from the
standpoint
of pure reason it is contingent, and has only the force and validity of an actual matter of fact,* [not that of a priori necessity].
Windelband - History of Philosophy
He thus restores to their rightful place, from which they had been displaced by the rationalism of the Enlightenment, the truly religious motives which are rooted in the felt need of a redemption, — though he does this in a form which is free from the historical faith of orthodoxy.
But the true Church, for him also, is only the invisible, the moral king dom of God, the ethical community of the redeemed.
The historical manifestations of the moral community of men are the.
Churches ; they need the means of revelation and of " statutory " faith.
But they have the task of putting this means into the service of the moral life, and if instead of this they lay the main weight upon the statutory, they fall into service for a reward, and into hypocrisy.
7. It is connected with his restriction of ethical judgment by making it apply only to the disposition, that in his Philosophy of Right Kant pursued that direction which treats the same, so far as possible, independently of morals. Kant distinguished
(even with regard to ethical valuation) between morality of disposition and
legality of action, between voluntary obedience to the moral law and external conformity of action to what is demanded by posi tive law. Actions are subject to compulsion, dispositions never. While morals speaks of the duties of the disposition, law or right is employed with the external duties of action which can be en
forced, and does not ask as to the disposition with which they are fulfilled or broken.
And yet Kant makes freedom, which is the central conception of his whole practical philosophy, the basis also of his science of right. For right or law is also a demand of the practical reason, and has in this its a priori, valid principle: it cannot therefore be deduced as a product of empirical interest, but must be understood from the
568 German PkiluMpky : Km$U'» Critique. '\ £Pa*x VL
general rational vocation or destiny of man. This latter is the vocation to freedom. The community of men conatts of those beings that are destined for ethical freedom, but an yet in the natural state of caprice or arbitrary will, in which riey
mntuallj disturb and check each other in their spheres of acti <fty. Law has
for its task to establish the conditions under whiclythe will of the one can be united with the will of another according to a imivprga[ law of freedom, and, by enforcing these conditions, to make sure the freedom of personality.
From this principle follows analytically, according to deduction, all private law, public law, and international law. At the same time, it is interesting to observe b«>w the principles of his theory of morals are everywhere authoritative in this construction. Thus, in private law it is a far-reaching principle — corresponding to the categorical imperative — that man must never be used as a thing. So, too, the penal law of the state is grounded not by the task of maintaining the state of right, but by the ethical necessity of retribution.
Law in a state of nature is therefore valid only in a provisory way; it is completely, or, as Kant says, peremptorily, valid, only when it can be certainly enforced, that in the state. The supreme rule for justice in the state, Kaut finds in this, that nothing should be decreed and carried out which might not have been resolved upon the state had come into existence by contract. The con tract theory here not an explanation of the empirical origin of the state, but a norm ior its task. This norm can be fulfilled with any kind of constitution, provided only law really rules, and not arbitrary caprice. Its realisation surest the three public functions of legislation, administration and judicial procedure are independent of each other, and the legislative power is organised in the "republican" form of the representative system, — a pro vision which not excluded by monarchical executive. It only by. this means, Kant thinks, that the freedom of the individual will be secured, so far as this can exist without detriment to the freedom of others and not until all states have adopted this constitution can the state of Nature in which they now find themselves in their rela tions to each other, give place to state of law. Then, too, the law of nations, which now only provisory, will become " peremptory. "
Upon foundations of philosophy of religion and philosophy of law built up, finally, Kant's theory of history. 1 This took form
Cf. besides the treatises cited on pp. 417-422. the treatises, Idea of a Uni- verml History from Cosmopolitical Point of Vieio (1784) [tr. by Hastie in
Kant's
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<? hap. 1, § 40. ] Natural Purposivenets. 559
in dependence upon the theories of Rousseau and Herder, a depend ence which follows from the antithesis between those authors. Kant can see in history neither the aberration from an originally good condition of the human race, nor the necessary, self-intelligible development of man's original constitution. If there ever was a primitive paradisiacal state of humanity, it was the state of inno cence in which man, living entirely according to his natural impulses, was as yet entirely unconscious of his ethical task. The beginning of the work of civilisation, however, was possible only through a break with the state of Nature, since it was in connection with its trans gression that the moral law came to consciousness. This (theoret ically incomprehensible) "Fall" was the beginning of history.
Natural impulse, previously ethically indifferent, now became evil, and was to be opposed.
Since then the progress of history has consisted not in a growth of human happiness, but in approximation to ethical perfection, and in the extension of the rule of ethical freedom. With deep earnestness Kant takes up the thought that the development of civilisation suc ceeds only at the cost of individual happiness. He who takes this latter for his standard must speak only of a retrogression in history. The more complicated relations become, the more the vital energy of civilisation grows, by so much the more do individual wants increase, and the less is the prospect of satisfying them. But just this refutes the opinion of the Enlighteners, as if happiness were man's vocation. The ethical development of the whole, the control
of practical reason, grows in an inverse ratio to the empirical satis faction of the individual. And since history represents the outer social life of humanity, its goal is the completion of right and law, the establishing of the best political constitution among all peoples, perpetual peace — a goal whose attainment, as is the case with all ideals, lies at an infinite distance.
§ 40. Natural Purposiveneu.
A. Sudler, Kant's Teleologie. Berlin, 1874.
H. Cohen, Kant's BrgrUndung der jEsthetik. Berlin, 1880.
\i. H. Tufta, The Sources and Development of Kant's Teleology. Chicago, 1893. ]
By his sharp formulation of the antithesis of Nature and Free dom, of necessity and purposiveness (or adaptation to ends), thb
Principles of Politics] ; Recension von Herder's Ideen (1785) ; Muthmasslicher Anfang der' WeltgesckichU (1788) ; Da* Knde alter Dinge (17W).
560 German Philosophy : Kant's Critique. [Paw VT.
theoretical and practical reason diTerge so widely in Kant's system, that the unity of the reason seems endangered. The critical phil osophy needs, therefore, in a manner that prefigures the methodical development of its system,1 a third principle that shall afford a defin itive mediation, and in which the synthesis of the above opposite* shall be effected.
1. Psychologically, the sphere in which this problem is to be solved can, in accordance with the triple division adopted by Kant (cf. 5 36, 8), be only the faculty offeeling or " approval. " This, in fact,
takes an intermediate position between ideation and desire. Feeling or approval presupposes a complete idea of the object, —complete in the theoretical sense, — and sustains a synthetic relation to this; and this synthesis as a feeling of pleasure or pain, or as approval or disapproval, always expresses in some way that the object in ques tion is felt by the subject to be either purposive, i. e. adapted to its end, or not to the purpose.
The standard of this valuation may have existed beforehand as a conscious design, forming thus a case of intentional volition, and in such cases the objects are termed useful or injurious ; but there are also feelings which, without being referred to any conscious purposes whatever, characterise their objects immediately as agreeable or dis agreeable, and in these also a determination with reference to an end must be somehow authoritative.
The critique of the reason, accordingly, has to ask, Are there feelings a priori, or approvals that have universal and necessary valid ity f and it is clear that the decision upon this case is dependent
upon the nature of the ends which determine the feelings and approvals in question. With regard to the purposes of the will, this question has been already decided by the Critique of the Practical Reason; the only end of the conscious will which has a priori validity is the fulfilling of the categorical imperative, and on this side, therefore, only the feelings of approval or disapproval in which we employ the ethical predicates " good " and " bad," can be regarded as necessary and universally valid. For this reason the new prob lem restricts itself to the a priori character of those feelings in which no conscious purpose or design precedes. But these, as may be seen from the beginning, are the feelings of the Beautiful and the Sublime.
2. But the problem widens upon another side, when we take into consideration the logical functions which are concerned in all feel
1 Cf. note at the close of the Introduction of the Critique Judgment, W. , VII. 38 i. of *
Chap. 1, { 40. ] Natural Purposiveness : the Judgment. ' 561
ings and approvals. The judgments in which these are expressed are evidently all synthetic. Predicates such as agreeable, useful, beautiful, and good, are not analytically contained in the subject, but express the worth of the object with reference to an end ; they are estimations of adaptation, and contain in all cases the subor dination of the object to its end. Now in the psychological scheme which lies at the basis of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant desig nates the faculty of subsuming the particular under the general by the name Judgment. And this, too, was regarded as playing among the theoretical functions, also, the mediating part between Reason and Understanding, in such a sort that the former gives principles, the latter objects, while the Judgment performs the task of applying the principles to the objects.
