The Movement Characterized. The
term "German Idealism" refers to a phase of intellectual life that had
its origin in the Enlightenment as modified by German conditions. English
and French representatives of the Enlightenment, giving precedence to sensation,
had become empiricists and skeptics. They viewed the world as a great machine,
adopted hedonism as their ethics, and interpreted history from a subjective-critical
point of view. The situation in Germany was just the reverse. There thought
was given precedence over sensation, and, instead of empiricism, idealism
was dominant. Ethics was based on norms of universal validity, instead
of on individual whim. History was interpreted genetically as a rational
process; and in place of the mechanical conception of the world, an organic
or dynamic view was substituted. Nature was seen to be spiritual, as well
as spatial, and was interpreted teleologically. In the hands of Jacobi
and Kant, Hume's skepticism became the weapon that destroyed the influence
of empiricism and thus paved the way for idealism. For the Germans, at
least, Rousseau's radicalism brought into question the value of the culture-ideals
of the Enlightenment, and impelled them to seek the basis of culture in
the creative power of the mind. For the philosopher German idealism usually
means the philosophy of Kant and his immediate followers, while for the
historian of literature it may seem little more than the personality of
Goethe; and it is not usual to characterize the literary aspect of the
movement as neo-humanism. However, there is a unity in the movement that
cannot be ignored. All its varied manifestations, whether in science, philosophy,
literature, art, or social life, are properly treated under the title German
Idealism
Leibniz and the Pietists. Several
factors contributed to the peculiarly independent character of the Enlightenment
in Germany. Most notable was the influence of Liebniz and that of the Pietists.
Leibniz was an essentially religious personality, and in transplanting
the spirit of the Enlightenment into Germany he gave it that distinctively
ethical and religious flavor which became characteristic of German Idealism.
It was he who was chiefly instrumental in substituting the mechanical view
of nature with a teleological one. He transformed the atoms of the materialists
into monads, or psychical entities, and substituted for natural law his
theory of preestablished harmony. He asserted the absolute worth of the
individual against the destructive monistic pantheism of Spinoza, and saw
in the progress of history a movement of the monads towards some divine
end. On the one hand, he made the development of materialism and skepticism
impossible in Germany, and, on the other hand, he brought about the teleological
explanation of the history of the universe as a whole. The teleological
and idealistic tendencies of Leibniz were strengthened through Pietism;
Klopstock, Herder, Jacobi, Goethe, and Jean Paul, all betray in their works
the Pietistic influence.
Kant's Transcedentalism. The
conceptual framework of German Idealism was provided by Immanuel Kant who
was the first to reconcile the conflicting empirical and rationalistic
elements of the prevailing dogmatic philosophy. With one stroke he secured
for mind priority over nature, and yet without endangering the validity
of the principles of scientific investigation. By giving the primacy to
practical reason, he placed religion and ethics on a sure footing and broke
the ban of rationalism. In the first instance Kant's work was purely epistemological.
He made it particularly his problem to rescue natural science from the
(epistemological) skepticism of Hume, and then to rescue religion from
nationalism. Kant demolished the rationalistic arguments of Anselm, Descartes,
and others, for the existence of God. Science is valid, but it has to do
only with phenomena. This phenomenal world, however, is produced a priori
by the activity of consciousness, reacting on that external reality whose
eternal nature cannot be known. The constancy of experience is accounted
for by the very fact that the world as we know it is only the sum total
of phenomena. This becomes the basis of the universal validity of certain
principles of explanation. Space and time, and the categories of the understanding
are subjective and thus ideal. Taken together they form a mold in which
we shape the impressions coming from the unknowable, transcendent reality.
Thus, the principles of science and the laws of nature are universally
valid because they are in the subject, not in the object. Knowledge of
ultimate reality comes through the practical reason, particularly through
the a priori moral law in us. Kant's idea of inner freedom became
the inspiration of the creative genius. The phase of German Idealism manifested
in the art and poetry of the period has been called aesthetic-ethical idealism.
