The three "Critiques" of Kant pointed to the organizing activity of the "thinking-ego." After Kant, thinkers logically developed the function of the thinking-ego, and came to the conclusion that its activity is not limited to the organization of phenomena, but implies the production of phenomena. Thus the ego is conceived of as a creative power. This concept of the creativity of the spirit gave origin in Germany to two movements -- the first, a cultural movement called Romanticism; the second, a philosophical one called Idealism.
I. THE GERMAN IDEALISTS
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814)
An expanded version of the philosophy of Fichte is presented HERE.
Johann G. Fichte ( picture) was born at Rammenau in Upper Lusatia in 1762. He studied theology at the University of Jena, where, some years later, he occupied the chair of philosophy. Dismissed from Jena as a result of a violent controversy, he lectured at Berlin, where he became identified with the Romantic Movement. In 1807 and 1808 he delivered in Berlin his famous "Addresses to the German Nation," which were aimed at stirring up the patriotic spirit of his countrymen and enlightening them on the foundations for national prosperity. Fichte died of typhus in 1814. His masterpiece is Foundation of General Science.
Doctrine
Fichte abolished the distinction between the thinking-ego and the "thing in itself." Primordial reality is one, Pure Ego, which is the root of all realities. The moments of the Pure Ego are two: (1) production; (2) reflection. First, by an unconscious obligation, the Universal Spirit (Pure Ego) is impelled to produce, that is, to put forth limited objects. This is the world of nature. By reflecting upon these limited objects, the Spirit becomes conscious of itself as a limited object. The consciousness of the spirit in the limited object gives origin to the empirical-ego (the individual ego), in which sensitive and intellective knowledge are possible. But the task of the Spirit cannot be fulfilled in limited objects; hence it is forever impelled to produce new objects. According to Fichte's theory, Germany, conscious of its superiority, was to become the leaders of all nations by fulfilling the destiny of the Universal Spirit.
Friedrich Wilhelm von Schelling (1775-1854)
F.W. von Schelling ( picture) was born at Leonberg, a small town of Wurttemberg. At the age of sixteen he entered the theological seminary at Tubingen, where he studied theology, philosophy and philology. A schoolmate, disciple and friend of Hegel, he later broke with him and became one of his most severe opponents. Called to lecture at Jena in 1798, Schelling had Fichte and Hegel as colleagues there, and came into close contact with the Romanticists. From 1803 to 1806 Schelling lectured at Wurzburg. Between 1806 and 1820 he was a member of the Academy of Sciences, with residence in Munich. Next he went to Erlangen and lectured there for about six years before returning to Munich to teach philosophy. Finally he accepted an invitation to lecture in Berlin, where he succeeded to the chair Hegel had held. Schelling's most systematic philosophical works are: System of Transcendental Idealism and Exposition of My System.
Doctrine
The primordial reality is the Absolute, which is conceived of by Schelling as "perfect identity of Spirit and nature"; this is a Romantic concept. This perfect identity consists in the fact that neither one can be separated from the other, but one can prevail over the other. Thus the prevalence of nature over the Spirit makes possible the manifestation of the world of nature.
The Spirit, wandering unconsciously in the world of nature, becomes conscious and appears as an empirical ago. Then it is able to reflect on what was unconsciously produced by itself. Art in its two moments of inspiration and production gives us the "model of activity" of the Absolute.
Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834)
Friedrich Schleiermacher ( picture), a German Protestant theologian and philosopher, was born at Breslau. He was a lecturer and professor at Halle and Berlin. His most representative works are Sermons on Religion and The Christian Faith.
Doctrine
The Absolute is actual reality, the source of the life of our spirit. In the act of sentiment we feel ourselves submerged in the Infinite Being and rooted in Him. Thus we understand the dependence of the finite upon the infinite; this dependence is the source of religion. Only religion leads us to the notion of the infinite as the origin of the life of the finite.
Schleiermacher fuses Spinozism and idealism in an attempt to combine pantheism with dualism. God and the world are one; things and the world have a relative independence. Yet God and the world are inseparable. God has never been without a world nor the world without a God. God is a spaceless and timeless unity; the world is a spatial-temporal plurality. The religious feeling illuminates one's entire life and brings unity into it.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)
An expanded presentation of the philosophy of Hegel is available HERE.
Georg W.F. Hegel ( picture) was born in Stuttgart. He studied theology and philosophy, and at first gave his sympathies to the philosophy of the Enlightenment and to Kantian Criticism, only to turn to Romantic historicism and become attached to Fichte and Schelling. He lectured in various German universities, and ultimately at the University of Berlin, where he exercised great influence.
Hegel's most representative philosophical works are Phenomenology of Spirit, Logic, and Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences. German Idealism and modern thought, generally speaking, reach the greatest heights of immanentism in the compact dialectic system of Hegel.
