No More Learning

The like is true, also, of Fichte's treatment of the problems of public life. A youthful energy masters the Kantian fundamental thoughts here, and gives them a much more impressive formulation than they could receive from Kant himself, who undertook the systematic carrying out of these thoughts, only in his old age. The reciprocal limitation of spheres of freedom in the outer social life of individuals for Fichte also, the principle of Natural Right. As "primitive rights" he regarded the claims of the individual to
Ficbte, W. , V. lttt H. , 210 B.
is, '
696 Germany : Development of Idealism. [Pabt VL
freedom of his body as the organ for performance of duty, of his property as being the external sphere of operation to this end, and finally of his self-preservation 'as personality. But these primitive rights become efficient as compulsory rights or laws only through the authority of (positive) laws in the state. The idea of the com pact which is at the basis of the state, Fichte analyses into the citizen, the property, and the defence contract. It is interesting in this connection to see how these thoughts culminate in his politics in the principle, that the state has to make provision that every one may be able to live by his work, — the doctrine, named after him, of the so-called right to work. 1 Work is the duty of the moral person ality, the condition of existence of the physical ; it must uncondi tionally be furnished by the state. Hence the regulation of the relations of labour must not be left to the natural working of supply
and demand (as according to Adam Smith), and the profits of labour must not be left to the mechanism of society's war of interests, but the rational law of the state must enter here. From the point of view of this thought, with a careful consideration of the conditions given by experience,8 Fichte projected his ideal of the socialistic state as "the complete industrial state" (geschlossenen Handelsstaates) . which itself takes in hand all production and manufacturing, and all trade with foreign countries, in order to assign to each citizen his work and also the full revenue for his work. The powerful idealism of the philosopher did not shrink from a deep system of compulsion, if he could hope to assure to every individual thereby a sphere for the free fulfilment of duty.
3. The problem of conceiving the universe as a system of reason was solved in the main in the Science of Knowledge by the method of deducing the external world of the senses as a product, appearing in the empirical ego, of the " consciousness in general " ; in this sense Fichte's doctrine, like Kant's, was later characterised as-" sub jective idealism. " Fichte's meaning in this, however, was through out that " Nature," which it was his intention to have posited as an organic whole,8 should possess the full significance of an objective product of reason, in contrast with the ideas of individuals ; to set this forth he lacked the penetrating knowledge of his subject which he possessed in the case of the relations of human life. Thus it was a supplementing of this work, that was welcome to Fichte
» Naturrecht, § 18 ; W. , III. 210 fl. ; Grschl. Handelsst. , I. 1 ; W„ III. 400 ff.
1 Cf. G. Schmoller, Studie iiber J. G. Fichte in Hildebrand's Jahrb. /. Nat. u. Stat. , 1866; also W. Windelband, Fichte't Idee det deutschen StaaUt (Frei
burg, 1890). * « Fichte, W. . IV. 116.
•
also.
Chap. 2, § 42. ] System of Reason : Schelling. 597
when Schelling undertook to solve the other part of the problem and took up in earnest the thought of constructing or deducing Nature as the objective system of reason. According to the Science of Knowledge and Kant's Philosophy of Nature this was possible only if Nature could be successfully comprehended as a connected whole
j}f_fprces, having their ultimate end in a service toward the realisa tion of the reason's command. The starting-point for this construc tion was necessarily Kant's dynamic theory, which derived the existence of matter from the relation of the forces of attraction and repulsion (cf. § 38, 7), and its goal was given by that manifestation of Nature in which alone the practical reason evinces itself — the human organism. Between the two the whole wealth of Nature's forms and functions must be spread out as a life in unity, whose rational meaning was to be sought in the organic growth of the final goal out of the material beginnings. Nature is the ego, or self, in process of becoming — this is the theme of Schelling's Philosophy of Nature. This task, which had its basis in philosophical premises, seemed at the same time set by the condition of natural science, which had once again reached the point where scattered detail-work craved a living conception of Nature as a whole. And this craving asserted itself the more vigorously, as the progress of empirical science gave little satisfaction to the highly pitched expectations which had been set upon the principle of the mechanical explanation of Nature after the seventeenth century. The derivation of the organic from the inorganic remained, as Kant stated, problematical, to say the least; a genetic development of organisms on this basis was a vexed question ; for the theory of medieine, which was then passing through a great movement, no key had as yet been found by which it could be fitted into the mechanical conception of the world ; now came, also, the discoveries of electric and magnetic phenomena, for which at that time it could not be anticipated that it would be possible to subsume their peculiar mysterious qualities under the point of view of the Galilean mechanics. In contrast with this, Spinoza had made his powerful impression upon the minds of men just because he thought all Nature, man not excluded, as a con nected unity, in which the divine Being manifests itself in all its fulness, and for the development of German thought it became of decisive importance that Goethe made this conception his own. The poet, indeed, as we find it best expressed in his splendid apho risms Die Natur, reinterpreted this view in his own way ; in the stead of the " mathematical consequence " and its mechanical neces sity he set the concrete idea of a tiring unity of Nature, in which the
Weltanschauung of the Renaissance was revived, though without a
598 Germany: Development of Idealism. [Part VI.
formulation in abstract thought. This poetic Spinozism ' became an essential link in the development of the idealistic systems.