The leaders of this artistic movement, who really popularized idealism
and made it a part of the life of the time, were not intent on solving
the old philosophical problems. For conceptual thought they substituted
the creative imagination.
Lessing, Herder, and Others.
Klopstock and Wieland mark the turning-point toward idealsm. However, their
contemporary, Lessing, was the first representative of the movement to
liberate himself completely from conventional theology and all that was
arbitrary and external in German culture and find in the inner aesthetic
and ethical development of the mind the ideal to be followed. Idealism
in the sense in which the word is here used became even more effective
in the work of Herder. His break with the Enlightenment was complete. In
his large application of the idealistic method to the interpretation of
science, art, and history, he practically reformed all the intellectual
sciences. He, too, proceeded from an analysis of the poetic and artistic
impulse, and in the creative activity of the mind he found the key to ethics,
aesthetics, and religion. From this subjective, or idealistic, view-point
he saw the panorama of history as a spiritualistic development. If Lessing's
great work was to introduce idealism into aesthetics, particularly the
aesthetics of dramatic poetry, Herder's greatest service to the idealistic
cause was his application of idealism, as a method, to the interpretation
of history. What Wieland, Lessing, and others had done for poetic art,
this Winckelmann did for plastic art. He too found in the conception of
the free creative mind the basis of ethics, aesthetics, and religion.
Goethe, Schiller, and Others.
The great representatives of the idealistic type mind in German poetry
were Goethe, and Schiller. Against the exclusive claims of the aesthetic
view of nature, and a morality essentially classical, Goethe emphasizes
the moral and religious worth of the individual, thus approaching the ethical
teachings of Kant. Schiller combined the epistemology of Kant with the
pantheism of Goethe. With him aesthetic values were the chief types of
intellectual norms. Thus, his ethics and religion might be regarded as
a phase of aesthetics. However, the aesthetic harmony that he found in
the universe had an impact on his ethical and religious nature; despite
his aesthetic view-point, he must be classed with Kant and Fichte as one
of the great moral teachers of Germany. Schiller's only consistent follower
was Willhelm von Humboldt, who was instrumental in bringing about the Neo-Humanistic
reform, on the basis of the new aesthetic-ethical culture. Jean Paul was
a representative of the anti-classical type of idealism.
Early Views of Fichte and Schelling.
The basis of the aesthetic-ethical movement was Kant transcendental idealism.
But while Kant made the idealistic position secure, he had not accounted
for the reality of the world of nature, with all that it means to the poet
as the expression of some divine purpose. To get at the bottom of the matter,
it was felt that human consciousness as a starting-point would have to
be abandoned and an absolute consciousness posited. From this reality of
absolute consciousness, then, individual consciousness could be deduced
in a manner, analogous to that employed by Kant. The first to attempt such
a comprehensive solution of the problem was Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Starting
from Kant's idealistic position he tried to overcome the dualism involved
in Kant's doctrine of a (thing in itself) by bringing this mysterious reality
into consciousness. To do this he dropped the Kantian distinction between
practical and theoretical reason, and conceived of the absolute mind, or
ego, as moral reason. In his view all existence is psychical, and the human
mind is only a manifestation of the absolute ego. Thus, the last trace
of an unknowable transcendent reality is obliterated. The absolute ego
has divided itself into a large number of relative egos, and through these
it is moving progressively toward its own destiny. The core of reality
lies in human personality, in the finite mind, but this is caught up in
an endless process of development; Hence, to transcend his own consciousness
and explain the progress of history, with reference to the past and future,
the philosopher must look at existence from the point of view of the absolute
ego. In this way Fichte developed his subjective realism, bringing this
scheme of idealistic evolution every phase of human experience. Under his
treatment, ethics, sociology, aesthetics, and religion become a part of
the history of the Absolute. He overcame the dualism between individual
mind and nature by dissolving both individual nature and mind. Schelling,
starting from the Kant-Fichte point of view, extended the conception of
the Absolute to objective nature. His system may be characterized as a
sort of spiritualized pantheism. The world is a continuous process from
inorganic unconscious nature to organic conscious nature, and then from
organic nature back to inorganic nature. While in humans the Absolute reaches
consciousness, nature remains essentially objective, but not in a materialistic
sense. Nature, for Schelling, is a system of spiritual forces similar to
the monads of Leibniz. Schelling worked out his so - called Identitatsphilosophie
by extending to absolute consciousness the view that in consciousness subject
and object are identical. The sum total of existence then becomes the Absolute
as perceived by itself. Naturally, all distinctions and qualities, which
are created by a finite relational consciousness, disappear in a self-contemplation
of the Absolute by itself, and existence becomes neutral. If Fichte had
interpreted existence ethically, Schelling interprets it aesthetically.
