 CHAPTER 65 GERMAN PHILLOSOPHY CONTINUED HEGLE LIFE Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born at Stuttgart in 1770. His life, like that of all the great post-Cantian philosophers, is merely the history of his academic and literary career. At the age of 18 he entered the Theological Seminary at Tübingen, where he diverted himself to the study of content for so, having for companions Schelling and the young poet Helderlin, whose enthusiasm for Greek poetry he fully shared. From the years 1793 to 1800 he spent his private tutor at Bern and at Frankfurt Hermain, years in which, through the study of Hellenic literature, he attained a realization of the spiritual significance of nature as the key to the harmony of existence. In 1801 he entered the University of Jena, and after a few years spent there as Privatuzent, was appointed Professor Extraordinary, 1805. While at Jena he renewed his acquaintance with Schelling, who was at that time editor of the critical journal of philosophy. Soon however, divergence of opinion between the two great opponents of Fichte subjectivism led to the development by Hegel of a system opposed to the philosophy of identity. In 1807 he published his Phenomilologie des Geistes, his first important contribution to speculative philosophy. After spending a year as newspaper editor at Bamberg, Hegel became rector of the Gymnasium at Nürnberg, and while there published his Logik, Wissenschaft der Logik 1816. In 1816 he was made Professor of Philosophy at Heidelberg, and in 1818 was transferred to the University of Berlin. While at Heidelberg he published the Encyclopédie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse, 1817. He died at Berlin in 1831. Sources Hegel's works were published soon after his death, Berlin 1832 and following, in 19 volumes, the last volume being the Life of Hegel written by Rosenkranz. The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, volumes 1 to 5, St. Louis, 1867 to 1871, published translations of the Phenomilologie and of portions of the Encyclopédie. The Logik was translated by W. T. Harris and is to be found in the second volume of the journal just referred to. Wallace has published translations of the most important portions of the Encyclopédie, the Logik of Hegel, Oxford, 1892 and Hegel's Philosophy of Mind, Oxford, 1894. The translation of the Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte by Sibré is published in Bohn's Library, Philosophy of History, London, 1860, 1884. Professor Keert's Hegel, Blackwood's Philosophical Classics, Edinburgh and Philadelphia, 1896, will be found very useful by those who are not prepared to take up Stirling's formal double exposition, The Secret of Hegel, two volumes, London, 1865, one volume, Edinburgh and London, 1898. Mind, especially in the new series, contains many valuable articles expository and explanatory of Hegelian philosophy. See also, Fischer's Hegel, Heidelberg, 1898 to 1901. Doc Twins, The Problem of Philosophy. Thus far, in following the course of development of philosophic thought in Germany, we have found that Kant, by feeling to complete the synthesis of ultimate reality, bequeathed the problem towards the solution of which all post-Kantian speculation was directed. Fischer completed the synthesis by merging the thing in itself, object, in the activity of the ego, subject. Schelling tried to effect his synthesis equally complete by merging both subject and object in the indifference of the absolute. Hegel now approaches the problem anew. Disatisfied with Schelling's solution of the problem, he proposes to substitute for the absolute of indifference, an absolute of imminent activity. According to Schelling, nature and spirit, object and subject proceed from the absolute. According to Hegel, the absolute becomes successively nature and spirit. The absolute of Hegel's speculative system is a process rather than a source. It is infinite, but unlike the spinosistic substance, it is an infinite of activity, opposition and tension rather than of static immensity and of undifferentiated plenitude. It is a maelstrom rather than a sea of unruffled rest. This concept of the absolute is Hegel's starting point, but we can understand neither his starting point nor his method unless we first obtain a clear conception of the frame of mind in which he approaches the problems of philosophy. In Fichte, as in Kant, the ethical character predominated, and in Fichte's philosophy, the practical reason retained its supremacy. In Schelling, it was the scientific artistic character that prevailed, and in his philosophy, the real and the ideal, the rational and the imaginative, were given equal play. In Hegel, the rational or idealistic temperament is predominant. In his vast philosophical synthesis, the theoretical is placed supreme above the practical. An action is subordinated to thought, for thought is the center in some of reality. Quote, the rational alone is real. Unquote, quote, all being is thought realized, and all becoming is a development of thought. Unquote, mere science, he observes, looks for the causal explanations of phenomena. Philosophy seeks to find the ideal interpretation of phenomena to understand them in terms of the absolute which is thought. As to content, therefore, philosophy does not go beyond experience. It is, to repeat Kant's distinction, transcendental, but not transcendent. Indeed, it cannot go beyond rational experience, since the rational alone is real, and philosophy must necessarily be in harmony with actuality and experience. As to form, however, philosophy differs from the empirical sciences. For, to the laws, classifications, and categories of these sciences, it adds the categories of notion, being, essence, et cetera. In logic, as we shall see, these categories are studied as it were in vacuo, that is, devoid of all empirical content. But in the philosophy of nature and in the philosophy of mind, they are studied in their development and determination. Logic is, nevertheless, a science of reality, for in it, reality is studied through the abstract categories. Hegel's is a critical philosophy, yet it is, at the same time, systematic or constructive. It is, as Waller says, quote, a system which is self- critical and systematic only through the absoluteness of its criticism, unquote. Or, to use Hegel's own phrase, it is, quote, an imminent incessant dialectic, unquote. Briefly then, Hegel's philosophy is idealism in the absolute sense of the word, logical or conceptual rather than ethical or scientific. It is a philosophy of identity in as much as it looks upon nature and spirit as manifestations of a higher absolute. It is a philosophy of development in as much as the absolute from which it deduces nature and spirit is not a static but a dynamic prize. This dynamic prize of nature and spirit is the process from in itself, an sich, through out of self, für sich und sein, to for itself, an und für sich. Before passing to consider Hegel's method, it is necessary to emphasize the importance of the idea of development and to explain the principle which governs all development, whether in the purely logical order or in nature and mind. In its barest statement, the principle is that all development passes through three stages, in itself, out of self, and for itself. This may be called a metaphysical application of the maxim on which the mystics insist, namely, die to live, for it pertains to the very essence of spirit that through disintegration it must attain to reintegration, through diversity to unity, through strife to peace, through opposition to agreement. It is a law of thought as well as a law of being and thought is being that a concept or a thing realises itself by going out from itself, losing itself in the other, and returning to itself. To take one of Hegel's favourite examples, freedom is developed by discipline, which is its opposite. The freedom of the child is surrendered in the discipline of education in order to become the major freedom of the man, and the freedom of the man is in turn surrendered in the discipline of law in order to become the freedom of the citizen. Hegel's method is to be understood in the light of his principle of development. Fichte, while admitting in theory that philosophic method consists in the use of thesis, antithesis and synthesis failed to develop this idea of method and to apply it to every department of thought. Schelling relied on intuition and gave free scope to his exuberant imagination. Hegel insists on the pruning of the imaginative faculty and the discussion of all intuitions by means of dialectic. Philosophy he observes, being the thinking study of things, does not stop at the intuition, which presents the thing, object in its immediate unity, for that is only part of the truth, but follows it out into the self mediation, whereby it passes into its opposites and back again to reconstructed unity. Philosophy therefore, must pursue a concept or an object from its immediate unity into the divergence of opposites, so as to arrive at the full truth in the reconciliation of opposites. For all position is negation, every concept contains its opposite, and all negation is position, every opposite contains that to which it is opposed, so that neither in affirmation nor in negation is there the full truth, but in the re-affirmation, which follows affirmation and negation. Here we have the famous dialectic method, the triadism, which determines the division as well as the method of Higa's philosophy. It is important to note here that, quote, at least the first and third category, the in itself and for itself in every triad, may be looked upon as definitions of the absolute or metaphysical definitions of God, the first where the thought form of the triad is formulated in its simplicity, and the third being the return from differentiation to a simple self-reference. The second subcategory, the out of self in each triad, where the grade of thought is in its differentiation, gives on the other hand a definition of the