deducible from the conditions of the maintenance of life at large and of
social life. From this law follow various particular corollaries or rights,
all of which coincide with ordinary ethical concepts and have legal
enactments corresponding to them. Political rights so-called do not exist;
government is simply a system of appliances for the maintenance of private
rights. Both the nature of the state and its constitution are variable:
the militant type requires centralization and a coercive constitution;
the industrial type implies a wider distribution of political power, but
requires a representation of interests rather than a representation of
individuals. Government develops as a result of war, and its function of
protection against internal aggression arises by differentiation from its
primary function of external defense. These two, then, constitute the
essential duties of the state; when war ceases the first falls away, and
its sole function becomes the maintenance of the conditions under which
each individual may "gain the fullest life compatible with the fullest life
of fellow-citizens." All beyond this, all interference with this life of
the individual, whether by way of assistance, restraint, or education,
proves in the end both unjust and impolitic. The remaining parts of the
_Ethics_ will treat of Negative and Positive Beneficence.
If J.S. Mill and Spencer (the latter of whom, moreover, had announced
evolution as a world-law before the appearance of Darwin), move in a
direction akin to positivism, the same is true, further, of G.H. Lewes
(1817-78; _History of Philosophy_, 5th ed., 1880; _Problems of Life and
Mind_, 1874 _seq_).
Turning to the discussion of particular disciplines, we may mention as
prominent among English logicians,[1] besides Hamilton, Whewell, and Mill,
Whately, Mansel, Thomson, De Morgan, Boole (_An Investigation of the Laws
of Thought_, 1854); W.S. Jevons (_The Principles of Science_, 2d ed.,
1877); Venn (_Symbolic Logic_, 1881; _Empirical Logic_, 1889), Bradley, and
Bosanquet. Among more recent investigators in the field of psychology we
may name Carpenter, Ferrier, Maudsley, Galton, Ward, and Sully (_The Human
Mind_, 1892), and in the field of comparative psychology, Lubbock, Romanes
(_Mental Evolution in Animals_, 1883; _Mental Evolution in Man_, 1889), and
Morgan (_Animal Life and Intelligence_, 1891). Among ethical writers the
following, besides Spencer and Green, hold a foremost place: H. Sidgwick
_(The Methods of Ethics_, 4th ed., 1890), Leslie Stephen _(The Science of
Ethics_, 1882), and James Martineau _(Types of Ethical Theory_, 3d ed.,
1891). The quarterly review _Mind_ (vols. i.-xvi. 1876-91, edited by G.
Croom Robertson; new series from 1892, edited by G.F.
Stout) has since its
foundation played an important part in the development of English thought.
[Footnote 1: Cf. Nedich, _Die Lehre von der Quantifikation des Prädikats_
in vol. iii. of Wundt's _Philosophische Studien_; L.
Liard, _Les
Logiciens Anglais Contemporains_, 1878; Al. Riehl in vol. i. of the
_Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie_, 1877 [cf. also
appendix A to the English translation of Ueberweg's _Logic_.--TR.].]
German idealism, for which S.T. Coleridge (died 1834) and Thomas Carlyle
(died 1881) endeavored to secure an entrance into England, for a long
time gained ground there but slowly. Later years, however, have brought
increasing interest in German speculation, and much of recent thinking
shows the influence of Kantian and Hegelian principles.
