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PARERGA AND PARALIPOMENA: SHORT PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS |
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[b]SKETCH OF A HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE IDEAL AND THE REAL[/b]
[quote]Plurimi pertransibunt, et multiplex erit scientia. [' Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.'
-- Daniel 12: 4.][/quote] [b]Sketch of a History of the Doctrine of the Ideal and the Real[/b]
DESCARTES is rightly regarded as the father of modern philosophy primarily and generally because he helped the faculty of reason to stand on its own feet by teaching men to use their brains in place whereof the Bible, on the one hand, and Aristotle, on the other, had previously served. But he is the father in a special and narrower sense because he was the first to bring to our consciousness the problem whereon all philosophizing has since mainly turned, namely that of the ideal and the real. This is the question concerning what in our knowledge is objective and what subjective, and hence what eventually is to be ascribed by us to things different from us and what is to be attributed to ourselves. Thus in our head images arise not arbitrarily, as it were, from within, nor do they proceed from the connection of ideas; consequently, they arise from an external cause. But such images alone are what is immediately known to us, what is given. Now what relation may they have to things which exist quite separately from and independently of us and which would somehow become the cause of those images? Are we certain that such things generally exist at all, and in this case do the images give us any information as to their nature? This is the problem and in consequence thereof the main endeavour of philosophers for the last two hundred years has been clearly to separate by a line of cleavage correctly drawn the ideal, in other words, what belongs to our knowledge solely and as such, from the real, that is to say, what exists independently of our knowledge, and thus to determine the relation of the two to each other.
Neither the philosophers of antiquity nor even the Schoolmen really appear to have become clearly aware of this fundamental philosophical problem, although we find a trace of it, as idealism and even as the doctrine of the ideality of time, in Plotinus, and in fact in Enneads, lib. VII, c. 10, where he tells us that the soul made the world by emerging from eternity into time. He says there, for instance: [x] (neque datur alius hujus universi locus, quam anima.) [1] as also: [x] (oprortet autem nequaquam extra animam tempus accipere, quemadmodum neque aeternitatem ibi extra id, quod ens appellatur); [2] here is really expressed Kant's ideality of time. And in the following chapter: [x] (haec vita nostra tempus gignit: quamobrem dictum est, tempus simul cum hoc universo factum esse; quia anima tempus una cum hoc universo progenuit.) [3] Yet the clearly recognized and clearly expressed problem continues to be the characteristic theme of modern philosophy, after the necessary reflectiveness had first been awakened in Descartes. He was struck by the truth that we are above all restricted to our own consciousness and that the world is given to us only as representation or mental picture [Vorstellung). Through his well-known dubito, cogito, ergo sum, [4] he tried to lay stress on the only certain thing of subjective consciousness in contrast to the problematical nature of everything else, and to express the great truth that self-consciousness is the only thing really and unconditionally given. Closely considered, his famous proposition is the equivalent of that from which I started, namely: 'The world is my representation'. The only difference is that his proposition stresses the immediateness of the subject, whereas mine stresses the mediateness of the object. Both propositions express the same thing from two points of view. They are the reverse of each other and therefore stand in the same relation as the laws of inertia and causality, according to my discussion in the preface to my ethics. [ The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics treated in two academical prize-essays by Dr. Arthur Schopenhauer. Frankfurt am Main, 1841, p. xxiv; 2nd edn., Leipzig, 1860, pp. xxivf.) Since the days of Descartes his proposition has been repeated innumerable times from a mere feeling of its importance and without a clear understanding of its real meaning and purport. (See Meditationes, Med. II, p. 15.) And so it was he who discovered the gulf between the subjective or ideal and the objective or real. He clothed this insight in the form of a doubt concerning the existence of the external world; but by his inadequate solution of such doubt, namely that God Almighty would surely not deceive us, he has shown how profound the problem is and how difficult it is to solve. Meanwhile through him this scruple had come into philosophy and was bound to continue to have a disturbing effect until it was thoroughly disposed of. The consciousness that, without thorough knowledge and an explanation of the distinction that had been discovered, no sure and satisfactory system was possible, had since existed and the question could no longer be shirked.
To dispose of it, Malebranche first devised the system of occasional causes. He grasped the problem itself in its whole range more clearly, seriously, and deeply than did Descartes. (Recherches de La veriti, Livre III, seconde partie.) The latter had assumed the reality of the external world on the credit of God; and here, of course, it seems strange that, whereas the other theistic philosophers endeavour to demonstrate the existence of God from that of the world, Descartes, on the contrary, proves the existence of the world first from the existence and trustworthiness of God; it is the cosmological proof the other way round. Here too Malebranche goes a step farther and teaches that we see all things immediately in God himself. This certainly is equivalent to explaining something unknown by something even more unknown. Moreover, according to him, we not only see all things in God, but God is also the sole activity therein, so that physical causes are so only apparently; they are mere causes occasionnelles. (Recherches de La veriti, Livre VI, seconde partie, chap. 3.) And so here we have essentially the pantheism of Spinoza who appears to have learnt more from Malebranche than from Descartes.
