History of Modern Philosophy Part 24
Friedrich Paulsen of Berlin (born in 1846; cf. pp. 330, 332, note) sees in the Kantian philosophy the foundation for the philosophy of the future. A profounder Wolff (the self-dominion of the reason), a Prussian Hume (the categories of the understanding are not world-categories; rejection of anthropomorphic metaphysics), and a German Rousseau (the primacy of the will, consideration of the demands of the heart; the good will alone, not deeds nor culture, const.i.tutes the worth of man; freedom, the rights of man) in one person, Kant has withdrawn from scientific discussion the question concerning the dependence of reality on values or the good, which is theoretically insoluble but practically to be answered in the affirmative, and given it over to faith. Kant is in so far a positivist that he limits the mission of knowledge to the reduction of the temporo-spatial relations of phenomena to rules, and declares the teleological power of values to be undemonstrable. But science is able to prove this much, that the belief in a suprasensible world, in the indestructibility of that which alone has worth, and in the freedom of the intelligible character, which the will demands, is not scientifically impossible. Since, according to formal rationalism, the whole order of nature is a creation of the understanding, and hence atomism and mechanism are only forms of representation, valid, no doubt, for our peripheral point of view, but not absolutely valid, since, further, the empirical view of the world apart from the Idea of the divine unity of the world (which, it is true, is incapable of theoretical realization) would lack completion, the immediate conviction of the heart in regard to the power of the good is in no danger of attack from the side of science, although this can do no further service for faith than to remove the obstacles which oppose it. The will, not the intellect, determines the view of the world; but this is only a belief, and in the world of representation, the intelligible world, with which the will brings us into relation, can come before us only in the form of symbols.-While Albrecht Krause (The Laws of the Human Heart, a Formal Logic of Pure Feeling, 1876) and A. Cla.s.sen (Physiology of the Sense of Sight, 1877) are strict followers of Kant, J. Volkelt (a.n.a.lysis of the Fundamental Principles of Kant's Theory of Knowledge, 1879) has traced the often deplored inconsistencies and contradictions in Kant down to their roots, and has shown that in Kant's thinking, which has. .h.i.therto been conceived as too simple and transparent, but which, in fact, is extremely complicated and struggling in the dark, a number of entirely heterogeneous principles of thought (skeptical, subjectivistic, metaphysico-work, rationalistic, a priori, and practical motives) are at which, conflicting with and crippling one another, make the attainment of harmonious results impossible. Benno Erdmann (p. 330) and Hans Vaihinger (pp. 323 note, 331) have given Kant's princ.i.p.al works careful philological interpretation.
Among the various differences of opinion which exist within the neo-Kantian ranks, the most important relates to the question, whether the individual ego or a transcendental consciousness is to be looked upon as the executor of the a priori functions. In agreement with Schopenhauer and with Lotze, who makes the subjectivity of s.p.a.ce, time, and the pure concepts parallel with that of the sense qualities, Lange teaches that the human individual is so organized that he must apprehend that which is sensuously given under these forms. Others, on the contrary, urge that the individual soul with its organization is itself a phenomenon, and consequently cannot be the bearer of that which precedes phenomena-s.p.a.ce, time, and the categories as "conditions" of experience are functions of a pure consciousness to be presupposed. The ant.i.thesis of subject and object, the soul and the world, first arises in the sphere of phenomena. The empirical subject, like the world of objects, is itself a product of the a priori forms, hence not that which produces them. To the transcendental group belong Hermann Cohen[1] in Marburg, A. Stadler[2], Natorp, La.s.switz (p.17), E. Konig (p. 17), Koppelmann (p. 330), Staudinger (p. 331). Fritz Schultze of Dresden is also to be counted among the neo-Kantians (Philosophy of Natural Science, 1882; Kant and Darwin, 1875; The Fundamental Thoughts of Materialism, 1881; The Fundamental Thoughts of Spiritualism, 1883; Comparative Psychology, i. 1, 1892).
[Footnote 1: Cohen: Kant's Theory of Experience, 1871, 2d ed., 1886; Kant's Foundation of Ethics, 1877; Kant's Foundation of Aesthetics, 1889.]
[Footnote 2: Stadler: Kant's Teleology, 1874; The Principles of the Pure Theory of Knowledge in the Kantian Philosophy, 1876; Kant's Theory of Matter, 1883.]
