History Of Modern Philosophy From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time

point of view of Bodin and the naturalistic positions of the time, the common property of the cultivated world. Laws must be adapted to the character a

nes nations are less constant in their habits, their vices, and their virtues. The laws of religion concern man as man, those of the state concern him as a citizen; the former have for their object the moral good of the individual, the latter, the welfare of society; the first aim

iderations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Roma

by extravagance, lust, and self-seeking, a monarchy can dispense with civil virtue, patriotism, and moral disinterestedness, since in it false honor, luxury, and wantonness subserve the public good. Great states tend toward despotism; smaller ones toward aristocracy, or a democratic republicanism; for those of medium size monarchy, which is intermedia

itizen with a sense of security. In order to prevent misuse of the supreme power, the different authorities in the state must be divided so that they shall hold one another in check. In particular Montesquieu demands for the judicial

was his strength. True religion, so reason teaches us, consists in loving God and in being just and forbearing to our fellow-men as to our brothers; morality is so natural and necessary that it is no wonder that all philosophers since Zoroaster have inculcated the same principles. The less of dogma the better the religion; atheism is not so bad as superstition, which teaches men to commit crimes with an easy conscience. He considered it the chief mission of his life to destroy these two miserable errors. He endeavored to controvert atheism by rational arguments, while with passionate hatred and contemptuous wit he attacked positive Christianity and his persecutors

drich Strauss, Voltaire

and Practical

dure, Extent, and Limits of the Human Understanding, 1728): understanding and reflection must be reduced to sensation. All psychical functions are transformed sensations. The soul has only one original faculty, that of sensation; all the others, theoretical and practical alike, are acquired, i.e., they have gradually developed from the former. Condillac is related to Locke as Fichte to Kant; in the former case the transition is mediated by Browne, in the latter by Reinhold. Each crowns the work of his predecessor with a unifying conclusion; each demands and offers a genetic psychology which finds the origin of all the spiritual functions-from sensation and feelings of pleasure and pain up to rational cognition and moral will-in a single fundamental power of the soul. But there is a great difference, materially as well as formally, between these kindred undertakings, a difference corresponding to that between Locke's empiricism and Kant's idealism. The idea of ends, which controls the course of thought in Fichte as in Leibnitz, is entirely lacking in Condillac; that which is first in time, sensation, is f

ily organs merely the "occasions" on which the soul of itself alone exercises its sensitive activity. Even freedom-the supremacy of thought over the passions-is maintained, in striking contrast to the whole tendency of his doctrine and to the openly announced principle, that pleasure controls the attention and governs all our actions. He has just as little intention of doubting the existence of God. All is depe

whole. To prove these positions Condillac makes use of the fiction of a statue, in which one sense awakes after another, first the lowest of the senses, smell, and last the most valuable, the sense of touch, which compels us (by its perception of density or resistance) to project our sensations, and thus wakes in us the idea of an external world. In themselves sensations are merely subjective st

ntion, by its retentive effect on the sensation, becomes memory. Double attention-to a new sensation, and to the lingering trace of the previous one-is comparison; the recognition of a relation (resemblance or difference) between two ideas is judgment; the separation of an idea from another naturally connected with it, by the aid of voluntary linguistic symbols, is abstraction; a series of judgments is reflection; and the sum total of inner phenomena, that wherein ideas succeed one anothe

from this springs desire (désir) then the emotions of love, hate, hope, fear, and astonishment; finally, the will as an unconditional desire accompanied by the thought of its possible fulfillment. All inclinations, good and bad alike, spring from self-love. The predicates "good" and "beautiful" denote the pleasure-giving qualities of things, the fo

avoidance of pain but also self-preservation; and the possession of language. Without denomination no abstractions, no thought, no handing down of knowledge. Although all that is mental has its origin, in the last

view, reactions of the immaterial soul to sense stimuli, which operate merely as occasional causes. On the other hand, he emphasizes more strongly than Condillac the dependence of psychical phenomena on physiological conditions, and endeavors to show definite brain vibrations as the basis not only of habit, memory, and the association of ideas, but also of the higher mental operations. In harmony with these views he adheres to determinism, and finds the motive of all endeavor: in self-love, and its u

ath, the work On Man, his Intellectual Faculties and his Education. The search for pleasure or self-love is, as Helvetius thinks he has discovered for the first time,[1] the only motive of action; the laws of interest reign in the moral world as the l

actions proceed from selfishness, and that virtue is merely a refined egoism. Thus La Rochefoucauld in his Maxims (Réflexions, ou S

cquired, and concern the intellect only, not the soul: that which is innate-sensibility and self-love-is the same in all; differences arise only through external circumstances, through education. Man is the pupil of all that environs him, of his situation and his chance experience. The most important instrument in education is the law; the function of the lawgiver is to connect public and personal welfare by means of rewards and punishments, and thus to elevate morality. A man is called virtuous when his stronger passions harmonize with the general interest. Unfortunately the virtu

in Maupertuis (Works, 1752), and Frederick the Great,[1] to the latter of whom D'Alembert obje

orals, 1770, printed in the proceedings of the Acad

cism and M

an as a world-system, and with cynical satisfaction in the violation of traditional beliefs-in his Natural History of the Soul, 1745, in a disguised form, and, undisguised, in his Man a Machine, 1748-and at the same time (Anti-Seneca, or Discourse on Happiness, 1748) had sketched out for Helvetius the outlines of the sensationalistic morality of interest. While ill with a violent fever he observed the influence of the heightened circulation of the blood on his mental tone, and inferred that thought is the result of the bodily organization. The soul can only be known from the body. The senses, the best philosophers, teach us that matter is never without form and motion; and whether all matter is sentient or not, certainly all that is sentient is material,

Berlin, whither Frederick the Great had called him after he had been driven out of his native land and from Ho

till the farce of life is ended! Virtue exists only in society, which restrains from evil by its laws, and incites to good by rousing the love of honor. The good man, who subordinates his own welfare to that of society, acts under the same necessity as the evil-doer; hence repentance and pangs of conscience, which increase the amount of pain in the world, but are incapable of effecting amendment, are useless and reprehensible: the criminal is an i

by bringing Shaftesbury's Inquiry into Virtue and Merit to the notice of his countrymen; and then turned his sword, on the one hand, against the atheists, to refute whom, he thought, a single glance into the microscope was sufficient, and, on the other, against the traditional belief in a God of anger and revenge, who takes pleasure in bathing in the tears of mankind. Then followed a period of skepticism, which is well illustrated by the prayer in the Thoughts on the Interpretation of Nature, 1754: O God! I do not know whether thou art, but I will guide my thoughts and actions as though thou didst see me think and act, etc. Under the influence of Holbach's circle he finally reached (in the Conversation between D'Alembert and Diderot, and D'Alembert's Dream, written in 1769, but not published until 1830, in vol. iv. of the Mémoires, Correspondance, et Ouvr

821; latest edition, 1875 seq. Cf. on Diderot the fine w

isms are built up. Robinet (On Nature, 1761 seq.), availing himself of Spinozistic and Leibnitzian conceptions, goes still further, in that he endows every particle of matter with sensation, looks on the whole world as a successi

ach himself, although his friends Diderot, Naigeon, Lagrange, the mathematician, and the clever Grimm (died 1807) seem to have co-operated in the preparation of certain sections. The cumbrous seriousness and the dry tone of this systematic combination of the radical ide

the justification of God in view of the existence of evil. Man is at every moment of his life a passive instrument in the hands of necessity; the universe is an immeasurable and uninterrupted chain of actions and reactions, an eternal round of interchanging motions, ruled by laws, a change in which would at once alter the nature of all things. The most fatal error is the idea of human and divine spirits, which has been advanced by philosophers and adopted with applause by fools. The opinion that man is divided into two substances is based on the fact that, of the changes in our body, we directly perceive only the external molar movements, while, on the other hand, the inner motions of the invisible molecules are known only by their effects. These latter have been ascribed to the mind, which, moreover, we have adorned with properties whose emptiness is manifested by the fact that they are all mere negat

t the explanation of motion required a separate immaterial Mover. This assumption is, in the first place, false, for since the All is the complex of all that exists there can be nothing outside it; motion follows from the existence of the universe as necessarily as its other properties; the world does not receive it from without, but imparts it to itself by its own power. In the second place the assumption is useless; it explains nothing, but confuses the problems of natural science to the point of insolubility. In the third place it is self-contradictory, for after theology has removed the Deity as far away from man as possible, by mean

all is effect (there is no spontaneous motion, none directed to an end). Order and disorder are not in nature, but only in our understanding; they are abstract ideas to denote that which is conformabl

follow the love or contempt of fellow-men, the pleasure of self-esteem and the pain of repentance (regret for evil consequences, hence no evidence of freedom). Neither responsibility nor punishment is done away with by this necessity-have we not the right to protect ourselves against the stream which damages our fields, by building dikes and altering its course? The end of endeavor is permanent happiness, and this can be attained through virtue alone. The passions which are useful to society compel the affection and approval of our fellows. In order to interest others in our welfare we must interest ourselves in theirs-nothing is more indispensable to man than man. The clever man acts morally, interest binds us to the good; love for ot

d in the race. Besides the selfish affections, which are directed as much to the injury as to the support of others, there lies in the organization of man a force which steadily tends toward the good, in the form of underived feelings of sympathy and benevolence, from which moral self-judgment is developed by the aid of reflection. The aim of true ethics and social art is not to make the "great" virtues universal, but to make them needless; the nearer the nations approximate to mental and moral perfection, the less they stand in need of these-happy the people in which good deeds are so customary that scarcely an opportunit

m organization and sensation. His doctrine of the will, though but briefly sketched, is interesting. The desires have a passive and an active side (corresponding to the twofold action of the nerves, on themselves and on the muscles); on the one hand, they are feelings of pleasure or pain, and on the other, they lead us to action-will is need, and, at the same time, the source of the means for satisfying this need. Both these feelings and the external movements are probably based upon unconscious organic motions. The will is rightly identified with the

Conflict with t

rom the imaginations of science to the unerring voice of the heart and the conscience; from the artificial conditions of culture to healthy nature. The vaunted Illumination is not the lever of progress, but the source of all degeneration; morality does not rest on the shrewd calculation of self-interest, but on

hoff, Leipsic, 1863-74;

artificial feeling of selfishness (amour propre) in the course of social development-thinking man is a degenerate animal. Property has divided men into rich and poor; the magistracy, into strong and weak; arbitrary power, into masters and slaves. Wealth generated luxury with its artificial delights of science and the theater, which make us more unhappy and evil than we otherwise are; science, the child of vice, becomes in turn the mother of new vices. All nature, all that is characteristic, all that is good, has disappeared with advancing c

and, in addition, property rights in all that he possesses, equality before the law, and moral freedom, which first really makes him master of himself. The impulse of mere desire is slavery, obedience to self-imposed law, freedom. The sovereign is the people, law the general popular will directed to the common good, the supreme goods, "freedom and equality," the chief objects of legislation. The lawgiving power is the moral will of the body politic, the government (magistracy, prince) its executive physical power; the former is its heart, the latter its brain. Rousseau calls the government the middle term between the head of the state and the individual, or between the citizen as lawgiver and as subject-the sovereign (the people) commands, the government executes, the subject obeys. The act by which the people submits itself to its head is not a contract, but merely a mandate; whe

eration and idiosyncrasy which surrounded it. Among the latter belong the preference of bodily over intellectual development, and the unlimited faith in the goodness of human nature. Exercise the body, the organs, the senses of the pupil, and keep his soul unemployed as long as possible; for the first

ion of feeling. The rational proofs brought forward for the existence of God-from the motion of matter in itself at rest, and from the finality of the world-are only designed, as he declares by

geaud, Rousseaus Religio

ic, 1

thought and action guarantees to me the immateriality of my soul, and is that which distinguishes me from the brute. The life of the soul after the decay of the body is assured to me by the fact that in this world the wicked triumphs, while the good are oppressed. The favored position which man occupies in the scale of beings-he is able to look over the universe and to reverence its author, to recognize order and beauty, to love the good and to do it; and shall he, then, compare himself to the brute?-fills me with emotion and gratitude to the benevolent Creator, who e

f its judgment is evidenced by the agreement of different peoples; amid the surprising differences of manners you will everywhere find the same ideas of justice, the same notions of good and evil. Show me a land where it is a crime to keep one's word, to be merciful, benevolent, magn

nguages, would require an amount of learning which could not possibly be a condition of salvation and acceptance with God. Miracles and prophecy are not conclusive, for how are we to distinguish the true among them from the false? If we turn from the external to the internal criteria of the doctrines themselves, even here no decision can be reached between the reasons pro and con (the author puts the former into the mouth of a believer, and the latter into that of a rationalist); even if the former outweighed the latter, the difficulty would still remain of reconciling it with God's goodness and justice that the gospel has not reached so many of mankind, and of explaining how those to whom the divinity of Christ is now proclaimed can convince themselves of it, while his contemporaries misjudged and crucified him. In my opinion, I am incapable of fathoming the truth of the Christian religion and its value to those who confess it. The investigation of the reason ends in "reverential doubt": I neither accept revelation nor reject it, but I reject the obligation to accept it. My heart, however, judges otherwise than the reflection of my intellect; for thi

fervid eloquence the participation of the whole man in the highest questions, in opposition to the one-sided illumination of the understanding, he became a pre-Kanti

