religious feelings into representations, and one which is harmless because
of the unmistakableness of their symbolic character, the anthropomorphic
predicates, through which we think the Deity as personal, themselves
establish the superiority of theism over pantheism. The object of religion,
moreover, is accessible only to the subjective certitude of feeling which
is given by faith, and not to scientific knowledge.
Feuerbach's anthropological standpoint will be discussed below. Like
Friedrich Ueberweg (1826-71; professor in Königsberg; _System of Logic_,
1857, 5th ed., edited by J.B. Meyer, 1882--English translation, 1871), Karl
Fortlage was strongly influenced in his psychological views by Beneke.
Born in 1806 at Osnabrück, and at his death in 1881 a professor in Jena,
Fortlage shared with Beneke an impersonality of character, as well as the
fate of meeting with less esteem from his contemporaries than he merited
by the seriousness and originality of his thinking. To his _System of
Psychology_, 1855, in two volumes, he added, as it were, a third volume,
his _Contributions to Psychology_, 1875, besides psychological lectures of
a more popular cast (_Eight Lectures_, 1869, 2d ed., 1872; _Four Lectures_,
1874).[1] Fortlage characterizes his psychological method--in the criticism
of which F.A. Lange fails to show the justice for which he is elsewhere
to be commended--as observation by the inner sense. In the first place,
consciousness, as the active form of representation, must be separated from
that of which we are conscious, from the "content of representation," which
is in itself unconscious, but capable of coming into consciousness. Next
Fortlage seeks to determine the laws of these two factors. In regard to
the content of representation he distinguishes more sharply than Herbart
between the fusibility of the homogeneous and the capacity for complex
combination possessed by the heterogeneous (the fusion of similars goes on
even without aid from consciousness, while the connection of dissimilars is
brought about only through the help of the latter), and adds to these two
general properties of the content of representation two further ones, its
revivability (its persistence in unconsciousness), and its dissolubility in
the scale of size, color, etc. Consciousness, on the other hand, which for
Fortlage coincides with the ego or self, is treated as the presupposition
of all representations, not as their result--it is underived activity. He
explains the nature of consciousness by the concept of attention,
characterizes them both as "questioning activity"
(_Fragethätigkeit_), and
follows them out in their various degrees from expectation through
observation up to reflection. The listening and watching of the hunter
when waiting for the game is only a prolongation of the same consciousness
which accompanies all less exciting representations. The essential element
in conscious or questioning activity is the oscillation between yes and no.
As soon as the disjunction is decided by a yes, the desire which lies at
its basis, and which in the condition of consciousness is arrested, passes
over into activity. All consciousness is based on interest, and in its
origin is "arrested impulse" (_Triebhemmung_). "The direction of impulse
to an intuition to be expected only in the future is called
consciousness." The rank of a being depends on its capacity for
reflection: the greater the extent of its attention and the smaller
the stimuli which suffice to rouse this to action, the higher it stands.
Impulse--this is the fundamental idea of Fortlage's psychology, like will
with Fichte, and representation with Herbart--consists of an element of
representation and an element of feeling.
Pleasure + effort-image = impulse.
[Footnote 1: Among Fortlage's other works we may mention his valuable
_History of Poetry_, 1839; the _Genetic History of Philosophy since Kant_,
1852; and the attractive _Six Philosophical Lectures_, 1869, 2d ed., 1872.]
In his metaphysical convictions, to which he gave expression in his
_Exposition and Criticism of the Arguments for the Existence of God_,
1840, among other works, Fortlage belongs to the philosophers of identity.
Originally sailing in Hegel's wake, he soon recognizes that the roots of
the theory of identity go back to the Kantio-Fichtean philosophy, with
which the system of absolute truth, as he holds, has come into being. He
thus becomes an adherent of the Science of Knowledge, whose deductive
results he finds inductively confirmed by psychological experience.
