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| PART I : THEORY The Knowledge of Freedom 1. THE CONSCIOUS HUMAN DEED 2. THE FUNDAMENTAL URGE FOR KNOWLEDGE 3. THINKING IN THE SERVICE OF UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD 4. THE WORLD AS PERCEPTION 5. THE ACT OF KNOWING THE WORLD 6. THE HUMAN INDIVIDUALITY 7. ARE THERE LIMITS TO KNOWLEDGE? |
PART II : PRACTICE The Reality of Freedom 8. THE FACTORS OF LIFE 9. THE IDEA OF FREEDOM 10. PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM AND MONISM 11. WORLD PURPOSE AND LIFE PURPOSE 12. MORAL IMAGINATION 13. THE VALUE OF LIFE 14. INDIVIDUALITY AND SPECIES |
1. THE CONSCIOUS HUMAN DEED
1.0 The Question Of Freedom
[1] Is man in his thinking and acting a spiritually free being, or is he compelled by the iron necessity of natural law? Few questions have been debated more than this one. The concept of the freedom of the human will has found enthusiastic supporters and stubborn opponents in plenty. There are those who, in moral fervor, declare it to be sheer stupidity to deny so evident a fact as freedom. Opposed to them are others who regard as utterly
naive the belief that the uniformity of natural law is interrupted in the sphere of human action and thinking. One and the same thing is here declared as often to be the most precious possession of humanity, as it is said to be its most fatal illusion. Infinite subtlety has been devoted to explaining how human freedom is compatible with the working of nature, to which, after all, man belongs. No less pains have been taken to make comprehensible how a delusion like this could have arisen. That here we are dealing with one of the most important questions of life, religion, conduct and science, is felt by everyone whose character is not totally devoid of depth.
1.1 Freedom Of Indifferent Choice
And indeed, it belongs to the sad signs of the superficiality of present day thinking that a book which attempts to develop a “new faith” out of the results of the latest scientific discoveries, contains, on this question, nothing but the words:
“There is no need here to go into the question of the freedom of the human will. The supposed indifferent freedom of choice has always been recognized as an empty illusion by every philosophy worthy of the name. The moral valuation of human conduct and character remains untouched by this question.”
I do not quote this passage because I consider that the book in which it appears has any special importance, but because it seems to me to express the only view which most of our thinking contemporaries are able to reach, concerning this question. Everyone who claims to have advanced beyond an elementary education seems nowadays to know that freedom cannot consist in choosing at one’s pleasure, one or the other of two possible courses of action; it is maintained that there is always a quite definite reason why, out of several possible actions, we carry out a particular one.
1.2 Freedom Of Choice
[2] This seems obvious. Nevertheless, up to now, the main attacks by those who oppose freedom are directed only against the freedom of choice. Herbert Spencer, who has views which are rapidly gaining ground, says:
“That everyone is able to desire or not to desire, as he pleases, which is the essential principle in the dogma of free will, is negated by the analysis of consciousness, as well as by the contents of the preceding chapter.”
1.3 Free Necessity Of One's Nature
Others, too, start from the same point of view in combating the concept of free will. The germs of all that is relevant in these arguments are to be found as early as Spinoza. All that he brought forward in clear and simple language against the idea of freedom has since been repeated times without number, but usually veiled in the most complicated theoretical doctrines so that it is difficult to recognize the straightforward train of thought on which all depends. Spinoza writes in a letter of October or November, 1674:
“I call something free which exists and acts from the pure necessity of its nature, and I call that compelled, the existence and action of which are exactly and fixedly determined by something else. The existence of God, for example, though necessary, is free because He exists only through the necessity of His nature. Similarly, God knows Himself and all else in freedom, because it follows solely from the necessity of His nature that He knows all. You see, therefore, that I regard freedom as consisting, not in free decision, but in free necessity.
[3] “But let us come down to created things which are all determined by external causes to exist and to act in a fixed and definite manner. To recognize this more clearly, let us imagine a perfectly simple case. A stone, for example, receives from an external cause acting upon it a certain quantity of motion, by which it necessarily continues to move after the impact of the external cause has ceased. The continued motion of the stone is a compelled one, not a necessary one, because it has to be defined by the thrust of the external cause. What is true here for the stone is true also for every other particular thing, however complicated and many-sided it may be, namely, that each thing is necessarily determined by external causes to exist and to act in a fixed and definite manner.
[4] “Now, please, suppose that during its motion the stone thinks and knows that it is striving to the best of its ability to continue in motion. This stone which is conscious only of its striving and is by no means indifferent, will believe that it is absolutely free, and that it continues in motion for no other reason than its own will to continue. But this is that human freedom which everybody claims to possess and which consists in nothing but this, that men are conscious of their desires, but do not Know the causes by which they are determined. Thus the child believes that he is free when he desires milk, the angry boy that he is free in his desire for vengeance, and the timid in his desire for flight. Again, the drunken man believes that he says of his own free decision what, sober again, he would fain have left unsaid, and as this prejudice is innate in all men, it is not easy to free oneself from it. For although experience teaches us often enough that man, least of all, can temper his desires and that, moved by conflicting passions, he sees the better and pursues the worse, yet he considers himself free, simply because there are some things which he desires less strongly and many desires which can easily be inhibited through the recollection of something else which is often remembered.”
[5] Because here we are dealing with a clear and definitely expressed view, it is also easy to discover the fundamental error in it. As necessarily as a stone continues a definite movement after being put in motion, just as necessarily is a man supposed to carry out an action when urged thereto by any reason. It is only because man is conscious of his action, that he regards himself as its free originator. But, in doing so, he overlooks the fact that he is driven to it by a cause which he has to obey unconditionally. The error in this train of thought is soon found. Spinoza, and all who think like him, overlook the fact that man not only is conscious of his action, but may also become conscious of the causes which guide him.
No one will deny that when the child desires milk, he is unfree, as is also the drunken man when he says things he later regrets. Neither knows anything of the causes working in the depths of their organisms, which exercise irresistible power over them. But is it justifiable to lump together actions of this kind with those in which a man is conscious, not only of his actions but also of the reasons which cause him to act? Are the actions of men really all of one kind? Should the deed of a soldier on the field of battle, of the research scientist in his laboratory, of the statesman in complicated diplomatic negotiations, be placed, scientifically, on the same level with that of the child when he desires milk? It is indeed true that it is best to attempt the solution of a problem where the conditions are simplest. But inability to differentiate has caused endless confusion before now. There is, after all, a profound difference between whether I know why I do something, or whether I do not. At first sight this seems a self-evident truth. And yet those who oppose freedom never ask whether a motive which I recognize and see through, compels me in the same sense as does the organic process in the child that causes him to cry for milk.
1.4 Free From External Influences
[6] Eduard von Hartmann maintains that the human will depends on two main factors: the motive and the character. If one regards all men as alike, or at any rate the differences between them as negligible, then their will appears as determined from without, namely by the circumstances which come to meet them. But if one takes into consideration that men let a representation become a motive for their deeds only if their character is such that the particular representation arouses a desire in them, then man appears as determined from within and not from without. Now, because a representation pressing in on him from without must first, in accordance with his character, be adopted as a motive, man believes himself to be free, that is, independent of external motives. The truth, however, according to Eduard von Hartmann, is that
“even though we ourselves first turn a representation into a motive, we do so not arbitrarily, but according to the necessity of our characterological disposition, that is, we are anything but free.”
Here again, the difference between motives which I allow to influence me only after I have permeated them with my consciousness, and those which I follow without having any clear knowledge of them, is disregarded.
1.5 Action Resulting From Conscious Motive
[7] And this leads directly to the standpoint from which the facts will be considered here. Is it at all permissible to consider by itself the question of the freedom of our will? And if not: With what other question must it necessarily be connected?
[8] If there is a difference between a conscious motive of my action and an unconscious impulse, then the conscious motive will result in an action which must be judged differently from one that springs from blind urge. The first question must, therefore, concern this difference, and upon the answer will depend how we are to deal with the question of freedom as such.
[9] What does it mean to know the reason for one’s action? This question has been too little considered because, unfortunately, the tendency has always been to tear into two parts what is an inseparable whole: Man. We distinguish the knower from the doer, and the one who really matters is lost sight of: the man who acts because he knows.
1.6 Free When Controlled By Reason
[10] It is said: Man is free when his reason has the upper hand, not his animal cravings. Or else: Freedom means to be able to determine one’s life and action in accordance with purposes and decisions.
[11] Nothing is achieved by assertions of this kind. For the question is just whether reason, purposes and decisions exercise compulsion over a man in the same way as do his animal cravings. If, without my doing, a reasonable decision emerges in me with just the same necessity as hunger and thirst, then I must needs obey it, and my freedom is an illusion.
1.7 Free To Do As One Wants
[12] Another phrase is: To be free means not that one is able to will what one wants, but that one is able to do what one wants. This thought has been expressed with great clearness by the poet-philosopher, Robert Hamerling.
“Man can, indeed, do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wants, because his will is determined by motives! He cannot will what he wants? Let us consider these words more closely. Have they any sense? Should freedom of will consist in being able to will something without reason, without a motive? But what does it mean to will something, other than to have a reason to do or to strive for this rather than that? To will something without a reason, without a motive, would mean to will something without willing it. The concept of will is inseparable from that of motive. Without a motive to determine it, the will is an empty ability; only through the motive does it become active and real. It is, therefore, quite correct that the human will is not ‘free,’ inasmuch as its direction is always determined by that motive which is the strongest. But, on the other hand, it must be admitted that in contrast with this ‘unfreedom’ it is absurd to speak of a thinkable ‘freedom’ of the will, which would end up in being able to will what one does not will.”
[13] Here again, only motives in general are discussed, without regard for the difference between unconscious and conscious motives. If a motive affects me and I am compelled to act on it because it proves to be the “strongest” of its kind, then the thought of freedom ceases to have any meaning. Should it matter to me whether I can do a thing or not, if I am forced by the motive to do it? The immediate question is not whether I can or cannot do a thing when a motive has influenced me, but whether only such motives exist as affect me with compelling necessity. If I have to will something, then I may well be absolutely indifferent as to whether I can also do it. And if, through my character, or through circumstances prevailing in my environment, a motive is pressed upon me which to my thinking is unreasonable, then I should even have to be glad if I could not do what I will.
[14] The question is not whether I can carry out a decision once made, but how the decision arises within me.
1.8 Spontaneous Unconditioned Will
[15] What distinguishes man from all other organic beings is his rational thinking. Actions he has in common with other organisms. Nothing is gained by seeking analogies in the animal world to clarify the concept of freedom of action of human beings. Modern natural science loves such analogies. When scientists have succeeded in finding among animals something similar to human behavior, they believe they have touched upon the most important question of the science of man. To what misunderstandings this view leads is seen, for example, in a book by P. Rée, where the following remark on freedom appears:
“It is easy to explain why the movement of a stone seems to us necessary, while the will impulse of a donkey does not. The causes which set the stone in motion are external and visible, while the causes which induce in the donkey impulses of will are internal and invisible, that is, between us and the place where they are active there is the skull of the donkey.... The dependence on a cause is not seen and the conclusion, therefore, is drawn that no dependence is present. It is explained that the will is, indeed, the cause of the donkey’s turning round, but that it is itself unconditioned; it is an absolute beginning.”
Here again, human actions in which man is conscious of the reasons why he acts, are simply ignored, for Rée declares: “We are not aware of the causes by which our will is determined, and so we imagine that it is not causally determined at all.” From these words can be seen that Ree had no notion that there are actions, not indeed of the donkey, but of human beings, in which between us and the deed lies the motive that has become conscious. That Ree does not see this he shows again later, when he says:
“We do not perceive the causes by which our will is determined, hence we believe that our will is not causally determined at all.”
[16] But enough of examples which show that many oppose freedom without knowing in the least what freedom is.
1.9 Knowledge Of The Reasons
[17] That an action cannot be free, of which the doer does not know why he carries it out, is obvious. But what about an action for which we know the reason! This leads us to the question: What is the origin and significance of thinking? For without knowledge of the thinking activity of the soul, it is impossible to form a concept of what it means to know something, and therefore also of what it means to know the reason for an action. When we recognize what thinking in general means, then it will also be easy to become clear about the role that thinking plays in human action. As Hegel rightly says,
“It is thinking that turns the soul, with which the animals are also endowed, into spirit.”
And this is why thinking gives to human action its characteristic stamp.
1.10 Driving Force Of The Heart
[18] It is not maintained that all our action springs only from the sober deliberations of our reason. Far be it from me to consider human in the highest sense only those actions which result from abstract judgments. But as soon as our conduct rises above the sphere of the satisfaction of purely animal desires, our motives are always permeated by thoughts. Love, pity and patriotism are motivating forces for deeds which cannot be analyzed away into cold concepts of the intellect. It is said that here the heart and the mood of soul hold sway. No doubt. But the heart and the mood of the soul do not create the motives. They presuppose them and let them enter. Pity enters my heart when the representation of a person who arouses pity appears in my consciousness. The way to the heart is through the head.
1.11 Idealistic Thought
Love is no exception. Whenever it is not merely the expression of bare sexual instinct, it depends on the representation we form of the loved one. And the more idealistic these representations are, just so much the more blessed is our love. Here too, thought is the father of feeling.
1.12 Perception Of Good Qualities
It is said: Love makes us blind to the failings of the loved one. But this also holds good the other way round, and it can be said: Love opens the eyes just for the good qualities of the loved one. Many pass by these good qualities without noticing them. One, however, sees them, and just because he does, love awakens in his soul. He has done nothing other than form a representation of something, of which hundreds have none. They have no love because they lack the representation.
[19] From whatever point we regard the subject, it becomes ever clearer that the question of the nature of human action presupposes that of the origin of thinking. I shall, therefore, turn to this question next.
2. THE FUNDAMENTAL URGE FOR KNOWLEDGE
Two souls alas are dwelling in my breast;
And each is fain to leave its brother.
The one, fast clinging, to the world adheres
With clutching organs, in love’s sturdy lust;
The other strongly lifts itself from dust
To yonder high, ancestral spheres.
Faust I, Sc. 2
Priest translation
2.0 Urge To Know
[1] In these words Goethe expresses a characteristic feature belonging to the deepest foundation of human nature. Man is not a uniformly organized being. He always demands more than the world gives him of its own accord. Nature has endowed us with needs; among them are some that are left to our own initiative to satisfy. Abundant are the gifts bestowed upon us, but still more abundant are our desires. We seem born to be dissatisfied. Our thirst for knowledge is but a special instance of this dissatisfaction. If we look twice at a tree and the first time see its branches motionless, the second time in movement, we do not remain satisfied with this observation. Why does the tree appear to us now motionless, now in movement? Thus we ask. Every glance at nature evokes in us a number of questions. Every phenomenon we meet sets us a problem. Every experience contains a riddle. We see emerging from the egg a creature like the mother animal; we ask the reason for this likeness. We notice that living beings grow and develop to a certain degree of perfection and we investigate the conditions for this experience. Nowhere are we satisfied with what nature spreads before our senses. Everywhere we seek what we call explanation of the facts.
[2] The something more which we seek in things, over and above what is given us directly in them, divides our whole being into two aspects; we become conscious of our contrast to the world. We confront the world as independent beings. The universe appears to us to have two opposite poles: I and world.
[3] We erect this barrier between ourselves and the world as soon as consciousness first dawns in us. But we never cease to feel that, in spite of all, we belong to the world, that there is a bond of union between it and us, that we are not beings outside, but within, the universe.
[4] This feeling makes us strive to bridge over the contrast. And in this bridging the whole spiritual striving of mankind ultimately consists. The history of man’s spiritual life is an incessant search for unity between us and the world. Religion, art and science all have this same aim. In the revelation God grants him, the religious believer seeks the solution of the problems in the world which his I, dissatisfied with the world of mere phenomena, sets him. The artist seeks to imprint into matter the ideas of his I, in order to reconcile with the world outside what lives within him. He, too, feels dissatisfied with the world as it appears to him, and seeks to embody into the world of mere phenomena that something more which his I, reaching out beyond it, contains. The thinker seeks the laws of phenomena, and strives to penetrate with thinking what he experiences by observing. Only when we have made the world-content into our thought-content do we again find the unity from which we separated ourselves. We shall see later that this goal will be reached only when the task of the scientific investigator is understood at a much deeper level than is usually the case.
The whole situation I have described here, presents itself to us on the stage of history in the contrast between a unified view of the world or monism,9 and the theory of two worlds or dualism. Dualism pays attention only to the separation between I and world, brought about by man’s consciousness. All its efforts consist in a vain struggle to reconcile these opposites, which it calls spirit and matter, subject and object, or thinking and phenomena. The dualist feels that there must be a bridge between the two worlds, but he is unable to find it. In as far as man is aware of himself as “I,” he cannot but think of this “I” as belonging to spirit; and in contrasting this “I” with the world he cannot do otherwise than reckon the perceptions given to the senses, the realm of matter, as belonging to the world. In doing so, man places himself within the contrast of spirit and matter. He must do so all the more because his own body belongs to the material world. Thus the “I” belongs to the realm of spirit, as part of it; the material things and events which are perceived by the senses belong to the “world.” All the problems connected with spirit and matter, man finds again in the fundamental riddle of his own nature. Monism pays attention only to the unity and tries either to deny or to efface the contrasts, which are there nevertheless. Neither of these two views is satisfactory, for they do not do justice to the facts. Dualism sees spirit (I) and matter (world) as two fundamentally different entities and cannot, therefore, understand how they can interact upon each other. How should spirit know what goes on in matter, if the essential nature of matter is quite alien to spirit? And how, in these circumstances, should spirit be able to act upon matter, in order to transform its intentions into actions? The most clever and the most absurd hypotheses have been put forward to solve these problems. But, so far, monism has fared no better. Up to now it has tried to justify itself in three different ways. Either it denies spirit and becomes materialism; or it denies matter and seeks its salvation in spiritualism; or it maintains that since even in the simplest entities in the world spirit and matter are indivisibly bound together, there is no need for surprise if these two kinds of existence are both present in the human being, for they are never found apart.
2.1 Materialism
[5] Materialism can never arrive at a satisfactory explanation of the world. For every attempt at an explanation must of necessity begin with man’s forming thoughts about the phenomena of the world. Materialism, therefore, takes its start from thoughts about matter or material processes. In doing so, it straightway confronts two different kinds of facts, namely, the material world and the thoughts about it. The materialist tries to understand thoughts by regarding them as a purely material process. He believes that thinking takes place in the brain much in the same way that digestion takes place in the animal organs. Just as he ascribes to matter mechanical and organic effects, so he also attributes to matter, in certain circumstances, the ability to think. He forgets that in doing this he has merely shifted the problem to another place. Instead of to himself, he ascribes to matter the ability to think. And thus he is back again at his starting-point. How does matter come to reflect about its own nature! Why is it not simply satisfied with itself and with its existence? The materialist has turned his attention away from the definite subject, from our own I, and has arrived at a vague, indefinite image. And here again, the same problem comes to meet him. The materialistic view is unable to solve the problem; it only transfers it to another place.
2.2 Spiritualism
[6] How does the matter stand with the spiritualistic view? The extreme spiritualist denies to matter its independent existence and regards it merely as product of spirit. But when he tries to apply this view of the world to the solution of the riddle of his own human nature, he finds himself in a corner. Confronting the I, which can be placed on the side of spirit, there stands, without any mediation, the physical world. No spiritual approach to it seems possible; it has to be perceived and experienced by the I by means of material processes. Such material processes the “I” does not find in itself if it regards its own nature as having only spiritual validity. The physical world is never found in what it works out spiritually. It seems as if the “I” would have to admit that the world would remain closed to it if it did not establish a non-spiritual relation to the world.
2.3 Realism
Similarly, when we come to be active, we have to translate our intentions into realities with the help of material substances and forces. In other words, we are dependent upon the outer world. The most extreme spiritualist - or rather, the thinker who, through absolute idealism, appears as an extreme spiritualist - is Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He attempts to derive the whole edifice of the world from the “I.” What he has actually accomplished is a magnificent thoughtpicture of the world, without any content of experience. As little as it is possible for the materialist to argue the spirit away, just as little is it possible for the idealist to argue away the outer world of matter.
2.4 Idealism
[7] The first thing man perceives when he seeks to gain knowledge of his “I” is the activity of this “I” in the conceptual elaboration of the world of ideas. This is the reason why someone who follows a world-view which inclines toward spiritualism may feel tempted, when looking at his own human nature, to acknowledge nothing of spirit except his own world of ideas. In this way spiritualism becomes one-sided idealism. He does not reach the point of seeking through the world of ideas a spiritual world; in the world of his ideas he sees the spiritual world itself. As a result of this, he is driven to remain with his worldview as if chained within the activity of his “I.”
2.5 Materialistic Idealism
[8] The view of Friedrich Albert Lange14 is a curious variety of idealism, put forward by him in his widely read History of Materialism. He suggests that the materialists are quite right in declaring all phenomena, including our thinking, to be the product of purely material processes, only, in turn, matter and its processes are themselves the product of our thinking.
“The senses give us the effects of things, not true copies, much less the things themselves. To these mere effects belong the senses themselves, as well as the brain and the molecular vibrations which are thought to go on there.”
That is, our thinking is produced by the material processes, and these by the thinking of the “I.” Lange’s philosophy, in other words, is nothing but the story - applied to concepts - of the ingenious Baron Miinnchhausen, who holds himself up in the air by his own pigtail.
2.6 Indivisible Unity
[9] The third form of monism is the one which sees the two entities, matter and spirit, already united in the simplest being (the atom). But nothing is gained by this, either, for here again the question, which really originates in our consciousness, is transferred to another place. How does the simple being come to manifest itself in two different ways, if it is an indivisible unity?
2.7 Polarity Of Consciousness
[10] To all these viewpoints it must be objected that it is first and foremost in our own consciousness that we meet the basic and original contrast. It is we who detach ourselves from the bosom of nature and contrast ourselves as “I” with the “world.” Goethe’” has given classic expression to this in his essay On Nature, although at first glance his manner may be considered quite unscientific: “We live in the midst of her (nature) yet are we strangers to her. Ceaselessly she speaks to us, and yet betrays not her secrets.” But Goethe knew the other side too: “All human beings are in her and she is in all human beings.”
2.8 Feeling Impulse
[11] Just as true as it is that we have estranged ourselves from nature, so is it also true that we feel: We are within nature and we belong to it. That which lives in us can only be nature’s own influence.