TER

BNI

Leibnitz a twofold approximation begins. As a rationalist he sides with Spinoza against Locke, as an individualist with Locke against Spinoza. But he not only separated rationalism from pantheism, but also qualified it by the recognition (which his historical tendencies had of themselves sugg

ormed. Himself a stimulating man, he yet needed stimulation from without. He was an astonishingly wide reader, and declared that he had never found a book that did not contain something of value. With a ready adaptability to the ideas of others he combined a remarkable power of transformative appropriation; he read into books more than stood written in them. The versatility of his genius was unli

atter place. Having made the acquaintance of the former minister of the Elector of Mayence, Freiherr von Boineburg, in Nuremberg, he went, after a short stay at Frankfort-on-the-Main, to the court of the Elector at Mayence, at whose request he devoted himself to the reform of legal procedure, besides writing, while there, on the most diverse subjects. In 1672 he went to Paris, where he remained during four years with the exception of a short stay in London. The special purpose of the journey to Paris-to persuade Louis XIV to undertake a campaign in Egypt, in order to divert him from his designs upon Germany-was not successful; but Leibnitz was cap

or's death in L'Europe Savante. While Ernst August, as well as the German emperor and Peter the Great, distinguished the philosopher, who was not indifferent to such honors, by the bestowal of titles and preferments, his relations with the Hanoverian court, which until then had been so cordial, grew cold after the Elector Georg Ludwig ascended the English throne as George I. The letters which Leibnitz interchanged with his daughter-in-law, gave rise to the correspondence, continued to his death, with Clarke, who defended the theology of Newton against him. The contest for priority between Leibnitz and Newton concerning the invention of the differential calculus was later settled by the decision that Newton invented his method of fluxions first, but that Leibnitz published his differential calculus earlier and in a more perfect form. The variety of pursuits in which Leibnitz was engaged was unfavorable to the development and influence of his philosophy, in that it hindered him from working out his original ideas in systematic form, and left him leisure only for the composition of shorter essays. Besides the two larger works mentioned above, the New Essays

the aid of previously unedited material the relations of Leibnitz to Spinoza (whom he visited at The Hague on his return journey from Paris) are discussed, and the attempt is made to trace the development of the theory of monads, down to 1697. The new exposition of the Leibnitzian monadology by Ed. Dillman, which

tation, the Pre-established Harmony;

action for independent existence, self-activity for self-existence. Substance is not that which exists through itself (otherwise there would be no finite substances), but that which acts through itself, or that which contains in itself the ground of its changing states. Substance is to be defined by active force,[2] by which we mean something different from and better than the bare possibility or capacity of the Scholastics. The potentia sive facultas, in order to issue into action, requires positive stimulation from without, while the vis activa (like an elastic body) sets itself

itz took the expression Monad, which he employs after

1671, conceived substances as forces in his treatise De Natura Substantiae Energetica. That Glisson in

ss over into the realm of the immaterial and come to the conclusion that bodies are composed of immaterial constituents. Physical points, the atoms, are physical, but not points; mathematical points are indivisible, but not real; metaphysical or substantial points, the incorporeal, soul-like units, alone combine in themselves indivisibility and reality-the monads are the true atoms. Together with indivisibility they possess immortality; as it is imposs

r the theory of monads. From the first it followed that the substances were self-acting forces; from the second, that they were immaterial units. Through the combination of both determinations we gain information conce

roar which we perceive in the vicinity of the sea-beach is composed of the numerous sounds of the single waves. Each single sound is of itself too small to be heard; nevertheless it must make an impression on us, if only a small one, since otherwise their total-as a sum of mere nothings-could not be heard. The sensation which the motion of the single wave causes is a weak, confused, unconscious, infinitesimal perception (petite, insensible perception), which must be combined with many s

ts all others in itself, is a concentrated all, the universe in miniature. Each individual contains an infinity in itself (substantia infinitas actiones simul exercet) and a supreme intelligence, for which every obscure idea would at once become distinct, would be able to read in a single monad the whole universe and its history-all that is, has been, or will be; for the past has left its traces behind it, and the future will bring nothing not found

m B to Z, while these in turn do nothing more than represent one another. The monad mirrors mirrors-where is the thing that is mirrored? The essence of substance consists in being related to others, which themselves are only points of relation; amid mere relativities we never reach a real. That which prevented Leibnitz himself from recognizing this empty formalism was, no doubt, the fact that for him the mere form of representation was at on

The clearer the representations of a monad the more active it is. To have clear and distinct perceptions only is the prerogative of God; to the Omnipresent everything is alike near. He alone is pure activity; all finite beings are passive as well, that is, so far as their perceptions are not clear and distinct. Retaining the Aristotelian-Scholastic terminology, Leibnitz calls the active principle form, the passive matter, and makes the monad, since it is not, like God, purus actus and pure form, consist of form (entelechy, soul) and matter. This mat

as well as the others, but either better or worse. There are as many

r naked monads, which never rise above obscure and unconscious perception and, so to speak, pass their lives in a swoon or sleep. If perception rises into conscious feeling, accompanied by memory, then the monad deserves the name of soul. And if the soul rises to self-consciousness and to reason or the knowledge of universal truth, it is called spirit. Each hig

so adapted to one another that the changes in their states, although they take place in each according to immanent laws and without external influence, follow an exactly parallel course, and the result is the same as though there were a constant mutual interaction. This general idea of a pre-established harmony finds special application in the problem of the interaction between body and soul. Body and soul are like two clocks so excellently constructed that, without needing to be regulated by each other, they show exactly the same time. Over the numberless lesser miracles with which occasionalism burdened the Deity, the one great miracle of the pre-established harmony has an undeniable advantage. As one great miracle it is more worthy of the divine wisdom than the many lesser ones, nay, it is really no miracle at all, since the harmony does not interfere with natu

t be greater than it is; every possible degree of distinctness of representation is present in each single monad, and yet there is a single harmonic accord in which the unnumbered tones unite. Now order amid diversity, unity in variety make up the concept of beauty and perfection. If, then, this world shows, as it does, the greatest unity in the greatest multiplicity, so that there is nothing wanting and nothing superfluous, it is the most perfect, the best of all possible worlds. Even the lowest grade

ion, so that their merely possible or conceivable being had the same content as their actual being, and their essence is not altered or increased by their existence. Now, since the impulse toward actualization dwells in every possible essence, and is the more justifiable the more perfect the essence, a competition goes on before God, in which, first, those monod-possibilities unite which are mutually compatible or compossible, and, then, among the different conceivable combinations of monads or worlds that one is ordained for entrance into existence which shows the greatest possible sum of perfection. It was, therefore, no

together with the moral interests involved in guarding against fatalism, and the opposing interests of religion. On the one side, creation is for him only an actualization of finished, unchangeable pos

te contains a contradiction is necessary. Or positively formulated as the principle of identity, everything and every representative content is identical with itself.[2] Upon this antithesis between the rational laws of contradiction and sufficient reason-which, however, is such only for us men, while the divine spirit, which cognizes all things a priori, is able to reduce even the truths of fact to the eternal truths-Leibnitz bases his distinction between two kinds of necessity. That is metaphysically necessary whose opposite involves a contradiction; that is morally necessary or contingent which, on account of its fitness, is preferred by God to its (equally conceivable) opposite. To the latter class belongs, further, the physically necessary:

thers are to be derived by demonstration-proof is analysis and, as free from contradictions, demonstration. The primitive truths of experience are the immediate facts of consciousness; whatever is inferred from them is less certain than demonstrative knowledge. Nevertheless experience is not t

all stand in the closest relation to one another and to his monadological and harmonistic principles, viz., the law of continuity, the law of an

for rest may be considered as infinitely minute motion; the ellipse and the parabola are not qualitatively different, for the laws which hold for the one may be applied to the other. Likeness is vanishing unlikeness, passivity arrested activity, evil a lesser good, confused ideas simply less distinct ones, animals men with infinitely little reason, plants animals with vanishing consciousness, fluidity a lower degree of solidity, etc. In the whole world similarity and correspondence rule, and it is everywhere the same as here-between apparent opposites there is a distinction in degree merely, and hence, analogy. In the macrocosm of the universe things go on as in the microcosm of the monad; every later state of the world is prefigured in the earlier, etc. If, on the one side, the law of analogy follows as a consequence from the law of continuity, on the other, we have the principium (identitatis) indiscernibilium. As nature abhors gaps, so also it avoids the superflu

laws, to the actual, to that which, obeying these

Organi

oment would have the sensation of warmth, or would wish an arm-motion executed, and has so ordered the development of the body-monads that, at the same instant, they appear to cause this sensation and to obey this impulse to move. Now, since God in this foreknowledge and accommodation naturally paid more regard to the perfect beings, to the more active and more distinctly perceiving monads than to the less perfect ones, and subordinated the latter, as means and conditions, to the former as ends, the soul, prior to creation, actually exercised an ideal influence-through the mind of God-upon its body. Its activity is the reason why in less perfect monads a definite change, a passion takes place, since the action was attainable only in this way, "compossible" with this alone.[1] The monads which constitute the bod

Class, Die metaphysisc

eterminismus, T

ts apparent existence. If we thoughtfully consider bodies, we perceive that there is nothing lifeless and non-representative. But the phenomenon of extended mass arises for our confused sensuous perception, which perceives the monads composing a body together and regards them as a continuous unity. Body exists only as a confused idea in the feeling subject; since, nevertheless, a reality with

call it birth or death. Actual death there is as little as there is an actual genesis; not the soul only, but every living thing is imperishable. Death is decrease and involution, birth increase and evolution. The dying creature loses only a portion of its bodily machine and so returns to the slumberous or germinal condition of "involution", in which it existed before birth, and from which it was aroused through conception to development. Pre-existence as

gnition and

y. Man differs from higher beings in that the majority of his ideas are confused. Under confused ideas Leibnitz includes both sense-perceptions-anyone who has distinct ideas alone, as God, has no sense-perceptions-and the feelings which mediate between the former and the perfectly distinct ideas

which it has arisen; (3) sensation and thought differ only in degree; (4) in the order of time, the ideas of sense precede those of reason. We are never wholly without ideas, only we are

essors up to a certain point: with the one, that the pure concepts have their origin within the mind; with the other, that they are not the earliest knowledge, but are conditioned by sensations. This synthesis, however, was possible only because Leibnitz looked on sensation differently from both the others. If sensation is to be the mother of thought, and the latter at the same time to preserve its character as original, i.e., as something not obtained from without, sensation must, first, include an unconscious thinking in itself, and, secondly, must itself receive a title to originality and spontaneity. As the Catholic dogma added the immaculate conception of the mother to that of the Son, so Leibnitz transfers the (virginal) origin of rational concepts, independent of external influence, to sensations. The monad has no windows. It bears germinally in itself all that it is to experience, and nothing is impressed on it from without. The intellect should not be compared to a blank tablet, but to a block of marble in whose veins the outlines of the statue are prefigured. Ideas can only arise from ideas, never from external impressions or movements of corporeal parts. Thus all ideas a

is given by G. Hartenstein, Abhandlungen der k. s?chs. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften,

ibnitz here appears as the representative of a view of the world which found in Kant a powerful and victorious opponent, yet, on the other hand, he prepared the way by his conception of innate ideas for the Critique of Reason. By his theory of knowledge he forms the transition link between Descartes and Kant, since he interprets necessary truths not as dwelling in the mind complete and explicit from the start, but as produced or raised into consciousness only on the occasion of sensuous experience. It must be admitted, moreover, that this in reality was only a restoration of Descartes's original position, i.e., a deliverance of it from the misinterpretations and perver

hoice, or contrary to the motives present. In this last case, a motive which is very strong in itself is overcome by the united power of many in themselves weaken The will is always determined, and that by an idea (of ends), which generally is of a very complex nature, and in which the stronger

, grounded in the being's own nature, not an external compulsion. The agent determines himself in accordance with his own nature, and for this each bears the responsibility himself, for God, when he brought the monads out of possibility into actuality, left their natures as they had existed before the creation in the form of eternal ideas in His understanding. Though Leibnitz thus draws a distinction between his deterministic doctrine and the "fatalism" of Spinoza, he recognizes a second concept of freedom, which completely corresponds to Spinoza's. A decision is the more free the more distinct the ideas which determine it,

s up an insight into the connection of all beings and the harmony of the world, in virtue of which the virtuous man will seek to promote the perfection and happiness of others as well as his own, i.e., will love them, for to love is to find pleasure in the happiness of others. To promote the good of all, again, is the same as to contribute one's share to the world-harmony and to co-operate in the fulfillment of God's purposes. Probity and piety are the same. They form

ogy and T

of the practical element in piety, as the doctrines of faith are a weak imitation of the theoretical. It is a direct contradiction of the intention of the Divine Teacher when occult formulas and ceremonies, which have no connection with virtue, are made the chief thing. The points in which the creeds agree are more important than those by which they are differentiated. Natural religion has found its most perfect expression in Christianity, although pagan

t cannot fully comprehend, though it is able approximately to understand them and to defend them against objections. Hence Leibnitz defended the Trinity, which he interpreted as God's power, understanding, and will, the eternity of the torments of hell (which brought him the commendation of Lessing), and other dogmas. Miracles also b

uppose an eternal intelligence in which they exist. If we ask why anything whatever, or why just this world exists, this ultimate ground of things cannot be found within the world. Every contingent thing or event has its cause in another. However far we follow out the series of conditions, we never reach an ultimate, unconditioned cause. Consequently the sufficient reason for the series must be situated without the world, and, as is evident from the harmony of things, can only be an infinitely wise and good Being. Here the teleological proof comes in: From the

e of its undeniable imperfections, is still the best world. God could certainly have brought into actuality a world in which there would have been less imperfection than in ours, but it would at the same time have contained fewer perfections. No world whatever can exist entirely free from evil, entirely without limitation-whoever forbids God to create imperfect beings forbids him to create a world at all. Certain evils-in general terms, the evil of finitude-are entirely inseparable from the concept of c

of misery finds its justification in that it makes for good. First of all, the amount of suffering is not so great as it appears to discontented spirits to be. Life is usually quite tolerable, and vouchsafes more joy and pleasure than grief and hardship; in balancing the good and the evil we must especially remember to reckon on the positive side the goods of activity, of health, and all that which affords us, perchance, no perceptible pleasure, but the removal of which would be felt as an evil (Theodic

hat the sum of the bad is much less than that of the good. Then, moral evil is connected with metaphysical evil: created beings cannot be absolutely perfect, hence, also, not morally perfect or sinless. But, in return for this, there is no being that is absolutely imperfect, none only and entirely evil. With this is joined the well-known principle of the earlier thinkers, that evil is nothing actual, but merely deprivation, absence of good, lack of clear reason and force of will. That which is real in the evil action, the power to act, is perfect and good, and, as force, comes from God-the negative or evil element in it comes from the agent himself; just as in the case of two ships of the same size, but unequally laden, which drift with the current, the speed comes from the stream and the retardation from the load of the vessels themselves. God is not responsible for sin, for he has only permitted it, not willed it directly, and man was already evil be

merely must approve itself in the battle against evil without and within the acting subject, but that it is only through this conflict that it is attainable at all. Virtue implies force of will as well as purity, and force develops only by resistance. Although he does not appreciate the full depth of the significance of pain,

TER

AN ILLUM

emporaries o

, since no reliance can be placed on sense-perception and the principles of thought contradict the doctrines of faith, and harmful, since it contributes nothing to salvation, but makes its possessors proud and draws them away from piety. He maintained, further, that divine authority is the only refuge for man, and moral life the true science. Side by side with such skepticism Hirnhaym's contemporary, the poet Angelus Silesius (Joh. Scheffler, died 1667), defended mysticism. The teacher of natural law, Samuel Pufendorf[3]

a Electiva, vol. i. 1697, vol. ii. with preface by Chr. Wol

gica Hamburgiensis, 163

ii Germanici, 1667, under the pseudonym Monzambano; De Jure Natures et G

ticism, and the demand for religious tolerance. Philosophy must be generally intelligible, and practically useful, knowledge of the world (not of God); its form, free and tasteful ratiocination; its object, man and morals; its first duty, culture, not learning; its highest aim, happiness; its organ and the criterion of every truth, common sense. He alone gains true knowledge who frees his understanding from prejudice and judges only after examining for himself; the joy of mental peace is given to no one who does not free his heart from foolish desires and vehement passions, and devote it to virtue, to "rational love." The p

; Fundamenta Juris Naturae et Gentium, 1705, both in Latin; in German, appeare

phical investigations, as well as elsewhere, Tschirnhausen still holds it indispensable that the deductions, on the one hand, start from empirical facts, and, on the other, that they be confirmed by experiments. Inner experience gives us four primal facts, of which the chief is the certainty of self-consciousness. The second, that many things affect us agreeably and many disagreeably, is the basis of morals; the third, that some things are comprehensible to us and others not, the basis of logic; the fourth, that through the senses we passively receive impressions from without, the basis of the empirical sciences, in particular, of physics. Consequently consciousness, will, understanding, and sensuous representation (imaginatio), together with corporeality, are our fundamental concepts. Not perception (

istian

ther great service consisted in the reduction of the philosophy of Leibnitz to a systematic form, by which he secured a dissemination for it which otherwise it would scarcely have obtained. But he did not possess sufficient originality to contribute anything remarkable of his own, and it showed little self-knowledge when he became indignant at the designation Leibnitzio-Wolffian philosophy, which was first used by his pupil, Bilfinger. The alterations which he made in the doctrines of Leibnitz are far from being improvements, and the parts which he rejected are just the most characteristic and thoughtful of all. Such at least is the opinion of thinkers to-day, though this mutilation and leveling down of the most daring of Leibnitz's hypotheses was perhaps entirely advantageous for Wolff's impression on his contemporaries; what appeared questionable to him would no doubt have repelled them also. Leibnitz's two leading ideas, the theory of monads and the pre-established harmony, were most of all affected by this process of toning down. Wolff weakens the former by attributing a representative power only to actual souls, which are capable of consciousness, although he holds that bodies are compounded of simple beings and that the latter are endowed with (a not further defined) force. He limits the application of the pre-established harmony to the