The German positivists[1]:-E. Laas of Strasburg (1837-85), A. Riehl of Freiburg in Baden (born 1844), and R. Avenarius of Zurich (born 1843)-develop their sensationalistic theory of knowledge in critical connection with Kant. Ernst Laas defines positivism (founded by Protagoras, advocated in modern times by Hume and J.S. Mill, and hostile to Platonic idealism) as that philosophy which recognizes no other foundations than positive facts (i.e., perceptions), and requires every opinion to exhibit the experiences on which it rests. Its basis is const.i.tuted by three articles of belief: (1) The correlative facts, subject and object, exist and arise only in connection (objects are directly known only as the contents of a consciousness, cui objecta sunt, subjects only as centers of relation, as the scene or foundation of a representative content, cui subjecta sunt: outside my thoughts body does not exist as body, nor I myself as soul). (2) The variability of the objects of perception. (3) Sensationalism-all specific differences in consciousness must be conceived as differences in degree, all higher mental processes and states, including thought, as the perceptions and experiences, transformed according to law, of beings which feel, have wants, possess memory, and are capable of spontaneous motion. The subject coincides with its feeling of pleasure and pain, from which sensation is distinguished by its objective content. The illusions of metaphysics are scientifically untenable and practically unnecessary. Various yearnings, wants, presentiments, hopes, and fancies, it is true, lead beyond the sphere of that which can be checked by sense and experience, but for none of their positions can any sufficient proof be adduced. As physics has discarded transcendent causes and learned how to get along with immanent causes, so ethics also must endeavor to establish the worth of moral good without excursions into the suprasensible. The ethical obligations arise naturally from human relations, from earthly needs. The third volume of Laas's work differs from the earlier ones by conceding the rank of facts to the principles of logic as well as to perception. Aloys Riehl opposes the theory of knowledge (which starts from the fundamental fact of sensation) as scientific philosophy to metaphysics as unscientific, and banishes the doctrine of the practical ideals from the realm of science into the region of religion and art. Richard Avenarius defends the principle of "pure experience." Sensation, which is all that is left as objectively given after the removal of the subjective additions, const.i.tutes the content, and motion the form of being.
[Footnote 1: Laas: Idealism and Positivism, 1879-84. Riehl: Philosophical Criticism, 1876-87; Address On Scientific and Unscientific Philosophy, 1883. Avenarius (p. 598): Philosophy as Thought concerning the World according to the Principle of Least Work, 1876; Critique of Pure Experience, vol. i. 1888, vol. ii. 1890; Man's Concept of the World, 1891. C. Goring (died 1879; System of Critical Philosophy, 1875) may also be placed here.]
With the neo-Kantians and the positivists there is a.s.sociated, thirdly, a coherent group of noetical thinkers, who, rejecting extramental elements of every kind, look on all conceivable being as merely a conscious content. This monism of consciousness is advocated by W. Schuppe of Greifswald (born 1836; Noetical Logic, 1878), J. Rehmke, also of Greifswald (The World as Percept and Concept, 1880; "The Question of the Soul" in vol. ii. of the Zeitschrift fur Psychologie, 1891), A. von Leclair (Contributions to a Monistic Theory of Knowledge, 1882), and R. von Schubert-Soldern (Foundations of a Theory of Knowledge, 1884; On the Transcendence of Object and Subject, 1882; Foundations for an Ethics, 1887). J. Bergmann[1] in Marburg (born 1840) occupies a kindred position.
[Footnote 1: Bergmann: Outlines of a Theory of Consciousness, 1870; Pure Logic, 1879; Being and Knowing, 1880; The Fundamental Problems of Logic, 1882; On the Right, 1883; Lectures on Metaphysics, 1886; On the Beautiful, 1887; History of Philosophy, vol. i., Pre-Kantian Philosophy, 1892.]
It is the same scientific spirit of the time, which in the fifties led many who were weary of the idealistic speculations over to materialism, that now secures such wide dissemination and so widespread favor for the endeavors of the neo-Kantians and the positivists or neo-Baconians, who desire to see metaphysics stricken from the list of the sciences and replaced by noetics, and the theory of the world relegated to faith. The philosophy of the present, like the pre-Socratic philosophy and the philosophy of the early modern period, wears the badge of physics. The world is conceived from the standpoint of nature, psychical phenomena are in part neglected, in part see their inconvenient claims reduced to a minimum, while it is but rarely that we find an appreciation of their independence and co-ordinate value, not to speak of their superior position. The power which natural science has gained over philosophy dates essentially from a series of famous discoveries and theories, by which science has opened up entirely new and wide outlooks, and whose t.i.tle to be considered in the formation of a general view of reality is incontestable. To mention only the most prominent, the following have all posited important and far-reaching problems for philosophy as well as for science: Johannes Muller's (Muller died 1858) theory of the specific energies of the senses, which Helmholtz made use of as an empirical confirmation of the Kantian apriorism; the law of the conservation of energy discovered by Robert Mayer (1842, 1850; Helmholtz, 1847, 1862), and, in particular, the law of the transformation of heat into motion, which invited an examination of all the forces active in the world to test their mutual convertibility; the extension of mechanism to the vital processes, favored even by Lotze; the renewed conflict between atomism and dynamism; further, the Darwinian theory[1] (1859), which makes organic species develop from one another by natural selection in the struggle for existence (through inheritance and adaptation); finally, the meta-geometrical speculations[2] of Gauss (1828), Riemann (On the Hypotheses which lie at the Basis of Geometry, 1854, published in 1867), Helmholtz (1868), B. Erdmann (The Axioms of Geometry, 1877). G. Cantor, and others, which look on our Euclidean s.p.a.ce of three dimensions as a special case of the unintuitable yet thinkable a.n.a.lytic concept of a s.p.a.ce of n dimensions. The circ.u.mstance that these theories are still largely hypothetical in their own field appears to have stirred up rather than moderated the zeal for carrying them over into other departments and for applying them to the world as a whole. Thus, especially, the Darwinians[3] have undauntedly attempted to utilize the biological hypothesis of the master as a philosophical principle of the world, and to bring the mental sciences under the point of view of the mechanical theory of development, though thus far with more daring and noise than success. The finely conceived ethics of Hoffding (p. 585) is an exception to the rule which is the object of this remark.
