quality of the absorption is the No; (_b_) Sharpness;
(_c_) Hardness; (_d_) Feeling; (_e_) the source of fire, hell or
hollowness, Hiddenness. (5) The fifth quality, Love, makes in the fire,
as in pain, another _Principium_ as a great fire of love.”[145] These
are the main points under the second head. In such depths Boehme keeps
struggling on, for to him conceptions are lacking, and there are only
religious and chemical forms to be found; and because he uses these in a
forced sense in order to express his ideas, not only does barbarism of
expression result, but incomprehensibility as well.
c. “From this eternal operation of the sensation the visible world
sprang; the world is the Word which has flowed forth and has disposed
itself into qualities, since in qualities the particular will has
arisen. The _Separator_ has made it a will of its own after such a
fashion.”[146] The world is none other than the essence of God made
creaturely.[147] Hence “If thou beholdest the Deep” of the heavens, “the
Stars, the Elements and the Earth,” and what they have brought forth,
“then thou” certainly “comprehendest not with thy eyes the bright and
clear Deity, though indeed it is” likewise “there and in them.” Thou
seest only their creaturely manifestation. “But if thou raisest thy
thoughts and considerest ... God who rules in holiness in this government
or dominion, then thou breakest through the heaven of heavens and
apprehendest God at His holy heart. The powers of heaven ever operate in
images, growths and colours, in order to reveal the holy God, so that He
may be in all things known.”[148]
3. Finally what comes third in these three-fold forms is the unity of the
light, of the separator and power: this is the spirit, which is already
partially implied in what has preceded. “All the stars signify the power
of the Father, and from them issues the sun” (they make themselves a
counterstroke to unity). “And from all the stars there goes forth the
power which is in every star, into the Deep, and the power, heat and
shining of the sun goes likewise into the Deep”—back to the stars,
into the power of the Father. “And in the Deep the power of all stars,
together with the heat and lustre of the sun, are all but one thing,
a moving, boiling Hovering, like a spirit or matter. Now in the whole
deep of the Father, externally without the Son, there is nothing but the
manifold and unmeasurable or unsearchable power of the Father and the
Light of the Son. The Light of the Son is in the Deep of the Father a
living, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-hearing, all-seeing, all-smelling,
all-tasting, all-feeling Spirit, wherein is all power, splendour, and
wisdom, as in the Father and the Son.”[149] That is Love, the softener of
all powers through the light of the Son. We see that the sensuous element
thus pertains to this.
Boehme really has the idea that “God’s essence” (which has proceeded
from the eternal deep as world) “is thus not something far away which
possesses a particular position or place, for” essence, “the abyss of
nature and creation, is God Himself. Thou must not think that in heaven
there was some manner of _Corpus_”—the seven spirits generate this
_Corpus_ or heart—“which above all other things is called God. No; but
the whole divine power which itself is heaven and the heaven of all
heavens, is so generated, and that is called God the Father; of whom all
the holy angels are generated, in like manner also the spirit of all men.
Thou canst name no place, either in heaven or in this world, where the
divine birth is not. The birth of the divine Trinity likewise takes place
in thine own heart; all three persons are generated in thy heart, God the
Father, Son and Holy Ghost. In the divine power everywhere we find the
fountain spring of the divine birth; and there already are all the seven
qualifying or fountain spirits of God, as if thou wouldst make a spacious
creaturely circumscribed circle and hadst the deity therein.”[150] In
every spirit all are contained.
To Boehme this trinity is the complete universal life in each individual,
it is absolute substance. He says: “All things in this world are
according to the similitude of this ternary. Ye blind Jews, Turks, and
Heathens, open wide the eyes of your mind: I will show you, in your
body, and in every natural thing, in men, beasts, fowls, and worms, also
in wood, stone, leaves, and grass, the likeness of the holy ternary in
God. You say, there is but one Being in God, and that God has no Son.
Open your eyes and consider your selves: man is made according to the
similitude and out of the power of God in his ternary. Behold thy inward
man, and then thou wilt see it most plainly and clearly, if thou art not
a fool and an irrational beast. Therefore observe, in thy heart, in thy
veins, and in thy brain, thou hast thy spirit; and all the powers which
move in thy heart, in thy veins, and in thy brain, wherein thy life
consists, signify God the Father. From that power springs up [gebaret]
thy light, so that thou seest, understandest, and knowest in the same
power what thou art to do; for that light glimmers in thy whole body; and
the whole body moves in the power and knowledge of the light; this is the
Son which is born in thee.” This light, this seeing and understanding, is
the second determination; it is the relationship to itself. “Out of thy
light goes forth into the same power, reason, understanding, skill, and
wisdom, to govern the whole body, and to distinguish all whatsoever is
externally without the body. And both these are but one in the government
of thy mind, viz. thy spirit, which signifies God the Holy Ghost. And the
Holy Ghost from God rules in this spirit in thee, if thou art a child of
light and not of darkness. Now observe: in either wood, stone, or herbs
there are three things contained, neither can anything be generated or
grow, if but one of the three should be left out. First, there is the
power, from which a body comes to be, whether wood, stone, or herbs;
after that there is in that” thing “a sap which is the heart of the
thing. And thirdly there is in it a springing, flowing power, smell, or
taste, which is the spirit of the thing whereby it grows and increases.
Now if any of these three fail, the thing cannot subsist.”[151] Thus
Boehme regards everything as this ternary.
When he comes into particulars we see that he is obscure; from his
detailed explanations there is therefore not much to be derived. As
showing his manner of apprehending natural things I shall give one
more example of the manner in which, in the further working out of
the existence of nature as a counterstroke to the divine knowledge,
he makes use of what we call things as Notions (_supra_, p. 192).
The creaturely, he says, has “three kinds of powers or _Spiritus_ in
different _Centris_, but in one _Corpore_. (α) The first and external
_Spiritus_ is the coarse sulphur, salt and _Mercurius_, which is a
substance of four elements” (fire, water, earth, air) “or of the stars.
It forms the visible _Corpus_ according to the constellation of the
stars or property of the planets and now enkindled elements—the greatest
power of the _Spiritus mundi_. The _Separator_ makes the signature or
sign”—the self. The salt, the salitter, is approximately the neutral:
mercury [Merk or Mark] the operating, unrest as against nourishment;
the coarse sulphur, the negative unity. (β) “The other _Spiritus_ is
found in the oil of sulphur, the fifth essence, viz. a root of the four
elements. That is the softening and joy of the coarse, painful spirit
of sulphur and salt; the real cause of growing life, a joy of nature
as is the sun in the elements”—the direct principle of life. “In the
inward ground of that coarse spirit we see a beautiful, clear _Corpus_
in which the ideal light of nature shines from the divine efflux.” The
outward separator signs what is taken up with the shape and form of the
plant which receives into itself this coarse nourishment. (γ) “What comes
third is the tincture, a spiritual fire and light; the highest reason
for which the first separation of qualities takes place in the existence
of this world. _Fiat_ is the Word of each thing and belongs according
to its peculiar quality to eternity. Its origin is the holy power of
God. Smell [Ruch] is the sensation of this tincture. The elements are
only a mansion and counterstroke of the inward power, a cause of the
movement of the tincture.”[152] Sensuous things entirely lose the force
of sensuous conceptions. Boehme uses them, though not as such, as thought
determinations, that constitutes the hard and barbarous element in
Boehme’s representations, yet at the same time this unity with actuality
and this present of infinite existence.
Boehme describes the opposition in creation in the following way. If
nature is the first efflux of the _Separator_, two kinds of life must
yet be understood as in the counterstroke of the divine essence, beyond
that temporal one there is an eternal, to which the divine understanding
is given. It stands at the basis of the eternal, spiritual world, in the
_Mysterium Magnum_ of the divine counterstroke (personality)—a mansion
of divine will through which it reveals itself and is revealed to no
peculiarity of personal will. In this _centrum_ man has both lives in
himself, he belongs to time and eternity. He is (α) universal in the
“eternal understanding of the one good will which is a temperament;
(β) the original will of nature, viz. the comprehensibility of the
_Centra_, where each _centrum_ in the divisibility shuts itself in one
place to egotism and self-will as a personal _Mysterium_ or mind. The
former only requires a counterstroke to its similarity; this latter, the
self-generated natural will also requires in the place of the egotism
of the dark impression a likeness, that is a counterstroke through its
own comprehensibility, through which comprehension it requires nothing
but its corporality as a natural ground.” Now it is this “I,” the dark,
pain, fire, the wrath of God, implicitude, self-comprehension, which is
broken up in regeneration; the I is shattered, painfulness brought into
true rest—just as the dark fire breaks into light.[153]
Now these are the principal ideas found in Boehme; those most profound
are (α) the generating of Light as the Son of God from qualities, through
the most living dialectic; (β) God’s diremption of Himself. Barbarism
in the working out of his system can no more fail to be recognized than
can the great depths into which he has plunged by the union of the most
absolute opposites. Boehme grasps the opposites in the crudest, harshest
way, but he does not allow himself through their unworkableness to be
prevented from asserting the unity. This rude and barbarous depth which
is devoid of Notion, is always a present, something which speaks from
itself, which has and knows everything in itself. We have still to
mention Boehme’s piety, the element of edification, the way in which
the soul is guided in his writings. This is in the highest degree deep
and inward, and if one is familiar with his form these depths and this
inwardness will be found. But it is a form with which we cannot reconcile
ourselves, and which permits no definite conception of details, although
we cannot fail to see the profound craving for speculation which existed
within this man.
SECTION TWO
PERIOD OF THE THINKING UNDERSTANDING
After Neo-Platonism and all that is associated with it is left behind,
it is not until Descartes is arrived at that we really enter upon a
philosophy which is, properly speaking, independent, which knows that
it comes forth from reason as independent, and that self-consciousness
is an essential moment in the truth. Philosophy in its own proper soil
separates itself entirely from the philosophizing theology, in accordance
with its principle, and places it on quite another side. Here, we may
say, we are at home, and like the mariner after a long voyage in a
tempestuous sea, we may now hail the sight of land; with Descartes
the culture of modern times, the thought of modern Philosophy, really
begins to appear, after a long and tedious journey on the way which has
led so far. It is specially characteristic of the German that the more
servile he on the one hand is, the more uncontrolled is he on the other;
restraint and want of restraint—originality, is the angel of darkness
that buffets us. In this new period the universal principle by means of
which everything in the world is regulated, is the thought that proceeds
from itself; it is a certain inwardness, which is above all evidenced
in respect to Christianity, and which is the Protestant principle in
accordance with which thought has come to the consciousness of the
world at large as that to which every man has a claim. Thus because the
independently existent thought, this culminating point of inwardness,
is now set forth and firmly grasped as such, the dead externality of
authority is set aside and regarded as out of place. It is only through
my own free thought within that thought can however be recognized and
ratified by me. This likewise signifies that such free thought is the
universal business of the world and of individuals; it is indeed the duty
of every man, since everything is based upon it; thus what claims to rank
as established in the world man must scrutinize in his own thoughts.
Philosophy is thus become a matter of universal interest, and one
respecting which each can judge for himself; for everyone is a thinker
from the beginning.
On account of this new beginning to Philosophy we find in the old
histories of Philosophy of the seventeenth century—_e.g._ that of
Stanley—the philosophy of the Greeks and Romans only, and Christianity
forms the conclusion. The idea was that neither in Christianity nor
subsequently any philosophy was to be found, because there was no longer
a necessity for it, seeing that the philosophic theology of the Middle
Ages had not free, spontaneous thought as its principle (Vol. I. pp. 111,
112). But though it is true that this has now become the philosophic
principle, we must not expect that it should be at once methodically
developed out of thought. The old assumption is made, that man only
attains to the truth through reflection; this plainly is the principle.
But the determination and definition of God, the world of the manifold as
it appears, is not yet revealed as necessarily proceeding from thought;
for we have only reached the thought of a content which is given through
ordinary conception, observation, and experience.
On the one hand we see a metaphysic, and, on the other, the particular
sciences: on the one hand abstract thought as such, on the other its
content taken from experience; these two lines in the abstract stand
opposed to one another, and yet they do not separate themselves so
sharply. We shall indeed come to an opposition, viz. to that between
_a priori_ thought—that the determinations which are to hold good
for thought must be taken from thought itself—and the determination
that we must commence, conclude and think from experience. This is
the opposition between rationalism and empiricism; but it is really
a subordinate one, because even the metaphysical mode in philosophy,
which only allows validity to immanent thought, does not take what is
methodically developed from the necessity of thought, but in the old
way derives its content from inward or outward experience, and through
reflection and meditation renders it abstract. The form of philosophy
which is first reached through thought is metaphysics, the form of the
thinking understanding; this period has, as its outstanding figures,
Descartes and Spinoza, likewise Malebranche and Locke, Leibnitz and
Wolff. The second form is Scepticism and Criticism with regard to the
thinking understanding, to metaphysics as such, and to the universal
of empiricism; here we shall go on to speak of representatives of the
Scottish, German, and French philosophies; the French materialists again
turn back to metaphysics.
CHAPTER I
THE METAPHYSICS OF THE UNDERSTANDING
Metaphysics is what reaches after substance, and this implies that one
unity, one thought is maintained in opposition to dualism, just as Being
was amongst the ancients. In metaphysics itself we have, however, the
opposition between substantiality and individuality. What comes first
is the spontaneous, but likewise uncritical, metaphysics, and it is
represented by Descartes and Spinoza, who assert the unity of Being and
thought. The second stage is found in Locke, who treats of the opposition
itself inasmuch as he considers the metaphysical Idea of experience, that
is the origin of thoughts and their justification, not yet entering on
the question of whether they are absolutely true. In the third place we
have Leibnitz’s monad—the world viewed as a totality.
A. FIRST DIVISION.
We here encounter the innate ideas of Descartes. The philosophy of
Spinoza, in the second place, is related to the philosophy of Descartes
as its necessary development only; the method is an important part of
it. A method which stands alongside of Spinozism and which is also a
perfected development of Cartesianism, is, in the third place, that by
which Malebranche has represented this philosophy.
1. DESCARTES.
René Descartes is a bold spirit who re-commenced the whole subject
from the very beginning and constituted afresh the ground-work on which
Philosophy is based, and to which, after a thousand years had passed, it
once more returned. The extent of the influence which this man exercised
upon his times and the culture of Philosophy generally, cannot be
sufficiently expressed; it rests mainly in his setting aside all former
presuppositions and beginning in a free, simple, and likewise popular
way, with popular modes of thought and quite simple propositions, in his
leading the content to thought and extension or Being, and so to speak
setting up this before thought as its opposite. This simple thought
appeared in the form of the determinate, clear understanding, and it
cannot thus be called speculative thought or speculative reason. There
are fixed determinations from which Descartes proceeds, but only of
thought; this is the method of his time. What the French called exact
science, science of the determinate understanding, made its appearance at
this time. Philosophy and exact science were not yet separated, and it
was only later on that this separation first took place.
To come to the life of Descartes—he was born in 1596, at La Haye in
Touraine, of an ancient and noble race. He received an education
of the usual kind in a Jesuit school, and made great progress; his
disposition was lively and restless; he extended his insatiable zeal
in all directions, pursued his researches into all systems and forms;
his studies, in addition to ancient literature, embraced such subjects
as philosophy, mathematics, chemistry, physics, and astronomy. But the
studies of his youth in the Jesuit school, and those studies which
he afterwards prosecuted with the same diligence and strenuous zeal,
resulted in giving him a strong disinclination for learning derived from
books; he quitted the school where he had been educated, and yet his
eagerness for learning was only made the keener through this perplexity
and unsatisfied yearning. He went as a young man of eighteen to Paris,
and there lived in the great world. But as he here found no satisfaction,
he soon left society and returned to his studies. He retired to a suburb
of Paris and there occupied himself principally with mathematics,
remaining quite concealed from all his former friends. At last, after
the lapse of two years, he was discovered by them, drawn forth from his
retirement, and again introduced to the great world. He now once more
renounced the study of books and threw himself into the affairs of actual
life. Thereafter he went to Holland and entered the military service;
soon afterwards, in 1619, and in the first year of the Thirty Years’ War,
he went as a volunteer with the Bavarian troops, and took part in several
campaigns under Tilly. Many have found learning unsatisfying; Descartes
became a soldier—not because he found in the sciences too little, but
because they were too much, too high for him. Here in his winter quarters
he studied diligently, and in Ulm, for instance, he made acquaintance
with a citizen who was deeply versed in mathematics. He was able to carry
out his studies even better in winter quarters at Neuberg on the Danube,
where once more, and now most profoundly, the desire awoke in him to
strike out a new departure in Philosophy and entirely reconstruct it;
he solemnly promised the Mother of God to make a pilgrimage to Loretto
if she would prosper him in this design, and if he should now at last
come to himself and attain to peace. He was also in the battle at Prague
in which Frederick the Elector-Palatine lost the Bohemian crown. Yet
since the sight of these wild scenes could not satisfy him, he gave up
military service in 1621. He made several other journeys through the rest
of Germany, and then proceeded to Poland, Prussia, Switzerland, Italy
and France. On account of its greater freedom he withdrew to Holland, in
order there to pursue his projects; here he lived in peace from 1629 to
1644—a period in which he composed and issued most of his works, and
also defended them against the manifold attacks from which they suffered,
and which more especially proceeded from the clergy. Queen Christina
of Sweden finally called him to her court at Stockholm, which was the
rendezvous for all the most celebrated men of learning of the time, and
there he died in 1650.[154]
As regards his philosophic works, those which contain his first
principles have in particular something very popular about their method
of presentation, which makes them highly to be recommended to those
commencing the study of philosophy. Descartes sets to work in a quite
simple and childlike manner, with a narration of his reflections as they
came to him. Professor Cousin of Paris has brought out a new edition of
Descartes in eleven octavo volumes; the greater part consists of letters
on natural phenomena. Descartes gave a new impetus to mathematics as well
as to philosophy. Several important methods were discovered by him, upon
which the most brilliant results in higher mathematics were afterwards
built. His method is even now an essential in mathematics, for Descartes
is the inventor of analytic geometry, and consequently the first to point
out the way in this field of science to modern mathematics. He likewise
cultivated physics, optics, and astronomy, and made the most important
discoveries in these; we have not, however, to deal with such matters.
The application of metaphysics to ecclesiastical affairs, investigations,
etc., has likewise no special interest for us.
1. In Philosophy Descartes struck out quite original lines; with him the
new epoch in Philosophy begins, whereby it was permitted to culture to
grasp in the form of universality the principle of its higher spirit in
thought, just as Boehme grasped it in sensuous perceptions and forms.
Descartes started by saying that thought must necessarily commence from
itself; all the philosophy which came before this, and specially what
proceeded from the authority of the Church, was for ever after set aside.
But since here thought has properly speaking grasped itself as abstract
understanding only, in relation to which the more concrete content still
stands over on the other side, the determinate conceptions were not
yet deduced from the understanding, but taken up only empirically. In
Descartes’ philosophy we have thus to distinguish what has, and what
has not universal interest for us: the former is the process of his
thoughts themselves, and the latter the mode in which these thoughts are
presented and deduced. Yet we must not consider the process as a method
of consistent proof; it is indeed a deep and inward progress, but it
comes to us in an ingenuous and naïve form. In order to do justice to
Descartes’ thoughts it is necessary for us to be assured of the necessity
for his appearance; the spirit of his philosophy is simply knowledge as
the unity of Thought and Being. And yet on the whole there is little to
say about his philosophy.
a. Descartes expresses the fact that we must begin from thought as such
alone, by saying that we must doubt everything (_De omnibus dubitandum
est_); and that is an absolute beginning. He thus makes the abolition
of all determinations the first condition of Philosophy. This first
proposition has not, however, the same signification as Scepticism,
which sets before it no other aim than doubt itself, and requires that
we should remain in this indecision of mind, an indecision wherein mind
finds its freedom. It rather signifies that we should renounce all
prepossessions—that is, all hypotheses which are accepted as true in
their immediacy—and commence from thought, so that from it we should in
the first place attain to some fixed and settled basis, and make a true
beginning. In Scepticism this is not the case, for with the sceptics
doubt is the end at which they rest.[155] But the doubting of Descartes,
his making no hypotheses, because nothing is fixed or secure, does not
occur in the interests of freedom as such, in order that nothing should
have value except freedom itself, and nothing exist in the quality of
an external objective. To him everything is unstable indeed, in so
far as the Ego can abstract from it or can think, for pure thought is
abstraction from everything. But in consciousness the end is predominant,
and it is to arrive at something fixed and objective—and not the moment
of subjectivity, or the fact of being set forth, known and proved by me.
Yet this last comes along with the other, for it is from the starting
point of my thought that I would attain my object; the impulse of freedom
is thus likewise fundamental.
In the propositions in which Descartes gives in his own way the ground
of this great and most important principle, there is found a naïve and
empirical system of reasoning. This is an example: “Because we were born
as children, and formed all manner of judgments respecting sensuous
things before we had the perfect use of our reason, we are through many
preconceived ideas hindered from the knowledge of the truth. From these
we appear not to be able to free ourselves in any other way but by once
in our lives striving to doubt that respecting which we have the very
slightest suspicion of an uncertainty. Indeed it is really desirable to
hold as false everything in respect to which we have any doubt, so that
we may find more clearly what is most certain and most knowable. Yet
this doubt has to be limited to the contemplation of the truth, for in
the conduct of our life we are compelled to choose the probable, since
there the opportunity for action would often pass away before we could
solve our doubts. But here, where we have only to deal with the search
for truth, we may very reasonably doubt whether any thing sensuous and
perceptible exists—in the first place because we find that the senses
often deceive us and it is prudent not to trust in what has even once
deceived us, and then because every day in dreaming we think we feel or
see before ourselves innumerable things which never were, and to the
doubter no signs are given by which he can safely distinguish sleeping
from waking. We shall hereby likewise doubt everything else, even
mathematical propositions, partly because we have seen that some err
even in what we hold most certain, and ascribe value to what to us seems
false, and partly because we have heard that a God exists who has created
us, and who can do everything, so that He may have created us liable to
err. But if we conceive ourselves not to derive our existence from God,
but from some other source, perhaps from ourselves, we are all the more
liable, in that we are thus imperfect, to err. But we have so far the
experience of freedom within us that we can always refrain from what is
not perfectly certain and well founded.”[156] The demand which rests
at the basis of Descartes’ reasonings thus is that what is recognized
as true should be able to maintain the position of having the thought
therein at home with itself. The so-called immediate intuition and inward
revelation, which in modern times is so highly regarded, has its place
here. But because in the Cartesian form the principle of freedom as such
is not brought into view, the grounds which are here advanced are for the
most part popular.
b. Descartes sought something in itself certain and true, which should
neither be only true like the object of faith without knowledge, nor the
sensuous and also sceptical certainty which is without truth. The whole
of Philosophy as it had been carried on up to this time was vitiated by
the constant presupposition of something as true, and in some measure,
as in the Neo-Platonic philosophy, by not giving the form of scientific
knowledge to its matter, or by not separating its moments. But to
Descartes nothing is true which does not possess an inward evidence
in consciousness, or which reason does not recognize so clearly and
conclusively that any doubt regarding it is absolutely impossible.
“Because we thus reject or declare to be false everything regarding which
we can have any doubt at all, it is easy for us to suppose that there is
no God, no heaven, no body—but we cannot therefore say that we do not
exist, who think this. For it is contradictory to say that what thinks
does not exist. Hence the knowledge that ‘I think, therefore I am,’ is
what we arrive at first of all, and it is the most certain fact that
offers itself to everyone who follows after philosophy in an orderly
fashion. This is the best way of becoming acquainted with the nature of
spirit and its diversity from body. For if we inquire who we are who can
set forth as untrue everything which is different from ourselves, we
clearly see that no extension, figure, change of position, nor any such
thing which can be ascribed to body, constitutes our nature, but only
thought alone; which is thus known earlier and more certainly than any
corporeal thing.”[157] ‘I’ has thus significance here as thought, and
not as individuality of self-consciousness. The second proposition of
the Cartesian philosophy is hence the immediate certainty of thought.
Certainty is only knowledge as such in its pure form as self-relating,
and this is thought; thus then the unwieldy understanding makes its way
on to the necessity of thought.
Descartes begins, just as Fichte did later on, with the ‘I’ as
indubitably certain; I know that something is presented in me. By this
Philosophy is at one stroke transplanted to quite another field and
to quite another standpoint, namely to the sphere of subjectivity.
Presuppositions in religion are given up; proof alone is sought for,
and not the absolute content which disappears before abstract infinite
subjectivity. There is in Descartes likewise a seething desire to
speak from strong feeling, from the ordinary sensuous point of view,
just as Bruno and so many others, each in his own fashion, express as
individualities their particular conceptions of the world. To consider
the content in itself is not the first matter; for I can abstract from
all my conceptions, but not from the ‘I.’ We think this and that, and
hence it is—is to give the common would-be-wise argument of those
incapable of grasping the matter in point; that a determinate content
exists is exactly what we are forced to doubt—there is nothing absolutely
fixed. Thought is the entirely universal, but not merely because I
can abstract, but because ‘I’ is thus simple, self-identical. Thought
consequently comes first; the next determination arrived at, in direct
connection with it, is the determination of Being. The ‘I think’ directly
involves my Being; this, says Descartes, is the absolute basis of all
Philosophy.[158] The determination of Being is in my ‘I’; this connection
is itself the first matter. Thought as Being and Being as thought—that
is my certainty, ‘I’; in the celebrated _Cogito, ergo sum_ we thus have
Thought and Being inseparably bound together.
On the one hand this proposition is regarded as a syllogism: from thought
Being is deduced. Kant more especially has objected to this that Being
is not contained in thinking, that it is different from thinking. This
is true, but they are still inseparable, or constitute an identity;
their difference is not to the prejudice of their unity. Yet this maxim
of pure abstract certainty, the universal totality in which everything
implicitly exists, is not proved;[159] we must therefore not try to
convert this proposition into a syllogism. Descartes himself says:
“There is no syllogism present at all. For in order that there should be
such, the major premise must have been ‘all that thinks exists’”—from
which the subsumption would have followed in the minor premise, ‘now
I am.’ By this the immediacy which rests in the proposition, would be
removed. “But that major premise” is not set forth at all, being “really
in the first instance derived from the original ‘I think, therefore, I
am.’”[160] For arriving at a conclusion three links are required—in this
case we ought to have a third through which thought and Being should have
been mediated, and it is not to be found here. The ‘Therefore’ which
binds the two sides together is not the ‘Therefore’ of a syllogism; the
connection between Being and Thought is only immediately posited. This
certainty is thus the _prius_; all other propositions come later. The
thinking subject as the simple immediacy of being-at-home-with-me is
the very same thing as what is called Being; and it is quite easy to
perceive this identity. As universal, thought is contained in all that
is particular, and thus is pure relation to itself, pure oneness with
itself. We must not make the mistake of representing Being to ourselves
as a concrete content, and hence it is the same immediate identity which
thought likewise is. Immediacy is, however, a one-sided determination;
thought does not contain it alone, but also the determination to mediate
itself with itself, and thereby—by the mediation being at the same time
the abrogation of the mediation—it is immediacy. In thought we thus have
Being; Being is, however, a poor determination, it is the abstraction
from the concrete of thought. This identity of Being and Thought,
which constitutes the most interesting idea of modern times, has not
been further worked out by Descartes; he has relied on consciousness
alone, and for the time being placed it in the fore-front. For with
Descartes the necessity to develop the differences from the ‘I think’ is
not yet present; Fichte first applied himself to the deduction of all
determinations from this culminating point of absolute certainty.
Other propositions have been set against that of Descartes.
Gassendi,[161] for example, asks if we might not just as well say
_Ludificor, ergo sum_: I am made a fool of by my consciousness, therefore
I exist—or properly speaking, therefore I am made a fool of. Descartes
himself recognized that this objection merited consideration, but he
here repels it, inasmuch as it is the ‘I’ alone and not the other
content which has to be maintained. Being alone is identical with pure
thought, and not its content, be it what it may. Descartes further says:
“By thought I, however, understand all that takes place in us within
our consciousness, in as far as we are conscious of it; thus will,
conception, and even feeling are identical with thought. For if I say
‘I see,’ or ‘I walk out,’ and ‘therefore I am,’ and understand by this
the seeing and walking which is accomplished by the body, the conclusion
is not absolutely certain, because, as often happens in a dream, I may
imagine that I can see or walk even if I do not open my eyes nor move
from my place, and I might also possibly do so supposing I had no body.
But if I understand it of the subjective feeling or the consciousness of
seeing or walking itself, because it is then related to the mind that
alone feels or thinks that it sees or walks, this conclusion is perfectly
certain.”[162] “In a dream” is an empirical mode of reasoning, but there
is no other objection to it. In willing, seeing, hearing, &c., thought is
likewise contained, it is absurd to suppose that the soul has thinking
in one special pocket, and seeing, willing, &c., in others. But if I say
‘I see,’ ‘I walk out,’ there is present on the one hand my consciousness
‘I,’ and consequently thought, on the other hand, however, there is
present willing, seeing, hearing, walking, and thus a still further
modification of the content. Now because of this modification I cannot
say ‘I walk, and therefore I am,’ for I can undoubtedly abstract from
the modification, since it is no longer universal Thought. Thus we must
merely look at the pure consciousness contained in the concrete ‘I.’ Only
when I accentuate the fact that I am present there as thinking, is pure
Being implied, for only with the universal is Being united.
“In this it is implied,” says Descartes, “that thought is more certain to
me than body. If from the fact that I touch or see the earth I judge that
it exists, I must more certainly judge from this that my thought exists.
For it may very well happen that I judge the earth to exist, even if it
does not exist, but it cannot be that I judge this, and that my mind
which judges this does not exist.”[163] That is to say, everything which
is for me I may assert to be non-existent, but when I assert myself to be
non-existent, I myself _assert_, or it is _my_ judgment. For I cannot set
aside the fact that I judge, even if I can abstract from that respecting
which I judge. In this Philosophy has regained its own ground that
thought starts from thought as what is certain in itself, and not from
something external, not from something given, not from an authority,
but directly from the freedom that is contained in the ‘I think.’ Of all
else I may doubt, of the existence of bodily things, of my body itself;
or this certainty does not possess immediacy in itself. For ‘I’ is just
certainty itself, but in all else this certainty is only predicate; my
body is certain to _me_, it is not this certainty itself.[164] As against
the certainty we feel of having a body, Descartes adduces the empirical
phenomenon that we often hear of persons imagining they feel pain in
a limb which they have lost long ago.[165] What is actual, he says is
a substance, the soul is a thinking substance; it is thus for itself,
separate from all external material things and independent. That it is
thinking is evident from its nature: it would think and exist even if no
material things were present; the soul can hence know itself more easily
than its body.[166]
All else that we can hold as true rests on this certainty; for in order
that anything should be held as true, evidence is requisite, but nothing
is true which has not this inward evidence in consciousness. “Now the
evidence of everything rests upon our perceiving it as clearly and
vividly as that certainty itself, and on its so entirely depending from,
and harmonizing with this principle, that if we wished to doubt it we
should also have to doubt this principle likewise” (our _ego_).[167] This
knowledge is indeed on its own account perfect evidence, but it is not
yet the truth, or if we take that Being as truth, it is an empty content,
and it is with the content that we have to do.
c. What comes third is thus the transition of this certainty into
truth, into the determinate; Descartes again makes this transition
in a naïve way, and with it we for the first time begin to consider
his metaphysics. What here takes place is that an interest arises in
further representations and conceptions of the abstract unity of Being
and Thought; there Descartes sets to work in an externally reflective
manner. “The consciousness which merely knows itself to be certain now
however seeks to extend its knowledge, and finds that it has conceptions
of many things—in which conceptions it does not deceive itself, so long
as it does not assert or deny that something similar outside corresponds
to them.” Deception in the conceptions has meaning only in relation to
external existence. “Consciousness also discovers universal conceptions,
and obtains from them proofs which are evident, _e.g._ the geometric
proposition that the three angles of a triangle are together equal to two
right angles is a conception which follows incontrovertibly from others.
But in reflecting whether such things really exist doubts arise.”[168]
That there is such a thing as a triangle is indeed in this case by
no means certain, since extension is not contained in the immediate
certainty of myself. The soul may exist without the bodily element, and
this last without it, they are in reality different; one is conceivable
without the other. The soul thus does not think and know the other as
clearly as the certainty of itself.[169]
Now the truth of all knowledge rests on the proof of the existence of
God. The soul is an imperfect substance, but it has the Idea of an
absolute perfect existence within itself; this perfection is not begotten
in itself, just because it is an imperfect substance; this Idea is thus
innate. In Descartes the consciousness of this fact is expressed by his
saying that as long as the existence of God is not proved and perceived
the possibility of our deceiving ourselves remains, because we cannot
know whether we do not possess a nature ordered and disposed to err
(_supra_, p. 226).[170] The form is rather a mistaken one, and it only
generally expresses the opposition in which self-consciousness stands to
the consciousness of what is different, of the objective; and we have
to deal with the unity of both—the question being whether what is in
thought likewise possesses objectivity. This unity rests in God, or is
God Himself. I shall put these assertions in the manner of Descartes:
“Amongst these various conceptions possessed by us there likewise is
the conception of a supremely intelligent, powerful, and absolutely
perfect Being; and this is the most excellent of all conceptions.” This
all-embracing universal conception has therefore this distinguishing
feature, that in its case the uncertainty respecting Being which appears
in the other conceptions, finds no place. It has the characteristic that
“In it we do not recognize existence as something merely possible and
accidental, as we do the conceptions of other things which we perceive
clearly, but as a really essential and eternal determination. For
instance, as mind perceives that in the conception of a triangle it is
implied that the three angles are equal to two right angles, the triangle
has them; and in the same way from the fact that mind perceives existence
to be necessarily and eternally implied in the Notion of the most
perfect reality, it is forced to conclude that the most perfect reality
exists.”[171] For to perfection there likewise pertains the determination
of existence, since the conception of a non-existent is less perfect.
Thus we there have the unity of thought and Being, and the ontological
proof of the existence of God; this we met with earlier (p. 63, _seq._)
in dealing with Anselm.
The proof of the existence of God from the Idea of Him is in this wise:
In this Notion existence is implied; and therefore it is true. Descartes
proceeds further in the same direction, in so far as after the manner
of empirical axioms he sets forth: (α) “There are different degrees of
reality or entity, for the substance has more reality than the accident
or the mode, and infinite substance has more than finite.” (β) “In the
Notion of a thing existence is implied, either the merely potential
or the necessary,” _i.e._ in the ‘I’ there is Being as the immediate
certainty of an other-being, of the not-I opposed to the I. (γ) “No
thing or no perfection of a thing which really exists _actu_ can have
the Nothing as original cause of its existence. For if anything could
be predicated of nothing, thought could equally well be predicated of
it, and I would thus say that I am nothing because I think.” Descartes
here arrives at a dividing line, at an unknown relationship; the Notion
of cause is reached, and this is a thought indeed, but a determinate
thought. Spinoza says in his explanation, “That the conceptions contain
more or less reality, and those moments have just as much evidence as
thought itself, because they not only say that we think, but how we
think.” These determinate modes as differences in the simplicity of
thought, had, however, to be demonstrated. Spinoza adds to this step in
advance that “The degrees of reality which we perceive in ideas are not
in the ideas in as far as they are considered merely as kinds of thought,
but in so far as the one represents a substance and the other a mere
mode of substance, or, in a word, in so far as they are considered as
conceptions of things.” (δ) “The objective reality of Notions” (_i.e._,
the entity of what is represented in so far as it is in the Notion),
“demands a first cause in which the same reality is contained not merely
objectively” (that is to say in the Notion), “but likewise formally or
even _eminenter_—formally, that is perfectly likewise: _eminenter_, more
perfectly. For there must at least be as much in the cause as in the
effect.” (ε) “The existence of God is known immediately”—_a priori_—“from
the contemplation of His nature. To say that anything is contained in
the nature or in the Notion of a thing is tantamount to saying that it
is true: existence is directly contained in the Notion of God. Hence
it is quite true to say of Him that existence pertains of necessity to
Him. There is implied in the Notion of every particular thing either a
possible or a necessary existence—a necessary existence in the Notion
of God, _i.e._ of the absolutely perfect Being, for else He would be
conceived as imperfect.”[172]
Descartes likewise argues after this manner: “Problem: to prove _a
posteriori_ from the mere Notion within us the existence of God. The
objective reality of a Notion demands a cause in which the same reality
is not merely contained objectively” (as in the finite), “but formally”
(freely, purely for itself, outside of us) “or _eminenter_” (as
original). (Axiom δ.) “We now have a Notion of God, but His objective
reality is neither formally nor _eminenter_ contained within us, and it
can thus be only in God Himself.”[173] Consequently we see that with
Descartes this Idea is an hypothesis. Now we should say we find this
highest Idea in us. If we then ask whether this Idea exists, why, this
is the Idea, that existence is asserted with it. To say that it is only
a conception is to contradict the meaning of this conception. But here
it is unsatisfactory to find that the conception is introduced thus: ‘We
have this conception,’ and to find that it consequently appears like an
hypothesis. In such a case it is not proved of this content in itself
that it determines itself into this unity of thought and Being. In the
form of God no other conception is thus here given than that contained
in _Cogito, ergo sum_, wherein Being and thought are inseparably bound
up—though now in the form of a conception which I possess within me.
The whole content of this conception, the Almighty, All-wise, &c., are
predicates which do not make their appearance until later; the content
is simply the content of the Idea bound up with existence. Hence we
see these determinations following one another in an empirical manner,
and not philosophically proved—thus giving us an example of how in _a
priori_ metaphysics generally hypotheses of conceptions are brought in,
and these become objects of thought, just as happens in empiricism with
investigations, observations, and experiences.
Descartes then proceeds: “Mind is the more convinced of this when it
notices that it discovers within itself the conception of no other thing
wherein existence is necessarily implied. From this it will perceive that
that idea of highest reality is not imagined by it, it is not chimerical,
but a true and unalterable fact which cannot do otherwise than exist,
seeing that existence is necessarily involved in it. Our prejudices
hinder us from apprehending this with ease, for we are accustomed to
distinguish in all other things the essence” (the Notion) “from the
existence.” Respecting the assertion that thought is not inseparable
from existence, the common way of talking is as follows: ‘If what men
think really existed, things would be different.’ But in saying this men
do not take into account that what is spoken of in this way is always a
particular content, and that in it the essential nature of the finality
of things simply signifies the fact that Notion and Being are separable.
But how can one argue from finite things to the infinite? “This Notion,”
Descartes continues, “is furthermore not made by us.” It is now declared
to be an eternal truth which is revealed in us. “We do not find in
ourselves the perfections which are contained in this conception. Thus
we are certain that a first cause in which is all perfection, _i.e._
God as really existent, has given them to us; for it is certain to us
that from nothing, nothing arises” (according to Boehme God derived the
material of the world from Himself), “and what is perfect cannot be the
effect of anything imperfect. From Him we must thus in true science
deduce all created things.”[174] With the proof of the existence of God
the validity of and evidence for all truth in its origin is immediately
established. God as First Cause is Being-for-self, the reality which is
not merely entity or existence in thought. An existence such as this
first cause (which is not what we know as a thing) rests in the Notion of
the not-I, not of each determinate thing—since these as determinate are
negations—but only in the Notion of pure existence or the perfect cause.
It is the cause of the truth of ideas, for the aspect that it represents
is that of their Being.
d. Fourthly, Descartes goes on to assert: “We must believe what is
revealed to us by God, though we cannot understand it. It is not to
be wondered at, since we are finite, that there is in God’s nature as
inconceivably infinite, what passes our comprehension.” This represents
the entrance of a very ordinary conception. Boehme on the other hand says
(_supra_, p. 212): ‘The mystery of the Trinity is ever born within us.’
Descartes, however, concludes: “Hence we must not trouble ourselves with
investigations respecting the infinite; for seeing that we are finite, it
is absurd for us to say anything about it.”[175] This matter we shall
not, however, enter upon at present.
“Now the first attribute of God is that He is true and the Giver of all
light; it is hence quite contrary to His nature to deceive us. Hence the
light of nature or the power of acquiring knowledge given us by God can
affect no object which is not really true in as far as it is affected by
it” (the power of acquiring knowledge) “_i.e._ as it is perceived clearly
and distinctly.” We ascribe truth to God. From this Descartes goes on to
infer the universal bond which exists between absolute knowledge and the
objectivity of what we thus know. Knowledge has objects, has a content
which is known; we call this connection truth. The truth of God is just
this unity of what is thought by the subject or clearly perceived, and
external reality or existence. “Thereby an end is put to doubt, as if it
could be the case that what appears quite evident to us should not be
really true. We can thus no longer have any suspicion of mathematical
truths. Likewise if we give heed to what we distinguish by our senses in
waking or in sleeping, clearly and distinctly, it is easy to recognize
in each thing what in it is true.” By saying that what is rightly and
clearly thought likewise is, Descartes maintains that man comes to know
by means of thought what in fact is in things; the sources of errors lie
on the other hand in the finitude of our nature. “It is certain, because
of God’s truth, that the faculty of perceiving and that of assenting
through the will, if it extends no further than to that which is clearly
perceived, cannot lead to error. Even if this cannot be in any way
proved, it is by nature so established in all things, that as often as we
clearly perceive anything, we assent to it from ourselves and can in no
wise doubt that it is true.”[176]
All this is set forth very plausibly, but it is still indeterminate,
formal, and shallow; we only have the assertion made to us that this is
so. Descartes’ method is the method of the clear understanding merely.
Certainty with him takes the first place; from it no content is deduced
of necessity, no content generally, and still less its objectivity as
distinguished from the inward subjectivity of the ‘I.’ At one time we
have the opposition of subjective knowledge and actuality, and at another
their inseparable union. In the first case the necessity of mediating
them enters in, and the truth of God is asserted to be this mediating
power. It consists in this, that His Notion contains reality immediately
in itself. The proof of this unity then rests solely upon the fact of its
being said that we find within us the idea of complete perfection; thus
this conception here appears simply as one found ready to hand. With this
is compared the mere conception of God which contains no existence within
it, and it is found that without existence it would be imperfect. This
unity of God Himself, of His Idea, with His existence, is undoubtedly
the Truth; in this we find the ground for holding as true what is for us
just as certain as the truth of ourselves. As Descartes proceeds further
we thus find that in reality everything has truth for him only in so far
as it is really an object of thought, a universal. This truth of God has
been, as we shall see, expressed even more clearly and in a more concise
way by a disciple of Descartes, if one may venture to call him so—I mean
Malebranche (who might really be dealt with here),[177] in his _Recherche
de la vérité_.
The first of the fundamental determinations of the Cartesian metaphysics
is from the certainty of oneself to arrive at the truth, to recognize
Being in the Notion of thought. But because in the thought “I think,”
I am an individual, thought comes before my mind as subjective;
Being is hence not demonstrated in the Notion of thought itself, for
what advance has been made is merely in the direction of separation
generally. In the second place the negative of Being likewise comes
before self-consciousness, and this negative, united with the positive
I, is so to speak implicitly united in a third, in God. God, who before
this was a non-contradictory potentiality, now takes objective form to
self-consciousness, He is all reality in so far as it is positive, _i.e._
as it is Being, unity of thought and Being, the highest perfection of
existence; it is just in the negative, in the Notion of this, in its
being an object of thought, that Being is contained. An objection to
this identity is now old—Kant urged it likewise—that from the Notion of
the most perfect existence more does not follow than that _in_ thought
existence here and now and the most perfect essence are conjoined, but
not _outside_ of thought. But the very Notion of present existence is
this negative of self-consciousness, not out of thought,—but the thought
of the ‘out of thought.’
2. Descartes accepts Being in the entirely positive sense, and has
not the conception of its being the negative of self-consciousness:
but simple Being, set forth as the negative of self-consciousness,
is extension. Descartes thus separates extension from God, remains
constant to this separation, unites the universe, matter, with God in
such a way as to make Him its creator and first cause: and he has the
true perception that conservation is a continuous creation, in so far
as creation as activity is asserted to be separated. Descartes does
not, however, trace extension in a true method back to thought; matter,
extended substances, stand over against the thinking substances which
are simple; in as far as the universe is created by God, it could not
be as perfect as its cause. As a matter of fact the effect is less
perfect than the cause, since it is that which is posited, if we are to
remain at the conception of cause pertaining to the understanding. Hence
according to Descartes extension is the less perfect. But as imperfect
the extended substances cannot exist and subsist through themselves or
their Notion; they thus require every moment the assistance of God for
their maintenance, and without this they would in a moment sink back into
nothing. Preservation is, however, unceasing reproduction.[178]
Descartes now proceeds to further particulars, and expresses himself as
follows: “We consider what comes under consciousness either as things or
their qualities, or as eternal truths which have no existence outside
our thought”—which do not belong to this or that time, to this or that
place. He calls those last something inborn within us, something not
made by us or merely felt,[179] but the eternal Notion of mind itself
and the eternal determinations of its freedom, of itself as itself. From
this point the conception that ideas are inborn (_innatæ ideæ_) hence
proceeds; this is the question over which Locke and Leibnitz dispute. The
expression “eternal truths” is current even in these modern times, and it
signifies the universal determinations and relations which exist entirely
on their own account. The word ‘inborn’ is however a clumsy and stupid
expression, because the conception of physical birth thereby indicated,
does not apply to mind. To Descartes inborn ideas are not universal,
as they are to Plato and his successors, but that which has evidence,
immediate certainty, an immediate multiplicity founded in thought
itself—manifold conceptions in the form of a Being, resembling what
Cicero calls natural feelings implanted in the heart. We would rather say
that such is implied in the nature and essence of our mind and spirit.
Mind is active and conducts itself in its activity in a determinate
manner; but this activity has no other ground than its freedom. Yet if
this is the case more is required than merely to say so; it must be
deduced as a necessary product of our mind. We have such ideas, for
instance, in the logical laws: “From nothing comes nothing,” “A thing
cannot both be and not be,”[180] as also in moral principles. These are
facts of consciousness which Descartes however soon passes from again;
they are only present in thought as subjective, and he has thus not yet
inquired respecting their content.
As regards things, on which Descartes now directs his attention, the
other side to these eternal verities, the universal determinations
of things are substance, permanence, order, &c.[181] He then gives
definitions of these thoughts, just as Aristotle draws up a list of the
categories. But although Descartes laid it down formerly as essential
that no hypotheses must be made, yet now he takes the conceptions, and
passes on to them as something found within our consciousness. He defines
substance thus: “By substance I understand none other than a thing
(_rem_) which requires no other something for existence; and there is
only one thing, namely God, which can be regarded as such a substance
requiring no other thing.” This is what Spinoza says; we may say that it
is likewise the true definition, the unity of Notion and reality: “All
other” (things) “can only exist by means of a concurrence (_concursus_)
of God”; what we still call substance outside of God thus does not exist
for itself, does not have its existence in the Notion itself. That is
then called the system of assistance (_systema assistentiæ_) which
is, however, transcendental. God is the absolute uniter of Notion and
actuality; other things, finite things which have a limit and stand in
dependence, require something else. “Hence if we likewise call other
things substances, this expression is not applicable both to them and
to God _univoce_, as is said in the schools; that is to say no definite
significance can be given to this word which would equally apply both to
God and to the creatures.”[182]
“But I do not recognize more than two sorts of things; the one is that
of thinking things, and the other that of things which relate to what
is extended.” Thought, the Notion, the spiritual, the self-conscious,
is what is at home with itself, and its opposite is contained in what
is extended, spatial, separated, not at home with itself nor free.
This is the real distinction (_distinctio realis_) of substances: “The
one substance can be clearly and definitely comprehended without the
other. But the corporeal and the thinking and creating substance can
be comprehended under this common notion, for the reason that they
are things which require God’s support alone in order to exist.” They
are universal; other finite things require other things as conditions
essential to their existence. But extended substance, the kingdom of
nature, and spiritual substance, do not require one another.[183]
They may be called substances, because each of them constitutes an
entire range or sphere, an independent totality. But because, Spinoza
concluded, each side, the kingdom of thought as well as nature, is one
complete system within itself, they are likewise in themselves, that is
absolutely, identical as God, the absolute substance; for thinking spirit
this implicit is thus God, or their differences are ideal.
Descartes proceeds from the Notion of God to what is created, to thought
and extension, and from this to the particular. “Now substances
have several attributes without which they cannot be thought”—that
signifies their determinateness—“but each has something peculiar to
itself which constitutes its nature and essence”—a simple universal
determinateness—“and to which the others all relate. Thus thought
constitutes the absolute attribute of mind,” thought is its quality;
“extension is” the essential determination of corporeality, and this
alone is “the true nature of body. What remains are merely secondary
qualities, modes, like figure and movement in what is extended,
imagination, feeling and will in thinking; they may be taken away or
thought away. God is the uncreated, thinking substance.”[184]
Descartes here passes to what is individual, and because he follows
up extension he arrives at matter, rest, movement. One of Descartes’
main points is that matter, extension, corporeality, are quite the same
thing for thought; according to him the nature of body is fulfilled in
its extension, and this should be accepted as the only essential fact
respecting the corporeal world. We say that body offers resistance, has
smell, taste, colour, transparency, hardness, &c., since without these
we can have no body. All these further determinations respecting what is
extended, such as size, rest, movement, and inertia, are, however, merely
sensuous, and this Descartes showed, as it had long before this been
shown by the Sceptics. Undoubtedly that is the abstract Notion or pure
essence, but to body or to pure existence, there likewise of necessity
pertains negativity or diversity. By means of the following illustration
Descartes showed that with the exception of extension, all corporeal
determinations may be annihilated, and that none can be absolutely
predicated. We draw conclusions respecting the solidity and hardness
of matter from the resistance which a body offers to our disturbance,
and by means of which it seeks to hold its place. Now if we admit that
matter as we touch it always gives way to us like space, we should have
no reason for ascribing to it solidity. Smell, colour, taste, are in
the same way sensuous qualities merely; but what we clearly perceive is
alone true. If a body is ground into small parts, it gives way, and yet
it does not lose its nature; resistance is thus not essential.[185] This
not-being-for-itself is however a quantitatively slighter resistance
only; the resistance always remains. But Descartes desires only to think;
now he does not think resistance, colour, &c., but apprehends them by the
senses only. Hence he says that all this must be led back to extension
as being special modifications of the same. It is undoubtedly to the
credit of Descartes that he only accepts as true what is thought; but the
abrogation of these sensuous qualities simply represents the negative
movement of thought: the essence of body is conditioned through this
thought, that is, it is not true essence.
Descartes now makes his way from the Notion of extension to the laws of
motion, as the universal knowledge of the corporeal in its implicitude;
he shows (α) that there is no vacuum, for that would be an extension
without bodily substance, _i.e._ a body without body; (β) that there are
no atoms (no indivisible independent existence), for the same reason,
viz., because the essence of body is extension. (γ) He further shows
that a body is set in motion by something outside of it, but of itself
it continues in a condition of rest, and likewise it must, when in a
condition of movement, be brought to rest by another outside of it—this
is the property of inertia.[186] These are unmeaning propositions, for
an abstraction is involved for instance in asserting simple rest and
movement in their opposition.
Extension and motion are the fundamental conceptions in mechanical
physics; they represent the truth of the corporeal world. It is thus
that ideality comes before the mind of Descartes, and he is far elevated
above the reality of the sensuous qualities, although he does not reach
so far as to the separation of this ideality. He thus remains at the
point of view of mechanism pure and simple. Give me matter (extension)
and motion and I will build worlds for you, is what Descartes virtually
says.[187] Space and time were hence to him the only determinations of
the material universe. In this, then, lies the mechanical fashion of
viewing nature, or the natural philosophy of Descartes is seen to be
purely mechanical.[188] Hence changes in matter are due merely to motion,
so that Descartes traces every relationship to the rest and movement
of particles, and all material diversity such as colour, and taste—in
short, all bodily qualities and animal phenomena—to mechanism. In living
beings processes such as that of digestion are mechanical effects which
have as principles, rest and movement. We here see the ground and origin
of the mechanical philosophy; but further on we find that this is
unsatisfactory, for matter and motion do not suffice to explain life.
Yet the great matter in all this is that thought goes forward in its
determinations, and that it constitutes from these thought-determinations
the truth of nature.
In his consideration of the system of the world and the movement of the
heavenly bodies, Descartes has worked out the mechanical view more fully.
He thus comes to speak of the earth, the sun, &c., and of his conception
of the circling motion of the heavenly bodies in the form of vortices:
of metaphysical hypotheses as to how small particles pass into, out of,
and through pores and act on one another; and finally to saltpetre and
gunpowder.[189]
Universal reflections should have the first claim on our attention; but
on the other hand the transition to the determinate is accomplished in a
system of Physics which is the result of observations and experiences,
and this is done entirely by means of the understanding. Descartes thus
mingles many observations with a metaphysic of this nature, and to us
the result is hence obscure. In this philosophy the thinking treatment
of empiricism is thus predominant, and a similar method has been adopted
by philosophers from this time on. To Descartes and others, Philosophy
had still the more indefinite significance of arriving at knowledge
through thought, reflection, and reasoning. Speculative cognition, the
derivation from the Notion, the free independent development of the
matter itself, was first introduced by Fichte, and consequently what
is now called philosophic knowledge is not yet separated in Descartes
from the rest of scientific knowledge. In those times all the knowledge
of mankind was called philosophy; in Descartes’ metaphysics we thus
saw quite empirical reflection and reasoning from particular grounds,
from experiences, facts, phenomena, being brought into play in the
naivest manner, and one has no sense of speculation in the matter. The
strictly scientific element here really consisted mainly in the method of
proof as it has long been made use of in geometry, and in the ordinary
method of the formal logical syllogism. Hence it likewise happens that
Philosophy, which ought to form a totality of the sciences, begins with
logic and metaphysics; the second part is composed of ordinary physics
and mathematics, mingled no doubt with metaphysical speculations, and
the third part, ethics, deals with the nature of man, his duties, the
state, the citizen. And this is the case with Descartes. The first part
of the _Principia philosophiæ_ treats _De principiis cognitionis humanæ_,
the second _De principiis rerum materialium_. This natural philosophy,
as a philosophy of extension, is, however, none other than what a quite
ordinary physics or mechanics might at that time be, and it is still
quite hypothetical; we, on the other hand, accurately distinguish
empirical physics and natural philosophy, even though the first likewise
pertains to thought.
3. Descartes never reached the third part, the philosophy of Mind, for,
while he made a special study of physics, in the region of ethics he
published one tract only, _De passionibus_. In this reference Descartes
treats of thought and human freedom. He proves freedom from the fact of
the soul thinking that the will is unrestrained, and of that constituting
the perfection of mankind. And this is quite true. In respect to the
freedom of the will he comes across the difficulty of how to reconcile it
with the divine prescience. As free, man might do what is not ordained of
God beforehand—this would conflict with the omnipotence and omniscience
of God; and if everything is ordained of God, human freedom would thereby
be done away with. Yet he does not solve the contradiction contained
in these two different aspects without falling into difficulty. But
conformably to the method which he adopts, and which we pointed out
above (pp. 238, 239), he says: “The human mind is finite, God’s power
and predetermination are infinite; we are thus not capable of judging of
the relationship in which the freedom of the human soul stands to the
omnipotence and omniscience of God—but in self-consciousness we have
the certainty of it given us as a fact. And we must hold only to what
is certain.”[190] When he proceeds further much appears to him still
incapable of explanation; but we see obstinacy and caprice likewise
exhibited in his stopping short at the assertion as to the best of his
knowledge. The method of knowledge as set forth by Descartes, takes the
form of a reasoning of the understanding, and is thus without special
interest.
These, then, are the principal points in the Cartesian system. Some
particular assertions made by Descartes, which have been specially
instrumental in giving him fame, have still to be mentioned—particular
forms which have been formerly considered in metaphysics, and likewise
by Wolff. For example, in the first place we gather that Descartes
regarded animals and other organisms as machines moved by another,
and not possessing the principle of the spontaneity of thought within
them[191]—a mechanical physiology, a cut and dry thought pertaining
to the understanding, which is of no further importance. In the sharp
opposition between thought and extension, the former is not considered
as sensation, so that the latter can isolate itself. The organic must as
body reduce itself to extension; any further development of this last
thus only proves its dependence on the first determinations.
In the second place, the relation between soul and body now becomes an
important question, that is, the return of the object within itself
in such a way that thought posits itself in another, in matter. As to
this, many systems are offered to us in metaphysics. One of these is
the _influxus physicus_, that the relation of spirit is of a corporeal
nature, that the object is related to mind as bodies are to one another—a
conception like this is very crude. How does Descartes understand the
unity of soul and body? The former belongs to thought, the latter to
extension; and thus because both are substance, neither requires
the Notion of the other, and hence soul and body are independent of
one another and can exercise no direct influence upon one another.
Soul could only influence body in so far as it required the same, and
conversely—that is, in so far as they have actual relation to one
another. But since each is a totality, neither can bear a real relation
to the other. Descartes consistently denied the physical influence
of one on the other; that would have signified a mechanical relation
between the two. Descartes thus established the intellectual sphere in
contradistinction to matter, and on it based the independent subsistence
of mind; for in his _cogito_ ‘I’ is at first only certain of itself,
since I can abstract from all. Now we find the necessity of a mediator
to bring about a union of the abstract and the external and individual.
Descartes settles this by placing between the two what constitutes the
metaphysical ground of their mutual changes, God. He is the intermediate
bond of union, in as far as He affords assistance to the soul in what
it cannot through its own freedom accomplish, so that the changes in
body and soul may correspond with one another.[192] If I have desires,
an intention, these receive corporeal realization; this association of
soul and body is, according to Descartes, effected through God. For
above (p. 239) we saw that Descartes says of God that He is the Truth of
the conception: as long as I think rightly and consistently, something
real corresponds to my thought, and the connecting link is God. God
is hereby the perfect identity of the two opposites, since He is, as
Idea, the unity of Notion and reality. In the Idea of Spinoza this is
worked out and developed in its further moments. Descartes’ conclusion
is quite correct; in finite things this identity is imperfect. Only the
form employed by Descartes is inadequate; for it implies that in the
beginning there are two things, thought or soul and body, and that then
God appears as a third thing, outside both—that He is not the Notion of
unity, nor are the two elements themselves Notion. We must not however
forget that Descartes says that both those original elements are created
substances. But this expression ‘created’ pertains to the ordinary
conception only and is not a determinate thought; it was Spinoza,
therefore, who first accomplished this return to thought.
2. SPINOZA.
The philosophy of Descartes underwent a great variety of unspeculative
developments, but in Benedict Spinoza a direct successor to this
philosopher may be found, and one who carried on the Cartesian principle
to its furthest logical conclusions. For him soul and body, thought and
Being, cease to have separate independent existence. The dualism of
the Cartesian system Spinoza, as a Jew, altogether set aside. For the
profound unity of his philosophy as it found expression in Europe, his
manifestation of Spirit as the identity of the finite and the infinite in
God, instead of God’s appearing related to these as a Third—all this is
an echo from Eastern lands. The Oriental theory of absolute identity was
brought by Spinoza much more directly into line, firstly with the current
of European thought, and then with the European and Cartesian philosophy,
in which it soon found a place.
First of all we must, however, glance at the circumstances of Spinoza’s
life. He was by descent a Portuguese Jew, and was born at Amsterdam in
the year 1632; the name he received was Baruch, but he altered it to
Benedict. In his youth he was instructed by the Rabbis of the synagogue
to which he belonged, but he soon fell out with them, their wrath having
been kindled by the criticisms which he passed on the fantastic doctrines
of the Talmud. He was not, therefore, long in absenting himself from the
synagogue, and as the Rabbis were in dread lest his example should have
evil consequences, they offered him a yearly allowance of a thousand
gulden if he would keep away from the place and hold his tongue. This
offer he declined; and the Rabbis thereafter carried their persecution
of him to such a pitch that they were even minded to rid themselves of
him by assassination. After having made a narrow escape from the dagger,
he formally withdrew from the Jewish communion, without, however, going
over to the Christian Church. He now applied himself particularly to the
Latin language, and made a special study of the Cartesian philosophy.
Later on he went to Rhynsburg, near Leyden, and from the year 1664 he
lived in retirement, first at Voorburg, a village near the Hague, and
then at the Hague itself, highly respected by numerous friends: he
gained a livelihood for himself by grinding optical glasses. It was
no arbitrary choice that led him to occupy himself with light, for it
represents in the material sphere the absolute identity which forms the
foundation of the Oriental view of things. Although he had rich friends
and mighty protectors, among whom even generals were numbered, he lived
in humble poverty, declining the handsome gifts offered to him time after
time. Nor would he permit Simon von Vries to make him his heir; he only
accepted from him an annual pension of three hundred florins; in the
same way he gave up to his sisters his share of their father’s estate.
From the Elector Palatine, Carl Ludwig, a man of most noble character
and raised above the prejudices of his time, he received the offer of a
professor’s chair at Heidelberg, with the assurance that he would have
liberty to teach and to write, because “the Prince believed he would not
put that liberty to a bad use by interfering with the religion publicly
established.” Spinoza (in his published letters) very wisely declined
this offer, however, because “he did not know within what limits that
philosophic liberty would have to be confined, in order that he might
not appear to be interfering with the publicly established religion.”
He remained in Holland, a country highly interesting in the history
of general culture, as it was the first in Europe to show the example
of universal toleration, and afforded to many a place of refuge where
they might enjoy liberty of thought; for fierce as was the rage of the
theologians there against Bekker, for example (Bruck. Hist. crit. phil.
T. IV. P. 2, pp. 719, 720), and furious as were the attacks of Voetius
on the Cartesian philosophy, these had not the consequences which they
would have had in another land. Spinoza died on the 21st of February,
1677, in the forty-fourth year of his age. The cause of his death was
consumption, from which he had long been a sufferer; this was in harmony
with his system of philosophy, according to which all particularity
and individuality pass away in the one substance. A Protestant divine,
Colerus by name, who published a biography of Spinoza, inveighs strongly
against him, it is true, but gives nevertheless a most minute and kindly
description of his circumstances and surroundings—telling how he left
only about two hundred thalers, what debts he had, and so on. A bill
included in the inventory, in which the barber requests payment due him
by M. Spinoza of blessed memory, scandalizes the parson very much, and
regarding it he makes the observation: “Had the barber but known what
sort of a creature Spinoza was, he certainly would not have spoken of his
blessed memory.” The German translator of this biography writes under
the portrait of Spinoza: _characterem, reprobationis in vultu gerens_,
applying this description to a countenance which doubtless expresses the
melancholy of a profound thinker, but is otherwise mild and benevolent.
The _reprobatio_ is certainly correct; but it is not a reprobation in the
passive sense; it is an active disapprobation on Spinoza’s part of the
opinions, errors and thoughtless passions of mankind.[193]
Spinoza used the terminology of Descartes, and also published an account
of his system. For we find the first of Spinoza’s works entitled “An
Exposition according to the geometrical method of the principles of the
Cartesian philosophy.” Some time after this he wrote his _Tractatus
theologico-politicus_, and by it gained considerable reputation. Great as
was the hatred which Spinoza roused amongst his Rabbis, it was more than
equalled by the odium which he brought upon himself amongst Christian,
and especially amongst Protestant theologians—chiefly through the medium
of this essay. It contains his views on inspiration, a critical treatment
of the books of Moses and the like, chiefly from the point of view that
the laws therein contained are limited in their application to the Jews.
Later Christian theologians have written critically on this subject,
usually making it their object to show that these books were compiled at
a later time, and that they date in part from a period subsequent to the
Babylonian captivity; this has become a crucial point with Protestant
theologians, and one by which the modern school distinguishes itself from
the older, greatly pluming itself thereon. All this, however, is already
to be found in the above-mentioned work of Spinoza. But Spinoza drew the
greatest odium upon himself by his philosophy proper, which we must now
consider as it is given to us in his Ethics. While Descartes published
no writings on this subject, the Ethics of Spinoza is undoubtedly his
greatest work; it was published after his death by Ludwig Mayer, a
physician, who had been Spinoza’s most intimate friend. It consists of
five parts; the first deals with God (_De Deo_). General metaphysical
ideas are contained in it, which include the knowledge of God and nature.
The second part deals with the nature and origin of mind (_De natura
et origine mentis_). We see thus that Spinoza does not treat of the
subject of natural philosophy, extension and motion at all, for he passes
immediately from God to the philosophy of mind, to the ethical point of
view; and what refers to knowledge, intelligent mind, is brought forward
in the first part, under the head of the principles of human knowledge.
The third book of the Ethics deals with the origin and nature of the
passions (_De origine et natura affectuum_); the fourth with the powers
of the same, or human slavery (_De servitute humana seu de affectuum
viribus_); the fifth, lastly, with the power of the understanding, with
thought, or with human liberty (_De potentia intellectus seu de libertate
humana_).[194] Kirchenrath Professor Paulus published Spinoza’s works
in Jena; I had a share in the bringing out of this edition, having been
entrusted with the collation of French translations.
As regards the philosophy of Spinoza, it is very simple, and on the
whole easy to comprehend; the difficulty which it presents is due
partly to the limitations of the method in which Spinoza presents his
thoughts, and partly to his narrow range of ideas, which causes him in
an unsatisfactory way to pass over important points of view and cardinal
questions. Spinoza’s system is that of Descartes made objective in the
form of absolute truth. The simple thought of Spinoza’s idealism is this:
The true is simply and solely the one substance, whose attributes are
thought and extension or nature: and only this absolute unity is reality,
it alone is God. It is, as with Descartes, the unity of thought and
Being, or that which contains the Notion of its existence in itself. The
Cartesian substance, as Idea, has certainly Being included in its Notion;
but it is only Being as abstract, not as real Being or as extension
(_supra_, p. 241). With Descartes corporeality and the thinking ‘I’ are
altogether independent Beings; this independence of the two extremes
is done away with in Spinozism by their becoming moments of the one
absolute Being. This expression signifies that Being must be grasped as
the unity of opposites; the chief consideration is not to let slip the
opposition and set it aside, but to reconcile and resolve it. Since then
it is thought and Being, and no longer the abstractions of the finite
and infinite, or of limit and the unlimited, that form the opposition
(_supra_, p. 161), Being is here more definitely regarded as extension;
for in its abstraction it would be really only that return into itself,
that simple equality with itself, which constitutes thought (_supra_, p.
229). The pure thought of Spinoza is therefore not the simple universal
of Plato, for it has likewise come to know the absolute opposition of
Notion and Being.
Taken as a whole, this constitutes the Idea of Spinoza, and it is
just what τὸ ὄν was to the Eleatics (Vol. I. pp. 244, 252). This Idea
of Spinoza’s we must allow to be in the main true and well-grounded;
absolute substance is the truth, but it is not the whole truth; in
order to be this it must also be thought of as in itself active and
living, and by that very means it must determine itself as mind. But
substance with Spinoza is only the universal and consequently the
abstract determination of mind; it may undoubtedly be said that this
thought is the foundation of all true views—not, however, as their
absolutely fixed and permanent basis, but as the abstract unity which
mind is in itself. It is therefore worthy of note that thought must
begin by placing itself at the standpoint of Spinozism; to be a follower
of Spinoza is the essential commencement of all Philosophy. For as we
saw above (Vol I. p. 144), when man begins to philosophize, the soul
must commence by bathing in this ether of the One Substance, in which
all that man has held as true has disappeared; this negation of all
that is particular, to which every philosopher must have come, is the
liberation of the mind and its absolute foundation. The difference
between our standpoint and that of the Eleatic philosophy is only this,
that through the agency of Christianity concrete individuality is in the
modern world present throughout in spirit. But in spite of the infinite
demands on the part of the concrete, substance with Spinoza is not yet
determined as in itself concrete. As the concrete is thus not present in
the content of substance, it is therefore to be found within reflecting
thought alone, and it is only from the endless oppositions of this last
that the required unity emerges. Of substance as such there is nothing
more to be said; all that we can do is to speak of the different ways
in which Philosophy has dealt with it, and the opposites which in it
are abrogated. The difference depends on the nature of the opposites
which are held to be abrogated in substance. Spinoza is far from having
proved this unity as convincingly as was done by the ancients; but what
constitutes the grandeur of Spinoza’s manner of thought is that he is
able to renounce all that is determinate and particular, and restrict
himself to the One, giving heed to this alone.
1. Spinoza begins (Eth. P. I pp. 35, 36) with a series of definitions,
from which we take the following.
a. Spinoza’s first definition is of the Cause of itself. He says: “By
that which is _causa sui_, its own cause, I understand that whose
essence” (or Notion) “involves existence, or which cannot be conceived
except as existent.” The unity of existence and universal thought is
asserted from the very first, and this unity will ever be the question
at issue. “The cause of itself” is a noteworthy expression, for while we
picture to ourselves that the effect stands in opposition to the cause,
the cause of itself is the cause which, while it operates and separates
an “other,” at the same time produces only itself, and in the production
therefore does away with this distinction. The establishing of itself as
an other is loss or degeneration, and at the same time the negation of
this loss; this is a purely speculative Notion, indeed a fundamental
Notion in all speculation. The cause in which the cause is identical
with the effect, is the infinite cause (_infra_, p. 263); if Spinoza had
further developed what lies in the _causa sui_, substance with him would
not have been rigid and unworkable.
b. The second definition is that of the finite. “That thing is said to be
finite in its kind which can be limited by another of the same nature,”
For it comes then to an end, it is not there; what is there is something
else. This something else must, however, be of a like nature; for those
things which are to limit each other must, in order to be able to limit
each other, touch each other, and consequently have a relation to each
other, that is to say they must be of one nature, stand on a like basis,
and have a common sphere. That is the affirmative side of the limit.
“Thus a thought is” only “limited by another thought, a body by another
body, but thoughts are not limited by bodies nor” conversely “bodies by
thoughts.” We saw this (p. 244) with Descartes: thought is an independent
totality and so is extension, they have nothing to do with one another;
they do not limit each other, each is included in itself.
c. The third definition is that of substance. “By substance I understand
that which exists in itself and is conceived by itself, _i.e._ the
conception of which does not require the aid of the conception of any
other thing for its formation (_a quo formari debeat_);” otherwise it
would be finite, accidental. What cannot have a conception formed of it
without the aid of something else, is not independent, but is dependent
upon that something else.
d. In the fourth place Spinoza defines attributes, which, as the moment
coming second to substance, belong to it. “By attribute I understand
that which the mind perceives as constituting the essence of substance;”
and to Spinoza this alone is true. This is an important determination;
the attribute is undoubtedly a determinateness, but at the same time it
remains a totality. Spinoza, like Descartes, accepts only two attributes,
thought and extension. The understanding grasps them as the reality of
substance, but the reality is not higher than the substance, for it
is only reality in the view of the understanding, which falls outside
substance. Each of the two ways of regarding substance—extension and
thought—contains no doubt the whole content of substance, but only in one
form, which the understanding brings with it; and for this very reason
both sides are in themselves identical and infinite. This is the true
completion; but where substance passes over into attribute is not stated.
e. The fifth definition has to do with what comes third in relation to
substance, the mode. “By mode I understand the affections of substance,
or that which is in something else, through the aid of which also it
is conceived.” Thus substance is conceived through itself; attribute
is not conceived through itself, but has a relation to the conceiving
understanding, in so far as this last conceives reality; mode, finally,
is what is not conceived as reality, but through and in something else.
These last three moments Spinoza ought not merely to have established
in this way as conceptions, he ought to have deduced them; they are
especially important, and correspond with what we more definitely
distinguish as universal, particular and individual. They must not,
however, be taken as formal, but in their true concrete sense; the
concrete universal is substance, the concrete particular is the concrete
species; the Father and Son in the Christian dogma are similarly
particular, but each of them contains the whole nature of God, only under
a different form. The mode is the individual, the finite as such, which
enters into external connection with what is “other.” In this Spinoza
only descends to a lower stage, the mode is only the foregoing warped
and stunted. Spinoza’s defect is therefore this, that he takes the
third moment as mode alone, as a false individuality. True individuality
and subjectivity is not a mere retreat from the universal, not merely
something clearly determinate; for, as clearly determinate, it is at the
same time Being-for-itself, determined by itself alone. The individual,
the subjective, is even in being so the return to the universal; and
in that it is at home with itself, it is itself the universal. The
return consists simply and solely in the fact of the particular being
in itself the universal; to this return Spinoza did not attain. Rigid
substantiality is the last point he reached, not infinite form; this he
knew not, and thus determinateness continually vanishes from his thought.
f. In the sixth place, the definition of the infinite is also of
importance, for in the infinite Spinoza defines more strictly than
anywhere else the Notion of the Notion. The infinite has a double
significance, according as it is taken as the infinitely many or as
the absolutely infinite (_infra_, p. 263). “The infinite in its kind
is not such in respect of all possible attributes; but the absolutely
infinite is that to whose essence all belongs that expresses an essence
and contains no negation.” In the same sense Spinoza distinguishes in
the nine-and-twentieth Letter (Oper. T. I. pp. 526-532) the infinite of
imagination from the infinite of thought (_intellectus_), the actual
(_actu_) infinite. Most men, when they wish to strive after the sublime,
get no farther than the first of these; this is the false infinite, just
as when one says “and so on into infinity,” meaning perhaps the infinity
of space from star to star, or else the infinity of time. An infinite
numerical series in mathematics is exactly the same thing. If a certain
fraction is represented as a decimal fraction, it is incomplete; ⅐
is, on the contrary, the true infinite, and therefore not an incomplete
expression, although the content here is of course limited. It is
infinity in the incorrect sense that one usually has in view when
infinity is spoken of; and even if it is looked on as sublime, it yet is
nothing present, and only goes ever out into the negative, without being
actual (_actu_). But for Spinoza the infinite is not the fixing of a
limit and then passing beyond the limit fixed—the sensuous infinity—but
absolute infinity, the positive, which has complete and present in itself
an absolute multiplicity which has no Beyond. Philosophic infinity,
that which is infinite _actu_, Spinoza therefore calls the absolute
affirmation of itself. This is quite correct, only it might have been
better expressed as: “It is the negation of negation.” Spinoza here also
employs geometrical figures as illustrations of the Notion of infinity.
In his _Opera postuma_, preceding his Ethics, and also in the letter
quoted above, he has two circles, one of which lies within the other,
which have not, however, a common centre.
[Illustration]
“The inequalities of the space between A B and C D exceed every number;
and yet the space which lies between is not so very great.” That is to
say, if I wish to determine them all, I must enter upon an infinite
series. This “beyond” always, however, remains defective, is always
affected with negation; and yet this false infinite is there to hand,
circumscribed, affirmative, actual and present in that plane as a
complete space between the two circles. Or a finite line consists of
an infinite number of points; and yet the line is present here and
determined; the “beyond” of the infinite number of points, which are not
complete, is in it complete and called back into unity. The infinite
should be represented as actually present, and this comes to pass in the
Notion of the cause of itself, which is therefore the true infinity. As
soon as the cause has something else opposed to it—the effect—finitude
is present; but here this something else is at the same time abrogated
and it becomes once more the cause itself. The affirmative is thus
negation of negation, since, according to the well-known grammatical
rule, _duplex negatio affirmat_. In the same way Spinoza’s earlier
definitions have also the infinite already implied in them, for instance
in the case of the just mentioned cause of itself, inasmuch as he defines
it as that whose essence involves existence (_supra_, p. 258). Notion
and existence are each the Beyond of the other; but cause of itself, as
thus including them, is really the carrying back of this “beyond” into
unity. Or (_supra_, p. 259) “Substance is that which is in itself and is
conceived from itself;” that is the same unity of Notion and existence.
The infinite is in the same way in itself and has also its Notion in
itself; its Notion is its Being, and its Being its Notion; true infinity
is therefore to be found in Spinoza. But he has no consciousness of this;
he has not recognized this Notion as absolute Notion, and therefore has
not expressed it as a moment of true existence; for with him the Notion
falls outside of existence, into the thought of existence.
g. Finally Spinoza says in the seventh place: “God is a Being absolutely
infinite, _i.e._ a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of
which expresses an eternal and infinite essence.” Does substance, one
might here ask, possess an infinite number of attributes? But as with
Spinoza there are only two attributes, thought and extension, with which
he invests God, “infinite” is not to be taken here in the sense of the
indeterminate many, but positively, as a circle is perfect infinity in
itself.
The whole of Spinoza’s philosophy is contained in these definitions,
which, however, taken as a whole are formal; it is really a weak point
in Spinoza that he begins thus with definitions. In mathematics this
method is permitted, because at the outset we there make assumptions,
such as that of the point and line; but in Philosophy the content
should be known as the absolutely true. It is all very well to grant
the correctness of the name-definition, and acknowledge that the word
“substance” corresponds with the conception which the definition
indicates, but it is quite another question to determine whether this
content is absolutely true. Such a question is not asked in the case of
geometrical propositions, but in philosophic investigation it is the very
thing to be first considered, and this Spinoza has not done. Instead of
only explaining these simple thoughts and representing them as concrete
in the definitions which he makes, what he ought to have done was to
examine whether this content is true. To all appearance it is only the
explanation of the words that is given; but the content of the words is
held to be established. All further content is merely derived from that,
and proved thereby; for on the first content all the rest depends, and
if it is established as a basis, the other necessarily follows. “The
attribute is that which the understanding thinks of God.” But here the
question is: How does it come that besides the Deity there now appears
the understanding, which applies to absolute substance the two forms
of thought and extension? and whence come these two forms themselves?
Thus everything proceeds inwards, and not outwards; the determinations
are not developed from substance, it does not resolve itself into these
attributes.
2. These definitions are followed by axioms and propositions in which
Spinoza proves a great variety of points. He descends from the universal
of substance through the particular, thought and extension, to the
individual. He has thus all three moments of the Notion, or they are
essential to him. But the mode, under which head falls individuality,
he does not recognize as essential, or as constituting a moment of true
existence in that existence; for it disappears in existence, or it is not
raised into the Notion.
a. The main point then is that Spinoza proves from these Notions that
there is only One Substance, God. It is a simple chain of reasoning,
a very formal proof. “Fifth Proposition: There cannot be two or more
substances of the same nature or of the same attribute.” This is implied
already in the definitions; the proof is therefore a useless and
wearisome toil, which only serves to render Spinoza more difficult to
understand. “If there were several” (substances of the same attribute)
“they must be distinguished from one another either by the diversity of
their attributes or by the diversity of their affections” (modes). “If
they are distinguished by their attributes, it would be directly conceded
that there is only one substance having the same attribute.” For the
attributes are simply what the understanding grasps as the essence of the
one substance, which is determined in itself, and not through anything
else. “But if these substances were distinguished by their affections,
since substance is by nature prior to its affections it would follow that
if from substance its affections were abstracted and it were regarded
in itself, _i.e._ in its truth, it could henceforth not be regarded as
distinct from other substances.” “Eighth Proposition: All substance is
necessarily infinite. Proof: For otherwise it must be limited by another
substance of the same nature, in which case there would be two substances
of the same attribute, which is contrary to the fifth proposition.”
