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Windelband - History of Philosophy
, 2d ed.
, 1898) ; Critical Expositions in Griggs series (Chicago) ; of the ^Esthetics, by J.
S.
Kedney (1885) ; of the Philosophy of the State and of History, by G.
S.
Morris (1887) ; and of the Logic, by W.
T.
Harris (1890)'; numerous articles in the Jour.
Spec.
Phil, cited in last-named work].
Friedrich Ernst Daniel Schleiermacher, born, 1768, in Breslau, educated at the Herrnhuter educational institutions in Niesky and Barby, and at the University of Halle, after private positions took a vicarship in Landsberg, and in 1796 began his duties as preacher at the Berlin Charitfe. In 1802 he went as court preacher to Stolpe ; in 1804 as Professor Extraordinary to Halle ; in 1806 returned to Berlin, where in 1809 he became preacher at the Dreifaltigkeits- kirche ; and in 1810 Professor at the University. He acquitted himself well in both offices, occupying at the time a successful position in the ecclesiastical movement (Union) until his death in 1834. His philosophical writings form the third part of his works collected after his death (Berlin, 1835 ff. ). They contain his lectures on Dialectic, ^Esthetic, etc. ; among his writings are to be mentioned : Beden ube. rdie Religion an die Gfebildeten unter ihren Verdchtern (1799) ; Monologen (1800) ; GrundMnUn einer Kritik der bisherigen Sittenlehre
The most important work, the Ethik, is given in the coll. works, in the edition by Al. Schweizer; it is also published in an edition by A. Twesten (Berlin, 1841). — Cf. Aus Sch. 's Leben in Briefen, ed. by L Jonas and W. Dil- they, 4 vols. (Berlin, 1868-1863) ; W. Dilthey, Leben Schleiermacher's, Vol. I.
(1803).
(Berlin, 1870) [art. S. in Enc. Brit. , J. F. Smith].
Johann Friedrich Herbart, born, 1776, at Oldenburg, educated there and at the Jena University, for a time private teacher in Berne and acquainted with Pestalozzi, became in 1802 Privatdocent in Gottingen, was from 1809 to 183:1 Professor in Konigsberg, and then returned to Gottingen as Professor, where he died, 1841. His main writings are: Hauptpunkte der Afetaphysik (1806); Allgemeine praktische Philosophic (1808) ; Einleitnng in die Philosophic (1813) : Lehrbuch ztir Psycholoyie (1816) [Eng. tr. by M. K. Smith, N. Y. 1891] ; Psycho logic als Wissenschaft (1824 f. ). Complete edition by G. Hartenstein, 12 vols. (Leips. 1850 ff. ) ; in process of appearance, ed. by K. Kehrbach, since 1882. The pedagogical writings have been edited by O. Willmann in 2 vols. (Leips. 1873 and 1876). Cf. G. Hartenstein, Die Problems und Grundlehren der allgemeinen Afetaphysik (Leips. 1836) ; J. Kaftan, Sollen und Sein (Leips. 1872) ; J. Cape- sius, Die Metaphysik Herbart's (Leips. 1878) [Ward, art. Herbart, in Enc
Brit. ].
Arthur Schopenhauer, born 1788 in Danzic, passed over somewhat late to philosophical life, studied in Gottingen and Berlin, received his degree in 1813 at Jena with his treatise on the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficirnt Reason, lived for a time at Weimar and Dresden, habilitated as Privatdocent in Berlin in 1820, but withdrew after he had won no success in a work as teacher which was frequently interrupted by journeys, and spent the rest of his life in private, after 1831, in Frankfort on the Main, where he died In 1880. His main work is Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 1819 [The World at
Will and as Idea, tr. by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp, Lond. and Boston, 3 vols. , 1884-86]. To this were attached Ueber den Willen in der Natur, 1836; Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik, 1841 ; finally, Parerga und Paralipomena.
1851. Complete edition in 6 vols. (Leips. 1873 f. ), and since then frequently edited. [Tr. of the Fourfold Root and of On the Will in Nature, by K. Hille- brand, Bohn Library, 2d ed. , 1891 ; of selected essays by Bax, Bohn Library, also by T. B. Saunders, 5 vols. , Lond. and N. Y. , 3d ed. , 1892. ] Cf. W. Gwinner, Sch. 's Leben, 2d ed. (Leips. 1878) ; J. Frauenstadt, Briefe iiber die ScK'scht
Chap. 2, § 41. ] Thing-in-Ittelf : Jacobi. 573
Philosophic (Leips. 1864) ; R. Seydel, Sch. 's System (Leips. 1867) ; A. Haym. A. Seh. (Berlin, 1864) ; G. Jellinek, Die Weltanschauungcn Leibniz1 und Schopenhauer's (Leips. 1872) [H. Zimmern, Schopenhauer, His Life and Phil. , Lond. 1876 ;
J. Sully, Pessimism, 2d ed. , Lond. 1801
By the side of the main metaphysical development runs a psychological
aide-line, a series of schools which, in an eclectic way, frequently approached the doctrines of the great systems by the path of the psychological method. Such is the relation to Kant and Jacobi of J. Fr. Fries (1773-1843 ; Beinhold, Fiehte und Schelling, 1803 ; Wissen, Olaube und Ahndung, 1806 ; Neue Kritik der Vernunft, 1807 ; Psychische Anthropologic, 1820 f. Cf. Kuno Fischer, Die beiden kantischen Schulen in Jena, Acad. 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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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.
