No More Learning

« lb. 27 ff.
« Cf. the contingency of the world with Leibniz and the specification of
Nature with Kant, pp. 398 666
f. ,
Cbap. 2, § 41. ] Thing-in-Itself : Maimon, Fichte. 579
knowledge is limited to the knowledge of the autonomous Forms of the theoretical consciousness, to mathematics and logic. In his esteem for these two demonstrative sciences Maimon's critical scep ticism is in harmony with Hume ; with regard to their theories of the knowledge of that which is empirically given they diverge diametrically.
With this, however, it had become clear that the investigations of the Critique of Pure Reason require a new conception of the relation ofconsciousness and Being. Being is to be thought only in conscious ness, only as a kind of consciousness. Thus the prophecy of Jacobi begins to be fulfilled; Kant's doctrine urges toward the "strongest idealism. "
This is seen in a disciple who stood in the closest relations to Kant himself: Sigismund Beck. He found1 the "Only Possible Standpo it for Estimating the Critical Philosophy " in this, that the datum of the individual consciousness, given it as " object," is
made the content of an " original," supra-individual * consciousness, which for this reason is authoritative for the truth of the empirical knowing process. In the place of the things-in-themselves he set Kant's "consciousness in general. " But he explained to himself in this way the a priori character of the pure conceptions and catego ries: the given in the sensuous manifold remained for him also the unsolved remnant of the Kantian problem.
5. The full idealistic disintegration of the conception of the thing-in-itself was the work of Fichte. We may best understand the matter by following the course of thought in his introductions to his Science of Knowledge* which attaches itself directly, in a free reproduction, to the most difficult part of the Kantian doctrine, — the transcendental deduction, — and illumines with complete clear ness the culmination of the movement of thought here considered.
The fundamental problem of philosophy — or, as Fichte calls just on this account, of the Wissenschaftslehre [lit. "doctrine of science," where science has the twofold meaning of knowledge as a mental act, and knowledge as body of truth = philosophy
p. 94. note — given in the fact, that in contrast with the ideas of
(cf. individual consciousness, which may come and go in voluntary
tlipm-
3d vol. of hi* Erlduternder Auuug, from Kant'* writing (Leips. 1*96). lb. p. 120 B. Ftchti't W. , 410 B.
and contingent manner, another set of our ideas maintain
selves there, and these latter are characterised by feeling of neces sity that can be distinguished with entire certainty. To make this necessity intelligible the chief task of philosophy or the Science
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580 Germany: Development of Idealism. [Pakt VX
of Knowledge. We call the system of those ideas which emerge with the feeling of necessity experience ; the problem runs, there fore, " What is the ground of experience ? " To its solution there are only two paths. Experience is an activity of consciousness directed toward objects; it can therefore be derived only from things or from the consciousness. In the one case the explanation is dogmatic, in the other idealistic Dogmatism regards conscious ness as a product of things ; it traces the activities of intelligence also back to mechanical necessity of the causal relations ; if con sistently thought, therefore, it cannot end otherwise than fatalisti cally and materialistically. Idealism, on the contrary, sees in things a product of consciousness, of a free function determined only by itself ; it is the system of freedom and of deed. These two modes of explanation, each of which is consistent in itself, are in such thorough-going contradiction to each other and so irreconcil able that Fichte regards the attempt of syncretism, to explain expe rience by dependence both upon things-in-themselves and upon the reason, as a failure from the outset. If one will not fall a victim to sceptical despair, he must choose between the two.
This choice, since both present themselves logically as equally consistent systems, will primarily depend " on what sort of a man one is"1 ("wow fur ein Mensch man ist"); but while the ethical interest thus already speaks for idealism, there is still a theoretical consideration which comes to its aid. The fact of experience, in the constant reciprocal relation of " being " and " being conscious "
(Sein und Bewusstsein), consists in this, that the "real series" of objects is perceived in the "ideal" series of mental representations. * This " doubleness " dogmatism cannot explain ; for the causality of things is only a simple series (of "mere being posited"). The repetition of Being in consciousness (or in the being conscious) is incomprehensible, if the being is to serve as a ground of explanation for being conscious. On the contrary, it belongs to the very nature of intelligence " to see itself. " Consciousness, in that it acts or func tions, knows also that it acts and what it does ; in conjunction with the real (primary) series of its own functions it produces always at the same time the ideal (secondary) series of the knowledge of these functions. If, therefore, consciousness yields the sole ground of explanation for experience, it does this only in so far as it is the
» Fichte's W. , I. 434.