As pioneer of this
movement we may name J.H. Stirling _(The Secret of Hegel_, 1865); and as
its most prominent representatives John Caird _(An Introduction to the
Philosophy of Religion_, 1880), Edward Caird _(The Critical Philosophy of
Immanuel Kant_, 1889; _The Evolution of Religion_, 1893), both in Glasgow,
and T.H. Green (1836-82; professor at Oxford; _Prolegomena to Ethics_,
3d ed., 1887; _Works_, edited by Nettleship, 3 vols., 1885-88).[1] In
opposition to the hereditary empiricism of English philosophy--which
appears in Spencer and Lewes, as it did in Locke, Berkeley, and Hume,
though in somewhat altered form--Green maintains that all experience is
constituted by intelligible relations. Knowledge, therefore, is possible
only for a correlating self-consciousness; while nature, as a system of
relations, is likewise dependent on a spiritual principle, of which it is
the expression. Thus the central conception of Green's philosophy becomes,
"that the universe is a single eternal activity or energy, of which it is
the essence to be self-conscious, that is, to be itself and not itself
in one" (Nettleship). To this universal consciousness we are related as
manifestations or "communications" under the limitations of our physical
organization. As such we are free, that is, self-determined, determined by
nothing from without. The moral ideal is self-realization or perfection,
the progressive reproduction of the divine self-consciousness. This is
possible only in terms of a development of persons, for as a self-conscious
personality the divine spirit can reproduce itself in persons alone; and,
since "social life is to personality what language is to thought,"
the realization of the moral ideal implies life in common. The nearer
determination of the ideal is to be sought in the manifestations of the
eternal spirit as they have been given in the moral history of individuals
and nations. This shows what has already been implied in the relation of
morality to personality and society, that moral good must first of all be
a common good, one in which the permanent well-being of self includes the
well-being of others also. This is the germ of morality, the development of
which yields, first, a gradual extension of the area of common good, and
secondly, a fuller and more concrete determination of its content. Further
representatives of this movement are W. Wallace, Adamson, Bradley; A. Seth
is an ex-member.
[Footnote 1: Cf. on Green the Memoir by Nettleship in vol. iii. of the
_Works_.]
The first and greatest of American philosophical thinkers was the
Calvinistic theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703-58; treatise on the _Freedom
of Will_, 1754; _Works_, 10 vols., edited by Dwight, 1830). Edwards's
deterministic doctrine found numerous adherents (among them his son, who
bore his father's name, died 1801) as well as strenuous opponents (Tappan,
Whedon, Hazard among later names), and essentially contributed to
the development of philosophical thought in the United States. For a
considerable period this crystallized for the most part around elements
derived from British thinkers, especially from Locke and the Scottish
School. In 1829 James Marsh called attention to German speculation [1] by
his American edition of Coleridge's _Aids to Reflection_, with an important
introduction from his own hand. Later W.E. Channing (1780-1842), the head
of the Unitarian movement, attracted many young and brilliant minds, the
most noted of whom, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), became a leader among
the New England transcendentalists. Metaphysical idealism has, perhaps, met
with less resistance in America than in England. Kant and Hegel have been
eagerly studied (G.S. Morris, died 1889; C.C. Everett; J. Watson in Canada;
Josiah Royce, _The Spirit of Modern Philosophy_, 1892; and others); and
_The Journal of Speculative Philosophy_, edited by W.T.
Harris, has since
1867 furnished a rallying point for idealistic interests. The influence
of Lotze has also been considerable (B.P. Bowne in Boston). Sympathy
with German speculation, however, has not destroyed the naturally close
connection with the work of writers who use the English tongue. Thus
Spencer's writings have had a wide currency, and his system numbers many
disciples, though these are less numerous among students of philosophy by
profession (John Fiske, _Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy_, 1874).
[Footnote 1: Cf. Porter, _op. cit._]
In the latest decades the broadening of the national life, the increasing
acquaintance with foreign thought, and the rapid development of university
work have greatly enlarged and deepened the interest in philosophical
pursuits. This is manifested most clearly in the field of psychology,
including especially the "new" or "physiological"
psychology, and the
history of philosophy, though indications of pregnant thought in other
departments, as ethics and the philosophy of religion, and even of
independent construction, are not wanting. Among psychologists of the day
we may mention G.S. Hall, editor of _The American Journal of Psychology_
(1887 seq.), G.T. Ladd (_Elements of Physiological Psychology_, 1887),
and William James (_Principles of Psychology_, 1890).
_The International
Journal of Ethics_ (Philadelphia, 1890 seq.), edited by S. Burns Weston, is
"devoted to the advancement of ethical knowledge and practice"; among the
foreign members of its editorial committee are Jodl and Von Gizycki. The
weekly journal of popular philosophy, _The Open Court_, published in
Chicago, has for its object the reconciliation of religion and science; the
quarterly, _The Monist_ (1890 seq.), published by the same company under
the direction of Paul Carus (_The Soul of Man_, 1891), the establishment of
a monistic view of the world. Several journals, among them the _Educational
Review_ (1891 seq., edited by N.M. Butler), point to a growing interest in
pedagogical inquiry. _The American Philosophical Review_
(1892 seq.,
edited by J.G. Schurman, _The Ethical Import of Darwinism_, 1887) is a
comprehensive exponent of American philosophic thought.
