" To its
solution
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Windelband - History of Philosophy
Address, Stuttg.
1862), — to Kant and Fiehte of Willi.
Traug.
Krug (1770-1842 ; Organon der Philosophic 1801 ;
§ 41. The Thing-in-Itielf.
The compelling power which Kant's philosophy gained over the minds and hearts of men was due chiefly to the earnestness and greatness of its ethical conception of the world ; ' the progress of thought, however, attached itself primarily to the new form which had been given to the principles of the theory of knowledge in the Critique of the Pure Reason. Kant took the antithesis of phenom ena and uoumena from earlier philosophy ; but by his transcen
dental analytic he widened the realm of phenomena to include the whole compass of human knowledge, and the thing-in-itself survived only as a problematical conception, like a rudimentary organ, which might be indeed characteristic for the historical genesis of this theory of knowledge, but which performed no living function in it.
1. This was first seen by Jacobi, when he confessed that without the presupposition of realism one could not enter the Kantian system, and with the same could not remain in it ; * for the concep tion of the sensibility introduced at the beginning involves the causal relation of being affected by things-in-themselves, —a rela tion which, according to the doctrine of the analytic that categories must not be applied to things-in-themselves, it is forbidden to think. In this contradiction of professing to think things-in-themselves
and yet of not being jwrmitted to think thein, the whole critique of the reason moves ; and at the same time this contradictory assump tion does not at all help to guarantee to our knowledge of phe nomena even the slightest relation to truth. For, according to Kant, the mind presents to itself in thought " neither itself nor
1 This is especially to be recognised from Reinhold's Bnefen Uber die kant. Ph.
Handworterbufh der philos. Wisscnschaftcn, 1827 ff. ), — to Fiehte and Schelling of Fried. Bouterwek (1766-1828; Apodiktik, 1790; uEsthetik, 1806), —and Anally, to Herbart of Fr. Beneke (1708-1864; Psychologische Skitxen, 1826 and 1827 ; Lehrbueh der Psychologie, als Xatuncissenschaft, 1832 ; Metaphysik und Beligionsphilosophie, 1840 ; Die neue Psychologie, 1846).
;
Adamson in Mind,
1876].
» JacoW, W. , II. 304.
574 Germany : Development of Idealism. [Part VI.
other things, but solely and alone that which is neither what the mind is itself, nor what other things are. " * The faculty of cogni tion hovers between a problematical X of the subject and an equally problematical X of the object. The sensibility has nothing behind
and the understanding nothing before it; "in a twofold en chanter's smoke, called space and time, rise the ghostly forms of phenomena or appearances in which nothing appears. " If we assume things, Kant teaches that knowledge has not the least to do with them. The critical reason reason busy about pure noth ing, i. e. only about itself. If, therefore, criticism will not fall into nihilism or absolute scepticism, the transcendental idealist must have the courage to assert the " strongest " idealism he must declare that only phenomena are.
^— In the claim that what Kant calls the object of knowledge in truth " nothing," inheres as presupposition the same naive realism, the destruction of which was the great service of the transcendental analytic and the same realism determines also the episteinology of Faith, which Jacobi opposes to "the transcendental
uncertainty," not without being entirely dependent upon All truth knowl edge of the actual but the actual asserts itself in human con
sciousness not through thought, but through feeling; just Kant's experiment proves that thought alone moves in circle out of which there no access to actuality, in an endless series of the condi tioned in which no unconditioned to be found. The fundamental law of causality may indeed be formulated in exactly this manner, viz. there nothing unconditioned. Knowledge, therefore, or thought that can be demonstrated, in its very nature, as Jacobi says, Spinozism, — doctrine of the mechanical necessity of all that finite: and the interest of science that there be no God, — indeed, God who could be known would be no God. * Even he who in his heart a Christian must be in his head heathen he who will bring into his intellect the light which in his heart quenches it. 4 But this knowledge only mediate knowing the true, immediate knowing feeling; in this we are truly one with the object," and possess as we possess ourselves in the certainty of a faith that has no proof. 7 This feeling, however, as regards its objects, of twofold kind: the reality of the sensuous reveals itself to us in perception, that of the supersensuous in the " reason. "
Allwill, XV. W. , II. 310. To Hamann,
W. , 121.
W. , in. Ill W. , III. 384. W. , II. 175.
367.
Hume's conception of belief and his distinction of impressions and ideas
(here called Vorstellungen) experience in this a noteworthy transformation.
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Thiny-in-Itself
Fries, Reinhold. 575
For this supra-natural sensualism. , therefore, " reason " signifies the immediate feeling of the reality of the supersensuous, of God, free dom, morality, and immortality. In this limitation Kant's dualism of theoretical and practical reason and of the primacy of the latter return in Jacobi,1 to be placed in the service of mystical extrava gance of feeling, which manifests itself also in the character of a style which warm and full of spirit, but rhapsodical and more given to assertion than to proof.
This same fundamental conception, brought somewhat nearer to Kant, appears with Fries. In demanding that the knowledge of the a priori forms to which the critical philosophy aspired must itself arise a posteriori, through inner experience, and therefore that Kant's
"
results must be established or set right by an " anthropological critique, he rested upon the conviction that the immediate, proper cognitions of the reason are given originally in an obscure form through the feeling,' and transformed into intellectual knowledge only by means of reflection. This Leibnizian body ends, however, in the critical tail, since the perceptional and conceptional Forms of this reflection are regarded as only an expression of the phenomenal mode in which the above original truth [as experienced in feeling] appears on the other hand, the body received a Kant-Jacobi head, when the limitation of knowledge to these phenomenal Forms had set over against the immediate relation of moral faith to things- in-themselves, while at the same time — with a decided attachment to the Critique of Judgment — the aesthetic and religious feelings had ascribed to them the significance of presage (Ahndung) that the Being which lies at the basis of phenomena just that to which the practical reason relates.
The untenability of the Kantian conception of the thing-in-itself, so keenly recognised by Jacobi, became palpable to a certain extent when Reinhold in his Elementary Philosophy made the attempt to present the critical doctrine in a systematic unity. He admired Kant and adopted entirely his solutions of the individual problems, but missed in him the formulation of a simple, fundamental princi ple from which all particular insights might be deduced. Through the fulfilment of this (Cartesian) demand,' opposing private opinions would be at last replaced sby the philosophy, — Philosophy without any surname. He himself believed that he had found this principle in the principle which he supposed to be quite free from presuppo sitions, — that in consciousness every idea distinguished by the
W. . III. 8M ff. Krtcs, Neut Krittk, 208 Reinhold, Beitrdge, 91 II.
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576 Germany: Development of Idealism. [Paht Vi.
consciousness of subject and object, and is related to both (Principle
Hence there inheres in every idea something that belongs to the subject and something that belongs to the object. From the object comes the manifold of the material, from the subject the synthetic unity of the Form. From this it follows
that neither the object in itself, nor the subject in itself, is know- able, but only the world of consciousness which hovers between the two ; from this results further the opposition of the (sensuous) material impulse and of the (ethical) Form impulse; in the former the heteronomy of the dependence of the will upon things may be recognised ; in the latter the autonomy of the will directed toward the formal conformity to law.
In this crude form the Kantian School propagated the doctrine of the master ; all the fineness and profound meaning of the analytic of the "object " had become lost, and the only substitute was Rein- hold's effort to find in the " ideational faculty " ( Vorstellungsver- mbgen), or "consciousness,'* the deeper unity of all the different cognitive powers which Kant had separated from each other as Sensibility, Understanding, Judgment, and Reason. In so far the " fundamental philosophy " opposed with a positive hypothesis the objections which the sharp separation of the sensibility and the under standing in the Kantian doctrine encountered with many contempora ries. This separation presented itself in the exposition determined by the after-working of the Inaugural Dissertation (cf. p. 538, note 4), still more strongly than the spirit of the Critique of Reason required, and became at the same time still more palpable by the dualism of the practical philosophy. So the tendency was awak ened to replace the sensibility again in its rights as against Kant, and the Leibnizian doctrine of the gradual transition from the func tions of sense to those of reason proved the source of a powerful counter-current against Kant's " dissection " of the soul, — a dissec tion more apparent than serious. Hamann in his review, and ih conjunction with him, Herder in his Metakritik, urged this against the Critique of Pure Reason. Both lay chief emphasis upon lan guage as the fundamental, unitary, sensuous-intellectual work of
the reason, and seek to show how from the first " splitting apart " of sensibility and understanding all the other chasms and dualisms of the critical philosophy necessarily followed. 2
» Herder, Metakritik, 14, 1 1 1 . Works in 40 vols. , XXX VII. 333 ft. Moreover, this thought as Herder presented it in the Metakritik, a silly composition of personal irritation, was for a long time a positively impelling moment in the development. Cf . § 42.
of Consciousness). 1
1 Neue Theorie des Vorst. , pp. 201 ff.
Chap. 2, S 41. ] Thing-in-It»elf : Schulze. 577
3. The weak points in Keinhold's system could not escape the sceptics, but their attacks applied at the same time to Kant himself. They were united most effectively in Schulze's sEnesidemus. He shows that the critical method ensnares itself by setting for itself a task, the solution of which is according to its own results im possible. For if the Critique seeks the conditions which lie at the liasis of experience, these conditions are yet not themselves objects of experience (a conception which certainly corresponded better with Kant's meaning than did Fries' attempt at a psychological discovery of the a priori) : the critical method demands, therefore, that philosophical knowledge, at all events a thinking in categories, shall go beyond experience; and just this the Analytic declares impermissible. In fact, the "reason" and each of the knowing faculties, as sensibility, understanding, etc. , is a thing-in-itself, an
imperceptible ground of the empirical activities of the kind of cognition in question; and of all these things-in-theinselves and their relations to each other and to experience, the critical philoso phy — the metaphysics of knowledge — offers a very circumstantial body of information. To be sure, this information is, if closely examined, very slight ; for such a " faculty " is ultimately thought only as an unknown common cause of empirical functions, and is to be characterised only through these its workings.