“Every attribute must be conceived for itself,” as determination
reflected on itself. “For attribute is what the mind conceives of
substance as constituting its essence, from which it follows that it
must be conceived through itself,” _i.e._ substance is what is conceived
through itself (see the fourth and third definitions). “Therefore we may
not argue from the plurality of attributes to a plurality of substances,
for each is conceived by itself, and they have all been, always and at
the same time, in substance, without the possibility of the one being
produced by the other.” “Substance is indivisible. For if the parts
retained the nature of the substance, there would be several substances
of the same nature, which is contrary to the fifth proposition. If not,
infinite substance would cease to exist, which is absurd.”[195]
“Fourteenth Proposition: No other substance than God can either exist or
be conceived. Proof: God is the absolutely infinite substance, to whom
can be denied no attribute which expresses the essence of substance,
and He exists necessarily; therefore if there were a substance other
than God, it must be explained by means of an attribute of God.”
Consequently the substance would not have its own being, but that of
God, and therefore would not be a substance. Or if it were still to be
substance, “then there would necessarily follow the possibility of there
being two substances with the same attribute, which according to the
fifth proposition is absurd. From this it then follows that the thing
extended and the thing that thinks” are not substances, but “are either
attributes of God, or affections of His attributes.” By these proofs and
others like them not much is to be gained. “Fifteenth, proposition: What
is, is in God, and cannot exist or be conceived without God.” “Sixteenth
proposition: By the necessity of the divine nature infinite things must
follow in infinite modes, _i.e._, all that can fall under the infinite
understanding. God is therefore the absolute First Cause.”[196]
Spinoza then ascribes freedom and necessity to God: “God is the absolute
free cause, who is determined by nothing outside of Himself, for He
exists solely by the necessity of His nature. There is no cause which
inwardly or outwardly moves Him to act, except the perfection of His
nature. His activity is by the laws of His Being necessary and eternal;
what therefore follows from His absolute nature, from His attributes,
is eternal, as it follows from the nature of the triangle from eternity
and to eternity that its three angles are equal to two right angles.”
That is to say, His Being is His absolute power; _actus_ and _potentia_,
Thought and Being, are in Him one. God has not therefore any other
thoughts which He could not have actualized. “God is the immanent cause
of all things, not the transient (_transiens_),” _i.e._, external
cause. “His essence and His existence are the same, namely, the truth.
A thing which is determined to perform some action, is, since God is
cause, necessarily determined thereto by God; and a thing which is thus
determined cannot render itself undetermined. In nature nothing is
contingent. Will is not a free cause, but only a necessary cause, only a
mode; it is therefore determined by another. God acts in accordance with
no final causes (_sub ratione boni_). Those who assert that He does so,
appear to establish something apart from God, which does not depend on
God, and which God in His working keeps in view, as though it were an
end. If this view is taken, God is not a free cause, but is subject to
fate. It is equally inadmissible to subject all things to the arbitrary
pleasure of God, _i.e._, to His indifferent will.”[197] He is determined
solely by His own nature; the activity of God is thus His power, and that
is necessity. He is then absolute power in contrast to wisdom, which
sets up definite aims, and consequently limitations; particular aims,
thoughts of what is about to come to pass, and the like are therefore put
out of the question. But beyond this universal, no advance is made; for
it must be noticed as specially singular, that Spinoza in the fiftieth
Letter (Oper. T. I. p. 634) says that every determination is a negation.
Moreover, if God is the cause of the world, it is implied that He is
finite; for the world is here put beside God as something different from
Him.
b. The greatest difficulty in Spinoza is, in the distinctions to which
he comes, to grasp the relation of this determinate to God, at the same
time preserving the determination. “God is a thinking Being, because all
individual thoughts are modes which express God’s nature in a certain
and determinate manner; there pertains therefore to God an attribute the
conception of which all individual thoughts involve, and by means of this
they also are conceived. God is an extended Being for the same reason.”
This means that the same substance, under the attribute of thought, is
the intelligible world, and under the attribute of extension, is nature;
nature and thought thus both express the same Essence of God. Or, as
Spinoza says, “The order and system of natural things is the same as
the order of the thoughts. Thus, for instance, the circle which exists
in nature, and the idea of the existing circle, which is also in God,
are one and the same thing” (they are one and the same content), “which
is” merely “expressed by means of different attributes. If we therefore
regard nature either under the attribute of extension or of thought,
or under any other attribute whatever, we shall find one and the same
connection of causes, _i.e._, the same sequence of things. The formal
Being of the idea of the circle can be conceived only by means of the
mode of thought, as its proximate cause, and this mode again by means of
another, and so on infinitely; so that we must explain the order of the
whole of nature, or the connection of causes, by the attribute of thought
alone, and if things are considered by the attribute of extension, they
must be considered only by the attribute of extension,—and the same holds
good of other causes.”[198] It is one and the same system, which at one
time appears as nature, and at another time in the form of thought.
But Spinoza does not demonstrate how these two are evolved from the
one substance, nor does he prove why there can only be two of them.
Neither are extension and thought anything to him in themselves, or in
truth, but only externally; for their difference is a mere matter of the
understanding, which is ranked by Spinoza only among affections (Eth. P.
I. Prop. XXXI. Demonst. p. 62), and as such has no truth. This has in
recent times been served up again by Schelling in the following form:
In themselves, the intelligent world and the corporeal world are the
same, only under different forms; so that the intelligent universe is in
itself the whole absolute divine totality, and the corporeal universe is
equally this same totality. The differences are not in themselves, but
the different aspects from which the Absolute is regarded are matters
external to it. We take a higher tone in saying that nature and mind
are rational; but reason is for us no empty word, for it means the
totality which develops itself within itself. Again, it is the standpoint
of reflection to regard aspects only, and nothing in itself. This
defect appears in Spinoza and Schelling in the fact that they see no
necessity why the Notion, as the implicit negative of its unity, should
make a separation of itself into different parts; so that out of the
simple universal the real, the opposed, itself becomes known. Absolute
substance, attribute and mode, Spinoza allows to follow one another as
definitions, he adopts them ready-made, without the attributes being
developed from the substance, or the modes from the attributes. And more
especially in regard to the attributes, there is no necessity evident,
why these are thought and extension in particular.
c. When Spinoza passes on to individual things, especially to
self-consciousness, to the freedom of the ‘I,’ he expresses himself in
such a way as rather to lead back all limitations to substance than
to maintain a firm grasp of the individual. Thus we already found the
attributes not to be independent, but only the forms in which the
understanding grasps substance in its differences; what comes third,
the modes, is that under which for Spinoza all difference of things
alone falls. Of the modes he says (Ethic. P. I. Prop. XXXII. Demonst. et
Coroll. II. p. 63): In every attribute there are two modes; in extension,
these are rest and motion, in thought they are understanding and will
(_intellectus et voluntas_). They are mere modifications which only exist
for us apart from God; therefore whatever refers to this difference and
is specially brought about by it, is not absolute, but finite. These
affections Spinoza sums up (Ethices, P. I. Prop. XXIX. Schol. pp. 61, 62)
under the head of _natura naturata_: “_Natura naturans_ is God regarded
as free cause, in so far as He is in Himself and is conceived by Himself:
or such attributes of substance as express the eternal and infinite
essence. By _natura naturata_, I understand all that follows from the
necessity of the divine nature, or from any of the attributes of God,
all modes of the divine attributes, in so far as they are regarded as
things which are in God, and which without God can neither exist nor be
conceived.” From God proceeds nothing, for all things merely return to
the point whence they came, if from themselves the commencement is made.
These then are Spinoza’s general forms, this is his principal idea. Some
further determinations have still to be mentioned. He gives definitions
of the terms modes, understanding, will, and of the affections, such
as joy and sadness.[199] We further find consciousness taken into
consideration. Its development is extremely simple, or rather it is not
developed at all; Spinoza begins directly with mind. “The essence of
man consists of certain modifications of the attributes of God”; these
modifications are only something related to our understanding. “If we,
therefore, say that the human mind perceives this or that, it means
nothing else than that God has this or that idea, not in so far as He
is infinite, but in so far as He is expressed by the idea of the human
mind. And if we say that God has this or that idea, not in so far as
He constitutes the idea of the human mind, but in so far as He has,
along with the human mind, the idea of another thing, then we say that
the human mind perceives the thing partially or inadequately.” Truth
is for Spinoza, on the other hand, the adequate.[200] The idea that
all particular content is only a modification of God is ridiculed by
Bayle,[201] who argues from it that God modified as Turks and Austrians,
is waging war with Himself; but Bayle has not a trace of the speculative
element in him, although he is acute enough as a dialectician, and has
contributed to the intelligent discussion of definite subjects.
The relation of thought and extension in the human consciousness is dealt
with by Spinoza as follows: “What has a place in the object” (or rather
in the objective) “of the idea which constitutes the human mind must be
perceived by the human mind; or there must necessarily be in the mind
an idea of this object. The object of the idea which constitutes the
human mind is body, or a certain mode of extension. If, then, the object
of the idea which constitutes the human mind, is the body, there can
happen nothing in the body which is not perceived by the mind. Otherwise
the ideas of the affections of the body would not be in God, in so far
as He constitutes our mind, but the idea of another thing: that is to
say, the ideas of the affections of our body would not be likewise in
our mind.” What is perplexing to understand in Spinoza’s system is, on
the one hand, the absolute identity of thought and Being, and, on the
other hand, their absolute indifference to one another, because each
of them is a manifestation of the whole essence of God. The unity of
the body and consciousness is, according to Spinoza, this, that the
individual is a mode of the absolute substance, which, as consciousness,
is the representation of the manner in which the body is affected by
external things; all that is in consciousness is also in extension, and
conversely. “Mind knows itself only in so far as it perceives the ideas
of the affections of body,” it has only the idea of the affections of its
body; this idea is synthetic combination, as we shall immediately see.
“The ideas, whether of the attributes of God or of individual things,
do not recognize as their efficient cause their objects themselves, or
the things perceived, but God Himself, in so far as He is that which
thinks.”[202] Buhle (Geschichte der neuern Philos. Vol. III. Section
II. p. 524) sums up these propositions of Spinoza thus: “Thought is
inseparably bound up with extension; therefore all that takes place in
extension must also take place in consciousness.” Spinoza, however, also
accepts both in their separation from one another. The idea of body,
he writes (Epistol. LXVI. p. 673), includes only these two in itself,
and does not express any other attributes. The body which it represents
is regarded under the attribute of extension; but the idea itself is
a mode of thought. Here we see a dividing asunder; mere identity, the
undistinguishable nature of all things in the Absolute, is insufficient
even for Spinoza.
The _individuum_, individuality itself, is thus defined by Spinoza
(Ethic. P. II. Prop. XIII. Defin. p. 92): “When several bodies of the
same or of different magnitudes are so pressed together that they rest on
one another, or when, moving with like or different degrees of rapidity,
they communicate their movement to one another in a certain measure, we
say that such bodies are united to one another, and that all together
they form one body or individuum, which by this union distinguishes
itself from all the other bodies.” Here we are at the extreme limit
of Spinoza’s system, and it is here that his weak point appears.
Individuation, the one, is a mere synthesis; it is quite a different
thing from the Ichts or self-hood of Boehme (_supra_, pp. 205-207), since
Spinoza has only universality, thought, and not self-consciousness. If,
before considering this in reference to the whole, we take it from the
other side, namely from the understanding, the distinction really falls
under that head; it is not deduced, it is found. Thus, as we have already
seen (p. 270) “the understanding in act (_intellectus actu_), as also
will, desire, love, must be referred to _natura naturata_, not to _natura
naturans_. For by the understanding, as recognized for itself, we do not
mean absolute thought, but only a certain mode of thought—a mode which is
distinct from other modes like desire, love, etc., and on that account
must be conceived by means of absolute thought, _i.e._ by means of an
attribute of God which expresses an eternal and infinite essentiality
of thought; without which the understanding, as also the rest of the
modes of thought, could neither be nor be conceived to be.” (Spinoza,
Ethices, P. I. Propos. XXXI. pp. 62, 63). Spinoza is unacquainted with
an infinity of form, which would be something quite different from that
of rigid, unyielding substance. What is requisite is to recognize God as
the essence of essences, as universal substance, identity, and yet to
preserve distinctions.
Spinoza goes on to say: “What constitutes the real (_actuale_) existence
of the human mind is nothing else than the idea of a particular”
(individual) “thing, that actually exists,” not of an infinite thing.
“The essence of man involves no necessary existence, _i.e._ according
to the order of nature a man may just as well be as not be.” For the
human consciousness, as it does not belong to essence as an attribute,
is a mode—a mode of the attribute of thought. But neither is the body,
according to Spinoza, the cause of consciousness, nor is consciousness
the cause of the body, but the finite cause is here only the relation
of like to like; body is determined by body, conception by conception.
“The body can neither determine the mind to thought, nor can the mind
determine the body to motion, or rest, or anything else. For all modes
of thought have God as Cause, in so far as He is a thinking thing, and
not in so far as He is revealed by means of another attribute. What
therefore determines the mind to thought, is a mode of thought and not
of extension; similarly motion and rest of the body must be derived from
another body.”[203] I might quote many other such particular propositions
from Spinoza, but they are very formal, and a continual repetition of one
and the same thing.
Buhle (Gesch. d. neuern Phil. Vol. III. Section 2, pp. 525-528),
attributes limited conceptions to Spinoza: “The soul experiences in the
body all the ‘other’ of which it becomes aware as outside of the body,
and it becomes aware of this ‘other’ only by means of the conceptions
of the qualities which the body perceives therein. If, therefore, the
body can perceive no qualities of a thing, the soul also can come to
no knowledge of it. On the other hand, the soul is equally unable to
arrive at the perception of the body which belongs to it; the soul knows
not that the body is there, and knows itself even in no other way than
by means of the qualities which the body perceives in things which are
outside of it, and by means of the conceptions of the same. For the
body is an individual thing, determined in a certain manner, which can
only gradually, in association with and amidst other individual things,
attain to existence, and can preserve itself in existence only as thus
connected, combined and associated with others,” _i.e._ in infinite
progress; the body can by no means be conceived from itself. “The soul’s
consciousness expresses a certain determinate form of a Notion, as the
Notion itself expresses a determinate form of an individual thing. But
the individual thing, its Notion, and the Notion of this Notion are
altogether and entirely one and the same thing, only regarded under
different attributes. As the soul is nothing else than the immediate
Notion of the body, and is one and the same thing with this, the
excellence of the soul can never be anything else than the excellence
of the body. The capacities of the understanding are nothing but the
capacities of the body, if they are looked at from the corporeal point of
view, and the decisions of the will are likewise determinations of the
body. Individual things are derived from God in an eternal and infinite
manner” (_i.e._ once and for all), “and not in a transitory, finite and
evanescent manner: they are derived from one another merely inasmuch
as they mutually produce and destroy each other, but in their eternal
existence they endure unchangeable. All individual things mutually
presuppose each other; one cannot be thought without the other; that is
to say they constitute together an inseparable whole; they exist side
by side in one utterly indivisible, infinite Thing, and in no other way
whatever.”
3. We have now to speak of Spinoza’s system of morals, and that is
a subject of importance. Its great principle is no other than this,
that the finite spirit is moral in so far as it has the true Idea,
_i.e._ in so far as it directs its knowledge and will on God, for
truth is merely the knowledge of God. It may be said that there is no
morality loftier than this, since its only requisite is to have a clear
idea of God. The first thing Spinoza speaks of in this regard is the
affections: “Everything strives after self-preservation. This striving
is the actual essence of the thing, and involves only indefinite time;
when referred exclusively to mind, it is termed will; when referred to
both mind and body together, it is called desire. Determination of
the will (_volitio_) and Idea are one and the same thing. The sense of
liberty rests on this, that men do not know the determining causes of
their actions. The affection is a confused idea; the more clearly and
distinctly, therefore, we know the affection, the more it is under our
control.”[204] The influence of the affections, as confused and limited
(inadequate) ideas, upon human action, constitutes therefore, according
to Spinoza, human slavery; of the passionate affections the principal are
joy and sorrow; we are in suffering and slavery in so far as we relate
ourselves as a part.[205]
“Our happiness and liberty consist in an enduring and eternal love to
God; this intellectual love follows from the nature of mind, in so far
as it is regarded as eternal truth through the nature of God. The more
a man recognizes God’s existence and loves Him, the less does he suffer
from evil affections and the less is his fear of death.”[206] Spinoza
requires in addition the true kind of knowledge. There are, according to
him, three kinds of knowledge; in the first, which he calls opinion and
imagination, he includes the knowledge which we obtain from an individual
object through the senses—a knowledge fragmentary and ill-arranged—also
knowledge drawn from signs, pictorial conceptions and memory. The second
kind of knowledge is for Spinoza that which we derive from general
conceptions and adequate ideas of the properties of things. The third
is intuitive knowledge (_scientia intuitiva_) which rises from the
adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to
the adequate knowledge of the essence of things.[207] Regarding this
last he then says: “The nature of reason is not to contemplate things
as contingent, but as necessary ... to think of all things under a
certain form of eternity (_sub quadam specie œternitatis_);” _i.e._ in
absolutely adequate Notions, _i.e._ in God. “For the necessity of things
is the necessity of the eternal nature of God Himself. Every idea of an
individual thing necessarily includes the eternal and infinite essence of
God in itself. For individual things are modes of an attribute of God;
therefore they must include in themselves His eternal essence. Our mind,
in so far as it knows itself and the body under the form of eternity,
has to that extent necessarily the knowledge of God, and knows that it
is itself in God and is conceived through God. All Ideas, in so far
as they are referable to God, are true.”[208] Man must trace back all
things to God, for God is the One in All; the eternal essence of God is
the one thing that is, the eternal truth is the only thing for man to
aim at in his actions. With Spinoza this is not a knowledge arrived at
through philosophy, but only knowledge of a truth. “The mind can succeed
in tracing back all affections of the body or images of things to God. In
proportion as the mind regards all things as necessary, it has a greater
power over its affections,” which are arbitrary and contingent. This is
the return of the mind to God, and this is human freedom; as mode, on the
other hand, the spirit has no freedom, but is determined from without.
“From the third kind of knowledge there arises the repose of the mind;
the supreme good of the mind is to know God, and this is its highest
virtue. This knowledge necessarily produces the intellectual love of
God; for it produces a joyfulness accompanied by the Idea of God as
cause—_i.e._ the intellectual love of God. God Himself loves Himself with
an infinite intellectual love.”[209] For God can have only Himself as aim
and cause; and the end of the subjective mind is to be directed on Him.
This is therefore the purest, but also a universal morality.
In the thirty-sixth Letter (pp. 581-582) Spinoza speaks of Evil. The
allegation is made that God, as the originator of all things and
everything, is also the originator of evil, is consequently Himself evil;
in this identity all things are one, good and evil are in themselves the
same thing, in God’s substance this difference has disappeared. Spinoza
says in answer to this: “I assert the fact that God absolutely and truly”
(as cause of Himself) “is the cause of everything that has an essential
content” (_i.e._ affirmative reality) “be it what it may. Now if you can
prove to me that evil, error, crime, etc., are something that expresses
an essence, I will freely admit to you that God is the originator of
crime and evil and error. But I have elsewhere abundantly demonstrated
that the form of evil cannot subsist in anything that expresses an
essence, and therefore it cannot be said that God is the cause of evil.”
Evil is merely negation, privation, limitation, finality, mode—nothing
in itself truly real. “Nero’s murder of his mother, in so far as it had
positive content, was no crime. For Orestes did the same external deed,
and had in doing it the same end in view—to kill his mother; and yet he
is not blamed,” and so on. The affirmative is the will, the intention,
the act of Nero. “Wherein then consists Nero’s criminality? In nothing
else but that he proved himself ungrateful, merciless, and disobedient.
But it is certain that all this expresses no essence, and therefore
God was not the cause of it, though He was the cause of Nero’s action
and intention.” These last are something positive, but yet they do not
constitute the crime as such; it is only the negative element, such
as mercilessness, etc. that makes the action a crime. “We know that
whatever exists, regarded in itself and without taking anything else
into consideration, contains a perfection which extends as widely as
the essence of the thing itself extends, for the essence is in no way
different therefrom.”—“Because then,” we find in the thirty-second letter
(pp. 541, 543), “God does not regard things abstractly, or form general
definitions,” (of what the thing ought to be) “and no more reality is
required of things than the Divine understanding and power has given
and actually meted out to them; therefore it clearly follows that such
privation exists only and solely in respect to our understanding, but
not in respect to God;” for God is absolutely real. It is all very well
to say this, but it does not meet the case. For in this way God and
the respect to our understanding are different. Where is their unity?
How is this to be conceived? Spinoza continues in the thirty-sixth
letter: “Although the works of the righteous (_i.e._ of those who have
a clear idea of God, to which they direct all their actions and even
their thoughts), and” also the works “of the wicked (_i.e._ of those
who have no idea of God, but only ideas of earthly things,”—individual,
personal interests and opinions,—“by which their actions and thoughts
are directed), and all whatsoever exists, necessarily proceed from God’s
eternal laws and counsels, and perpetually depend on God, they are
yet not distinguished from one another in degree, but in essence; for
although a mouse as well as an angel depends on God, and sorrow as well
as joy, yet a mouse cannot be a kind of angel, and sorrow cannot be a
kind of joy,”—they are different in essence.
There is therefore no ground for the objection that Spinoza’s philosophy
gives the death-blow to morality; we even gain from it the great result
that all that is sensuous is mere limitation, and that there is only one
true substance, and that human liberty consists in keeping in view this
one substance, and in regulating all our conduct in accordance with the
mind and will of the Eternal One. But in this philosophy it may with
justice be objected that God is conceived only as Substance, and not
as Spirit, as concrete. The independence of the human soul is therein
also denied, while in the Christian religion every individual appears as
determined to salvation. Here, on the contrary, the individual spirit is
only a mode, an accident, but not anything substantial. This brings us to
a general criticism of the philosophy of Spinoza, in the course of which
we shall consider it from three different points of view.
In the first place Spinozism is asserted to be Atheism—by Jacobi, for
instance (Werke, Vol. IV. Section I. p. 216)—because in it no distinction
is drawn between God and the world; it makes nature the real God, or
lowers God to the level of nature, so that God disappears and only nature
is established. But it is not so much God and nature that Spinoza sets up
in mutual opposition, as thought and extension; and God is unity, not One
made up of two, but absolute Substance, in which has really disappeared
the limitation of the subjectivity of thought and nature. Those who
speak against Spinoza do so as if it were on God’s account that they
were interested; but what these opponents are really concerned about is
not God, but the finite—themselves. The relationship between God and the
finite, to which we belong, may be represented in three different ways:
firstly, only the finite exists, and in this way we alone exist, but God
does not exist—this is atheism; the finite is here taken absolutely,
and is accordingly the substantial. Or, in the second place, God alone
exists; the finite has no reality, it is only phenomena, appearance. To
say, in the third place, that God exists and we also exist is a false
synthetic union, an amicable compromise. It is the popular view of the
matter that the one side has as much substantiality as the other; God
is honoured and supreme, but finite things also have Being to exactly
the same extent. Reason cannot remain satisfied with this “also,” with
indifference like this. The philosophic requisite is therefore to
apprehend the unity of these differences in such a way that difference
is not let slip, but proceeds eternally from substance, without being
petrified into dualism. Spinoza is raised above this dualism; religion is
so also, if we turn its popular conceptions into thoughts. The atheism
of the first attitude—when men set up as ultimate the arbitrariness of
the will, their own vanity, the finite things of nature, and the world
dwells for ever in the mind—is not the standpoint of Spinoza, for whom
God is the one and only substance, the world on the contrary being merely
an affection or mode of this substance. In the respect that Spinoza does
not distinguish God from the world, the finite, it is therefore correct
to term his theory atheism, for his words are these: Nature, the human
mind, the individual, are God revealed under particular forms. It has
been already remarked (pp. 257, 258, 280) that undoubtedly Substance
with Spinoza does not perfectly fulfil the conception of God, since
it is as Spirit that He is to be conceived. But if Spinoza is called
an atheist for the sole reason that he does not distinguish God from
the world, it is a misuse of the term. Spinozism might really just as
well or even better have been termed Acosmism, since according to its
teaching it is not to the world, finite existence, the universe, that
reality and permanency are to be ascribed, but rather to God alone
as the substantial. Spinoza maintains that there is no such thing as
what is known as the world; it is merely a form of God, and in and for
itself it is nothing. The world has no true reality, and all this that
we know as the world has been cast into the abyss of the one identity.
There is therefore no such thing as finite reality, it has no truth
whatever; according to Spinoza what is, is God, and God alone. Therefore
the allegations of those who accuse Spinoza of atheism are the direct
opposite of the truth; with him there is too much God. They say: If
God is the identity of mind and nature, then nature or the individual
man is God. This is quite correct, but they forget that nature and the
individual disappear in this same identity: and they cannot forgive
Spinoza for thus annihilating them. Those who defame him in such a way
as this are therefore not aiming at maintaining God, but at maintaining
the finite and the worldly; they do not fancy their own extinction and
that of the world. Spinoza’s system is absolute pantheism and monotheism
elevated into thought. Spinozism is therefore very far removed from being
atheism in the ordinary sense; but in the sense that God is not conceived
as spirit, it is atheism. However, in the same way many theologians are
also atheists who speak of God only as the Almighty Supreme Being, etc.,
who refuse to acknowledge God, and who admit the validity and truth of
the finite. They are many degrees worse than Spinoza.
The second point to be considered is the method adopted by Spinoza for
setting forth his philosophy; it is the demonstrative method of geometry
as employed by Euclid, in which we find definitions, explanations,
axioms, and theorems. Even Descartes made it his starting-point that
philosophic propositions must be mathematically handled and proved, that
they must have the very same evidence as mathematics. The mathematical
method is considered superior to all others, on account of the nature
of its evidence; and it is natural that independent knowledge in its
re-awakening lighted first upon this form, of which it saw so brilliant
an example. The mathematical method is, however, ill-adapted for
speculative content, and finds its proper place only in the finite
sciences of the understanding. In modern times Jacobi has asserted
(Werke, Vol. IV. Section I. pp. 217-223) that all demonstration, all
scientific knowledge leads back to Spinozism, which alone is a logical
method of thought; and because it must lead thither, it is really of
no service whatever, but immediate knowledge is what we must depend on.
It may be conceded to Jacobi that the method of demonstration leads
to Spinozism, if we understand thereby merely the method of knowledge
belonging to the understanding. But the fact is that Spinoza is made a
testing-point in modern philosophy, so that it may really be said: You
are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all. This being so, the
mathematical and demonstrative method of Spinoza would seem to be only
a defect in the external form; but it is the fundamental defect of the
whole position. In this method the nature of philosophic knowledge and
the object thereof, are entirely misconceived, for mathematical knowledge
and method are merely formal in character and consequently altogether
unsuited for philosophy. Mathematical knowledge exhibits its proof on
the existent object as such, not on the object as conceived; the Notion
is lacking throughout; the content of Philosophy, however, is simply
the Notion and that which is comprehended by the Notion. Therefore this
Notion as the knowledge of the essence is simply one assumed, which falls
within the philosophic subject; and this is what represents itself to
be the method peculiar to Spinoza’s philosophy. Of this demonstrative
manner we have already seen these examples: (α) The definitions from
which Spinoza takes his start—as in geometry a commencement is made
with the line, triangle, &c.—concern universal determinations, such as
cause of itself, the finite, substance, attribute, mode, and so on,
which are solely and simply accepted and assumed, not deduced, nor
proved to be necessary: for Spinoza is not aware of how he arrives at
these individual determinations. (β) He further speaks of axioms, for
instance (Ethic. P. I. Ax. I. p. 36): “What is, is either in itself or
in another.” The determinations “in itself” and “in another” are not
shown forth in their necessity: neither is this disjunction proved, it
is merely assumed. (γ) The propositions have, as such, a subject and
predicate which are not similar. When the predicate is proved of the
subject and necessarily combined with it, the discrepancy remains that
the one as universal is related to the other as particular: therefore
even although the relation is proved, there is present at the same time
a secondary relation. Mathematical science, in its true propositions
respecting a whole, escapes from the difficulty by proving also the
converse of the propositions, in this way obtaining for them a special
definiteness by proving each proposition in both ways. True propositions
may, therefore, be looked on as definitions, and the conversion is the
proof of the proposition in the form in which it is expressed. But this
means of escaping the difficulty Philosophy cannot well employ, since
the subject of which something is proved is itself only the Notion or
the universal, and the proposition form is therefore quite superfluous
and out of place. What has the form of the subject is in the form of an
existent thing, as contrasted with the universal, the content of the
proposition. The existent thing is taken as signifying existent in the
ordinary sense; it is the word which we use in every-day life, and of
which we have a conception that has nothing of the Notion in it. The
converse of a proposition would simply read like this: The Notion is
that which is thus popularly conceived. This proof from the usage of
language—that we also understand this to be the meaning in every-day
life, or in other words that the name is correct—has no philosophic
significance. But if the proposition is not one like this, but an
ordinary proposition, and if the predicate is not the Notion, but some
general term or other, a predicate of the subject, such propositions are
really not philosophic: we might instance the statement that substance
is one and not several, but only that in which substance and unity are
the same. Or, in other words, this unity of the two moments is the very
thing which the proof has to demonstrate, it is the Notion or the
essence. In this case it looks as if the proposition were the matter
of chief importance, the truth. But if in these really only so-called
propositions, subject and predicate are in truth not alike, because one
is individual and the other universal, their relation is essential,
_i.e._ the reason for which they are one. The proof has here a false
position indeed, as if that subject were implicit or in itself, whereas
subject and predicate are, fundamentally even, moments in separation;
in the judgment “God is One,” the subject itself is universal, since
it resolves itself into unity. On the other side it is implied in this
false position that the proof is brought in from outside merely, as in
mathematics from a preceding proposition, and that the proposition is not
therefore conceived through itself; thus we see the ordinary method of
proof take its middle term, the principle, from anywhere it can, in the
same way as in classification it takes its principle of classification.
The proposition is then, as it were, a secondary affair; but we must
ask if this proposition is true. The result as proposition ought to be
truth, but is only knowledge. The movement of knowledge, as proof, falls
therefore, in the third place, outside of the proposition, which ought
to be the truth. The essential moments of the system are really already
completely contained in the presuppositions of the definitions, from
which all further proofs have merely to be deduced. But whence have we
these categories which here appear as definitions? We find them doubtless
in ourselves, in scientific culture. The existence of the understanding,
the will, extension, is therefore not developed from infinite substance,
but it is directly expressed in these determinations, and that quite
naturally; for of a truth there exists the One into which everything
enters, in order to be absorbed therein, but out of which nothing comes.
For as Spinoza has set up the great proposition, all determination
implies negation (_supra_, p. 267), and as of everything, even of thought
in contrast to extension, it may be shown that it is determined and
finite, what is essential in it rests upon negation. Therefore God alone
is the positive, the affirmative, and consequently the one substance;
all other things, on the contrary, are only modifications of this
substance, and are nothing in and for themselves. Simple determination or
negation belongs only to form, but is quite another thing from absolute
determinateness or negativity, which is absolute form; in this way
of looking at it negation is the negation of negation, and therefore
true affirmation. This negative self-conscious moment, the movement of
knowledge, which pursues its way in the thought which is present before
us, is however certainly lacking to the content of Spinoza’s philosophy,
or at least it is only externally associated with it, since it falls
within self-consciousness. That is to say, thoughts form the content, but
they are not self-conscious thoughts or Notions: the content signifies
thought, as pure abstract self-consciousness, but an unreasoning
knowledge, into which the individual does not enter: the content has
not the signification of ‘I.’ Therefore the case is as in mathematics;
a proof is certainly given, conviction must follow, but yet the matter
fails to be understood. There is a rigid necessity in the proof, to
which the moment of self-consciousness is lacking; the ‘I’ disappears,
gives itself altogether up, merely withers away. Spinoza’s procedure
is therefore quite correct; yet the individual proposition is false,
seeing that it expresses only one side of the negation. The understanding
has determinations which do not contradict one another; contradiction
the understanding cannot suffer. The negation of negation is, however,
contradiction, for in that it negates negation as simple determination,
it is on the one hand affirmation, but on the other hand also really
negation; and this contradiction, which is a matter pertaining to reason,
is lacking in the case of Spinoza. There is lacking the infinite form,
spirituality and liberty. I have already mentioned before this (pp. 93,
94; 129-137) that Lullus and Bruno attempted to draw up a system of form,
which should embrace and comprehend the one substance which organizes
itself into the universe; this attempt Spinoza did not make.
Because negation was thus conceived by Spinoza in one-sided fashion
merely, there is, in the third place, in his system, an utter blotting
out of the principle of subjectivity, individuality, personality, the
moment of self-consciousness in Being. Thought has only the signification
of the universal, not of self-consciousness. It is this lack which has,
on the one side, brought the conception of the liberty of the subject
into such vehement antagonism to the system of Spinoza, because it
set aside the independence of the human consciousness, the so-called
liberty which is merely the empty abstraction of independence, and in
so doing set aside God, as distinguished from nature and the human
consciousness—that is as implicit or in Himself, in the Absolute; for
man has the consciousness of freedom, of the spiritual, which is the
negative of the corporeal, and man has also the consciousness that his
true Being lies in what is opposed to the corporeal. This has been
firmly maintained by religion, theology, and the sound common sense of
the common consciousness, and this form of opposition to Spinoza appears
first of all in the assertion that freedom is real, and that evil exists.
But because for Spinoza, on the other hand, there exists only absolute
universal substance as the non-particularized, the truly real—all that is
particular and individual, my subjectivity and spirituality, has, on the
other hand, as a limited modification whose Notion depends on another,
no absolute existence. Thus the soul, the Spirit, in so far as it is
an individual Being, is for Spinoza a mere negation, like everything
in general that is determined. As all differences and determinations
of things and of consciousness simply go back into the One substance,
one may say that in the system of Spinoza all things are merely cast
down into this abyss of annihilation. But from this abyss nothing comes
out; and the particular of which Spinoza speaks is only assumed and
presupposed from the ordinary conception, without being justified. Were
it to be justified, Spinoza would have to deduce it from his Substance;
but that does not open itself out, and therefore comes to no vitality,
spirituality or activity. His philosophy has only a rigid and unyielding
substance, and not yet spirit; in it we are not at home with ourselves.
But the reason that God is not spirit is that He is not the Three in
One. Substance remains rigid and petrified, without Boehme’s sources or
springs; for the individual determinations in the form of determinations
of the understanding are not Boehme’s originating spirits, which energize
and expand in one another (_supra_, pp. 202, 203). What we find regarding
this particular then is that it is only a modification of absolute
substance, which, however, is not declared to be such; for the moment of
negativity is what is lacking to this rigid motionlessness, whose single
form of activity is this, to divest all things of their determination
and particularity and cast them back into the one absolute substance,
wherein they are simply swallowed up, and all life in itself is utterly
destroyed. This is what we find philosophically inadequate with Spinoza;
distinctions are externally present, it is true, but they remain
external, since even the negative is not known in itself. Thought is the
absolutely abstract, and for that very reason the absolutely negative; it
is so in truth, but with Spinoza it is not asserted to be the absolutely
negative. But if in opposition to Spinozism we hold fast to the assertion
that Spirit, as distinguishing itself from the corporeal, is substantial,
actual, true, and in the same way that freedom is not something merely
privative, then this actuality in formal thought is doubtless correct,
yet it rests only upon feeling; but the further step is that the Idea
essentially includes within itself motion and vitality, and that it
consequently has in itself the principle of spiritual freedom. On the one
hand, therefore, the defect of Spinozism is conceived as consisting in
its want of correspondence with actuality; but on the other side it is to
be apprehended in a higher sense, I mean in the sense that substance with
Spinoza is only the Idea taken altogether abstractly, not in its vitality.
If, in conclusion, we sum up this criticism that we have offered, we
would say that on the one hand with Spinoza negation or privation is
distinct from substance; for he merely assumes individual determinations,
and does not deduce them from substance. On the other hand the negation
is present only as Nothing, for in the absolute there is no mode; the
negative is not there, but only its dissolution, its return: we do not
find its movement, its Becoming and Being. The negative is conceived
altogether as a vanishing moment—not in itself, but only as individual
self-consciousness; it is not like the _Separator_ we met with in
Boehme’s system (_supra_, p. 206). Self-consciousness is born from this
ocean, dripping with the water thereof, _i.e._ never coming to absolute
self-hood; the heart, the independence is transfixed—the vital fire is
wanting. This lack has to be supplied, the moment of self-consciousness
has to be added. It has the following two special aspects, which we
now perceive emerging and gaining acceptance; in the first place the
objective aspect, that absolute essence obtains in self-consciousness
the mode of an object of consciousness for which the “other” exists, or
the existent as such, and that what Spinoza understood by the “modes” is
elevated to objective reality as an absolute moment of the absolute; in
the second place we have the aspect of self-consciousness, individuality,
independence. As was formerly the case with respect to Bacon and Boehme,
the former aspect is here taken up by the Englishman, John Locke, the
latter by the German Leibnitz; in the first case it did not appear
as a moment, nor did it in the second appear as absolute Notion. Now
while Spinoza only takes notice of these ordinary conceptions, and the
highest point of view he reaches in regard to them is that they sink
and disappear in the one Substance, Locke on the contrary examines the
genesis of these conceptions, while Leibnitz opposes to Spinoza the
infinite multiplicity of individuals, although all these monads have one
monad as the basis of their Being. Both Locke and Leibnitz therefore came
forward as opponents of the above-mentioned one-sidedness of Spinoza.
3. MALEBRANCHE.
The philosophy of Malebranche is in point of matter entirely identical
with that of Spinoza, but it has another, a more religious and more
theological form; on account of this form it never encountered the
opposition met with by Spinoza, and for the same reason Malebranche has
never been reproached with Atheism.
Nicholas Malebranche was born at Paris in 1638. He was sickly and
deformed in body, and was hence brought up with great care. He was
diffident and loved solitude; in his twenty-second year he entered the
_congrégation de l’oratoire_, a sort of spiritual order, and devoted
himself to the sciences. In passing a bookseller’s shop he happened
accidentally to see Descartes’ work _De homine_; he read it, and it
interested him greatly—so much so that the reading of it brought on
severe palpitation and he was forced to cease. This decided his future
life; there awoke in him an irrepressible inclination for Philosophy. He
was a man of most noble and gentle character, and of the most genuine and
unswerving piety. He died at Paris in 1715, and in the seventy-seventh
year of his age.[210] His principal work bears the title: _De la
recherche de la vérité_. One part of it is entirely metaphysical, but the
greater part is altogether empirical. For instance, Malebranche in the
first three books treats logically and psychologically of the errors in
sight and hearing, in the imagination and understanding.
a. What is most important in this book is his idea of the origin of our
knowledge. He says: “The essence of the soul is in thought, just as that
of matter is in extension. All else, such as sensation, imagination and
will, are modifications of thought”. He thus begins with two sides,
between which he sets an absolute chasm, and then he follows out in
detail the Cartesian idea of the assistance of God in knowledge. His main
point is that “the soul cannot attain to its conceptions and notions
from external things.” For when I and the thing are clearly independent
of one another and have nothing in common, the two can certainly not
enter into relation with one another nor be for one another. “Bodies are
impenetrable; their images would destroy one another on the way to the
organs.” But further: “The soul cannot beget ideas from itself, nor can
they be inborn,” for as “Augustine has said, ‘Say not that ye yourselves
are your own light.’” But how then comes extension, the manifold, into
the simple, into the spirit, since it is the reverse of the simple,
namely the diverse? This question regarding the association of thought
and extension is always an important one in Philosophy. According to
Malebranche the answer is, “That we see all things in God.” God Himself
is the connection between us and them, and thus the unity between the
thing and thought. “God has in Him the ideas of all things because He has
created all; God is through His omnipresence united in the most intimate
way with spirits. God thus is the place of spirits,” the Universal
of spirit, “just as space” is the universal, “the place of bodies.
Consequently the soul knows in God what is in Him,” bodies, “inasmuch
as He sets forth” (inwardly conceives) “created existence, because all
this is spiritual, intellectual, and present to the soul.”[211] Because
things and God are intellectual and we too are intellectual, we perceive
them in God as they are, so to speak, intellectual in Him. If this be
further analyzed it in no way differs from Spinozism. Malebranche indeed
in a popular way allows soul and things to subsist as independent,
but this independence vanishes away like smoke when the principle is
firmly grasped. The catechism says: “God is omnipresent,” and if this
omnipresence be developed Spinozism is arrived at; and yet theologians
then proceed to speak against the system of identity, and cry out about
Pantheism.
b. We must further remark that Malebranche also makes the universal,
thought, the essential, by placing it before the particular. “The soul
has the Notion of the infinite and universal: it knows nothing excepting
through the Idea which it has of the infinite; this Idea must hence come
first. The universal is not a mere confusion of individual ideas, it is
not a union of individual things.” According to Locke the individual from
which the universal is formed precedes (_infra_, p. 299); according to
Malebranche the universal Idea is what comes first in man. “If we wish
to think of anything particular we think first of the universal;” it is
the principle of the particular, as space is of things. All essentiality
precedes our particular conceptions, and this essentiality comes
first. “All essential existences (_essences_) come before our ordinary
conception; they cannot be such excepting by God’s presence in the mind
and spirit. He it is who contains all things in the simplicity of His
nature. It seems evident that mind would not be capable of representing
to itself the universal Notions of species, kind, and suchlike, if it
did not see all things comprehended in one.” The universal is thus in and
for itself, and it does not take its rise through the particular. “Since
each existent thing is an individual, we cannot say that we see something
actually created when, for example, we see a triangle in general,” for
we see it through God. “No account can be given of how spirit knows
abstract and common truths, excepting through the presence of Him who can
enlighten spirit in an infinite way,” because He is in and for Himself
the universal. “We have a clear idea of God,” of the universal: “We can
have such only through union with Him, for this idea is not a created
one,” but is in and for itself. As with Spinoza, the one universal is
God, and in so far as it is determined, it is the particular; we see
this particular only in the universal, as we see bodies in space. “We
already have a conception of infinite Being, inasmuch as we have a
conception of Being without regard to whether it is finite or infinite.
To know a finite we must limit the infinite; and this last must thus
precede. Thus spirit perceives all in the infinite; this is so far
from being a confused conception of many particular things that all
particular conceptions are merely participations in the universal Idea
of infinitude—in the same way that God does not receive this Being from”
finite “creatures, but,” on the contrary, “all creatures only subsist
through Him.”[212]
c. As regards the turning of the soul to God, Malebranche says what
Spinoza said from his ethical point of view: “It is impossible that God
should have an end other than Himself (the Holy Scriptures place this
beyond doubt);” the will of God can only have the good, what is without
doubt universal as its end. “Hence not only is it essential that our
natural love, _i.e._ the emotion which He brings forth in our spirit,
should strive after Him”—“the will is really love towards God”—“but
it is likewise impossible that the knowledge and the light which He
gives to our spirit should make anything else known than what is in
Him,” for thought only exists in unity with God. “If God were to make
a spirit and give it the sun as an idea or as the immediate object of
its knowledge, God would have made this spirit and the idea of this
spirit for the sun and not for Himself.” All natural love, and still
more knowledge, and the desire after truth, have God as their end. “All
motions of the will as regards the creatures are only determinations of
motion as regards the creator.” Malebranche quotes from Augustine “that
we see God even from the time we first enter upon this life (_dès cette
vie_), through the knowledge that we have of eternal truths. The truth
is uncreated, unchangeable, immeasurable, eternal above all things; it
is true through itself, and has its perfection from no thing. It makes
the creator more perfect, and all spirits naturally seek to know it:
now there is nothing that has these perfections but God, and thus the
truth is God. We perceive these unchangeable and eternal truths, hence
we see God.” “God indeed sees but He does not feel sensuous things. If
we see something sensuous, sensation and pure thought are to be found
in our consciousness. Sensation is a modification of our spirit; God
occasions this because He knows that our soul is capable of it. The Idea
which is bound up with the sensation is in God; we see it, etc. This
relation, this union of our mind and spirit with the Word (_Verbe_) of
God, and of our will with His love, is that we are formed after the
image of God and in His likeness.”[213] Thus the love of God consists in
relating one’s affections to the Idea of God; whoever knows himself and
thinks his affections clearly, loves God. We further find sundry empty
litanies concerning God, a catechism for children of eight years of age
respecting goodness, justice, omnipresence, the moral order of the world;
in all their lifetime theologians do not get any further.
We have given the principal of Malebranche’s ideas; the remainder of his
philosophy is composed partly of formal logic, and partly of empirical
psychology. He passes to the treatment of errors, how they arise, how
the senses, the imagination, the understanding, deceive us, and how we
must conduct ourselves in order to effect a remedy. Then Malebranche goes
on (T. III. L. VI. P. I. chap. i. pp. 1-3) to the rules and laws for
recognizing the truth. Thus here the term Philosophy was even applied
to the manner in which reflections on particular objects are drawn from
formal logic and external facts.
B. SECOND DIVISION.
It was Locke who became the instrument of setting forth this entire
manner of thinking in a systematic way, for he worked out Bacon’s
position more fully. And if Bacon made sensuous Being to be the truth,
Locke demonstrated the universal, Thought, to be present in sensuous
Being, or showed that we obtained the universal, the true, from
experience. From Locke a wide culture proceeds, influencing English
philosophers more especially; the forms adopted by this school were
various, but the principle was the same; it became a general method of
regarding things in a popular way, and calls itself Philosophy, although
the object of Philosophy is not to be met with here.
1. LOCKE.
When experience means that the Notion has objective actuality for
consciousness, it is indeed a necessary element in the totality; but
as this reflection appears in Locke, signifying as it does that we
obtain truth by abstraction from experience and sensuous perception,
it is utterly false, since, instead of being a moment, it is made the
essence of the truth. It is no doubt true that against the hypothesis
of the inward immediacy of the Idea, and against the method of setting
it forth in definitions and axioms, as also against absolute substance,
the demand that ideas should be represented as results, and the claims
of individuality and self-consciousness, assert their rights to
recognition. In the philosophy of Locke and Leibnitz, however, these
necessities make themselves known in an imperfect manner only; the one
fact which is common to both philosophers is that they, in opposition to
Spinoza and Malebranche, take for their principle the particular, finite
determinateness and the individual. According to Spinoza and Malebranche
substance or the universal is the true, the sole existent, the eternal,
that which is in and for itself, without origin, and of which particular
things are only modifications which are conceived through substance. But
hereby Spinoza has done an injury to this negative; he hence arrived at
no immanent determination, for all that is determined and individual
is merely annihilated in his system. Now, on the contrary, the general
inclination of consciousness is to maintain the difference, partly
in order to mark itself out as implicitly free in opposition to its
object—Being, nature, and God, and partly in order to recognize the unity
in this opposition, and from the opposition itself to make the unity
emerge. But those who were the instruments of this tendency comprehended
themselves but little, they had still no clear consciousness of their
task, nor of the manner in which their claims could be satisfied. With
Locke, this principle makes its first entrance into Philosophy in a
manner so completely at variance with the inflexible undifferentiated
identity of the substance of Spinoza, that the sensuous and limited, the
immediate present and existent, is the main and fundamental matter. Locke
does not get beyond the ordinary point of view of consciousness, viz.
that objects outside of us are the real and the true. The finite is thus
not grasped by Locke as absolute negativity, _i.e._ in its infinitude;
this we shall not find until we come to deal in the third place with
Leibnitz. It is in a higher sense that Leibnitz asserts individuality,
the differentiated, to be self-existent and indeed objectless, to be
true Being. That is to say, it is not according to him finite, but is
yet distinguished; thus, each monad is itself the totality. Leibnitz
and Locke hence likewise stand in a position of mutual independence and
antagonism.
John Locke was born in 1632, at Wrington, in England. He studied for
himself the Cartesian philosophy at Oxford, setting aside the scholastic
philosophy which was still in vogue. He devoted himself to the study of
medicine, which, however, on account of his delicate health, he never
really practised. In 1664 he went with an English ambassador for a year
to Berlin. After his return to England, he became acquainted with the
intellectual Earl of Shaftesbury of that time, who availed himself of his
medical advice, and in whose house he lived without requiring to give
himself up to practice. When Lord Shaftesbury became Lord Chancellor
of England, Locke received an office from him, which, however, he soon
lost by a change of ministry. Owing to his dread of falling a prey to
consumption, he betook himself in 1675 to Montpellier for the benefit of
his health. When his patron came into power again he once more recovered
the place he had lost, only to be again deposed on a fresh overthrow of
this minister, and he was now compelled to flee from England. “The act by
means of which Locke was driven from Oxford” (what post he held there we
are not told) “was not an enactment of the University, but of James II.,
by whose express command, and by the peremptory authority of a written
warrant, the expulsion was carried out. From the correspondence that took
place, it is evident that the college submitted itself against its will
to a measure which it could not resist without compromising the peace
and quiet of its members.” Locke went to Holland, which was at that time
the land wherein all who were obliged to effect their escape from any
oppression, whether political or religious, found protection, and in
which the most famous and liberal-minded men were to be met with. The
Court party persecuted him even here, and by royal warrant he was ordered
to be taken prisoner and sent to England; consequently he had to remain
hidden with his friends. When William of Orange ascended the English
throne, after the Revolution of 1688, Locke returned with him to England.
He was there made Commissioner of Trade and Plantations, gave to the
world his famous treatise on the Human Understanding, and finally, having
withdrawn from public office on account of the delicacy of his health,
he spent his remaining years in the country houses of English nobles; he
died on the 28th day of October, 1704, in the seventy-third year of his
life.[214]
The philosophy of Locke is much esteemed; it is still, for the most part,
the philosophy of the English and the French, and likewise in a certain
sense of the Germans. To put it in a few words, it asserts on the one
hand that truth and knowledge rest upon experience and observation; and
on the other the analysis of and abstraction from general determinations
is prescribed as the method of knowledge; it is, so to speak, a
metaphysical empiricism, and this is the ordinary method adopted in the
sciences. In respect of method, Locke thus employs an exactly opposite
system to that of Spinoza. In the methods of Spinoza and Descartes an
account of the origin of ideas may be dispensed with; they are accepted
at once as definitions, such as those of substance, the infinite, mode,
extension, etc., all of which constitute a quite incoherent list. But we
require to show where these thoughts come in, on what they are founded,
and how they are verified. Thus Locke has striven to satisfy a true
necessity. For he has the merit of having deserted the system of mere
definitions, which were before this made the starting point, and of
having attempted to make deduction of general conceptions, inasmuch as
he was, for example, at the pains to show how substantiality arises
subjectively from objects. That is a further step than any reached
by Spinoza, who begins at once with definitions and axioms which are
unverified. Now they are derived, and no longer oracularly laid down,
even if the method and manner whereby this authentication is established
is not the right one. That is to say, here the matter in question is
merely subjective, and somewhat psychological, since Locke merely
describes the methods of mind as it appears to us to be. For in his
philosophy we have more especially to deal with the derivation of the
general conceptions, or ideas, as he called them, that are present in our
knowledge, and with their origin as they proceed from what is outwardly
and inwardly perceptible. Malebranche no doubt likewise asks how we
arrive at conceptions, and thus he apparently has before him the same
subject of investigation as has Locke. But firstly, this psychological
element in Malebranche is merely the later development, and then to him
the universal or God is plainly first, while Locke commences at once with
individual perceptions, and only from them does he proceed to Notions,
to God. The universal to Locke is, therefore, merely a later result,
the work of our minds; it is simply something pertaining to thought,
as subjective. Every man undoubtedly knows that when his consciousness
develops empirically, he commences from feelings, from quite concrete
conditions, and that it is only later on that general conceptions come
in, which are connected with the concrete of sensation by being contained
therein. Space, for example, comes to consciousness later than the
spacial, the species later than the individual; and it is only through
the activity of my consciousness that the universal is separated from
the particular of conception, feeling, etc. Feeling undoubtedly comes
lowest, it is the animal mode of spirit; but in its capacity as thinking,
spirit endeavours to transform feeling into its own form. Thus the course
adopted by Locke is quite a correct one, but all dialectic considerations
are utterly and entirely set aside, since the universal is merely
analyzed from the empirical concrete. And in this matter Kant reproaches
Locke with reason, the individual is not the source of universal
conceptions, but the understanding.
As to Locke’s further reflections, they are very simple. Locke considers
how the understanding is only consciousness, and in being so is something
in consciousness, and he only recognizes the implicit in as far as it is
in the same.
a. Locke’s philosophy is more especially directed against Descartes,
who, like Plato, had spoken of innate ideas. Locke likewise makes
special examination of the “inborn impressions (_notiones communes in
foro interiori descriptæ_)” which Lord Herbert assumes in his work _De
veritate_. In the first book of his work Locke combats the so-called
innate ideas, theoretic as well as practical, _i.e._ the universal,
absolutely existent ideas which at the same time are represented as
pertaining to mind in a natural way. Locke said that we arrive first
at _that_ which we call idea. By this he understands not the essential
determinations of man, but conceptions which we have and which are
present and exist in consciousness as such: in the same way we all have
arms and legs as parts of our bodies, and the desire to eat exists in
everyone. In Locke we thus have the conception of the soul as of a
contentless _tabula rasa_ which is by-and-by filled with what we call
experience.[215] The expression “innate principles” was at that time
common, and these innate principles have sometimes been foolishly spoken
of. But their true signification is that they are implicit, that they are
essential moments in the nature of thought, qualities of a germ, which do
not yet exist: only in relation to this last there is an element of truth
in Locke’s conclusions. As diverse conceptions essentially determined
they are only legitimatized by its being shown that they are implied in
the essential nature of thought; but as propositions which hold good as
axioms, and conceptions which are immediately accepted as laid down in
definitions, they undoubtedly possess the form of that which is present
and inborn. As they are regarded they are bound to have value in and for
themselves; but this is a mere assertion. From the other point of view
the question of whence they come is a futile one. Mind is undoubtedly
determined in itself, for it is the explicitly existent Notion; its
development signifies the coming to consciousness. But the determinations
which it brings forth from itself cannot be called innate, for this
development must be occasioned by an external, and only on that does the
activity of mind react, in order that it may for the first time become
conscious of its reality.
The grounds on which Locke refutes innate ideas are empirical. “There
is nothing more commonly taken for granted than that there are certain
principles, both speculative and practical, universally agreed upon
by all mankind: which therefore, they argue, must needs be constant
impressions which the souls of men receive in their first Beings.”
But this universal consent is not to be found. We may instance the
proposition, “Whatsoever is, is; and It is impossible for the same thing
to be and not to be; which of all others I think have the most allowed
title to innate.” But this proposition does not hold good for the Notion;
there is nothing either in heaven or earth which does not contain Being
and non-Being. Many men, “All children and idiots,” says Locke, “have
not the least apprehension of these propositions.” “No proposition can
be said to be in the mind which it never yet knew, which it was never
yet conscious of.... ’Tis usually answered, That all men know and assent
to them” (the propositions) “when they come to the use of reason....
If it be meant that the use of reason assists us in the knowledge of
these maxims, it would prove them not to be innate.” Reason is said to
be the deriving from principles already known unknown truths. How then
should the application of reason be required to discover supposed innate
principles? This is a weak objection, for it assumes that by innate ideas
we understand those which man possesses in consciousness as immediately
present. But development in consciousness is something altogether
different from any inherent determination of reason, and therefore the
expression innate idea is undoubtedly quite wrong. Innate principles
must be found “clearest and most perspicuous nearest the fountain, in
children and illiterate people, who have received least impression from
foreign opinion.” Locke gives further reasons of a similar nature, more
especially employing those which are of a practical kind—the diversity in
moral judgments, the case of those who are utterly wicked and depraved,
devoid of sense of right or conscience.[216]
b. In the second book Locke goes on to the next stage, to the origin of
ideas, and seeks to demonstrate this process from experience—this is
the main object of his efforts. The reason that the positive point of
view which he opposes to any derivation from within, is so false, is
that he derives his conceptions only from outside and thus maintains
Being-for-another, while he quite neglects the implicit. He says:
“Every man being conscious to himself, that he thinks; and that which
his mind is applied about, while thinking, being the ideas that are
there; ’tis past doubt, that men have in their minds several ideas,
such as those expressed in the words, whiteness, hardness, sweetness,
thinking, motion, man, elephant, army, drunkenness, and others.” Idea
here signifies both the ordinary conception and thought; we understand
something quite different by the word idea. “It is in the first place
then to be inquired, how he comes by them” (these ideas)? Innate ideas
have already been refuted. “Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we
say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it
to be furnished?... To this I answer in a word, from Experience: in that
all our knowledge is founded.”[217]
As to the question in point we must in the first place say that it is
true that man commences with experience if he desires to arrive at
thought. Everything is experienced, not merely what is sensuous, but
also what excites and stimulates my mind. Consciousness thus undoubtedly
obtains all conceptions and Notions from experience and in experience;
the only question is what we understand by experience. In a usual way
when this is spoken of the idea of nothing particular is conveyed; we
speak of it as of something quite well known. But experience is nothing
more than the form of objectivity; to say that it is something which is
in consciousness means that it has objective form for consciousness or
that consciousness experiences it, it sees it as an objective. Experience
thus signifies immediate knowledge, perception, _i.e._ I myself must
have and be something, and the consciousness of what I have and am is
experience. Now there is no question as to this, that whatever we know,
of whatever kind it may be, must be experienced, that rests in the
conception of the thing. It is absurd to say that one knows anything
which is not in experience. I undoubtedly know men, for instance, from
experience, without requiring to have seen them all, for I have, as man,
activity and will, a consciousness respecting what I am and what others
are. The rational exists, _i.e._ it is as an existent for consciousness,
or this last experiences it; it must be seen and heard, it must be there
or have been there as a phenomenon in the world. This connection of
universal with objective is however in the second place not the only
form, that of the implicit is likewise absolute and essential—that
is, the apprehension of what is experienced or the abrogation of this
apparent other-being and the knowledge of the necessity of the thing
through itself. It is now quite a matter of indifference whether anything
is accepted as something experienced, as a succession of empirical
ideas, if one may so say, or conceptions; or whether the succession is a
succession of thoughts, _i.e._ implicitly existent.
Locke treats of the various kinds of these ideas imperfectly and
empirically merely.
α. According to Locke simple ideas arise partly from outward, and partly
from inward experience. For experiences, he says, are in the first place
sensations; the other side is reflection, the inward determinations
of consciousness.[218] From sensation, from the organs of sight for
instance, the conceptions of colour, light, etc., arise; there further
arises from outward experience the idea of impenetrability, of figure,
rest, motion and such like. From reflections come the ideas of faith,
doubt, judgment, reasoning, thinking, willing, etc.; from both combined,
pleasure, pain, etc. This is a very commonplace account of the matter.
β. After Locke has presupposed experience, he goes on to say that it
is the understanding which now discovers and desires the universal—the
complex ideas. The Bishop of Worcester made the objection that “If
the idea of substance be grounded upon plain and evident reason, then
we must allow an idea of substance which comes not in by sensation or
reflection.” Locke replies: “General ideas come not into the mind
by sensation or reflection, but are the creatures or inventions of
the understanding. The mind makes them from ideas which it has got by
sensation and reflection.” The work of the mind now consists in bringing
forth from several simple so-called ideas a number of new ones, by means
of its working upon this material through comparing, distinguishing and
contrasting it, and finally through separation or abstraction, whereby
the universal conceptions, such as space, time, existence, unity and
diversity, capacity, cause and effect, freedom, necessity, take their
rise. “The mind in respect of its simple ideas is wholly passive, and
receives them all from the existence and operation of things, such as
sensation or reflection offers them, without being able to make any one
idea.” But “the mind often exercises an active power in making these
several combinations. For it being once furnished with simple ideas
it can put them together in several combinations.” According to Locke
therefore thought itself is not the essence of the soul, but one of
its powers and manifestations. He maintains thought to be existent in
consciousness as conscious thought, and thus brings it forward as a fact
in his experience, that we do not always think. Experience demonstrates
dreamless sleep when the sleep is profound. Locke quotes the example of a
man who remembered no dream until he had reached his twenty-fifth year.
It is as in the Xenien,—[219]
Oft schon war ich, und hab’ wirklich an gar nichts gedacht.
That is to say, my object is not a thought. But sensuous perception and
recollection are thought, and thought is truth.[220] Locke, however,
places the reality of the understanding only in the formal activity of
constituting new determinations from the simple conceptions received
by means of perception, through their comparison and the combination
of several into one; it is the apprehension of the abstract sensations
which are contained in the objects. Locke likewise distinguishes (Bk. II.
chap. xi. § 15-17) between pure and mixed modes. Pure modes are simple
determinations such as power, number, infinitude; in such expressions as
causality we reach, on the other hand, a mixed mode.
Locke now explains in detail the manner in which the mind, from the
simple ideas of experience, reaches more complex ideas; but this
derivation of general determinations from concrete perception is most
unmeaning, trivial, tiresome and diffuse; it is entirely formal, an empty
tautology. For instance we form the general conception of space from the
perception of the distance of bodies by means of sight and feeling.[221]
Or in other words, we perceive a definite space, abstract from it,
and then we have the conception of space generally; the perception of
distances gives us conceptions of space. This however is no deduction,
but only a setting aside of other determinations; since distance itself
is really space, mind thus determines space from space. Similarly we
reach the notion of time through the unbroken succession of conceptions
during our waking moments,[222] _i.e._ from determinate time we
perceive time in general. Conceptions follow one another in a continual
succession; if we set aside the particular element that is present we
thereby receive the conception of time. Substance (which Locke does not
accept in so lofty a sense as Spinoza), a complex idea, hence arises
from the fact that we often perceive simple ideas such as blue, heavy,
etc., in association with one another. This association we represent to
ourselves as something which so to speak supports these simple ideas, or
in which they exist.[223] Locke likewise deduces the general conception
of power.[224] The determinations of freedom and necessity, cause and
effect, are then derived in a similar way. “In the notice that our senses
take of the constant vicissitude of things, we cannot but observe, that
several particulars, both qualities and substance, begin to exist; and
that they receive this their existence from the due application and
operation of some other being. From this observation we get our ideas
of cause and effect,” for instance when wax is melted by the fire.[225]
Locke goes on to say: “Every one, I think, finds in himself a power to
begin or forbear, continue or put an end to several actions in himself.
From the consideration of the extent of this power of the mind over the
actions of the man, which every one finds in himself, arise the ideas of
liberty and necessity.”[226]
We may say that nothing can be more superficial than this derivation of
ideas. The matter itself, the essence, is not touched upon at all. A
determination is brought into notice which is contained in a concrete
relationship; hence the understanding on the one hand abstracts and
on the other establishes conclusions. The basis of this philosophy is
merely to be found in the transference of the determinate to the form
of universality, but it was just this fundamental essence that we had
to explain. As to this Locke confesses of space, for example, that he
does not know what it really is.[227] This so-called analysis by Locke
of complex conceptions, and his so-called explanation of the same, has,
on account of its uncommon clearness and lucidity of expression, found
universal acceptance. For what can be clearer than to say that we have
the notion of time because we perceive time, if we do not actually see
it, and that we conceive of space because we see it? The French have
accepted this most readily and they have carried it further still; their
_Idéologie_ contains nothing more nor less.
γ. When Locke starts by saying that everything is experience and we
abstract for ourselves from this experience general conceptions regarding
objects and their qualities, he makes a distinction in respect of
external qualities which was before this made by Aristotle (De anima,
II. 6), and which we likewise met with in Descartes (_supra_, pp. 245,
246). That is to say, Locke distinguishes between primary and secondary
qualities; the first pertain to the objects themselves in truth, the
others are not real qualities, but are founded on the nature of the
organs of sensation. Primary qualities are mechanical, like extension,
solidity, figure, movement, rest; these are qualities of the corporeal,
just as thought is the quality of the spiritual. But the determinations
of our individual feelings such as colours, sounds, smells, taste, etc.,
are not primary.[228] In Descartes’ case this distinction has however
another form, for the second class of these determinations is defined
by him in such a way as that they do not constitute the essence of
body, while Locke says that they exist for sensation, or fall within
existence as it is for consciousness. Locke, however, no doubt reckons
figure, etc., as still pertaining to reality, but by so doing nothing is
ascertained as to the nature of body. In Locke a difference here appears
between the implicit and being ‘for-another,’ in which he declares the
moment of ‘for-another’ to be unreal—and yet he sees all truth in the
relation of ‘for-another’ only.
c. Since the universal as such, the idea of species, is, according to
Locke, merely a product of our mind, which is not itself objective, but
relates merely to objects which are germane to it, and from which the
particular of qualities, conditions, time, place, etc., are separated,
Locke distinguishes essences into real essences and nominal essences;
the former of these express the true essence of things, while species
on the other hand are mere nominal essences which no doubt express
something which is present in the objects, but which do not exhaust these
objects. They serve to distinguish species for our knowledge, but the
real essence of nature we do not know.[229] Locke gives good reasons
for species being nothing in themselves—for their not being in nature,
or absolutely determined—instancing in exemplification the production
of monstrosities (Bk. III. chap. iii. § 17): were species absolute no
monster would be born. But he overlooks the fact that since it pertains
to species to exist, it thereby likewise enters into relationship with
other determinations; thus that is the sphere in which individual things
operate upon one another, and may hence be detrimental to the existence
of the species. Locke thus argues just as one would who wished to prove
that the good does not exist in itself, because there are likewise evil
men, that the circle does not exist absolutely in nature, because the
circumference of a tree, for example, represents a very irregular circle,
or because I draw a circle badly. Nature just signifies the lack of
power to be perfectly adequate to the Notion; it is only in spirit that
the Notion has its true existence. To say that species are nothing in
themselves, that the universal is not the essential reality of nature,
that its implicit existence is not the object of thought, is tantamount
to saying that we do not know real existence: it is the same litany which
has since been so constantly repeated that we are tired of listening to
it:
Das Innere der Natur kennt kein erschaffener Geist,
and which goes on until we have perceived that Being-for-another,
perception, is not implicit; a point of view which has not made its way
to the positive position that the implicit is the universal. Locke is far
back in the nature of knowledge, further back than Plato, because of his
insistence on Being-for-another.
It is further noteworthy that from the sound understanding Locke argues
(Vol. III. Bk. IV. chap. vii. § 8-11) against universal propositions
or axioms such as that A = A, _i.e._ if anything is A it cannot be B.
He says they are superfluous, of very little use or of no use at all,
for nobody yet has built up a science on a proposition which asserts a
contradiction. From such the true may be proved as easily as the false;
they are tautological. What Locke has further achieved in respect of
education, toleration, natural rights or universal state-right, does not
concern us here, but has to do with general culture.
This is the philosophy of Locke, in which there is no trace of
speculation. The great end of Philosophy, which is to know the truth,
is in it sought to be attained in an empiric way; it thus indeed serves
to draw attention to general determinations. But such a philosophy not
only represents the standpoint of ordinary consciousness, to which all
the determinations of its thought appear as if given, humble as it is
in the oblivion of its activity, but in this method of derivation and
psychological origination that which alone concerns Philosophy, the
question of whether these thoughts and relationships have truth in and
for themselves, is not present at all, inasmuch as the only object aimed
at is to describe the manner in which thought accepts what is given to
it. It may be held with Wolff that it is arbitrary to begin with concrete
conceptions, as when our conception of identity is made to take its
origin from such things as blue flowers and the blue heavens. One can
better begin directly from universal conceptions and say that we find
in our consciousness the conceptions of time, cause and effect; these
are the later facts of consciousness. This method forms the basis of
the Wolffian system of reasoning, only here we must still distinguish
amongst the different conceptions those that are to be regarded as most
essential; in Locke’s philosophy, this distinction cannot really be said
to come under consideration. From this time, according to Locke, or in
this particular aspect of Philosophy, there is a complete and entire
change in the point of view adopted; the whole interest is limited to the
form in which the objective, or individual sensations, pass into the form
of conceptions. In the case of Spinoza and Malebranche, we undoubtedly
likewise saw that it was made a matter of importance to recognize this
relation of thought to what is sensuously perceived, and thus to know it
as falling into relation, as passing into the relative; the main question
hence was: How are the two related? But the question was answered to the
effect that it is only this relation for itself that constitutes the
point of interest, and this relation itself as absolute substance is thus
identity, the true, God, it is not the related parts. The interest does
not lie in the related parts; the related parts as one-sided are not the
existent, presupposed and permanently established, they are accidental
merely. But here the related sides, the things and the subject, have
their proper value, and they are presupposed as having this value.
Locke’s reasoning is quite shallow; it keeps entirely to the phenomenal,
to that which is, and not to that which is true.
There is another question however: Are these general determinations
absolutely true? And whence come they not alone into my consciousness,
into my mind and understanding, but into the things themselves? Space,
cause, effect, etc., are categories. How do these categories come into
the particular? How does universal space arrive at determining itself?
This point of view, the question whether these determinations of the
infinite, of substance, etc., are in and for themselves true, is quite
lost sight of. Plato investigated the infinite and the finite, Being and
the determinate, etc., and pronounced that neither of these opposites is
of itself true; they are so only as together constituting an identity,
wherever the truth of this content may come from. But here the truth
as it is in and for itself is entirely set aside and the nature of the
content itself is made the main point. It does not matter whether the
understanding or experience is its source, for the question is whether
this content is in itself true. With Locke, the truth merely signifies
the harmony of our conceptions with things; here relation is alone in
question, whether the content is an objective thing or a content of
the ordinary conception. But it is quite another matter to investigate
the content itself, and to ask, “Is this which is within us true?” We
must not dispute about the sources, for the Whence, the only important
point to Locke, does not exhaust the whole question. The interest of the
content in and for itself wholly disappears when that position is taken
up, and thereby the whole of what is aimed at by Philosophy is given up.
On the other hand, when thought is from the beginning concrete, when
thought and the universal are synonymous with what is set before us, the
question of the relation of the two which have been separated by thought
is destitute of interest and incomprehensible. How does thought overcome
the difficulties which itself has begotten? Here with Locke none at all
have been begotten and awakened. Before the need for reconciliation can
be satisfied, the pain of disunion must be excited.
The philosophy of Locke is certainly very comprehensible, but for that
very reason it is likewise a popular philosophy to which the whole of
the English philosophy as it exists at this day is allied; it is the
thinking method of regarding things which is called philosophy carried
to its perfection, the form which was introduced into the science which
then took its rise in Europe. This is an important moment in culture;
the sciences in general and specially the empiric sciences have to
ascribe their origin to this movement. To the English, Philosophy has
ever signified the deduction of experiences from observations; this
has in a one-sided way been applied to physical and economic subjects.
General principles of political economy such as free-trade in the present
day, and all matters which rest on thinking experience, the knowledge of
whatever reveals itself in this sphere as necessary and useful, signifies
philosophy to the English (Vol. I. pp. 57, 58). The scholastic method
of starting from principles and definitions has been rejected. The
universal, laws, forces, universal matter, etc., have in natural science
been derived from perceptions; thus to the English, Newton is held to
be the philosopher κατ’ ἐξοχήν. The other side is that in practical
philosophy regarding society or the state, thought applies itself to
concrete objects such as the will of the prince, subjects and their ends
and personal welfare. Inasmuch as we have an object such as that before
us, the indwelling and essential universal is made evident; it must,
however, be made clear which conception is the one to which the others
must yield. It is in this way that rational politics took their rise in
England, because the institutions and government peculiar to the English
led them specially and in the first place to reflection upon their inward
political and economic relationships. Hobbes must be mentioned as an
exemplification of this fact. This manner of reasoning starts from the
present mind, from what is our own, whether it be within or without us,
since the feelings which we have, the experiences which fall directly
within us, are the principles. This philosophy of reasoning thought
is that which has now become universal, and through which the whole
revolution in the position taken up by mind has come to pass.
2. HUGO GROTIUS.
Hugo Grotius was studying the laws of nations at the same time as
Locke; and in him the very same methods may be found as those already
mentioned, inasmuch as he also falls into a quite empirical system
of associating nations with one another, combining with that an
empirical mode of reasoning. Hugo van Groot, born 1583 at Delft, was a
lawyer, fiscal general, and council pensionary; in 1619, however, he
was implicated in the Barneveldt trial, and was compelled to fly the
country. For a long time he remained in France, but in 1634 he entered
the service of Queen Christina of Sweden. In 1635 he was made Swedish
ambassador in Paris, and in 1645 he died at Rostock, while on a journey
from Stockholm to Holland.[230] His principal work, _De jure belli et
pacis_, he composed in 1625; now it is not read, but at one time it
exercised a very great and important influence. In it Grotius presented a
comparative historical account, the material of which was partly derived
from the Old Testament, of the manner in which nations in the various
relationships of war and peace have acted towards one another, and what
usages they held to be binding. The following may serve as an example of
his empirical method of reasoning: Prisoners ought not to be killed; for
the object is to disarm the enemy, and if this end be attained nothing
further should be done.[231] This empirical way of connecting facts had
the effect of bringing general comprehensible and rational principles
into consciousness, of making them recognized, and of causing them to be
more or less acceptable. Thus we see principles set forth, respecting
the righteousness of a king’s power for instance; for thought applied
itself to everything. We are unsatisfied by such proofs and deductions,
but we must not overlook what is thereby accomplished; and this is the
establishment of principles which have their ultimate confirmation in the
objects themselves, in mind and thought.
3. THOMAS HOBBES.
Hobbes, who was celebrated and distinguished on account of the
originality of his views, was tutor to the Earl of Devonshire; he was
born in 1588 at Malmesbury, and died in 1679.[232] As a contemporary
of Cromwell, he found in the events of that time, in the Revolution
which then took place in England, an occasion for reflecting on the
principles of state and law, and in fact he succeeded in making his way
to quite original conceptions. He wrote much, including a treatise on
Philosophy, entitled “The Elements of Philosophy.” The first section
(_Sectio_) of this work, _De corpore_, appeared in London in 1655; in it
he first of all treats of Logic (_Pars_ I.), and secondly of _philosophia
prima_ (_Pars_ II.); this last is an ontology and metaphysic. The
next sub-division (_Pars_ III.), “On the relation between motion and
magnitude,” is a system of mechanism, a quite popular system of physics;
and a study of the human organs. The second section was to treat of the
nature of man (_De homine_), and the third of the state (_De cive_), but
the intellectual sections of the work Hobbes did not entirely finish.
He says in his preface that Copernicus first opened up astronomy, and
Galileo physics, before them there was nothing certain in either science.
Harvey worked out the science of the human body, and physics generally
as well as astronomy were perfected by Keppler. All this was termed
Philosophy, in accordance with the point of view which has been already
given (p. 313), since in it the reflective understanding desires to know
the universal. Hobbes further says concerning the philosophy of the state
(_philosophia civilis_), that it only dates from the publication of his
book _De cive_.[233] This work, which appeared at Paris in 1642,[234]
is, like his Leviathan, a much decried book; the second mentioned writing
was forbidden to be circulated, and is hence very rare. Both works
contain sounder reflections on the nature of society and government than
many now in circulation. Society, the state, is to Hobbes absolutely
pre-eminent, it is the determining power without appeal as regards law
and positive religion and their external relations; and because he placed
these in subjection to the state, his doctrines were of course regarded
with the utmost horror. But there is nothing speculative or really
philosophic in them, and there is still less in Hugo Grotius.
Before this ideals were set before us, or Holy Scripture or positive law
was quoted as authoritative. Hobbes, on the contrary, sought to derive
the bond which holds the state together, that which gives the state
its power, from principles which lie within us, which we recognize as
our own. In this way two opposite principles arise. The first is the
passive obedience of subjects, the divine authority of rulers, whose
will is absolute law, and is itself elevated above all other law. All
this is represented in close connection with religion, and proved by
examples from the Old Testament, by such stories as those of Saul and
David. Criminal and marriage laws, too, for long derived their character
from the Mosaic laws, or, speaking generally, from those the provisions
of which possessed their value by the fact of being established by
express divine command. On the other hand we have in the second place
the reasoning wherein we ourselves are the determining agents, and which
was called sound reason. In the movement which Cromwell made use of
there was allied with this a fanaticism, which from the written letter
drew opposite conclusions to the above, and this we see exemplified in
the equality of property, for instance. Hobbes, it is true, likewise
maintained passive obedience, the absolute freedom of the royal will
and power; but at the same time he sought to derive the principles of
monarchical power, etc., from universal determinations. The views that
he adopts are shallow and empirical, but the reasons he gives for them,
and the propositions he makes respecting them, are original in character,
inasmuch as they are derived from natural necessities and wants.
Hobbes maintained that “The origin of all society is to be found in
the mutual fear of all its members;” it is hence a phenomenon in
consciousness. “Each association is thus formed in its own interest or
for its own renown, that is, from selfish motives.” All such matters as
security of life, property, and enjoyment, are not to be found outside
it. “But men have in all dissimilarity of strength a natural similarity
as well.” This Hobbes proves by a characteristic reason, viz. that “each
individual can make away with the other,” each is the ultimate power
over the others. “Each can be supreme.”[235] Thus their similarity is
not derived from the greatest strength; it is not, as in modern times,
founded on the freedom of the spirit, or on an equality of merit and
independence, but on the equal weakness of mankind; each man is weak as
regards others.
b. Hobbes further takes up the position that this natural condition is
of such a nature that all possess the desire to rule over one another.
“All in their natural condition are possessed of the will to injure
others,” to tyrannize over other men; each has thus to fear the other.
Hobbes looks at this condition in its true light, and we find in him
no idle talk about a state of natural goodness; the natural condition
is really far more like that of the animals—a condition in which there
is an unsubdued individual will. All thus wish to “secure themselves
against the pretensions of others, to acquire for themselves advantages
and superior rights. Opinions, religions, desires, arouse strife; the
stronger bears away the victory. The natural condition is consequently
a condition of mistrust on the part of all towards all; it is a war of
all against all (_bellum omnium in omnes_),” and the endeavour of one to
overreach another. The expression nature has a double significance: In
the first place the nature of man signifies his spiritual and rational
Being; but his natural condition indicates quite another condition,
wherein man conducts himself according to his natural impulses. In this
way he conducts himself in conformity with his desires and inclinations,
while the rational, on the contrary, is the obtaining supremacy over the
immediately natural. “In the condition of nature a certain irresistible
power grants the right to rule over those who cannot resist; it is absurd
to leave those whom we have in our power to become free and strong
again.” From this Hobbes draws the conclusion that “man must go forth
from the natural condition.”[236] This is true; the natural condition is
not what it should be, and must hence be cast off.
c. Hobbes finally passes to the laws of reason which preserve
tranquillity. This condition of law is the subjection of the natural,
particular will of the individual to the universal will, which, however,
is not that of all individuals, but is the will of the ruler; this is
consequently not responsible to individuals, but is directed against this
private will, and to it all must be obedient.[237] Thus the whole matter
is now placed on quite another footing. But because the universal will is
made to reside in the will of one monarch, there nevertheless proceeds
from this point of view, which is really correct, a condition of absolute
rule, of perfect despotism. The condition of law does not, however,
mean that the arbitrary will of one man constitutes absolute law, for
the universal will is no despotism, being rational, inasmuch as it is
consistently expressed and determined in laws.