But in its theoretical use the Judgment is analytical, since it determines its objects by general conceptions according to rules of formal logic ; the attainment of a correct conclusion depends only on finding the appropriate minor for a given major, or vice versa.
In contrast with this determining Judgment, which thus needs no " Critique," Kant sets the reflecting Judgment, in the case of which the synthesis consists just in subordination to an end. And accord ingly the problem of the Critique of the Judgment takes this formu lation : Is it a priori possible to judge Nature to be adapted to an end t Kvident. lv this is the highest synthesis of the critical philosophy ; the application of the category of the practical reason to the object of
the theoretical. It is clear from the outset that this application itself can be neither theoretical nor practical, neither a knowing nor a witting : it is only a looking at Nature from the point of view of pur
posiveness or adaptation to ends.
If the reflecting Judgment gives to this contemplation the direc
tion of judging Nature with regard to her adaptation to the contem plating subject as such, it proceeds aesthetically, i. e. having regard to our mode of feeling or sensibility ; ' on the contrary, regards Nature as she were purposive in herself, then proceeds teleologi- eally in the narrower sense, and so the Critique of the Judgment
divided into the investigation of aesthetic and teleological prob lems.
3. In the first part Kant primarily concerned to separate the aesthetic judgment with exactness from the kinds of judgments of feeling or approval which border upon on both sides, and to this end he proceeds from the point of view of the feeling of the beaut
Smpindunaiuf ue tbiu Kant justifies his change In terminology, W. , VIL *8«. d. II. «andabove,p. 483
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562 German Philosophy : Kant's Critique. [Part VL
The beautiful shares with the good the a priori character, but the good is that which agrees with the end presented as a norm in the moral law, while the beautiful, on the contrary, pleases without a conception. For this reason, also, it is impossible to set up a universal criterion which shall contain a content according to which beauty shall be judged with logical clearness. An aesthetic doctrine is impossible ; there is only a " Critique of the Taste" that is, an investigation as to the possibility of the a priori validity of aesthetic judgments.
On the other hand, the beautiful shares with the agreeable its conceptionless quality, the absence of a conscious standard of judgment, and, therefore, the immediacy of the impression. But the distinction here lies in the fact that the agreeable is something individually and contingently gratifying, whereas the beautiful forms the object of universal and necessary pleasure. 1 The princi ple that there is no disputing over tastes, is true only in the sense that in matters of taste nothing is to be effected by proofs with con ceptions, but this does not exclude the possibility of an appeal to universally valid feelings.
Finally, the beautiful distinguishes itself from both the good and the agreeable, in that it is the object of a completely disinterested pleasure. This appears in the circumstance that the empirical reality
of its object is a matter of complete indifference for the aesthetic judgment. The hedonic feelings all presuppose the material presence
of the phenomena which excite them ; ethical approval or disapproval concerns just the realisation of the moral end in willing and acting; the aesthetic feelings, on the contrary, require as their condition a pure delight in the mere represented image of the object, whether the same is objectively present for knowledge or not. The aesthetic life lacks the power of the feelings of personal weal and woe, just as it lacks the earnestness of a universally worthy work for ethical ends ; it is the mere play of ideas in the imagination.
Such a delight which relates not to the object, but only to the image ofthe object, cannot concern the objective material of the object, — for this always stands in relation to the interests of the subject, — but only the form in which the object is presented to the mind; and in this, therefore, if anywhere, is to be sought the ground of the a priori synthesis which belongs to the aesthetic judgments. The purposiveness of aasthetic objects cannot consist in their adaptation to some interest or other ; it can be only in their adaptation to the
1 Cf. F. Blencke, Kant's Unterseheidung des Schonen vom Angenehmen (Strassburg, 1889), where the analogy to the judgments of perception and of experience is emphasised.
ful.
Chak 1, $ 40. ] Natural Purporivenett : Beauty. 563
knowing Forms, by the aid of which they are imaged in the mind. But the faculties which are active in presenting every object are sensibility and understanding. The feeling of beauty arises, there fore, in connection with those objects in the apprehension of which in the imagination sensibility and understanding co-operate in harmonious manner. Such objects are purposive with regard to their working upon our ideational activity, and to this relates the disinterested delight which manifests itself in the feeling of their beauty. 1
But this relation to the formal principles of objective ideation has its ground, not in merely individual activities, but in the "consciousness in general," in the "supersensuous substrate of humanity. " On this account the feeling of a fitness or purposive- ness of objects with reference to this consciousness in general is universally communicable, though not capable of proof by concep tions, and from this is explained the a priori character of the aesthetic judgments.
4. While the "undesigned fitness" or appropriateness of the beautiful is thus set in relation with the working of the object upon the cognitive functions, Kant conceives the nature of the sublime from the point of view of an adaptation of the working of the object to the relation between the sensuous and supersensuous parts of human nature.
While the beautiful signifies a delightful rest in the play of the knowing faculties, the impression of the sublime is effected through the medium of a painful feeling of inadequacy. In the presence of the immeasurable greatness or overpowering might of objects, we feel the inability of our sensuous perception to master them, as an oppression and a casting down ; but the supersensuous power of our reason raises itself above this our sensuous insufficiency. If here the imagination has to do only with extensive magnitudes, — the mathematically sublime, — then the firmly shaping activity of the theoretical reason gains the victory ; but on the contrary, has to do with the relations of power, — the dynamically sublime, — then the superiority of our moral worth to all the jwwer of Nature conies to consciousness. In both cases the discomfort over our sen suous inferiority richly outweighed and overcome by the triumph of our higher rational character. And since this the appropriate
[A fragment published by Relcke in his Lot*. Blatter aui KanCi Sachlau (B II. 112) shows that Kant at one time connected this adaptation with the psychological and physiological conception of general furtherance of life, whether through the senses or through the play of intellectual faculties. Ct
J. H. Tufu, op. cit. , p. 36 f. ]
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564 German Philosophy : Kanfs Critique. [Past VL
relation of the two sides of our being, these objects have an exalting, " subliming" effect, and produce the feeling of a delight of the reason, and this feeling, again, because it is based only upon the relation of our ideational Forms, is universally communicable and of a priori operation.
5. "Kant's aesthetic theory, accordingly, in spite of its "subjec tive point of departure, takes essentially the course of an explana tion of the beautiful and the sublime in Nature; and determines the same through the relation of the ideational Form*. Hence the philosopher finds pure beauty only where the aesthetic judgment relates solely to forms that have no meaning. Where with the delight there is mingled a regard for the meaning of the forms for any norm whatever, however indefinite, there we hare dependent beauty. This appears everywhere where the aesthetic judgment is directed toward objects in which our thought puts a reference to an end. Such norms of dependent beauty rise necessarily as soon as we contemplate in the individual phenomenon the relation to the class which it represents. There is no norm of beauty for landscapes, arabesques, or flowers, but there may be such perhaps for the higher types of the organic world. Such norms are aesthetic ideals, and the true ideal of the aesthetic judgment is man.
The presentation of the ideal is art, the power of aesthetic produc tion. But while this is a function of man which is performed with reference to an end, its product will make the impression of the beau tiful only when it appears as undesigned, disinterested, and free from the attempt to represent a conception, as is the case with the beauty of Nature. Technical art produces structures corresponding to definite ends according to rules and designs, — structures which are adapted to satisfy definite interests. Fine art must work upon the feeling as does a purposeless product of Nature ; it must " be able to be regarded as Nature. "
This, therefore, is the secret of artistic creation, and the character istic element in viz. that the mind which builds with purpose works, nevertheless, in the same way as Nature, which builds with out designs and disinterestedly. The great artist does not create according to general rules; he creates the rules themselves in his involuntary work he original and prototypal. Genius an in telligence that works like Nature.
In the realm of man's rational activity the desired synthesis of freedom and nature, of purposiveness and necessity, of practical and theoretical function, then represented by genius, which with undesigning purposiveness or appropriateness creates the work of fine art.