All these motives come into play in Schelling's Philosophy of Nature : as a result itsjsentral conception, is life, and it makes the attempt to consider Nature from the point of view of the organism, and to understand the connection of its forces from the ultimate end of the production of organic life. Nature is not to be described and measured, but the meaning and significance which belong to its particular phenomena in the purposeful system of the whole are to be understood. The " categories of Nature " are the forms or shapes in which the reason sets itself as objective to itself; they form a system of development in which every particular phenomenon finds its logically determined place. In carrying out this idea Schelling
was of course dependent upon the condition of the natural science of his time. Of the connection of forces, of their transformation into each other, which was the principal point of interest for his purpose, ideas at that time were still very imperfect, and the philosopher did not hesitate to fill out the gaps of knowledge by hypotheses, which he took from the a priori construction of the teleological system. In many cases these theories proved valuable heuristic principles (cf. above, p. 666), in others they proved false
paths by which investigation could attain no useful results.
The element in the Philosophy of Nature, which is of historical significance, is its opposition to the dominance of the Democritic- Galilean principle of the purely mechanical explanation of Nature.
determination is here again regarded as only external form and appearance, and the causal mechanical connection as only the mode of representation which conforms to the understanding. The meaning of the structures of Nature is the significance which they have in the system of the development of the whole. If, there fore, Schelling turned his look toward the relationship of forms in the organic world, if he used the beginnings of comj>arative mor phology, in which Goethe played so important a role, in order to ex hibit the unity of the plan which Nature follows in the succession of animate beings, yet this connected system was not for him, or for his disciples such as Oken, properly a causal genesis in time, but the expression of a gradually succeeding fulfilment of the end. In the different orders of animate beings we see in separate forms, accord ing to Oken, what Nature intends with the organism, and what she first reaches completely in man. This teleological interpretation
1 It took Herder prisoner also, as is proved by his conversations on Spinoza's system under the title Gott (1787).
Quantitative
Chap. 2, § 42. ] System of Reanon : iSchelling, Goethe. 599
does not exclude a causal relation in time, but, with Schelling and Oken at least, it does not include it. It is not their point to ask whether one species has arisen from another; they only wish to show that one is the preliminary stage for that which the other accomplishes. 1
From this we can understand why the mechanical explanation of Nature, which has again attained the victory in the nineteenth cen tury, is wont to see in the period of the Philosophy of Nature, only a fit of teleologies! excess, now happily overcome, which checked the quiet work of investigation. But the chronicles of the contro versy, which since the time of Democritus and Plato has tilled the history of the mode of conceiving Nature, are not yet closed, even to-day. The reduction of the qualitative to the quantitative, which
presses forward victoriously under the flag of mathematics, has repeatedly encountered the need which seeks behind motions in space a reality of rational meaning. This felt need of a living con tent of Nature Schelling's theory aimed to meet, and for this reason the great poet, who endeavoured to demonstrate as the true reality in the charming play of colours not a vibration of atoms, but a some thing that is originally qualitative, felt drawn toward it. This is the philosophical meaning of Goethe's " Theory of Colours. "
With Schelling the system of Nature is ruled by the thought that in it the objective reason struggles upward from its material modes of manifestation, through the multitude of forms and transforma tions of forces, up to the organism in which it comes to conscious ness. * Sensitive beings form the termination of the life of Nature ; with sensation the system of the Science of Knowledge begins. The devious way which Nature pursues to this goal is frequently altered in details in the various remodellings which Schelling gave to his Philosophy of Nature, but in its main outlines it remained the same. In particular, it was the conception of duality, of the opposition of forces which negate each other in a higher unity, that formed the fundamental schema of his " construction of Nature," — a conception due to the Science of Knowledge, — and from this point of view the polarity in electric and magnetic phenomena which
1 The " interpretation " of phenomena wu, to be sure, a dangerous principle from a scientific point of view ; it opened the gates of the Philosophy of Nature to poetic fancy and brilliant flashes. These guests forced their way in even with Schelling, but still more with his disciple*, such as Xoralit, Ottffetu, and Schubert. In the case of Novalis especially we have a magical, dreamy sym bolism of Nature in a play which is admirable ia poetry but questionable in philosophy.
. • The poetry of this fundamental thought was expressed in most character istic form by Schelling himself In the beautiful verses which are printed in &*. '• Ltben in Brie/en, I. 282 ft
600 Germany : Development of Idealism. [Part VI.
busied Schelling's contemporaries as a newly found enigma was particularly significant for him.
4. When Schelling wished to place beside his Philosophy of Nature an elaboration of his own of the Science of Knowledge, under the name of " Transcendental Idealism," an important change had taken place in the common thought of the Jena idealists, to which he now gave the first systematic expression. The impetus to this came from Schiller, and from the development which he had given to the thoughts of the Critique of Judgment. It had become plainer step by step that the system of reason must become perfected for idealism in the aesthetic function, and in place of the ethical idealism which the Science of Knowledge taught, and the physical idealism which the Philosophy of Nature presented, appeared now aesthetic idealism.