Man, 1721; Reasonable Thoughts on the Operations of Nature, 1723; Reasonable Thoughts on the Purposes of Natural Things, 1724; Reasonable Thoughts on the Parts of Man, Animals, and Plants, 1725, all in German. Besides these there are extensive Latin treatises (1728-53) on Logic, Ontology

Geschichte der Termin

observes and describes, the other deduces. The antithesis of cognition and appetition gives the basis for the division into theoretical and practical philosophy. The former, called metaphysics, is divided into a general part, which treats of being in general whether it be of a corporeal or a spiritual nature, and three special parts, according to their principal subjects, the world, the soul, and God,-henc

ined in the concept of the subject. In order to confirm that which has been deduced from pure concepts by the facts of experience, psychologia rationalis is supplemented by psychologia empirica, rational cosmology by empirical physics, and speculative theology by an e

nciple of perfection to the English principle of happiness (that is good which perfects man's condition, and this is life in conformity with nature or reason, with which happiness is necessarily connected); that he makes the will determined by the understanding, and assigns ignorance as the cause of sin; that his philosophy of religion, which argues for a na

aesthetics was established for the theory of the beautiful, though in Kant's great work it is used in its literal meaning as the doctrine of sense, of the faculty of sensations or intuitions. Baumgarten's pupils and followers, the aesthetic writer G.F. Meier at Halle, Baumeister, and others, contributed like himself to the dissemination of the Wolffian system by their manuals on different branches of philosophy. To this school belong also the following: Thümmig (Institutiones Philosophia Wolfianae, 1725-26); the theologian Siegmund Baumgarten at Halle, the elder brother of the aesthete; the mathematician Martin Knutzen, Kant's teacher;[1] the literary historian Gottsched [2] at Leipsic; and G. Ploucquet, who

rdmann, M. Knutzen u

Danzel, Gottsched un

anon, 1764; Groundwork of Architectonics, 1771. Bernoulli

diger that mathematics is the science of the possible, and philosophy the science of the actual, and that the latter, instead of imitating to its own disadvantage the deductive-analytical method of geometry, must, with the aid of experience and with attention to the probability of its conclusions, rise to the highest principles synthetically. Besides its deduction the determinism of the Wolffian philosophy gave offense, for it was believed to endanger morals, justice, and religion. The will, the special fundamental power of the soul (consisting of the impulses to perfection, love, and knowledge), is far from being determined by ideas; it is rather they which depend on the will. The application of the principle of sufficient reason, which is wrongly held to admi

Oriantur a Sensione, 1704; Philosophia Synthetica, 17

ve a Rational Life (theory of the will and of ethics), 1744; A Sketch of the Necessary T

ca Philosophiae, 5 vols., 1742-44; 2d ed.

as Scientific and a

istence of God-became the exclusive subjects of reflection. The fact that, besides ethics and religion, psychology was chosen as a favorite field, is in complete harmony with the general temper of an age for which self-observation and the enjoyment of tender and elevated feelings in long, delightfully friendly letters and sentimental diaries had become a favorite habit. Hand in hand with this narrowing of the content of philosophy went a change in the form of presentation. As thinkers now addressed themselves to all cultivated people, intelligibility and agreeableness were made the prime requisites; the style became light and flowing, the method of treatment facile and often superficial. This is true not only of the popular philosophers proper-who, as Windelband pertinently remarks (vol. i. p. 563), did not seek after the truth, but believed that they already possessed it, and desired only to dissem

sophers on the German philosophy of the eightee

ed by the Academy, 1764; Phaedo, or on Immortality, 1767; Jerusalem, 1783; Morning Hours, or on the Existence of God, 17

rs on the Most Recent German Literature, from 1759; Universal Ger

ens, from whom Kant took it; in opposition to the twofold division of Aristotle and Wolff into "cognition and appetition," he established the equal rights of the faculty of feeling-which had previously been defended by Sulzer (1751), the aesthetic writer, and by Mendelssohn (1755, 1763, 1785). Besides Tetens, the following should be mentioned among the psychologists: Tetens's opponent, Johann

y objectivity of knowledge which we can attain consists in the subjective necessity of the forms of thought or the ide

salvation, is to deny the perfection of God, and to do violence to the immutability of his providence. To these general considerations against the credibility of positive revelation are to be added, as special arguments against the Jewish and Christian revelations, the untrustworthiness of human testimony in general, the contradictions in the biblical writings, the uncertainty of their meaning, and the moral character of the persons regarded as messengers of God, whose teachings, precepts, and deeds in no wise correspond to their high mission. Jewish history is a "tissue of sheer follies, shameful deeds, deceptions, and cruelties, the chief motives of which were self-interest and lust for power." The New Testament is also the work of man; all talk of divine inspiration, an idle delusion, the resurrection of Christ, a fabrication of the disciples; and the Protestant system, with i

nal Worshipers of God. Fragments of the last of these works, which was kept secret during its author's life, were published by Lessing (the well-known "Wolffenbüttel Fragments,

er, Philosophy of Religion,

speculative interpretation of certain dogmas (the Trinity, etc.), and the application of the Leibnitzian idea of development to the history of the positive religions. By both of these he prepared the way for Hegel. In regard to his relation to his predecessors, Lessing sought to mediate between the pantheism of Spinoza and the individualism of Leibnitz; and in his comprehension of the latter showed hims

s on Lessing we may note those by G.E. Schwarz (1854), and Zeller (in Sybel's Historische Zeitschrift, 1870, incorporated in the second collection of Zeller's Vortr?ge und Abhandlungen, 1877); and on his theological position, that of K.

, and he conceived them as single. Now God's thinking is creation, his ideas actualities. By conceiving his perfections united he created his eternal image, the Son of God; the bond between God representing and God represented, between Father and Son, is the Holy Spirit. But when he conceived his perfections singly he created the world, in which these manifest themselves divided among a continuous series of particular beings. Every individual is an isolated divine perfection; the things in the world are limited gods, all living, all with souls, and of a s

everything to the pupil at once, but considers the state of development reached by him at each given period, so God in his revelation observes a certain order and measure. To the rude Jewish people he revealed himself first as a national God, as the God of their fathers; they had to wait for the Persians to teach them that the God whom they had hitherto worshiped as the most powerful among other gods was the only one. Although this lowest stage in the development of religion lacked the belief in immortality, yet it must not be lightly valued; let us acknowledge that it was an heroic obedience for men to observe the laws of God simply because they are the laws of God, and not because of temporal or future rewards! The first practical teacher of immortality was Christ; with him the second age of religion begins: the first good book of elementary instruction, the Old Testament, from which man had hitherto learned, was followed by the second, better one, the New Testament. As we now can dispense with the first primer in regard to the doctrine of the unity of God, and as we gradually begin to be able to dispense with the second in regard to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, so this New Testament may easily contain still further truths, which for the present we wonder at as revelations, until the reason shall learn to derive them from other truths already established. Lessing himself makes an attempt at a philosophical interpretation of the dogmas of the Trinity (see above), of or

Erziehung des Men

ts perfection, Lessing connects the idea of the transmigration of souls. Why may not the individual man

, on the other hand, he broke with the orthodox, whose idolatrous reverence for the Bible was to him an abomination. The letter is not the spirit, the Bible is not religion, nor

ciousness that he was making a contribution to thought, and that the Illumination contemplated this new doctrine without comprehending it, in order to recognize that the difference between his efforts and achievements and those of the Illumination is far greater than their kinship. For although Kant is upon common ground with it, in so far as he adheres to its motto, "Have courage to use thine own understanding, become a man, cease to trust thyself to the guidance of others, and free thyself in all fields from the yoke of authority," and, although besides such formal injunctions to freedom of thought, he also shares in certain material tendencies and convictions (the turning from the world to man, the attempt at a synthesis of reason and experience, and the belief in a religion of reason); yet in method and results, he stands like a giant among a

Faith Ph

rtitude is to be sought not in discriminating thought, but in intuition, experience, revelation, and tradition; that the highest truths can be felt only and not proved; that all existing things are incomprehensible, because individual-these are convictions which, before Jacobi defended them as based on scientific principles, had been vehemently proclaimed by that singular m

from the lower by means of language-reason, like sense, is not a productive but a receptive faculty of knowing, perceiving ("Vernehmen")-so the free process of history is only the continuation and completion of the nature-process (Ideas for the Philosophy of the History of Mankind, 1784 seq.). Man, the last child of nature and her first freedman, is the nodal point where the physical series of events changes into the ethical; the last member of the organisms of earth is at the same time the first in the spiritual development. The mission of history is the unfolding of all the powers which nature has concentrated in man as the compendium of the world; its law, that everywhere on our earth everything be realized that can be realized there; its end, humanity and the harmonious development of all our capacities. As nature forms a single great organism, and from the stone to man describes a connect

aym, 2 vols., 1877, 1885; and the work by Witte

or the most part grossly misunderstood. The "disinterested" satisfaction Herder makes a cold satisfaction; the harmonious activity of the cognitive powers, a tedious, apish sport; the satisfaction "without a concept," judgment without ground or cause. The positive elements in his own views are more valuable. Pleasure in mere form, without a concept, and without the idea of an end, is impossible. All beauty must mean or express someth

h Kant's critique of the understanding (the understanding is merely a formal function, one which forms and combines concepts only, but does not guarantee reality, one to which the material of thought must be given from elsewhere and for which the suprasensible remains unattainable); in regard to the critique of reason he raises the objection that it; makes the Ideas mere postulates, which possess no guarantee for their reality. The critique of sensibility appears to him still more unsatisfactory, as it does not explain the origin of sensations. Without the concept of the "thing-in-itself" one cannot enter the Kantian philosophy, and with it one cannot remain there. Fichte has drawn the correct conclusion from the Kantian premises; idealism is the unavoidable result of the Critique of Reason and foretold by; it as the Messiah was foretold by John the Baptist. And by the evil fruit we know the evil root: the idealistic theory is philosophica

urce of all wonders, the transcendent God above us. The inference from our own spiritual, self-conscious, free personality to that of God is no unauthorized anthropomorphism-in the knowledge of God we may fearlessly deify our human existence, because God, when he created man, gave his divine nature human form. Reason and freedom are the same: the former is theoretical, the latter practical elevation to the suprasensible. Nevertheless virtue is not based upon an inflexible, despotic, abstractly, formal law, but upon an instinct, which, however, does not aim at happiness. Thus Jacobi attempts to mediate between the ethics of the Illuminatio

M KANT TO THE

PTE

A

nsible, which it denies, but also the science of the objects of experience, about which it concerns itself, is impossible. For perception informs us concerning single cases merely, it can never comprehend all cases, it yields no necessary and universal truth; but knowledge which is not apodictically valid for every reasoning being and for all cases is not worthy the name. The very reasons which were intended to prove the possibility of knowledge give a direct inference to its impossibility. The empirical philosophy destroys itself, ending with Hume in skepticism and probabilism. Rationalism is overtaken by a different, and yet an analogous fate-it breaks up into a popular eclecticism. It believes that it has discovered an infallible criterion of truth in the clearness and distinctness of ideas, and a sure example for philosophical method in the method of mathematics. In both points it is wrong. The criterion of truth is insufficient, for Spinoza and Leibnitz built up their opposing theories-the pantheism of the one and the monadology of the other-from equally clear and distinct conceptions; tried by this standard individualism is just as true as pantheism. Mathematics, again, does not owe its unquestioned acceptance and c

supply new ones. Following the example of mathematics thus misunderstood, the mission of philosophy was made to consist in the development of the truths slumbering in pregnant first principles by means of logical analysis. If only there were metaphysical axioms! If we only did not demand, and were not compelled to demand, of true science that it increase our knowledge, and not merely give an analytical explanation of knowledge. When once the clearness and distinctness of conceptions had been taken in so purely for

the two extremes; but it was a much more difficult matter to discover the due middle ground. Neither of the opposing standpoints is so correct as its defenders believ

s; empiricism concerning the sphere of their validity. The two may be thus combined: some concepts (those which produce knowledge) take their origin in reason or are a priori, but they are valid for objects of experience alone. The conflict concerns, secondly, the use of the deductive (syllogistic) or the inductive method. Empiricism, through its founder Bacon, had recommended induction in place of the barren syllogistic method, as the only method which would lead to new discoveries. It demands, above all things, the extension of knowledge. Rationalism, on the contrary, held fast to the deductive method, because the syllogism alone, in its view, furnishes knowledge valid for all rational beings. It demands, first of all, universality and necessity i

wledge, differ, and what is the basis of their congruence? Notwithstanding their different points of departure and their variant results, the two main tendencies of modern philosophy agree in certain points. If the conflict between the two schools and their one-sidedness suggested the idea of supplementing the conclusions of the one by those of the other, the recognition of the incorrectness of their common convictions furnished the occasion to go beyond them and to establish a new, a higher point of view above them both, as also above the eclecticism which sought to unite the opposing principles. The errors common to both concern, in the first place, the nature of judgment and the difference between sensibility and understanding. Neither side had recognized that the peculiar character of judgment consists in active connection. The rationalists made judgment an active function, it is true, but a mere activity of conscious development, of elucidation and analytical inference, which does not advance knowledge a single step. The empiricists described it as a process of comparison and discrimination, as the mere perception and recognition of the relations and connections already existing between ideas; while in reality judgment does not discover the relations and connections of representations, but itself establishes them. In the former case the synthetic moment is ignored, in the latter the active moment. The imperfect view of judgment was one of the reasons for the appearance of extreme theories concerning the origin of ideas in reason or in perception. Rationalism regards even those concepts which have a content as innate, whereas it is only formal concepts which are so. Empiricism regards all, even the highest formal co

c approached with his objections the dogmatist was defenseless. All previous philosophy, so far as it had not been skeptical, had been, according to Kant's expression, dogmatic; that is, it had held as an article of faith, and without precedent inquiry, that we possess the power of cognizing objects. It had not asked how this is possible; it had not even asked what knowledge is, what may and must be demanded of it, and by what means our reason is in a position to satisfy such demands. It had left human intelligence and its extent uninvestigated. The skeptic, on the other hand, had been no more thorough. He had doubted and denied man's capacity for knowledge just as uncritically as the dogmatist had believed and presupposed it. He had directed his ingenuity against the theories of dogmatic philosophy, instead of toward the fundamental question of the possibility of knowledge. Human intelligence, which the dogmatist had approached wit

what powers is it composed? are all objects knowable which have been so regarded? Kant does not ask whether, but how and by what means, knowledge is possible. Everyone who gives himself to scientific reflection must postulate that knowledge is possible, and the demand of the no?tical theorists of the day for a philosophy absolutely without assumptions is quite incapable of fulfillment. Nay, in order to be able to begin his inquiry at all, it was necessary for Kant to assume still more special postulate

d as a teacher and writer (till about 1760), although at the same time he was inquiring with an independent spirit, Kant was gradually won over through the influence of the English philosophy to the side of empirical skepticism. Then-as the result, no doubt, of reading the Nouveaux Essais of Leibnitz, published in 1765-he