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Chap. 1, § 40. ] Natural Purposivenett : Organisms. 565
6. In the Critique of the Teleological Judgment the most promi nent task is to establish the relations which, from the points of view of transcendental idealism, exist between the scientific explanation of Nature and the consideration of the adaptation that dwells within her. The theory of natural science can in all lines be only mechanical. "End" (Zweck) is not a category or a constitutive principle of objective knowledge : all explanation of Nature consists in pointing out the causal necessity with which one phenomenon produces another ; a phenomenon can never be made intelligible by emphasis
ing its adaptation or fitness. Such " lazy " teleology is the death of all philosophy of Nature. The apprehension of purposiveness can, therefore, never profess to be an act of knowledge.
But, on the other hand, the standpoint of the mechanical explana tion of Nature would give us the right to completely reject teleologi cal consideration of Nature, only in case we were in a position to make intelligible with the aid of scientific conceptions the whole system of experience, even to the last remnant, in principle at least. But should points be found where scientific theory is inadequate for the explanation of the given material, not indeed on account of the limited nature of the material hitherto available in human experi ence, but on account of the permanent form of the principle which determines this material, then in these points the possibility of supplementing our knowledge by a teleological consideration must be conceded, at the same time, appears that that which mechanically inexplicable makes upon us the inevitable impression of the purposive. Critical teleology can, therefore, concern only the limiting conceptions of the mechanical explanation of Nature.
The first of these Life. mechanical explanation of the organ ism has not only not yet succeeded, but is, according to Kant, impossible in principle. All life can be explained only through other life. We are to understand the individual functions of organ isms through the mechanical connection of their parts with each other and with the environment but we shall always be obliged to bring into our account the peculiar nature of organised matter and it* capacity of reaction, as factor incapable of further reduction. An archsologist of Nature may trace back the genealogy of life, the origination of one species from another according to mechanical prin
ciples as far as possible he will always be obliged to stop with an original organisation which he cannot explain through the mere mechanism of inorganic matter.
The piaugw, in which Kant anticipated the latter theory of deacent, an collected In Fr. Schultze, Kant and Darrein (Jena, 1874).
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666 German Philosophy : Kant's Critique. [Part TI
This explanation is impossible because the essential nature of an organism is, that the whole is determined by the parts just as the part is determined by the whole, — that every member is both cause and effect of the whole. This reciprocal causality is incomprehen sible mechanically: the organism is the miracle in the world of
It is just this inter-related play of forms and forces which in the organism makes the impression of the purposive, or of adaptation to an end. Therefore the teleological view of organisms is necessary and universally valid. But it must never profess to be anything else than a mode of consideration. Thought must never be satisfied with this in an individual case ; but the insight into this purposeful activity must rather serve as a heuristic principle for seeking out the mechanical connections by which this purposeful vitality realises itself in each particular case.
7. A second limit of the knowledge of Nature Kant designates by the name of the Specification of Nature. From pure reason arise the general Forms of the uniformity of Nature [». e. causality, etc], but only these. The particular laws of Nature do indeed range themselves beneath those general laws, but do not follow from them. Their particular content is only empirical, i. e.
from the standpoint of pure reason it is contingent, and has only the force and validity of an actual matter of fact,* [not that of a priori necessity]. It is never to be understood why there is just this and not some other content. But at the same time, this particular aspect of Nature proves completely purposive; on the one hand, with reference to our knowledge, since the wealth of the matter of fact in our experi ence shows itself to be adapted to be ordered under the a priori Forms of experience, — and on the other hand, as purposive in itself, also, inasmuch as the whole varied multiplicity of the given fits together to form a concrete world of reality, which is objectively unitary.
In this lie the reasons a priori for regarding Nature as a whole from the point of view of purposiveness, and for seeing in the vast mechanism of her causal connections the realising of a supreme end of reason. But in accordance with the primacy of the practical reason, this end can be none other than the moral law, and thus the teleological consideration issues in the moral faith in the divine
world-order.
Finally, if we consider Nature as purposive, in the sense that in
1 Cf. above, p. 480.
* Here Kant joins on in an extremely interesting manner to the latest specu lations of the Leibnizian Monadology ; cf. above, p. 426 [cf. further on this point Utber eine Entdeckung. etc, and J, Dewey, Leibniz's ffew Essays, last chapter].
experience. 1
Chap. 1, § 40. ] Natural Purpotivenesa. 567
it the universal Forms and the particular contents completely har monise with each other, then the divine mind, as the reason which creates the content at the same time with its Forms, appears as intellectual perception or intuitive understanding. 1 In this conception the ideas of the three Critiques run together.
1 Critique of Judy. , g 77. Of. U. Thiele, Kant's Intellectuelle Amchauung C Halle, 1876).
CHAPTER n.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF IDEALISM.
R. Haym, Die romanttiche Sehnle. Berlin, 1870. [A. Seth, From Kant to Hegel. Lond. 1882. ]
The development of the principles won by Kant, to the compre hensive systems of German philosophy, took place under the co operation of very different kinds of circumstances. Externally, it was of primary importance that the doctrine of criticism, after at first experiencing the fortune of being neglected and misunder stood, was first raised as a standard by the leading spirits of the University of Jena, and made the centre of a brilliant teaching activity. But in this lay the incitement to build out a unified and impressive system of instruction, the foundations of which Kant had laid by a careful separation and fine arrangement of philosophical problems. The systematic impulse ruled philosophical thought at no period so energetically as at this, and this was due in good part to the desires of an audience in a state of high and many-sided excitement, which demanded from the teacher a complete scientific Weltanschauung.
But in Jena philosophy found itself close by Weimar, the resi dence of Goethe, and the main literary city of Germany. In constant personal contact, poetry and philosophy mutually stimulated each other, and after Schiller had joined the thoughts of the two, their interaction became constantly more intimate and deep with their rapid forward movement.
A third factor was of a purely philosophical nature. A coinci dence that was rich in results willed that just at the time when the Critique of Beason of the "all-crushing" K6nigsberger began to break its path, the most firmly articulated and most influential of all metaphysical systems, the type of " dogmatism," became known in Germany — Spinozism. Through the strife between Jacobi and Mendelssohn, which related to Lessing's attitude to Spinoza, the
tatter's doctrine was brought into the most lively interest, and thus, 608
Chat. 2. ] The Development of Idealism. 569
in spite of the deep opposition which prevails between the two, ' Kant and Spinoza became the two poles about which the thought of the following generation moved.
The predominance of the Kantian influence may be chiefly recog nised in that the common character of all these systems is idealitm ; ' they all develop out of the antagonistic thoughts which were inter woven in Kant's treatment of the conception thing-in-itself. After a short time of critical hesitation, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel took the lead in the unresting effort to understand the world as a System of Reason. Over against the bold energy of metaphysical specula-, tion of these thinkers, which was extended by numerous disciples to a many -coloured variety, there appears in men like Schleiermacher and Herbart the Kantian reminder of the limits of human knowl edge; while, on the other hand, the same motive unfolded in the construction of a Metaphysics of the Irrational in Schelling' s later doctrine, and with Schopenhauer.
Common to all these systems, however, is the all-sidedness of philosophical interest, the wealth of creative thoughts, the fineness of feeling for the needs of modern culture, and the victorious power of an elaboration from the point of view of a principle, of the his torical material of ideas.
The Critique of the Pure Reason found little regard at first, and then later violent opposition. The most important impetus to this was given by Friedrich Heinrich Jacob! (1743-1810, Anally President of the Munich Academy). His main treatise bears the title, David Hume lifter den Olauben, oder Idealismus and Realism** (1787) ; in addition to this the treatise Ueber das Unternekmen dr* Kritieismus die Vernunft su Verttande su bringen (1802). The treatise
Von den gottlichen Dingtn und ihrer Offenbarung (1811) was directed against Schelling. Cf. also his introduction to his philosophical writings in the second volume of the complete edition (6 vols. , Leips. 1812-1826). His main disciple was Fr. Kttppen (1776-1868 ; Darttelluny des Wtsens der Philosophie, Nurem berg. 1810 ; cf. on aim the art. K. by W. Windelband in Ersch u. Oruber's Ene. ).