" ifinesidemus " develops this criticism in connection with Rein- hold's conception of the "ideational faculty";1 he shows that we explain nothing at all, when we postulate over again the content of that which is to be explained, provided with the problematical mark "power" or "faculty. " Schulze thus turned against the " faculty theory," which was employed by the empirical psycholo gists of the Enlightenment in rather a thoughtless manner. It is only descriptively that there is any sense in comprehending like phenomena of the psychical life under one generic conception ; but to hypostatise this conception to a metaphysical power — this is a mythological treatment of psychology. With this watch-word
Herbart* extended the criticism of Schulze to the whole earlier psychological theory, and Beneke also saw in the bringing into prominence of this conception the essential progress towards a natural science of the soul ; i. e. the associational psychology. *
For Schulze, this is only one of the elements in a proof that the critical philosophy, while aiming to prove the authority of the causal conception as against Hume, professes to limit the same
1 sEnrrid. , p. 06.
'» HerbaArt, Uhrb. 13; W. , V. 8 and elaewbere. Uhrb. . z. Ptych. ,
• Beneke, . Vent rtycA. , pp. MB
578 Germany : Development of Idealism. [1*a*t VI.
to experience, and yet everywhere makes the assumption of a causal relation between experience and that which "lies at its basis. " Here, too, belongs of course the contradiction, already exhibited by Jacobi, in the conception of the thing-in-itself by which the "sensibility" is said to be affected. Every attempt of the Critique of Pare Reason to go beyond the circuit of experience,
even merely problematically, is judged in advance by itself. 1
4. The first attempt to transform the conception of the thing-u> itself, untenable in its Kantian shape, proceeded from Salomon
Maimon. He saw that the assumption of a reality to be placed outside of consciousness involves a contradiction. What is thought is in consciousness ; to think of a something outside of consciousness is as imaginary as it would be mathematics to regard the require ment V— a as a real quantity. Tlie thing-in-itself is an impossible conception. But what was the inducement to form it? It lay in the need of explaining the given in consciousness. * It meets us, that is to say, in our ideas of the antithesis between the Form which we ourselves create and are conscious of creating, and the material which we only find present in us, without knowing how we come by it. Of the Forms we have, therefore, a complete consciousness ; of the matter, on the contrary, only an incomplete consciousness ; it is something that is in consciousness, without being produced with con sciousness. But since nothing outside of consciousness is thinkable, the given can be defined only by the lowest grade of the complete ness of consciousness. Consciousness can be thought as diminishing through an infinite number of intermediate stages down to nothing, and the idea of the limit of this infinite series (comparable to the V2) is that of the merely-given, the thing-in-itself. Things-in-them- selves are, therefore, as Maimon says with direct reference to Leibniz — pelites perceptions ; cf. p. 424 — differentials of consciousness. 3 The thing-in-itself is the limiting conception for the infinite decreasing series from complete consciousness down — an irrational quantity. The consequence of this fundamental assumption with Maimon is, that of the given there can always be only an incomplete knowledge, as there is only an incomplete consciousness,4 and that complete
1 The author of the jEnesidemus repeated the thoughts of his polemic in moat concise and comprehensive manner in his Kritik der theoretischen Philoso phic (II. 640 ff. ), — a work, moreover, which contains not only an analysis of the Critique of Pure Reason (I. 172-682), which is one of the best even to the present day, but also a criticism of the same, supported by deep historical understanding (found II. 126-722). Cf. on the relation to Leibniz, II. 176 ff.
3 Maimon, Transscendentalphilos. , pp. 419 f.
« lb. 27 ff.
« Cf. the contingency of the world with Leibniz and the specification of
Nature with Kant, pp. 398 666
f. ,
Cbap. 2, § 41. ] Thing-in-Itself : Maimon, Fichte. 579
knowledge is limited to the knowledge of the autonomous Forms of the theoretical consciousness, to mathematics and logic. In his esteem for these two demonstrative sciences Maimon's critical scep ticism is in harmony with Hume ; with regard to their theories of the knowledge of that which is empirically given they diverge diametrically.
With this, however, it had become clear that the investigations of the Critique of Pure Reason require a new conception of the relation ofconsciousness and Being. Being is to be thought only in conscious ness, only as a kind of consciousness. Thus the prophecy of Jacobi begins to be fulfilled; Kant's doctrine urges toward the "strongest idealism. "
This is seen in a disciple who stood in the closest relations to Kant himself: Sigismund Beck. He found1 the "Only Possible Standpo it for Estimating the Critical Philosophy " in this, that the datum of the individual consciousness, given it as " object," is
made the content of an " original," supra-individual * consciousness, which for this reason is authoritative for the truth of the empirical knowing process. In the place of the things-in-themselves he set Kant's "consciousness in general. " But he explained to himself in this way the a priori character of the pure conceptions and catego ries: the given in the sensuous manifold remained for him also the unsolved remnant of the Kantian problem.
5. The full idealistic disintegration of the conception of the thing-in-itself was the work of Fichte. We may best understand the matter by following the course of thought in his introductions to his Science of Knowledge* which attaches itself directly, in a free reproduction, to the most difficult part of the Kantian doctrine, — the transcendental deduction, — and illumines with complete clear ness the culmination of the movement of thought here considered.
The fundamental problem of philosophy — or, as Fichte calls just on this account, of the Wissenschaftslehre [lit. "doctrine of science," where science has the twofold meaning of knowledge as a mental act, and knowledge as body of truth = philosophy
p. 94. note — given in the fact, that in contrast with the ideas of
(cf. individual consciousness, which may come and go in voluntary
tlipm-
3d vol. of hi* Erlduternder Auuug, from Kant'* writing (Leips. 1*96). lb. p. 120 B. Ftchti't W. , 410 B.
and contingent manner, another set of our ideas maintain
selves there, and these latter are characterised by feeling of neces sity that can be distinguished with entire certainty. To make this necessity intelligible the chief task of philosophy or the Science
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of Knowledge. We call the system of those ideas which emerge with the feeling of necessity experience ; the problem runs, there fore, " What is the ground of experience ?
" To its solution there are only two paths. Experience is an activity of consciousness directed toward objects; it can therefore be derived only from things or from the consciousness. In the one case the explanation is dogmatic, in the other idealistic Dogmatism regards conscious ness as a product of things ; it traces the activities of intelligence also back to mechanical necessity of the causal relations ; if con sistently thought, therefore, it cannot end otherwise than fatalisti cally and materialistically. Idealism, on the contrary, sees in things a product of consciousness, of a free function determined only by itself ; it is the system of freedom and of deed. These two modes of explanation, each of which is consistent in itself, are in such thorough-going contradiction to each other and so irreconcil able that Fichte regards the attempt of syncretism, to explain expe rience by dependence both upon things-in-themselves and upon the reason, as a failure from the outset. If one will not fall a victim to sceptical despair, he must choose between the two.
This choice, since both present themselves logically as equally consistent systems, will primarily depend " on what sort of a man one is"1 ("wow fur ein Mensch man ist"); but while the ethical interest thus already speaks for idealism, there is still a theoretical consideration which comes to its aid. The fact of experience, in the constant reciprocal relation of " being " and " being conscious "
(Sein und Bewusstsein), consists in this, that the "real series" of objects is perceived in the "ideal" series of mental representations. * This " doubleness " dogmatism cannot explain ; for the causality of things is only a simple series (of "mere being posited"). The repetition of Being in consciousness (or in the being conscious) is incomprehensible, if the being is to serve as a ground of explanation for being conscious. On the contrary, it belongs to the very nature of intelligence " to see itself. " Consciousness, in that it acts or func tions, knows also that it acts and what it does ; in conjunction with the real (primary) series of its own functions it produces always at the same time the ideal (secondary) series of the knowledge of these functions. If, therefore, consciousness yields the sole ground of explanation for experience, it does this only in so far as it is the
» Fichte's W. , I. 434.