finite, unquote, we shall find as we proceed triad within triad. The first grade triad is idea, nature and spirit, which gives us the division of philosophy. Division of philosophy. Philosophy starts with the idea. It is scarcely necessary to remark that the term idea does not here designate a phenomenon of the individual consciousness, but the system of reason, the sum of reality. Now the idea following the law of development is at first in itself, an sich, then outside itself, für sich anders sein, and finally for itself, an und für sich. There, therefore, three parts of philosophy. First, logic, the science of the idea in itself. Second, philosophy of nature, the science of the idea outside itself or in the state of otherness. Third, philosophy of mind, the science of the idea come back to itself out of otherness. In each of these divisions, there are subordinate triadic divisions so that each part is a circle, rounded and completed in itself, while philosophy as a whole resembles a circle of circles. First, logic is the science of the pure idea. This does not mean that logic is the science of the forms of thought or that it is the science of mere thought. It is the science of reality, for the idea is the sum of reality, the synthetic unity of experience. Logic differs from the other parts of philosophy merely in this that it is the science of reality looked at through the medium of pure or abstract thought. If then logic is the morphology of thought, Hegelian logic is the morphology of the world of life, of reality. As Hegel himself says, quote, logic coincides with metaphysics, the science of things set and held in thoughts, unquote. It is important to remark here that the identification of logic with metaphysics necessitates a change in the meaning of the word category and in that of the phrase deduction of the categories. The forms of thought are for Hegel but they were for none of his Kantian predecessors. Forms of being in a sense akin to that which the schoolmen attach to the substantial forms. Although, of course, they differ radically from the scholastic forms in as much as they are wholly dynamic processes rather than static entities conceived after some remote analogy to a mold or die. The forms of thought are for Hegel but they were for none of his Kantian predecessors. Forms of being in a sense akin to that which the schoolmen attach to substantial forms. Although, of course, they differ radically from the scholastic forms in as much as they are wholly dynamic processes rather than static entities conceived after some remote analogy to a mold or die. If then the categories are processes of being as well as forms of thought, the deduction of the categories will be the tracing of their genealogy from the first form, which is being. It will not be enough to enumerate the categories and to indicate their systematic articulation. It will be necessary to discover and demonstrate the genetic connection, their functional dependence, so to speak, on one another. Logic is not only the morphology, it is also the physiology of thought. It is important to note also that neither in the logic nor anywhere else in Hegelian philosophy are the categories discovered. The task of discovering the categories belongs to experience and to empirical sciences. The categories being given, philosophy shows how they grow out of each other and are phases of the same reality. Philosophy not merely enumerates them. For that would be simply a mechanical synthesis. It also shows their functional interdependence and interconnection, thus affecting an organic synthesis. Logic is divided into A, doctrine of being, sign, that is, of the idea in its immediacy, B, doctrine of essence, reason, that is, of the idea in its reflection or mediation, C, doctrine of notion, begriff, that is, of the idea returned to itself. Being is the notion implicit or in germ. Essence is the show or appearance, shine of the notion, and the notion is being or idea in and for itself. A, doctrine of being. Logic begins with being because being is, on the one hand, pure thought and on the other, immediacy itself, simple and indeterminate. Now, if being is complete indeterminateness, it is identical with nothing, nix. Let us see what Hegel means by the famous formula being equals nothing. He means that, where there is undoubtedly a distinction between being and nothing, the distinction is not absolute, but only relative. When Aristotle enunciated the principle of contradiction, he gave expression to what is only part of the truth. For if it is true that every object and every thought is differentiated from every other object and every other thought and is therefore identical with itself, A is not not A, A equals A. It is no less true that every object and every thought is related to every other object and every other thought. And that, insofar as it is related to another, it is differentiated from itself and identical with that other. A is not A, A equals not A. Aristotle, emphasizing one aspect of thought, namely its differentiating power and feeling to realize the equal importance of the relating power of thought, formulated the principle of contradiction, the differentiation of things, as if it were an absolute truth, whereas it is only relative to one aspect of thought and being. Looking at thought and being from the viewpoint of totality, we see that the absolute differentiation or the absolute identity of concepts or of things is but part of the truth. The whole truth being that concepts and things are partially differentiated and partially identified. We have consequently as much right to say that being is nothing as that being is being, since the whole truth is that being is both, being and nothing. It is becoming, thus verdant. Here we have the barest and most abstract form of development by means of the union of opposites. Becoming is, as Hegel himself says, a poor term, meager of content. Life and mind are higher, richer, more intense unions of opposites than is mere becoming, which, however, is the abstract formula of life and mind. The result of the union of being and nothing in becoming is, first, the process itself, an endless weighing, a constant tension, and secondly, at each stage of the process, a product, so that to being identical with nothing succeeds determinate being or what we call something, or being then and there. Dasein. Now, the determinateness of being is, in its immediacy, quality, from which art it used the categories otherwise being, negation, limit, alteration, being for itself, which is the one with its attraction and repulsion. But in attraction and repulsion, the one unknowls itself and its determinants, becoming the many. At this point, therefore, quality passes over into quantity. Quantity is defined as, quote, pure being with mode or character, quality, is no longer taken as one with a being itself, but explicitly put as superseded or indifferent, unquote. Quantity arises from a unit and the identification or equalization of other units. Completing, now, the triadic circle within pure being, we have measure, mass, as the union of quality and quantity. In measure, these two are united. So, for example, progressive diminution in temperature causes a transition from heat to cold. For quantity is implicitly quality and quality is implicitly quantity. Being, which is thus determined by quality, quantity, and measure, becomes essence. Or, in other words, the determinations, quality, quantity, and measure being transitory. The result of their dialectic is essence. B, doctrine of essence. Essence, reason, is defined as being, coming into mediation with itself through the negativity of itself. Being, as we have seen, is immediate in itself identity. Now, when this immediacy is deposed, being is reduced to a reflected light and essence is being thus reflected on itself. As reflection supersedes immediacy, essence supersedes being. The reflection is, however, to be conceived as inward indirection. For the outer, rind, or curtain is being and the inner reflection is essence. There is, therefore, a duality here. The categories of essence come in pairs, as for instance, essence and appearance, force and expression, matter and form, substance and accident, cause and effect. A duality which, as we shall see, disappears in the notion wherein the opposite aspects of being attain final unity. First, we have essence and appearance. Immediate being is now an appearance. Yet it is not, as we should say, merely phenomenal. For it is the appearance of an essence and it is as necessary that the appearance should have an essence as it is that the essence should appear. Life, for example, must manifest itself. The cause must produce an effect and at the same time there is no manifestation of life without life and no production of an effect without a cause. Next, as determinations of essence, we have identity and difference. The unity of these is the ground, grund, which is defined, quote, the essence put explicitly in totality, unquote. At this point, essence has completed the circle of self-mediation, reflection, so that we are back again at immediate being, not at being in its primitive immediacy, but at being in an immediacy which results from the annulment of all intermediation. Being, which is immediate in this sense, is existence. Developing now the categories of ground and existence into an explicit unity, we arrive at the category of thing, ding. Thing in its relation to reflection on other things develops the category of properties and the union of essence with existence, combining all the essential with the existential aspects of being, gives the form of actuality, which is synonymous with reality. Similarly, by processing the details of which it is unnecessary to sit down here, the categories content and form, power and expression, inner and outer, substance and accident, cause and effect, action and reaction are deduced from essence. It is important, however, to note that as substance and accident, so cause and effect, and indeed all the categories