%4. Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Holland.%
In _Sweden_ an empirical period represented by Leopold (died 1829) and Th.
Thorild (died 1808), and based upon Locke and Rousseau, was followed, after
the introduction of Kant by D. Boëthius, 1794, by a drift toward idealism.
This was represented in an extreme form by B. Höijer (died 1812), a
contemporary and admirer of Fichte, who defended the right of philosophical
construction, and more moderately by Christofer Jacob Böstrom (1797-1866),
the most important systematic thinker of his country. As predecessors of
Böstrom we may mention Biberg (died 1827), E.G. Geijer (died 1846), and S.
Grubbe (died 1853), like him professors in Upsala, and of his pupils,
S. Ribbing, known in Germany by his peculiar conception of the Platonic
doctrine of ideas (German translation, 1863-64), the moralist Sahlin
(1877), the historian, of Swedish philosophy[1] (1873
seq.) A. Nyblaeus of
Lund, and H. Edfeldt of Upsala, the editor of Böstrom's works (1883).
[Footnote 1: Cf. Höffding, _Die Philosophie in Schweden_
in the
_Philosophische Monatshefte_, vol. xv. 1879, p. 193
seq.]
Böstrom's philosophy is a system of self-activity and personalism which
recalls Leibnitz and Krause. The absolute or being is characterized as a
concrete, systematically articulated, self-conscious unity, which dwells
with its entire content in each of its moments, and whose members both bear
the character of the whole and are immanent in one another, standing in
relations of organic inter-determination. The antithesis between unity and
plurality is only apparent, present only for the divisive view of finite
consciousness. God is infinite, fully determinate personality (for
determination is not limitation), a system of self-dependent living beings,
differing in degree, in which we, as to our true being, are eternally and
unchangeably contained. Every being is a definite, eternal, and living
thought of God; thinking beings with their states and activities alone
exist; all that is real is spiritual, personal. Besides this true,
suprasensible world of Ideas, which is elevated above space, time, motion,
change, and development, and which has not arisen by creation or a process
of production, there exists for man, but only for him--
man is formally
perfect, it is true, but materially imperfect (since he represents the real
from a limited standpoint)--a sensuous world of phenomena as the sphere of
his activity. To this he himself belongs, and in it he is spontaneously to
develop the suprasensible content which is eternally given him (i.e., his
true nature), namely, to raise it from the merely potential condition of
obscure presentiment to clear, conscious actuality.
Freedom is the power
to overcome our imperfection by means of our true nature, to realize our
suprasensible capacities, to become for ourselves what we are in ourselves
(in God). The ethics of Böstrom is distinguished from the Kantian ethics,
to which it is related, chiefly by the fact that it seeks to bring
sensibility into a more than merely negative relation to reason. Society
is an eternal, and also a personal, Idea in God. The most perfect form
of government is constitutional monarchy; the ideal goal of history, the
establishment of a system of states embracing all mankind.
J. Borelius of Lund is an Hegelian, but differs from the master in regard
to the doctrine of the contradiction. The Hegelian philosophy has adherents
in _Norway_ also, as G.V. Lyng (died 1884; _System of Fundamental Ideas_),
M.J. Monrad (_Tendencies of Modern Thought_, 1874, German translation,
1879), both professors in Christiania, and Monrad's pupil G. Kent (_Hegel's
Doctrine of the Nature of Experience_, 1891).
The _Danish_ philosophy of the nineteenth century has been described
by Höffding in the second volume of the _Archiv für Geschichte der
Philosophie_, 1888. He begins with the representatives of the speculative
movement: Steffens (see above), Niels Treschow (1751-1833), Hans Christian
Oersted (1777-1851; _Spirit in Nature_, German translation, Munich,
1850-51), and Frederik Christian Sibbern (1785-1872). A change was brought
about by the philosophers of religion Sören Kierkegaard (1813-55) and
Rasmus Nielsen (1809-84; _Philosophy of Religion_, 1869), who opposed
speculative idealism with a strict dualism of knowledge and faith, and were
in turn opposed by Georg Brandes (born 1842) and Hans Bröchner (1820-75).