The re-shaping, so rich in results, which Kant's thoughts experi enced through Schiller, by no means concerned merely the aesthetic questions which lay nearest the poet, but likewise the ethical ques tions and those pertaining to the history of philosophy, and there with the whole system of reason. For Schiller's thoughts, even before his acquaintance with Kant, — as is shown among other things by his poem, Die Kiinstler, — had been turned to the prob lem of the significance of art and the beautiful in the whole con nected system of man's rational life and its historical development, and by solving this problem with Kantian conceptions he gave to the idealism of the Science of Knowledge a decisive turn.
This began with the new Forms which Schiller found for Kant's conception of beauty. The synthesis of the theoretical and the practical in the aesthetic reason (cf. § 40, 2) could perhaps find no more fortunate expression than in Schiller's definition of beauty as
freedom in phenomenal appearance. 1 It asserts that aesthetic con templation apprehends its object without subjecting it to the rules of the cognising understanding ; it is not subsumed under concep tions, and we do not ask for the conditions which it has in other phenomena. It is perceived as if it were free. Schopenhauer after wards expressed this in the form that the enjoyment of the beautiful is the contemplation of the object in independence of the principle of sufficient reason. Schiller later laid still more weight upon the point that the aesthetic process is as independent of the practical reason as of the theoretical. The beautiful (in distinction from the agreeable and the good) is as little an object of the sensuous as it
1 CI. chiefly the letters to Korner of February, 1793, also the sketch on "The Beautiful in Art," printed with the letter of the 20th of June of that same year, — all fragments of the dialogue Kallias which was not completed.
Chap. 2, §42. ] System of Reason : Schiller. 601
is of the moral impulse ; it lacks that quality of want or need which belongs to the life of empirical impulse, just as it lacks the earnest ness of the practical reason. In the aesthetic life the play impulse unfolds itself ; ' every stirring of the will is silent in disinterested
In this, too, Schiller was followed by Schopenhauer, when the latter found the happiness of the {esthetic condition in the
overcoming of the unhappy will to live, in the activity of the pure, ' willess subject of knowledge. *
From this Schiller concluded in the first place that wherever we have to do with educating man, subject to his sensuous nature, to a condition where he shall will morally, the aesthetic life offers the most effective means to this end. Kant had designated the " rever sal of motives " as the ethical task of man (cf. above, § 39, 6) ; for the transition from the sensuous to the ethical determination of the will he offered man, as an aid, religion ; Schiller offered art. ' Faith and taste cause man to act legally, at least, when he is not yet ripe for morality. In intercourse with the beautiful the feelings become refined, so that natural rudeness vanishes, and man awakes to his higher vocation. Art is the fostering soil for science and morality. Such was the teaching of Schiller in the Artists ; his Letters on the ^Esthetic Education of the Human Race go deeper. The aesthetic condition, or state (Stoat), because it is the completely disinterested state, destroys the sensuous will, also, and thus makes room for the possibility of the moral will ; it is the necessary point of transition from the physical state, ruled by needs, into the moral state. In the physical state man endures the power of Nature ; in the aesthetic state he frees himself from it ; and in the moral state
he controls it.
But already in the Artists the beautiful had been assigned a
second higher task of ultimately giving also the culmination and completion to moral and intellectual cultivation, and in building this thought into the critical system the poet passes over from supple menting to transforming the Kantian doctrine. The two sides of human nature are not reconciled if the moral impulse is obliged to overcome the sensuous impulse. In the physical and in the " moral " state oue side of human nature is always suppressed in favour of the
' The attempt which Schiller make* in his Letters concerning Afthrstie Education (11 f. ) to lay a basis (or this in transcendental psychology remind us strongly of the Keinhold-Fichte time when "Jena whirred with the buxi of Form and Matter. "
• World as Will, etc. , I. }{ 36-38. In this connection Schopenhauer no doubt claims the same value for scientific knowledge. Cf. ( 43, 4.
* Cf. the conclusion of the essay, Utber den moralitchrn Nutsen asthttitchtr SUten.
contemplation.
602 Germany : Development of Idealism. [Pakt VL
other. We have a complete manhood only where neither of the two impulses prevails over the other. Man is truly man, only where he plays, where the war within him is silent, where his sensuous nature is exalted to so noble a sentiment or sensibility that it is no longer needful for him to will loftily. The Kantian rigorism holds where- ever sensuous inclination stands over against duty : but there is the higher ideal of the " schone Seele " — the beautiful soul — which does not know this internal conflict because its nature is so ennobled that
lit fulfils the moral law from its own inclination. And just this ennobling is gained by man, only through aesthetic education. Through it alone is the sensuous-supersensuous discord in human nature abolished ; in it alone does complete, full manhood come to realisation. " " " "
5. In the ideal of the schone Seele the virtuosoship of Shaftesbury overcomes the Kantian dualism. The completion of man is the aesthetic reconciliation of the two natures which dwell within him ; culture is to make the life of the individual a work of art, by ennobling what is given through the senses to full accord with the ethical vocation. In this direction Schiller gave expres sion to the ideal view of life characteristic of his time in antithesis to the rigorism of Kant, and the aesthetic Humanism which he thus wrested from abstract thought found besides his, a wealth of other characteristic manifestations. In them all, however, Goethe appeared as the mighty personality, who presented in living form this ideal height of humanity in the aesthetic perfection of his conduct of life, as well as in the great works of his poetic activity.