As further opponents of Kant are to be named Gottlob Ernst Schulxe (17(11-1823), the author of the anonymous writing, Alnesidemus oder liber die Punilmnente der Elementarpkilosophie (1702), and of a Kritik der theorttischen
J. O. Hamann above, p. 610), whose (cf.
Philosophie (Hamburg, 1801) ;
"review" of the Critique was first printed in 1801 in Reinhold's Beitragen,
1 Let it be remarked here at the outset that not only the main series of the development from Reinhold to Fichte, Schelling, Krause, Schleiermacher, and Hegel is idealistic, but also the series which is usually opposed to this, Herbart and Schopenhauer, in so far, that is, as by "idealism" is understood the
dissolution or resolution (AuflSsung) of the world of experience in the process at consciousness. Herbart and Schopenhauer are "idealists" in the same degree as Kant; they posit things-in-themselves, but the world of the senses is to them also a "phenomenon of consciousness. " With Schopenhauer this is usually noted. With Herbart, on the contrary, the circumstance that he called the things-in-themselves " Reals" (Realen), in connection with the fact that for entirely other reasons he opposed the Fichte-Hegel line of thought, has led to the completely distorted and misleading mode of expression which has run through all previous text-books of the history of philosophy, of terming hi* doctrine " realism," and him in opposition to the " idealists " a " realist. "
570 German Philosophy.
[Part VI.
and G. Herder in his treatise, Verstand und Vernunft, eine Metakritik eur Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1790), also in the Kalligone, 1800.
Jac. Sig. Beck (1761-1842 ; Einzig möglicher Standpunkt, au» welchem die kritische Philosophie beurtheilt werden muss, Riga, 1796) worked more posi tively in the development of the Kantian doctrine, as did also Salomon Maimon (died 1800 ; Versuch einer Transscendentalphilosophie, 1790 ; Versuch einer neuen Logik, 1794 ; Die Kategorien des Aristoteles, 1794 ; cf. J. Witte, S. M. , Berlin, 1876).
In Jena the Kantian philosophy was introduced by Professor Erh. Schmid ; its main organ was the Allgemeine Litteraturzeitung, which appeared there after 1785, edited by Schütz and Hufeland. The greatest success for extending the doctrine of Criticism was gained by K. L. Reinhold's Briefe über die kantische Philosophie, which first appeared in Wieland's Deutscher Merkur (1786).
The same author begins also the series of re-shapings and transformations of the doctrine. Karl Leonh. Reinhold (1768-1823 ; fled from the cloister of the Bamabites in Vienna ; 1788, Professor in Jena ; from 1794 Professor in Kiel) wrote Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermö gens (Jena, 1789) and Das Fundament des philosophischen Wissens (1791). Later, after many changes in his standpoint, he fell into fantasticalness and was forgotten. His teaching presented in his Jena period gave in crude outlines a superficially systematic exposition, which soon became the school-system of the "Kantians. " To tear from forget fulness the names of these numerous men is not for this place.
Much finer, richer, and more independent was the work which Fr. Schiller gave to Kant's ideas. Of his philosophical writings are here principally to be named On Grace and Dignity, 1793 ; On the Sublime, 1793 ; Letters upon the jEsthetical Education of Man, 1795; On Naive and Sentimental Poetry, 1796 [Eng. tr. Bohn Library]. In addition to these the philosophical poems such as Die Künstler, Ideal und Leben, and the correspondence with Körner, Goethe, and W. v. Humboldt. Cf. K. Tomaschek, Seh. in seinem Verhältniss zur
Wissenschaft, Vienna, 1862 ; K. Twesten, Seh. in seinem Verhältniss zur Wis senschaft, Berlin, 1863; Kuno Fischer, Seh. als Philosoph, 2d ed. , 1891; Fr. Ueberweg, Seh. als Historiker und Philosoph, pub. by Brasch, Leips. 1884.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte, born 1762, at Rammenau in Lusatia, educated in the " Princes' School " at Pforta and at the University of Jena, after he had experienced many changes of fortune as a private teacher and had become famous by his Kritik aller Offenbarung, which appeared by chance anony mously, and was universally ascribed to Kant (1792), was calied in 1794, while living in Zurich, to become Reinhold's successor as Professor at Jena. After a brilliant activity there, he was dismissed in 1799, on account of the "atheism controversy " (cf. his Appellation an das Publicum and the Gerichtliche Verant wortungsschrift), and went to Berlin, where he came into connection with the Romanticists. In 1805 he was for a time assigned to the University of Erlangen ; in 1806 he went to Königsberg, and then returned to Berlin, where in the winter of 1807 to 1808 he delivered the Reden an die deutsche Nation. At the newly founded Berlin University he acted as Professor and as the first Rector. He died, 1814, of hospital fever. His main writings are Grundlage der gesammten
Wissenschaftslehre, 1794 ; Grundriss des Eigentümlichen der Wissenschaft"s lehre, 1796 [these two, together with other minor works, are translated by A. E. Kroeger, under the title The Science of Knowledge, Lond. 1889] ; Natur- recht, 1796 [tr. by A. E. Koeger, The Science of Sights, Lond. 1889] ; the two Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre, 1797 ; System der Sittenlehre, 1798; Die Bestimmung des Menschen, 1800 ; Der geschlossene Handelsstadt, 1801 ;
lieber das Wesen des Gelehrten, 1805 ; Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters, 1806 ; Anweisung zum seligen Leben, 1806 [of the last five all but the second are trans, by W. Smith, Fichte' s Popular Works, Lond. 1889. There are also translations and criticisms in Jour, of Spec. Phil. '] ; Works, 8 vols. , Berlin, 1846 f. ; Post, works, 3 vols. , Bonn, 1834 ; Life, and Correspondence, Sulzbach, 1830 ; Correspondence with Schelling, Leips. 1866 ; cf. J. H. Löwe, Die Philos. Fichte's, Stuttgart, 1862 ; R. Adamson, Fichte, Lond. 1881 ; [also art. in Enc
Brit. ; C. C. Everett, Fichte's Science of Knowledge, Chicago, 1883],
Chat. 2. ] Development of Idealism. 571
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Bohelling, born, 1776, at Leonberg in WUrtem- berg, came to Leipsic in 1796 after his education in Tubingen, was made Pro fessor in Jena in 1798, and in WUrzburg in 1803. Called in 1806 to the Munich Academy, and for a time (1820-1826) active at the Erlangen University, he entered in 1827 the newly founded University of Munich. From here he ac cepted, in 1840, a call to Berlin, where he soon gave up his activity as a teacher. He died in 1864 in Ragaz. Cf. Aim Sch. 's Leben in Briefen, ed. by Plitt, Leips.
1869 f. ; Caroline, Britfe, etc. , ed. by G. Waitz, Leips. 1871. Schelling's devel opment as philosopher and author falls into five periods: (1) Philosophy of Nature, ldeen zu einer Philos. der Xatur, 1797 ; Von der Wellseelc, 1798 ;
Setter Kntteurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie, 1799; (2) vKsthetic Ideal ism, Der transcendeutale Idealismus, 1800 ; Vorlesungen iiber die Philosophic der Kunst ; (3) Absolute Idealism, Darstellung meines Systems der Philosophic, 1801 ; Bruno, oder Sber das naturliche und gSttliche Prineip der Dinge, 1802 ;
Vorleiungen iiber die Methode des akademischen Studiums, 1803; (4) his Doctrine of Freedom, Philosophic und Beligion, 1804 ; Vntcrsuchungen iiber das Wescn der menschlichen Freiheit, 1809 ; Denkmal der Schrtfl Jacob? s von den gottliehen Dinge*, 1812 ; (6) Philosophy of Mythology and Revelation, Lecture* in Part II. of the writings; Collected works, 14 vols. , Stuttg. and Augsb. 1866-1861 ; [J. Watson, Schelling's Transcendental Idealism, Chicago,
Griggs series].
Among the thinkers who stood in close relation to Schelling may be noticed,
of the Romantic School, Fr. Schlegel (m2-1829 ; Characteristics and Criti cisms in the " Athenseum," 1799 f. ; Lurinde, 1799 ; Philosophical Lectures, in the years 1804-6, ed. by Windischmann, 1836 f. ; Complete writings, 16 vols. , Vienna, 1846 [Eng. tr. of the Philosophy of History and of the Philosophy of Life and of Language in Bohn Library]) and Novalia (Fr. v. Hardenberg, 1772-1801), also K. W. F. Bolger (1780-1819; Erwin, 1816; Philosophische Gesprache, 1817 ; Vorlesungen iiber sEsthetik, ed. by Heyse, 1829) ; further, Lor. Oken (1779-1851; Lehrbuch der Xaturphilosophie, Jena, 1809; cf. A. Ecker, L. O. , Stuttgart, 1880) ; U. Bteffens (1773-1846; a Norwegian, Grund- suye der philosophic hen Naturmissenschaft, 1806), U. II. Schubert
(1780- 18«IO; Akndungen einer allg. Oeschichte des Lebens, 1800 f. ), Franz Baader
(17(16-1841; Permenta Cognitionis, 1822 ff. ; Speculative Dogmatik, 1827 ff. Complete writings with a biography ed. by Fr.