which come under the head of essence and appearance are inseparable. Cause passes over into effect, so that the effect is the cause explicated or manifested, and effect in turn passes over into cause. For the causal series is not a progress at infinitum, the rectilinear movement from cause to effect being bent back on itself, so as to form a circle in which every effect becomes the cause of its cause. This reciprocity is illustrated in history. For example, the character and manners of a nation influence its constitution and laws, while in turn, the constitution and laws of a country influence the character and manners of its people. The category of reciprocity, Fexelwirkung, does away with the idea of predetermining fatality, shows that freedom is to be found in the concept of absolute but reciprocal necessity, and thus leads us to the category of the notion. C, doctrine of the notion. The notion, begriff, is, quote, essence reverted to the immediacy of being, unquote, or since each category is inseparable from its antecedent, the notion is the principle of freedom the power of substance serve realized. In fact, the notion contains all the earlier categories, and may therefore be defined as the truth of being and essence. Obviously then, we may understand the notion to be synonymous with totality fully realized, which is apparently what Hegel means when he says that quality, quantity, force, cause, necessity, freedom are nothing apart from the notion. The dialectical process of being was transition, that of essence was reflection. The movement of the notion is merely development. It is, Hegel tells us, to be looked upon as play, for the other, which it sets up, is not really another. Following this play of the notion, we find that its triadic development is subjective notion, objective notion, and absolute notion, or idea. A, subjective notion is the notion as notion, and as such has three moments, universality, particularity, and individuality. The meaning is that the notion passes from unity to partition and then spec to the explicit identification of parts in the one. This reintegration is effected by means of judgment, or tile, which, as its name implies, signifies the identification of partition with primary unity, so that the abstract form in which all judgments may be expressed is, quote, the individual is the universal, unquote. Now judgment, inasmuch as it affirms the identity of the individual with the universal, contains a contradiction. This contradiction is removed in the syllogism. The syllogism is therefore the complete expression of the subjective notion, the reintegration of the partitions of the notion in the universal by means of the particular, quote, consequently at the present stage in the deduction of the categories, the definition of the absolute is that it is a syllogism, or stating the principle in the form of a preposition, everything is a syllogism, unquote. B, objective notion. Thus far, the notion has been considered in its subjective stage, as it were in the abstract as form without content. But since it is a form which, in its ultimate development, is a union of opposites, it constantly tends to objectify itself. The notion as object is the totality of objects, the universe. Here, as usual, we are to distinguish three forms, mechanism, or the juxtaposition of independent objects held together as an aggregate, chemism, or the mutual attraction, penetration, and neutralization of objects, elements, held together by affinity, and organism, or the complete unity of purpose of action in which the independence of the objects, body cells, disappears, and parts are made to serve the purpose of the entire structure. Now, notion become object implies a contradiction. For a subjective notion was form without content, so the object as object is content without form. The play of the notion has here reached a point where the notion is not a notion. The contradiction, however, disappears in the idea or absolute notion. C, absolute notion, is the truth in itself and for itself, the absolute unity of notion and objectivity. It may be defined as reason, subject, object, the union of the real with the idea, of the body with the soul, et cetera. It is essentially a process. In its immediate form, it is life. When it becomes its own object in the theoretical order, it becomes the true. When it becomes its own object in the practical order, it becomes the good. And when, by its theoretical and practical activity, the knowledge of the true and the pursuit of the good, it returns to itself from the bias and finiteness of cognition and volition, it becomes the absolute idea. Life is defective, inasmuch as it is the idea implicit or natural. Cognition and volition is defective insofar as it is the idea as merely conscious and therefore one-sided. The absolute idea unites the truth of life with the truth of consciousness, supplying the defect of the former and overcoming the one-sidedness of the latter. This is the goal of the entire series of logical processes. In its next phase, the idea passes over into otherness and becomes nature. Thus far, we have followed the triadic developments of the idea, reality, reason, the absolute, through processes which in non-technical language may be stalled the dialectic of the divine reason until early to the creation of the universe. We come in the next place to the study of reason in nature. Second, philosophy of nature. Nature is the idea, reason, and the state of otherness. A state intermediate between the immediacy of reason as notion and the reintegrated immediacy of reason as it fully realizes itself in spirit. In nature, the idea has become externalized and particularized. Its unity has disappeared or rather is concealed. Still nature, while it is a state of the idea, is also a process of spirit. And although the natural sciences are right in regarding phenomena as isolated realities, they do not fully exhaust the truth of nature. The very plurality of phenomena being a contradiction which of itself shows that nature is a process. Philosophy therefore, taking a higher viewpoint than that of science, represents nature as a series of successful struggles by which the idea, scattered as it were in plurality, regains unity and self-identity, self-consciousness in the individual spirit, man, which is the goal of the processes of nature. Exclude this concept of the upward struggle of nature and natural phenomena become a tangled mass of events in inextricable disorder. There are three stages in the process which is nature, namely mechanics, matter and space, physics, bodies, and organics, life. In bodies, nature attains individuality. In living organisms, it attains objectivity or consciousness. It is only in man that it attains self-consciousness, self as subject and object. Man, however, while he is the highest product of the idea in nature, is, like nature itself, subject to the law of development. No sooner, therefore, has the idea become spirit by attaining self-consciousness in man than it undergoes a further and final process of development as subjective, objective, and absolute spirit. This last process is the subject matter of the philosophy of mind. The philosophy of nature has been pronounced the least original and the least consistent of the three portions into which Hegel's philosophy is divided. It underwent more modification in the hands of Hegel's pupils and successors than did the logic or the philosophy of mind. Yet, even in a modified form, the Hegelian philosophy of nature is far from being consistent with the principle of absolute idealism. Indeed, the supreme test of a system of metaphysics is its compatibility with the ultimate truth of empirical science, a test to which it is safe to say no system of idealism from the days of Permanidus to those of Hegel has consistently conformed. Not that the metaphysical point of view is not different from that of the physical sciences. There may, however, be difference without antagonism. For, as Hegel himself observes, quote, the philosophical way of presenting things is not a capricious effort, for once in a way to walk on one's head as a change from the ordinary method of walking on one's feet, but it is because the manner of science does not fully satisfy that we are obliged to go beyond it, unquote. Third, philosophy of mind. Mind, spirit, gist, is the truth of nature. Its formal essence is freedom. The absolute self-identity of the idea. Mind, it is important to note, is the most complete development of the absolute, so that when we say the absolute is mind, we have the supreme definition of the absolute. But our thorough mind is absolutely the price of nature, yet for us, it comes out of nature and therefore brings with it what may be called a germ of development. In this development, we are to distinguish, as usual, three stages. Subjective mind, objective mind, and absolute mind. A, subjective mind. If freedom is the formal essence of mind, consciousness is its material essence. For it is by successive steps towards complete self-consciousness that mind attains perfect freedom. Hegel agrees with Spinoza in teaching that the emancipative acts of the soul are conditioned by advance in knowledge. A doctrine which does not surprise us when we remember that, in Hegel's view, thought is essentially dynamic, having, so to speak, a volitional as well as a cognitive phase. While mind was still immersed in nature, it took part in the planetary life of the universe responding to the change of seasons, et cetera. Partially emerging from nature, it experienced in the first dull stirring of consciousness, namely sensation, Empfindung, a kind of vague realization for itself as in and for itself. Feeling, das fühlen, succeeded sensation and was in turn succeeded by self-feeling, selbstgefühl, which is the ground of consciousness, Bewusstsein. When it has reached this stage, mind, recognizing itself as an ego, has divested itself of nature. Next, as theoretical mind, it passes through the stages of