3 If the antithesis of dogmatism and idealism points back to the Kantian antithesis of Nature and Freedom, in which connection, moreover, the system of the necessity of things already appears with a strong Spinozistic character, the systematic influence of Spinoza's doctrine concerning the two attributes asserts itself for the first time in this relation of the two series.
Chap. 2, § 41. ] Thing-in-itself : Fichte, Krug. 581
activity which perceives itself and is reflected back into itself, i. e. as self-consciousness. The science of knowledge has to show that all consciousness (of experience) which is directed toward something else — toward a Being, toward objects, toward things — has its root in the original relation of consciousness to itself.
The principle of idealism is self-consciousness; in a subjective, methodical aspect, in so far as the science of knowledge aims to develop all of its insights from the intellectual perception alone, with which consciousness accompanies its own activities, from reflection upon that which consciousness knows of its own deed, — in objec tive, systematic aspect, in so far as in this way those functions of intelligence are to be pointed out, by means of which that which in common life is called thing and object, and in the dogmatic philosophy thing-in-itself, is produced. This last conception, that of the thing-in-itself, which is through and through contradictory, is thus resolved to its last remnant ; all Being is comprehensible only as product of reason, and the subject-matter of philosophical knowledge is the system of the reason (cf. § 42).
For Fichte and his successors, the conception of the thing-in- itself thus became indifferent, and the old antithesis between Being and consciousness sank to the secondary significance of an immanent relation within the activities of the reason. An object exists only for a subject ; and the common ground of both is the reason, the 1 which perceives itself and its action. 1
6. While the main development of German metaphysics followed this Fichtean tendency, the syncretism above mentioned did not re main without supporters whom the Wissenschaftslehre had thrust from the threshold. Its metaphysical type had been stamped out by Rein- hold ; but it was likewise close at hand for all who took their point of departure from tbe individual consciousness with the psychological method, and believed that they found the individual consciousness equally dependent upon the Real and upon the universal essence of the intellect The " transcendental synthetism" which Krug taught, may be conceived of as an example of this mode of view. For him, philosophy is an explanation of self by means of the reflection of the "I" upon the " facts of consciousness. " Hut in this the primi tive fact proves to be the transcendental synthesis, that real and ideal are posited in consciousness as equally original and in relation to each other. ' We know Being only in so far as it appears in con sciousness, and consciousness only in so far as it refers to Being;
> Cf. alao 8chelling'n youthful opuacule, Vom lek all Prineip der Philotophie, vT, L 161 tt.
• Krug. Fundamentaliihiloiophie, pp. lot! ft.
582 Germany : Development of Idealitm. [Pabt VL
but both are objects of an immediate knowledge just as is the com munity existing between them iu our world of ideas.
These thoughts found a tiner turn given them in Schleiermacher s dialectic. All knowledge has as its end to establish the identity oj Being and thinking; for the two emerge in human consciousness separate, as its real and ideal factors, perception and conception, organic and intellectual functions: Only their complete adjustment would give knowledge, but they remain always in a state of differ ence. In consequence of this, science is divided with reference to its subject matter into physics and ethics, with reference to its methods into empirical and theoretical disciplines ; natural history and natural science, history of the world, and science of morals. In all these particular disciplines one or the other of the two factors has the predominance,1 materially or formally, although the oppo site* strive toward each other — the empirical branches of knowledge toward rational articulation, the theoretical towards an understand ing of the facts, physics towards the genesis of the organism and of consciousness out of the corporeal world, ethics towards the control and inter-penetration of the sensuous by the will, which acts according to ends. But the complete adjustment of the real and the ideal is nowhere attained in actual cognition; it forms rather the absolute, unconditioned, infinitely removed goal of the thinking which desires to become knowledge, but will never completely suc ceed. * Hence philosophy is the science not of knowledge, but of knowledge in a perpetual state of becoming, — dialectic
But just for this reason it presupposes the reality of this goal which is never to be attained in human knowledge ; the identity of thought and Being. This Schleiermacher, with Spinoza (and Schell- ing), calls Owl. It cannot be an object of the theoretical reason, and just as little can it be such of the practical reason. We do not know God, and therefore we cannot order our ethical life with refer ence to him. Religion is more than knowing and right-doing ; it is the community of life with the highest reality, in which Being and consciousness are identical. This communion, however, emerges only in the feeling, in the " pious " (frommen) feeling of an " abso lute " dependence upon the infinite world-ground which cannot be exhausted by thought (cf. § 42, 6). Spinoza's God and Kanfs thing-in-itself coincide in the infinite, but thus are raised above all human knowledge and will, and made the objects of a mystical feel ing whose delicate vibrations harmonise in Schleiermacher (as in
1 This relation in Schleiermacher's Dialectic appears copied after the meta physical form of Schelling'H Syttem of Identity ; cf. § 42, 8.