48-49. This is a work marked by acuteness, great industry, and an objective point of view which

s-drew upon him the derision of Lessing, who said that he had endeavored to estimate living forces without having tested his own. A similar tendency toward compromise-this time it is a synthesis of Leibnitz and Newton-is seen in his Habilitationsschrift, Principiorum Primorum Cognitionis Metaphysicae Nova Dilucidatio, 1755, and in the dissertation Monadologia Physica, 1756. The former distinguishes between ratio essendi and ratio cognoscendi, rejects the ontological argument, and defends determinism against Crusius on Leibnitzian grounds. In the Physical Monadology Kant gives his adherence to dynamism (matter the product of attraction and repulsion), and makes the monads or elements of body fill space without prejudice to their simplicity. A series of treatises is devoted to subjects in natural science: The Effect of the Tides in retarding the Earth's Rotation; The Obsolescence of the Earth; Fire (Inaugural Dissertation), Earthquakes, and the Theory of the Winds. The most important of these, the General Natural History and Theory of the Heave

n logical opposition, contradiction or mere negation (a and not-a, pleasure and the absence of pleasure, power and lack of power), and real opposition, which cannot be explained by logic (+a and -a, pleasure and pain, capital and debts, attraction and repulsion; in real opposition both determinations are positive, but in opposite directions). Parallel with this it distinguishes, also, between logical ground and real ground. The prize essay, Inquiry concerning the Clearness (Evidence) of the Principles of Natural Theology and Ethics, 1764, draws a sharp distinction between mathematical and metaphysical knowledge, and warns philosophy against the hurtful imitation of the geometrical method, in place of which it should rather take as an example the method which Newton introduced into natural science. Quantity constitutes the object of mathematics, qualities, the object of philosophy; the former is easy and simple, the latter difficult and complicated-how much more comprehensible the conception of a trillion is than the philosophical idea of freedom, which the philosophers thus far have been unable to make intelligible. In mathematics the general is considered under symbols in concrete, in philosophy, by means of symbols in abstracto; the former constructs its object in sensuous intuition, while the object of the latter is given to it, and that as a confused concept to be decomposed. Mathematics, therefore, may well begin with def

problem that first received definitive solution. In the Latin dissertation On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World, 1770, which concludes the pre-critical period, and which was written on the occasion of his assumption of his chair as ordinary professor, the critique of sensibility, the new theory of space and time, is set forth in approximately the same form as in the Critique of Pure Reason, while the critique of the understanding and of reason, the theory of the categories and the Ideas and of the sphere of their validity, required for its completion the

he First Ground of the Distinction of Positions in Spa

rtue "), are devoted to the development of the system. The year 1798 brought two more larger works, the Conflict of the Faculties and the Anthropology. Of the reviews, that on Herder's Ideen maybe mentioned, and among the minor essays, the following: Idea for a Universal History in a Cosmopolitan Sense, Answer to the Question: What is Illumination f both in 1784; What does it mean to Orient oneself in Thought? 1786; On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy, 1788; On a Discovery according to which all Recent Criticism of Pure Reason is to be superseded by a Previous One, 1790; On the Progress of Metaphysics since the Time of Wolff; On Philosophy in General, The End of all Things, 1794; On Everlasting Peace, 1795. Kant's Logic was published by J?sche in 1800; his Physical Geography and his Observations on Pedagogics by F.T. Rink in 1803; his lectures on the Philosophical Theory of Religion (1817; 2d. ed., 1830) and on Metaphysics (1821; cf. Benno Erdmann in the Phi

ition to Schopenhauer and Kuno Fischer it must be maintained that the alterations in the second edition consist in giving g

nd the censorship concerning the right of free religious inquiry; cf. Dilth

schen Hauptwerkes vertheidigt, 1884 (in reply, K. Fischer, Das Streber- und Gründerthum in der Litteratu

ical Elements of Natural Science), and Mahaffy and Bernard, new ed., 1889; to Abbot's Kant's Theory of Ethics, 4th ed., 1889, containing the Foundation of the Metaphysics of Ethics and the Critique of Practical Reason entire, with por

lumes, in 1838 seq., appeared the edition in twelve volumes by K. Rosenkranz and F.W. Schubert (containing in the last volumes a biography of Kant by Schubert, and a history of the Kantian philosophy by Rosenkranz, 1842). Kehrbach's ed

n seiner Lehre, 1860) take the first place. The writings of Liebmann, Cohen, Stadler, Riehl, Volkelt, and others will be mentioned later, in connection wi

die Beziehungen zwischen Kategorien und Urtheilsformen, 1877; Wilhelm Koppelmann, Kants Lehre vom analytischen Urtheil, Philosoph. Monatshefte, vol. xxi, 1885; the same, Lotzes Stellung zu Kants Kritizismus, Zeitschrift für Philosophie, vol. lxxxviii, 1886; the same, Kants Lehre vom kategorischen Imperativ, 1888; the same, Kant und die Grundlagen der Christlichen Religion, 1890; E. Laas, Kants Analogien der Erfahrung, 1876; the same, Einige Bemerkungen zur Transzendentalphilosophie, Strassburg Abhandlungen, 1884; J. Mainzer, Die kritische Epoche in der Lehre von der Einbildungskraft, 1881; J.B. Meyer, Kants Psychologie, 1870; F. Paulsen, Was Kant uns sein kann, Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, 1881; B. Pünjer, Die Religionslehre Kants, 1874; R. Quaebicker, Kants und Herbarts metaphysische Grundansichten über das Wesen der Seele, 1870; J. Rehmke, Physiologie und Kantianismus, address in Eisenach, 1883; Rud. Reicke, Lose Bl?tter aus Kants Nachlass, 1889 (on this H. Vaihinger in the Zeitschrift für Philosophie, vol. xcvi. 1889); O. Riedel, Die monadologischen Bestimmungen in Kants Lehre vom Ding an sich, dissertation at Kiel, 1884; O. Schneider, Die psychologische Entwickelung des Apriori, 1883; the same, Transzendentalpsychologie, 1891; F. Staudinger, Noumena, 1884; M. Steckelmacher, Die formale Logik Kants, Breslau Prize Essay, 1879; A. Stern, Die Beziehung Garves zu Kant, nebst ungedruckten Briefen, 1884; C. Stumpf, Psychologie und Erkenntnisstheorie, Abhandlungen der bayerisch

Lehre Kants über Seele, Freiheit, und Gott, 1882; the same, Grundlegung zur Reform der Philosophie, vereinfachte und erweiterte Darstellung von Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1885; the same, Die Vollendung des Socrates, Kants Grundlegung zur Reform der Sittenlehre; the same, Ein neuer Paulus, Kants Grundlegung

Watson, Kant and his English Critics, 1881], Morris Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Griggs's Philosophical Classics, 1882, [Wallace, Kant, Blackwood's Philosophical Classics, 1882; Porter, Kant's Ethics, Griggs's Philosophical Classics, 1886; Green, Lectures, Works, vol. ii., 1886.-Tr.], have among others made contributions to Kantian l

gy was due to his diligent study of works of travel, and to an unusually acute gift of observation, which enabled him to draw from his surroundings a comprehensive knowledge of the world and of man. He ceased lecturing in 1797, and in 1804 old age ended a life which had always, even in minute detail, been governed by rule. A man of extreme devotion to duty, particularity, and love of truth, and an amiable, bright, and witty companion, Kant belongs to the acute rather than to the profound thinkers. Among his manifold endowments the tendency to combination and the faculty of intuition (as the Critique of Judgment especially shows) are present to a notic

: Paulsen (Versuch einer Entwickelungsgeschichte der Kantischen Erkenntnisstheorie, 1875), B. Erdmann, Vaihinger, and Winde

knowledge with the Cartesian ideal of certainty in knowledge. It is synthetic judgments alone which extend knowledge, while analytic judgments are explicative merely.[1] A priori judgments alone are perfectly certain, absolutely universal, and necessarily valid; while a posteriori judgments are s

of; it is based on the law of contradiction: an unextended body is a self-contradictory concept. The latter, on the contrary, goes beyond the concept of the subject and adds a predicate which had not been thought therein. It is experience which teaches us that weight

Leibnitz and Lambert, uses the terms to designate the antithesis, knowledge from reason and knowledge from experience. An a priori judgment is a judgment obtained witho

s science of the suprasensible, and to its great disadvantage. Experiential verification is in the nature of things denied to a presumptive knowledge of that which is beyond experience; it lacks evidence to such an extent that there is scarcely a principle to be found to which all metaphysicians assent, much less a metaphysical text-book to compare with Euclid; there is so little continuous advance that it is rather true that the later comers are likely to overthrow all that their predecessors have taught. In met

faculty of intuition) answers the first of these questions; the Transcendental Analytic (the critique of the understanding), the second; and the Transcendental Dialectic (the critique of "reason" in the narrower sense) and the Transcendental Doctrine of Method (Methodenlehre), the third. The Analytic and the Dialectic are the two parts of the Trans

nce it is not possible, because the application of the categories is restricted to the limits of experience, while the objects thought through the Ideas cannot be sensuously given, and all assumed knowledge of them becomes involved in irresolvable contradictions (antinomies). On the other hand, a science is possible and necessary to teach the correct use of the categories, which may be applied to phenomena alone, and of the Ideas, which may be applied only to our knowledge of things (and our volition), and to determine the origin and t

ysics of nature there is added a metaphysics of morals, and to the critique of theoretical reason, a critique of practical reason or of the will, together with a critique of religious beli

t raises it, in the third place, in regard to our judgment concerning the subjective and objective purposiveness of things, or concerning their be

three parts, one theoretical, one practical (a

*

lf). Kant takes the first of these from the psychology of his time, by combining the Wolffian classification of the faculties with that of Tetens, and thus obtains six different faculties: lower (sensuous) and higher (intellectual) faculties of cognition, of feeling, and of appetition; or sensibility (the capacity for receiving representations through the way in which we are affected by objects), understanding (the faculty of producing representations spontane

gh the mediation of other representations). In intuition the mind is receptive, in conception it acts spontaneously. "Through intuitions objects are given to us; through concepts they are thought." It results from this that neither of the two faculties is of itself sufficient for the attainment of knowledge, for cognition is objective thinking, the determination of objects, the unifying combination or elaboration of a given manifold, the forming of a material content. Rationalists and empiricists alike have been deceived in regard to the necessi

e intuiting subject, but this is not sufficient, without the aid of the understanding, for the genesis of knowledge. In view of the a priori nature of space and time, though without detr

external impulse merely gives the soul the occasion for such productive acts, while their grounds and laws are found in its own nature. In this sense Kant terms them "originally acquired," and in the Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason declares that although it is indubitable that "all our knowledge begins with experience (impressions of

, there is a distinction. A judgment is a priori when the connection takes place independently of experience, no matter whether the concepts co

Kant's transcendental idealism was placed by a reviewer on a level with the empirical idealism of Berkeley, which denies the existence of the external world, he distinctly asserted that it had never entered his mind to question the reality of external things. Further, after the existence of real t

under his hands into another, that of proving the existence of external phenomena.

y, must be applied to matter given in intuition. To the question, "How are synthetic judgments a priori possible?" is joined a second equally legitimate inquiry, "How do they become objectively valid, or applicable to objects of experience?" The principle from which their validit

aihinger, Kommenta

to consider himself the creator of no?tics, for he showed it the transcendental point of view. Knowledge is an object of experience, but its conditions are not. The object is to explain knowledge, not merely to describe it psychologically,-to establish a new science of knowledge from principles, from pure reason. That which lies beyond experience is sealed from our thought; that

not only to designate the a priori element itself, but also as a synonym for transcendent. In all three cases its opposite is empirical, namely, empirico-psychological investigation by observation in

the grounds of experiential knowledge existing in the subject. In the Kantian school, however, these complementary elements,-empirical result, transcendental or metaphysical, properly speaking, pro-physical method,-were divorced, and the one emphasized, favored, and further developed at the expense of the other. The empiricists hold to the result, while they either weaken or completely misunderstand the rationalism of the method: the a priori factor, says Fries, was not reached by a priori, but by a posteriori, means, and there is no other way by which it could have been reached. The constructive thinkers, Fichte and his successors, adopt and continue the metaphysical method, but rejec

ry of Kn

hough they were not intuited, but forms of our intuition, which have their basis in the subjective constitution of our, the human, mind. If we separate from sensuous intuition all that the understanding thinks in it through its concepts, and all that belongs to sensation, these two forms of i

ter, the other inner experience. They are postulates of perception, not abstractions from it. (2) Time is a necessary representation a priori. We can easily think all phenomena away from it, but we cannot remove time itself in view of phenomena in general; we can think time without phenomena, but not phenomena without time. The same is true of space in reference to external objects. Both are conditions of the possibility of phenomena. (3) Time is not a discursive or general concept. For there is but one time. And different times do not precede the one time as the constituent parts of which it is made up, but are mere limitations of it; the part is possible only through the whole. In the same way the various spaces are only parts of one and the same space, and can be thought in it alone. But a representation which can be given only by a single object is a particular representation or an intuition. Because, therefore, of the oneness of space and time, the representation of each is an intuition. The a priori, immediate intuition of the one space is entirely different from the empirical, genera

ind. No logical marks can be given for the distinction between the object and its image in the mirror, or between the right ear and the left. The complete description of a right hand must, in all respects (quality, proportionate position of parts, size of the whole), hold for the left as well; but, despite the complete similarity, the one hand cannot be exactly super-imposed on the other; the glove of the one cannot be

an explanation of space and time could make it conceivable how synthetic cognitions a priori can arise from them. The principles of mathematics are of this kind. The synthetic character of geometrical truths is explained by the intuiti

eaches us only that something is thus or so, and not that it could not be otherwise, the axioms, (space has only three dimensions, time only one; only one straight line is possible between two points), nay, all the propositions of mathematics are strictly universal and apodictically certain: we are entirely relieved from the necessity of measuring all triangles in the world in order to find out whether the sum of their angles is equal to two right angles, and we do not need, as in the case of judgments of experience, to add the limitation, so far as it is yet known there are no exceptions to this rule. The apriority is the ratio essendi of the strict necessity involved in the "it must be so" (des Soseinmüssens), while the latter is th

given to our senses), but only for these, not for things as they are in themselves. They have "empirical reality, but, at the same time, transcendental ideality." As external phenomena all things are beside one another in space, and all phenomena whatever are in time and of necessity under temporal relations; in regard to all things which can occur in our experience, and in so far as they can occur, space and time are objectively, therefore empirically, real. But they do not possess absolute reality (neither subsistent reality nor the reality of inherence); for if we abstract from our sensuous intuition both vanish, and, apart from the subject (N.B., the transcendental subject, concerning which more below), they are naught. It is only from man's point of view that we ca

n of two infinite nonentities which exist, but without being anything real, merely in order to comprehend all reality, and on one of which even our own existence would be dependent), in view of which the origin of so peculiar a theory as the idealism of Berkeley appears intelligible. The critical theory of space and time is so far from being identical with, or akin to, the theory of Berkeley, that it furnishes the best and only defe