In this conception of the genius Schiller was first joined by Wil liam von Humboldt} He sought to understand the nature of great poems from this point of view ; he found the ideal of man's life in the harmony of the sensuous and the moral nature, and in his treatise which laid the foundations for the science of language 2 he applied this principle by teaching that the nature of language is to be under stood from the organic interaction of the two elements.
An attitude of sharper opposition to the Kantian rigorism had already been taken, in the Shaftesbury spirit, by Jacobi in his romance patterned after Goethe's personality, " AUwill's Briefsamm- lung. " The moral genius also is " exemplary " ; he does not subject himself to traditional rules and maxims, he lives himself out and thereby " gives himself the laws of his morality. This "ethical Nature is the highest that the circuit of humanity affords.
i Born 1787, died 1836. Works, 7 vols. (Berlin, 1841 ff. ). Aside from the correspondence, especially that with Schiller, cf. principally the jf&theti- »chen Versuehe (Brunswick, 1799). Also Rud. Haym, W. v. H. (Berlin, 1866).
* Urbrr die Katei- Spraehe (Berlin, 18361.
Chap. 2, $ 42. ] 8ystem of Reason : Romanticists. 603
Among the Romantic School this ethical "geniality" in theory and practice came to its full pride of luxuriant efflorescence. Here it developed as an cesthetic aristocracy of culture in opposition to the democratic utility of the Enlightenment morals. The familiar word of Schiller's as to the nobility in the moral world was interpreted to mean, that the Philistine, with his work ruled by general prin ciples, has to perform his definite action determined by ends, while the man of genius, free from all external determination
and rules, merely lives out his own important individuality as a something valuable in itself, — lives it out in the disinterested play of his stirring inner life, and in the forms shaped out by his own ever-plastic imagination. In his morals of genius, the sensibility (Sinnlichkeit) in the narrowest significance of the word is to come to its full, unstunted right, and by aesthetic enhancement is to become equal in rank to the finest stirrings of the inner nature, — a sublime thought, which did not prevent its carrying out in Schlegel's Lu- cinde from running out into sensual though polished vulgarity.
SchUiermacher's ethics brought back the Romantic morals to the purity of Schiller's intention. 1 It is the complete expression of the life-ideal of that great time. All ethical action seems to it to be directed toward the unity of Reason and Nature. By this is deter mined in general the moral law, which can be none other than the natural law of the reason's life ; by this is also determined in detail the task of every individual, who is to bring this unity to expression in a special way, proper only for him. In the systematic carrying- out of this thought, Schleierraacher distinguishes (according to the organic and the intellectual factors of intelligence, cf. § 41, 6) the
organising and the symbolising activities, according as the unity of Nature and Reason is procured by striving, or is presupposed, and thus result in all four fundamental ethical relations, to whioh correspond as goods, the state, society, the school, and the Church. From these the individual has to develop in self-activity to a harmonious life of his own.
Finally, Uerbart, also, reduced ethical theory to the aesthetic reason in a completely independent manner; for him, morals is a branch of general aesthetics. Besides the theoretical reason, which contains the principles for knowledge of Being, he recognises as original only the judging or estimation of the existent in accordance with out lie tic Ideas. This estimation has to do with the will and the needs of the empirical self as little as has the knowing activity ; "Judgments of taste " hold necessarily and universally with direct self-evidence.
by purposes
' Cf. alao Scbleienuacber'* Vtrtrautr Brirft *l>rr die Lueinde (1800).
604 Germany : Development of Idealism. [Pabt VX
and always refer to the relations in the existent: these have an original pleasure or displeasure inherent in them. The application of these principles to the narrower field of the aesthetic is only indicated by Herbart : ethics, on the contrary, is regarded by him as the science of the judgments of taste pronounced upon the rela tions of human will. It has not to explain anything — that is the business of psychology ; it has only to settle the norms by which the judgment mentioned above is passed. As such norms, Herbart finds the five ethical Ideas, — Freedom, Affection, Benevolence, Bight, and Equity, — and according to these he seeks to arrange the sys tems of the moral life, while for his genetic investigation he always employs the principles of the associational psychology, and thus in the statics and mechanics of the state undertakes to set forth the mechanism of the movements of the will, by which the social life of man is maintained.
6. From Schiller's aesthetic morals resulted, also, a philosophy of history, which made the points of view of Eousseau and Kant appear in a new combination. The poet unfolded this in an entirely char acteristic manner in his essays on Naive and Sentimental Poetry, by gaining the fundamental aesthetic conceptions from bringiug forward historical antitheses, and constructing a general plan of their movement. The different ages and the different kinds of poetry are characterised, in his view, by the different relations sustained by the spirit to the realm of Nature and the realm of Freedom. As the " Arcadian " state, we have that where man does what is in accordance with the moral order instinctively, without command ment, because the antithesis of his two natures has not yet unfolded in consciousness : as the Elysian goal, we have that full consumma tion in which his nature has become so ennobled that it has again taken up the moral law into its will. Between the two lies the struggle of the two natures, — the actual life of history.
Poetry, however, whose proper task it is to portray man, is every where determined by these fundamental relations. If it makes the sensuous, natural condition of man appear as still in harmonious unity with his spiritual nature, then it is naive; on the contrary,
sets forth the contradiction between the two, in any way makes the inconsistency between the reality and the ideal in man appear, then sentimental, and may be either satirical or elegiac or, also, in the form of the idyl.