On the whole, one might be surprised that even in the seventeenth century pantheism did not gain a complete victory over theism; for the most original, finest, and most thorough European expositions of it (none of them, of course, will bear comparison with the Upanishads of the Vedas) all came to light at that period, namely through Bruno, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Scotus Erigena. Mter Scot us Erigena had been lost and forgotten for many centuries, he was again discovered at Oxford and in 1681, thus four years after Spinoza's death, his work first saw the light in print. This seems to prove that the insight of individuals cannot make itself felt so long as the spirit of the age is not. ripe to receive it. On the other hand, in our day pantheism, although presented only in Schelling's eclectic and confused revival thereof, has become the dominant mode of thought of scholars and even of educated people. This is because Kant had preceded it with his overthrow of theistic dogmatism and had cleared the way for it, whereby the spirit of the age was ready for it, just as a ploughed field is ready for the seed. In the seventeenth century, on the contrary, philosophy again forsook that path and accordingly arrived at Locke, on the one hand, for whom Bacon and Hobbes had paved the way, and at Christian Wolff, on the other, through Leibniz. These two were then dominant in the eighteenth century, especially in Germany, although ultimately only in so far as they had been initiated into syncretistic eclecticism. Malebranche's profound ideas, however, first gave rise to Leibniz's system of harmonia praestabilita, and the widespread fame and high repute of this in his day furnish a proof of the fact that in the world the absurd most easily succeeds. Although I cannot boast of having a clear notion of Leibniz's monads, which are at the same time mathematical points, material atoms, and souls, yet it seems to me beyond doubt that such an assumption once settled could help to save us from all further hypotheses for explaining the connection between the ideal and the real, and to dispose of the question by the fact that both are already fully identified in the monads. (For this reason Schelling in our day, as the originator of the system of identity, has again relished it.) However, it did not please the famous philosophizing mathematician, polyhistor, and politician to employ them for this purpose, but to this end he expressly formulated the pre-established harmony. This now furnishes us with two entirely different worlds, each incapable of acting in any way on the other (Principia philos., § 84, and Examen du sentiment du P. Malebranche, pp. 500 ff. of the Oeuvres de Leibniz, publ. by Raspe), each the wholly superfluous duplicate of the other. But yet the two are now supposed to exist once for all, to run exactly parallel to each other, and to keep time with each other to a hair. Therefore at the very beginning, the originator of both established between them the precisest harmony wherein they now continue most beautifully to run side by side. Incidentally, the harmonia praestabilita might perhaps be best rendered comprehensible by a comparison with the stage. Here very often the influxus physicus [5] only apparently exists, since cause and effect are connected merely by means of a pre-established harmony of the stage manager, for example, when the one shoots and the other falls a tempo. In §§ 62, 63 of his Thlodicle, Leibniz has presented the matter in its monstrous absurdity in the crassest manner and in brief. And yet with the whole dogma he has not even the merit of originality, since Spinoza had already presented the harmonia praestabilita clearly enough in the second part of his Ethics, thus in the sixth and seventh propositions together with their corollaries, and again in the fifth part, first proposition, after he had expressed, in his own way in the fifth proposition of the second part, the very closely related doctrine of Malebranche, that we see everything in God. * Therefore Malebranche alone is the originator of this whole line of thought which both Spinoza and Leibniz have utilized and modified, each in his own way. Leibniz could very well have dispensed with the thing altogether, for here he had already given up the mere fact, constituting the problem, namely that the world is immediately given to us merely as our representation, in order to substitute for it the dogma of a corporeal world and a spiritual world between which no bridge is possible. For he interweaves the question concerning the relation of representations to things-in-themselves with that concerning the possibility of the movements of the body through the will, and now solves both together by means of his harmonia praestabilita. (See Systeme nouveau de la nature, in Leibniz's Works, ed. Erdmann, p. 125-Brucker, Hist. Ph., Tom. iv, Pt. II, p. 425.) The monstrous absurdity of his assumption was placed in the clearest light even by some of his contemporaries, especially by Bayle, who showed the consequences resulting from it. (See also in Leibniz's short works, translated by Huth, 1740, the note on page 79, where Leibniz himself is compelled to expose the revolting consequences of his contention.) Nevertheless, the very absurdity of the assumption, to which a thinking mind was driven by the problem before us, shows its magnitude, difficulty, and perplexity, and also how little we are able to brush it aside and thus cut the knot by merely repudiating it, as some in our day have ventured to do.
Spinoza starts again directly from Descartes; therefore, in his capacity as a Cartesian, he at first retained even the dualism of his teacher and accordingly assumed a substantia cogitans and a substantia extensa, [6] the former as subject, the latter as object, of knowledge. Later, however, when he stood on his own feet, he found that both were one and the same substance, viewed from different sides, and hence at one time conceived as substantia extensa, at another as substantia cogitans. Now this is really equivalent to saying that the distinction between the thinking and the extended, or between mind and body, is unfounded and therefore inadmissible, and hence that nothing more should have been said about it. But nevertheless he still retains it in so far as he is never tired of repeating that the two are one. Now in addition to this, he says by a mere sic etiam that modus extensionis et idea illius modi una eademque est res [7] (Ethics, Pt. ", prop. 7, schol.), by which is meant that our representation of bodies and these bodies themselves are one and the same. However, the sic etiam [8] is an insufficient transition to this, for although the distinction between mind and body or between what represents and what is exended is unfounded, it by no means follows that the distinction between our representation and something objective and real existing outside this, that fundamental problem raised by Descartes, is also unfounded. What represents and what is represented may still be homogeneous, yet the question remains whether I can infer with certainty from representations in my head the existence of entities, in themselves different from me, that is to say, entities that are independent of those representations. The difficulty is not the one into which Leibniz would prefer to distort it (e.g. Theodicle, Pt. I, § 59), namely that between the assumed souls or minds and the corporeal world, as between two wholly heterogeneous kinds of substances, absolutely no action and connection can take place, for which reason he denied physical influence. For this difficulty is merely a consequence of rational psychology and, therefore, needs only to be discarded as a fiction, as is done by Spinoza. Moreover, there is, as the argumentum ad hominem [9] against the upholders of rational psychology, their dogma that God, who is indeed a spirit, created the corporeal world and continues to govern it; and so a spirit can act immediately on bodies. On the contrary, the difficulty is and remains merely the Cartesian, namely that the world, which alone is given immediately to us, is only ideal, in other words, one that consists of mere representations in our head; whereas, over and above this, we undertake to judge of a real world, in other words, one that exists independently of our representations. Therefore by abolishing the difference between substantia cogitans and substantia extensa, Spinoza has still not solved this problem, but has at most again rendered physical influence admissible. This, however, does not suffice to solve the difficulty, for the law of causality is demonstrably of subjective origin. But even if that law sprang conversely from external experience, it would still belong to that world in question which is given to us only ideally. Hence in no case can the law of causality furnish a bridge between the absolutely objective and the subjective; on the contrary, it is merely the bond that connects phenomena with one another, (See World as Will and Representation, vol. II, chap. I.)