the physical or empirical sense of "in itself"; but in the transcendental sense the raindrops, also, together with their form and size, are themselves mere phenomena, the "in itself" of which remains entirely unknown to us. Kant, moreover, does not wish to see the subjectivity of the forms of intuition placed on a level with the subjectivity of sensations or explained by this, though he accepts it as a fact long established. The sensations of color, of tone, of temperature are, no doubt, like the representation of space in that they belong only to the subjective constitution of the sensibility, and can be attributed to objects only in relation to our senses. But the great difference between the two is that these sense qualities may be different in different persons (the color of the rose may seem different to each eye), or may fail to harmonize with any human sense; that they are not a priori in the same strict sense as space and tim

to something, else, that is, external relations. Where is the inner side which underlies this exterior, and which belongs to the object in itself? This is never to be found in the phenomenon, and no matter how far the observation and analysis of nature may advance (a work with unlimited horizons!) they reach nothing but portions of space occupied by matter and effects which matter exercises, that is, nothing beyond that which is comparatively internal, and which, in its turn, consists of external relations. The absolutely inner side of m

object not dependent on the sensibility. What this may be continues hidden from us, for knowledge is impossible without intuition. Things in themselves are unknowable. Nevertheless the idea (it must be confessed, the entirely empty idea) of this "transcendent

rately express Kant's position, for he might justly reply that, according to him, bodies as phenomena are in different parts in space from that which we assign to ourselves, and thus without us; that space is the fo

in me the intuition of the rose. But there is still something else remaining-the phenomenon of the rose, with its size, its form, and its motion in the wind. For these are predicates which must be attributed to the phenomenon itself as the object of my representation. If the rose, as determined in space and time, vanished when I turned my head away, it could not, unless intuited by a subject, experience or exert effects in space and time, could not lose its leaves in the wind and strew the ground with its petals. Perception and thought inform me not merely concerning events of which I am a witness, but also of others which have occurred, or which will occur, in my absence. The process of stripping the leaves from the rose has actually taken place as a phenomenon and does not first become real by my subsequent representation of it or inference to it. The things and events of the phenomenal world exist both before and after my perception, and are something distinct from my subjective and momentary representations of them. The space and time, however, in which they exist and happen are not furnished by the intuiting individual, but by the supra-individual, transcendental consciousness or generic reason of the race. The phenomenon thus stands midway between its objective ground (the absolute thing in itself) and the subject, whose common product it

ndividual now has of it and now does not have, is far from being everywhere adhered to with desirable clearness; and wherever it is impossible to substitute that which has been represented and that which may be represented or possible intuitions for "mere representations in me," we must acknowledge that there is a departure from the standpoint which is assumed in some places with the greatest distinctness. The latter finds unequivocal expression, among other places, in the "Analogies of Experience" and the "Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Unde

rld of phenomena would have its real counterpart in the noumenal sphere: un-extended roses in themselves would lie back of extended roses, certain non-temporal processes back of their growth and decay, intelligible relations back of their relations in space. This is approximately the relation of the two conceptions as in part taught by Lotze himself, in part represented by him as taught by Kant. Herbart's principle, "So much seeming, so much indication of being" (wie viel Schein so viel Hindeutung aufs Sein), might also be cited in this connection. That which continually impelled Kant, in spite of his proclamation of the unknowableness of things in themselves, to form ideas about their character, was the moral interest, but this sometimes threw its influence in favor of their commensurability with phenomena and sometimes in the opposite scale. For in his ethics Kant needs the intelligible character or man as noumenon, and must assume as many men in themselves (to be consistent, then, in general, as many beings in themselves) as there

tal phenomena, and those concerning the common root of sensibility and underst

ys remains problematical), the other when we regard the form of the intuition of this object, which must be sought not in the object in itself, but in the subject to whom the object appears, while

e coarseness of our senses, and the last, because forces in general are not perceptible; nature comprehends everything whose existence "is connected with our perceptions in a possible experience"[1]). (3) Our representations of phenomena, i.e., that of the latter which actually enters into the consciousness of the empirical individual. In the realm of things in themselves there is no motion whatever, but at most an intelligible correlate of this relation; in the world of phenomena, the world of physics, the earth moves around the sun; i

from this to other possible perceptions." "To call a phenomenon a real thing antecedent to p

n of it." "There is nothing in space but that which is actually represented in it." Phenomena

vertheless still present for me as man, is mediately given, that is, is discoverable by future search. That which is without my present consciousness is not for this reason without all human consciousness. In fact, Kant often overlooks the distinction between actual and possible intuition, so that

second place, the problem of the possibility of a priori syntheses in pure natural science, or the question, Do pure concepts exist? And after this has been answered in t

f objects, intuitions need a synthesis through concepts. In order to objective knowledge the manifold of intuition (already ordered by its arrangement in space and time) must be connected in the unity of the concept. Sensibility gives the manifold to be connect

or composite, but fundamental concepts, and their number must be complete. This completeness is guaranteed only when the pure concepts or categories are sought according to some common principle, which assigns to each its position in the connection of the whole, and not (as with Aristotle) collected by occasional, unsystematic inquiries undertaken at random. The table of the forms of ju

o modality, problematical, assertory, or apodictic. To these twelve forms of judgment correspond as many categories, viz., I., Unity, Plurality, Totality; II., Reality, Negation, Limitation; III., Subsistence and Inh

a derivative) concept, since this combination requires a special actus of the understanding. Universality or totality is plurality regarded as unity, limitation is reality combined with negation, community is the reciprocal causality of substances, and necessity is the actuality given by possibility itself. Kant omits, as unnecessary here, the useful, easy, and not unpleasant task of noting the great number of derivative concepts a priori (predicables) which spring from the combination of these twelve original concepts (predicaments = categories) with one another, or with the

d to the scientific form of all knowledge of reason." This prophecy was fulfilled, although in a different sense from that

cessary bond between cause and effect can neither be perceived nor logically demonstrated; that, therefore, the relation of causality is an idea which we-with what right?-add to perceived succession in time. This doubt (without the hasty conclusions), says Kant, must be generalized, must be extended to the category of substance (which had been already done by Hume, pp. 226-7, though the author of the Critique of Reason was not aware of the fact), and to all other pure concepts of the understanding. Then we may hope to kindle a torch at the spark which Hume struck out. The problem

"How (through what means or media) does their application to objects of experience take place?" the first is answe

of an object in general in which the manifold is united), and a subjective unity (the unity of consciousness under which or, rather, through which the connection is effected). The categories represent the different kinds of combination, each one of these, again, being completed in three stages, which are termed the Synthesis of Apprehension in Intuition, the Synthesis of Reproduction in Imagination, and the Synthesis of Recognition in Concepts. If I wish to think the time from one noon to the next, I must (1) grasp (apprehend) the manifold representations (portions of time) in succession; (2) retain or renew (reproduce) in thought those which have preceded in passing to those which follow; (3) be conscious that that which is now thought is the same with that thought before, or know again (recognize) the reproduced representation as the one previously experienced. If the mind did not exercise such synthetic activity the manifold of representation would not co

arbitrary determination of our cognitions," and which c

ot only for me and my present condition, but always, for me and for everyone else. If the former is to become the latter, an a priori concept must be added to the perception (in the above case, the concept of cause), under which the perception is subsumed. The category determines the perceptions in view of the form of the judgment, gives to the

priori, and perceptions, which are intuitous and empirical, bridged over? The connecting link is supplied by the imagination, as the faculty which mediates between sensibility and understanding to provide a concept with its image, and consists in the intuition of time, which, in common with the categories, has an a priori character, and, in common with perceptions, an intuitive character, so that

gle or dog) and the unintuitable concept, as a general intuition (of a triangle or a dog in general, which holds alike for righ

on. Permanence in time is the sign for the application of the category of substance;[1] regular succession, for the application of the concept of cause; the coexistence of the determinations of one substance with those of another, the signal for their subsumption under the concept of reciprocity. The schemata of possibility, actuality, and necessity, f

g, not an intuitable object,-the concept of substance is not applicable to psychical phenomena. Representations of a permanent (material substances) exist, indeed, but not permanent representations. The abiding self (ego, soul) w

higher and more general cognitions, are termed "principles," and the system of them-to be given, with the table of the categories as a guide, in the Analytic of Principles or the Doctrine of the Faculty of Judgment-furnishes the outlines of "pure natural science." When thus the rul

on in time" (in the second edition this is stated as follows: "Experience is possible only through the representation of a necessary connection of perceptions"). As there are three modes of time, there result three "Analogies," the principles of permanence, of succession (production), and of coexistence. These are: (1) "In all changes of phenomena the substance is permanent, and its quantum is neither increased nor diminished in nature." (2) "All changes take place according to the law of connection between cause and effect"; or, "Everything that happens (begins to be) presuppose

only fundamental concepts, so also the principles of relation have an established reputation for special importance. The leading ideas in the proo

e a passing wagon now here, now there, but in these cases I am bound in the succession of my sensuous representations. The possibility of interchange in the series of perceptions proves an objective coexistence, the impossibility of this, an objective succession. But this criterion is limited to the immediate present, and fails us when a time relation between unobserved phenomena is to be established. If I go at evening into the dining room and see a vessel of bubbling water, which is to be used in making tea, over a burning spirit lamp, whence do I derive the knowledge that the water began, and could begin, to boil only after the alcohol had been lighted, and not before? Because I have often seen the flame precede the boiling of the water, and in this the irreversibility of the two perceptions has guaranteed to me the succession of the events perceived? Then I may only assume that it is very probable, not that it is certain, that in this case also the order of the two events has been the same as I have observed several times before. As a matter of fact, however, we all assert that the water could not have come into a boiling condition unless the generation of heat had preceded; that in every case the fire must be there before the boiling of the water can commence. Whence do we derive this must? Simply and alone from the thought of a causal connection between the two events. Every phenomenon must follow in time that phenomenon of which it is the effect, and must precede that of which it is the cause. It is through the relation of causality, and through this alone, that the objective time relation of phenomena is determined. If nothing preceded an event on which it must follow according to a rule,[1] then all succession in perception would be subjective merely, and nothing

is, a beginning of existence preceded by no state of th

ould be able, from the succession of the representations of t

cannot be directly determined, but only through a concept of the understanding. When I conclude that two objects (the earth and the moon) must be coexistent, because perceptions of them can follow upon one another in both ways, I do this on the presupposition that the objects the

merely, and not the lapse of time. The ball lying on a soft cushion is simultaneous, it is true, with its effect, the depression in the cushion. "But I, nevertheless, distinguish the two by the time relation of dynamic

that changes, and its states alone that begin and cease to be. The origin and extinction of substances, or the increase and diminution of their quantum, would remove the sole condition of the empirical unity of time; for the time relations of the coexistent and the successive can be perceived only in an identical substratum, in a permanent, which exists always. The law "From nothing nothing comes, and nothing can return to nothing," is everywhere assumed and has been frequently advanced, but never yet proved, for, indeed, it is impossible to prove it dogmatically. Here the only possible proof for it, the critical proof, is given: the principle of permanence is a necessary condition of experience. The same argument establishes the principle of sufficient reason, and the principle of the community of substances, together with the unity of

which geometry asserts of pure intuition (i.e., the infinite divisibility of lines) holds also of empirical intuition. An intensive quantity is one which is apprehended only as unity, and in which plurality can be represented only by approximation to negation = 0. Every sensation, consequently every reality in phenomena, has a degree, which, however small it may be, is never the smallest, but can always be still more diminished; and between reality and negation there exists a continuous connection of possible smaller intermediate sensations, or an infinite series of ever decreasing degrees. The property of quantities, according to which no part in them is the smallest po

hysics of corporeal nature, is a doctrine of motion. The fundamental determination of matter (of a somewhat which is to be the object of the external senses) is motion, for it is only through motion that these senses can be affected, and the understanding itself reduces all other predicates of matter to this. The second and most valuable part of the work defines matter as the movable, that which fills space by its moving force, and recognizes two original forces, repulsive, expansive superficial force or force of contact, by which a body resists the entr

cable so long as it was assumed that the understanding must conform itself to objects; it is at once explained if, conversely, we make objects conform themselves to the understanding. This is a reversal of philosophical opinion which may justly be compared to the Copernican revolution in astronomy; it is just as paradoxical as the latter, but just as incontestably true, and just as rich in results. The sequel will show that this strangely sounding principle, that things c

presupposes something permanent in perception, and this permanent something cannot be in me (the mere representation of an external thing), but only actually existing things which I perceive without me. There is, further, a chapter on the "Ground of the Distinction of all Objects in general into Phenomena and Noumena," with an appendix on the Amphiboly (ambiguity) of the Concepts of Reflection. The latter shows that the concepts of comparison: identity and difference

time limit them to this sphere. The schematism makes the immanent use of the categories, and thus a metaphysics of phenomena, possible, but the transcendent use of them, and consequently the metaphysics of the suprasensible, impossible. The case would be different if our intuition were intellectual instead of sensuous, or, which is the same thing, if our understanding were intuitive instead of discursive; then the objects which we think would not need to be given us from another source (through sensuous intuition), but would be themselves produced in the act by which we thought them. The divine spirit may be such an archetypal, creative understanding (intellectus archetypus), which generates objects by its thought; the human spirit is not such, and therefore is confined, with its knowledge, within the circle of possible perception.-The conception of "intellectual intuition" leads to a distinction in regard to things in themselves: in its negative meaning noumenon denotes a thing in so far as it is not the object of our sensuous intuition, in its positive meaning a thing which is the object of a non-sensuous intuition. The positive thing in itself is a problematical concept; its possibility depends on the existence of an intuitive understand

f thought by which no object can be given to me, but by which I can only think whatever may be given to me in intuition" (Critique of Pure Reason, Max Müller's translation, vol. ii. p. 220). Without the condition of sensuous intuition, for which they supply the synthesis, th

phenomena. O. Liebmann (Kant und die Epigonen, p. 27, and passim) overlooks or ignores this when he says: Kant here allows himself to "recognize an object emancipated from the forms of knowledge, therefore an irrational object, i.e., to represent

e representation of a substance which is thought without permanence in time, or of

son. It is indubitable that our spirit is conscious of a far higher need than that for the mere connection of phenomena into experience; it is that which cannot be experienced, the Ideas God, freedom, and

ules, reason the faculty of principles. The categories of the understanding are necessary concepts which make experience possible, and which, therefore, can always be given in experience; the Ideas of reason are nec

t possible extension. The concept of the absolute grows out of the logical task which is incumbent on reason, i.e., inference, and it may be best explained from this as a starting point. In the syllogism the judgment asserted in the conclusion is derived from a general rule, the major premise. The validity of this general proposition is, however, itself conditional, dependent on higher conditions. Then, as reason seeks the condition for each conditioned moment, and always commands a further advance in the series of conditions, it acts under the Idea of the totality of conditions, which, nevertheless, since it can never be g

ed under the comprehensive system of the (never to be experienced) universe, and regard all things as the work of a supreme (unknowable) intelligence. These Ideas are necessary concepts; not accidental products nor mere fancies, but concepts sprung from the nature of reason; their use is legitimate so long as we remember that we can have a problematical concept of objects corresponding to them, but no knowledge of these; that they are problems and rules for knowledge, never objects and instruments of it. Nevertheless the temptation to regard these regulative principles as constitutive and these problems as knowable objects is almost irresistible; for the groun