Rixner (Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, Vol. III. p. 30) says:
“Law to him is nothing but the sum of the conditions of peace extorted
by iron necessity from the original wickedness of mankind.” We might add
that in Hobbes we at least find this, that the nature and organism of the
State is established on the principle of human nature, human desire, &c.
The English concerned themselves greatly with that principle of passive
obedience, in accordance with which it is said that kings receive their
power from God. This, in one aspect, is quite true, but in another it is
falsely taken to mean that they have no responsibility, that their blind
desires, their merely subjective will, is what must be obeyed.
4. CUDWORTH, CLARKE, WOLLASTON.
Cudworth wished to revive Plato in England, but to do this after the
manner of the demonstrations which we met with in Descartes, and through
a trivial metaphysic of the understanding. He wrote a celebrated work:
“The true intellectual System of the Universe,” but the Platonic ideas
expressed are often in a clumsy form and mingled with the Christian
conceptions of God and angels—all regarded as particular existent things.
What in Plato is mythical, is here taken as reality in the form of
existence; this is reasoned about just as we reason respecting a matter
of ordinary fact, such as whether it is probable that the French seek to
effect a landing in England, and if so, whether they will successfully
accomplish it. The Christian intellectual world is dragged down to the
form of ordinary actuality, and consequently it is ruined.
The name of Clarke is likewise famous in connection with his proof
of the existence of God. There were quite a number of other English
philosophers, whom we do not, however, require to notice; for Clarke,
Wollaston, and others carry on their speculations within forms such
as belong to a very commonplace metaphysic of the understanding.
The manifold systems of moral philosophy which we find taking their
rise in England are drawn up from this same mental standpoint; in
them the implicitude of mind appears in a form of natural existence,
namely, of desires and feelings. Their principles are found in moral
sentiments, benevolent desires, sympathy, &c. That form alone is
worthy of notice which, on the one hand, represents duty as something
which is not foreign, given, commanded, but as clearly belonging to
self-consciousness, even while, on the other hand, it represents
this property as a natural, unconscious, unspiritual, and irrational
existence. Impulse is blind, a solid existence which cannot get beyond
itself like thinking self-consciousness. It is indeed true of impulse
that its pure activity or its process, and the content, are, as in
thought, immediately posited as the same; it has its content in itself,
and this is not dead and passive, but self-acting and impelling. But that
unity has the form of immediacy only as existent; in the first place
it is not a knowledge, it is not necessary, for it is only taken from
inward perception; in the second place, it is a determinate which does
not abrogate itself, beyond which we cannot get, and which thus is not a
universal. Impulse is no more an infinite than is the fixed category of
force. Such reasoning takes the impulses in their determinate character
from experience, and expresses the appearance of necessity in the same
as an inward existence, as a force. For instance, the social instinct is
a moment which is found in experience, because man derives all manner
of utility from society. Wherein does the necessity of the State, of
society, find its basis? In a social desire. This is cause, just as in
the physical world a formal interpretation such as this is always to
be found. The necessity of any existent fact, such as what pertains to
electrical phenomena, finds its basis in a force which brings it forth;
it is merely the form of returning from the external to an inward, of
passing from the existent to what is thought, which is again in turn
represented as an existent. Force is necessitated by reason of the
manifestation, we must argue from the latter to the former. On the other
hand, the manifestation takes place through the force, for it is the
cause of the manifestation; we hence have force in one place as reason,
and in another as cause. But in all this there is no realization of
the fact that in respect of form there is a transition from the Notion
into Being and the other way, while in respect of content there is a
perfect contingency of manifestation; we look at electricity in the same
way as we look at the fact that men have social instincts, sympathetic
inclinations, and so on.
5. PUFFENDORF.
In the struggle to give to just and equitable relations in the State
an independent basis of their own, and to found a judicial system of
government, reflective thought put forth its efforts; and this became to
it a real interest and concern. And, as in the case of Grotius, it was
also true of Puffendorf, that the instinct of mankind—that is, the social
instinct, &c.—was made the principle. Samuel von Puffendorf was born
in 1632 in Saxony; he studied public law, philosophy, and mathematics
at Leipzig and Jena; in 1661, as a professor at Heidelberg, he made
natural and civil law for the first time academic studies; in 1668 he
became tutor in a Swedish family, which office he later on exchanged
for the service of the House of Brandenburg, and in 1694 he died at
Berlin as a privy councillor. He wrote several works on political law
and history; we must specially mention his work, _De jure naturæ et
gentium_, Libr. viii., Londin. Scan. 1672, 4; and also his compendium _De
officio hominis_, published at the same place in 1673, 8, and _Elementa
jurisprudentiæ universalis_.[238] While the divine right of kings was
here still recognized—whereby they rendered account to God alone, or, at
all events, were still bound to take counsel of the Church—the impulses
and necessities present in mankind were now considered as well. These
were regarded as the inward principles for private and political law, and
from them the duties both of the government and of rulers were deduced,
so that the freedom of mankind might not be interfered with. The basis
of the state in Puffendorf’s view is the social instinct: the highest
end of the state is the peace and security of social life through the
transformation of inward duties as prescribed by conscience into external
duties as compelled by law.[239]
6. NEWTON.
The other side is that thought likewise applied itself to nature, and
in this connection Isaac Newton is famous by reason of his mathematical
discoveries and his work in physics. He was born in 1642 at Cambridge,
made a special study of mathematics, and became professor of the same at
Cambridge; later on he was made president of the Royal Society in London,
and he died in 1727.[240]
Newton was indisputably the chief contributor to the popularity of the
philosophy of Locke, or the English method of treating of Philosophy,
and more especially did he promote its application to all the physical
sciences. “Physics, beware of metaphysics,” was his maxim,[241] which
signifies, Science, beware of thought; and all the physical sciences,
even to the present day, have, following in his wake, faithfully
observed this precept, inasmuch as they have not entered upon an
investigation of their conceptions, or thought about thoughts. Physics
can, however, effect nothing without thought; it has its categories and
laws through thought alone, and without thought it does not effect any
progress. Newton was mainly instrumental in introducing to physics the
determinations respecting forces, which pertain to reflection; he raised
science to the standpoint of reflection, and set the laws of forces
in the place of the laws of phenomena. Regarding matters as he did,
Newton derived his conclusions from his experiences; and in physics and
the theory of colour-vision, he made bad observations and drew worse
conclusions. He passed from experiences to general points of view,
again made them fundamental, and from them constructed the individual;
this is how his theories are constructed. The observation of things,
the discovery of the law immanent therein, and the universal which is
found within them, has become the real point of interest. In this way,
Newton is so complete a barbarian as regards his conceptions that his
case is like that of another of his countrymen who was surprised and
rejoiced to learn that he had talked prose all his life, not having
had any idea that he was so accomplished. This Newton, like all the
Physicists, indeed, never learned; he did not know that he thought in,
and had to deal with Notions, while he imagined he was dealing with
physical facts: and he presented the extremest contrast to Boehme, who
handled sensuous things as Notions, and, by sheer force of mind, obtained
entire possession of their actuality and subjugated them. Instead of
this Newton treated Notions like sensuous things, and dealt with them
just as men deal with wood and stone. And this is even now the case. In
the beginnings of physical science we read of the power of inertia, for
instance, of the force of acceleration, of molecules, of centripetal and
centrifugal force, as of facts which definitely exist; what are really
the final results of reflection are represented as their first grounds.
If we ask for the cause of there being no advance made in such sciences,
we find that it is because men do not understand that they should
apply themselves to Notions, but make up their minds to adopt these
determinations without sense or understanding. Hence in Newton’s Optics,
for instance, there are conclusions derived from his experience which
are so untrue and devoid of understanding, that while they are set forth
as the finest example of how men can learn to know nature by means of
experiments and conclusions derived from experiments, they may also serve
as an example of how we should neither experiment nor draw conclusions,
of how nothing at all can be learned. A miserable kind of experience
like this itself contradicts itself through nature, for nature is more
excellent than it appears in this wretched experience: both nature itself
and experience, when carried a little further, contradict it. Hence,
of all the splendid discoveries of Newton in optics, none now remain
excepting one—the division of light into seven colours. This is partly
because the conception of whole and part come into play, and partly from
an obdurate closing of the eyes to the opposite side. From this empirical
method in Philosophy, we shall now pass on to Leibnitz.
C. THIRD SECTION.
The third development of the philosophy of the understanding is that
represented by Leibnitz and Wolff. If Wolff’s metaphysics is divested of
its rigid form, we have as a result the later popular philosophy.
1. LEIBNITZ.
As in other respects Leibnitz represents the extreme antithesis to
Newton, so in respect of philosophy he presents a striking contrast to
Locke and his empiricism, and also to Spinoza. He upholds thought as
against the perception of the English school, and in lieu of sensuous
Being he maintains Being for thought to be the essence of truth, just as
Boehme at an earlier time upheld implicit Being. While Spinoza asserted
the universality, the oneness of substance merely, and while with Locke
we saw infinite determinations made the basis, Leibnitz, by means of
his fundamental principle of individuality, brings out the essentiality
of the opposite aspect of Spinoza’s philosophy, existence for self, the
monad, but the monad regarded as the absolute Notion, though perhaps
not yet as the “I.” The opposed principles, which were forced asunder,
find their completion in each other, since Leibnitz’s principle of
individuation completed Spinoza’s system as far as outward aspect goes.
Gottfried Wilhelm, Baron von Leibnitz, was born in 1646 at Leipzig, where
his father was professor of Philosophy. The subject that he studied in
view of a profession was jurisprudence, but first, in accordance with the
fashion of the day, he made a study of Philosophy, and to it he devoted
particular attention. To begin with, he picked up in Leipzig a large
and miscellaneous stock of knowledge, then he studied Philosophy and
mathematics at Jena under the mathematician and theosophist Weigel, and
took his degree of Master of Philosophy in Leipzig. There also, on the
occasion of his graduation as Doctor of Philosophy, he defended certain
philosophical theses, some of which discourses are still contained in
his works (ed. Dutens, T. II. P. I. p. 400). His first dissertation, and
that for which he obtained the degree of doctor of philosophy, was: _De
principio individui_,—a principle which remained the abstract principle
of his whole philosophy, as opposed to that of Spinoza. After he had
acquired a thorough knowledge of the subject, he wished to graduate also
as Doctor of Laws. But though he died an imperial councillor, it was his
ill fortune to receive from the Faculty at Leipzig a refusal to confer
the doctorate upon him, his youth being the alleged reason. Such a thing
could scarcely happen now-a-days. It may be that it was done because of
his over-great philosophical attainments, seeing that lawyers are wont
to hold the same in horror. He now quitted Leipzig, and betook himself
to Altdorf, where he graduated with distinction. Shortly afterwards he
became acquainted in Nürnberg with a company of alchemists, with whose
ongoings he became associated. Here he made extracts from alchemistic
writings, and studied the mysteries of this occult science. His activity
in the pursuit of learning extended also to historical, diplomatic,
mathematical and philosophical subjects. He subsequently entered the
service of the Elector of Mayence, becoming a member of council, and in
1672 he was appointed tutor to a son of Von Boineburg, Chancellor of
State to the Elector. With this young man he travelled to Paris, where
he lived for four years. He at this time made the acquaintance of the
great mathematician Huygens, and was by him for the first time properly
introduced into the domain of mathematics. When the education of his
pupil was completed, and the Baron Von Boineburg died, Leibnitz went on
his own account to London, where he became acquainted with Newton and
other scholars, at whose head was Oldenburg, who was also on friendly
terms with Spinoza. After the death of the Elector of Mayence, the salary
of Leibnitz ceased to be paid; he therefore left England and returned to
France. The Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg then took him into his service,
and gave him the appointment of councillor and librarian at Hanover, with
permission to spend as much time as he liked in foreign countries. He
therefore remained for some time longer in France, England, and Holland.
In the year 1677 he settled down in Hanover, where he became busily
engaged in affairs of state, and was specially occupied with historical
matters. In the Harz Mountains he had works constructed for carrying
off the floods which did damage to the mines there. Notwithstanding
these manifold occupations he invented the differential calculus in
1677, on occasion of which there arose a dispute between him and Newton,
which was carried on by the latter and the Royal Society of London in
a most ungenerous manner. For it was asserted by the English, who gave
themselves the credit of everything, and were very unfair to others, that
the discovery was really made by Newton. But Newton’s _Principia_ only
appeared later, and in the first edition indeed Leibnitz was mentioned
with commendation in a note which was afterwards omitted. From his
headquarters in Hanover, Leibnitz, commissioned by his prince, made
several journeys through Germany, and also went to Italy in order to
collect historical evidence relative to the House of Este, and for the
purpose of proving more clearly the relationship between this princely
family and that of Brunswick-Lüneburg. At other times he was likewise
much occupied with historical questions. Owing to his acquaintance with
the consort of Frederick I. of Prussia, Sophia Charlotte, a Hanoverian
princess, he was enabled to bring about the foundation of an Academy of
Science in Berlin, in which city he lived for a considerable time. In
Vienna he also became acquainted with Prince Eugène, which occasioned his
being appointed finally an Imperial Councillor. He published several very
important historical works as the result of this journey. His death took
place at Hanover in 1716, when he was seventy years of age.[242]
It was not only on Philosophy, but also on the most varied branches of
science that Leibnitz expended toil and trouble and energy; it was to
mathematics, however, that he specially devoted his attention, and he is
the inventor of the methods of the integral and differential calculus.
His great services in regard to mathematics and physics we here leave out
of consideration, and pay attention to his philosophy alone. None of his
books can be exactly looked on as giving a complete systematic account of
his philosophy. To the more important among them belongs his work on the
human understanding (_Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain_) in reply
to Locke; but this is a mere refutation. His philosophy is therefore
scattered through various little treatises which were written in very
various connections, in letters, and replies to objections which caused
him to bring out one aspect of the question more strongly than another;
we consequently find no elaborated systematic whole, superintended or
perfected by him. The work which has some appearance of being such, his
_Théodicée_, better known to the public than anything else he wrote, is
a popular treatise which he drew up for Queen Sophia Charlotte in reply
to Bayle, and in which he took pains not to present the matter in very
speculative form. A Wurtemberg theologian, Pfaff by name, and others who
were correspondents of Leibnitz and were themselves only too well versed
in philosophy, brought it as a charge against Leibnitz—a charge which he
never denied—that his philosophy was written in popular form.[243] They
laughed very much afterwards at Wolff, who had taken them to be quite
in earnest; his opinion was that if Leibnitz were not perfectly serious
in this sense with his _Théodicée_, yet he had unconsciously written
his best therein. Leibnitz’s _Théodicée_ is not what we can altogether
appreciate; it is a justification of God in regard to the evil in the
world. His really philosophic thoughts are most connectedly expressed in
a treatise on the principles of Grace (_Principes de la Nature et de la
Grace_),[244] and especially in the pamphlet addressed to Prince Eugène
of Savoy.[245] Buhle (Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, vol. iv. section
1, p. 131) says: “His philosophy is not so much the product of free,
independent, original speculation, as the result of well-tested earlier”
and later “systems, an eclecticism whose defects he tried to remedy in
his own way. It is a desultory treatment of Philosophy in letters.”
Leibnitz followed the same general plan in his philosophy as the
physicists adopt when they advance a hypothesis to explain existing data.
He has it that general conceptions of the Idea are to be found, from
which the particular may be derived; here, on account of existing data,
the general conception, for example the determination of force or matter
furnished by reflection, must have its determinations disposed in such a
way that it fits in with the data. Thus the philosophy of Leibnitz seems
to be not so much a philosophic system as an hypothesis regarding the
existence of the world, namely how it is to be determined in accordance
with the metaphysical determinations and the data and assumptions of the
ordinary conception, which are accepted as valid[246]—thoughts which
are moreover propounded without the sequence pertaining to the Notion
and mainly in narrative style, and which taken by themselves show no
necessity in their connection. Leibnitz’s philosophy therefore appears
like a string of arbitrary assertions, which follow one on another like
a metaphysical romance; it is only when we see what he wished thereby
to avoid that we learn to appreciate its value. He really makes use of
external reasons mainly in order to establish relations: “Because the
validity of such relations cannot be allowed, nothing remains but to
establish the matter in this way.” If we are not acquainted with these
reasons, this procedure strikes us as arbitrary.
a. Leibnitz’s philosophy is an idealism of the intellectuality of the
universe; and although from one point of view he stands opposed to Locke,
as from another point of view he is in opposition to the Substance of
Spinoza, he yet binds them both together again. For, to go into the
matter more particularly, on the one hand he expresses in the many
monads the absolute nature of things distinguished and of individuality;
on the other hand, in contrast to this and apart from it, he expresses
the ideality of Spinoza and the non-absolute nature of all difference,
as the idealism of the popular conception. Leibnitz’s philosophy is a
metaphysics, and in sharp contrast to the simple universal Substance of
Spinoza, where all that is determined is merely transitory, it makes
fundamental the absolute multiplicity of individual substances, which
after the example of the ancients he named monads—an expression already
used by the Pythagoreans. These monads he then proceeds to determine as
follows.
Firstly “Substance is a thing that is capable of activity, it is compound
or simple, the compound cannot exist without the simple. The monads are
simple substances.” The proof that they constitute the truth in all
things is very simple, it is a superficial reflection. For instance,
one of Leibnitz’s maxims is “Because there are compound things, the
principles of the same must be simple, for the compound consists of
the simple.”[247] This proof is poor enough, it is an example of the
favourite way of starting from something definite, say the compound, and
then drawing conclusions therefrom as to the simple. It is quite light
in a way, but really it is tautology. Of course, if the compound exists,
so does the simple, for the compound means something in itself manifold
whose connection or unity is external. From the very trivial category
of the compound it is easy to deduce the simple. It is a conclusion
drawn from a certain premiss, but the question is whether the premiss is
true. These monads are not, however, something abstract and simple in
itself, like the empty Epicurean atoms, which, as they were in themselves
lacking in determination, drew all their determination from their
aggregation alone. The monads are, on the contrary, substantial forms, a
good expression, borrowed from the Scholastics (_supra_, p. 71), or the
metaphysical points of the Alexandrian School (Vol II. p. 439), they are
the entelechies of Aristotle taken as pure activity, which are forms in
themselves (Vol II. pp. 138, 182, 183). “These monads are not material
or extended, nor do they originate or decay in the natural fashion, for
they can begin only by a creative act of God, and they can end only
by annihilation.”[248] Thereby they are distinguished from the atoms,
which are regarded simply as principles. The expression creation we are
familiar with from religion, but it is a meaningless word derived from
the ordinary conception; in order to be a thought and to have philosophic
significance, it must be much more closely defined.
Secondly: “On account of their simplicity the monads are not susceptible
of alteration by another monad in their inner essence; there is no
causal connection between them.” Each of them is something indifferent
and independent as regards the rest, otherwise it would not be an
entelechy. Each of them is so much for itself that all its determinations
and modifications go on in itself alone, and no determination from
without takes place. Leibnitz says: “There are three ways in which
substances are connected: (1) Causality, influence; (2) The relation of
assistance; (3) The relation of harmony. The relation of influence is a
relation pertaining to a commonplace or popular philosophy. But as it is
impossible to understand how material particles or immaterial qualities
can pass from one substance into another, such a conception as this must
be abandoned.” If we accept the reality of the many, there can be no
transition at all; each is an ultimate and absolutely independent entity.
“The system of assistance,” according to Descartes, “is something quite
superfluous, a _Deus ex machina_, because continual miracles in the
things of nature are assumed.” If we, like Descartes, assume independent
substances, no causal nexus is conceivable; for this presupposes an
influence, a bearing of the one upon the other, and in this way the
other is not a substance. “Therefore there remains only harmony, a unity
which is in itself or implicit. The monad is therefore simply shut up in
itself, and cannot be determined by another; this other cannot be set
into it. It can neither get outside itself, nor can others get inside
it.”[249] That is also Spinoza’s way of regarding matters: each attribute
entirely represents the essence of God for itself, extension and thought
have no influence on each other.
In the third place, “however, these monads must at the same time have
certain qualities or determinations in themselves, inner actions,
through which they are distinguished from others. There cannot be two
things alike, for otherwise they would not be two, they would not be
different, but one and the same.”[250] Here then Leibnitz’s axiom of the
undistinguishable comes into words. What is not in itself distinguished
is not distinguished. This may be taken in a trivial sense, as that there
are not two individuals which are alike. To such sensuous things the
maxim has no application, it is _prima facie_ indifferent whether there
are things which are alike or not; there may also be always a difference
of space. This is the superficial sense, which does not concern us. The
more intimate sense is, however, that each thing is in itself something
determined, distinguishing itself from others implicitly or in itself.
Whether two things are like or unlike is only a comparison which we
make, which falls within our ken. But what we have further to consider
is the determined difference in themselves. The difference must be a
difference in themselves, not for our comparison, for the subject must
have the difference as its own peculiar characteristic or determination,
_i.e._ the determination must be immanent in the individual. Not only
do we distinguish the animal by its claws, but it distinguishes itself
essentially thereby, it defends itself, it preserves itself. If two
things are different only in being two, then each of them is one; but the
fact of their being two does not constitute a distinction between them;
the determined difference in itself is the principal point.
Fourthly: “The determinateness and the variation thereby established
is, however, an inward implicit principle; it is a multiplicity of
modifications, of relations to surrounding existences, but a multiplicity
which remains locked up in simplicity. Determinateness and variation
such as this, which remains and goes on in the existence itself, is a
perception;” and therefore Leibnitz says all monads perceive or represent
(for we may translate _perceptio_ by representation [Vorstellung]).
In other words, they are in themselves universal, for universality is
just simplicity in multiplicity, and therefore a simplicity which is
at the same time change and motion of multiplicity. This is a very
important determination; in substance itself there is negativity,
determinateness, without its simplicity and its implicitude being given
up. Further, in it there is this idealism, that the simple is something
in itself distinguished, and in spite of its variation, that it yet
remains one, and continues in its simplicity. An instance of this is
found in “I,” my spirit. I have many conceptions, a wealth of thought
is in me, and yet I remain one, notwithstanding this variety of state.
This identity may be found in the fact that what is different is at the
same time abrogated, and is determined as one; the monads are therefore
distinguished by modifications in themselves, but not by external
determinations. These determinations contained in the monads exist in
them in ideal fashion; this ideality in the monad is in itself a whole,
so that these differences are only representations and ideas. This
absolute difference is what is termed the Notion; what falls asunder
in the mere representation is held together. This is what possesses
interest in Leibnitz’s philosophy. Such ideality in the same way pertains
to the material, which is also a multiplicity of monads; therefore the
system of Leibnitz is an intellectual system, in accordance with which
all that is material has powers of representation and perception. As
thus representing, the monad, says Leibnitz, possesses activity; for
activity is to be different, and yet to be one, and this is the only
true difference. The monad not only represents, it also changes; but in
doing so, it yet remains in itself absolutely what it is. This variation
is based on activity. “The activity of the inner principle, by means of
which it passes from one perception to another, is desire (_appetitus_).”
Variation in representation is desire, and that constitutes the
spontaneity of the monad; all is now complete in itself, and the category
of influence falls away. Indeed, this intellectuality of all things is a
great thought on the part of Leibnitz: “All multiplicity is included in
unity;”[251] determination is not a difference in respect of something
else, but reflected into itself, and maintaining itself. This is one
aspect of things, but the matter is not therein complete; it is equally
the case that it is different in respect of other things.
Fifthly: These representations and ideas are not necessarily conscious
representations and ideas, any more than all monads as forming
representations are conscious. It is true that consciousness is itself
perception, but a higher grade of the same; perceptions of consciousness
Leibnitz calls apperceptions. The difference between the merely
representing and the self-conscious monads Leibnitz makes one of degrees
of clearness. The expression representation has, however, certainly
something awkward about it, since we are accustomed to associate it only
with consciousness, and with consciousness as such; but Leibnitz admits
also of unconscious representation. When he then adduces examples of
unconscious representations, he appeals to the condition of a swoon or
of sleep, in which we are mere monads: and that representations without
consciousness are present in such states he shows from the fact of our
having perceptions immediately after awakening out of sleep, which shows
that others must have been there, for one perception arises only out of
others.[252] That is a trivial and empirical demonstration.
Sixthly: These monads constitute the principle of all that exists. Matter
is nothing else than their passive capability. This passive capability it
is which constitutes the obscurity of the representations, or a confusion
which never arrives at distinction, or desire, or activity.[253] That
is a correct definition of the conception; it is Being, matter, in
accordance with the moment of simplicity. This is implicitly activity;
“mere implicitness without actualization” would therefore be a better
expression. The transition from obscurity to distinctness Leibnitz
exemplifies by the state of swooning.
Seventhly: Bodies as bodies are aggregates of monads: they are mere heaps
which cannot be termed substances, any more than a flock of sheep can
bear this name.[254] The continuity of the same is an arrangement or
extension, but space is nothing in itself;[255] it is only in another,
or a unity which our understanding gives to that aggregate.[256]
b. Leibnitz goes on to determine and distinguish more clearly as the
principal moments, inorganic, organic, and conscious monads, and he does
it in the following way.
α. Such bodies as have no inner unity, whose elements are connected
merely by space, or externally, are inorganic; they have not an entelechy
or one monad which rules over the rest.[257] The continuity of space as a
merely external relation has not the Notion in itself of the likeness of
these monads in themselves. Continuity is in fact to be regarded in them
as an arrangement, a similarity in themselves. Leibnitz therefore defines
their movements as like one another, as a harmony in themselves;[258]
but again, this is as much as saying that their similarity is not in
themselves. In fact continuity forms the essential determination of
the inorganic; but it must at the same time not be taken as something
external or as likeness, but as penetrating or penetrated unity, which
has dissolved individuality in itself like a fluid. But to this point
Leibnitz does not attain, because for him monads are the absolute
principle, and individuality does not annul itself.
β. A higher degree of Being is found in bodies with life and soul, in
which one monad has dominion over the rest. The body which is bound up
with the monad, of which the one monad is the entelechy or soul, is
with this soul named a living creature, an animal. One such entelechy
rules over the rest, yet not really, but formally: the limbs of this
animal, however, are again themselves such living things, each of which
has in its turn its ruling entelechy within it.[259] But ruling is
here an inappropriate expression. To rule in this case is not to rule
over others, for all are independent; it is therefore only a formal
expression. If Leibnitz had not helped himself out with the word rule,
and developed the idea further, this dominant monad would have abrogated
the others, and put them in a negative position; the implicitness of the
other monads, or the principle of the absolute Being of these points or
individuals would have disappeared. Yet we shall later on come across
this relation of the individuals to one another.
γ. The conscious monad distinguishes itself from the naked (material)
monads by the distinctness of the representation. But this is of course
only an indefinite word, a formal distinction; it indicates that
consciousness is the very thing that constitutes the distinction of the
undistinguished, and that distinction constitutes the determination
of consciousness. Leibnitz more particularly defined the distinction
of man as that “he is capable of the knowledge of necessary and
eternal truths,”—or that he conceives the universal on the one hand,
and on the other what is connected with it; the nature and essence of
self-consciousness lies in the universality of the Notions. “These
eternal truths rest on two maxims; the one is that of contradiction,
the other is that of sufficient reason.” The former of these is unity
expressed in useless fashion as a maxim, the distinction of the
undistinguishable, A = A; it is the definition of thinking, but not a
maxim which could contain a truth as content, or it does not express
the Notion of distinction as such. The other important principle
was, on the other hand: What is not distinguished in thought is
not distinguished (p. 333). “The maxim of the reason is that
everything has its reason,”[260]—the particular has the universal
as its essential reality. Necessary truth must have its reason in
itself in such a manner that it is found by analysis, _i.e._ through
that very maxim of identity. For analysis is the very favourite
plan of resolving into simple ideas and principles: a resolution
which annihilates their relation, and which therefore in fact
forms a transition into the opposite, though it does not have the
consciousness of the same, and on that account also excludes the
Notion; for every opposite it lays hold of only in its identity.
Sufficient reason seems to be a pleonasm; but Leibnitz understood by
this aims, final causes (_causæ finales_), the difference between
which and the causal nexus or the efficient cause he here brings under
discussion.[261]
c. The universal itself, absolute essence, which with Leibnitz is
something quite different from the monads, separates itself also into two
sides, namely universal Being and Being as the unity of opposites.
α. That universal is God, as the cause of the world, to the consciousness
of whom the above principle of sufficient reason certainly forms the
transition. The existence of God is only an inference from eternal
truths; for these must as the laws of nature have a universal sufficient
reason which determines itself as none other than God. Eternal truth is
therefore the consciousness of the universal and absolute in and for
itself; and this universal and absolute is God, who, as one with Himself,
the monad of monads, is the absolute _Monas_. Here we again have the
wearisome proof of His existence: He is the fountain of eternal truths
and Notions, and without Him no potentiality would have actuality; He
has the prerogative of existing immediately in His potentiality.[262]
God is here also the unity of potentiality and actuality, but in an
uncomprehending manner; what is necessary, but not comprehended, is
transferred to Him. Thus God is at first comprehended chiefly as
universal, but already in the aspect of the relation of opposites.
β. As regards this second aspect, the absolute relation of opposites, it
occurs in the first place in the form of absolute opposites of thought,
the good and the evil. “God is the Author of the world,” says Leibnitz;
that refers directly to evil. It is round this relation that philosophy
specially revolves, but to the unity of which it did not then attain;
the evil in the world was not comprehended, because no advance was made
beyond the fixed opposition. The result of Leibnitz’s Théodicée is an
optimism supported on the lame and wearisome thought that God, since a
world had to be brought into existence, chose out of infinitely many
possible worlds the best possible—the most perfect, so far as it could
be perfect, considering the finite element which it was to contain.[263]
This may very well be said in a general way, but this perfection is no
determined thought, but a loose popular expression, a sort of babble
respecting an imaginary or fanciful potentiality; Voltaire made merry
over it. Nor is the nature of the finite therein defined. Because the
world, it is said, has to be the epitome of finite Beings, evil could
not be separated from it, since evil is negation, finitude.[264] Reality
and negation remain standing in opposition to one another exactly in the
same way as before. That is the principal conception in the Théodicée.
But something very like this can be said in every-day life. If I have
some goods brought to me in the market at some town, and say that they
are certainly not perfect, but the best that are to be got, this is quite
a good reason why I should content myself with them. But comprehension
is a very different thing from this. Leibnitz says nothing further than
that the world is good, but there is also evil in it; the matter remains
just the same as it was before. “Because it had to be finite” is then a
mere arbitrary choice on the part of God. The next question would be: Why
and how is there finitude in the Absolute and His decrees? And only then
should there be deduced from the determination of finitude the evil which
no doubt exists therein.
It is true that Leibnitz has a reply to the above question: “God does
not will what is evil; evil comes only indirectly into the results”
(blind), “because oftentimes the greater good could not be achieved if
evils were not present. Therefore they are means to a good end.” But why
does not God employ other means? They are always external, not in and
for themselves. “A moral evil may not be regarded as a means, nor must
we, as the apostle says, do evil that good may come; yet it has often
the relation of a _conditio sine qua non_ of the good. Evil is in God
only the object of a permissive will (_voluntatis permissivæ_);” but
everything that is wrong would be such. “God has therefore among the
objects of His will the best possible as the ultimate object, but the
good as a matter of choice (_qualemcunque_), also as subordinate; and
things indifferent and evils often as means. Evil is, however, an object
of His will only as the condition of something otherwise necessary (_rei
alioqui debitæ_), which without it could not exist; in which sense Christ
said it must needs be that offences come.”[265]
In a general sense we are satisfied with the answer: “In accordance
with the wisdom of God we must accept it as a fact that the laws of
nature are the best possible,” but this answer does not suffice for a
definite question. What one wishes to know is the goodness of this or
that particular law; and to that no answer is given. If, for example, it
is said that “The law of falling bodies, in which the relation of time
and space is the square, is the best possible,” one might employ, as far
as mathematics are concerned, any other power whatever. When Leibnitz
answers: “God made it so,” this is no answer at all. We wish to know the
definite reason of this law; such general determinations sound pious, but
are not satisfying.
γ. He goes on to say that the sufficient reason has reference to the
representation of the monads. The principles of things are monads, of
which each is for itself, without having influence on the others. If
now the Monad of monads, God, is the absolute substance, and individual
monads are created through His will, their substantiality comes to
an end. There is therefore a contradiction present, which remains
unsolved in itself—that is between the one substantial monad and the
many monads for which independence is claimed, because their essence
consists in their standing in no relation to one another. Yet at the same
time, in order to show the harmony that exists in the world, Leibnitz
understands the relation of monads to monads more generally as the
unity of contrasted existences, namely of soul and body. This unity he
represents as a relation without difference, and notionless, _i.e._ as a
pre-established harmony.[266] Leibnitz uses here the illustration of two
clocks, which are set to the same hour, and keep the same time;[267] in
the same way the movement of the kingdom of thought goes on, determined
in accordance with ends, and the movement onward of the corporeal
kingdom which corresponds with it, proceeds according to a general
causal connection.[268] The case is the same as with Spinoza, that these
two sides of the universe have no connection with each other, the one
does not influence the other, but both are entirely indifferent to one
another; it is really the differentiating relation of the Notion that is
lacking. In abstract thought that is without Notion, that determination
now receives the form of simplicity, of implicitude, of indifference
with regard to what is other, of a self-reflection that has no movement:
in this way red in the abstract is in a position of indifference as
regards blue, &c. Here, as before, Leibnitz forsakes his principle of
individuation; it has only the sense of being exclusively one, and of not
reaching to and including what is other; or it is only a unity of the
popular conception, not the Notion of unity. The soul has thus a series
of conceptions and ideas which are developed from within it, and this
series is from the very first placed within the soul at its creation,
_i.e._ the soul is in all immediacy this implicit determination;
determination is, however, not implicit, but the reflected unfolding of
this determination in the ordinary conception is its outward existence.
Parallel with this series of differentiated conceptions, there now runs a
series of motions of the body, or of what is external to the soul.[269]
Both are essential moments of reality; they are mutually indifferent, but
they have also an essential relation of difference.
Since now every monad, as shut up within itself, has no influence upon
the body and its movements, and yet the infinite multitude of their
atoms correspond with one another, Leibnitz places this harmony in God;
a better definition of the relation and the activity of the Monad of
monads is therefore that it is what pre-establishes harmony in the
changes of the monads.[270] God is the sufficient reason, the cause of
this correspondence; He has so arranged the multitude of atoms that the
original changes which are developed within one monad correspond with
the changes of the others. The pre-established harmony is to be thought
of somewhat in this style; when a dog gets a beating, the pain develops
itself in him, in like fashion the beating develops itself in itself, and
so does the person who administers the beating: their determinations all
correspond with one another, and that not by means of their objective
connection, since each is independent.[271] The principle of the harmony
among the monads does not consequently belong to them, but it is in God,
who for that very reason is the Monad of monads, their absolute unity.
We saw from the beginning how Leibnitz arrived at this conception. Each
monad is really possessed of the power of representation, and is as such
a representation of the universe, therefore implicitly the totality of
the whole world. But at the same time this representation is not in
consciousness; the naked monad is implicitly the universe, and difference
is the development of this totality in it.[272] What develops itself
therein is at the same time in harmony with all other developments; all
is one harmony. “In the universe all things are closely knit together,
they are in one piece, like an ocean: the slightest movement transmits
its influence far and wide all around.”[273] From a single grain of
sand, Leibnitz holds, the whole universe might be comprehended in its
entire development—if we only knew the sand grain thoroughly. There is
not really much in all this, though it sounds very fine; for the rest of
the universe is considerably more than a grain of sand, well though we
knew it, and considerably different therefrom. To say that its essence
is the universe is mere empty talk: for the fact is that the universe
as essence is not the universe. To the sand grain much must be added
which is not present; and since thought adds more than all the grains
of sand that exist, the universe and its development may in this way
certainly be comprehended. Thus according to Leibnitz every monad has
or is the representation of the entire universe, which is the same as
saying that it is really representation in general; but at the same time
it is a determinate representation, by means of which it comes to be
this particular monad, therefore it is representation according to its
particular situation and circumstances.[274]
The representations of the monad in itself, which constitute its
universe, develop themselves from themselves, as the spiritual element
in it, according to the laws of their own activity and desire, just as
the movements of their outer world do according to laws of bodies; hence
liberty is nothing other than this spontaneity of immanent development,
but as in consciousness. The magnetic needle, on the contrary, has only
spontaneity without consciousness, and consequently without freedom.
For, says Leibnitz, the nature of the magnetic needle is to turn to
the north; if it had consciousness it would imagine that this was
its self-determination; it would thus have the will to move round in
accordance with its nature.[275] But it is clear that in the course of
conscious representations there is involved no necessary connection, but
contingency and want of sequence are to be found, the reason of this
according to Leibnitz (Oper. T. II P. I. p. 75) being “because the nature
of a created substance implies that it changes incessantly according to
a certain order, which order guides it spontaneously (_spontanément_)
in all the circumstances which befall it; so that one who sees all
things recognizes in the present condition of substance the past also
and the future. The law of order, which determines the individuality of
the particular substance, has an exact reference to what takes place in
every other substance and in the whole universe.” The meaning of this is
that the monad is not a thing apart, or that there are two views of it,
the one making it out as spontaneously generating its representations,
so far as form is concerned, and the other making it out to be a moment
of the whole of necessity; Spinoza would call this regarding it from
both sides. An organic whole, a human being, is thus for instance the
assertion of his aim from out of himself: at the same time the being
directed on something else is involved in his Notion. He represents
this and that to himself, he wills this and that; his activity employs
itself and brings about changes. His inward determination thus becomes
corporeal determination, and then change going beyond himself; he appears
as cause, influencing other monads. But this Being-for-another is only
an appearance. For the other, _i.e._ the actual, in so far as the monad
determines it or makes it negative, is the passive element which the
monad has in itself: all moments are indeed contained therein, and for
that very reason it has no need of other monads, but only of the laws of
the monads in itself. But if the Being-for-another is mere appearance,
the same may be said of Being-for-self; for this has significance only in
reference to Being-for-another.
The important point in Leibnitz’s philosophy is this intellectuality
of representation which Leibnitz, however, did not succeed in carrying
out; and for the same reason this intellectuality is at the same time
infinite multiplicity, which has remained absolutely independent,
because this intellectuality has not been able to obtain mastery over
the One. The separation in the Notion, which proceeds as far as release
from itself, or appearance in distinct independence, Leibnitz did not
succeed in bringing together into unity. The harmony of these two
moments, the course of mental representations and the course of things
external, appearing mutually as cause and effect, is not brought by
Leibnitz into relation in and for themselves; he therefore lets them
fall asunder, although each is passive as regards the other. He moreover
considers both of them in one unity, to be sure, but their activity
is at the same time not for themselves. Every forward advance becomes
therefore incomprehensible when taken by itself, because the course
of the representation as through aims in itself, requires this moment
of Other-Being or of passivity; and again the connection of cause and
effect requires the universal: each however lacks this its other moment.
The unity which according to Leibnitz is to be brought about by the
pre-established harmony, namely that the determination of the will of man
and the outward change harmonize, is therefore brought about by means of
another, if not indeed from without, for this other is God. Before God
the monads are not to be independent, but ideal and absorbed in Him.
At this point the demand would come in that in God Himself there should
be comprehended the required unity of that which before fell asunder;
and God has the special privilege of having laid on Him the burden of
what cannot be comprehended. The word of God is thus the makeshift which
leads to a unity which itself is only hypothetical; for the process of
the many out of this unity is not demonstrated. God plays therefore in
the later philosophy a far greater part than in the early, because now
the comprehension of the absolute opposition of thought and Being is
the chief demand. With Leibnitz the extent to which thoughts advance is
the extent of the universe; where comprehension ceases, the universe
ceases, and God begins: so that later it was even maintained that to be
comprehended was derogatory to God, because He was thus degraded into
finitude. In that procedure a beginning is made from the determinate,
this and that are stated to be necessary; but since in the next place the
unity of these moments is not comprehended, it is transferred to God. God
is therefore, as it were, the waste channel into which all contradictions
flow: Leibnitz’s Théodicée is just a popular summing up such as this.
There are, nevertheless, all manner of evasions to be searched out—in the
opposition of God’s justice and mercy, that the one tempers the other;
how the fore-knowledge of God and human freedom are compatible—all manner
of syntheses which never come to the root of the matter nor show both
sides to be moments.
These are the main moments of Leibnitz’s philosophy. It is a metaphysic
which starts from a narrow determination of the understanding, namely,
from absolute multiplicity, so that connection can only be grasped
as continuity. Thereby absolute unity is certainly set aside, but
all the same it is presupposed; and the association of individuals
with one another is to be explained only in this way, that it is God
who determines the harmony in the changes of individuals. This is an
artificial system, which is founded on a category of the understanding,
that of the absoluteness of abstract individuality. What is of importance
in Leibnitz lies in the maxims, in the principle of individuality and the
maxim of indistinguishability.
2. WOLFF.
The philosophy of Wolff is directly connected with that of Leibnitz,
for really it is a pedantic systematization of the latter, for which
reason it is likewise called the Leibnitz-Wolffian system of philosophy.
Wolff attained to great distinction in mathematics and made himself
famous by his philosophy as well; the latter was for long predominant
in Germany. In Wolff, as a teacher dealing with the understanding, we
find a systematic exposition of the philosophic element present in human
conceptions as a whole. As regards his connection with German culture
generally, great and immortal praise is more especially due to him;
before all others he may be termed the teacher of the Germans. We may
indeed say that Wolff was the first to naturalize philosophy in Germany.
Tschirnhausen and Thomasius likewise participated in this honour,
for the special reason that they wrote upon Philosophy in the German
language. In regard to the matter of the philosophy of Tschirnhausen and
Thomasius we have not much to say; it is so-called healthy reason—there
is in it the superficial character and the empty universality always
to be found where a beginning is made with thought. In this case the
universality of thought satisfies us because everything is present
there, just as it is present in a moral maxim which has, however, no
determinate content in its universality. Wolff, then, was the first to
make, not exactly Philosophy, but thoughts in the form of thought, into
a general possession, and he substituted this in Germany for mere talk
originating from feeling, from sensuous perception, and from the ordinary
conception. This is most important from the point of view of culture,
and yet it does not really concern us here, excepting in so far as the
content in this form of thought has caused itself to be recognized as
Philosophy. This philosophy, as a philosophy of the understanding, became
the ordinary culture of the day; in it determinate, intelligent thought
is the fundamental principle, and it extends over the whole circle of
objects which fall within the region of knowledge. Wolff defined the
world of consciousness for Germany, and for the world in general, in the
same wide sense in which we may say that this was done by Aristotle. What
distinguishes him from Aristotle is that in so doing the point of view
that he adopted was that of the understanding merely, while Aristotle
treated the subject speculatively. The philosophy of Wolff is hence no
doubt built on foundations laid by Leibnitz, but yet in such a manner
that the speculative interest is quite eliminated from it. The spiritual
philosophy, substantial in a higher sense, which we found emerging first
in Boehme, though still in a peculiar and barbarous form, has been quite
lost sight of, and has disappeared without leaving any traces or effects
in Germany; his very language was forgotten.
The principal events in Christian Wolff’s life are these: He was the son
of a baker, and was born at Breslau in 1679. He first studied Theology
and then Philosophy, and in 1707 he became Professor of Mathematics
and Philosophy at Halle. Here the pietistic theologians, and more
especially Lange, treated him in the basest manner. Piety did not trust
this understanding; for piety, if it is true, embodies a content which
is speculative in nature, and which passes beyond the understanding. As
his opponents could make no headway by their writings, they resorted to
intrigues. They caused it to be conveyed to King Frederick William I.,
the father of Frederick II., a rough man who took an interest in nothing
but soldiers, that according to the determinism of Wolff, free will was
impossible, and that soldiers could not hence desert of their own free
will, but by a special disposition of God (pre-established harmony)—a
doctrine which, if disseminated amongst the military, would be extremely
dangerous. The king, much enraged by this, immediately issued a decree
that within forty-eight hours Wolff should leave Halle and the Prussian
States, under penalty of the halter. Wolff thus left Halle on the 23rd
of November, 1723. The theologians added to all this the scandal of
preaching against Wolff and his philosophy, and the pious Franke thanked
God on his knees in church for the removal of Wolff. But the rejoicings
did not last long. Wolff went to Cassel, was there immediately installed
first professor in the philosophic faculty at Marburg, and at the same
time made a member of the Academies of Science of London, Paris, and
Stockholm. By Peter the First of Russia he was made Vice-President of
the newly instituted Academy in St. Petersburg. Wolff was also summoned
to Russia, but this invitation he declined; he received, however, an
honorary post, he was made a Baron by the Elector of Bavaria, and, in
short, loaded with public honours which, more especially at that time,
though even now it is the case, were very much thought of by the general
public, and which were too great not to make a profound sensation in
Berlin. In Berlin a commission was appointed to pass judgment on the
Wolffian philosophy—for this it had not been possible to eradicate—and it
declared the same to be harmless, that is to say, free from all danger
to state and religion; it also forbade the theologians to make it a
subject of dispute, and altogether put an end to their clamour. Frederick
William now issued a recall in very respectful terms to Wolff, who,
however, hesitated to comply with it owing to his lack of confidence in
its sincerity. On the accession of Frederick II. in 1740 he was again
recalled in terms of the highest honour (Lange had meanwhile died), and
only then did he comply. Wolff became Vice-Chancellor of the University,
but he outlived his repute, and his lectures at the end were very poorly
attended. He died in 1754.[276]
Like Tschirnhausen and Thomasius, Wolff wrote a great part of his works
in his mother tongue, while Leibnitz for the most part wrote only in
Latin or French. This is an important matter, for, as we have already
noticed (pp. 114 and 150), it is only when a nation possesses a science
in its own language that it can really be said to belong to it; and in
Philosophy most of all this is requisite. For thought has in it this
very moment of pertaining to self-consciousness or of being absolutely
its own; when one’s own language is the vehicle of expression, as when
we talk of “Bestimmtheit” instead of “Determination,” and “Wesen”
instead of “Essenz,” it is immediately present to our consciousness
that the conceptions are absolutely its own; it has to deal with these
at all times, and they are in no way foreign to it. The Latin language
has a phraseology, a definite sphere and range of conception; it is
at once taken for granted that when men write in Latin they are at
liberty to be dull; it is impossible to read or write what men permit
themselves to say in Latin. The titles of Wolff’s philosophic works
are perpetually of this nature: “Rational thoughts on the powers of
the human understanding and their right uses in the knowledge of the
truth,” Halle, 1712, 8vo; “Rational thoughts on God, the world, and the
soul of man, likewise on all things generally,” Frankfort and Leipzig,
1719; “On the action and conduct of men,” Halle, 1720; “On Social Life,”
Halle, 1720; “On the operations of Nature,” Halle, 1723, and so on.
Wolff wrote German and Latin quartos on every department of Philosophy,
even on economics—twenty-three thick volumes of Latin, or about forty
quartos altogether. His mathematical works make a good many more quartos.
He brought into general use the differential and integral calculus of
Leibnitz.
It is only in its general content and taken as a whole that Wolff’s
philosophy is the philosophy of Leibnitz, that is to say, only in
relation to the fundamental determinations of monads and to the
theodicy—to these he remained faithful; any other content is empiric,
derived from our feelings and desires. Wolff likewise accepted in their
entirety all the Cartesian and other definitions of general ideas. Hence
we find in him abstract propositions and their proofs mingled with
experiences, on the indubitable truth of which he builds a large part
of his propositions; and he must so build and derive his foundations if
a content is to result at all. With Spinoza, on the contrary, no content
is to be found excepting absolute substance and a perpetual return into
the same. The greatness of Wolff’s services to the culture of Germany,
which now appeared quite independently and without any connection with
an earlier and profounder metaphysical standpoint (_supra_, p. 350), are
in proportion to the barrenness and inward contentless condition into
which Philosophy had sunk. This he divided into its formal disciplines,
spinning it out into determinations of the understanding with a pedantic
application of geometric methods; and, contemporaneously with the
English philosophers, he made the dogmatism of the metaphysics of the
understanding fashionable, that is a philosophizing which determines the
absolute and rational by means of self-exclusive thought-determinations
and relationships (such as one and many, simple and compound, finite
and infinite, causal connection, &c.). Wolff entirely displaced the
Aristotelian philosophy of the schools, and made Philosophy into an
ordinary science pertaining to the German nation. But besides this he
gave Philosophy that systematic and requisite division into sections
which has down to the present day served as a sort of standard.
In theoretic philosophy Wolff first treats of Logic purified from
scholastic interpretations or deductions; it is the logic of the
understanding which he has systematized. The second stage is Metaphysics,
which contains four parts: first there is Ontology, the treatment of
abstract and quite general philosophic categories, such as Being (ὄν) and
its being the One and Good; in this abstract metaphysic there further
comes accident, substance, cause and effect, the phenomenon, &c. Next
in order is Cosmology, a general doctrine of body, the doctrine of the
world; here we have abstract metaphysical propositions respecting the
world, that there is no chance, no leaps or bounds in nature—the law
of continuity. Wolff excludes natural science and natural history. The
third part of the metaphysic is rational psychology or pneumatology, the
philosophy of the soul, which deals with the simplicity, immortality,
immateriality of the soul. Finally, the fourth is natural theology, which
sets forth the proofs of the existence of God.[277] Wolff also inserts
(chap. iii.) an empirical psychology. Practical philosophy he divides
into the Rights of Nature, Morality, the Rights of Nations or Politics,
and Economics.
The whole is propounded in geometric forms such as definitions, axioms,
theorems, scholia, corollaries, &c. In mathematics the understanding is
in its proper place, for the triangle must remain the triangle. Wolff on
the one hand started upon a large range of investigation, and one quite
indefinite in character, and on the other, held to a strictly methodical
manner with regard to propositions and their proofs. The method is really
similar to that of Spinoza, only it is more wooden and lifeless than his.
Wolff applied the same methods to every sort of content—even to that
which is altogether empirical, such as his so-called applied mathematics,
into which he introduces many useful arts, bringing the most ordinary
reflections and directions into the geometric form. In many cases this
undoubtedly gives his work a most pedantic aspect, especially when the
content directly justifies itself to our conception without this form at
all. For Wolff proceeds by first laying down certain definitions, which
really rest upon our ordinary conceptions, since these he translated
into the empty form of determinations of the understanding. Hence the
definitions are merely nominal definitions, and we know whether they are
correct only by seeing whether they correspond to conceptions which are
referred to their simple thoughts. The syllogism is the form of real
importance in this mode of reasoning, and with Wolff it often attains to
its extreme of rigidity and formalism.
Under mathematics, which is the subject of four small volumes, Wolff also
treats of architecture and military science. One of the propositions in
Architecture is this: “Windows must be wide enough for two persons.” The
making of a door is also propounded as a task, and the solution thereof
given. The next best example comes from the art of warfare. The “Fourth
proposition. The approach to the fortress must always be harder for
the enemy the nearer he comes to it.” Instead of saying, because the
danger is greater, which would be trivial, there follows the “Proof.
The nearer the enemy comes to the fortress, the greater the danger. But
the greater the danger the greater the resistance that must be offered
in order to defy the attacks, and, so far as may be, avert the danger.
Hence the nearer the enemy is to the fort the harder must the approach
be made for him. Q.E.D.”[278] Since the increase of the danger is given
as the reason, the whole is false, and the contrary may be said with
equal truth. For if at the beginning all possible resistance is offered
to the enemy, he cannot get nearer the fortress at all, and thus the
danger cannot become greater. The greater resistance has a real cause,
and not this foolish one—namely, that because the garrison is now at
closer quarters, and consequently operates in a narrow field, it can
offer a greater resistance. In this most trivial way Wolff proceeds
with every sort of content. This barbarism of pedantry, or this pedantry
of barbarism, represented as it is in its whole breadth and extent,
necessarily brought itself into disrepute; and without there being a
definite consciousness of the reason why the geometric method is not
the only and ultimate method of knowledge, instinct and an immediate
consciousness of the foolishness of its applications caused this method
to be set aside.
3. THE POPULAR PHILOSOPHY OF GERMANY.
Popular philosophy flatters our ordinary consciousness, makes it the
ultimate standard. Although with Spinoza we begin with presupposed
definitions, the content is still profoundly speculative in nature,
and it is not derived from the ordinary consciousness. In Spinoza
thinking is not merely the form, for the content belongs to thinking
itself; it is the content of thought in itself. In the speculative
content the instinct of reason satisfies itself on its own account,
because this content, as a totality which integrates itself within
itself, at once in itself justifies itself to thought. The content in
Spinoza is only without ground in so far as it has no external ground,
but is a ground in itself. But if the content is finite, a demand for
an external ground is indicated, since in such a case we desire to
have a ground other than this finite. In its matter the philosophy of
Wolff is indeed a popular philosophy, even if in form it still makes
thought authoritative. Until the time of Kant the philosophy of Wolff
was thus pre-eminent. Baumgarten, Crusius, and Moses Mendelssohn worked
each of them independently on the same lines as Wolff; the philosophy
of the last-mentioned was popular and graceful in form. The Wolffian
philosophy was thus carried on, although it had cast off its pedantic
methods: no further progress was however made. The question dealt with
was how perfection could be attained—what it is possible to think
and what not; metaphysic was reduced to its slightest consistency and
to its completest vacuity, so that in its texture not a single thread
remained secure. Mendelssohn considered himself, and was considered, the
greatest of philosophers, and was lauded as such by his friends. In his
“Morgenstunden” we really find a dry Wolffian philosophy, however much
these gentlemen endeavoured to give their dull abstractions a bright
Platonic form.
The forms of Philosophy which we have considered bear the character
which pertains specially to metaphysics, of proceeding from general
determinations of the understanding, but of combining therewith
experience and observation, or the empiric method in general. One side
of this metaphysic is that the opposites of thought are brought into
consciousness, and that attention is directed upon the solution of this
contradiction. Thought and Being or extension, God and the world, good
and evil, the power and prescience of God on the one side, and the evil
in the world and human freedom on the other: these contradictions, the
opposites of soul and spirit, things conceived and things material, and
their mutual relation, have occupied all men’s attention. The solution
of these opposites and contradictions has still to be given, and God is
set forth as the One in whom all these contradictions are solved. This is
what is common to all these philosophies as far as their main elements
are concerned. Yet we must likewise remark that these contradictions are
not solved in themselves, _i.e._ that the nullity of the supposition is
not demonstrated in itself, and thereby a true concrete solution has not
come to pass. Even if God is recognized as solving all contradictions,
God as the solution of these contradictions is a matter of words rather
than something conceived and comprehended. If God is comprehended in His
qualities, and prescience, omnipresence, omniscience, power, wisdom,
goodness justice, &c., are considered as qualities of God Himself,
they simply lead to contradictions; and these contradictions, Leibnitz
(_supra_, p. 348) sought to remove by saying that the qualities temper
one another, _i.e._ that they are combined in such a way that one annuls
the other. This, however, is no real comprehension of such contradiction.
This metaphysic contrasts greatly with the old philosophy of a Plato or
an Aristotle. To the old philosophy we can always turn again and admit
its truth; it is satisfying in the stage of development it has reached—a
concrete centre-point which meets all the problems set by thought as
these are comprehended. In this modern metaphysic, however, the opposites
are merely developed into absolute contradictions. God is indeed given as
their absolute solution, but only as an abstract solution, as a Beyond;
on this side all contradictions are, as regards their content, unsolved
and unexplained. God is not comprehended as the One in whom these
contradictions are eternally resolved; He is not comprehended as Spirit,
as the Trinity. It is in Him alone as Spirit, and as Spirit which is
Three in One, that this opposition of Himself and His Other, the Son, is
contained, and with it the resolution of the same; this concrete Idea of
God as reason, has not as yet found an entrance into Philosophy.
In order that we may now cast a retrospective glance over the philosophic
efforts of other nations, we shall apply ourselves to the further
progress of Philosophy. Once more we see Scepticism making its way
into this arid philosophy of the understanding. But this time it is,
properly speaking, in the form of Idealism, or the determinations are
subjective determinations of self-consciousness. In the place of thought
we consequently find the Notion now making its appearance. Just as with
the Stoics determinateness is held to be an object of thought, we have in
modern times this same manifestation of thought as the unmoved form of
simplicity. Only here the image or inner consciousness of totality is
present, the absolute spirit which the world has before it as its truth
and to whose Notion it makes its way—this is another inward principle,
another implicitude of mind which it endeavours to bring forth from
itself and for itself, so that reason is a comprehension of the same, or
has the certitude of being all reality. With the ancients reason (λόγος),
as the implicit and explicit Being of consciousness, had only an ethereal
and formal existence as language, but here it has certainty as existent
substance. Hence with Descartes there is the unity of the Notion and
Being, and with Spinoza the universal reality. The first commencement
of the Notion of the movement of fixed thoughts in themselves is found
in this, that the movement which, as method, simply falls outside
its object, comes within it, or that self-consciousness comes within
thought. Thought is implicitude without explicitude, an objective
mode bearing no resemblance to a sensuous thing; and yet it is quite
different from the actuality of self-consciousness. This Notion which
we now find entering into thought, has the three kinds of form which we
still have to consider; in the first place it has that of individual
self-consciousness or the formal conception generally; secondly, that of
universal self-consciousness, which applies itself to all objects whether
they be objects of thought, determinate conceptions, or have the form
of actuality—that is to say it applies itself to what is established in
thought, to the intellectual world with the riches of its determinations
and looked on as a Beyond, or to the intellectual world in as far as it
is its realization, the world here and around us. It is in those two
ways, and in those ways alone, that the actual Notion is present in the
succeeding chapter; for not as yet is it in the third place to be found
as taken back into thought, or as the self-thinking or thought-of Notion.
While that universal self-consciousness is, on the whole, a thought which
grasps and comprehends, this third kind of thought is the Notion itself
recognized as constituting reality in its essence, that is to say as
Idealism. These three aspects again divide themselves as before into the
three nations which alone count in the civilized world. The empirical and
perfectly finite form of Notion pertains to the English; to the French
belongs its form as making an attempt at everything, as establishing
itself in its reality, abolishing all determination, and therefore being
universal, unlimited, pure self-consciousness; and, lastly, to the German
pertains the entering into itself of this implicitude, the thought of the
absolute Notion.
CHAPTER II
TRANSITION PERIOD
The decadence which we find in thought until the philosophy of Kant is
reached, is manifested in what was at this time advocated in opposition
to the metaphysic of the understanding, and which may be called a general
popular philosophy, a reflecting empiricism, which to a greater or less
extent becomes itself a metaphysic; just as, on the other hand, that
metaphysic, in as far as it extended to particular sciences, becomes
empiricism. As against these metaphysical contradictions, as against the
artificialities of the metaphysical synthesis, as against the assistance
of God, the pre-established harmony, the best possible world, &c., as
against this merely artificial understanding, we now find that fixed
principles, immanent in mind, have been asserted or maintained respecting
what is felt, intuitively perceived and honoured in the cultured human
breast. And in distinction to the assertion that we only find the
solution in the Beyond, in God, these concrete principles of a fixed
and permanent content form a reconciliation here and now, they adopt a
position of independence, and assume an intellectual standing-ground
which they find in what has generally been termed the healthy human
understanding. Such determinations may indeed be found to be perfectly
good and valid if the feelings, intuitions, heart and understanding of
man be morally and intellectually fashioned; for in that case better
and more noble feelings and desires may rule in men and a more universal
content may be expressed in these principles. But when men make what we
call sound reason—that which is by nature implanted in man’s breast—into
the content and the principle, the healthy human understanding discovers
itself to be identical with a feeling and knowledge belonging to nature.
The Indians who worship a cow, and who expose or slay new-born children,
and commit all sorts of barbarous deeds, the Egyptians who pray to a
bird, the apis, &c., and the Turks as well, all possess a healthy human
understanding similar in nature. But the healthy human understanding
and the natural feeling of rude and barbarous Turks, when taken as a
standard, result in shocking principles. When we speak of healthy human
understanding, however, of natural feelings, we always have before our
eyes a cultured mind; and those who make the healthy human reason, the
natural knowledge, the immediate feelings and inspirations found in
themselves, into a rule and standard, do not know that when religion,
morality, and rectitude are discovered to be present in the human breast,
this is due to culture and education, which are the first to make
such principles into natural feelings. Here natural feelings and the
healthy human understanding are thus made the principle; and much may be
recognized as coming under these heads. This then is the form taken by
Philosophy in the eighteenth century. Taken as a whole, three points of
view have to be considered; in the first place, Hume must be regarded on
his own account, then the Scottish, and, thirdly, the French philosophy.
Hume is a sceptic; the Scottish philosophy opposes the scepticism of
Hume, the French philosophy has in the “enlightenment” of Germany (by
which expression is indicated that form of German philosophy which is
not Wolffian metaphysics) an appendage of a feebler form. Since from the
metaphysical God we can make no further progress in the concrete, Locke
grounds his content on experience. But that empiricism leads thought to
no fixed standpoint, Hume demonstrates by denying every universal; the
Scottish philosophers, on the contrary, undoubtedly maintain universal
propositions and truths, but not through thought. Hence in empiricism
itself the fixed standpoint has now to be adopted; thus the French find
the universal in the actuality which they call _réalité_. They do not,
however, find its content in and from thought, but as living substance,
as nature and matter. All this is a further working out of reflecting
empiricism, and some more details respecting it must still be given.
A. IDEALISM AND SCEPTICISM.
Thought generally is simple, universal self-identity, but in the form
of negative movement, whereby the determinate abrogates itself. This
movement of Being-for-self is now an essential moment of thought,
while hitherto it was outside it; and thus grasping itself as movement
in itself, thought is self-consciousness—at first indeed formal, as
individual self-consciousness. Such a form it has in scepticism, but
this distinction marks it off from the older scepticism, that now the
certainty of reality is made the starting point. With the ancients, on
the contrary, scepticism is the return into individual consciousness in
such a way that to it this consciousness is not the truth, in other words
that scepticism does not give expression to the results arrived at, and
attains no positive significance. But since in the modern world this
absolute substantiality, this unity of implicitude and self-consciousness
is fundamental—that is, this faith in reality generally—scepticism has
here the form of idealism, _i.e._ of expressing self-consciousness or
certainty of self as all reality and truth. The crudest form of this
idealism is when self-consciousness, as individual or formal, does not
proceed further than to say: All objects are our conceptions. We find
this subjective idealism in Berkeley,[279] and another form of the same
in Hume.
1. BERKELEY.
This idealism, in which all external reality disappears, has before it
the standpoint of Locke, and it proceeds directly from him. For we saw
that to Locke the source of truth is experience, or Being as perceived.
Now since this sensuous Being, as Being, has in it the quality of being
for consciousness, we saw that it necessarily came to pass that in
Locke’s case some qualities, at least, were so determined that they were
not in themselves, but only for another; and that colour, figure, &c.,
had their ground only in the subject, in his particular organization.
This Being-for-another, however, was not by him accepted as the Notion,
but as falling within self-consciousness—i.e. self-consciousness not
looked on as universal,—not within mind, but within what is opposed to
the implicit.
George Berkeley was born in 1684 at Kilcrin, near Thomastown, in the
county of Kilkenny, Ireland: in 1754 he died as an English Bishop.[280]
He wrote the “Theory of Vision,” 1709; “A Treatise concerning the
principles of human knowledge,” 1710; “Three Dialogues between Hylas and
Philonous,” 1713. In 1784 his collected works were published in London in
two quarto volumes.
Berkeley advocated an idealism which came very near to that of
Malebranche. As against the metaphysic of the understanding, we have
the point of view that all existence and its determinations arise from
feeling, and are constituted by self-consciousness. Berkeley’s first
and fundamental thought is consequently this: “The Being of whatever is
called by us a thing consists alone in its being perceived,” _i.e._ our
determinations are the objects of our knowledge. “All objects of human
knowledge are ideas” (so called by Berkeley as by Locke), “which arise
either from the impressions of the outward senses, or from perceptions
of the inward states and activities of the mind, or finally, they are
such as are constituted by means of memory and imagination through their
separation and rearrangement. A union of different sensuous feelings
appears to us to be a particular thing, _e.g._ the feeling of colour,
taste, smell, figure, &c.; for by colours, smells, sounds, something of
which we have a sensation is always understood.”[281] This is the matter
and the object of knowledge; the knower is the percipient “I,” which
reveals itself in relation to those feelings in various activities, such
as imagination, remembrance, and will.
Berkeley thus indeed acknowledges the distinction between Being-for-self
and Other-Being, which in his case, however, itself falls within the
“I.” Of the matter on which activity is directed, it is no doubt in
regard to one portion allowed that it does not exist outside of mind—that
is to say, so far as our thoughts, inward feelings and states, or the
operations of our imaginary powers are concerned. But in like manner the
manifold sensuous conceptions and feelings can only exist in a mind.
Locke certainly distinguished extension and movement, for example, as
fundamental qualities, _i.e._ as qualities which pertain to the objects
in themselves. But Berkeley very pertinently points out inconsistency
here from the point of view that great and small, quick and slow, hold
good as something relative; thus were extension and movement to be
inherent or implicit, they could not be either large or small, quick or
slow; that is, they could not be, for these determinations rest in the
conception[282] of such qualities. In Berkeley the relation of things
to consciousness is alone dealt with, and beyond this relationship
they do not in his view come. From this it follows that it is only
self-consciousness that possesses them; for a perception which is not in
a conceiving mind is nothing: it is a direct contradiction. There can
be no substance, he says, which neither conceives nor perceives, and
which is yet the substratum of perceptions and conceptions. If it is
represented that there is something outside of consciousness which is
similar to the conceptions, this is likewise contradictory; a conception
can alone be similar to a conception, the idea to the idea alone.[283]
Thus, while Locke’s ultimate point is abstract substance, Being generally
with the real determination of a substratum of accidents, Berkeley
declares this substance to be the most incomprehensible assumption
of all; but the incomprehensibility does not make this Being into an
absolute nullity, nor does it make it in itself incomprehensible.[284]
For Berkeley brings forward against the present existence of external
objects only the inconceivability of the relation of a Being to mind.
This inconceivability, however, is destroyed in the Notion, for the
Notion is the negative of things; and this moved Berkeley and Leibnitz
to shut up the two sides in themselves. There nevertheless remains a
relationship of what is “other” to us; these feelings do not develop from
us as Leibnitz represents, but are determined through somewhat else.
When Leibnitz speaks of development within the monads, it is nothing but
empty talk; for the monads as they follow in succession have no inward
connection. Each individual is thus determined through another, and
not through us; and it does not matter what this external is, since it
remains a contingent. Now in relation to the two sides of Leibnitz which
are indifferent to one another, Berkeley says that such an “other” is
quite superfluous. Berkeley calls the other the objects; but these, he
says, cannot be what we call matter, for spirit and matter cannot come
together.[285] But the necessity of conceptions directly contradicts
this Being-within-self of the conceiver; for the Being-within-self is
the freedom of the conceiver; the latter does not, however, produce the
conceptions with freedom; they have for him the form and determinateness
of an independent “other.” Berkeley likewise does not accept idealism
in the subjective sense, but only in respect that there are spirits
which impart themselves (in the other case the subject forms his own
conceptions), and consequently that it is God alone who brings to
pass such conceptions; thus the imaginations or conceptions which are
produced by us with our individual activity remain separate from these
others,[286] _i.e._ from the implicit.
This conception gives an instance of the difficulties which appear in
regard to these questions, and which Berkeley wished to escape from in
a quite original way. The inconsistency in this system God has again
to make good; He has to bear it all away; to Him the solution of the
contradiction is left. In this idealism, in short, the common sensuous
view of the universe and the separation of actuality, as also the system
of thought, of judgments devoid of Notion, remain exactly as before;
plainly nothing in the content is altered but the abstract form that all
things are perceptions only.[287] Such idealism deals with the opposition
between consciousness and its object merely, and leaves the extension
of the conceptions and the antagonisms of the empirical and manifold
content quite untouched; and if we ask what then is the truth of these
perceptions and conceptions, as we asked formerly of things, no answer
is forthcoming. It is pretty much a matter of indifference whether we
believe in things or in perceptions, if self-consciousness remains
possessed entirely by finalities; it receives the content in the ordinary
way, and that content is of the ordinary kind. In its individuality it
stumbles about amid the conceptions of an entirely empirical existence,
without knowing and understanding anything else about the content: that
is to say in this formal idealism reason has no content of its own.
As to what Berkeley further states in respect of the empirical content,
where the object of his investigation becomes entirely psychological, it
relates in the main to finding out the difference between the sensations
of sight and feeling, and to discovering which kind of sensations
belong to the one and which to the other. This kind of investigation
keeps entirely to the phenomenal, and only therein distinguishes the
various sorts of phenomena; or comprehension only reaches as far as to
distinctions. The only point of interest is that these investigations
have in their course chiefly lighted on space, and a dispute is carried
on as to whether we obtain the conception of distance and so on, in short
all the conceptions relating to space, through sight or feeling. Space
is just this sensuous universal, the universal in individuality itself,
which in the empirical consideration of empirical multiplicity invites
and leads us on to thought (for it itself is thought), and by it this
very sensuous perception and reasoning respecting perception is in its
action confused. And since here perception finds an objective thought,
it really would be led on to thought or to the possession of a thought,
but at the same time it cannot arrive at thought in its completion, since
thought or the Notion are not in question, and it clearly cannot come
to the consciousness of true reality. Nothing is thought in the form of
thought, but only as an external, as something foreign to thought.
2. HUME.
We must add to what has preceded an account of the Scepticism of Hume,
which has been given a more important place in history than it deserves
from its intrinsic nature; its historic importance is due to the fact
that Kant really derives the starting point of his philosophy from Hume.
David Hume was born in 1711 at Edinburgh and died there in 1776. He
held a librarian’s post in that town for some time, then he became
secretary to the Embassy in Paris; for quite a long period, indeed,
he moved in diplomatic circles. In Paris he came to know Jean Jacques
Rousseau and invited him to England, but Rousseau’s terribly distrustful
and suspicious nature very soon estranged the two.[288] Hume is more
celebrated as a writer of history than through his philosophic works.
He wrote: “A Treatise of human nature,” 3 vols., 1739, translated into
German by Jacob, Halle, 1790, 8vo; likewise “Essays and Treatises on
several subjects,” 2 vols. (Vol. I. containing “Essays moral, political
and literary,” printed for the first time in Edinburgh, 1742; Vol.
II. containing an “Inquiry concerning human understanding,” a further
development of the Treatise, and first printed separately in London,
1748, 8vo). In his “Essays,” which contributed most to his fame as far
as the philosophic side is concerned, he treated philosophic subjects as
an educated, thoughtful man of the world would do—not in a systematic
connection, nor showing the wide range which his thoughts should properly
have been able to attain; in fact in some of his treatises he merely
dealt with particular points of view.
We must shortly deal with the main aspects of Hume’s philosophy. He
starts directly from the philosophic standpoint of Locke and Bacon,
which derives our conceptions from experience, and his scepticism
has the idealism of Berkeley as its object. The sequence of thought
is this: Berkeley allows all ideas to hold good as they are; in Hume
the antithesis of the sensuous and universal has cleared and more
sharply defined itself, sense being pronounced by him to be devoid of
universality. Berkeley does not make any distinction as to whether in his
sensations there is a necessary connection or not. Formerly experience
was a mixture of the two elements. Hume tells us that all perceptions of
the mind may be divided into two classes or species, that of impressions,
_i.e._ sensuous perceptions, and thoughts or ideas; the latter are
similar in content to the former, but less forcible and lively. All
objects of reason are consequently either relations of thoughts such as
mathematical axioms, or facts of experience.[289] Since Hume makes these
into the content he naturally rejects innate ideas.[290]
Now when Hume goes on to consider more closely what is subsumed under
experience, he finds categories of the understanding present there, and
more especially the determination of the universal and of universal
necessity; he took under his consideration more particularly the
category of cause and effect, and in it set forth the rational element,
inasmuch as in this causal relationship necessity is especially
contained. Here Hume really completed the system of Locke, since he
consistently drew attention to the fact that if this point of view be
adhered to, experience is indeed the principle of whatever one knows, or
perception itself contains everything that happens, but nevertheless the
determination of universality and necessity are not contained in, nor
were they given us by experience. Hume has thus destroyed the objectivity
or absolute nature of thought-determinations. “Our conviction of the
truth of a fact rests on feeling, memory, and the reasonings founded on
the causal connection, _i.e._ on the relation of cause and effect. The
knowledge of this relation is not attained by reasonings _a priori_, but
arises entirely from experience; and we draw inferences, since we expect
similar results to follow from similar causes, by reason of the principle
of the custom or habit of conjoining different manifestations, _i.e._ by
reason of the principle of the association of ideas. Hence there is no
knowledge and no metaphysics beyond experience.”[291]
The simple thought we have here is exactly what Locke says, that we must
receive the conception of cause and effect, and thus of a necessary
connection, from experience; but experience, as sensuous perception,
contains no necessity, has no causal connection. For in what we term
such, that which we properly speaking perceive is merely the fact that
something first of all happens and that then something else follows.
Immediate perception relates only to a content of conditions or things
which are present alongside of and in succession to one another, but not
to what we call cause and effect; in time-succession there is thus no
relation of cause and effect, and consequently no necessity either.[292]
When we say the pressure of the water is the cause of the destruction of
this house, that is no pure experience. We have merely seen the water
pressing or moving along in this direction, and subsequently the house
falling down; and so with other examples. Necessity is thus not justified
by experience, but we carry it into experience; it is accidentally
arrived at by us and is subjective merely. This kind of universality
which we connect with necessity, Hume calls custom. Because we have
often seen results to follow we are accustomed to regard the connection
as a necessary one; the necessity to him is thus a quite contingent
association of ideas, which is custom.
It is the same thing in respect of the universal. What we perceive are
individual phenomena and sensations in which we see that this is now
one thing and now another. It may likewise be that we perceive the same
determination frequently repeated and in manifold ways. But this is
still far removed from universality; universality is a determination
which is not given to us through experience. It may be said that this is
quite a correct remark on Hume’s part, if by experience we understand
outward experience. Experience is sensible that something exists, but
nevertheless the universal is not as yet present in it. Indeed, sensuous
existence as such is something which is set forth as indifferent, not
differentiated from anything else; but sensuous existence is likewise
universal in itself, or the indifference of its determinateness is not
its only determinateness. But since Hume regards necessity, the unity of
opposites, as resting quite subjectively on custom, we cannot get any
deeper in thought. Custom is indeed so far a necessity in consciousness,
and to this extent we really see the principle of this idealism in it;
but in the second place this necessity is represented as something quite
devoid of thought or Notion.
This custom obtains both in our perception which relates to sensuous
nature, and in relation to law and morality. The ideas of justice
and morality rest upon an instinct, on a subjective, but very often
deceptive moral feeling.[293] From a sceptical point of view the opposite
may likewise be demonstrated. From this side Hume considers justice,
morality, religious determinations, and disputes their absolute validity.
That is to say when it is assumed that our knowledge arises from
experience, and that we must consider only what we obtain thereby to be
the truth, we find indeed in our feeling, the sentiment _e.g._ that the
murderer, the thief, &c., must be punished; and because this is likewise
felt by others it is universally allowed. But Hume, like the sceptics of
former days, appeals to the various opinions of various nations: amongst
different nations and in different times various standards of right have
been held.[294] There are those who in this case do not have the feeling
of wrong-doing in respect of stealing, _e.g._ the Lacedæmonians or the
so-called innocent inhabitants of the South Sea Islands. What is by
one nation called immoral, shameful and irreligious, is by another not
considered so at all. Thus because such matters rest upon experience,
one subject has such and such an experience, finds, for instance, in his
religious feelings this determination which inclines him to God, while
another subject has different experiences altogether. We are in the
habit of allowing one thing to be just and moral, others have another
mode of regarding it. Hence if the truth depends upon experience, the
element of universality, of objectivity, &c., comes from elsewhere,
or is not justified by experience. Hume thus declared this sort of
universality, as he declared necessity, to be rather subjectively than
objectively existent; for custom is just a subjective universality of
this kind. This is an important and acute observation in relation to
experience looked at as the source of knowledge; and it is from this
point that the Kantian reflection now begins.
Hume (Essays and Treatises on several subjects, Vol. III. Sect. 8, 11)
then extended his scepticism to the conceptions and doctrines of freedom
and necessity, and to the proofs of the existence of God; and in fact
scepticism here possesses a wide field. To such a system of reasoning
from thoughts and possibilities another method of reasoning may again be
opposed, and this reasoning is no better than the other. What is said to
be metaphysically established regarding immortality, God, nature, &c.,
lacks a real ground for resting upon, such as is professed to be given;
for the inferences on which men ground their proofs are subjectively
formed conceptions. But where a universality is found, it does not rest
in the matter in itself, but is simply a subjective necessity which is
really mere custom. Hence the result which Hume arrives at is necessarily
astonishment regarding the condition of human knowledge, a general state
of mistrust, and a sceptical indecision—which indeed does not amount
to much. The condition of human knowledge regarding which Hume so much
wonders, he further describes as containing an antagonism between reason
and instinct; this instinct, it is said, which embraces many sorts of
powers, inclinations, &c., deceives us in many different ways, and reason
demonstrates this. But on the other side it is empty, without content
or principles of its own; and if a content is in question at all, it
must keep to those inclinations. In itself reason thus has no criterion
whereby the antagonism between individual desires, and between itself and
the desires, may be settled.[295] Thus everything appears in the form of
an irrational existence devoid of thought; the implicitly true and right
is not in thought, but in the form of an instinct, a desire.
B. SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY.
In Scotland quite another school of thought developed, and the Scotch
are the foremost of Hume’s opponents; in German philosophy, on the other
hand, we have to recognize in Kant another opposing force to that of
Hume. To the Scottish school many philosophers belong; English philosophy
is now restricted to Edinburgh and Glasgow, in which places a number
of professors belonging to this school succeeded one another. To the
scepticism of Hume they oppose an inward independent source of truth for
all that pertains to religion and morality. This coincides with Kant, who
also maintains an inward source or spring as against external perception;
but in the case of Kant this has quite another form than that which it
possesses with the Scottish philosophers. To them this inward independent
source is not thought or reason as such, for the content which comes to
pass from this inwardness is concrete in its nature, and likewise demands
for itself the external matter of experience. It consists of popular
principles, which on the one hand are opposed to the externality of the
sources of knowledge, and, on the other, to metaphysics as such, to
abstract thought or reasoning on its own account. This sort of reasoning
understanding applied itself to ethics and to politics—sciences which
have been much developed by German, French, and above all by Scottish
philosophers (_supra_, p. 320): they regarded morality as cultured men
would, and sought to bring moral duties under a principle. Many of their
works are translated into German; several of these on ethics or morality
are translated by Garve, for instance, who also translated Cicero _De
Officiis_, and they are written in a manner similar to that of Cicero
when he uses the expression _Insitum est a natura_ (Vol. I. p. 93). This
moral sentiment and the ordinary human understanding hereafter formed the
common principle to a whole succession of Scots, such as Thomas Reid,
Beattie, Oswald, and others; in this way they frequently made sagacious
observations, but with them speculative philosophy quite disappears. One
special characteristic of these Scottish philosophers is that they have
sought accurately to define the principle of knowledge; but on the whole
they start from the same point as that which was in Germany likewise
accepted as the principle. That is to say they represented the so-called
healthy reason, or common-sense (_sensus communis_), as the ground of
truth. The following are the principal members of this school, each of
whom has some special feature distinguishing him from the rest.