While with Fichte the Absolute distributes itself in finite minds in order
to work out its own moral development, with Schelling the Absolute comes
to consciousness in humans in order that we may enjoy the aesthetic contemplation
of the unity of mind and nature, the identity of mind with its sensuous
content.
Romanticism. The immediate result
of the metaphysical systems of Fichte and Schelling was a revival of poetic
production and criticism known as Romanticism, which sprang from the school
of Goethe and Schiller. The union of poetry with the metaphysical or religious
view of life became a recognized principle of art; and it was this combination
that secured for idealism the final triumph over the narrow naturalism
and rationalism of the Enlightenment. Romanticism brought to light the
connection of poetry with Christianity. Just as Schiller had taken Kant's
epistemology as a basis for the explanation of the relation of aesthetics
to ethics, so now the Kantian position was used to explain the relation
of religion to aesthetics. Thus, from Kant's idealism came a new analysis
of religion, illuminating with a new light the problems of culture. Romanticism
gave depth to the historical view and dissolved into thin air those time-worn
conceptions of a "law of nature," "common sense," and innate norms of the
reason; this was just as the Enlightenment had formerly disposed of the
idea of a supernatural, ecclesiastical norm, which rested on these conceptions.
The leading spirits in the romantic movement were the two Schlegels, though
Fichte, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Schelling, Novalis, and many others took
a part in it. Out of Romanticism sprang a new impulse for systematic thinking;
and through the political catastrophes of the time and the moral earnestness
of the intellectual leaders, idealistic speculation was forced to apply
its norms to practical social problems.
Later Views of Fichte and Schelling.
The first to feel the pressure of the realistic-historical problems were
the founders of metaphysical idealism, Fichte and Schelling. Both betray
the influence of Schleiermacher. Realizing the inadequacy of their philosophy
to meet practical needs, they now sought an ethical and religious ideal
which should unify the concrete content of spiritual life and at the same
time be a necessary deduction from the metaphysical background of existence.
Fichte retained his idea of the moral state as the consummation of the
historical process. However, he no longer considered this state merely
as a postulate of progressive freedom, but as a concrete civilized state,
in which all members of society share in the blessings of religion, morality,
and art. In this remodeled view of Fichte, religion is dominant; for he
finds that only religious faith makes possible the realization of the moral
idea, and thus the reality of the external world. The world is ethical.