But to explain more fully the above-mentioned identity of extension and of the representation thereof, Spinoza furnishes something that at the same time includes the views of Malebranche and Leibniz. Thus, wholly in accordance with Malebranche, we see all things in God: rerum singularium ideae non ipsa ideata, sive res perceptas, pro causa agnoscunt, sed ipsum Deum, quatenys est res cogitans. [10] Ethics, Pt. II, prop. 5; and this God is also at the same time the real and active principle in them, just as he is with Malebranche. In the last resort, however, nothing is explained by Spinoza's designation of the world with the name Deus. But at the same time there is with him, as with Leibniz, an exact parallelism between the extended and the represented worlds: ordo et connexio idearum idem est, ac ordo et connexio rerum, [11] Pt. II, prop. 7 and many similar passages. This is the harmonia praestabilita of Leibniz; only that here the represented world and the objectively existing world do not remain wholly separated, as with Leibniz, corresponding to each other merely by virtue of a harmonia, regulated in advance and from without, but actually they are one and the same. Therefore we have here in the first place a complete and absolute realism, in so far as the existence of things corresponds exactly to their representation in us, since indeed both are one. * Accordingly, we know the things-in-themselves; they are in themselves extensa, just as they also manifest themselves as extensa, in so far as they appear as cogitata, that is to say, in our representation of them. (Incidentally, here is the origin of Schelling's identity of the real and the ideal.) Now all this, properly speaking, is based only on mere assertion. The exposition is difficult to understand through the ambiguity of the word Deus that is used in a wholly improper sense; and so it loses itself in obscurity and in the end amounts to saying: nee impraesemiarum haec clarius possum explicare. [12] But obscurity in the exposition always arises from obscurity of a philosopher's own understanding and study of his works. Vauvenargues has very aptly said: La clarte est la bonne foi des philosophes. [13] (See Revue des deux mondes, 15 August 1853, p. 635.) What in music is the 'pure phrase or movement' is in philosophy perfect clearness, in so far as it is the conditio sine qua non, [14] and without the fulfilment of this, everything loses its value and we have to say: quodcunque ostendis mihi sic incredulus odi. [15] If even in the affairs of ordinary practical life we have through clearness carefully to guard against possible misunderstandings, how can we dare to express ourselves indefinitely, or even unintelligently, in the most difficult, abstruse, and wellnigh impenetrable subject of thought, in the problems of philosophy? The obscurity I have censured in Spinoza's doctrine arises from his not proceeding impartially from the nature of things as he finds them, but from Cartesianism, and accordingly from all kinds of traditional concepts, such as Deus, substantia, perfectio, and so on, which he attempted in roundabout ways to bring into harmony with his notion of truth. Very often he expresses the best things only indirectly, especially in the second part of the Ethics, since he always speaks per ambages [16] and almost allegorically. On the other hand, Spinoza again evinces an unmistakable transcendental idealism, namely a knowledge, although only general, of the truths expounded by Locke and particularly by Kant, hence a real distinction between the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself, and a recognition that only the phenomenon is accessible to us. See, for example, Ethics, Pt. u, prop. 16, with the second corollary; prop. 17, schol.; prop. 18, schol.; prop. 19; prop. 23, which extends it to self- knowledge; prop. 25, which expresses it clearly, and finally, as a resume, the corollary to prop. 29, which clearly states that we do not know either ourselves or things as they are in themselves, but merely as they appear. The demonstration of Pt. III, prop. 27, expresses the matter most clearly at the very beginning. With regard to the relation of Spinoza's doctrine to Descartes's, I here recall what I have said in the World as Will and Representation, vol. ii, chap. 50. But by starting from the concepts of the Cartesian philosophy, Spinoza in his exposition not only gave rise to much obscurity and misunderstanding, but he was also led into many flagrant paradoxes, obvious fallacies, and indeed absurdities and contradictions. In this way, much that is true and admirable in his teaching has acquired an extremely unwelcome admixture of positively indigestible matter, and the reader is tossed between admiration and annoyance. But in the aspect here to be considered, Spinoza's fundamental fault is that from the wrong point he drew his line of intersection between the ideal and the real, or between the subjective and objective worlds. Thus extension is by no means the opposite of representation, but lies wholly within this. We represent things as extended and, in so far as they are extended, they are our representation. But the question and the original problem is whether, independently of our representing, anything is extended, or indeed whether anything exists at all. This problem was later solved by Kant, and so far with undeniable accuracy, by his stating that extension or spatiality lies simply and solely in the representation and hence that it is closely connected with and dependent on this, since the whole of space is the mere form of the representation; and, therefore, independently of our representing, nothing extended can exist and also quite certainly nothing does exist. Accordingly, Spinoza's line of intersection has been drawn entirely on the ideal side and he has stopped at the represented world. Indicated by its form of extension, this world is, therefore, regarded by him as the real and consequently as existing independently of its being represented in our heads, in other words, as existing in itself. He is then, of course, quite right in saying that what is extended and what is represented, in other words our representation of bodies and these bodies themselves, are one and the same (Pt. II, prop. 7, schol.). For naturally only as represented are things extended, and only as extended are they capable of representation; the world as representation and the world in space are una eademque res; [17] this we can fully admit. Now if extension were a quality of things-in-themselves, then our intuitive perception would be a knowledge of things-in- themselves. This is what he assumes, and therein consists his realism. But since he does not establish realism and does not prove that, corresponding to our intuitive perception of a spatial world, there is a spatial world independent of that perception, the fundamental problem remains unsolved. This, however, is simply due to the fact that the line of intersection is not correctly drawn between the real and the ideal, the objective and the subjective, the thing-in-itse1f and the phenomenon. On the contrary, he carries the intersection, as I have said, through the middle of the ideal, subjective, phenomenal side of the world and hence through the world as representation. He splits this world into the extended or spatial and our representation of the extended, and then takes a great deal of trouble to show that the two are identical, as in fact they are. Just because Spinoza remains entirely on the ideal side of the world, for he thought he would find the real in what is extended and belongs to the world; and as, in consequence, the world of intuitive perception is the sole reality outside us, and that which knows (cogitans) the sole reality within us, so, on the other hand, he shifts the only truly real, namely the will, into the ideal, for he represents it as being a mere modus cogitandi; in fact, he identifies it with the judgement. See Ethics, Pt II, the proofs of the propositions 48 and 49, where it says: per VOLUNTATEM intelligo affirmandi et negandi facultatem, and again: concipiamus singularem aliquam VOLITIONEM, nempe modum cogitandi, quo mens affirmat, tres angulos trianguli aequales esse duobus rectis, whereupon the corollary follows: Volunlas et intellectus unum et idem sunt. [18] In general Spinoza has the great fault of purposely misusing words for expressing concepts that in the entire world go by other names, and, on the other hand, of depriving them of the meaning which they everywhere have. Thus he calls 'God' that which is everywhere called 'the world'; 'justice' that which is everywhere called 'power'; and 'will' that which is everywhere called 'judgement'. Here we are fully justified in recalling the Hetman of the Cossacks in Kotzebue's Graf Benjowsky. [19]
Although coming later and already with the knowledge of Locke, Berkeley consistently went farther on this path of the Cartesians, and thus became the originator of the proper and true idealism, that is, of the knowledge that what is extended in and fills space, and thus the world of intuitive perception generally, can have its existence as such absolutely only in our representation, and that it is absurd and even contradictory to attribute to it, as such, another existence outside all representation and independently of the knowing subject, and accordingly to assume a matter existing in itself.* This is a very true and deep insight, but his whole philosophy consists in nothing but this. He had hit upon and clearly separated the ideal; but he did not know how to find the real, about which he did not trouble himself very much and expressed himself only occasionally, piecemeal, and incompletely. With him God's will and omnipotence are directly the cause of all the phenomena in the world of intuitive perception, that is to say, of all our representations. Real existence belongs only to knowing and willing beings, such as we ourselves are: hence these, together with God, constitute the real. They are spirits, that is, just knowing and willing beings; for willing and knowing are regarded by him as absolutely inseparable. Also in common with his predecessors, he regards God as better known than the actual world before us; and he therefore regards a reduction to him as an explanation. Speaking generally, his clerical and even episcopal position cramped and fettered him, and restricted him to a narrow circle of ideas against which he could never offend. He could, therefore, go no further, but in his head the true and the false had to learn as best they could to be compatible with each other. These remarks may be extended even to the works of all these philosophers, with the exception of Spinoza. They are all marred by that Jewish theism which is impervious to any investigation, dead to all research, and thus actually appears as a fixed idea. At every step, it plants itself in the path of truth, so that the harm it does here in the theoretical sphere appears as a counterpart to that which it has done in the practical in the course of a thousand years; I mean in religious wars, inquisitions, and conversions of nations by the sword.