of Reason completes its work of destruction when, as Dialectic (Logic cf. Illusion), it follows the refutation of dogmatic ontology-developed in the Analytic-which believed that it knew things in themselves through the concepts of the understanding, with a refut

mmateriality and immortality as well as for its relation to the body, is based upon this substitution, this ambiguity of the middle term, and therefore upon a quaternio terminorum,-all its conclusions are fallacious. It is allowable and unavoidable to add in thought an absolute subject, the unity of the ego, to inner phenomena;[1] it is inadmissible to treat the Idea of the soul as a knowable thing. In order to be able to apply the category of substance to it, we would have to lay hold of a permanent in intuition such as cannot be found in the inner sense. Empirical psychology, then, alone remains for the extension of our knowledge of mental life, while rational psychology shrivels up from a doctrine into a mere discipline, which watches that the limits of experience are not overstepped

nity in the explanation of psychical phenomena, viz., "To regard all determinations as existing in one subject, all powers, as far as possible, as derived from, one fundam

f simple parts; that, besides the causality according to the laws of nature, there is a causality through freedom, and that an absolutely necessary Being exists, either as a part of the world or as the cause of it. But the contrary may be proved with equal stringency (and indirectly, as before): The world is infinite in space and time; there is nothing simple in the world; there is no freedom, but everything in the world takes place entirely according to the laws of nature; and there exists no absolutely necessary Being either within the world or without it. This is the famous doctrine of the conflict of the four cosmological theses and antitheses or of the Antinomy of Pure Reason, the discovery of which indubitably exercised a determini

ivisible, no doubt, yet it does not consist of infinitely numerous parts, and just as little of a definite number of simple parts, but the parts exist merely in the representation of them, in the division (decomposition), and this goes as far as possible experience extends. The case is different with the dynamical antinomies, where thesis and antithesis can both be true, in so far as the former is referred to things in themselves and the latter to phenomena. The contradiction vanishes if we take that which the thesis asserts and the antithesis denies in different senses. The fact that in the world of phenomena the causal nexus proceeds without interruption and without end, so that there is no room in it either for an absolutely necessary Being or for freedom, does not conflict with this other, that beyond the world of sense there may exist an omnipotent, omniscient cause of the world, and an intelligible freedom as the ground of our empirically necessary actions. "May exist," since for the critical philosopher, who has learned that every extension of knowledge beyond the limits of experience is impossible, the question can concern only the conceivability of the world-ground and of freedom. This possibility is amply sufficient to give a support for faith, as, on the other hand, it is indispensable in order to satisfy at once the demands of the understanding and of reason, especially to satisfy their pr

ir removal cf. R. Falckenberg, Ueber den intelligiblen Character, zur Kritik der Kant

rivative beings are not related to the ideal of the original Being as limitations to the sum of the highest reality (on which view the Supreme Being would be conceived as an aggregate consisting of the derivative beings, whereas these presuppose it, and hence cannot constitute it), but as consequences to a ground. But reason does not remain content with this entirely legitimate thought of the dependence of finite things on the ideal of the Being of all beings, as a relation of concepts to the Idea, but, dazzled by an irresistible illusion, proceeds to realize, to hypostatize, and to personify this ideal, and, since she herself is dimly conscious of the illegitimacy of such a transformation of the mere Idea into a given object

prove only a very wise and wonderfully powerful, but not an omniscient and omnipotent, designer, and so cannot give any definite concept of the supreme cause of the world. In leaping from the contingency of the purposive order of the world to the existence of something absolutely necessary and thence to an all-comprehensive reality, the teleological argument abandons the ground of experience and passes over into the cosmological argument, which in its turn is merely a concealed ontological argument (these two differ only in the fact that the cosmological proof argues from the antecedently given absolute necessity of a being to its unlimited reality, and the ontological, conversely, from supreme reality to necessary existence). The weaknesses of the cosmological argument in its first half consist in the fact that, in the inference from the contingent to a cause for it, it oversteps the boundary of the sense-world, and, in the inference from the impossibility of an infinite series of conditions to a first cause, it employs the subjective principle of investigation-to assume hypothetically a necessary ultimate ground in behalf of the systematic unity of knowledge-as an objective principle applying to thing

nt Being, reason would be obliged to take sides and to follow these grounds, which, it is true, are not objectively sufficient,[1] but still preponderant, and than which we know none better. After, however, the objective reality of the idea of God is guaranteed from the standpoint of ethics, there remains for transcendental theology the important negative duty ("censorship," Censor) of exactly determining the concept of the most perfect Being (as a being which through understanding and freedom contains the first ground of all other things), of removing from it all impure elements, and of putting an end to all opposite assertions, whether atheistic, deistic (deism maintains the possibility

one, therefore, they are unable to yield any theological knowledge, but they are fitted to

imit our judgment to the relation of the world to the Supreme Being, and in this allow ourselves a symbo

e world and their existence from other (phenomena), as if no necessary being existed, and yet unceasingly strive after completeness in the derivation, as th

practical philosophy, which furnishes the only possible proof, the moral proof, for the reality of the Ideas, erects on the site left free by the removal of the airy summer-houses of dogmatic metaphysics the solid mansion of critical metaphysics, that is, the metaphysics of duties and of hopes. "I was obliged to destroy knowledge in order to make room for faith." The transition from the impossible theoretical or speculative knowledge of things in themselves to the possible "practical knowledge" of them (the belief that there is a God and a future

e earth, mountains, and seas, the members of animal bodies) as if it proceeded fro

ecessary knowledge possible in relation to the forms under which objects can be given to us; the second make a similarly apodictic knowledge possible in relation to the forms under which phenomena must be thought; the third make possible a judgment of phenomena differing from this knowledge, yet not in conflict with it. The categories an

e able to do this we must ascribe to ourselves the power to initiate a series of events; and, in general, we are warranted in assuming everything the non-assumption of which makes moral action impossible. If we were merely theoretical, merely experiential beings, we should lack all occasion to suppose a second, intelligible world behind and above the world of phenomena; but we are volit

ory of

standpoint can only be attained by conquering the sensuous impulses, therefore the moral law speaks to us in the form of an "ought," of an imperative.) Among the laws of the will or imperatives, also, there are some which possess the character of absolute necessity and universality, and which, consequently, are a priori. As the understanding dictates laws to the phenomenal world, so practical reason gives a law to itself, is autonomous;

or technical rules are hypothetical imperatives, the moral law is a categorical imperative. The injunction to be truthful is not connected with the condition that we intend to act morally, but this general purpose, together with all the special purposes belonging to it, to avoid lying, etc., is demanded unconditionally and of everyone-as surely as we are rational beings we are under moral obligation, not in order to reputation here bel

ible to discover by empirical methods what duty demands of all men alike and under all circumstances; the appeal is to our reason, not to our sensibility. If happiness were the end of rational beings, then nature had endowed us but poorly for it, since instead of an unfailing instinct she has given us the weak and deceitful reason as a guide, which, with its train, culture, science, art, and luxury, has brought more trouble than satisfaction to mankind. Man has a destiny other than well-being, and a higher one-the formation of good dispositions: here we have the only thing in the whole world that can never be used for evil, the only thing that does not borrow its value

ement on him whom ambition impels to industry, kind feeling to beneficence, and pity to render assistance. But he alone earns our esteem who does his duty for duty's sake. Only in this third case, where not merely the external action, nor merely the impulse of a happy disposition, but the will itself, the maxim, is in harmony with the moral law, where the good is done for the sake of the good, do we find true morality, that uncon

from all feelings of inclination or fear awakened by sensuous influences. As it strengthens and raises our rational nature, the consciousness of our freedom and of our high destination, but, at the same time, humbles our sensibility, there is min

he funds intrusted to him, or one who is oppressed by hopeless misery preserves his life, although he does not love it, then I may ascribe the abstinence from wrongdoing to moral principles. This, too, may be admitted. We are certain of the morality of a resolution only when it can be shown that no inclination was involved along with the maxim. The cases where the right action is performed in opposition to inclination are the only ones in which we may be certain that the moral quality of the action is unmixed-are they, then, the only ones in which a moral disposition is present? Kant rightly maintains that the admixture of egoistic motives beclouds the purity of the disposition, and consequently diminishes its moral worth. With equal correctness he draws attention to the possibility that, even when we believe that we are acting from pure principles, a hidden sensuous impulse may be involved. But he leaves unconsidered the poss

e I gladly would serve,

ite

virtue to swerve since m

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ovest thou must first s

can I gu

t thou canst rightly p

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disposition which corresponds to it. The universality and necessity (unconditionalness) of the categorical imperative proves that it springs from no other source than reason itself. Those who derive the moral law from the will of God subject it to a condition, viz., the immutability of the divine will. Those who find the source of moral legislation in the pursuit of happiness make rational will dependent on a natural law of the sensibility; it would be folly to enjoin by a moral law that which everyone does of himself, and does superabundantly. Moreover, the theories of the so

al. The definition runs: Will is the faculty of ac

lements of every sort.[1] If we think away all content from the law we retain the form of universal legality,[2] and gain the formula: "Act so that the maxim of thy will can always at the same time hold good as a principle of universal legislation." The possibility of conceiving the principle of volition as a universal law of nature is the criterion of morality. If you are in doubt concerning the m

tent, and its validity. It springs from reason, it contains a formal precept only, and its validity is not concerned

Edmund Pfleiderer (Kantischer Kritizismus und Englische Philosophie, 1881) and Zeller express themselv

ant effects which they exercise, in the satisfaction of a need or of the taste, they can be replaced by other means, which fulfill the same purpose, and they have a (market or fancy) value; while that which is above all value and admits of no equivalent has an ultimate worth or dignity, and is an object of respect. The legislation which determines all worth, and with this the disposition which corresponds to it, has a dignity, an unconditioned, inco

ity of the eudemonistic systems, along with the promotion of private welfare, prescribe the furtherance of universal good without being able to indicate at what point the pursuit of personal welfare should give way to regard for the good of others, while in the perfectionist systems the social element is wanting or retreats unduly into the background. The principle of happiness represents moral empiricism, the principle of perfection moral rationalism

respect) or of merit (of love). Since no one can obligate me to feel, we are to understand by love not the pathological love of complacency, but only the active love of benevolence or practical sympathy. Since it is just as impossible that the increase of the evils in the world should be a duty, the enervating and useless excitation of pity, which adds to

s, likewise the so-called duties toward God, are in reality duties toward ourselves. Cruelty to animals is immoral, because our sympat

have no meaning if we did not possess the power to obey it: I can because I ought. It is true that freedom is a mere Idea, whose object can never be given to me in an experience, and whose reality, consequently, cannot be objectively known and proved, but nevertheless, is required with satisfactory subjective necessity as the condition of the moral law and of the possibility of its fulfillment. I may not say it is certain, but, with safety, I am certain that I am free. Freedom is not a dogmatic proposition of theoretical reason, but a postulate of practical reason; and the latter holds the primacy over the former to this extent, that it can require the former to show that certain transcendent Ideas of the suprasensible, which are most intimately connected with moral obligation, are compatible with the principles of the understanding. It was just in view of the practical interests involved in the rational concepts God, freedom, immortality, that it was so important to establish, at least, their possibili

ortality, and the second the argument for the existence of God. (1) Perfect correspondence between the will and the law never occurs in this life, because the sensibility never allows us to attain a permanently good disposition, armed against every temptation; our will can never be holy, but at best virtuous, and our lawful disposition never escape the consciousness of a constant tendency to transgression, or at least of impurity. Since, nevertheless, the demands of the (Christian) moral law continue in their unrelenting stringency to be the standard, we are justified in the hope of an unlimited continuation of our existence, in order that by constant progress in goodness we may draw nearer in infinitum to the ideal of holiness. (2) The establishment of a rational proportion between happiness and virtue is also not to be expected until the future life, for too often on earth it is the evil man who prospers, while the good man suffers. A justly proportioned distribution of rewards and punishment can only b

n its form, not in its content, in that it adds to the conception of duty the idea of God as a moral lawgiver, and thus increases the influence of this conception on the will; it is simply a means for the promotion of morality. Since, however, besides natural religion or the pure faith of reason (the moral law and the moral postulates), the historical religions contain statutory d

d under the title Relig

Radical Evil in Human N

Evil for the Mastery ove

Evil and the Founding

vice and False Service u

on and Priestcraft; or mo

a), the Church, and true

xims, in virtue of which the maxim of duty or morality is subordinated to that of well-being or self-love instead of being placed above it, and that which should be the supreme condition of all satisfaction is degraded into a mere means thereto. Morality is therefore a conversion from the evil to the good, and requires a complete revolution in the dispo

al has appeared on earth as an actual man, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The only saving faith is the belief of reason in the ideal which Christ represents, and not the historical belief in his person. The vicarious atonement of the ideal man for those who believe on him is to be interpreted to mean that the sufferings and sacrifices (crucifixion of the flesh) imposed by moral conversion, which are

hurch, and its foundation the pure faith of reason; but in consequence of a weakness peculiar to human nature the foundation of an actual church required the addition of a statutory historical faith, with claims to a divine origin, from which a multitude of visible churches and the antithesis of orthodox and heretics have sp

erfluous. It has been necessary as a vehicle, as a means for the introduction and extension of the pure religion of morality, and it still remains useful for a time, until humanity shall become of age; with man's entrance on the period of youth and manhood, however, the leading-string of holy traditions, which in its time did good service, becomes unnecessary, nay, finally, a fetter. (This relative appreciation of the positive element in religion, in antithesis to the unthinking rejection of it by the Illumination, resembles the view of Lessing; cf. pp. 306-309.)

an be said on the question, save that works of grace may exist, and perhaps must exist in order to supplement our imperfect efforts after virtue; and that everyone, instead of waiting for divine assistance, should do for his own amendment all that is in his power. (2) Kant judges more sharply in regard to the belief in miracles, which contradict the laws of experience without in the least furthering the performance of our duties. In practical life no one regards miracles as possible; and their limitation to the past and to rare instances does not make them more credible. (3) In so far as the Christian mysteries actually represent impenetrable secrets they have no bearing on moral conduct; so far as the

ion is concerned, the Kantian view does not exclude completion in the direction of Schleiermacher's theory of feeling, just as by its speculative interpretation of the Christian dogmas and its appreciation of the history of religion as a gradual transformation of

n hereditary nobility as a hindrance to the natural equality of rights, and demanded freedom for the public expression of opinion as the surest means of guarding against revolutions. The only legitimate form of the state is the republican, i.e., that in which the executive power is separated from the legislative power, in contrast to despotism, where they are united in one hand. The best guaranty for just government and civil liberty is offered by constitutional monarchy, in which the people through its representatives exercises the legislative power, the sovereign the executive power, and judges chosen by the people the judicial power. The contract from which we may conceive the state to have arisen is not to be regarded as an historical fact, but as a rational idea or rule, by which we may judge whether the laws are just or not: that which the people as a whole cannot prescribe for itself, this cannot be prescribed for it by the ruler (cf. p. 235). That there is a constant progress-not only of individuals, but-of the race, not merely in technical and intellectual, but also in moral respects, is supported both by rational grounds (without faith in such

ue-duty, Kant took into account only the legal side of the institutions of marriage and of the state, overlooking the fact that besides these they have a moral importance and purpose, if we may demand a social ethic as a supplement to his ethics, which is directed to the duties of the individual alone, yet these and other well-founded desiderata may be att