7. It is connected with his restriction of ethical judgment by making it apply only to the disposition, that in his Philosophy of Right Kant pursued that direction which treats the same, so far as possible, independently of morals. Kant distinguished
(even with regard to ethical valuation) between morality of disposition and
legality of action, between voluntary obedience to the moral law and external conformity of action to what is demanded by posi tive law. Actions are subject to compulsion, dispositions never. While morals speaks of the duties of the disposition, law or right is employed with the external duties of action which can be en
forced, and does not ask as to the disposition with which they are fulfilled or broken.
And yet Kant makes freedom, which is the central conception of his whole practical philosophy, the basis also of his science of right. For right or law is also a demand of the practical reason, and has in this its a priori, valid principle: it cannot therefore be deduced as a product of empirical interest, but must be understood from the
568 German PkiluMpky : Km$U'» Critique. '\ £Pa*x VL
general rational vocation or destiny of man. This latter is the vocation to freedom. The community of men conatts of those beings that are destined for ethical freedom, but an yet in the natural state of caprice or arbitrary will, in which riey
mntuallj disturb and check each other in their spheres of acti <fty. Law has
for its task to establish the conditions under whiclythe will of the one can be united with the will of another according to a imivprga[ law of freedom, and, by enforcing these conditions, to make sure the freedom of personality.
From this principle follows analytically, according to deduction, all private law, public law, and international law. At the same time, it is interesting to observe b«>w the principles of his theory of morals are everywhere authoritative in this construction. Thus, in private law it is a far-reaching principle — corresponding to the categorical imperative — that man must never be used as a thing. So, too, the penal law of the state is grounded not by the task of maintaining the state of right, but by the ethical necessity of retribution.
Law in a state of nature is therefore valid only in a provisory way; it is completely, or, as Kant says, peremptorily, valid, only when it can be certainly enforced, that in the state. The supreme rule for justice in the state, Kaut finds in this, that nothing should be decreed and carried out which might not have been resolved upon the state had come into existence by contract. The con tract theory here not an explanation of the empirical origin of the state, but a norm ior its task. This norm can be fulfilled with any kind of constitution, provided only law really rules, and not arbitrary caprice. Its realisation surest the three public functions of legislation, administration and judicial procedure are independent of each other, and the legislative power is organised in the "republican" form of the representative system, — a pro vision which not excluded by monarchical executive. It only by. this means, Kant thinks, that the freedom of the individual will be secured, so far as this can exist without detriment to the freedom of others and not until all states have adopted this constitution can the state of Nature in which they now find themselves in their rela tions to each other, give place to state of law. Then, too, the law of nations, which now only provisory, will become " peremptory. "
Upon foundations of philosophy of religion and philosophy of law built up, finally, Kant's theory of history. 1 This took form
Cf. besides the treatises cited on pp. 417-422. the treatises, Idea of a Uni- verml History from Cosmopolitical Point of Vieio (1784) [tr. by Hastie in
Kant's
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in dependence upon the theories of Rousseau and Herder, a depend ence which follows from the antithesis between those authors. Kant can see in history neither the aberration from an originally good condition of the human race, nor the necessary, self-intelligible development of man's original constitution. If there ever was a primitive paradisiacal state of humanity, it was the state of inno cence in which man, living entirely according to his natural impulses, was as yet entirely unconscious of his ethical task. The beginning of the work of civilisation, however, was possible only through a break with the state of Nature, since it was in connection with its trans gression that the moral law came to consciousness. This (theoret ically incomprehensible) "Fall" was the beginning of history.
Natural impulse, previously ethically indifferent, now became evil, and was to be opposed.
Since then the progress of history has consisted not in a growth of human happiness, but in approximation to ethical perfection, and in the extension of the rule of ethical freedom. With deep earnestness Kant takes up the thought that the development of civilisation suc ceeds only at the cost of individual happiness. He who takes this latter for his standard must speak only of a retrogression in history. The more complicated relations become, the more the vital energy of civilisation grows, by so much the more do individual wants increase, and the less is the prospect of satisfying them. But just this refutes the opinion of the Enlighteners, as if happiness were man's vocation. The ethical development of the whole, the control
of practical reason, grows in an inverse ratio to the empirical satis faction of the individual. And since history represents the outer social life of humanity, its goal is the completion of right and law, the establishing of the best political constitution among all peoples, perpetual peace — a goal whose attainment, as is the case with all ideals, lies at an infinite distance.
§ 40. Natural Purposiveneu.
A. Sudler, Kant's Teleologie. Berlin, 1874.
H. Cohen, Kant's BrgrUndung der jEsthetik. Berlin, 1880.
\i. H. Tufta, The Sources and Development of Kant's Teleology. Chicago, 1893. ]
By his sharp formulation of the antithesis of Nature and Free dom, of necessity and purposiveness (or adaptation to ends), thb
Principles of Politics] ; Recension von Herder's Ideen (1785) ; Muthmasslicher Anfang der' WeltgesckichU (1788) ; Da* Knde alter Dinge (17W).
560 German Philosophy : Kant's Critique. [Paw VT.
theoretical and practical reason diTerge so widely in Kant's system, that the unity of the reason seems endangered. The critical phil osophy needs, therefore, in a manner that prefigures the methodical development of its system,1 a third principle that shall afford a defin itive mediation, and in which the synthesis of the above opposite* shall be effected.
1. Psychologically, the sphere in which this problem is to be solved can, in accordance with the triple division adopted by Kant (cf. 5 36, 8), be only the faculty offeeling or " approval. " This, in fact,
takes an intermediate position between ideation and desire. Feeling or approval presupposes a complete idea of the object, —complete in the theoretical sense, — and sustains a synthetic relation to this; and this synthesis as a feeling of pleasure or pain, or as approval or disapproval, always expresses in some way that the object in ques tion is felt by the subject to be either purposive, i. e. adapted to its end, or not to the purpose.
The standard of this valuation may have existed beforehand as a conscious design, forming thus a case of intentional volition, and in such cases the objects are termed useful or injurious ; but there are also feelings which, without being referred to any conscious purposes whatever, characterise their objects immediately as agreeable or dis agreeable, and in these also a determination with reference to an end must be somehow authoritative.
The critique of the reason, accordingly, has to ask, Are there feelings a priori, or approvals that have universal and necessary valid ity f and it is clear that the decision upon this case is dependent
upon the nature of the ends which determine the feelings and approvals in question. With regard to the purposes of the will, this question has been already decided by the Critique of the Practical Reason; the only end of the conscious will which has a priori validity is the fulfilling of the categorical imperative, and on this side, therefore, only the feelings of approval or disapproval in which we employ the ethical predicates " good " and " bad," can be regarded as necessary and universally valid. For this reason the new prob lem restricts itself to the a priori character of those feelings in which no conscious purpose or design precedes. But these, as may be seen from the beginning, are the feelings of the Beautiful and the Sublime.
2. But the problem widens upon another side, when we take into consideration the logical functions which are concerned in all feel
1 Cf. note at the close of the Introduction of the Critique Judgment, W. , VII. 38 i. of *
Chap. 1, { 40. ] Natural Purposiveness : the Judgment. ' 561
ings and approvals. The judgments in which these are expressed are evidently all synthetic. Predicates such as agreeable, useful, beautiful, and good, are not analytically contained in the subject, but express the worth of the object with reference to an end ; they are estimations of adaptation, and contain in all cases the subor dination of the object to its end. Now in the psychological scheme which lies at the basis of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant desig nates the faculty of subsuming the particular under the general by the name Judgment. And this, too, was regarded as playing among the theoretical functions, also, the mediating part between Reason and Understanding, in such a sort that the former gives principles, the latter objects, while the Judgment performs the task of applying the principles to the objects.
But in its theoretical use the Judgment is analytical, since it determines its objects by general conceptions according to rules of formal logic ; the attainment of a correct conclusion depends only on finding the appropriate minor for a given major, or vice versa.