2.9 Knowing Nature Within
[12] We must find the way back to nature again. A simple consideration can show us this way. We have, it is true, detached ourselves from nature, but we must have taken something of it over with us, into our own being. This essence of nature in us we must seek out, and then we shall also find the connection with it once again. Dualism neglects this. It considers the inner being of man as a spiritual entity quite alien to nature, and seeks somehow to hitch it onto nature. No wonder it cannot find the connecting link. We can only understand nature outside us when we have first learned to recognize it within us. What within us is akin to nature must be our guide. This points out our path. We shall not speculate about the interaction of nature and spirit. But we shall penetrate the depths of our own being, there to find those elements which we took with us in our flight from nature.
2.10 Something More Than "I"
[13] Investigation of our own being must bring the solution of the riddle. We must reach a point where we can say to ourselves: Here I am no longer merely “I,” here I encounter something which is more than “I.”
2.11 Description Of Consciousness
[14] I am aware that many who have read thus far will not have found my discussion “scientific” in the usual sense. To this I can only reply that so far I have not been concerned with scientific results of any kind, but with the simple description of what everyone experiences in his own consciousness. A few expressions concerning the attempts to reconcile man’s consciousness and the world have been used only for the purpose of clarifying the actual facts. I have, therefore, made no attempt to use the expressions “I,” “spirit,” “world,” “nature,” in the precise way that is usual in psychology and philosophy.
2.12 Facts Without Interpretation
Ordinary consciousness is unaware of the sharp distinctions made by the sciences, and up to this point it has only been a matter of describing the facts of everyday conditions. I am concerned, not with how science, so far, has interpreted consciousness, but with how we experience it in daily life.
3. THINKING IN THE SERVICE OF UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD
3.0 Reflective Thinking
[1] When I see how a billiard ball, when struck, communicates its motion to another ball, I remain entirely without influence on the course of this event which I observe. The direction and velocity of the second ball is determined by the direction and velocity of the first. As long as I do no more than observe, I cannot say anything about the motion of the second ball until it actually moves. The situation alters if I begin to reflect on the content of my observation. The purpose of my reflection is to form concepts of the event. I bring the concept of an elastic ball into connection with certain other concepts of mechanics, and take into consideration the special circumstances prevailing in this particular instance. In other words, to the action taking place without my doing, I try to add a second action which unfolds in the conceptual sphere. The latter is dependent on me. This is shown by the fact that I could rest content with the observation and forgo all search for concepts if I had no need of them. If, however, this need is present, then I am not satisfied until I have brought the concepts ball, elasticity, motion, impact, velocity, etc., into a certain connection, to which the observed process is related in a definite way. As certain as it is that the event takes place independently of me, so certain is it also that the conceptual process cannot take place without my doing it.
[2] We shall consider later whether this activity of mine is really a product of my own independent being or whether the modern physiologists are right who say that we cannot think as we will, but that we must think exactly as the thoughts and thought-connections present in our consciousness determine. For the time being we wish merely to establish the fact that we constantly feel compelled to seek for concepts and connections of concepts standing in a certain relation to objects and events given independently of us. Whether this activity is really ours, or whether we accomplish it according to an unalterable necessity, we shall leave aside for the moment. That at first sight it appears to be our activity is beyond doubt. We know with absolute certainty that we are not given the concepts together with the objects. That I myself am the doer may be illusion, but to immediate observation this certainly appears to be the case. The question here is: What do we gain by finding a conceptual counterpart to an event?
[3] There is a profound difference between the ways in which, for me, the parts of an event are related to one another before and after the discovery of the corresponding concepts. Mere observation can follow the parts of a given event as they occur, but their connection remains obscure without the help of concepts. I see the first billiard ball move toward the second in a certain direction and with a definite velocity. I must wait for what will happen after the impact, and again I can follow what happens only with my eyes. Let us assume that at the moment the impact occurs someone obstructs my view of the field where the event takes place: then - as mere onlooker - I have no knowledge of what happens afterward. The situation is different if before my view was obstructed I had discovered the concepts corresponding to the nexus of events. In that case I can estimate what occurs, even when I am no longer able to observe. An object or event which has only been observed does not of itself reveal anything about its connection with other objects or events. This connection comes to light only when observation combines with thinking.
[4] Observation and thinking are the two points of departure for all spiritual striving of man insofar as he is conscious of such striving. What is accomplished by ordinary human reason as well as by the most complicated scientific investigations rests on these two fundamental pillars of our spirit. Philosophers have started from various primary antitheses: idea and reality, subject and object, appearance and thing-in-itself, ego and non-ego, idea and will, concept and matter, force and substance, the conscious and the unconscious. It is easy to show, however, that all these antitheses must be preceded by that of observation and thinking, as the one the most important for man.
[5] Whatever principle we wish to advance, we must prove that somewhere we have observed it, or express it in the form of a clear thought which can be re-thought by others. Every philosopher who begins to speak about his fundamental principles must make use of the conceptual form, and thereby makes use of thinking. He therefore indirectly admits that for his activity he presupposes thinking. Whether thinking or something else is the main element in the evolution of the world, we shall not decide as yet. But that without thinking the philosopher can gain no knowledge of the evolution of the world, is immediately clear. Thinking may play a minor part in the coming into being of world phenomena, but thinking certainly plays a major part in the coming into being of a view about them.
[6] As regards observation, it is due to our organization that we need it. For us, our thinking about a horse and the object horse are two separate things. But we have access to the object only through observation. As little as we can form a concept of a horse by merely staring at it, just as little are we able to produce a corresponding object by mere thinking.
3.1 Observation Of Thought
[7] In sequence of time, observation even precedes thinking. For even thinking we learn to know first by means of observation. It was essentially a description of an observation when, at the opening of this chapter, we gave an account of how thinking is kindled by an event and of how it goes beyond what is given without its activity. Whatever enters the circle of our experiences we first become aware of through observation. The contents of sensation, of perception, of contemplation, of feelings, of acts of will, of the pictures of dreams and fantasy, of representations, of concepts and ideas, of all illusions and hallucinations are given us through observation.
[8] However, as object of observation, thinking differs essentially from all other objects. The observation of a table or a tree occurs in me as soon as these objects appear within the range of my experience. But my thinking that goes on about these things, I do not observe at the same time. I observe the table; the thinking about the table I carry out, but I do not observe it at the same moment. I would first have to transport myself to a place outside my own activity if, besides observing the table, I wanted also to observe my thinking about the table. Whereas observation of things and events, and thinking about them, are but ordinary occurrences filling daily life, the observation of thinking itself is a sort of exceptional situation. This fact must be taken into account sufficiently when we come to determine the relation of thinking to all other contents of observation. It is essential to be clear about the fact that when thinking is observed the same procedure is applied to it as the one we normally apply to the rest of the world-content, only in ordinary life we do not apply it to thinking.
3.2 Formation Of Concept
[9] Someone might object that what I have said here about thinking also holds good for feeling and for all other soul activities. When, for example, we feel pleasure, the feeling is also kindled by an object, and it is this object I observe, and not the feeling of pleasure. This objection, however, is based upon an error. Pleasure does not have at all the same relationship to its object as has the concept which thinking builds up. I am absolutely conscious of the fact that the concept of a thing is built up by my activity, whereas pleasure is produced in me by an object in the same way as, for instance, a change is caused in an object by a stone which falls upon it. For observation, a pleasure is given in exactly the same way as that is given which causes it. The same is not true of concepts. I can ask: Why does a particular event arouse in me a feeling of pleasure? But it is never possible to ask: Why does an event produce in me a certain number of concepts? That simply has no sense. When I reflect about an event there is no question of an effect on me. I learn nothing about myself by knowing the concepts which correspond to the change observed in a pane of glass when a stone is thrown against it. But I very definitely do learn something about my personality when I know the feeling which a certain event arouses in me. When I say of an observed object: This is a rose, I say absolutely nothing about myself; but when I say of the same thing: It gives me a feeling of pleasure, I characterize not only the rose but also myself in my relation to the rose.
3.3 Thinking Contemplation Of Object
[10] There can, therefore, be no question of comparing thinking and feeling as objects of observation. And the same could easily be shown concerning other activities of the human soul. Unlike thinking, they belong in the same sphere as other observed objects and events. It is characteristic of the nature of thinking that it is an activity directed solely upon the observed object and not upon the thinking personality. This can already be seen from the way we express our thoughts, as distinct from the way we express our feelings or acts of will in relation to objects. When I see an object and recognize it as a table, generally I would not say: I am thinking of a table, but: This is a table. But I would say: I am pleased with the table. In the first instance I am not at all interested in pointing out that I have entered into any relationship with the table, whereas in the second it is just this relationship that matters. In saying: I am thinking of a table, I already enter the exceptional situation characterized above, where something is made an object of observation which is always contained within our soul’s activity, only normally it is not made an object of observation.
[11] It is characteristic of thinking that the thinker forgets thinking while doing it. What occupies him is not thinking, but the object of thinking which he observes.
[12] The first thing then, that we observe about thinking is that it is the unobserved element in our ordinary life of thought.
[13] The reason we do not observe thinking in our daily life of thought is because it depends upon our own activity. What I myself do not bring about, enters my field of observation as something objective. I find myself confronted by it as by something that has come about independently of me; it comes to meet me; I must take it as the presupposition of my thinking process. While I reflect on the object, I am occupied with it, my attention is turned to it. This activity is, in fact, thinking contemplation. My attention is directed not to my activity but to the object of this activity. In other words: while I think, I do not look at my thinking which I produce, but at the object of thinking which I do not produce.
3.4 Thinking Contemplation Of Thought
[14] I am even in the same position when I let the exceptional situation come about and think about my own thinking. I can never observe my present thinking, but only afterward can I make into an object of thinking the experience I have had of my thinking-process. If I wanted to observe my present thinking, I would have to split myself into two persons: one to do the thinking, the other to observe this thinking. This I cannot do. I can only accomplish it in two separate acts. The thinking to be observed is never the one actually being produced, but another one. Whether for this purpose I observe my own earlier thinking, or follow the thinking process of another person, or else, as in the above example of the movements of the billiard balls, presuppose an imaginary thinking process, makes no difference.
[15] Two things that do not go together are actively producing something and confronting this in contemplation. This is already shown in the First Book of Moses. The latter represents God as creating the world in the first six days, and only when the world is there is the possibility of contemplating it also present: “And God saw everything that he had made and, behold, it was very good.” So it is also with our thinking. It must first be present before we can observe it.
3.5 Know Content Of Concept
[16] The reason it is impossible for us to observe thinking when it is actually taking place, is also the reason it is possible for us to know it more directly and more intimately than any other process in the world. It is just because we ourselves bring it forth that we know the characteristic features of its course, the manner in which the process takes place. What in the other spheres of observation can be found only indirectly: the relevant context and the connection between the individual objects - in the case of thinking is known to us in an absolutely direct way. Off-hand, I do not know why, for my observation, thunder follows lightning, but from the content of the two concepts I know immediately why my thinking connects the concept of thunder with the concept of lightning. Naturally here it does not matter whether I have correct concepts of thunder and lightning. The connection between those concepts I have is clear to me, and indeed this is the case through the concepts themselves.
3.6 Guided By Content Of Thought
[17] This transparent clarity of the process of thinking is quite independent of our knowledge of the physiological basis of thinking. I speak here of thinking insofar as it presents itself to observation of our spiritual activity. How one material process in my brain causes or influences another while I carry out a line of thought, does not come into consideration at all. What I see when I observe thinking is not what process in my brain connects the concept of lightning with the concept of thunder, but I see what motivates me to bring the two concepts into a particular relationship. My observation of thinking shows me that there is nothing that directs me in my connecting one thought with another, except the content of my thoughts; I am not directed by the material processes in my brain. In a less materialistic age than ours this remark would of course be entirely superfluous. Today however, when there are people who believe: When we know what matter is, we shall also know how matter thinks, - it has to be said that it is possible to speak about thinking without entering the domain of brain physiology at the same time. Today many people find it difficult to grasp the concept of thinking in its purity. Anyone who wants to contrast the representation of thinking I have here developed, with Cabanis’ statement, “The brain secretes thoughts as the liver does gall or the spittle-glands spittle, etc.,” simply does not know what I am talking about. He tries to find thinking by means of a mere process of observation such as we apply to other objects that make up the content of the world. He cannot find it in this manner because as I have shown, it eludes normal observation. Whoever cannot overcome materialism lacks the ability to bring about in himself the exceptional situation described above, which brings to his consciousness what remains unconscious in all other spiritual activities. If a person does not have the good will to place himself in this situation, then one can no more speak to him about thinking than one can speak about color to a person who is blind. However, he must not believe that we consider physiological processes to be thinking. He cannot explain thinking because he simply does not see it.
3.7 I Produce My Content Of Thought
[18] However, one possessing the ability to observe thinking, - and with goodwill every normally organized person has this ability, - this observation is the most important he can make. For he observes something which he himself brings to existence; he finds himself confronted not by a foreign object, to begin with, but by his own activity. He knows how what he observes comes to be. He sees through the connections and relations. A firm point is attained from which, with well-founded hope, one can seek for the explanation of the rest of the world’s phenomena.
[19] The feeling of possessing such a firm point caused the founder of modern philosophy, Renatus Cartesius, to base the whole of human knowledge on the principle, I think, therefore I am. All other things, all other events are present independent of me. Whether they are there as truth or illusion or dream I know not. Only one thing do I know with absolute certainty, for I myself bring it to its sure existence: my thinking. Perhaps it also has some other origin as well, perhaps it comes from God or from elsewhere, but that it is present in the sense that I myself bring it forth, of that I am certain. Cartesius had, to begin with, no justification for giving his statement any other meaning. He could maintain only that within the whole world content it is in my thinking that I grasp myself within that activity which is most essentially my own. What is meant by the attached therefore I am, has been much debated. It can have a meaning in one sense only. The simplest assertion I can make about something is that it is, that it exists. How this existence can be further defined I cannot say straight away about anything that comes to meet me. Each thing must first be studied in its relation to others before it can be determined in what sense it can be said to exist. An event that comes to meet me may be a set of perceptions, but it could also be a dream, a hallucination, and so forth. In short, I am unable to say in what sense it exists. I cannot gather this from the event in itself, but I shall learn it when I consider the event in its relation to other things. From this, however, I can, again, learn no more than how it is related to these other things. My search only reaches solid ground if I find an object which exists in a sense which I can derive from the object itself. As thinker I am such an object, for I give my existence the definite, self dependent content of the activity of thinking. Having reached this, I can go on from here and ask: Do the other objects exist in the same or in some other sense?
3.8 Remain Within Thought
[20] When thinking is made the object of observation, to the rest of the elements to be observed is added something which usually escapes attention; but the manner in which the other things are approached by man is not altered. One increases the number of observed objects, but not the number of methods of observation. While we are observing the other things, there mingles in the universal process - in which I now include observation - one process which is overlooked. Something different from all other processes is present, but is not noticed. But when I observe my thinking, no such unnoticed element is present. For what now hovers in the background is, again, nothing but thinking. The observed object is qualitatively the same as the activity directed upon it. And that is another characteristic feature of thinking. When we observe it, we do not find ourselves compelled to do so with the help of something qualitatively different, but can remain within the same element.
[21] When I weave an object, given independently of me, into my thinking, then I go beyond my observation, and the question is: Have I any right to do so? Why do I not simply let the object act upon me? In what way is it possible that my thinking could be related to the object? These are questions which everyone who reflects on his own thought processes must put to himself. They cease to exist when one thinks about thinking. We do not add anything foreign to thinking, and consequently do not have to justify such an addition.
3.9 Create Before Knowing
[22] Schelling says: “To gain knowledge of nature means to create nature.” If these words of the bold nature-philosopher are taken literally, we should have to renounce forever all knowledge of nature. For after all, nature is there already, and in order to create it a second time, one must know the principles according to which it originated. From the nature already in existence one would have to learn the conditions of its existence in order to apply them to the nature one wanted to create. But this learning, which would have to precede the creating, would, however, be knowing nature, and would remain this even if, after the learning, no creation took place. Only a nature not yet in existence could be created without knowing it beforehand.
[23] What is impossible with regard to nature: creating before knowing, we achieve in the case of thinking. If we wanted to wait and not think until we had first learned to know thinking, then we would never think at all. We have to plunge straight into thinking in order to be able, afterward, to know thinking by observing what we ourselves have done. We ourselves first create an object when we observe thinking. All other objects have been created without our help.
[24] Against my sentence, We must think before we can contemplate thinking, someone might easily set another sentence as being equally valid: We cannot wait with digesting, either, until we have observed the process of digestion. This objection would be similar to the one made by Pascal against Cartesius, when he maintained that one could also say: I go for a walk, therefore I am. Certainly I must resolutely get on with digesting before I have studied the physiological process of digestion. But this could only be compared with the contemplation of thinking if, after having digested, I were not to contemplate it with thinking, but were to eat and digest it. It is, after all, not without significance that whereas digestion cannot become the object of digestion, thinking can very well become the object of thinking.
[25] This, then, is beyond doubt: In thinking we are grasping a corner of the universal process, where our presence is required if anything is to come about. And, after all, this is just the point. The reason things are so enigmatical to me is that I do not participate in their creation. I simply find them there, whereas in the case of thinking I know how it is made. This is why a more basic starting point than thinking, from which to consider all else in the world, does not exist.
3.10 Self-Supporting Thought
[26] Here I should mention another widely current error which prevails with regard to thinking. It consists in this, that it is said: Thinking, as it is in itself, we never encounter. That thinking which connects the observations we make of our experiences and weaves them into a network of concepts, is not at all the same as that thinking which later we extract from the objects we have observed and then make the object of our consideration. What we first unconsciously weave into things is something quite different from what we consciously extract from them afterward.
[27] To draw such conclusions is not to see that in this way it is impossible to escape from thinking. It is absolutely impossible to come out of thinking if one wants to consider it. When one distinguishes an unconscious thinking from a later conscious thinking, then one must not forget that this distinction is quite external and has nothing to do with thinking as such. I do not in the least alter a thing by considering it with my thinking. I can well imagine that a being with quite differently organized sense organs and with a differently functioning intelligence would have a quite different representation of a horse from mine, but I cannot imagine that my own thinking becomes something different because I observe it. What I observe is what I myself bring about. What my thinking looks like to an intelligence different from mine is not what we are speaking about now; we are speaking about what it looks like to me. In any case, the picture of my thinking in another intelligence cannot be truer than my own picture of it. Only if I were not myself the thinking being, but thinking confronted me as the activity of a being foreign to me, could I say that my picture of thinking appeared in quite a definite way, and that I could not know what in itself the thinking of the beings was like.
[28] So far there is not the slightest reason to view my own thinking from a standpoint different from the one applied to other things. After all, I consider the rest of the world by means of thinking. How should I make of my thinking an exception?
[29] With this I consider that I have sufficiently justified making thinking my starting point in my approach to an understanding of the world. When Archimedes had discovered the lever, he thought that with its help he could lift the whole cosmos from its hinges if only he could find a point upon which he could support his instrument. He needed something that was supported by itself, that was not carried by anything else. In thinking we have a principle which exists by means of itself. From this principle let us attempt to understand the world. Thinking we can understand through itself. So the question is only whether we can also understand other things through it.
3.11 Impartial Consideration Of Thinking
[30] I have so far spoken of thinking without considering its vehicle, man’s consciousness. Most present-day philosophers would object: Before there can be thinking, there must be consciousness. Therefore, one should begin, not from thinking, but from consciousness. No thinking can exist without consciousness. To them I must reply: If I want to have an explanation of what relation exists between thinking and consciousness, I must think about it. In doing so I presuppose thinking. To this could be said: When the philosopher wants to understand consciousness he makes use of thinking, and to that extent presupposes it, but in the ordinary course of life thinking does arise within consciousness and, therefore, presupposes this. If this answer were given to the World Creator who wished to create thinking, it would no doubt be justified. One naturally cannot let thinking arise without first having brought about consciousness. However, the philosopher is not concerned with the creation of the world, but with the understanding of it. Therefore he has to find the starting point, not for the creation, but for the understanding of the world. I consider it most extraordinary that a philosopher should be reproached for being concerned first and foremost about the correctness of his principles, rather than turning straight to the objects he wants to understand. The World Creator had to know, above all, how to find a vehicle for thinking; the philosopher has to find a secure foundation for his understanding of what already exists. How can it help us to start from consciousness and apply thinking to it, if first we do not know whether it is possible to reach any explanation of things by means of thinking?
[31] We must first consider thinking quite impartially, without reference to a thinking subject or a thought object. For in subject and object we already have concepts formed by thinking. There is no denying: Before anything else a can be understood, thinking must be understood. To deny this is to fail to realize that man is not a first link in creation, but the last. Therefore, for an explanation of the world by means of concepts, one cannot start from the first elements of existence, but must begin with what is nearest to us and is most intimately ours. We cannot at one bound transport ourselves to the beginning of the world, in order to begin our investigations there; we must start from the present moment and see whether we cannot ascend from the later to the earlier. As long as geology spoke in terms of assumed revolutions in order to explain the present condition of the earth, it groped in darkness. It was only when it made its beginnings from the investigations of those processes at present at work on the earth, and from these drew conclusions about the past, that it gained a secure foundation. As long as philosophy assumes all sorts of principles such as atom, motion, matter, will, the unconscious, it will get nowhere. Only when the philosopher recognizes as his absolute first that which came as the absolute last, can he reach his goal. But this absolute last in world evolution is Thinking.
3.12 Application Of Thought
[32] There are people who say: Whether or not our thinking is right in itself cannot be established with certainty, after all. And to this extent the point of departure is still a doubtful one. It would be just as sensible to raise doubts as to whether in itself a tree is right or wrong. Thinking is a fact, and to speak of the rightness or wrongness of a fact has no sense. At most, I can have doubts as to whether thinking is being rightly applied, just as I can doubt whether a certain tree supplies a wood suitable for making tools for a particular purpose. To show to what extent the application of thinking to the world is right or wrong, is just the task of this book. I can understand anyone doubting whether we can ascertain anything about the world by means of thinking, but it is incomprehensible to me how anyone can doubt the rightness of thinking in itself.