3 If the antithesis of dogmatism and idealism points back to the Kantian antithesis of Nature and Freedom, in which connection, moreover, the system of the necessity of things already appears with a strong Spinozistic character, the systematic influence of Spinoza's doctrine concerning the two attributes asserts itself for the first time in this relation of the two series.
Chap. 2, § 41. ] Thing-in-itself : Fichte, Krug. 581
activity which perceives itself and is reflected back into itself, i. e. as self-consciousness. The science of knowledge has to show that all consciousness (of experience) which is directed toward something else — toward a Being, toward objects, toward things — has its root in the original relation of consciousness to itself.
The principle of idealism is self-consciousness; in a subjective, methodical aspect, in so far as the science of knowledge aims to develop all of its insights from the intellectual perception alone, with which consciousness accompanies its own activities, from reflection upon that which consciousness knows of its own deed, — in objec tive, systematic aspect, in so far as in this way those functions of intelligence are to be pointed out, by means of which that which in common life is called thing and object, and in the dogmatic philosophy thing-in-itself, is produced. This last conception, that of the thing-in-itself, which is through and through contradictory, is thus resolved to its last remnant ; all Being is comprehensible only as product of reason, and the subject-matter of philosophical knowledge is the system of the reason (cf. § 42).
For Fichte and his successors, the conception of the thing-in- itself thus became indifferent, and the old antithesis between Being and consciousness sank to the secondary significance of an immanent relation within the activities of the reason. An object exists only for a subject ; and the common ground of both is the reason, the 1 which perceives itself and its action. 1
6. While the main development of German metaphysics followed this Fichtean tendency, the syncretism above mentioned did not re main without supporters whom the Wissenschaftslehre had thrust from the threshold. Its metaphysical type had been stamped out by Rein- hold ; but it was likewise close at hand for all who took their point of departure from tbe individual consciousness with the psychological method, and believed that they found the individual consciousness equally dependent upon the Real and upon the universal essence of the intellect The " transcendental synthetism" which Krug taught, may be conceived of as an example of this mode of view. For him, philosophy is an explanation of self by means of the reflection of the "I" upon the " facts of consciousness. " Hut in this the primi tive fact proves to be the transcendental synthesis, that real and ideal are posited in consciousness as equally original and in relation to each other. ' We know Being only in so far as it appears in con sciousness, and consciousness only in so far as it refers to Being;
> Cf. alao 8chelling'n youthful opuacule, Vom lek all Prineip der Philotophie, vT, L 161 tt.
• Krug. Fundamentaliihiloiophie, pp. lot! ft.
582 Germany : Development of Idealitm. [Pabt VL
but both are objects of an immediate knowledge just as is the com munity existing between them iu our world of ideas.
These thoughts found a tiner turn given them in Schleiermacher s dialectic. All knowledge has as its end to establish the identity oj Being and thinking; for the two emerge in human consciousness separate, as its real and ideal factors, perception and conception, organic and intellectual functions: Only their complete adjustment would give knowledge, but they remain always in a state of differ ence. In consequence of this, science is divided with reference to its subject matter into physics and ethics, with reference to its methods into empirical and theoretical disciplines ; natural history and natural science, history of the world, and science of morals. In all these particular disciplines one or the other of the two factors has the predominance,1 materially or formally, although the oppo site* strive toward each other — the empirical branches of knowledge toward rational articulation, the theoretical towards an understand ing of the facts, physics towards the genesis of the organism and of consciousness out of the corporeal world, ethics towards the control and inter-penetration of the sensuous by the will, which acts according to ends. But the complete adjustment of the real and the ideal is nowhere attained in actual cognition; it forms rather the absolute, unconditioned, infinitely removed goal of the thinking which desires to become knowledge, but will never completely suc ceed. * Hence philosophy is the science not of knowledge, but of knowledge in a perpetual state of becoming, — dialectic
But just for this reason it presupposes the reality of this goal which is never to be attained in human knowledge ; the identity of thought and Being. This Schleiermacher, with Spinoza (and Schell- ing), calls Owl. It cannot be an object of the theoretical reason, and just as little can it be such of the practical reason. We do not know God, and therefore we cannot order our ethical life with refer ence to him. Religion is more than knowing and right-doing ; it is the community of life with the highest reality, in which Being and consciousness are identical. This communion, however, emerges only in the feeling, in the " pious " (frommen) feeling of an " abso lute " dependence upon the infinite world-ground which cannot be exhausted by thought (cf. § 42, 6). Spinoza's God and Kanfs thing-in-itself coincide in the infinite, but thus are raised above all human knowledge and will, and made the objects of a mystical feel ing whose delicate vibrations harmonise in Schleiermacher (as in
1 This relation in Schleiermacher's Dialectic appears copied after the meta physical form of Schelling'H Syttem of Identity ; cf. § 42, 8.
* Dialektik, W. , III. 4 b 68 f.
Chap. 2, $ 41. ] Thing-in~It»elf : Sehleiermacher. 583
a somewhat different form in Fries, also) with the inwardness of the religious life among the Moravians.
Thus the traditions of Mysticism pass through Pietism — in
which the orthodox tendency toward a coarser view became
and more prominent after Spener and Francke, and so called forth the opposition of the Brothers of the Common Life — up to the summits of the idealistic development ; and indeed the doctrine of Eckhart and the transcendental philosophy are in close touch in the spirit which desires to transpose all the outer into the inner ; both have a genuinely Germanic savour, they seek the world in the " Gemiith " [the mind as the seat of the feeling and sentiments].
7. In putting aside the possibility of a scientific knowledge of the world-ground Sehleiermacher remained nearer to Kant, but the intuition of religious feeling which he substituted was all the more dependent upon Spinoza and upon the influences which the latter had exercised upon the idealistic metaphysics after Fichte's Science of Knowledge. This monism of the reason (cf. the development in $ 42) Herbart combated by an entirely different re-shaping of the Kantian conception of the thing-in-itself. He desired to oppose the dissolution of this conception, and found himself forced thereby to the paradox of a metaphysics of things-in-themselves, which yet should hold fast to their unknowableness. The contradictions of the transcendental analytic appear here grotesquely magnified.
This is the more noteworthy as the retrogressive tendency which has been ascribed to Herbart's doctrine, perhaps in contrast with the idealistic innovations, developed itself in his attack upon Kant's transcendental logic (cf. $ 38, 5). Herbart saw in this with right the roots of idealism. It teaches, indeed, the Forms with which the '■Understanding" produces the world of objects, and in Fichte's " I " we only have in a completely developed form that which in germ was in Kant's " consciousness in general " or " transcendental apperception. " Herbart's inclination toward the earlier philosophy consists in this, that he denies the creative spontaneity of conscious ness, and, like the associational psychologists, finds it determined ami dependent in both Form and content from without. He opposes also the virtual innateness which had propagated itself from Leibniz on through the Inaugural DiKxertation into the Critique of Pure Rnunn : the forms of relation expressed in the categories are for him, like space and time, products of the ideational mechanism. As regards the psycho-genetic questions, he stands entirely upon the platform of the philosophy of the Enlightenment. For this reason he knows no other logic than the formal logic whose principle is the principle of contradiction, i. e. the prohibition to commit a contra
more
584 Germany : Development of Idealism. [Part VI.
diction. The supreme principle of all thought that which con tradicts itself cannot he truly real or actual. 1
Now evident that the conceptions in which we think experi ence are full of internal contradictions; we assume things, which are to be identical with themselves and yet made equal to a variety of attributes we speak of alterations in which that which
to itself successively different we trace all inner experience back to an "I" or "self" which as that "which mentally represents itself" (sich selbst VorsteUende) involves an infinite series in the subject as well as in the object, — we trace all outer experience back to a matter, in the idea of which the attributes of the discrete and the continuous are at variance. This experience can be only phenomenon but this phenomenon must have at its basis something real which free from contradictions, seeming things must have absolute "Reals" (Reale), seeming occurrence and change a real occurrence and change. Whatever seeming there is, there just so much indication of Being. To discover this the task of philoso phy working over of the conceptions of experience which are given and which must be re-shaped according to the rules of formal logic, until we know the reality that has no internal contradictions.