The poet who himself Nature presents Nature naively; he who possesses her not has the senti mental interest in her of calling back, as Idea in poetry, the Nature that has vanished from life. The harmony of Nature and Reason is given in the former, set as task in the latter — there as reality,
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is
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it is
it
it
Chap. 2, § 42. ] System of Reason: Schiller, Schlegel. 605
here as ideal. This distinction between the poetic modes of feeling is, according to Schiller, characteristic also for the contrast between the ancient and the modern. The Greek feels naturally, the modern man is sensible of Nature as a lost Paradise, as the sick man is sensible of convalescence. Hence the ancient and naive poet gives Nature as she without his own feelings the modern and senti mental only in relation to his own reflection the former vanishes behind his object, as the Creator behind his works the latter shows in the shaping of his material the power of his own personality striving toward the ideal. There realism dominant here ideal ism and the last summit of art would be the union in which the naive poet should set forth the sentimental material. So Schiller sketched the form of his great friend, the modern Greek.
These principles were eagerly seized upon by the Romanticists. Virtuosos of the reviewer's art, such as were the Schlegels, rejoiced in this philosophical schema for criticism and characterisation, and introduced into their comprehensive treatment of the history of literature. In this Frederick Schlegel gave Schiller's thoughts the specifically romantic flavour, for which he knew how to use Fichtean motifs with ready superficiality. While he designated the antithe sis propounded by Schiller with the new names classic and romantic, he remodelled materially, also, by his doctrine of irony. The classic poet loses himself in his material the romantic poet hovers as a sovereign personality above he annuls matter by the form. In going with his free fancy beyond the material which he posits, he unfolds, in connection with merely the play of his genius, which he limits in none of its creation. Hence the romantic poet has tendency to the infinite, toward the never complete he him self always more than any of his objects, and just in this the irony evinces itself. For the infinite doing of the ethical will, of which Fichte taught, the Romanticist substitutes the endless play of the fancy, which creates without purpose, and again destroys.
The elements in Schiller's doctrine that concern the philosophy nf history found their full development in Fichte, from whom they borrowed much. As the result of their influence he allowed the antitheses of his Wissenschaftslehre to become reconciled in the aesthetic reason. Already in his Jena lectures on the Nature of the Scholar, and in the treatment which the professional duties of the teacher and the artist found in the "System of Ethics" we hear these motifs in his Erlangen lectures they " have become the ruling theme. When he proceeded to draw the Characteristics
the Present Age," he did in the pithy HneB of a construction of universal history. As the first ("Arcadian state of mankind
")
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;
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;
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;
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;
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606 Germany : Development of Idealism. [Part VL
appears that of rationed instinct or instinctive reason (" Vernunflin- stinct"), as the representatives of which a normal people is assumed. In this age the universal consciousness is dominant over and in individuals with immediate, uncontested certainty of natural neces sity; but it is the vocation of the free individual ego to tear himself loose from this government of custom and tradition, and follow his own impulse and judgment. With this, however, begins the age of sinfulness. This sinfulness becomes complete in the intel lectual and moral crumbling of social life, in the anarchy of opin ions, in the atomism of private interests. With clear strokes this " complete sinfulness " is characterised as the theory and practice of the Enlightenment. The community of mankind has here sunk to the "state based upon needs" ("Nothstaat"), which is limited to making it externally possible for men to exist together, — and ought to be so limited, since it has nothing to do with any of man's higher interests, — morality, science, art, and religion, — and must leave them to the sphere of the individual's freedom. But for this reason the individual has no living interest in this "actual" state; his home is the world, and perhaps also at any moment the state which stands at the summit of civilisation. 1 This civilisation, how ever, consists in the subordination of individuals to the known law of reason. Out of the sinful, arbitrary free-will of individuals must rise the autonomy of the reason, the self-knowledge and self-legisla tion of the universally valid, which is now consciously dominant in the individual. With this the age of the ride of reason will begin, but it will not be complete until all the powers of the rationally matured individual are placed at the service of the whole in the
" true state," and so the commandment of the common conscious ness is again fulfilled without resistance. This ("Elysian") final state is that of rational art or artistic reason ("Vernunflkunst"). It is the ideal of the " schone Seele " carried over to politics and history. To bring about this age, and in it to lead the community, the " kingdom," by reason, is the task of the " teacher," the scholar, and the artist. ' "
The " beginning of the rule of reason
saw just where sinfulness arid need had risen to the highest point. In his "Addresses to the German Nation" he praised his people
1 The classical passage for the cosmopolitanism of the culture of the eighteenth century is found in Fichte, W. , VII. 212.
4 In the religious turn which Fichte's thought takes at the close, this picture of the ideal civilised state of the future takes on more and more theocratic features : the scholar and artist have now become the priest and seer- Cf. W. , IV. 463 ff. , and Nachgel. Werke, III. 417 ff.
Fichte's vigorous idealism
Chat. 2, $ 42. ] System of Reason : Fichte, SehelUny. t>07
as the only one that still preserves its originality and is destined to create the true civilised state. He cries to his people to bethink itself of this its vocation, on which the fate of Europe is hanging, to raise itself from within by a completely new education to the kingdom of reason, and to give back freedom to the world.