In contrast with this determining Judgment, which thus needs no " Critique," Kant sets the reflecting Judgment, in the case of which the synthesis consists just in subordination to an end. And accord ingly the problem of the Critique of the Judgment takes this formu lation : Is it a priori possible to judge Nature to be adapted to an end t Kvident. lv this is the highest synthesis of the critical philosophy ; the application of the category of the practical reason to the object of
the theoretical. It is clear from the outset that this application itself can be neither theoretical nor practical, neither a knowing nor a witting : it is only a looking at Nature from the point of view of pur
posiveness or adaptation to ends.
If the reflecting Judgment gives to this contemplation the direc
tion of judging Nature with regard to her adaptation to the contem plating subject as such, it proceeds aesthetically, i. e. having regard to our mode of feeling or sensibility ; ' on the contrary, regards Nature as she were purposive in herself, then proceeds teleologi- eally in the narrower sense, and so the Critique of the Judgment
divided into the investigation of aesthetic and teleological prob lems.
3. In the first part Kant primarily concerned to separate the aesthetic judgment with exactness from the kinds of judgments of feeling or approval which border upon on both sides, and to this end he proceeds from the point of view of the feeling of the beaut
Smpindunaiuf ue tbiu Kant justifies his change In terminology, W. , VIL *8«. d. II. «andabove,p. 483
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562 German Philosophy : Kant's Critique. [Part VL
The beautiful shares with the good the a priori character, but the good is that which agrees with the end presented as a norm in the moral law, while the beautiful, on the contrary, pleases without a conception. For this reason, also, it is impossible to set up a universal criterion which shall contain a content according to which beauty shall be judged with logical clearness. An aesthetic doctrine is impossible ; there is only a " Critique of the Taste" that is, an investigation as to the possibility of the a priori validity of aesthetic judgments.
On the other hand, the beautiful shares with the agreeable its conceptionless quality, the absence of a conscious standard of judgment, and, therefore, the immediacy of the impression. But the distinction here lies in the fact that the agreeable is something individually and contingently gratifying, whereas the beautiful forms the object of universal and necessary pleasure. 1 The princi ple that there is no disputing over tastes, is true only in the sense that in matters of taste nothing is to be effected by proofs with con ceptions, but this does not exclude the possibility of an appeal to universally valid feelings.
Finally, the beautiful distinguishes itself from both the good and the agreeable, in that it is the object of a completely disinterested pleasure. This appears in the circumstance that the empirical reality
of its object is a matter of complete indifference for the aesthetic judgment. The hedonic feelings all presuppose the material presence
of the phenomena which excite them ; ethical approval or disapproval concerns just the realisation of the moral end in willing and acting; the aesthetic feelings, on the contrary, require as their condition a pure delight in the mere represented image of the object, whether the same is objectively present for knowledge or not. The aesthetic life lacks the power of the feelings of personal weal and woe, just as it lacks the earnestness of a universally worthy work for ethical ends ; it is the mere play of ideas in the imagination.
Such a delight which relates not to the object, but only to the image ofthe object, cannot concern the objective material of the object, — for this always stands in relation to the interests of the subject, — but only the form in which the object is presented to the mind; and in this, therefore, if anywhere, is to be sought the ground of the a priori synthesis which belongs to the aesthetic judgments. The purposiveness of aasthetic objects cannot consist in their adaptation to some interest or other ; it can be only in their adaptation to the
1 Cf. F. Blencke, Kant's Unterseheidung des Schonen vom Angenehmen (Strassburg, 1889), where the analogy to the judgments of perception and of experience is emphasised.
ful.
Chak 1, $ 40. ] Natural Purporivenett : Beauty. 563
knowing Forms, by the aid of which they are imaged in the mind. But the faculties which are active in presenting every object are sensibility and understanding. The feeling of beauty arises, there fore, in connection with those objects in the apprehension of which in the imagination sensibility and understanding co-operate in harmonious manner. Such objects are purposive with regard to their working upon our ideational activity, and to this relates the disinterested delight which manifests itself in the feeling of their beauty. 1
But this relation to the formal principles of objective ideation has its ground, not in merely individual activities, but in the "consciousness in general," in the "supersensuous substrate of humanity. " On this account the feeling of a fitness or purposive- ness of objects with reference to this consciousness in general is universally communicable, though not capable of proof by concep tions, and from this is explained the a priori character of the aesthetic judgments.
4. While the "undesigned fitness" or appropriateness of the beautiful is thus set in relation with the working of the object upon the cognitive functions, Kant conceives the nature of the sublime from the point of view of an adaptation of the working of the object to the relation between the sensuous and supersensuous parts of human nature.
While the beautiful signifies a delightful rest in the play of the knowing faculties, the impression of the sublime is effected through the medium of a painful feeling of inadequacy. In the presence of the immeasurable greatness or overpowering might of objects, we feel the inability of our sensuous perception to master them, as an oppression and a casting down ; but the supersensuous power of our reason raises itself above this our sensuous insufficiency. If here the imagination has to do only with extensive magnitudes, — the mathematically sublime, — then the firmly shaping activity of the theoretical reason gains the victory ; but on the contrary, has to do with the relations of power, — the dynamically sublime, — then the superiority of our moral worth to all the jwwer of Nature conies to consciousness. In both cases the discomfort over our sen suous inferiority richly outweighed and overcome by the triumph of our higher rational character. And since this the appropriate
[A fragment published by Relcke in his Lot*. Blatter aui KanCi Sachlau (B II. 112) shows that Kant at one time connected this adaptation with the psychological and physiological conception of general furtherance of life, whether through the senses or through the play of intellectual faculties. Ct
J. H. Tufu, op. cit. , p. 36 f. ]
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564 German Philosophy : Kanfs Critique. [Past VL
relation of the two sides of our being, these objects have an exalting, " subliming" effect, and produce the feeling of a delight of the reason, and this feeling, again, because it is based only upon the relation of our ideational Forms, is universally communicable and of a priori operation.
5. "Kant's aesthetic theory, accordingly, in spite of its "subjec tive point of departure, takes essentially the course of an explana tion of the beautiful and the sublime in Nature; and determines the same through the relation of the ideational Form*. Hence the philosopher finds pure beauty only where the aesthetic judgment relates solely to forms that have no meaning. Where with the delight there is mingled a regard for the meaning of the forms for any norm whatever, however indefinite, there we hare dependent beauty. This appears everywhere where the aesthetic judgment is directed toward objects in which our thought puts a reference to an end. Such norms of dependent beauty rise necessarily as soon as we contemplate in the individual phenomenon the relation to the class which it represents. There is no norm of beauty for landscapes, arabesques, or flowers, but there may be such perhaps for the higher types of the organic world. Such norms are aesthetic ideals, and the true ideal of the aesthetic judgment is man.
The presentation of the ideal is art, the power of aesthetic produc tion. But while this is a function of man which is performed with reference to an end, its product will make the impression of the beau tiful only when it appears as undesigned, disinterested, and free from the attempt to represent a conception, as is the case with the beauty of Nature. Technical art produces structures corresponding to definite ends according to rules and designs, — structures which are adapted to satisfy definite interests. Fine art must work upon the feeling as does a purposeless product of Nature ; it must " be able to be regarded as Nature. "
This, therefore, is the secret of artistic creation, and the character istic element in viz. that the mind which builds with purpose works, nevertheless, in the same way as Nature, which builds with out designs and disinterestedly. The great artist does not create according to general rules; he creates the rules themselves in his involuntary work he original and prototypal. Genius an in telligence that works like Nature.
In the realm of man's rational activity the desired synthesis of freedom and nature, of purposiveness and necessity, of practical and theoretical function, then represented by genius, which with undesigning purposiveness or appropriateness creates the work of fine art.
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Chap. 1, § 40. ] Natural Purposivenett : Organisms. 565
6. In the Critique of the Teleological Judgment the most promi nent task is to establish the relations which, from the points of view of transcendental idealism, exist between the scientific explanation of Nature and the consideration of the adaptation that dwells within her. The theory of natural science can in all lines be only mechanical. "End" (Zweck) is not a category or a constitutive principle of objective knowledge : all explanation of Nature consists in pointing out the causal necessity with which one phenomenon produces another ; a phenomenon can never be made intelligible by emphasis
ing its adaptation or fitness. Such " lazy " teleology is the death of all philosophy of Nature. The apprehension of purposiveness can, therefore, never profess to be an act of knowledge.