It is religious faith that gives an ultimate aim to ethical conduct, that
makes possible a union of the empirical ego with its metaphysical basis,
that is, God. His ethics is thus deprived of its formal character as an
endless progress and given a definite aim. This ethical and religious view
necessitates a modification of his metaphysics. The background of empirical
consciousness is no longer an endless progression of the Absolute, but
a fixed and unchanging divine being. In this being the empirical ego has
its origin, and through ethical conduct it returns to its source. Similarly,
in view of moral and aesthetic needs, Schelling was forced to change his
views. In applying the principle of identity, he destroyed the variety
of existence, and thus its reality. In describing the universe as a quality-less
neutrum he had only caricatured the Absolute. His philosophy disagreed
with every phase of experience. Just as Fichte, so Schelling sought in
religion the key to the origin and destiny of humans. The phenomenal world
takes its rise in the absolute, self-determined will of God. Because of
its origin, the phenomenal world necessarily works its way back up to God
again. This movement back to God is a religious process, through mythology,
or natural religion, up to Christianity, at which stage the union of man
with God takes place. Thus, Christianity, whose dogmas are interpreted
evolutionistically by Schelling, becomes the end and purpose of history;
and it is upon Christianity that ethics, politics, and aesthetics are to
be based.
Hegel's System. If Fichte and
Schelling tried to find the purpose of existence in some concrete content
(such as the moral state or the Christian religion, deducing this concept
from the conception of God), Hegel solved the problem by a systematic exploitation
of the conception of evolution, which with him was both a constituent and
a teleological principle. The conception had been variously and obscurely
employed by Leibniz, Lessing, Kant, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, and F. Schlegel.
Then, on the basis of Kant's transcendental deduction, Fichte and Schelling
interpreted the process of development in a purely idealistic manner as
the unconscious opposition of the Absolute to itself; this further entailed
the conscious and gradual removal of this opposition by self-absorption,
the double process following necessarily from the very nature of mind.
Hegel makes the impulse of the absolute mind a gradual and self-determined
process, by which the Absolute lifts itself from mere possibility and actuality
to conscious, free, and necessary possession. Viewed sub specie aeternitatis
the whole process is timeless, and only to a finite mind does it appear
as an endless procession in time and space. However, it is just in this
finite view that the ethical, aesthetic and religious character of Hegel's
philosophy manifests itself. In the finite consciousness there is a separation
of the natural, the actual, and the empirical from the spiritual, the free,
and the necessary. In the unity reached by overcoming this divorce of the
finite from the infinite lies religious blessedness, perfect beauty, and
moral freedom. Every phase and stage of this inner teleological development
is necessary to the life of the Absolute, and all variety in finite experience
is preserved in the higher unity. Nothing is lost. Instead of being an
undifferentiated substance, or a qualityless neutrum, the Absolute
is the living, vital reality that manifests itself in human experience.
This reality is spiritual , and the guiding principle of its upward movement
is the fulfillment of its own divine purpose, which is religious, ethical,
aesthetic. Religion and ethics are thus a necessary product of the self-explication
of the Absolute, or God.
Schleiermacher. The religious
turn that idealistic metaphysics had taken was due to the influence of
Schleiermacher, the most specifically religious of all the great philosophers.
In his own system he made use of the religious consciousness in an original
and striking manner to solve the practical and theoretical problems growing
out of Kant's critical philosophy. In the field of ethics he was the most
conspicuous exponent of German idealism. What Hegel had deduced from the
Absolute by his application of the conception of development, Schleiermacher,
following the critical method of Kant, sought to attain by an analysis
of empirical consciousness. In its theoretical attitude toward being, consciousness
is receptive and seeks to combine the data of sense into the highest possible
conceptual unity; in its practical attitude consciousness is active and
transfers the aim of reason from the world of sense to the world of conscious
freedom. However, in both cases thought and being always remain separate
for the finite understanding. On the other hand, that essential unity of
reality which makes possible any relation of thought to being, such as
volition to being, is present in religious feeling. While Hegel had employed
a deductive, dialectical method to show that all being is in God, Schleiermacher
reached this unity by an inductive process, which was guided by feeling,
instead of by pure reason. Instead of starting with a timeless and spaceless
Absolute, he started with the phenomenal world. His task was to analyze
the reason that dominates the actual world of history, to bring to light
its various purposes, combine them into a totality representing the absolute
divine purpose of the universe, the summum bonum, and to show that
the power to realize this ideal lies in religious consciousness. Schleiermacher's
practical religious interests now took him into the field of theology.