[Footnote 1: A critical exposition of the modern doctrine of development and of the causes used to explain it is given by Otto Hamann, Entwickelungslehre und Darwinismus, Jena, 1892. Cf. also, O. Liebmann, a.n.a.lysis der Wirklichkeit; and Ed. von Hartmann (above, p. 610). [Among the numerous works in English the reader may be referred to the article "Evolution," by Huxley and Sully, Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th ed., vol. viii.; Wallace's Darwinism, 1889; Romanes, Darwin and after Darwin, i. The Darwinian Theory, 1892; and Conn's Evolution of To-day, 1886.-TR.]]
[Footnote 2: Cf. Liebmann, a.n.a.lysis der Wirklichkeit, 2d ed., pp. 53-59. G. Frege (Begriffsschrift, 1879; The Foundations of Arithmetic, 1884; Function and Concept, 1891; "On Sense and Meaning" in the Zeitschrift fur Philosophie, vol. c. 1892) has also chosen the region intermediate between mathematics and philosophy for his field of work. We note, further, E.G. Husserl, Philosophy of Arithmetic, vol. i., 1891.]
[Footnote 3: Ernst Haeckel of Jena (born 1834; General Morphology, 1866; Natural History of Creation, 1868 [English, 1875] I Anthropogeny, 1874; Aims and Methods of the Development History of To-day, 1875; Popular Lectures, 1878 seq.-English, 1883), G. Jager, A. Schleicher (The Darwinian Theory and the Science of Language, 1865), Ernst Krause (Carus Sterne, the editor of Kosmos) O. Caspari, Carneri (Morals and Darwinism, 1871), O. Schmidt, Du Prel, Paul Ree (The Origin of the Moral Feelings, 1877; The Genesis of Conscience, 1885; The Illusion of Free Will, 1885); G.H. Schneider (The Animal Will, 1880; The Human Will, 1882; The Good and III of the Human Race, 1883).]
Besides the theory of knowledge, in the elaboration of which the most eminent naturalists[1] partic.i.p.ate with acuteness and success, psychology and the practical disciplines also betray the influence of the scientific spirit. While sociology and ethics, following the English model, seek an empirical basis and begin to make philosophical use of statistical results (E.F. Schaffle, Frame and Life of the Social Body, new ed., 1885; A. von Oettingen, Moral Statistic in its Significance for a Social Ethics, 3d ed., 1882), psychology endeavors to attain exact results in regard to psychical life and its relation to its physical basis-besides Fechner and the Herbartians, W. Wundt and A. Horwicz should be mentioned here. Wundt and, of late, Haeckel go back to the Spinozistic parallelism of material and psychical existence, only that the latter emphasizes merely the inseparability (Nichtohneeinander) of the two sides (the cell-body and the cell-soul) with a real difference between them and a metaphysical preponderance of the material side, while the former emphasizes the essential unity of body and soul, and the higher reality of the spiritual side.
[Footnote 1: Helmholtz, Virchow (born 1821), Zollner (1834-82; On the Nature of Comets, 1872), and Du Bois-Reymond (born 1818), who, in his lectures On the Limits of the Knowledge of Nature, 1872, and The Seven World-riddles, 1880 (both together in 1882, and reprinted in the first series of his Addresses, 1886), looks on the origin of life, the purposive order of nature, and thought as problems soluble in the future, but declares, on the other hand, that the nature of matter (atoms) and force (actio in distant), the origin of motion, the genesis of consciousness (of sensation, together with pleasure and pain) from the knowable conditions of psychical life, and the freedom of the will, are absolute limits to our knowledge of nature.]