But, on the other hand, the standpoint of the mechanical explana tion of Nature would give us the right to completely reject teleologi cal consideration of Nature, only in case we were in a position to make intelligible with the aid of scientific conceptions the whole system of experience, even to the last remnant, in principle at least. But should points be found where scientific theory is inadequate for the explanation of the given material, not indeed on account of the limited nature of the material hitherto available in human experi ence, but on account of the permanent form of the principle which determines this material, then in these points the possibility of supplementing our knowledge by a teleological consideration must be conceded, at the same time, appears that that which mechanically inexplicable makes upon us the inevitable impression of the purposive. Critical teleology can, therefore, concern only the limiting conceptions of the mechanical explanation of Nature.
The first of these Life. mechanical explanation of the organ ism has not only not yet succeeded, but is, according to Kant, impossible in principle. All life can be explained only through other life. We are to understand the individual functions of organ isms through the mechanical connection of their parts with each other and with the environment but we shall always be obliged to bring into our account the peculiar nature of organised matter and it* capacity of reaction, as factor incapable of further reduction. An archsologist of Nature may trace back the genealogy of life, the origination of one species from another according to mechanical prin
ciples as far as possible he will always be obliged to stop with an original organisation which he cannot explain through the mere mechanism of inorganic matter.
The piaugw, in which Kant anticipated the latter theory of deacent, an collected In Fr. Schultze, Kant and Darrein (Jena, 1874).
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666 German Philosophy : Kant's Critique. [Part TI
This explanation is impossible because the essential nature of an organism is, that the whole is determined by the parts just as the part is determined by the whole, — that every member is both cause and effect of the whole. This reciprocal causality is incomprehen sible mechanically: the organism is the miracle in the world of
It is just this inter-related play of forms and forces which in the organism makes the impression of the purposive, or of adaptation to an end. Therefore the teleological view of organisms is necessary and universally valid. But it must never profess to be anything else than a mode of consideration. Thought must never be satisfied with this in an individual case ; but the insight into this purposeful activity must rather serve as a heuristic principle for seeking out the mechanical connections by which this purposeful vitality realises itself in each particular case.
7. A second limit of the knowledge of Nature Kant designates by the name of the Specification of Nature. From pure reason arise the general Forms of the uniformity of Nature [». e. causality, etc], but only these. The particular laws of Nature do indeed range themselves beneath those general laws, but do not follow from them. Their particular content is only empirical, i. e.
from the standpoint of pure reason it is contingent, and has only the force and validity of an actual matter of fact,* [not that of a priori necessity]. It is never to be understood why there is just this and not some other content. But at the same time, this particular aspect of Nature proves completely purposive; on the one hand, with reference to our knowledge, since the wealth of the matter of fact in our experi ence shows itself to be adapted to be ordered under the a priori Forms of experience, — and on the other hand, as purposive in itself, also, inasmuch as the whole varied multiplicity of the given fits together to form a concrete world of reality, which is objectively unitary.
In this lie the reasons a priori for regarding Nature as a whole from the point of view of purposiveness, and for seeing in the vast mechanism of her causal connections the realising of a supreme end of reason. But in accordance with the primacy of the practical reason, this end can be none other than the moral law, and thus the teleological consideration issues in the moral faith in the divine
world-order.
Finally, if we consider Nature as purposive, in the sense that in
1 Cf. above, p. 480.
* Here Kant joins on in an extremely interesting manner to the latest specu lations of the Leibnizian Monadology ; cf. above, p. 426 [cf. further on this point Utber eine Entdeckung. etc, and J, Dewey, Leibniz's ffew Essays, last chapter].
experience. 1
Chap. 1, § 40. ] Natural Purpotivenesa. 567
it the universal Forms and the particular contents completely har monise with each other, then the divine mind, as the reason which creates the content at the same time with its Forms, appears as intellectual perception or intuitive understanding. 1 In this conception the ideas of the three Critiques run together.
1 Critique of Judy. , g 77. Of. U. Thiele, Kant's Intellectuelle Amchauung C Halle, 1876).
CHAPTER n.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF IDEALISM.
R. Haym, Die romanttiche Sehnle. Berlin, 1870. [A. Seth, From Kant to Hegel. Lond. 1882. ]
The development of the principles won by Kant, to the compre hensive systems of German philosophy, took place under the co operation of very different kinds of circumstances. Externally, it was of primary importance that the doctrine of criticism, after at first experiencing the fortune of being neglected and misunder stood, was first raised as a standard by the leading spirits of the University of Jena, and made the centre of a brilliant teaching activity. But in this lay the incitement to build out a unified and impressive system of instruction, the foundations of which Kant had laid by a careful separation and fine arrangement of philosophical problems. The systematic impulse ruled philosophical thought at no period so energetically as at this, and this was due in good part to the desires of an audience in a state of high and many-sided excitement, which demanded from the teacher a complete scientific Weltanschauung.
But in Jena philosophy found itself close by Weimar, the resi dence of Goethe, and the main literary city of Germany. In constant personal contact, poetry and philosophy mutually stimulated each other, and after Schiller had joined the thoughts of the two, their interaction became constantly more intimate and deep with their rapid forward movement.
A third factor was of a purely philosophical nature. A coinci dence that was rich in results willed that just at the time when the Critique of Beason of the "all-crushing" K6nigsberger began to break its path, the most firmly articulated and most influential of all metaphysical systems, the type of " dogmatism," became known in Germany — Spinozism. Through the strife between Jacobi and Mendelssohn, which related to Lessing's attitude to Spinoza, the
tatter's doctrine was brought into the most lively interest, and thus, 608
Chat. 2. ] The Development of Idealism. 569
in spite of the deep opposition which prevails between the two, ' Kant and Spinoza became the two poles about which the thought of the following generation moved.
The predominance of the Kantian influence may be chiefly recog nised in that the common character of all these systems is idealitm ; ' they all develop out of the antagonistic thoughts which were inter woven in Kant's treatment of the conception thing-in-itself. After a short time of critical hesitation, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel took the lead in the unresting effort to understand the world as a System of Reason. Over against the bold energy of metaphysical specula-, tion of these thinkers, which was extended by numerous disciples to a many -coloured variety, there appears in men like Schleiermacher and Herbart the Kantian reminder of the limits of human knowl edge; while, on the other hand, the same motive unfolded in the construction of a Metaphysics of the Irrational in Schelling' s later doctrine, and with Schopenhauer.
Common to all these systems, however, is the all-sidedness of philosophical interest, the wealth of creative thoughts, the fineness of feeling for the needs of modern culture, and the victorious power of an elaboration from the point of view of a principle, of the his torical material of ideas.
The Critique of the Pure Reason found little regard at first, and then later violent opposition. The most important impetus to this was given by Friedrich Heinrich Jacob! (1743-1810, Anally President of the Munich Academy). His main treatise bears the title, David Hume lifter den Olauben, oder Idealismus and Realism** (1787) ; in addition to this the treatise Ueber das Unternekmen dr* Kritieismus die Vernunft su Verttande su bringen (1802). The treatise
Von den gottlichen Dingtn und ihrer Offenbarung (1811) was directed against Schelling. Cf. also his introduction to his philosophical writings in the second volume of the complete edition (6 vols. , Leips. 1812-1826). His main disciple was Fr. Kttppen (1776-1868 ; Darttelluny des Wtsens der Philosophie, Nurem berg. 1810 ; cf. on aim the art. K. by W. Windelband in Ersch u. Oruber's Ene. ).
As further opponents of Kant are to be named Gottlob Ernst Schulxe (17(11-1823), the author of the anonymous writing, Alnesidemus oder liber die Punilmnente der Elementarpkilosophie (1702), and of a Kritik der theorttischen
J. O. Hamann above, p. 610), whose (cf.
Philosophie (Hamburg, 1801) ;
"review" of the Critique was first printed in 1801 in Reinhold's Beitragen,
1 Let it be remarked here at the outset that not only the main series of the development from Reinhold to Fichte, Schelling, Krause, Schleiermacher, and Hegel is idealistic, but also the series which is usually opposed to this, Herbart and Schopenhauer, in so far, that is, as by "idealism" is understood the
dissolution or resolution (AuflSsung) of the world of experience in the process at consciousness. Herbart and Schopenhauer are "idealists" in the same degree as Kant; they posit things-in-themselves, but the world of the senses is to them also a "phenomenon of consciousness. " With Schopenhauer this is usually noted. With Herbart, on the contrary, the circumstance that he called the things-in-themselves " Reals" (Realen), in connection with the fact that for entirely other reasons he opposed the Fichte-Hegel line of thought, has led to the completely distorted and misleading mode of expression which has run through all previous text-books of the history of philosophy, of terming hi* doctrine " realism," and him in opposition to the " idealists " a " realist. "
570 German Philosophy.
[Part VI.
and G. Herder in his treatise, Verstand und Vernunft, eine Metakritik eur Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1790), also in the Kalligone, 1800.
