History of Philosophy German Philosophy: The Reaction against Hegel; Herbart, Schopenhauer byTurner, William (S.T.D.)
In the movement which arose in opposition to Hegel's philosophy we may
distinguish three currents: (1) the Psychological movement,
represented by Fries and Beneke; (2) the Realistic
movement, represented by Herbart; (3) the Voluntarist
movement, represented by Schopenhauer.
1. Psychological Reaction against Hegelianism. Fries
(1773-1843), professor at Jena and at Heidelberg, and author of the
New Critique of Reason (1807), adopted Kant's results, but
rejected the method of transcendental criticism, substituting for it
empirico-psychological inquiry, which he made the basis of all
philosophy. [1] He also admitted into his system of thought
elements derived from the fideism of Jacobi. His work was continued
and developed by Beneke (1798-1854), who succeeded to Hegel's
chair in the University of Berlin (1832), and by Ueberweg
(1826-1871), and Fortlage (1806-1881)~ who taught at
Königsberg and at Jena respectively.
[1] Cf. Falckenberg, op. cit., p. 409 (English trans., p.
507).
2. Realistic Metaphysics. Herbart (1776-1841), after
studying at the University of Jena, spent several years as private
tutor in Switzerland, where he made the acquaintance of
Pestalozzi (1746-1827), the founder of modern pedagogy. From
1802 to 1809 Herbart taught at Göttingen; in 1809 he was
transferred to Königsberg, whence he was recalled to
Göttingen in 1833. His collected works were published in twelve
volumes (Leipzig, 1850-1852) by his pupil Hartenstein. [2]
[2] New ed. by Kehrbach, 1882 ff. cf. Ribot, Contemporary
German Psychology (trans. by Baldwin, New York, 1886); also article
on Herbart in Encyc. Brit.
Herbart took up the realistic elements of Kant's philosophy and
combined them with Leibnizian monadism; the metaphysical system which
he evolved from these premises he himself described as realism. He
defines philosophy as the elaboration of the concepts which underlie
the different sciences, thus outlining the task which he undertook;
namely, (a) to restore realism, (b) to rehabilitate the principle of
contradiction, and (c) to establish philosophy on a scientific basis.
In his metaphysics he teaches that Being is not one, as the
Eleatics and the pantheists held, but many. The multiple realities
(Realen), which constitute real being, correspond in a measure to
the monads of Leibniz's philosophy; they differ, however, in this, that
they are devoid not only of all perception and incipient consciousness,
but of all activity whatsoever, except the power of self-preservation.
Extension in space, action in time, inherence, causality involve
contradictions, which philosophy removes by the elaboration of these
concepts.
In his psychology Herbart conceives the soul as a simple real
essence, one of the Realen, and the ideas of the soul he
conceives to be acts of self-preservation. There are not, therefore,
several faculties of the soul, but one faculty, the function of which
is to preserve the soul in its indestructible originality. Perception
arises from the conflict of this self-preserving tendency with the
self-preserving tendency of other real beings. Mental states are thus
an equilibrium of opposing forces, and Herbart, by attempting to
reduce psychic life to a mechanism, the laws of which are the same as
those of physics, forestalled the attempts of Fechner and Wundt to make
psychology an exact science. The best known example of this mechanics
of the mind is the attempt to determine the sum of arrest of
ideas.
Consistently with his rejection of the plurality of mental faculties,
Herbart identifies will with thought, and teaches that the freedom of
the will is merely the assured supremacy of the strongest idea or mass
of ideas.
Historical Position. Herbart is distinguished by his "systematic
opposition to the method, starting point, and conclusions of Hegel."
His philosophy is a union of Eleatic, Leibnizian, and Kantian elements.
We must not overlook the fact that Herbart devoted special attention to
the pedagogical aspects of philosophy, his rejection of the plural
concept of mind being of special importance on account of its influence
on the development of the theory of education.