(b) Idealistic Reaction against the Scientific Spirit.-In opposition to the preponderance of natural science and the empirico-skeptical tendency of the philosophy of the day conditioned by it, an idealistic counter-movement is making itself increasingly felt as the years go on. Wilhelm Dilthey[1] abandons metaphysics as a basis, it is true, but (with the a.s.sent of Gierke, Preussische Jahrbucher, vol. liii. 1884) declares against the transfer of the method of natural science to the mental sciences, which require a special foundation. In spite of his critical rejection of metaphysics, Wilhelm Windelband in Strasburg (born 1848; Preludes, 1884) is, like Dilthey, to be counted among the idealists. In opposition to the individualism of the positivists, the folk-psychologists-at their head Steinthal and Lazarus (p. 536); Gustav Glogau[2] in Kiel (born 1844) is an adherent of the same movement-defend the power of the universal over individual spirits. The spirit of the people is not a phrase, an empty name, but a real force, not the sum of the individuals belonging to the people, but an encompa.s.sing and controlling power, which brings forth in the whole body processes (e.g., language) which could not occur in individuals as such. It is only as a member of society that anyone becomes truly man; the community is the subject of the higher life of spirit.
[Footnote 1: Dilthey: Introduction to the Mental Sciences, part i., 1883; Poetic Creation in the Zeller Aufsatze, 1887; "Contributions to the Solution of the Question of the Origin of our Belief in the Reality of the External World, and its Validity," Sitzungsberichte of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, 1890; "Conception and a.n.a.lysis of Man in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries" in the Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie, vols. iv., v., 1891-92.]
[Footnote 2: Glogau: Sketch of the Fundamental Philosophical Sciences (part i., The Form and the Laws of Motion of the Spirit, 1880; part ii., The Nature and the Fundamental Forms of Conscious Spirit, 1888); Outlines of Psychology; 1884.]
If folk-psychology, whose t.i.tle but imperfectly expresses the comprehensive endeavor to construct a psychology of society or of the universal spirit, is, as it were, an empirical confirmation of Hegel's theory of Objective Spirit, Rudolf Eucken[1] (born 1846), pressing on in the Fichtean manner from the secondary facts of consciousness to an original real-life, endeavors to solve the question of a universal becoming, of an all-pervasive force, of a supporting unity ("totality") in the life of spirit (neither in a purely noetical nor a purely metaphysical, but) in a noological way, and demands that the fundamental science or doctrine of principles direct its attention not to cognition by itself, but to the activity of psychical life as a whole.
[Footnote 1: Eucken: The Unity of Spiritual Life in the Consciousness and Deeds of Humanity, 1888; Prolegomena to this, 1885. A detailed a.n.a.lysis of the latter by Falckenberg is given in the Zeitschrift fur Philosophie, vol. xc, 1887; cf. above, pp. 17 and 610.]
We have elsewhere discussed the more recent attempts to establish a metaphysic which shall be empirically well grounded and shall cautiously rise from facts.[1] In regard to the possibility of metaphysics three parties are to be distinguished: On the left, the positivists, the neo-Kantians, and the monists of consciousness, who deny it out of hand. On the right, a series of philosophers-e.g., adherents of Hegel, Herbart, and Schopenhauer-who, without making any concessions to the modern theory of knowledge, hold fast to the possibility of a speculative metaphysics of the old type. In the center, a group of thinkers who are willing to renounce neither a solid noetical foundation nor the attainment of metaphysical conclusions-so Eduard von Hartmann, Wundt,[2] Eucken, Volkelt (pp. 590, 617). Otto Liebmann (born 1840; On the a.n.a.lysis of Reality, 1876, 2d ed., 1880; Thoughts and Facts, Heft i. 1882) demands a sharp separation between the certain and the uncertain and an exact estimation of the degree of probability which theories possess; puts the principles of metaphysics under the rubric of logical hypothesis; and, in his Climax of the Theories, 1884, calls attention to the fact that experiential science, in addition to axioms necessarily or apodictically certain and empeiremes possessing actual or a.s.sertory certainty, needs, further, a number of "interpolation maxims," which form an attribute of our type of intellectual organization (i.e., principles, according to the standard of which we supplement the fragmentary and discrete series of single perceptions and isolated observations by the interpolation of the needed intermediate links, so that they form a connected experience). The most important of these maxims are the principles of real ident.i.ty, of the continuity of existence, of causality, and of the continuity of becoming. Experience is a gift of the understanding; the premises, as a rule, latent in ordinary consciousness, on whose antic.i.p.atory application our experience is based throughout, a.s.sert something absolutely incapable of being experienced. If, in order to the production of a "pure experience," we eliminate all subjective additions of the understanding contained in experiential thought (all that cannot be present at the moment or locally at hand, in short, all that cannot be the direct object and content of actual observation), this breaks up into an unordered, unconnected aggregate of discontinuous perceptual fragments; in order that a complete and articulated condition of experience may result, these fragments (the purely factual content of observation, the incoherent matter of perception) must be supplemented and connected by very much that is not observed.