Psychology is the empirical test for the metaphysical calculus of the
Science of Knowledge. In regard to the absolute Fortlage is in agreement
with Krause, the younger Fichte, Ulrici, etc., and calls his standpoint
_transcendent pantheism_. According to this all that is good, exalted, and
valuable in the world is divine in its nature; the human reason is of
the same essence as the divine reason (there can be nothing higher than
reason); the Godhead is the absolute ego of Fichte, which employs the
empirical egos as organs, which thinks and wills in individuals, in so
far as they think the truth and will the good, but at the same time as
universal subject goes beyond them. If, after the example of Hegel, we give
up transcendent pantheism in favor of immanence, two unphilosophical modes
of representing the absolute at once result--on the one hand, materialism;
on the other, popular, unphilosophical theism. If the Fichtean Science
of Knowledge could be separated from its difficult method, which it is
impossible ever to make comprehensible to the unphilosophical mind, it
would be called to take the place of religion.[1]
[Footnote 1: Among Fortlage's posthumous manuscripts was one on the
Philosophy of Religion, on which Eucken published an essay in the
_Zeitschrift für Philosophie_, vol. lxxxii. 1883, p. 180
_seq_. after
Lipsius had given a single chapter from it--"The Ideal of Morality
according to Christianity"--in his _Jahrbücher für protestantische
Theologie_ (vol. ix. pp. 1-45). The journals _Im Neuen Reich_, 1881, No.
24, and _Die Gegenwart_, 1882, No. 34, contained warmly written notices of
Fortlage by J. Volkelt. Leopold Schmid (in Giessen, died 1869) gives a
favorable and skillfully composed outline of Fortlage's system in his
_Grundzüge der Einleitung in die Philosophie mit einer Beleuchtung der
von K. Ph. Fischer, Sengler, und Fortlage ermöglichten Philosophie der
That_, 1860, pp. 226-357. Cf. also Moritz Brasch, _K.
Fortlage, Ein
philosophisches Charakterbild_, in _Unsere Zeit_, 1883, Heft II,
pp. 730-756, incorporated in the same author's _Philosophie der
Gegenwart_, 1888.]
%2. Realism: Herbart.%
Johann Friedrich Herbart was scientifically the most important among the
philosophers of the opposition. Herbart was born at Oldenburg in 1776, the
son of a councilor of justice, and had already become acquainted with the
systems of Wolff and Kant before he entered the University of Jena in
1794. In 1796 he handed in to his instructor Fichte a critique of two of
Schelling's treatises, in which the youthful thinker already broke
away from idealism. While a private tutor in Switzerland he made the
acquaintance of Pestalozzi. In 1802 he habilitated in Göttingen, where, in
1805, he was promoted to a professorship extraordinary; while in 1809 he
received the professorship in Königsberg once held by Kant, and later by
W. Tr. Krug (died 1842). He died in 1841 at Göttingen, whither he had been
recalled in 1833. His _Collected Works_ were published in twelve volumes,
1850-52 (reprinted 1883 _seq_.), by his pupil Hartenstein, who has also
given an excellent exposition of his master's system in his _Probleme und
Grundlehren der allgemeinen Metaphysik_, 1836, and his _Grundbegriffe der
ethischen Wissenschaften_, 1844; a new edition, in chronological order, and
under the editorship of K. Kehrbach, began to appear in 1882, or rather
1887, and has now advanced to the fourth volume, 1891.