3. Voluntarism. The most important of the anti-Hegelian
movements was that inaugurated by Schopenhauer, a movement which may be
described as an emphatic assertion of the importance of the
non-rational in a philosophical synthesis.
SCHOPENHAUER
Life. Arthur Schopenhauer was born at Danzig in 1788. After
traveling in France and England, he entered the University of
Göttingen and devoted himself to the study of the natural sciences
and of Plato. From Göttingen he went to Berlin, where Fichte was
lecturing at the time; thence he went to Jena, and there obtained his
doctor's degree, for which he wrote
the dissertation entitled The Fourfold Root of the Principle of
Sufficient Reason (Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom
zureichenden Grunde, 1813). During the four following years, which
he spent at Dresden, he devoted much attention to the study of Hindu
philosophy. His principal work, Die Welt als Wille und
Vorstellung, appeared in 1819. After two unsuccessful attempts to
expound his philosophy from the professor's chair and to stem the tide
of Hegel's popularity at Berlin, he retired in 1831 to
Frankfort-am-Main, where he spent the remainder of his life in learned
retirement, indulging his moody and passionate temperament and
elaborating a system of pessimism in which one may see, in addition to
the influence of his Buddhistic studies, the reflection of the personal
character of the man. He died in 1860.
Sources. Schopenhauer's Complete Works have been edited
several times (for example, Leipzig, 1873-1874; second edition, 1877;
Leipzig, 1890; and finally, Leipzig, 1894). The following works exist
in English translations: Fourfold Root, etc. (London, 1891),
The World as Will, etc. (3 vols., London and Boston, 1884-1886),
Essays (5 vols., London and New York, 1896). The best English
presentations of Schopenhauer's philosophy are to be found in Wallace's
Schopenhauer (London, 1890), and Caldwell's Schopenhauer's
System in its Philosophical Significance (New York, 1896). [3]
[3] Consult Sully, Pessimism (second edition, London, 1891);
Zimmern, Schopenhauer, His Life and Philosophy (London, 1876); K.
Fischer, Arthur Schopenhauer (Heidelberg, 1893); Volkelt, A.
Schopenhauer (Stuttgart, 1900).
DOCTRINES
General Character of Schopenhauer's Philosophy. Kant, Plato, and
the Buddhist philosophers contributed to the building of Schopenhauer's
system of thought. From Kant and the Kantians was derived the
transcendental element, -- the criticism with which Schopenhauer
started, and the synthetic arrangement by which he grouped all the
elements of thought under the absolute will. From Plato was derived the
theory of Ideas as stages of the voluntary phenomenon; and from the
Buddhists, the pessimism and the negation of will, which form the
practical aspects of Schopenhauer's system. Mention must also be made
of Hegel's influence, which, however, was wholly indirect. Indeed,
it is hardly an exaggeration to say that Schopenhauer was a
voluntarist because Hegel was an intellectualist, the former insisting
on the importance of the non-rational because the latter
identified the rational with the real.
Starting Point. Schopenhauer, like Fichte and Schelling, starts
with the Kantian resolution of noumenal reality into subject and object
(thing-in-itself), and addresses himself, as they addressed themselves,
to the task of analyzing the object with a view to perfecting the
Kantian synthesis. Influenced to a greater extent than he was aware
of by Fichte's subjectivism, he maintained that there is no object
without subject. Instead, however, of resolving the subjective
aspect of the object into a rational activity of the Ego, he resolved
it into the volitional activity ot the will, which is not only
the essence of man but also the essence of the universe.
The Fourfold Root. In the treatise entitled The Fourfold Root
of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, Schopenhauer teaches that
the celebrated principle which had played so important a part in
Leibniz' philosophy has four forms, corresponding to the four classes
of representations to which it is applied; namely: (1) principium
rationis essendi, as applied to formal intuitions; (2)
principium rationis fiendi, as applied to empirical intuitions;
(3) principium rationis agendi, as applied to acts of the will;
and (4) principium rationis cognoscendi, as applied to abstract
concepts.