* Dialektik, W. , III. 4 b 68 f.
Chap. 2, $ 41. ] Thing-in~It»elf : Sehleiermacher. 583
a somewhat different form in Fries, also) with the inwardness of the religious life among the Moravians.
Thus the traditions of Mysticism pass through Pietism — in
which the orthodox tendency toward a coarser view became
and more prominent after Spener and Francke, and so called forth the opposition of the Brothers of the Common Life — up to the summits of the idealistic development ; and indeed the doctrine of Eckhart and the transcendental philosophy are in close touch in the spirit which desires to transpose all the outer into the inner ; both have a genuinely Germanic savour, they seek the world in the " Gemiith " [the mind as the seat of the feeling and sentiments].
7. In putting aside the possibility of a scientific knowledge of the world-ground Sehleiermacher remained nearer to Kant, but the intuition of religious feeling which he substituted was all the more dependent upon Spinoza and upon the influences which the latter had exercised upon the idealistic metaphysics after Fichte's Science of Knowledge. This monism of the reason (cf. the development in $ 42) Herbart combated by an entirely different re-shaping of the Kantian conception of the thing-in-itself. He desired to oppose the dissolution of this conception, and found himself forced thereby to the paradox of a metaphysics of things-in-themselves, which yet should hold fast to their unknowableness. The contradictions of the transcendental analytic appear here grotesquely magnified.
This is the more noteworthy as the retrogressive tendency which has been ascribed to Herbart's doctrine, perhaps in contrast with the idealistic innovations, developed itself in his attack upon Kant's transcendental logic (cf. $ 38, 5). Herbart saw in this with right the roots of idealism. It teaches, indeed, the Forms with which the '■Understanding" produces the world of objects, and in Fichte's " I " we only have in a completely developed form that which in germ was in Kant's " consciousness in general " or " transcendental apperception. " Herbart's inclination toward the earlier philosophy consists in this, that he denies the creative spontaneity of conscious ness, and, like the associational psychologists, finds it determined ami dependent in both Form and content from without. He opposes also the virtual innateness which had propagated itself from Leibniz on through the Inaugural DiKxertation into the Critique of Pure Rnunn : the forms of relation expressed in the categories are for him, like space and time, products of the ideational mechanism. As regards the psycho-genetic questions, he stands entirely upon the platform of the philosophy of the Enlightenment. For this reason he knows no other logic than the formal logic whose principle is the principle of contradiction, i. e. the prohibition to commit a contra
more
584 Germany : Development of Idealism. [Part VI.
diction. The supreme principle of all thought that which con tradicts itself cannot he truly real or actual. 1
Now evident that the conceptions in which we think experi ence are full of internal contradictions; we assume things, which are to be identical with themselves and yet made equal to a variety of attributes we speak of alterations in which that which
to itself successively different we trace all inner experience back to an "I" or "self" which as that "which mentally represents itself" (sich selbst VorsteUende) involves an infinite series in the subject as well as in the object, — we trace all outer experience back to a matter, in the idea of which the attributes of the discrete and the continuous are at variance. This experience can be only phenomenon but this phenomenon must have at its basis something real which free from contradictions, seeming things must have absolute "Reals" (Reale), seeming occurrence and change a real occurrence and change. Whatever seeming there is, there just so much indication of Being. To discover this the task of philoso phy working over of the conceptions of experience which are given and which must be re-shaped according to the rules of formal logic, until we know the reality that has no internal contradictions.