The general means to this end the method of relation. The fundamental form of contradiction always that something simple
thought as having differences (the synthetic unity of the mani fold in Kant). This difficulty can be removed only by assuming plurality of simple beings, through the relation of which to each other the " illusion " of the manifold or changeable produced in any individual object. Thus the conception of substance can be maintained only we suppose that the various qualities and chang ing states which substance said to unite, concern not substance itself, but only the relation in which successively stands to other substances. The things-in-themselves must be many from thing-in-itself the multiplicity of qualities and states could never be understood. But each of these metaphysical things must be thought as entirely simple and unchangeable; they are called by Herbart, "Reals" (Realen). All qualities which form the characteristics of things in experience are relative, and make these characteristics
Cf. Einleitung in die Philos. , W. , 72-82. The historical stimulus to this sharp presentation of the principle of contradiction was no doubt the deprecia tion which this principle found in the dialectic method (cf. 42, logically, however, Herbart's doctrine (with the exception of his treatment of the "I" conception) entirely independent of it. The Eleatic element in the Herbar- tian philosophy (cf. 226) is given with the postulate of Bring void of contra dictions, and to this circumstance the philosopher, who otherwise had little historical disposition, owed his fineness of feeling for the metaphysical motire
the Platonic doctrine of Ideas. Cf, 237 ff. and XII. 61 ft
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appear only in relation to other things ; the absolute qualities of the Reals are, therefore, unknowable.
8. But they must be thought as the ground which determines the qualities that appear ; aud likewise we must assume as ground of the seeming changes which the mutation of qualities exhibits in the case of empirical things, an actual process or occurrence, a change of relations between the Reals. Here, however, this whole artificial construction of that which lies beyond experience began to waver. For the Eleatic rigidity of these Reals in nowise permits us to form an idea of the kind of " actual relations " which are held to obtain between them. First of all, these cannot be spatial ; ' space and time are products of the series formed by ideas, products of the
psychical mechanism, and hence phenomenal for Herbart in almost a higher degree than for Kant. Only in a transferred sense can the changing relations of substances be termed a " coming and going in the intelligible space"; what they are themselves the Herbartian doctrine has nd term to express. Only, in a negative direction it is obliged to make a questionable concession. Every Real has only simple and unchangeable determinations: the relation, therefore, which exists or arises between two Reals is not essential to either, and has not its basis in either. A tertium quid, however, which this
relation would postulate, is not to be discovered in this metaphys ics. * Hence the relations which the Reals sustain to each other, and from which the appearance of things and their relations are said to follow, are called " contingent views " (zu/SUige Ansichten) of the Reals ; and Herbart's meaning in several passages is scarcely to be understood otherwise than that consciousness is the intelligible apace in which the above relations between the Reals obtain, that the real process or occurrence, also, is some thing which itself only "takes place for the spectator" as "objective seeming. "1 If we add to this, that the " Being " of the Reals or absolute qualities is
1 Not only in thia point do Herbart's Reals distinguish themselves from the atoms of Detnocrilua, with which they have the common basis of a pluralistic rc-ihaping of the Eleatic conception of Being, but also by the difference in
quality, in the place of which atomism allows only quantitive differences. Just as little are the Reals to be confused with Leibniz's monads, with which indeed they share their absence of windows, but not the attribute of being a unity of the manifold. With the Platonic Ideas, they have in com mon the attributes of the Eleatic Being, but not the character of class-concepts.
(unknowable)
t in this gap of his metaphysics lierbart inserted his philo$ophy of religion; for since there is no knowledge of the real ground of the relations between the Reals, from which the world of phenomena proceeds, the impression of pur- posireness which the latter makes permits us to believe, in a manner which is theoretically unassailable, upon a supreme intelligence as the ground of these relations, — a very pale revival of the old pbysico-lheological proof.
'CtW, IV. 93 ff. , 127-132, 233, 240 (. , 248 ff. ; see also E. Zeller, Oeth. d. dtutaeA. Pkilo$. , 844.
586 Germany: Development of Ideal ism. [Pakt VI
defined by Herbart as " absohite position," i. e. as a " Setzung," ' a pos iting in which Being is at rest, and which is not taken back, we have opening before us the perspective into an " absolute " idealism.
This was, indeed, carried out by Herbart still less than by Kant ; here, too, it would have led to absolute contradiction. For the theory of Heals aims to deduce consciousness also, as a consequence, emerging in the realm of phenomena, of the "co-existence of the Reals. " The Reals are held to reciprocally " disturb " each other, and to call forth in each other as reactions against these disturb ances, inner states which have the significance of self-preserva tions. "* Such self-preservations are immediately known to us as those by the aid of which the unknown Real of our soul maintains itself against disturbance by other Reals ; they are ideas (VorsteUun- gen). The soul as a simple substance is naturally unknowable; psychology is only the science of its self-preservations. These, the ideas, sustain within the soul, which simply furnishes the indiffer ent stage for their co-existence, once more the relations of Reals ; they disturb and inhibit each other, and the whole course of the psychical life is to be explained from this reciprocal tension of ideas. By their tension the ideas lose in intensity ; and the consciousness depends upon the degree of intensity. The lowest degree of strength, which the ideas can have and still be regarded as actual, is the threshold of consciousness. If the ideas are pressed by others below this threshold, they change into impulse. Hence the essential nature of those psychical states which are called feeling and will is to be sought in the inhibitory relations of ideas. All these relations must be developed as a " statics and mechanics of ideas," * and since we have to do here essentially with the determining of differences of force, this metaphysical psychology must take on the form of a mathe matical theory of the mechanism of ideas. * Herbart lays particular
»Cf. W. , IV. 71 ff.
* The " suum esse conservare," with Hobbes and Spinoza the fundamental in
* In carrying out this thought Herbart assumed that ideas in their reciprocal inhibitions lose in intensity as much as the weakest of them possesses, and thai this Inhibition-sum is divided among the individual ideas in inverse ratio to their original strength, so that if in the simplest case, a > 6, a is reduced by
stinct of individuals, appears with Herbart as the metaphysical activity of the Reals, by virtue of which they produce the world of seeming, i. e. experience.
' On this metaphysical basis Herbart erected the structure of an immanent associational psychology. The assumption of a mechanical necessity of the ideational process, and the view that the volitions follow from this as likewise necessary relations, proved a fortunate basis for a scientific theory of pedagog ics, — a discipline which Herbart made also dependent upon ethics, since the latter teaches the goal of education (the formation of ethical character), while psychology teaches the mechanism through which this is realised. In a similar way Beneke, who took the standpoint of associational psychology without Her- bart's metaphysics, found the path to a systematic pedagogics.
Chap. 2, $ 41. ] Thing-in-Ittelf : Eerbart. 587
weight upon the investigation of the process by which newly entering ideas are "assimilated," ordered, formed, and in part altered, by the ideas already present; he employs for this the expression appercep tion (first coined by Leibniz ; cf. p. 463), and his theory of this takes the form of an explanation of the " I " or " self " by associational psychology. The " I " is thought as the moving point in which the apperceiving and apperceived ideas continually converge.
While the self-preservation of the Real which constitutes the soul, against disturbance by other Reals thus produces the phenomena of the ideational "life, the reciprocal self-preservation and " partial inter-penetration of several Reals produce for the consciousness of the spectator the "objective seeming or illusion" of matter. The
various physical and chemical phenomena are here tortured out of the metaphysical presuppositions with an unspeakably toilsome deduction,1 — an attempt forgotten to-day, which remained as desti tute of results in natural science as in philosophy.
9. Another Gottingen professor, Bouterwek, attacked the thing-in- itself with other weapons. He showed in his Apodiktik, that if the doctrines of the Critique of Pure Reason are to be taken in earnest, nothing remains for the "object to which the subject necessarily relates" except a completely inconceivable X. We cannot talk of a thing-in-itself or of things-in-themselves; for in this are involved already the categories of Inherence, of Unity and Plurality,' and of
Reality, which hold good only for phenomena. The transcendental philosophy must become " negative Spinozism. " * It can teach only that to the " consciousness in general " a " something in general " corresponds, concerning which nothing whatever is to be affirmed in absolute knowledge. (Cf. with regard to Spinoza, above, pp. 408 f. ). On the other hand, this absolutely real asserts itself in all relative knowledge through the consciousness of trilling. * For this shows everywhere the living force of individuality. We know of the subject because it wills something, and of the object because it furnishes
the inhibition to + "* ~ and to _ —. Cf. on thin arbitrarily axiomatic a a+"
assumption and on the mistaken nature of the whole psychological calculus," A. Lange, Die Grundlegung dtr mathftnatuehen Ptyehologif, Duisburg, 1866.
Allgrm. Mttnphyrik. «f 240 ff. . 331 If. VV\, IV. 147 ft. , 3*7 fl. In llerbart's metaphysics the branching out of general ontology into the beginnings of psy chology and natural philosophy designated by the names Eidology and Sfneehology.
Cf. asp. Apodiktik. 261, 302 ff.
lb. 386 ff.
Following the example of Kant and Fichte, Bouterwek ends his theoretical
Apodiktik in scepticism or in completely abstract-formal, absolute knowledge U the "practical" apodictic which first gala* a relation of its content to
reality.