1. THOMAS REID.
Thomas Reid, born in 1710, died as a professor in Glasgow in 1796.[296]
He maintained the principle of common-sense. His endeavour was to
discover the principles of knowledge, and the following are his
conclusions: “(a) There are certain undemonstrated and undemonstrable
fundamental truths which common-sense begets and recognizes as
immediately conclusive and absolute.” This hence constitutes an immediate
knowledge; in it an inward independent source is set forth which is
hereby opposed to religion as revealed. “(b) These immediate truths
require no support from any elaborated science, nor do they submit to
its criticism;” they cannot be criticized by philosophy. “(c) Philosophy
itself has no root other than that of an immediate, self-enlightening
truth; whatever contradicts such truth is in itself false, contradictory,
and absurd.” This is true for knowledge and “(d) Morality; the individual
is moral if he acts in accordance with the perfect principles of the
perfection of the whole and with his own duty as it is known to him.”[297]
2. JAMES BEATTIE.
James Beattie, born 1735, was a professor of moral philosophy in
Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and died in 1803. He likewise made common-sense
the source of all knowledge. “The common-sense of the plain human
understanding is the source of all morality, of all religion, and
all certainty. The confirmation of common-sense must be added to the
testimony of our senses. The truth is what the necessities of my
nature call upon me to believe. Belief signifies conviction in the
case of truths which are certain, in that of those which are probable,
approbation. The truth which is certain is known by means of intuition,
the probable truth by means of proofs.”[298] Such convictions as are
quite certain form the basis of actions.
3. JAMES OSWALD.
James Oswald, a Scottish clergyman, made use of an expression which
indicates that we have the principles just mentioned as facts existing
within us.[299] “The existence of the Divine Being is (according to
him) a fact absolutely raised above all reasoning and all doubt, and
immediately certain for the common-sense of morality.”[300] The same
principle was likewise established in Germany at this time—an inward
revelation, a knowledge of the conscience, and specially of God and His
Being.
4. DUGALD STEWART.
To this school also belong Dugald Stewart, Edward Search,[301] Ferguson,
and Hutcheson, most of whom have written on morals. The political
economist Adam Smith from this point of view is likewise a philosopher,
and the best known of them all. This Scottish philosophy is now given
forth in Germany as something new. It is a popular philosophy, which,
on the one hand, has the great merit of seeking in man, and in his
consciousness, for the source of all that should be held by him as
true, the immanence of what should be by him esteemed. The content is
at the same time a concrete content; in a certain degree, it is the
antithesis of metaphysics proper, of the wandering about in abstract
determinations of the understanding. Of these Scots, Dugald Stewart, who
is living still,[302] appears to be the last and least significant; in
them all there is the same ground-work to be found, the same circle of
reflection, namely, an _a priori_ philosophy, though not one which is to
be pursued in a speculative way. The general idea which pervades their
principle is that of the healthy human understanding; to this they have
added benevolent desires, sympathy, a moral sense, and from such grounds
composed very excellent moral writings. That is certainly all very well
in order to understand approximately, up to a certain degree of culture,
what universal thoughts are, in order to narrate their history, to appeal
to examples, and to explain them; but further it does not extend.
In more recent times this Scottish philosophy has passed to France,
and Professor Royer-Collard, now president of the Second Chamber,[303]
as also his disciple, Jouffroy, in conformity with it, pass from the
facts of consciousness through cultured reasoning and experience, to a
further stage in development. What by the French is called _Idéologie_
(_supra_, p. 308) has also its place here; it is abstract metaphysics,
in so far as it is an enumeration and analysis of the most simple
thought-determinations. They are not treated dialectically, but from our
reflection, from our thoughts, the material is derived, and in this the
determinations therein contained are demonstrated.
C. FRENCH PHILOSOPHY.
We pass on to the French philosophy; the relation it bears to
metaphysics is this, that while man as a metaphysician stands to
himself in the attitude of a layman or outsider, French philosophy does
away with the lay or outside position in regard alike to politics,
religion, and philosophy. Two forms have to be mentioned which are of
the greatest importance in respect to culture—French philosophy and
the _Aufklärung_. With the English we saw a certain idealism only:
this was either formal, as the mere general translation of Being
into Being-for-another, _i.e._ into perceptibility, or else what is
implicit in this perceptibility, instincts, impulses, habits, &c.—blind
determinate forces; a return into self-consciousness, which itself
appears as a physical thing. In that first idealism the whole finitude
and extension of appearances, of sensations, and likewise of thoughts
and determinate fixed conceptions, remain just what they are in the
unphilosophic consciousness. The scepticism of Hume makes all that is
universal sink into habits and instincts, _i.e._ it consists in a more
simple synthesis of the phenomenal world; but these simpler elements,
these instincts, impulses, and forces, are just as much a fixed present
existence in self-consciousness, unspiritual, and without movement. The
French philosophy has more life, more movement, more spirit; it would
perhaps be more correct to describe it as full of life and spirit. It
is the absolute Notion, which revolts against the whole reigning system
of prevalent conceptions and established ideas, which overthrows all
that has settled into fixity, and acquires the consciousness of perfect
liberty. At the root of this idealistic activity lies the certainty that
whatever is, whatever counts for anything in itself, is all a matter of
self-consciousness; and as to Notions (individual and isolated existences
ruling actual self-consciousness), such as the Notions of good and evil,
of power and riches, and the fixed conceptions regarding faith in God
and His relation to the world, His mode of government and, further, the
duties of self-consciousness towards Him—that all these are not truths
in themselves, having validity beyond the bounds of self-consciousness.
All these forms, the real implicitude of the actual world and also of the
supersensuous world, are therefore set aside in this spirit conscious of
itself. It does not trouble itself seriously about those who admit the
validity of these conceptions just as they are, and accept them as true,
respecting them as independent and free apart from self-consciousness,
but it speaks of such conceptions with intelligence and spirit, that is
to say, it asserts that self-consciousness by its activity is the first
to make anything of them, and to make that a something very different
from what they profess to be; for the self-conscious spirit only
intellectual relations, these processes of formation and movement by
means of its self-consciousness, possess validity and interest. This is
the character of the Notion in its actuality; what has reality for this
all-perceiving and all-comprehending consciousness is held to be valid.
We must now consider what form existence takes for this absolutely
comprehending self-consciousness. In the first place this Notion is
fixed as the negative movement of the Notion only; the positive and
simple, or existence, falls outside of this movement. There remains to
the Notion no distinction, no content; for all determinate content is
lost in that negativity. This empty existence is for us pure thought
generally, what the French call _être suprême_, or if represented
objectively as existent, and as in opposition to consciousness, it
is matter. Absolute Being is therefore determined as matter, as
empty objectivity, through a Notion which destroys all content and
determination, and has as its object this universal alone. It is a Notion
which acts only destructively, and does not again construct itself
out of this matter or pure thought or pure substantiality. We here
see so-called materialism and atheism freely emerge, as the necessary
result of the pure comprehending self-consciousness. From one point
of view there perishes in this negative movement all determination
which represents spirit as something beyond self-consciousness, and
more especially all determinations within the spirit, and also those
which express it as spirit, indeed all the conceptions formed of it
by faith, for which it has validity as an existent self-consciousness
beyond self-consciousness—in short, all that is traditional or
imposed by authority. There remains only a present, actual Being, for
self-consciousness recognizes implicit existence only in the form which
it has for self-consciousness, and in which it is actually known to
itself; in matter, and matter as actively extending and realizing itself
in multiplicity, _i.e._ as nature. In the present I am conscious to
myself of my reality, and consequently self-consciousness finds itself as
matter, finds the soul to be material, and conceptions to be movements
and changes in the inner organ of the brain, which result from external
impressions on the senses. Thought is therefore a mode of the existence
of matter. The One Substance of Spinoza, to which French materialism
as naturalism is parallel, really finds its accomplishment here in
this object as in all respects the ultimate; but while in Spinoza this
category is a possession which we find ready to hand, here it appears
as the result of the abstraction of the understanding proceeding from
empiricism.
The other form of the _Aufklärung_ is, on the contrary, when absolute
Being is set forth as something beyond self-consciousness, so that
of itself, of its implicit Being, nothing whatever can be known. It
bears the empty name of God. For though God may be determined in any
way whatever, all these determinations fall away; He is, like _x_,
the altogether unknown quantity. This view is not therefore to be
termed atheism, in the first place because it still employs the empty,
meaningless name, and in the second place because it expresses the
necessary relations of self-consciousness, duties, &c., not as necessary
in an absolute sense, but as necessary through relation to another,
namely to the unknown—although there can be no positive relation to
an unknown except by abrogating the self as particular. Yet it is not
matter, because this simple and empty something is negatively defined as
non-existent for self-consciousness. This all comes to the same thing,
however, for matter is the universal, and is Being-for-self represented
as abrogated. But the true reflection on that unknown is this, that it
exists for self-consciousness simply as a negative of the same, _i.e._
as matter, reality, the present; it is this negative for me, this is its
Notion. The difference distinguishing this from what appears to be in its
entirety something “other,” and in which any one side is not permitted
to say that what it thinks is such is that particular thing, is the
difference which rests on this last abstraction.
Since then the Notion is present only in its negative form, positive
extension remains without a Notion; it has the form of nature, of an
existent, both in the physical and in the moral sphere. The knowledge
of nature remains the ordinary, scientifically unspeculative knowledge,
and as to its essence, in so far as it claims to be philosophy, it is a
general way of speaking that plays with the words, “forces, relations,
manifold connections,” but arrives at nothing definite. Similarly, in
the spiritual sphere, it is so far true that the metaphysic of the
spirit is of such a nature that it is nothing more nor less than a
particular organization by means of which the powers which are termed
sensation, perception, &c., come into existence; but this is a wearisome
way of talking, which can make nothing intelligible, which accepts
appearances and perceptions and reasons about them, but none the less
reduces their implicit existence to certain determinate forces, of the
inward nature of which we know nothing further. The determination and
knowledge of the moral sphere has similarly for its object to bring
man back to his so-called natural promptings; its essence has the form
of a natural impulse, and this natural impulse is termed self-love,
selfishness, or benevolence. It is required that man should live in
conformity with nature; but this nature does not reach further than
general expressions and descriptions, such as the state of nature we
find depicted by Rousseau. What is called the metaphysic of ordinary
conceptions is the empiricism of Locke, which seeks to show their origin
to be in consciousness, in as far as it is individual consciousness;
which, when born into the world, emerges out of unconsciousness in order
to acquire knowledge as sensuous consciousness. This external origin
they confound with the Becoming and Notion of the matter in point. If
one were to ask vaguely what is the origin and genesis of water, and
the answer were to be given that it comes from the mountains or from
rain, this would be a reply in the spirit of the above philosophy. In
short, it is only the negative aspect that is interesting, and as for
this positive French philosophy, it is out of the question. But even the
negative side of it belongs properly to culture mainly, with which we
have here nothing to do, and the _Aufklärung_ likewise belongs to the
same. In the French philosophic writings, which in this respect are of
importance, what is worthy of admiration is the astonishing energy and
force of the Notion as directed against existence, against faith, against
all the power of authority that had held sway for thousands of years.
On the one hand we cannot help remarking the feeling of utter rebellion
against the whole state of affairs at present prevailing, a state which
is alien to self-consciousness, which would fain dispense with it, and
in which self-consciousness does not find itself; there is a certainty
of the truth of reason, which challenges the whole intellectual world
as it stands aloof, and is confident of destroying it. French atheism,
materialism, or naturalism has overcome all prejudices, and has been
victorious over the senseless hypotheses and assumptions of the positive
element in religion, which is associated with habits, manners, opinions,
determinations as to law and morality and civil institutions. With the
healthy human understanding and earnestness of spirit, and not with
frivolous declamations, it has rebelled against the condition of the
world as legally established, against the constitution of the state, the
administration of justice, the mode of government, political authority,
and likewise against art.
Contrasting with this barren content there is the other and fertile
side. The positive is in its turn constituted by so-called immediately
enlightening truths of the healthy human understanding, which contains
nothing except this truth and the claim to find itself, and beyond
this form does not pass. But in so doing there arises the endeavour
to grasp the absolute as something present, and at the same time as
an object of thought and as absolute unity: an endeavour which, as it
implies denial of the conception of design both in the natural and in
the spiritual sphere—the former involving the idea of life, and the
latter that of spirit and freedom—only reaches to the abstraction of a
nature undetermined in itself, to sensation, mechanism, self-seeking,
and utility. It is this then that we shall have to make evident in the
positive side of French philosophy. In their political constitutions
the French have, it is true, started from abstractions, but they have
done so as from universal thoughts, which are the negative of reality;
the English, on the other hand, proceed from concrete reality, from the
unwieldy structure of their constitution; just as their writers even have
not attained to universal principles. What Luther began in the heart
only and in the feelings—the freedom of spirit which, unconscious of its
simple root, does not comprehend itself, and yet is the very universal
itself, for which all content disappears in the thought that fills itself
with itself—these universal determinations and thoughts the French
asserted and steadfastly adhered to: they are universal principles, in
the form of the conviction of the individual in himself. Freedom becomes
the condition of the world, connects itself with the world’s history and
forms epochs in the same; it is the concrete freedom of the spirit, a
concrete universality; fundamental principles as regards the concrete
now take the place of the abstract metaphysic of Descartes. Among the
Germans we find mere chatter; they would have liked to offer explanations
also, but all they have to give is in the form of miserable phenomena
and individualism. The French, from their starting-point of the thought
of universality, and the German liberty of conscience starting from
the conscience which teaches us to “Prove all things,” to “hold fast
that which is good,” have, however, joined hands with one another, or
they follow the same path. Only the French, as though they were without
conscience, have made short work of everything, and have systematically
adhered to a definite thought—the physiocratic system; while the Germans
wish to leave themselves a free retreat, and examine from the standpoint
of conscience whether a certain course is permissible. The French warred
against the speculative Notion with the spirit, the Germans did so with
the understanding. We find in the French a deep all-embracing philosophic
need, different from anything in the English and Scotch and even in the
Germans, and full of vitality: it is a universal concrete view of all
that exists, with entire independence both of all authority and of all
abstract metaphysics. The method employed is that of development from
perception, from the heart; it is a comprehensive view of the entire
matter, which keeps the whole ever in sight, and seeks to uphold and
attain to it.
This healthy human understanding, this sound reason, with its content
taken from the human breast, from natural feeling, has directed itself
against the religious side of things in various moments: on the one hand
and first of all, as French philosophy, it did so against the Catholic
religion, the fetters of superstition and of the hierarchy; on the other
hand, in less pronounced form, as the German “illumination,” against the
Protestant religion, in as far as it has a content which it has derived
from revelation, from ecclesiastical authority in general. On the one
hand the form of authority in general was challenged, and on the other
hand its matter. The content can be easily enough disposed of by this
form of thought, which is not what we understand by reason, but which
must be termed understanding; it is easy for the understanding to show
objections to the ultimate principles of what can be comprehended only
by means of speculation. The understanding has thus tried the content
of religion by its standard, and has condemned it; the understanding
proceeds in the same way against a concrete philosophy. What of religion
has in many theologies been very commonly left remaining is what is
termed theism, faith in general; this is the same content which is
found also in Mohammedanism. But along with this attack upon religion
on the part of the reasoning understanding there has been also a
movement towards materialism, atheism and naturalism. It is true that we
should not make the charge of atheism lightly, for it is a very common
occurrence that an individual whose ideas about God differ from those
of other people is charged with lack of religion, or even with atheism.
But here it really is the case that this philosophy has developed into
atheism, and has defined matter, nature, &c., as that which is to be
taken as the ultimate, the active, and the efficient. Some Frenchmen,
Rousseau for instance, are not, however, to be included with the rest;
one of this author’s works, “The Confession of Faith of a Vicar,”[304]
contains the very same theism which is found in German theologians.
Thus French metaphysics finds a parallel not only in Spinoza (_supra_,
p. 382) but also in the German metaphysics of Wolff. Other Frenchmen
have confessedly gone over to naturalism; among them is specially to be
mentioned Mirabaud, to whom the _Système de la Nature_ is attributed.
In what has been termed French philosophy, represented by Voltaire,
Montesquieu, Rousseau, d’Alembert, Diderot, and in what subsequently
appeared in Germany as the _Aufklärung_, and has been also stigmatized as
atheism, we may now distinguish three aspects, first, the negative side,
to which most exception has been taken; secondly, the positive side;
thirdly, the philosophical, metaphysical side.
1. THE NEGATIVE ASPECT.
Justice must be done even to this negative side, as to everything else;
what is substantial in it is the attack of the reasoning instinct
against a condition of degeneracy, I may even say of utter and universal
falsehood; for instance, against the positive side of a religion that
has become wooden and lifeless. What we call religion is firm faith,
conviction that there is a God; if this is faith in the doctrines of
Christianity, it is more or less abstracted from. But in this attack
against religion we have to think of something quite different from the
above; in what we find here, the positive of religion is the negative
of reason. If we would understand the feeling of indignation to which
these writers give utterance, we must keep before our eyes the state of
religion in those days, with its might and magnificence, the corruption
of its manners, its avarice, its ambition, its luxury, for which
nevertheless reverence was claimed—a state of contradiction present and
existent. We perceive into what a frightful condition of formalism and
deadness positive religion had sunk, as had the bonds of society as
well, the means employed for the administration of justice, the power of
the state. This French philosophy also attacked the state; it assailed
prejudices and superstition, especially the depravity of civic life, of
court manners and of Government officials; it laid hold of and brought to
light the evil, the ridiculous, the base, and exposed the whole tissue
of hypocrisy and unjust power to the derision, the contempt and the
hatred of the world at large, and thus brought men’s minds and hearts
into a state of indifference to the idols of the world and indignation
against them. Old institutions, which in the sense of self-conscious
freedom and humanity that had developed, no longer found a place, and
which had formerly been founded and upheld by mutual good feeling and the
obtuseness of a consciousness unconscious of self, institutions which
were no longer in harmony with the spirit that had established them,
and now, in consequence of the advance that had been made in scientific
culture, were bound to make good to reason their claim to be sacred and
just,—this was the formalism that those philosophers overthrew. In making
their attacks, they wrote sometimes with reasoned argument, sometimes
satirically, sometimes in the language of plain common-sense, and they
did not wage war on what we call religion; that was left quite unharmed,
and its claims were urged with words of choicest eloquence. Those who
enforced these views were therefore agents of destruction against that
alone which was in itself already destroyed. We place it to our credit
when we reproach the French for their attacks upon religion and on the
state. We must represent to ourselves the horrible state of society, the
misery and degradation in France, in order to appreciate the services
that these writers rendered. Hypocrisy and cant, imbecility of mind
and the tyranny which sees itself robbed of its prey, may say that
attacks were made on religion, on the state, and on manners. But what a
religion! Not the religion that Luther purified, but the most wretched
superstition, priestly domination, stupidity, degradation of mind, and
more especially the squandering of riches and the revelling in temporal
possessions in the midst of public misery. And what a state! The blindest
tyranny of ministers and their mistresses, wives and chamberlains; so
that a vast army of petty tyrants and idlers looked upon it as a right
divinely given them to plunder the revenues of the state and lay hands
upon the product of the nation’s sweat. The shamelessness, the dishonesty
were past belief; and morals were simply in keeping with the corruptness
of the institutions. We see the law defied by individuals in respect to
civil and political life; we see it likewise set at nought in respect to
conscience and thought.
In regard to practical politics, the writers in question never even
thought of a revolution, but desired and demanded reforms alone, and
that these should be subjective mainly; they called on the Government to
sweep away abuses, and appoint honourable men as ministers. The positive
recommendations made by them as to the course to be pursued were, for
example, that the royal children should receive a good upbringing, that
princes should be of frugal habits, &c. The French Revolution was forced
on by the stiff-necked obstinacy of prejudices, by haughtiness, utter
want of thought, and avarice. The philosophers of whom we are speaking
were able to give only a general idea of what ought to be done; they
could not indicate the mode in which the reforms were to be carried
out. It was the Government’s business to make arrangements and carry
out reforms in concrete shape; but it did not perceive this. What the
philosophers brought forward and maintained as a remedy for this horrible
state of disorder was, speaking generally, that men should no longer be
in the position of laymen, either with regard to religion or to law; so
that in religious matters there should not be a hierarchy, a limited and
selected number of priests, and in the same way that there should not
be in legal matters an exclusive caste and society (not even a class
of professional lawyers), in whom should reside, and to whom should be
restricted, the knowledge of what is eternal, divine, true, and right,
and by whom other men should be commanded and directed; but that human
reason should have the right of giving its assent and its opinion. To
treat barbarians as laymen is quite as it should be—barbarians are
nothing but laymen; but to treat thinking men as laymen is very hard.
This great claim made by man to subjective freedom, perception and
conviction, the philosophers in question contended for heroically and
with splendid genius, with warmth and fire, with spirit and courage,
maintaining that a man’s own self, the human spirit, is the source from
which is derived all that is to be respected by him. There thus manifests
itself in them the fanaticism of abstract thought. We Germans were
passive at first with regard to the existing state of affairs, we endured
it; in the second place, when that state of affairs was overthrown, we
were just as passive: it was overthrown by the efforts of others, we let
it be taken away from us, we suffered it all to happen.
In Germany, Frederick II. allied himself with this culture, a rare
example in those days. French court manners, operas, gardens, dresses,
were widely adopted in Germany, but not French philosophy; yet in the
form of wit and jest much of it found its way into this upper world,
and much that was evil and barbarous was driven away. Frederick II.,
without having been brought up on melancholy psalms, without having had
to learn one or two of them every day by heart, without the barbarous
metaphysics and logic of Wolff (for what did he find to admire in Germany
except Gellert?), was well acquainted with the great, although formal and
abstract principles of religion and the state, and governed in accordance
therewith, as far as circumstances allowed. Nothing else was at that time
required in his nation; one cannot ask that he should have reformed and
revolutionized it, since not a single person yet demanded representative
government and the publicity of courts of justice. He introduced what
there was need of, religious tolerance, legislation, improvements in
the administration of justice, economy in the revenues of state; of the
wretched German law there remained no longer in his states even the
merest phantom. He showed what was the object and purpose of the state,
and at the same time cast down all privileges, the private rights which
pertained to Germans, and arbitrary statute laws. It is foolish when
cant and German pseudo-patriotism pounce down upon him now, and try to
disparage the greatness of a man whose influence was so enormous, and
would even detract from his fame by a charge of vanity and wickedness.
What German patriotism aims at should be reasonable.
2. THE POSITIVE ASPECT.
The affirmative content of this philosophy certainly does not satisfy
the requirements of profundity. A leading characteristic of its
teaching, which is found also with the Scottish philosophers and with
ourselves, is the assumption of primitive feelings of justice which man
has in himself, as for example benevolence and social instincts which
should be cultivated. The positive source of knowledge and of justice
is placed in human reason and the common consciousness of mankind, in
the healthy human reason, and not in the form of the Notion. It is
certainly wonderful to find truths expressed in the form of universal
thoughts, respecting which it is of infinite importance that they should
be assumptions present in the human mind: that man has in his heart the
feeling of right, of love to his fellow-creatures: that religion and
faith are not matters of compulsion; that merit, talent, virtue are the
true nobility, &c. An important question, especially among the Germans,
was what is the end and character of man, by which was meant the nature
of his mind and spirit; and certainly, as far as the spiritual is
concerned, it is to this point that we must return. But in order to find
the nature of spirit, to discover what this determination is, a return
was made to perception, observation, experience, to the existence of
certain impulses. These are certainly determinations in ourselves, but
we have not known them in their necessity. Such an impulse is besides
taken as natural, and thus it is here indeterminate in itself, it has
its limitation only as a moment of the whole. In regard to knowledge,
very abstract thoughts are to be found—though of a truth they are quite
as good as ours, and more ingenious—which according to their content
ought to be concrete, and also were so. But so superficially were they
comprehended that they soon showed themselves far from sufficient for
what had to be derived from them. They said, for instance, that Nature
is a whole, that all is determined by laws, through a combination of
different movements, through a chain of causes and effects, and so on;
the various properties, materials, connections of things bring everything
to pass. These are general phrases, with which one can fill whole books.
a. SYSTÈME DE LA NATURE.
To this philosophy belongs the _Système de la Nature_, the leading work
on the subject, written in Paris by a German, Baron von Hollbach, who was
the central figure of all those philosophers. Montesquieu, d’Alembert,
Rousseau, were for a time in his circle; however much these men were
moved to indignation at the existing state of things, they were yet
in other respects very different from one another. The _Système de la
Nature_ may very easily be found tiresome to read, because it treats
discursively of general conceptions, which are often repeated; it is not
a French book, for vivacity is lacking and the mode of presentation is
dull.
The great Whole of Nature (_le grand tout de la nature_) is the ultimate:
“The universe displays nothing but an immense collection of matter and
motion” (as with Descartes), “an unbroken chain of causes and effects, of
which causes some directly affect our senses, while others are unknown
to us, because their effects, which we perceive, are too remote from
their causes. The different qualities of these materials, their manifold
connections, and the effects which result therefrom, constitute essences
for us. From the diversity of these essences arise the different orders,
species, systems, under which things fall, and whose sum total, the great
whole, is what we call Nature.”[305] It is like what Aristotle (_vide_
Vol. I. p. 241) says of Xenophanes, that he gazed into the blue, _i.e._
into Being. According to Hollbach all is movement, matter moves itself:
beer ferments, the soul is moved by its passions.[306] “The manifold
variety of natural phenomena, and their incessant rise and disappearance,
have their sole ground in the variety of motions and of their material.”
Through different combinations and modifications, through a different
arrangement, another thing is originated. “Material substances have
either a tendency to combine with one another, or else they are incapable
of so combining. Upon this are based by physical scientists the forces of
attraction and repulsion, sympathy and antipathy, affinity and relation;
and the moralists base thereon hatred and love, friendship and enmity.”
Spirit, the incorporeal, contradicts or opposes itself to motion, to a
change of the relations of a body in space.[307]
b. ROBINET.
Another work of importance is the still more “dangerous” treatise, _De la
Nature_, by Robinet. In it there reigns quite a different and a deeper
spirit; one is frequently struck by the depth of earnestness which the
writer displays. He begins thus: “There is a God, _i.e._ a cause of the
phenomena of that Whole which we call Nature. Who is God? We know not,
and we are so constituted that we can never know in what order of things
we have been placed. We cannot know God perfectly, because the means of
doing so will always be lacking to us. We too might write over the doors
of our temples the words which were to be read upon the altar which the
Areopagite raised, ‘To the unknown God.’” The very same thing is said
now-a-days: there can be no transition from the finite to the infinite.
“The order which reigns in the universe is just as little the visible
type of His wisdom, as our weak mind is the image of His intelligence.”
But this First Cause, God, is according to Robinet a creative God, He
has brought Nature into existence; so that for him the only possible
knowledge is that of Nature. “There is only One Cause. The eternal Cause,
who so to speak had sown (_engrainé_) events one in the other, in order
that they might without fail follow one upon another as He chose, in
the beginning set in motion the endless chain of things. Through this
permanent impression the Universe goes on living, moving and perpetuating
itself. From the unity of cause there follows the unity of activity, for
even it does not appear as something to be more or less admitted. By
virtue of this single act all things come to pass. Since man has made
Nature his study, he has found no isolated phenomenon, and no independent
truth, because there are not and cannot be such. The whole sustains
itself through the mutual correspondence of its parts.”[308] The activity
of Nature is one, as God is One.
This activity, more particularly regarded, signifies that germs unfold
themselves in everything: everywhere there are organic Beings which
produce themselves; nothing is isolated, everything is combined and
connected and in harmony. Robinet here goes through the plants, the
animals, and also the metals, the elements, air, fire, water, &c.; and
seeks from them to demonstrate the existence of the germ in whatever has
life, and also how metals are organized in themselves. “The example of
the polypus is convincing as to the animal nature (_animalité_) of the
smallest portions of organized matter; for the polypus is a group of
associated polypi, each of which is as much a true polypus as the first.
It stands proved that from the same point of view the living consists
only of the living, the animals of minute animals, every animal in
particular of minute animals of the same kind, a dog of dog-germs, man of
human germs.” In proof of this Robinet states in a “Recapitulation” that
“animal sperm swarms with spermatic animalcules.” Since he then connects
every propagation properly so-called with the co-operation of both sexes,
he alleges that every individual is inwardly or also in the external
organs a hermaphrodite. Of the minerals he says: “Are we not compelled
to regard as organic bodies all those in which we meet with an inward
structure such as this? It presupposes throughout a seed, seed-granules,
germs, of which they are the development.” In the same way the air must
have its germ, which does not come to reality until it is nourished by
water, fire, &c. “The air, as principle, is only the germ of the air;
as it impregnates or saturates itself in varying degrees with water and
fire, it will gradually pass through different stages of growth: it will
become first embryo, then perfect air.”[309] Robinet gives the name of
germ to the simple form in itself, the substantial form, the Notion.
Although he seeks to prove this too much from the sensuous side, he yet
proceeds from principles in themselves concrete, from the form in itself.
He speaks also of the evil and good in the world. The result of his
observation is that good and evil balance each other; this equilibrium
constitutes the beauty of the world. In order to refute the assertion
that there is more good than evil in the world, he says that everything
to which we reduce the good consists only in an enjoyment, a pleasure,
a satisfaction; but this must be preceded by a want, a lack, a pain,
the removal of which constitutes satisfaction.[310] This is not only a
correct thought empirically, but it also hints at the deeper idea that
there is no activity except through contradiction.
3. IDEA OF A CONCRETE UNIVERSAL UNITY.
The result of the French philosophy is that it insisted on maintaining
a general unity, not abstract, but concrete. Thus Robinet now
propounded the theory of a universal organic life, and a uniform mode
of origination; this concrete system he called Nature, over which God
was set, but as the unknowable; all predicates which could be expressed
of Him contained something inapplicable. We must admit that grand
conceptions of concrete unity are to be found here, as opposed to the
abstract metaphysical determinations of the understanding, _e.g._ the
fruitfulness of Nature. But, on the other hand, the point of most
importance with these philosophers is that what is to be accepted as
valid must have presence, and that man in all knowledge must be himself
the knower; for, as we may see, those philosophers made war on all
external authority of state and church, and in particular on abstract
thought which has no present meaning in us. Two determinations found
in all philosophy are the concretion of the Idea and the presence of
the spirit in the same; my content must at the same time be something
concrete, present. This concrete was termed Reason, and for it the
more noble of those men contended with the greatest enthusiasm and
warmth. Thought was raised like a standard among the nations, liberty of
conviction and of conscience in me. They said to mankind, “In this sign
thou shalt conquer,” for they had before their eyes what had been done in
the name of the cross alone, what had been made a matter of faith and
law and religion—they saw how the sign of the cross had been degraded.
For in the sign of the cross lying and deceit had been victorious, under
this seal institutions had become fossilized, and had sunk into all
manner of degradation, so that this sign came to be represented as the
epitome and root of all evil. Thus in another form they completed the
Reformation that Luther began. This concrete had manifold forms; social
instincts in the practical sphere, laws of nature in the theoretical.
There is present the absolute impulse to find a compass immanent
in themselves, _i.e._ in the human mind. For the human mind it is
imperative to have a fixed point such as this, if, indeed, it is to be
within itself, if it is to be free in its own world at least. But this
striving after really present vitality took forms which as by-paths were
themselves one-sided. In this striving after unity, which was, however,
concrete unity, the further varieties of the content likewise lie.
On the theoretic side of their philosophy, therefore, the French
proceeded to materialism or naturalism, because the requirements of the
understanding, as abstract thought, which from a firmly fixed principle
allows the most monstrous consequences to be drawn, drove them to set up
one principle as ultimate, and that a principle which had at the same
time to be present and to lie quite close to experience. Hence they
accept sensation and matter as the only truth, to which must be reduced
all thought, all morality, as a mere modification of sensation. The
unities which the French propounded were in this way one-sided.
a. OPPOSITION OF SENSATION AND THOUGHT.
To this one-sidedness belongs the opposition between _sentir_ and
_penser_, or else, if you like, their identity, making the latter
only a result of the former; there is not, however, any speculative
reconciliation of this opposition in God, such as we find in Spinoza and
Malebranche. This reduction of all thought to sensation, which in certain
respects took place with Locke, becomes a widely extended theory. Robinet
(_De la Nature_, T. I. P. IV. chap. iii. pp. 257-259) lights also on this
opposition, beyond which he does not get, that mind and body are not
separate, but that the manner in which they are united is inexplicable.
The _Système de la Nature_ (T. I. chap. x. p. 177) is marked by an
especially plain reduction of thought to sensation. The leading
thought is this: “Abstract thoughts are only modes in which our inmost
organ views its own modifications. The words goodness, beauty, order,
intelligence, virtue, &c., have no meaning for us if we do not refer and
apply them to objects which our senses have shown to be capable of these
qualities, or to modes of being and acting which are known to us.” Thus
even psychology passed into materialism, as for instance we may find in
La Mettrie’s work _L’homme Machine_: All thought and all conception have
meaning only if they are apprehended as material; matter alone exists.
b. MONTESQUIEU.
Other great writers have opposed to the above the feeling in the breast,
the instinct of self-preservation, benevolent dispositions towards
others, the impulse to fellowship, which last Puffendorf also made the
foundation of his system of law (_supra_, p. 321). From this point of
view much that is excellent has been said. Thus Montesquieu, in his
charming book, _L’Esprit des Lois_, of which Voltaire said it was an
_esprit sur les lois_, regarded the nations from this important point of
view, that their constitution, their religion, in short, everything that
is to be found in a state, constitutes a totality.
c. HELVETIUS.
This reduction of thought to feeling in the case of Helvetius takes
the form that if in man as a moral being a single principle is sought,
this ought to be called self-love, and he endeavoured to demonstrate by
ingenious analysis that whatever we term virtue, all activity and law and
right, has as its foundation nothing but self-love or selfishness, and is
resolvable thereinto.[311] This principle is one-sided, although the “I
myself” is an essential moment. What I will, the noblest, the holiest, is
_my_ aim; I must take part in it, I must agree to it, I must approve of
it. With all self-sacrifice there is always conjoined some satisfaction,
some finding of self; this element of self, subjective liberty, must
always be present. If this is taken in a one-sided sense, there may be
consequences drawn from it which overthrow all that is sacred; but it is
found in equal degree in a morality as noble as any possibly can be.
d. ROUSSEAU.
In connection with the practical side of things this particular must also
be noted, that when the feeling of right, the concrete practical mind,
and, speaking generally, humanity and happiness were made the principle,
this principle, universally conceived, had certainly the form of thought;
but in the case of such concrete content derived from our impulse or
inward intuition, even though that content were religious, the thought
itself was not the content. But now this further phase appeared, that
pure thought was set up as the principle and content, even if again there
was lacking to this content the true consciousness of its peculiar
form; for it was not recognized that this principle was thought. We see
it emerge in the sphere of will, of the practical, of the just, and so
apprehended that the innermost principle of man, his unity with himself,
is set forth as fundamental and brought into consciousness, so that man
in himself acquired an infinite strength. It is this that Rousseau from
one point of view said about the state. He investigated its absolute
justification, and inquired as to its foundation. The right of ruling and
associating, of the relation of order, of governing and being governed,
he apprehends from his own point of view, so that it is made to rest
historically on power, compulsion, conquest, private property, &c.[312]
Rousseau makes free-will the principle of this justification, and without
reference to the positive right of states he made answer to the above
question (chap. iv. p. 12), that man has free-will, because “liberty is
the distinguishing feature of man. To renounce his liberty signifies to
renounce his manhood. Not to be free is therefore a renunciation of a
man’s rights as a human being, and even of his duties.” The slave has
neither rights nor duties. Rousseau therefore says (chap. vi. p. 21):
“The fundamental task is to find a form of association which will shield
and protect with the power of the whole commonwealth combined the person
and property of every one of its members, and in which each individual,
while joining this association, obeys himself only, and thus remains
as free as before. The solution is given by the Social Contract;” this
is the association of which each is a member by his own will. These
principles, thus abstractly stated, we must allow to be correct, yet
the ambiguity in them soon begins to be felt. Man is free, this is
certainly the substantial nature of man; and not only is this liberty
not relinquished in the state, but it is actually in the state that it
is first realized. The freedom of nature, the gift of freedom, is not
anything real; for the state is the first realization of freedom.
The misunderstanding as to the universal will proceeds from this, that
the Notion of freedom must not be taken in the sense of the arbitrary
caprice of an individual, but in the sense of the rational will, of
the will in and for itself. The universal will is not to be looked on
as compounded of definitively individual wills, so that these remain
absolute; otherwise the saying would be correct: “Where the minority must
obey the majority, there is no freedom.” The universal will must really
be the rational will, even if we are not conscious of the fact; the
state is therefore not an association which is decreed by the arbitrary
will of individuals. The wrong apprehension of these principles does
not concern us. What does concern us is this, that thereby there should
come into consciousness as content the sense that man has liberty in his
spirit as the altogether absolute, that free-will is the Notion of man.
Freedom is just thought itself; he who casts thought aside and speaks of
freedom knows not what he is talking of. The unity of thought with itself
is freedom, the free will. Thought, as volition merely, is the impulse
to abrogate one’s subjectivity, the relation to present existence, the
realizing of oneself, since in that I am endeavouring to place myself as
existent on an equality with myself as thinking. It is only as having
the power of thinking that the will is free. The principle of freedom
emerged in Rousseau, and gave to man, who apprehends himself as infinite,
this infinite strength. This furnishes the transition to the Kantian
philosophy, which, theoretically considered, made this principle its
foundation; knowledge aimed at freedom, and at a concrete content which
it possesses in consciousness.
D. THE GERMAN ILLUMINATION.
The Germans were at this time quietly drifting along in their
Leibnitzo-Wolffian philosophy, in its definitions, axioms and proofs.
Then they were gradually breathed upon by the spirit of foreign lands,
they made acquaintance with all the developments which there came to
pass, and took very kindly to the empiricism of Locke; on the other hand
they at the same time laid aside metaphysical investigations, turned
their attention to the question of how truths can be grasped by the
healthy human understanding, and plunged into the _Aufklärung_ and into
the consideration of the utility of all things—a point of view which
they adopted from the French. Utility as the essence of existent things
signifies that they are determined as not being in themselves, but for
another: this is a necessary moment, but not the only one. The German
_Aufklärung_ warred against ideas, with the principle of utility as its
weapon. Philosophic investigations on this subject had degenerated into
a feeble popular treatment of it which was incapable of going deeper;
they displayed a rigid pedantry and an earnestness of the understanding,
but were unspiritual. The Germans are busy bees who do justice to all
nations, they are old-clothesmen for whom anything is good enough, and
who carry on their haggling with everyone. Picked up as it was from
foreign nations, all this had lost the wit and life, the energy and
originality which with the French had made the content to be lost sight
of in the form. The Germans, who honestly sift a matter to its root, and
who would put rational arguments in the place of wit and vivacity, since
wit and vivacity really prove nothing, in this way reached a content
which was utterly empty, so much so that nothing could be more wearisome
than this profound mode of treatment; such was the case with Eberhard,
Tetens, and those like them.
Others, like Nicolai, Sulzer and their fellows, were excellent in
their speculations on questions of taste and the liberal sciences;
for literature and art were also to flourish among the Germans.
But with all this they only arrived at a most trivial treatment of
æsthetics—Lessing[313] called it shallow chatter. As a matter of fact,
indeed, the poems of Gellert, Weisse and Lessing sank almost, if not
quite as much into the same poetic feebleness. Moreover, previous to
the philosophy of Kant, the general principle was really the theory
of happiness, which we have already met with in the philosophy of
the Cyrenaics (Vol. I. p. 477), and the point of view of pleasant or
unpleasant sensations held good among the philosophers of that time as an
ultimate and essential determination. Of this manner of philosophizing
I will quote an example which Nicolai gives in the account of a
conversation which he had with Mendelssohn: what is in question is the
pleasure in tragic subjects which is held to be awakened even by means of
the unpleasant emotions depicted in a tragedy:
HERR MOSES.
“The power of having an inclination for perfections and of
shunning imperfections is a reality.” Therefore the exercise
of this power brings a pleasure with it, which, however, is in
nature comparatively less than the displeasure which arises from
the contemplation of the object.
I.
Yet even then, when the violence of passion causes us unpleasant
sensations, the movement (what else is this movement than the
power of loving perfections, &c.?) which it brings with it has
still delights for us. It is the strength of the movement which
we enjoy, even in spite of the painful sensations which oppose
what is pleasant in the passion, and in a short time obtain the
victory.
HERR MOSES.
In a stage play, on the contrary, as the imperfect object is
absent, pleasure must gain the upper hand and eclipse the small
degree of displeasure.
I.
A passion therefore which is not followed by these results must
be altogether pleasant. Of this sort are the imitations of the
passions which the tragedy affords.”[314]
With such vapid and meaningless drivel they rambled on. In addition to
these, the eternity of punishment in hell, the salvation of the heathen,
the difference between uprightness and godliness, were philosophic
matters on which much labour was expended among the Germans, while the
French troubled themselves little about them. Finite determinations
were made to hold good against the infinite; against the Trinity it was
asserted that One cannot be Three; against original sin, that each must
bear his own guilt, must have done his own deeds of himself, and must
answer for them; in the same way against redemption, that another cannot
take upon himself punishment that is due; against forgiveness of sin,
that what is done cannot be rendered undone; to sum up generally, the
incommensurability of the human nature with the divine. On the one side
we see healthy human understanding, experience, facts of consciousness,
but on the other side there was still in vogue the Wolffian metaphysics
of the dry, dead understanding; thus we see Mendelssohn take his stand by
the healthy human understanding, and make it his rule.
Some movement was brought into this authority, which had settled into
perfect peace and security and let no dreams of other matters cross its
path, by the chance dispute of Mendelssohn with Jacobi, first as to
whether Lessing had been a disciple of Spinoza, and then regarding the
doctrines of Spinoza himself. On this occasion it came to light how much
Spinoza was really forgotten, and in what horror Spinozism was held. But
while Jacobi in this way once more unexpectedly brought to remembrance
in connection with Spinozism a quite different content of philosophy,
faith, _i.e._ the simply immediate certainty of external, finite things,
as well as of the divine (which faith in the divine he called reason)
was certainly placed by him, as an independent thinker, in opposition to
mediating knowledge, which he apprehended as mere understanding. This
continued until Kant gave a new impulse in Germany to philosophy, which
had died out in the rest of Europe.
As far as the transition to modern German philosophy is concerned, it
is from Hume and Rousseau, as we have said (pp. 369, 374, 402), that
it took its start. Descartes opposes extension to thought, as what is
simply one with itself. He is charged with dualism, but, like Spinoza
and Leibnitz, he did away with the independence of the two sides, and
made supreme their unity, God. But, as this unity, God is first of all
only the Third; and He is further determined in such a way that no
determination pertains to Him. Wolff’s understanding of the finite, his
school metaphysics generally, his science of the understanding, and his
divergence into the observation of nature, after it has grown strong
in its conformity with law and in its finite knowledge, turns against
the infinite and the concrete determinations of religion, and comes to
a standstill with abstractions in his _theologia naturalis_; for the
determinate is his domain. But from this time an utterly different point
of view is introduced. The infinite is transported into abstraction
or incomprehensibility. This is an incomprehensible position to adopt.
Nowadays it is looked on as most pious, most justifiable. But as we see
the third, the unity of differences, defined as something which cannot
be thought or known, this unity is not one of thought, for it is above
all thought, and God is not simply thought. Nevertheless this unity
is defined as the absolutely concrete, _i.e._ as the unity of thought
and Being. Now we have come so far that this unity is a unity simply
in thought, and pertaining to consciousness, so that the objectivity
of thought—reason—comes forth as One and All. This is dimly conceived
by the French. Whether the highest Being, this Being divested of all
determination, is elevated above nature, or whether nature or matter is
the highest unity, there is always present the establishing of something
concrete, which at the same time belongs to thought. Since the liberty of
man has been set up as an absolutely ultimate principle, thought itself
has been set up as a principle. The principle of liberty is not only
in thought but the root of thought; this principle of liberty is also
something in itself concrete, at least in principle it is implicitly
concrete. Thus far have general culture and philosophic culture advanced.
Since what is knowable has now been placed entirely within the sphere of
consciousness, and since the liberty of the spirit has been apprehended
as absolute, this may be understood to mean that knowledge has entered
altogether into the realm of the finite. The standpoint of the finite
was at the same time taken as ultimate, and God as a Beyond outside
consciousness; duties, rights, knowledge of nature, are finite. Man
has thereby formed for himself a kingdom of truth, from which God is
excluded; it is the kingdom of finite truth. The form of finitude may
here be termed the subjective form; liberty, self-consciousness [Ichheit]
of the mind, known as the absolute, is essentially subjective—in fact it
is the subjectivity of thought. The more the human reason has grasped
itself in itself, the more has it come down from God and the more has it
increased the field of the finite. Reason is One and All, which is at the
same time the totality of the finite; reason under these conditions is
finite knowledge and knowledge of the finite. The question is, since it
is this concrete that is established (and not metaphysical abstractions),
how it constitutes itself in itself; and then, how it returns to
objectivity, or abrogates its subjectivity, _i.e._ how by means of
thought God is to be again brought about, who at an earlier time and
at the beginning of this period was recognized as alone the true. This
is what we have to consider in the last period, in dealing with Kant,
Fichte, and Schelling.
SECTION THREE
RECENT GERMAN PHILOSOPHY
In the philosophy of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling, the revolution to which
in Germany mind has in these latter days advanced, was formally thought
out and expressed; the sequence of these philosophies shows the course
which thought has taken. In this great epoch of the world’s history,
whose inmost essence is laid hold of in the philosophy of history,
two nations only have played a part, the German and the French, and
this in spite of their absolute opposition, or rather because they are
so opposite. The other nations have taken no real inward part in the
same, although politically they have indeed so done, both through their
governments and their people. In Germany this principle has burst forth
as thought, spirit, Notion; in France, in the form of actuality. In
Germany, what there is of actuality comes to us as a force of external
circumstances, and as a reaction against the same. The task of modern
German philosophy is, however, summed up in taking as its object the
unity of thought and Being, which is the fundamental idea of philosophy
generally, and comprehending it, that is, in laying hold of the inmost
significance of necessity, the Notion (_supra_, p. 360). The philosophy
of Kant sets forth, in the first place, the formal aspect of the task,
but it has the abstract absoluteness of reason in self-consciousness
as its sole result, and, in one respect, it carried with it a certain
character of shallowness and want of vigour, in which an attitude of
criticism and negativity is retained, and which, as far as any positive
element is concerned, adheres to the facts of consciousness and to mere
conjecture, while it renounces thought and returns to feeling. On the
other hand, however, there sprang from this the philosophy of Fichte,
which speculatively grasps the essence of self-consciousness as concrete
egoism, but which does not reach beyond this subjective form pertaining
to the absolute. From it again comes the philosophy of Schelling, which
subsequently rejects Fichte’s teaching and sets forth the Idea of the
Absolute, the truth in and for itself.
A. JACOBI.
In connection with Kant we must here begin by speaking of Jacobi, whose
philosophy is contemporaneous with that of Kant; in both of these the
advance beyond the preceding period is very evident. The result in the
two cases is much the same, although both the starting point and the
method of progression are somewhat different. In Jacobi’s case the
stimulus was given mainly by French philosophy, with which he was very
conversant, and also by German metaphysics, while Kant began rather from
the English side, that is, from the scepticism of Hume. Jacobi, in that
negative attitude which he preserved as well as Kant, kept before him the
objective aspect of the method of knowledge, and specially considered it,
for he declared knowledge to be in its content incapable of recognizing
the Absolute: the truth must be concrete, present, but not finite.
Kant does not consider the content, but took the view of knowledge
being subjective; and for this reason he declared it to be incapable of
recognizing absolute existence. To Kant knowledge is thus a knowledge of
phenomena only, not because the categories are merely limited and finite,
but because they are subjective. To Jacobi, on the other hand, the chief
point is that the categories are not merely subjective, but that they
themselves are conditioned. This is an essential difference between the
two points of view, even if they both arrive at the same result.
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, born at Düsseldorf in 1743, held office first
in the Duchy of Berg, and then in Bavaria. He studied in Geneva and
Paris, associating in the former place with Bonnet and in the latter
with Diderot. Jacobi was a man of the highest character and culture.
He was long occupied with State affairs, and in Düsseldorf he held a
public office which was connected with the administration of the finance
department in the State. At the time of the French Revolution he was
obliged to retire. As a Bavarian official he went to Munich, there became
President of the Academy of Sciences in 1804, which office he, however,
resigned in 1812; for in the Napoleonic period Protestants were decried
as demagogues. He lived at Munich till the end of his life, and died at
the same place on the 10th of March, 1819.[315]
In the year 1785, Jacobi published Letters on Spinoza, which were written
in 1783, on the occasion of the dispute with Mendelssohn above-mentioned
(p. 406); for in none of his writings did Jacobi develop his philosophy
systematically, he set it forth in letters only. When Mendelssohn wished
to write a life of Lessing, Jacobi sent to ask him if he knew that
“Lessing was a Spinozist” (Jacobi’s Werke, Vol. IV. Sec. 1, pp. 39,
40). Mendelssohn was displeased at this, and it was the occasion of the
correspondence. In the course of the dispute it was made evident that
those who held themselves to be professed philosophers and possessed of
a monopoly of Lessing’s friendship, such as Nicolai, Mendelssohn, &c.,
knew nothing about Spinozism; not only was there manifested in them the
superficial character of their philosophic insight, but ignorance as
well; with Mendelssohn, for instance, this was shown respecting even the
outward history of the Spinozistic philosophy, and much more regarding
the inward (Jacobi’s Werke, Vol. IV. Sec. 1, p. 91). That Jacobi asserted
Lessing to be a Spinozist, and gave a high place to the French—this
serious statement came to these good men as a thunderbolt from the blue.
They—the self-satisfied, self-possessed, superior persons—were quite
surprised that he also made pretensions to knowledge, and of such a “dead
dog” as Spinoza (_ibidem_, p. 68). Explanations followed upon this, in
which Jacobi further developed his philosophic views.
Mendelssohn is directly opposed to Jacobi, for Mendelssohn took his
stand on cognition, placed true existence immediately in thought and
conception, and maintained: “What I cannot think as true does not trouble
me as doubt. A question which I do not understand, I cannot answer, it
is for me as good as no question at all.”[316] He continued to argue on
these same lines. His proof of the existence of God thus carries with
it this necessity of thought, viz. that actuality must plainly be in
thought, and a thinker must be presupposed, or the possibility of the
actual is in the thinker. “What no thinking Being conceives as possible
is not possible, and what is thought by no thinking creature as actual
cannot be actual in fact. If we take away from anything whatsoever the
conception formed by a thinking Being that that thing is possible or
actual, the thing itself is done away with.” The Notion of the thing
is thus to man the essence of the same. “No finite Being can think the
actuality of a thing in its perfection as actual, and still less can
he perceive the possibility and actuality of all present things. There
must thus be a thinking Being or an understanding which in the most
perfect way thinks the content of all possibilities as possible, and the
content of all actualities as actual; _i.e._ there must be an infinite
understanding, and this is God.”[317] Here on the one hand we see a
unity of thought and Being, on the other the absolute unity as infinite
understanding—the former is the self-consciousness which is apprehended
as finite merely. Actuality, Being, has its possibility in thought, or
its possibility is thought; it is not a process from possibility to
actuality, for the possibility remains at home in the actuality.
Jacobi maintains against these demands of thought—and this in one
view is the chief thought in his philosophy—that every method of
their demonstration leads to fatalism, atheism, and Spinozism,[318]
and presents God as derived and founded upon something else; for
comprehending Him signifies demonstrating His dependence. Jacobi thus
asserts that mediate knowledge consists in giving a cause of something
which has in its turn a finite effect, and so on; so that a knowledge
such as this can all through relate to the finite only.
Jacobi further states upon this subject, in the first place, that
“Reason”—later on when he distinguished reason and understanding (of
which more hereafter[319]), he altered it to understanding[320]—“can
never bring to light more than the conditions of what is conditioned,
natural laws and mechanism. We comprehend a thing when we can deduce it
from its proximate causes,” and not from the remoter causes; the most
remote and quite universal cause is always God. “Or” we know the thing
if we “perceive its immediate conditions as they come in due succession.
Thus, for instance, we comprehend a circle when we can clearly represent
to ourselves the mechanism of its origination or its physical conditions;
we know the syllogistic formulæ when we have actually come to know
the laws to which the human understanding is subject in judgment and
conclusion, its physical nature and its mechanism. For this reason we
have no conceptions of qualities as such, but only intuitions. Even
of our present existence we have a feeling only, but no conceptions.
Genuine conceptions we have merely of figure, number, position, movement
and the forms of thought; qualities are known and understood, if they
are traced back to these and objectively annulled.” This is undoubtedly
really finite knowledge, which is to give the determinate conditions
of anything determinate, to demonstrate it as resulting from another
cause, in such a way that each condition is again conditioned and finite.
Jacobi continues: “The business of reason is really progressive union
and connection, and its speculative business is union and connection
in accordance with the known laws of necessity, _i.e._ of identity.
Everything that reason can bring forth by means of analysis, combination,
judgment, conclusion, and re-conception, consists in nothing but things
of nature” (_i.e._ finite things), “and reason itself, as a limited
existence, belongs to these things. But the whole of nature, the sum
of all conditioned existence, cannot reveal more to the investigating
understanding than what is contained in it, namely, manifold existence,
changes, a succession of forms” (the conditioned), “and not an actual
beginning” (of the world), “nor a real principle of any objective
existence.”[321]
But Jacobi in the second place here accepts reason in a wider sense and
says: “If we understand by reason the principle of knowledge generally,
it is the mind from which the whole living nature of man is constituted;
through it man arises; he is a form which it has adopted.” With this
Jacobi’s view of the attempt to know the unconditioned is connected. “I
take the whole human being, and find that his consciousness is composed
of two original conceptions, the conceptions of the conditioned and the
unconditioned. Both are inseparably bound up with one another, and yet
in such a way that the conception of the conditioned presupposes the
conception of the unconditioned, and can be given in this alone. We
are just as certain of its existence as we are of our own conditioned
existence, or even more so. Since our conditioned existence rests on
an infinitude of mediations, there is opened up to our investigation a
vast field which, for the sake of our preservation even, we are forced
to work upon.” It would, however, be quite another thing to wish to know
the unconditioned apart from this practical end. However Jacobi here
remarks, “To try to discover the conditions of the unconditioned, to find
a possibility for absolute necessity, and to construct this last in order
to be able to comprehend it, is what we undertake when we endeavour to
make nature an existence comprehensible to us, _i.e._ a merely natural
existence, and to bring the mechanism of the principle of mechanism into
the light of day. For if everything which can be said to arise and be
present in a way comprehensible to us, must arise and be present in a
conditioned way, we remain, so long as we continue to comprehend, in a
chain of conditioned conditions. Where this chain breaks off, we cease
to comprehend, and there the connection which we call nature likewise
ceases. The conception of the possibility of the outward existence of
nature would thus be the conception of an absolute beginning or origin
of nature; it would be the conception of the unconditioned itself in so
far as it is a conditioning of nature not naturally connected, _i.e._
a conditioning of nature unconnected and unconditioned for us. Now
should a conception of what is thus unconditioned and unconnected, and
consequently supernatural, be possible, the unconditioned must cease
to be unconditioned, it must itself receive conditions; and absolute
necessity must commence to be possibility in order that it may allow
itself to be constructed.”[322] This is contradictory.
Jacobi then passes on from this point to the second of his main
propositions, “The unconditioned is called the supernatural. Now since
everything which lies outside the connection of what is conditioned, of
what is naturally mediated, also lies outside the sphere of our clear
and certain knowledge, and cannot be understood through conceptions,
the supernatural cannot be accepted in any other way by us than that
in which it is given to us—namely as a fact. It is! This supernatural,
this essence of all essence, all tongues join in proclaiming to be
God.”[323] God as the universal, the true, is here taken in the sense
of a spiritual generally, in the sense of power, wisdom, &c. That
God is, however, is to Jacobi not absolutely true; for to knowledge
pertains His objective absolute existence, but He cannot be said to be
known. It is thus merely a fact of my consciousness that God exists
independently apart from my consciousness; this, however, is itself
maintained through my consciousness; the subjective attitude of thought
is thus to Jacobi the element of most importance. The consciousness of
God, which is in our consciousness, is, however, of such a nature that
along with the thought of God we have immediately associated the fact
that He is. The existence of the supernatural and supersensuous, to
which the thought of man regarding the natural and finite passes on, is
just as certain to Jacobi as he is himself. This certainty is identical
with his self-consciousness; as certainly as I am, so certainly is
God (Jacobi’s Werke, Vol. III. p. 35). Since he thus passes back into
self-consciousness, the unconditioned is only for us in an immediate way;
this immediate knowledge Jacobi calls Faith, inward revelation (Werke,
Vol. II. pp. 3, 4); to this appeal can be made in man. God, the absolute,
the unconditioned, cannot, according to Jacobi, be proved. For proof,
comprehension, means to discover conditions for something, to derive it
from conditions; but a derived absolute, God, &c., would thus not be
absolute at all, would not be unconditioned, would not be God (Jacobi’s
Werke, Vol. III. p. 7). This immediate knowledge of God is then the point
which is maintained in the philosophy of Jacobi. The faith of Kant and
of Jacobi are, however, different. To Kant it is a postulate of reason,
it is the demand for the solution of the contradiction between the world
and goodness; to Jacobi it is represented on its own account as immediate
knowledge.
Everything which has been written upon God since Jacobi’s time, by
philosophers such as Fries and by theologians, rests on this conception
of immediate intellectual knowledge, and men even call this revelation,
though in another sense than the revelation of theology. Revelation as
immediate knowledge is in ourselves, while the Church holds revelation
to be something imparted from without.[324] In the theological sense,
faith is faith in something which is given to us through teaching. It
is a sort of deception when faith and revelation are spoken of and
represented as if faith and revelation in the theological sense were
here in question; for the sense in which they are used, and which may be
termed philosophic, is quite a different one, however pious an air may be
assumed in using the terms. This is Jacobi’s standpoint, and whatever is
by philosophers and theologians said against it, this teaching is eagerly
accepted and disseminated. And nowhere is there anything to be found
but reflections originating from Jacobi, whereby immediate knowledge
is opposed to philosophic knowledge and to reason; and people speak
of reason, philosophy, &c., as a blind man speaks of colours. It is,
indeed, allowed that a man cannot make shoes unless he is a shoemaker,
even although he have the measure and foot, and also the hands. But when
Philosophy is concerned, immediate knowledge signifies that every man
as he walks and stands is a philosopher, that he can dogmatize as he
chooses, and that he is completely acquainted with Philosophy.
By reason, however, mediate knowledge merely is on the one hand
understood, and on the other the intellectual perception which speaks of
facts (_supra_, pp. 413-415). In this respect it is true that reason is
the knowledge and revelation of absolute truth, since the understanding
is the revelation of the finite (Jacobi’s Werke, Vol. II. pp. 8-14,
101). “We maintained that two different powers of perception in man have
to be accepted: a power of perception through visible and tangible and
consequently corporeal organs of perception, and another kind of power,
viz. through an invisible organ which in no way represents itself to
the outward senses, and whose existence is made known to us through
feeling alone. This organ, a spiritual eye for spiritual objects, has
been called by men—generally speaking—reason. He whom the pure feelings
of the beautiful and good, of admiration and love, of respect and awe,
do not convince that in and with these feelings he perceives something
to be present which is independent of them, and which is unattainable by
the outward senses or by an understanding directed upon their perceptions
alone—such an one cannot be argued with” (Jacobi’s Werke, Vol. II. pp.
74, 76). But by faith Jacobi likewise understands all that has immediacy
of Being for me: “Through faith we know that we have a body, we become
aware of other actual things, and that indeed with the same certainty
with which we are aware of ourselves. We obtain all conceptions through
the qualities which we receive and accept, and there is no other way
of attaining real knowledge; for reason, when it begets objects, begets
phantoms of the brain. Thus we have a revelation of nature.”[325] Hence
the expression faith, which had a deep significance in religion, is made
use of for different contents of every kind; this in our own time is the
point of view most commonly adopted.
Jacobi here brings faith into opposition with thought. Let us compare the
two, and discover whether they are separated by so great a chasm as those
who thus oppose them think. On the one hand absolute existence is to
faith immediate; believing consciousness feels itself penetrated by this
as by its essence: that existence is its life, believing consciousness
asserts itself to be in direct unity with it. Thought thinks the
absolute existence; such existence is to it absolute thought, absolute
understanding, pure thought; but that signifies that it is likewise
immediate itself. On the other hand to faith the immediacy of absolute
existence has also the significance of a Being: it _is_, and is another
than ‘I.’ And the same is true of the thinker; to him it is absolute
Being, actual in itself, and different from self-consciousness or thought
as finite understanding, to use the common term. Now what is the reason
that faith and thought do not understand one another, and each recognize
itself in the other? In the first place faith has no consciousness of
being a thought, inasmuch as it asserts absolute consciousness to be
identical with it as self-consciousness, and has direct inward knowledge
of the same. But it expresses this simple unity; in its consciousness
it is only immediacy so to speak in the signification of Being, a unity
of its unconscious substance. In the second place Being-for-self is
contained in thought; to this faith opposes the immediacy of Being.
Thought, on the contrary, has the immediate as absolute potentiality,
as absolutely a thing of thought: and the immediacy belonging to this
thing of thought is without the determination of Being, of life. On
the heights of this abstraction the two stand opposed to each other,
as the _Aufklärung_ which asserts absolute existence to be a Beyond of
self-consciousness, and as the materialism which makes it so to speak
present matter (_supra_, pp. 382, 383). In the one case it is in faith
and thought as positive existence or thought, and in the other it is the
negative of self-consciousness, which is thus either only determined as
negative, as a Beyond, or likewise as existent for self-consciousness.
Hence faith and thought are both of them knowledge. We call universal
knowledge thought, particular knowledge we call sensuous perception;
and we term the introduction of external determinations understanding.
The universal element in man is thought, but to it likewise appertains
religious feeling for instance; the animal does not possess it, for it
has no human feeling; and in so far as this feeling is religious, it is
the feeling of a thinker, and what determines this feeling is not the
determination of natural desire, &c., but a universal determination. Thus
God, even though He is only felt and believed in, is yet the universal
taken quite abstractly—even in His personality He is the absolutely
universal personality.
As thought and faith are thus one, the same is true of the antithesis
between mediated and immediate knowledge. We must, it is true, keep
before our eyes the fact that what is revealed in immediate knowledge
is the universal. But abstract immediate knowledge is natural, sensuous
knowledge; the immediate man in his natural condition, in his desires,
does not know this universal. Children, the Esquimaux, &c., know nothing
of God; or what the natural man knows of Him is not a real knowledge
of Him. Thus the intuitive knowledge of the Egyptians told them that
God was an ox or a cat, and the Indians still possess similar sorts of
knowledge. On the other hand when man has come so far as to know God
as merely an object of the mind, _i.e._ as spiritual, it is easy to
perceive that this knowledge which is asserted to be immediate is really
a result mediated through instruction, through a long continued culture.
It is only by means of being elevated above nature that man arrives at
a consciousness of what is higher, and at a knowledge of the universal;
there indeed his knowledge is immediate, but he has only arrived at this
through mediation. I think, and thus I know the universal immediately,
but this very thought is just process in itself, movement and life. All
life is process within itself, is mediated, and this is all the more
true of spiritual life; for it is the passing from one to the other,
that is, from the merely natural and sensuous to the spiritual. It thus
indicates a deficiency in the most simple reflection not to know that the
universal is not in immediate knowledge, but is a result of the culture,
the education, and the self-revelation of the human race. If immediate
knowledge is to be allowed, everyone will be responsible merely to
himself: this man knows this, another that, and consequently everything
is justified and approved, however contrary to right and religion. This
opposition between immediacy and mediacy is thus a very barren and quite
empty determination; it is a platitude of the extremest type to consider
anything like this to be a true opposition; it proceeds from a most
wooden understanding, which thinks that an immediacy can be something on
its own account, without a mediation within itself. If Philosophy were
to result in this it would be a poor affair; these determinations are
merely forms, none of which has intrinsic truth. The form into which
Philosophy has in Jacobi’s case finally fallen, which is that immediacy
is grasped as absolute, manifests a lack of all critical faculty, of
all logic. The Kantian philosophy is critical philosophy, but from it
the fact has been omitted that we cannot constitute the infinite with
finite categories—and immediacy is such an one. When we regard this
opposition more closely all knowledge may be termed immediate, but all
immediate knowledge is likewise mediated in itself. This we know within
our consciousness, and we may see it in the most general phenomena. I
know, for example, of America immediately, and yet this knowledge is very
much mediated. If I stand in America and see its soil, I must first of
all have journeyed to it, Columbus must first have discovered it, ships
must have been built, &c.; all these discoveries and inventions pertain
to it. That which we now know immediately is consequently a result of
infinitely many mediations. Likewise when I see a right-angled triangle
I know that the squares of the two sides are equal to the square of the
hypotenuse: I know this immediately, and yet I have merely learned it and
am convinced of it through the mediation of proof. Immediate knowledge
is thus everywhere mediated, and Philosophy does nothing but bring this
to consciousness—demonstrating the mediation which in point of fact is
already present there, _e.g._ in religion, &c.
The philosophy of Jacobi, inasmuch as it says: “Thought cannot proceed
further than to the feeling of God,” has been accepted _utiliter_; it
was more easily arrived at than in the case of Kant. Knowledge, however,
is something very different from what Jacobi calls such; against finite
knowledge his arguments are quite correct. Immediate knowledge is not
knowledge, comprehension, for that implies that the content is determined
in itself, _i.e._ is grasped as concrete. But in immediate knowledge
it is the case that the only fact known of God is that He exists. For
should there be determinations respecting God, they must, according to
Jacobi, be grasped as a finite, and the knowledge of them would again
merely be a progression from finite to finite. There thus remains only
the indeterminate conception of God, an “Above me,” an indeterminate
Beyond. This gives accordingly the same result as does the _Aufklärung_,
viz. that the highest reality is ultimate: we find the same in French
philosophy and in Kant—only here we still have the opinion that this
emptiness is the highest philosophy possible. But if each standpoint has
an aspect wherein it is justified, there always rests in the proposition
that the human mind knows God immediately, the important consideration
that we have here a recognition of the freedom of the human spirit: in
it we have the source of the knowledge of God, and all externality of
authority is thus abrogated in this principle. The principle is hereby
gained, but only the principle of freedom of spirit; and the greatness of
our time rests in the fact that freedom, the peculiar possession of mind
whereby it is at home with itself in itself, is recognized, and that mind
has this consciousness within itself. This however is merely abstract,
for the next step is that the principle of freedom is again purified
and comes to its true objectivity, so that not everything which strikes
me or springs up within me must, because it is manifested in me, hold
good as true. It is only through thought, which casts off the particular
and accidental, that the principle receives this objectivity which is
independent of mere subjectivity and in and for itself—though in such a
way that the freedom of mind still remains respected. One’s own spirit
must bear witness to spirit that God is Spirit; the content must be true.
But this does not give authenticity to itself by its being revealed
with certainty to me. This is the standpoint, and we have thus seen its
deficiency and the greatness of the principle which is involved in it.
B. KANT.
The philosophy of Kant, which we have now more particularly to consider,
made its appearance at the same time as the above. While Descartes
asserted certainty to be the unity of thought and Being, we now have the
consciousness of thought in its subjectivity, _i.e._ in the first place,
as determinateness in contrast with objectivity, and then as finitude
and progression in finite determinations. Abstract thought as personal
conviction is that which is maintained as certain; its contents are
experience, but the methods adopted by experience are once more formal
thought and argument. Kant turns back to the standpoint of Socrates;
we see in him the freedom of the subject as we saw it with the Stoics,
but the task in respect of content is now placed on a higher level. An
endless aiming at the concrete is required for thought, a filling up in
accordance with the rule which completion prescribes, which signifies
that the content is itself the Idea as the unity of the Notion and
reality. With Jacobi thought, demonstration, does not in the first
place reach beyond the finite and conditioned, and in the second place,
even when God is likewise the metaphysical object, the demonstration is
really the making Him conditioned and finite; in the third place the
unconditioned, what is then immediately certain, only exists in faith, a
subjectively fixed point of view but an unknowable one, that is to say
an undetermined, indeterminable, and consequently an unfruitful one. The
standpoint of the philosophy of Kant, on the contrary, is in the first
place to be found in the fact that thought has through its reasoning
got so far as to grasp itself not as contingent but rather as in itself
the absolute ultimate. In the finite, in connection with the finite,
an absolute standpoint is raised which acts as a connecting bond; it
binds together the finite and leads up to the infinite. Thought grasped
itself as all in all, as absolute in judgment; for it nothing external
is authoritative, since all authority can receive validity only through
thought. This thought, determining itself within itself and concrete,
is, however, in the second place, grasped as subjective, and this
aspect of subjectivity is the form which from Jacobi’s point of view is
predominant; the fact that thought is concrete Jacobi has on the other
hand for the most part set aside. Both standpoints remain philosophies
of subjectivity; since thought is subjective, the capacity of knowing the
absolute is denied to it. To Kant God cannot on the one hand be found
in experience; He can neither be found in outward experience—as Lalande
discovered when he swept the whole heavens and found no God—nor can He be
discovered within; though no doubt mystics and enthusiasts can experience
many things in themselves, and amongst these God, _i.e._ the Infinite.
On the other hand Kant argues to prove the existence of God, who is to
him an hypothesis necessary for the explanation of things, a postulate
of practical reason. But in this connection another French astronomer
made the following reply to the Emperor Napoleon: “_Je n’ai pas eu
besoin de cette hypothèse._” According to this the truth underlying
the Kantian philosophy is the recognition of freedom. Even Rousseau
represented the absolute to be found in freedom; Kant has the same
principle, but taken rather from the theoretic side. The French regard
it from the side of will, which is represented in their proverb: “_Il a
la tête près du bonnet._” France possesses the sense of actuality, of
promptitude; because in that country conception passes more immediately
into action, men have there applied themselves more practically to the
affairs of actuality. But however much freedom may be in itself concrete,
it was as undeveloped and in its abstraction that it was there applied
to actuality; and to make abstractions hold good in actuality means to
destroy actuality. The fanaticism which characterized the freedom which
was put into the hands of the people was frightful. In Germany the same
principle asserted the rights of consciousness on its own account, but
it has been worked out in a merely theoretic way. We have commotions of
every kind within us and around us, but through them all the German head
quietly keeps its nightcap on and silently carries on its operations
beneath it.
Immanuel Kant was born at Königsberg in 1724, and there studied theology
to begin with; in the year 1755 he entered upon his work as an academic
teacher; in 1770 he became professor of logic, and in 1804 he died at
Königsberg on the 12th of February, having almost attained his eightieth
year (Tennemann’s Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie by Wendt, §
380, pp. 465, 466), without ever having left his native town.
While to Wolff thought as thought was merely positive self-identity
and grasped itself as such, we saw the negative self-moving thought,
the absolute Notion, appear in all its power in France; and in the
_Aufklärung_ it likewise made its way to Germany in such a manner
that all existence, all action, was called upon to serve a useful
purpose, _i.e._ the implicit was done away with and everything had
to be for another; and that for which everything had to be is man,
self-consciousness, taken, however, as signifying all men generally. The
consciousness of this action in abstract form is the Kantian philosophy.
It is thus the self-thinking absolute Notion that passes into itself
which we see making its appearance in Germany through this philosophy,
in such a way that all reality falls within self-consciousness; it
is the idealism which vindicates all moments of the implicit to
self-consciousness, but which at first itself remains subject to a
contradiction, inasmuch as it still separates this implicit from itself.
In other words the Kantian philosophy no doubt leads reality back to
self-consciousness, but it can supply no reality to this essence of
self-consciousness, or to this pure self-consciousness, nor can it
demonstrate Being in the same. It apprehends simple thought as having
difference in itself, but does not yet apprehend that all reality rests
on this difference; it does not know how to obtain mastery over the
individuality of self-consciousness, and although it describes reason
very well, it does this in an unthinking empiric way which again robs
it of the truth it has. Theoretically the Kantian philosophy is the
“Illumination” or _Aufklärung_ reduced to method; it states that nothing
true can be known, but only the phenomenal; it leads knowledge into
consciousness and self-consciousness, but from this standpoint maintains
it to be a subjective and finite knowledge. Thus although it deals with
the infinite Idea, expressing its formal categories and arriving at
its concrete claims, it yet again denies this to be the truth, making
it a simple subjective, because it has once for all accepted finite
knowledge as the fixed and ultimate standpoint. This philosophy made an
end of the metaphysic of the understanding as an objective dogmatism,
but in fact it merely transformed it into a subjective dogmatism, _i.e._
into a consciousness in which these same finite determinations of the
understanding persist, and the question of what is true in and for itself
has been abandoned. Its study is made difficult by its diffuseness and
prolixity, and by the peculiar terminology found in it. Nevertheless this
diffuseness has one advantage, that inasmuch as the same thing is often
repeated, the main points are kept before us, and these cannot easily be
lost from view.
We shall endeavour to trace the lines which Kant pursued. The philosophy
of Kant has in the first place a direct relation to that of Hume as
stated above (p. 370). That is to say, the significance of the Kantian
philosophy, generally expressed, is from the very beginning to allow
that determinations such as those of universality and necessity are
not to be met with in perception, and this Hume has already shown in
relation to Locke. But while Hume attacks the universality and necessity
of the categories generally, and Jacobi their finitude, Kant merely
argues against their objectivity in so far as they are present in
external things themselves, while maintaining them to be objective in
the sense of holding good as universal and necessary, as they do, for
instance, in mathematics and natural science.[326] The fact that we
crave for universality and necessity as that which first constitutes
the objective, Kant thus undoubtedly allows. But if universality and
necessity do not exist in external things, the question arises “Where are
they to be found?” To this Kant, as against Hume, maintains that they
must be _a priori_, _i.e._ that they must rest on reason itself, and on
thought as self-conscious reason; their source is the subject, “I” in my
self-consciousness.[327] This, simply expressed, is the main point in the
Kantian philosophy.
In the second place the philosophy of Kant is likewise called a critical
philosophy because its aim, says Kant, is first of all to supply a
criticism of our faculties of knowledge; for before obtaining knowledge
we must inquire into the faculties of knowledge. To the healthy human
understanding that is plausible, and to it this has been a great
discovery. Knowledge is thereby represented as an instrument, as a method
and means whereby we endeavour to possess ourselves of the truth. Thus
before men can make their way to the truth itself they must know the
nature and function of their instrument. They must see whether it is
capable of supplying what is demanded of it—of seizing upon the object;
they must know what the alterations it makes in the object are, in order
that these alterations may not be mixed up with the determinations of
the object itself.[328] This would appear as though men could set forth
upon the search for truth with spears and staves. And a further claim is
made when it is said that we must know the faculty of knowledge before
we can know. For to investigate the faculties of knowledge means to know
them; but how we are to know without knowing, how we are to apprehend the
truth before the truth, it is impossible to say. It is the old story of
the σχολαστικός who would not go into the water till he could swim. Thus
since the investigation of the faculties of knowledge is itself knowing,
it cannot in Kant attain to what it aims at because it is that already—it
cannot come to itself because it is already with itself; the same thing
happens as happened with the Jews, the Spirit passes through the midst of
them and they know it not. At the same time the step taken by Kant is a
great and important one—that is, the fact that he has made knowledge the
subject of his consideration.
On the one hand this critique of knowledge applies to the empirical
knowledge of Locke, which asserts itself to be grounded on experience,
and, on the other hand, it also deals with what claims to be on the whole
a more metaphysical kind of philosophy—the Wolffian and German—which
had also taken up the line of proceeding on the more empiric method
which has been depicted. But this last has at the same time kept itself
separate from the merely empiric method, inasmuch as its main efforts
have been directed towards making such categories of thought as those of
potentiality, actuality, God, &c., have as their foundation categories of
the understanding, and then reasoning from them. The Kantian philosophy
is in the first instance directed against both. Kant takes away the
objective significance of the determinations of the Wolffian metaphysics,
and shows how they must be ascribed to subjective thought alone. At the
same time Jacobi likewise declared himself against this metaphysic, but
since he started more especially from the standpoint of the French and
Germans, his point of view was different: he asserts that our finite
thought can set forth finite determinations alone, and thus can only
consider God and Spirit in accordance with finite relationships. On
the practical side there reigned at that time the so-called happiness
theory, since man’s inherent Notion and the way to realize this Notion
was apprehended in morality as a satisfaction of his desires. As against
this Kant has very rightly shown that it involves a heteronomy and not
an autonomy of reason—a determination through nature and consequently
an absence of freedom. But because the rational principle of Kant was
formal, and his successors could not make any further progress with
reason, and yet morality had to receive a content, Fries and others must
still be called Hedonists though they avoid giving themselves the name.
In the third place, as regards the relation of the categories to the
material which is given through experience, there is according to
Kant already inherent in the subjective determinations of thought,
_e.g._ in those of cause and effect, the capacity of themselves to
bind together the differences which are present in that material. Kant
considers thought as in great measure a synthetic activity, and hence
he represents the main question of Philosophy to be this, “How are
synthetic judgments _a priori_ possible?”[329] Judgment signifies the
combination of thought-determinations as subject and predicate. Synthetic
judgments _a priori_ are nothing else than a connection of opposites
through themselves, or the absolute Notion, _i.e._ the relations of
different determinations such as those of cause and effect, given
not through experience but through thought. Space and time likewise
form the connecting element; they are thus _a priori_, _i.e._ in
self-consciousness. Since Kant shows that thought has synthetic judgments
_a priori_ which are not derived from perception, he shows that thought
is so to speak concrete in itself. The idea which is present here is a
great one, but, on the other hand, quite an ordinary signification is
given it, for it is worked out from points of view which are inherently
rude and empirical, and a scientific form is the last thing that
can be claimed for it. In the presentation of it there is a lack of
philosophical abstraction, and it is expressed in the most commonplace
way; to say nothing more of the barbarous terminology, Kant remains
restricted and confined by his psychological point of view and empirical
methods.
To mention one example only of his barbarous expressions, Kant calls
his philosophy (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 19) a Transcendental
philosophy, _i.e._ a system of principles of pure reason which
demonstrate the universal and necessary elements in the self-conscious
understanding, without occupying themselves with objects or inquiring
what universality and necessity are; this last would be transcendent.