Herbart's chief
works were written during his Königsberg residence: the _Text-book of
Introduction to Philosophy_, 1813, 4th ed., 1837 (very valuable as an
introduction to Herbartian modes of thought); _General Metaphysics_, 1829
(preceded in 1806 and 1808 by _The Principal Points in Metaphysics_, with a
supplement, _The Principal Points in Logic); Text-book of Psychology_,[1]
1816, 2d ed., 1834; _On the Possibility and Necessity of applying
Mathematics to Psychology_, 1822; _Psychology as a Science_, 1824-25. The
two works on ethics, which were widely separated in time, were, on the
other hand, written in Göttingen: _General Practical Philosophy_, 1808;
_Analytical Examination of Natural Right and of Morals_, 1836. To these
may be added a _Discourse on Evil_, 1817; _Letters on the Doctrine of
the Freedom of the Human Will_, 1836; and the _Brief Encyclopaedia of
Philosophy_, 1831, 2d ed., 1841. His works on education and instruction,
whose influence and value perhaps exceed those of his philosophical
achievements (collected editions of the pedagogical works have been
prepared by O. Willmann, 1873-75, 2d ed., 1880; and by Bartholomaei),
extended through his whole life. Besides pedagogics, psychology was the
chief sphere of his services.
[Footnote 1: English translation by M.K. Smith, 1891.]
In antithesis to the philosophy of intuition with its imagined superiority
to the standpoint of reflection, Herbart makes philosophy begin with
attention to concepts, defining it as the elaboration of concepts.
Philosophy, therefore, is not distinguished from other sciences by its
object, but by its method, which again must adapt itself to the
peculiarity of the object, to the starting point of the investigation in
question--there is no universal philosophical method.
There are as many
divisions of philosophy as there are modes of elaborating concepts. The
first requisite is the discrimination of concepts, both the discrimination
of concepts from others and of the marks within each concept. This work
of making concepts clear and distinct is the business of logic. With this
discipline, in which Herbart essentially follows Kant, are associated two
other forms of the elaboration of concepts, that of physical and that
of aesthetic concepts. Both of these classes require more than a merely
logical elucidation. The physical concepts, through which we apprehend the
world and ourselves, contain contradictions and must be freed from them;
their correction is the business of meta-physics.
Metaphysics is the
science of the comprehensibility of experience. The aesthetic (including
the ethical) concepts are distinguished from the nature-concepts by a
peculiar increment which they occasion in our representation, and which
consists in a judgment of approval or disapproval. To clear up these
concepts and to free them from false allied ideas is the task of aesthetics
in its widest sense. This includes all concepts which are accompanied by a
judgment of praise or blame; the most important among them are the ethical
concepts. Thus, aside from logic, we reach two principal divisions of
philosophy, which are elsewhere contrasted as theoretical and practical,
but here in Herbart as metaphysics and aesthetics.
Herbart maintains that
these are entirely independent of each other, so that aesthetics, since it
presupposes nothing of metaphysics, may be discussed before metaphysics,
while the philosophy of nature and psychology depend throughout on
ontological principles. Together with natural theology the two latter
sciences constitute "applied" metaphysics. This in turn presupposes
"general" metaphysics, which subdivides into four parts: Methodology,
Ontology, Synechology, _i.e._, the theory of the continuous ([Greek:
_suneches_]), which treats of the continua, space, time, and motion, and
Eidolology, _i.e._, the theory of images or representations. The last forms
the transition to psychology, while synechology forms the preparation
for the philosophy of nature, whose most general problems it solves. Our
exposition will not need to observe these divisions closely.
Metaphysics starts with the given, but cannot rest content with it, for it
contains contradictions. In resolving these we rise above the given. What
_is given_? Kant has not answered this question with entire correctness.
We may, indeed, term the totality of the given
"phenomena," but this
presupposes something which appears. If nothing existed there would also
nothing appear. As smoke points to fire, so appearance to being. So much
seeming, so much indication of being. Things in themselves may be known
mediately, though not immediately, by following out the indications of
being contained by the given appearance. Further, not merely the unformed
matter of cognition is given to us, but it is rather true that everything
comes under this concept which experience so presses on us that we cannot
resist it; hence not merely single sensations, but entire sensation-groups,
not merely the matter, but also the forms of experience.
If the latter were
really subjective products, as Kant holds, it would necessarily be possible
for us at will to think each perceptive-content either under the category
of substance, or property, or cause--possible for us, if we chose, to see
a round table quadrilateral. In reality we are bound in the application of
these forms; they are given for each object in a definite way. The given
forms--Herbart calls them experience-concepts--contain contradictions.