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§ 41. The Thing-in-Itielf.
The compelling power which Kant's philosophy gained over the minds and hearts of men was due chiefly to the earnestness and greatness of its ethical conception of the world ; ' the progress of thought, however, attached itself primarily to the new form which had been given to the principles of the theory of knowledge in the Critique of the Pure Reason. Kant took the antithesis of phenom ena and uoumena from earlier philosophy ; but by his transcen
dental analytic he widened the realm of phenomena to include the whole compass of human knowledge, and the thing-in-itself survived only as a problematical conception, like a rudimentary organ, which might be indeed characteristic for the historical genesis of this theory of knowledge, but which performed no living function in it.
1. This was first seen by Jacobi, when he confessed that without the presupposition of realism one could not enter the Kantian system, and with the same could not remain in it ; * for the concep tion of the sensibility introduced at the beginning involves the causal relation of being affected by things-in-themselves, —a rela tion which, according to the doctrine of the analytic that categories must not be applied to things-in-themselves, it is forbidden to think. In this contradiction of professing to think things-in-themselves
and yet of not being jwrmitted to think thein, the whole critique of the reason moves ; and at the same time this contradictory assump tion does not at all help to guarantee to our knowledge of phe nomena even the slightest relation to truth. For, according to Kant, the mind presents to itself in thought " neither itself nor
1 This is especially to be recognised from Reinhold's Bnefen Uber die kant. Ph.
Handworterbufh der philos. Wisscnschaftcn, 1827 ff. ), — to Fiehte and Schelling of Fried. Bouterwek (1766-1828; Apodiktik, 1790; uEsthetik, 1806), —and Anally, to Herbart of Fr. Beneke (1708-1864; Psychologische Skitxen, 1826 and 1827 ; Lehrbueh der Psychologie, als Xatuncissenschaft, 1832 ; Metaphysik und Beligionsphilosophie, 1840 ; Die neue Psychologie, 1846).
;
Adamson in Mind,
1876].
» JacoW, W. , II. 304.
574 Germany : Development of Idealism. [Part VI.
other things, but solely and alone that which is neither what the mind is itself, nor what other things are. " * The faculty of cogni tion hovers between a problematical X of the subject and an equally problematical X of the object. The sensibility has nothing behind
and the understanding nothing before it; "in a twofold en chanter's smoke, called space and time, rise the ghostly forms of phenomena or appearances in which nothing appears. " If we assume things, Kant teaches that knowledge has not the least to do with them. The critical reason reason busy about pure noth ing, i. e. only about itself. If, therefore, criticism will not fall into nihilism or absolute scepticism, the transcendental idealist must have the courage to assert the " strongest " idealism he must declare that only phenomena are.
^— In the claim that what Kant calls the object of knowledge in truth " nothing," inheres as presupposition the same naive realism, the destruction of which was the great service of the transcendental analytic and the same realism determines also the episteinology of Faith, which Jacobi opposes to "the transcendental
uncertainty," not without being entirely dependent upon All truth knowl edge of the actual but the actual asserts itself in human con
sciousness not through thought, but through feeling; just Kant's experiment proves that thought alone moves in circle out of which there no access to actuality, in an endless series of the condi tioned in which no unconditioned to be found. The fundamental law of causality may indeed be formulated in exactly this manner, viz. there nothing unconditioned. Knowledge, therefore, or thought that can be demonstrated, in its very nature, as Jacobi says, Spinozism, — doctrine of the mechanical necessity of all that finite: and the interest of science that there be no God, — indeed, God who could be known would be no God. * Even he who in his heart a Christian must be in his head heathen he who will bring into his intellect the light which in his heart quenches it. 4 But this knowledge only mediate knowing the true, immediate knowing feeling; in this we are truly one with the object," and possess as we possess ourselves in the certainty of a faith that has no proof. 7 This feeling, however, as regards its objects, of twofold kind: the reality of the sensuous reveals itself to us in perception, that of the supersensuous in the " reason. "
Allwill, XV. W. , II. 310. To Hamann,
W. , 121.
W. , in. Ill W. , III. 384. W. , II. 175.
367.
Hume's conception of belief and his distinction of impressions and ideas
(here called Vorstellungen) experience in this a noteworthy transformation.
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Thiny-in-Itself
Fries, Reinhold. 575
For this supra-natural sensualism. , therefore, " reason " signifies the immediate feeling of the reality of the supersensuous, of God, free dom, morality, and immortality. In this limitation Kant's dualism of theoretical and practical reason and of the primacy of the latter return in Jacobi,1 to be placed in the service of mystical extrava gance of feeling, which manifests itself also in the character of a style which warm and full of spirit, but rhapsodical and more given to assertion than to proof.
This same fundamental conception, brought somewhat nearer to Kant, appears with Fries. In demanding that the knowledge of the a priori forms to which the critical philosophy aspired must itself arise a posteriori, through inner experience, and therefore that Kant's
"
results must be established or set right by an " anthropological critique, he rested upon the conviction that the immediate, proper cognitions of the reason are given originally in an obscure form through the feeling,' and transformed into intellectual knowledge only by means of reflection. This Leibnizian body ends, however, in the critical tail, since the perceptional and conceptional Forms of this reflection are regarded as only an expression of the phenomenal mode in which the above original truth [as experienced in feeling] appears on the other hand, the body received a Kant-Jacobi head, when the limitation of knowledge to these phenomenal Forms had set over against the immediate relation of moral faith to things- in-themselves, while at the same time — with a decided attachment to the Critique of Judgment — the aesthetic and religious feelings had ascribed to them the significance of presage (Ahndung) that the Being which lies at the basis of phenomena just that to which the practical reason relates.
The untenability of the Kantian conception of the thing-in-itself, so keenly recognised by Jacobi, became palpable to a certain extent when Reinhold in his Elementary Philosophy made the attempt to present the critical doctrine in a systematic unity. He admired Kant and adopted entirely his solutions of the individual problems, but missed in him the formulation of a simple, fundamental princi ple from which all particular insights might be deduced. Through the fulfilment of this (Cartesian) demand,' opposing private opinions would be at last replaced sby the philosophy, — Philosophy without any surname. He himself believed that he had found this principle in the principle which he supposed to be quite free from presuppo sitions, — that in consciousness every idea distinguished by the
W. . III. 8M ff. Krtcs, Neut Krittk, 208 Reinhold, Beitrdge, 91 II.
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consciousness of subject and object, and is related to both (Principle
Hence there inheres in every idea something that belongs to the subject and something that belongs to the object. From the object comes the manifold of the material, from the subject the synthetic unity of the Form. From this it follows
that neither the object in itself, nor the subject in itself, is know- able, but only the world of consciousness which hovers between the two ; from this results further the opposition of the (sensuous) material impulse and of the (ethical) Form impulse; in the former the heteronomy of the dependence of the will upon things may be recognised ; in the latter the autonomy of the will directed toward the formal conformity to law.
In this crude form the Kantian School propagated the doctrine of the master ; all the fineness and profound meaning of the analytic of the "object " had become lost, and the only substitute was Rein- hold's effort to find in the " ideational faculty " ( Vorstellungsver- mbgen), or "consciousness,'* the deeper unity of all the different cognitive powers which Kant had separated from each other as Sensibility, Understanding, Judgment, and Reason. In so far the " fundamental philosophy " opposed with a positive hypothesis the objections which the sharp separation of the sensibility and the under standing in the Kantian doctrine encountered with many contempora ries. This separation presented itself in the exposition determined by the after-working of the Inaugural Dissertation (cf. p. 538, note 4), still more strongly than the spirit of the Critique of Reason required, and became at the same time still more palpable by the dualism of the practical philosophy. So the tendency was awak ened to replace the sensibility again in its rights as against Kant, and the Leibnizian doctrine of the gradual transition from the func tions of sense to those of reason proved the source of a powerful counter-current against Kant's " dissection " of the soul, — a dissec tion more apparent than serious. Hamann in his review, and ih conjunction with him, Herder in his Metakritik, urged this against the Critique of Pure Reason. Both lay chief emphasis upon lan guage as the fundamental, unitary, sensuous-intellectual work of
the reason, and seek to show how from the first " splitting apart " of sensibility and understanding all the other chasms and dualisms of the critical philosophy necessarily followed. 2
» Herder, Metakritik, 14, 1 1 1 . Works in 40 vols. , XXX VII. 333 ft. Moreover, this thought as Herder presented it in the Metakritik, a silly composition of personal irritation, was for a long time a positively impelling moment in the development. Cf . § 42.
of Consciousness). 1
1 Neue Theorie des Vorst. , pp. 201 ff.
Chap. 2, S 41. ] Thing-in-It»elf : Schulze. 577
3. The weak points in Keinhold's system could not escape the sceptics, but their attacks applied at the same time to Kant himself. They were united most effectively in Schulze's sEnesidemus. He shows that the critical method ensnares itself by setting for itself a task, the solution of which is according to its own results im possible. For if the Critique seeks the conditions which lie at the liasis of experience, these conditions are yet not themselves objects of experience (a conception which certainly corresponded better with Kant's meaning than did Fries' attempt at a psychological discovery of the a priori) : the critical method demands, therefore, that philosophical knowledge, at all events a thinking in categories, shall go beyond experience; and just this the Analytic declares impermissible. In fact, the "reason" and each of the knowing faculties, as sensibility, understanding, etc. , is a thing-in-itself, an
imperceptible ground of the empirical activities of the kind of cognition in question; and of all these things-in-theinselves and their relations to each other and to experience, the critical philoso phy — the metaphysics of knowledge — offers a very circumstantial body of information. To be sure, this information is, if closely examined, very slight ; for such a " faculty " is ultimately thought only as an unknown common cause of empirical functions, and is to be characterised only through these its workings.