Transcendent and transcendental have accordingly to be clearly
distinguished. Transcendent mathematics signifies the mathematics in
which the determination of infinitude is made use of in a pre-eminent
degree: in this sphere of mathematics we say, for instance, that the
circle consists of an infinitude of straight lines; the periphery
is represented as straight, and since the curve is represented as
straight this passes beyond the geometric category and is consequently
transcendent. Kant, on the contrary, defines the transcendental
philosophy as not a philosophy which by means of categories passes beyond
its own sphere, but one which points out in subjective thought, in
consciousness, the sources of what may become transcendent. Thought would
thus be transcendent if the categories of universality, of cause and
effect, were predicated of the object, for in this way men would from the
subjective element ‘transcend’ into another sphere. We are not justified
in so doing as regards the result nor even to begin with, since we
merely contemplate thought within thought itself. Thus we do not desire
to consider the categories in their objective sense, but in so far as
thought is the source of such synthetic relationships; the necessary and
universal thus here receive the significance of resting in our faculties
of knowledge. But from this faculty of knowledge Kant still separates the
implicit, the thing-in-itself, so that the universality and necessity are
all the time a subjective conditionment of knowledge merely, and reason
with its universality and necessity does not attain to a knowledge of
the truth.[330] For it requires perception and experience, a material
empirically given in order, as subjectivity, to attain to knowledge.
As Kant says, these form its “constituent parts”; one part it has in
itself, but the other is empirically given.[331] When reason desires to
be independent, to exist in itself and to derive truth from itself, it
becomes transcendent; it transcends experience because it lacks the other
constituent, and then creates mere hallucinations of the brain. It is
hence not constitutive in knowledge but only regulative; it is the unity
and rule for the sensuous manifold. But this unity on its own account
is the unconditioned, which, transcending experience, merely arrives at
contradictions. In the practical sphere alone is reason constitutive. The
critique of reason is consequently not the knowing of objects, but of
knowledge and its principles, its range and limitations, so that it does
not become transcendent.[332] This is an extremely general account of
what we shall now consider in its separate details.
In dealing with this matter Kant adopts the plan of first considering
theoretic reason, the knowledge which relates to outward objects. In the
second place he investigates the will as self-actualization; and, in the
third place, the faculty of judgment, the special consideration of the
unity of the universal and individual; how far he gets in this matter we
shall likewise see. But the critique of the faculty of knowledge is the
matter of main importance.
1. In the first place, as to the theoretic philosophy, Kant in the
Critique of Pure Reason sets to work in a psychological manner, _i.e._
historically, inasmuch as he describes the main stages in theoretic
consciousness. The first faculty is sensuousness generally, the second
understanding, the third reason. All this he simply narrates; he accepts
it quite empirically, without developing it from the Notion or proceeding
by necessity.
a. The _a priori_ fact of sensuous existence, the forms of sensuous
existence, constitute the beginning of this transcendentalism. Kant
calls the judgment of the same the transcendental æsthetic. Nowadays
æsthetic signifies the knowledge of the beautiful. But here the doctrine
of intuition or perception is taken from the point of view of its
universality, _i.e._ from what in it pertains to the subject as such.
Perception, says Kant, is the knowledge of an object given to us through
the senses; sensuousness, however, is the capacity of being affected by
conceptions as external. Now, according to Kant, in perception there
are to be found all manner of contents, and in dealing with this he
first of all distinguishes feeling as external, such as redness, colour,
hardness, &c., and then as internal, such as justice, wrath, love, fear,
pleasurable and religious feelings, &c. He says content such as this
forms the one constituent and pertains to feeling; all this is subjective
and merely subjective. In this sensuous element there is, however, a
universal sensuous element likewise contained, which as such does not
belong to feeling in so far as it is immediately determined; in such a
content this ‘other’ consists in the categories of space and time, which
of themselves are void and empty. The filling in is performed by the
content, by colour, softness, hardness, &c., as regards space; while as
regards time, the same content, so soon as it is something transient,
or again some other content, and in particular inward feelings are what
causes the determination. Space and time are consequently pure, _i.e._
abstract perceptions in which we place outside of us the content of
individual sensations, either in time as succeeding one another, or in
space as separate from one another. Here we thus meet with the division
between subjectivity and objectivity, for if we isolate the ‘alongside
of’ and ‘after’ we have space and time. It is the act of _a priori_
sensuousness to project the content; the forms of intuition or perception
constitute this pure perception.[333] Now everything indeed is termed
perception, even thought and consciousness; God, who certainly pertains
to thought alone, is said to be comprehended by perception or intuition,
the so-called immediate consciousness.
Kant further remarks in this regard, (1) “Space is no empirical Notion
which has been derived from outward experiences.” But the Notion is
never really anything empiric: it is in barbarous forms like this that
Kant, however, always expresses himself: “For in order that I may relate
my sensations to something outside of me, I must presuppose space.” Of
time Kant speaks in similar terms: “In order that something outside of
me may be represented in separate space or time, the conception of space
and time must come first, or it cannot be derived from experience, for
experience first becomes possible through this antecedent conception.”
That is to say, time and space which may appear as objective, since their
particular filling in certainly belongs to subjective feeling, are not
empirical; for consciousness has time and space first of all in itself.
(2) “Space is a necessary conception which lies at the basis of all
external perceptions. Space and time are conceptions _a priori_, because
we cannot represent things without space and time. Time is a necessary
basis for all phenomena.” As _a priori_, space and time are universal
and necessary, that is to say we find this to be the case; but it does
not follow that they must be previously present as conceptions. They
are fundamental indeed, but they are likewise an external universal.
Kant however places the matter somewhat in this fashion: there are
things-in-themselves outside, but devoid of time and space; consciousness
now comes, and it has time and space beforehand present in it as the
possibility of experience, just as in order to eat it has mouth and
teeth, &c., as conditions necessary for eating. The things which are
eaten have not the mouth and teeth, and as eating is brought to bear
on things, so space and time are also brought to bear on them; just as
things are placed in the mouth and between the teeth, so is it with space
and time. (3) “Space and time are not general Notions of the relations
of things, but pure intuitive perceptions. For we can only represent
to ourselves one space; there are not different component parts of
space.” The same is the case with time. The abstract conception tree,
for example, is in its actuality a number of individual and separate
trees, but spaces are not such particulars, nor are they parts; for
one immediate continuity remains, and hence a simple unity. Ordinary
perception has always something individual before it; space or time are
always however one only, and therefore _a priori_. It might however be
replied to Kant: The nature of space and time undoubtedly involves their
being an abstract universal; but there is in like manner only one blue.
(4) “Each Notion or conception certainly comprises an infinite number
of conceptions under itself, but not within itself; nevertheless this
last is the case in space and time, and they are therefore intuitive
perceptions and not Notions or conceptions.”[334] Space and time, then,
are certainly not thought-determinations, if no thoughts are there
present, but a Notion, so soon as we have a Notion of them.
From the transcendental point of view it is likewise maintained that
this conception of space and time contains synthetic propositions _a
priori_, connected with the consciousness of its necessity. Examples of
these synthetic propositions are sought in statements such as that of
space having three dimensions, or in the definition of a straight line,
that it is the shortest distance between two points, and likewise in
the statement that 5 + 7 = 12.[335] All these propositions are however
very analytic. Kant nevertheless in the first place holds that such
propositions do not take their rise from experience, or, as we might
better express it, are not an individual contingent perception; this
is very true, the perception is universal and necessary. In the second
place he states that we acquire them from pure sensuous perception, and
not through the understanding or Notion. But Kant does not grasp the
two together, and yet this comprehension of them is involved in such
propositions being immediately certain even in ordinary perception.
When Kant then expresses himself (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 49)
to the effect that we have many sensations which constitute “the real
matter,” with which we externally and inwardly “occupy our minds,” and
that the mind has in itself in space and time “formal conditions of the
mode in which we place them” (those manifold feelings) “in our mind,”
the question of how mind arrives at having just these special forms now
forces itself upon us. But what the nature of time and space is, it does
not occur to the Kantian philosophy to inquire. To it what space and time
are in themselves does not signify ‘What is their Notion,’ but ‘Are they
external things or something in the mind?’
b. The second faculty, the understanding, is something very different
from sensuousness; the latter is Receptivity, while Kant calls thought
in general Spontaneity—an expression which belongs to the philosophy
of Leibnitz. The understanding is active thought, I myself; it “is the
faculty of thinking the object of sensuous perception.” Yet it has
thoughts merely without real content: “Thoughts without content are
void and empty, sensuous perceptions without Notions are blind.” The
understanding thus obtains from the sensuous its matter, both empirical
and _a priori_, time and space; and it thinks this matter, but its
thoughts are very different from this matter. Or it is a faculty of
a particular kind, and it is only when both occur, when the sensuous
faculty has supplied material and the understanding has united to
this its thoughts, that knowledge results.[336] The thoughts of the
understanding as such are thus limited thoughts, thoughts of the finite
only.
Now logic, as transcendental logic, likewise sets forth the conceptions
which the understanding has _a priori_ in itself and “whereby it thinks
objects completely _a priori_.” Thoughts have a form which signifies
their being the synthetic function which brings the manifold into a
unity. _I_ am this unity, the transcendental apperception, the pure
apperception of self-consciousness. I = I; _I_ must ‘accompany’ all
our conceptions.[337] This is a barbarous exposition of the matter.
As self-consciousness I am the completely void, general I, completely
indeterminate and abstract; apperception is determination generally,
the activity whereby I transplant an empirical content into my simple
consciousness, while perception rather signifies feeling or conceiving.
In order that a content may enter this One, it must be infected by its
simplicity; it is thus that the content first becomes my content. The
comprehending medium is ‘I’; whatever I have to do with must allow
itself to be forced into these forms of unity. This is a great fact, an
important item of knowledge; what thought produces is unity; thus it
produces itself, for it is the One. Yet the fact that I am the one and,
as thinking, the simplifier, is not by Kant satisfactorily set forth. The
unity may likewise be called relation; for in so far as a manifold is
presupposed, and as this on the one side remains a manifold while on the
other side it is set forth as one, so far may it be said to be related.
Now as ‘I’ is the universal transcendental unity of self-consciousness
which binds together the empirical matter of conception generally,
there are various modes in this relationship, and here we
have the transcendental nature of the categories or universal
thought-determinations. But Kant (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 70,
77) approaches these modes of simplicity by accepting them as they
are classified in ordinary logic. For he says that in common logic
particular kinds of judgment are brought forward; and since judgment is
a special kind of relationship of the manifold, the various functions
of thought which ‘I’ has in it are shown therein. But the following
kinds of judgment have been noticed, viz. Universal, Particular and
Singular; Affirmative, Negative, Infinite; Categorical, Hypothetical,
Disjunctive; Assertoric, Problematic and Apodictic judgments. These
particular modes of relationship now brought forward are the pure forms
of the understanding. There are thus, according to Kant (Kritik der
reinen Vernunft, pp. 75, 76, 78-82), twelve fundamental categories,
which fall into four classes; and it is noteworthy, and deserves to be
recognized, that each species of judgment again constitutes a triad.
(1) The first kind of categories are those of Quantity, viz. Unity,
Plurality and Totality. Plurality is negation of the one, the assertion
of difference; and the third, the bringing of the other two into one,
plurality circumscribed, the indeterminate plurality comprehended as
one, is the Totality. (2) In the second series are the categories of
Quality: Reality, Negation, Limitation. Limitation is as real or positive
as negation. (3) The third series comprises the categories of relation,
of connection; and first of all, indeed, the relation of Substantiality,
Substance and Accident: then the relation of Causality, the relation
of Cause and Effect, and finally Reciprocity. (4) The categories of
Modality, of the relation of the objective to our thought, come fourth,
viz. Possibility, Existence (actuality) and Necessity. Possibility should
come second; in abstract thought, however, the empty conception comes
first. It betrays a great instinct for the Notion when Kant says that the
first category is positive, the second the negative of the first, the
third the synthesis of the two. The triplicity, this ancient form of the
Pythagoreans, Neo-Platonists and of the Christian religion, although it
here reappears as a quite external _schema_ only, conceals within itself
the absolute form, the Notion. But since Kant says that a conception can
determine itself in me as accidental, as cause, effect, unity, plurality,
&c., we thereby have the whole of the metaphysics of the understanding.
Kant does not follow up further the derivation of these categories,
and he finds them imperfect, but he says that the others are derived
from them. Kant thus accepts the categories in an empiric way, without
thinking of developing of necessity these differences from unity. Just
as little did Kant attempt to deduce time and space, for he accepted
them likewise from experience—a quite unphilosophic and unjustifiable
procedure.
Thinking understanding is thus indeed the source of the individual
categories, but because on their own account they are void and empty,
they only have significance through their union with the given, manifold
material of perception, feeling, &c. Such connection of sensuous material
with categories now constitutes the facts of experience, _i.e._ the
matter of sensation after it is brought under the categories; and this
is knowledge generally.[338] The matter of perception which pertains to
the feelings or sensuous perception is not left in the determination of
individuality and immediacy, but I am active in relation to it, inasmuch
as I bring it into connection through the categories and elevate it into
universal species, natural laws, &c. The question of whether a completed
sensuousness or the Notion is the higher may accordingly be easily
decided. For the laws of the heavens are not immediately perceived, but
merely the change in position on the part of the stars. It is only when
this object of immediate perception is laid hold of and brought under
universal thought-determinations that experience arises therefrom, which
has a claim to validity for all time. The category which brings the unity
of thought into the content of feeling is thus the objective element in
experience, which receives thereby universality and necessity, while that
which is perceived is rather the subjective and contingent. Our finding
both these elements in experience demonstrates indeed that a correct
analysis has been made. Kant (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 119, 120)
however connects with this the statement that experience grasps phenomena
only, and that by means of the knowledge which we obtain through,
experience we do not know things as they are in themselves, but only as
they are in the form of laws of perception and sensuousness. For the
first component part of experience, sensation, is doubtless subjective,
since it is connected with our organs. The matter of perception is only
what it is in my sensation. I know of this sensation only and not of the
thing. But, in the second place, the objective, which ought to constitute
the opposite to this subjective side, is itself subjective likewise: it
does not indeed pertain to my feeling, but it remains shut up in the
region of my self-consciousness; the categories are only determinations
of our thinking understanding. Neither the one nor the other is
consequently anything in itself, nor are both together, knowledge,
anything in itself, for it only knows phenomena—a strange contradiction.
The transition of the category to the empiric is made in the following
way: “Pure conceptions of the understanding are quite of a different
nature from empiric, indeed from any sensuous perceptions;” we have
thus “to show how pure conceptions of the understanding can be applied
to phenomena.” This is dealt with by the transcendental faculty of
judgment. For Kant says that in the mind, in self-consciousness, there
are pure conceptions of the understanding and pure sensuous perceptions;
now it is the schematism of the pure understanding, the transcendental
faculty of the imagination, which determines the pure sensuous perception
in conformity with the category and thus constitutes the transition to
experience.[339] The connection of these two is again one of the most
attractive sides of the Kantian philosophy, whereby pure sensuousness and
pure understanding, which were formerly expressed as absolute opposites,
are now united. There is thus here present a perceptive understanding
or an understanding perception; but Kant does not see this, he does not
bring these thoughts together: he does not grasp the fact that he has
here brought both sides of knowledge into one, and has thereby expressed
their implicitude. Knowledge itself is in fact the unity and truth of
both moments; but with Kant the thinking understanding and sensuousness
are both something particular, and they are only united in an external,
superficial way, just as a piece of wood and a leg might be bound
together by a cord. Thus, for example, the conception of substance in the
_schema_ becomes permanent in time,[340] _i.e._ the pure conception of
the understanding, the pure category, is brought into unity with the form
of pure sensuous perception.
In as far as we have to deal with our own determinations only and as we
do not reach the implicit, the true objective, the Kantian philosophy
called itself Idealism. But in this connection Kant (Kritik der reinen
Vernunft, pp. 200, 201) brings forward a refutation of empirical or
material idealism, thus: “I am conscious of my existence as determined
in time. But all time-determination presupposes something permanent in
perception. This permanence cannot be” a sensuous perception “in me.”
For all the determining grounds of my existence which are met with in
me are conceptions, and as such themselves require a constant element
different from them, and in relation to which the change taking place
in them—consequently “my existence in time,” in which they change, “may
be determined.” Or I am conscious of my existence as of an empirical
consciousness which is only capable of being determined in relation to
something which is outside of me; _i.e._ I am conscious of something
external to me. Conversely it may be said: I am conscious of external
things as determined in time and as changing; these hence presuppose
something constant which is not in them but outside of them. And this is
‘I,’ the transcendental ground of their universality and necessity, of
their implicitude, the unity of self-consciousness. On another occasion
Kant regards it thus (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 101): These moments
confuse themselves, because the constant element is itself a category.
Idealism, when we regard it as signifying that nothing exists outside of
my individual self-consciousness as individual, as also the refutation of
this, the assertion that things exist outside of my self-consciousness
as individual, are the one as bad as the other. The former is the
idealism of Berkeley, in which self-consciousness as individual is alone
in question, or the world of self-consciousness appears as a number of
limited, sensuous, individual conceptions, which are as completely devoid
of truth as though they were called things. The truth or untruth does not
rest in their being things or conceptions, but in their limitation and
contingency, whether as conceptions or things. The refutation of this
idealism is nothing more than calling attention to the fact that this
empirical consciousness does not exist in itself—just as those empiric
things do not exist in themselves. But the knowing subject does not
with Kant really arrive at reason, for it remains still the individual
self-consciousness as such, which is opposed to the universal. As a
matter of fact there is described in what we have seen only the empirical
finite self-consciousness which requires a material from outside, or
which is limited. We do not ask whether these facts of knowledge are
in and for themselves true or untrue; the whole of knowledge remains
within subjectivity, and on the other side there is the thing-in-itself
as an external. This subjectivity is however concrete in itself; even
the determinate categories of the thinking understanding are concrete,
and much more is experience so—the synthesis of the sensation and the
category.[341]
c. The third faculty Kant finds in reason, to which he advances from
the understanding after the same psychological method; that is to say,
he hunts through the soul’s sack to see what faculties are still to be
found there; and thus by merest chance he lights on Reason. It would
make no difference if there had been no Reason there, just as with
physicists it is a matter of perfect indifference whether, for instance,
there is such a thing as magnetism or not. “All our knowledge begins
from the senses, thence proceeds to the understanding, and finishes
up with reason; nothing higher than this is to be found in us, for
it signifies the working up of the material of perception, and the
reducing of it to the highest unity of thought.” Reason is therefore,
according to Kant, the power of obtaining knowledge from principles,
that is, the power of knowing the particular in the universal by means
of Notions; the understanding, on the contrary, reaches its particular
by means of perception. But the categories are themselves particular.
The principle of reason, according to Kant, is really the universal,
inasmuch as it finds the unconditioned involved in the conditioned
knowledge of the understanding. Understanding is hence for him thought
in finite relations; reason, on the contrary, is thought which makes
the unconditioned its object. Since Kant’s time it has become customary
in the language of philosophy to distinguish understanding and reason,
while by earlier philosophers this distinction was not drawn. The product
of reason is, according to Kant, the Idea—a Platonic expression—and he
understands by it the unconditioned, the infinite.[342] It is a great
step forward to say that reason brings forth Ideas; with Kant, however,
the Idea is merely the abstract universal, the indeterminate.
This, the unconditioned, must now be grasped as concrete, and therein
lies the main difficulty. For to know the unconditioned means to
determine it and to deduce its determinations. Much has been written and
said on the subject of knowledge, without a definition of it ever having
been offered. But it is the business of Philosophy to see that what is
taken for granted as known is really known. Now on this point Kant says
that reason has certainly the desire to know the infinite, but has not
the power. And the reason which Kant gives for this (Kritik der reinen
Vernunft, pp. 277, 278), is on the one hand that no psychologically
sensuous intuition or perception corresponds with the infinite, that it
is not given in outward or inward experience; to the Idea “no congruent
or corresponding object can be discovered in the sensuous world.” It
depends, however, on how the world is looked at; but experience and
observation of the world mean nothing else for Kant than a candlestick
standing here, and a snuff-box standing there. It is certainly
correct to say that the infinite is not given in the world of sensuous
perception; and supposing that what we know is experience, a synthesis
of what is thought and what is felt, the infinite can certainly not be
known in the sense that we have a sensuous perception of it. But no one
wishes to demand a sensuous proof in verification of the infinite; spirit
is for spirit alone. The second reason for considering that the infinite
cannot be known, lies in this, that Reason has no part in it except
as supplying the forms of thought which we call categories; and these
doubtless afford what Kant calls objective determinations, but in such
a way that in themselves they are still only subjective. If therefore
for the determination of the infinite we employ these categories which
are applicable only to phenomena, we entangle ourselves in false
arguments (paralogisms) and in contradictions (antinomies); and it is an
important point in the Kantian philosophy that the infinite, so far as
it is defined by means of categories, loses itself in contradictions.
Although reason, says Kant, becomes transcendent by the exhibition of
these contradictions, it still retains its claim to trace perception,
experience, and knowledge pertaining to the understanding, back to the
infinite. This union of the infinite, the unconditioned, with the finite
and conditioned as existing in the knowledge given by the understanding,
or even in perception, would signify that the acme of concreteness had
been reached.
Of this Unconditioned there are several kinds, objects having special
features of their own and proceeding from reason, transcendental Ideas;
they are thus themselves particular in their nature. The manner in which
Kant arrives at these Ideas is again derived from experience, from formal
logic, according to which there are various forms of the syllogism.
Because, says Kant, there are three forms of the syllogism, categorical,
hypothetical, and disjunctive, the Unconditioned is also three-fold in
its nature: “Firstly, an Unconditioned of the categorical synthesis in a
subject.” Synthesis is the concrete; but the expression is ambiguous,
since it indicates an external association of independent elements. “In
the second place, an Unconditioned of the hypothetical synthesis of
the members of a series will have to be looked for; and in the third
place, an Unconditioned of the disjunctive synthesis of the parts in a
system.” We make the first connection, expressed as object of Reason or
transcendental Idea, when we conceive “the thinking subject;” the second
“is the sum total of all phenomena, the world;” and the third is “the
thing which contains the supreme condition of the possibility of all that
can be thought, the Being of all Beings,” _i.e._ God. When brought to an
ultimate point, the question which meets us is whether Reason can bring
these objects to reality, or whether they remain confined to subjective
thought. Now, according to Kant, Reason is not capable of procuring
reality for its Ideas—otherwise it would be transcendent, its limits
would be overstepped; it produces only paralogisms, antinomies, and an
ideal without reality.[343]
α. “A. paralogism is a syllogism false in its form.” Since Reason
credits with reality that mode of the Unconditioned which constitutes
the categorical synthesis in a subject, and therefore the thinking
subject, it is termed substance. Now is the thinking ego a substance,
a soul, a soul-thing? Further questions are whether it is permanent,
immaterial, incorruptible, personal and immortal, and such as to have
a real community with the body. The falsity of the syllogism consists
in this, that the idea of the unity of the transcendental subject
essential to Reason is expressed as a thing; for it is only in this way
that the permanency of the same becomes substance. Otherwise I find
myself permanent in my thought, of course, but only within perceiving
consciousness, not outside of that. The ego is therefore the empty,
transcendental subject of our thoughts, that moreover becomes known only
through its thoughts; but of what it is in itself we cannot gather the
least idea. (A horrible distinction! For thought is nothing more or less
than the “in-itself” or implicit.) We cannot assert of it any present
Being, because thought is an empty form, we have a conception of what
thinking Beings are through no outward experience, but only by means of
self-consciousness,—_i.e._ because we cannot take the “I” in our hands,
nor see it, nor smell it. We therefore know very well that the ego is a
subject, but if we pass beyond self-consciousness, and say that it is
substance, we go farther than we are entitled to do. I cannot therefore
assign any reality to the subject.[344]
We here see Kant fall into contradiction, what with the barbarity of the
conceptions which he refutes, and the barbarity of his own conceptions
which remain behind when the others are refuted. In the first place, he
is perfectly correct when he maintains that the ego is not a soul-thing,
a dead permanency which has a sensuous present existence; indeed, were
it to be an ordinary thing, it would be necessary that it should be
capable of being experienced. But, in the second place, Kant does not
assert the contrary of this, namely that the ego, as this universal or
as self-thinking, has in itself the true reality which he requires as an
objective mode. For he does not get clear of the conception of reality in
which reality consists in the possession of a sensuous present existence;
accordingly, because the ego is given in no outward experience, it is
not real. For self-consciousness, the ego as such, is not, according to
Kant, reality; it is only _our_ thought, or in other words he regards
self-consciousness as being itself simply and entirely sensuous. The form
which Kant accordingly bestows on Being, thing, substance, would seem
to indicate that these categories of the understanding were too high for
the subject, too high to be capable of being predicated of it. But really
such determinations are too poor and too mean, for what possesses life is
not a thing, nor can the soul, the spirit, the ego, be called a thing.
Being is the least or lowest quality that one can assign to spirit, its
abstract, immediate identity with itself; Being thus no doubt pertains
to spirit, but it must be considered as a determination scarcely worth
applying to it.
β. In the second place we have the antinomy, _i.e._ the contradiction in
Reason’s Idea of the Unconditioned, an Idea applied to the world in order
to represent it as a complete summing-up of conditions. That is to say,
in the given phenomena Reason demands the absolute completeness of the
conditions of their possibility, so far as these constitute a series, so
that the unconditioned is contained in the world, _i.e._ the totality
of the series. If now this completeness is expressed as existing, an
antinomy is alone presented, and Reason is presented only as dialectic:
_i.e._ in this object there is on every side a perfect contradiction
found.[345] For phenomena are a finite content, and the world is a
conjunction of the limited; if this content is now thought by Reason, and
therefore subsumed under the unconditioned and the unlimited, we have two
determinations, finite and infinite, which contradict each other. Reason
demands a perfectly complete synthesis, an absolute beginning; but in
phenomena we have, on the contrary, a succession of causes and effects,
which never come to an end. Kant here points out four contradictions
(Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 320), which, however, is not enough; for
in each Notion there are antinomies, since it is not simple but concrete,
and therefore contains different determinations, which are direct
opposites.
αα. These antinomies in the first place involve our making the one
determination, limitation, just as valid as non-limitation. “Thesis: The
world has a beginning and an end in time, and it is limited in regard to
space. Antithesis: It has no beginning and no end in time, and also no
limits in space.” The one, says Kant, can be proved just as easily as
the other; and indeed he does prove each indirectly, though his are not
“advocate’s proofs.”[346] The world, as the universe, is the whole; it
is thus a universal idea, and therefore unlimited. The completion of the
synthesis in progression as regards time and space is, however, a first
beginning of time and space. If therefore the categories of limited and
unlimited are applied to the world in order to attain to a knowledge
of it, we fall into contradictions, because the categories are not
applicable to things-in-themselves.
ββ. The second antinomy is that atoms, from which substance is composed,
must necessarily be admitted to exist, therefore simplicity can be
proved; but just as easy is it to prove incompleteness, the endless
process of division. The thesis is accordingly stated thus: “Every
compound substance consists of simple parts,” and the antithesis is as
follows: “There exists nothing simple.”[347] The one is here the limit,
a material self-existence, the point which is likewise the enclosing
surface; the other is divisibility _ad infinitum_.
γγ. The third antinomy is the opposition between freedom and necessity.
The first is the self-determining, the point of view pertaining to
infinity: causality according to the laws of freedom is the only
causality. The other is: Determinism alone is to be found: everything is
determined by means of an external ground or reason.[348]
δδ. The fourth antinomy rests on what follows: On the one hand totality
completes itself in freedom as a first beginning of action, or in
an absolutely necessary Being, as the cause of the world, so that
the process is interrupted: but there is opposed to that freedom the
necessity of a process according to conditions of causes and effects,
and to the necessity of a Being is opposed the consideration that
everything is contingent. The absolute necessity of the conditioned world
is therefore on the one hand maintained thus: “To the world belongs an
absolutely necessary Being.” The opposite to this is, “There exists no
absolutely necessary Being, either as part of the world or outside of the
world.”[349]
One of these opposites is just as necessary as the other, and it
is superfluous to carry this further here. The necessity of these
contradictions is the interesting fact which Kant (Kritik der reinen
Vernunft, p. 324) has brought to consciousness; in ordinary metaphysics,
however, it is imagined that one of these contradictions must hold good,
and the other be disproved. The most important point involved in this
assertion of Kant’s is, however, unintentional on his part. For he indeed
solves these antinomies (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 385, 386), but
only in the particular sense of transcendental idealism, which does not
doubt or deny the existence of external things (_supra_, p. 442), but
“allows that things are perceived in space and time” (which is the case,
whether it allows it or not): for transcendental idealism, however,
“space and time in themselves are not things at all,” and therefore “do
not exist apart from our mind;” _i.e._ all these determinations of a
beginning in time, and so on, do not really belong to things, to the
implicitude of the phenomenal world, which has independent existence
outside of our subjective thought. If such determinations belonged
to the world, to God, to free agents, there would be an objective
contradiction; but this contradiction is not found as absolute, it
pertains only to us. Or, in other words, this transcendental idealism
lets the contradiction remain, only it is not Being in itself that
is thus contradictory, for the contradiction has its source in our
thought alone. Thus the same antinomy remains in our mind; and as it was
formerly God who had to take upon Himself all contradictions, so now
it is self-consciousness. But the Kantian philosophy does not go on to
grapple with the fact that it is not things that are contradictory, but
self-consciousness itself. Experience teaches that the ego does not melt
away by reason of these contradictions, but continues to exist; we need
not therefore trouble ourselves about its contradictions, for it can
bear them. Nevertheless Kant shows here too much tenderness for things:
it would be a pity, he thinks, if they contradicted themselves. But that
mind, which is far higher, should be a contradiction—that is not a pity
at all. The contradiction is therefore by no means solved by Kant; and
since mind takes it upon itself, and contradiction is self-destructive,
mind is in itself all derangement and disorder. The true solution
would be found in the statement that the categories have no truth in
themselves, and the Unconditioned of Reason just as little, but that it
lies in the unity of both as concrete, and in that alone.
γ. Kant now goes on to the Idea of God; this third idea is the Being of
Beings, which the other ideas presupposed. Kant says (Kritik der reinen
Vernunft, pp. 441-452), that according to the definition of Wolff, God is
the most real of all Beings; the object then comes to be to prove that
God is not only Thought, but that He is, that He has reality, Being.
This Kant calls the Ideal of Reason, to distinguish it from the Idea,
which is only the sum of all possibility. The Ideal is thus the Idea as
existent; just as in art we give the name of ideal to the Idea realized
in a sensuous manner. Here Kant takes into consideration the proof of
the existence of God, as he asks whether reality can be assigned to this
Ideal.
The ontological proof proceeds from the absolute Notion, in order from it
to argue up to Being. With Anselm, Descartes, and Spinoza the transition
to Being is thus made; and all of them assume in so doing the unity
of Being and thought. But Kant says (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp.
458-466): To this Ideal of Reason just as little reality can be assigned:
there is no transition from the Notion to Being. “Being is not a real
predicate,” like any other, “a Notion of something which might be added
to the Notion of a thing. A hundred real dollars do not contain in the
very least more than a hundred possible dollars,” they are the same
content, _i.e._ the same Notion; they are also a hundred exactly. The one
is the Notion, or rather the conception, the other is the object; Being
is no new determination of the Notion, otherwise my Notion of a hundred
real dollars would contain something different from a hundred real
dollars. But “the object, as real, is not contained in my Notion alone;
or to my Notion the real hundred dollars are synthetically added.” Being
cannot therefore be derived from the Notion, because it is not contained
therein, but must be added to it. “We must go out of the Notion in order
to arrive at existence. With regard to objects of pure thought, there are
no means of coming to know of their existence, because it had to be known
_a priori_; but our consciousness of all existence belongs entirely to
experience.” That is to say, Kant does not attain to the comprehension of
that very synthesis of Notion and Being, or in other words, he does not
comprehend existence, _i.e._ he does not attain to the establishment of
it as Notion; existence remains for him something absolutely different
from a Notion. The content is no doubt the same for him in what exists
and in the Notion: but since Being is not involved in the Notion, the
attempt to derive the one from the other is unavailing.
Of course the determination of Being is not found as positive and
ready-made in the Notion; the Notion is something different from reality
and objectivity. If we therefore abide by the Notion, we abide by Being
as something different from the Notion, and adhere to the separation of
the two; we then have conception, and not Being at all. That a hundred
possible dollars are something different from a hundred actual ones is
a reflection of a very popular nature, so much so that no proposition
has been so well received as the assertion that no transition can be
made from the Notion to Being; for though I imagine to myself a hundred
dollars, I do not possess them for all that. But in a like popular
fashion it might be said that one must leave off imagining, for that is
mere conception: _i.e._ what is merely imaginary is untrue, the hundred
imaginary dollars are and remain imaginary. Therefore to believe in them
is a proof of an unsound understanding, and is of no manner of use;
and he is a foolish fellow who indulges in such fancies and wishes.
One possesses a hundred dollars, when they are real only; if a man has
therefore so great a desire to possess a hundred dollars, he must put
his hand to work in order to obtain them: _i.e._ he must not come to
a standstill at the imagination of them, but pass out beyond it. This
subjective side is not the ultimate or the absolute; the true is that
which is not merely subjective. If I possess a hundred dollars, I have
them actually, and at the same time I form a conception of them to
myself. But according to Kant’s representation we come to a deadlock
at the difference; dualism is ultimate, and each side has independent
validity as an absolute. Against this false idea of what is to be
absolute and ultimate, the healthy human understanding is directed; every
ordinary consciousness rises above it, every action aims at setting aside
a subjective conception and making it into something objective. There
is no man so foolish as that philosophy; when a man feels hungry, he
does not call up the imagination of food, but sets about satisfying his
hunger. All activity is a conception which does not yet exist, but whose
subjectivity is abrogated. Moreover the imaginary hundred dollars become
real, and the real ones imaginary: this is a frequent experience, this
is their fate; it depends on circumstances entirely outward whether a
hundred dollars become my property or not. Of course the mere conception
is of no good, if I obstinately hold by it: for I can imagine what I
will, but that does not make it exist. The only important point is what I
conceive to myself, and then whether I think or comprehend the subjective
and Being; by means of this each passes into the other. Thought, the
Notion, of necessity implies that the Notion does not remain subjective;
this subjective is on the contrary abrogated and reveals itself as
objective. Now that unity is expressly affirmed by Descartes solely in
reference to the Notion of God, for it is just that which is God; he
speaks of no hundred dollars, as these are not an existence which has
a Notion in itself. That opposition does away with itself absolutely
and entirely, _i.e._ the finite passes away; it holds good only in the
philosophy of finitude. If, therefore, there is not a Notion of existence
formed, we have in it a notionless, sensuous object of perception; and
what is notionless is certainly not a Notion,—therefore sensation,
handling, are not Notions. Such existence has of course no Absolute, no
real essence: or such existence has no truth, it is only a vanishing
moment. This useless thrashing of the empty grainless straw of the common
logic is termed philosophizing: it is like Issachar the strong ass, which
could not be made to move from the spot where it was (Gen. xlix. 14).
People of this kind say: We are good for nothing, and because we are good
for nothing, we are good for nothing, and wish to be good for nothing.
But it is a very false idea of Christian humility and modesty to desire
through one’s abjectness to attain to excellence; this confession of
one’s own nothingness is really inward pride and great self-conceit. But
for the honour of true humility we must not remain in our misery, but
raise ourselves above it by laying hold of the Divine.
The fact to which Kant clings most strongly (Kritik der reinen Vernunft,
p. 467) is this, that Being cannot be extracted from the Notion. The
result of this is the proposition that to have the thought of the
Infinite is certainly Reason; but that from the Idea of Reason is
separated determination in general, and especially the determination
which is known as Being. The Ideas of Reason cannot be proved from
experience, or obtain from it their verification: if they are defined
by means of categories, contradictions arise. If the Idea in general
is to be defined as existent only, it is nothing more or less than the
Notion; and the Being of the existent is still distinguished from it.
This result, however, so highly important with reference to knowledge of
the understanding, Kant does not, with reference to Reason, carry further
than to say that Reason has on its own account nothing but formal unity
for the methodical systematization of the knowledge of the understanding.
Abstract thinking is adhered to; it is said that the understanding
can only bring about order in things; but order is nothing in and for
itself, it is only subjective. There therefore remains nothing for Reason
except the form of its pure identity with itself, and this extends no
further than to the arranging of the manifold laws and relations of the
understanding, the classes, kinds and species which the understanding
discovers.[350] I, as Reason or conception, and the things external to
me, are both absolutely different from one another; and that, according
to Kant, is the ultimate standpoint. The animal does not stop at this
standpoint, but practically brings about unity. This is the critique
of theoretical Reason which Kant gives, and in which he states the _a
priori_ and determinate character of Reason in itself, without bringing
it to the determinateness of individuality.[351]
Mention should still be made of the positive philosophy or metaphysics,
which Kant sets _a priori_ above objective existence, the content of the
object of experience, nature; we have here his natural philosophy, which
is a demonstration of the universal conceptions of Nature. But this is
on the one hand very scanty and restricted in content, containing as
it does sundry general qualities and conceptions of matter and motion,
and with regard to the scientific side or the _a priori_, as Kant calls
it, it is likewise altogether unsatisfactory. For Kant assumes all such
conceptions as that matter has motion and also a power of attraction and
repulsion,[352] instead of demonstrating their necessity. The “Principles
of Natural Philosophy” have nevertheless been of great service, inasmuch
as at the commencement of a philosophy of nature, attention was called
to the fact that physical science employs thought-determinations without
further investigation; and these determinations constitute the real
foundations of its objects. Density, for instance, is looked on by
physical science as a variable quantity, as a mere _quantum_ in space:
instead of this Kant asserted it to be a certain degree of occupation
of space, _i.e._ energy, intensity of action. He demands accordingly
(Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft, pp. 65-68) a
construction of matter from powers and activities, not from atoms; and
Schelling still holds to this without getting further. Kant’s work is an
attempt to think, _i.e._ to demonstrate the determinations of thought,
whose product consists of such conceptions as matter; he has attempted
to determine the fundamental Notions and principles of this science, and
has given the first impulse to a so-called dynamic theory of Nature.
“Religion within pure Reason” is also a demonstration of dogmas as
aspects of Reason, just as in Nature. Thus in the positive dogmas of
religion, which the Aufklärung (the clearing-up)—or the Ausklärung (the
clearing-out)—made short work of, Kant called to remembrance Ideas of
Reason, asking what rational and, first of all, what moral meaning lies
in that which men call dogmas of religion, _e.g._ original sin.[353] He
is much more reasonable than the _Ausklärung_, which thinks it beneath
its dignity to speak of such matters. These are the principal points in
respect to the theoretical part of Kant’s philosophy.
2. The second subject of review in Kant’s philosophy is the practical
sphere, the nature and principle of the will; this subject is dealt with
in the Critique of Practical Reason, in which Kant accepted Rousseau’s
conclusion that the will is absolutely free. Kant’s idea of theoretic
Reason is that when Reason relates itself to an object, this object must
be given to it; but when the object is given by Reason to itself, it
has no truth; and Reason in knowledge of this kind does not arrive at
independence. As practical, on the contrary, Reason is independent in
itself; as a moral Being man is free, raised above all natural law and
above all phenomena. As the theoretic Reason had in itself categories,
_a priori_ distinctions, so practical Reason has in turn the moral law
in general, the further determinations of which are constituted by the
notions of duty and right, lawful and unlawful; and here Reason disdains
all the given material which was necessary to it on the theoretic side.
The will determines itself within itself; all that is right and moral
rests on freedom; in this man has his absolute self-consciousness.[354]
On this side self-consciousness finds essential reality in itself, as
theoretical Reason found it in an “other”; and in the first place,
indeed, the ego in its individuality is immediate reality, universality,
objectivity; in the second place subjectivity strives after reality, but
not after sensuous reality such as we had before, for here Reason holds
itself to be the real. Here we have the Notion which is sensible of its
own deficiency; this theoretic Reason could not be, as in it the Notion
had to remain the Notion. Thus we have the standpoint of absoluteness
revealed, since there is an infinite disclosed within the human breast.
The satisfying part in Kant’s philosophy is that the truth is at least
set within the heart; and hence I acknowledge that, and that alone, which
is in conformity with my determined nature.
a. Kant divides will into lower and higher faculties of desire; this
expression is not inapt. The lower faculties of desire are impulses,
inclinations, etc.; the higher faculty is the will as such, which has
not external, individual aims, but universal. To the question what the
principle of will that should determine man in his actions is, all
sorts of answers have been given; for instance, self-love, benevolence,
happiness, etc. Such material principles of action, Kant now says, are
all reducible to impulses, to happiness; but the rational in itself
is purely formal, and consists in the maxim that what is to hold good
as law, must be capable of being thought of as a law of universal
application, without destroying itself. All morality of action now rests
upon the conviction that the act is done with consciousness of the law,
for the sake of the law and out of respect for the law and for itself,
without any regard to what makes for happiness. As a moral Being man has
the moral law in himself, the principle of which is freedom and autonomy
of the will; for the will is absolute spontaneity. Determinations which
are taken from the inclinations are heterogeneous principles as regards
the will; or the will is heteronomy if it takes such determinations
as its end and aim; for in that case it takes its determinations from
something else than itself. But the essence of the will is to determine
itself from itself; for practical Reason gives itself laws. But the
empirical will is heteronomous, for it is determined by desires; and they
belong to our nature, not to the realm of freedom.[355]
It is a highly important point in the Kantian philosophy that what
self-consciousness esteems reality, law, and implicit Being, is brought
back within itself. While a man is striving after this aim and that,
according as he judges the world or history in one way or the other,
what is he to take as his ultimate aim? For the will, however, there is
no other aim than that derived from itself, the aim of its freedom. It
is a great advance when the principle is established that freedom is the
last hinge on which man turns, a highest possible pinnacle, which allows
nothing further to be imposed upon it; thus man bows to no authority, and
acknowledges no obligations, where his freedom is not respected. Great
popularity has from one point of view been won for Kantian philosophy by
the teaching that man finds in himself an absolutely firm, unwavering
centre-point; but with this last principle it has come to a standstill.
While the highest pinnacle of the theoretic Reason is abstract
identity, because it can furnish only a canon, a rule for abstract
classifications,[356] practical Reason, as law-giving, is immediately
regarded as concrete; the law which it gives to itself is the moral law.
But even if it is stated that it is concrete in itself, there is the
further consideration that this freedom is at first only the negative of
everything else; no bond, nothing external, lays me under an obligation.
It is to this extent indeterminate; it is the identity of the will with
itself, its at-homeness with itself. But what is the content of this
law? Here we at once come back to the lack of content. For the sole form
of this principle is nothing more or less than agreement with itself,
universality; the formal principle of legislation in this internal
solitude comes to no determination, or this is abstraction only. The
universal, the non-contradiction of self, is without content, something
which comes to be reality in the practical sphere just as little as in
the theoretical. The universal moral law Kant therefore expresses thus
(and the setting up of such a universal form was at all times the demand
of the abstract understanding): “Act from maxims” (the law is also to be
my particular law), “which are capable of becoming universal laws.”[357]
Thus for the determination of duty (for the question which meets us is,
what is duty for the free will) Kant has contributed nothing but the
form of identity, which is the law of abstract Understanding. To defend
one’s fatherland, to promote the happiness of another, is a duty, not
because of the content, but because it is duty; as with the Stoics, what
was thought was true for the very reason that, and in so far as it was
thought (Vol. II., pp. 254, 260, 263). The content as such is indeed not
what holds good universally in the moral law, because it contradicts
itself. For benevolence, for instance, enjoins: “Give your possessions to
the poor,” but if all give away what they have, beneficence is done away
with (Vol. I., pp. 417, 418). Even with abstract identity, however, we do
not get a step further, for every content which is put into this form is
by being so put freed from self-contradiction. But nothing would be lost
if it were not put into this form at all. With regard to property, for
instance, the law of my actions is this: Property ought to be respected,
for the opposite of this cannot be universal law. That is correct, but
it is quite a formal determination: If property is, then it is. Property
is here presupposed, but this determination may also in the same way be
omitted, and then there is no contradiction involved in theft: If there
is no such thing as property, then it is not respected. This is the
defect in the principle of Kant and Fichte, that it is really formal;
chill duty is the final undigested lump left within the stomach, the
revelation given to Reason.
The first postulate in practical Reason is thus free, independent will
which determines itself, but this concrete is still abstract. The second
and third are forms which remind us that the will is concrete in a higher
sense.
b. The second point is the connection of the Notion of the will with the
particular will of the individual; the concrete is here the fact that
my particular will and the universal will are identical, or that I am a
moral human being. The unity, that man should be moral, is postulated;
but beyond the “should” and this talk of morality, no advance is made.
It is not said what is moral; and no thought is given to a system of the
self-realizing spirit. For really, as theoretic Reason stands opposed to
the objective of the senses, so practical Reason stands opposed to the
practical sensuousness, to impulses and inclinations. Perfected morality
must remain a Beyond; for morality presupposes the difference of the
particular and universal will. It is a struggle, the determination of
the sensuous by the universal; the struggle can only take place when
the sensuous will is not yet in conformity with the universal. The
result is, therefore, that the aim of the moral will is to be attained
in infinite progress only; on this Kant founds (Kritik der prakt.
Vernunft, pp. 219-223) the postulate of the immortality of the soul, as
the endless progress of the subject in his morality, because morality
itself is incomplete, and must advance into infinitude. The particular
will is certainly something other than the universal will; but it is not
ultimate or really permanent.
c. The third point is the highest concrete, the Notion of the freedom
of all men, or the natural world has to be in harmony with the Notion
of freedom. That is the postulate of the existence of God, whom Reason,
however, does not recognize. Will has the whole world, the whole of the
sensuous, in opposition to it, and yet Reason insists on the unity of
Nature or the moral law, as the Idea of the Good, which is the ultimate
end of the world. Since, however, it is formal, and therefore has no
content on its own account, it stands opposed to the impulses and
inclinations of a subjective and an external independent Nature. Kant
reconciles the contradiction of the two (Kritik der prakt. Vernunft,
pp. 198-200) in the thought of the highest Good, in which Nature is
conformed to rational will, and happiness to virtue;—a harmony which does
not enter into the question at all, although practical reality consists
therein. For happiness is only one’s own sensuous consciousness, or the
actuality of a particular individual, not universal reality in itself.
The unification spoken of itself therefore remains only a Beyond, a
thought, which is not actually in existence, but only ought to be. Kant
(Kritik der prakt. Vernunft, pp. 205-209) thus agrees entirely with
the talk which alleges that in this world it often fares ill with the
good, and well with the wicked, and so on; and he postulates further the
existence of God as the Being, the causality, through whom this harmony
comes to pass, on behalf both of the sanctity of the moral law, and of
the rational end to be attained in Nature, but only in infinite progress;
which postulate, like that of the immortality of the soul, allows the
contradiction to remain as it is all the time, and expresses only in
the abstract that the reconciliation ought to come about. The postulate
itself is always there, because the Good is a Beyond with respect to
Nature; the law of necessity and the law of liberty are different from
one another, and placed in this dualism. Nature would remain Nature no
longer, if it were to become conformed to the Notion of the Good; and
thus there remains an utter opposition between the two sides, because
they cannot unite. It is likewise necessary to establish the unity of
the two; but this is never actual, for their separation is exactly what
is presupposed. Kant employs popular language thus: evil ought to be
overcome, but yet must not have been overcome. God is to him, therefore,
only a faith, an opinion, which is only subjectively, and not absolutely
true.[358] This result is also of a very popular character.
These postulates express nothing but the synthesis, devoid of thought, of
the different moments which contradict each other on every hand; they are
therefore a “nest”[359] of contradictions. For instance, the immortality
of the soul is postulated on account of imperfect morality, _i.e._
because it is infected with sensuousness. But the sensuous is implied in
moral self-consciousness; the end, perfection, is what really destroys
morality as such. Similarly the other aim, the harmony of the sensuous
and the rational, to an equal extent abrogates morality; for that
consists in this very opposition of Reason to the sensuous. The actuality
of the God who produces harmony is of such a character that it does not
enter into consciousness at all; it is accepted by consciousness for the
sake of harmony, just as children make some kind of scarecrow, and then
agree with each other to pretend to be afraid of it. The ground on which
God is accepted—that by the conception of a holy law-giver the moral
law may acquire additional reverence—contradicts the fact that morality
really consists in reverence for the law simply for its own sake.[360]
In Practical Reason self-consciousness esteems itself to be implicit
Being, as contrasted with theoretic Reason, which assigns implicitude to
objective existence, but the one, we see, attains just as little as the
other to unity and actuality in itself. It is hard for man to believe
that Reason actually exists: but there is nothing real except Reason; it
is the absolute power. The vanity of man aspires to have an ideal before
him, in order to be able to find fault with everything alike. We possess
all wisdom, it is within us, but is not forthcoming. That is the ultimate
standpoint; it is a high standpoint, no doubt, but in it the truth is
never reached. The absolute Good remains “what ought to be,” or without
objectivity; and there it has to remain.
3. There is still left for us to consider the third side in Kant’s
philosophy, the Critique of the Faculty of Judgment, in which the demand
for the concrete comes in, the demand that the Idea of unity spoken of
before should be established not as a Beyond, but as present; and this
side is of special importance. Kant says that the understanding no doubt
regulates in the theoretic sphere and produces categories; but these
remain mere general determinations, beyond which lies the particular
(the other element which belongs to every item of knowledge). The two
are distinguished from one another for the understanding; for its
distinctions remain in universality. In the practical sphere Reason is
certainly the implicit, but its free independence, its law-giving freedom
in higher form, is opposed to Nature in its freedom or to Nature’s own
laws. “In the theoretic sphere Reason can draw conclusions from given
laws through syllogisms, only by means of the understanding, and these
conclusions never get beyond Nature; it is only in the practical sphere
that Reason itself gives laws. Understanding and” (practical) “Reason
have two different regulative systems on one and the same ground of
experience, without the one being detrimental to the other. For if the
Notion of Nature has but little influence on the giving of laws by the
Notion of Freedom, just as little does the latter interfere with the
legislation of Nature. The possibility of the existence side by side
of the two regulative systems and of the powers belonging to them was
proved in the Critique of pure Reason.” (!?) “Now if a unity is not
constituted by these two different spheres, which certainly do not put
a limit on each other in their regulative action, but do so incessantly
in their operations in the sensuous world” (_i.e._ where they encounter
each other), “the reason is this, that the Notion of Nature represents
its objects in perception, not as things in themselves, but as mere
phenomena, while the Notion of Freedom, on the other hand, represents
in its object a thing in itself, no doubt, but not in perception.
Consequently neither of them can attain to a theoretic knowledge of its
object (and even of the thinking subject) as a thing-in-itself, which
last would be the supersensuous, an unlimited and inaccessible realm
for our whole faculty of knowledge. Now truly there is fixed a gulf
over which the eye cannot reach, between the realm of the Notion of
Nature, as the sensuous, and the realm of the Notion of Freedom, as the
supersensuous, so that it is not possible to pass from the one to the
other, since it is just as if there were two different worlds, the first
of which could have no influence on the second. Nevertheless the latter
is conceived as having an influence on the former, or, in other words,
freedom is conceived as having for its mission the realization in the
sensuous world of the end indicated by the laws of freedom. Consequently
Nature must be so conceived that, while in form it realizes its own laws,
there may yet be a possibility of ends being realized in it according
to the laws of freedom. Therefore there must surely be some ground for
the unity of the supersensuous which lies at the foundation of Nature
with that which the Notion of Freedom practically contains, the Notion
of which ground of unity, although it attains neither theoretically nor
practically to a knowledge of the same, and consequently has no peculiar
province, yet makes possible the transition from the mode of thought in
accordance with the principles of the one, to the mode of thought in
accordance with the principles of the other. Between Understanding and
Reason there now comes the Faculty of Judgment, as between the powers
of knowledge and desire there come pleasure and its opposite; in this
faculty must therefore lie the transition from the province of the
Notions of Nature to the province of the Notion of Freedom.”[361]
Adaptation to ends has its place here, _i.e._ a particular reality, which
is determined only through the universal, the end. The understanding
is the ground of this unity of the manifold; the sensuous is therefore
here determined by means of the supersensuous. This idea of a universal
which implicitly contains the particular is according to Kant the
precise object of the faculty of judgment, which he divides as
follows:—“If the universal (the rule, principle, law) is given, the
faculty of judgment which subsumes the particular under that universal,
is determinative,”—the immediate faculty of judgment. But here there
is also a particular which is not determined by species. “If, however,
only the particular is given, for which the faculty of judgment has to
find the universal, it is reflective.” The reflective judgment has as
its principle the unity of particularity and the abstract universal of
the understanding, the idea of a legal necessity which is at the same
time free, or of a freedom which is directly one with its content.
“This principle can be no other but the fact that since universal laws
of Nature have their foundation in our understanding, which prescribes
them to nature, although only according to their general conception,
the particular, empirical laws, in so far as they are undetermined by
universal laws, must be viewed as containing that unity which they
would contain if they had been given by some intelligence—other, it may
be, than our own—with express reference to our cognitive faculties, in
order to render possible a system of experience according to particular
natural laws. It is not as if such an intelligence must be assumed (for
it is only the reflective faculty of judgment to which this idea serves
as principle): this faculty gives a law only to itself, not to Nature
in addition. Now the conception of an object (if it at the same time
contains the ground of the reality of this object), the end, and the
harmony of a thing with that quality of things which is only possible
in conformity with ends, are termed the adaptation to purpose of the
form; therefore the principle of the faculty of judgment in respect to
the form of the things of Nature under empirical laws in general is the
adaptability to purpose of Nature in its multiplicity. That is to say,
Nature is represented by this Notion as if an intelligence contained the
ground of the unity in multiplicity of Nature’s empirical laws.”[362]
Aristotle already regarded Nature as in itself showing this adaptation
to end, and as having in itself νοῦς, intelligence, the Universal, so
that in undivided unity one element is moment of another (_v._ Vol.
II. pp. 156-162). Purpose is the Notion, and immanent; not external
form and abstraction as distinguished from a fundamental material,
but penetrating, so that all that is particular is determined by this
universal itself. According to Kant this is Understanding: no doubt the
laws of the Understanding, which it implicitly has in knowledge, leave
the objective still undetermined, but because this manifold itself
must have a connection in itself, which is yet contingent for human
intelligence, “the faculty of judgment must assume as a principle for
its own use that what is contingent for us contains a unity, which
for us indeed is not knowable, but yet thinkable, in the connection
of the manifold with an implicitly possible experience.”[363] This
principle hereby at once falls back again into the subjectivity of a
thought, and is only a maxim of our reflection, by which nothing is to
be expressed regarding the objective nature of the object,[364] because
Being-in-itself is once for all fixed outside of self-consciousness, and
the Understanding is conceived only in the form of the self-conscious,
not in its becoming another.
Now this principle of the reflective faculty of judgment is in itself a
two-fold adaptation to end, the formal and the material; the faculty of
judgment is thus either æsthetic or teleological: of these the former has
to do with subjective, the latter with objective, logical adaptation to
end. There are thus two objects of the faculty of judgment—the beautiful
in works of art and the natural products of organic life—which make known
to us the unity of the Notion of Nature and the Notion of Freedom.[365]
The consideration of these works involves the fact, that we see a unity
of the Understanding and the particular. But as this consideration is
only a subjective manner of representing such products, and does not
contain the truth of the same, such things are regarded only according to
this unity, and they are not in themselves of this nature; what they are
in themselves lies beyond.
a. The Beautiful of the æsthetic faculty of judgment consists in the
following: “Pleasure and displeasure are something subjective, which
can in no way become a part of knowledge. The object has adaptation
to end only to the extent that its conception is directly bound up
with the feeling of pleasure; and this is an æsthetic conception.
The taking up of forms into the imaginative faculty can never occur
without the reflecting faculty of judgment at least comparing them,
even unintentionally, by means of its power of relating perceptions
to Notions.” Now if in this comparison the imaginative faculty (as
a faculty of perceptions _a priori_?) “is, by means of a conception
given”—something beautiful,—“unintentionally placed in agreement with
the Understanding, as the faculty of Notions, and thereby a feeling of
pleasure is awakened, the object must then be looked on as in conformity
with end for the reflecting faculty of judgment. Such a judgment
regarding the adaptability to end of the object, a judgment which is
grounded on no previous Notion of the object, and furnishes no Notion
of it, is an æsthetic judgment. An object whose form (not the material
of its conception as sensation) is judged to be a cause of the pleasure
which springs from the conception of such an object, is beautiful,”—the
first reasonable thing said about beauty. The sensuous is one moment
of the Beautiful, but it must also express the spiritual, a Notion.
“The Beautiful is what is conceived without” subjective “interest,” but
similarly also “without Notions” (_i.e._ determinations of reflection,
laws) “as object of a universal pleasure. It is related to no
inclination, therefore the subject feels itself quite free therein. It is
not beautiful _for me_. The end is the object of a Notion, so far as the
latter is looked on as the cause of the former” (the object); “and the
causality of a Notion in respect to its object is adaptation to end.” To
the ideal belongs “the Idea of reason, which makes the aims of humanity,
as far as they cannot be sensuously conceived, the principle of judgment
of a form through which these aims reveal themselves as their effect in
the phenomenon. The ideal we may expect to find revealed only in human
form.”
The sublime is the effort to give sensuous expression to an Idea in
which the inconceivability of the Idea, and the impossibility of finding
an adequate expression of it by means of the sensuous, are clearly
evidenced.[366] Here in the æsthetic faculty of judgment we see the
immediate unity of the universal and the particular; for the Beautiful
is this very unity, without Notion and immediate. Because Kant, however,
places it in the subject, it is limited, and as æsthetic it also ranks
lower, inasmuch as it is not the unity as Notion.
b. The other manner of bringing harmony to pass is the teleological
way of regarding Nature, which is found in the objective and material
adaptation to end. Here the immediate unity of the Notion and reality is
looked upon as objective in the organic products of Nature—this being
the purpose of Nature, containing in its universality the particular,
in its particularity the species. But such a mode of consideration
must be practised not externally, but in conformity with internal
teleology. In external adaptation to end one thing has its end in
another: “Snow protects the sown crops in cold lands from frost, and
facilitates the intercourse of men by permitting of sleighing.”[367]
Internal adaptation to end signifies, on the contrary, that a thing is
in itself end and means, its end is not therefore beyond itself. In the
contemplation of the living creature we do not remain at the point of
having something sensuous before us, which according to the categories of
the Understanding is only brought into relation to something other than
itself; for we regard it as cause of itself, as producing itself. This
is the self-preservation of the living creature; as an individual it is
no doubt perishable, but in living it produces itself, although for that
purpose certain conditions are requisite. The end or purpose of Nature
is therefore to be sought for in matter, to the extent that matter is an
inwardly organized product of nature, “in which all is end, and all in
turn is means;”[368] because all the members of the organism are at the
same time means and end, it is an end in itself. That is the Aristotelian
Notion—the infinite that returns into itself, the Idea.
Kant at this point calls to mind the following: “We should find no
difference between natural mechanism and the technique of Nature, _i.e._
the connection of ends in the same, were our Understanding not of such
a kind that it must pass from the universal to the particular, and the
faculty of judgment can therefore pronounce no determining sentences,
without having a universal law under which it may subsume the particular.
Now the particular as such contains a contingent element in regard to the
universal, but nevertheless Reason also demands unity in the connection
of particular laws of Nature, and consequently a regulative character,
which character when found in the contingent is termed adaptation to end:
and the derivation of particular laws from universal is, in regard to the
element of contingency which those particular laws contain, _a priori_
impossible through the determination of the Notion of the object; the
Notion of the adaptation to end of Nature in its products becomes thus
a Notion necessary for the human faculty of judgment, but not affecting
the determination of the objects themselves, and therefore a subjective
principle.”[369] An organic Being is therefore, according to Kant (Kritik
der Urtheilskraft, p. 354) one in which natural mechanism and end are
identical. We regard it as if there dwelt in the sensuous a Notion
which brings the particular into conformity with itself. In the organic
products of Nature we perceive this immediate unity of the Notion and
reality; for in a living creature there is perceived in one unity the
soul, or the universal, and existence or particularity, which is not the
case with inorganic Nature. Thus there enters into the Kantian philosophy
the conception of the concrete, as that the universal Notion determines
the particular. But Kant took these Ideas again in a subjective sense
only, as guiding thoughts for the faculty of judgment, by which no
Being-in-itself can be expressed; and thus, although he expresses the
unity of the Notion and reality, he yet lays fresh emphasis on the side
of the Notion. He will not therefore throw off his limitations in the
moment in which he assumes them as limitations. This is the perpetual
contradiction in Kant’s philosophy: Kant exhibited the extremes of
opposition in their one-sidedness, and expressed also the reconciliation
of the contradiction; Reason postulates unity, and this we have also in
the faculty of judgment. Kant, however, says (Kritik der Urtheilskraft,
pp. 355-363): This is only a mode of our reflecting faculty of judgment,
life itself is not so; we are merely accustomed so to regard it. In art
it is thus certainly the sensuous mode which gives us the conception of
the Idea; reality and ideality are here directly in one. But at this
point also Kant says that we must remain at what is one-sided, at the
very moment when he is passing out beyond it. The wealth of thought
therefore still unfolds itself with Kant in subjective form alone; all
fulness, all content, concentrates in conceiving, thinking, postulating.
The objective, according to Kant, is only what is in itself; and we know
not what Things-in-themselves are. But Being-in-itself is only the _caput
mortuum_, the dead abstraction of the “other,” the empty, undetermined
Beyond.
The reason why that true Idea should not be the truth is therefore that
the empty abstractions of an understanding which keeps itself in the
abstract universal, and of a sensuous material of individuality standing
in opposition to the same, are presupposed as the truth. Kant no doubt
expressly advances to the conception of an intuitive or perceiving
understanding, which, while it gives universal laws, at the same time
determines the particular; and the determination thus given is deep; it
is the true concrete, reality determined by the indwelling Notion, or,
as Spinoza says, the adequate Idea. For “to knowledge there also belongs
intuitive perception, and the possession of a perfect spontaneity of
intuition would be a faculty of knowledge” specifically “distinct from
the sensuous, and quite independent thereof, and therefore it would be
understanding in the most universal sense. Consequently it is possible
to think of an intuitive understanding which does not pass from the
universal to the particular, and thus proceed through conceptions to the
individual—an understanding in which we do not meet with the contingency
of the harmony of Nature in her products, according to particular
laws, with the understanding, a contingency which makes it so hard for
our understanding to bring” together “into the unity of knowledge the
manifold of Nature.” But that this “_intellectus archetypus_” is the
true Idea of the understanding, is a thought which does not strike Kant.
Strange to say, he certainly has this idea of the intuitive; and he does
not know why it should have no truth—except because our understanding is
otherwise constituted, namely such “that it proceeds from the analytic
universal to the particular.”[370] But absolute Reason and Understanding
in itself, as we have already seen (pp. 432, 461), are, in Kant’s
view, of such a nature that they have no reality in themselves: the
Understanding requires material to work upon, theoretic Reason spins
cobwebs of the brain, practical Reason has to allow its reality to come
to an end with its postulates. In spite of their directly and definitely
expressed non-absoluteness, they are yet looked on as true knowledge; and
intuitive Understanding, which holds Notion and sensuous perception in
one unity, is looked on as a mere thought which we make for ourselves.
c. The highest form in which the conception of the concrete comes
into Kant’s philosophy is this, that the end is grasped in its entire
universality; and thus it is the Good. This Good is an Idea; it is my
thought; but there exists the absolute demand that it should be realized
also in the world, that the necessity of Nature should correspond with
the laws of freedom, not as the necessity of an external Nature, but
through what is right and moral in human life, through life in the
State,—or in other words that the world in general should be good. This
identity of the Good and reality is the demand of practical Reason; but
subjective Reason cannot realize this. In every good action a man no
doubt accomplishes something good, but this is only limited; universal
Good, as the final object of the world, can be attained to only through
a third. And this power over the world, which has as its final object
the Good in the world, is God.[371] Thus the Critique of the Faculty
of Judgment also ends with the postulate of God. Now, although the
particular laws of Nature, as independent individual relations, have no
relation to the Good, Reason consists in having and desiring unity as the
essential or substantial in itself. The opposition of these two, the Good
and the world, is contrary to that identity; Reason must therefore demand
that this contradiction should be abrogated, that there should be a power
which is good on its own account, and is a Power over Nature. This is the
position which God assumes in Kant’s philosophy: no proof is possible,
he says, of God’s existence, but the demand is there. The deficiency
here is the impossibility of proving God’s existence, and it consists in
this, that if we admit Kant’s dualism, it cannot be shown how the Good
as abstract Idea in itself is the abrogating of its Idea as abstract; and
how the world in itself is the abrogating of itself in its externality,
and in its diversity from the Good—this being done in order that both may
reveal themselves to be their truth, which in respect to them appears
as the Third, but is at the same time determined as the First. Thus,
therefore, according to Kant (Kritik der Urtheilskraft, pp. 460, 461),
God can only be believed in. We associate the faith of Jacobi with this;
for in this point Kant agrees with Jacobi.[372]
If now, in accordance with this standpoint of Kant and Jacobi, God is
believed in, and we admit this standpoint for an instant, there is
certainly a return to the Absolute. But the question remains: What is
God? To define Him as supersensuous is not much, nor is it more to say
He is universal, abstract, absolute. What then is His determination?
Were we here, however, to pass over to determinations of the Absolute,
the evil result would follow, as far as this standpoint is concerned,
that we should pass over to knowledge; for this signifies knowledge of
an object which is in itself concrete, _i.e._ determined. But here the
furthest point reached is the general statement that God exists with the
determination of being infinite, universal, indeterminate. God cannot be
known in this way; for in order to be known He must as concrete possess
at least two determinations. In this way mediation would be established,
for a knowledge of the concrete is at once a mediate knowledge. But
this standpoint lacks mediation, and thus remains at the immediate.
Paul, in speaking to the Athenians, appeals to the altar which they had
dedicated to the Unknown God, and declares to them what God is; but the
standpoint indicated here takes us back to the Unknown God. All the life
of Nature, as of Spirit, is mediation in itself; and to this mediation
the philosophy of Schelling now passed on.
If we sum up the Kantian philosophy, we find on all hands the Idea of
Thought, which is in itself the absolute Notion, and has in itself
difference, reality. In the theoretic and practical Reason it has only
abstract difference, but in the Faculty of Judgment, as the unity of
the two, Kant goes so far as to establish the difference as actual,
establishing not only particularity, but also individuality. But, to
be sure, this Philistine conception proceeds from our human faculty of
knowledge, which is valid for him in its empirical form, notwithstanding
his statement that it does not know the truth, and his further
description of the true idea of the same as being merely a thought which
we possess. Therefore actuality counts as something sensuous, empirical,
for the comprehension of which Kant takes the categories of the
Understanding, giving them the same validity as they have in every-day
life. This is a complete philosophy of the Understanding, which renounces
Reason: the reason why it became so popular was the negative one, that
men were once for all free from the old metaphysic. According to Kant
something sensuous is produced, having thought-determinations, which,
however, is not the thing, for if a man, for instance, feels something
hard, Kant says: “I feel hardness, but I do not feel Something.”
Kant’s philosophy thus ends with a dualism, with the relation which is
a plainly essential “ought,” with the unreconciled contradiction. It
is otherwise with Jacobi’s faith; he finds the conception of God as
immediate existence, and all mediation is untrue for him. With Kant,
therefore, the result is: “We know only phenomena;” with Jacobi, on the
other hand, it is: “We know only the finite and conditioned.” Over these
two results there has been unmingled joy among men, because the sloth of
Reason (Heaven be praised!) considered itself liberated from every call
to reflect, and now, being saved the trouble of penetrating to its own
inward meaning and exploring the depths of Nature and Spirit, it could
very well leave itself alone. The further result attending this is the
autocracy of the subjective Reason, which, seeing that it is abstract and
without knowledge, has only subjective certainty and not objective truth.
The second cause of rejoicing was the concession to freedom of a perfect
right, which I can neither understand nor justify, and need not do so; my
subjective liberty of conviction and certainty holds good all round. The
third cause of joy was added by Jacobi, who said that it amounted even to
a crime to seek to know the truth, because the infinite was thereby only
rendered finite. Truth is in a bad way, when all metaphysic is done away
with, and the only philosophy acknowledged is not a philosophy at all!
But besides the general idea of synthetic judgments _a priori_, a
universal which has difference in itself, Kant’s instinct carried this
out in accordance with the scheme of triplicity, unspiritual though
that was, in the whole system into which for him the entire universe
was divided. This he not only practised in the three critiques, but he
also followed it out in most of the sub-divisions under the categories,
the ideas of Reason, &c. Kant has therefore set forth as a universal
scheme the rhythm of knowledge, of scientific movement; and has
exhibited on all sides thesis, antithesis and synthesis, modes of the
mind by means of which it is mind, as thus consciously distinguishing
itself. The first is existence, but in the form of Other-Being for
consciousness; for what is only existence is object. The second is
Being-for-self, genuine actuality; here the reverse relation enters in,
for self-consciousness, as the negative of Being-in-itself, is itself
reality. The third is the unity of the two; the absolute, self-conscious
actuality is the sum of true actuality, into which are re-absorbed both
the objective and the independently existent subjective. Kant has
thus made an historical statement of the moments of the whole, and has
correctly determined and distinguished them: it is a good introduction
to Philosophy. The defect of Kant’s philosophy consists in the falling
asunder of the moments of the absolute form; or, regarded from the
other side, our understanding, our knowledge, forms an antithesis to
Being-in-itself: there is lacking the negative, the abrogation of the
“ought,” which is not laid hold of. But thought and thinking had become
once for all an absolute requisite that could no longer be set aside.
It was consequently in the first place demanded by consistency that
particular thoughts should appear as if produced of necessity from
the original unity of the ego, and in that way justified. But, in the
second place, thought had spread itself over the world, had attached
itself to everything, investigated everything, introduced its forms
into everything, and systematized everything, so that on every hand
thought-determinations had to be followed, instead of any mere feeling
or routine or practical common-sense, or what is evidenced in the
extraordinary lack of understanding on the part of so-called practical
men. And therefore in theology, in governments and their legislation,
in the object aimed at by the state, in trades and in mechanics, it
is said that men ought to act according to universal determinations,
_i.e._ rationally: and men even talk of a rational brewery, a rational
brick-kiln, etc. This is the requisite of concrete thought; while in the
Kantian result, which is that of phenomenon, an empty thought was alone
present. It is verily also the essence of revealed religion to know what
God is. There was, therefore, to be found a yearning desire for content,
for truth, since man could not possibly return to the condition of a
brute, nor yet sink to the form of sensation, so that this yearning
was for him the only thing that held good with regard to the higher
life. The first requirement—consistency—Fichte sought to satisfy; the
other—content—Schelling strove to fulfil.
C. FICHTE.
Fichte created a great sensation in his time; his philosophy is the
Kantian philosophy in its completion, and, as we must specially notice,
it is set forth in a more logical way. He does not pass beyond the
fundamentals of Kant’s philosophy, and at first regarded his own
philosophy as no more than a systematic working out of the other.[373]
In addition to these systems of philosophies, and that of Schelling,
there are none. Any that pretend to be such merely pick out something
from these, and over this they fight and wrangle among themselves. _Ils
se sont battus les flancs, pour être de grands hommes._ For in those
times there were in Germany many systems of philosophy, such as those of
Reinhold, Krug, Bouterweck, Fries, Schulze, &c.; but in them there is
only an extremely limited point of view, combined with boastfulness—a
strange medley of stray thoughts and conceptions or facts which I find
within me. But their thoughts are all derived from Fichte, Kant, or
Schelling—that is in so far as there are thoughts there present at all.
Or else some slight modification is added, and this for the most part
merely consists in making the great principles barren, what points in
them were living are destroyed, or else subordinate forms are changed,
whereby another principle is said to be set forth, though when we
look closer we find that these principles are but the principles of
one of those philosophies that have gone before. This may serve as a
justification for my not speaking further of all these philosophies;
any exposition of them would be no more than a demonstration that
everything in them is taken from Kant, Fichte, or Schelling, and that the
modification in form is only the semblance of a change, while really it
indicates a deterioration in the principles of those philosophies.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte was born on the 19th of May, 1762, at Rammenau,
near Bischoffswerda, in Upper Lusatia. He studied at Jena, and for some
time was a private tutor in Switzerland. He wrote a treatise on Religion,
termed a “Critique of all Revelation,” where the Kantian phraseology is
employed throughout—so much so that it was thought to be the work of
Kant. After this he was in 1793 summoned to Jena by Goethe as Professor
of Philosophy, which appointment he, however, resigned in the year 1799,
on account of an unpleasantness which had arisen through his essay “On
the ground of our Belief in a Divine Government of the World.” For Fichte
published a journal in Jena, and a paper in it which was by someone else
was regarded as atheistical. Fichte might have kept silence, but he
published the above-mentioned essay as an introduction to the article.
The authorities wished an investigation to be made into the matter. Then
Fichte wrote a letter which contained threats, and respecting it Goethe
said that a Government ought not to allow itself to be threatened. Fichte
now taught privately for some time in Berlin; in 1805 he became professor
at Erlangen, and in 1809 at Berlin, at which place he died on the 27th
January, 1814.[374] We cannot here deal more particularly with the
details of his life.
In what is termed the philosophy of Fichte a distinction must be made
between his properly-speaking speculative philosophy, in which the
argument is most consistently worked out, and which is less well known,
and his popular philosophy, to which belong the lectures delivered
in Berlin before a mixed audience, and, for example, the work termed
a “Guidance to a Blessed Life.” These last have much in them that is
affecting and edifying—many who call themselves the disciples of Fichte
know this side alone—and they are expressed in language most impressive
to a cultured, religious temperament. In the history of Philosophy,
however, such cannot be taken into consideration, although through their
matter they may have the highest possible value; the content has to be
speculatively developed, and that is done in Fichte’s earlier philosophic
works alone.[375]
1. THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF FICHTE’S PHILOSOPHY.
As we mentioned above (p. 478), the shortcoming in the Kantian philosophy
was its unthinking inconsistency, through which speculative unity was
lacking to the whole system; and this shortcoming was removed by Fichte.
It is the absolute form which Fichte laid hold of, or in other words, the
absolute form is just the absolute Being-for-self, absolute negativity,
not individuality, but the Notion of individuality, and thereby the
Notion of actuality; Fichte’s philosophy is thus the development of form
in itself. He maintained the ego to be the absolute principle, so that
from it, the direct and immediate certainty of self, all the matter
in the universe must be represented as produced; hence, according to
Fichte, reason is in itself a synthesis of Notion and actuality. But this
principle he once more in an equally one-sided manner set aside; it is
from the very beginning subjective, conditioned by an opposite, and its
realization is a continual rushing onward in finitude, a looking back
at what has gone before. The form in which it is presented has also the
disadvantage, and indeed, the real drawback of bringing the empiric ego
ever before one’s eyes, which is absurd, and quite distracting to one’s
point of view.
The claims of Philosophy have advanced so far that in the first place
self-consciousness refuses any longer to regard absolute essence as
immediate substance which does not in itself possess difference, reality,
and actuality. Against this substance self-consciousness ever struggled,
for it does not find its explicit Being there, and consequently feels
the lack of freedom. But besides this it demanded that this essence,
objectively presented, should be personal, living, self-conscious,
actual, and not shut up in abstract metaphysical thoughts alone. On the
other hand consciousness, for which the other is, demanded the moment of
external actuality, Being as such, into which thought must pass, truth
in objective existence; and this is what we more especially noticed in
connection with the English. This Notion, which is immediately actuality,
and this actuality which is immediately its Notion, and that indeed in
such a way that there neither is a third thought above this unity, nor
is it an immediate unity which does not possess difference, separation,
within it, is the ego; it is the self-distinction of opposites within
itself. That whereby it distinguishes itself from the simplicity of
thought, and distinguishes this other, is likewise immediately for it; it
is identical with, or not distinguished from it.[376] Hence it is pure
thought, or the ego is the true synthetic judgment _a priori_, as Kant
called it. This principle is apprehended actuality, for the taking back
of the other-Being into self-consciousness is just apprehension. The
Notion of the Notion is from this point of view found in the fact that in
what is apprehended self-consciousness has the certainty of itself; what
is not apprehended is something foreign to it. This absolute Notion or
this absolutely existent infinitude it is which has to be developed in
knowledge, and its distinction as the whole distinction of the universe
has to be represented from itself, and this has in its distinction to
remain reflected within itself in equal absoluteness. Nothing other than
the ego anywhere exists, and the ego is there because it is there; what
is there is only in the ego and for the ego.[377]
Now Fichte merely set forth this Notion; he did not bring it to a
scientific realization from itself. For to him this Notion maintains
and asserts itself as this Notion; it has absoluteness for him in so
far as it is merely the unrealized Notion, and thus indeed comes once
more into opposition with reality. The Fichtian philosophy has the great
advantage of having set forth the fact that Philosophy must be a science
derived from one supreme principle, from which all determinations are
necessarily derived. The important point is this unity of principle and
the attempt to develop from it in a scientifically consistent way the
whole content of consciousness, or, as has been said, to construct the
whole world.[378] Beyond this no progress was made.[379] But the great
necessity in Philosophy is to possess one living Idea; the world is a
flower which is eternally produced from one grain of seed. Thus Fichte
does not, like Kant, throw his work into narrative form because he begins
with the ego; but he has proceeded further, inasmuch as he sought to
bring about a construction of determinations of knowledge from the ego.
The whole extent of knowledge in all the world must be developed, and
further this knowledge must be the consequence of the development of
determinations; but because Fichte says that what is not for us does not
concern us, he has not grasped this principle of the ego as Idea, but
solely in the consciousness of the activity which we exercise in knowing,
and consequently it is still laid hold of in the form of subjectivity.
Thus as Kant treats of cognition [Erkennen], so Fichte sets forth real
knowledge [Wissen]. Fichte states that the task of Philosophy is to
find a theory of knowledge; universal knowledge is both the object
and the starting-point of Philosophy. Consciousness knows, that is
its nature; the end of philosophic learning is the knowledge of this
knowledge. Hence Fichte called his philosophy the Theory of Knowledge
(Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre, p. 18), the science of knowledge.
That is to say ordinary consciousness as the active ego finds this and
that, occupies itself, not with itself, but with other objects and
interests, but the necessity that I bring forth determinations, and
which determinations—cause and effect, for example,—lies beyond my
consciousness: I bring them forth instinctively and cannot get behind my
consciousness. But when I philosophize, I make my ordinary consciousness
itself my object, because I make a pure category my consciousness: I know
what my ego is doing, and thus I get behind my ordinary consciousness.