Among younger investigators the Copenhagen professors, Harald Höffding[1]
(born 1843) and Kristian Kroman[2] (born 1846) stand in the first rank.
[Footnote 1: Höffding: _The Foundations of Human Ethics_, 1876, German
translation, 1880; _Outlines of Psychology_, 1882, English translation by
Lowndes, 1891, from the German translation, 1887; _Ethics_, 1887, German
translation by Bendixen, 1888.]
[Footnote 2: Kroman: _Our Knowledge of Nature_, German translation, 1883;
_A Brief Logic and Psychology_, German translation by Bendixen, 1890.]
Land (_Mind_, vol. iii. 1878) and G. von Antal (1888) have written on
philosophy in _Holland_. Down to the middle of the nineteenth century the
field was occupied by an idealism based upon the ancients, in particular
upon Plato: Franz Hemsterhuis (1721-90; _Works_, new ed., 1846-50), and the
philologists Wyttenbach and Van Heusde. Then Cornelius Wilhelm Opzoomer[3]
(1821-92; professor in Utrecht) brought in a new movement. Opzoomer
favors empiricism. He starts from Mill and Comte, but goes beyond them in
important points, and assigns faith a field of its own beside knowledge.
In opposition to apriorism he seeks to show that experience is capable of
yielding universal and necessary truths; that space, time, and causality
are received along with the content of thought; that mathematics itself is
based upon experience; and that the method of natural science, especially
deduction, must be applied to the mental sciences. The philosophy of mind
considers man as an individual being, in his connection with others, in
relation to a higher being, and in his development; accordingly it
divides into psychology (which includes logic, aesthetics, and ethology),
sociology, the philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of history.
Central to Opzoomer's system is his doctrine of the five sources of
knowledge: Sensation, the feeling of pleasure and pain, aesthetic, moral,
and religious feeling. If we build on the foundation of the first three
alone, we end in materialism; if we leave the last unused, we reach
positivism; if we make religious feeling the sole judge of truth, mysticism
is the outcome. The criteria of science are utility and progress. These are
still wanting in the mental sciences, in which the often answered but never
decided questions continually recur, because we have neither derived the
principles chosen as the basis of the deduction from an exact knowledge
of the phenomena nor tested the results by experience.
The causes of this
defective condition can only be removed by imitating the study of nature:
we must learn that no conclusions can be reached except from facts, and
that we are to strive after knowledge of phenomena and their laws alone. We
have no right to assume an "essence" of things beside and in addition to
phenomena, which reveals itself in them or hides behind them. Pupils of
Opzoomer are his successor in his Utrecht chair, Van der Wyck, and Pierson.
We may also mention J.P.N. Land, who has done good service in editing
the works of Spinoza and of Geulincx, and the philosopher of religion
Rauwenhoff (1888).
[Footnote 1: Opzoomer: _The Method of Science_, a Handbook of Logic, German
translation by Schwindt, 1852; _Religion_, German translation by Mook,
1869.]
On the system of the Hungarian philosopher Cyrill Horváth (died 1884 at
Pesth) see the essay by E. Nemes in the _Zeitschrift für Philosophie_,
vol. lxxxviii, 1886. Since 1889 a review, _Problems of Philosophy and
Psychology_, has appeared at Moscow in Russian, under the direction of
Professor N. von Grot.
CHAPTER XVI.
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY SINCE THE DEATH OF HEGEL.
With Hegel the glorious dynasty which, with a strong hand, had guided the
fate of German philosophy since the conclusion of the preceding century
disappears. From his death (1831) we may date the second period of
post-Kantian philosophy,[1] which is markedly and unfavorably distinguished
from the first by a decline in the power of speculative creation and by
a division of effort. If previous to this the philosophical public,
comprising all the cultured, had been eagerly occupied with problems in
common, and had followed with unanimous interest the work of those who were
laboring at them, during the last fifty years the interest of wider circles
in philosophical questions has grown much less active; almost every
thinker goes his own way, giving heed only to congenial voices; the inner
connection of the schools has been broken down; the touch with thinkers of
different views has been lost. The latest decades have been the first
to bring a change for the better, in so far as new rallying points of
philosophical interest have been created by the neo-Kantian movement, by
the systems of Lotze and Von Hartmann, by the impulse toward the philosophy
of nature proceeding from Darwinism, by energetic labors in the field of
practical philosophy, and by new methods of investigation in psychology.