7. The point of view of the aesthetic reason attained full mastery in the whole system of the idealistic philosophy through Scftelling. In his working out of the " Transcendental Idealism " he developed the Fichtean antithesis of the theoretical and practical Wissen-
by the relation between the conscious and unconscious activity of the self (cf. above, No. 2). If the conscious is de termined by the unconscious, the self is theoretical ; in the reverse case it is practical. But the theoretical self, which looks on at the
of the unconscious reason, manifested in feeling, perceiving, and thinking, never comes to an end with this, and the practical self, also, which re-shapes and transforms the unconscious reality of the cosmos in the free work of individual morality, of political community, and of historical progress, has the goal of its activity in the infinite. In neither series does the whole essential nature of the reason ever come to its full realisation. This is possible only through the unconscious-conscious activity of the artistic genius, in which the above antitheses are abolished. In the un designed appropriateness of the creative activity, whose product is freedom in phenomenal appearance, the highest synthesis of all activities of reason must be sought. Kant had defined genius as the intelligence that works like Nature; Schiller had characterised the aesthetic condition of play as the truly human; Schelling declared the aesthetic reason to be the capstone of the idealistic system. The work of art is that phenomenon in which the reason attains purest and fullest development ; art is the true organon of philosophy. It is in art that the " spectator thought " has to learn what reason is. Science and philosophy are one-sided and never completed series of the development of the subjective reason ; only art is complete in all its works as entirely realised reason.
After he had written the Transcendental Idealism Schelling delivered in Jena his lectures on the Philosophy of Art, which carried out this fundamental thought with an intelligent apprecia tion for artistic character and mode of production, that showed admirable fineness and acuteness especially in its treatment of
poetry. These lectures, not printed at that time, determined the whole subsequent development of aesthetics by their influence upon the Jena circle. As published later they present that form which Schelling gave them some years after, when delivering them in
schaftslehre
productiveness
608 Germany: Development of Idealism. [Pabt VL
Wiirzburg. In this later form ' the change in general point of view, to which the philosopher had meanwhile advanced, asserts itself still more.
8. The aesthetic motif was active also, at least formally, in that a common systematic basis was sought for the Philosophy of Mature and the Transcendental Philosophy. The former treated the objec tive, the latter the subjective reason ; the two, however, must be indentical in their ultimate essence; whence this phase of idealism is called the System of Identity (Identitatsystem). According to this, a common principle is required for Nature and the self. In the treatise which Schelling entitled "Exposition of my System of Philosophy," this common principle is called the "Absolute Reason" or the "Indifference of Nature and Spirit, of object and subject " ; for the highest principle can be determined neither as real nor as ideal; in it all antitheses must be obliterated. The " Absolute " is here as undetermined in its content,5 with Schelling, as in the old " negative theology," or as in Spinoza's " substance. " With the latter conception it has in common the property, that its phenomenal manifestation diverges into two series, the real and the ideal, Nature and Spirit or Mind. This kinship with Spinoza as regards his thought, Schelling strengthened by formal relationship, imitating in his Exposition the schematism of the Ethics. Nevertheless this idealistic Spinozism is different throughout from the original in its conception of the world. Both desire to set forth the eternal transmutation of the Absolute into the universe; but in this Spinoza regards the two attributes of materiality and con sciousness as completely separate, and each finite phenomenon as belonging solely to one of the two spheres. Schelling, however, requires that "Reality" and "Ideality" must be contained in every
phenomenon, and construes particular phenomena according to the degree in which the two elements are combined. The dialectical principle of absolute idealism is the quantitative difference between the real and the ideal factors ; the Absolute itself is just for this reason complete indifference. ''' The real series is that in which the objective factor predominates (" iiberwiegt") ; it leads from matter through light, electricity, and chemism to the organism — the relatively spiritual manifestation of Nature. In the ideal series the subjective factor predominates. In it the development proceeds from morality
1 In the coll. works, V. 353 ff. , first printed 1859.
1 Schelling'* disciple, Oken, expressed this very characteristically when he placed the Absolute, already called God by him, = ±0.
• Schelling illustrates this schematically by the example of the magnet, in the different parts of which north and south magnetism are present with vary ing intensities. . . .
Ch a*. 2, § 42. ] System of Reason : Schilling. 609
and science to the work of art, the relatively most natural appear ance in the realm of Spirit. And the total manifestation of the Absolute, the universe, therefore, at once the most perfect organ ism and the most perfect work of art. 1
9. In this system Schelling would comprehend the entire issue of the investigations which had previously diverged in various direc tions. The different stages of the self-differentiation of the Absolute he termed at first, " potencies," but soon introduced another name, and at the same time another conception of the matter. This was connected with the religions turn which the thinking of the Roman ticists took at about the close of the last and the beginning of the present century. The incitement to this came from Schleiermacher. He proved to the " Cultured Despisers of Religion," that the system of reason can become complete only in religion. In this, too, was victory for the (esthetic reason. For what Schleiermacher then preached as religion (cf. 41, was not theoretical or practical behaviour of man, but an aesthetic relation to the World-ground, the
feeling of absolute dependence. Therefore, religion, too, was in his view limited to pious feeling, to the complete permeation of the individual by this inward relation to the universal, and put aside all theoretical form and practical organisation. For the same reason religion was held to be an individual matter, and positive religion was traced back to the "religious genius" of its founder. In view of this kinship we can understand the influence which Schleier- macher's " Reden " exercised upon Romanticism to this due the inclination of the latter to expect from religion the unitary solution of all problems of mankind, to desire to bring in the separated spheres of the activity of civilisation into inner and intimate union again, and, finally, to seek the eternal welfare of all in that rule of religion over all spheres of life, which obtained in the Middle Ages. As Schiller created an idealised Greece, so the later Roman ticists created an idealised Middle Ages.