Fichte thus defines Philosophy as the artificial consciousness, as the
consciousness of consciousness.[380]
a. Where Fichte in his system has attained the highest degree of
determinateness, he begins, as we saw Kant did before (pp. 437, 438),
from the transcendental unity of self-consciousness; in it I—as this—am
one, this unity is to Fichte the same and the original. Ego is there
a fact, says Fichte, but not yet a proposition. As proposition, as
principle, the ego must not remain barren, nor be accepted as one,
for to a proposition pertains a synthesis. Now Fichte proceeds in his
system from the fact that Philosophy must begin with an absolutely
unconditioned, certain principle, with something indubitably certain in
ordinary knowledge. “It cannot be proved or defined, because it must
be absolutely the first principle.”[381] According to Wendt’s account
(Tennemann’s Grundriss, § 393, pp. 494, 495) Fichte gives an exposition
of the necessity of such a principle as follows: “Scientific knowledge
is a system of cognition obtained through a supreme principle which
expresses the content and form of knowledge. The theory of knowledge is
the science of knowledge which sets forth the possibility and validity of
all knowledge, and proves the possibility of principles in reference to
form and content, the principles themselves, and thereby the connection
existing in all human knowledge. It must have a principle which can
neither be proved from it nor from another science; for it is supreme.
If there is a theory of knowledge there also is a system; if there is
a system there is also a theory of knowledge and an absolute first
principle—and so on through an inevitable circle.”[382]
The simple principle of this knowledge is certainty of myself, which is
the relation of me to myself; what is in me, that I know. The supreme
principle, as immediate and not derived, must be certain on its own
account; that is, a determination of the ego only, for it is only from
the ego that I cannot abstract.[383] Fichte thus begins, like Descartes,
with ‘I think, therefore I am,’ and he expressly brings this proposition
to mind. The Being of the ego is not a dead, but a concrete Being;
but the highest Being is thought. Ego, as an explicitly self-existent
activity of thought, is thus knowledge, even if it is only abstract
knowledge, as in the beginning at least it cannot help being. At the
same time Fichte begins from this absolute certainty with quite other
necessities and demands; for from this ego not only Being but also the
larger system of thought has to be derived (_supra_, p. 230). According
to Fichte, the ego is the source of the categories and ideas, but all
conceptions and thoughts are a manifold reduced to a synthesis through
Thought. Thus while with Descartes in connection with the ego other
thoughts appear which we simply find already in us, such as God, nature,
&c., Fichte sought for a philosophy entirely of a piece, in which nothing
empiric was to be admitted from without. With this reflection a false
point of view was at once introduced, namely that contained in the old
conception of knowledge, of commencing with principles in this form and
proceeding from them; so that the reality which is derived from such
a principle is brought into opposition with it, and hence in truth is
something different, _i.e._ it is not derived: or that principle for this
same reason expresses only the absolute certainty of itself and not the
truth. The ego is certain, it cannot be doubted; but Philosophy desires
to reach the truth. The certainty is subjective, and because it is made
to remain the basis, all else remains subjective also without there being
any possibility of this form being removed. Fichte now analyzes the ego,
reducing it to three principles from which the whole of knowledge has to
be evolved.
α. The first proposition must be simple, in it predicate and subject must
be alike; for were they unlike, their connection—since in accordance
with their diversity the determinations are not directly one—would have
to be first of all proved by means of a third. The first principle
must thus be identical. Fichte now proceeds further to distinguish in
this first principle the form and content; but in order that this same
may be immediately true through itself, form and content must be again
the same, and the principle conditioned by neither. It signifies
A = A, the abstract undetermined identity; that is the proposition of
contradiction, wherein A is an indifferent content. Fichte says, “Thought
is by no means essence, but only a particular determination of Being;
there are outside of it many other determinations of our Being. I merely
remark this, that when ‘I am’ is overstepped, Spinozism is necessarily
reached. Its unity is something which ought to be produced through
us, but which cannot be so; it is not anything that is.” The first
proposition is then that I am identical with myself, Ego = Ego;[384] that
undoubtedly is the definition of the ego. The subject and the predicate
are the content; and this content of the two sides is likewise their
relation, _i.e._ form. Relation requires two sides; the relating and the
related are here, however, the same; for on account of the simplicity of
the ego, there is nothing but a relation of the ego to the ego. I have
knowledge of myself; but in so far as I am consciousness, I know of an
object which is different from me, and which is then likewise _mine_.
But the ego is in such a way identical with its difference that what is
different is immediately the same, and what is identical is likewise
different; we have a difference without a difference. Self-consciousness
is not dead identity, or non-Being, but the object which is identical
with me. This is immediately certain; all else must be as certain to
me, inasmuch as it must be my relation to myself. The content must
be transformed into the ego, so that in it I have _my_ determination
alone. This principle is at first abstract and deficient, because in
it no difference, or a formal difference only is expressed; whereas
the principle should possess a content: a subject and a predicate are
indeed distinguished in it, but only for us who reflect upon it, _i.e._
in itself there is no difference, and consequently no true content. In
the second place, this principle is indeed the immediate certainty of
self-consciousness, but self-consciousness is likewise consciousness,
and in it there is likewise the certainty that other things exist to
which it stands in an attitude of opposition. In the third place, that
principle has not the truth in it, for the very reason that the certainty
of itself possessed by the ego has no objectivity; it has not the form of
the differentiated content within it—or it stands in opposition to the
consciousness of an “other”.
β. Now in order that determination should come to pass, _i.e._ a content
and difference, it is essential for Fichte that a second principle should
be established, which in regard to form is unconditioned, but the content
of which is conditioned, because it does not belong to the ego. This
second principle, set forth under the first, is, “I assert a non-ego
in opposition to the ego,” and in this something other than absolute
self-consciousness is set forth.[385] To this pertains the form therein
present, relation; but the content is the non-ego, another content
from the ego. We might say that through this content the proposition
is independent, since the negative therein is an absolute, as truly as
the reverse—that it is independent through the form of opposition which
cannot be derived from the original. Here, then, we have no more to do
with derivation, although this derivation of opposition from the first
proposition was all the same demanded. Inasmuch as I posit another in
opposition to the ego, I posit myself as not posited; this non-ego is
the object generally, _i.e._ that which is opposed to me. This other is
the negative of the ego; thus when Fichte called it the non-ego he was
expressing himself in a very happy, suitable, and consistent manner.
There has been a good deal of ridicule cast on the ego and non-ego;
the expression is new, and therefore to us Germans it seems strange at
first. But the French say _Moi_ and _Non-moi_, without finding anything
laughable in it. In this principle the positing belongs, however, to
the ego; but because the non-ego is independent of the ego, we have two
sides, and self-consciousness relates itself to another. This second
proposition thus signifies that I posit myself as limited, as non-ego;
but non-ego is something quite new to be added. On the one side we thus
have before us a field which is merely appropriated from the ego; and in
this way we have before us the non-ego as our object.
γ. To these is added yet a third proposition, in which I now make this
division into ego and non-ego: it is the synthetic principle, the
proposition of ground, which in content is unconditioned, just as in the
second was the case in regard to form. This third proposition is the
determination of the first two through one another, in such a way that
the ego limits the non-ego. “In and through the ego both the ego and the
non-ego are posited as capable of being mutually limited by means of
one another, _i.e._ in such a way that the reality of the one abrogates
the reality of the other.” In limitation both are negated, but “only
in part”; only thus are synthesis and deduction possible. I posit the
non-ego, which is for me, in myself, in my identity with myself; thus I
take it from its non-identity, its not-being-I, that is to say I limit
it. This limitation of the non-ego Fichte expresses thus: “I place in
opposition to the ego,” and indeed “to the divisible ego, a divisible
non-ego.” The non-ego I destroy as a complete sphere, which it was
according to the second principle, and posit it as divisible; I likewise
posit the ego as divisible in so far as the non-ego is present in it. The
whole sphere which I have before me is supposed indeed to be the ego,
but in it I have not one but two. The proposition of ground is thus the
relation of reality and negation, _i.e._ it is limitation; it contains
the ego limited by the non-ego, and the non-ego limited by the ego.[386]
Of this synthesis there is nothing, properly speaking, contained in the
two earlier propositions. Even this first presentation of the three
principles does away with the immanence of real knowledge. Thus the
presentation is here also subject to an opposite from the first, as it is
with Kant, even if these are two acts of the ego merely, and we remain
entirely in the ego.
Now that limitation may take place for me in two different ways: at
one time the one is passive, at another time the other is so. In this
limitation the ego may posit the non-ego as limiting and itself as
limited, in such a way that the ego posits itself as requiring to have
an object; I know myself indeed as ego, but determined by the non-ego;
non-ego is here active and ego passive. Or, on the other hand, the ego,
as abrogating other-being, is that which limits, and non-ego is the
limited. I know myself then as clearly determining the non-ego, as the
absolute cause of the non-ego as such, for I can think. The first is
the proposition of the theoretic reason, of intelligence: the second
the proposition of practical reason, of will.[387] The will is this,
that I am conscious of myself as limiting the object; thus I make myself
exercise activity upon the object and maintain myself. The theoretic
proposition is that the object is before me and it determines me. The ego
is, since I perceive, a content, and I have this content in me, which is
thus outside of me. This is on the whole the same thing as we meet with
in the experience of Kant: it comes to the same thing whether it is by
matter or the non-ego that the ego is here determined.
b. In the theoretic consciousness the ego, although the assertive
generally, finds itself limited by the non-ego. But it is identical
with itself; hence its infinite activity ever sets itself to abrogate
the non-ego and to bring forth itself. Now the different methods whereby
the ego sets forth itself are the different methods of its activity;
these we have to understand in their necessity. But since philosophic
knowledge is the consideration of consciousness itself (_supra_, p. 483),
I can only know knowledge, the act of the ego. Fichte thus appeals to
consciousness, postulates ego and non-ego in their abstraction, and since
philosophic knowledge is the consciousness of consciousness, it is not
sufficient that I should find its determinations in consciousness, for I
produce them with consciousness. Common consciousness, indeed, likewise
brings forth all the determinations of the ordinary conception and of
thought, but without—on the theoretic side at least—having any knowledge
of it; for it is the fact of being limited alone that is present to it.
Thus, when I see a large square object, such as a wall, my ordinary
consciousness accepts these determinations as they are given to it; the
object _is_. In so doing I do not think of seeing, but of the object;
seeing, however, is my activity, the determinations of my faculty of
sensation are thus posited through me.[388] The ego as theoretic is,
indeed, aware in philosophic consciousness that it is the ego which
posits; but here it posits that the non-ego posits somewhat in me. The
ego thus posits itself as that which is limited by the non-ego. I make
this limitation mine; thus is it for me in me, this passivity of the ego
is itself the activity of the ego. As a matter of fact, all reality which
appears in the object for the ego is a determination of the ego,[389]
just as the categories and other determinations were in Kant’s case. Thus
it is here more especially that we should expect Fichte to demonstrate
the return of other-Being into absolute consciousness. However, because
after all the other-Being was regarded as unconditioned, as implicit,
this return does not come to pass. The ego determines the ‘other,’
indeed, but this unity is an altogether finite unity; non-ego has thus
immediately escaped from determination once more and gone forth from this
unity. What we find is merely an alternation between self-consciousness
and the consciousness of another, and the constant progression of this
alternation, which never reaches any end.[390]
The development of theoretic reason is the following-out of the manifold
relationships between the ego and non-ego; the forms of this limitation
which Fichte now goes through are the determinations of the object.
These particular thought-determinations he calls categories, and he
seeks to demonstrate them in their necessity; from the time of Aristotle
onwards no one had thought of so doing. The first of these forms is the
determination of reciprocity, which we already met with in the third
proposition: “By the determination of the reality or negation of the
ego, the negation or reality of the non-ego is equally determined;” the
two in one is reciprocal action. In the second place, “Causality is the
same degree of activity in the one as of passivity in the other.” In so
far as something is considered as the reality of the non-ego, the ego is
considered as passive, and, on the other hand, in so far as ‘I’ am real,
the object is passive; this relation, that the passivity of the object is
my activity or reality, and the opposite, is the conception of Causality.
“As many parts of negation as the ego posits in itself, so many parts
of reality it posits in the non-ego; it therefore posits itself as
self-determining in so far as it is determined, and as suffering
determination in so far as it determines itself. In so far,” in the
third place, “as the ego is regarded as embracing the whole absolutely
determined realm of all reality, it is substance; on the other hand when
it is posited in a not absolutely determined sphere of this realm, in so
far there is an accidence in the ego.”[391] That is the first rational
attempt that has ever been made to deduce the categories; this progress
from one determination to another is, however, only an analysis from the
standpoint of consciousness, and is not in and for itself.
The ego is so far the ideal ground of all conceptions of the object;
all determination of this object is a determination of the ego. But in
order that it may be object, it must be placed in opposition to the ego,
_i.e._ the determinations set forth through the ego are another, the
non-ego; this placing of the object in opposition is the real ground
of conceptions. The ego is, however, likewise the real ground of the
object; for it is likewise a determination of the ego that the non-ego
as object is set in opposition to the ego. Both, the real ground and the
ideal ground of the conception, are thus one and the same.[392] Regarding
the ego as ideal principle and the non-ego as real principle, Krug has
likewise talked a great deal of nonsense. Regarded from the one point
of view, the ego is active and the non-ego purely passive; while from
the other side the ego is passive and the object active and operative.
But since the ego in the non-philosophic consciousness does not have
the consciousness of its activity in the conception of the object, it
represents to itself its own activity as foreign, _i.e._ as belonging to
the non-ego.
We here see the opposition adopting various forms: ego, non-ego;
positing, setting in opposition; two sorts of activity of the ego, &c.
The fact that I represent is undoubtedly my activity, but the matter
of main importance is the content of the positing and its necessary
connection through itself. If one occupies oneself only with this
content, that form of subjectivity which is dominant with Fichte, and
which remains in his opposition, disappears. As the ego is affirmative
and determining, there now is in this determination a negative likewise
present; I find myself determined and at the same time the ego is like
itself, infinite, _i.e._ identical with itself. This is a contradiction
which Fichte indeed endeavours to reconcile, but in spite of it all he
leaves the false basis of dualism undisturbed. The ultimate, beyond
which Fichte does not get, is only an ‘ought,’ which does not solve
the contradiction; for while the ego should be absolutely at home with
itself, _i.e._ free, it should at the same time be associated with
another. To Fichte the demand for the solution of this contradiction thus
adopts the attitude of being a demanded solution only, of signifying that
I ever have to destroy the barriers, that I ever have to reach beyond
the limitation into utter infinitude, and that I ever find a new limit;
a continual alternation takes place between negation and affirmation,
an identity with self which again falls into negation, and from this
negation is ever again restored. To speak of the bounds of human reason
is, however, an unmeaning form of words. That the reason of the subject
is limited is comprehensible from the nature of the case, but when we
speak of Thought, infinitude is none other than one’s own relation to
self, and not to one’s limit; and the place in which man is infinite is
Thought. Infinitude may then be likewise very abstract, and in this way
it is also once more finite; but true infinitude remains in itself.
Fichte further deduces the ordinary conception thus: the fact that the
ego in going forth at once finds its activity checked by a limitation,
and returns once more into itself, brings about two opposite tendencies
in me, between which I waver, and which I try to unite in the faculty
of imagination. In order that a fixed determination may exist between
the two, I have to make the limit a permanent one, and we have that in
the understanding. All further determinations of the object are, as
categories of the understanding, modes of synthesis; but each synthesis
is a new contradiction. New mediations are thus once more necessary, and
these are new determinations. Thus Fichte says: I can always continue to
determine the non-ego, to make it my conception, _i.e._ to take from it
its negation as regards me. I have to deal with my activity alone; but
there is always an externality therein present which still remains, and
which is not explained by my activity. This Beyond which alone remains
to the undetermined ego Fichte calls the infinite check upon the ego,
with which it ever has to deal, and beyond which it cannot get; thus the
activity which proceeds into infinitude finds itself checked and driven
back by this repulsive force, and then it reacts upon itself. “The ego
in its self-determination has been considered both as determining and
determined; if we reflect on the fact that the absolutely determined
determining power must be an absolutely indeterminate, and further, that
ego and non-ego are absolutely opposed to one another, in the one case
ego is the indeterminate and in the other case non-ego.”[393]
Inasmuch as the ego here makes the object its conception and negates it,
this philosophy is Idealism, in which philosophy all the determinations
of the object are ideal. Everything determinate which the ego possesses
it has through its own positing; I even make a coat or a boot because I
put them on. There remains only the empty repulsive force, and that is
the Kantian Thing-in-itself, beyond which even Fichte cannot get, even
though the theoretic reason continues its determination into infinitude.
“The ego as intelligence” ever “remains dependent on an undetermined
non-ego; it is only through this that it is intelligence.”[394] The
theoretic side is thus dependent. In it we have not therefore to deal
with the truth in and for itself, but with a contingent, because ego
is limited, not absolute, as its Notion demands: intelligence is not
here considered as spirit which is free. This is Fichte’s standpoint as
regards the theoretic side.
c. Practical reason comes next; the point of view from which it starts
is that “The ego posits itself as determining the non-ego.” Now the
contradiction has thus to be solved of ego being at home with itself,
since it determines its Beyond. The ego is thus infinite activity, and,
as ego = ego, the absolute ego, it is undoubtedly abstract. But in order
to have a determination, a non-ego must exist; ego is thus activity,
causality, the positing of the non-ego. But as with Kant sensuousness and
reason remain opposed, the same contradiction is present here, only in a
more abstract form, and not in the rude empiricism of Kant. Fichte here
turns and twists in all sorts of ways, or he gives the opposition many
different forms; the crudest form is that ego is posited as causality,
for in it another is necessitated on which it exercises its activity.
“The absolute ego has accordingly to be” now “the cause of the non-ego,
_i.e._ only of that in the non-ego which remains when we abstract from
all demonstrable forms of representation or conception—of that to
which is ascribed the check given to the infinitely operative activity
of the ego; for the fact that the intelligent ego is, in accordance
with the necessary laws of the conception, the cause of the particular
determinations of that which is conceived as such, is demonstrated in
the theoretic science of knowledge.”[395] The limits of intelligence
must be broken through, the ego must alone be active; the other side,
the infinite repulsion, must be removed, in order that the ego may be
liberated.
“According to our hypothesis the ego must now posit a non-ego absolutely,
and without any ground, _i.e._ absolutely and without any ground it must
limit or in part not posit itself.” This, indeed, it already does as
intelligent. “It must therefore have the ground of not positing itself”
only “in itself.” The ego is, however, just the ego, it posits itself,
“it must” therefore “have the principle of positing itself within it,
and also the principle of not positing itself. Hence the ego in its
essence would be contradictory and self-repellent; there would be in it a
two-fold or contradictory principle, which assumption contradicts itself,
for in that case there would be no principle within it. The ego would”
consequently “not exist, for it would abrogate itself. All contradictions
are reconciled through the further determination of contradictory
propositions. The ego must be posited in one sense as infinite, and in
another as finite. Were it to be posited as infinite and finite in one
and the same sense, the contradiction would be insoluble; the ego would
not be one but two. In so far as the ego posits itself as infinite, its
activity is directed upon itself and on nothing else but itself. In so
far as the ego posits limits, and itself in these limits, its activity is
not exercised directly on itself, but on a non-ego which has to be placed
in opposition,” upon another and again upon another, and so on into
infinitude; that is the object, and the activity of the ego “is objective
activity.”[396] In this way Fichte in the practical sphere also remains
at opposition, only this opposition now has the form of two tendencies in
the ego, both of which are said to be one and the same activity of the
ego. I am called upon to proceed to determine the other in relation to
which I am negative, the non-ego, in accordance with my freedom; it has
indeed all determinations through the activity of the ego, but beyond my
determination the same non-ego ever continues to appear. The ego clearly
posits an object, a point of limitation, but where the limitation is, is
undetermined. I may transfer the sphere of my determination, and extend
it to an infinite degree, but there always remains a pure Beyond, and the
non-ego has no positive self-existent determination.
The last point in respect of the practical sphere is hence this, that
the activity of the ego is a yearning or striving[397]—like the Kantian
“ought”; Fichte treats this with great prolixity. The Fichtian philosophy
consequently has the same standpoint as the Kantian; the ultimate is
always subjectivity, as existent in and for itself. Yearning, according
to Fichte, is divine; in yearning I have not forgotten myself, I have
not forgotten that I possess a superiority in myself; and therefore it
is a condition of happiness and satisfaction. This infinite yearning
and desire has then been regarded as what is highest and most excellent
in the Beautiful, and in religious feelings likewise; and with it
is connected the irony of which we have spoken before (Vol. I. pp.
400, 401). In this return the ego is merely an effort, on its side
it is fixed, and it cannot realize its endeavours. Striving is thus
an imperfect or implicitly limited action. The ultimate result is
consequently a “circle” which cannot be broken through, so that “the
finite spirit must necessarily posit an absolute outside itself (a
thing-in-itself), and yet on the other hand it must recognize that
this same is only there for it (a necessary noumenon).”[398] To put it
otherwise, we see the ego absolutely determined in opposition only, we
see it only as consciousness and self-consciousness which does not get
beyond this, and which does not reach so far as to Spirit. The ego is the
absolute Notion in so far as it does not yet reach the unity of thought,
or in this simplicity does not reach difference, and in motion does not
have rest; that is to say, in so far as positing, or the pure activity
of the ego, and setting in opposition, are not by it comprehended as the
same. Or the ego does not comprehend the infinite repulsion, the non-ego;
self-consciousness determines the non-ego, but does not know how to make
this Beyond its own.
The deficiency in the Fichtian philosophy is thus firstly that the ego
retains the significance of the individual, actual self-consciousness,
as opposed to that which is universal or absolute, or to the spirit in
which it is itself a moment merely; for the individual self-consciousness
simply signifies standing apart as far as another is concerned. Hence,
if the ego was ever called absolute existence, the most terrible offence
was given, because really the ego only came before us as signifying the
individual subject as opposed to the universal.
In the second place, Fichte does not attain to the idea of Reason as the
perfected, real unity of subject and object, or of ego and non-ego; it is
only, as with Kant, represented as the thought of a union in a belief or
faith, and with this Fichte likewise concludes (Grundlage der gesammten
Wissenschaftslehre, p. 301). This he worked out in his popular writings.
For because the ego is fixed in its opposition to the non-ego, and _is_
only as being opposed, it becomes lost in that unity. The attainment of
this aim is hence sent further and further back into the false, sensuous
infinitude: it is a progression implying just the same contradiction as
that found in Kant, and having no present actuality in itself; for the
ego has all actuality in its opposition only. The Fichtian philosophy
recognizes the finite spirit alone, and not the infinite; it does not
recognize spirit as universal thought, as the Kantian philosophy does not
recognize the not-true; or it is formal. The knowledge of absolute unity
is apprehended as faith in a moral disposition of the world, an absolute
hypothesis in accordance with which we have the belief that every moral
action that we perform will have a good result.[399] As in Kant’s case,
this Idea belongs to universal thought. “In a word, when anything is
apprehended it ceases to be God; and every conception of God that is set
up is necessarily that of a false God. Religion is a practical faith
in the moral government of the world; faith in a supersensuous world
belongs, according to our philosophy, to the immediate verities.”[400]
Fichte thus concludes with the highest Idea, with the union of freedom
and nature, but a union of such a nature that, immediately regarded,
it is not known; the opposition alone falls within consciousness. This
union of faith he likewise finds in the Love of God. As believed and
experienced, this form pertains to Religion, and not to Philosophy,
and our only possible interest is to know this in Philosophy. But with
Fichte it is still associated with a most unsatisfying externality of
which the basis is the non-Idea, for the one determination is essential
only because the other is so, and so on into infinitude. “The theory
of knowledge is realistic—it shows that the consciousness of finite
beings can only be explained by presupposing an independent and wholly
opposite power, on which, in accordance with their empirical existence,
they themselves are dependent. But it asserts nothing more than this
opposed power, which by finite beings can merely be _felt_ and not known.
All possible determinations of this power or of this non-ego which can
come forth into infinity in our consciousness, it pledges itself to
deduce from the determining faculties of the ego, and it must actually
be able to deduce these, so certainly as it is a theory of knowledge.
This knowledge, however, is not transcendent but transcendental. It
undoubtedly explains all consciousness from something independent of all
consciousness, but it does not forget that this independent somewhat is
again a product of its own power of thought, and consequently something
dependent on the ego, in so far as it has to be there for the ego. Every
thing is, in its ideality, dependent upon the ego; but in its reality
even the ego is dependent. The fact that the finite spirit must posit
for itself somewhat outside of itself, which last exists only for it, is
that circle which it may infinitely extend but never break through.” The
further logical determination of the object is that which in subject and
object is identical, the true connection is that in which the objective
is the possession of the ego; as thought, the ego in itself determines
the object. But Fichte’s theory of knowledge regards the struggle of the
ego with the object as that of the continuous process of determining the
object through the ego as subject of consciousness, without the identity
of the restfully self-developing Notion.[401]
Thirdly, because the ego is thus fixed in its one-sidedness, there
proceeds from it, as representing one extreme, the whole of the progress
that is made in the content of knowledge; and the deduction of the
philosophy of Fichte, cognition in its content and form, is a progression
from certain determinations to others which do not turn back into
unity, or through a succession of finitenesses which do not have the
Absolute in them at all. The absolute point of view, like an absolute
content, is wanting. Thus the contemplation of nature, for instance, is
a contemplation of it as of pure finitenesses from the point of view of
another, as though the organic body were regarded thus: “Consciousness
requires a sphere entirely its own for its activity. This sphere is
posited through an original, necessary activity of the ego, in which
it does not know itself as free. It is a sensuous perception, a drawing
of lines; the sphere of activity thereby becomes something extended in
space. As quiescent, continuous, and yet unceasingly changing, this
sphere is matter, which, as body, has a number of parts which in relation
to one another are called limbs. The person can ascribe to himself no
body without positing it as being under the influence of another person.
But it is likewise essential that I should be able to check this same
influence, and external matter is also posited as resisting my influences
on it, _i.e._ as a tough, compact matter.”[402] These tough matters must
further be separated from one another—the different persons cannot hold
together like one mass of dough. For “my body is my body and not that of
another; it must further operate and be active without my working through
it. It is only through the operation of another that I can myself be
active and represent myself as a rational being who can be respected by
him. But the other being should treat me immediately as a rational being,
I should be for him a rational being even before my activity begins.
Or my form must produce an effect through its mere existence in space,
without my activity, _i.e._ it must be visible. The reciprocal operation
of rational beings must take place without activity; thus a subtle matter
must be assumed in order that it may be modified by means of the merely
quiescent form. In this way are deduced first Light and then Air.”[403]
This constitutes a very external manner of passing from one step to
another, resembling the method of the ordinary teleology, which makes
out, for instance, that plants and animals are given for the nourishment
of mankind. This is how it is put: Man must eat, and thus there must be
something edible—consequently plants and animals are at once deduced;
plants must have their root in something, and consequently the earth is
forthwith deduced. What is altogether lacking is any consideration of the
object as what it is in itself; it is plainly considered only in relation
to another. In this way the animal organism appears as a tough, tenacious
matter which is “articulated” and can be modified; light is a subtle
matter which is the medium of communication of mere existence, &c.—just
as in the other case plants and animals are merely edible. As regards a
philosophic consideration of the content there is nothing at all to be
found.
Fichte likewise wrote both a Science of Morals and of Natural Rights,
but he treats them as sciences pertaining to the understanding only, and
his method of procedure is destitute of ideas and carried on by means of
a limited understanding. The Fichtian deduction of the conceptions of
justice and morality thus remains within the limitations and rigidity of
self-consciousness, as against which Fichte’s popular presentations of
religion and morality present inconsistencies. The treatise on Natural
Rights is a special failure, _e.g._ where he, as we have just seen (p.
502), deduces even nature just as far as he requires it. The organization
of the state which is described in Fichte’s Science of Rights is
furthermore as unspiritual as was the deduction of natural objects just
mentioned, and as were many of the French constitutions which have
appeared in modern times—a formal, external uniting and connecting, in
which the individuals as such are held to be absolute, or in which Right
is the highest principle. Kant began to ground Right upon Freedom, and
Fichte likewise makes freedom the principle in the Rights of Nature; but,
as was the case with Rousseau, it is freedom in the form of the isolated
individual. This is a great commencement, but in order to arrive at the
particular, they have to accept certain hypotheses. The universal is
not the spirit, the substance of the whole, but an external, negative
power of the finite understanding directed against individuals. The
state is not apprehended in its essence, but only as representing a
condition of justice and law, _i.e._ as an external relation of finite
to finite. There are various individuals; the whole constitution of the
state is thus in the main characterized by the fact that the freedom of
individuals must be limited by means of the freedom of the whole.[404]
The individuals always maintain a cold attitude of negativity as regards
one another, the confinement becomes closer and the bonds more stringent
as time goes on, instead of the state being regarded as representing the
realization of freedom.
This philosophy contains nothing speculative, but it demands the presence
of the speculative element. As the philosophy of Kant seeks in unity its
Idea of the Supreme Good, wherein the opposites have to be united, so
the Fichtian philosophy demands union in the ego and in the implicitude
of faith; in this self-consciousness in all its actions makes its
starting-point conviction, so that in themselves its actions may bring
forth the highest end and realize the good. In the Fichtian philosophy
nothing can be seen beyond the moment of self-consciousness, of
self-conscious Being-within-self, as in the philosophy of England we find
expressed—in just as one-sided a way—the moment of Being-for-another, or
of consciousness, and that not as a moment simply, but as the principle
of the truth; in neither of the two is there the unity of both—or spirit.
Fichte’s philosophy constitutes a significant epoch in Philosophy
regarded in its outward form. It is from him and from his methods that
abstract thought proceeds, deduction and construction. Hence with the
Fichtian philosophy a revolution took place in Germany. The public had
penetrated as far as the philosophy of Kant, and until the Kantian
philosophy was reached the interest awakened by Philosophy was general;
it was accessible, and men were curious to know about it, it pertained to
the ordinary knowledge of a man of culture (_supra_, p. 218). Formerly
men of business, statesmen, occupied themselves with Philosophy; now,
however, with the intricate idealism of the philosophy of Kant, their
wings droop helpless to the ground. Hence it is with Kant that we first
begin to find a line of separation which parts us from the common modes
of consciousness; but the result, that the Absolute cannot be known, has
become one generally acknowledged. With Fichte the common consciousness
has still further separated itself from Philosophy, and it has utterly
departed from the speculative element therein present. For Fichte’s
ego is not merely the ego of the empiric consciousness, since general
determinations of thought such as do not fall within the ordinary
consciousness have likewise to be known and brought to consciousness;
in this way since Fichte’s time few men have occupied themselves with
speculation. Fichte, it is true, in his later works especially, wrote
with a view to meeting the popular ear as we may see in the “Attempt to
force the reader into comprehension,” but this end was not accomplished.
The public was through the philosophy of Kant and Jacobi strengthened in
its opinion—one which it accepted _utiliter_—that the knowledge of God is
immediate, and that we know it from the beginning and without requiring
to study, and hence that Philosophy is quite superfluous.
2. FICHTE’S SYSTEM IN A RE-CONSTITUTED FORM.
The times called for life, for spirit. Now since mind has thus retreated
within self-consciousness, but within self-consciousness as a barren ego,
which merely gives itself a content or a realization through finitenesses
and individualities which in and for themselves are nothing, the next
stage is found in knowing this realization of self-consciousness in
itself, in knowing the content in itself as a content which, penetrated
throughout by spirit, is self-conscious and spiritual, or a spirit full
of content. In his later popular works Fichte thus set forth faith, love,
hope, religion, treating them without philosophic interest, and as for
a general public: it was a philosophy calculated to suit enlightened
Jews and Jewesses, councillors and Kotzebues. He places the matter in a
popular form: “It is not the finite ego that is, but the divine Idea is
the foundation of all Philosophy; everything that man does of himself
is null and void. All existence is living and active in itself, and
there is no other life than Being, and no other Being than God; God is
thus absolute Being and Life. The divine essence likewise comes forth,
revealing and manifesting itself—the world.”[405] This immediate unity
of the self-conscious ego and its content, or spirit, which merely
has an intuition of its self-conscious life and knows it as the truth
immediately, manifested itself subsequently in poetic and prophetic
tendencies, in vehement aspirations, in excrescences which grew out of
the Fichtian philosophy.
3. THE MORE IMPORTANT OF THE FOLLOWERS OF FICHTE.
On the one hand, in respect of the content which the ego reaches in
the philosophy of Fichte, the complete absence of spirituality, the
woodenness, and, to put it plainly, the utter foolishness therein
evidenced, strike us too forcibly to allow us to remain at his
standpoint; our philosophic perception likewise tells us of the
one-sidedness and deficiencies of the principle, as also of the
evident necessity that the content should prove to be what it is. But
on the other hand self-consciousness was therein posited as reality
or essence—not as a foreign, alien self-consciousness, but as ego—a
signification which all possess, and which finds an answer in the
actuality of all. The Fichtian standpoint of subjectivity has thus
retained its character of being unphilosophically worked out, and arrived
at its completion in forms pertaining to sensation which in part remained
within the Fichtian principle, while they were in part the effort—futile
though it was—to get beyond the subjectivity of the ego.
a. FRIEDRICH VON SCHLEGEL.
In Fichte’s case the limitation is continually re-appearing; but because
the ego feels constrained to break through this barrier, it reacts
against it, and gives itself a resting-place within itself; this last
ought to be concrete, but it is a negative resting-place alone. This
first form, Irony, has Friedrich von Schlegel as its leading exponent.
The subject here knows itself to be within itself the Absolute, and
all else to it is vain; all the conclusions which it draws for itself
respecting the right and good, it likewise knows how to destroy again.
It can make a pretence of knowing all things, but it only demonstrates
vanity, hypocrisy, and effrontery. Irony knows itself to be the master
of every possible content; it is serious about nothing, but plays with
all forms. The other side is this, that subjectivity has cast itself
into religious subjectivity. The utter despair in respect of thought, of
truth, and absolute objectivity, as also the incapacity to give oneself
any settled basis or spontaneity of action, induced the noble soul to
abandon itself to feeling and to seek in Religion something fixed and
steadfast; this steadfast basis, this inward satisfaction, is to be found
in religious sentiments and feelings. This instinct impelling us towards
something fixed has forced many into positive forms of religion, into
Catholicism, superstition and miracle working, in order that they may
find something on which they can rest, because to inward subjectivity
everything fluctuates and wavers. With the whole force of its mind
subjectivity tries to apply itself to what is positively given, to bend
its head beneath the positive, to cast itself, so to speak, into the arms
of externality, and it finds an inward power impelling it so to do.
b. SCHLEIERMACHER.
On the other hand the ego finds in the subjectivity and individuality
of the personal view of things the height of all its vanity—its
Religion. All the various individualities have God within themselves.
Dialectic is the last thing to arise and to maintain its place. As
this is expressed for philosophic self-consciousness, the foreign
intellectual world has lost all significance and truth for ordinary
culture; it is composed of three elements, a deity pertaining to a time
gone by, and individualized in space and existence, a world which is
outside the actuality of self-consciousness, and a world which had yet
to appear, and in which self-consciousness would first attain to its
reality. The spirit of culture has deserted it, and no longer recognizes
anything that is foreign to self-consciousness. In accordance with this
principle, the spiritual living essence has then transformed itself into
self-consciousness, and it thinks to know the unity of spirit immediately
from itself, and in this immediacy to be possessed of knowledge in a
poetic, or at least a prophetic manner. As regards the poetic manner, it
has a knowledge of the life and person of the Absolute immediately, by an
intuition, and not in the Notion, and it thinks it would lose the whole
as whole, as a self-penetrating unity, were it not to express the same
in poetic form; and what it thus expresses poetically is the intuition
of the personal life of self-consciousness. But the truth is absolute
motion, and since it is a motion of forms and figures [Gestalten], and
the universe is a kingdom of spirits, the Notion is the essence of this
movement, and likewise of each individual form; it is its ideal form
[Form] and not the real one, or that of figure [Gestalt]. In the latter
case necessity is lost sight of; individual action, life and heart,
remain within themselves, and undeveloped; and this poetry vacillates
betwixt the universality of the Notion and the determinateness and
indifference of the figure; it is neither flesh nor fish, neither poetry
nor philosophy. The prophetic utterance of truths which claim to be
philosophical, thus belongs to faith, to self-consciousness, which indeed
perceives the absolute spirit in itself, but does not comprehend itself
as self-consciousness, since it places absolute reality above Knowledge,
beyond self-conscious reason, as was done by Eschenmayer and Jacobi.
This uncomprehending, prophetic manner of speech affirms this or that
respecting absolute existence as from an oracle, and requires that each
man should find the same immediately in his own heart. The knowledge of
absolute reality becomes a matter pertaining to the heart; there are a
number of would-be inspired speakers, each of whom holds a monologue and
really does not understand the others, excepting by a pressure of the
hands and betrayal of dumb feeling. What they say is mainly composed of
trivialities, if these are taken in the sense in which they are uttered;
it is the feeling, the gesture, the fulness of the heart, which first
gives them their significance; to nothing of more importance is direct
expression given. They outbid one another in conceits of fancy, in ardent
poetry. But before the Truth vanity turns pale, spitefully sneering
it sneaks back into itself. Ask not after a criterion of the truth,
but after the Notion of the truth in and for itself; on that fix your
gaze. The glory of Philosophy is departed, for it presupposes a common
ground of thoughts and principles—which is what science demands—or at
least of opinions. But now particular subjectivity was everything,
each individual was proud and disdainful as regards all others. The
conception of independent thought—as though there could be a thought
which was not such (Vol. I. p. 60)—is very much the same; men have, it is
said, to bring forth a particularity of their own, or else they have not
thought for themselves. But the bad picture is that in which the artist
shows himself; originality is the production of what is in its entirety
universal. The folly of independent thought is that it results in each
bringing forth something more preposterous than another.
c. NOVALIS.
Subjectivity signifies the lack of a firm and steady basis, but likewise
the desire for such, and thus it evermore remains a yearning. These
yearnings of a lofty soul are set forth in the writings of Novalis.
This subjectivity does not reach substantiality, it dies away within
itself, and the standpoint it adopts is one of inward workings and fine
distinctions; it signifies an inward life and deals with the minutiæ
of the truth. The extravagances of subjectivity constantly pass into
madness; if they remain in thought they are whirled round and round
in the vortex of reflecting understanding, which is ever negative in
reference to itself.
d. FRIES, BOUTERWECK, KRUG.
Yet a last form of subjectivity is the subjectivity of arbitrary will and
ignorance. It maintained this, that the highest mode of cognition is an
immediate knowledge as a fact of consciousness; and that is so far right.
The Fichtian abstraction and its hard understanding has a repellent
effect on thought; slothful reason allowed itself to be told the result
of the philosophy of Kant and Jacobi, and renounced all consistent
thought, all construction. This arbitrariness gave itself entire
liberty—the liberty of the _Tabagie_—but in doing so it regarded itself
from a poetic or prophetic point of view, as we have just seen (pp. 508,
509). Then it was both more sober and more prosaic, and thus brought
the old logic and metaphysic once more into evidence, though with this
modification that they are made facts of consciousness. Thus Fries turns
back to the faith of Jacobi in the form of immediate judgments derived
from reason, and dark conceptions incapable of utterance.[406] He wished
to improve the critique of pure reason by apprehending the categories
as facts of consciousness; anything one chooses can in such a case be
introduced. Bouterweck speaks of “The virtue, the living nature of power;
the fact that subject and object are regarded as one, that is as absolute
virtue. With this absolute virtue we have all Being and action, namely
the eternal, absolute and pure unity; in one word we have grasped the
world within us and we have grasped ourselves in the world, and that
indeed not through conceptions and conclusions, but directly through the
power which itself constitutes our existence and our rational nature. To
know the All, or indeed to know God in any way, is, however, impossible
for any mortal.”[407] Krug wrote a “Groundwork of Philosophy,” setting
forth a “Transcendental Synthesis—that is a transcendental realism and a
transcendental idealism inseparably bound together,” It is an “original,
transcendental synthesis of the real and the ideal, the thinking subject
and the corresponding outer world;” this transcendental synthesis must
“be recognized and asserted without any attempt being made at explaining
it.”[408]
D. SCHELLING.
It was Schelling, finally, who made the most important, or, from
a philosophic point of view, the only important advance upon the
philosophy of Fichte; his philosophy rose higher than that of Fichte,
though undoubtedly it stood in close connection with it; indeed, he
himself professes to be a Fichtian. Now the philosophy of Schelling
from the first admitted the possibility of a knowledge of God, although
it likewise started from the philosophy of Kant, which denies such
knowledge. At the same time Schelling makes Jacobi’s principle of
the unity of thought and Being fundamental, although he begins to
determine it more closely.[409] To him concrete unity is this, that
the finite is no more true than the infinite, the subjective idea no
more than objectivity, and that combinations in which both untruths are
brought together in their independence in relation to one another, are
likewise combinations of untruths merely. Concrete unity can only be
comprehended as process and as the living movement in a proposition. This
inseparability is in God alone; the finite, on the other hand, is that
which has this separability within it. In so far as it is a truth it is
likewise this unity, but in a limited sphere, and for that reason in the
separability of both moments.
Frederick Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, born on the 27th January, 1775, at
Schorndorf,[410] in Wurtemberg, studied in Leipzig and Jena, where he
came to be on terms of great intimacy with Fichte. In the year 1807 he
became secretary of the Academy of Science in Munich. We cannot with
propriety deal fully with his life, for he is still living.[411]
Schelling worked out his philosophy in view of the public. The series of
his philosophic writings also represents the history of his philosophic
development and the gradual process by which he raised himself above
the Fichtian principle and the Kantian content with which he began. It
does not thus contain a sequence of separately worked out divisions of
Philosophy, but only successive stages in his own development. If we
ask for a final work in which we shall find his philosophy represented
with complete definiteness none such can be named. Schelling’s first
writings are still quite Fichtian, and it is only by slow degrees that
he worked himself free of Fichte’s form. The form of the ego has the
ambiguity of being capable of signifying either the absolute Ego or
God, or ego in my particularity;[412] this supplied the first stimulus
to Schelling. His first and quite short work of four sheets which he
wrote in 1795 at Tubingen, while still at the university, was called,
“On the Possibility of any Form of Philosophy”; it contains propositions
respecting the Fichtian philosophy only. The next work, “On the Ego as
principle of Philosophy, or on the Unconditioned in Human Knowledge”
(Tubingen, 1795), is likewise quite Fichtian; in this case, however,
it is from a wider and more universal point of view, since the ego is
therein grasped as an original identity.[413] We find, however, a summary
of the Fichtian principle and the Kantian mode of presentation: “It is
only by something being originally set in opposition to the ego, and
by the ego being itself posited as the manifold (in time), that it is
possible for the ego to get beyond the unity which belongs to it of
merely being posited, and that, for example, it posits the same content
on more than one occasion.”[414] Schelling then passed on to natural
philosophy, adopted Kantian forms and reflective determinations, such as
those of repulsion and attraction, from Kant’s “Metaphysics of Nature,”
and likewise dealt with quite empirical phenomena in expressions taken
from Kant. All his first works on this subject come under this category,
viz.: “Ideas towards a Philosophy of Nature,” 1797; “On the World-Soul,”
1798, the second edition of which possesses appendices which are entirely
inconsistent with what goes before. In the writings of Herder and
Kielmeyer[415] we find sensibility, irritability, and reproduction dealt
with, as also their laws, such as that the greater the sensibility the
less the irritability, &c.—just as the powers or potencies were dealt
with by Eschenmayer. It was only later on in relation to these that
Schelling first apprehended nature in the categories of thought, and made
general attempts of a more definite character in the direction of greater
scientific development. It was only through what had been accomplished by
these men that he was enabled to come into public notice so young. The
spiritual and intellectual side, morality and the state, he represented
on the other hand purely in accordance with Kantian principles: thus in
his “Transcendental Idealism,” although it was written from a Fichtian
point of view, he goes no further than Kant did in his “Philosophy
of Rights” and his work “On Eternal Peace.” Schelling, indeed, later
on published a separate treatise on Freedom, deeply speculative in
character; this, however, remains isolated and independent, and deals
with this one point alone; in Philosophy, however, nothing isolated can
be worked out or developed. In the various presentations of his views
Schelling on each occasion began again from the beginning, because, as we
may see, what went before did not satisfy him; he has ever pressed on to
seek a new form, and thus he has tried various forms and terminologies
in succession without ever setting forth one complete and consistent
whole. His principal works in this connection are the “First Sketch of
a System of Natural Philosophy,” 1799; the “System of Transcendental
Idealism,” 1800, one of his most carefully thought-out works; “Bruno, a
Dialogue on the Divine and Natural Principle of Things,” 1802; “Journal
of Speculative Physics,” 1801; “New Journal of Speculative Physics,”
1802 _et_ In the second number of the second volume of his “Journal of
Speculative Physics,” Schelling made the commencement of a detailed
treatment of the whole of his philosophy. Here he likewise starts to
a certain measure, though unconsciously, from the Fichtian form of
construction; but the idea is already present that nature equally with
knowledge is a system of reason.
It is not feasible here to go into details respecting what is called the
philosophy of Schelling, even if time permitted. For it is not yet a
scientific whole organized in all its branches, since it rather consists
in certain general elements which do not fluctuate with the rest of his
opinions. Schelling’s philosophy must still be regarded as in process of
evolution, and it has not yet ripened into fruit;[416] we can hence give
a general idea of it only.
When Schelling made his first appearance the demands put forward by
Philosophy were as follows. With Descartes thought and extension were
in some incomprehensible way united in God, with Spinoza it was as
motionless substance; and beyond this point of view neither of them
ever passed. Later on we saw the form develop, partly in the sciences
and partly in the Kantian philosophy. Finally, in the Fichtian
philosophy, the form was subjectivity on its own account, from which
all determinations were held to develop. What is thus demanded is that
this subjectivity of infinite form which we saw dying into irony or
arbitrariness (pp. 507-510) should be delivered from its one-sidedness
in order to be united with objectivity and substantiality. To put it
otherwise, the substance of Spinoza should not be apprehended as the
unmoved, but as the intelligent, as a form which possesses activity
within itself of necessity, so that it is the forming power of nature,
but at the same time knowledge and comprehension. This then is the object
of Philosophy; it is not the formal union of Spinoza that is demanded,
nor the subjective totality of Fichte, but totality with the infinite
form. We see this developing in the philosophy of Schelling.
1. In one of his earlier writings, the “System of Transcendental
Idealism,” which we shall consider first of all, Schelling represented
transcendental philosophy and natural philosophy as the two sides of
scientific knowledge. Respecting the nature of the two, he expressly
declared himself in this work, where he once more adopts a Fichtian
starting-point: “All knowledge rests on the harmony of an objective with
a subjective.” In the common sense of the words this would be allowed;
absolute unity, where the Notion and the reality are undistinguished in
the perfected Idea, is the Absolute alone, or God; all else contains an
element of discord between the objective and subjective. “We may give
the name of nature to the entire objective content of our knowledge;
the entire subjective content, on the other hand, is called the ego
or intelligence.” They are in themselves identical and presupposed as
identical. The relation of nature to intelligence is given by Schelling
thus: “Now if all knowledge has two poles which mutually presuppose
and demand one another, there must be two fundamental sciences, and it
must be impossible to start from the one pole without being driven to
the other.” Thus nature is impelled to spirit, and spirit to nature;
either may be given the first place, and both must come to pass. “If the
objective is made the chief,” we have the natural sciences as result, and
“the necessary tendency,” the end, “of all natural science thus is to
pass from nature to intelligence. This is the meaning of the effort to
connect natural phenomena with theory. The highest perfection of natural
science would be the perfect spiritualization of all natural laws into
laws of intuitive perception and thought. The phenomenal (the material
element) must entirely disappear, and laws (the formal element) alone
remain. Hence it comes to pass that the more that which is in conformity
with law breaks forth in nature itself, the more the outward covering
disappears; the phenomena themselves become more spiritual, and finally
cease altogether. The perfect theory of nature would be that by which the
whole of nature should be resolved into an intelligence. The dead and
unconscious products of nature are only abortive attempts on the part
of nature to reflect itself, but the so-called dead nature is really
an immature,” torpid, fossilized “intelligence”; it is implicit only,
and thus remains in externality; “hence in its phenomena,” even though
“still unconsciously, the character of intelligence shines through. Its
highest end, which is to become object to itself, is first attained
by nature” (instead of nature we should call it the Idea of nature),
“through its highest and ultimate reflection, which is none other than
man, or, more generally, it is that which we call reason, through which
nature for the first time returns completely within itself, and whereby
it becomes evident that nature is originally identical with what is known
in us as intelligence or the conscious. Through this tendency to make
nature intelligent natural science becomes the philosophy of nature.”
The intelligent character of nature is thus spoken of as a postulate
of science. The other point of view is “to give the subjective the
foremost place.” Thus here “the problem is how to add an objective
element agreeing with it. To start from the subjective as from the first
and absolute, and to make the objective arise from it,” signifies a new
departure; its consideration forms the content of true Transcendental
Philosophy, or, as Schelling himself now named this science, “the
other science fundamental to Philosophy.” The organ of transcendental
philosophy is the subjective, the production of inward action. Production
and reflection upon this production, the unconscious and conscious in
one, is the æsthetic act of the imagination.[417] Thus these two separate
processes are as a whole very clearly expressed: the process which leads
from nature to the subject, and that leading from the ego to the object.
But the true process could only be traced out by means of logic, for it
contains pure thoughts; but the logical point of view was what Schelling
never arrived at in his presentation of things.
a. In respect of the ego, as principle of the transcendental philosophy,
Schelling sets to work in the same way as did Fichte, inasmuch as he
begins from the fact of knowledge “in which the content is conditioned
through the form, and the form through the content”; this is formal
A = A. But does A exist? The ego is “the point where subject and object
are one in their unmediated condition”; the ego is just Ego = Ego,
subject-object; and that is the act of self-consciousness wherein I am
for myself object to myself. In self-consciousness there is not to be
found a distinction between me and anything else; what are distinguished
are directly identical, and there is so far nothing at all in opposition
to this self-consciousness. How the case stands with regard to external
objects is the question which must be decided later, in the further
course of development. It is only the Notion of the ego which is to be
laid hold of: “The Notion of the ego, that is the act whereby thought
in general becomes object to itself, and the ego itself (the object)
are absolutely one; independently of this act the ego is nothing.” It
is the act whereby thought makes itself objective, and wherein the ego
is brought into harmony with the objective, with thought; and from
this standpoint it had to be demonstrated how the ego makes its way to
objectivity. “The ego, as pure act, as pure action, is not objective
in knowledge itself, for the reason that it is the principle of all
knowledge. If it is to be object of knowledge, this must come to pass
through a very different kind of knowledge than the ordinary.” The
immediate consciousness of this identity is intuition, but inwardly
it becomes “intellectual intuition”; it “is a knowledge which is the
production of its object: sensuous intuition or perception is perception
of such a nature that the perception itself appears to be different
from what is perceived. Now intellectual intuition is the organ of all
transcendental thought,” the act of pure self-consciousness generally.
“The ego is nothing else than a process of production which ever makes
itself its own object. Science can start from nothing objective,” but
from “the non-objective which itself becomes object” as an “original
duplicity. Idealism is the mechanism of the origination of the objective
world from the inward principle of spiritual activity.”[418]
On the one hand Schelling’s system is related to the philosophy of
Fichte, and, on the other hand, he, like Jacobi, makes his principle
immediate knowledge—the intelligent intuitive perception which all who
wish to philosophize must have. But what comes next is that its content
is no longer the indeterminate, the essence of essence, but likewise
the Absolute, God, the absolutely self-existent, though expressed as
concrete, _i.e._ as mediating itself within itself, as the absolute
unity or indifference of subjective and objective. Intellectual intuition
is the Fichtian imagination oscillating between two different points.
We have already spoken above (p. 417) of the _form_ of intellectual
intuition; it is the most convenient manner of asserting knowledge
respecting—anything one likes. But the immediate knowledge of God as
spiritual is only in the consciousness of Christian nations, and not for
others. This immediate knowledge appears to be still more contingent
as the intellectual intuition of the concrete, or the identity of
subjectivity and objectivity. This intuition is intellectual indeed,
because it is a rational intuition, and as knowledge it is likewise
absolutely one with the object of knowledge. But this intuition,
although itself knowledge, is not as yet known; it is the unmediated,
the postulated. As it is in this way an immediate we must possess it,
and what may be possessed may likewise not be possessed. Thus since the
immediate presupposition in Philosophy is that individuals have the
immediate intuition of this identity of subjective and objective, this
gave the philosophy of Schelling the appearance of indicating that the
presence of this intuition in individuals demanded a special talent,
genius, or condition of mind of their own, or as though it were generally
speaking an accidental faculty which pertained to the specially favoured
few. For the immediate, the intuitively perceived, is in the form of an
existent, and is not thus an essential; and whoever does not understand
the intellectual intuition must come to the conclusion that he does not
possess it. Or else, in order to understand it, men must give themselves
the trouble of possessing it; but no one can tell whether he has it or
not—not even from understanding it, for we may merely think we understand
it. Philosophy, however, is in its own nature capable of being universal;
for its ground-work is thought, and it is through thought that man is
man. Schelling’s principle is thus indeed clearly a universal; but if
a definite intuition, a definite consciousness is demanded, such as the
consciousness or intuition of the identity of subjective and objective,
this determinate particular thought is not as yet to be found in it.
It was, however, in this form of knowledge of the absolute as concrete,
and, further, in the form of unity of subjective and objective, that
Philosophy as represented by Schelling more especially marked itself off
from the ordinary conceiving consciousness and its mode of reflection.
Even less than Fichte did Schelling attain to popularity (_supra_, pp.
504, 505), for the concrete in its nature is directly speculative.
The concrete content, God, life, or whatever particular form it has,
is indeed the content and object of natural consciousness; but the
difficulty lies in bringing what is contained in the concrete into
concrete thought in accordance with its different determinations, and
in laying hold of the unity. It pertains to the standpoint of the
understanding to divide and to distinguish, and to maintain the finite
thought-determinations in their opposition; but Philosophy demands that
these different thoughts should be brought together. Thought begins
by holding apart infinite and finite, cause and effect, positive and
negative; since this is the region of reflecting consciousness, the old
metaphysical consciousness was able to take part in so doing: but the
speculative point of view is to have this opposition before itself and
to reconcile it. With Schelling the speculative form has thus again come
to the front, and philosophy has again obtained a special character of
its own; the principle of Philosophy, rational thought in itself, has
obtained the form of thought. In the philosophy of Schelling the content,
the truth, has once more become the matter of chief importance, whereas
in the Kantian philosophy the point of interest was more especially
stated to be the necessity for investigating subjective knowledge. This
is the standpoint of Schelling’s philosophy in its general aspects.
b. Since in further analysis the distinction between subject and object
comes into view and is accepted, there follows the relationship of the
ego to its other; with Fichte that forms the second proposition, in
which the self-limitation of the ego is posited. The ego posits itself
in opposition to itself, since it posits itself as conditioned by the
non-ego; that is the infinite repulsion, for this conditionment is the
ego itself. Schelling, on the one hand, says: “The ego is unlimited as
the ego only in so far as it is limited,” as it relates to the non-ego.
Only thus does consciousness exist, self-consciousness is a barren
determination; through its intuition of self the ego becomes finite to
itself. “This contradiction only allows itself to be dissolved by the ego
becoming in this finitude infinite to itself, _i.e._ by its having an
intuitive perception of itself as an infinite Becoming.” The relation of
the ego to itself and to the infinite check or force of repulsion is a
constant one. On the other hand it is said: “The ego is limited only in
so far as it is unlimited;” this limitation is thus necessary in order to
be able to get beyond it. The contradiction which we find here remains
even if the ego always limits the non-ego. “Both activities—that which
makes for infinitude, the limitable, real, objective activity, and the
limiting and ideal, mutually presuppose one another. Idealism reflects
merely on the one, realism on the other, transcendental idealism on
both.”[419] All this is a tangled mass of abstractions.
c. “Neither through the limiting activity nor through the limited does
the ego arrive at self-consciousness. There consequently is a third
activity, compounded from the other two, through which the ego of
self-consciousness arises; this third is that which oscillates between
the two—the struggle between opposing tendencies.” There is essential
relation only, relative identity; the difference therein present thus
ever remains. “This struggle cannot be reconciled by one such action,
but only by an infinite succession of such,” _i.e._ the reconciliation
of the opposition between the two tendencies of the ego, the inward and
the outward, is, in the infinite course of progression, only an apparent
one. In order that it may be complete, the whole inward and outward
nature must be presented in all its details: but Philosophy can only
set forth the epochs which are most important. “If all the intermediate
links in sensation could be set forth, that would necessarily lead us to
a deduction of all the qualities in nature, which last is impossible.”
Now this third activity, which contains the union directly in itself,
is a thought in which particularity is already contained. It is the
intuitive understanding of Kant, the intelligent intuition or intuitively
perceiving intelligence; Schelling, indeed, definitely names this
absolute unity of contradictions intellectual intuition. The ego here
is not one-sided in regard to what is different; it is identity of the
unconscious and the conscious, but not an identity of such a nature that
its ground rests on the ego itself.[420]
This ego must be the absolute principle: “All philosophy starts from a
principle which as absolute identity is non-objective.” For if it is
objective, separation is at once posited and it is confronted by another;
but the principle is the reconciliation of the opposition, and therefore
in and for itself it is non-objective. “Now how should a principle such
as this be called forth to consciousness and understood, as is required
if it is the condition attached to the comprehension of all philosophy?
That it can no more be comprehended through Notions [Begriffe] than set
forth, requires no proof.” Notion to Schelling signifies a category of
the ordinary understanding; Notion is, however, the concrete thought
which in itself is infinite. “There thus remains nothing more than
that it should be set forth in an immediate intuition. If there were
such an intuition which had as object the absolutely identical, that
which in itself is neither subjective nor objective, and if for such,
which,” however, “can be an intellectual intuition only, one could
appeal to immediate experience,” the question would be: “How can this
intuition be again made objective, _i.e._ how can it be asserted without
doubt that it does not rest on a subjective deception, if there is
not a universal objectivity in that intuition, which is recognized by
all?” This intellectual principle in itself should thus be given in an
experience so that men may be able to appeal to it. “The objectivity of
intellectual intuition is art. The work of art alone reflects to me what
is otherwise reflected through nothing—that absolute identical which has
already separated itself in the ego itself.” The objectivity of identity
and the knowledge of the same is art; in one and the same intuition the
ego is here conscious of itself and unconscious.[421] This intellectual
intuition which has become objective is objective sensuous intuition—but
the Notion, the comprehended necessity, is a very different objectivity.
Thus a principle is presupposed both for the content of philosophy and
for subjective philosophizing: on the one hand it is demanded that the
attitude adopted should be one of intellectual intuition, and, on the
other hand, this principle has to be authenticated, and this takes place
in the work of art. This is the highest form of the objectivization of
reason, because in it sensuous conception is united with intellectuality,
sensuous existence is merely the expression of spirituality. The
highest objectivity which the subject attains, the highest identity of
subjective and objective, is that which Schelling terms the power of
imagination. Art is thus comprehended as what is inmost and highest, that
which produces the intellectual and real in one, and philosophizing is
conceived as this genius of art. But art and power of imagination are not
supreme. For the Idea, spirit, cannot be truly given expression to in
the manner in which art expresses its Idea. This last is always a method
pertaining to intuitive perception; and on account of this sensuous
form of existence the work of art cannot correspond to the spirit.
Thus because the point last arrived at is designated as the faculty of
imagination, as art, even in the subject this is a subordinate point
of view, and thus in itself this point is not the absolute identity
of subjectivity and objectivity. In subjective thought, rational,
speculative thought is thus indeed demanded, but if this appears false to
you nothing farther can be said than that you do not possess intellectual
intuition. The proving of anything, the making it comprehensible, is thus
abandoned; a correct apprehension of it is directly demanded, and the
Idea is thus assertorically pre-established as principle. The Absolute
is the absolute identity of subjective and objective, the absolute
indifference of real and ideal, of form and essence, of universal and
particular; in this identity of the two there is neither the one nor
the other. But the unity is not abstract, empty, and dry; that would
signify logical identity, classification according to something common
to both, in which the difference remains all the while outside. The
identity is concrete: it is subjectivity as well as objectivity; the two
are present therein as abrogated and ideal. This identity may easily be
shown in the ordinary conception: the conception, we may for example
say, is subjective; it has, too, the determinate content of exclusion in
reference to other conceptions; nevertheless, the conception is simple—it
is one act, one unity.
What is lacking in Schelling’s philosophy is thus the fact that the
point of indifference of subjectivity and objectivity, or the Notion of
reason, is absolutely presupposed, without any attempt being made at
showing that this is the truth. Schelling often uses Spinoza’s form
of procedure, and sets up axioms. In philosophy, when we desire to
establish a position, we demand proof. But if we begin with intellectual
intuition, that constitutes an oracle to which we have to give way, since
the existence of intellectual intuition was made our postulate. The true
proof that this identity of subjective and objective is the truth, could
only be brought about by means of each of the two being investigated in
its logical, _i.e._ essential determinations; and in regard to them,
it must then be shown that the subjective signifies the transformation
of itself into the objective, and that the objective signifies its not
remaining such, but making itself subjective. Similarly in the finite,
it would have to be shown that it contained a contradiction in itself,
and made itself infinite; in this way we should have the unity of finite
and infinite. In so doing, this unity of opposites is not asserted
beforehand, but in the opposites themselves it is shown that their truth
is their unity, but that each taken by itself is one-sided—that their
difference veers round, casting itself headlong into this unity—while the
understanding all the time thinks that in these differences it possesses
something fixed and secure. The result of thinking contemplation would in
this former case be that each moment would secretly make itself into its
opposite, the identity of both being alone the truth. The understanding
certainly calls this transformation sophistry, humbug, juggling, and
what-not. As a result, this identity would, according to Jacobi, be
one which was no doubt conditioned and of set purpose produced. But we
must remark that a one-sided point of view is involved in apprehending
the result of development merely as a result; it is a process which is
likewise mediation within itself, of such a nature that this mediation is
again abrogated and asserted as immediate. Schelling, indeed, had this
conception in a general way, but he did not follow it out in a definite
logical method, for with him it remained an immediate truth, which can
only be verified by means of intellectual intuition. That is the great
difficulty in the philosophy of Schelling. And then it was misunderstood
and all interest taken from it. It is easy enough to show that subjective
and objective are different. Were they not different, nothing could be
made of them any more than of A = A; but they are in opposition _as one_.
In all that is finite, an identity is present, and this alone is actual;
but besides the fact that the finite is this identity, it is also true
that it is the absence of harmony between subjectivity and objectivity,
Notion and reality; and it is in this that finitude consists. To this
principle of Schelling’s, form, or necessity, is thus lacking, it is only
asserted. Schelling appears to have this in common with Plato and the
Neo-Platonists, that knowledge is to be found in the inward intuition
of eternal Ideas wherein knowledge is unmediated in the Absolute. But
when Plato speaks of this intuition of the soul, which has freed itself
from all knowledge that is finite, empirical, or reflected, and the
Neo-Platonists tell of the ecstasy of thought in which knowledge is the
immediate knowledge of the Absolute, this definite distinction must be
noticed, viz., that with Plato’s knowledge of the universal, or with
his intellectuality, wherein all opposition as a reality is abrogated,
dialectic is associated, or the recognized necessity for the abrogation
of these opposites; Plato does not begin with this, for with him the
movement in which they abrogate themselves is present. The Absolute is
itself to be looked at as this movement of self-abrogation; this is the
only actual knowledge and knowledge of the Absolute. With Schelling this
idea has, however, no dialectic present in it whereby those opposites may
determine themselves to pass over into their unity, and in so doing to be
comprehended.
2. Schelling begins with the idea of the Absolute as identity of the
subjective and objective, and accordingly there evinced itself in the
presentations of his system which followed, the further necessity of
proving this idea; this he attempted to do in the two Journals of
Speculative Physics. But if that method be once adopted, the procedure
is not immanent development from the speculative Idea, but it follows
the mode of external reflection. Schelling’s proofs are adduced in such
an exceedingly formal manner that they really invariably presuppose the
very thing that was to be proved. The axiom assumes the main point in
question, and all the rest follows as a matter of course. Here is an
instance: “The innermost essence of the Absolute can only be thought of
as identity absolute, altogether pure and undisturbed. For the Absolute
is only absolute, and what is thought in it is necessarily and invariably
the same, or in other words, is necessarily and invariably absolute. If
the idea of the Absolute were a general Notion” (or conception), “this
would not prevent a difference being met with in it, notwithstanding
this unity of the absolute. For things the most different are yet in the
Notion always one and identical, just as a rectangle, a polygon and a
circle are all figures. The possibility of the difference of all things
in association with perfect unity in the Notion lies in the manner in
which the particular in them is combined with the universal. In the
Absolute this altogether disappears, because it pertains to the very idea
of the Absolute that the particular in it is also the universal, and
the universal the particular; and further that by means of this unity
form and existence are also one in it. Consequently, in regard to the
Absolute, from the fact of its being the Absolute, there likewise follows
the absolute exclusion from its existence of all difference, and that at
once.”[422]
In the former of the two above-named works, the “Journal of Speculative
Physics,” Schelling began by again bringing forward the Substance
of Spinoza, simple, absolute Existence, inasmuch as he makes his
starting-point the absolute identity of the subjective and objective.
Here, like Spinoza, he employed the method of geometry, laying down
axioms and proving by means of propositions, then going on to deduce
other propositions from these, and so on. But this method has no real
application to philosophy. Schelling at this point laid down certain
forms of difference, to which he gave the name of potencies, adopting
the term from Eschenmayer, who made use of it (p. 514);[423] they are
ready-made differences, which Schelling avails himself of. But philosophy
must not take any forms from other sciences, as here from mathematics.
With Schelling, the leading form is that which was brought into
remembrance again by Kant, the form of triplicity as first, second, and
third potency.
Schelling, like Fichte, begins with I = I, or with the absolute
intuition, expressed as proposition or definition of the Absolute, that
“Reason is the absolute indifference of subject and object”: so that
it is neither the one nor the other, for both have in it their true
determination; and their opposition, like all others, is utterly done
away with. The true reality of subject and object is placed in this
alone, that the subject is not posited in the determination of subject
against object, as in the philosophy of Fichte; it is not determined
as in itself existent, but as subject-object, as the identity of the
two; in the same way the object is not posited according to its ideal
determination as object, but in as far as it is itself absolute, or
the identity of the subjective and objective. But the expression
“indifference” is ambiguous, for it means indifference in regard to
both the one and the other; and thus it appears as if the content of
indifference, the only thing which makes it concrete, were indifferent.
Schelling’s next requirement is that the subject must not be hampered
with reflection; that would be bringing it under the determination of
the understanding, which, equally with sensuous perception, implies
the separateness of sensuous things. As to the form of its existence,
absolute indifference is with Schelling posited as A = A; and this
form is for him the knowledge of absolute identity, which, however, is
inseparable from the Being or existence of the same.[424]
Thus, therefore, opposition, as form and reality or existence, no doubt
appears in this Absolute, but it is determined as a merely relative
or unessential opposition: “Between subject and object no other than
quantitative difference is possible. For no qualitative difference as
regards the two is thinkable,” because absolute identity “is posited as
subject and object only as regards the form of its Being, not as regards
its existence. There is consequently only a quantitative difference
left,” _i.e._ only that of magnitude: and yet difference must really be
understood as qualitative, and must thus be shown to be a difference
which abrogates itself. This quantitative difference, says Schelling,
is the form _actu_: “The quantitative difference of subjective and
objective is the basis of all finitude. Each determined potency marks
a determined quantitative difference of the subjective and objective.
Each individual Being is the result of a quantitative difference of
subjectivity and objectivity. The individual expresses absolute identity
under a determined form of Being:” so that each side is itself a relative
totality, A = B, and at the same time the one factor preponderates in
the one, and the other factor in the other, but both remain absolute
identity.[425] This is insufficient, for there are other determinations;
difference is undoubtedly qualitative, although this is not the absolute
determination. Quantitative difference is no true difference, but an
entirely external relation; and likewise the preponderance of subjective
and objective is not a determination of thought, but a merely sensuous
determination.
The Absolute itself, in so far as the positing of difference is taken
into account, is defined by Schelling as the quantitative indifference of
subjective and objective: in respect to absolute identity no quantitative
difference is thinkable. “Quantitative difference is only possible
outside of absolute identity, and outside of absolute totality. There
is nothing in itself outside of totality, excepting by virtue of an
arbitrary separation of the individual from the whole. Absolute identity
exists only under the form of the quantitative indifference of subjective
and objective.” Quantitative difference, which appears outside of
absolute identity and totality, is therefore, according to Schelling, in
itself absolute identity, and consequently thinkable only under the form
of the quantitative indifference of the subjective and objective. “This
opposition does not therefore occur in itself, or from the standpoint of
speculation. From this standpoint A exists just as much as B does; for A
like B is the whole absolute identity, which only exists under the two
forms, but under both of them alike. Absolute identity is the universe
itself. The form of its Being can be thought of under the image of a
line,” as shown by the following scheme:
+ +
A = B A = B
-----------------
A = A
“in which the same identity is posited in each direction, but with A or B
preponderating in opposite directions.”[426] If we go into details, the
main points from an elementary point of view are the following.
The first potency is that the first quantitative difference of the
Absolute, or “the first relative totality is matter. Proof: A = B is
not anything real either as relative identity or as relative duplicity.
As identity A = B, in the individual as in the whole, can be expressed
only by the line,”—the first dimension. “But in that line A is posited
throughout as existent,” _i.e._ it is at the same time related to B.
“Therefore this line presupposes A = B as relative totality throughout;
relative totality is therefore the first presupposition, and if relative
identity exists, it exists only through relative totality,”—this is
duplicity, the second dimension. “In the same way relative duplicity
presupposes relative identity. Relative identity and duplicity are
contained in relative totality, not indeed _actu_, but yet _potentia_.
Therefore the two opposites must mutually extinguish each other in
a third” dimension. “Absolute identity as the immediate basis of
the reality of A and B in matter, is the force of gravitation. If A
preponderates we have the force of attraction, if B preponderates we have
that of expansion. The quantitative positing of the forces of attraction
and expansion passes into the infinite; their equilibrium exists in the
whole, not in the individual.”[427] From matter as the first indifference
in immediacy Schelling now passes on to further determinations.
The second potency (A²) is light, this identity itself posited as
existent; in so far as A = B, A² is also posited. The same identity,
“posited under the form of relative identity,” _i.e._ of the polarity
which we find appearing “in A and B, is the force of cohesion. Cohesion
is the impression made on matter by the self-hood” of light “or by
personality, whereby matter first emerges as particular out of the
universal identity, and raises itself into the realm of form.” Planets,
metals and other bodies form a series which under the form of dynamic
cohesion expresses particular relations of cohesion, in which on the
one hand contraction preponderates, and on the other hand expansion.
These potencies appear with Schelling as north and south, east and west
polarity: their developments further appear as north-west, south-east,
&c. He counts as the last potency Mercury, Venus, the Earth, &c. He
continues: “Cohesion outside of the point of indifference I term passive.
Towards the negative side” (or pole) “fall some of the metals which
stand next to iron, after them the so-called precious metals,” then the
“diamond, and lastly carbon, the greatest passive cohesion. Towards the
positive side, again, some metals fall, in which the cohesive nature of
iron gradually diminishes,” _i.e._ approaches disintegration, and lastly
“disappears in nitrogen.” Active cohesion is magnetism, and the material
universe is an infinite magnet. The magnetic process is difference in
indifference, and indifference in difference, and therefore absolute
identity as such. The indifference point of the magnet is the “neither
nor” and the “as well as”; the poles are potentially the same essence,
only posited under two factors which are opposed. Both poles depend “only
upon whether + or - preponderates”; they are not pure abstractions. “In
the total magnet the empirical magnet is the indifference point. The
empirical magnet is iron. All bodies are mere metamorphoses of iron—they
are potentially contained in iron. Every two different bodies which touch
each other set up mutually in each other relative diminution and increase
of cohesion. This mutual alteration of cohesion by means of the contact
of two different bodies is electricity; the cohesion-diminishing factor
+E is the potency of hydrogen,-E is the potency of oxygen. The totality
of the dynamic process is represented only by the chemical process.”[428]
“By the positing of the dynamic totality the addition of light is
directly posited as a product. The expression, the total product,
therefore signifies light combined with the force of gravitation; by the
positing of the relative totality of the whole potency, the force of
gravity is directly reduced to the mere form of the Being of absolute
identity.” Thus is the third potency (A³), the organism.[429] Schelling
launched out into too many individual details, if he desired to indicate
the construction of the whole universe. On the one hand, however, he
did not complete this representation, and on the other hand, he has
confined himself mainly to implicit existence, and has mixed therewith
the formalism of external construction according to a presupposed scheme.
In this representation he advanced only as far as the organism, and did
not reach the presentation of the other side of knowledge, _i.e._ the
philosophy of spirit. Schelling began time after time, in accordance
with the idea implied in this construction, to work out the natural
universe, and especially the organism. He banishes all such meaningless
terms as perfection, wisdom, outward adaptability; or, in other words,
the Kantian formula, that a thing appears so and so to our faculty of
knowledge, is transformed by him into this other formula, that such and
such is the constitution of Nature. Following up Kant’s meagre attempt
at demonstrating spirit in nature, he devoted special attention to
inaugurating anew this mode of regarding nature, so as to recognize in
objective existence the same schematism, the same rhythm, as is present
in the ideal. Hence nature represents itself therein not as something
alien to spirit, but as being in its general aspect a projection of
spirit into an objective mode.
We have further to remark that Schelling by this theory became the
originator of modern Natural Philosophy, since he was the first to
exhibit Nature as the sensuous perception or the expression of the
Notion and its determinations. Natural Philosophy is no new science; we
met with it continually—in the works of Aristotle, for instance, and
elsewhere. English Philosophy is also a mere apprehension in thought of
the physical; forces, laws of Nature, are its fundamental determinations.
The opposition of physics and Natural Philosophy is therefore not the
opposition of the unthinking and the thinking view of Nature; Natural
Philosophy means, if we take it in its whole extent, nothing else
than the thoughtful contemplation of Nature; but this is the work of
ordinary physics also, since its determinations of forces, laws, &c.,
are thoughts. The only difference is that in physics thoughts are formal
thoughts of the understanding, whose material and content cannot, as
regards their details, be determined by thought itself, but must be
taken from experience. But concrete thought contains its determination
and its content in itself, and merely the external mode of appearance
pertains to the senses. If, then, Philosophy passes beyond the form of
the understanding, and has apprehended the speculative Notion, it must
alter the determinations of thought, the categories of the understanding
regarding Nature. Kant was the first to set about this; and Schelling has
sought to grasp the Notion of Nature, instead of contenting himself with
the ordinary metaphysics of the same. Nature is to him nothing but the
external mode of existence as regards the system of thought-forms, just
as mind is the existence of the same system in the form of consciousness.
That for which we have to thank Schelling, therefore, is not that he
brought thought to bear on the comprehension of Nature, but that he
altered the categories according to which thought applied itself to
Nature; he introduced forms of Reason, and applied them—as he did the
form of the syllogism in magnetism, for instance—in place of the ordinary
categories of the understanding. He has not only shown these forms in
Nature, but has also sought to evolve Nature out of a principle of this
kind.
In the “Further Exposition of the System of Philosophy” which the “New
Journal for Speculative Physics” furnishes, Schelling chose other forms;
for, by reason of incompletely developed form and lack of dialectic,
he had recourse to various forms one after another, because he found
none of them sufficient. Instead of the equilibrium of subjectivity
and objectivity, he now speaks of the identity of existence and form,
of universal and particular, of finite and infinite, of positive and
negative, and he defines absolute indifference sometimes in one and
sometimes in another form of opposition, just according to chance. All
such oppositions may be employed; but they are only abstract, and refer
to different stages in the development of the logical principle itself.
Form and essence are distinguished by Schelling in this way, that
form, regarded on its own account, is the particular, or the emerging
of difference, subjectivity. But real existence is absolute form or
absolute knowledge immediately in itself, a self-conscious existence in
the sense of thinking knowledge, just as with Spinoza it had the form
of something objective or in thought. Speculative Philosophy is to be
found in this assertion, not that it asserts an independent philosophy,
for it is purely organization; knowledge is based on the Absolute. Thus
Schelling has again given to transcendental Idealism the significance of
absolute Idealism. This unity of existence and form is thus, according
to Schelling, the Absolute; or if we regard reality as the universal,
and form as the particular, the Absolute is the absolute unity of
universal and particular, or of Being and knowledge. The different
aspects, subject and object, or universal and particular, are only ideal
oppositions; they are in the Absolute entirely and altogether one. This
unity as form is intellectual intuition, which posits Thinking and
Being as absolutely alike, and as it formally expresses the Absolute,
it becomes at the same time the expression of its essence. He who has
not the power of imagination, whereby he may represent this unity to
himself, is deficient in the organ of Philosophy. But in this consists
the true absoluteness of all and each, that the one is not recognized as
universal, and the other as particular, but the universal in this its
determination is recognized as unity of the universal and particular,
and in like manner the particular is recognized as the unity of both.
Construction merely consists in leading back everything determined and
particular into the Absolute, or regarding it as it is in absolute unity;
its determinateness is only its ideal moment, but its truth is really
its Being in the Absolute. These three moments or potencies—that of the
passing of existence (the infinite) into form (the finite), and of form
into existence (which are both relative unities), and the third, the
absolute unity, thus recur anew in each individual. Hence Nature, the
real or actual aspect, as the passing of existence into form or of the
universal into the particular, itself again possesses these three unities
in itself, and in the same way the ideal aspect does so; therefore each
potency is on its own account once more absolute. This is the general
idea of the scientific construction of the universe—to repeat in each
individual alike the triplicity which is the scheme of the whole, thereby
to show the identity of all things, and in doing so to regard them in
their absolute essence, so that they all express the same unity.[430]
The more detailed explanation is extremely formal: “Existence passes into
form—this taken by itself being the particular (the finite)—by means of
the infinite being added to it; unity is received into multiplicity,
indifference into difference.” The other assertion is: “Form passes into
existence by the finite being received into the infinite, difference into
indifference.” But passing into and receiving into are merely sensuous
expressions. “Otherwise expressed, the particular becomes absolute
form by the universal becoming one with it, and the universal becomes
absolute existence by the particular becoming one with it. But these two
unities, as in the Absolute, are not outside of one another, but in one
another, and therefore the Absolute is absolute indifference of form and
existence,” as unity of this double passing-into-one. “By means of these
two unities two different potencies are determined, but in themselves
they are both the exactly equal roots of the Absolute.”[431] That is a
mere assertion, the continual return after each differentiation, which is
perpetually again removed out of the Absolute.