intuition, anschauen, representation, Vorstellung and thought, das Denken. Having now taken possession of its intuition's representations and thoughts, it proceeds as practical mind to determine its contents. This it does by means of impulse, trebe, desire, begirn, and inclination, naigung, thus arriving at complete self-determination, which is freedom. Free will is therefore the union of theoretical and practical mind. Quote, it was Hegel remarks through Christianity that this idea of actual freedom came into the world. According to Christianity, the individual as such has an infinite value as the object and aim of divine law. Quote, the Greeks and Romans, he explains, maintained that freedom is an accident of birth, or is grounded in strength of character, or is acquired by education and philosophy, while Christianity, on the contrary, maintains that man as man is free. Freedom, once attained, must be realized, and according to the universal formula of development, it must be realized through its opposite, necessity. It is for this reason that mind objectifies itself in law, the family, and the state. In this way, through the discipline of necessity, the egotistic impulse becomes property right, sexual impulse becomes moral and marriage, and the inclination to revenge is transformed into punitive justice in the state. B. Objective Mind The yoke of necessity to which free will subjects itself in order to realize full freedom is A. right, recht, in which freedom attains outer actuality, B. morality, moralität, in which it attains inner actuality, and C. social morality, sitlichkeit, in which it attains complete actuality, which is both inner and outer. A. From right springs ownership, property, and from ownership the right to dispose of one's possessions by contract. Now, although contract refers primarily to individual property, it implies the merging of two wills in the common will. Hence arises the possibility of conflict between the will of the individual and that of the community. This conflict consists wrong, unrecht, which is the duty of the public authority to correct the punishment. In this way the idea of contract leads to the idea of the state. B. From morality, spring purpose, the inner determination of the subject, intention, the subjective aim of the action to be performed inasmuch as that aim is implied in the general well-being of the subject, and good and evil. The moral aspect of action. These determine the moral standpoint, the conscientious attitude, as we should call it, of the agent. However, they determine it so vaguely and unsatisfactorily that a conflict of apparent duties often results. For conscience is liable to error, and what is subjectively represented as good may be objectively evil. To write therefore and to morality must be added social morality. Write regulates merely the external, material interests of life. Conscience is one-sided because it is subjective. Social morality, being at once objective and subjective, external and internal, is the complete realization of freedom through the discipline of necessity. C. Social morality. In social moral life, the individual recognizes that what he ought to do is. For his duty is presented to him in its objective concrete realization in the family and in the state. He is no longer subject to the uncertainty of selective reflection. He sees his duty and he is, as it were, constrained to fulfill it. It is by submitting to this restraint that he attains the fullness of freedom. The primary social-moral institution is the family. It is the foundation of the state and is, of its nature, permanent. He was opposed to the principle of divorce and would justify the granting of divorce only in exceptional cases provided for by law. Civil society is the relative totality of individuals. It depends on the one hand from the family, for the family is an individual, and on the other hand from the state, for the state is a complete organic unity in which individuals as individuals do not exist. Civil society aims merely at the protection of individual interests. Its mission is purely economic. The state, start, is the perfect social organization. It does not live for the individuals of which it is composed, but for the ethical idea which it embodies. Individuals being merely means which when occasion demands it must be sacrificed as all private interests must be sacrificed for the good of the whole. Hegel in treating of the state takes up in succession constitutional law, the inner form of particular state organizations, international law, the outer form of states which is regulative of the interrelations of states, and the dialectics of history, the laws of the general development of the universal mind which manifests itself both in the internal constitution and in the outer forms of particular states. Alpha, constitutional law in Nils Staatsrecht. The constitution is the articulation or organization of state power. From the point of view of the individual, the power of the state is a restriction. Still and as much as it functions for the common good, it is the substance of the volition of the individual. By nature, men are unequal. But before the law, that is by virtue of the principle of state organization, the merging of individual freedom in the objective mind, all men are equal. This however means that as abstract persons they are equal. For in the concrete there is no perfect equality. Men being equal before the law only in so far as they are equal outside the law. The collective spirit of the nation is the constitution. The real living totality, the embodiment of the collective spirit is the government. And although according to the basic laws of organization, the government must divide its powers, legislative, judicial and executive. It must nevertheless preserve the highest form of organic unity. For this reason, a constitutional monarchy is superior to a republic on the one hand and to an absolute monarchy on the other hand. But while Hegel opposes the extension of individualism within the state, he is in favor of the individualism of states with respect to one another. For the state is based on national spirit and the national spirit is fostered by unity of language, customs, religion, etc. So long as a nation stands for a national idea, it is a crime Hegel teaches to an exit. Better international law, including treaty law and natural law, governs the relation of states to one another in time of peace and in time of war. War, Hegel teaches, is the indispensable means of political progress. It is a crisis in the development of the idea which is embodied in the different states. A crisis out of which the better state, that is the state which approaches more closely to the ideal, is certain to emerge victorious. For right is might. The better state conquers because it is better. Thus in every period of the world's history there has been some one chosen people, a nation which realizes more perfectly than any other the ideal of national life. This consideration leads to the next point, the dialectics of history. Gamma, the dialectics of history. Hegel's philosophy of history is perhaps the most important portion of his speculative system. In it we find the most intelligible application of the principle of development, which dominates the method and contents of the other portions of his philosophy. Indeed, Hegel as well as Schelling insisted that the lower is to be understood by the higher. The philosophy of history will therefore throw light on the philosophy of nature and on logic. The most general definition of the philosophy of history is that it is the thoughtful consideration of history. More specifically, the thought which philosophy brings to the study of history is the conception of a sovereign reason of which the succession of historical events is a rational process. This is at once a postulate of history inasmuch as it is a demonstrated thesis of philosophy and a conclusion of history inasmuch as it is the most obvious inference from the study of historical happenings. The micrologist admits the peddling of the idea of providence but denies its applicability to the process of history as a whole. We must not, Hegel observes, imagine God to be too weak to exercise his wisdom on the grand scale. History, then, is the process of reason as spirit. Interest, passion, character and a word all the forces at play in the process are a compound of will and intelligence. The world historical persons, the great men of history, apparently drew the impulse of their lives from themselves. In reality, however, they were great because they, quote, had an insight into the requirements of the time, which was ripe for development, unquote. They embodied the irresistible force of spirit in their own lives. They lived not for themselves, but for the idea which was their master passion. Therefore, was not a happy one. The development of the spirit in history aims at complete freedom. The process is, however, not a tranquil growth, but a stern, reluctant working through opposition to complete realization. Thus we have three stages, oneness, expansion and concentration. The Oriental monarchies represented despotism. The Grecian republics represented the unstable equilibrium of democracy, tending towards demagogic rule. And the Christian and parliamentary monarchy represents the reintegration of freedom in constitutional government. Here we have an ideal example of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, the triadic movement, which is the law of all development. Even in the highest and most perfect form of political organization, mind is limited. And though the necessity which the state imposes makes for ultimate freedom, yet it is necessity. Mind therefore, having objectified itself in the state, must complete the circle of development by returning to itself, becoming identical with itself and subjecting itself to itself alone, as absolute mind in art, religion and philosophy. C. Absolute mind is the ultimate identification of mind with itself. Here mind