Schelling followed this line of thought with great acuteness and fineness of feeling. Like Spinoza, he now named the Absolute " Ood " or the " Infinite," and likewise as Spinoza had inserted the attri butes and the "infinite modes" (cf. 409 f. ) between "substance "and the particular finite realities, so the " potencies " are now regarded as the eUrnal forms of the phenomenal manifestation of God, while the empirical particular phenomena are the finite copies of these. But when in this sense they were also termed by Schelling Ideas (in his Bruno and in his Method of Academical Study)
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another influence still comes to light in this. Schleiermacher and Hegel, the latter of whom had exerted a personal influence upon Schelling since 1801, both pointed to Plato; but the philosophical knowledge of that time * still saw Plato's doctriue through the spec tacles of Neo-Platonism, which conceived of the Ideas as God's vision or intuition of himself (Selbstanschauung Gottes). And so Schelling's doctrine turned back into a Neo-Platonic Idealism, according to which the "Ideas" formed the intermediate link through which the Absolute became transformed into the world.
This religious idealism of Schelling's doctrine of Ideas has a number of parallel and succeeding phenomena. The most interest ing of these personally is Fichte's later doctrine, in which he paid to the victory of Spinozism the tribute of making the infinite impulse of the I proceed forth from an "absolute Being" (Sein) and be di rected toward the same. For finite things, he held fast to his deduc tion of them as products of consciousness ; but the infinite activity of this consciousness he now deduced from the end of " imitating " an absolute Being, the deity, and hence the vocation and destiny of man appeared to him no longer the restless activity of categorical imperative, but the "blessed life" of sinking into a contemplation of the divine original, — a mystical dying note of the mighty thinker's life, which makes the victory of the aesthetic reason appear in its full magnitude.
The religious motif was followed still, farther by Schelling's dis ciple Krause. He wished to combine the pantheistic Weltanschauung
of idealism, which Schelling even at that time still defended Spinozistic fashion), with the conception of divine personality. He, too, regards the world as the development of the divine " essence," which is distinctly stamped out in the Ideas ; but these ideas are the intuition which the supreme personality has of himself. Essence
( Wesen) — this is Krause 's term for God — is not indifferent Rea son, but the personal, living ground of the world. In his"farther carrying out of the system, which was characterised as Panen- theism," Krause has scarcely any other originality than the very objectionable one of presenting the thoughts common to the whole idealistic development in an unintelligible terminology, which he himself invented, but declared to be pure German. He carries out, especially, his conception of the entire life of reason from the point of view of the " Gliedbau" (in German, organism). He not only, like Schelling, regards the universe as a " Wesengliedbau "
1 On Herbart's independent position, the importance of which becomes clear just in antithesis to that of Schelling and Hegel, see above, p. 684, note 1. -
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Chap. 2, § 42. ] System of Reason : Krau. se, Hegel. 611
(divine organism), but also regards the structures of society as continuations of the organic vital movement beyond the individual man ; every union {Bund) is such a " Oliedbau," and inserts itself again into a higher organism as a member (Glied), and the course of history is the process of the production of more and more perfect and comprehensive unions.
For the Romantic aesthetics, finally, Schilling's new doctrine gave rise to the result that the Neo-Flatonic conception of beauty, as phenomenal manifestation of the Idea in the sensuous, became again recognised as authoritative. The relation of inadequacy between the finite appearance and the infinite Idea agreed with Schlegel's principle of irony, and these thoughts Solger, especially, made the basis of his theory of art.
10. The consummation of this whole rich and varied development is formed by Hegel's logical idealism. He signifies in the main a return from Schelling to Fichte, a giving up of the thought that the living wealth of the world can be derived or deduced from the " Nothing" ' of absolute indifference, and the attempt to raise this empty substance again to spirit* — to the self-determined subject. Such knowledge, however, cannot have the form of intuition or immediate perception (Anschauung), which Fichte and Schelling had claimed for the Ego or the Absolute, but only that of the con ception or notion {Begriff). If all that is real or actual is the mani festation of spirit or mind, then metaphysics coincides with the logic* which has to develop the creative self-movement of spirit as a dialectical necessity. The conceptions into which mind or spirit takes apart and analyses its own content are the categories of reality, the forms of the cosmic life ; and the task of philosophy is not to describe this realm of forms as a given manifold, but to comprehend them as the moments of a single unitary development. The dialec tical method, therefore, serves, with Hegel, to determine the essential nature of particular phenomena by the significance which they have as members or links in the self-unfolding of spirit. Instead of Spirit (Oeist) Hegel also uses Idea or God. It is the highest task that has ever been set philosophy, to comprehend the world as a development of those principles or determinations which form the content of the divine mind.