Addition to the revised edition (1918)
[1] In the preceding discussion, the significant difference between thinking and all other activities of the soul has been referred to as a fact which reveals itself to a really unprejudiced observation. Unless this unprejudiced observation is achieved, against this discussion one is tempted to raise objections such as these: When I think about a rose, then after all, this also is only an expression of a relation of my “I” to the rose, just as when I feel the beauty of the rose. In the case of thinking, a relation between “I” and object exists in the same way as in the case of feeling or perceiving. To make this objection is to fail to realize that it is only in the activity of thinking that the “I” knows itself to be completely at one with that which is active - going into all the ramifications of the activity. In the case of no other soul activity is this completely so. When, for example, a pleasure is felt, a more sensitive observation can quite easily detect to what extent the “I” knows itself to be one with something active, and to what extent there is something passive in it so that the pleasure merely happens to the “I.” And this is the case with the other soul activities. But one should not confuse “having thought-images” with the working through of thought by means of thinking. Thought-images can arise in the soul in the same way as dreams or vague intimations. This is not thinking.
To this could be said: If this is what is meant by thinking, then the element of will is within thinking, and so we have to do not merely with thinking, but also with the will within thinking. However, this would only justify one in saying: Real thinking must always be willed. But this has nothing to do with the characterization of thinking as given in this discussion. The nature of thinking may be such that it must necessarily always be willed; the point is that everything that is willed is - while being willed - surveyed by the “I” as an activity entirely its own. Indeed it must be said that just because this is the nature of thinking, it appears to the observer as willed through and through. Anyone who really takes the trouble to understand all that has to be considered in order to reach a judgment about thinking, cannot fail to recognize that this soul activity does have the unique character we have described here.
[2] A personality highly appreciated as a thinker by the author of this book, has objected that it is impossible to speak about thinking as is done here, because what one believes one is observing as active thinking only appears to be so. In reality one is observing only the results of an unconscious activity, which is the foundation of thinking. Only because this unconscious activity is not observed does the illusion arise that the observed thinking exists through itself, just as when in an illumination made by a rapid succession of electric sparks one believes one is seeing a continuous movement. This objection, too, rests on an inaccurate examination of the facts. To make it means that one has not taken into consideration that it is the “I” itself, standing within thinking, that observes its own activity. The “I” would have to stand outside thinking to be deluded as in the case of an illumination with a rapid succession of electric sparks. Indeed one could say: To make such a comparison is to deceive oneself forcibly, like someone who, seeing a moving light, insisted that it was being freshly lit by an unknown hand at every point where it appeared. - No, whoever wants to see in thinking anything other than a surveyable activity brought about within the “I,” must first make himself blind to the plain facts that are there for the seeing, in order to be able to set up a hypothetical activity as the basis of thinking. He who does not so blind himself cannot fail to recognize that everything he “thinks into” thinking in this manner takes him away from the essence of thinking. Unprejudiced observation shows that nothing belongs to thinking’s own nature that is not found in thinking itself. If one leaves the realm of thinking, one cannot come to what causes it.
4. THE WORLD AS PERCEPT
4.0 Reactive Thinking
[1] Concepts and ideas arise through thinking. What a concept is cannot be stated in words. Words can do no more than draw attention to our concepts. When someone sees a tree, his thinking reacts to his observation, an ideal counterpart is added to the object, and he considers the object and the ideal counterpart as belonging together. When the object disappears from his field of observation, only the ideal counterpart of it remains. This latter is the concept of the object. The further our range of experience is widened, the greater becomes the sum of our concepts. But a concept is never found isolated. Concepts combine to form a totality built up according to inherent laws. The concept “organism” combines, for example, with those of “gradual development, growth.” Other concepts formed of single objects merge completely. All concepts that I form of lions, merge into the general concept “lion.” In this way the single concepts unite in an enclosed conceptual system, in which each concept has its special place. Ideas are not qualitatively different from concepts. They are but concepts that are richer in content, more saturated and comprehensive. At this particular point I must draw special attention to the fact that thinking is my point of departure, and not concepts and ideas which must first be gained by means of thinking. Concepts and ideas already presuppose thinking. Therefore, what I have said about the nature of thinking, that it exists through itself, that it is determined by nothing but itself, cannot simply be carried over and applied to concepts. (I mention this at this point explicitly because it is here that my difference with Hegel lies. For Hegel, the concept is the primary and original.)
[2] The concept cannot be gained from observation. This can already be seen from the fact that the growing human being slowly and gradually forms concepts corresponding to the objects surrounding him. The concepts are added to observation.
4.1 Conceptual Search
[3] A much-read contemporary philosopher, Herbert Spencer, describes the mental process which we carry out in response to observation, in the following way:
[4] “If, when walking through the fields one day in September, we hear a sound a few yards in advance, and, on observing the ditch-side where it occurs, see the grass move, we shall probably turn toward the spot to learn by what this sound and motion are produced. As we approach, a partridge flutters in the ditch; on seeing this our curiosity is satisfied; we have what we call an explanation of the phenomena. This explanation, please notice, amounts to this: Because we have experienced countless times in life that a disturbance of the stationary position of small bodies is accompanied by the movement of other bodies existing among them, and because we have therefore generalized the relation between such disturbances and such movements, we consider this particular disturbance explained as soon as we find it to be an example of just this relationship.”
A closer examination gives a very different result from what is described above. When I hear a sound, the first thing I do is to find the concept that corresponds to this observation. It is this concept that takes me beyond the sound. Someone who did not reflect further would simply hear the sound and be content with that. But, because I reflect, it becomes clear to me that I have to understand the sound as an effect. It is therefore only when I connect the concept of effect with the perception of the sound that I am induced to go beyond the single observation and look for the cause. The concept of effect calls up that of cause; I then look for the object which is the cause, and in this case I find it to be the partridge. But these concepts, cause and effect, I can never gain by mere observation, however many instances I may have observed. Observation calls up thinking, and it is thinking that then shows me how to fit one individual occurrence to another.
[5] If one demands of a “strictly objective science” that it must take its content from observation alone, then one must at the same time require that it is to desist from all thinking. For by its very nature, thinking goes beyond the observed object.
4.2 Conceptual Reference
[6] We must now pass from thinking itself to the being who thinks, for it is through the thinker that thinking is combined with observation. Human consciousness is the stage upon which concept and observation meet one another and become united. In saying this, we have at the same time characterized human consciousness. It is the mediator between thinking and observation. Insofar as the human being observes an object, it appears to him as given; insofar as he thinks, he appears to himself as active. He regards what comes to meet him as object, and himself as thinking subject. While he directs his thinking to the observation, he is conscious of the object; while he directs his thinking to himself he is conscious of himself, or is self-conscious. Human consciousness of necessity, must be self-conscious at the same time, because it is a thinking consciousness. For when thinking turns its attention to its own activity, then its own essential being, that is, its subject, is its object as well.
[7] It must, however, not be overlooked that it is only with the help of thinking that we can define ourselves as subject and contrast ourselves with objects. For this reason, thinking must never be understood as a merely subjective activity. Thinking is beyond subject and object. It forms these two concepts, just as it forms all others. When therefore as thinking subject, we refer a concept to an object, we must not understand this reference as something merely subjective. It is not the subject that makes the reference, but thinking. The subject does not think because it is subject; rather it appears to itself as a subject because it is able to think. The activity carried out by man as a thinking being is, therefore, not a merely subjective activity. Rather it is neither subjective nor objective; it is an activity that goes beyond both these concepts. I ought never to say that my individual subject thinks; in fact, my subject exists by the very grace of thinking. Thinking, therefore, is an element that takes me beyond myself and unites me with the objects. Yet at the same time it separates me from them, inasmuch as it sets me, as subject, over against them.
[8] Man’s twofold nature is due to this: he thinks, and in so doing encompasses himself and the rest of the world; but at the same time, it is also by means of thinking that he defines himself as an individual who confronts the objects.
4.3 Conceptual Relationship
[9] The next step is to ask ourselves: How does the other element, - that in consciousness meets with thinking - which we have so far simply called the object of observation, enter our consciousness?
[10] In order to answer this question, we must separate from our field of observation all that has been brought into it by thinking. For the content of our consciousness at any moment is already permeated with concepts in the most varied ways.
[11] We must imagine a being with fully developed human intelligence suddenly waking into existence out of nothing, and confronting the world. Everything of which it was aware before its thinking activity began, would be the pure content of observation. The world would then reveal to this being nothing but the mere disconnected aggregate of objects of sensation: colors, sounds, sensations of pressure, warmth, taste and smell, then feelings of pleasure and displeasure. This aggregate is the content of pure, unthinking observation. Over against it stands thinking, ready to unfold its activity if a point of attack can be found. Experience soon shows that it is found. Thinking is able to draw threads from one element of observation to another. It connects definite concepts with these elements and thereby brings about a relationship between them. We have already seen above how a sound that comes to meet us is connected with another observation by our identifying the former as the effect of the latter.
[12] If we now remind ourselves that the activity of thinking is never to be understood as a subjective activity, then we shall not be tempted to believe that such relationships, established by thinking, have merely a subjective value.
4.4 Correction Of My Picture Of World
[13] Our next task is to discover by means of thinking reflection what relation the above mentioned directly given content of observation has to our conscious subject.
[14] The varied ways of using words make it necessary for me to come to an agreement with my readers concerning the use of a word which I shall have to employ in what follows. I shall use the word perceptions for the immediate objects of sensation enumerated above, insofar as the conscious subject becomes aware of them through observation. It is therefore not the process of observation, but the object of observation which I call perception.
[15] I do not choose the word sensation because in physiology this has a definite meaning which is narrower than that of my concept of perception. I can call a feeling in myself a perception, but not a sensation in the physiological sense. But I also become aware of my feelings by their becoming perceptions for me. And the way we become aware of our thinking through observation is such that we can also call thinking, as it first comes to the notice of our consciousness, a perception.
[16] The naive man considers his perceptions, in the sense in which they directly seem to appear to him, as things having an existence completely independent of himself. When he sees a tree he believes, to begin with, that it stands in the form which he sees, with the colors of its various parts, etc., there on the spot toward which his gaze is directed. When in the morning he sees the sun appear as a disk on the horizon and follows the course of this disk, his opinion is that all this actually exists (by itself) and occurs just as he observes it. He clings to this belief until he meets with further perceptions which contradict those he first had. The child who has as yet no experience of distance grasps at the moon, and does not correct his first impression as to the real distance until a second perception contradicts the first. Every extension of the circle of my perceptions compels me to correct my picture of the world. We see this in everyday life, as well as in the intellectual development of mankind. That picture which the ancients made for themselves of the relation of the earth to the sun and to the other heavenly bodies had to be replaced through Copernicus by a different one, because theirs did not accord with perceptions which were unknown in those early times. A man who had been born blind said, when operated on by Dr. Franz, that the idea of the size of objects which he had formed by his sense of touch before his operation, was a very different one. He had to correct his tactual perceptions by his visual perceptions.
4.5 Mathematical And Qualitative Percept-Picture
[17] Why are we compelled to make these constant corrections of our observations?
[18] A simple reflection will answer this question. When I stand at one end of an avenue, the trees at the far end seem smaller and nearer together than those where I stand. The picture of my perception changes when I change the place from which I am looking. The form in which it appears to me, therefore, is dependent on a condition which belongs not to the object, but to me, the perceiver. It is all the same to the avenue where I stand. But the picture of it which I receive depends essentially on the place where I stand. In the same way, it is all the same to the sun and the planetary system that human beings happen to consider them from the earth; but the perception-picture of the heavens which human beings have is determined by the fact that they inhabit the earth. This dependence of our perception-picture upon our place of observation is the easiest one to grasp. Matters already become more difficult when we learn how our perceptions are dependent on our bodily and spiritual organization. The physicist shows us that within the space in which we hear a sound, vibrations of the air occur, and also that in the body in which we seek the origin of the sound, vibrating movements of its parts will be found. We perceive this movement as sound, but only if we have a normally constructed ear. Without this, the whole world would be forever silent for us. From physiology we know that there are people who perceive nothing of the splendor of color surrounding us. Their perception-picture shows only degrees of light and dark. Others are blind to one color, e.g., red. Their picture of the world lacks this shade of color, and therefore is actually a different one from that of the average person. I would call the dependence of my perception-picture on my place of observation, a mathematical one, and its dependence on my organization a qualitative one. The first determines the proportions of size and mutual distances of my perceptions, the second their quality. The fact that I see a red surface as red - this qualitative determination - depends on the organization of my eye.
4.6 Subjective Percept-Picture
[19] My perception-pictures, then, are subjective to begin with. Knowledge of the subjective character of our perceptions may easily lead to doubt that there is any objective basis for them at all. If we know that a perception, for example, that of the color red or of a certain tone, is not possible without a specific structure of our organism, it is easy to believe that it has no existence at all apart from our subjective organization, that without the act of perceiving - the objective of which it is - it would have no kind of existence. This view found a classical exponent in George Berkeley. His opinion was that man, from the moment he realizes the significance the subject has for perception, is no longer able to believe in the presence of a world without the conscious spirit. He said:
“Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that a man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, viz., that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth - in a word, all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world - have not any subsistence without a mind; that their being is to be perceived or known; that, consequently, so long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all or else subsist in the mind of some Eternal Spirit.”
According to this view, nothing remains of the perception, if one disregards the fact of its being perceived. There is no color when none is seen, no sound when none is heard. Apart from the act of perception, extension, form and motion exist as little as do color and sound. Nowhere do we see bare extension or form; these are always connected with color or some other quality unquestionably dependent on our subjectivity. If these latter disappear when our perception of them disappears, then the former, being bound up with them, must likewise disappear.
[20] To the objection that even if figure, color, sound, etc., have no other existence than the one within the act of perception, yet there must be things that exist apart from consciousness and to which the conscious perception pictures are similar, the above view would answer that a color can be similar only to a color, a figure only to a figure. Our perceptions can be similar only to our perceptions, and to nothing else. What we call an object is also nothing but a collection of perceptions which are connected in a particular way. If I strip a table of its form, extension, color, etc., - in short, of all that is only my perception-then nothing else remains. If this view is followed to its logical conclusion, it leads to the assertion that the objects of my perceptions are present only through me and, indeed, only in as far as, and as long as I perceive them. They disappear with the act of perceiving them, and have no meaning apart from it. But apart from my perceptions I know of no objects and cannot know of any.
[21] No objection can be made to this assertion as long as in general I merely take into account the fact that the perception is partially determined by the organization of my subject. It would be very different if we were able to estimate what function our perceiving has in bringing about a perception. We should then know what happens to the perception during the act of perceiving, and could also determine how much of it must already have existed before it was perceived.
4.7 Mental Picture: After-effect Of Observation
[22] This leads us to turn our consideration from the object of perception to its subject. I perceive not only other things; I also perceive myself. The immediate content of the perception of myself is the fact that I am the stable element in contrast to the continually coming and going perception-pictures. The perception of the I can always come up in my consciousness while I am having other perceptions. When I am absorbed in the perception of an object that is given, then, for the time being, I am conscious only of this object. To this, the perception of my self can come. I am then conscious, not only of the object, but also of my own personality, which confronts the object and observes it. I do not merely see a tree, but I also know that it is I who see it. I also realize that something takes place in me while I observe the tree. When the tree disappears from my field of vision, an after-effect of this process remains in my consciousness: an image of the tree. This image became united with my self during my observation. My self has become enriched; its content has taken a new element into itself. This element I call my representation of the tree. I should never be in a position to speak of representations if I did not experience them in the perception of my own self. Perceptions would come and go; I should let them slip by. Only because I perceive my self, and am aware that with each perception the content of my self also changes, do I find myself compelled to bring the observation of the object into connection with the changes in my own condition, and to speak of my representation.
4.8 Mental Picture: Caused By Unknown Thing-In-Itself
[23] I perceive the representation in my self in the same sense as I perceive color, sound, etc., in other objects. Now I am also able to make the distinction that I call those other objects that confront me, outer world, whereas the content of my self-perception I call inner world. Misunderstanding of the relationship between representation and object has led to the greatest mistakes in modern philosophy. The perception of a change in us, the modification experienced in the self, has been thrust into the foreground and the object which causes this modification is lost sight of altogether. It is said: We do not perceive the objects, but only our representations. I am supposed to know nothing of the table in itself, which is the object of my observation, but only of the changes which occur in my self while I perceive the table. This view should not be confused with that of Berkeley, mentioned above. Berkeley maintains the subjective nature of the content of perceptions, but he does not say that I can know only of my own representations. He limits man’s knowledge to his representations because, in his opinion, there are no objects outside the act of representing. What I regard as a table is no longer present, according to Berkeley, when I cease to turn my gaze toward it. This is why Berkeley lets our perceptions arise directly out of the omnipotence of God. I see a table because God calls up this perception in me. For Berkeley, therefore, there are no real beings other than God and human spirits. What we call “world” is present only within spirits. For Berkeley, what the naive man calls outer world, or physical nature, is not there. This view is contrasted by the now predominant Kantian view”’ which limits our knowledge to our representations, not because it is convinced that there cannot be things in existence besides these representations, but because it believes us to be so organized that we can experience only the modification in our own self, not the thing-in-itself that causes this modification. This conclusion arises from the view that I know only my representations, not that there is no existence apart from them, but only that the subject cannot take such an existence directly into itself; all it can do is merely through “the medium of its subjective thoughts to imagine it, invent it, think it, cognize it, or perhaps also fail to cognize it.” This view believes it expresses something absolutely certain, something that is immediately obvious, in need of no proof.
“The first fundamental principle which the philosopher has to bring to clear consciousness consists in the recognition that our knowledge, to begin with, does not reach beyond our representations. Our representation is the only thing we experience and learn to know directly and, just because we have direct experience of it, even the most radical doubt cannot rob us of our knowledge. By contrast, the knowledge that goes beyond our representations - taking this expression here in the widest possible sense, so that all physical happenings are included in it - is open to doubt. Hence, at the very beginning of all philosophizing, all knowledge which goes beyond representations must explicitly be set down as being open to doubt.”
4.9 Mental Picture: What My Organization Transmits
These are the opening sentences of Volkelt’s book on Kant’s Theory of Knowledge. What is put forward here as an immediate and self-evident truth is in reality the result of a line of thought which runs as follows: The naive man believes that the objects, just as he perceives them, are also present outside his consciousness. Physics, physiology and psychology, however, seem to show that for our perceptions our organization is necessary and that, therefore, we cannot know about anything except what our organization transmits to us from the objects. Our perceptions therefore are modifications of our organization, not things-in-themselves. The train of thought here indicated has, in fact, been characterized by Eduard von Hartmann as the one which must lead to the conviction that we can have a direct knowledge only of our own representations.
Physics
Outside our organisms we find vibrations of physical bodies and of air; these are sensed by us as sounds, and therefore it is concluded that what we call sound is nothing but a subjective reaction of our organisms to these movements in the external world. In the same way, color and warmth are found to be merely modifications of our organisms. And, indeed, the view is held that these two kinds of perceptions are called forth in us through effects or processes in the external world which are utterly different from the experiences we have of warmth or of color. If these processes stimulate the nerves in my skin, I have the subjective perception of warmth; if they happen to encounter the optic nerve, I perceive light and color. Light, color and warmth, then, are the responses of my sensory nerves to external stimuli. Even the sense of touch does not reveal to me the objects of the outer world, but only conditions in myself. In the sense of modern physics, one must imagine that bodies consist of infinitely small particles, molecules, and that these molecules are not in direct contact, but are at certain distances from one another. Between them, therefore, is empty space. Across this space they act on one another by attraction and repulsion. If I put my hand on a body, the molecules of my hand by no means touch those of the body directly, but there remains a certain distance between body and hand, and what I sense as the body’s resistance is nothing other than the effect of the force of repulsion which its molecules exert on my hand. I am completely external to the body and perceive only its effects upon my organism.
[24] These considerations have been supplemented by the theory of the so-called specific nervous energy, which has been advanced by J. Miiller (1801-1958). According to this theory, each sense has the peculiarity that it responds to all external stimuli in one definite way only. If the optic nerve is stimulated, perception of light results, irrespective of whether the nerve is stimulated by what we call light, or by a mechanical pressure, or an electric current. On the other hand, the same external stimulus applied to different senses gives rise to different perceptions. This appears to show that our sense-organs can transmit only what occurs in themselves, but nothing from the external world. They determine our perceptions, each according to its own nature.
Physiology
[25] Physiology also shows that there is no question of a direct knowledge of what the objects cause to take place in our sense-organs. When the physiologist traces the processes in our bodies, he discovers that already in the sense-organs, the effects of the external vibrations are modified in the most manifold ways. This can be seen most clearly in the case of the eye and ear. Both are very complicated organs which modify the external stimulus considerably before they conduct it to the corresponding nerve. From the peripheral end of the nerve the already modified stimulus is then led further to the brain. Here at last the central organs are stimulated in their turn. From this the conclusion is drawn that the external process must have undergone a series of transformations before it reaches consciousness. What goes on in the brain is connected by so many intermediate processes with the external process, that any similarity to the latter is unthinkable. What the brain ultimately transmits to the soul is neither external processes nor processes in the sense-organs, but only such as occur in the brain. But even these are not directly perceived by the soul; what we finally have in consciousness are not brain processes at all, but sensations. My sensation of red has absolutely no similarity to the process which occurs in the brain when I sense the red. The red is caused by the processes in the brain and appears again only as an effect of this in the soul. This is why Hartmann says: “What the subject perceives therefore is always only modifications of his own psychic states and nothing else.”
Psychology
When I have sensations, these are as yet far from being grouped into what I perceive as objects. For only single sensations can be transmitted to me by the brain. The sensations of hardness and softness are transmitted to me by the sense of touch, those of color and light by the sense of sight. Yet all these can be found united in one and the same object. The unification must, therefore, be caused by the soul itself; this means that the soul combines into bodies the separate sensations transmitted through the brain. My brain gives me separately and indeed along very different paths, the sensations of sight, touch and hearing, which the soul then combines into the representation “trumpet.” This last link (the representation of trumpet) is the very first process to enter my consciousness. In it can no longer be found anything of what is outside of me and originally made an impression on my senses. The external object has been entirely lost on the way to the brain and through the brain to the soul.