subjects itself to itself, not as limited, but as infinite. There are three stages of absolute mind, art, religion and philosophy. A. Art. In art, mind has an intuitive contemplation of itself as infinite in the objective actuality of the art material. According as the art material becomes more docile, less rebellious to the idea we have architecture, sculpture, painting, music and poetry. This is at once the line of ascending perfection and the line of historical development. B. Religion. In religion, mind feels that the idea is superior to all its finite and particular manifestations. Religion arises from poetry, the highest form of art, but it is by its nature a protest against the tendency of art to become pantheistic. Religion insists on the infinity of God and the finiteness of man, whereas the tendency of art is to defy man and represent God as human. Nevertheless, it is essential to religion to represent the infinite and finite as in some relation with each other. Oriental religions exaggerated the idea of the infinite. Greek religion gave undue importance to the finite. Christianity, being a synthesis of both, represents the union of the infinite and the finite in the doctrine of the incarnation and represents all truth in the dogma of the Trinity by teaching as far as representation can teach the triadic development of imminent reason as idea, nature and spirit. The intellectual content of Christianity is thus the same as that of philosophy. There is no supernatural truth, gnosticism. Religion, however, contains the truth in the form of symbols and representations. Philosophy, therefore, which contains the truth as reason, is superior to religion. See, philosophy is the unity of art and religion. The infinite, which as the beautiful was rendered visible in art and as God was made the object of representation and feeling in religion, is now, as the true, made the object of the thinking faculty in philosophy. Philosophy is consequently, quote, the highest, freest and wisest phase of the union of subjective and objective mind and the ultimate goal of all development, unquote. Historical position. It is difficult to trace even an outline the influence which Hegel's philosophy exercised on the thought of his own and subsequent generations. Some of Hegel's contemporaries regarded his system of philosophy as the organic synthesis of all preceding speculation and the final form of philosophic thought. Others believed, and not a few still believe, that that system must be the foundation of all profitable speculation in the future. And when due allowance is made for the exaggerations which are inevitable and the cult of greatness attains, as in this instance it has attained almost to the proportions of religious renovation, it cannot be denied that Hegel's was the mind which in developing towards a more complete unity the elements of Kantian thought took the most comprehensive synthetic view of the problems of philosophy, reached farthest and deepest into every department of knowledge and found in the principle of development best suited by reason of its simplicity and universal applicability to hold together the various elements of a system extending from the promise of logic to the analysis of religion. It is safe to say that no department of human knowledge has failed to feel the influence of Hegel's doctrines or at least of his method. And this is due partly to the fact that his philosophy embodies the highest aspirations of the spirit of the 19th century, the spirit of collectivism and partly to the fact that in his system of thought so large scope is assigned to the principle of development which has so dominated the scientific as well as the philosophical thought of the century. But the very greatness of Hegel's plan the vastness of the enterprise itself was the surest guarantee of its ultimate failure. The rational alone is real is a formula which as understood and applied by Hegel means that there are no limits to the power of the thinking faculty. For whether we understand the rational to refer to the infinite reason of the creator or to the finite reason of the creature the conclusion is ultimately the same that everything real is to be analysed in terms of rational thought. How inadequate is this view of reality the reaction against Hegelianism has taught us by insisting on the importance of the non-rational and how hopeless is the self-imposed task of this new agnosticism is proved by Hegel's concept of God which is the least satisfactory portion of his philosophy. The attempt to bring all reality under a single formula may indeed be the ideal of philosophy but it is certainly an ideal which is as unattainable in practice as the dream of the world conqueror who would bring all the nations of the earth under the scepter of one monarch. The highest unification which the finite mind can effect will necessarily fall short of absolute unity for it is not given to the human mind to grasp the totality of being and to find in one formula a rationale of all reality. No philosophical system can consistently claim to comprehend God it may discover him but it must acknowledge that he and his ways are inscrutable. Philosophy must leave room for faith and its last word must be the necessity of faith. Gnosticism as the modern world is just now realising is more irreligious than agnosticism it was the followers of Hegel who first revealed to the religious world the true drift of Hegelianism. The so-called Hegelian leftists develop the anti-Christian elements in Hegel's thought while the rightists maintained that the teaching of Hegel accords with Christian faith and the doctrines of the church. To the leftists belonged Strauss 1808 to 1874 author of Das Leben Jesu Bruno Bauer 1809 to 1882 author of Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte des Johannes not to be confused with F. C. Bauer 1792 to 1860 Head of the Tübingen School Feuerbach 1804 to 1872 author of Das Wesen des Christentums and the Socialist Karl Marx 1818 to 1883 To the rightists belonged Gershel 1781 to 1861 Rosenkranz 1805 to 1879 Professor at Königsberg and Johann Eduard Erdmann 1805 to 1892 Professor at Halle End of Chapter 65 Chapter 66 of History of Philosophy This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Lizzie Schneider History of Philosophy by William Turner Chapter 66 German Philosophy Schopenhauer In the movement which arose in opposition to Heger's philosophy we may distinguish three currents First, the psychological movement represented by Fries and Beinecke Second, the realistic movement represented by Herbert Third, the volunteerist movement represented by Schopenhauer First, psychological reaction against Hegelianism Fries 1773 to 1843 Professor at Jena and at Heidelberg and author of the New Critic of Reason 1807 adopted Kahn's results but rejected the method of transcendental criticism substituting for it empirical psychological inquiry which he made the basis of all philosophy He also admitted into his system of thought elements derived from the Fidism of Ticobi His work was continued and developed by Beinecke 1798 to 1854 who succeeded to Hegel's chair at the University of Berlin 1832 and by Uwe Wieg 1826 to 1871 and Fodlar 1806 to 1881 who taught at Königsberg and at Jena respectively Second, realistic metaphysics Herbert 1776 to 1841 after studying at the University of Jena spent several years as private tutor in Switzerland where he made the acquaintance of Pestalozzi 1746 to 1827 the founder of modern pedagogy 1802 to 1809 Herbert taught at Göttingen In 1809 he was transferred to Königsberg when he was recalled to Göttingen in 1833 His collected works were published in 12 volumes Leipzig 1850 to 1852 by his pupil Hartenstein Herbert took up the realistic elements of Kahn's philosophy and combined them with Leipnizian monadism The metaphysical system which he evolved from these premises he himself described as realism He defines philosophy as the elaboration of the concepts which underlie the different sciences thus outlining the task which he undertook namely A to restore realism B to rehabilitate the principle of contradiction and C to establish philosophy on a scientific basis In his metaphysics he teaches that being is not one as the aleatics and pantheists held but many The multiple realities, Rihain which constitute real being correspond in a measure to the monads of Leipniz philosophy They differ however in this that they are devoid not only of all perception and incipient consciousness but of all activity whatsoever except the power of self-preservation Extension in space, action in time Inherence, causality involve contradictions which philosophy removes by the elaboration of these concepts In his psychology Herbert conceives the soul as a simple real essence one of the Rihain and the ideas of the soul he conceives to be acts of self-preservation There are not therefore several faculties of the soul but one faculty the function of which is to preserve the soul in its indestructible originality Perception arises from the conflict of this self-preserving tendency with the self-preserving tendency of other real beings Mental states are thus an equilibrium of opposing forces and Herbert by attempting to reduce psychic life to a mechanism the loss of which are the same as those of physics forestalled the attempts of Fechne and Wund to make psychology an exact science The best known example of these mechanics of the mind is the attempt to determine the sum of a rest of ideas Consistently, with his rejection of the plurality of mental faculties Herbert identifies will with thought and teaches that the freedom of the will is merely the assured supremacy of the strongest idea or mass of ideas Historical position Herbert is distinguished by his systematic opposition to the method starting point and conclusions of Hegel His philosophy is a union of Iliatic, Leibnizian and Kantian elements We must not overlook the fact that Herbert devoted special attention to the pedagogical aspects of philosophy His rejection of