The closest affinity between Malebranche, Spinoza, and Berkeley is unmistakable. We see them all start from Descartes in so far as they retain and try to solve the fundamental problem that is presented by him in the form of a doubt concerning the existence of the external world. For they are concerned to investigate the separation and connection of the ideal subjective world, given solely in our representation, and the real objective world, existing independently thereof and thus in itself. Therefore this problem is, as I have said, the axis on which the whole of modern philosophy turns.
Now Locke differs from those philosophers in that, probably because he is under the influence of Hobbes and Bacon, he attaches himself as closely as possible to experience and common sense, avoiding as far as possible hyperphysical hypotheses. For him the real is matter, and without paying any regard to Leibniz's scruple as to the impossibility of a causal connection between the immaterial thinking substance and the material extended substance, he at once assumes physical influence between matter and the knowing subject. Here, however, with rare deliberation and honesty, he goes so far as to confess that possibly that which knows and thinks can also be matter (On the Human Understanding, lib. IV, c. 3, § 6). Later this won for him the repeated praise of the great Voltaire; on the other hand, in his own day it exposed him to the malicious attacks of an artful Anglican priest, the Bishop of Worcester. [20] Now with him the real, i.e. matter, generates in the knower representations or the ideal through 'impulse', i.e. through push or thrust. (Ibid., lib. I, c. 8; § II.) Thus here we have a thoroughly massive realism which by its very exorbitance called forth contradiction and gave rise to Berkeley's idealism. The special point of origin of this is perhaps what Locke states at the end of § 2 of chapter 21 of the second book with so surprisingly little reflection. Among other things he says that 'solidity, extension, figure, motion and rest, would be really in the world, as they are, whether there were any sensible being to perceive them or not'. Thus as soon as we reflect on this, we are bound to recognize it as false; but then Berkeleyan idealism stands there and is undeniable. However, even Locke does not overlook that fundamental problem, namely the gulf between the representations within us and the things existing independently of us and thus the distinction between the ideal and the real. But speaking generally, he disposes of it with arguments of sound but rough common sense, and by reference to the adequacy of our knowledge of things for practical purposes (ibid., lib. IV, c. 4 and 9), which obviously has nothing to do with the case and only shows how very inadequate to the problem empiricism remains. But now it is just his realism that leads him to restrict what corresponds to the real in our knowledge to qualities inherent in things, as thry are in themselves, and to distinguish these qualities from those that are connected merely with our knowledge of them, and thus only with the ideal. Accordingly, he calls the latter secondary qualities but the former primary. This is the origin of the distinction between thing-in-itself and phenomenon, which later on in the Kantian philosophy becomes so very important. Here, then, is the true genetic point of contact between the Kantian teaching and the earlier philosophy, namely in Locke. The former was provoked, and more immediately occasioned, by Hume's sceptical objections to Locke's teaching; on the other hand, it has only a polemical relation to the philosophy of Leibniz and Wolff.
Now those primary qualities, which are said to be exclusively determinations of things-in-themselves and consequently to belong thereto, even outside and independently of our representation, prove to be merely such as cannot be thought away, namely extension, impenetrability, form, motion or rest, and number. All the rest are recognized as secondary, that is, as creations of the action of those primary qualities on our organs of sense, consequently as mere sensations therein; such qualities are colour, tone, taste, smell, hardness, softness, smoothness, roughness, and so on. Accordingly, these have not the least resemblance to that quality in the things-in-themselves which excites them, but are reducible to those primary qualities as their causes, and these alone are purely objective and actually exist in things. (Ibid., lib. I, c. 8, §§ 7 seqq.) Our representations of these are, therefore, actually faithful copies of them, which reproduce exactly the qualities present in the things-in-themselves (loc. cit., § 15. I wish the reader luck who actually perceives here how ludicrous realism becomes). We see, therefore, that Locke takes away from the nature of things-in-themselves, whose 'representations we receive from without, that which is an action of the nerves of the sense organs, an easy, comprehensible, and indisputable observation. But on this path, Kant later took the immeasurably greater step of also taking away that which is an action of our brain (this incomparably greater mass of nerves). Thus all those ostensibly primary qualities sink into secondary ones, and the assumed things-in-themselves into mere phenomena. The real thing-in- itself, however, now divested even of those qualities, remains over as an entirely unknown quantity, a mere x. Now this, of course, called for a difficult and deep analysis that was long to be defended against the attacks of misunderstanding and of a want of understanding.
Locke does not deduce his primary qualities of things, nor does he state any further reason why just these and no others are purely objective, except to say that they are ineradicable. Now if we ourselves investigate why he declares as not objectively present those qualities of things which act immediately on sensation and which consequently come directly from without, whereas he concedes objective existence to those qualities which (as we have since recognized) spring from our intellect's own special functions, then the reason for this is that the objectively perceiving consciousness (the consciousness of other things) necessarily requires a complicated apparatus, and as the function of this it appears; consequently, its most essential fundamental determinations are already fixed from within. Therefore the universal form, i.e. the mode, of intuitive perception, from which alone the a priori knowable can result, presents itself as the basic fabric of the intuitively perceived world and accordingly appears as the absolutely necessary factor that is without exception and cannot in any way be removed so that, already in advance, it stands firm as the condition of all other things and of their manifold variety. We know that this is first of all time and space, and what follows from them and is possible only through them. In themselves, time and space are empty; if anything is to come into them, it must appear as matter, in other words, as something acting and consequently as causality; for matter is through and through pure causality. Its being consists in its acting and vice versa; it is simply the objectively apprehended form of the understanding for causality itself. (On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, §21; as also World as Will and Representation, vol. i, § 4, and vol. ii, chap. 4.) Hence it follows that Locke's primary qualities are merely such as cannot be thought away; and this indicates clearly enough their subjective origin, since they result directly from the nature and constitution of the perception-apparatus itself. Consequently, it follows that he regards as absolutely objective just that which, as a function of the brain, is much more subjective than is the sensation that is occasioned directly from without, or is at any rate more fully determined.