4.10 Perceived World Is A Projection Of Soul Qualities
[26] In the history of man’s intellectual endeavor it would be hard to find another edifice of thought which has been put together with greater ingenuity and yet which, on closer analysis, collapses into nothing. Let us look a little closer at the way it has been built up. The starting point is taken from what is given in naive consciousness, that is, from things as perceived. Then it is shown that nothing of what belongs to these things would be present for us had we no senses. No eye: no color. Therefore, the color is not yet present in what affects the eye. It arises first through the interaction of the eye and the object. The latter must, therefore, be colorless. But neither is the color present in the eye, for what is present there is a chemical or physical process which first has to be led by the optic nerve to the brain, and there releases another process. This is not yet the color. The latter is only called up in the soul through the process in the brain. As yet it does not enter my consciousness, but is first placed by the soul on a body outside. Here, finally, I believe that I perceive it. We have completed a circle. We are conscious of a colored object. This is the starting point; here the building up of thoughts begins. If I had no eye, for me the object would be colorless. I cannot, therefore, place the color on the body. I start on a search for it. I look for it in the eye: in vain; in the nerve: in vain; in the brain: in vain once more; in the soul: here I find it indeed, but not attached to the body. I recover the colored body only there at the point from which I started. The circle is closed. I am confident that I recognize as a product of my soul what the naive man imagines to be present out there in space.
4.11 External Perception Is Mental Picture
[27] As long as one remains here, everything seems to fit beautifully. But we must start again from the beginning. Until now I have been dealing with the outer perception, of which earlier, as naive man, I had a completely wrong opinion. I believed that just as I perceive it, it had an objective existence. But now I have noticed that in the act of representing it, it disappears; that it is only a modification of my soul condition. Is there any justification for using it as a starting point in my consideration! Can I say of it that it affects my soul? From now on I have to treat the table, of which earlier I believed that it acted on me and brought about in me a representation of itself, as being itself a representation. From this it follows logically that my sense-organs and the processes in them are also mere subjective manifestations. I have no right to speak of a real eye, but only of my representation of eye. And the same holds good in regard to the nerves and the brain process, and no less in regard to what takes place in the soul itself, through which, out of the chaos of manifold sensations, objects are supposed to be built up. If I run through the steps of my act of cognition once more, presupposing the first line of thought to be correct, then the latter shows itself to be a web of representations which, as such, could not act upon one another. I cannot say: My representation of the object affects my representation of the eye, and from this interaction the representation of color comes about. Nor is there any need for saying this, for as soon as it is clear to me that my sense-organs and their activity, and my nerve and soul processes as well, can also be given only through perception, then the described line of thought shows itself in its full impossibility. It is true that I can have no perception without the corresponding sense-organ, but neither can I have the sense-organ without perception. From my perception of the table I can go over to the eye which sees it, and to the nerves in the skin which touch it, but what takes place in these I can, again, learn only from perception. And there I soon notice that in the process which takes place in the eye there is no trace of similarity to what I perceive as color. I cannot deny the existence of my color perception by pointing to the process which takes place in the eye during this perception. And just as little can I find the color in the nerve and brain processes; all I do is only add new perceptions, within the organism, to the first perception, which the naive man placed outside his organism. I simply pass from one perception to another.
[28] Apart from this there is an error in the whole conclusion of the line of thought. I am able to follow what takes place in my organism up to the processes in my brain, even though my assumptions become more and more hypothetical the nearer I get to the central processes in the brain. But the path of observation from outside ceases with what takes place in my brain, ceases, in fact, with what I should observe if I could treat the brain with the assistance and methods of physics and chemistry. The path of observation from within begins with the sensation and continues up to the building up of objects out of the material of sensation. In the transition from brain-process to sensation, there is a gap in the path of observation.
[29] This characteristic way of thinking, which describes itself as critical idealism, in contrast to the standpoint of naive consciousness which it calls naive realism, makes the mistake of characterizing one perception as representation while taking another in the very same sense as does the naive realism which it apparently refutes. Critical idealism wants to prove that perceptions have the character of representations; in this attempt it accepts - in naive fashion - the perceptions belonging to the organism as objective, valid facts, and, what is more, fails to see that it mixes up two spheres of observation, between which it can find no mediation.
4.12 Objective Existence Of Own Organism
[30] Critical idealism is able to refute naive realism only by itself assuming, in naive-realistic fashion, that one’s own organism has objective existence. As soon as the critical idealist becomes conscious of the complete similarity between the perceptions connected with one’s own organism and those which naive realism assumes to have objective existence, he can no longer rely on the perceptions of the organism as being a safe foundation. He would have to regard his own subjective organization also as a mere complex of representations. But then the possibility ceases of regarding the content of the perceived world as a product of man’s spiritual organization. One would have to assume that the representation “color” was only a modification of the representation “eye.” So-called critical idealism cannot be proved without borrowing something from naive realism. Naive realism can only be refuted by accepting its assumptions - without testing them - in another sphere.
[31] This much, then, is certain: Investigations within the sphere of perceptions cannot prove critical idealism, and consequently cannot strip perceptions of their objective character.
[32] Still less can the principle, “The perceived world is my representation,” be stated as if it were obvious and in need of no proof. Schopenhauer begins his principal work, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, The World as Will and Representation, with the words:
“The world is my representation - this is a truth which holds good for every being that lives and cognizes, though man alone is able to bring it into reflective, abstract consciousness. If he really does this, then he has attained to philosophical self consciousness. It then becomes clear and certain to him that he does not know a sun or an earth, but always only an eye that sees a sun, a hand that feels an earth; that the world which surrounds him is only there as representation, that means throughout only in relation to something else, to the one who represents, that is, to himself. If ever a truth can be asserted a priori, this one can, for it expresses the form most general of all possible and thinkable experiences, more general than time, or space, or causality, for all these presuppose it...”
The principle above: “The world is my representation,” on which this is based, is, however, wrecked by the fact, already mentioned, that the eye and the hand are perceptions in just the same sense as the sun and the earth. And if one used Schopenhauer’s expressions in his own sense, one could object to his principle: My eye that sees the sun and my hand that feels the earth are my representations, just like the sun and the earth themselves. But that, with this, the principle is cancelled out, is immediately obvious. For only my real eye and my real hand could have the representations “sun” and “earth” as their modifications; my representations “eye” and “hand” cannot have them. But critical idealism can speak of representations only.
[33] It is impossible by means of critical idealism to gain insight into what relation perception has to representation. It is insensible to the distinction, mentioned on page 85, of what happens to the perception while perceiving takes place and what must be inherent in it before it is perceived. We must, therefore, attempt to gain this insight along another path.
5. KNOWING THE WORLD
5.0 Finding The Concept That Corresponds To The World
[1] From the foregoing considerations it follows that by investigating the content of our observation it is impossible to prove that our perceptions are representations. This proof is supposed to follow from the fact that if the process of perception takes place in the way it is imagined, according to the naive-realistic suppositions as to man’s psychological and physiological constitution, then we are dealing, not with things-in-themselves, but merely with our representations of things. Now if naive realism, when consistently thought through, leads to results which directly contradict what it presupposes, then one must regard its presuppositions as unsuitable for the foundation of a world view and discard them. It is certainly inadmissible on the one hand to reject the presuppositions and yet, on the other, to regard their outcome as valid, as does the critical idealist when he bases his assertion, The world is my representation, on the so-called proof indicated above. (Eduard von Hartmann gives a full account of this line of argument in his work, Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie, The Basic Problem of a Theory of Knowledge.)
[2] The correctness of critical idealism is one thing, the power of conviction of its proof another. How it stands with the former will be seen later in the course of our discussion. But the power of conviction of its proof is nil. If one builds a house and the first floor collapses while the second floor is being built, then the second floor collapses also. As first floor is related to second floor, so is naive realism related to critical idealism.
[3] For the one holding the view that the whole world we perceive is only a world that we represent to ourselves and, indeed, only the effect on our soul of things unknown to us, the essential problem of knowledge is naturally concerned, not with the representations present only in the soul, but with the things which lie outside our consciousness and are independent of us. He asks: How much can we indirectly learn about them, since they are not directly accessible to our observation? From this point of view he is concerned, not with the inner connection of his conscious perceptions, but with their causes, which lie beyond his consciousness and exist independently of him while the perceptions disappear as soon as he turns his senses away from things. From this point of view, our consciousness acts like a mirror from which the pictures of things also disappear the moment its reflecting surface is not turned toward them. He who does not see things themselves, but only their reflections, must obtain information about their nature indirectly by drawing conclusions from the behavior of the reflections. This is the standpoint of modern natural science, which uses perceptions only as a means of obtaining information about the processes of matter which lie behind them, and alone really “are.” If the philosopher, as critical idealist, acknowledges a real existence at all, then his sole aim is to gain knowledge of this real existence indirectly by means of his representations. His interest skips over the subjective world of representations and instead pursues what produces these representations.
[4] But the critical idealist may go as far as to say: I am confined to the world of my representations and cannot get beyond it. If I think that there is something behind my representations, then again this thought is nothing but my representation. An idealist of this kind will then either deny the thing-in-itself entirely or, at any rate, say that it has no significance for human beings, that it is as good as non-existent since we can know nothing of it.
[5] To this kind of critical idealist the whole world seems a dream, in the face of which all striving for knowledge is simply meaningless. For him there can be only two kinds of men: those who are victims of the illusion that their own dream-pictures are real things, and the wise ones who see through the nothingness of this dream-world and therefore must gradually lose all desire to trouble themselves further about it. From this point of view, even one’s own personality may become a mere dream phantom. Just as during sleep, among our dream-images an image of our self appears, so in waking consciousness the representation of the I is added to the representations of the outer world. We then have in consciousness not the real I, but only our representation of the I. Now, if the existence of things is denied or at least it is denied that we can know anything of them, then the existence or the knowledge of one’s own personality must also be denied. The critical idealist then comes to maintain: “All reality transforms itself into a wonderful dream - without a life which is dreamed about, and without a spirit which dreams - into a dream which hangs together in a dream of itself.”
[6] It does not matter whether the person who believes that he recognizes life to be a dream assumes nothing more behind this dream, or whether he refers his representations to real things: in either case, life must lose all scientific interest for him. But whereas all science must be meaningless for those who believe that the whole of the accessible universe is exhausted in dreams, for others who believe they can draw conclusions about the things from the representations, science will consist in the investigation of such “things-in-themselves.” The first world view could be described as absolute illusionism, the second is called transcendental realism by its most consistent exponent, Eduard von Hartmann.
[7] Both these views have this in common with naive realism that they seek to establish themselves by means of an investigation of perceptions. However, nowhere within this sphere can they find a firm foundation.
5.1 The Awakened State Of Thinking
[8] An essential question for an adherent of transcendental realism must be: How does the I bring about, out of itself, the world of representations? Insofar as it would be a means of investigating indirectly the world of the I-in-itself, an earnest striving for knowledge could still be kindled by a world of representations that was given us, even if this disappeared as soon as we shut our senses to the external world. If the things we experience were representations, then everyday life would be like a dream, and recognition of the true situation would be like an awakening. Our dream pictures also interest us as long as we are dreaming and, consequently, do not recognize them as dreams. The moment we awaken we no longer look for inner connections between our dream-pictures, but for the physical, physiological and psychological processes which caused them. In the same way a philosopher who considers the world to be his representation cannot be interested in the inner connection of the details within it. If he allows for the existence of an I at all, then he will not ask how his representations are connected with one another, but what takes place in the soul that exists independently of him while his consciousness contains a certain content of representations. If I dream that I am drinking wine which makes my throat burn, and I wake up coughing, then the moment I awaken I cease to be interested in what the dream was about; now my attention is concerned only with the physiological and psychological processes by means of which the irritation which caused me to cough comes to be symbolically expressed in the dream picture. Similarly the philosopher, as soon as he is convinced that the given world consists of nothing but representations, would at once turn from them to the real soul behind them. Things become worse when illusionism completely denies the existence of the I-in-itself behind representations, or at least holds it to be unknowable. One may easily arrive at such a view through the observation that in contrast to dreaming there exists the waking state, in which we have the opportunity to see through the dream and to refer it to the real connections of things, but that we have no condition which is related similarly to our waking conscious life. To adopt this view is to fail to see that in fact there is something which is related to mere perceiving as waking experience is related to dreams. This something is thinking.
5.2 Thought That Applies To The World
[9] The naive man cannot be considered to lack the insight referred to here. He takes the world as it is and regards things as real in the sense in which he experiences them to be so. The first step, however, which is taken beyond this standpoint can only consist in asking: How is thinking related to perception? Whether or not the perception, in the form given me, continues to exist before and after my forming a representation of it, - if I want to say anything whatever about it, I can do so only with the help of thinking. If I say: The world is my representation, I have expressed the result of a thinking process, and if my thinking is not applicable to the world, then this result is erroneous. Between a perception and any kind of assertion about it, thinking slips in.
5.3 World Connects With Corresponding Concept
[10] It has already been indicated why, in our consideration of things, we usually overlook thinking (See p. 61f.). This is due to the fact that we direct our attention only toward the object about which we think, but not toward our thinking at the same time. Naive consciousness treats thinking as something which has nothing to do with things, but stands altogether aloof from them and contemplates them. The picture which the thinker makes of the phenomena of the world is considered, not as something belonging to them, but as something existing only in men’s heads. The world is complete, even without this picture. The world is finished and ready-made with all its substances and forces, and of this ready-made world man makes himself a picture. Whoever thinks along these lines should be asked: What gives you the right to declare the world to be complete without thinking? Does the world not produce thinking in the heads of men with the same necessity as it produces the blossom on a plant? Plant a seed in the earth. Root and stem will grow. It will unfold leaves and blossoms. Then place the plant before you. In your soul it connects itself with a definite concept. Why should this concept belong to the entire plant any less than leaf and blossom? You say: The leaves and blossoms are there without the presence of a perceiving subject; the concept, however, does not appear till a human being confronts the plant. Quite true. But leaves and blossoms appear on the plant only if there is soil in which the seed can be planted, and light and air in which the leaves and blossoms can unfold. In just this way does the concept of the plant arise when a thinking consciousness confronts it.
5.4 Process Of Growth
[11] It is quite arbitrary to regard as a totality, as a thing in its entirety, the sum of what we experience through mere perception, and to regard as a mere addition, which has nothing to do with the thing itself, what reveals itself through thinking observation. If I receive a rosebud today, the picture that offers itself to my perception is complete only for the moment. If I put the bud into water, tomorrow I shall get a quite different picture of my object. If I do not turn my gaze away from the rosebud, then I shall see today’s state gradually change into tomorrow’s through an infinite number of intermediate stages. The picture which presents itself to me at any one moment is only a chance section of an object which is in a continual process of becoming. If I do not put the bud into water, a whole series of states, which as possibilities lay within the bud, will not be evolved; or tomorrow I may be prevented from observing the blossom further and therefore will have an incomplete picture of it.
[12] That opinion is quite subjective which, on the basis of a chance picture of a thing, declares: This is the thing.
5.5 Indivisible Existence of Concept With Percept
[13] It is equally inadmissible to declare the sum of perceptions to be the thing. It could well be possible for a being to receive the concept at the same time as, and undivided from, the perception. To such a being it would never occur that the concept did not belong to the thing. He would ascribe to the concept an existence indivisibly bound up with the thing.
[14] Let me make myself clearer by an example. If I throw a stone horizontally through the air, I see it in different places, one after the other. I connect these places to form a line. In mathematics I learn to know various kinds of lines, one of which is the parabola. I know the parabola to be a line produced by a point moving according to certain laws. If I investigate the conditions under which the stone moves, I find that the path traversed is identical with the line I know as a parabola. That the stone moves just in a parabola is a result of the given conditions and necessarily follows from them. The form of the parabola belongs to the whole phenomenon as much as does any other feature of it. The being described above, who did not have to make the detour of thinking, would be given not only a sum of visual aspects at different points but, undivided from the whole occurrence, also the parabolic form of the path which we add to the phenomenon by means of thinking.
[15] It is not due to the objects that they are given us at first without the corresponding concepts, but to our intellectual organization. Our being as a totality functions in such a way that from every reality the elements belonging to it flow to us from two directions: from the direction of perceiving and from that of thinking.
[16] How I am organized for grasping them has nothing to do with the nature of things. The breach between perceiving and thinking is not present until the moment I, the one who contemplates them, confront the things. Which elements do, and which do not belong to the object, cannot at all depend on the manner in which I arrive at knowledge of these elements.
5.6 Isolate And Grasp Single Concepts
[17] Man is a limited being. To begin with, he is a being among other beings. His existence is bound up with space and time. Because of this, it is always only a limited section of the total universe that can be given him. But this limited section links itself in all directions, both in time and in space, to other sections. If our existence were so bound up with the surrounding world that every process would be a process in us as well, then the distinction between us and things would not exist. But then neither would there be any individual events for us. All events would pass over into one another continuously. The cosmos would be a unity, a totality enclosed within itself. Nowhere would there be a break in the stream of events. It is because of our limitations that things appear to us as if they were separate, when in reality they are not separate at all. Nowhere, for example, is the singular quality of red present by itself, in isolation. It is surrounded on all sides by other qualities, to which it belongs and without which it could not subsist. For us, however, to lift certain sections out from the rest of the world and to consider them by themselves, is a necessity. Our eye can take hold of only single colors, one after another, out of a totality of many colors, our understanding, of only single concepts out of a coherent system of concepts. This separating off is a subjective act, and it is due to the fact that man is not identical with the world process, but is a being among other beings.
5.7 Self Definition Through Thinking
[18] Now all depends on our defining how the being of man is related to other beings. This definition must be distinguished from merely becoming conscious of ourselves. This latter depends on the act of perceiving, just as does our becoming conscious of anything else. Self-perception shows me a number of qualities which I comprise in the unity of my personality in the same way as I comprise the qualities yellow, metallic, hard, etc., in the unity “gold.” Self-perception does not take me beyond the sphere of what belongs to myself. This perceiving myself is to be distinguished from defining myself by means of thinking. Just as I insert a separate perception of the external world into the connection of things by means of thinking, so do I insert the perceptions derived from myself into the world process by means of thinking. When I perceive myself, then I see myself as enclosed within certain limits, but my thinking has nothing to do with these limits. In this sense I am a twofold being. I am enclosed within the sphere which I perceive as that of my personality, but I am also the bearer of an activity which, from a higher sphere, determines my limited existence. Our thinking is not individual like our sensing and feeling. It is universal. It receives an individual stamp in each separate human being only because it becomes related to his individual feelings and sensations. Through these particular colorings of the universal thinking, single persons differ from one another. A triangle has only one single concept. For the content of this concept it is quite immaterial whether the human bearer of consciousness who grasps it is A or B. But it will be grasped by each of the two bearers of consciousness in an individual way.
5.8 In Thinking We Are The All One Being
[19] This thought conflicts with a common prejudice which is very hard to overcome. Those who have this prejudice cannot reach the insight that the concept of triangle which my head grasps is the same concept as that which my neighbor’s head grasps. The naive man considers himself to be the maker of his concepts. He therefore believes that each person has his own concepts. It is a fundamental requirement of philosophic thinking to overcome this prejudice. The one undivided concept, triangle, does not become a multiplicity because it is thought by many. For the thinking of the many is itself a unity.
[20] In thinking, we are given that element which embraces our particular individuality and makes it one with the cosmos. In that we sense and feel (and also perceive), we are single entities; in that we think, we are the All-One Being that pervades everything. This is the deeper foundation of our twofold being: We see within us a simply absolute force come into existence, a force which is universal, but we learn to know it, not as it issues from the center of the world, but at a point of the periphery. Were the former the case, as soon as we came to be conscious, we should know the whole world riddle. But since we stand at a point on the periphery and find that our own existence is confined within definite limits, we must learn to know the region which lies beyond our own being with the help of thinking, which penetrates into us out of the general world existence.
[21] Through the fact that the thinking in us reaches out beyond our separate existence and relates itself to the general world existence, there arises in us the urge for knowledge. Beings without thinking do not have this urge. When other things confront them, this gives rise to no questioning within them. These other things remain external to such beings. But the concept rises up within thinking beings when they confront external things. It is that part of things which we receive not from outside, but from within. It is for knowledge to bring about the agreement, the union of the two elements, the inner and the outer.
[22] The perception therefore is not something finished, not something self-contained, but one side of the total reality. The other side is the concept. The act of knowledge is the synthesis of perception and concept. Only perception and concept together constitute the whole thing.
5.9 Will Is Objectified In Action And Known By Thinking
[23] The above explanations give proof that it is meaningless to seek for any common factor in the separate entities of the world, other than the ideal content to be found in thinking. All efforts must fail which seek to find any other world unity than this internally coherent ideal content which we gain by thinking consideration of our perceptions. Neither a humanly personal God, nor force, nor matter, nor idea-less will (Schopenhauer), is acceptable as the universal world unity. All these entities belong only to a limited sphere of our observation. Humanly limited personality we perceive only in man, force and matter in external things. As regards the will, it can be considered only as the expression of the activity of our finite personality. Schopenhauer wants to avoid making “abstract” thinking the bearer of the world unity, and instead seeks something which seems to him to be immediate reality. This philosopher believes we can never approach the world so long as we regard it as an external world.
“In fact, the meaning sought for in the world that confronts me solely as my representation, or the transition from it, as mere representation of the cognizing subject, to whatever it may be besides this, could never be found if the investigator himself were nothing more than the pure cognizing subject (a winged cherub without a body). But he himself is rooted in that world, he finds himself in it as an individual; this means that his knowledge, which is the necessary bearer of the whole world as representation, is yet always given through the medium of a body, whose affections are, as we have shown, the starting point from which the intellect forms a view of that world. For the pure cognizing subject as such, this body is a representation like every other representation, an object among objects; in this respect its movements and actions are known to him in no other way than the changes in all other objects which he can contemplate, and would be just as strange and incomprehensible to him if their meaning were not revealed to him in an entirely different way.... For the subject of cognition, who appears as an individual through his identity with the body, this body is given in two entirely different ways: It is given as a representation for intelligent consideration, as object among objects and subjected to their laws; but also, at the same time, in quite a different way, namely, as that which is directly known to everyone, and which is called will. Every true act of his will is also at once and unfailingly a movement of his body: he cannot will the act without perceiving at the same time that it appears as a movement of the body. The act of will and the action of the body are not two different conditions objectively recognized, connected by the bond of causality; they do not stand in the relation of cause and effect; they are one and the same, but are given in two entirely different ways: once quite directly, and once again for the intelligence that considers it.”
By these arguments Schopenhauer believes himself entitled to see in the human body the “objectivity” of the will. In his opinion one feels in the actions of the body a direct reality, the thing-in-itself in the concrete. The objection to these arguments is that the actions of our body come to our consciousness only through self-perceptions, and that, as such, they are in no way superior to other perceptions. If we want to learn to know their nature, we can do so only by thinking investigation, that is, by fitting them into the ideal system of our concepts and ideas.