the plural concept of mind being of special importance on account of its influence on the development of the theory of education Third, volunteerism The most important of the anti-Hegelian movements was that inaugurated by Schopenhauer a movement which may be described as an emphatic assertion of the importance of the non-rational in a philosophical synthesis Schopenhauer Life Arthur Schopenhauer was born at Danzig in 1788 After travelling in France and England he entered the University of Göttingen and devoted himself to the study of the natural sciences and of Plato From Göttingen he went to Berlin, where Fichte was lecturing at the time Then he went to Jena and there obtained his doctor's degree for which he wrote the dissertation entitled The Fourfold Route of the Principle of Sufficient Reason über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom Zureichenden Grunde, 1813 During the four following years which he spent at Dresden he devoted much attention to the study of Hindu philosophy His principal work, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, appeared in 1819 After two unsuccessful attempts to expound his philosophy from the professor's chair and to stem the tide of Hegel's popularity at Berlin he retired in 1831 to Frankfurt am Main where he spent the remainder of his life in a learned retirement indulging his moody and passionate temperament and elaborating a system of pessimism in which one may see, in addition to the influence of his badistic studies the reflection of the personal character of the man He died in 1860 Sources Schopenhauer's complete works have been edited several times for example Leipzig 1873-1874 second edition 1877 Leipzig 1890 and finally Leipzig 1894 The following works exist in English translations Fourfold Route, etc. London 1891 The Welt als Wille, etc. Three volumes London and Boston 1884-1886 Essays Five volumes London and New York 1896 The best English presentations of Schopenhauer's philosophy are to be found in Wallis's Schopenhauer London 1890 and Coldwell's Schopenhauer system and its philosophical significance New York 1896 Doctrines General character of Schopenhauer's philosophy Kant, Plato, and the Buddhist philosophers contributed to the building of Schopenhauer's system of thought From Kant and the Kantians was derived the transcendental element the criticism with which Schopenhauer started and the synthetic arrangement by which he grouped all the elements of thought under the absolute will From Plato was derived the theory of ideas as stages of the voluntary phenomenon and from the Buddhists the pessimism and the negation of will which formed the practical aspects of Schopenhauer's system Mansion must also be made of Hegel's influence which, however, was wholly indirect Indeed, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that Schopenhauer was a volunteerist because Hegel was an intellectualist the former insisting on the importance of the non-rational because the latter identified the rational with the real Starting Point Schopenhauer, like Fichte and Schelling starts with the Kantian resolution of nominal reality into subject and object, thing in itself and addresses himself as they address themselves to the task of analysing the object with a few to perfecting the Kantian synthesis Influenced to a greater extent than he was aware of by Fichte's subjectivism he maintained that there is no object without subject Instead, however, of resolving the subjective aspect of the object into a rational activity of the ego he resolved it into the volitional activity of the will which is not only the essence of man but also the essence of the universe The Fourfold Route In the treatise entitled The Fourfold Route of the Principle of Sufficient Reason Schopenhauer teaches that the celebrated principle which had played so important a part in Leibniz philosophy has four forms corresponding to the four classes of representations to which it is applied namely, first, Principium Rationis Ascendi as applied to formal intuitions second, Principium Rationis Fiendi as applied to empirical intuitions third, Principium Rationis Agendi as applied to acts of the will and fourth, Principium Rationis Cognos Ascendi as applied to abstract concepts The World as Representation In his most important work The World as Will and Representation Schopenhauer first takes up and evolves the epistemological principles which he had expounded in his earlier treatise Here he lays special emphasis on the notion of causality When we analyse our experience he says we find that all that is given is sensation or representation The understanding, however which may not be separated from sensation immediately refers the representation to an external cause Now, if we were merely rational beings endowed with sense and intellect but devoid of volition we should never be able to answer the question what is the external cause of representation It is by combining internal experience with external that we perceive Will to be the ultimate real the nominal cause of the phenomenon Will therefore determines our knowledge of reality and constitutes reality itself It is important to note that by Will Schopenhauer understands not merely the faculty of choice but also impulse the blind, unreasoning impulse to self-preservation which manifests itself in pleasure and pain hope and fear, love and hatred in the word The Will to Live To this blind impulse he subordinates knowledge and although he claims that volunteerism is opposed to materialism on the one hand and to subjective idealism on the other the whole trend of his investigation of knowledge is towards the materialistic conclusion that understanding is a function of the brain In this connection he quotes with a parent approval the celebrated saying attributed to Cabanes as the liver secret's bile the brain secret's ideas The Will is Absolute All representation is conditioned by causality, space, time, etc which constitute the principle of individuation The Will is Subject to none of these conditions It is neither individual nor personal although individual acts of the Will volitions, being merely representations are subject to causality, space, time and other individuating conditions The World is Will In the second book of the treatise above mentioned The World is Will, etc Schopenhauer proceeds to the study of the external world which is the Will in the form of objectivity that is in the body which it creates for itself Starting with self he takes for granted as axiomatic that the human body is merely the external manifestation of the inner force which is human Will The Will may be said to create the body In truth however the inner volition and the outer bodily action are not cause and effect but are merely the inner and the outer aspect of the same reality Turning next to the world of natural phenomena he finds there the all permeating or producing Will as natural force This force manifests itself in purely mechanical action, reaction in chemical affinity and the striving and unconscious repetition of vegetable life and in the conscious self-preserving impulse of animals Everywhere and at every moment Will is indefatigably active Organising, preserving, sustaining It is Will that endows the animal with weapons of defence and with the means of obtaining its food It is Will too that endows the animal with consciousness and man with intellect For these are weapons like any other contrivance for escaping from the enemy or securing prey Indeed intellect is the most perfect of all the weapons with which Will has endowed creatures For as the ink sack of the cuttlefish serves to conceal the animal's flight or approach so intellect serves to hide the intent of the Will and thus to ensure its success The Will to live as manifested in vegetable, animal and human life is essentially a combative impulse As one form of existence necessarily comes in the way of other forms there arises an inevitable struggle Here Schopenhauer undoubtedly forstals the Darwinian concept of nature as a struggle for existence Yet although he insists on the influence of want and environment on organic development he is opposed to the Lamarckian hypothesis of the evolution of the higher from the lower species Pessimism Schopenhauer was by temperament and disposition inclined to dwell on the gloomy side of the picture of life which he presented in his doctrine of the struggle of nature The only positive feelings he taught are those of pain Pleasure is the merely temporary satisfaction of our need and is therefore negative Positive pleasure is an illusion Quote The simple truth is that we ought to be miserable and we are so The chief source of the serious evils which affect man is man himself Whoever keeps this fact clearly in view beholds the world as a hell which surpasses that of Dante in this respect that one man must be the devil of another Life is a path of red-hot coals with a few cool places here and there Quote The escape from bondage In the third and fourth books of the treatise The world as will etc Schopenhauer undertakes to answer the question How is man to escape from the bondage of will and the misery of life In his answer he maintains throughout the individualistic standpoint He has no belief in deliverance through the ultimate development of the race Each man must deliver himself Now the means of deliverance are three Art, sympathy and negation of the will to live Art When a man loses himself in artistic contemplation pure perception takes full possession of his conscious life The will disappears and with it all suffering In this connection Schopenhauer attaches a special importance to music as a means of deliverance from the bondage of suffering But he confesses it requires a very great effort to maintain the artistic attitude We must look therefore beyond art to find a more effectual remedy Sympathy differs from art in this that it is permanent and maybe universal Misery as we have seen arises from the egoistic impulse to preserve one's own existence at the expense