The general means to this end the method of relation. The fundamental form of contradiction always that something simple
thought as having differences (the synthetic unity of the mani fold in Kant). This difficulty can be removed only by assuming plurality of simple beings, through the relation of which to each other the " illusion " of the manifold or changeable produced in any individual object. Thus the conception of substance can be maintained only we suppose that the various qualities and chang ing states which substance said to unite, concern not substance itself, but only the relation in which successively stands to other substances. The things-in-themselves must be many from thing-in-itself the multiplicity of qualities and states could never be understood. But each of these metaphysical things must be thought as entirely simple and unchangeable; they are called by Herbart, "Reals" (Realen). All qualities which form the characteristics of things in experience are relative, and make these characteristics
Cf. Einleitung in die Philos. , W. , 72-82. The historical stimulus to this sharp presentation of the principle of contradiction was no doubt the deprecia tion which this principle found in the dialectic method (cf. 42, logically, however, Herbart's doctrine (with the exception of his treatment of the "I" conception) entirely independent of it. The Eleatic element in the Herbar- tian philosophy (cf. 226) is given with the postulate of Bring void of contra dictions, and to this circumstance the philosopher, who otherwise had little historical disposition, owed his fineness of feeling for the metaphysical motire
the Platonic doctrine of Ideas. Cf, 237 ff. and XII. 61 ft
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Chaf. 2, §41. ] Thiny-iitrltae\f ': llerbart. 585
appear only in relation to other things ; the absolute qualities of the Reals are, therefore, unknowable.
8. But they must be thought as the ground which determines the qualities that appear ; aud likewise we must assume as ground of the seeming changes which the mutation of qualities exhibits in the case of empirical things, an actual process or occurrence, a change of relations between the Reals. Here, however, this whole artificial construction of that which lies beyond experience began to waver. For the Eleatic rigidity of these Reals in nowise permits us to form an idea of the kind of " actual relations " which are held to obtain between them. First of all, these cannot be spatial ; ' space and time are products of the series formed by ideas, products of the
psychical mechanism, and hence phenomenal for Herbart in almost a higher degree than for Kant. Only in a transferred sense can the changing relations of substances be termed a " coming and going in the intelligible space"; what they are themselves the Herbartian doctrine has nd term to express. Only, in a negative direction it is obliged to make a questionable concession. Every Real has only simple and unchangeable determinations: the relation, therefore, which exists or arises between two Reals is not essential to either, and has not its basis in either. A tertium quid, however, which this
relation would postulate, is not to be discovered in this metaphys ics. * Hence the relations which the Reals sustain to each other, and from which the appearance of things and their relations are said to follow, are called " contingent views " (zu/SUige Ansichten) of the Reals ; and Herbart's meaning in several passages is scarcely to be understood otherwise than that consciousness is the intelligible apace in which the above relations between the Reals obtain, that the real process or occurrence, also, is some thing which itself only "takes place for the spectator" as "objective seeming. "1 If we add to this, that the " Being " of the Reals or absolute qualities is
1 Not only in thia point do Herbart's Reals distinguish themselves from the atoms of Detnocrilua, with which they have the common basis of a pluralistic rc-ihaping of the Eleatic conception of Being, but also by the difference in
quality, in the place of which atomism allows only quantitive differences. Just as little are the Reals to be confused with Leibniz's monads, with which indeed they share their absence of windows, but not the attribute of being a unity of the manifold. With the Platonic Ideas, they have in com mon the attributes of the Eleatic Being, but not the character of class-concepts.
(unknowable)
t in this gap of his metaphysics lierbart inserted his philo$ophy of religion; for since there is no knowledge of the real ground of the relations between the Reals, from which the world of phenomena proceeds, the impression of pur- posireness which the latter makes permits us to believe, in a manner which is theoretically unassailable, upon a supreme intelligence as the ground of these relations, — a very pale revival of the old pbysico-lheological proof.
'CtW, IV. 93 ff. , 127-132, 233, 240 (. , 248 ff. ; see also E. Zeller, Oeth. d. dtutaeA. Pkilo$. , 844.
586 Germany: Development of Ideal ism. [Pakt VI
defined by Herbart as " absohite position," i. e. as a " Setzung," ' a pos iting in which Being is at rest, and which is not taken back, we have opening before us the perspective into an " absolute " idealism.
This was, indeed, carried out by Herbart still less than by Kant ; here, too, it would have led to absolute contradiction. For the theory of Heals aims to deduce consciousness also, as a consequence, emerging in the realm of phenomena, of the "co-existence of the Reals. " The Reals are held to reciprocally " disturb " each other, and to call forth in each other as reactions against these disturb ances, inner states which have the significance of self-preserva tions. "* Such self-preservations are immediately known to us as those by the aid of which the unknown Real of our soul maintains itself against disturbance by other Reals ; they are ideas (VorsteUun- gen). The soul as a simple substance is naturally unknowable; psychology is only the science of its self-preservations. These, the ideas, sustain within the soul, which simply furnishes the indiffer ent stage for their co-existence, once more the relations of Reals ; they disturb and inhibit each other, and the whole course of the psychical life is to be explained from this reciprocal tension of ideas. By their tension the ideas lose in intensity ; and the consciousness depends upon the degree of intensity. The lowest degree of strength, which the ideas can have and still be regarded as actual, is the threshold of consciousness. If the ideas are pressed by others below this threshold, they change into impulse. Hence the essential nature of those psychical states which are called feeling and will is to be sought in the inhibitory relations of ideas. All these relations must be developed as a " statics and mechanics of ideas," * and since we have to do here essentially with the determining of differences of force, this metaphysical psychology must take on the form of a mathe matical theory of the mechanism of ideas. * Herbart lays particular
»Cf. W. , IV. 71 ff.