> Hegel, PMiu»nen. Voir. , \V. , II. 14.
- [firuit. a* in J 20, has the connotation of both "mind" and "spirit. " rhe former *eems more appropriate where logical relation* are under considera
tion, though the latter la usually retained for the sake of uniformity. 1
1 Thia metaphysical logic Is of course not formal logic, but in its determining principle la properly Kant's transcendental logic. The only difference is that the "phenomenon"' is for Kant a human mode of representation, for Hegel an
objective externalising of the Absolute Spirit
612 Q-ermany : Development of Idealism. [Pabt VL
In this, Hegel sustains not only to the German philosophy, but to the whole earlier intellectual movement, a relation similar to that of Proclus to Greek thought : ' in the "schema of trinities " of Posi tion, Negation, and Sublation or Reconciliation, all conceptions with which the human mind has ever thought reality or its particular groups, are woven together into a unified system. Each retains its assigned place, in which its necessity, its relative justification, is said to become manifest : but each proves by this same treatment to be only a moment or factor which receives its true value only when it has been put in connection with the rest and introduced into the whole. It is to be shown that the antitheses and contradictions of conceptions belong to the nature of mind itself, and thus also to the essential nature of the reality which unfolds from and that their truth consists just in the systematic connection in which the cate gories follow from one another. "The phenomenon the arising and passing away, which itself does not arise and pass away, but
in-itself, and constitutes the reality and movement of the life of truth. "
Hegel's philosophy is, therefore, essentially historical, systematic elaboration of the entire material of history. He possessed both the necessary erudition and also the combining power and fineness of feeling for the discovery of those logical relations which were of importance for him. The interest in his philosophy lies less in the individual conceptions, which he took from the intellectual labours of two thousand years, than in the systematic combination which he brought about between them and just by this means he knew how to portray in masterly manner the meaning and significance of indi vidual details, and to throw surprising light upon long-standing structures of thought. He, indeed, displayed in connection with his data the arbitrariness (Willkiir) of priori] constructive thought, which presents the actual reality, not as offers itself empirically, but as ought to be in the dialectical movement, and this violation of the actual matter of fact might be objectionable where the attempt was made to bring empirical material into philosophical system, as the philosophy of Nature, the history of philosophy, and history general. All the more brilliant did the power of the thinking sat urated by the historical spirit prove in those fields where the express province of philosophical treatment, merely to reflect on
Cf. above, 20,
This Heracliteanism, which was inherent already in Fichte's doctrine action (cf. above, p. 694 f. ), found its most vigorous opponent in Herbart's Eleaticism (cf. 41, f. ). This old antithesis constitutes the essential element in the relation of the two branches of German idealism (cf. above, p. 584, note)-
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undoubted data, but not -to give any account of empirical reality. So Hegel gave as aesthetics a historical structure built up of the aesthetic ideals of mankind. Following Schiller's method, and attach ing himself also materially to Schiller's results, he displayed all the fundamental systematic conceptions of this science in the well- arranged series of the symbolic, the classic, and the romantic, and likewise divided the system of the arts into architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry. So, too, from the fundamental concep tion of religion as being the relation of the finite to the absolute Spirit in the form of imaginative representation (Vorstellung) his
philosophy of religion develops the stages of its positive realisation in the natural religion of magic, fire worship, and animal symbolism, in the religion of spiritual individuality of the sublime, the beautiful, and the intellectual, and finally in the absolute religion which repre sents God as what he the triune Spirit Here, with deep-going knowledge of his material, Hegel has everywhere drawn the main lines in which the empirical treatment of these same subjects later moved, and set up the philosophical categories for the general con sideration of historical facts as whole.
The same true, also, of his treatment of universal history. Hegel understood by Objective Spirit the active and influential living body of individuals, which not created by these, but rather forms
the source from which they proceed as regards their spiritual life. The abstract form of this body called Right;' the Objective Spirit " in itself. " The subjection of the subjective disposition of the individual to the commands of the common consciousness the philosopher calls "morality," while he retains the name of "Sittlich- keit " [social morality or the moral order] for the realisation of the common consciousness in the State. In the immanent living activity of the human reason the state the highest beyond this are only- art, religion, and science, which press forward to the Absolute Spirit. The state the realisation of the ethical Idea; the spirit of the people become visible in its Idea the living work of art, in which the inwardness of the human reason comes forth into outer manifestation. But this Idea, from which the system of the forms and functions of political life derives, appears in the actual world only in the individual structures of the states which arise and pass away. Its only true and full realisation universal history, in which the peoples enter successively, to live out their spirit in the work of state formation, and then retire from the stage.
Hence Hegel treau the doctrine of Objective Spirit under the title Philoso phy of Right RtchUrphilotophie).
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614 Germany: Development of Idealism. [Part VL
So every epoch is characterised by the spiritual predominance of a definite people, which imprints the sign of its peculiar character upon all the activities of civilisation. And if it is the task of his tory as a whole to understand this connected order, then politics, too, must not suppose that it can construct and decree a political life from abstract requirements; it must, rather, seek in the quiet development of the national spirit the motives of its political move ment. So in Hegel, the "Philosopher of the Restoration," the historical Weltanschauung turns against the revolutionary doctrinair- ism of the Enlightenment.