The World as Representation. In his most important work, The
World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer first takes up and
evolves the epistemological principles which he had expounded in his
earlier treatise. Here he lays special emphasis on the notion of
causality. When we analyze our experience, he says, we find that all
that is given is sensation or representation. The understanding,
however, which may not be separated from sensation, immediately refers
the representation to an external cause. Now if we were merely
rational beings, endowed with
sense and intellect, but devoid of volition, we should never be able
to answer the question, What is the external cause of representation?
It is by combining internal experience with external that we perceive
will to be the ultimate real, the noumenal cause of the
phenomenon. Will, therefore, determines our knowledge of reality and
constitutes reality itself. Will governs knowledge.
It is important to note that by will Schopenhauer understands
not merely the faculty of choice but also impulse, the blind
unreasoning impulse to self-preservation, which manifests itself in
pleasure and pain, hope and fear, love and hatred, -- in a word, the
will-to-live. To this blind impulse he subordinates knowledge,
and although he claims that voluntarism is opposed to materialism on
the one hand, and to subjective idealism on the other, the whole trend
of his investigation of knowledge is towards the materialistic
conclusion that understanding is a function of the brain. In this
connection he quotes with apparent approval the celebrated saying
attributed to Cabanis: "As the liver secretes bile, the brain secretes
ideas." [4]
[4] Cf. Höffding, op. cit., II, 223.
The will is absolute. All representation is conditioned by
causality, space, time, etc., which constitute the principle of
individuation. The will is subject to none of these conditions;
it is neither individual nor personal, although individual acts of the
will (volitions), being merely representations, are subject to
causality, space, time, and other individuating conditions.
The World as Will. In the second book of the treatise above
mentioned (The World as Will, etc.), Schopenhauer proceeds to
the study of the external world, which is the will in the form of
objectivity, that is, in the body which it creates for itself. Starting
with self, he takes for granted as axiomatic that the human body
is merely the external manifestation of the inner force which is human
will. The will may be said to create the body: in truth,
however, the inner volition and the outer bodily action
are not cause and effect, but are merely the inner and the outer
aspect of the same reality.
Turning next to the world of natural phenomena he finds there the
all-permeating, all-producing will as natural force. This force
manifests itself in purely mechanical action and reaction, in chemical
affinity, in the striving and unconscious appetition of vegetable life,
and in the conscious self-preserving impulse of animals. Everywhere and
at every moment will is indefatigably active, organizing, preserving,
sustaining. It is will that endows the animal with weapons of defense
and with the means of obtaining its food; it is will too that endows
the animal with consciousness and man with intellect, for these are
weapons like any other contrivance for escaping from the enemy or
securing prey. Indeed, intellect is the most perfect of all the
weapons with which will has endowed creatures, for as the ink sac
of the cuttlefish serves to conceal the animal's flight or approach, so
intellect serves to hide the intent of the will and thus to insure its
success.
The will-to-live, as manifested in vegetable, animal, and human life,
is essentially a combative impulse; as one form of existence
necessarily comes in the way of other forms there arises an inevitable
struggle. Here Schopenhauer undoubtedly forestalls the Darwinian
concept of nature as a struggle for existence. Yet, although he
insists on the influence of want and environment on organic
development, he is opposed to the Lamarckian hypothesis of the
evolution of the higher from the lower species.
Pessimism. Schopenhauer was by temperament and disposition
inclined to dwell on the gloomy side of the picture of life which he
presented in his doctrine of the struggle of nature. The only positive
feelings, he taught, are those of pain: pleasure is the merely
temporary satisfaction of a need, and is, therefore, negative.
Positive pleasure is an illusion. "The simple truth is that we
ought to be miserable, and we are so. The chief source of the serious
evils which affect man is man himself;
homo homini lupus. Whoever keeps this fact clearly in view
beholds the world as a hell which surpasses that of Dante in this
respect, that one man must be the devil of another. . . . Life is a
path of red-hot coals with a few cool places here and there." [5]
[5] Werke, VI, 663.