“Of the first absolute transformation there are copies in phenomenal
Nature; therefore Nature, regarded in itself, is nothing else than
that first transformation as it exists in the absolute (unseparated
from the other). For by means of the infinite passing into the finite,
existence passes into form; since then form obtains reality only by
means of existence, existence, when it has passed into form without form
having (according to the assumption) similarly passed into existence,
can be represented only as potentiality or ground of reality, but not
as indifference of possibility and actuality. But that which may be
described thus, namely as existence, in so far as that is mere ground of
reality, and therefore has really passed into form, although form has not
in turn passed into it, is what presents itself as Nature.—Existence
makes its appearance in form, but in return form also makes its
appearance in existence; this is the other unity,” that of mind. “This
unity is established by the finite being received into the infinite. At
this point form, as the particular, strikes into existence, and itself
becomes absolute. Form which passes into existence places itself as
absolute activity and positive cause of reality in opposition to the
existence which passes into form, and which appears only as ground. The
passing of absolute form into existence is what we think of as God, and
the images or copies of this transformation are in the ideal world, which
is therefore in its implicitude the other unity.”[432] Each of these
two transformations, then, is the whole totality, not, however, posited
and not appearing as totality, but with the one or the other factor
preponderating; each of the two spheres has, therefore, in itself again
these differences, and thus in each of them the three potencies are to be
found.
The ground or basis, Nature as basis merely, is matter, gravity, as the
first potency; this passing of form into existence is in the actual world
universal mechanism, necessity. But the second potency is “the light
which shineth in darkness, form which has passed into existence. The
absolute unification of the two unities in actuality, so that matter is
altogether form, and form is altogether matter, is organism, the highest
expression of Nature as it is in God, and of God as He is in Nature, in
the finite.” On the ideal side “Knowledge is the essence of the Absolute
brought into the daylight of form; action is a transformation of form, as
the particular, into the essence of the Absolute. As in the real world
form that is identified with essence appears as light, so in the ideal
world God Himself appears in particular manifestation as the living form
which has emerged in the passing of form into essence, so that in every
respect the ideal and real world are again related as likeness and
symbol. The absolute unification of the two unities in the ideal, so that
material is wholly form and form wholly material, is the work of art;
and that secret hidden in the Absolute which is the root of all reality
comes here into view, in the reflected world itself, in the highest
potency and highest union of God and Nature as the power of imagination.”
On account of that permeation art and poetry therefore hold the highest
rank in Schelling’s estimation. But art is the Absolute in sensuous form
alone. Where and what could the work of art be, which should correspond
to the Idea of the spirit? “The universe is formed in the Absolute as
the most perfect organic existence and the most perfect work of art: for
Reason, which recognizes the Absolute in it, it possesses absolute truth;
for the imagination, which represents the Absolute in it, it possesses
absolute Beauty. Each of these expresses the very same unity,” regarded
“from different sides; and both arrive at the absolute indifference point
in the recognition of which lies both the beginning and the aim of real
knowledge.”[433] This highest Idea, these differences, are grasped as a
whole in a very formal manner only.
3. The relation of Nature to Spirit, and to God, the Absolute, has
been stated by Schelling elsewhere, _i.e._ in his later expositions,
as follows: he defines the existence of God as Nature—in so far as God
constitutes Himself its ground or basis, as infinite perception—and
Nature is thus the negative moment in God, since intelligence and
thought exist only by means of the opposition of one Being. For in one
of his writings, directed on some particular occasion against Jacobi,
Schelling explains himself further with regard to the nature of God and
His relation to Nature. He says: “God, or more properly the existence
which is God, is ground: He is ground of Himself as a moral Being.
But” then “it is ground that He makes Himself”—not cause. Something
must precede intelligence, and that something is Being—“since thought
is the exact opposite of Being. That which is the beginning of an
intelligence cannot be in its turn intelligent, since there would
otherwise be no distinction; but it cannot be absolutely unintelligent,
for the very reason that it is the potentiality of an intelligence. It
will accordingly be something between these, _i.e._ it will operate
with wisdom, but as it were with an innate, instinctive, blind, and
yet unconscious wisdom; just as we often hear those who are under a
spell uttering words full of understanding, but not uttering them with
comprehension of their meaning, but as it were owing to an inspiration.”
God, therefore, as this ground of Himself, is Nature—Nature as it is in
God; this is the view taken of Nature in Natural Philosophy.[434] But
the work of the Absolute is to abrogate this ground, and to constitute
itself Intelligence. On this account Schelling’s philosophy has later
been termed a Philosophy of Nature, and that in the sense of a universal
philosophy, while at first Natural Philosophy was held to be only a part
of the whole.
It is not incumbent on us here to give a more detailed account of
Schelling’s philosophy, or to show points in the expositions hitherto
given by him which are far from satisfactory. The system is the latest
form of Philosophy which we had to consider, and it is a form both
interesting and true. In the first place special emphasis, in dealing
with Schelling, must be laid on the idea that he has grasped the true
as the concrete, as the unity of subjective and objective. The main
point in Schelling’s philosophy thus is that its interest centres round
that deep, speculative content, which, as content, is the content with
which Philosophy in the entire course of its history has had to do.
The Thought which is free and independent, not abstract, but in itself
concrete, comprehends itself in itself as an intellectually actual
world; and this is the truth of Nature, Nature in itself. The second
great merit possessed by Schelling is to have pointed out in Nature the
forms of Spirit; thus electricity, magnetism, &c., are for him only
external modes of the Idea. His defect is that this Idea in general,
its distinction into the ideal and the natural world, and also the
totality of these determinations, are not shown forth and developed as
necessitated in themselves by the Notion. As Schelling has not risen to
this point of view, he has misconceived the nature of thought; the work
of art thus becomes for him the supreme and only mode in which the Idea
exists for spirit. But the supreme mode of the Idea is really its own
element; thought, the Idea apprehended, is therefore higher than the work
of art. The Idea is the truth, and all that is true is the Idea; the
systematizing of the Idea into the world must be proved to be a necessary
unveiling and revelation. With Schelling, on the other hand, form is
really an external scheme, and his method is the artificial application
of this scheme to external objects. This externally applied scheme
takes the place of dialectic progress; and this is the special reason
why the philosophy of Nature has brought itself into discredit, that it
has proceeded on an altogether external plan, has made its foundation a
ready-made scheme, and fitted into it Nature as we perceive it. These
forms were potencies with Schelling, but instead of mathematical forms
or a type of thought like this, by some other men sensuous forms have
been taken as basis, just as were sulphur and mercury by Jacob Boehme.
For instance, magnetism, electricity, and chemistry have been defined to
be the three potencies in Nature, and thus in the organism reproduction
has been termed chemistry; irritability, electricity; and sensibility,
magnetism.[435] In this way there has crept into Natural Philosophy
the great formalism of representing everything as a series, which is a
superficial determination without necessity, since instead of Notions
we find formulas. Brilliant powers of imagination are displayed, such
as were exhibited by Görres. This mistake of applying forms which are
taken from one sphere of Nature to another sphere of the same has been
carried a long way; Oken, for example, calls wood-fibres the nerves and
brain of the plant, and is almost crazy on the subject. Philosophy would
in this way become a play of mere analogical reflections; and it is not
with these but with thoughts that we have to do. Nerves are not thoughts,
any more than such expressions as pole of contraction, of expansion,
masculine, feminine, &c. The formal plan of applying an external scheme
to the sphere of Nature which one wishes to observe, is the external
work of Natural Philosophy, and this scheme is itself derived from the
imagination. That is a most false mode of proceeding; Schelling took
advantage of it to some extent, others have made a complete misuse of it.
All this is done to escape thought; nevertheless, thought is the ultimate
simple determination which has to be dealt with.
It is therefore of the greatest importance to distinguish Schelling’s
philosophy, on the one hand, from that imitation of it which throws
itself into an unspiritual farrago of words regarding the Absolute; and,
on the other hand, from the philosophy of those imitators, who, owing to
a failure to understand intellectual intuition, give up comprehension,
and with it the leading moment of knowledge, and speak from so-called
intuition, _i.e._ they take a glance at the thing in question, and having
fastened on it some superficial analogy or definition, they fancy they
have expressed its whole nature, while in point of fact they put an
end to all capacity for attaining to scientific knowledge. This whole
tendency places itself, in the first place, in opposition to reflective
thought, or to progress in fixed, steadfast, immovable Notions. But
instead of remaining in the Notion and recognizing it as the unresting
ego, they have lighted on the opposite extreme of passive intuition,
of immediate Being, of fixed implicitude; and they think that they can
make up for the lack of fixity by superficial observation, and can
render this observation intellectual by determining it once more by some
fixed Notion or other; or they bring their minds to bear on the object
of consideration by saying, for instance, that the ostrich is the fish
among birds, because he has a long neck—fish becomes a general term, but
not a Notion. This whole mode of reasoning, which has forced its way
into natural history and natural science, as well as into medicine, is a
miserable formalism, an irrational medley of the crudest empiricism with
the most superficial ideal determinations that formalism ever descended
to. The philosophy of Locke is not so crude as it is, for it is not a
whit better in either its content or its form, and it is combined with
foolish self-conceit into the bargain. Philosophy on this account sank
into general and well-deserved contempt, such as is for the most part
extended to those who assert that they have a monopoly of philosophy.
Instead of earnestness of apprehension and circumspection of thought,
we find in them a juggling with idle fancies, which pass for deep
conceptions, lofty surmises, and even for poetry; and they think they
are right in the centre of things when they are only on the surface.
Five-and-twenty years ago[436] the case was the same with poetic art; a
taste for ingenious conceits took possession of it, and the effusions
of its poetic inspiration came forth blindly from itself, shot out as
from a pistol. The results were either crazy ravings, or, if they were
not ravings, they were prose so dull that it was unworthy of the name of
prose. It is just the same in the later philosophies. What is not utterly
senseless drivel about the indifference-point and polarity, about oxygen,
the holy, the infinite, &c., is made up of thoughts so trivial that we
might well doubt our having correctly apprehended their meaning, in the
first place because they are given forth with such arrogant effrontery,
and in the second place because we cannot help trusting that what was
said was not so trivial as it seems. As in the Philosophy of Nature men
forgot the Notion and proceeded in a dead unspiritual course, so here
they lose sight of spirit entirely. They have strayed from the right
road; for by their principle, Notion and perception are one unity, but in
point of fact this unity, this spirit, itself emerges in immediacy, and
is therefore in intuitive perception, and not in the Notion.
E. FINAL RESULT.
The present standpoint of philosophy is that the Idea is known in its
necessity; the sides of its diremption, Nature and Spirit, are each of
them recognized as representing the totality of the Idea, and not only as
being in themselves identical, but as producing this one identity from
themselves; and in this way the identity is recognized as necessary.
Nature, and the world or history of spirit, are the two realities; what
exists as actual Nature is an image of divine Reason; the forms of
self-conscious Reason are also the forms of Nature. The ultimate aim
and business of philosophy is to reconcile thought or the Notion with
reality. It is easy from subordinate standpoints to find satisfaction
in modes of intuitive perception and of feeling. But the deeper the
spirit goes within itself, the more vehement is the opposition, the
more abundant is the wealth without; the depth is to be measured by
the greatness of the craving with which spirit seeks to find itself
in what lies outside of itself. We saw the thought which apprehends
itself appearing; it strove to make itself concrete within itself. Its
first activity is formal; Aristotle was the first to say that νοῦς is
the thought of thought. The result is the thought which is at home
with itself, and at the same time embraces the universe therein, and
transforms it into an intelligent world. In apprehension the spiritual
and the natural universe are interpenetrated as one harmonious universe,
which withdraws into itself, and in its various aspects develops the
Absolute into a totality, in order, by the very process of so doing, to
become conscious of itself in its unity, in Thought. Philosophy is thus
the true theodicy, as contrasted with art and religion and the feelings
which these call up—a reconciliation of spirit, namely of the spirit
which has apprehended itself in its freedom and in the riches of its
reality.
To this point the World-spirit has come, and each stage has its own form
in the true system of Philosophy; nothing is lost, all principles are
preserved, since Philosophy in its final aspect is the totality of forms.
This concrete idea is the result of the strivings of spirit during almost
twenty-five centuries of earnest work to become objective to itself, to
know itself:
_Tantæ molis erat, se ipsam cognoscere mentem._
All this time was required to produce the philosophy of our day; so
tardily and slowly did the World-spirit work to reach this goal. What we
pass in rapid review when we recall it, stretched itself out in reality
to this great length of time. For in this lengthened period, the Notion
of Spirit, invested with its entire concrete development, its external
subsistence, its wealth, is striving to bring spirit to perfection, to
make progress itself and to develop from spirit. It goes ever on and on,
because spirit is progress alone. Spirit often seems to have forgotten
and lost itself, but inwardly opposed to itself, it is inwardly working
ever forward (as when Hamlet says of the ghost of his father, “Well said,
old mole! canst work i’ the ground so fast?”[437]), until grown strong
in itself it bursts asunder the crust of earth which divided it from the
sun, its Notion, so that the earth crumbles away. At such a time, when
the encircling crust, like a soulless decaying tenement, crumbles away,
and spirit displays itself arrayed in new youth, the seven league boots
are at length adopted. This work of the spirit to know itself, this
activity to find itself, is the life of the spirit and the spirit itself.
Its result is the Notion which it takes up of itself; the history of
Philosophy is a revelation of what has been the aim of spirit throughout
its history; it is therefore the world’s history in its innermost
signification. This work of the human spirit in the recesses of thought
is parallel with all the stages of reality; and therefore no philosophy
oversteps its own time. The importance which the determinations of
thought possessed is another matter, which does not belong to the history
of Philosophy. These Notions are the simplest revelation of the World
spirit: in their more concrete form they are history.
We must, therefore, in the first place not esteem lightly what spirit has
won, namely its gains up to the present day. Ancient Philosophy is to be
reverenced as necessary, and as a link in this sacred chain, but all the
same nothing more than a link. The present is the highest stage reached.
In the second place, all the various philosophies are no mere fashionable
theories of the time, or anything of a similar nature; they are neither
chance products nor the blaze of a fire of straw, nor casual eruptions
here and there, but a spiritual, reasonable, forward advance; they are of
necessity one Philosophy in its development, the revelation of God, as He
knows Himself to be. Where several philosophies appear at the same time,
they are different sides which make up one totality forming their basis;
and on account of their one-sidedness we see the refutation of the one by
the other. In the third place we do not find here feeble little efforts
to establish or to criticize this or that particular point; instead of
that, each philosophy sets up a new principle of its own, and this must
be recognized.
If we glance at the main epochs in the whole history of Philosophy, and
grasp the necessary succession of stages in the leading moments, each of
which expresses a determinate Idea, we find that after the Oriental whirl
of subjectivity, which attains to no intelligibility and therefore to no
subsistence, the light of thought dawned among the Greeks.
1. The philosophy of the ancients had the absolute Idea as its thought;
and the realization or reality of the same consisted in comprehending the
existing present world, and regarding it as it is in its absolute nature.
This philosophy did not make its starting-point the Idea itself, but
proceeded from the objective as from something given, and transformed the
same into the Idea; the Being of Parmenides.
2. Abstract thought, νοῦς, became known to itself as universal essence or
existence, not as subjective thought; the Universal of Plato.
3. In Aristotle the Notion emerges, free and unconstrained, as
comprehending thought, permeating and spiritualizing all the forms which
the universe contains.
4. The Notion as subject, its independence, its inwardness, abstract
separation, is represented by the Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics: here
we have not the free, concrete form, but universality abstract and in
itself formal.
5. The thought of totality, the intelligible world, is the concrete
Idea as we have seen it with the Neo-Platonists. This principle is
ideality generally speaking, which is present in all reality, but not
the Idea which knows itself: this is not reached until the principle
of subjectivity, individuality, found a place in it, and God as spirit
became actual to Himself in self-consciousness.
6. But it has been the work of modern times to grasp this Idea as spirit,
as the Idea that knows itself. In order to proceed from the conscious
Idea to the self-conscious, we must have the infinite opposition, namely
the fact that the Idea has come to the consciousness of being absolutely
sundered in twain. As spirit had the thought of objective existence,
Philosophy thus perfected the intellectuality of the world, and produced
this spiritual world as an object existing beyond present reality,
like Nature,—the first creation of spirit. The work of the spirit now
consisted in bringing this Beyond back to reality, and guiding it into
self-consciousness. This is accomplished by self-consciousness thinking
itself, and recognizing absolute existence to be the self-consciousness
that thinks itself. With Descartes pure thought directed itself on
that separation which we spoke of above. Self-consciousness, in the
first place, thinks of itself as consciousness; therein is contained
all objective reality, and the positive, intuitive reference of its
reality to the other side. With Spinoza Thought and Being are opposed
and yet identical; he has the intuitive perception of substance, but
the knowledge of substance in his case is external. We have here the
principle of reconciliation taking its rise from thought as such, in
order to abrogate the subjectivity of thought: this is the case in
Leibnitz’s monad, which possesses the power of representation.
7. In the second place, self-consciousness thinks of itself as being
self-consciousness; in being self-conscious it is independent, but
still in this independence it has a negative relation to what is
outside self-consciousness. This is infinite subjectivity, which
appears at one time as the critique of thought in the case of Kant, and
at another time, in the case of Fichte, as the tendency or impulse
towards the concrete. Absolute, pure, infinite form is expressed as
self-consciousness, the Ego.
8. This is a light that breaks forth on spiritual substance, and shows
absolute content and absolute form to be identical;—substance is in
itself identical with knowledge. Self-consciousness thus, in the third
place, recognizes its positive relation as its negative, and its negative
as its positive,—or, in other words, recognizes these opposite activities
as the same, _i.e._ it recognizes pure Thought or Being as self-identity,
and this again as separation. This is intellectual perception; but it
is requisite in order that it should be in truth intellectual, that it
should not be that merely immediate perception of the eternal and the
divine which we hear of, but should be absolute knowledge. This intuitive
perception which does not recognize itself is taken as starting-point as
if it were absolutely presupposed; it has in itself intuitive perception
only as immediate knowledge, and not as self-knowledge: or it knows
nothing, and what it perceives it does not really know,—for, taken at its
best, it consists of beautiful thoughts, but not knowledge.
But intellectual intuition is knowledge, since, in the first place, in
spite of the separation of each of the opposed sides from the other, all
external reality is known as internal. If it is known according to its
essence, as it is, it shows itself as not existing of itself, but as
essentially consisting in the movement of transition. This Heraclitean
or Sceptical principle, that nothing is at rest, must be demonstrated of
each individual thing; and thus in this consciousness—that the essence of
each thing lies in determination, in what is the opposite of itself—there
appears the apprehended unity with its opposite. Similarly this unity is,
in the second place, to be recognized even in its essence; its essence
as this identity is, in the same way, to pass over into its opposite, or
to realize itself, to become for itself something different; and thus
the opposition in it is brought about by itself. Again, it may be said
of the opposition, in the third place, that it is not in the Absolute;
this Absolute is existence, the eternal, &c. This is, however, itself an
abstraction in which the Absolute is apprehended in a one-sided manner
only, and the opposition is apprehended only as ideal (_supra_, p.
536); but in fact it is form, as the essential moment of the movement
of the Absolute. This Absolute is not at rest, and that opposition is
not the unresting Notion; for the Idea, unresting though it is, is
yet at rest and satisfied in itself. Pure thought has advanced to the
opposition of the subjective and objective; the true reconciliation of
the opposition is the perception that this opposition, when pushed to
its absolute extreme, resolves itself; as Schelling says, the opposites
are in themselves identical—and not only in themselves, but eternal life
consists in the very process of continually producing the opposition and
continually reconciling it. To know opposition in unity, and unity in
opposition—this is absolute knowledge; and science is the knowledge of
this unity in its whole development by means of itself.
This is then the demand of all time and of Philosophy. A new epoch has
arisen in the world. It would appear as if the World-spirit had at last
succeeded in stripping off from itself all alien objective existence,
and apprehending itself at last as absolute Spirit, in developing
from itself what for it is objective, and keeping it within its own
power, yet remaining at rest all the while. The strife of the finite
self-consciousness with the absolute self-consciousness, which last
seemed to the other to lie outside of itself, now comes to an end. Finite
self-consciousness has ceased to be finite; and in this way absolute
self-consciousness has, on the other hand, attained to the reality which
it lacked before. This is the whole history of the world in general up
to the present time, and the history of Philosophy in particular, the
sole work of which is to depict this strife. Now, indeed, it seems to
have reached its goal, when this absolute self-consciousness, which it
had the work of representing, has ceased to be alien, and when spirit
accordingly is realized as spirit. For it becomes such only as the result
of its knowing itself to be absolute spirit, and this it knows in real
scientific knowledge. Spirit produces itself as Nature, as the State;
nature is its unconscious work, in the course of which it appears to
itself something different, and not spirit; but in the State, in the
deeds and life of History, as also of Art, it brings itself to pass with
consciousness; it knows very various modes of its reality, yet they are
only modes. In scientific knowledge alone it knows itself as absolute
spirit; and this knowledge, or spirit, is its only true existence. This
then is the standpoint of the present day, and the series of spiritual
forms is with it for the present concluded.
At this point I bring this history of Philosophy to a close. It has been
my desire that you should learn from it that the history of Philosophy is
not a blind collection of fanciful ideas, nor a fortuitous progression.
I have rather sought to show the necessary development of the successive
philosophies from one another, so that the one of necessity presupposes
another preceding it. The general result of the history of Philosophy is
this: in the first place, that throughout all time there has been only
one Philosophy, the contemporary differences of which constitute the
necessary aspects of the one principle; in the second place, that the
succession of philosophic systems is not due to chance, but represents
the necessary succession of stages in the development of this science;
in the third place, that the final philosophy of a period is the
result of this development, and is truth in the highest form which the
self-consciousness of spirit affords of itself. The latest philosophy
contains therefore those which went before; it embraces in itself all the
different stages thereof; it is the product and result of those that
preceded it. We can now, for example, be Platonists no longer. Moreover
we must raise ourselves once for all above the pettinesses of individual
opinions, thoughts, objections, and difficulties; and also above our
own vanity, as if our individual thoughts were of any particular value.
For to apprehend the inward substantial spirit is the standpoint of the
individual; as parts of the whole, individuals are like blind men, who
are driven forward by the indwelling spirit of the whole. Our standpoint
now is accordingly the knowledge of this Idea as spirit, as absolute
Spirit, which in this way opposes to itself another spirit, the finite,
the principle of which is to know absolute spirit, in order that absolute
spirit may become existent for it. I have tried to develop and bring
before your thoughts this series of successive spiritual forms pertaining
to Philosophy in its progress, and to indicate the connection between
them. This series is the true kingdom of spirits, the only kingdom of
spirits that there is—it is a series which is not a multiplicity, nor
does it even remain a series, if we understand thereby that one of its
members merely follows on another; but in the very process of coming to
the knowledge of itself it is transformed into the moments of the one
Spirit, or the one self-present Spirit. This long procession of spirits
is formed by the individual pulses which beat in its life; they are the
organism of our substance, an absolutely necessary progression, which
expresses nothing less than the nature of spirit itself, and which
lives in us all. We have to give ear to its urgency—when the mole that
is within forces its way on—and we have to make it a reality. It is my
desire that this history of Philosophy should contain for you a summons
to grasp the spirit of the time, which is present in us by nature,
and—each in his own place—consciously to bring it from its natural
condition, _i.e._ from its lifeless seclusion, into the light of day.
I have to express my thanks to you for the attention with which you have
listened to me while I have been making this attempt; it is in great
measure due to you that my efforts have met with so great a measure of
success. And it has been a source of pleasure to myself to have been
associated with you in this spiritual community; I ought not to speak of
it as if it were a thing of the past, for I hope that a spiritual bond
has been knit between us which will prove permanent. I bid you a most
hearty farewell.
* * * * *
(The closing lecture of the series was given on the 22nd March, 1817; on
the 14th March, 1818; on the 12th August, 1819; on the 23rd March, 1821;
on the 30th March, 1824; on the 28th March, 1828; and on the 26th March,
1830.)
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Neander. Genet. Entwickelung d. vornehmsten gnost. Systeme, p. 43.
[2] Neander. Genetische Entwickelung, &c., pp. 87-91.
[3] Tennemann, Vol. VIII Section I. p. 366; Buhle: Lehrb. d. Gesch. d.
Phil. Part V. p. 36; Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. III. pp. 23, 24; 28,
29.
[4] Moses Maimonides: More Nevochim, P. I. c. 71, pp. 133, 134 (Basil.
1629).
[5] Abulphar. Dynast. IX. pp. 153, 171, 208, 209; Brucker. Hist. crit.
phil. T. III. pp. 27-29, 44.
[6] Moses Maimonides: More Nevochim, P. I. c. 73, pp. 152-155, 157-159.
[7] Pocock. Specim. hist. Arab. pp. 78, 79; Hottinger. Biblioth. orient.
c. 2, p. 219; Brucker. Hist. cr. phil. T. III. pp. 65, 66; Tennemann,
Vol. VIII. Section I. p. 374.
[8] Hottinger. Biblioth. orient. c. 2, p. 221; Gabriel Sionita: De
moribus Orient. p. 16; Brucker. Hist. cr. phil. T. III. pp. 73, 74;
Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section I. pp. 374, 375.
[9] Leo Africanus: De illustrib. Arabum viris, c. 9, p. 268; Abulphar.
Dynast. IX. p. 230, Tiedemann, Geist. d. spec. Phil. Vol. IV. p. 112,
_sqq._, Brucker. Hist. cr. phil. T. III. pp. 80-84.
[10] Leo Afric. De illustrib. Arabum viris, c. 12, p. 274; Brucker. Hist.
cr. phil. T. III. pp. 93-95; Tiedemann, Geist. d. spec. Phil. Vol. IV.
pp. 120-126, Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section I. pp. 383-396.
[11] Brucker. Hist. cr. phil. T. III. p. 97.
[12] Brucker. Hist. cr. phil. T. III. p. 101; Tennemann, Vol. III.
Section I. pp. 420, 421.
[13] Brucker. Hist. cr. phil. T. II. p. 857; Tennemann, Vol. VIII.
Section I. pp. 446, 447.
[14] Moses Maimonides: More Nevochim, P. I. c. 51, pp. 76-78; c. 57, 58,
pp. 93-98; II. c. 1, 2, pp. 184-193; III. c. 8, pp. 344-350; &c., &c.
[15] Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Pt. I. p. 49.
[16] Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. III. pp. 614-617; Bulæus: Hist.
Universitatis Parisiensis; T. I. p. 184.
[17] Bulæus: Hist. Univ. Paris. T. I. p. 182. (Tennemann, Vol. VIII. pp.
71, 72.)
[18] De prædestinatione. Proœmium (Veterum auctorum, qui IX. sæculo de
prædestinatione et gratia scripserunt, opera et fragmenta, cura Gilb.
Mauguin. Paris, 1650. T. I. p. 103.)
[19] Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Sec. I. pp. 115, 117.
[20] Anselmi Epistol. XLI. I. 11 (Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Sec. I. pp. 159,
160.)
[21] Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Sec. I. p. 116; Eadmerus: De vita Anselmi
(subjuncta operibus Anselmi editis a Gabr. Gerberon. 1721. Fol.), p. 6.
[22] Gaunilo: Liber pro insipiente, c. 5; Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Sec. I.
p. 139; Brucker, Hist. crit. phil. T. III. p. 665.
[23] Tiedemann: Geist d. specul. Philos. Vol. IV. p. 277; Brucker. Hist.
crit. phil. T. III. p. 762.
[24] Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Sec. II. pp. 457, 458.
[25] Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. III. pp. 764-768.
[26] Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Sec. I. pp. 317, 325; Brucker, Hist. crit.
phil. T. III. p. 688; Thomas Aquinas: in IV. libros sentent. L. II. Dist.
17, Qu. I. Art. I; Alberti Magni: Summa Theol. P. I. Tract. IV. Qu. 20
(Oper. T. XVII. p. 76).
[27] Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Sec. II. pp. 550-553; Brucker, Hist. crit.
phil. T. III. p. 802.
[28] Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Sec. II. pp. 554-561.
[29] Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. III. pp. 825-828; Bulæus: Hist. Univ.
Paris. T. IV. p. 970.
[30] Duns Scotus in Magistrum sententiarum. Proœmium (Tennemann, Vol.
VIII. Sec. II. p. 706).
[31] Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. III. p. 828; et not. from Sancrutius.
[32] Trithemius: Annal. Hirsaugiens, T. I. p. 135.
[33] Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. III. pp. 779, 697; Tennemann, Vol.
VIII. Sec. I. pp. 353-359, and in the same place, note 3 (cf. Jourdain,
Gesch. d. Arist. Schriften im Mittelalter, ubersetzt von Stahr pp.
165-176); Bulæus: Hist. Univers. Paris, T. III. pp. 82, 142; Launoius, De
varia Arist. fortuna in Academ. Paris, c. IX. p. 210.
[34] Hegel erroneously mentions this event as occurring to “William
of England” instead of to William of Holland, King of the Romans.
[Translator’s note.]
[35] Brucker. Hist. cr. phil. T. III. pp. 788-798.
[36] Anselmus: De fide trinitatis, c. 2, 3; Epist. XLI. 1. 11; Tennemann,
Vol. VIII. Section I. p. 158.
[37] Rixner: Handbuch der Geschichte der Philos., Vol. II. p. 26 (1st
ed.); Anselmus De fide trinitatis, c. 2; Buhle: Lehrbuch d. Geschichte d.
Philosoph., Part V. p. 184; Abælard, Epist. XXI.; Tennemann, Vol. VIII
Section I. pp. 162, 163.
[38] Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section I. p. 339; Joh. Sarisberiensis:
Metalogicus, L. II. c. 17.
[39] Tiedemann: Geist d. specul. Philos. Vol. V. pp. 401, 402; Suarez.
Disputationes metaphysicæ, Disp. I Sectio 6.
[40] Tiedemann; Geist d. specul. Philos. Vol. IV. pp. 490, 491; Thomas
Aquinas: De ente et essent. c 3 et 5.
[41] Tiedemann: Geist d. spec. Philos. Vol. IV. pp. 609-613; Scotus:
in Magistrum sententiar. L. II. Dist., 3. Qu. 1-6; Occam: in libr. I.
sentent. Dist. II. Quæst. 6 (Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section II. pp. 852,
853.)
[42] Rixner: Handbuch der Geschichte der Philos. Vol. II. p. 110.
[43] Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. III. pp. 846-848, 911, 912; Tennemann,
Vol. VIII. Section II. pp. 903, 944, 945, 925, 939, 940; Bulæus: Hist.
Univers. Paris, T. IV. pp. 257, 265.
[44] Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section II. pp. 914-919, 945-947; Bulæus:
Hist. Univ. Paris. T.V. pp. 706, 739, 740.
[45] Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section I. p. 61; Cramer, Fortsetzung von
Bossuet, Part V. Vol. II. p. 88.
[46] Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section I. p. 61; Bulæus: Hist. Univ. Paris.
T. I. p. 169.
[47] Rixner: Handbuch d. Gesch. d. Phil. Vol. II. p. 153.
[48] Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section I, pp. 236, 237.
[49] Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. III. p. 878.
[50] Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section II. pp. 955, 956.
[51] Rixner: Handbuch d. Geschichte d. Philos. Vol. II. p. 157;
Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section II. p. 964 _seq._; Tiedemann: Geist d.
spec. Phil. Vol. V. p. 290 _seq._
[52] Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section II. pp. 824-829.
[53] Rixner: Lehrbuch d. Gesch. d. Philos. Vol. II. p. 126; Tennemann,
Vol. VIII. Section II. pp. 829, 833.
[54] Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section II. pp. 834-836; Rixner: Handb. d.
Gesch. d. Phil. Vol. II. Appendix, pp. 86-89; Jordanus Brunus Nolanus: De
compendiosa architectura et complemento artis Lullii, Sectio II. (Bruni
scripta, quæ latine confecit, omnia; ed. Gfrörer, Stuttgardiæ 1835,
Fasciculus II. pp. 243-264).
[55] Buhle: Lehrb. d. Gesch. d. Phil., Part VI. Section I. pp. 125—128;
Tennemann, Vol. IX. pp. 22, 23.
[56] Pomponatius: Tractatus de immortalitate animæ, c. VII., VIII. p. 35;
c. IX. pp. 57, 58; c. XII. pp. 89, 90; c. XV. p. 142.
[57] Ficinus: Proœmium in Plotinum, p. 2, Pomponatius, l. l. c. III. p.
9; c. IV. 12; Tennemann, Vol. IX. pp. 65-67.
[58] Bruck. Hist. crit. phil. T. IV. P. I. p. 164.
[59] Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. IV. P. I. pp. 44, 45.
[60] Ficinus: Proœmium in Plotinum, p. 1; Brucker. I. 1, p. 49, 55, 48.
[61] Proclus: Theologia Platonis, Appendix, pp. 503-505; Tennemann, Vol.
IX. p. 149.
[62] Tennemann, Vol. IX. pp. 164, 165; Tiedemann: Geist d. Spec. Phil.
Vol. V. p. 483; Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. IV. P. I. pp. 358, 365,
366; Rixner: Handbuch d. Gesch. d. Phil. Vol. II. p. 206.
[63] Tennemann, Vol. IX. pp. 228-230; Brucker. 1. 1, p. 721.
[64] Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. IV. P. II. pp. 63, 64, 66-68; Buhle:
Lehrb. d. Gesch. d. Phil. Part VI. Section I. pp. 360, 362; Cardanus: De
vita propria, c. 4, pp. 9-11; Tiedemann, Geist d. spec. Philosophie, Vol.
V. pp. 563, 564.
[65] Buhle: Lehrb. d. Gesch. d. Phil. Part VI. Section I. pp. 362-365;
Tiedemann, Geist. d. Spec. Phil. Vol. V. p. 565; Brucker. Hist. crit.
phil. T. IV. P. II. pp. 71-74; Cardanus: De vita propria, c. 26, p. 70.
[66] Cardanus: De genitur. XII. p. 84; Buhle: Lehrbuch d. Gesch. d. Phil.
Part VI. Section I. pp. 363, 364; Tiedemann: Geist. d. Spec. Phil. Vol.
V. pp. 564, 565.
[67] Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. IV. P. II. pp. 108, 114-120;
Tennemann, Vol. IX. pp. 290-295.
[68] Giordano Bruno: De la causa, principio et uno, Venetia 1584, 8,
which was certainly not really printed at Venice, since both it and
the following work, De l’infinito, Universo e Mondi, Venetia 1584, 8,
appeared at Paris. Both these works are dialogues.
[69] Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. IV. P. II. pp. 15-29.
[70] Lectures of 1829-30.
[71] Opere di Giordano Bruno Nolano, ora per la prima volta raccolte e
pubblicate da Adolfo Wagner in due volumi. Lipsia, Weidmann 1830.
[72] Cf. Opere di Giordano Bruno pubbl. da Wagner. Introduzione, pp.
xxiv., xxv.
[73] v. Hegel’s Werke, Vol. VII. Section II. p. 10.
[74] Lectures of 1805-6.
[75] Jacobi: Werke, Vol. IV. Section II. pp. 7-18; Tennemann, Vol. IX.
pp. 391-394; Giordano Bruno: De la causa, principio et uno, Dialog. II.
(Opere pubbl. da Ad. Wagner, Vol. I.), pp. 235-243.
[76] Jacobi: Werke, Vol. IV. Section II. pp. 19-23, 28-31; Tennemann,
Vol. IX. pp. 394-396, 398, 399; Giordano Bruno: De la causa, principio et
uno, Dial. III. pp. 251-257; Dial. IV. pp. 269-274.
[77] Jacobi: Werke, Vol. IV. Section II. pp. 23-25; Tennemann, Vol. IX.
p. 396; Giordano Bruno: De la causa, principio et uno, Dial. III. pp.
260, 261.
[78] Jacobi: Werke, Vol. IV. Section II. pp. 25, 26; Tennemann, Vol. IX.
p. 397; Giordano Bruno: De la causa, principio et uno, Dial. III. p. 261.
[79] Jacobi: Werke, Vol. IV. Section II. pp. 32, 45; Tennemann, Vol. IX.
pp. 399, 403, 404; Giordano Bruno: De la causa, principio et uno, Dial.
IV. p. 275; Dial. V. p. 291.
[80] Jordanus Brunus: De Minimo, pp. 10, 16-18; Jacobi: Werke, Vol. IV.
Section II. pp. 34-39; Tennemann, Vol. IX. pp. 400-402; Giordano Bruno:
De la causa, principio et uno, Dial. V. pp. 281-284.—On this opposition
of the minimum and the maximum Bruno wrote several special works,
for example, De triplici Minimo et Mensura libri V. Francofurti apud
Wechelium et Fischer, 1591, 8; the text is hexameters, with notes and
scholia; Buhle gives the title as De Minimo libri V. Another work bears
the title: De Monade, Numero et figura liber; Item De Innumerabilibus,
Immenso et Infigurabili: seu de Universo et Mundis libri VIII. Francof.
1591, 8.
[81] Bruno wrote many such topico-mnemonic works, of which the earliest
are the following: Philotheus Jordanus Brunus Nolanus De compendiosa
architectura et complemento artis Lullii, Paris. ap. Æg. Gorbinum, 1582.
12.—J. Brunus Nol. De Umbris idearum, implicantibus Artem quærendi, &c.,
Paris. ap. eund. 1582. 8. The second part has the title: Ars memoriæ.—Ph.
Jord. Bruni Explicatio XXX sigillorum &c. Quibus adjectus est Sigillus
sigillorum, &c. It is evident from the dedication that Bruno published
this work in England, therefore between 1582 and 1585.—Jordanus Brunus
De Lampade combinatoria Lulliana, Vitebergæ 1587. 8. In the same place
he wrote De Progressu et lampade venatoria Logicorum, Anno 1587, which
he dedicated to the Chancellor of the Wittenberg University.—Jordanus
Brunus De Specierum scrutinio et lampade combinatoria Raym. Lullii,
Pragæ, exc. Georg. Nigrinus 1588. 8; also printed in the works of Raymund
Lullius.—Also De imaginum, signorum et idearum compositione Libri III.
Francofurti ap. Jo. Wechel. et Petr. Fischer. 1591. 8.
[82] Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philos. Vol. II. Section II. p. 715
(717); Jordanus Brunus: De compendiosa architectura et complemento artis
Lullii (Jordani Bruni Nolani scripta, quæ latine confecit, omnia. ed. A.
Fr. Gfrörer, Stuttgard, 1835, Fasc. II.), c. 1, p. 238.
[83] Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philos. Vol. II. Section II. pp. 717,
718 (719, a-718, b); Jord. Brunus: De compend. architect. c. 5, p. 239.
[84] Buhle: Gesch. d. neuern Philos. Vol. II. Section II. p. 717 (719,
a); Jord. Brun. De compend. architect. c. 2, 3, pp. 238, 239.
[85] Buhle: Gesch. d. neuern Philos. Vol. II. Section II. pp. 723, 724;
Jordani Bruni De Umbris idearum (Jord. Bruni Nolani scripta, ed. A. Fr.
Gfrörer, Fasc. II.): Triginta intentiones umbrarum, Intentio I-IV. pp.
300-302.
[86] Buhle: Gesch. d. neuern Philos. Vol. II. Section II. pp. 724-726;
Jordanus Brunus: De Umbris idearum, Intentio V-IX. pp. 302-305.
[87] Buhle: Gesch. d. neuern Philos. Vol. II. Section II. pp. 727, 731;
Jordanus Brunus: De Umbris idearum, Intentio XXI. p. 310; De triginta
idearum conceptibus: Conceptus X. p. 319.
[88] Buhle: Gesch. d. neuern Philos. Vol. II. Section II. pp. 730-734;
Jordani Bruni De Umbris idearum: De triginta idearum conceptibus,
Conceptus VII. X. XIII. XXVI. pp. 318-320, 323, 324.
[89] Buhle: Gesch. d. neuern Philos. Vol. II. Section II. p. 745; Jordani
Bruni Explicatio triginta sigillorum: Sigillus Sigillorum, P. II. § 11.
[90] Buhle: Gesch. d. neuern Philos. Vol. II. Section II. p. 734; cf.
Jordan. Brun. De Umbris Idearum: Ars Memoriæ, I.-XI. pp. 326-330.
[91] Buhle: Gesch. d. neuern Philos. Vol. II. Section II. pp. 734, 735;
Jordan. Brun. De Umbris Idearum: Ars Memoriæ, XII. pp. 330, 331.
[92] Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. IV. P. II. pp. 671-677; Buhle: Gesch.
d. neuern Phil. Vol. II. Section II. pp. 866-869.
[93] Buhle: Lehrbuch. d. Gesch. d. Phil. Part VI. Section I. pp. 410-415;
Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. IV. P. II. pp. 677-680; Buhle: Gesch. d.
neuern Philos. Vol. II. Section II. pp. 870-878.
[94] Buhle: Gesch. d. neuern Philos. Vol. II. Sec. II. pp. 670-680;
Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. IV. P. II. pp. 548-562.
[95] Buhle: Gesch. d. neuern Philos. Vol. II. Section II. pp. 950-954;
Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. IV. P. II. pp. 91-95.
[96] The _Quarterly Review_, Vol. XVII., April, 1817, p. 53.
[97] Bacon, De augmentis scientiarum, II. c. 1 (Lugd. Batavor, 1652. 12),
pp. 108-110 (Operum omnium, pp. 43, 44, Lipsiæ, 1694)
[98] Ibidem, c. 2, p. 111 (Operum, p. 44); c. 4, pp. 123, 124 (p. 49), c.
11, pp. 145-147 (pp. 57, 58).
[99] Bacon. De augmentis scientiarum, IV. c. 2, pp. 294, 295 (p. 213)
(Ellis and Spedding’s translation, Vol. IV. p. 394).
[100] Bacon. Novum Organon, L. I. Aphor. 11-34, pp. 280-282 (Operum).
[101] Bacon. De augm. scient. V. c. 4, p. 358 (p. 137). (Ellis and
Spedding’s translation. Vol. IV. p. 428.)
[102] Bacon. De augmentis scientiarum, V. c. 2, pp. 320, 321 (pp. 122,
123).
[103] Bacon. Novum Organon, L. I. Aphor. 105, p. 313; De augmentis
scientiarum, V. c. 2, pp. 326, 327 (pp. 124, 125).
[104] The _Quarterly Review_, Vol. XVII., April, 1817, pp. 50, 51: cf.
Bacon silva silvarum sive historia naturalis, Cent. IV., Sect. 326, 327
(Operum, pp. 822, 823).
[105] Bacon. De augmentis scientiarum, III. c. 5, pp. 245, 246 (p. 95).
[106] Ibid. IV. c. 2, p. 293 (p. 112).
[107] The _Quarterly Review_, Vol. XVII., April, 1817, pp. 51, 52; cf.
Bacon. De augmentis scientiarum, III. c. 3, 4, pp. 200-206 (pp. 78-80).
[108] Bacon. Novum Organon, L. II. Aphor. 2. (Ellis and Spedding’s
translation, Vol. IV. p. 119.)
[109] Bacon. Novum Organon, L. II. Aphor. 2; cf. the _Quarterly Review_,
Vol. XVII. April, 1817, p. 52.
[110] Bacon. De augmentis scientiarum, III. c. 4; p. 237 (p. 92).
[111] Bacon. De augm. scient. III. c. 4, p. 239 (p. 92).
[112] Bacon. De augmentis scientiarum, I. p. 46 (p. 19); III. c. 4, pp.
211-213 (pp. 82, 83); Novum Organon, L. I. Aphor. 85, p. 304.
[113] Bacon. De augmentis scientiarum, III. c. 4, pp. 231-234 (pp. 89,
90).
[114] The _Quarterly Review_, Vol. XVII. April, 1817, p. 52.
[115] Bacon. Novum Organon, L. II. Aphor. 17, pp. 345, 346.
[116] Bacon. Novum Organon, L II Aphor. II pp. 325, 326 (Tennemann, Vol.
X. pp. 35, 36); Lib I. Aphor. 51, p. 286, L. II Aphor. 9; Aphor. 3, p.
326.
[117] Bacon. Novum Organon, L II. Aphor. 35, p. 366.
[118] The _Quarterly Review_, Vol. XVII. April, 1817, p. 52. Cf. Bacon.
De augmentis scientiarum, III. c. 4, p. 236 (p. 91).
[119] Jacob Böhme’s Leben und Schriften (in his Works, Hamburg, 1715, 4),
No. I. § 18, pp. 11, 12; No. V., § 2, p. 54 and the title-page; No. I. §
57, pp. 27, 28.
[120] Jacob Böhme’s Leben und Schriften, No. I. 2-4, pp. 3, 4; § 6, 7, p.
5; § 10, 11, pp. 7, 8; § 28, 29, pp. 17, 18.
[121] Jacob Böhme’s Leben und Schriften, No. VI. § 3-8, pp. 81-87; No. I.
§ 12-17, pp. 8-11.
[122] Theosophische Sendbriefe, 47th Letter (Werke, Hamburg, 1715, 4), p.
3879.
[123] Trostschrift von vier Complexionen, § 43-63, pp. 1602-1607.
[124] Act I. Scene 2.
[125] Von Christi Testament der heiligen Taufe, Book II. chap. i. § 4-5,
pp. 2653, 2654.
[126] Morgenröthe im Aufgang, Preface, § 84, 85, 88, p. 18.
[127] Von wahrer Gelassenheit, chap. ii. § 9, 10, p. 1673.
[128] Von den drei Principien göttlichen Wesens, chap. x. § 42, p. 470.
[129] Von der Gnadenwahl, chap. i. § 3-10, pp. 2408-2410; chap. ii. § 9,
p. 2418; § 19, 20, p. 2420; Schlüssel der vornehmsten Puncten und Wörter,
§ 2, p. 3668; § 145, 146, pp. 3696, 3697; Morgenröthe, chap. iv. § 9-21,
pp. 49-51; chap. xi. § 47, pp. 126, 127, etc.
[130] Morgenröthe, chap. i. § 3-7, 9-24, pp. 23-27; chap. ii. § 38-40,
pp. 34, 35; § i. p. 28 [see Law’s translation].
[131] Morgenröthe, chap. 11. § 8, 14-18, 31-33, pp. 29-34 [see Law’s
translation].
[132] Morgenröthe, chap. iii. § 2, 8-11, pp. 36-38.
[133] Morgenröthe, chap. iv. § 5, 6, p. 48; chap. viii. § 15-chap. xi. §
46, pp. 78-126.
[134] Morgenröthe, chap. iii. § 18, p. 40; chap. x. § 54, p. 115; § 39,
40, p. 112; chap. xi. § 7-12, pp. 119, 120.
[135] Von göttlicher Beschaulichkeit, chap. i. § 8-10, p. 1739.
[136] Von göttlicher Beschaulichkeit, chap. iii. § 1-3, pp. 1755, 1756.
[137] Morgenröthe, chap. iii. § 33-35, p. 44 (cf. Rixner: Handbuch d.
Gesch. d. Philos. Vol. II. Appendix, p. 106, § 7).
[138] Morgenröthe, chap. iii. § 15, 18-22, pp. 39-41.
[139] Von göttlicher Beschaulichkeit, chap. iii. § 4, 5, p. 1756, § 12,
p. 1758; Morgenröthe, chap. xii. § 99-107, p. 149, 150; chap. xiii. §
92-104, 31-52, pp. 166-168, 157-160; chap. xiv. § 36, p. 178; Von den
drei Principien göttlichen Wesens, chap. iv. § 69, p. 406; chap. xv. § 5,
pp. 543, 544.
[140] Morgenröthe, chap. xiii. § 53-64, pp. 160-162; Vierzig Fragen von
der Seele, XII. § 4, p. 1201; Von sechs theosophischen Puncten, V. 7,
§ 3, p. 1537; Von wahrer Gelassenheit, chap. i. § 1-7, pp. 1661-1663;
Von göttlicher Beschaulichkeit, chap. i. § 23-26, pp. 1742, 1743; Von
der Geburt und Bezeichnung aller Wesen, chap. xvi. § 49, p. 2391; Vom
übersinnlichen Leben, § 41, 42, p. 1696 [see Law’s translation].
[141] Von der Menschwerdung Jesu Christi, Pt. I. chap. v. § 14, p. 1323;
Von den drei Principien göttlichen Wesens, chap. x. § 43, p. 470.
[142] Von göttlicher Beschaulichkeit, chap. iii. § 11, p. 1757.
[143] _Infra_, p. 213.
[144] Morgenröthe, chap. viii. § 15-20, pp. 78, 79; chap. x. § 38, p.
112; chap. xiii. § 69-91, pp. 162-166; chap xi. § 5-13, pp. 119, 120.
[145] 177 Fragen von göttlicher Offenbarung, III. § 2-5, 10-16, pp.
3591-3595.
[146] Von göttlicher Beschaulichkeit, chap. iii. § 12, 14, pp. 1757, 1758.
[147] Rixner: Handbuch d. Gesch d. Philos. Vol. II. Appendix, p. 108, § 5
(from Boehme’s Morgenröthe, chap. ii. § 16, pp. 30, 31, § 33, p. 34).
[148] Morgenröthe, chap. xxiii. § 11, 12, pp. 307, 308 (cf. Rixner:
Handb. d. Gesch. d. Philos. Vol. II. Appendix, p. 108, § 5),
Theosophische Sendbriefe, I. § 5, p. 3710.
[149] Morgenröthe, chap. iii. § 29, 30, p. 43 [see Law’s translation].
[150] Von göttlicher Beschaulichkeit, chap. iii. § 13, p. 1758;
Morgenröthe, chap. x. § 55, 60, 58, pp. 115, 116 (chap. xi. § 4, p. 118).
[151] Morgenröthe, chap. iii. § 36-38, 47, pp. 44-46 [see Law’s
translation].
[152] Von göttlicher Beschaulichkeit, chap. i. § 33, p. 1745; chap. ii. §
29, p. 1754, chap. iii. § 15, 18-24, 27, 29, pp. 1758-1761; Von den drei
Principien göttlichen Wesens, chap. viii § 5, p. 433, Mysterium Magnum,
oder Erklarung des ersten Buchs Mosis, chap xix § 28, pp. 2830, 2831.
[153] Von göttlicher Beschaulichkeit, chap. i. § 23-39, pp. 1742-1746;
chap. ii. § 1-13, 15-30, pp. 1747-1754.
[154] Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. IV. P. II. pp. 203-217; Cartes. De
Methodo, I-II (Amstelod. 1672, 4), pp. 2-7 (Œuvres complètes de Descartes
publiées par Victor Cousin, T. I.), pp. 125-133; Notes sur l’éloge de
Descartes par Thomas (Œuvres de Descartes publiées par Cousin, T. I.), p.
83, et suiv.; Tennemann, Vol. X. pp. 210-216.
[155] Spinoza: Principia philosophiæ Cartesianæ (Benedicti de Spinoza
Opera, ed. Paulus. Jenæ, 1802, T. I.), p. 2.
[156] Cartes. Principia philosophiæ, P. I. § 1-6 (Amstelod. 1672, 4), pp.
1, 2 (Œuvres, T. III. pp. 63-66); cf. Meditationes de prima philosophia,
I. (Amstelod. 1685, 4), pp. 5-8 (Œuvres, T. I. pp. 235-245); De Methodo,
IV. p. 20 (pp. 156-158).
[157] Cartes. Principia philosophiæ, P. I. § 7, 8, p. 2 (pp. 66, 67).
[158] Cartes. De Methodo, IV. pp. 20, 21 (p. 158); Spinoza: Principia
philosophiæ Cartes, p. 14.
[159] Cartes. De Methodo, IV. p. 21 (p. 159); Epistol. T. I. ep. 118
(Amstelod. 1682, 4), p. 379 (Œuvres, T. IX. pp. 442, 443).
[160] Cartes. Responsiones ad sec. objectiones, adjunctæ Meditationibus
de prima philosophia, p. 74 (p. 427); Spinoza: Principia philosophiæ
Cartes., pp. 4, 5.
[161] Appendix ad Cartes. Meditationes, continens objectiones quint. p. 4
(Œuvres, T. II. pp. 92, 93).
[162] Cartes. Principia philosophiæ, P I § 9, pp. 2, 3 (pp. 67, 68).
[163] Ibid. P I § 11, p. 3 (pp. 69, 70)
[164] Cartes. Respons. ad sec. object.: Rationes more geometr. dispos.,
Postulata, p. 86 (pp. 454, 455); Spinoza: Principia philosophiæ, Cartes.,
p. 13.
[165] Cartes. Princip. philos., P. IV. § 196, pp. 215, 216 (pp. 507-509);
Meditation. VI. p. 38 (pp. 329, 330); Spinoza: Principia philos. Cartes.,
pp. 2, 3.
[166] Cartes. Respons. ad sec. object.: Rat. more geom. dispos.,
Axiomata V., VI. p. 86 (p. 453), et Propositio IV. p. 91 (pp. 464, 465);
Meditationes, II. pp. 9-14 (pp. 246-262).
[167] Cartes. De Methodo, IV. p. 21 (pp. 158, 159); Spinoza: Principia
philosoph. Cartes., p. 14.
[168] Cartes. Principia philosophiæ, P. I. § 13, pp. 3, 4 (pp. 71, 72).
[169] Cartes. Respons. ad sec. object. Rationes more geom. dispos.,
Def. I. p. 85 (pp. 451, 452), et Proposit. IV. p. 91 (pp. 464, 465),
Meditationes, III. pp. 15-17 (pp. 263-268).
[170] Cartes. Principia philos., P. I. § 20, p. 6 (pp. 76, 77);
Meditationes, III. pp. 17-25 (pp. 268-292); De Methodo, IV. pp. 21, 22
(pp. 159-162); Spinoza: Principia philos. Cartes., p. 10.
[171] Cartes. Principia philos. P. I., § 14, p. 4 (pp. 72, 73.)
[172] Cartes. Resp. ad sec. obj.: Rat. more geom. disp., Ax. III.-VI.,
X., Prop. I. pp. 88, 89 (pp. 458-461); Spinoza: Princ. phil. Cart., pp.
14-17.
[173] Spinoza: Princip. philos. Cart., p. 20; Cartesii Resp. ad sec.
obj.: Rat. more geom. dispos., Propos. II. p. 89 (pp. 461, 462).
[174] Cartes. Principia philosophiæ, P. I. §. 15, 16, 18, 24, pp. 4, 5, 7
(pp. 73-75, 78, 79).
[175] Cartes. Principia philosophiæ, P. I. § 24-26, p. 7 (pp. 79, 80).
[176] Ibid. P. I. § 29, 30, 35, 36, 38, 43, pp. 8-11 (pp. 81-86, 89);
Meditationes, IV. pp. 25, 26 (pp. 293-297).
[177] In the Lectures of 1829-1830 the philosophy of Malebranche is
inserted here. (Editor’s note).
[178] Cartes. Principia philos. P. I. § 22, 23, pp. 6, 7 (pp. 77, 78);
Responsiones quartæ, p. 133 (p. 70); Spinoza: Princip. philos. Cart. pp.
30, 31, 36, 38; Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. III. Sec.
I. pp. 17, 18.
[179] Cartes. Principia philos. P. I. § 48, p. 12 (p. 92); Meditationes,
III. p. 17 (pp. 268, 269).
[180] Cartes. Principia philosophiæ, P. I. § 49, p. 13 (p. 93).
[181] Ibid. P. I. § 48, p. 12 (p. 92).
[182] Cartes. Princip. philosophiæ, P. I. § 51, p. 14 (p. 95)
[183] Ibid. P. I. § 48, pp. 12, 13 (p. 92); § 60, p. 16 (p. 101); § 52,
p. 14 (p. 95); Ration. more geometr. dispos., Definit. X. p. 86 (p. 454).
[184] Cartes. Principia philosophiæ, P. I. § 53, 54, p. 14 (pp. 96, 97).
[185] Cartes. Princip. philos., P. I. § 66-74, pp. 19-22 (pp. 107-117);
P. II. § 4, p. 25 (pp. 123, 124).
[186] Cartes. Principia philos. P. II. § 16, 20, 37, 38, pp. 29-31, 38,
39 (pp. 133, 134, 137, 138, 152-154).
[187] Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. III. Sec. I. p. 19;
cf. Cartes. Princip. phil., P. III. § 46, 47, p. 65 (pp. 210-212).
[188] Cf. Cartes. Principia philos., P. II. § 64, p. 49 (pp. 178, 179).
[189] Cartes. Principia philos., P. III. § 5-42, 46 _sqq._ pp. 51-63, 65
_sqq._ (pp. 183-208, p. 210 _et suiv._); P. IV. § 1 _sqq._, 69, 109-115,
p. 137 _sqq._, 116, 178-180 (p. 330 _et suiv._, 388, 420-425).
[190] Cartes. Principia philosoph, P. I. § 37, 39-41, pp. 10, 11 (pp.
85-88).
[191] Cartes. De Methodo, V. pp. 35, 36 (pp. 185-189).
[192] Cartes. De Methodo, V. p. 29 (173, 174).
[193] Collectanea de vita B. de Spinoza (addita Operibus ed. Paulus Jenæ
1802-1803, T. II.), pp. 593-604, 612-628 (Spinoza Epist. LIII-LIV. in
Oper. ed. Paul. T. I. pp. 638-640) 642-665; Spinozæ Oper. ed. Paul. T.
II. Præf. p. XVI.
[194] Collectanea de vita B. de Spinoza, pp. 629-641; Spinozæ Ethic.
(Oper. T. II.) pp. 1, 3 et not., 33.
[195] Spinoz. Ethices, P. I. Prop. V. VIII. X. et Schol., XIII. pp.
37-39, 41, 42, 45.
[196] Spinoz. Ethices, P. I. Prop. XIV. et Coroll. II. Prop. XV. XVI. et
Coroll. I. pp. 46, 51.
[197] Spinoz. Ethices, P. I. Prop. XVII., Coroll. I., II., et Schol,
Prop. XVIII., Prop. XX, et Coroll. I. Prop. XXI., XXVI., XXVII., XXIX.,
XXXII., XXXIII. Schol. II. pp. 51-57, 59, 61, 63, 67, 68.
[198] Spinoz. Ethices, P. II. Prop. I., II., VII. et Schol. pp. 78, 79,
82, 83.
[199] Spinoz. Ethic. P. I. Prop. XXX-XXXII. pp. 62, 63; P. III. Defin.
III. p. 132; Prop. XI. Schol., p. 141.
[200] Spinoz. Ethices, P. II. Prop. XI. Demonst. et Coroll. pp. 86, 87;
Defin. IV. pp. 77, 78.
[201] Dictionnaire historique et critique (édition de 1740, T. IV.),
Article Spinosa, p. 261, Note N. No. IV.
[202] Spinoz. Ethices, P. II. Prop. XII., XIII. et Schol. Prop. XIV.,
XXIII., V. pp. 87-89, 95, 102, 80, 81.
[203] Spinoz. Ethices, P. II. Prop. XI. (Axiom I. p. 78) et Demonstr.
Prop. X. pp. 85-87; Prop. VI. p. 81; P. III. Prop. II. pp. 133, 134.
[204] Spinoz. Ethices, P. III. Prop. VI.-VIII. Prop. IX. Schol. pp. 139,
140; P. II. Prop. XLIX. Coroll. p. 123; P. III. Prop. II. Schol. p. 136;
P. V. Prop. III. Demonst. et Coroll. pp. 272, 273.
[205] Spinoz. Ethices, P. III. Prop. I. p. 132; Prop. III. p. 138; P. IV.
Præf. p. 199; P. III. Prop. XI. Schol. pp. 141, 142; P. IV. Prop. II. p.
205; P. III. Prop. III. et Schol. p. 138.
[206] Spinoz. Ethices, P. V. Prop. XXXVI. Schol. Prop. XXXVII. Demonstr.,
Prop. XXXVIII. et Schol. pp. 293-295.
[207] Spinoz. Ethices, P. II. Prop. XL. Schol. II. pp. 113, 114.
[208] Spinoz. Ethices, P. II. Prop. XLIV. et Coroll. II. pp. 117, 118;
Prop. XLV. p. 119; P. V. Prop. XXX. p. 289; P. II. Prop. XXXII. p. 107.
[209] Spinoz. Ethices, P. V. Prop. XIV. p. 280; Prop. VI. p. 275; Prop.
XXVII. pp. 287, 288; Prop. XXXII. Coroll.; Prop. XXXV. pp. 291, 292.
[210] Buhle: Gesch. d. neuern Philosophie, Vol. III. Sec. 2, pp. 430, 431.
[211] Malebranche: De la recherche de la vérité (Paris, 1736), T. II.
L. III. Part I. chap. i. pp. 4-6; T. I. L. I. chap. i. pp. 6, 7; P. II.
chap. ii. pp. 66-68; chap. iii. p. 72; chap. iv. p. 84; chap. v. p. 92;
chap. vi. pp. 95, 96.
[212] Malebranche: De la recherche de la vérité, T. II. L. III. Part II.
chap. vi. pp. 100-102.
[213] Malebranche: De la recherche de la vérité, T. II. L. III. P. II.
chap. vi. pp. 103-107, 109-111.
[214] Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. IV. Sec. 1, pp.
238-241; Quarterly Review, April, 1817, pp. 70, 71; The Works of John
Locke (London, 1812), Vol. I.: The Life of the Author, pp. xix.-xxxix.
[215] Locke: An Essay concerning human Understanding (The Works of John
Locke, Vol. I.), Book I. chap. ii. § 1; chap. iii. § 15, § 22.
[216] Locke: An Essay concerning human Understanding (Vol. I) Book I.
chap. ii. § 2-9, § 27; chap. iii. § 1-15.
[217] Locke: An Essay concerning human Understanding (Vol. I.) Bk. II.
chap. i. § 1, 2.
[218] Locke: An Essay concerning human Understanding (Vol. I.), Bk. II.
chap. i. § 2-5.
[219] v. Schiller’s Xenien.
[220] Locke: An Essay concerning human Understanding (Vol I.), Bk. II.,
chap. ii. § 2, not.; chap. xii. § 1; chap. xxii. § 2; chap. i. § 10-14.
[221] Locke: An Essay concerning human Understanding (Vol. I), Bk. II.
chap. xiii. § 2; chap. iv. § 2.
[222] Ibidem (Vol. I.), Bk. II. chap. xiv. § 3.
[223] Locke: An Essay concerning human Understanding (Vol. II.), Bk. II.
chap. xxiii. § 1, 2.
[224] Ibidem (Vol. I.), Bk. II. chap. xxi. § 1.
[225] Ibidem (Vol. II.), Bk. II. chap. xxvi. § 1.
[226] Ibidem (Vol. I.), Bk. II. chap xxi. § 7.
[227] Ibidem (Vol. I.), Bk. II. chap. xiii. § 17, 18.
[228] Locke: An Essay concerning human Understanding (Vol. I.), Bk. II.
chap. viii. § 9-26.
[229] Locke: An Essay concerning human Understanding (Vol. II.), Bk. III.
chap. iii. § 6; § 13, 15.
[230] Brucker. Histor. critic. philos. T. IV. P. 2, pp. 731-736, 743-745.
[231] Hug. Grot. De jure belli ac pacis, B. III. chap. xi. § 13-16 (Ed.
Gronov. Lipsiæ, 1758, 8vo), pp. 900-905; chap. iv. § 10, pp. 792, 793.
[232] Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. III. Sec. 1, pp.
223, 224, 227.
[233] Hobbes. Epistola dedicatoria ante Elementor philos Sectionem primam
(Thomæ Hobbesii Opera philosophica, quæ latine scripsit omnia, Amstelod,
1668, 4to), pp. 1, 2.
[234] Cf. Brucker. Histor. crit. philos. T. IV. P. II. p. 154.
[235] Hobbes, De cive, chap. i. § 2, 3 (Oper. phil. etc. Amstel. 1668),
pp. 3, 4.
[236] Hobbes, De cive, chap. i. § 4-6, 12-14, pp. 4-8; Leviathan, chap.
xiii. (Oper.), pp. 63-66.
[237] Ibidem, chap. v. § 6-12, pp. 37-38; chap. vi. § 12-14, pp. 44-46.
[238] Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. IV. Sec. 2, pp.
519-523; Rixner: Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, Vol. III. p. 29.
[239] Rixner: Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, Vol. III. p. 31;
cf. Puffendorf. De jure naturæ et gent. II. 2, § 5-7 (Francof. ad Moenum,
1706, 4), pp. 157-161; VII. 1, § 3-7, pp. 900-909.
[240] Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. IV. Sec. 1, pp. 107,
108.
[241] Buhle, Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. IV. p. 115, cf.
Newtoni Optices. P. III (Londini, 1706, 4) p. 314.
[242] La vie de Mr. Leibnitz par Mr. le Chevalier de Jaucourt (Essais de
Théodicée, par Leibnitz, Amsterdam, 1747, T. I.), pp. 1-28, 45, 59-62,
66-74, 77-80, 87-92, 110-116, 148-151; Brucker. Hist. crit. phil., T. IV.
P. II. pp. 335-368; Leibnitzii Opera omnia (ed. Dutens), T. II., P. I.
pp. 45, 46.
[243] Vie de Mr. Leibnitz, pp. 134-143; Brucker. Hist. crit. philos. T.
IV. P. II. pp. 385, 389; Tennemann, vol. xi. pp. 181, 182.
[244] Leibnitzii Opera, T. II. P. I. pp. 32-39.
[245] Ibidem, Principia philosophiæ, pp. 20-31.
[246] cf. Leibnitz: Essais de Théodicée, T. I. P. I. § 10, p. 86.
[247] Leibnitz, Principes de la nature et la grace § 1, p. 32.
(Recueil de diverses pieces par Des Maiseaux, T. II. p. 485, Principia
philosophiæ, § 1, 2, p. 20.)
[248] Leibnitzii De ipsa natura sive de vi insita actionibusque
creaturarum (Oper. T. II. P. II.), § 11, p. 55, Principia philosophiæ, §
3-6, 18, pp. 20-22; Principes de la nature et de la grace, § 2, p. 32.
[249] Leibnitzii Principia philosophiæ, § 7, p. 21; Troisième
éclaircissement du système de la communication des substances (Oper. T.
II. P. I.), p. 73 (Recueil, T. II. p. 402).
[250] Leibnitzii Principia philosophiæ, § 8, 9, p. 21; Oper. T. II. P. I.
pp. 128, 129, § 4, 5: Il n’y a point deux individus indiscernables. Un
gentilhomme d’esprit de mes amis, en parlant avec moi en présence de Mad.
l’Electrice dans le jardin de Herrenhausen, crut qu’il trouverait bien
deux feuilles entièrement semblables. Mad. l’Electrice l’en défia, et il
courut longtemps en vain pour en chercher. Deux gouttes d’eau ou de lait
regardées par le microscope se trouveront discernables. C’est un argument
contre les Atomes (Recueil, T. I. p. 50).—Cf. Hegel’s Werke, Vol. IV. p.
45.
[251] Leibnitzii Principia philosophiæ, § 10-16, pp. 21, 22; Principes de
la nature et de la grace, § 2, p. 32.
[252] Leibnitzii Principia philosophiæ, § 19-23, pp. 22, 23; Principes
de la nature et de la grace, § 4, pp. 33, 34; Nouveaux essais sur
l’entendement humain (Œuvres philosophiques de Leibnitz par Raspe), Bk.
II. chap. ix. § 4, p. 90.
[253] Leibnitzii De anima brutorum (Op. T. II. P. I.), § 2-4, pp. 230,
231.
[254] Leibnitzii Oper. T. II. P. I. pp. 214, 215, § 3; De ipsa natura
sive de vi insita, § 11, p. 55; Système nouveau de la nature et de la
communication des substances (Op. T. II. P. I.), pp. 50, 53.
[255] Leibnitzii Oper. T. II. P. I. pp. 79, 121, 234-237, 280, 295;
Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain, Bk. II. chap. xiii. § 15, 17,
pp. 106, 107.
[256] Leibnitz: Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain, Bk. II. chap.
xii. § 7, pp. 102, 103; chap. xxi. § 72, p. 170; chap. xxiv. § 1, p. 185.
[257] Leibnitzii Oper. T. II. P. I. p. 39; Nouveaux essais sur
l’entendement humain, Bk. III. chap. vi. § 24, p. 278; § 39, p. 290.
[258] Leibnitzii Oper. T. II. P. II. p. 60; Nouveaux essais sur
l’entendement humain, Bk. II. chap. xxiii. § 23, p. 181.
[259] Leibnitzii Principia philosophiæ, § 65-71, p. 28; Principes de la
nature et de la grace, § 3, 4, pp. 32, 33.
[260] Leibnitzii Principia philosophiæ. § 29-31, p. 24; Principes de la
nature et de la grace, § 5, p. 34; Essais de Théodicée, T. I. P. I. § 44,
p. 115.
[261] Leibnitz. Principes de la nature et de la grace, § 7, p. 35.
[262] Leibnitz: Principes de la nature et de la grace, § 8, p. 35;
Principia philosophiæ, § 43-46, p. 25.
[263] Leibnitz: Essais de Théodicée, T. I. P. I. § 6-8, pp. 83-85;
Principes de la nature et de la grace, § 10, p. 36.
[264] Leibnitz: Essais de Théodicée, T. I. P. I. § 20, pp. 96, 97; § 32,
33, pp. 106, 107; T. II. P. II. § 153, pp. 57, 58; § 378, pp. 256, 257.
[265] Leibnitzii Causa Dei asserta per justitiam ejus (Essais de
Théodicée, T. II.), § 34-39, pp. 385, 386.
[266] Leibnitz: Principes de la nature et de la grace, §3, p. 33; Premier
élaircissement du système de la communication des substances, p. 70.
[267] Leibnitz: Second et troisième éclaircissements du système de la
communication des substances, pp. 71-73.
[268] Leibnitzii Principia philosophiæ, § 82, p. 30; Principes de la
nature et de la grace, § 11, p. 36.
[269] Leibnitz: Système nouveau de la nature et de la communication des
substances, pp. 54, 55.
[270] Leibnitzii Principia philosophiæ, § 90, p. 31; Principes de la
nature et de la grace, § 12, 13, pp. 36, 37; § 15, pp. 37, 38.
[271] Leibnitzii Oper. T. II. P. I. pp. 75, 76.
[272] Leibnitzii Principia philosoph., § 58-62, p. 27; Oper. T. II. P. I.
pp. 46, 47.
[273] Leibnitz: Essais de Théodicée, T. I. P. I. § 9, pp. 85, 86.
[274] Leibnitz: Principes de la nature et de la grace, § 12,13, pp. 36,
37; Oper. T. II. P. I. p. 337.
[275] Leibnitz: Essais de Théodicée, T. II. P. III. § 291, pp. 184, 185;
T. I. P. I. § 50, p. 119.
[276] Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosoph., Vol. IV. Sec. II., pp.
571-582; Tiedemann: Geist der speculativen Philos., Vol. VI. pp. 511-518;
Rixner: Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, Vol. III. § 79, pp. 195,
196.
[277] Wolf’s Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des
Menschen (Halle, 1741), Pt. I. chap. ii. § 114, 120, pp. 59, 60, 62, 63;
chap. iv. § 575-581, 686, pp. 352-359, 425; chap. v. § 742, p. 463; §
926, p. 573; chap vi. § 928, p. 574, _seq._
[278] Wolff’s Anfangsgründe aller mathematischen Wissenschaften, Pt. I.:
Anfangsgründe der Baukunst, Pt. II. Prop. 8, p. 414; Problem 22, pp. 452,
453; Pt. II.: Anfangsgründe der Fortification, Pt. I. p. 570.
[279] In the lectures of 1825-1826 and 1829-1830 Berkeley was passed
over by Hegel; in both courses Hume follows directly after the Scottish
and French philosophers, and thus comes immediately before Kant; in the
course of 1825-1826 the French philosophy precedes the Scottish also.
[280] Nachrichten von dem Leben und den Schriften des Bischofs Berkeley
(in Berkeley’s philosoph. Werk. Pt. I. Leipzig, 1781), pp. 1, 45, Buhle:
Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. V Sect. 1, pp. 86-90.
[281] Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol V. pp. 90, 91; The
Works of George Berkeley, Prof. Fraser’s edition (Dialogues between Hylas
and Philonous), Vol. I. p. 264, _seq._ _et passim_.
[282] Buhle, Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. V. Sect. 1, pp. 92,
93; The Works of George Berkeley, Vol. I. p. 279 _seq._
[283] Buhle, _ibidem_, pp. 91, 92; Berkeley, _ibidem_, pp. 288 _seq._,
300 _seq._ _et passim_.
[284] Buhle, _ibidem_, pp. 93, 94; Berkeley, _ibidem_, pp. 289, 308,
_seq._
[285] Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. V. Sect. 1, pp. 91,
95; The Works of George Berkeley, Vol. I. pp. 308, 335.
[286] Buhle, _ibidem_, pp. 96-99; Berkeley, _ibidem_, p. 325, _seq._ _et
passim_.
[287] Cf. Berkeley, _ibidem_, _passim_.
[288] Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. V. Sect. 1, pp.
193-200.
[289] Tennemann’s Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie von Wendt
(Leipzig, 1829), § 370, pp. 439, 440; Hume: Essays and Treatises on
several subjects, Vol. III. containing an Inquiry concerning human
understanding (London, 1770), Sect. 2, pp. 21, 22, Sect. 4, P. I. p. 42,
Tennemann, Vol. XI pp. 433, 434.
[290] Hume: Essays and Treatises on several subjects, Vol III. Not. A,
pp. 283, 284.
[291] Tennemann’s Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie von Wendt, §
370, p. 440; Hume, Essays and Treatises on several subjects, Vol. III.
Sect. 4, Pt. I. pp. 43-45; Sect. 5, pp. 66, 67; Buhle: Geschichte der
neuern Philosophie, Vol. V. Sect. 1, pp. 204, 205; Tennemann, Vol. XI.
pp. 435, 436.
[292] Hume: Essays and Treatises on several subjects, Vol. III. Sect.
vii. Pt. 1, pp. 102, 103; Pt. 2, pp. 108, 109; Sect. viii. pp. 118, 119.
[293] Hume: Essays and Treatises on several subjects, Vol. IV. containing
an Inquiry concerning the principles of morals, Sect. 1, p. 4; Appendix
I. p. 170.
[294] Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. V. Sect. 1, pp. 230,
231; cf. Hume, _ibidem_, Vol. III. Sect. 12, P. II. p. 221; Vol. IV.; An
Inquiry, &c., Sect. 4, pp. 62-65; A dialogue, pp. 235, 236, &c., &c.
[295] Hume: Essays and Treatises on several subjects, Vol. III. Sect. 12,
Pt. I. pp. 217, 218; Not. N. pp. 296, 297; Buhle: Geschichte der neuern
Philosophie, Vol. V. Sect. 1, p. 210.
[296] Tennemann’s Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie von Wendt, §
371, p. 442.
[297] Rixner: Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, Vol. III. §
119, p. 259; cf. Thomas Reid; An Inquiry into the human mind on the
principles of common sense (Edinburgh, 1810), chap. i. Sect. 4, pp. 19,
20 (translated into German, Leipzig, 1782, pp. 17, 18); chap. vi. Sect.
20, pp. 372-375 (pp. 310, 311), &c.
[298] Rixner: Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, Vol. III. § 120,
pp. 261, 262; cf. James Beattie: Essays on the nature and immutability
of Truth, &c. (Edinburgh, 1772), Pt. I., chap, i., pp. 18-31 (translated
into German, Copenhagen and Leipzig, 1772, pp. 24-42); chap. ii. Sect. 2,
pp. 37-42 (pp. 49-55), &c.
[299] Cf. James Oswald: An Appeal of common-sense in behalf of religion
(Edinburgh, 1772), Vol. I. Book I. Introduction, p. 12 (translated by
Wilmsen, Leipzig, 1774, p. 11).
[300] Rixner, _ibidem_, § 121, p. 262; cf. James Oswald, _ibidem_, Vol.
II. Book II. chap. i. pp. 50, 51 (pp. 54, 55).
[301] The name assumed by Abraham Tucker.—[Translator’s note.]
[302] Lectures of 1825-1826.
[303] Lectures of 1829-1830.
[304] Emile ou de l’éducation. T. II. (Paris, 1813, él. stéréotype), Book
IV., Profession de foi du vicaire savoyard, p. 215 _seq._
[305] Buhle: Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, Pt. VIII. pp. 62,
63: Système de la Nature par Mirabaud (Londres, 1770), T. I. chap. i. p.
10; chap. ii. p. 28.
[306] Buhle: Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, Pt. VIII. pp. 63,
64. Système de la Nature, T. I. chap. ii. pp. 18, 16, 21, et 15.
[307] Buhle, _ibidem_, pp. 64, 65, 70; Système de la Nature, T. I. chap.
ii. pp. 30, 31; chap. iii. pp. 39, 40; chap. iv. pp. 45, 46; chap. vii.
pp. 90, 91.
[308] Robinet: De la Nature (Troisième édition, Amsterdam, 1766), T. I.
P. I. chap. iii. iv. pp. 16, 17.
[309] Robinet, De la Nature, T. I. P. II. chap. ii. pp. 156, 157; chap.
vii. pp. 166, 168; chap. ix.-xi.; chap. xv. pp. 202, 203, chap. xix. p.
217.
[310] Robinet: De la Nature, T. I. P. I. chap. xxviii. p. 138; chap.
xiii. p. 70.
[311] Helvetius: De l’esprit (Oeuvres complètes, T. II. Deux-Ponts,
1784), T. I. Discours II. chap. i. pp. 62-64; chap. ii. pp. 65, 68, 69;
chap. iv. p. 90; chap. v. p. 91; chap. viii. p. 114; chap. xxiv. pp. 256,
257.
[312] Rousseau: Du contrat social (Lyon, 1790), Book I. chap. iii. pp. 8,
9; chap. iv. pp. 10, 11, 13-16.
[313] Sämmtliche Schriften, Vol. XXXIX. (Berlin u. Stettin, 1828), pp.
111, 112.
[314] Lessing’s Sämmtliche Schriften, Vol. XXIX. pp. 122, 123.
[315] Tenneman’s Grundriss von Wendt, § 406, p. 531; Rixner: Handbuch der
Geschichte der Philosophie, Vol. III. § 145, p. 317; Jacobi’s Werke, Vol.
IV. Sec. 1, p. 3.
[316] Jacobi: Briefe über die Lehre des Spinoza (second edition, 1789),
pp. 85, 86 (Werke, Vol. IV. Sec. 1, p. 110).
[317] Buhle: Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, Part VIII. pp. 386,
387; Mendelssohn’s Morgenstunden (second edition, 1786), pp. 293-296.
[318] Jacobi: Briefe über die Lehre des Spinoza, IV. Prop. pp. 225, 223
(pp. 223, 216).
[319] _Infra_, pp. 418, 419.
[320] Jacobi’s Werke, Vol. II. pp. 7 _seq._; p. 221, note.
[321] Jacobi: Briefe über die Lehre des Spinoza, supplement vii. pp.
419-421, and note (Werke, Vol. IV. Sec. 2, pp. 149-151).
[322] Jacobi: Briefe über die Lehre des Spinoza, supplement vii. pp.
422-426 (pp. 151-155).
[323] Ibidem, pp. 426, 427 (pp. 155, 156).
[324] Cf. Jacobi’s Werke, Vol. III. p. 277.
[325] Jacobi: Briefe über die Lehre des Spinoza, pp. 216, 217 (p. 211).