[Footnote 1: R. Falckenberg, Ueber die gegenwartige Lage der deutschen Philosophie, inaugural address at Erlangen, Leipsic, 1890.]
[Footnote 2: Wundt: Essays, 1885, including "Philosophy and Science"; System of Philosophy, 1889. On the latter cf. Volkelt's paper in the Philosophische Monatshefte, vol. xxvii. 1891; and on the Essays a notice by the same author in the same review, vol. xxiii. 1887.]
Further, a reaction against crude naturalism is observable in the practical field, though political economists (Roscher) and jurists take a more active part in it than the philosophers. Personally R. von Jhering (1818-92; Purpose in Law, 2 vols., 1877-83, 2d ed., 1884-86) stands on idealistic ground, although, rejecting the nativistic and formalistic theory, he is in principle an adherent of "realism," of the principle of interest and social utility (the moral is that Which is permanently useful to society).
Finally, similar motives underlie the growing interest in the history of philosophy. The idealistic impulse seeks the nourishment which the un-metaphysical present denies to it from the great works of the past, and hopes, by keeping alive the cla.s.sical achievements of previous times, to enhance the consciousness of the urgency and irrepressibleness of the highest questions, and to awaken courage for renewed attempts at their solution. Thus the study of history enters the service of systematic philosophy.
(c) The Special Philosophical Sciences.-The more the courage to attack the central problems of philosophy has been paralyzed by the neo-Kantian theory of knowledge and the coming-in of the positivistic spirit, the more lively has been the work of the last decades in the special departments: the transfer of the center of gravity from metaphysics to the particular sciences is the most prominent characteristic of the philosophy of the time. Logic sees century-old convictions shattered and new foundations arising. Psychology has entered into compet.i.tion with physiology in regard to the discovery of the laws of the psychical functions which depend on bodily processes, while metaphysical questions are forced into the background and there is a growing distrust of the reliability of inner observation. The philosophy of religion is favored with undiminished interest and aesthetics, after long neglect, with a renewal of attention; the philosophy of history is about to reconquer its former rights. There is, moreover, an especially lively interest in ethics; and the investigation of the history of philosophy is more widely extended than ever before. We will close our sketch with a short survey of the particular disciplines.
In the department of logic the following should be mentioned as cla.s.sical achievements: the works of Christoph Sigwart of Tubingen (vol. i. 1873, 2d ed., 1889; vol. ii. 1878), of Lotze (p. 605), and of Wundt (vol. i. Erkenntnisslehre, 1880; vol. ii. Methodenlehre, 1883). Besides these, Bergmann (p. 620), Schuppe (p. 619), and Benno Erdmann (Logik, vol. i. 1892) deserve notice.
In psychology the following writers have made themselves prominent: Wilhelm Wundt at Leipsic (born 1832), Grundzuge der physiologischen Psychologie, 1874, 3d ed., 1887; A. Horwicz, Psychologische a.n.a.lysen auf physiologischer Grundlage, 1872 seq.; Franz Brentano in Vienna (born 1838), Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte, vol. i. 1874; Carl Stumpf of Munich (born 1848), Ueber den psychologischen Ursprung der Raumvorstellung, 1873, Tonpsychologie, vol. i. 1883, vol. ii. 1890; Theodor Lipps of Breslau (born 1851), Grundthatsachen des Seelenlebens, 1883. The following may be mentioned in the same connection: J.H. Witte, Das Wesen der Seele, 1888; H. Munsterberg, Die Willenshandlung, 1888, Beitrage zur experimentellen Psychologie, 1889 seq,; Goswin K. Uphues at Halle, Wahrnehmung und Empfindung, 1888, Ueber die Erinnerung, 1889; H. Schmidkunz, Psychologie der Suggestion, 1892; H. Ebbinghaus, the co-editor of the Zeitschrift fur Psychologie una Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, 1890 seq.; H. Spitta; Max Dessoir, Der Hautsinn, in the Archiv fur Anatomie una Physiologie, 1892. The following works are psychological contributions to the theory of knowledge: E.L. Fischer, Theorie der Gesichtswahrnehmung, 1891; Hermann Schwarz, Das Wahrnehmungsproblem, 1892. Finally we may add A. Dorner in Konigsberg, Das menschliche Erkennen, 1887; and E.L. Fischer, Die Grundfragen der Erkenntnisstheorie, 1887.