" ifinesidemus " develops this criticism in connection with Rein- hold's conception of the "ideational faculty";1 he shows that we explain nothing at all, when we postulate over again the content of that which is to be explained, provided with the problematical mark "power" or "faculty. " Schulze thus turned against the " faculty theory," which was employed by the empirical psycholo gists of the Enlightenment in rather a thoughtless manner. It is only descriptively that there is any sense in comprehending like phenomena of the psychical life under one generic conception ; but to hypostatise this conception to a metaphysical power — this is a mythological treatment of psychology. With this watch-word
Herbart* extended the criticism of Schulze to the whole earlier psychological theory, and Beneke also saw in the bringing into prominence of this conception the essential progress towards a natural science of the soul ; i. e. the associational psychology. *
For Schulze, this is only one of the elements in a proof that the critical philosophy, while aiming to prove the authority of the causal conception as against Hume, professes to limit the same
1 sEnrrid. , p. 06.
'» HerbaArt, Uhrb. 13; W. , V. 8 and elaewbere. Uhrb. . z. Ptych. ,
• Beneke, . Vent rtycA. , pp. MB
578 Germany : Development of Idealism. [1*a*t VI.
to experience, and yet everywhere makes the assumption of a causal relation between experience and that which "lies at its basis. " Here, too, belongs of course the contradiction, already exhibited by Jacobi, in the conception of the thing-in-itself by which the "sensibility" is said to be affected. Every attempt of the Critique of Pare Reason to go beyond the circuit of experience,
even merely problematically, is judged in advance by itself. 1
4. The first attempt to transform the conception of the thing-u> itself, untenable in its Kantian shape, proceeded from Salomon
Maimon. He saw that the assumption of a reality to be placed outside of consciousness involves a contradiction. What is thought is in consciousness ; to think of a something outside of consciousness is as imaginary as it would be mathematics to regard the require ment V— a as a real quantity. Tlie thing-in-itself is an impossible conception. But what was the inducement to form it? It lay in the need of explaining the given in consciousness. * It meets us, that is to say, in our ideas of the antithesis between the Form which we ourselves create and are conscious of creating, and the material which we only find present in us, without knowing how we come by it. Of the Forms we have, therefore, a complete consciousness ; of the matter, on the contrary, only an incomplete consciousness ; it is something that is in consciousness, without being produced with con sciousness. But since nothing outside of consciousness is thinkable, the given can be defined only by the lowest grade of the complete ness of consciousness. Consciousness can be thought as diminishing through an infinite number of intermediate stages down to nothing, and the idea of the limit of this infinite series (comparable to the V2) is that of the merely-given, the thing-in-itself. Things-in-them- selves are, therefore, as Maimon says with direct reference to Leibniz — pelites perceptions ; cf. p. 424 — differentials of consciousness. 3 The thing-in-itself is the limiting conception for the infinite decreasing series from complete consciousness down — an irrational quantity. The consequence of this fundamental assumption with Maimon is, that of the given there can always be only an incomplete knowledge, as there is only an incomplete consciousness,4 and that complete
1 The author of the jEnesidemus repeated the thoughts of his polemic in moat concise and comprehensive manner in his Kritik der theoretischen Philoso phic (II. 640 ff. ), — a work, moreover, which contains not only an analysis of the Critique of Pure Reason (I. 172-682), which is one of the best even to the present day, but also a criticism of the same, supported by deep historical understanding (found II. 126-722). Cf. on the relation to Leibniz, II. 176 ff.
3 Maimon, Transscendentalphilos. , pp. 419 f.
« lb. 27 ff.
« Cf. the contingency of the world with Leibniz and the specification of
Nature with Kant, pp. 398 666
f. ,
Cbap. 2, § 41. ] Thing-in-Itself : Maimon, Fichte. 579
knowledge is limited to the knowledge of the autonomous Forms of the theoretical consciousness, to mathematics and logic. In his esteem for these two demonstrative sciences Maimon's critical scep ticism is in harmony with Hume ; with regard to their theories of the knowledge of that which is empirically given they diverge diametrically.
With this, however, it had become clear that the investigations of the Critique of Pure Reason require a new conception of the relation ofconsciousness and Being. Being is to be thought only in conscious ness, only as a kind of consciousness. Thus the prophecy of Jacobi begins to be fulfilled; Kant's doctrine urges toward the "strongest idealism. "
This is seen in a disciple who stood in the closest relations to Kant himself: Sigismund Beck. He found1 the "Only Possible Standpo it for Estimating the Critical Philosophy " in this, that the datum of the individual consciousness, given it as " object," is
made the content of an " original," supra-individual * consciousness, which for this reason is authoritative for the truth of the empirical knowing process. In the place of the things-in-themselves he set Kant's "consciousness in general. " But he explained to himself in this way the a priori character of the pure conceptions and catego ries: the given in the sensuous manifold remained for him also the unsolved remnant of the Kantian problem.
5. The full idealistic disintegration of the conception of the thing-in-itself was the work of Fichte. We may best understand the matter by following the course of thought in his introductions to his Science of Knowledge* which attaches itself directly, in a free reproduction, to the most difficult part of the Kantian doctrine, — the transcendental deduction, — and illumines with complete clear ness the culmination of the movement of thought here considered.
The fundamental problem of philosophy — or, as Fichte calls just on this account, of the Wissenschaftslehre [lit. "doctrine of science," where science has the twofold meaning of knowledge as a mental act, and knowledge as body of truth = philosophy
p. 94. note — given in the fact, that in contrast with the ideas of
(cf. individual consciousness, which may come and go in voluntary
tlipm-
3d vol. of hi* Erlduternder Auuug, from Kant'* writing (Leips. 1*96). lb. p. 120 B. Ftchti't W. , 410 B.
and contingent manner, another set of our ideas maintain
selves there, and these latter are characterised by feeling of neces sity that can be distinguished with entire certainty. To make this necessity intelligible the chief task of philosophy or the Science
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580 Germany: Development of Idealism. [Pakt VX
of Knowledge. We call the system of those ideas which emerge with the feeling of necessity experience ; the problem runs, there fore, " What is the ground of experience ?
" To its solution there are only two paths. Experience is an activity of consciousness directed toward objects; it can therefore be derived only from things or from the consciousness. In the one case the explanation is dogmatic, in the other idealistic Dogmatism regards conscious ness as a product of things ; it traces the activities of intelligence also back to mechanical necessity of the causal relations ; if con sistently thought, therefore, it cannot end otherwise than fatalisti cally and materialistically. Idealism, on the contrary, sees in things a product of consciousness, of a free function determined only by itself ; it is the system of freedom and of deed. These two modes of explanation, each of which is consistent in itself, are in such thorough-going contradiction to each other and so irreconcil able that Fichte regards the attempt of syncretism, to explain expe rience by dependence both upon things-in-themselves and upon the reason, as a failure from the outset. If one will not fall a victim to sceptical despair, he must choose between the two.
This choice, since both present themselves logically as equally consistent systems, will primarily depend " on what sort of a man one is"1 ("wow fur ein Mensch man ist"); but while the ethical interest thus already speaks for idealism, there is still a theoretical consideration which comes to its aid. The fact of experience, in the constant reciprocal relation of " being " and " being conscious "
(Sein und Bewusstsein), consists in this, that the "real series" of objects is perceived in the "ideal" series of mental representations. * This " doubleness " dogmatism cannot explain ; for the causality of things is only a simple series (of "mere being posited"). The repetition of Being in consciousness (or in the being conscious) is incomprehensible, if the being is to serve as a ground of explanation for being conscious. On the contrary, it belongs to the very nature of intelligence " to see itself. " Consciousness, in that it acts or func tions, knows also that it acts and what it does ; in conjunction with the real (primary) series of its own functions it produces always at the same time the ideal (secondary) series of the knowledge of these functions. If, therefore, consciousness yields the sole ground of explanation for experience, it does this only in so far as it is the
» Fichte's W. , I. 434.