Doctrine
The primordial reality is conceived by Hegel as the "pure indetermined," as "non-being." However, its perennial activity consists in developing explicitly what it contains implicitly. The characteristic principle of this primordial reality in its development is the "coincidence of opposites," in the sense that any passage is a result of some already acquired determination as related to its opposite. Hence the triad which is fundamental to Hegel's philosophy:
Another characteristic of Hegel's idealism is rationality: primordial being is essentially thought, idea. Hence the process of development is essentially rational.
Logic of the Concrete: The principle of the coincidence of opposites carries within itself the negation of Aristotelian logic. For Hegel, the logic of Aristotle takes into consideration abstract ideas, which as such are immutable. Hence Aristotle could establish his logic on the principle of contradiction. But this logic misinterprets reality; reality is never immutable; it is always new, and what makes the new reality is the coincidence of opposites. By means of this principle, reality nullifies in itself both extremes of contradiction, being and non-being. Hegel calls this new logic "The logic of the concrete." That of Aristotle he calls formal logic.
Dialectical Process of Being: The Universal Spirit objectivates itself with the intention of gaining consciousness of self. At the basis of this process is rationality, i.e., a system of pure concepts according to which the development will be made. The Spirit objectivates itself first in "nature," whose pinnacle is the human organism and individual consciousness. But the spirit is not satisfied with the limits of individual consciousness, and is impelled to other super-individual forms:
As the whole process is supposed to be rational, in the state all opposites are reconciled. Although the state is the supreme manifestation of the spirit, there is another triad regarding the Absolute Spirit: art, religion and philosophy.
Conclusion
For a decade after Hegel's death, Hegelianism was the outstanding philosophy of Germany. It enjoyed patronage of the Prussian State and the universities. Its logical method was popular.
Hegelianism divides into two groups:
Hegel's genius in the history of philosophy and in the history of religion produced a school of great historians of philosophy including Trendelenburg, Erdman, Zeller, Kuno Fischer, Windelband, and Pfleiderer. Hegel's work influenced the study of history, jurisprudence, politics, and all the mental sciences.
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The positive contributions of the German Idealists to the Perennial Philosophy
None. Virtually all of German Idealism is antithetical to Commonsense Philosophical Realism. Some of the ideas are truly dangerous. For instance, the Hegelian concept, in which the state is the living God and individuals are but passing shadows, and in which, moreover, conflict and war are affirmations of the vitality of the state, has been put to the test in the German nation. The course which Germany followed -- with disastrous results -- in two world wars is rightly judged the consequence of such a concept. Ideas do have consequences! Needless to say Hegel's concept of reality is immanentist, pantheistic, and atheistic.
II. THE CRITICAL REVISION OF IDEALISM
The Hegelian identification of reality with rationality influenced the entire German culture of the first half of the nineteenth century, with the result that facts were distorted so as to fit into the system. A critical revision was necessary, and it was undertaken in the name of Kant. The most important representatives of this critical movement were Herbert and Schopenhauer.
Every phase of Hegelian philosophy was subjected to attack: its idealism, its pantheism, its rationalism, and its a priori methods attracted criticism. Some thinkers insisted on the refinement of scientific methods; their approaches resulted in realism and pluralism. Others insisted that the irrational elements in reality would have to be taken into account. Devotees of mysticism, religion, and intuition sought to expand the functions of the mind. Reason was not enough.
Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841)
Herbart was born in Oldenburg. He studied at the University of Jena and was a disciple of Fichte. He then went to Berne as a private tutor. From 1802 to 1809 he lectured at Gottingen, and then went to Konigsberg, where he occupied the chair formerly held by Kant. In 1833 he returned to Gottingen as professor of philosophy, dying there in 1841. The most representative works of Herbart are: Introduction to Philosophy, Manual of Psychology, and General Metaphysics.
Doctrine
Herbart started with experience and tried to restore the Kantian concept of the thing in itself. For him, experience shows an irreducible contradiction between the one and the many. Indeed,
To overcome these contradictions, we must suppose that reality is not uniform, but broken up into a multitude of parts. These parts have a relationship to one another, and these relationships make a plurality of realities. The human soul is one of many simple and immutable realities. Its relationship to the others is called representation. These relationships or representations obey mechanical laws. The ego as a person is a solidified group of perceptions. The moral value of human operations is due to the existence in man of some "model ideas," such as: interior freedom; perfection; benevolence; right and equity.