The literature of moral philosophy has been substantially enriched by Wundt, Ethik, 1886, 2d ed., 1892; and Friedrich Paulsen, System der Ethik, 1889, 2d ed., 1891. We may mention, further, Baumann (p. 601); Schuppe, Grundzuge der Ethik und Rechtsphilosophie, 1882; Witte, Freiheit des Willens, 1882; G. Cla.s.s in Erlangen, Ideale und Guter, 1886; Richard Wallaschek, Ideen zur praktischen Philosophic, 1886; F. Tonnies in Kiel, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, 1887; A. Doring, Philosophische Guterlehre, 1888; Th. Ziegler, Sittliches Sein und Werden, 2d ed., 1890; G. Simmel, Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft, vol. i. 1892.
Of the newer works in the field of aesthetics, in addition to A.
Zeising's Aesthetische Forschungen, 1855, C. Hermann's Aesthetik, 1875, and Hartmann's Philosophie des Schonen, 1887, we may mention the Einleitung in die Aesthetik of Karl Groos, 1892, and the following by Lipps: Der Streit uber die TraG.o.die, 1890; Aesthetische Faktoren der Raumanschauung, 1891; the essay Psychologie der Komik (Philosophische Monatshefte, vols. xxiv.-xxv. 1888-89), and Aesthetische Litteraturberichte, (in the same review, vol. xxvi. 1890 seq.).
Among the writers and works on the philosophy of history we may note Conrad Hermann in Leipsic (born 1819), Philosophie der Geschichte, 1870; Bernheim, Geschichtsforschung und Geschichtsphilosophie, 1880; Karl Fischer, Ist eine Philosophie der Geschichte wissenschaftlich erforderlich bezw. moglich? Dillenburg Programme, 1889; Hinneberg, Die philosophischen Grundlagen der Geschichtswissenschaft in Sybel's Historische Zeitschrift, vol. lxiii. 1889; A. Dippe, Das Geschichtsstudium mit seinen Zielen und Fragen, 1891; Georg Simmel, Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie, 1892.
In the philosophy of religion, which is discussed especially by the theologians, a neo-Kantian and a neo-Hegelian tendency confront each other. The former, dividing in its turn, is represented, on the one hand, by the Ritschlian school-W. Herrmann in Marburg (Die Metaphysik in der Theologie, 1876, Die Religion im Verhaltniss zum Welterkennen und zur Sittlichkeit, 1889), J. Kaftan in Berlin (Das Wesen der christlichen Religion, 1881)-and, on the other, by R.A. Lipsius in Jena (born 1830; Dogmatik, 1876, 2d ed., 1879; Philosophie und Religion, 1885). The latter is represented by A.E. Biedermann of Zurich (1819-85; Christliche Dogmatik, 1868; 2d ed., 1884-85), a pupil of W. Vatke, and by Otto Pfleiderer of Berlin (born 1839; Religionsphilosophie, 1879; 2d ed., 1883-4). The neo-Kantians base religion exclusively on the practical side of human nature, especially on the moral law, derive it from the contrast between external dependence on nature and the inner freedom or supernatural destination of the spirit, and wish it preserved from all intermixture with metaphysics. According to the neo-Hegelians, on the contrary, the theoretical element in religion is no less essential; and is capable of being purified, of being elevated from the form of representation, which is full of contradictions, into the adequate form of pure thought, capable, therefore, of reconciliation with philosophy. Hugo Delff (Ueber den Weg zum Wissen und zur Gewissheit zu gelangen, 1882; Die Hauptprobleme der Philosophie und Religion, 1886) follows Jacobi's course.