Friedrich Ernst Daniel Schleiermacher, born, 1768, in Breslau, educated at the Herrnhuter educational institutions in Niesky and Barby, and at the University of Halle, after private positions took a vicarship in Landsberg, and in 1796 began his duties as preacher at the Berlin Charitfe. In 1802 he went as court preacher to Stolpe ; in 1804 as Professor Extraordinary to Halle ; in 1806 returned to Berlin, where in 1809 he became preacher at the Dreifaltigkeits- kirche ; and in 1810 Professor at the University. He acquitted himself well in both offices, occupying at the time a successful position in the ecclesiastical movement (Union) until his death in 1834. His philosophical writings form the third part of his works collected after his death (Berlin, 1835 ff. ). They contain his lectures on Dialectic, ^Esthetic, etc. ; among his writings are to be mentioned : Beden ube. rdie Religion an die Gfebildeten unter ihren Verdchtern (1799) ; Monologen (1800) ; GrundMnUn einer Kritik der bisherigen Sittenlehre
The most important work, the Ethik, is given in the coll. works, in the edition by Al. Schweizer; it is also published in an edition by A. Twesten (Berlin, 1841). — Cf. Aus Sch. 's Leben in Briefen, ed. by L Jonas and W. Dil- they, 4 vols. (Berlin, 1868-1863) ; W. Dilthey, Leben Schleiermacher's, Vol. I.
(1803).
(Berlin, 1870) [art. S. in Enc. Brit. , J. F. Smith].
Johann Friedrich Herbart, born, 1776, at Oldenburg, educated there and at the Jena University, for a time private teacher in Berne and acquainted with Pestalozzi, became in 1802 Privatdocent in Gottingen, was from 1809 to 183:1 Professor in Konigsberg, and then returned to Gottingen as Professor, where he died, 1841. His main writings are: Hauptpunkte der Afetaphysik (1806); Allgemeine praktische Philosophic (1808) ; Einleitnng in die Philosophic (1813) : Lehrbuch ztir Psycholoyie (1816) [Eng. tr. by M. K. Smith, N. Y. 1891] ; Psycho logic als Wissenschaft (1824 f. ). Complete edition by G. Hartenstein, 12 vols. (Leips. 1850 ff. ) ; in process of appearance, ed. by K. Kehrbach, since 1882. The pedagogical writings have been edited by O. Willmann in 2 vols. (Leips. 1873 and 1876). Cf. G. Hartenstein, Die Problems und Grundlehren der allgemeinen Afetaphysik (Leips. 1836) ; J. Kaftan, Sollen und Sein (Leips. 1872) ; J. Cape- sius, Die Metaphysik Herbart's (Leips. 1878) [Ward, art. Herbart, in Enc
Brit. ].
Arthur Schopenhauer, born 1788 in Danzic, passed over somewhat late to philosophical life, studied in Gottingen and Berlin, received his degree in 1813 at Jena with his treatise on the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficirnt Reason, lived for a time at Weimar and Dresden, habilitated as Privatdocent in Berlin in 1820, but withdrew after he had won no success in a work as teacher which was frequently interrupted by journeys, and spent the rest of his life in private, after 1831, in Frankfort on the Main, where he died In 1880. His main work is Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 1819 [The World at
Will and as Idea, tr. by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp, Lond. and Boston, 3 vols. , 1884-86]. To this were attached Ueber den Willen in der Natur, 1836; Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik, 1841 ; finally, Parerga und Paralipomena.
1851. Complete edition in 6 vols. (Leips. 1873 f. ), and since then frequently edited. [Tr. of the Fourfold Root and of On the Will in Nature, by K. Hille- brand, Bohn Library, 2d ed. , 1891 ; of selected essays by Bax, Bohn Library, also by T. B. Saunders, 5 vols. , Lond. and N. Y. , 3d ed. , 1892. ] Cf. W. Gwinner, Sch. 's Leben, 2d ed. (Leips. 1878) ; J. Frauenstadt, Briefe iiber die ScK'scht
Chap. 2, § 41. ] Thing-in-Ittelf : Jacobi. 573
Philosophic (Leips. 1864) ; R. Seydel, Sch. 's System (Leips. 1867) ; A. Haym. A. Seh. (Berlin, 1864) ; G. Jellinek, Die Weltanschauungcn Leibniz1 und Schopenhauer's (Leips. 1872) [H. Zimmern, Schopenhauer, His Life and Phil. , Lond. 1876 ;
J. Sully, Pessimism, 2d ed. , Lond. 1801
By the side of the main metaphysical development runs a psychological
aide-line, a series of schools which, in an eclectic way, frequently approached the doctrines of the great systems by the path of the psychological method. Such is the relation to Kant and Jacobi of J. Fr. Fries (1773-1843 ; Beinhold, Fiehte und Schelling, 1803 ; Wissen, Olaube und Ahndung, 1806 ; Neue Kritik der Vernunft, 1807 ; Psychische Anthropologic, 1820 f. Cf. Kuno Fischer, Die beiden kantischen Schulen in Jena, Acad. 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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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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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.