Influence on Education: Herbart had his greatest influence on education. Pedagogy is applied psychology and its ends are determined by ethics. Herbart's mechanical conception of the mental life places emphasis on
Herbart's aim in education is found in the five great elements which enter into character: proper instruction, full knowledge, clear ideas, right action, personal character.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
Arthur Schopenhauer (picture) was born in Danzig, the son of a wealthy merchant. He had been educated for the business world by his father, but as soon as his father died Schopenhauer turned to the study of philosophy. He traveled extensively in Holland, England, France, Switzerland, and Italy. He obtained his doctor's degree at Jena in 1813. A few years later he began to lecture at Berlin, but his attempts to stem the tide of Hegel's popularity there were unsuccessful. He left the University and traveled again in Italy. In 1833 he retired to Frankfort on the Main, where he spent the remainder of his life writing his books in learned retirement. Always hostile to Idealism and particularly toward Hegelianism, he died in 1860, when Hegel's philosophy was already in its decline. Schopenhauer's masterpiece of philosophical writing is The World as Will and Idea. He also published Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics.
Doctrine
The World as Will and Idea. The primordial reality is blind will, whose unconscious desire is self-preservation. Hence the primordial reality is a blind will to live. This desire accounts for the fact that the will unconsciously manifests itself in a multiplicity of natural beings. When the brain of man is constructed, the will becomes conscious and knowledge is possible.
Pessimism. The "desire to live" on the part of the primordial reality is present everywhere: love, egoism, the progress of civilization are means for perpetuating the desire to live. But this desire is caused by blind will; hence the whole universe is miserable.
Applications of Schopenhauer's Doctrine to Man. The only remedy against evil is to suppress the will to live. This can be done by:
Schopenhauer is of the later German school in his doctrine of all embracing will, but he is alone among German philosophers in ascribing to the efforts of universal will no goal, no good, no improvement.
The positive contributions of Herbart and Schopenhauer to the Perennial Philosophy
In a word, none.
The New Idealism in German Philosophy
With the decline of Hegelianism, natural science progressed. Philosophy seems to be threatened with permanent silence. From the natural sciences some great thinkers appeared who restored philosophic prestige. Prominent among this group were Lotze, Fechner, Hartmann, Wundt, and Paulsen. They generally regarded it futile to construct a metraphysics by means of rationalistic methods slone, independent of natural science. They all hold, with Kant, that there can be no knowledge without experience. The most outstanding of this group to do justice to idealism was Lotze (1817-1881).
III. PHILOSOPHY OF THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY OUTSIDE GERMANY
England
During the first half of the nineteenth century the countries of Europe, with the exception of Germany, paid little attention to Kantian Criticism and Romantic Idealism. Indeed, in England the current of thought was developed almost entirely apart from the influence of German philosophy. English philosophers invariably followed the empiricist tradition of the past.
France
In France Kant, Fichte and Schelling had some influence on philosophical thought. However, the main currents of thought followed the general trends of French philosophy. Worthy of mention are:
All these, however, shed little light upon the problems of speculative philosophy and made no real contribution to the Perennial Philosophy.
Italy
In Italy, Pasquale Galluppi (1770-1846) was the first to bring Italian philosophy into contact with German thought through his translations of the principal works of the German thinkers. Italian philosophers were opposed not only to Kantian Criticism and Idealism, but also to Empiricism and Sensism. They endeavored to develop their thought in accordance with Italian Catholic tradition and to overcome Idealism through the affirmation of the transcendence of God. The most representative thinkers of this movement are Rosmini-Serbati and Gioberti.
Antonio Rosmini-Serbati (1797-1855)
The concern of Rosmini was the restoration of morality and religion in opposition to the atheism of the sensists and Idealists. Sensism and Idealism were connected with the problem of knowledge. Thus Rosmini believed that to defeat them he must find a starting point in the problem of knowledge. For him, this starting point was the idea of being, Platonically conceived and similar to a Kantian category. The degrees of the process of knowledge are:
The first three are subjective types of knowledge; judgment, on the contrary, is objective, because it applies to empirical data the idea of being, which is universal and absolute.
Rosmini stands as one of the first to undertake the restoration of Scholastic philosophy. Although his thought is influenced by St. Augustine's philosophy rather than the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, his entire philosophy is a constant affirmation of the transcendence of God.
Vincenzo Gioberti (1801-1852)
According to Gioberti, the essential condition for objective knowledge must be found in the Absolute Being (God); thus the fundamental act of human knowledge must be connected with Him, not in the sense that we see God intuitively -- which would be pure ontologism -- but that we see some operation of God -- that is, His creative act.
The second half of the nineteenth century is marked by a broad new movement of thought called Positivism. This movement arose in opposition to the abstractionism and formalism of the transcendental Idealists, who had made nature a "representation" of the ego. The purpose of the new school of thought was to lay greater stress upon immediate experience, upon the positive data obtained through the senses.