How can these contradictions be removed? We may neither simply reject the
concepts which are burdened with contradictions, for they are given, nor
leave them as they are, for the logical _principium contradictionis_
requires that the contradiction as such be rooted out.
The
experience-concepts are valid (they find application in experience), but
they are not thinkable. Therefore we must so transform and supplement them
that they shall become free from contradictions and thinkable. The method
which Herbart employs to remove the contradictions is as follows: The
contradiction always consists in the fact that an _a_
should be the same as
a _b_, but is not so. The desiderated likeness of the two is impossible so
long as we think _a_ as _one_ thing. That which is unsuccessful in this
case will succeed, perhaps, if in thought we break up the _a_ into several
things--[Greek: _a b g_]. Then we shall be able to explain through the
"together" (_Zusammen_) of this plurality what we were unable to explain
from the undecomposed _a_, or from the single constituents of it. The
"together" is a "relation" established by thought among the elements of the
real. For this reason Herbart terms his method of finding out necessary
supplements to the given "the method of relations."
Another name for the
same thing is "the method of contingent aspects."
Mechanics operates with
contingent aspects when, for the sake of explanation, it resolves a given
motion into several components. Such fictions and substitutions--auxiliary
concepts, which are not real, but which serve only as paths for
thought--may be successfully employed by metaphysics also. The abstract
expression of this method runs: The contradiction is to be removed by
thinking one of its members as manifold rather than as one. In order to
observe the workings of this Herbartian machine we shall go over the four
principal contradictions by which his acuteness is put to the test--the
problems of inherence, of change, of the continuous, of the ego.
We call the given sensation-complexes "things," and ascribe "properties" to
them. How can one and the same thing have different properties--how can
the one be at the same time many? To say that the thing
"possesses" the
properties does not help the matter. The possession of the different
properties is itself just as manifold and various as the properties which
are possessed. Hence the concept of the thing and its properties must be
so transformed that the plurality which seems to be in the thing shall be
transferred without it. Instead of one thing let us assume several, each
with a single definite property, from whose "together"
the appearance
of many qualities in one thing now arises. The appearance of manifold
properties in the one thing has its ground in the
"together" of many
things, each of which has one simple quality. Again, it is just as
impossible for a thing to have different qualities in succession, or to
change, as it is for it to have them at the same time.
The popular view
of change, which holds that a thing takes on different forms (ice, water,
steam) and yet remains the same substance, is untenable.
How is it possible
to become another, and yet to remain the same? The universal feeling that
the concept needs correction betrays itself in the fact that everyone
involuntarily adds a cause to the change in thought, and seeks a cause for
it, and thus of himself undertakes a transformation of the concept, though,
it is true, an inadequate one. If we think this concept through we come
upon a trilemma, a threefold impossibility. Whether we endeavor to deduce
the change from external or from internal causes, or (with Hegel) to think
it as causeless, in each case we involve ourselves in inconceivabilities.
All three ideas--change as mechanism, as self-determination or freedom,
as absolute becoming--are alike absurd. We can escape these contradictions
only by the bold decision to conceive the quality of the existent as
unchangeable. For the truly existent there is no change whatever. It
remains, however, to explain the appearance of change, in which the wand of
decomposition and the "together" again proves its magic power. Supported by
the motley manifoldness of phenomena, we posit real beings as qualitatively
different, and view this diversity as partial contraposition; we resolve,
_e.g._, the simple quality _a_ into the elements _x_ +
_z_, and a second
quality _b_ into _y - z_. So long as the individual things remain by
themselves, the opposition of the qualities will not make itself evident.
But as soon as they come together, something takes place--now the opposites
(+_z_ and -_z_) seek to destroy or at least to disturb each other. The
reals defend themselves against the disturbance which would follow if the
opposites could destroy each other, by each conserving its simple,
unchangeable quality, _i.e._, by simply remaining self-identical.