[Footnote 1: On philosophy since 1831 cf. vol. iii. of J.E. Erdmann's
_History_; Ueberweg, _Grundriss_, part iii. §§ 37-49
(English translation,
vol. ii. pp. 292-516); Lange, _History of Materialism_; B. Erdmann, _Die
Philosophie der Gegenwart_ in the _Deutsche Rundschau_, vols. xix., xx.,
1879, June and July numbers; (A. Krohn,) _Streifzüge durch die Philosophie
der Gegenwart_ in the _Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische
Kritik_, vols. lxxxvii., lxxxix., 1885-86; (Burt, _History of Modern
Philosophy_, 1892), also the third volume of Windelband's _Geschichte der
neueren Philosophie_, when it appears.]
%1. From the Division of the Hegelian School to the Materialistic
Controversy.%
A decade after the philosophy of Hegel had entered on its supremacy a
division in the school was called forth by Strauss's _Life of Jesus_(1835).
The differences were brought to light by the discussion of religious
problems, in regard to which Hegel had not expressed himself with
sufficient distinctness. The relation of knowledge and faith, as he had
defined it, admitted of variant interpretations and deductions, and this in
favor of Church doctrine as well as in opposition to it.
Philosophy has the
same content as religion, but in a different form, _i.e._, not in the form
of representation, but in the form of the concept--it transforms dogma into
speculative truth. The conservative Hegelians hold fast to the identity of
content in the two modes of cognition; the liberals, to the alteration
in form, which, they assert, brings an alteration in content with it.
According to Hegel the lower stage is "sublated" in the higher, _i.e._,
conserved as well as negated. The orthodox members of the school emphasize
the conservation of religious doctrines, their justification from the side
of the philosopher; the progressists, their negation, their overcoming by
the speculative concept. The general question, whether the ecclesiastical
meaning of a dogma is retained or to be abandoned in its transformation
into a philosopheme, divides into three special questions, the
anthropological, the soteriogical, and the theological.
These are: whether
on Hegelian principles immortality is to be conceived as a continuance
of individual existence on the art of particular spirits, or only as the
eternity of the universal reason; whether by the God-man the person of
Christ is to be understood, or, on the other hand, the human species, the
Idea of Humanity; whether personality belongs to the Godhead before the
creation of the world, or whether it first attains to self-consciousness
in human spirits, whether Hegel was a theist or a pantheist, whether he
teaches the transcendence or the immanence of God. The Old Hegelians defend
the orthodox interpretation; the Young Hegelians oppose it. The former,
Göschel, Gabler, Hinrichs, Schaller (died 1868; _History of the Philosophy
of Nature since Bacon_, 1841 _seq_.), J.E. Erdmann in Halle (1805-92; _Body
and Soul_, 1837; _Psychological Letters_, 1851, 6th ed., 1882; _Earnest
Sport_, 1871, 4th ed., 1890), form, according to Strauss's parliamentary
comparison carried out by Michelet, the "right"; the latter, Strauss,
Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, and A. Ruge, who, with Echtermeyer, edited the
_Hallesche_, afterward _Deutsche, Jahrbücher für Wissenschaft und Kunst_,
1838-42, the "left." Between them, and forming the
"center," stand Karl
Rosenkranz[1] in Königsberg (1805-79), C.L. Michelet in Berlin (p. 16;
_Hegel, the Unrefuted World-philosopher_, 1870; _System of Philosophy_,
1876 _seq_.), and the theologians Marheineke (a pupil of Daub at
Heidelberg) and W. Vatke (_Philosophy of Religion_, edited by Preiss,
1888). Contrasted with these is the group of semi- or pseudo-Hegelians (p.
596), who declare themselves in accord with the theistic doctrines of the
right, but admit that the left represents Hegel's own opinion, or at least
the correct deductions from his position.
[Footnote 1: K. Rosenkranz: _Psychology_, 1837, 3d ed., 1863; _Science
of the Logical Idea_, 1858; _Studies_, 1839 _seq_., _New Studies_, 1875
_seq_.; _Aesthetics of the