3 If the antithesis of dogmatism and idealism points back to the Kantian antithesis of Nature and Freedom, in which connection, moreover, the system of the necessity of things already appears with a strong Spinozistic character, the systematic influence of Spinoza's doctrine concerning the two attributes asserts itself for the first time in this relation of the two series.
Chap. 2, § 41. ] Thing-in-itself : Fichte, Krug. 581
activity which perceives itself and is reflected back into itself, i. e. as self-consciousness. The science of knowledge has to show that all consciousness (of experience) which is directed toward something else — toward a Being, toward objects, toward things — has its root in the original relation of consciousness to itself.
The principle of idealism is self-consciousness; in a subjective, methodical aspect, in so far as the science of knowledge aims to develop all of its insights from the intellectual perception alone, with which consciousness accompanies its own activities, from reflection upon that which consciousness knows of its own deed, — in objec tive, systematic aspect, in so far as in this way those functions of intelligence are to be pointed out, by means of which that which in common life is called thing and object, and in the dogmatic philosophy thing-in-itself, is produced. This last conception, that of the thing-in-itself, which is through and through contradictory, is thus resolved to its last remnant ; all Being is comprehensible only as product of reason, and the subject-matter of philosophical knowledge is the system of the reason (cf. § 42).
For Fichte and his successors, the conception of the thing-in- itself thus became indifferent, and the old antithesis between Being and consciousness sank to the secondary significance of an immanent relation within the activities of the reason. An object exists only for a subject ; and the common ground of both is the reason, the 1 which perceives itself and its action. 1
6. While the main development of German metaphysics followed this Fichtean tendency, the syncretism above mentioned did not re main without supporters whom the Wissenschaftslehre had thrust from the threshold. Its metaphysical type had been stamped out by Rein- hold ; but it was likewise close at hand for all who took their point of departure from tbe individual consciousness with the psychological method, and believed that they found the individual consciousness equally dependent upon the Real and upon the universal essence of the intellect The " transcendental synthetism" which Krug taught, may be conceived of as an example of this mode of view. For him, philosophy is an explanation of self by means of the reflection of the "I" upon the " facts of consciousness. " Hut in this the primi tive fact proves to be the transcendental synthesis, that real and ideal are posited in consciousness as equally original and in relation to each other. ' We know Being only in so far as it appears in con sciousness, and consciousness only in so far as it refers to Being;
> Cf. alao 8chelling'n youthful opuacule, Vom lek all Prineip der Philotophie, vT, L 161 tt.
• Krug. Fundamentaliihiloiophie, pp. lot! ft.
582 Germany : Development of Idealitm. [Pabt VL
but both are objects of an immediate knowledge just as is the com munity existing between them iu our world of ideas.
These thoughts found a tiner turn given them in Schleiermacher s dialectic. All knowledge has as its end to establish the identity oj Being and thinking; for the two emerge in human consciousness separate, as its real and ideal factors, perception and conception, organic and intellectual functions: Only their complete adjustment would give knowledge, but they remain always in a state of differ ence. In consequence of this, science is divided with reference to its subject matter into physics and ethics, with reference to its methods into empirical and theoretical disciplines ; natural history and natural science, history of the world, and science of morals. In all these particular disciplines one or the other of the two factors has the predominance,1 materially or formally, although the oppo site* strive toward each other — the empirical branches of knowledge toward rational articulation, the theoretical towards an understand ing of the facts, physics towards the genesis of the organism and of consciousness out of the corporeal world, ethics towards the control and inter-penetration of the sensuous by the will, which acts according to ends. But the complete adjustment of the real and the ideal is nowhere attained in actual cognition; it forms rather the absolute, unconditioned, infinitely removed goal of the thinking which desires to become knowledge, but will never completely suc ceed. * Hence philosophy is the science not of knowledge, but of knowledge in a perpetual state of becoming, — dialectic
But just for this reason it presupposes the reality of this goal which is never to be attained in human knowledge ; the identity of thought and Being. This Schleiermacher, with Spinoza (and Schell- ing), calls Owl. It cannot be an object of the theoretical reason, and just as little can it be such of the practical reason. We do not know God, and therefore we cannot order our ethical life with refer ence to him. Religion is more than knowing and right-doing ; it is the community of life with the highest reality, in which Being and consciousness are identical. This communion, however, emerges only in the feeling, in the " pious " (frommen) feeling of an " abso lute " dependence upon the infinite world-ground which cannot be exhausted by thought (cf. § 42, 6). Spinoza's God and Kanfs thing-in-itself coincide in the infinite, but thus are raised above all human knowledge and will, and made the objects of a mystical feel ing whose delicate vibrations harmonise in Schleiermacher (as in
1 This relation in Schleiermacher's Dialectic appears copied after the meta physical form of Schelling'H Syttem of Identity ; cf. § 42, 8.
* Dialektik, W. , III. 4 b 68 f.
Chap. 2, $ 41. ] Thing-in~It»elf : Sehleiermacher. 583
a somewhat different form in Fries, also) with the inwardness of the religious life among the Moravians.
Thus the traditions of Mysticism pass through Pietism — in
which the orthodox tendency toward a coarser view became
and more prominent after Spener and Francke, and so called forth the opposition of the Brothers of the Common Life — up to the summits of the idealistic development ; and indeed the doctrine of Eckhart and the transcendental philosophy are in close touch in the spirit which desires to transpose all the outer into the inner ; both have a genuinely Germanic savour, they seek the world in the " Gemiith " [the mind as the seat of the feeling and sentiments].
7. In putting aside the possibility of a scientific knowledge of the world-ground Sehleiermacher remained nearer to Kant, but the intuition of religious feeling which he substituted was all the more dependent upon Spinoza and upon the influences which the latter had exercised upon the idealistic metaphysics after Fichte's Science of Knowledge. This monism of the reason (cf. the development in $ 42) Herbart combated by an entirely different re-shaping of the Kantian conception of the thing-in-itself. He desired to oppose the dissolution of this conception, and found himself forced thereby to the paradox of a metaphysics of things-in-themselves, which yet should hold fast to their unknowableness. The contradictions of the transcendental analytic appear here grotesquely magnified.
This is the more noteworthy as the retrogressive tendency which has been ascribed to Herbart's doctrine, perhaps in contrast with the idealistic innovations, developed itself in his attack upon Kant's transcendental logic (cf. $ 38, 5). Herbart saw in this with right the roots of idealism. It teaches, indeed, the Forms with which the '■Understanding" produces the world of objects, and in Fichte's " I " we only have in a completely developed form that which in germ was in Kant's " consciousness in general " or " transcendental apperception. " Herbart's inclination toward the earlier philosophy consists in this, that he denies the creative spontaneity of conscious ness, and, like the associational psychologists, finds it determined ami dependent in both Form and content from without. He opposes also the virtual innateness which had propagated itself from Leibniz on through the Inaugural DiKxertation into the Critique of Pure Rnunn : the forms of relation expressed in the categories are for him, like space and time, products of the ideational mechanism. As regards the psycho-genetic questions, he stands entirely upon the platform of the philosophy of the Enlightenment. For this reason he knows no other logic than the formal logic whose principle is the principle of contradiction, i. e. the prohibition to commit a contra
more
584 Germany : Development of Idealism. [Part VI.
diction. The supreme principle of all thought that which con tradicts itself cannot he truly real or actual. 1
Now evident that the conceptions in which we think experi ence are full of internal contradictions; we assume things, which are to be identical with themselves and yet made equal to a variety of attributes we speak of alterations in which that which
to itself successively different we trace all inner experience back to an "I" or "self" which as that "which mentally represents itself" (sich selbst VorsteUende) involves an infinite series in the subject as well as in the object, — we trace all outer experience back to a matter, in the idea of which the attributes of the discrete and the continuous are at variance. This experience can be only phenomenon but this phenomenon must have at its basis something real which free from contradictions, seeming things must have absolute "Reals" (Reale), seeming occurrence and change a real occurrence and change. Whatever seeming there is, there just so much indication of Being. To discover this the task of philoso phy working over of the conceptions of experience which are given and which must be re-shaped according to the rules of formal logic, until we know the reality that has no internal contradictions.