[326] Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft (sixth edition, Leipzig, 1818),
pp. 4, 11, 13, 93.
[327] Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 3-5.
[328] Ibidem, Preface, pp. xviii., xix.
[329] Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 8, 9, 75, 77, 15.
[330] Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 255, 256.
[331] Ibidem, p. 107.
[332] Ibidem, pp. 497, 498; Kritik der prakt. Vernunft (fourth edition,
Riga, 1797), p. 254; Kritik der Urtheilskraft (third edition, Berlin,
1799), Preface, p. v.
[333] Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 25-27.
[334] Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 29, 30; 34-36.
[335] Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 30, 31, 41; 12, 13, 150.
[336] Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 54, 55.
[337] Ibidem, pp. 59, 97-104.
[338] Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 105-110.
[339] Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 129-132.
[340] Ibidem, p. 134.
[341] In the lectures of 1825-1826 the philosophy of Fichte on its
theoretic side is interpolated here, while its practical side is only
shortly mentioned after an account is given of the Critique of Practical
Reason.
[342] Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 257-259, 264, 267, 268, 273.
[343] Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 261, 262, 274, 275, 284, 288,
289.
[344] Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 289-299.
[345] Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 312-314.
[346] Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 317, 318, 328, 329, 332.
[347] Ibidem, pp. 318, 336, 337.
[348] Ibidem, pp. 319, 346, 347.
[349] Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 319, 354, 355.
[350] Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 497, 498.
[351] Here there is inserted in the lectures of 1825-1826 an examination
of what the philosophy of Jacobi has to say on this point.
[352] Kant: Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft (third
edition, Leipzig, 1800), pp. 1, 27.
[353] Kant: Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft
(second edition, Königsberg, 1794), pp. 20-48.
[354] Kant: Kritik der prakt. Vernunft (fourth edition, Riga, 1797), pp.
3-11, 29-32.
[355] Kant: Kritik d. prakt. Vernunft, pp. 40, 41, 56, 126-135, 58, 38,
77.
[356] Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 62, 500.
[357] Kant: Kritik d. prakt. Vernunft, pp. 54, 58 (35).
[358] Kant: Kritik d. prakt. Vernunft, pp. 223-227.
[359] Cf. Kant’s Kritik d. reinen Vernunft, p. 471.
[360] Kant: Kritik der prakt. Vernunft, p. 146.
[361] Kant: Kritik der Urtheilskraft (third edition, Berlin, 1799),
Einleitung, pp. xvii.-xx. xxiv., xxv.
[362] Kant: Kritik der Urtheilskraft, Introduction, pp. xxv.-xxviii.
[363] Kant: Kritik der Urtheilskraft, Einleitung, pp. xxvi.-xxxiii.
[364] Ibidem, p. xxxiv.
[365] Ibidem, pp. xlviii.-lii.
[366] Kant: Kritik der Urtheilskraft, pp. xliii.-xlv., 16-19, 32, 56, 59,
77.
[367] Ibidem, pp. 279-283.
[368] Kant: Kritik der Urtheilskraft, pp. 286-288, 292-296.
[369] Ibidem, pp. 343, 344.
[370] Kant: Kritik der Urtheilskraft. pp. 347, 348 (351).
[371] Kant: Kritik der Urtheilskraft, pp. 423, 424.
[372] What falls under this heading in Jacobi’s philosophy is inserted
here in the lectures of 1825-1826.
[373] Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre (Leipzig, 1794),
Preface, p. xii.
[374] Fichte’s Leben und Briefwechsel, edited by his son, Pt. I. pp. 3,
6, 24 _seq._; 38 _seq._; 142, 189; 337, 338, 348, 349, 353, 354, 358-364;
Pt. II. pp. 140-142; Pt. I. pp. 370-372, 442-448, 455; 518, 540; 578.
[375] Fichte’s posthumous works, which were not published until after
Hegel’s death, nevertheless show that the writer in his lectures at the
Berlin University likewise worked out scientifically this newly developed
point of view in his philosophy; Fichte made a beginning in this regard
brocheven in the ure which appeared in 1810: “Die Wissenschaftslehre in
ihrem allgemeinen Umrisse” (v. Michelet: Geschichte der letzten Systeme
der Philosophie, Pt. I. pp. 441, 442). [Editor’s note.]
[376] Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 10-12.
[377] Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 13, 14.
[378] Fichte: Ueber den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre (Weimar, 1794), p.
12.
[379] Fichte: Grundlage der ges. Wissenschaftsl., Preface, pp. x., xi.
[380] Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 184, 185.
[381] Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, p. 3.
[382] Cf. Fichte: Ueber den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 13-17,
19-39, 50-52.
[383] Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 4, 5.
[384] Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 23, 5, 15, 17, 8.
[385] Fichte: Grundlage der ges. Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 17, 19-22.
[386] Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 34, 31, 23,
27-30 (52), 14, 18.
[387] Ibidem, pp. 52-56, 74.
[388] Fichte’s Anweisung zum seligen Leben, pp. 80-82.
[389] Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, p. 57.
[390] Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 78, 79.
[391] Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 60, 67, 59,
76.
[392] Ibidem, pp. 121, 122.
[393] Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 194-197,
204, 221, 222.
[394] Ibidem, p. 228.
[395] Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 225, 229,
232.
[396] Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 233, 238,
239.
[397] Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 302, 246,
247.
[398] Ibidem, p. 273.
[399] Fichte: Ueber den Grund unseres Glaubens an eine göttliche
Weltregierung (Fichte’s Leben, Part II.), p. 111.
[400] Fichte: Verantwortungsschreiben gegen die Anklage des Atheismus,
pp. 51, 53.
[401] Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 272-274.
[402] Fichte: Grundlage des Naturrechts (Jena und Leipzig, 1796), Part I.
pp. 55-71.
[403] Ibidem, pp. 78-82.
[404] Fichte: Grundlage des Naturrechts, Part II. p. 21.
[405] Rixner: Handbuch d. Gesch. d. Phil. Vol. III., § 192, p. 416;
Fichte: Ueber das Wesen des Gelehrten (Berlin, 1806), pp. 4, 5, 15, 25-27.
[406] Rixner: Handbuch d. Gesch. d. Phil. Vol. III. § 158, pp. 350, 351;
Fries: Neue Kritik d. Vernunft (First edition, Heidelberg, 1807), Vol. I.
pp. 75, 281, 284, 343; 206.
[407] Rixner: Handbuch d. Gesch. d. Phil. Vol. III. § 156, pp. 347, 348;
cf. Bouterweck’s Apodiktik (1799), Part II. pp. 206-212.
[408] Krug: Entwurf eines neuen Organon der Philosophie (Meissen, 1801),
pp. 75, 76; Rixner: Handbuch d. Geschichte d. Philosophie, Vol. III. §
157, p. 349.
[409] Schelling’s philosophische Schriften (Landshut, 1809, Vol. I. Vom
Ich als Princip der Philosophie, pp. 1-114), pp. 3, 4 (first edition,
Tubingen, 1795, pp. 4-7).
[410] His birthplace is usually stated to have been Leonberg, a short
distance from Schorndorf.—[Translators’ note.]
[411] Lectures of 1816-1817. [Translators’ note.]
[412] Schelling’s philosophische Schriften: Vom Ich als Princip der
Philosophie, p. 99 _seq._ (p. 178 _seq._).
[413] Ibidem, pp. 23, 24 (pp. 38-42).
[414] Ibidem, p. 83 (p. 150).
[415] Schelling’s System des transcendentalen Idealismus, p. 257, not.
Zeitschrift für speculative Physik, Vol. II. No. 2, p. 92.
[416] Lectures of 1805-1806.
[417] Schelling: System des transcendentalen Idealismus, pp. 1-7, 17-21.
[418] Schelling: System des transcendentalen Idealismus, pp. 24-46,
49-52, 55-58, 63-65.
[419] Schelling: System des transcendentalen Idealismus, pp. 69, 70,
72-79.
[420] Schelling: System des transcendentalen Idealismus, pp. 85, 86, 89,
98, 442-444.
[421] Schelling: System des transcendentalen Idealismus, pp. 471, 472,
475.
[422] Schelling: Neue Zeitschrift für speculative Physik, Vol. I. Part I.
pp. 52, 53.
[423] Kritisches Journal der Philosophie, published by Schelling and
Hegel, Vol. I. Part I. p. 67; Schelling: Zeitschrift für speculative
Physik, Vol. II. No. II. Preface, p. xiii.
[424] Schelling: Zeitschrift für speculative Physik, Vol. II. No. II. §
1, pp. 1, 2; § 4, p. 4; § 16-18, pp. 10-12.
[425] Ibidem, § 22-24, pp. 13-15; § 37, 38, pp. 22, 23; § 40-42, pp. 25,
26.
[426] Schelling: Zeitschrift für speculative Physik, Vol. II. No. II. §
25, 26, 28, 30-32, pp. 15-19; § 44, 46, pp. 27-29.
[427] Schelling: Zeitschrift für speculative Physik, Vol. II. No. II.
§ 50, Note I, § 51, pp. 34-36; § 54, p. 40; § 56, Appendix 2, § 57 and
note, pp. 42-44.
[428] Schelling: Zeitschrift für spec. Phys., Vol. II. No. II. § 62-64,
pp. 47, 48; § 92, 93, pp. 59, 60; § 67-69, pp. 49, 50; § 95, pp. 64-68;
(Neue Zeitschrift für speculative Physik, Vol. I. Part II. pp. 92, 93,
98, 117-119; Erster Entwurf eines Systems der Nutur-philosophie, p. 297);
§ 76-78, p. 53; § 83 and Appendix, p. 54; § 103, Note, p. 76; § 112, p.
84.
[429] Ibidem, § 136, 137, pp. 109, 110, § 141, Appendix I. p. 112.
[430] Schelling: Neue Zeitschrift für speculative Physik, Vol. I. Part I.
pp. 1-77; Part II. pp. 1-38.
[431] Schelling: Ibidem, Vol. I. Part II. p. 39.
[432] Schelling: Ibidem, Vol. I. Part II. pp. 39-41.
[433] Schelling, Ibidem, Vol. I. Part II. pp. 41-50.
[434] Schelling: Denkmal der Schrift von den göttlichen Dingen, pp. 94,
85, 86 (Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen
Freiheit in den Philosophischen Schriften, Vol. I. Landshut, 1809, p.
429). 89-93.
[435] Cf. Schelling’s Erster Entwurf der Natur-philosophie, p. 297.
[436] From the lectures of 1805-1806.
[437] Hamlet, Act I. Scene V.
INDEX
Abelard, III. 67, 68, 78, 79, 82.
Absolute, the, I. 91, 94, 102, 108, 109, 154, 178-180, 193, 279, 301,
374; II. 30, 378; III. 4, 6, 410, 551;
of Bruno, III. 127;
of Schelling, III. 525 _seq._
Abstraction, I. 97.
Academies of Science, II. 402.
Academy and Academics, II. 5, 236;
Old, II. 232, 311;
Middle, II. 311;
New, I. 107, 167, 474; II. 117, 232, 310-328;
subjectivity of New, II. 327;
15th cent. Platonic, I. 46; III. 112.
Achilles the Swift, I. 272.
Achilles, I. 443.
Adam, II. 392; III. 3, 9, 18.
Ænesidemus, II. 337.
Æschines, I. 450.
Æsculapius, I. 78.
Agrippa, II. 346.
Ahriman, I. 83-85, 118.
Air, spirit of, I. 86;
as Principle, I. 189, 190.
Albertus Magnus, III. 71, 75-77, 86.
Albordi, I. 84.
Alchemy, III. 326.
Alcibiades, I. 390, 395, 421, 427, 438, 447.
Alemæon, I. 207, 215.
Aldobrandini, I. 183.
Alexander, II. 121-127, 210, 335, 336.
Alexander of Hales, III. 73-75.
Alexandria, Alexandrians, I. 53, 82.
Alfarabi, III. 34.
Algazel, III. 35.
Alkendi, III. 34.
Amalrich, III. 70, 75.
Aminias, I. 249.
Ammonius Saccas, II. 403, 404.
Anabaptists, I. 443.
Anaxagoras, I 102,165,169,170,183, 186, 187, 190, 311, 313, 352, 373,
384, 386, 390, 432, 441;
life and teaching, I. 319-349;
νοῦς, I. 319 _seq._, 350, 351;
the Good, I. 332, 346;
homœomeriæ, I. 334 _seq._; II. 178, 345.
Anaximander, I. 44, 169, 170, 175, 194, 196, 203, 241, 249;
life and teaching, I. 185-189.
Anaximenes, I. 169, 170, 175, 196, 321;
age and teaching, I. 189-191.
Anniceris the Cyrenaic, I. 469, 478, 479.
Annihilation, I. 98.
Anselm, III. 61-67, 98, 235, 452.
Antigone, I. 441.
Antisthenes the Cynic, I. 280, 450, 481-486.
Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius, II. 26, 242, 243, 264, 272, 274, 372.
Anytus, I. 435, 436, 438.
Apelles, II. 342.
Apellicon of Teos, II. 127, 128.
Aphorisms (Sutras), I. 128.
Aphrodisiensis, Alexander, III. 111.
Apollodorus, I. 299.
Apollonius of Tyana, I. 200.
Aquinas, Thomas, III. 39, 71, 76, 86.
Arabians, I. 110; II. 395; III. 1, 27, 29, 37, 45, 76.
Aramæans, III. 27, 28.
Arcesilaus, II. 280, 311, 321, 325;
life and teaching, 313-319.
Archelaus, I. 191, 390.
Archytas of Tarentum, II. 5, 7.
Arians, III. 20.
Aristides, II. 25.
Aristippus of Cyrene, I. 469-475, 484-486;
principle of pleasure, I. 470 _seq._
” the Younger, I. 469.
Aristophanes, I. 401, 426-430; II. 14; III. 113.
Aristotle, I. 44, 46, 51, 88, 113, 128, 163, 165-168, 174, 175, 180-186,
192-195, 198, 208, 216, 220, 221, 229-232, 234, 237, 239, 240, 244,
245, 248, 257, 258, 260, 266, 269, 272, 278, 282-284, 286, 288, 292,
303, 304, 308, 314-316, 318, 319, 321, 329, 335, 350, 378, 380, 382,
387, 412-414; II. 1, 4, 11, 17, 38, 232, 234, 237, 244, 255, 270,
289, 296, 297, 312, 339, 350, 369, 380, 381, 383, 401, 403, 407,
410, 413, 429, 431, 450, 452; III. 29, 40, 42, 59, 63, 73-75, 81,
85, 86, 90, 99, 100, 110, 111, 120, 126, 137, 159, 181, 185, 243,
308, 349, 350, 358, 393, 467, 492, 535, 546, 548;
life and philosophy, II. 117-231;
Manuscripts, II. 127;
Poetics, II. 128;
Metaphysics, I. 166, 167, 211-215, 220, 225, 282, 285, 300, 301, 311,
316, 334, 340, 348; II. 128, 137-153;
exoteric and esoteric writings, II. 129;
Aristotelian Idea, II. 134, 139, 229, 230;
knowledge and conception of end, II. 135, 156 _seq._, 258;
ontology, II. 138;
potentiality and actuality, II. 138;
principle of individualization, II. 140;
principle of activity, II. 141 _seq._;
sensuous substance, II. 141, 142;
understanding, II. 143;
the Absolute, II. 143;
organization of the universe, II. 152;
philosophy of nature, 153-179;
Physics, I. 189, 251, 252, 255, 259; II. 153 _seq._; III. 76, 139;
movement and change, II. 153 _seq._, 163 _seq._, 173-175;
treatises, II. 154, 155, 180;
_entelecheia_, II. 159, 182; III. 71, 124, 331;
place, II. 165, 166;
empty space, II. 166;
time, II. 170 _seq._;
elements, deduction of, II. 176, 177;
philosophy of mind, II. 180-210;
psychology, II. 180-202;
body and soul, II. 182 _seq._;
sense-perception, II. 186-194;
thought and understanding, II. 194 _seq._;
practical philosophy, II. 201-210;
happiness as principle of morality, II. 203 _seq._;
Politics, II. 207-210;
Logic, II. 210-231; III. 144;
the categories, II. 212-217;
interpretation, II. 217;
Analytics, II. 217;
Topics, I. 358; II. 217; III. 129;
Sophistical elenchi, I. 457, 464; II. 218, 219;
commentators of, II. 403; III. 34, 35;
organon, III. 34, 44;
dialectic, III. 145;
deduction of, III. 179;
Notion of, III. 471.
Arnold of Brescia, III. 148.
Arrian, II. 242, 243.
Art, I. 67, 69, 393; III. 540, 542, 552;
poetic, III. 544.
Asclepigenia, II. 433.
Asia, Asiatics, I. 22, 150, 206; II. 123.
Asia Minor, I. 169; II. 123.
Aspasia, I. 328, 441.
Assistance, Descartes’ system of, III. 243 _seq._, 291, 332, 361.
Ast, I. 114, 400, 401.
Atheism, I. 41, 328; III. 280, 282, 381, 384, 387, 413.
Athenian and Athenians, I. 49, 79, 100, 168, 169, 328, 407, 408;
democracy, I. 280;
golden age, I. 322;
mode of life, I. 396;
spirit of, I. 426;
the State, I. 439;
law, I. 440, 442;
subjective principle opposed by, I. 444, 445, 447.
Atomic Theory, I. 37; II. 174;
of Leucippus, I. 300 _seq._, 384;
of Epicurus, II. 288-290, 299; III. 449.
Aufklärung, III. 379, 382, 384, 386, 387, 403-408, 420, 422, 426.
Augustine, III. 37, 69, 74, 291, 294.
Authority, I. 60, 93, 142; III. 386.
Averroës, III. 35, 86, 111, 138.
Bacon, Lord, I. 110; III. 189, 289, 295, 370;
life and philosophy, III. 171-188;
treatment of science, III. 174;
works, III. 177 _seq._;
natural history, III. 182 _seq._;
final causes, III. 184 _seq._
Bacon, Roger, III. 92.
Basilides, II. 397.
Baumgarten, III. 356.
Bayle, I. 269; III. 140, 271, 329.
Beattie, James, III. 376, 377.
Becoming, I. 404, 451; II. 60, 427;
of Heraclitus, 279 _seq._
Being, I. 57, 73, 106, 107, 125, 174, 278, 282, 294, 301, 378, 383, 408,
451; II. 177; III. 98, 506;
of Eleatics, I. 240 _seq._;
and non-Being, I. 382; II. 32, 393; III. 301;
Being-in-self, I. 24;
Being-in-itself, I. 20; III. 472, 506;
Being-for-self, I. 21, 24, 76, 302, 334, 451; III. 346, 363, 365, 419;
as sensation, II. 276;
opposed to Thought, II. 317, 318; III. 63, 160;
of Plotinus, II. 414, 415;
in unity with Thought, III. 224, 228 _seq._, 256, 271 _seq._,
452 _seq._;
Being-for-another, III. 302, 308 _seq._, 346, 504;
for Thought, III. 325 _seq._;
Other-Being, III. 365.
Bekker, III. 254.
Berkeley, Bishop, III. 364-369, 370, 442.
Berosus of the Chaldeans, I. 86, 87.
Bessarion, III. 112.
Beza, III. 120.
Bias, I. 156, 157.
Bible, III. 12, 14, 114.
Boccaccio, III. 114.
Bockh, II, 81.
Boehme, Jacob, I. 110; III. 161, 170, 224, 238, 273, 238, 289, 324, 325,
330, 542;
life and teaching, III. 188-216;
doctrine of Evil, III. 194 _seq._;
doctrine of God, III. 197-202;
process, III. 202, 211;
the Spirit, III. 211.
Boethius, III. 37, 74.
Bonaparte, III. 104.
Brahma, I. 118, 128-133.
Brahmins, I. 137.
Brandis, Prof., I. 242, 248.
Brucker, I. 43, 112, 185; II. 400.
Bruno, Giordano, I. 113;
III, 116, 119-137, 139, 155, 194, 228, 287.
Buddha, Buddhiste, I. 124, 125; II. 125.
Buffon, I. 188.
Buhle, I. 113; II. 200; III. 121, 272, 274, 329.
Buridan, III. 85, 86.
Byzantine world, III. 11, 46.
Cabala, II. 394-396; III. 25, 113, 118.
Cagliostro, I. 438.
Caius Acilius, II. 320.
Calculus, differential and integral, III. 327, 328, 352.
Calvin, III. 120.
Campanella, III. 116, 119.
Canade, I. 141, 143, 144.
Canning, I. 58.
Capila, I. 128, 137.
Cardanus, III. 116-119, 138.
Carneades, II. 211, 311, 319-327;
doctrine of sensation, II. 322;
of conception, II. 322 _seq._
Cassiodorus, III. 37, 74.
Caste, I. 98.
Cato the Elder, II. 320.
Cause, Causality, I. 41, 138, 139, 192;
first, I. 174;
final, I. 345;
of Plato, I. 342, 343.
Cesava, I. 143.
Charlier, John, III. 91.
Charondas, I. 201.
Charpentier, III. 145.
Charron, III. 146.
Chilon, I. 156, 161.
Chinese, I. 89, 119, 125; II. 123, 124.
Christ, I. 14, 17, 67, 71, 72, 71, 105, 117, 446; III. 4, 5, 14, 15, 54,
103.
Christians, Christianity, I. 8, 9, 46, 49, 79, 111, 117; II. 114, 226,
374, 377-379, 383, 390, 391, 448; III. 1, 4, 8, 10-14, 22, 21,
40-46, 49, 57, 90, 103, 142, 157, 158, 194, 217, 218, 258, 319, 439;
influenced by Plato, II. 2;
ideal man, II. 94;
idea of, III. 2, 5, 7.
Chrysippus the Stoic, I. 460; II. 240, 241, 249, 250, 256, 258, 280.
Church, the, I. 8, 53, 92, 110, 117, 149; III. 21, 45, 50-53, 55-58,
102, 103, 106, 142, 147 _seq._;
Christian, III. 60, 61;
faith of, III. 417;
dogma of, I. 60.
Cicero, I. 16, 92, 93, 121, 167, 183-185, 189, 228, 233, 242, 279, 364,
388, 455, 479; II. 12, 130, 225, 243, 244, 246, 248-251, 259, 262,
267, 278, 280, 305, 314, 319, 375; III. 38, 110, 175, 242, 376.
Citizenship, I. 361-363.
Clarke, III. 319, 320.
Cleanthes, II. 240, 244.
Clement of Alexandria, I. 212, 289, 294.
Cleobulus, I. 156, 161.
Clothing, dress, I. 201, 207, 483, 481; III. 168.
Colerus, III. 254.
Colebrooke, I. 127, 128, 131, 137-139, 141.
Concrete, the, I. 20, 23-28, 33, 34, 40, 79, 122; II. 13, 84;
world of thought, I. 178.
Condensation and Rarefaction, I. 180-182, 187.
Confucius, I. 120-124.
Conscience, I. 98.
_Consensus gentium_, I. 59, 93.
Constitution (of a nation), II. 96-98.
Contingency, I. 11, 36.
Continuity of Space (of Zeno), I. 268 _seq._;
(of Leucippus) I. 306, 307.
Copernicus, Copernican Theory, III. 140, 315.
Corceo, Robert, III. 74.
Cousin, II. 434, 450; III. 223.
Cramer, III. 39.
Crates, II. 314.
Crates of Thebes, I. 487.
Cratylus, II. 4.
Creuzer, I. 82, 281; II. 406, 434.
Criterion, the, as principle, II. 234, 235, 250, 254, 257, 267, 281,
285, 287, 313, 316, 318, 321-324, 374, 408.
Critias, I. 438, 447; II. 2, 3.
Critolaus, II. 242.
Crœsus, I. 155, 157, 161, 163, 171.
Crusades, Crusaders, III. 53, 104, 109.
Crusius, III. 356.
Cudworth, III. 319.
Culture, I. 205, 356;
French, I. 359;
European, I. 365, 366.
Custom (of Hume), III. 372 _seq._
Cynics, Cynicism, I. 126, 452-454; II. 22, 236, 237, 239, 276, 308;
principle of the, I. 453, 469;
school of the, I. 479-487.
Cyrenaics, I. 452-454, 480; II. 22, 236, 277, 303, 304; III. 404;
principle of the, I. 453;
school of the, I. 469-479.
Cyrus, I. 155, 157, 171.
Dæmon (of Socrates), Dæmonic influences, I. 421-425, 431, 434, 439.
Dalai Lama, II. 125; III. 15, 103.
D’Alembert, III. 387, 393.
Damascius, II. 450.
Dante, III. 105, 114.
Darius Hystaspes, I. 280.
Darkness, principle of, I. 84, 85, 135.
David of Dinant, III. 70, 75.
Delphic problem, II. 4.
Demetrius, I. 281.
Democritus, I. 169, 170, 298, 335, 336;
life and teaching, I. 299-310; II. 277, 278;
atoms of, II. 288.
Demosthenes, I. 157.
Descartes, I. 38, 59, 110, 308; III. 166, 217, 219, 255, 256, 259, 260,
282, 300, 308, 319, 332, 352, 359, 385, 393, 406, 423, 452, 454,
486, 515, 549;
life and teaching, III. 220-252;
_cogito ergo sum_, III. 228 _seq._;
mechanical point of view, III. 246 _seq._
Development, I. 20-24, 27, 28, 33, 34, 37, 41, 44; II. 158, 383.
Dialectic, I. 37, 141, 385; III. 180, 508, 527;
of Zeno, I. 261-278;
of Heraclitus, I. 278;
false, II. 63;
of Proclus, II. 435 _seq._;
formal, III. 86-90;
of Being, III. 98.
Dicæarchus, I. 156; II. 225.
Diderot, III. 387.
Diochartes the Pythagorean, I. 249.
Diodorus, I. 455, 457.
Diogenes (of Apollonia), I. 191.
” (of Crete), I. 169, 175.
” (of Sinope) the Cynic, I. 267, 471, 484-486; II. 29.
Diogenes Laertius, I. 156, 159-161, 167, 171-173, 183, 185, 186, 189,
190, 195, 196, 199, 233, 237-242, 249, 257, 262, 279, 280, 289, 290,
294, 299, 300, 309, 311, 313, 321, 326, 387, 450, 464, 465, 471,
481; II. 7 not., 120, 126, 127, 239, 241, 243, 258, 260, 267, 278,
280, 288, 301, 303, 309, 346, 400.
Diogenes of Seleucia, II. 241.
Dion, II. 5-7.
Dionysius, I. 471, 472.
” (of Syracuse), I. 52; II. 5-8, 121.
” the Areopagite, III. 59, 76.
Disputations of Schools, III. 145.
Diversity, Difference, principle of, I. 25, 34, 181;
of Leucippus, I. 307.
Divination, II. 89.
Divisibility of Space (of Zeno), I. 267 _seq._
Docetæ, III. 17.
Dogmas, Dogmatism, I. 79; II. 230-373, 383, 429.
Don Quixote, I. 460.
Doubt, I. 144, 406; II. 332, 333.
Duns Scotus, III. 39.
Duty, II. 206.
Eberhard, III. 403.
Eclectics, Eclecticism, I. 163; II. 400, 401.
Education, I. 237; III. 10.
Egypt, Egyptians, I. 63, 66, 150, 154, 172, 206, 233; III. 104, 362, 420;
mysteries of, I. 79.
Eleatics, I. 166, 170, 335, 371, 378, 454; II. 4, 140; III. 36, 257, 258;
their School, I. 239-278;
dialectic of, II. 12, 54, 65.
Elenchi, I. 457 _seq._;
the Liar, I. 459;
the Concealed one and Electra, I. 461, 462;
Sorites and the Bald, I. 462, 463.
Eleusinian mysteries, I. 79.
Empedocles, I. 169, 170, 186, 223, 298, 320, 334, 336, 378; II. 158;
life and teaching, I. 310-319;
synthesis, I. 313;
elements, I. 314;
friendship, strife, I. 314 _seq._
Empiricism, III. 176, 219, 361.
England, the English, I. 57, 58; III. 164, 172, 173, 298, 313, 360, 379,
385, 386, 410, 504, 535.
Enunciation, I. 141.
Epictetus, II. 242, 243.
Epicurus, Epicureanism, I. 14, 102, 103, 106, 164, 167, 304, 454, 469,
471, 480, 482; II. 225, 235, 236, 248, 261, 312, 313, 321, 322, 325,
327, 331, 339, 350, 358, 359, 374, 384, 408; III. 42, 110, 112, 186,
189, 331, 548;
life and teaching, II. 276 311;
doctrine of Happiness, II. 276;
Canonical Philosophy, II. 281-286;
metaphysics, II. 286-292;
theory of knowledge, II. 288;
physics, II. 292-300;
doctrine of the Soul, II. 299;
ethics, II. 300-311;
death, II. 307;
doctrine of impulses, II. 307.
Erasmus, III. 89, 114.
Erigena, John Scotus, III. 58-60, 74, 91.
Eristics, I. 454, 455, 457.
Erudition, I. 12.
Eschenmayer, III. 509, 514, 529.
Eubulides, I. 455-464;
sophism of, I. 457 _seq._
Euclides, I. 448, 452, 454-456; II. 4.
Eudæmonism, I. 162.
Eunapius, II. 450.
Euripides, I. 90.
Europe and Europeans, I. 120, 146, 149.
Eusebius, I. 85, 86, 188, 290.
Euthydemus, I. 416, 417.
Experience, III. 170, 175, 179, 180, 182, 219, 265, 303 _seq._
Extension (of Descartes), III. 241 _seq._
Fabricius, I. 86.
Faith, I. 73, 74; II. 10;
and Reason, I. 78, 108; II. 44;
of Jacobi, III. 417;
in relation to Thought, III. 419 _seq._
Fall, the, I. 105, 274, 447; II. 40, 321, 395; III. 165.
Fathers, the, I. 91, 149; II. 76; III. 11, 13, 15, 16, 20, 22, 45, 69,
70, 159.
Fear, I. 96, 97.
Feeling, I, 40;
nature of, II. 45.
Ferguson, III. 378.
Fichte, I. 47; II. 188, 360; III. 228, 230, 248, 408-410, 478, 512-522,
529, 550;
life and teaching. III. 479-506;
Ego as principle, III. 481 _seq._;
theory of knowledge, III. 484 _seq._;
unity of self-consciousness, III. 484-490;
Ego limited by non-Ego, III. 490-496;
categories, III. 492 _seq._;
practical reason, III. 496-499;
defects, III. 499-505;
natural rights, III. 503;
followers, III. 506 _seq._
Ficinus, Marsilius, I. 46; III. 112.
Finitude, I. 96;
finite world, I. 179;
in Infinitude, II. 78;
Finite point of view, III. 407;
finite knowledge, III. 414.
Fire, principle of, I. 191, 193;
Stoic principle of, II. 246.
Formalists, III. 81.
France, French, the, II. 133, 401; III. 164, 219, 221, 298, 360, 389,
403, 405, 407.
Francis of Assisi, II. 238.
Frederick II., philosopher king, II. 26; III. 391.
Freedom, I. 26, 94, 95, 99, 100, 146, 150, 206, 324, 386, 481; II. 209,
385, 451; III. 105, 150, 154, 164, 249, 287, 385, 402, 407, 503, 504;
subjective, I. 407, 423; II. 99, 109; III. 390;
concrete, I. 482 _seq._;
in thought, II. 71;
inward, II. 235;
and necessity, III. 6, 374;
of spirit, III. 423;
Kantian, III. 459, 462 _seq._
Freemasonry, I. 89.
Freewill, II. 115; III. 401.
Fries, II. 55; III. 417, 430, 479, 510, 511.
Galileo, III. 140, 315.
Garve, III. 376.
Gassendi, I. 46, 303;
III, 77, 112. 230.
Gaunilo, III. 66.
Gellert, III. 391, 404.
Genus, the, I. 345, 346.
Geometry, geometric figures, I. 88, 172.
Germany, Germans, I. 149; III. 105, 191, 349, 360, 385, 386.
Germs, doctrine of, III. 395, 396.
Gerson, _see_ Charlier.
Getans, I. 196.
Gnostics, II. 396-399, 427, 428; III. 17.
God, I. 41, 65-68, 70-79, 101, 108, 117, 132, 154, 177, 184, 243, 375,
467;
Eleatic conception of, I. 244-246;
actions universal, I. 434;
nature of, as Reason, II. 39;
as the Good, II. 72, _seq._;
as Process, II. 77;
as identity of identical and non-identical, II. 80;
Greek idea of, II. 125;
Aristotle’s idea of, II. 136;
Jewish conception of, II. 379;
as Self-limiting, II. 382;
as Concrete, II. 384-387;
as Light, II. 395;
as self-conscious Spirit, II. 401;
Nature of, III. 63;
unity in, III. 196, 347;
existence of, III. 164, 233 _seq._;
in unity with existence, III. 240;
assistance of, III. 251;
as One Substance, III. 264 _seq._;
Idea of, III. 294;
as absolute Monad, III. 339;
as Beyond, III. 361, 382, 407;
as Supernatural, III. 416;
indeterminate conception of, III. 422;
immediate consciousness of, III. 434, 505.
Gods, Greek, I. 41, 71, 74, 117, 154, 178, 248, 431, 432, 435; II. 304,
305;
Roman, I. 117.
Goethe, I. 27, 90, 113; II. 337.
Good, Evil, I. 83-85; III. 164, 194, 340 _seq._
Gorgias, I. 170, 371, 372, 481;
life and teaching, I. 378-384.
Görres, III. 543.
Gospels, I. 149.
Gotama, I. 141, 142, 144.
Goveanus, III. 144.
Greece, the Greeks, I. 22, 52, 77, 100, 101, 119, 125, 119-164, 206,
207, 234, 322, 366, 423, 458; II. 25, 234, 274, 376, 377, 382, 451;
III. 4, 24, 27-29, 96, 109, 160, 167, 218, 548;
disintegration of Greece, I. 350;
culture in Greece, I. 355;
constitutions of Greece, II. 209.
Gregory, Pope, III. 75.
Grotius, Hugo, I. 59; III. 313, 314, 321.
Gymnosophists, I. 126.
Harmony of music, II. 69;
pre-established (of Leibnitz), III. 342-344, 347, 350, 361.
Harvey, III. 315.
Hegesias the Cyrenaic, I. 469, 477, 478, 480.
Helmont, III. 113.
Helvetius, III. 400.
Heraclitus, Heraclitics, I. 167, 169, 170, 191, 211, 262, 302, 313, 316,
317, 320, 330, 331, 336, 352, 377; II. 4, 12, 54, 140, 239, 244-246,
334, 402; III. 132, 550;
life and teaching, I. 278-298;
obscurity of, I. 281;
doctrine of Becoming, I. 283 _seq._;
time as first principle, I. 286 _seq._
Herbert, Lord, III. 300.
Herder, III. 514.
Hermias, II. 120, 121, 123, 126.
Hermippus, I. 156.
Hermotimus of Clazomenæ, I. 320, 321.
Herodotus, I. 69, 79, 115, 157, 158, 161, 168, 171, 196, 198, 233.
Hesiod, I. 69, 205, 248; II. 107, 278.
Hieronymus, I. 172.
Hipparchia the Cynic, I. 487.
Hippasus, I. 191.
Hippias, I. 116.
Hippocrates, I. 358-361.
History, I. 1, 2, 5, 6, 110, 151, 152;
of religion, I. 8;
political, I. 115;
conception of, II. 24;
philosophy of, III. 7, 8, 16.
Hobbes, I. 59; III. 313, 315-319.
Hollbach, Baron von, III. 393.
Holy Ghost, sin against, I. 74.
Homeliness, I. 150, 151.
Homer, Homeric, I. 69, 120, 178, 179, 205, 248, 413; II. 15, 72, 107,
153, 334, 388.
Homonyms, II, 212.
Homœomeriæ, I. 334, 335 _seq._
Hugo, Master, II. 276.
Hume, III. 362-364, 369-375, 380, 406, 410, 427.
Huss, III. 148.
Hutcheson, III. 378.
Iamblichus, I. 197, 221, 226; II. 409.
Idea, the, I. 20, 24, 25, 27-31, 33-35, 41, 42, 61, 82, 83, 101, 103-106,
134, 146, 163-165, 183, 216, 282, 324, 345, 346, 350, 387, 406; II.
84, 96, 136, 140, 188, 232, 233, 318, 344, 370, 374, 380, 402, 407,
418; III. 8, 10, 16, 21, 29, 49, 100, 123, 131, 161, 175, 176;
of Plato, II. 17 _seq._;
of Aristotle, II. 17;
of Proclus, II. 440;
of Bruno, III, 128;
of Kant, III. 444;
self-determinate, II. 68;
abstract, II. 331;
the True, II. 113;
speculative, II. 152, 222, 367 _seq._; III. 152;
concrete, III. 3;
nature of, II. 79;
determination of, II. 74;
of reality, II. 379;
as thought, II. 383;
of Philosophy, II. 358, 400;
of spirit, III. 101, 549;
of Absolute, III. 410;
in its necessity, III. 545.
Ideal, Idealism, I. 102; II. 1, 43, 95, 361, 364; III. 163, 358, 360,
363-368, 516 _seq._
Ideas, Innate, II. 42; III. 242, 300 _seq._, 370;
complex, III. 306 _seq._
Identity, Eleatic doctrine of, I. 245.
_Idéologie_, III. 308.
I-H-W, I. 125 _seq._
Immortality, I. 233; II. 35-37, 39, 41-43, 225; III. 111.
Indians, I. 66, 90, 97, 119, 154; III. 105, 362, 420;
religion of, I. 64, 91, 126-129;
poetry of, I. 120.
Individual, place of the, I. 45;
self-determination of the, I. 448.
Individuality, principle of, I. 323, 345, 444, 445;
false form of, I. 444.
Indra, I. 129, 133.
Induction, III. 181.
Inference, conclusion from, I. 130, 142.
Ionia, Ionians, I. 155-158, 168-170.
Isidorus, II. 450.
Iswara, I. 132, 137, 138.
Italy, I. 117, 169; III. 105, 109.
Jacobi, I. 87, 107; III. 119, 122, 280, 282, 283, 406, 424, 427, 429,
475, 477, 505, 509, 511, 512, 519, 526, 540;
life and teaching, III. 410-423;
dispute with Mendelssohn, III. 411, 412.
Jesuits, I. 121.
Jews, I. 94, 110; II. 377, 388; III. 1, 22, 35, 36, 429, 506;
Platonic, II. 380.
Josephus, I. 86.
Jouffroy, III. 379.
Julian of Toledo, III. 87, 88.
Justice, II. 91-93, 99, 100, 103-106, 113, 115; III. 105.
Kant, I. 135, 374, 377, 384; II. 223, 265, 273, 331, 360; III. 62,
64-66, 124, 241, 300, 356, 361, 369, 374, 375, 402, 404, 406,
408-410, 417, 422, 479, 482, 483, 490, 491, 496, 498-500, 503-505,
511-514, 521, 523, 529, 534, 549;
life and teaching, III. 423-478;
his antinomies, I. 277, III. 44 _seq._;
life end in itself, II. 160;
his philosophy a subjective dogmatism, III. 427;
critical philosophy, III. 428 _seq._;
transcendental philosophy, III. 431;
theoretic reason, III. 432-457;
transcendental æsthetic, III. 433-436;
space and time, III. 434 _seq._;
understanding, III. 436-443;
logic, III. 437 _seq._;
categories, III. 438 _seq._;
philosophy as idealism, III. 441 _seq._;
faculty of reason, III. 443;
Idea of God, III. 451 _seq._, 463;
practical reason, III. 457-464;
faculty of judgment, III. 464-476;
the Beautiful, III. 468-470;
teleology in nature, III. 470-474;
the good as God, III. 474-476;
thing-in-itself, III. 495.
Kepler, I. 231; II. 80; III. 162, 315.
Kielmeyer, III. 514.
Knowledge, II. 21, 22, 27, 31-35, 41, 44;
immediate, I. 107; III. 418;
and mediate, III. 420 _seq._;
of Spinoza, III. 276-278.
Krug, III. 479, 493, 510, 511.
Lacedæmon, Lacedæmonians, I. 323, 391, 408, 448.
Lalande, III. 425.
Lambertus Danæus, III. 39.
La Mettrie, III. 399.
Lange, III. 351.
Launoi, III. 39.
Lavoisier, I. 291.
Law, I. 60, 149;
as sublated, 418, 419;
as having a conscience, I. 443.
Learning, I. 352, 410; II. 21, 33, 35, 42, 44.
Leibnitz, I. 120, 235, 342; II. 188, 331; III. 188, 219, 220, 242, 290,
296, 297, 350, 358, 366, 367, 403, 406, 436;
life and teaching, III. 325-348;
Monads of, III. 330 _seq._, 549.
Lessing, III. 404, 406, 411, 412.
Leucippus, I. 169, 170, 277, 298, 335; II. 29, 144, 225, 278;
life and teaching, I. 299-310;
atomic theory, I. 300 _seq._; II. 288;
principle of the One, I. 302 _seq._;
plenum and vacuum, I. 305 _seq._;
principle of diversity, I. 307.
Liberty of speech, I. 439.
Life, its ends, I. 332, 333.
Light principle, I. 84, 85.
Limitation, I. 153, 260;
of Parmenides, I. 253;
of Zeno, I. 274.
Lipsius, I. 46; III. 112, 113.
Livy, I. 115.
Locke, II. 119, 289; III. 188, 219, 220, 242, 290, 292, 325, 328, 330,
363, 364, 366, 370, 371, 383, 399, 403, 427, 429, 541;
life and teaching, III. 295-313;
doctrine of reality, III. 296 _seq._;
innate ideas, III. 300;
origin of ideas, III. 302 _seq._
Logos (Reason), II. 244, 381, 391 _seq._, 397, 407;
of Plotinus, II. 416; III. 4, 10, 359.
Lombard, Peter, III. 69-71, 89.
Longinus, II. 404.
Lullus, Raymundus, III. 92-94, 287;
His Art, III. 93, 123, 129, 134, 136.
Luther, III. 12, 54, 114, 148, 150, 158, 159, 385, 389, 398.
Lutheran faith, I. 73; III. 149.
Lyceum, II. 126
Lycurgus, I. 158; II. 8.
Macchiavelli, III. 146.
Magna Græcia, I. 169, 206.
Maheswara, I. 131, 135.
Mahomed, Mahomedanism, I. 71; III. 24, 26, 28, 30, 387.
Malebranche, III. 219, 220, 240, 296, 299, 311, 364, 399;
life and teaching, III. 290-295;
origin of knowledge, III. 291 _seq._
Manichæism, III. 17-20.
Marcus the Gnostic, II. 397.
Marinus, II. 433, 434, 450.
Materialism, II. 62; III. 125, 381, 387, 398.
Mathematics, I. 10.
Mauritius, III. 75.
Mayer, Ludwig, III. 255.
Medabberim, III. 27, 30-33.
Medici, Cosmo de’, I. 46; III. 112.
Megarics, the, I. 452-469;
dialectic of, I. 453, 454.
Melancthon, III. 114.
Melchisedec, I. 47.
Melissus, I. 240, 241, 249, 250, 263, 380;
life and teaching, I. 257-260.
Melitus, I, 435.
Mendelssohn, Moses, II. 55; III. 356, 357, 404-406, 411, 412.
Menedemus, I. 455, 461.
Messemans, I. 100.
Messina, I. 241.
Metaphysics, II. 137 _seq._, 283 _seq._; III. 61 _seq._, 220 _seq._
Metrodorus, II. 279.
Michael of Montaigne, III. 146.
Middle Ages, I. 110;
thought of the, II. 227;
standpoint of the, III. 160.
Miletus, I. 171.
Miltiades, I. 157.
Mimansa, I. 128.
Mind, I. 22, 23, 26, 27, 32-36, 46-48, 50-55, 62, 63, 68, 70, 75, 76,
81, 88, 95-97, 102-108, 144, 152, 153, 353, 354; II. 17, 18, 33-36,
41, 83, 388; III. 6;
universal, I. 3, 77;
principle of, II. 275;
reconciling mind, II. 382;
as concrete, II. 384-386.
Mirabaud, III. 387.
Miracles, I. 72; II. 410.
Mithra, I. 85.
Moderatus, I. 209.
Moisture, principle of, _see_ Water.
Monads of Leibnitz, III. 330 _seq._
Montesquieu, III. 387, 393, 399.
Morality, I. 153, 156, 408, 409; II. 90, 108;
objective and subjective, I. 387, 388, 411;
shaking of, I. 414;
Greek, I. 415; II. 98;
reflective, II. 98;
traditional, II. 99, 100;
Stoic, II. 275.
Mortagne, Walter of, III. 80-82.
Moses Maimonides, III. 27, 30, 31, 35, 36.
Motion, principle of, I. 193;
Zeno’s dialectic of, I. 266-277.
Mysticism, II. 448; III. 91-94.
Mythology, I. 6, 56, 73, 78, 81-88, 93, 133 _seq._; III. 160.
Nature, I. 29, 32, 36, 93, 96, 103, 107, 130-132, 140, 152, 154, 155,
315; II. 376, 383, 386; III. 107, 309, 383, 397;
state of, II. 92;
_système de la_, III. 393, 394.
Neander, II. 397.
Necessity, I. 26, 36, 106; II. 248, 275; III. 6, 374;
of Heraclitus, I. 293, 294.
Nemesis, I. 328; II. 73, 135.
Neo-Platonists, Neo-Platonism, I. 53, 78, 82, 104, 109, 163, 202, 208;
II. 313, 374-453, 381, 382; III. 1-3, 11, 17, 23, 29, 36, 40, 59,
61, 91, 110, 131, 217, 227, 439, 527, 548.
Neo-Pythagoreans, I. 194, 208; II. 380.
Newton, I. 59, 275; III. 162, 313, 322-325, 327.
Nicolai, III. 404, 411.
Nicomachus, I. 221.
Nominalists, III. 77-86.
Notion, Notions, I. 20, 29-31, 54, 78-80, 82, 85, 89, 102-104, 106, 108,
109, 135, 178, 181, 182, 185, 194, 208-211, 239, 268, 284, 290-293,
306, 339, 344, 352, 355, 415; II. 133, 227-230, 237, 279, 429; III.
189, 197, 324, 359, 366, 380, 381, 409, 544;
of Plato and Socrates, I. 367; II. 18-20, 74;
of Aristotle, II. 132;
of Stoics, II. 248;
of Proclus, II. 438;
of Philosophy, I. 452;
of universal, II. 33;
nature of Notion, II. 61;
subjective and objective identical, II. 233;
logical, II. 330;
as self-movement, II. 369;
of absolute essence, II. 411;
absolute, III. 175;
as essence, III. 412:
Notion or Being, III. 452 _seq._
_Nous_, I. 102, 104, 165, 293, 319, 329 _seq._, 350, 351, 406, 451; II.
381, 444, 446; III. 123;
of Plotinus, II. 413 _seq._;
of Aristotle, III. 467, 546.
Novalis, III. 510.
Numbers, I. 89;
of Pythagoreans, I. 195, 208-238, 278.
Nyaya, I. 128, 141, 142, 144.
Occam, Occamists, III. 81, 82-85.
Oceanus, I. 176.
Oken, III. 543.
Oldenburg, III. 327.
Om, I. 137.
Opinion, Opinions, I. 11-15, 31, 62, 99, 247, 254, 255, 259, 353; II.
31, 32, 283, 284, 318.
Oriental, Orientals, I. 96, 98; II. 390; III. 33;
theory of identity, III. 252.
Origen, II. 404.
Origination and Decease (of Parmenides), I. 252, 253;
of Aristotle, II. 176, 178.
Ormuzd, I. 83, 85, 118.
Orpheus, II. 434.
Oswald, James, III. 376-378.
“Other,” principle of, II. 85.
Palestine, I. 74.
Panaetius, II. 242.
Pantheism, II. 381; III. 3, 120, 123, 170, 292.
Paracelsus, III. 191.
Parents and children, relation between, I. 437, 438, 440.
Parmenides, I. 169, 240-242, 247, 249-258, 261-264, 279, 302, 311; II.
14, 78, 390, 402, 413;
Being of, II. 53; III. 548.
Pascal, I. 93.
Paul, III. 475.
Paulus, Prof., III. 256.
Pausanias, I. 423.
Pedantry, I. 353.
Pelagians, III. 20.
Pelopideans, I. 155.
Peloponnesus, I. 168.
Pentecost, III. 16.
Perception, I. 130, 142;
of Berkeley III. 365 _seq._
Periander, I. 156, 160.
Pericles, I. 157, 325, 326, 328, 357, 361, 372, 393, 394, 427, 441;
II. 126.
Peripatetics, I. 167, 479; II. 126, 130, 225, 226, 337.
Persians, I. 83, 118, 155, 171.
Peter, Apostle, I. 17; II. 387.
Petrarch, III. 110, 114.
Pfaff, III. 329.
Pherecydes, I. 185, 190, 191, 233.
Philetas of Cos, I. 460.
Philip of Macedon, II. 119, 121.
Philo, II. 397; III. 17, 36;
life and teaching, II. 387-394;
doctrine of ecstasy, II. 389;
_logos_, II. 391 _seq._;
man as Wisdom, II. 392;
ideas of II. 392;
matter as negative, II. 393.
Philo of Biblus, I. 86.
Philolaus, I. 207; II. 5.
Philosophers, lives and calling of, III. 166-169.
Philosophos, I. 199.
Philosophy, General idea of History of, I. 1-7, 29, 31, 49, 108, 110;
as the true and eternal, I. 38, 39;
systems of, I. 18, 19, 35, 37, 38, 45;
particular form of, I. 53;
beginning of, I. 178, 254;
natural, I. 173, 180;
doubt essential in, I. 406;
its one reality, II. 13;
its meaning, II. 24, 25;
its object, II. 134;
its essence, II. 351;
its objectivity, III. 22;
idea of, III. 23;
as physics, III. 162;
its history, III. 176;
new epoch in, III. 223 _seq._;
its nature, III. 248;
its aims, III. 545 _seq._;
one philosophy, III. 553.
Philosophy, Alexandrian, I. 103; II. 130, 373, 380-382, 399-453;
III. 17, 118, 123, 152, 160, 331.
” Arabian, III. 26-35.
” Aristotelian, II. 117-231, 400; III. 353.
” Atomic, I. 37, 143, 300-310, 384; II. 174, 288-291, 299;
III. 449.
” Christian, I. 63.
” Ciceronian, III. 113-115.
” of Fathers, I. 64.
” French, III. 219, 362, 363, 375, 379-402, 409, 423, 425,
426, 429.
” German, III. 219, 356-360, 375, 403-408, 425, 426, 429, 504;
recent, III. 409 _seq._
” Gnostic, I. 117.
” Greek, I. 52, 55, 78, 103, 104, 107, 109, 111, 155;
in Roman world, I. 163.
” Indian, I. 63, 99, 125-146, 162.
” Ionic, I. 52, 58, 155, 171-194, 208, 320, 384.
” Kantian, I. 277, 388; III. 421, 423-478, 505.
” of Middle Ages, I. 109; III. 1-155.
” Modern, I. 109; III. 157-554
” Neo-Aristotelian, II. 381.
” Oriental, I. 63, 96-99, 117-147.
” Platonic, II. 1-117, 400; III. 38, 110, 111.
” Popular, I. 92, 93, 389.
” Pythagorean, I. 194-239; III. 113.
” Scholastic, I. 64; II. 130, 395; III. 25, 37-107, 114, 115,
138, 142, 146, 151, 162, 180;
language of, III. 38;
name, III. 39.
” Scottish, III. 219, 362, 363, 375-379, 392.
” of the Sophists, I. 107, 352-384.
” Teutonic, I. 101, 109.
” Western, I. 99.
Phœnicians, I. 85.
Physiocratic system, III. 386.
Picus, III. 112.
Pindar, II. 35.
Pisistratus, I. 158-160.
Pittacus, I. 156, 160.
Plato, I. 14, 46, 48, 52, 87, 88, 91, 135, 163, 165-167, 195, 206-209,
213, 215, 228, 249, 250, 262, 342, 350, 354, 365-368, 374-376, 386,
387, 396, 401-406, 410-414, 431, 443, 448, 457, 459, 464, 471, 474,
486; II. 118-121, 134-136, 140, 210, 232, 234, 244, 274, 311, 314,
317, 338, 350, 364, 383, 388, 401-403, 407, 410, 413, 429, 434, 435,
441, 445, 452; III. 29, 59, 85, 95, 110, 161, 242, 257, 300, 310,
312, 319, 358, 527;
life and teaching, II. 1-117;
disciple of Socrates, II. 1, 3, 4;
studied Heraclitus, I. 282, 283; II. 4;
difficulty of his philosophy II. 10;
dialogues, II. 12 _seq._;
Symposium, I. 284, 285, 390, 394, 395;
Phædo, I. 340, _seq._; II. 41, 55;
Timæus, I. 38, 143, 233, 252; II. 14, 20, 22, 49, 62, 71, 73, 81, 106,
134, 312;
Parmenides, I. 88, 166, 249, 261, 264, 266; II. 49, 56, 59, 60, 64,
437;
Republic, I. 323; II. 22, 23, 27, 44, 46, 49, 51, 90, 93, 95-99, 109,
122, 405; III. 48;
Theætetus, I. 249;
Protagoras, I. 358-364;
Meno, I. 406; II. 33, 34;
Phædrus, II. 14, 36, 41, 74;
Critias, II. 49;
Philebus, II. 56, 68, 70, 442;
Sophist, II. 56, 62;
Laws, II. 104;
aim of dialogues, II. 50, 51;
Ideas of, I. 220, 278; II. 21, 29 _seq._, 56, 59, 139, 140, 228, 229,
419, 451;
inert ideas, II. 144;
myths, II. 19 _seq._;
conception of Philosophy, II. 21 _seq._;
knowledge and opinion, II. 31, 32;
doctrine of recollection, II. 33 _seq._;
immortality of the soul, II. 36 _seq._;
idealism of, II. 43;
sensuous and intellectual distinguished, II. 46;
dialectic, II. 48-71, 257, 436, 438;
speculative dialectic, II. 52, 53;
logical side of dialectic, II. 54;
natural philosophy, II. 49;
mental philosophy, II. 49, 90-117;
theory of virtue, II. 52;
Being and Non-Being, II. 58 _seq._;
indifference in difference, II. 65;
esoteric and exoteric elements, II. 11, 12, 68;
truth identity of opposites, II. 69;
philosophy of nature, II. 71-90;
numbers, II. 80, 81;
physics and physiology, II. 87 _seq._;
conception of justice, II. 91, 92;
State and individual the same, II. 99;
classes in the State, II. 100 _seq._, 109 _seq._;
cardinal virtues, II. 102-105;
Idea of the State, II. 105, 113;
education, II. 107;
private property, II. 110;
marriage. II. 111, 112;
æsthetics, II. 115, 116;
Universal of Plato, III. 548.
Platonists, I. 46.
Pliny, II. 125, 126.
Plotinus, I. 109, 253, 254; II. 432, 435, 443, 444, 446; III. 2, 17, 85;
life and teaching, II. 404-431;
condition of ecstasy, II. 408 _seq._;
principle of reason, II. 412;
doctrine of matter, II. 422-425;
of evil, II. 425-427.
Plouquet, I. 184.
Plutarch, I. 83, 183, 187, 189, 190, 257, 290, 310, 325, 326, 394, 468.
” Pseudo, I. 176.
Politics, I. 361 _seq._; II. 96 _seq._, 207 _seq._; III. 389.
Polycrates, I. 185, 196, 198.
Pomponatius, III. 111, 140.
Porphyry, I. 200, 209, 221; II. 219, 403-405, 409; III. 37;
writings, II. 431, 432.
Posidonius, II. 242.
Potamo, II. 400.
Proclus, I. 109, 224, 252, 280; II. 60; III. 1, 2, 4, 29, 59, 70, 85,
112, 124, 132, 134, 135, 198;
life and writings, II. 432-450;
his principle and dialectic, II. 435 _seq._;
his triads, II. 443 _seq._
Prodicus, I. 371, 390.
Protagoras, I. 371, 379, 385, 386; III. 63;
life and teaching, I. 372-378;
man a measure, I. 373 _seq._;
doctrine of truth, I. 375; II. 32, 45.
Protestantism, III. 114, 152.
Proverbs of Solomon, I. 161.
Proxenus, II. 119, 120.
Ptolemæus, II. 398.
Ptolemaic Library, II. 127, 402.
Ptolemies, I. 458, 478; II. 399.
Puffendorf, III. 321, 322, 399.
Pulleyn, Robert, III. 69.
Pyrrho, II. 314, 335-337, 342, 343.
Pyrrhonian, II. 337.
Pythagoras, I. 58, 63, 71, 89, 169, 170, 173, 185, 191, 241, 321; II.
14, 402, 409, 427, 432;
life and teaching, I. 194-239;
numbers of, I. 195, 208-238;
doctrine of soul, I. 231-235;
morality, I. 235-237;
order of, I. 198, 201-206, 236, 279;
harmony of sounds, I. 58, 225-228.
Pythagoreans, I. 122, 194, 239, 240, 255, 313; II. 4, 12, 54, 71, 78,
129, 375, 380, 398, 400, 403, 405; III. 331, 439;
numbers of, II. 80, 140; III. 137;
Order, II. 279.
Pythia, I. 434, 435.
Quakers, I. 443; II. 95.
Radbertus, Paschasius, III. 88.
Ramayana, I. 128.
Ramists, III. 145.
Ramus, Peter, III. 116, 143-146, 155.
Rarefaction, I. 180-182, 187.
Rationalism, I. 80; III. 219.
Raymundus of Sabunde, III. 91, 92.
Realism, Realists, III. 77-86, 162, 163, 522.
Reason, I. 13, 21, 35, 62, 71, 78, 83, 108, 125, 220; III. 43, 64, 140,
142, 397, 407, 408;
imaginative, I. 81;
_logos_, I. 294, 295;
as going forth from state of nature, I. 327;
as end, I. 374;
what it is, I. 399;
development of, I. 403;
demands of, II. 10;
Aristotle’s conception of, II. 149;
thinking itself, II. 151;
sufficient, III. 339;
as contentless, III. 368;
healthy, III. 376, 392;
of Jacobi, III. 413 _seq._;
of Kant, III. 443 _seq._
Reconciliation, doctrine of, III. 3.
Reformation, the, II. 130; III. 12, 111, 146-155, 158, 398.
Reid, Thomas, III. 376, 377.
Reinhold, II. 324; III. 479.
Religion, I. 6, 50, 52, 56, 59-92, 96, 105, 106, 117, 118; II. 25; III.
103, 388, 389, 507;
history of, I. 9; III. 8;
subjective, III. 508.
Religion, Indian, I. 64, 91, 126, 129.
” Greek. I. 65, 74, 90, 117, 118.
” Persian, I. 64.
” Popular, I. 77, 82.
” Roman, I. 117.
Rémusat, Abel, I. 124.
Reuchlin, III. 113.
Revival of Learning, I. 59, 112; III. 108 _seq._
Revolution, French, III. 48, 390.
Rhetoric, I. 358, 359.
Rights, natural, II. 208.
Ritter, Professor, I. 43.
Rixner, I. 114; III. 39, 319.
Robinet, III. 394-397, 399.
Romans, the, I. 22, 49, 101, 115, 149, 150; II. 128, 234, 235, 242, 274,
276, 320, 372, 375-377, 382, 386; III. 11, 37, 45, 46, 167, 218;
their Republic, I. 441;
their Empire, I. 14, 52, 110; II. 405;
their jurists, II. 276.
Roscelinus, III. 78-80, 82.
Rousseau, II. 115; III. 369, 383, 387, 393, 400-402, 406, 425, 457, 503;
Social Contract, III. 401.
Royer-Collard, III. 379.
Sachs, Hans, III. 90, 193.
Sages, Seven, I. 156, 279.
Sakontala. I. 126.
Salitter (of Boehme), III. 198 _seq._
Sanchumathonic Cosmogony, I. 85, 86.
Sanc’hya, I. 128-141.
Scaliger, I. 86.
Scepticism, Sceptics, I. 103, 104, 106, 107, 161, 246, 286, 378,
380-382, 455, 464; II. 313, 328-373, 376, 383, 429, 452; III. 38,
224, 225, 245, 358, 363-375, 548, 550;
signification of, II. 328 _seq._;
doctrine of appearance, II. 328;
dialectic of determinate, II. 330;
modern, II. 331, 368;
history of, II. 333;
doctrine of imperturbability, II. 342;
tropes, II. 346-365;
knowledge of negative, II. 365;
directed against finite, II. 367.
Schelling, I. 114; III. 269, 408-410, 456, 478, 479;
life and teaching, III. 512-545;
the ego, III. 513, 518 _seq._;
transcendental idealism, III. 516-527, 536;
intellectual intuition, III. 520 _seq._;
Notion of, III. 523 _seq._;
art of, III. 524, 525, 540;
the Absolute, III. 525 _seq._;
potencies of, III. 529 _seq._;
indifference of, III. 529 _seq._;
natural philosophy, III. 535 _seq._;
conception of God, III. 539-541;
concrete nature of Philosophy, III. 541.
Schiller, I. 90; II. 337.
Schlegel, F. von, I. 61, 127, 400; III. 507, 508;
Irony of, III. 507.
Schleiermacher, I. 281; II. 10; III. 508-510.
Scholasticism, Scholastics, I. 59, 80, 91, 92, 110, 127, 146; II. 143;
III. 25, 29, 94 _seq._, 109, 111, 178, 331.
Schuking, I. 123.
Schultz, II. 143.
Schulze, II. 331; III. 479.
Scioppius, III. 121.
Scotists, III. 80.
Scotus, John Duns, III. 72, 73, 81.
Search (Abrahams Tucker), III. 378.
Seneca, I. 175; II. 242, 243, 264, 272, 273, 302, 309.
Sensation as opposed to Thought, III. 398, 399.
Sensuality, I. 97.
Sextus Empiricus, I. 167, 195, 208, 212, 214, 216, 223, 225, 242,
247-250, 278, 284, 291, 297, 310, 321, 348, 372, 379, 380; II. 3,
243, 252-255, 280, 315, 321, 332, 335, 338-341, 343-347, 350,
353-357, 362, 365, 367, 369, 370.
Simon, the shoemaker, I. 450.
Simplicius, I. 168, 189, 250-252, 254, 259, 265, 299, 467; II. 450.
Sin, original, III. 9.
Siva, I. 118, 135.
Slavery, I. 21, 99, 100.
Sleep, I. 295.
Smith, Adam, III. 378.
Socinians, III. 20.
Socrates, I. 14, 52, 71, 78, 79, 102, 165, 174, 211, 249, 250, 281, 297,
340, 344, 350, 351, 354, 359, 364, 366-368, 370, 374, 453, 459, 469,
470, 474, 481, 483; II. 1-4, 12 _seq._, 23, 29, 32, 41, 43, 51, 54,
114, 135, 141, 205, 238, 267, 451; III. 66, 175, 424;
life and teaching, I. 384-448;
universality of thought, I. 385;
theory of the Good, I. 385 _seq._;
ethics, I. 387 _seq._;
character, I. 392 _seq._;
method, I. 397 _seq._;
irony, I. 398 _seq._;
questioning, I. 402 _seq._;
friends, I. 421 _seq._;
genius or δαιμόνιον, I. 421, _seq._;
guilt, I. 440;
death, I. 443, 448;
principle of knowledge, I. 447;
schools proceeding from, I. 449;
Socratics, I. 448-487; II. 239.
Solomon, I. 35, 487; II. 239.
Solon, I. 156, 158-162, 324; II. 8.
Sophists, Sophistry, I. 165, 240, 253, 262, 265, 277, 278, 349-387, 390,
398, 406, 432, 439, 454, 457; II. 3, 4, 12, 17, 45, 48, 51, 54, 65,
131; III. 44;
culture of, I. 355, 356;
reflection of, I. 357;
teachers of oratory, I. 358;
lives of Sophists, I. 366;
principle of Sophistry, I. 353, 367-369.
Sophocles, I. 388, 427.
Sosicrates, II. 314.
Soul, the, I. 129-133, 142, 330; II. 21, 33-36, 41, 83;
idea of, II. 37-39;
as universal, II. 42;
harmony of (Plato), II. 43, 83.
Space determination, I. 103, 270, 271, 329;
as conceived by Plato, II. 86.
Spartans, I. 100, 324.
Speech, III. 150, 204, 351, 352.
Speusippus, I. 209; II. 120.
Spinoza, I. 73, 252, 297; II. 245, 364; III. 64, 119, 120, 131, 169,
219, 220, 235, 243, 244, 296, 298, 299, 306, 311, 325-327, 333, 343,
346, 353, 354, 356, 359, 382, 387, 399, 406, 411, 412, 452, 473,
487, 515, 516, 526, 528, 529;
life and teaching, III. 252-290;
idea of, III. 251, 257;
ethics, III. 255 _seq._;
definitions, III. 258 _seq._;
axioms, III. 264 _seq._;
system of morals, III. 275 _seq._;
doctrine of evil, III. 278;
geometric method, III. 282 _seq._;
substance of, III. 330.
Spinozism, I. 244; III. 31, 91, 123, 126, 292, 413.
Spirit, I. 67, 72-75, 93, 101; III. 16, 46, 49, 147, 153, 392;
teaching of, I. 410;
of the people, I. 420;
substantial, III. 288;
Notion of, III. 546.
Spirituality, I. 180, 386.
Stanley, Thomas, I. 111, 112; III. 218.
State, the, I. 53, 153, 409, 443;
spiritual nature of, I. 439;
foundation of, III. 401.
Stephanus, I. 280.
Stewart, Dugald, III. 378, 379.
Stilpo, I. 455, 464-469; II. 238;
maintained the Universal, I. 465 _seq._
Stobæus, I. 188; II. 225, 240, 246.
Stoics, Stoicism, I. 102-106, 164, 167, 454, 474, 480, 482; II. 91,
235-276, 277, 292, 295, 297, 301-304, 309-317, 321, 322, 327, 343,
350, 358, 359, 372, 380, 381, 398, 400, 401, 408, 452; III. 42, 110,
113, 186, 358, 424, 548;
physics, II. 243-249;
superstitions of the, II. 248, 249;
logic, II. 249-257;
morality, II. 257-276;
conception of virtue, II. 259 _seq._;
harmony of virtue and happiness, II. 262 _seq._
Strabo, I. 242, 255.
Strato of Lampsacus, II. 225.
Strepsiades, I. 429, 430.
Sturz, I. 310, 311.
Subjectivity, I. 41, 48, 70, 102, 104, 105, 108, 145, 152, 153, 165,
285, 294, 304, 325, 332 _seq._, 350 _seq._; III. 48, 49, 148-151,
408, 508, 510, 511;
of Socrates, I. 374 _seq._, 384, 387, 407, 410-413, 420-423, 444, 449;
of Plato, II. 33, 80, 108 _seq._;
of lack of, in Greek moral Idea, II. 114, 139;
Aristotle, II. 140, 221;
of the Academy, II. 311;
of the Sceptics, II. 328 _seq._, 341, 350, 374;
of Descartes, III. 240;
lack of in Spinoza, III. 287;
of Hume, III. 372-374;
of Kant, III. 410, 430-434, 440-443, 453, 454, 468, 477;
of Jacobi, III. 416, 423-425;
of Fichte, III. 481, 486, 507.
Substance, I. 73, 98, 105, 106, 127, 143, 150, 153, 174; III. 243, 244,
257, 259, 288-290, 299, 306, 363.
Substantial, the, I. 70, 76, 77, 97, 104-106, 144-146, 150, 152, 386.
Sulzer, III. 404.
Supernatural, the, I. 80.
Supper, the, I. 74; III. 54.
Syllogism, the, II. 75, 213, 214, 223; III. 179, 180, 445, 446, 464.
Syncellus, I. 86.
Syria, Syrians, I. 149, 150; III. 26-29, 104.
Syrianus, II. 433.
Talk, idle, I. 202, 203.
Tennemann, I. 111, 113, 114, 181, 196, 206, 241, 243, 250, 278, 290,
297, 299, 311, 322, 394, 430, 440, 465; II. 11, 19, 53, 130; III.
39, 67, 68, 85.
Tertullian, III. 8.
Testament, Old, II. 108; III. 163;
New, III. 12.
Tetens, III. 403.
Teutons, I. 105, 109; III. 24, 56.
Thales, I. 41, 43, 44, 58, 109, 120, 156, 157, 163, 165, 196, 197, 203,
236, 248, 278, 286, 336; II. 350; III. 1;
life and teaching, I. 168-185.
Theism, I. 41; III. 387.
Themistocles, I. 157; II. 25.
Theodicy, III. 7, 546.
Theodorus the Cyrenaic, I. 469, 475-477; II. 3.
” the Mathematician, II. 4.
Theogony, I. 69, 179.
Theology, I. 14, 60, 64, 80.
Theon of Smyrna, I. 214.
Theophrastus, I. 256; II. 127, 224, 225, 277, 314.
Theurgy, II. 432, 449.
Thirty Tyrants, II. 2.
Thomas of Strasburg, III. 89.
Thomasius, III. 349, 351.
Thomists, III. 80, 82.
Thought, I. 4, 5, 13, 21, 35, 67, 76, 77, 83, 89-92, 94, 95, 102, 103,
106-109, 145, 146, 153-155, 320, 347, 349; II. 2, 20, 36, 151,
316-318, 321, 419; III. 41, 43, 153, 218, 219, 249, 305, 359, 423;
in union with Being, I. 451;
as activity of the Universal, II. 37;
as harmony between objective and subjective, II. 150;
as self-identity, II. 254; III. 550;
as absolute, II. 1, 375;
as divine, II. 411;
as ultimate, III. 424.
Thrasyllus, I. 299.
Thucydides, I. 115, 159, 168, 199, 322, 373; II. 15.
Tiedemann, Dietrich, I. 112, 176, 181, 183, 379; II. 60; III. 39.
Time, I. 32, 118; II. 22;
spirit of the, I. 54;
principle of, I. 191; II. 84, 85.
Timon of Phliasis, II. 337.
Tradition, I. 2, 3, 69, 130.
Tragedy, real, I. 446.
Transmigration of Souls (of Pythagoras), I. 233.
Trinity, the, I. 89, 125, 135, 222; II. 418; III. 2, 4, 20, 22, 53, 78,
193, 196, 212, 238, 405;
of Plato, II. 76;
Christian, II. 383;
of Proclus, II. 440;
Abelard’s proof of, III. 68.
Tropes, II. 346;
earlier, II. 347-357;
later, II. 357-365.
Truth, I. 8, 9, 13-15, 17-20, 62, 71, 78, 108, 109, 277, 450; II. 30,
31, 45, 50, 65-67, 69, 95-97, 148-150, 201, 220-223, 233, 249-254,
276, 277, 281-286, 287, 311, 315-319, 321-333, 335-347, 350, 384,
386-388; III. 271, 477;
as simple, I. 459;
Notion of, III. 509.
Tschirnhausen, III. 349, 351.
Tyrannion, II. 128.
Tyrants, Tyranny, I. 158-160.
Understanding, the, III. 158, 304;
healthy, I. 379; III. 386.
Universal, Universality, I. 95, 96, 98, 102, 108, 147, 177, 178, 179,
347, 386; II. 29, 228, 231; III. 339, 372;
Anaxagoras’ view of, I. 320;
spiritual, I. 387;
of Socrates, I. 411;
fixed nature of disappears, I. 418.
Uranus, I. 118.
Valentinus, II. 397.
Valerius Maximus, I. 299, 322.
Vedas, I. 126-130.
Vespasian, I. 86.
Virtue, I. 412, 414. _seq._; II. 32, 52, 102, 103, 204-207, 259-263,
265-268, 272, 319, 427, 428; III. 52, 147;
the teaching of, I. 363;
political, I. 361-364;
as perception, I. 411;
as whole heart, I. 413.
Vishnu, I. 118, 127, 128, 131.
Voetius, III. 254.
Voltaire, III. 143, 340, 387, 399.
Water, as Principle, I. 175-185, 187.
Weigel, III. 326.
Weisse, III. 404.
Wendt, A., I. 111, 114.
Western Church, III. 17.
Windischmann, I. 123.
Wisdom, worldly, I. 60, 61, 65.
Wise Man, the Doctrine of the, I. 474, 475; II. 233, 267 _seq._, 301,
309, 314-316, 318, 319.
Wit, I. 427, 428.
Wolff, August, I. 119, 311; II. 72, 325; III. 219, 250, 310, 311, 325,
329, 357, 387, 391, 403, 405, 406, 426, 429;
life and teaching, III. 348-356.
Wollaston, III. 319, 320.
Worcester, Bishop of, III. 304.
Word, the, III. 202 _seq._
World-spirit, the, I. 36, 79, 109; II. 378.
Worship, I. 62, 63, 74, 76, 129;
spiritual, III. 150.
Wycliffe, III. 148.
Xeniades, I. 278.
Xenocrates, II. 238, 277.
Xenophon, I. 390, 396, 402, 414-416, 422-424, 431, 432, 436, 441, 450;
II. 15.
Xenophanes, I. 77, 169, 240, 249, 250, 257, 258, 263; II. 334; III. 393;
life and teaching, I. 241-248.
Zaleucus, I. 201.
Zalmoxis, I. 196.
Zeno, I. 169, 240-242, 249, 250, 279, 282, 284, 354, 380; II. 14, 174,
219, 334, 413;
life and teaching, I. 261-278.
Zeno the Stoic. II. 238-240, 244, 245, 250, 251, 313, 314.
Zervane Akerene, I. 83, 118.
Zeus, I. 191, 362.
Zoroaster, I. 81.
CORRIGENDA IN VOLS. I. & II.
VOL. I.
Page xii., line 32, _for_ “never ... completely” _read_ “never
have emptiness and conceit swum so persistently on the surface.”
” 12, ” 26, _for_ “is in” _read_ “is not in.”
” 56, ” 9, _for_ “sound” _read_ “found.”
” 60, ” 17, _for_ “wherever, etc.” _read_ “be this positive
character derived from whence it may.”
” 70, ” 29, _for_ “And Mind ... implicit,” _read_ “And Mind is
implicitly not that.”
” 71, ” 2, _for_ “Finality” _read_ “Finiteness.”
” 72, ” 7, _for_ “involve” _read_ “involves”; line 22, _omit_
“through”; line 24 _omit_ “of.”
” 73, ” 26, _for_ “and” _read_ “all.”
” 81, ” 11, _for_ “What ... evidence” _read_ “The essential truth
contained in the testimony.”
” 82, ” 9, _for_ “symbolism” _read_ “his _Symbolik_.”
” 85, ” 36, _omit_ “the.”
” 86, ” 3, _omit_ “the.”
” 90, ” 29, _for_ “thought—determination” _read_
“thought-determination.”
” 112, ” 24, _for_ “Tiedmann” _read_ “Tiedemann”; line 30, _for_
“Plato of Brucker” _read_ “Bipontine edition of Plato.”
” 113, ” 21, _for_ “overthrown by” _read_ “converted into;” line
27, _for_ “a correct” _read_ “a more correct.”
” 114, lines 5 and 8, _for_ “Aft” _read_ “Ast;” line 18,
_for_ “Rirner” _read_ “Rixner”; line 33, _for_ “and hence ...
philosophers” _read_ “giving also biographical sketches of the
principal philosophers.”
” 117, line 9, _for_ “East” _read_ “West”; line 20, _for_ “and
approximates” to end of sentence _read_ “which is very liable to
be taken for Philosophy, and we must indicate the main reason why
the Oriental idea of religion is so liable to be regarded as a
religious philosophy.”
” 118, ” 10, _for_ “Civa” _read_ “Siva”; line 16, _for_ “Zeroane”
_read_ “Zervane.”
” 119, ” 6, _for_ “lawlessness” _read_ “absence of individual
rights”; line 20, _for_ “To that ... substance” _read_ “This
finite can only come to be true when absorbed in substance.”
” 120, ” 16, _for_ “last” _read_ “arise”; line 26, _for_
“Liebnitz” _read_ “Leibnitz.”
” 122, ” 6, _for_ “sensuous” _read_ “thoughtful.”
” 123, ” 32, ” ” ” ”
” 135, ” 11, ” ” ” ”
” 128, ” 23, _for_ “very extensive” _read_ “widely diffused.”
” 129, ” 5, _for_ “it must ... again” _read_ “it must be
separated from nature in order that it may not come back.”
” 154, ” 5, _for_ “connoisseurs” _read_ “masters.”
” 169, ” 4, _for_ “of” _read_ “in.”
” 173, ” 5, _for_ “; and it carries ... weight” _read_ “with a
very important air.”
” 174, ” 2, _for_ “for he speaks ... them” _read_ “; he speaks of
them in general terms for the most part”
” 176, ” 6, _for_ “Tiedmann” _read_ “Tiedemann.”
” 181, ” 9, ” ” ” ”
” 183, ” 29, ” ” ” ”
” 214, ” 15, _for_ “posited as” _read_ “added to”; line 16, _for_
“as” _read_ “to.”
” 231, lines 32 and 33, _for_ “solar corpuscles” _read_ “motes.”
” 244, line 19, _for_ “Spinozaism” _read_ “Spinozism.”
” 249, ” 23, _for_ “Thætetus,” _read_ “Theætetus.”
” 280, ” 23, _for_ “if” _read_ “even though;” line 24, _omit_
“also”; line 34, _for_ “until modern time” _read_ “until a late
period of antiquity.”
” 281, ” 8, _for_ “knowledge of language” _read_ “philological
learning”
” 323, ” 18, _for_ “we find, it held among” _read_ “as we have
seen, was held by.”
” 359, ” 23, _for_ “we have a desire to go on” _read_ “let us go
on”
” 384, ” 25, _for_ “For a mental turning-point ... thought”
_read_ “For there exhibited itself in him a turning-point of
spirit in the guise of philosophic thought.”
” 388, ” 24, _for_ “yield itself up ... that” _read_ “make
concessions, and therefore achieved no substantial result by
its study, praised Socrates as he has often enough been praised
since, in that.”
” 390, ” 33, _for_ “maintaining that it was given” _read_ “but
succeeded in having it given.”
” 393, ” 31, _for_ “every” _read_ “that.”
” 394, ” 1, _omit_ “alone.”
” 406, ” 7, _omit_ comma after “that.”
” 427, ” 9, _for_ “happy” _read_ “frivolous”; line 18, _for_
“refute” _read_ “establish.”
” 429, ” 31, _for_ “suprem” _read_ “supreme”; line 35, _for_
“execrations” _read_ “execration.”
” 472, ” 33, _for_ “that ... other” _read_ “in this way that one
stone would not be sitting on another.”
” 478, ” 28, _for_ “the Ptolemies” _read_ “by the Ptolemy.”
VOL. II.
Page 59, line 1, _omit_ “either of.”
” 98, ” 16, _for_ “to be” _read_ “as.”
” 160, lines 13 and 14, _for_ “In the Kantian philosophy ...
have” _read_ “Not until we come to the Kantian philosophy have
we.”
” 204, line 27, _for_ “virtue” _read_ “reason.”
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.
—The transcriber of this project created the book cover image using the
title page of the original book. The image is placed in the public domain.
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