5.10 Corresponding Intuition
[24] Rooted most deeply in the naive consciousness of mankind is the opinion: Thinking is abstract, empty of all concrete content. At most it can give an “ideal” mirror picture of the world, but nothing of the world itself. To judge like this is never to have become clear about what perception without the concept, is. Let us look at this realm of mere perceptions: it appears as a mere juxtaposition in space, a mere succession in time, an aggregate of disconnected entities. None of the things which come and go on the stage of perception have any direct, perceptible connection with any others. From this aspect, the world is a multiplicity of objects of equal value. None plays any greater part in the hustle and bustle of the world than any other. If it is to become clear to us that this or that fact has greater significance than another, we must consult our thinking. Without the functioning of thinking, the rudimentary organ of an animal which has no significance in its life appears to us as equal in value to the most important limb. The separate facts appear in their own significance, as well as in their significance for the rest of the world only when thinking spins its threads from one entity to another. This activity of thinking is one filled with content. For it is only through a quite definite, concrete content that I can know why the snail belongs to a lower level of organization than the lion. The mere sight, the perception, gives me no content which can inform me about the degree of perfection of an organization.
[25] Thinking brings this content to the perception from man’s world of concepts and ideas. In contrast to the content of perception given to us from outside, the content of thought shines forth in the inner being of man. The manner in which the content of thought first appears, we will call intuition. Intuition is for thinking what observation is for perception. Intuition and observation are the sources of our knowledge. An observed object or event is foreign to us as long as we do not have in our inner being the corresponding intuition which completes for us that part of reality which is missing in the perception. To someone who lacks the ability to find intuitions corresponding to things, the full reality remains inaccessible. Just as the color-blind sees only differences of brightness without any color qualities, so the one who lacks intuition can observe only disconnected fragments of perceptions.
[26] To explain a thing, to make it intelligible, means nothing other than to place it into the context from which it has been torn owing to the nature of our organization as described above. Something cut off from the world whole does not exist. Isolation in any form has only subjective validity for our organization. For us the world unity divides itself into above and below, before and after, cause and effect, object and representation, matter and force, object and subject, etc. What appears to our observation as single entities, combines, bit by bit, through the coherent, undivided world of our intuitions, and through thinking we again fit together into a unity everything we had divided through perceiving.
[27] The enigmatic aspect of an object is due to its separate existence. But this separation is brought about by us and, within the world of concepts, can be cancelled again.
5.11 Conceptual Connections Of Percepts
[28] Except through thinking and perceiving, nothing is given to us directly. The question now arises: What significance has perception according to our line of thought? We have, it is true, recognized that the proof which critical idealism brings forward for the subjective nature of perceptions, collapses, but the insight that the proof is wrong does not necessarily mean that what is asserted is incorrect. Critical idealism does not base its proof on the absolute nature of thinking, but relies on the fact that naive realism, when followed to its logical conclusion, contradicts itself. How does the matter stand when the absoluteness of thinking is recognized?
[29] Let us assume that a certain perception, for example, red, appears in my consciousness. Continued consideration will show the perception to be connected with other perceptions, for example, a definite form, certain perceptions of temperature, and of touch. This combination I call an object of the sense world. I can now ask: Over and above the perceptions just mentioned, what else is there in that section of space where they appear? I shall find mechanical, chemical and other processes in that section of space. I now go further and investigate the processes I find on the way from the object to my sense organs. I can find movements in an elastic medium, and their nature has not the slightest thing in common with the original perception. I get the same result when I go on and investigate the further transmission between sense organs and brain. In each of these spheres I gather new perceptions, but the connecting medium permeating all these perceptions standing side by side in both space and time, is thinking. The air vibrations which carry sound are given me as perception, just as is the sound itself. Thinking alone links all these perceptions to one another, showing them in their mutual relationships. Beyond what is directly perceived, we cannot speak of anything except what can be recognized through the ideal connections of perceptions (that is, what can be discovered through thinking). That relationship between the perceptual object and the perceiving subject, which goes beyond what can be perceived, is therefore a purely ideal one, that is, it can be expressed only by means of concepts. Only if I could perceive how the perceptual object affects the perceiving subject, or, the other way round, if I could observe the building up of the perceptual pictures by the subject, would it be possible to speak as does modern physiology and the critical idealism based on it. This view confuses an ideal relation (that of the object to the subject) with a process which we could speak of only if it were possible to perceive it. The principle, “No color without a color seeing eye,” is therefore not to be taken to mean that the eye produces the color, but only that an ideal relationship, recognizable by thinking, exists between the perception, color and the perception, eye. Empirical science will have to establish how the nature of the eye and the nature of colors are related to one another, that is, by what means the organ of sight transmits the perception of colors, etc. I can trace how one perception succeeds another and how one is related to others in space, and I can formulate this in conceptual terms, but I cannot perceive how a perception originates out of the non-perceptible. All attempts to seek any relations between perceptions other than thought relations must of necessity fail.
5.12 Conceptual Intuition Corresponds To Objective Percept
[30] What, then, is a perception? When asked in general, this question is absurd. A perception always appears as a quite definite, concrete content. This content is directly given and is completely contained within the given. The only question one can ask concerning this given is, What is it apart from being a perception; that is, What is it for thinking? The question concerning the “what” of a perception, therefore, can refer only to the conceptual intuition which corresponds to it. Seen in this light, the question of the subjectivity of perceptions, in the sense of critical idealism, cannot be raised at all. Only what is perceived as belonging to the subject can be termed “subjective.” No real process, in a naive sense, can form a link between the subjective and the objective, that is, no process that can be perceived; this is possible only for thinking. For us, then, that is objective which, to perception, lies outside of the perceptual subject. My perceptual subject remains perceptible to me when the table which stands before me has disappeared from my field of observation. My observation of the table has caused in me a change which likewise remains. I retain the ability to reproduce a picture of the table later. This ability to produce a picture remains connected with me. Psychology describes this picture as a memory representation. However, it is the only thing which can correctly be called the representation of the table. For it corresponds to the perceptible change in me, caused through the presence of the table in my field of vision. And indeed, it is not a change in some “I-in-itself” standing behind the perceptual subject, but a change in the perceptible subject itself. A representation, then, is a subjective perception, in contrast to the objective perception which occurs when the object is present in the field of vision. The confusing of the former subjective with the latter objective perception leads to the misunderstanding of idealism: The world is my representation.
[31] The next step must be to define the concept of representation more exactly. What we have so far described of it is not its concept; what we have described has only pointed the way to where in the perceptual field representations are to be found. The exact concept of representation will also then make it possible for us to gain a satisfactory explanation of the relationship between representation and object. This will also lead us over the borderline, where the relationship between the human subject and the object belonging to the world is brought down from the purely conceptual field of knowledge into concrete individual life. Once we know what to think of the world, it will also be easy to adapt ourselves to it. We can only be active with our full human forces when we know the objects belonging to the world to which we devote our activity.
Addition to the revised edition (1918)
[1] The view I have characterized here can be regarded as one to which man is led at first, as if by a natural instinct, the moment he begins to reflect upon his relation to the world. He then finds himself caught in a thought formation which dissolves for him while he frames it. This thought formation is such that a purely theoretical refutation of it does not suffice. One has to live through it and experience it in order to recognize how far it leads one astray, and then to find the way out. It must be a feature of any discussion concerning man’s relation to the world, not for the sake of refuting others whose view about this relation one believes to be wrong, but because one must oneself experience to what confusion every first reflection about such a relation can lead. One must gain that insight which will enable one to refute oneself with respect to such a first reflection. The above discussion is meant in this sense.
[2] When one tries to work out a view about man’s relation to the world, one becomes conscious of the fact that man himself creates this relation, at least in part, by forming representations about the things and events in the world. This draws his attention away from what is present outside in the world and directs it to his inner world, to his life of forming representations. He begins to say to himself: It is impossible for me to have a relationship to any thing or event unless a representation of it appears in me. From noticing this fact, it is but a step to the opinion: All that I experience is, after all, only my representation; I know about a world outside me only insofar as it is representation in me. With this opinion, man abandons the standpoint of naive reality which he has before he begins to reflect about his relation to the world. From the naive standpoint, he believes that he is dealing with real things. But reflection about his own being drives him away from this standpoint. This reflection does not allow him to turn his gaze toward a real world such as naive consciousness believes it confronts. This reflection turns his gaze only toward his representations; his representations slip in between his own being and that real world the naive standpoint believes in. Man no longer can look through the intervening world of representations to any such reality. He has to assume that he is blind to this reality. So the thought arises of a “thing-in-itself” which is inaccessible to knowledge.
As long as one considers only the relationship to the world into which man appears to enter through his life of forming representations, one cannot escape from this line of thought. But one cannot remain at the naive standpoint of reality except by artificially curbing the thirst for knowledge. The fact that in man the need is present for knowledge about his relation to the world indicates that the naive standpoint must be abandoned. If the naive standpoint gave us anything that could be acknowledged as truth, then we should not feel this need.
But one does not arrive at anything else that could be considered as truth if one merely abandons the naive standpoint, but retains - without noticing it - the kind of thought which it imposes upon us. This is the mistake that is made when it is said: I experience only my representations, and while I believe that I am dealing with reality, I am actually conscious only of my representations of reality; I must, therefore, assume that genuine reality, the “thing in-itself,” exists only outside the boundary of my consciousness and that I know nothing of it directly, but that it somehow approaches me and influences me in such a way that my representations come about. To think in this way is only to add in thought, to the world before us, another world; but one must begin the whole thinking process over again with regard to this second world. For the unknown “thing-in-itself,” in its relation to man’s being, is thought of in exactly the
same way as is the known thing of the naive standpoint of reality.
One only escapes the confusion that arises in one’s critical reflection concerning this standpoint when one notices that inside everything we can experience by means of perceiving, be it within ourselves or outside in the world, there is something which cannot succumb to the fate that a representation inserts itself between event and contemplating human being. And this something is thinking. With regard to thinking, man can remain at the naive standpoint of reality. If he does not do so, it is only because he has noticed that he has to abandon this standpoint in regard to other things, but overlooks the fact that this insight, which is true for other things, does not apply to thinking. When he notices this, he opens the portal to yet another insight, that in thinking and through thinking that must be acknowledged to which man appears to blind himself because he has to place between himself and the world the life of representations.
A critic highly esteemed by the author of this book has objected that this discussion of thinking remains at naive realism in regard to thinking, as it must if the real world and the world of representations are held to be one and the same. However, the author believes he has shown in just this discussion this fact: that an unprejudiced observation of thinking inevitably shows that “naive realism” is valid for thinking, and that naive realism, insofar as it is not valid for other things, is overcome through the recognition of the true nature of thinking.
6. HUMAN INDIVIDUALITY
6.0 Corresponding Concept Relates Self To The World
[1] In attempting to explain representations philosophers have found that the main difficulty lies in the fact that we ourselves are not the external things, and yet our representations must somehow correspond to things. But, on closer inspection, it turns out that this difficulty does not exist at all. We are certainly not the external things, but together with them we belong to one and the same world. That section of the world which I perceive as my subject is permeated by the stream of the universal world process. To my perceiving I appear, in the first instance, enclosed within the boundary of my skin. But all that is contained within the skin belongs to the cosmos as a whole. Hence for a relation to exist between my organism and an external object, it is by no means necessary that something of the object should slip into me or make an impression on my spirit, like a signet ring on wax. A question such as: How do I gain knowledge of the tree ten feet away from me? is wrongly formulated. It springs from the view that the boundaries of my body are absolute barriers, through which information about things filters into me. The forces active within the limit of my body are the same as those which exist outside. Therefore, in reality I am the things; not, however, insofar as I am a perceiving subject, but insofar as I am part of the universal world process. The perception of the tree and my I is within the same whole. There this universal world process calls forth the perception of the tree to the same extent that here it calls forth the perception of my I. Were I world creator instead of world knower, object and subject (perception and I) would originate in one act. For they depend on each other. As world knower I can discover the element they have in common, as entities belonging together, only through thinking which, by means of concepts, relates them to one another.
6.1 Sense Perception Of Motion
[2] Most difficult of all to overcome are the so-called physiological proofs of the subjectivity of our perceptions. If I press the skin of my body, I perceive this as a sensation of pressure. Such pressure will be perceived by the eye as light, by the ear as sound. For example, by the eye I perceive an electric shock as light, by the ear as sound, by the nerves of the skin as shock, and by the nose as a phosphoric smell. What follows from these facts? Only this: that when I perceive an electric shock (or a pressure, as the case may be) followed by a light quality or a sound, respectively, or a certain smell, etc., then, if no eye were present, no perception of a light quality would accompany the perception of mechanical vibrations in my environment; without the presence of the ear, no perception of sound, etc. But what right has one to say that in the absence of sense-organs, the whole process would not exist at all? From the fact that an electrical process calls forth light in the eye, those who conclude that outside our organism, what we sense as light is only a mechanical process of motion, forget that they are only passing from one perception to another, and nowhere to something over and above perceptions. Just as we can say that the eye perceives a mechanical process of motion in its surroundings as light, we can also say that a regulated change in an object is perceived by us as a process of motion. If I draw twelve pictures of a horse on the circumference of a rotating disc, reproducing exactly the positions which the horse’s body successively assumes in movement, then by rotating the disc I can produce the illusion of movement. I need only look through an opening in such a way that in the proper intervals I see the successive positions of the horse. I see, not twelve separate pictures of a horse, but the picture of a single galloping horse.
[3] The above-mentioned physiological fact cannot, therefore, throw any light on the relation of perception to representation. Therefore, we must find some other way.
6.2 Mental Picture: Intuition Related To A Percept
[4] The moment a perception appears in my field of observation, thinking also becomes active through me. A member of my thought-system, a definite intuition, a concept, unites itself with the perception. Then when the perception disappears from my field of vision, what do I retain? My intuition, with the reference to the particular perception which formed itself in the moment of perceiving. The degree of vividness with which I can recall this reference later depends on the manner in which my intellectual and bodily organism is working. A representation is nothing but an intuition related to a particular perception; it is a concept that once was connected with a perception and retains the reference to this perception. My concept of a lion is not formed out of my perceptions of lions. But my representation of a lion is indeed formed according to my perception. I can convey to someone who has never seen a lion, the concept of a lion. But I can never bring about in him a vivid representation of a lion, without his perceiving one.
6.3 Mental Picture: Individualized Concept
[5] A representation therefore is an individualized concept. And now we have the explanation as to why our representations can represent reality to us. The complete reality of something is submitted to us in the moment of observation through the flowing together of concept and perception. The concept acquires, through a perception, an individual form, a relation to this particular perception. In this individual form which has as a characteristic feature the reference to the perception, the concept lives on in us as the representation of the thing in question. If we come across a second thing with which the same concept connects itself, we recognize the second as belonging to the same kind as the first; if we come across the same thing twice, we find in our conceptual system not only a corresponding concept, but the individualized concept with its characteristic relation to the same object, and thus we recognize the object again.
[6] The representation, therefore, stands between perception and concept. It is the definite concept which points to the perception.
6.4 Mental Picture: Acquired Experience
[7] The sum of those things about which I can form representations may be called my practical experience. The man who has the greater number of individualized concepts will be the man of richer practical experience. A man who lacks all power of intuition is not capable of acquiring practical experience. He again loses the objects from his field of vision because he lacks the concepts which should bring him into relation with them. A man whose power of thinking is well developed, but whose ability to perceive functions poorly due to clumsy sense-organs, will be no better able to gather practical experience. It is true that he can acquire concepts by one means and another, but his intuitions lack vivid reference to definite things. The unthinking traveller and the scholar living in abstract conceptual systems are both incapable of acquiring rich practical experience.
6.5 Mental Picture: Subjective Representation Of Reality
[8] Reality appears to us as perception and concept, and the subjective representative of this reality is - representation.
[9] If our personality expressed itself only in cognition, the totality of all that is objective would be given in perception, concept and representation.
6.6 Refer Percepts To Feelings
[10] However, we are not satisfied merely to refer the perception, by means of thinking, to the concept, but we relate it also to our own subjectivity, to our individual I. The expression of this individual relationship is feeling, which we experience as pleasure or displeasure.
6.7 Two-Fold Nature: Thinking And Feeling
[11] Thinking and feeling correspond to the twofold nature of our being, which we have already considered. Thinking is the element through which we take part in the universal process of the cosmos; feeling, that through which we can withdraw into the narrow confines of our own soul life.
[12] Our thinking unites us with the world; our feeling leads us back into ourselves, and this makes us individuals. If we were merely thinking and perceiving beings, our whole life would flow along in monotonous indifference. If we could only cognize ourself as a self, we would be totally indifferent to ourself. Only because with self-knowledge we experience self-feeling, and with the perception of objects pleasure and pain, do we live as individual beings whose existence is not exhausted by the conceptual relations in which we stand to the rest of the world, but who have a special value for themselves as well.
[13] One might be tempted to see in the life of feeling an element more richly saturated with reality than is our thinking contemplation of the world. But the answer to this is that the life of feeling, after all, has this richer meaning only for my individual self. For the world my life of feeling can attain value only if, as perception of my self, the feeling enters into connection with a concept and, in this roundabout way, links itself to the cosmos.
6.8 True Individuality
[14] Our life is a continual oscillation between our living with the universal world process and our own individual existence. The further we ascend into the universal nature of thinking where what is individual ultimately interests us only as example, as instance of the concept, the more the character of the quite definite individual personality is lost within us. The further we descend into the depths of our own soul life and let our feelings resound with the experiences of the outer world, the more we cut ourselves off from universal life. A true individuality will be one who reaches up with his feelings farthest into the region of the ideal. There are people in whom even the most general ideas that enter their heads bear, nevertheless, that particular coloring which shows unmistakably their connection with the individual who thinks them. There are others whose concepts come before us without the least trace of individual coloring, as if they had not been produced by a being of flesh and blood at all.
6.9 Point Of View
[15] The act of representing already gives our conceptual life an individual stamp. For each one of us has his special place from which he looks out upon the world. His concepts link themselves to his perceptions. He will think the general concepts in his own particular way. This particular determination comes about through the place we occupy in the world and from the perceptions belonging to our sphere of life.
6.10 Intensity Of Feelings
[16] Distinct from this determination is another, which depends on our particular organization. Our organization is, indeed, a special, definite, individual unity. Each of us combines particular feelings, and these in the most varying degrees of intensity, with his perceptions. This is the individual aspect of our personality. It is what remains over when we have allowed fully for all the determining factors in our milieu.
6.11 Education Of Feelings
[17] A life of feeling devoid of all life of thought would gradually lose all connection with the world. But because it is inherent in man to develop his whole nature, his knowledge of things will go hand-in-hand with the education and development of his feeling-life.
6.12 Living Concepts
[18] Feeling is the means whereby, to begin with, concepts attain concrete life.
7. ARE THERE LIMITS TO COGNITION?
7.0 Cognitive Unity
[1] We have established that the elements for explaining reality are to be taken from the two spheres: perceiving and thinking. As we have seen, it is our organization that determines the fact that the full, complete reality of things, our own subject included, appears at first as a duality. Cognition overcomes this duality by combining the two elements of reality: the perception and the concept gained by thinking, into the complete thing. If we call the world as it confronts us before it has attained its true aspect by means of cognition, “the world of appearance,” in contrast to the unified whole composed of perception and concept, then we can say: The world is given us as a duality (dualistic), and cognition transforms it into a unity (monistic). A philosophy which starts from this basic principle may be called a monistic philosophy, or monism, in contrast to the theory of two worlds, or dualism. The latter does not assume that there are two sides of a single reality, which are kept apart merely by our organization, but, rather, that there are two worlds, completely different from each other. Then in the one world it tries to find the principles that can explain the other.
[2] Dualism rests on a misunderstanding of what we call knowledge. It divides the whole of existence into two spheres, each of which has its own laws, and it lets these spheres stand opposite to and outside of each other.
[3] It is from a dualism such as this that there arises the distinction between the perceived object and the thing-in-itself which Kant introduced into science and which so far has not been expelled. From our discussion can be seen that it is due to the nature of our intellectual organization that a particular thing can be given us only as perception. Thinking then overcomes this separateness by referring each perception to its rightful place in the world whole. As long as the separated parts of the world whole are defined as perceptions, in this elimination we are simply following a law of our subjectivity. If, however, we consider the sum-total of all perceptions as constituting one part, and confront it with the “thing-in-itself” as a second part, then our philosophising loses all foundation. It then becomes a mere playing with concepts. An artificial opposition is constructed, but it is not possible to attain a content for the second part of this opposition, since such content for a particular thing can be drawn only from perception.
7.1 Hypothetical World Principle and Experience
[4] Every kind of existence which is assumed outside the realm of perception and concept belongs to the sphere of unjustified hypotheses. The “thing-in-itself” belongs in this category. It is quite natural that a dualistic thinker should be unable to find the connection between a universal principle which he hypothetically assumes, and the given, known by experience. One can obtain a content for the hypothetical universal principle only by borrowing a content from the sphere of experience and then shutting one’s eyes to the fact of the borrowing. Otherwise it remains an empty concept, a non-concept, which is nothing but a shell of a concept. Then the dualistic thinker usually maintains that the content of this concept is not accessible to our knowledge. We can know only that such a content must be present, but not what it is. In both cases it is impossible to overcome dualism. Even if one brings a few abstract elements from the sphere of experience into the concept of the thing-in-itself, it still remains impossible to derive the rich concrete life of experience from those few qualities which, after all, are themselves taken from perception only. Du-Bois Reymond thinks that the imperceptible atoms of matter produce sensation and feeling by means of their position and motion, and then comes to the conclusion: We can never find a satisfactory explanation of how matter and motion produce sensation and feeling, for
“It is absolutely and forever unintelligible that it should be other than indifferent to a number of atoms of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen, etc., how they lie and move, how they lay and moved, or how they will lie and will move. It is impossible to see how consciousness could come into existence through their interaction.”
This conclusion is characteristic of this whole trend of thought. Position and motion are abstractions derived from the rich sphere of perceptions. They are then transferred to the imagined world of atoms. Then astonishment arises that real life cannot be evolved out of this principle which is self-made and borrowed from the sphere of perceptions.
[5] That the dualist who works with a completely empty concept of the “in-itself” of things can reach no explanation of the world, already follows from the definition of his principle indicated above.