* The " suum esse conservare," with Hobbes and Spinoza the fundamental in
* In carrying out this thought Herbart assumed that ideas in their reciprocal inhibitions lose in intensity as much as the weakest of them possesses, and thai this Inhibition-sum is divided among the individual ideas in inverse ratio to their original strength, so that if in the simplest case, a > 6, a is reduced by
stinct of individuals, appears with Herbart as the metaphysical activity of the Reals, by virtue of which they produce the world of seeming, i. e. experience.
' On this metaphysical basis Herbart erected the structure of an immanent associational psychology. The assumption of a mechanical necessity of the ideational process, and the view that the volitions follow from this as likewise necessary relations, proved a fortunate basis for a scientific theory of pedagog ics, — a discipline which Herbart made also dependent upon ethics, since the latter teaches the goal of education (the formation of ethical character), while psychology teaches the mechanism through which this is realised. In a similar way Beneke, who took the standpoint of associational psychology without Her- bart's metaphysics, found the path to a systematic pedagogics.
Chap. 2, $ 41. ] Thing-in-Ittelf : Eerbart. 587
weight upon the investigation of the process by which newly entering ideas are "assimilated," ordered, formed, and in part altered, by the ideas already present; he employs for this the expression appercep tion (first coined by Leibniz ; cf. p.
463), and his theory of this takes the form of an explanation of the " I " or " self " by associational psychology. The " I " is thought as the moving point in which the apperceiving and apperceived ideas continually converge.
While the self-preservation of the Real which constitutes the soul, against disturbance by other Reals thus produces the phenomena of the ideational "life, the reciprocal self-preservation and " partial inter-penetration of several Reals produce for the consciousness of the spectator the "objective seeming or illusion" of matter. The
various physical and chemical phenomena are here tortured out of the metaphysical presuppositions with an unspeakably toilsome deduction,1 — an attempt forgotten to-day, which remained as desti tute of results in natural science as in philosophy.
9. Another Gottingen professor, Bouterwek, attacked the thing-in- itself with other weapons. He showed in his Apodiktik, that if the doctrines of the Critique of Pure Reason are to be taken in earnest, nothing remains for the "object to which the subject necessarily relates" except a completely inconceivable X. We cannot talk of a thing-in-itself or of things-in-themselves; for in this are involved already the categories of Inherence, of Unity and Plurality,' and of
Reality, which hold good only for phenomena. The transcendental philosophy must become " negative Spinozism. " * It can teach only that to the " consciousness in general " a " something in general " corresponds, concerning which nothing whatever is to be affirmed in absolute knowledge. (Cf. with regard to Spinoza, above, pp. 408 f. ). On the other hand, this absolutely real asserts itself in all relative knowledge through the consciousness of trilling. * For this shows everywhere the living force of individuality. We know of the subject because it wills something, and of the object because it furnishes
the inhibition to + "* ~ and to _ —. Cf. on thin arbitrarily axiomatic a a+"
assumption and on the mistaken nature of the whole psychological calculus," A. Lange, Die Grundlegung dtr mathftnatuehen Ptyehologif, Duisburg, 1866.
Allgrm. Mttnphyrik. «f 240 ff. . 331 If. VV\, IV. 147 ft. , 3*7 fl. In llerbart's metaphysics the branching out of general ontology into the beginnings of psy chology and natural philosophy designated by the names Eidology and Sfneehology.
Cf. asp. Apodiktik. 261, 302 ff.
lb. 386 ff.
Following the example of Kant and Fichte, Bouterwek ends his theoretical
Apodiktik in scepticism or in completely abstract-formal, absolute knowledge U the "practical" apodictic which first gala* a relation of its content to
reality.