Beautiful and of

ehalf of what ought to be), and from the hints concerning a progress in history (in which both powers co-operate toward a common goal)-then the source of its laws is evidently to be sought in that faculty which mediates alike between understanding and reason and between knowing and feeling: in Judgment, as the higher faculty of feeling. Judgment, in the general sense, is the faculty of thinking a particular as contained in a univ

e given reality; we cannot deduce the special laws of nature from them. Nevertheless the nature of our cognitive faculty does not allow us to accept the empirical manifoldness of our world as conti

s accompanied by a feeling of pleasure; in the first case, where the pleasure is based on a concept of the object, it is a logical satisfaction, in the second, where it springs only from the harmony of the object with our cognitive powers, aesthetic satisfaction. The objects of the te

school, rationalistic. The former identified the beautiful with the agreeable, the latter identified it with the perfect or with the conformity of the object to its concept; in the one case, aesthetic appreciation is treated as sensuous pleasure, in the other, it is treated as a lower, confused kind of knowledge, its peculiar nature being in both cases overlooked. In opposition to the sensualization

d the satisfaction in the agreeable, in the good (in itself), and in the (good for something, as a means, or in the) useful, which latter three have this in common, that they are objects of appetition-of sensuous want, of moral will, of prudential desire-it becomes evident that the beautiful pleases through its mere representation (that is, independently of the real existence of the objec

of taste claims universal and necessary validity, without this being based upon concepts. This posits further differences between the beautiful and the agreeable and the g

iversal validity is demonstrable. The judgment concerning the agreeable is not capable of demonstration, but neither does it pretend to possess universal validity; we readily acknowledge that what is pleasant to one need not be so to every other m

epresentation in all men, which yields the common standard for the pleasurableness of the impression. The agreeable appeals to that in man which is different in different individuals, the beautiful to that which functions alike in all; the former addresses itself to the passive sensibility, the latter to the active judgment. The agreeable-because of the non-calculable differences in ou

re we obtain a determination of the judgment of taste from the standpoint of relation-purposive without a definite purpose. We know perfectly well that a landscape which attracts us has not been specially arranged for the purpose of delighting us, and we do not wish to find in a work of art anything of an intention to please. An object is perfect when it is purposive for itself (corresponds to its concept); useful when it is purposive for our desire (corresponds to a practical intention of man); beautiful when the arrangement of its parts is purp

autiful: The beautiful is that which universally and necessarily arouses disinterested

only in sensuous-rational beings. The agreeable exists for the animal as well, and the good is an object of approval for pure spirits; but the beautiful exists for humanity alone. Kant succeeded in giving very delicate and felicitous

as a beclouding of the "purity" of the aesthetic satisfaction, he is still just enough to admit the higher worth of adherent beauty. For almost the whole of artificial beauty and a considerable part of natural beauty belong to this latter division, which we to-day term ideal and characteristic beauty. Examples of free or purely formal beauty are tapestry patterns, arabesques, fountains, flowers, and landscapes, the pleasurableness of which rests simply on the proportion of their form and relations, and not upon their conformity to a presupposed significance and determination of the thing. A building, on the contrary-a dw

ceive a valuable supplement in the classical definition of genius. Kant

erhaps, is ugly, is called taste. To judge of the beautiful it is sufficient to possess taste, but for its production there is still another talent needed

self, that is, when he is gifted. Genius is the innate disposition (through) which (nature) gives rules to art; its characteristics are originality, exemplariness, and unreflectiveness. It does not produce according to definite rules which can be learned, but it is a law in itself, it is original. It creates instinctively without consciousness of the rule, and cannot

much of ineffable thought, much that belongs to the concept but which cannot be comprehended in a definite concept. With the aid of this idea Kant solves the antinomy of the aesthetic judgment. The thesis is: The judgment of taste is not based upon concepts; for otherwise it would admit of controversy (would be determinable by proofs). The antithesis is: It is based upon concepts; for otherwise

utiful play of sensations, includes painting as the art of color, and music, which as a "fine" art is placed immediately after poetry, as an "agreeable" art at the very foot of the list, and as the play of tone in the vicinity of the entertaining play of fortune [games of chance] and the witty play of thought. The explanation of the

o the imagination, we first feel small at the sight of the absolutely great, and incapable of compassing it with our sensuous glance. The sensibility is not equal to the impression; this at first seems contrary to purpose and violent. This humiliating impression, however, is quickly followed by a reaction, and the vital forces, which were at first checked, are stimulated to the more lively activity. Moreover, it is the sensuous part of man which is humbled and the spiritual part that is exalted: the overthrow of sensibility becomes a triumph for reason. The sight of the sublime, that is, awakens the Idea of the unconditioned, of the infinite. This Idea can never be adequately presented by an intuition, but can be aroused only by the inadequacy of all that is sensuous to present it; the infinite is presented through the impossibility of presenting it. We cannot intuit the infinite, but we can think it. In comparison with reason (as the faculty of Ideas, the faculty of thinking the infinite) even the greatest thing that can be given in the sense-world appears small; reason is the absolutely great. "That is sublime the mere ability to think which proves a faculty of the mind surpassing every standard of sense." "That is sublime which pleases immediately through its opposition to the interest of

of sensibility and reason, which is demanded by the moral law, realized in aesthetic intuition (as a voluntary yielding of the imagination to the legitimacy of the understan

e self-productive and this both as a species (the oak springs from the acorn, and in its turn bears acorns) and as individuals (self-preservation, growth, and the replacement of dying parts by new ones), and also by the fact that the reciprocally productive parts are in their form and their existence all conditioned by the whole. This latter fact, that the whole is the determining ground for the parts, is perfectly obvious in the products of human art. For here it is the representation of the whole (the idea of the work desired) which as the ground precedes the existence and the form of the parts (of the machine). But where is the subject to construct

ctual intuition the antithesis between possibility and actuality, between necessity and contingency, between mechanism and teleology, would disappear along with that between thought and intuition. For such a being everything possible (all that it thinks) would be at the same time actual (present for intuition), and all that appears to us contingent-intentionally selected from several possibilities and in order to an end-would be necessary as well; with the whole would be given the parts correspo

y possible, and, on the other, clearly to recognize that, at last, this will still leave a remainder which we cannot make intelligible without calling to our aid the concept of ends. Assuming that it were possible to carry the explanation of life from life, from ancestral organisms (for the generatio aequivoca is an absurd theory) so far that the whole organic world should represent one great family descended from one primitive form as the common mother, even then the concept of final causes would only be pushed further back, not eliminated: the origin of the first organization will always resist mechanical explanation. Besides

ulminates in the position that man, as the subject of morality, must be held to be the final aim of the world, for it is only in regard to a moral being that no further inquiry can be raised as to the purpose of its existence. It also repeats the moral argument f

*

whether they keep within the limits of the competency of human reason; whether Kant's determination of the origin and the limits of knowledge may count on continued favor or not, the fundamental critical idea, that reflection upon the nature and range of our cognitive faculty is indispensable, retains its validity for all cases and makes an end of all philosophizing at random.[1] No ethical system will with impunity pass by the autonomous legislation of reason and the unconditional imperative (the admonition of conscience

able to give account of all our concepts, opinions, and

echanical explanation does not satisfy reason, and that, besides it, a judgment according to Ideas is legitimate. When, therefore, the speculation of the constructive school gives an ide

g at once." The third, because of its subject and by its purpose of synthetic reconciliation between fields heretofore sharply separated, gained the sympathy of our poet-heroes Schiller and Goethe, and awakened in a young, speculative spirit Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature. Schelling reclaimed the intuitive understanding, which Kant had problematically attributed to the primal spirit, as the property of the philosopher, after Fichte had drawn attention to the fact that the consciousness of the categorical imperative, which Kant had not thoroughly investigated, could be nothing else than intellectual intuition, because in it knowing and doing coincide. Fichte, however, does not derive the material for his system from the Critique of Judgment, though he also had a high appreciation of it, but from the two earlier Critiques, the fundamental conce

Kant to

e flowing Letters concerning the Kantian Philosophy, by K.L. Reinhold in Wieland's Deutscher Merkur, 1786-87; and the Allgemeine Litteraturzeitung, in Jena, founded in 1785, and edited by the philologist Schütz and the jurist Hufeland, which offered itself as the o

. The Illumination collected its forces in the Philosophische Bibliothek, edited by Feder and Meiners. Nicolai waved the banner of common sense in the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, and in satirical romances, and was handled as he deserved by the her

y of cognition requires for its foundation a theory of the faculty of representation, or an elementary philosophy, which shall take for its object the deduction of the several functions of reason (intuition, concept, Idea) from the original activity of representation. The Kantian philosophy lacks a first principle, which, as first, cannot be demonstrable, but only a fact immediately evident and admitted by everyone. The primal fact, which we seek, is consciousness. No one can dispute that every representation contains three things: the subject, the object, and, between the two, the activity of representation. Accordingly the principle of consciousness runs: "The representation is distinguished in consciousness from the represent

urpose. Gottlob Ernst Schulze, professor in Helmst?dt, and from 1810 in G?ttingen, in his Aenesidemus (1792, published anonymously), which was followed later by psychological works, defended the skeptical position in opposition to the Critique of Reason. Hume's skepticism remains unrefuted by Kant and Reinhold. The thing in itself, which is to produce the material of representation by affecting the senses, is

and understanding, and with Schulze, the concept of the thing in itself to be an imaginary or irrational quantity, a thought that cannot be carried out; it is not only unknowable, but unthinkable. That alone is knowable which we ourselves produce, hence only the form of representation. The matter of representation is "given," but this does

t to elucidate the Kantian theory, holding up idealism as its true meaning. In opposition to the usual opinion that a representation is true when it agrees with its object, he points to the impossibility of comparing the one with the other. Of object

tings of Professor Kant; in the same year appeared the Outlines of the Critical Philosophy. Cf

atter-impulse and the higher, rational form-impulse, and unites the, two in harmonious co-operation. Where appetite seeks after satisfaction, and where the strict idea of duty rules, there only half the man is occupied; neither lust nor moral worth is beautiful. In order that beauty and grace may arise, the matter-impulse and the form-impulse, or sensibility and reason, must manifest themselves uniformly and in harmony. Only when he "plays" is man wholly and entirely man; only through art is the development of humanity possible. The discernment of the fact that the beautiful brings into equilibrium the two fundamental impulses, one or the other of which preponderates in sensuous desire and in moral volition, does not of itself decide the relative rank of artistic and moral activity. The recognition of this mediating position of art

On Na?ve and Sentimental Poetry, 1795-96; and the Letters on Aesthetic Education, intermediate betwee

PTE

CH

nderstood only from the standpoint of spirit, the spirit only from the will. The ego is pure activity, and all reality its product. Fichte's system is all life and action: its aim is not to mediate knowledge, but to summon the hearer and reader to the production of a new and pregnant fundamental view, in which the will is as much a participant as the understanding; it begins not with a concept or a proposition, but with a demand for action (posit thyself; do consciously what thou hast done unconsciously so often as thou hast called thyself I; analyze, then, the act of self-consciousness, and cognize in their elements the forces from which all reality proceeds); its God i

ve been occupied more with myself." "I now believe with all my heart in human freedom, and am convinced that only on this supposition duty and virtue of any kind are possible." "I live in a new world since I have read the Critique of Practical Reason. Things which I believed never could be proved to me, e.g., the idea of an absolute freedom and duty, have been proved, and I feel the happier for it. It is inconceivable what reverence for humanity, what power this philosophy gives us, what a blessing it is for an age in which the citadels of morality had been destroyed, and the idea of duty blotted out from all the dictionaries!" A journey to Warsaw, whither he had been attracted by the expectation of securing a position as a private tutor, soon afforded him the opportunity of visiting at K?nigsberg the autho

dents, who, after they had been untrue to their decision-which they had formed as a result of these lectures-to dissolve their societies or orders, gave vent to their spite by repeatedly smashing the windows of Fichte's residence. Accordingly he took leave of absence, and spent the summer of 1795 in Osmannst?dt. The years 1796-98, in which, besides the two Introductions to the Science of Knowledge, the Natural Right and the Science of Ethics (one of the most all important works in German philosophical literature) appeared, mark the culmination of Fichte's famous labors. The so-called atheistic controversy[1] resulted in Fichte's departure from Jena. The Philosophisches Journal, which since 1797 had been edited by Fichte in association with Niethammer, had published an artic

August Hase, Jenaische

ace and counts on his work, is most certain, nay, it is the ground of all other certitude. The living and operative moral order (ordo ordinans) is itself God; we need no other God, and can conceive no other. There is no ground in reason for going beyond this world order to postulate a particular being as its cau

t and that of his opponents are related as duty and advantage, sensible and suprasensible, and that the substantial God of his accusers, to be

nd later, after the outbreak of the war, he occupied for a short time a chair at K?nigsberg, finding a permanent university position at the foundation of the University of Berlin in 1810. His glowing Addresses to the German Nation, 1808, which essentially aided in arousing the national spirit, have caused his name to live as one of the greatest of orators and most ardent of patriots in circles of the German people where his philosophical importance cannot be understood. His death in 1814 was also a result of unselfish labor in the service of the Fatherland. He succumbed to a nervous fever contracted from his wife, who, with self-sacrifice equal to his own, had shared in the care of the wounded, and who had brought the c