Meanwhile, it is fine to see how, through all these different conceptions and explanations, the problem, raised by Descartes, of the relation between the ideal and the real is ever more developed and clarified and thus truth is advanced. This, of course, took place under the favourable circumstances of the times or more correctly of nature which, in the brief interval of two centuries, gave birth to, and allowed to mature in Europe, half a dozen thinking minds. Moreover, as a gift from fate, they were permitted, in a vulgar-minded world that was slavishly abandoned to profit and pleasure, to follow their eminent and exalted calling, indifferent as they were to the yelping of priests and to the twaddle or deliberate activities of the contemporary professors of philosophy.
Now as, in accordance with his strict empiricism, Locke enabled us to know even the relation of causality only through experience, Hume did not dispute this false assumption, which would have been the correct thing to do. On the contrary, he at once overshot the mark, the reality of the causality relation itself, and in fact did this by the observation, correct in itself, that experience can never give, sensuously and directly, more than a mere succession of things, not an ensuing and effecting in the real sense, namely a necessary connection. We all know how this sceptical objection of Hume's gave rise to Kant's incomparably deeper investigations of the matter, which led him to the result that causality, and indeed also space and time, are known by us a priori, that is to say, lie within us prior to all experience, and hence belong to the subjective part of knowledge. From this it further follows that all those primary, i.e. absolute, qualities of things, which had been determined by Locke, cannot be peculiar to things-in-themselves, but are inherent in our way of knowing these, for all such qualities are composed of pure determinations of time, space, and causality, and consequently are to be reckoned as belonging not to the real, but to the ideal. Finally, it follows from this that we know things in no respect as they are in themselves, but simply and solely in their phenomenal appearance. But then the real, the thing-in-itself, remains as something wholly unknown, a mere x, and the whole world of intuitive perception accrues to the ideal as a mere representation, a phenomenon, to which, however, as such a real, a thing-in-itself, must somehow correspond.
From this point I have finally made a step that I believe will be the last because I have solved the problem whereon all philosophizing since Descartes has turned. Thus I have reduced all being and knowing to the two elements of our self-consciousness and hence to something beyond which there can no longer be any principle of explanation, since it is that which is most immediate and therefore ultimate. I have thus called to mind, as follows from the investigations of all my predecessors which are here discussed, that the absolutely real, or the thing-initself, can never be given to us directly from without on the path of the mere representation because it is inevitably in the nature of such representation always to furnish only the ideal. On the other hand, since we ourselves are indisputably real, it must be possible in some way to draw a knowledge of the real from the interior of our own true nature. In fact, it now appears here in an immediate way in consciousness, namely as will. Accordingly, with me the line of intersection now falls between the real and the ideal in such a way that the whole world of intuitive perception, presenting itself objectively, including everyone's own body, together with space, time, and causality, and consequently together with the extended of Spinoza and the matter of Locke, belongs as representation to the ideal. But in this case, only the will is left as the real and all my predecessors, thoughtlessly and without reflection, had cast this into the ideal, as a mere result of representation and thought; in fact, Descartes and Spinoza even identified it with the judgement. [21] Thus with me ethics is now directly and incomparably more closely connected with metaphysics than it is in any other system, and so the moral significance of the world and existence is more firmly established than ever. Will and representation alone are fundamentally different in so far as they constitute the ultimate and basic contrast in all things in the world and leave no remainder. The represented thing and the representation thereof are the same; but only the represented thing, not the thing-in-itself. The latter is always will, whatever be the form in which it appears in the representation.
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[b]Notes:[/b]
1 ['For there is for this universe no other place than the mind.']
2 [' But we should not accept time outside the mind; and also we should not accept the eternity of the Beyond outside Being (i.e. the world of Ideas).']
3 ['This life produces time, which also means that time arose simultaneously with this universe; for the mind has produced it simultaneously with this universe.') 4 [' I doubt, that is to say, I think, consequently I am.')
* [Footnotes with an asterisk or dagger represent additions made by Schopenhauer in his interleaved copy between 1851 and his death in 1860.]
* Ethics, Pt. 11, prop. 7: Ordo et connexio idearum idem est, ac ordo et connexio rerum.-Pt. v, prop. 1: Prout cogitationes rerumque ideae concatenantur in Mente, ita corporis affectiones, seu rerum imagines ad amusim ordinantur et concatenantur in Corpore.-Pt. II, prop. 5: Esse formale idearum Deum, quatenus tantum ut res cogitans consideratur, pro causa agnoscit, et non quatenus alio attributo explicatur. Hoc est tam Dei attributorum, quam rerum singularium ideae non ipsa ideata, sive res perceptas pro causa efficiente agnoscunt: sed ipsum Deum, quatenus est res cogitans.
['The order and connection of ideas are the same as the order and connection of things... Just as the thoughts and ideas of things are linked in the mind, so are the affections of the body or the images of things arranged and linked in the body. . . . The formal existence of ideas has God as its cause, in so far as he is considered as a thinking being, and not in so far as he is evolved by another attribute. That is to say: the ideas of the attributes of God, as of individual things, have as their cause, not the objects of these ideas, i.e. perceived things, but God himself, in so far as he is a thinking being.']
5 ['Physical influence'. (Term used by Descartes.)]
6 [' A thinking substance' and 'an extended substance'.]
7 [' Likewise a mode of extension and the idea of this mode are also one and the same.']
8 (' Likewise'.]
9 [An irrelevant or malicious appeal to personal circumstances.)
* In the Treatise on the Improvement of the Understanding, pp. 414/25 he evinces a decided realism and indeed in such a way that idea vera est diversum quid a suo ideato; etc. ['A true idea is something different from its object.') Nevertheless, this treatise is undoubtedly older than his Ethics.
10 ['The ideas of particular things do not have as their cause the objects of these ideas, in other words, perceived things, but God himself, in so far as he is a thinking being.')
11 [' The order and connection of ideas are the same as the order and connection of things.')
12 [' And for the present I cannot explain this more clearly.']
13 [' Lucidity is the good faith of philosophers.']
14 [' Indispensable condition'.)
15 [' All that you show me is to me incredible and repulsive.' (Horace, Ars poetica, 188)]
16 [' Through circumlocutions'.)
17 [' One and the same thing'.]
18 ['By will I understand the ability to affirm and deny... Let us take a definite ad of will, namely the mode of thought whereby the mind affirms that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles ... Will and intellect are one and the same.'] * The uninitiated in philosophy, who include many doctors thereof, should be wholly deprived of the word Idealism because they do not know what it means and with it are up to all sorts of mischief. By idealism they understand first spiritualism, and then possibly the opposite of Philistinism, and in this view they are strengthened and confirmed by vulgar men of letters. The words' idealism' and ‘realism' are not ownerless and unappropriated, but have their fixed philosophical meaning. Those who mean something else, should simply use another word. The contrast between idealism and realism concerns what is known, the object; on the other hand, that between spiritualism and materialism concerns the knower, the subject. (The ignorant scribblers of today confuse idealism and spiritualism.)