Herbart. Herbart stuck even more
closely to the Kantian view-point, but, like other followers of Kant, he
sought to eliminate the conception of an unknowable reality, and press
forward to the ultimate nature of things. He adopted Kant's analysis of
consciousness, but in a psychological sense, and found that the transcendental
reality consists of a plurality of simple substances. These he called "reals."
They are psychical in nature and analogous to the monads of Leibniz. Through
their relations to one another and to human consciousness the phenomenal
world is brought into existence; and from their teleological cooperation
Herbart deduces a divine, creative intelligence, analogous to the monad-monadum
of Leibniz, thus opposing sharply current poetic naturalism and Spinozism.
Herbart's practical and social philosophy, which is based on the judgments
of the soul as to the relations of the "reals" to each other, particularly
on judgments expressing like or dislike, also tends toward rationalism.
On account of the method employed here, Herbart calls the result aesthetics,
to which he subordinates ethics. In his view the ideal society would be
one based on the insight and activity of the educated, and on the rational
education of youth, and realizing in its organization the natural and fundamental
ethical ideas. Herbart thus became not only a reformer of psychology, but
of pedagogy as well.
Schopenhauer. The last great
representative of German Idealism in systematic philosophy was Schopenhauer.
While with him the phenomenal world is idea (that is, existing only as
a subject idea) its objective basis is not a "thing in itself" as Kant
taught, but a universal will. This Schopenhauer interprets as a blind,
illogical, aimless impulse, without any original ethical tendency whatsoever.
Through the blind impulse of this world-will arises human intelligence
and the phenomenal world. History loses all teleological significance and
becomes an irrational and endless progression. Ethics, therefore, as the
philosophy of the ultimate purpose of the world can only proclaim the aimlessness
of the cosmic process and seek to put an end to it by stilling the will.
This quietizing of the will is effected by recognizing the aimlessness
of the process and resigning oneself to it completely. For these teachings,
Schopenhauer found a support in Buddhism, which was then just becoming
known in the West. He was bitter in his hatred of the theism of Judaism,
which for him exhibited selfishness and sensuality, and was the root of
all deceptive theism. The pure Christianity of Christ he regarded as a
sort of mystical quietism. Though his metaphysical work, De Welt als
Wille und Vorstellung, appeared as early as 1819, his teachings found
no popular reception till after the wane of Hegel's influence in Germany.
Idealism in the Positive Sciences.
The effects of this idealistic development are apparent in the positive
sciences no less than in metaphysics. In accord with the idea of the oneness
of the world, the natural sciences have been given a subordinate position,
or else reduced to natural philosophy. The new spirit is manifested even
more clearly in the historical sciences, where the genetic method is everywhere
employed and individual facts are treated in relation to the whole development.
For instance, the historian of literature or art now seeks to bring the
facts with which he is dealing into relation with other phases of life
and thus grasp the life and ideals of a nation as a whole. Similarly, the
philologist is no longer satisfied with the study of one language, but
seeks to correlate it with kindred tongues and reconstruct the inner life
of the people. Even in the field of jurisprudence the genetic method has
been adopted and particular stress laid on the development of common law.
The effect of this idealistic movement may also be observed in theology.
Here deistic efforts to base Christianity on a general theory of religion
have been replaced by a more penetrating psychological analysis, together
with a genetic view of religious history. It should be added, though, that
repeated and earnest attempts have been made to rescue the core of Christianity
from the general flux of history and give to it a fixed character. Since
it is in the universities, chiefly, that the sciences are cultivated, naturally
the universities were reorganized in conformity to the changed ideals.
It was in the University of Jena that German Idealism got its first foothold.
From here the new educational ideal went to the newly established universities
of Berlin, Heidelberg, Bonn, Breslau, and Munich, and into the secondary
schools.
IEP
© 1996
|