(not the lecture of 1813 with the same title), is especially valuable as an introduction to the system. Among the many redactions of the Wissenschaftslehre, the epoch-making Foundation of the whole Science of Knowledge, 1794, with the two Introductions to the Science of Knowledge, 1797, takes the first rank, while of the

degg in vol. xlii. of the Zeitschrift für Philosophie). Lasson has written, 1863, on Fichte's relation to Church and state, Zeller on Fichte as a political thinker (Vortr?ge und Abhandlungen, 1865), and F. Zimmer on his philosophy of religion. Among foreign works we may note Adamson's Fichte, 1881, and the English translations of several of Fich

ience of K

ose references to a given matter, the thing in itself, and the like, were intended only as preliminary, have overlooked the numberless others in which the contrary is distinctly maintained. Thus the interpreters of Kant, using their own prejudices as a criterion, have read into him exactly that which he sought to refute, and have made the destroyer of all dogmatism himself a dogmatist; thus in the Kantianism of the Kantians there has sprung up a marvelous combination of crude dogmatism and uncompromising idealism. Though such an absurd mingling of entirely heterogeneous elements may be excused in th

d results which he gives into a firmly connected and impregnable whole. The Wissenschaftslehre takes this completion of idealism for its mission. It cannot solve the problem by a commentary on the Kantian writings, nor by the correction and addition of particulars, but only by restoring the whole at a stroke. He alone finds the truth who new creates it in himself, independently and in his own way. Thus Fichte's system contains the same view of the matter as the critical

has explained the properties and relations of things (that they appear in space and time, and that their accidents must be referred to substances), the question still remains unanswered, Whence comes the matter which is taken up into these forms? So long as the whole object is not made to arise before the eyes of the thinker, dogmatism is not driven out of its last corner. The thing in itself is, like the rest, only a thought in the ego. If thus the antithesis between the form and the matter of cognition undergoes modification, so, further, the allied distinction between understanding and sensibility must, as Reinhold accurately recognized, be reduced to a common principle and receptivity be conceived as self-limiting spontaneity. In his practical philosophy also Kant left

nciple. Thought can never be derived from being, because it is not contained therein; from being only being can proceed, and never representation. Being, however, can be derived from thought, for consciousness is also being; nay, it is more than this, it is conscious being. And as consciousness contains both being and a knowledge of this being, idealism is superior to realism, because idealism includes the latter as a moment in itself, and hence can explain it, though it is not explicable by it. Dogmatism makes the mistake of going beyond consciousness or the ego, and working with empty, merely formal concepts. A concept is empty when nothing actual corresponds to it, or no intuition can be subsumed under it (here it is to be noted that, besides sensuous intuition, there is an intellectual intuition also; an example is found in the ego as a self

nce of all that is external which is morally enjoined, for in order to be able to know ourselves free we must have made ourselves free.[1] Thus the philosophy which a man chooses depends on what sort of a man he is. If, on the other hand, the categorical imperative calls for belief in the reality of the external world and of other minds, this is nothing against idealism. For idealism does not deny the realism of life, but explains it as a necessary, though not a final, mode of intuit

iscover the noteworthy point where theoretical and practical philosophy actually pass over into each other. For th

he elimination of the thing in itself, all these desires combined are fulfilled in Fichte's doctrine, and at the same time the results of the Critique of Reason are given that evidence which Aenesidemus-Schulze had missed in them. As an answer to the question, "How is knowledge brought about?" (as well the knowledge of common sense as that given in the particular sciences), "how is experience possible?", and as a construction of common consciousness as this manifests itself in life and in the particular sciences, Fichteanism adopts the name Science of Knowledge, being distinguished from the particular sciences by the fact that they discuss the voluntary, and it the necessary, representations or actions of t

of the deed-act which is ever (though unconsciously) performing. This is the meaning of the first of the principles: "The ego posits originally and absolutely its own being," or, more briefly: The ego posits itself; more briefly still: I am. The nature of the ego consists in positing itself as existing.[1] Since, besides this self-cogitation of the ego, an op-position is found among the facts of empirical consciousness (think only of the principle of contradiction), and yet, besides the ego, there is nothing which could be opposed, we must assume as a second principle: To the ego there is absolutely opposited a non-ego. These two principles must be united, and this can be accomplished only by positing the contraries (ego and non-ego), since they are both in the ego, as reciprocally limiting or partially sublating one another, that is, each as divisible (capable of quantitative determination). Accordingly the thi

ar persons stand related merely as accidents, as instruments, as special expressions, destined more and more to lose themselves in the universal form of reason. But, further still, a distinction must be made between the absolute ego as intuition (as the form of I-ness), from which the Science of Knowledge starts, and the ego as Idea (as the supreme goal of practical endeavor) with which it ends. In neither is the ego conceived as individual; in the former the I-ness is not yet determined to the point of individuality, in the latter individuality has disappeared, Fichte is rig

, through which consciousness is produced, and the complete investigation of whose members constitutes the further business of the Science of Knowledge as a theory of the nature of reason. In this the Science of Knowledge employs a method which, by its rhythm of analysis and synthesis, development and reconciliation of opposites, became the model of Hegel's dialectic method. The synthesis described in the third principle, although it balances thesis and antithesis and unites them in itself, still contains contrary

and drives the ego back into itself, whereupon another excursus follows, and a new limitation and return, etc. With every repetition of this double act of production and reflection a special class of representations arises. Through the first limitation of the in itself unlimited activity "sensation" arises (as a product of the "productive imagination"). Because the ego produces this unconsciously, it appears to be given, brought about by influence from without. The second stage, "intuition," is reached when the ego reflects on sensation, when it opposes to itself something foreign which limits it. Thirdly, by reflection on intuition an "image" of that which is intuited is constructed, and, as such, distinguished from a real thing to which the image corresponds; at this point the categories and the forms of intuition, space and time, appear, which thus arise along with the object.[1] The fourth stadium is "understanding," which steadies the fluctuating intuition into a concept, realizes the object, and looks upon it as the cause of the intuition. Fifthly, "judgme

it appears rather as a thing in itself independent of the ego and affecting it. Further, it must so appear, because the ego, in its after reflection on

associational psychology, which likewise excludes the idea of an isolated coexistence of mental faculties, by the fact that it demands a new manifestation of the soul-ground in order to the ascent from one member of the series to the next higher. It is also distinguished from sensationalism by its teleological point of view. For no matter how much Fichte, too, may speak of the mechanism of consciousness, it is plain to the reader of the theoretical part of his system not only that he makes this mechanism work in the service of an end, but also that he

sis the understanding, by continued reflection constructs the objective world, was necessary in order that consciousness and knowledge might arise. If the ego did not limit its infinite activity neither representation nor an objective world would exist. But why, then, are there such things as consciousness, representation, and a world? From the standpoint of the theoretical ego this problem, "Whence the original non-ego or opposition (Anstoss), which impels the ego back upon itself?" cannot be solved, since it is only throug

ich represents it; no consciousness possible without reflection of the ego on itself; no reflection without limitation, without an opposition or non-ego. The Anstoss is deduced. The ego posits a limit (is theoretical) in order (as practical) to overcome it. Our duty is the only per se (Ansich) of the phenomenal world, the only truly real element in it: "Things are in themselves that which we ought to make of them." Objectivity exists only to be more and more sublated, that is, to be so worked up that the activity of the ego may in it become evident.-The same ground of explanation which reveals the necessity of an external

pulse to harmony with self, which stands opposed to the natural impulses as the categorical imperative. The practical ego mediates between the theoretical and the absolute ego. The ego ought to be infinite and self-dependent, but finds itself finite and dependent on a non-ego-

ce of Ethics

n deliver us, but a miracle which we must ourselves perform-is inertness, lack of will to rise above the natural determinateness of the impulse of self-preservation to the clear consciousness of duty and of freedom. For the moral man there is no resting; each end attained becomes for him the impulse to renewed endeavor, each task fulfilled leads him to a fresh one. Become self-dependent, act autonomously, make thyself free; let every action have

h his bald moral principle, the self-dependence of the ego, he deserves praise for having given ethics a concre

ly than respect; true morality, however, does not arise until, with constant attention to the law and continued watchfulness of self, duty is done for its own sake. No man is for a moment secure of his morality without continued endeavor. In order to deliverance from the original sin of inertness and its train, cowardice and falsity, men stand in need of examples, such as have been given them in the foun

ese four classes are the duties of self-preservation, of class, of non-interference with others, and of vocation. The lower calling includes the producers, artisans, and tradesmen, whose action terminates directly on nature; and the higher, the scholars, teachers of t

an accomplish this only by positing itself in a relation of right to other finite rational beings; without a thou, no I. A finite rational being cannot posit itself without ascribing to itself a free activity in an external sense-world; and it cannot effect this latter unless (1) it ascribes free activity to other beings as well, hence not without assuming other finite rational beings outside itself, and positing itself as standing in the relation of right to them; and unless (2) it ascribes to itself a material body and posits this as standing und

of right and legal judgments) what shall be considered rights. Thus there result three subjects for natural right: original rights or the sum of that which pertains to freedom or personality (inviolability of the body and of property), the right of coercion, and political right. The aim of punishment is the reform of the evil doer and the deterrence of others. Fichte is in agreement with Kant concerning the principle of popular sovereignty (Rousseau) and the exercise of the political power through representatives; but not so concerning the guaranties against the violation of the fundamental law of the state. Instead of the division of powers recommended by Kant he demands supervision of the rulers of the state by ephors, who, themselves without any legislative or executive author

d: his View of History an

of the time especially attracted his attention. The last required philosophical interpretation, demanded at once inquiry into its historical conditions and a consideration of the means by which the glaring contradiction between the condition of the nation at the time and the ideals of reason could be diminished. The Addresses to the German Nation outlined a plan for a moral reformation of the world, to start with the

inal or primitive people of the new age, the only one which has preserved its living language-French is a dead tongue-and has raised itself to true creative poetry and free science. The ground of distinction betwe

e of history divides into five periods. In the state of "innocence" or of rational instinct that which is rational is done unconsciously, out of natural impulse; in the state of "commencing sin" the instinct for the good changes into an external compulsory authority, the law of reason appears as a ruling power from without, which can be disobeyed as well as obeyed. We ourselves live in the period of "completed sinfulness," of absolute license and indifference to all truth, of unlimited caprice and selfishness. But however far removed from the moral ideal this age appears, in which the individual, freed from all restraints, heeds naught except his egoistic desire, and in his care for his own welfare forgets to labor for the universal, yet this ultima

arated from it; religion is possible neither without a metaphysical belief in a suprasensible world, nor without obedience to the moral law, yet in itself it is not that belief nor this action, but the inner spirit which pervades and animates all our thought and action-it is life, love, blessedness. And as quiet blessedness is here distinguished from ceaseless action, so for our thinker the inactive Deity, the self-identical life of the absolute, separates from the active universal reaso

rated from these and removed beyond them; in the former the nature of God is described as activity, in the latter, as being; in the one, action is designated as the highest mission of man, in the other, blessed devotion to God. All three variations of the later doctrine from the earlier may be admitted without giving up the position that the former is only an extension of the latter and not an essential modification of it (i.e., in its teachings concerning the relation of the ego and the world). Fichte experienced religious feelings the philosophical outcome of which he worked into his system. He now knows a first thing (the Deity as distinct from the absolute ego) and a last thing (the inwardness of religious devotion to the world-ground), which he had before not overlooked, much less denied, but combined in one with the second (the absolute ego or the moral order of the world) and the one before the last (moral action). It is incorrect to say that, in his later doctrine, Fichte substituted the inactive absolute in place of the active absolute ego, and the quiet blessedness of contemplation in place of ceaseless action. Not in place of these, but beyond them, while all else remains as it was. The categorical imperative, the absolute ego or knowledge is no longer God himself, but the first manifestation of God, though a necessary revelation of him. Religion had previously been included for Fichte in moral actio

PTE

ELL

sor in Würzburg; then followed two residences of fourteen years each in Munich, separated by seven years in Erlangen: 1806-20 as Member of the Academy of Sciences and General Secretary of the Academy of the Plastic Arts (he received this latter position after delivering on the king's birthday his celebrated address on "The Relation of the Plastic Arts to Nature," 1807); and 1827-41 as professor in the newly established university, and President of the Academy of Sciences. In 1812 Schelling married his second wife, Pauline Gotter. Besides various journals[3] and the works to be noticed later, two polemic treatises should be mentioned, the Exposition of the True Relation of the Philosophy of Nature to the Improved Doctrine of Fichte, 1806, in which his former friend is charged with plagiarism

e Ego as Principle of Philosophy, both in 1795; Letters on Dogmatism and

ne, Letters, edited

Physik, 1800 (continued as Neue Zeitschrift für spekulative Physik); Jahrbücher der Medizin al

blished only two prefaces, one to Viktor Cousin über franz?sische und deutsche Philosophie, d

ve Philosophie der Offenbarung, 1843. Frauenst?dt had pre

and Jodl in the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie; R. Haym, Die romantische Schule, 1870; Aus Schellings Leben, in Briefen, edited by Plitt, 3 vols., 1869-70. [Cf. also Wa

always ideas from without whose incorporation has caused the transition. Besides Leibnitz, Kant, and Fichte, who were already familiar to Schelling as a pupil at Tübingen, it was first Herder, then Spinoza and Bruno, who exerted a transforming influence on his system, to be followed later by Neoplatonism and B?hme's mysticism, and, finally, by Aristotle and the Gnostics, not to speak of his intercourse with his contemporaries Kielmeyer, Steffens, Baader, Eschenmayer, and others. Omitting his early adherence to Fichte, at least three periods must be distinguished in Schelling's thinking. The first period (1797-1800) includes the epoch-making feat of his youth, the philosophy of nature, and, as an equally legitimate second part of his system, the philosophy of spirit or transcendental philosophy. The latter is a supplementary recasting of Fichte's Science of Knowledge, while in the former Schelling follows Kant and Herder. The second period, from 1801, adds to these two co-ordinate parts, the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of spirit, and as a fundamental discipline, a science of the absolute, the philosophy of identity, which may be characterized as Spinozism revived on a Fichtean basis. Besides the example of Spinoza,

osophy of

undeveloped, slumbering, unconscious, benumbed intelligence. By transferring to nature the power of self-position or of being subject, Schelling exalts the drudge of the Science of Knowledge to the throne. The threefold division, "infinite original activity-nature or object-individual ego or subject," remains as in Fichte, only that the first member is not termed pure ego, but nature, yet creative nature, natura naturans. Schelling's aim is to show how from the object a subject arises, from the existent something represented, from the representable a representer, from nature an ego. He could only hope to solve this problem if he conceived natural objects-in the highest of which, man, he makes conscious spirit break forth or nature intuit itself-as themselves the products of an original subject, of a creative ground striving toward consciousness. For him also doing is more original than being. It would not be exact, therefore, to define the difference between Fichte and Schelling by saying that, with the former, nature proceeds from the ego, and with the latter the ego, from nature. It is rather true that with them both nature and spirit are alike the products of a third and higher term, which seeks to become spi

he universal law of polarity. The absolute productivity strives toward an infinite product, which it never attains, because apart from arrest no product exists. At definite points a check must be given it in order that something knowable may arise. Thus every product in nature is the result of a positive, centrifugal, accelerating, universalizing force, and a negative, limiting, retarding, individualizing one. The endlessness of the creative activity manifests itself in various ways: in the striving for development on the part of every product, in the preservation of the genus amid the disappearance of individuals, in the endlessness of the

vital force is the mechanical interpretation, which looks on life merely as a chemical phenomenon. The dead, mechanical and chemical, forces are merely the negative conditions of life; to them there must be added as a positive force a vital stimulus external to the individual, which continually rekindles the conflict between the opposing activities on which the vital process depends. Life consists, that is, in the perpetual prevention of the equilibrium which is the object of the chemical process. This constant disturbance proceeds from "universal nature," which, as the common principle of organic and inorganic nature, as that which determines them for each other, which founds a pre-established harmony between them, deserves the name of the world-soul. Schelling thus recognizes a threefold nature: organized, in

namic atomism, since it posits pure intensities as the s

ght, and their copula, universal life. Gravity-this does not mean that which as the force of attraction falls within the view of sensation, for it is the union of attraction and repulsion-is the principle of corporeality, and produces in the visible world the different conditions of aggregation in solids, fluids, and gases. Light-this, too, is not to be confounded with actual light, of which it is the cause

ystem of the Philosophy of Nature, 1799; Universal Deduction of the Dynamical Process or the Categories of Physics (in the Zeitschrift für spek

la" these three dynamical categories are raised to organic categories. To magnetism as the most general, and hence the lowest force, corresponds reproduction (the formative impulse, as nutrition, growth, and production, including the artistic impulse); electricity develops into irritability or excitability; the higher analogue to the chemical process as the most individual and highest stage is sensibility or the capacity of feeling. (Such at least is Schelling's doctrine after Steffens had convinced him of the higher dignity of that which is individual, whereas at first he had made sensibility parallel with magnetism, and reproduction with chemism, because the former two appear most seldom, and the latter most frequently. Electricity and irritability always maintained their intermediate position.) With th

t by leaving out of account the numerous differences between the v

II. INORGANIC NATUR

ANIZ