19 (Kotzebue, A. F. F. v. (1761-1819). This early play has long since been forgotten. )
20 There is no Church that dreads the light more than does the English just because no other has at stake such great pecuniary interests, its income amounting to £5,000,000 sterling, which is said to be £40,000 more than the income of the whole of the remaining Christian clergy of both hemispheres taken together. On the other hand, there is no nation which it is so painful to see methodically stupefied by the most degrading blind faith than the English who surpass all others in intelligence. The root of the evil is that there is no ministry of public instruction and hence that this has hitherto remained entirely in the hands of the parsons. These have taken good care that two-thirds of the nation shall not be able to read and write; in fact, from time to time, they even have the audacity with the most ludicrous presumption to yelp at the natural sciences. It is, therefore, a human duty to smuggle into England, through every conceivable channel, light, liberal-mindedness, and science, so that those best-fed of all priests may have their business brought to an end. When Englishmen of education display on the Continent their Jewish sabbatarian superstition and other stupid bigotry, they should be treated with undisguised derision, until they be shamed into common sense (Schopenhauer's own English]. For such things are a scandal to Europe and should no longer be tolerated. Therefore even in the ordinary course of life, we should never make the least concession to the superstition of the English Church, but should at once stand up to it in the most caustic and trenchant manner wherever it puts in an appearance. For no arrogance exceeds that of Anglican parsons; on the Continent, therefore, this must suffer enough humiliation, so that a portion thereof is taken home, where there is a lack of it. For the audacity of Anglican parsons and of their slavish followers is quite incredible, even at the present time; it should, therefore, be confined to its island and, when it ventures to show itself on the Continent, it should at once be made to play the role of the owl by day.
21 Spinoza, loc cit.-Descartes, Mediationes de prima philosophia, Med. IV, p. 28.
[b]APPENDIX[/b]
Readers who are acquainted with what has passed for philosophy in Germany in the course of this [nineteenth] century, might perhaps wonder why they do not see mentioned in the interval between Kant and me either the idealism of Fichte, or the system of the absolute identity of the real and the ideal, as they quite properly appear to belong to our subject But I have not been able to include them because Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel are in my opinion not philosophers; for they lack the first requirement of a philosopher, namely a seriousness and honesty of inquiry. They are merely sophists who wanted to appear to be rather than to be something. They sought not truth, but their own interest and advancement in the world. Appointments from governments, fees and royalties from students and publishers, and, as a means to this end, the greatest possible show and sensation in their sham philosophy-such were the guiding stars and inspiring genii of those disciples of wisdom. And so they have not passed the entrance examination and cannot be admitted into the venerable company of thinkers for the human race.
Nevertheless they have excelled in one thing, in the art of beguiling the public and of passing themselves off for what they are not; and this undoubtedly requires talent, yet not philosophical. On the other hand, that they were unable to achieve in philosophy anything substantial was ultimately due to the fact that their intellect had not become free, but had remained in the service oft heir will. For it is true that the intellect can achieve an extraordinary amount for the will and its aims, yet it can do nothing for philosophy, any more than it can for art. For these lay down, as their very first condition, that the intellect acts only spontaneously and of its own accord and that, during the time of this activity, it ceases to submit to the will, that is, to have in view one's own personal aims. But when the intellect itself is of its own accord active, by its nature it knows of no other aim than truth. Hence to be a philosopher, that is to say, a lover of wisdom (for wisdom is nothing but truth), it is not enough for a man to love truth, in so far as it is compatible with his own interest, with the will of his superiors, with the dogmas of the Church, or with the prejudices and tastes of contemporaries; so long as he rests content with this position, he is only a [x], not a [x]. [1] For this title of honour is well and wisely conceived precisely by its stating that one should love the truth earnestly and with one's whole heart, and thus unconditionally and unreservedly, above all else, and, if need be, in defiance of all else. Now the reason for this is the one previously stated that the intellect has become free, and in this state it does not even know or understand any other interest than that of truth. The consequence, however, is that we then conceive an implacable hatred of all lying and deception, in whatever garb they may appear. In this way, of course, we shall not get on very well in the world, but we shall in philosophy. On the other hand, the auspices for philosophy are bad if, when proceeding ostensibly on the investigation of truth, we start saying farewell to all uprightness, honesty, and sincerity, and are intent only on passing ourselves off for what we are not. We then assume, like those three sophists, first a false pathos, then an affected and lofty earnestness, then an air of infinite superiority, in order to impose where we despair of ever being able to convince. One writes carelessly because, thinking only in order to write, one had saved up one's thoughts till the moment of writing. The attempt is made to smuggle in palpable sophisms as proofs, to give out hollow and senseless verbiage for profound ideas. A reference is made to intellectual intuition or to absolute thought and the self-movement of concepts. One expressly challenges the standpoint of' reflection', in other words, of rational deliberation, impartial consideration, and honest presentation, and thus the proper and normal use of the faculty of reason generally. Accordingly, an infinite contempt is expressed for the 'philosophy of reflection', by which name is designated every course of thought that deduces consequents from grounds, such as constitutes all previous philosophizing. If, therefore, one is provided with sufficient audacity and is encouraged by the pitiable spirit of the times, one will hold forth somewhat as follows: 'It is not difficult to see that the manner of stating a proposition, of adducing grounds or reasons for it, and likewise of refuting its opposite through grounds or reasons, is not the form in which truth can appear. Truth is the movement of itself within itself', and so on. (Hegel, Preface to the Phenomenology of the Mind, p. lvii, in the complete edition, p. 36.) I do not think that it is difficult to see that whoever puts forward anything like this is a shameless charlatan who wants to fool simpletons and observes that he has found his people in the Germans of the nineteenth century.
Accordingly if, while hurrying ostensibly to the temple of truth, we hand the reins over to our personal interests which look aside at very different guiding stars, for instance at the tastes and foibles of contemporaries, at the established religion, but in particular at the hints and suggestions of those at the head of affairs, then how shall we ever reach the high, precipitous, bare rock whereon stands the temple of truth? Then we may well attach to ourselves, through the sure bond of interest, a host of genuinely hopeful disciples, hopeful, that is, of protection and posts. These form in appearance a sect but in reality a faction, and by their united stentorian voices one is now proclaimed to all the four winds as a sage without parallel; the interest of the person is satisfied, that of truth betrayed.