Jac. Sig. Beck (1761-1842 ; Einzig möglicher Standpunkt, au» welchem die kritische Philosophie beurtheilt werden muss, Riga, 1796) worked more posi tively in the development of the Kantian doctrine, as did also Salomon Maimon (died 1800 ; Versuch einer Transscendentalphilosophie, 1790 ; Versuch einer neuen Logik, 1794 ; Die Kategorien des Aristoteles, 1794 ; cf. J. Witte, S. M. , Berlin, 1876).
In Jena the Kantian philosophy was introduced by Professor Erh. Schmid ; its main organ was the Allgemeine Litteraturzeitung, which appeared there after 1785, edited by Schütz and Hufeland. The greatest success for extending the doctrine of Criticism was gained by K. L. Reinhold's Briefe über die kantische Philosophie, which first appeared in Wieland's Deutscher Merkur (1786).
The same author begins also the series of re-shapings and transformations of the doctrine. Karl Leonh. Reinhold (1768-1823 ; fled from the cloister of the Bamabites in Vienna ; 1788, Professor in Jena ; from 1794 Professor in Kiel) wrote Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermö gens (Jena, 1789) and Das Fundament des philosophischen Wissens (1791). Later, after many changes in his standpoint, he fell into fantasticalness and was forgotten. His teaching presented in his Jena period gave in crude outlines a superficially systematic exposition, which soon became the school-system of the "Kantians. " To tear from forget fulness the names of these numerous men is not for this place.
Much finer, richer, and more independent was the work which Fr. Schiller gave to Kant's ideas. Of his philosophical writings are here principally to be named On Grace and Dignity, 1793 ; On the Sublime, 1793 ; Letters upon the jEsthetical Education of Man, 1795; On Naive and Sentimental Poetry, 1796 [Eng. tr. Bohn Library]. In addition to these the philosophical poems such as Die Künstler, Ideal und Leben, and the correspondence with Körner, Goethe, and W. v. Humboldt. Cf. K. Tomaschek, Seh. in seinem Verhältniss zur
Wissenschaft, Vienna, 1862 ; K. Twesten, Seh. in seinem Verhältniss zur Wis senschaft, Berlin, 1863; Kuno Fischer, Seh. als Philosoph, 2d ed. , 1891; Fr. Ueberweg, Seh. als Historiker und Philosoph, pub. by Brasch, Leips. 1884.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte, born 1762, at Rammenau in Lusatia, educated in the " Princes' School " at Pforta and at the University of Jena, after he had experienced many changes of fortune as a private teacher and had become famous by his Kritik aller Offenbarung, which appeared by chance anony mously, and was universally ascribed to Kant (1792), was calied in 1794, while living in Zurich, to become Reinhold's successor as Professor at Jena. After a brilliant activity there, he was dismissed in 1799, on account of the "atheism controversy " (cf. his Appellation an das Publicum and the Gerichtliche Verant wortungsschrift), and went to Berlin, where he came into connection with the Romanticists. In 1805 he was for a time assigned to the University of Erlangen ; in 1806 he went to Königsberg, and then returned to Berlin, where in the winter of 1807 to 1808 he delivered the Reden an die deutsche Nation. At the newly founded Berlin University he acted as Professor and as the first Rector. He died, 1814, of hospital fever. His main writings are Grundlage der gesammten
Wissenschaftslehre, 1794 ; Grundriss des Eigentümlichen der Wissenschaft"s lehre, 1796 [these two, together with other minor works, are translated by A. E. Kroeger, under the title The Science of Knowledge, Lond. 1889] ; Natur- recht, 1796 [tr. by A. E. Koeger, The Science of Sights, Lond. 1889] ; the two Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre, 1797 ; System der Sittenlehre, 1798; Die Bestimmung des Menschen, 1800 ; Der geschlossene Handelsstadt, 1801 ;
lieber das Wesen des Gelehrten, 1805 ; Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters, 1806 ; Anweisung zum seligen Leben, 1806 [of the last five all but the second are trans, by W. Smith, Fichte' s Popular Works, Lond. 1889. There are also translations and criticisms in Jour, of Spec. Phil. '] ; Works, 8 vols. , Berlin, 1846 f. ; Post, works, 3 vols. , Bonn, 1834 ; Life, and Correspondence, Sulzbach, 1830 ; Correspondence with Schelling, Leips. 1866 ; cf. J. H. Löwe, Die Philos. Fichte's, Stuttgart, 1862 ; R. Adamson, Fichte, Lond. 1881 ; [also art. in Enc
Brit. ; C. C. Everett, Fichte's Science of Knowledge, Chicago, 1883],
Chat. 2. ] Development of Idealism. 571
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Bohelling, born, 1776, at Leonberg in WUrtem- berg, came to Leipsic in 1796 after his education in Tubingen, was made Pro fessor in Jena in 1798, and in WUrzburg in 1803. Called in 1806 to the Munich Academy, and for a time (1820-1826) active at the Erlangen University, he entered in 1827 the newly founded University of Munich. From here he ac cepted, in 1840, a call to Berlin, where he soon gave up his activity as a teacher. He died in 1864 in Ragaz. Cf. Aim Sch. 's Leben in Briefen, ed. by Plitt, Leips.
1869 f. ; Caroline, Britfe, etc. , ed. by G. Waitz, Leips. 1871. Schelling's devel opment as philosopher and author falls into five periods: (1) Philosophy of Nature, ldeen zu einer Philos. der Xatur, 1797 ; Von der Wellseelc, 1798 ;
Setter Kntteurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie, 1799; (2) vKsthetic Ideal ism, Der transcendeutale Idealismus, 1800 ; Vorlesungen iiber die Philosophic der Kunst ; (3) Absolute Idealism, Darstellung meines Systems der Philosophic, 1801 ; Bruno, oder Sber das naturliche und gSttliche Prineip der Dinge, 1802 ;
Vorleiungen iiber die Methode des akademischen Studiums, 1803; (4) his Doctrine of Freedom, Philosophic und Beligion, 1804 ; Vntcrsuchungen iiber das Wescn der menschlichen Freiheit, 1809 ; Denkmal der Schrtfl Jacob? s von den gottliehen Dinge*, 1812 ; (6) Philosophy of Mythology and Revelation, Lecture* in Part II. of the writings; Collected works, 14 vols. , Stuttg. and Augsb. 1866-1861 ; [J. Watson, Schelling's Transcendental Idealism, Chicago,
Griggs series].
Among the thinkers who stood in close relation to Schelling may be noticed,
of the Romantic School, Fr. Schlegel (m2-1829 ; Characteristics and Criti cisms in the " Athenseum," 1799 f. ; Lurinde, 1799 ; Philosophical Lectures, in the years 1804-6, ed. by Windischmann, 1836 f. ; Complete writings, 16 vols. , Vienna, 1846 [Eng. tr. of the Philosophy of History and of the Philosophy of Life and of Language in Bohn Library]) and Novalia (Fr. v. Hardenberg, 1772-1801), also K. W. F. Bolger (1780-1819; Erwin, 1816; Philosophische Gesprache, 1817 ; Vorlesungen iiber sEsthetik, ed. by Heyse, 1829) ; further, Lor. Oken (1779-1851; Lehrbuch der Xaturphilosophie, Jena, 1809; cf. A. Ecker, L. O. , Stuttgart, 1880) ; U. Bteffens (1773-1846; a Norwegian, Grund- suye der philosophic hen Naturmissenschaft, 1806), U. II. Schubert
(1780- 18«IO; Akndungen einer allg. Oeschichte des Lebens, 1800 f. ), Franz Baader
(17(16-1841; Permenta Cognitionis, 1822 ff. ; Speculative Dogmatik, 1827 ff. Complete writings with a biography ed. by Fr.