Among the numerous works on the history of philosophy, besides the masterpieces of Zeller, J.E. Erdmann, and Kuno Fischer, the following are especially worthy of attention:
Cl. Baumker in Breslau, Das Problem der Materie in der griechischen Philosophie, 1890; H. Bonitz, Platonische Studien, 3d ed., 1886, Aristotelische Studien, 1862 seq., Index Aristotelicus, 1870, Kleine Schriften; P. Deussen (born 1845), Das System der Vedanta, 1883, H. Diels in Berlin, Doxographi Graeci, 1879; Eucken in Jena (p. 17), Die Methode der aristotelischen Forschung, 1872, Address Ueber den Werth der Geschichte der Philosophie, 1874; J. Freudenthal in Breslau (born 1839, pp. 63, 118), h.e.l.lenistische Studien, 3 Hefte, 1879, Ueber die Theologie des Xenophanes, 1886; M. Heinze in Leipsic, Die Lehre vom Logos in der griechischen Philosophie, 1872; G. Freiherr von Hertling in Munich (born 1843), Materie und Form und die Definition der Seele bei Aristoteles, 1871, Albertus Magnus, 1880; H. Heussler in Basle (p. 65 note), Der Rationalismus des XVII. Jahrhunderts in seinen Beziehungen zur Eniwickelungslehre, 1885; Fr. Jodl in Prague (born 1849; pp. 16, 221 note); A. Krohn (1840-89), Sokrates und Xenophon, 1874, Der platonische Staat, 1876, Die platonische Frage, 1878-on Krohn, an obituary by Falckenberg in the Biographisches Jahrbuch fur Alterthumskunde, Jahrg. 12, 1889; P. Natorp (pp. 88 note, 598), Forschungen zur Geschichte des Erkenntnissproblems im Alterthum, 1884; Edmund Pfleiderer in Tubingen (born 1842; p. 113 note[1]), Empirismus und Skepsis im D. Humes Philosophie, 1874, Die Philosophie des Heraklit im Lichte der Mysterienidee, 1886; K. von Prantl (1820-88), Geschichte der Logik im Abendlande, 4 vols., 1855-70; Carl Schaarschmidt (pp. 88 note, 117-118); Johannes Sarisberiensis, 1862, Die Sammlung der platonischen Schriften, 1866; L. Schmidt in Marburg (born 1824), Die Ethik der alten Griechen, 1881; Gustav Schneider, Die platonische Metaphysik, 1884; H. Siebeck in Giessen, Untersuchungen zur Philosophie der Griechen, 1873, 2d ed., 1888, Geschichte der Psychologie, part i. 1880-84; Chr. von Sigwart (born 1830; pp. 17, 118); Heinrich von Stein in Rostock (born 1833), Sieben Bucher zur Geschichte des Platonismus, 1862-75; Ludwig Stein in Berne, editor of the Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie, founded in 1877, Die Psychologie der Stoa, I. Metaphysisch-Anthropologischer Theil, 1886, II. Erkenntnisstheorie, 1888, Leibniz und Spinoza, 1890; L. Strumpell, Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie, 1854, 1861; Susemihl in Greifswald, Die Politik des Aristoteles, Greek and German with notes, 1879, further, a series of essays on Plato and Aristotle; Teichmuller (p. 601); Trendelenburg (pp. 600-601), Aristotelis de Anima, 2d ed., by Belger. 1887; Th. Waitz, Aristotelis Organon, 1844-46; J. Walter in Konigsberg, Die Lehre von der praktischen Vernunft in der griechischen Philosophie, 1874, Geschichte der Aesthetik im Alterthum, 1892; Tob. Wildauer in Innsbruck, Die Psychologie des Willens bei Sokrates, Platon, und Aristoteles, 1877, 1879; W. Windelbund in Strasburg (pp. 15-16), Geschichte der alten Philosophie, 1888; Theob. Ziegler in Strasburg, Geschichte der christlichen Ethik, 1886, 2d ed., with index, 1892; Rob. Zimmermann (pp. 19 note, 331, 536), Studien und Kritiken, 1870.
4. Retrospect.
In order to avoid the appearance of arbitrary construction we have been sparing with references of a philosophico-historical character. In conclusion, looking back at the period pa.s.sed over, we may give expression to some convictions concerning the guiding threads in the development of modern philosophy, though these here claim only the rights of subjective opinion.
A mirror of modern culture, and conscious of its sharp ant.i.thesis to Scholasticism, modern philosophy in its pre-Kantian period is pre-eminently characterized by naturalism. Nature, as a system of ma.s.ses moved according to law, forms not only the favorite object of investigation, but also the standard by which psychical reality is judged and explained. The two directions in which this naturalism expresses itself, the mechanical view of the world, which endeavors to understand the universe from the standpoint of nature and all becoming from the standpoint of motion,[1] and the intellectualistic view, which seeks to understand the mind from the standpoint of knowledge, are most intimately connected. Where the general view of the All takes form and color from nature, a content and a mission can come to the mind from no other source than the external world; whether we (empirically) make it take up the material of representation from without or (rationalistically) make it create an ideal reproduction of the content of external reality from within, it is always the function of knowledge, conceived as the reproduction of a completed reality, which, since it brings us into contact with nature, advances into the foreground and determines the nature of psychical activity. As is conceivable, along with dogmatic faith in the power of the reason to possess itself of the reality before it and to reconstrue it in the system of science, and with triumphant references to the mathematical method as a guaranty for the absolute certainty of philosophical knowledge, the noetical question emerges as to the means by which, and the limits within which, human knowledge is able to do justice to this great problem. Descartes gave out the programme for all these various tendencies-the mechanical explanation of nature, the absolute separation of body and soul (despiritualization of matter), thought the essence of the mind, the demand for certain knowledge, armed against every doubt, and the question as to the origin of ideas. Its execution by his successors shows not only a lateral extension in the most various directions (the dualistic view of the world held by the occasionalists, the monistic or pantheistic view of Spinoza, the pluralistic or individualistic view of Leibnitz; similarly the ant.i.thesis between the sensationalism of Locke and Condillac and the rationalism of Spinoza and Leibnitz), but also a progressive deepening of problems, mediated by party strife which puts every energy to the strain. What a tremendous step from the empiricism of Bacon to the skepticism of Hume, from the innate ideas of Descartes to the potential a priori of Leibnitz! From the moment when the negative and positive culminations of the pre-Kantian movement in thought-Hume and Leibnitz-came together in one mind, the conditions of the Kantian reform were given, just as the preparation for the Socratic reform had been given in the skepticism of the Sophists and the [Greek: nous] principle of Anaxagoras.