_Self-conservation against_ threatened _disturbances_
from without (it may
be compared to resistance against pressure) is the only real change, and
apparent change, the empirical changes of things, to be explained from
this. That which changes is only the relations between the beings, as a
thing maintains itself now against this and now against that other thing;
the relations, however, and their change are something entirely contingent
and indifferent to the existent. In itself the self-conservation of a real
is as uniform as the quality which is conserved, but in virtue of the
changing relations (the variety of the disturbing things) it can express
itself for the observer in manifold ways as force. The real itself changes
as little as a painting changes, for instance, when, seen near at hand, the
figures in it are clearly distinguished, while for the distant
observer, on the contrary, they run together into an indistinguishable
chaos. Change has no meaning in the sphere of the existent.
Anyone who speaks thus has denied change, not deduced it. Among the many
objections experienced by Herbart's endeavor to explain the empirical
fact of change by his theory of self-conservation against threatened
disturbances Lotze's is the most cogent: The unsuccessful attempt to
solve the difficulties in the concept of becoming and action is still
instructive, for it shows that they cannot be solved in this way--from the
concept of inflexible being. If the "together," the threatened disturbance,
and the reaction against the latter be taken as realities, then, in the
affection by the disturber, the concept of change remains uneliminated and
uncorrected; if they be taken as unreal concepts auxiliary to thought,
change is relegated from the realm of being to the realm of seeming.
Herbart gives to them a kind of semi-reality, less true than the unmoving
ground of things (their unchangeable, permanent qualities), and more true
than their contradictory exterior (the empirical appearance of change).
Between being and seeming he thrusts in, as though between day and night,
the twilight region of his "contingent aspects," with their relations,
which are nothing to the real, their disturbances, which do not come to
pass, and their self-conservations, which are nothing but undisturbed
continuance in existence on the part of the real.
Besides the contradictions in the concepts of inherence, of change,
and action and passion, it is the concept of being which prevents our
philosopher from ascribing a living character to reality. Being, as Kant
correctly perceived, contains nothing qualitative; it is absolute position.
Whoever affirms that an object _is_, expresses thereby that the matter is
to rest with the simple position; in which is included that it is nothing
dependent, relative, or negative. (Every negation is something relative,
relates to a precedent position, which is to be annulled by it.) Besides
being, the existent contains something more--a quality; it consists of this
absolute position and a _what_. If this _what_ is separated from being we
reach an "image"; united with being it yields an essence or a real. This
_what_ of things is not their sensuous qualities; the latter belong rather
to the mere phenomenon. No one of them indicates what the object is by
itself, when left alone. They depend on contingent circumstances, and apart
from these they would not exist--what is color in the dark? what sound
in airless space? what weight in empty space? what fusibility without
fire?--they are each and all relative. Since being excludes negation of
every kind, the quality of the existent must be absolutely _simple and
unchangeable_; it brooks no manifoldness, no quantity, no distinctions in
degree, no becoming; all this were a corruption of the purely affirmative
or positive character of being. The existent is unextended and eternal.
The Eleatics are to be praised because the need of escaping from the
contradictions in the world of experience led them to make themselves
masters of the concept of being without relation and without negation, and
of the simple, homogeneous quality of the existent in its full purity. But
while the Eleatics conceived the existent as one, the atomists made an
advance by assuming a _plurality_ of reals. The truly one never becomes
a plurality; plurality is given, hence an original plurality must be
postulated. Herbart characterizes his own standpoint as qualitative
atomism, since his reals are differentiated by their properties, not by
quantitative relations (size and figure). The idealists and the pantheists
make a false use of the tendency toward unity which, no doubt, is present
in our reason, when they maintain that true being must be one. There is
absolutely nothing in the concept of being to forbid us to think the
existent as many; while the world of phenomena, with its many things and
their many properties, gives irrefragable grounds which compel us to this
conclusion. Hence, according to Herbart, the true reality is a (very