The general means to this end the method of relation. The fundamental form of contradiction always that something simple
thought as having differences (the synthetic unity of the mani fold in Kant). This difficulty can be removed only by assuming plurality of simple beings, through the relation of which to each other the " illusion " of the manifold or changeable produced in any individual object. Thus the conception of substance can be maintained only we suppose that the various qualities and chang ing states which substance said to unite, concern not substance itself, but only the relation in which successively stands to other substances. The things-in-themselves must be many from thing-in-itself the multiplicity of qualities and states could never be understood. But each of these metaphysical things must be thought as entirely simple and unchangeable; they are called by Herbart, "Reals" (Realen). All qualities which form the characteristics of things in experience are relative, and make these characteristics
Cf. Einleitung in die Philos. , W. , 72-82. The historical stimulus to this sharp presentation of the principle of contradiction was no doubt the deprecia tion which this principle found in the dialectic method (cf. 42, logically, however, Herbart's doctrine (with the exception of his treatment of the "I" conception) entirely independent of it. The Eleatic element in the Herbar- tian philosophy (cf. 226) is given with the postulate of Bring void of contra dictions, and to this circumstance the philosopher, who otherwise had little historical disposition, owed his fineness of feeling for the metaphysical motire
the Platonic doctrine of Ideas. Cf, 237 ff. and XII. 61 ft
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Chaf. 2, §41. ] Thiny-iitrltae\f ': llerbart. 585
appear only in relation to other things ; the absolute qualities of the Reals are, therefore, unknowable.
8. But they must be thought as the ground which determines the qualities that appear ; aud likewise we must assume as ground of the seeming changes which the mutation of qualities exhibits in the case of empirical things, an actual process or occurrence, a change of relations between the Reals. Here, however, this whole artificial construction of that which lies beyond experience began to waver. For the Eleatic rigidity of these Reals in nowise permits us to form an idea of the kind of " actual relations " which are held to obtain between them. First of all, these cannot be spatial ; ' space and time are products of the series formed by ideas, products of the
psychical mechanism, and hence phenomenal for Herbart in almost a higher degree than for Kant. Only in a transferred sense can the changing relations of substances be termed a " coming and going in the intelligible space"; what they are themselves the Herbartian doctrine has nd term to express. Only, in a negative direction it is obliged to make a questionable concession. Every Real has only simple and unchangeable determinations: the relation, therefore, which exists or arises between two Reals is not essential to either, and has not its basis in either. A tertium quid, however, which this
relation would postulate, is not to be discovered in this metaphys ics. * Hence the relations which the Reals sustain to each other, and from which the appearance of things and their relations are said to follow, are called " contingent views " (zu/SUige Ansichten) of the Reals ; and Herbart's meaning in several passages is scarcely to be understood otherwise than that consciousness is the intelligible apace in which the above relations between the Reals obtain, that the real process or occurrence, also, is some thing which itself only "takes place for the spectator" as "objective seeming. "1 If we add to this, that the " Being " of the Reals or absolute qualities is
1 Not only in thia point do Herbart's Reals distinguish themselves from the atoms of Detnocrilua, with which they have the common basis of a pluralistic rc-ihaping of the Eleatic conception of Being, but also by the difference in
quality, in the place of which atomism allows only quantitive differences. Just as little are the Reals to be confused with Leibniz's monads, with which indeed they share their absence of windows, but not the attribute of being a unity of the manifold. With the Platonic Ideas, they have in com mon the attributes of the Eleatic Being, but not the character of class-concepts.
(unknowable)
t in this gap of his metaphysics lierbart inserted his philo$ophy of religion; for since there is no knowledge of the real ground of the relations between the Reals, from which the world of phenomena proceeds, the impression of pur- posireness which the latter makes permits us to believe, in a manner which is theoretically unassailable, upon a supreme intelligence as the ground of these relations, — a very pale revival of the old pbysico-lheological proof.
'CtW, IV. 93 ff. , 127-132, 233, 240 (. , 248 ff. ; see also E. Zeller, Oeth. d. dtutaeA. Pkilo$. , 844.
586 Germany: Development of Ideal ism. [Pakt VI
defined by Herbart as " absohite position," i. e. as a " Setzung," ' a pos iting in which Being is at rest, and which is not taken back, we have opening before us the perspective into an " absolute " idealism.
This was, indeed, carried out by Herbart still less than by Kant ; here, too, it would have led to absolute contradiction. For the theory of Heals aims to deduce consciousness also, as a consequence, emerging in the realm of phenomena, of the "co-existence of the Reals. " The Reals are held to reciprocally " disturb " each other, and to call forth in each other as reactions against these disturb ances, inner states which have the significance of self-preserva tions. "* Such self-preservations are immediately known to us as those by the aid of which the unknown Real of our soul maintains itself against disturbance by other Reals ; they are ideas (VorsteUun- gen). The soul as a simple substance is naturally unknowable; psychology is only the science of its self-preservations. These, the ideas, sustain within the soul, which simply furnishes the indiffer ent stage for their co-existence, once more the relations of Reals ; they disturb and inhibit each other, and the whole course of the psychical life is to be explained from this reciprocal tension of ideas. By their tension the ideas lose in intensity ; and the consciousness depends upon the degree of intensity. The lowest degree of strength, which the ideas can have and still be regarded as actual, is the threshold of consciousness. If the ideas are pressed by others below this threshold, they change into impulse. Hence the essential nature of those psychical states which are called feeling and will is to be sought in the inhibitory relations of ideas. All these relations must be developed as a " statics and mechanics of ideas," * and since we have to do here essentially with the determining of differences of force, this metaphysical psychology must take on the form of a mathe matical theory of the mechanism of ideas. * Herbart lays particular
»Cf. W. , IV. 71 ff.
* The " suum esse conservare," with Hobbes and Spinoza the fundamental in
* In carrying out this thought Herbart assumed that ideas in their reciprocal inhibitions lose in intensity as much as the weakest of them possesses, and thai this Inhibition-sum is divided among the individual ideas in inverse ratio to their original strength, so that if in the simplest case, a > 6, a is reduced by
stinct of individuals, appears with Herbart as the metaphysical activity of the Reals, by virtue of which they produce the world of seeming, i. e. experience.
' On this metaphysical basis Herbart erected the structure of an immanent associational psychology. The assumption of a mechanical necessity of the ideational process, and the view that the volitions follow from this as likewise necessary relations, proved a fortunate basis for a scientific theory of pedagog ics, — a discipline which Herbart made also dependent upon ethics, since the latter teaches the goal of education (the formation of ethical character), while psychology teaches the mechanism through which this is realised. In a similar way Beneke, who took the standpoint of associational psychology without Her- bart's metaphysics, found the path to a systematic pedagogics.
Chap. 2, $ 41. ] Thing-in-Ittelf : Eerbart. 587
weight upon the investigation of the process by which newly entering ideas are "assimilated," ordered, formed, and in part altered, by the ideas already present; he employs for this the expression appercep tion (first coined by Leibniz ; cf. p. 463), and his theory of this takes the form of an explanation of the " I " or " self " by associational psychology. The " I " is thought as the moving point in which the apperceiving and apperceived ideas continually converge.
While the self-preservation of the Real which constitutes the soul, against disturbance by other Reals thus produces the phenomena of the ideational "life, the reciprocal self-preservation and " partial inter-penetration of several Reals produce for the consciousness of the spectator the "objective seeming or illusion" of matter. The
various physical and chemical phenomena are here tortured out of the metaphysical presuppositions with an unspeakably toilsome deduction,1 — an attempt forgotten to-day, which remained as desti tute of results in natural science as in philosophy.
9. Another Gottingen professor, Bouterwek, attacked the thing-in- itself with other weapons. He showed in his Apodiktik, that if the doctrines of the Critique of Pure Reason are to be taken in earnest, nothing remains for the "object to which the subject necessarily relates" except a completely inconceivable X. We cannot talk of a thing-in-itself or of things-in-themselves; for in this are involved already the categories of Inherence, of Unity and Plurality,' and of
Reality, which hold good only for phenomena. The transcendental philosophy must become " negative Spinozism. " * It can teach only that to the " consciousness in general " a " something in general " corresponds, concerning which nothing whatever is to be affirmed in absolute knowledge. (Cf. with regard to Spinoza, above, pp. 408 f. ). On the other hand, this absolutely real asserts itself in all relative knowledge through the consciousness of trilling. * For this shows everywhere the living force of individuality. We know of the subject because it wills something, and of the object because it furnishes
the inhibition to + "* ~ and to _ —. Cf. on thin arbitrarily axiomatic a a+"
assumption and on the mistaken nature of the whole psychological calculus," A. Lange, Die Grundlegung dtr mathftnatuehen Ptyehologif, Duisburg, 1866.
Allgrm. Mttnphyrik. «f 240 ff. . 331 If. VV\, IV. 147 ft. , 3*7 fl. In llerbart's metaphysics the branching out of general ontology into the beginnings of psy chology and natural philosophy designated by the names Eidology and Sfneehology.
Cf. asp. Apodiktik. 261, 302 ff.
lb. 386 ff.
Following the example of Kant and Fichte, Bouterwek ends his theoretical
Apodiktik in scepticism or in completely abstract-formal, absolute knowledge U the "practical" apodictic which first gala* a relation of its content to
reality.
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