[6] A dualist is always compelled to set impassable barriers to our faculty of knowledge. The follower of a monistic world view knows that everything he needs for the explanation of any given phenomenon in the world must lie within this world itself. What hinders him from reaching the explanation can be only contingent limitations in space and time, or shortcomings of his organization. And, indeed, not of the human organization in general, but only of his own particular one.
7.2 Ego-hood's Questions and Answers
[7] It follows from the concept of cognizing, as we have defined it, that we cannot speak of limits to cognition. Cognizing is not the business of the world in general, but a transaction that we must each accomplish for ourselves. Things demand no explanation. They exist and work on one another according to laws that thinking can discover. They exist in indivisible unity with these laws. Our Ihood then confronts them, initially comprehending in them only what we have described as the percept. But within this I-hood also lies the power to find the other part of reality. Cognitive satisfaction is attained only when the I has united for itself both the elements of reality that are indivisibly connected in the world—for then the I has reached reality once again.
[8] The preconditions for cognizing exist through and for the I. The I itself poses the questions of cognition. In fact, it draws them from the element of thinking, which is completely clear and transparent within itself. If we ask ourselves questions that we cannot answer, their content cannot be clear and distinct in every aspect. It is not the world that poses questions to us; we pose them to ourselves.
[9] I can easily imagine that I would be quite incapable of answering a question that I happened to find written down somewhere if I did not know the sphere from which its content came.
7.3 Reconcile Familiar Perceptions and Concepts
[10] In knowledge we are concerned with questions which arise for us through the fact that a sphere of perceptions, conditioned by time, space, and our subjective organization, is confronted by a sphere of concepts pointing to a world which is a unity. My task is to reconcile these two spheres, well known to me. One cannot speak here of a limit of knowledge. It may be that at a particular moment, this or that remains unexplained because, through our place in life, we are prevented from perceiving all that is involved. What is not found to-day, however, may be found tomorrow. The limits due to these causes are only transitory, and can be overcome by the progress of perceiving and thinking.
7.4 Conceptual Representation Of Objective Reality
[11] Dualism makes the mistake of transferring the antithesis of object and subject, which has significance only within the sphere of perceptions, to purely invented entities outside this sphere. But as the separate things within the field of perception remain separated only as long as the perceiver refrains from thinking, which cancels all separation and shows it to be due to merely subjective factors, so the dualist, in fact, transfers to entities behind the sphere of perceptions definitions which, even for perceptions, have no absolute but only relative validity. In doing this he splits up the two factors concerned in the process of cognition, perception and concept, into four: 1) the object-in-itself, 2) the perception which the subject has of the object, 3) the subject, 4) the concept which relates the perception to the object-in-itself.
The relation between object and subject is considered to be real, that is, the subject is considered to be really (dynamically) influenced by the object. This real process is said not to appear in consciousness. But it is supposed to evoke in the subject a response to the stimulation from the object. The result of this response is said to be the perception. This at last enters our consciousness. The object is said to have an objective reality (independent of the subject), the perception a subjective reality. This subjective reality is said to be referred by the subject to the object. This latter reference is said to be an ideal one. The dualist, in other words, splits up the process of cognition into two parts. One part, i.e., the production of the perceptual object out of the thing-in-itself, takes place, according to him, outside of consciousness, the other part, the union of perception with concept and the reference of this to the object, within consciousness.
These presuppositions make it clear that the dualist believes he receives in his concepts only something subjective, which represents what confronts his consciousness. The objectively real process in the subject, by means of which the perception comes about, and still more the objective relationships between things-in-themselves, remain inaccessible to direct cognition for such a dualist. In his opinion, man can obtain only concepts that represent the objectively real. The bond of unity which connects things with one another and also objectively with our individual spirit (as thing-in-itself), lies beyond consciousness in a being-in-itself of whom we likewise can have in our consciousness only a concept that represents it.
7.5 Real Principles in addition to Ideal Principles
[12] The dualist believes that the whole world would be nothing but a mere abstract scheme of concepts if he did not insist on “real” connections between the objects beside the conceptual ones. In other words, the ideal principles which can be discovered by thinking seem too airy for the dualist, and he seeks, in addition, “real principles” with which to support them.
[13] Let us examine these “real principles” a little more closely. The naive man (naive realist) regards the objects of external experience as realities. The fact that his hands can grasp and his eyes can see these objects is for him the proof of their reality. “Nothing exists that cannot be perceived” is, in fact, the basic axiom of the naive man, and it is held to be equally valid in its converse: “Everything which can be perceived, exists.” The best proof for this assertion is the naive man’s belief in immortality and in ghosts. He thinks of the soul as a fine kind of physical matter which, in special circumstances, may actually become visible to the ordinary man (naive belief in ghosts).
[14] In contrast to this real world of his, the naive realist regards everything else, especially the world of ideas, as unreal, as “merely ideal.” What we add to objects by, thinking is mere thoughts about the objects. Thought adds nothing real to perception.
[15] But it is not only with reference to the existence of things that the naive man regards sense perception as the sole proof of reality, but also with reference to happenings. According to him, one thing can act upon another only when a force actually present to sense perception issues from the one and seizes upon the other. The older physicists thought that very fine substances emanate from the objects and penetrate through the sense-organs into the soul. They thought the actual seeing of these substances to be impossible only because of the coarseness of our sense organs in comparison with the fineness of these substances. In principle, the reason for attributing reality to these substances was the same as that for attributing it to the objects of the physical world, namely, the form of their existence, which was thought to be analogous to that of physical reality.
7.6 Real Evidence of Senses in addition to Ideal Evidence
[16] The self-dependent nature of what can be experienced, not physically but ideally, is not regarded by naive consciousness as being real in the same sense. Something grasped “merely as idea” is regarded as a chimera until sense perception can provide conviction of its reality. In short, in addition to the ideal evidence of his thinking, the naive man demands the real evidence of his senses. This need of naive man is the reason why primitive forms of belief in revelation arise. For naive consciousness, the God who is given through thinking always remains a God merely “thought.” Naive consciousness demands that the manifestation should be through means accessible to physical perception. God must appear in bodily form; little value is attached to the evidence of thinking, but only to the Divine Nature being proved by the changing of water into wine in a way which can be testified by the senses.
[17] The act of cognition, too, is regarded by naive man as a process analogous to sense-perception. Things must make an impression on the soul or send out images which penetrate the senses, etc.
[18] What the naive man can perceive with his senses he regards as real, and that of which he has no such perception (God, soul, cognition, etc.) he regards as analogous to what is perceived.
[19] A science based on naive realism will consist in an exact description of the content of perception. Concepts are only means to this end. They exist to provide ideal counterparts of perceptions. For things themselves, they have no significance. For the naive realist, only the individual tulips which are seen or could be seen, are real. The one idea of the tulip, is to him an abstraction, is to him an unreal thought-picture, which the soul has put together for itself out of the characteristics common to all tulips.
7.7 Vanishing Perceptions and Ideal Entities
[20] Naive realism, with its fundamental principle of the reality of all perceived things, is contradicted by experience, which shows us that the content of perceptions is of a transitory nature. The tulip I see, is real to-day; in a year it will have vanished into nothingness. What persists is the species tulip. This species, however, for the naive realist is “merely” an idea, not a reality. Thus, this worldview finds itself in the position of seeing its realities arise and perish, while what it regards as unreal, in contrast to the real, persists. Hence the naive realist has to allow for the existence of something ideal besides the perceptions. He has to accept entities which he cannot perceive by means of the senses. He justifies this by imagining their existence to be analogous to that of physical objects. Such hypothetically assumed realities are the invisible forces by means of which objects perceptible to the senses act on one another. Heredity is thought of in this way; it goes beyond the individual and is the reason why a new being develops from the individual which is similar to it, and by means of it the species is maintained. The life principle permeating the organic body is also thought of in this way, and so is the soul, for which one always finds in naive consciousness a concept based on an analogy to sense reality, and finally so, too, the naive man thinks of the Divine Being. This Divine Being is thought of as active in a manner exactly corresponding to what can be perceived as actions of men, that is, the Divine Being is thought of anthropomorphically.
[21] Modern physics traces sense impressions back to processes in the smallest parts of the body and in an infinitely fine substance, the ether—or something similar. For example, what we sense as warmth is the movement of the parts within the space occupied by the body that is the source of warmth. Here, too, something imperceptible is thought of by analogy to what is perceptible. The sensory analogue of the concept “body” might be, in this sense, the interior of an enclosed space, in which elastic spheres move in every direction, hitting one another, bouncing off the walls, and so forth.
7.8 Perceptible Reality and Imperceptible Reality
[22] Without such assumptions, for naive realism, the world would collapse into a disconnected chaos of perceptions with no mutual relationships to unite them. It is clear, however, that naive realism can arrive at these assumptions only by inconsistency. If it remained true to its fundamental principle that only what is perceived is real, then it would not assume a reality where it perceives nothing. The imperceptible forces which proceed from perceptible things are essentially unjustified hypotheses from the standpoint of naive realism itself. And as the naive realist acknowledges no other realities, he invests his hypothetical forces with perceptual content. In doing this he applies a form of existence (perceptual existence) to a sphere where he lacks the only means that can give any evidence of such existence: perceiving by means of physical senses.
[23] This self contradictory world view leads to metaphysical realism. Beside the perceptible reality, the metaphysical realist constructs an imperceptible one which he thinks of on the analogy of the former. Metaphysical realism therefore, is of necessity dualistic.
[24] Where the metaphysical realist observes a relation between perceptible things (mutual approach through movement, becoming conscious of an object, etc.), there he regards a reality as existing. But the relation that he notices he can, however, express only by means of thinking; he cannot perceive it. The relation, which is purely ideal, is arbitrarily made into something similar to what is perceptible. Thus, according to this line of thought, the real world is composed of perceptual objects which are in ceaseless flux, arising and disappearing, and of imperceptible forces which are permanent and produce the perceptual objects.
7.9 Sum of Perceptions and Laws of Nature
[25] Metaphysical realism is a contradictory mixture of naive realism and idealism. Its hypothetical forces are imperceptible entities endowed with the qualities of perceptions. In addition to the sphere, for the form of existence of which he has a means of cognition in its perceptibility, the metaphysical realist has decided to acknowledge another sphere to which this means is not applicable, a sphere which can be ascertained only by means of thinking. But he cannot at the same time decide also to acknowledge the form of existence which thinking mediates, namely the concept (the idea), as being of equal importance with perceptions. If one is to avoid the contradiction of imperceptible perceptions, then it must be admitted that the relation thinking mediates between perceptions can have no other form of existence for us than that of the concept. When the untenable part of metaphysical realism is rejected, we then have the world before us as the sum of perceptions and their conceptual (ideal) relations. Then metaphysical realism merges into a world view which requires the principle of perceptibility for perceptions and that of “thinkability” for the relations between the perceptions. Side by side with the realm of perceptions and that of concepts, this world view cannot acknowledge a third realm for which both principles, the so-called real principle and the ideal principle, have equal validity.
[26] When the metaphysical realist maintains that beside the ideal relation between the perceptual object and the perceiving subject, there must also exist a real relation between the “thing-in-itself” of the perception and the “thing-in-itself” of the perceptible subject (of the so-called individual spirit), then this assertion is due to the mistaken assumption of the existence of a process, analogous to a process in the sense-world, but imperceptible. Further, when the metaphysical realist says: I have a conscious ideal relationship with my world of perceptions, but with the real world I can have only a dynamic (force) relationship, he then makes the above mistake to an even greater degree. One can only speak of a force-relationship within the world of perceptions (in the sphere of the sense of touch), not outside that sphere.
[27] Let us call the world view characterized above, into which metaphysical realism merges if it discards its contradictory elements, monism, because it unites one-sided realism with idealism in a higher unity.
[28] For the naive realist, the real world is an aggregate of objects of perception; for the metaphysical realist also the imperceptible forces are realities. Instead of forces, the monist has ideal connections which he attains by means of his thinking. The laws of nature are such connections. For a law of nature is nothing other than the conceptual expression for the connection of certain perceptions.
7.10 Separation and then Reunion of “I” into World Continuity
[29] The monist never has any need to ask for factors other than perceptions and concepts, with which to explain reality. He knows that in the whole sphere of reality there is no need to ask for this. In the sphere of perceptions, directly accessible to his perceiving, he sees half of a reality; in the union of this sphere with the sphere of concepts, he finds the full reality. The metaphysical realist may make the objection to the adherent of monism: It could be that for your organization your knowledge is complete in itself, that no part is lacking; but what you do not know is how the world is mirrored in an intelligence organized differently from your own. To this the monist would reply: If there are intelligences other than human, if their perceptions have a different form than ours, then all that would be of significance for me would be what reaches me from them by means of perceptions and concepts.
By means of my perceiving and, in fact, by means of this specifically human manner of perceiving, as subject I am placed over against the object. The connection of things is thereby broken. The subject restores this connection by means of thinking. In doing so, things are reinserted into the world whole. Since it is only through our subject that this whole appears rent in two at the place between our perception and our concept, so likewise the union of these two factors gives us a true knowledge. For beings with a different world of perceptions (if, for example, they had twice as many sense-organs), the connection would appear broken in another place, and the restoration would, accordingly, have a form specific for such beings. The question concerning limits of knowledge exists only for the naive and metaphysical realists, both of whom see in the content of the soul only an ideal representation of the world. For them, what exists outside the subject is something absolute, something self-dependent, and the content of the subject is a picture of this absolute and is completely external to it. How complete is knowledge of this absolute would depend on the greater or lesser degree of resemblance between the picture and the absolute object. A being with fewer senses than man would perceive less of the world, one with more senses would perceive more. The former’s knowledge would therefore be less complete than that of the latter.
[30] For the monist, things are different. It is the organization of the perceiving being that determines how the world unity appears to be torn apart into subject and object. The object is not something absolute, but is only something relative in relation to this particular subject. The bridging of the contrasting entities can, therefore, take place again only in the quite specific way that is characteristic of the human subject. As soon as the I, which, in perceiving, is separated from the world, reinserts itself into the connection of things through thinking investigation, all further questioning ceases, since all questions arose only as a result of the separation.
[31] A differently constituted being would have a differently constituted knowledge. Our knowledge suffices to answer the questions asked by our nature.
[32] The metaphysical realist should ask: How does what is given as perception come to be the given; what is it that affects the subject?
[33] For the monist, the perception is determined by the subject. But in thinking, the subject has, at the same time, the means for cancelling this determination, caused through the subject itself.
7.11 Sum of Effects and Underlying Causes
[34] The metaphysical realist is faced by a further difficulty when he seeks to explain the similarity of the world pictures of different human individuals. He cannot but ask himself: How is it that the world picture which I build up out of my subjectively determined perceptions and out of my concepts, turns out to be like that which another individual builds up out of the same two subjective factors? How, from my subjective world picture, can I infer anything about that of another human being? The metaphysical realist believes he can infer, from the fact that people come to terms with one another in practical life, that their subjective world pictures must be similar. From the similarity of these world pictures he then further infers that the “individual spirits” behind the single perceiving human subjects, or the “I-in-itself” behind the subjects, must also be similar.
[35] Therefore this inference is drawn from a sum of effects to the nature of their underlying causes. It is believed that from a sufficiently large number of instances, the situation can be so recognized that one can know how the inferred causes will behave in other instances. Such an inference is called an inductive inference. It will be necessary to modify the results if, from further observation, some unexpected element is discovered, because the result, after all, is determined only by the particular form of the earlier observation. The metaphysical realist maintains that this stipulated knowledge of causes is quite sufficient for practical life.
[36] Inductive inference is the methodical foundation of modern metaphysical realism. At one time it was believed that out of concepts could be evolved something that is no longer a concept. It was believed that from concepts could be derived the metaphysical realities which of necessity, metaphysical realism must have. This kind of philosophizing is now superseded. Instead, it is believed that from a sufficiently large number of perceptual facts one can infer the character of the thing-in-itself which underlies these facts. Just as in the past one tried to derive the metaphysical from concepts, so to-day one tries to derive it from perceptions. As concepts are transparent in their clarity, it was believed that one could also deduce the metaphysical from them with absolute certainty. Perceptions are not of such transparency. Each later perception is always a little different from those of the same kind that preceded it. Therefore, anything inferred from the earlier perception is, in reality, somewhat modified by each following one. The aspect of the metaphysical arrived at in this way, therefore, can be said to be only relatively correct, for it is subject to correction by future instances. Eduard von Hartmann’s metaphysics is of a kind that is determined by this methodical principle. This is expressed in the motto he gave on the title-page of his first major work: “Speculative results according to the inductive method of natural science.”
7.12 Subjective and Objective World Continuity
[37] The form which the metaphysical realist gives to his things-in-themselves today is obtained by inductive inferences. His consideration of the process of knowledge has convinced him that a connection of things, which is objectively real, exists side by side with the “subjective” connection that can be known through perception and concept. The nature of this objective reality he believes he can determine by inductive inferences from his perceptions.
Addition to the revised edition (1918)
[1] Certain representations which arise from investigations of natural phenomena tend, again and again, to disturb unprejudiced observation - as the effort has been made to describe it above - of how we experience concepts and perceptions. Such investigations show that in the light-spectrum the eye perceives colors from red to violet. However, within the spectrum’s sphere of radiation, but beyond the violet there are forces to which corresponds no color perception of the eye, but a chemical effect and, similarly, beyond the limit of the red there exist radiations which have only effects of warmth. Investigation of these and similar phenomena has led to the opinion that the range of man’s sphere of perceptions is determined by the range of his senses, and that he would have before him a very different world if he had more or altogether different senses. Those who are inclined to flights of imagination, for which the glittering discoveries of recent scientific research in particular offer such tempting opportunities, may come to the conclusion: Nothing can enter man’s field of observation except what is able to affect the senses of his bodily organization, and he has no right to regard what he perceives, by means of his limited organization, as being in any way a standard for ascertaining reality. Every new sense would give him a different picture of reality.
Within its proper limits, this opinion is entirely correct. But one who allows this opinion to prevent him from observing without prejudice the relationship between concept and perception, as explained here, will put obstacles in the way to any realistic knowledge of man and world. To experience thinking in its own nature, that is, to experience the active working-out of the sphere of concepts, is something entirely different from the experience of something perceptible through the senses. Whatever senses man might possibly have, not one would give him reality if through the activity of thinking, he did not permeate with concepts the perceptions they conveyed to him; and indeed, every sense, of whatever kind, if thus permeated, gives man the possibility to live within reality. Speculations about quite different perceptual pictures conveyed by other senses, has nothing to do with the question concerning man’s relation to reality. It is essential to recognize that every perceptual picture derives its form from the organization of the perceiving being, but the perceptual picture when permeated by thinking which is livingly experienced leads man into reality. A fanciful description of how different the world would appear to other than human senses cannot act as an incentive to man to seek for knowledge concerning his relationship to the world; rather will this happen through the insight that every perception gives us only a part of the reality it conceals, that, therefore, it leads away from its reality. This then brings us to the further insight that it is thinking which leads into that part of reality which the perception conceals within itself.
An unprejudiced observation of the relation between perceptions, and concepts worked out by thinking, as here described, may also be disturbed by the fact that in the sphere of applied physics it becomes necessary to speak not at all of directly perceptible elements, but of non-perceptible magnitudes, such as lines of electric or magnetic force, etc. It may appear as if the elements of reality, spoken of in physics, had nothing to do either with what is perceptible or with concepts actively worked out by thinking. But such a view is based on self-deception. What matters is that all that is worked out in physics - as long as it is not based on unjustifiable hypotheses which must be excluded - is obtained by means of perceptions and concepts. By a correctly working instinct for knowledge in the physicist, what is apparently a non-perceptible content will always be placed into the field of perceptions, and will be thought of in concepts belonging to this field. The magnitudes in electric and magnetic fields, etc., are attained, owing to their nature, by no other process of cognition than the one which takes place between perception and concept.
An increase or a transformation of the human senses would give a different perceptual picture; it would be an enrichment or a transformation of human experience. But a real knowledge of this experience also could be attained only through the interplay of concept and perception. A deepening of knowledge depends upon the active power of intuition contained in thinking (see p. 113). In the living experience within thinking, this intuition can dive down into lesser or greater depths of reality. Through extension of the perceptual picture this diving down of intuition can receive stimulation and thus be indirectly strengthened. But never should this diving into the depths to attain reality be confused with being confronted with a wider or narrower perceptual picture, in which there would always be contained only a half-reality determined by the organization of the cognizing being. If one avoids getting lost in abstractions, it will be recognized how significant, also for knowledge of the being of man, is the fact that in physics one has to include the existence, in the field of perceptions, of elements for which no sense organ is directly tuned as for color or sound. The essential being of man is determined not only by what confronts him through his organization as direct perception, but also by the fact that he excludes something else from this direct perception. Just as life needs, in addition to the conscious waking state, an unconscious sleeping state, so, for man’s self-experience is needed besides the sphere of his sense perceptions, another sphere also - indeed, a much larger one - of elements not perceptible to the senses, but existing within the same field where sense-perceptions originate.
All this was already indirectly indicated in the first edition of this book. The author here adds these amplifications to the content because he has found by experience that many readers have not read accurately enough. - Another thing to be considered is that the idea of perception, as presented in this book, is not to be confused with the idea of external sense-perception, which is but a special instance of perception. The reader will gather from what has already been said, but even more from what will follow, that here perception includes everything that man meets, physically or spiritually, before he has grasped it in actively worked out concepts. We do not need what we usually mean by senses in order to have perceptions of a soul or spiritual kind. It may be said that such extension of the ordinary use of a word is inadmissible. Yet such extension is absolutely necessary if one is not to be barred by the current use of a word from enlarging the knowledge of certain fields. If the word perception is applied to physical perception only, then one cannot arrive at a concept that can be of use for attaining knowledge even of this (physical) perception. Often it is necessary to enlarge a concept in order that it may preserve in a narrower field the meaning appropriate to it. Or it is sometimes necessary to add something different to the previous content of a concept in order that its first content may be justified or even readjusted. For example, it is said in this book (p. 124): “A representation, therefore, is an individualized concept.” It has been objected that this is an unusual use of the word. But this use of the word is necessary if we are to find out what a representation really is. What would become of the progress of knowledge if, when compelled to readjust concepts, one is always to be met with the objection: “This is an unusual use of the word”?