All this explains the painful impression with which we are seized when, after studying the above-discussed genuine thinkers, we come to the writings of Fichte and Schelling, or even to the presumptuously scribbled nonsense of Hegel, produced as it was with a boundless, though justified, confidence in German stupidity. [2] With those genuine thinkers one always found an honest investigation of truth and just as honest an attempt to communicate their ideas to others. Therefore whoever reads Kant, Locke, Hume, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Descartes feels elevated and agreeably impressed. This is produced through communion with a noble mind which has and awakens ideas and which thinks and sets one thinking. The reverse of all this takes place when we read the above-mentioned three German sophists. An unbiased reader, opening one of their books and then asking himself whether this is the tone of a thinker wanting to instruct or that of a charlatan wanting to impress, cannot be five minutes in any doubt; here everything breathes so much of dishonesty. The tone of calm investigation, which had characterized all previous philosophy, is exchanged for that of unshakable certainty, such as is peculiar to charlatanry of every kind and at all times. Here, however, this certainty claims to rest on immediate intellectual intuition or on thought that is absolute, in other words, independent of the subject and thus of the fallibility thereof. From every page and every line, there speaks an endeavour to beguile and deceive the reader, first by producing an effect to dumbfound him, then by incomprehensible phrases and even sheer nonsense to stun and stupefy him, and again by audacity of assertion to puzzle him, in short, to throw dust in his eyes and mystify him as much as possible. Thus the impression felt by a man in the case of the transition in question as regards the theoretical, can be compared with that which he may have as regards the practical, ifhe found himself in a den of swindlers after coming from a community of men of honour. What an estimable man is Christian Wolff in comparison with them, a man so disparaged and ridiculed precisely by those three sophists! He had real thoughts and furnished them; they, on the other hand, had mere word structures and phrases for the purpose of deceiving. Accordingly, the true distinguishing character of the philosophy of the whole of this so-called post-Kantian school is dishonesty, its element mist and smoke, and its goal personal aims. Its exponents were concerned to appear, not to be; they are, therefore, sophists, not philosophers. The ridicule of posterity, extending to their admirers, and then oblivion awaits them. Incidentally, associated with the above-mentioned tendency of these men is the bickering and abusive tone which everywhere pervades Schelling's writings as an obligato accompaniment. Now if all this were not the case, and if Schelling had gone to work with honesty instead of with bluff and humbug, then, as being decidedly the most gifted of the three, he might at least have occupied in philosophy the subordinate position of an eclectic, useful for the time being. The amalgam prepared by him from the doctrines of Plotinus, Spinoza, Jacob Boehme, Kant, and of the natural sciences of modern times, could to this extent fill for the time being the great gap produced by the negative results of the Kantian philosophy, until a really new philosophy came along and properly afforded the satisfaction demanded by the former. In particular, he has used the natural science of our century to revive Spinoza's abstract pantheism. Thus without any knowledge of nature, Spinoza had philosophized at random merely from abstract concepts and, without properly knowing the things themselves, he had erected the structure of his system. To have clothed this bare skeleton with flesh and blood and to have imparted life and movement to it, as well as might be, by applying natural science that had in the meantime developed, although this was often falsely applied, is the undeniable merit of Schelling in his Naturphilosophie, which is also the best of his many different attempts and new departures.
Just as children play with weapons intended for serious purposes or with other implements belonging to adults, so have the three sophists we are considering dealt with the subject here discussed, in that they have furnished the grotesque pendant of two centuries of laborious investigations on the part of musing and meditating philosophers. Thus after Kant had more than ever accentuated the great problem of the relation between what exists in-itself and our representations, and so had brought it a great deal nearer to solution, Fichte came forward with the assertion that there is nothing more behind the representations and that these are simply products of the knowing subject, of the ego. While attempting in this way to outdo Kant, he produced merely a caricature of that philosopher's system since, by constantly applying the method of those three pseudo-philosophers which was already much vaunted, he entirely abolished the real and left over nothing but the ideal. Then came Schelling who, in his system of the absolute identity of the real and the ideal, declared that whole difference to be of no account and maintained that the ideal is also the real and that the two are identical. In this way, he attempted again to throw into confusion that which had been so laboriously separated by means of a slow and gradually developing process of reflection, and to mix up everything. (Schelling, Vom Verhaltniss tier Naturphilosophie zur Fichte'schen, pp. 14-21.) The distinction of the ideal and the real is just boldly denied in imitation of the above-censured errors of Spinoza. At the same time, even the monads of Leibniz, that monstrous identification of two absurdities, thus of the atoms and of the indivisible, originally and essentially knowing individuals called souls, are again fetched out, solemnly apotheosized, and made use of. (Schelling, Ideen zur Naturphilosophie, 2nd edn., pp. 38 and 82.) Schelling's philosophy of nature bears the name of the philosophy of identity because, following in Spinoza's footsteps, it abolishes three distinctions which he too had abolished, namely that between God and the world, that between body and soul, and finally also that between the ideal and the real in the intuitively perceived world. This last distinction, however, as was previously shown when we considered Spinoza, does not by any means depend on those other two. On the contrary, the more it was brought into prominence, the more were those other two rendered doubtful; for they are based on dogmatic proofs (overthrown by Kant), whereas it is based on a simple act of reflection. In keeping with all this, metaphysics was by Schelling identified with physics and accordingly the lofty title Von der Weltseele was given to a merely physico-chemical diatribe. All really metaphysical problems that untiringly force themselves on human consciousness were to be silenced through a flat denial by means of peremptory assertions. Nature is here just because it is, out of itself and through itself; we bestow on it the title of God, and with this it is disposed of; whoever asks for more is a fool. The distinction between subjective and objective is a mere trick of the schools, like the whole Kantian philosophy, and this philosophy's distinction of a priori and a posteriori is of no account. Our empirical intuitive perception quite properly furnishes us with the things-in- themselves, and so on. Let us see Ueber das Verhaltniss der Naturphilosophie zur Fichte'schen, pp. 51 and 67 and also p. 67, where those are expressly ridiculed 'who are really astonished that there is not nothing and who cannot be surprised enough that anything actually exists'. Thus to Herr von Schelling everything seems to be a matter of course. At bottom, however, such talk as this is a veiled appeal, in pompous phrases, to the so-called sound, i.e. crude, common sense. For the rest, I recall here what was said at the very beginning of chapter seventeen in the second volume of my chief work. Significant for our subject, and very naive, is the passage on page 69 of Schelling's, above-quoted book: 'If empiricism had completely attained its object, its opposition to philosophy, and therewith philosophy itself, would disappear as a particular sphere or species of science. All abstractions would dissolve themselves into direct, "friendly" intuitive perception; the highest would be a sport of pleasure and innocence; the most difficult would be easy, the most immaterial material, and man would be able to read gladly and freely in the book of nature.' That would, of course, be most delightful! But with us it is not like that; thinking cannot be shown the door in this way. The serious old sphinx with its riddle lies there motionless, and it does not plunge down from the rock because you declare it to be a ghost. Therefore when Schelling himself later observed that metaphysical problems cannot be dismissed by peremptory assertions, he gave us a really metaphysical essay in his treatise on freedom. This, however, is a mere piece of the imagination, a conte bleu, [3] a fairy-tale; and so it is that whenever the style assumes the tone of demonstration (e.g. pp. 453ff.), it has a decidedly comical effect.