The Escape from Bondage. In the third and fourth books of the
treatise, The World as Will, etc., Schopenhauer undertakes to
answer the question, How is man to escape from the bondage of will and
the misery of life? In his answer he maintains throughout the
individualistic standpoint: he has no belief in deliverance through the
ultimate development of the race; each man must deliver himself. Now
the means of deliverance are three: art, sympathy, and
negation of the will-to-live. [6]
[6] Cf. Caldwell, Schopenhauer's System, etc., pp. 171
ff.
Art. When a man loses himself in artistic contemplation, pure
perception takes full possession of his conscious life; the will
disappears and with it all suffering. In this connection Schopenhauer
attaches especial importance to music as a means of deliverance from
the bondage of suffering. But, he confesses, it requires a very great
effort to maintain the artistic attitude. We must look, therefore,
beyond art to find a more effectual remedy.
Sympathy differs from art in this, that it is permanent and may
be universal. Misery, as we have seen, arises from the egoistic impulse
to preserve one's own existence at the expense of the well-being of
others. Now sympathy leads us to look upon the sufferings of others as
our sufferings; it implies the oneness of all nature, the disappearance
of the concept of individuality, which is an illusion, and the
substitution of the will-to-let-live for the will-to-live. It
is, therefore, the ground phenomenon of ethics. Yet even sympathy can
only alleviate suffering; in order wholly to destroy and remove the
source of pain, man must negate the will-to-live, which is the origin
of suffering.
Negation of the Will-to-live. Schopenhauer finds both in
Christian asceticism and in Buddhism examples of men in whom
the will-to-live is completely eradicated, men who are utterly
indifferent to self-preservation and the preservation of the race. This
is the ideal of quiescence which the philosopher should strive to
attain, the nirvana in which passion and desire and conflict and
suffering disappear, to give place to perfect peace.
Historical Position. Schopenhauer's philosophy is lacking in
systematic cohesiveness. His theory of knowledge, his panthelism
(identity of will with reality), his pessimism, and his doctrine of
deliverance from suffering are not articulated into a rational system.
Perhaps the failure to furnish a complete and consistent rational
scheme was pardonable in one who insisted so emphatically on the
irrational nature of reality. Indeed, it is almost impossible in this
instance to separate the philosophy from the philosopher, so deeply do
the doctrines of Schopenhauer bear the impress of the character of the
man. His doctrines are, however, of extrinsic importance as reflecting
the sentiments of an age grown weary of life and surfeited with
rationalism and idealism. For pessimism is an index of inferior
vitality rather than of superior spiritual insight, and the insistence
on the nonrational nature of reality is a symptom of a malady which may
be traced to an overdose of transcendental metaphysics.
Eduard von Hartmann, born at Berlin in 1842, is the most
original of Schopenhauer's disciples, and is regarded as the greatest
living exponent of modified voluntarism and mitigated pessimism. His
system, which was first expounded in the Philosophie des
Unbewussten (1869), [7] and since then has been developed and
defended in several important treatises, may be described as a
philosophy of the unconscious. Hartmann, inspired with the idea of
reconciling Schopenhauer with Hegel, tries to unite the panthelism of
the former with the evolutionary idealism of the latter. The ground of
reality, the absolute, is, he teaches, the unconscious, which is not an
irrational will, but a will acting as if it were intelligent. The will,
guided by ideas, acts with a
knowledge of its actions; but since it does not know that it knows, it
is unconscious. Hartmann modifies Schopenhauer's pessimism by teaching
not only that the individual is freed from the misery of life by
attaining the negation of the will-to-live, but that the whole universe
is moving by an evolutionary process towards a universal redemption
from evil by means of a universal denial of will.
[7] Translated by E. C. Coupland (London, 1886).
Wilhelm Richard Wagner (1813-1883) and Friedrich
Nietzsche (1844-1900) are cited among those who were influenced in
their artistic and literary labors by Schopenhauer's doctrines. [8]