8. THE FACTORS OF LIFE
8.0 Cognitive Personality
[1] Let us recapitulate the results arrived at in the previous chapters. The world confronts man as a multiplicity, as a sum of separate entities. Man himself is one of these separate entities, a being among other beings. This aspect of the world we characterized simply as that which is given, and inasmuch as we do not evolve it by conscious activity, but find it present, we called it perception. Within the world of perceptions we perceive ourself. This self perception would remain merely one among the many other perceptions, did not something arise from the midst of this self-perception which proves capable of connecting perceptions in general and therefore also the sum of all other perceptions with that of ourself. This something which emerges is no longer mere perception, neither is it, like perceptions, simply given. It is brought about by our activity. To begin with, it appears united with what we perceive as ourself. But in accordance with its inner significance it reaches out beyond the self. It bestows on the separate perceptions ideal definitions, and these relate themselves to one another and stem from a unity. What is attained by self-perception, it defines ideally in the same way as it defines all other perceptions, placing this as subject, or “I,” over against the objects. This something is thinking, and the ideal definitions are the concepts and ideas.
Thinking, therefore, first manifests itself in the perception of the self, but it is not merely subjective, for the self characterizes itself as subject only with the help of thinking. This relationship to oneself by means of thoughts is a life-definition of our personality. Through it we lead a purely
ideal existence. Through it we feel ourselves to be thinking beings. This life-definition would remain a purely conceptual (logical) one if no other definitions of our self were added to it. We should then be beings whose life would be exhausted in establishing purely ideal relations between perceptions themselves, and between them and ourself. If we call the establishing of such a thought connection, an act of cognition, and the resulting condition of our self knowledge, then according to the above mentioned presupposition, we should have to consider ourselves as beings who merely cognize or know.
8.1 Feeling Personality
[2] However, the presupposition does not correspond to the facts. We relate perceptions to ourselves not merely ideally, through concepts, but also, as we have seen, through feeling. Therefore we are not beings with a merely conceptual life-content. The naive realist even sees in the life of feeling a more genuine life of the personality than in the purely ideal element of knowledge. And from his standpoint he is right in interpreting the matter in this way.
8.2 Perception of Feeling
For feeling on the subjective side to begin with, is exactly the same as perception on the objective side. From the basic principle of naive realism, that everything that can be perceived is real, it follows that feeling is the guarantee of the reality of one’s own personality.
8.3 Incomplete Feeling
Monism, however, as understood here, must confer upon feeling the same supplement that it considers necessary for all perceptions if these are to be present as a complete reality. For monism, feeling is an incomplete reality which, in the form it is first given to us, does not as yet contain its second factor, the concept or idea. This is why in actual life, feelings, like perceptions, appear before cognition has occurred.
8.4 Feeling Of Existence
At first we have merely a feeling of existence, and it is only in the course of gradual development that we reach the point where the concept of our self dawns within the dim feeling of our existence. But what for us appears only later is fundamentally and indivisibly bound up with feeling.
8.5 Cultivation Of Feeling
This fact leads the naive man to the belief that in feeling, existence is present directly, in knowledge only indirectly. Therefore the development of the feeling-life appears to him more important than anything else.
8.6 Feeling Knowledge
He will believe that he has grasped the connection of things only when he has felt it. He attempts to make feelings rather than knowing the means of cognition.
8.7 Philosopher Of Feeling
But as feeling is something quite individual, something equivalent to perception, a philosopher of feeling makes into the universal principle, a principle which has significance only within his personality. He tries to permeate the whole world with his own self. What the monist, in the sense we have described, strives to grasp by means of concepts, the philosopher of feeling tries to attain by means of feeling, and considers this relationship with objects to be the one that is most direct.
8.8 Feeling Mysticism
[3] The view just characterized, the philosophy of feeling, is often called mysticism. The error in mysticism based on feeling alone is that the mystic wants to experience in feeling what should be attained as knowledge; he wants to develop something which is individual, into something universal.
[4] Feeling is purely individual, it is the relation of the external world to our subject, insofar as this relation comes to expression in merely subjective experience.
8.9 Willing Personality
[5] There is yet another expression of the human personality. The I, through its thinking, lives within the universal life of the world; through thinking the “I” relates purely ideally (conceptually) the perception to itself, and itself to the perception. In feeling, it experiences a relation of the object to its own subject. In the will, the opposite is the case. In will, we are again confronted with a perception, namely that of the individual relation of our own self to the object. Everything in the will which is not a purely ideal factor is just as much a merely perceived object as any object in the external world.
8.10 Philosophy Of Will
[6] Nevertheless, here again the naive realist believes that he has before him something far more real than can be reached by thinking. He sees in the will an element in which he is directly aware of a process, a causation, in contrast to thinking, which must first grasp the process in concepts. What the I brings about by its will represents to such a view, a process which is experienced directly. An adherent of this philosophy believes that in the will he has really got hold of a corner of the universal process. Whereas all other events he can follow only by perceiving them from outside, he believes that in his will he is experiencing a real process quite directly. The form of existence in which the will appears to him within the self becomes for him a direct principle of reality. His own will appears to him as a special case of the universal process, and he therefore considers the latter to be universal will. The will becomes the universal principle just as in mysticism of feeling, feeling becomes the principle of knowledge. This view is a Philosophy of the Will (Thelism). Here something which can be experienced only individually is made into the constituent factor of the world.
8.11 Real Experience Of Feeling and Willing
[7] The philosophy of will can be called a science as little as can mysticism of feeling. For both maintain that to permeate things with concepts is insufficient. Both demand, side by side with an ideal-principle of existence, a real principle also. And this with a certain justification. But since for this so-called real principle, perceiving is our only means of comprehension, it follows that mysticism of feeling and philosophy of will are both of the opinion that we have two sources of knowledge: thinking and perceiving, perceiving being mediated through feeling and will as individual experience. According to mysticism of feeling and philosophy of will, what flows from the source of experience cannot be taken up directly into what flows from the source of thinking; therefore the two forms of knowledge, perceiving and thinking, remain standing side by side without a higher mediation. Besides the ideal principle attainable through knowledge, there is also supposed to exist a real principle which, although it can be experienced cannot be grasped by thinking. In other words: mysticism of feeling and philosophy of will are both forms of naive realism; they both adhere to the principle: What is directly perceived is real. Compared with naive realism in its original form, they are guilty of the further inconsistency of making one definite kind of perceiving (feeling or will) into the one and only means of knowing existence; and this they should not do when they adhere in general to the principle: What is perceived is real. According to this, for cognition, external perceptions should have equal value with inner perceptions of feeling.
8.12 Universal Will
[8] Philosophy of will becomes metaphysical realism when it considers will also to be present in those spheres of existence where a direct experience of it, as in one’s own subject, is not possible. It hypothetically assumes a principle outside the subject, for which subjective experience is the sole criterion of reality. The philosophy of will as a form of metaphysical realism is open to the criticism indicated in the preceding chapter; it has to overcome the contradictory element inherent in every form of metaphysical realism, and acknowledge that the will is a universal world process only insofar as it relates itself ideally to the rest of the world.
Addition to the revised edition (1918)
[1] The reason it is so difficult to observe and grasp the nature of thinking lies in the fact that its nature all too easily eludes the contemplating soul, as soon as one tries to focus attention on it. What then is left is something lifeless, abstract, the corpse of living thinking. If this abstract alone is considered, then it is easy, by contrast, to be drawn into the “living” element in mysticism of feeling, or into the metaphysics of the will, and to find it strange that anyone should expect to grasp the nature of reality in “mere thought.” But one who really penetrates to the life within thinking will reach the insight that to experience existence merely in feeling or in will cannot in any way be compared with the inner richness, the inwardly at rest yet at the same time alive experience, of the life within thinking, and no longer will he say that the other could be ranked above this. It is just because of this richness, because of this inner fullness of living experience, that its reflection in the ordinary life of soul appears lifeless and abstract. No other human soul-activity is so easily underestimated as thinking. Will and feeling warm the human soul even when experienced only in recollection. Thinking all too easily leaves the soul cold in recollection; the soul-life then appears to have dried out. But this is only the strong shadow cast by its warm luminous reality, which dives down into the phenomena of the world. This diving down is done by a power that flows within the thinking activity itself, the power of spiritual love. The objection should not be made that to see love in active thinking is to transfer into thinking a feeling, namely love. This objection is in truth a confirmation of what is said here. For he who turns toward the living essence of thinking will find in it both feeling and will, and both of these in their deepest reality; whereas for someone who turns away from thinking and instead turns toward “mere” feeling or will, for him these will lose their true reality. One who is willing to experience intuitively in thinking, will also be able to do justice to what is experienced in the realm of feeling and in the element of will, whereas mysticism of feeling and metaphysics of will are incapable of doing justice to the activity of permeating existence with intuitive thinking. They all too easily come to the conclusion that they have found reality, whereas the intuitive thinker produces in abstract thoughts without feeling, and far removed from reality, a shadowy, chilling picture of the world.
9. THE IDEA OF FREEDOM
9.0 Intuitive Thinking
[1] For cognition the concept of a tree is conditioned by the perception of the tree. When confronted with a particular perception I can lift out only one definite concept from the general system of concepts. The connection between concept and perception is determined indirectly and objectively through thinking according to the perception.
[2] The connection of the perception with its concept is recognized after the act of perception; but that they belong to one another is already inherent in the object itself. The process is different when the relation of man to the world is considered, as it arises within knowledge. In the preceding explanation the attempt has been made to show that it is possible to throw light on this relation if one observes it without prejudice. A real understanding of such an observation leads to the insight that thinking can be directly experienced as a self-contained reality. In order to explain thinking as such, those who find it necessary to add something to it, such as physical brain-processes or unconscious spiritual processes lying behind the conscious thinking which is being observed, underestimate what can be seen when thinking is observed without prejudice. During his observation of thinking, the observer lives directly within a spiritual, self-sustaining activity of a living reality. Indeed one can say that he who wants to grasp the reality of spirit in the form in which it first presents itself to man, can do this in his own self-sustaining thinking.
[3] In examining thinking itself, two things coincide that otherwise must always appear as separated: concepts and percepts. If we do not understand this, the concepts developed in response to percepts will seem to us to be shadowy copies of these percepts, while the percepts themselves will seem to present us with true reality. We will also build a metaphysical world for ourselves on the pattern of the perceived world. Following the style of our mental imagery, we will call this metaphysical world the atomic world, the world of the will, or of the unconscious spirit, and so forth. And we will fail to see how, in all of this, we have built up only a hypothetical metaphysical world on the pattern of our perceptual world. But, if we see what is really present in thinking, we will recognize that only one part of reality is present in the percept and that we experience the other part—which belongs to it and is necessary for it to appear as full reality—in the permeation of the percept by thinking. We shall then see, in what appears in consciousness as thinking, not a shadowy copy of reality, but a spiritual essence that sustains itself. Of this spiritual essence we can say that it becomes present to our consciousness through intuition. Intuition is the conscious experience, within what is purely spiritual, of a purely spiritual content. The essence of thinking can be grasped only through intuition.
9.1 Psyche-Physical Organization
[4] Only when, by observing thinking without prejudice, one has wrestled one’s way through to recognizing the truth that the nature of thinking is intuitive, is it possible to gain a real understanding of the body-soul organization of man. Then one recognizes that this organization cannot affect the nature of thinking. Quite obvious facts seem to contradict this at first. For ordinary experience, human thinking only takes place connected with, and by means of, the organization. This comes so strongly to the fore that the true facts can only be seen when it has been recognized that nothing from the organization plays into thinking as such. And then it is impossible not to notice how extraordinary is the relation of the human organization to thinking. For this organization has no effect at all on thinking; rather it withdraws when the activity of thinking takes place; it suspends its own activity, it makes room, and in the space that has become free, thinking appears. The spiritual substance that acts in thinking has a twofold task: first it presses back the human organization in its activity, and next, it steps into the place of it. The first, the pressing back of the bodily organization, is also a consequence of the thinking activity, and indeed of that part of this activity which prepares the manifestation of thinking. This explains the sense in which thinking finds its counterpart in the bodily organization. And when this is recognized, one will no longer mistake this counterpart for thinking itself. If someone walks over soft ground, his feet leave impressions in the soil. But one is not tempted to say that the forces of the ground have formed these imprints from below. One will not ascribe to these forces any participation in the creating of the footprints. So too, one who, without prejudice, observes the nature of thinking will not ascribe to the imprints in the bodily organization any participation in the nature of thinking, for the imprints in the organization come about through the fact that thinking prepares its manifestation through the body.”
[footnote: The significance of the above view in relation to psychology, physiology, etc., in various directions has been set forth by the author in works published after this book. Here the aim is only to characterize what can be recognized by an unprejudiced observation of thinking.]
9.2 Ego-Consciousness
[5] Now a significant question arises. If the human organism does not partake in the spiritual substance of thinking, what significance has this organism within man’s being as a whole? Now what happens in this organism through thinking has nothing to do with the nature of thinking, but indeed it has to do with the arising of the I-consciousness within thinking. The real “I” exists within the being of thinking, but not so the I-consciousness. This will be recognized if only thinking is observed without prejudice. The “I” is to be found within thinking; the “I-consciousness” arises through the fact that the imprints of the activity of thinking are engraved upon the general consciousness in the sense explained above. (The I-consciousness therefore arises through the bodily organism. But by this is not meant that the I-consciousness, once it has arisen, remains dependent on the bodily organism. Once arisen, it is taken up into thinking and henceforth shares its spiritual nature.)
9.3 Characterological Disposition
[6] The human organism is the foundation of the “I-consciousness.” It is also the source of will-activity. It follows from the preceding explanation that an insight into the connection between thinking, conscious I, and will activity can only be obtained if we first observe how will-activity issues from the human organism.
[7] The factors to be considered in a particular act of will are the motive and the driving force. The motive is either a concept or a representation; the driving force is the will element and is directly conditioned by the human organism. The conceptual factor, or motive, is the momentary source from which the will is determined; the driving force is the permanent source of determination in the individual. A motive of will may be a pure concept or a concept with a definite reference to what is perceived, i.e. a representation. General and individual concepts (representations) become motives of will by influencing the human individual and determine him to act in a particular direction. But one and the same concept, or one and the same representation, influences different individuals differently. It impels different people to different actions. Will, therefore, does not come about merely as a result of the concept, or representation, but also through the individual disposition of human beings. This individual disposition we will call - in this respect one can follow Eduard von Hartmann - the characterological disposition. The way in which concepts and representations influence the characterological disposition of a person gives his life a definite moral or ethical stamp.
[8] The characterological disposition is formed through the more or less constant life-content of our subject, that is, through the content of our representations and feelings. Whether a present representation stimulates me to will or not, depends on how the representation is related to the content of the rest of my representations, and also to my particular feelings. The content of my representations is determined in turn by all those concepts which in the course of my individual life have come into contact with perceptions, that is, have become representations. This again depends on my greater or lesser capacity for intuition, and on the range of my observations, that is, on the subjective and the objective factors of experience, on my inner determination and my place in life. The characterological disposition is more particularly determined by the life of feeling. Whether I make a definite representation or concept the motive of my action will depend on whether it gives me pleasure or pain.
These are the elements which come into consideration in an act of will. The immediately present representation or concept which becomes motive, determines the aim, the purpose of my will; my characterological disposition determines me to direct my activity toward this aim. The representation, to go for a walk in the next half-hour, determines the aim of my action. But this representation is elevated to a motive of will only if it meets with a suitable characterological disposition, that is, if during my life until now I have formed representations concerning the purpose of walking, its value for health, and further, if the representation of walking combines in me with a feeling of pleasure.
9.4 Levels Of Morality
[9] We therefore must distinguish: 1) the possible subjective dispositions which are suitable for turning definite representations and concepts into motives; and 2) the possible representations and concepts which are capable of so influencing my characterological disposition that willing is the result. The first represents the driving force, the second, the aims of morality.
[10] We can find the driving force of morality by investigating the elements which comprise individual life.
[11] The first level of individual life is perceiving, more particularly, perceiving by means of the senses. Here we are concerned with that region of our individual life where perceiving, without a feeling or a concept coming between, is directly transformed into willing. The driving force in man, which comes into consideration here, we shall simply call instinct. The satisfaction of our lower, purely animal needs (hunger, sexual intercourse, etc.) takes place in this way. What is most characteristic of instinctive life is the immediacy with which a particular perception releases the will. This kind of determination of the will, which is characteristic only of lower sense-life to begin with, can also be extended to the perceptions of the higher senses. We let a deed follow upon the perception of some event or other in the outer world without further reflection and without linking any particular feeling to the perception, as in fact happens in conventional social life. The driving force of such conduct is what is called tact or moral etiquette. The more often such a direct release of activity by a perception takes place, the more the person concerned is able to act purely under the guidance of tact, that is: tact becomes his characterological disposition.
[12] The second level of human life is feeling. Definite feelings link themselves to the perceptions of the outer world. These feelings can become the driving forces of deeds. When I see a starving person, pity for him can become the driving force of my action. Such feelings, for example, are shame, pride, honor, humility, remorse, pity, revenge, gratitude, piety, loyalty, love and duty.
[13] The third level of life is thinking and forming representations. A representation or a concept can become motive for an action through mere reflection. Representations become motives because in the course of life we continuously link certain aims of will with perceptions which keep returning in more or less modified form. This is why, when people not entirely without experience have certain perceptions, there always also enter into their consciousness representations of deeds which they themselves have carried out in a similar instance, or have seen carried out. These representations hover before them as determining models for all later decisions; they become united with their characterological disposition. We could call this driving force of the will, practical experience. Practical experience gradually merges into purely tactful conduct. This happens when definite typical pictures of actions have become so firmly connected in our consciousness with representations of certain situations in life that in any given case we skip over all deliberation based on experience and pass over directly from perception into willing.
[14] The highest level of individual life is that of conceptual thinking without reference to a definite perceptual content. We determine the content of a concept through pure intuition from the ideal sphere. Such a concept contains no reference to definite perceptions at first. If we pass over into willing under the influence of a concept pointing to a perception, that is, a representation, then it is this perception which determines us indirectly via the conceptual thinking. When we act under the influence of intuitions, then the driving force of our deed is pure thinking. Since in philosophy it is customary to call the faculty of pure thinking, reason, it would be justifiable to call the moral driving force characteristic of this level, practical reason. The clearest account of this driving force of the will has been given by Kreyenbühl. (Philosophische Monatshefte, Vol. XVIII, No. 3). I count his article on this subject among the most important contributions to presentday philosophy, particularly to ethics. Kreyenbühl characterizes this driving force as practical apriori, that is, an impulse to action springing directly from my intuition.
[15] It is clear that in the strictest sense of the word, such an impulse can no longer be considered as belonging to the characterological disposition. For here what acts as driving force is no longer something merely individual in me, but is the ideal and therefore the universal content of my intuition. As soon as I see the justification for making this content the foundation and starting-point of an action, I pass over into willing, irrespective of whether I had the concept already, or whether it enters my consciousness only immediately before acting, that is, irrespective of whether or not it was already present in me as disposition.
[16] An action is a real act of will only when a momentary impulse of action, in the form of a concept or representation, influences the characterological disposition. Such an impulse then becomes the motive of will.
[17] Motives of morality are representations and concepts. There are philosophers of ethics who also see in feeling a motive for morality; they maintain, for example, that the aim of moral conduct is the furtherance of the greatest possible quantity of pleasure in the individual who acts. But in itself a pleasure cannot be a motive; only a represented pleasure can. The representation of a future feeling, but not the feeling itself, can influence my characterological disposition. For in the moment of acting the feeling itself is not yet there; moreover it is to be produced by the action.
[18] The representation of one’s own or someone else’s welfare, however, is rightly regarded as a motive of will. The principle: through one’s deed to bring about the greatest amount of pleasure for oneself, that is, to attain personal advantage, is egoism. It is striven for either by ruthlessly considering only one’s own welfare, even at the cost of the happiness of others (pure egoism), or by furthering the welfare of others because indirectly one expects a favorable influence upon one’s own self through the happiness of others, or because one fears to endanger one’s own interest by injuring others (morality of prudence). The particular content of egoistical principles of morality will depend upon what representations a person has of his own or of another’s happiness. A person will determine the content of his egoistical striving according to what he considers to be the good things in life (luxury, hope of happiness, deliverance from various misfortunes, etc.).
[19] Another motive is the purely conceptual content of actions. This content does not refer to a particular action only, as in the case of the representation of one’s own pleasures, but to the reason for an action derived from a system of moral principles. In the form of abstract concepts these moral principles may govern moral life without the single individual troubling himself about the origin of the concepts. In that case, we simply feel the subjection to the moral concept which, like a command, overshadows our deeds as a moral necessity. The reason for this necessity we leave to those who demand our moral subjection, that is, to the moral authority we acknowledge (the head of the family, the state, social custom, the authority of the church, divine revelation). A particular instance of these moral principles is when the command announces itself to us, not through an external authority, but through our own inner being (moral autonomy). In this case, within ourselves we sense the voice to which we have to submit. This voice finds expression in conscience.
[20] It means moral progress when man does not simply take the command of an outer or inner authority as motive for his action, but strives to recognize the reason why a particular principle of conduct should act as motive in him. This is the advance from morality based on authority, to conduct based on moral insight. At this level of morality the person will consider the needs of moral life and will let this knowledge determine his actions. Such needs are: 1) the greatest possible welfare of humanity, purely for its own sake; 2) the progress of culture, or the moral development of mankind to ever greater perfection; 3) the realization of individual aims of morality, which are grasped purely intuitively.
[21] The greatest possible welfare of humanity will naturally be understood differently by different people. The above principle does not refer to a definite representation of this welfare, but to the fact that each person who acknowledges this principle strives to do what in his opinion best furthers the welfare of humanity.
[22] The progress of culture is seen as a special instance of the above-mentioned moral principle by those who connect feelings of pleasure with the advantages of culture, but they will have to accept into the bargain the decline and destruction of much that also contributes to the welfare of mankind. However, it is also possible that in the progress of culture someone sees a moral necessity, quite apart from the feeling of pleasure connected with it. Then for him, the progress of culture is a particular moral principle, distinct from the one mentioned previously.