[Footnote 1: Even for Leibnitz the mind is a machine (automaton spirituale), and psychical action a movement of ideas.]
Kant, who dominates the second period of modern philosophy down to the present time, is related to his predecessors in a twofold way. In his criticism he completes the noetical tendency, and at the same time overcomes naturalism, by limiting the mechanical explanation (and with it certain knowledge, it is true) to phenomena and opposing moralism to intellectualism. Nature must be conceived from the standpoint of the spirit (as its product, for all conformity to law takes its origin in the spirit), the spirit from the standpoint of the will. Metaphysics, as the theory of the a priori conditions of experience, is raised to the rank of a science, while the suprasensible is removed from the region of proof and refutation and based upon the rock of moral will. In the positive side of the Kantian philosophy-the spirit the law-giver of nature, the will the essence of spirit and the key to true reality-we find its kernel, that in it which is forever valid. The conclusions on the absolute worth of the moral disposition, on the ultimate moral aim of the world, on the intelligible character, and on radical evil, reveal the energy with which Kant took up the mission of furnishing the life-forces opened up by Christianity-which the Middle Ages had hidden rather than conserved under the crust of Aristotelian conceptions entirely alien to them, and the pre-Kantian period of modern times had almost wholly ignored-an entrance into philosophy, and of transforming and enriching the modern view of the world from this standpoint. Kant's position is as opposite and superior to the specifically modern, to the naturalistic temper of the new period, as Plato stands out, a stranger and a prophet of the future, above the level of Greek modes of thought. More fortunate, however, than Plato, he found disciples who followed further in the direction pointed out by that face of the Ja.n.u.s-head of his philosophy which looked toward the future: the ethelism of Fichte and the historicism of Hegel have their roots in Kant's doctrine of the practical reason. These are acquisitions which must never be given up, which must ever be reconquered in face of attack from forces hostile to spirit and to morals. In life, as in science, we must ever anew "win" ethical idealism "in order to possess it." As yet the reconciliation of the historical and the scientific, the Christian and the modern spirit is not effected. For the inbred naturalism of the modern period has not only a.s.serted itself, amalgamated with Kantian elements, in the realistic metaphysics and mechanical psychology of Herbart and in the system of Schopenhauer, as a lateral current by the side of Fichte, Sch.e.l.ling, and Hegel, but, under the influence of the new and powerful development of the natural sciences, has once more confidently risen against the traditions of the idealistic school, although now it is tempered by criticism and concedes to the practical ideals at least a refuge in faith. The conviction that the rule of neo-Kantianism is provisional does not rest merely on the mutability of human affairs. The widespread active study of the philosophy of the great Konigsberger gives ground for the hope that also those elements in it from which the systems of the idealists have proceeded as necessary consequences will again find attention and appreciation. The perception of the fact that the naturalistico-mechanical view represents only a part, a subordinate part, of the truth will lead to the further truth, that the lower can only be explained by the higher. We shall also learn more and more to distinguish between the permanent import of the position of fundamental idealism and the particular form which the constructive thinkers have given it; the latter may fall before legitimate a.s.saults, but the former will not be affected by them. The revival of the Fichteo-Hegelian idealism by means of a method which shall do justice to the demands of the time by a closer adherence to experience, by making general use of both the natural and the mental sciences, and by an exact and cautious mode of argument-this seems to us to be the task of the future. The most important of the post-Hegelian systems, the system of Lotze, shows that the scientific spirit does not resist reconciliation with idealistic convictions in regard to the highest questions, and the consideration which it on all sides enjoys, that there exists a strong yearning in this direction. But when a deeply founded need of the time becomes active, it also rouses forces which dedicate themselves to its service and which are equal to the work.
THE END.