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588 Germany : Development of Idealism. [Part VI
resistance to this will. The antithesis of force and resistance thus furnishes a common basis to the knowledge of the reality of our selves, and to that of the reality of other things, — of the I and the Not-I. 1 This doctrine Bouterwek would have called absolute Virtu- alism. We know our own reality in that we will, and the reality of other things in that our will finds in them a resisting force. The feeling of resistance refutes pure subjectivism or solipsism, but this relative knowledge of the particular forces of the real is supple mented by the consciousness of our own willing to form a merely empirical science. 8
This thought of his Gottingen teacher was developed by Schopen hauer, under the influence of Fichte, to a metaphysics. With a bold leap he swings himself up from the position of Virtualism to the knowledge of the essential nature of all things. We recognise the will within us as the true reality, and the resistance from which we know the reality of other things must, therefore, be likewise will. This is demanded by the " metaphysical need " of a unitary explana tion for all experience. The world " as idea " can be only phenome non ; an object is possible only in the subject and determined by the Forms of the subject. Hence the world in man's idea or mental representation (as " phenomenon of the brain," as Schopenhauer has often said with a dangerously contradictory laxity of expression) appears as a manifold ordered in space and time, a manifold whose connection can be thought only in accordance with the principle of causality, — the only one of the Kantian categories which Schopen hauer can admit to an originality of the same rank as that which belongs to the pure perceptions. Bound to these Forms, conceptional knowledge can have for its object only the necessity which prevails between individual phenomena: for causality is a relation of phe nomena to each other; science knows nothing absolute, nothing unconditioned; the guiding thread of causality, which leads from one condition to the other, never breaks off and must not be broken off arbitrarily. 8 The conceptional work of science can, therefore, in nowise raise itself above this infinite series of phenomena ; only an intuitive interpretation of the whole world of ideas, a look of genius over experience, an immediate apprehension, can penetrate to th6 true essence, which appears in our ideas as the world determined in space and time and hy causality. This intuition, however, is that by which the knowing subject is given immediately through itself as will. This word solves, therefore, the mystery of the outer world
i Apodiktik II. 68 ,ft a lb. II. 67 I.
8 In this Schopenhauer is in complete agreement with Jacobi (cf. above, p. 674).
Cm Ac. 41. Thing-in-itself Schopenhauer. 589
also. For we must apprehend the significance of all that given to ns immediately in space and time as idea,1 according to this analogy
of the only thing which immediately given. The thing-in-itself the Will.
The word "will" as here used must indeed be taken in an ex tended sense. In men and in animals the will appears as motiva tion determined through ideas, in the instinctive and vegetative life of the organism as susceptibility to stimulation, in the rest of the world of experience as mechanical processes. The meaning which
common to these different internal or external kinds of causality, should be designated a potiori as will, in accordance with that form in which alone immediately known to us. Accordingly the philosopher emphasises expressly the point, that the particular peculiarities with which the will given in human self-perception, i. e. its motivation through ideas and conceptions, must be kept quite apart from our notion of the will as thing-in-itself, — requirement which was, indeed, hard enough for Schopenhauer himself to
fulfil.
At the same time, however, the relation between thing-in-itself
and phenomenon must not be thought according to the rule of the understanding, i. e. causally. The thing-in-itself is not the cause of phenomena. Even in the case of man the will not the cause of his body or of the bodily activities but the same reality, which given us mediately, through our ideas in space and time perception, as body, and which in cognition conceived as something causally necessary and dependent upon other phenomena, — this im mediately given as will. Because the thing-in-itself not subject to the principle of sufficient reason, we have the paradox, that man feels himself as will immediately free, and yet in idea knows him self to be necessarily determined. So Schopenhauer adopts Kant's doctrine of intelligible and empirical character. In the same way, however, phenomenal Nature must everywhere be regarded as objectificatum that as the perceptional and conceptional mode of representation of the will or the immediately real, and must not be regarded as the product of the latter. The relation of essence to phenomenon not that of cause and effect
" Further, the will as thing-in-itself can be only the one, universal Korld-tcill. " All plurality and multiplicity belong to perception
in space and time; these latter are the principium indieiduationis. Hence things are different and separate from each other only as phenomena — in idea and cognition; in their true essence they are
Cf. World as Will, etc. , II. 18-83.
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590 Germany : Development of Idealism. [Past VL
all the same. The will is the tv «i war. Here lies for Schopen hauer the metaphysical root of morals. It is the deception of the phenomenal that makes the individual distinguish his own weal and woe from that of other individuals, and brings the two into opposition : in the fundamental moral feeling which feels another's sorrows as one's own — in sympathy, the transcendental unity of will of all reality comes to light.