of the well-being of others Now sympathy leads us to look upon sufferings of others as our sufferings It implies the oneness of all nature the disappearance of the concepts of individuality which is an illusion and the substitution of the will to let live for the will to live It is therefore the ground phenomenon of ethics yet even sympathy can only alleviate suffering In order wholly to destroy and remove the source of pain man must negate the will to live which is the origin of suffering Negation of the will to live Schopenhauer finds both in Christian asceticism and in Buddhism examples of men in whom the will to live is completely eradicated men who are utterly indifferent to self-preservation and the preservation of the ways This is the ideal of quiescence which the philosopher should strive to attain the nirvana in which passion and desire and conflict and suffering disappear to give place to perfect peace historical position Schopenhauer's philosophies lack in in systematic cohesiveness his theory of knowledge, his pantheism identity of will with reality his pessimism and his doctrine of deliverance from suffering are not articulated into a rational system Perhaps the failure to furnish a complete and consistent rational scheme was pardonable in one who insisted so emphatically on the irrational nature of reality Indeed it is almost impossible in this instance to separate the philosophy from the philosopher so deeply do the doctrines of Schopenhauer bear the impress of the character of a man His doctrines are however of extrinsic importance as reflecting the sentiments of an age-grown weary of life and surfited with rationalism and idealism For pessimism is an index of inferior vitality rather than of superior spiritual insight The insistence on the non-rational nature of reality is a symptom of a melody which may be traced to an overdose of transcendental metaphysics Edward von Hartmann, born at Berlin in 1842, is the most original of Schopenhauer's disciples and is regarded as the greatest living exponent of modified volunteerism and mitigated pessimism His system, which was first expounded in the philosophie and since then has been developed and defended in several important treatises may be described as a philosophy of the unconscious Hartmann, inspired with the idea of reconciling Schopenhauer with Heger tries to unite the pantheism of the former with the evolutionary idealism of the latter The ground of reality, the absolute is, he teaches, the unconscious which is not an irrational will but a will acting as if it were intelligent The will, guided by ideas acts with the knowledge of its actions but since it does not know that it knows, it is unconscious Hartmann modifies Schopenhauer's pessimism by teaching not only that the individuals freed from the misery of life by attaining the negation of the will to live but that the whole universe is moving by an evolutionary process towards a universal redemption from evil by means of a universal denial of will Wilhelm Richard Wagner 1813-1883 and Friedrich Nietzsche 1844-1900 are cited among those who were influenced in their artistic and literary labours by Schopenhauer's doctrines End of chapter 66 Chapter 67 of History of Philosophy This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org History of Philosophy by William Turner Chapter 67 The Scottish School While German philosophers inspired by the idea of counteracting the scepticism of Hume were evolving systems of transcendental philosophy from the principles laid down by Kant there was, developing in Hume's own country a school of philosophy which although it made common cause with transcendentalism against scepticism reached conclusions very different from those of the transcendentalists Indeed, in the first stages of its development the Scottish School was as much opposed to transcendentalism as it was to scepticism for the doctrine of common sense is not merely an affirmation of dogmatism but also a protest against absolute idealism Macosh whose work on the Scottish philosophy is a standard authority regards Reid as the first fit representative of the Scottish School although Sir William Hamilton traces the history of the school back to Carmichael and Hutchison Reid Life Thomas Reid 1710-1796 who succeeded Adam Smith as professor of philosophy at the University of Glasgow is the author of An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense 1764 Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man 1785 and essays on the Active Powers of Man 1788 The edition of Reid's works begun by Hamilton in 1827 was completed after the latter's death The seventh edition appeared in 1872 Doctrines There are in Reid's philosophy two points of doctrine which deserve special attention his theory of perception and his doctrine of common sense Theory of Perception Reid rightly traced the immaterialism of Berkeley and the scepticism of Hume to the Cartesian doctrine that what we directly and immediately perceive is not the external object but a subjective modification which is an image of the object a doctrine which he falsely attributes to the school men In opposition to this representative theory of perception Reid maintains the presentative theory that our knowledge of external things is immediate startled however by his own boldness as Hamilton observes he proceeds to deliver the whole case into the hands of his opponents by declaring that the perception of external objects is to be exempted from the region of consciousness so that while he holds that we have an immediate perception of external objects he does not admit that we are conscious of such perception Philosophy, Reid teaches has no other root but the principles of common sense it grows out of them and draws its nourishment from them severed from this root its honors wither its sap is dried up it dies and rots Zeno the Aliatic Pirro the Skeptic Berkeley the Immaterialist and Hume the Phenomenalist overlooked this truth Hobbes and Descartes were equally neglectful of the claims of common sense are accountable for the present and prosperous state of philosophy the principle on which Reid's philosophy is grounded is the following all knowledge and all science must be built upon principles that are self-evident and of such principles every man who has common sense is a competent judge self-evident truths such as the axiom of causality are to be exempted from critical inquiry they are primary data of intellectual thought in developing this fundamental principle Reid takes advantage of the twofold meaning of the term common sense, namely one, the combination of qualities constituting good sense or the faculty of sound judgment two, the aggregate of original principles planted in the minds of all men Hamilton has shown that if we take the latter meaning of the term Reid's argument is a valid and legitimate refutation of skepticism historical position not even the most enthusiastic of Reid's admirers claim for him the title of great philosopher he has not, writes Macosh, the mathematical consecutiveness of Descartes the speculative genius of Leibniz the sagacity of Locke the spiritual of Berkeley or the detective skill of Hume Reid himself was of opinion that it is genius and not the want of it that adulterates philosophy the greatest benefit that Reid conferred on philosophy was the importance which he attached and succeeded in causing others to attach to introspection or self-observation James Oswald 1727-1793 and James Beattie 1735-1803 popularized and applied to theological controversy the principles of the philosophy of common sense mention must also be made of a contemporary of Reid the eccentric author of ancient metaphysics or the science of universals Edinburgh 1779-1799 namely James Burnett Lord Mombardo 1714-1799 the philosophy of the Scottish school was developed by Stuart, Brown and Macintosh before reaching its final phase as represented in the philosophy of Hamilton Dugald Stuart Life Dugald Stuart 1753-1828 was the most eminent of the followers of Reid his principal work is entitled elements of the philosophy of the human mind his collected works were published in ten volumes by Hamilton Edinburgh 1854-1858 doctrines Stuart accepts Reid's analysis of perception while vindicating Reid's empirical method of self-observation he attached greater importance than Reid had done to the association of ideas he protested however with the utmost vigor against the materialism of the first associationists Hartley, Priestley and Erasmus Darwin Thomas Brown Life Thomas Brown 1778-1820 after studying law and medicine at the University of Edinburgh was appointed in 1810 associate professor with Dugald Stuart his chief works are an inquiry into the relation of cause and effect 1804 and lectures on the philosophy of the human mind 1820 doctrines Brown retains the fundamental doctrine of the Scottish school namely the existence of indemonstrable first principles he is however more inclined than were his predecessors to restrict the number of these principles and to give larger scope to the association in accounting for the origin of our universal and necessary beliefs in his analysis of the processes of sensation he attaches great importance to the muscular sense with regard to causation he teaches that while the relation of cause and effect is merely one of invariable succession our judgement concerning that relation is not the result of association or custom or intuitive belief Macintosh life Sir James Macintosh was no less distinguished as a statesman, historian, essayist and critic than as a philosopher his principal philosophical works are a dissertation on the progress of ethical philosophy contributed in 1830 to the Encyclopedia Britannica and a discourse on the law of nature and nations 1799 doctrines Macintosh, while adhering to the original speculative principle of the Scottish school, even going so far as to accuse Brown of openly revolting against the authority of Reid departed from the ethical tradition of the followers of Hutchison to the