Through his doctrine of the identity of the real and the ideal, Schelling had accordingly tried to solve the problem that was started by Descartes, dealt with by all great thinkers, and fina])y brought to a head by Kant. He attempted to solve this problem by cutting the knot, in that he denied the antithesis between the real and the ideal. In this way he really came into direct contradiction with Kant from whom he professed to start. Meanwhile he had firmly kept at any rate the original and proper meaning of the problem which concerns the relation between our intuitive perception and the being and essence-in-itself of the things that present themselves in that perception. But since he drew his doctrine mainly from Spinoza, he soon adopted from him the expressions thinking and being which state very badly the problem we are discussing and later gave rise to the absurdest monstrosities. With his doctrine that substantia cogitans et substantia extensa una eademque est substantia, quae am sub hoc jam sub illo attributo comprehenditur (Ethics, Pt. II, prop. 7, schol.); or scilicet mens et corpus una eademque est res, quae jam sub cogitationis, jam sub extensionis attributo concipitur [4] (Ethics, Pt. III, prop. 2, schol.), Spinoza had first tried to abolish the Cartesian antithesis of body and soul. He may also have recognized that the empirical object is not different from our representation thereof. Schelling now received from him the expressions thinking and being, which he gradually substituted for those of perceiving: or rather perceived and thing-in-itself. (Neue Zeitschrift fur spekulative Physik, vol. i, first article: 'Further expositions' and so on.) For the relation of our intuitive perception of things to their being and essence-in-itself is the great problem whose history I am here sketching; not, however, the relation of our thoughts or ideas, that is, of concepts. For quite obviously and undeniably these are mere abstractions from what is known through intuitive perception, and they have arisen from our arbitrarily thinking away or dropping of some qualities and our retention of others. To doubt this can never occur to any reasonable man. [5] Therefore these concepts and thoughts, constituting the class of non-perceptive representations, never have an immediate relation to the essence and being-in-itself of things. On the contrary, they have always only a mediate relation, that is, through the mediation of intuitive perception. It is this, that, on the one hand, furnishes them with the material and, on the other, stands in relation to the things-in- themselves, in other words, to the unknown, real, and true essence of things that objectifies itself in intuitive perception.
Now the inaccurate expression, borrowed by Schelling from Spinoza, was later used by that insipid and inane charlatan Hegel, who in this respect appears as Schelling's buffoon, and it was so distorted that thinking itself in the proper sense and hence concepts were to be identical with the essence-in-itself of things. Therefore what is thought in abstracto, as such and directly, was to be identical with what is objectively present in itself, and accordingly logic was at the same time to be the true metaphysics. In that case, we should need only to think, or put our trust in concepts, in order to know how the world outside is absolutely constituted. According to this, everything haunting a skull would at once be true and real. Now since 'the madder the better' was the motto of the philosophasters of this period, this absurdity was supported by a second, namely that we did not think, but the concepts, alone and without our assistance, completed the thought process, which was, therefore, called the dialectical self-movement of the concept, and was now to be a revelation of all things in et extra naturam. But this buffoonery was really based on yet another that likewise rested on a misuse of words, and indeed was never clearly expressed, although it is undoubtedly at the bottom thereof. Mter the manner of Spinoza, Schelling had given the world the title of God. Hegel took this in the literal sense. Now as the word really signifies a personal being who, together with other qualities absolutely incompatible with the world, has also that of omniscience, this too was now transferred by Hegel to the world. Naturally it could not find any other place than the simple mind of man, whereupon he needed only to give free play to his thoughts (dialectical self-movement) in order to reveal all the mysteries of heaven and earth, namely in the absolute gibberish of the Hegelian dialectic. There is one art that Hegel has really understood, and that is how to lead Germans by the nose. But it is not a great art; indeed, we see with what rubbish and nonsense he was able for thirty years to keep in its proper place the learned world of Germany. The professors of philosophy still take these three sophists seriously and consider it important to assign to them a place in the history of philosophy. This is only because it belongs to their gagne-pain, [6] since here they have material for elaborate dissertations, verbal and written, on the history of the so-called post-Kantian philosophy wherein the tenets and dogmas of these sophists are expounded in detail and seriously considered. But from a rational point of view, we should not bother about what these men brought to market in order to appear to be something, unless it were the intention to regard Hegel's scribblings as medicinal to be kept in chemists' shops as a psychically effective vomitive, for the disgust they excite is really quite specific. But enough of them and their author whose veneration we will leave to the Danish Academy of Scientific Studies. In him it recognized a summus philosophus in its sense of the term and therefore demands deference to him in its judgement that is appended as a lasting memorial to my prize-essay On the Basis of Ethics. This judgement merited rescue from oblivion no less on account of its discernment than of its remarkable honesty and also because it furnishes a striking confirmation of La Bruyere's fine saying: Du meme fonds dont on neglige un homme de merite, l'on sait encore admirer un sot. [7]
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[b]Notes:[/b]
1 [' A friend of his own ego, not a friend of wisdom '.]
2 The Hegelian sham wisdom is really that millstone in the student's head in Faust. If our intention is to make a youth stupid and wholly incapable of all thinking, there is no means more approved than the laborious study of Hegel's original works. For these monstrous articulations of words that cancel and contradict one another, so that the mind vainly torments itself in trying through them to think of anything till it finally collapses with exhaustion, gradually destroy so completely his ability to think, that henceforth hollow, empty flourishes and phrases are regarded by him as thoughts. Now add to this the presumption, confirmed for the youth by the word and example of all in authority, that that hollow verbiage is true and lofty wisdom! If at any time a guardian should ever be afraid that his wards might become too clever for his plans, then such a misfortune could be prevented by a sedulous study of the Hegelian philosophy.
3 [' Fairy-tale'.]
4 ['The thinking substance and the extended substance are one and the same substance which is comprehended now under this attribute, now under that …. namely that mind and body are one and the same thing which is conceived at one moment under the attribute of thinking, at another under that of extension.']
5 On the Fourfold Root of thee Princuoke of Sufficient Reason, 2nd edn., §26.
6 [' Livelihood'.]
7 [' For the same reason that we neglect a man of merit we are capable of admiring a fool.' (La Bruyere, Les Caracteres.)]
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