Finally, the will can have for its object no particular content that can be empirically presented in consciousness; for every such content belongs already to its "objectivity. " The world-will has only itself for its object ; it wills only to will. It wills only to be actual; for all that actually is, is itself only a willing. In this sense Schopenhauer calls it the will to live. It is the thing-in-itself which ever gives birth to itself in timeless, eternal process, and as such it is represented in the restless mutation of phenomena.
§ 42. The System of Reason.
The direction which the main line of the idealistic development was to take was prescribed by the principle from which Fichte made bold to throw overboard the conception of the thing-in-itself. The relation of Being and consciousness can be explained only out of consciousness, and by the fact that consciousness " looks at its own action" and creates thereby at once the real and the ideal series of experience — objects and the knowledge of them. The problem of the Wissenschaftslehre therefore, to comprehend the world as a necessary connected whole of rational activities, and the solution can proceed only by reflection on the part of the philos ophising reason upon its own action and upon that which is requi site therefor. The necessity, therefore, which prevails in this system ofreason not caused, but teleological. The dogmatic system understands the intelligence as product of things, the idealistic develops intelligence as an inherently purposeful connection of acts, some of which serve to produce objects. The progress of philo sophical thought should not take the form, that because something is, therefore something else also, but should rather shape itself after the guiding principle that in order that something may take
place, something else must take place also. Every act of reason has a task; to perforin this needs other acts and thus other tasks; the connected series of all activities for the fulfilment of all tasks, taken as a purposeful unity, the system of the reason, the " history of consciousness. " The ground or reason of all Being lies
is
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Crap. 2, { 42. ] System of Reason : Dialectic. 591
in the ought ; that is, in the activity of self-consciousness directed toward an end.
The schema for carrying out this thought is the dialectical method. If the world is to be comprehended as reason, the system of reason must be developed from an original task; all particular acts of intelligence must be deduced as means to its performance. This
act [lit "deed-act," Thathandlung'] is self-consciousness. A begin ning without assumptions, such as philosophy needs, is not to be found by means of an assertion or proposition, but by means of a demand, which every one must be able to fulfil : " Think thyself! " And the whole business of philosophy consists in making clear what takes place in this act, and what is requisite for it. But this principle can lead on farther, only so long as it is shown that between that which should take place and that which does take place to this end, there is still a contradiction, out of which the new task results, and so on. The dialectical method is a system in
which every problem or task creates a new one. There is in the reason itself a resistance to the result it seeks to achieve, and to overcome this resistance it unfolds a new function. These three momenta are designated as Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis.
If Kant had maintained the necessity of insoluble problems of reason for his explanation and criticism of metaphysics, the idealis tic metaphysics now makes this thought a positive principle. By this means the reason's world becomes an infinity of self-production, and the contradiction between the task and the actual doing is declared to be the real nature of the reason itself. This contradic tion is necessary and cannot be abolished. It belongs to the essen tial nature of the reason ; and since only the reason is real, the con tradiction is thus declared to be real. Thus the dialectical method, this metaphysical transformation of Kant's transcendental logic, came into stronger and stronger opposition to formal logic. The rules of the understanding, which have their general principle in the principle of contradiction, are adequate, perhaps, for the ordi nary elaboration of perceptions into conceptions, judgments, and conclusions; for the intellectual perception of the philosophising reason they do not suffice, before the problems of " speculative con struction" they sink to a relative importance.
This doctrine asserts itself already in the first exposition which Fichte gave to his Science of Knowledge;' it was then spoken out more and more boldly by disciples and associates like Fr. Schlegel, and, ultimately, the speculative reason affected a superiority to the
Omuttage der gtt. W. -L. , f 1 j W, I. 92 H. [Kroegfr's tr„ pp. 63 ff. ].
692 Germany : Development of Idealism. [Part VL
"reflective philosophy of the understanding" hemmed in within the principle of contradiction. Schelling ' appealed to the coind- dentia oppositorum of Nicolaus Cusanus and Giordano Bruno, and Hegel2 sees in the triumph of the "narrow understanding" over the reason the hereditary error of all earlier philosophy. 3 Meta physics, of which Kant has shown that it is not possible for the understanding, seeks an organ of its own in intellectual perception or intuition, and a form of its own in the dialectical method. The productive synthesis of the manifold must keep its unity above the antitheses into which it divides itself. It is the essential nature of mind or spirit to disunite itself, and from this state of being rent apart, to return back to its original unity.