extent of admitting that benevolence is the universal characteristic of human virtue but although he betrays here the influence of the utilitarians he does not maintain that the happiness of others is the universal criterion of moral conduct he is inclined rather to side with the intuitionists and to insist on the supremacy of the immediate judgement of conscience the next representative of the Scottish school is Sir William Hamilton who, under the influence of Kantian principles developed the philosophy of his predecessors Reid and Stewart into a more comprehensive system it was, however, inevitable that the introduction of foreign elements of speculative criticism should react on the dogmatism of the founders of the school and lead to a partial skepticism which, in the 19th century proved a no less formidable photo theism in religion and to absolutism in philosophy than was Hume's skepticism in the 18th Sir William Hamilton Life Sir William Hamilton was born at Glasgow in 1788 after completing his studies in the department of arts in the university of his native city he took up the study of medicine at Edinburgh in 1807 he went to Oxford after leaving Oxford he began the study of law and in 1813 was admitted to the Scottish bar in 1821 he was appointed to the chair of civil history in the university of Edinburgh in 1836 he was appointed to the chair of logic and metaphysics which he held until his death in 1856 sources besides the discussions on philosophy literature and education 1852 the lectures on metaphysics second edition 1866 the lectures on logic second edition 1866 in the Edinburgh review from 1829 to 1839 Hamilton contributed to English philosophical literature his valuable editions of Reeds and Stuart's works consult J.S. Mills examination of Sir William Hamilton's philosophy London 1865 fifth edition 1878 White's philosophy of Sir William Hamilton New York 1854 Bowen's metaphysics officer W. Hamilton Massachusetts 1867 and Beecher's Hamilton Blackwood's philosophical classics Edinburgh and Philadelphia 1882 doctrines general view of philosophy Hamilton defines philosophy as the knowledge of effects in their causes a definition which as Hamilton himself observes implies that all the sciences are to be viewed as so many branches of philosophy philosophy however differs from the other sciences in having for its primary problem to investigate and determine the conditions of knowledge consequently it makes mind its first and paramount object of consideration in logic, ethics politics, the philosophy of the fine arts and natural theology the mind is studied in certain special applications while in metaphysics the mind is studied in itself now metaphysics or psychology for the terms are synonymous has a three-fold task one, the observation of facts and phenomena of the mind phenomenology of mind two, the study of the laws which regulate these facts nomology of the mind and three the study of the real results which we are warranted in inferring from these phenomena ontology or metaphysics properly so called logic Hamilton's most important contribution to logic is his theory of the quantification of the predicate this theory is based on the postulate that we be allowed to state explicitly in language all that is implicitly contained in thought and on the alleged fact that in thought we quantify the predicate as well as the subject of a judgment the innovation would necessitate a complete change in the system of logical notation and was destined so at least its author claimed to reform the entire science to reduce propositions to equations to simplify the doctrine of conversion and to abolish the figured syllogism psychology Hamilton devised the phenomena of the mind into cognitions feelings and cognitive phenomena volitions and desires the cognitive states are subdivided according as they are referred to one or other of the cognitive faculties namely the presentative the conservative the reproductive the representative the elaborative the presentative faculty includes external and internal perception the former being synonymous with consciousness of states of the not self and the latter with self consciousness or consciousness of states of self for whether it is question of external or of internal perception all that we perceive is the phenomenon so that our knowledge of matter as well as our knowledge of mind is confined to phenomenal states our whole knowledge of mind and matter Hamilton writes is thus only relative of existence absolutely and in itself we know nothing in this sense Hamilton is a relativist a relativist however of a class altogether different from that to which are assigned those who like protagonists held that man is the measure of all things the qualities of external reality as perceived by us are reduced to three classes primary secundo primary and secondary according as the knowledge element or the feeling element predominates in the perception of these qualities we have an immediate or presentative not immediate or representative knowledge Hamilton is therefore an advocate of natural realism of which he says Reed is the first champion in modern times the conservative and reproductive faculties include the retentive and resuscitative functions of memory the resuscitative faculty is governed by the laws of association to which Hamilton devoted special attention the representative faculty or imagination is defined as the power of representing in consciousness and of keeping before the mind the knowledge presented retained and reproduced the elaborative faculty is the faculty of comparison it includes generalization simple apprehension judgment and reasoning the regulative faculty is what the ancients called intellect and what Reed and Stuart designated as common sense the phenomena with which it is concerned are not data of experience but rather the native cognitions of the mind which are the conditions of all experience passing over the nomology of the mind we next come to the questions of ontology that is to the inferences drawn from the study of the mind ontology since we know only the relations of things since relativity in this sense is a quality of all human knowledge it follows that we cannot know the unconditioned start quote conditional limitation of the mental law of the possibility of thought to know is to condition the unconditioned however is not in itself a contradiction its inconceivableness does not preclude the possibility of its existence it is inconceivable as a concept and its existence is unknowable so far as reason, intuition and experience go Hamilton however admitting that our faculties are weak and unseedful holds that a supernatural revelation of the absolute supplements our ordinary knowledge of it with regard to self and not self Hamilton while holding that the doctrine of relativity applies to these objects of knowledge that self and not self are per se unknowable as to their substance concedes that our mental experience reveals self as a unity amid successive changes and that our experience of the external world warrants us in representing it as a reality which is permanent as to the quantum of existence although the forms of existence are constantly changing it is scarcely necessary to point out here the ambiguity of the term relativity as applied to human knowledge between the propositions we know only the relations of things and we know the related thing only insofar as it is related to us there is a vast difference a difference to which the difference between agnosticism and theism is ultimately reduced Hamilton explains the universal belief in causation by the inability of the human mind to think anything except under the conditions of space and time historical position Hamilton brought to bear on the study of philosophy an erudition less common that it ought to have been among British philosophers as part of the 19th century it was by encouraging historical research in connection with the study of philosophy and by fostering a spirit of scholarship rather than by stimulating constructive effort that his influence as a writer and teacher was most widely felt exception must however be made in favour of his doctrine of relativity which may be said to be the philosophical basis of modern agnosticism although it is quite certain that Hamilton never intended that his criticism of rational knowledge should become a criticism of belief Henry Longvale Mansel 1822 1871 was the first to apply the doctrine of relativity to the defence of religion in The Limits of Religious Thought Bampton Lecture 1858 and The Philosophy of the Conditioned 1866 he endeavours to refute rationalism by showing in conformity with Hamilton's principles that the only knowledge of the unconditioned which the human mind can acquire is negative and that in matters of religious belief a scientific system is impossible he insists that the difficulty of believing arises not from revelation but from the inability of reason to form a positive concept of God and concludes that reason must be corrected and supplemented by faith Footnote start quote of the nature and attributes of God in his infinite being philosophy can tell us nothing of Mans inability to apprehend that nature and why he is thus unable she tells us all that we can know and all that we need know Limits of Religious Thought page 185 and footnote The constructive aspect of Mansel's system was however neglected its destructive aspect was promptly seized upon and converted into a justification of agnosticism James Frederick Ferrier 1808-1864 author of the Institutes of Metaphysics 1854 is sometimes reckoned among the members of the Scottish school his attitude was however one of antagonism to the doctrines of that school and especially to the identification of metaphysics with psychology which was as we have seen a tenet comment to all the Scottish philosophers he divided philosophy into epistemology the theory of knowledge agnoiology the theory of ignorance and ontology the theory of being end of chapter 67 recording by Kate McKenzie