This triplicity rests entirely upon the above (Fichtean) funda mental characterisation of the mind as that which beholds itself. The reason is not only "in-itself" as a simple ideal reality, but also " for-its. elf " ; it appears to itself as "something other, alien"; it becomes for itself an object different from the subject, and this otherness is the principle of negation. The doing away with this difference, the negation of the negation, is the synthesis of the two moments above named. These are annulled or sublated
[" aufge- hoben," which has no exact English equivalent ; Bosanquet suggests "put by"] in the threefold aspect that their one-sided force is overcome, their relative meaniug is preserved, and their original sense transmuted into a higher truth. Following " this scheme of the "in-itself," "for-itself," and " in-and-for-itself (An-sich, Fir-
sich, An-und-fiir-sich). Hegel developed his dialectical method with great virtuosoship by making each conception " turn into its oppo site," and from the contradiction of the two making the higher con ception proceed, which then experienced the same fortune of finding an antithesis which required a still higher synthesis, and so on. The Master himself, in his employment of this method, particularly in the Phcenomenology and in the Logic, worked in an astonishing wealth of knowledge, a quite unique fineness of feeling for concep- tional connections, and a victorious power of combining thought, while occasionally his profundity passed over into obscurity and schematic word-building. In the case of his disciples, a philosophical jargon grew out of this, which pressed all thought into the triple scheme, and by the thoughtless externality with which it was used,—
> Sixth Vorl. after Meth. d. ak. St. , W. , V. 267 ff.
3 Cf. esp. hia article on Glauben und Wissen, W. , I. 21 ff.
* It is from this point of view that we best can understand Herbart's polemic
against absolute idealism. He, too, finds contradictions in the fundamental conceptions of experience, but just on this account they ought to be worked over until the contradictionless reality is recognised ; cf. above, § 41, 7.
Chap. 2, § 42. ] System of Reason : Fichte. 598
and used for a time in widely extended circles, — it was all too well adapted to discredit philosophy as an empty bombast1
2. The system of reason with Fichte, in the first period of his philosophical activity (about 1800), is, in its content also, in full accord with the above method. The original "act" (Tliathandlung) of self-consciousness, which is determined by nothing except itself, is that the " J" or self can only be ** posited " by being distinguished from a " Not-I" or "not-self. " Since, however, the not-self is posited only in the self, — i. e. historically expressed, the object posited only in consciousness, — the self and the not-self (i. e. subject and object) must reciprocally determine each other within the " I " or self. From this results the theoretical or the practical series of self-conscious ness, according as the Not-I or the " I " is the determining part.
The functions of the theoretical reason are now developed by Fichte in the following manner : The particular stages result from the reflection of consciousness upon its own previously determined action. By virtue of its own activity, which is limited by nothing external, it presses beyond every bound which the "I" has set for itself in the Not-I as object. The pure perceptions, space and time, the categories as rules of the understanding, and the principles of the reason, are treated as the several forms of this self-determin ing. In place of the antitheses which Kant had set up between these particular strata, Fichte set the principle, that in each higher stage the reason apprehends in purer form what it has accomplished in the lower stage. Knowing is a process of self-knowledge on the part of the reason, beginning with sense perception and ascending to complete knowledge. ' But this whole series of the theoretical reason presupposes an original " self-limitation " of the I. If this is given, the entire series is comprehensible in accordance with the principle of self-perception ; for every activity has its object and its reason in the preceding. The first self-limitation has its ground in no preceding act, and therefore, theoretically, no ground what
ever. It is a groundless, free activity, but as such, the ground of all other activities. This groundless [undetermined] free act is sen sation. It falls into consciousness, therefore, only in its content, which is to be taken up into perception ; as act it like all that has
Of. the humorous portrayal in G. Rtlmelin, Reden nnd AuftaUt, pp. 47-60, Freiburg. 1888.
Without any directly visible influence from Leibniz, his conception of the relation of the different knowing faculties asserts itself here in contrast with the Kantian separation. Only to be noted that this "history of the devel opment of reason " la, with Leibniz, determined causally, with Fichte teleologi- cally . What Hainan and Herder (cf. above, p. 670) demanded as requirement of the unity of intelligence in the I/eibnizian sense, Fichte and Schelling had
lwhile performed in quite another sense.
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694 Germany: Development of Idealism. (. i'art VI.
no ground, unconscious. 1 In this consists its " givenness," by virtue of which it appears as foreign and coming " from without.