[23] The principle of the general welfare, as well as that of the progress of culture, is based upon a representation, that is, upon how one relates the content of moral ideas to certain experiences (perceptions). But the highest thinkable principle of morality is one which contains no such relation from the start, but springs from the source of pure intuition and only afterward seeks the relation to perceptions (to life). Here the decision as to what is to be willed proceeds from a different sphere than that of the previous examples. In all his conduct, one in favor of the principle of the general welfare will first ask what his ideals will contribute to this general welfare. He who acknowledges the moral principle of the progress of culture, will do the same. But at this level he could do something even higher: if in a particular case he were not to proceed from one single definite aim of morality, but were to recognize a certain value in all principles of morality and were always to ask whether the one or the other would be more important here. It may happen that in certain circumstances one considers the progress of culture, in others, the general welfare, and in yet others, the furtherance of his own welfare, to be the right aim and motive of his actions. But when all such reasons take second place, then first and foremost the conceptual intuition itself comes into consideration. When this happens, then all other motives retreat from the leading position and the idea-content of the action alone is effective as its motive.
9.5 Moral Intuition
[24] Among the levels of characterological disposition, we have shown the one which acts as pure thinking, as practical reason, to be the highest. From the motives, we have now shown conceptual intuition to be the highest. On closer consideration, it will soon be seen that at this level of morality driving force and motive coincide, that is, neither a predetermined characterological disposition nor an external moral principle accepted on authority, influences our conduct. The deed therefore is neither a conventional one, carried out according to some rule or other, nor one automatically performed in response to an external impulse; rather it is one which is determined solely through its ideal content.
[25] Such conduct presupposes the capacity for moral intuition. Whoever lacks the ability to experience the moral principle that applies in a particular instance, will never achieve truly individual willing.
[26] The exact opposite to this moral principle is the Kantian: Act so that the principles of your actions can be valid for all men. This principle is death to all individual impulses of action. How all men would act cannot be a standard for me, but rather what is right for me to do in the particular instance.
9.6 Moral Motive
[27] To this, a superficial judgment could perhaps object: How can an action be individually adapted to the particular instance and the particular situation, and yet at the same time be determined purely ideally by intuition? This objection is due to a confusion of the moral motive and the perceptible content of the action. The perceptible content could be a motive, and is one, for example, when an act is done for the progress of culture or out of pure egoism, etc., but it is not the motive when the reason for action is a pure moral intuition. My I naturally takes notice of this perceptual content, but is not determined by it. This content is used only to form a cognitive concept, but the moral concept that belongs to it, the I does not take from the object. The cognitive concept of a given situation confronting me is also a moral concept only if I base my view on a particular moral principle. If my viewpoint is limited to the general moral principle of the progress of culture, then I go through life along a fixed route. From every event I perceive which can occupy me, a moral duty also springs, namely, to do my best toward placing the particular event in the service of the progress of culture. In addition to the concept which reveals to me the natural law inherent in an event or object, there is also a moral label attached to it which contains for me, as a moral being, an ethical direction as to how I am to behave. This moral label is justified at a certain level, but at a higher level it coincides with the idea that arises in me when I face the concrete instance.
9.7 Ethical Individualism
[28] Men differ greatly in their capacity for intuition. In one person ideas bubble up easily, while another person has to acquire them with much labor. The situation in which men live, which is the scene of their actions, is no less different. How a man acts will therefore depend on the way his capacity for intuition functions in the face of a given situation. The sum of ideas active within us, the actual content of our intuitions, is what, for all the universality of the idea-world, is individually constituted in each human being. Insofar as this intuitive content is directed toward action, it is the moral content of the individual. To let this content come to expression is the highest moral driving force and also the highest motive for the one who has recognized that ultimately all other moral principles unite in this content. This standpoint can be called ethical individualism.
[29] The discovery of the quite individual intuition which corresponds to the situation, is the deciding factor in an intuitively determined action. At this level of morality one can speak only of general concepts of morality (norms, laws) insofar as these result from the generalization of individual impulses. General norms always presuppose concrete facts from which they can be derived. But facts must first be produced by human deeds.
9.8 Love For The Objective
[30] When we look for the laws (concepts) underlying the conduct of individuals, peoples and epochs, we obtain a system of ethics, not as a science of moral rules, but as a natural philosophy of morality. It is true that laws obtained in this way are related to human conduct, as the laws of nature are related to a particular phenomenon. But they are not at all identical with the impulses upon which we base our conduct. If one wants to grasp the means by which man’s action springs from his moral will, then one must first consider the relation of this will to the action. One must first select actions where this relation is the determining factor. If I, or someone else, reflect on such an action later, then can be discovered upon what principle of morality the action is based. While I am acting I am moved to act by the moral principle insofar as it lives in me intuitively; the moral principle is united with my love for what I want to accomplish by my deed. I ask no man and no code, Shall I do this? - rather I do it the moment I have grasped the idea of it. This alone makes it my action.
The deeds of a person who acts solely because he acknowledges a definite moral standard, come about as a result of a principle which is part of his moral code. He is merely the agent. He is a higher kind of automaton. If some impulse to action enters his consciousness, then at once the clockwork of his moral principle will be set in motion and run to rule, in order to bring about a deed which is Christian, or humane, or is deemed unselfish, or to further the progress of culture. Only when I follow my love for the object is it I myself who acts. At this level of morality I do not act because I acknowledge a ruler over me, an external authority, or a so-called inner voice. I do not acknowledge any external principle for my conduct, because I have found the source of my conduct within myself, namely, my love for the deed. I do not prove intellectually whether my deed is good or bad; I do it out of my love for it. My action will be “good” if my intuition, immersed in love, exists in the right way within the relationship between things; this can be experienced intuitively; the action will be “bad” if this is not the case. Nor do I ask myself: How would another person act in my place? - rather I act, as I, as this particular individuality, find my will motivated to act. I am not guided directly by what happens to be the usual thing, the general habit, some general human code or moral standard, but solely by my love for this deed. I feel no compulsion - neither the compulsion of nature which rules me through my instincts, nor the compulsion of moral commands. Rather, I simply carry out what lies within me.
9.9 Expression Of Ideals In Individual Way
[31] Those who defend general moral standards will perhaps object: If each person strives to express and do only what he pleases, then there is no difference between a good deed and a crime; every depraved impulse in me has the same right to express itself as has the intention to do my best. The fact that I have a deed in mind, according to an idea, cannot set my standard as a moral human being, but only the test as to whether it is a good or evil deed. Only if it is good should I carry it out.
[32] My reply to this obvious objection, which nonetheless is based on a misunderstanding of what is meant here, is this: One who wants to understand the nature of human will must differentiate between the path which brings this will to a certain degree of development, and the unique character which the will assumes as it approaches its goal. On the way toward this goal standards do play their justified part. The goal consists in the realization of aims of morality, grasped purely intuitively. Man attains such aims to the degree that he is at all able to raise himself to the intuitive idea-content of the world. In particular instances such aims are usually mixed with other elements, either as driving force or as motive. Nevertheless, in the human will intuition can be the determining factor, wholly or in part. A person does what he ought to do, he provides the stage upon which “ought” becomes deed; it is absolutely his own deed which he brings to expression. The impulse here can only be completely individual. And, in fact, only an act of will which springs from intuition can be individual. To call the acts of criminals and what is evil an expression of the individuality, in the same sense as the embodiment of pure intuition, is only possible if blind urges are reckoned as part of the human individuality. But the blind urge which drives a person to crime does not spring from intuition and does not belong to what is individual in man, but rather to what is most general in him, to what is equally valid in all men, and out of which man works his way by means of what is individual in him. What is individual in me is not my organism with its urges and feelings, but rather the universal world of ideas which lights up within this organism. My urges, instincts, passions confirm nothing more than that I belong to the general species, man; the fact that something ideal comes to expression in a particular way within these urges, passions and feelings, confirms my individuality. Through my instincts and urges I am a person of whom there are twelve to the dozen; through the particular form of the idea, by means of which I name myself “I” within the dozen, I am an individual. Only a being other than myself could distinguish me from others by the difference in my animal nature; through my thinking, that is, through the active grasp of what expresses itself as an ideal within my organism, do I distinguish myself from others. Therefore one definitely cannot say that the action of a criminal springs from the idea in him. Indeed, this is just what is characteristic of a criminal deed: it stems from elements in man which are external to the ideal-element in him.
[33] An action is felt to be free insofar as the reason for it springs from the ideal part of my individual being; any other part of an action, irrespective of whether it is carried out under the compulsion of nature or under the obligation of a moral code, is felt to be unfree.
[34] Man is free insofar as he is able, in every moment of his life, to follow himself. A moral deed is my deed only if it can be called free in this sense. What here have to be considered are the presuppositions necessary for a willed action to be felt as free; how this purely ethically grasped idea of freedom realizes itself in human nature, will be seen in what follows.
9.10 Harmony Of Intentions
[35] A deed done out of freedom does not at all exclude, but includes moral laws, but it will be a deed done from a higher sphere compared with those dictated solely by such laws. Why should my deed serve the general welfare any less when it is done out of love, than when I do it solely for the reason that I feel that to serve the general welfare is a duty? The concept of mere duty excludes freedom because it does not include what is individual, but demands subjection of the individual to a general standard. Freedom of action is thinkable only from the standpoint of ethical individualism.
[36] But how is it possible for people to live in a community if each person strives to assert only his own individuality? This objection is characteristic of misunderstood moralism. A person holding this viewpoint believes that a community of people is possible only if all men are united by general fixed moral rules. He simply does not understand the oneness and harmony of the idea-world. He does not realize that the idea-world which is active in me is none other than the one active in my fellow-man. This unity of ideas is indeed nothing but a result of men’s experience of life. Only this can it be. For if the unity of the idea-world could be recognized by any means other than by individual observation, then general rules and not personal experience would be valid in its sphere. Individuality is possible only when each individual is acquainted with others through individual observation alone. The difference between me and my fellow men is not at all because we live in two quite different spiritual worlds, but because from the world of ideas which we share, he receives different intuitions from mine. He wants to live out his intuitions, I mine. If we both really draw from the idea, and are not obeying any external impulses (physical or spiritual), then we cannot but meet in the same striving, in having the same intentions. A moral misunderstanding, a clash between men who are morally free, is out of the question. Only the morally unfree who follow natural instincts or some accepted command of duty, turn away from a fellow-man if he does not follow the same instinct and the same command as themselves. To live in love of the action and to let live, having understanding for the other person’s will, is the fundamental principle of free human beings. They know no other “ought” than that with which their will is intuitively in accord; how they shall will in a particular instance, their power of ideation will tell them.
[37] If human nature were not fundamentally social, no external laws could make it so! Only because individual human beings are one in the spiritual part of their being, can they live out their lives side by side. The free man is confident that others who are free belong to the same spiritual world as he does, and that they will meet him in their intentions. The free man does not demand agreement from his fellow men, but he expects it, because it lies in human nature. This does not refer to the existing necessity for this or that external arrangement, but rather to the disposition, the attitude of soul through which man, in his experience of himself among fellow men for whom he cares, comes nearest to doing justice to human dignity.
9.11 Concept of the Free Human Being
[38] There are many who will say that the concept of a free human being outlined here is a chimera, is nowhere to be found as a reality, and that we have to deal with real people from whom one can hope for morality only when they obey some moral law, when they regard their moral mission as a duty, and do not freely follow their inclinations and preferences. - I certainly do not doubt this. Only a blind man could do so. But then, away with all hypocrisy of morality if this is to be the ultimate conclusion. Then simply say: Human nature must be compelled as long as it is not free. Whether the unfreedom is dealt with by physical means or through moral laws, whether man is unfree because he follows his immeasurable sexual instinct, or because he is hemmed in by the fetters of conventional morality, is quite immaterial from a certain point of view. But one should not maintain that such a man can rightly call his actions his own, for he is driven to them by external powers. But there are human beings who raise themselves above all these compelling rules, free spirits who find their own self in the jumble of habits, regulations, religious observance, etc. They are free insofar as they follow only themselves; unfree insofar as they submit themselves. Which of us can say that he is really free in all that he deed But in each of us exists a higher being in whom the free man comes to expression.
[39] Our life is composed of free and unfree deeds. But we cannot complete the concept of man without including the free spirit as the purest characteristic of human nature. After all, we are truly human only insofar as we are free.
[40] That is an ideal, many will say. Without doubt - but it is an ideal which works itself to the surface from within our nature as a reality. It is no “thought out” or imagined ideal, but one in which there is life, one which clearly announces its presence even in its least perfect form of existence. If man were merely a product of nature, the search for ideals, that is, for ideas which for the moment are inactive but whose realization we demand, would not be possible. In the case of external objects the idea is determined by the perception. We have done our share when we have recognized the connection between idea and perception. But with man this is not so. His content is not determined without him; his true concept as a moral being (free spirit) is not objectively united with the perceptual picture “man” from the start merely in order to be confirmed by knowledge later. By his own activity man must unite his concept with the perception, man. Concept and perception only coincide here if man himself brings it about. But he cannot do this till he has found the concept of the free spirit, that is, his own concept. In the objective world a line of division is drawn by our organization between perception and concept; cognition overcomes this division. In our subjective nature this division is no less present; man overcomes it in the course of his development by bringing his concept to expression in his outward existence. Both man’s intellectual as well as his moral life point to his twofold nature: perceiving (direct experience) and thinking. In the intellectual life the two-foldness is overcome through knowledge; in the moral life through actually bringing the free spirit to realization. Every being has its inborn concept (the law of its existence and activity), but in external objects the concept is indivisibly connected with the perception and separated from it only within our spiritual organism. In man concept and perception are to begin with, actually apart, to be united by him just as actually. One could object: To our perception of a man a definite concept corresponds at every moment of his life, just as is the case with everything else. I can form a concept of a typical man, and I may also find such a man given to me as a perception. If to this I also bring the concept of the free spirit, then I have two concepts for the same object.
[41] This line of thought is one-sided. As perceptual object I am subjected to perpetual change. As a child I was one thing, another as a youth, yet another as a man. In fact, at every moment the perceptual picture of myself is different from what it was a moment ago. These changes may take place in such a way that either it is always the same (the typical) man who expresses himself in them, or they become the expression of the free spirit. The perceptual object of my action is subjected to these changes.
[42] In the perceptual object “man” the possibility of transformation is given, just as in the plant-seed there lies the possibility of becoming a fully developed plant. The plant transforms itself because of the objective laws which are inherent in it; man remains in his imperfect state unless he takes hold of the substance to be transformed within him and transforms it through his own power. Nature makes man merely into a product of nature; society makes him into a being who acts rationally, but he alone can make himself into a free being. At a definite stage in his development nature releases man from its fetters; society carries his development a stage further; the final polish he can only apply himself.
[43] Therefore, from the standpoint of free morality it is not asserted that as free spirit is the only form in which a man can exist. Free spirituality is the ultimate stage of man’s development. And it is not denied that conduct according to rules has its justification as a stage of development. However, this cannot be acknowledged as the highest level of morality. But the free spirit in man overcomes rules in the sense that he does not accept only commands as motives, but also regulates his conduct in accordance with his impulses (intuitions).
[44] When Kant says of duty: “Duty! You sublime, you great name, you encompass nothing beloved or endearing, but you demand submission,” you “lay down a law ... before which all inclinations become silent, even if in secret they also go against it,” then man, conscious of the free spirit, answers: “Freedom! You friendly, humane name, you encompass all that is morally beloved, all that is most worthy of my humanity, you make me no one’s servant, you do not merely lay down a law, but wait for what my moral love will of itself recognize as law, because it feels unfree when faced with any law simply forced upon it.”
[45] This is the contrast between mere law-abiding morality and morality born of freedom.
9.12 Moral World Order
[46] The philistine who sees morality embodied in some external rule, may perhaps even regard the free spirit as a dangerous person. But this is simply because his view is limited to a certain period of time. If he were able to see beyond this, he would soon find that the free spirit need go beyond the laws of his state as seldom as the philistine himself, and is never in any real opposition to them. For all the laws of the state have sprung from the intuitions of free spirits, just as have all other objective laws of morality. No law is exercised through a family authority which was not at some time intuitively grasped and laid down by an ancestor. Similarly the conventional laws of morality were first laid down by definite people and so too the laws of the state first arise in the head of a statesman. These individualities have established laws over other people, and only he is unfree who forgets this origin and either looks upon these laws as extra-human commands, that is, as objective moral concepts of duty independent of man, or turns them into the commanding voice thought of - in a falsely mystical way - as compelling him in his own inner being. However, he who does not forget the origin of such laws, but looks for it in man, will reckon with them as belonging to the same idea-world as that from which he too draws his moral intuitions. If he believes his own intuitions to be better, then he will try to replace those in existence with his own; but if he finds the existing ones justified, he will act in accordance with them as if they were his own.
[47] The formula must not be coined: Man is meant to realize a moral world order which exists independent of him. Insofar as knowledge of man is concerned, one maintaining this stands at the point where natural science stood when it believed that the goat has horns in order to be able to butt. Fortunately natural scientists have rejected such a concept of purpose as a dead theory. It is more difficult to get rid of such theories in ethics. However, just as horns do not exist because of butting, but butting exists through horns, so man does not exist because of morality, but morality exists through man. The free human being acts morally because he has a moral idea, but he does not act in order that morality may come about. Human individuals, with the moral ideas belonging to their nature, are the presupposition for a moral world-order.
[48] The human individual is the source of all morality and the center of earthly life. State and society have come about only because they are the necessary results of life shared by individual human beings. That state and society should react in turn upon the life of the individual is understandable, just as it is understandable that butting, which exists through the horns, reacts in turn upon the further development of the goat’s horns, which would waste away by prolonged disuse. Similarly, the individual would waste away if he led a separate existence outside a human community. This is just why the social order arises, so that it can react favorably upon the individual.
10. PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM (SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY) AND MONISM
10.0 Authoritative Moral Principles
[1] The naive man who regards as real only what he can see with his eyes and grasp with his hands, also needs to have motives for his moral life that are perceptible to the senses. He needs someone who will impart these motives to him in a way that he can understand by means of his senses. He will let them be dictated to him as commands by a person whom he considers wiser and more powerful than himself, or whom he acknowledges, for some other reason, to be a power standing above him. In this way the moral principles already mentioned come about through being prescribed by authority of family, state, society, church, or the Divinity. An undeveloped person still trusts in the authority of a single individual; a somewhat more advanced person lets his moral conduct be dictated by a majority (state, society). But it is always perceptible powers upon which he relies. When at last the conviction dawns upon him that fundamentally all these are weak human beings just like himself, then he will seek guidance from a higher power, from a divine Being, whom, however, he endows with sense-perceptible qualities. He lets the conceptual content of his moral life be dictated to him by this Being, again in a perceptible way, for example when God appears in the burning bush, or moves among men in bodily human form and in a manner perceptible to their ears tells them what to do and what not to do.
[2] The highest level of development of naive realism in the moral sphere is reached when the moral command (moral idea) has been separated from every foreign entity, and is hypothetically thought of as an absolute force in one’s own inner being. What at first is sensed as the external voice of God, is now sensed as an independent power within man, and is spoken of in a way that shows the inner power to be identified with the voice of conscience.
10.1 Mechanical Necessity
[3] When this happens, the level of naive consciousness has been abandoned and we enter the region where moral laws become independent rules. They no longer have a bearer, but have become metaphysical entities, existing by themselves. They are similar to the invisible-visible forces of the metaphysical realist who does not look for the reality of things in the human soul’s participation in this reality through thinking, but who hypothetically imagines reality as an addition to actual experience. Extra-human moral rules, therefore, always accompany metaphysical realism. Metaphysical realism cannot do otherwise than seek the origin of morality too in a sphere beyond human reach. And here there are several possibilities. If the presupposed Being is thought of as in itself unthinking, acting according to purely mechanical laws, as materialism thinks of it, then out of itself it must also produce, by purely mechanical necessity, the human individual and all that belongs to him. The consciousness of freedom can then be only an illusion. For while I believe myself to be the creator of my deeds, it is the material substances of which I am composed, together with their processes, that are at work within me. I believe myself to be free, whereas in reality all my actions are but results of the material processes which are the foundation of my bodily and spiritual organism. According to this point of view, it is simply because we do not know the motives compelling us, that we have the feeling of freedom. “We must emphasize that the feeling of freedom is due to the absence of external compelling motives.” “Our actions as well as our thinking are subject to necessity.”
10.2 Absolute Spiritual Being
[4] Another possibility is that the extra-human absolute is seen as a spiritual Being behind the world of phenomena. Then the impulse to action will also be sought in such a spiritual power. The moral principles to be found in man’s reason will be regarded as issuing from this Being-in-itself, which has its own particular intentions with regard to man. Moral laws appear to such a dualist as dictated by the Absolute, and through his reason, man simply has to discover and carry out these decisions of the Absolute Being. The moral world-order appears to the dualist as the perceptible reflection of a higher order that stands behind it. Earthly morality is the manifestation of the extra-human world order. It is not man that matters in this moral order, but the Being-in-itself, the extrahuman Being. Man ought to do what this Being wills.
Eduard von Hartmann, who sees the Being-in-itself as the Godhead whose very existence is suffering, believes that this divine Being has created the world in order that through the world he will be redeemed from his infinitely great pain. This philosopher therefore regards the moral development of mankind as a process which exists for the purpose of redeeming the Godhead.
“Only through the building up of a moral world-order by sensible, responsible individuals can the aim of the world-process be carried through....” “Existence in its reality is the incarnation of the Godhead - the world process is the Passion of the God becoming flesh, and at the same time the path of redemption of Him who was crucified in the flesh; and morality is the co-operation in the shortening of this path of suffering and redemption.”
10.3 Infer The True Reality
Here man does not act because he wills, but he ought to act because it is God’s will to be redeemed. Just as the materialistic dualist makes man into an automaton whose conduct is merely the result of purely mechanical laws, so the spiritualistic dualist (that is, he who sees the Absolute, the Being-in-itself, as a spiritual entity in which man has no conscious share) makes him into a slave of the will of the Absolute. Freedom is out of the question in materialism as well as in one-sided spiritualism, in fact in any kind of metaphysical realism which does not experience, but infers something extra-human as the true reality.
10.4 Imposed Principles
[5] Naive as well as metaphysical realism, in order to be consistent, must deny freedom for one and the same reason, since they regard man as being simply the agent or executor of principles which are forced upon him by necessity. Naive realism kills freedom through subjection to the authority either of a perceptible being or of an entity thought of as similar to a perceptible being, or else through submission to the authority of the abstract inner voice which is interpreted as “conscience;” the metaphysical realist, who merely infers something extra-human, cannot acknowledge freedom because he lets man be determined, mechanically or morally, by a “Being-in-itself.”
10.5 Accept The Moral Principles Of Others
[6] Monism must acknowledge the partial justification of naive realism because it acknowledges the justification of the world of perceptions. Someone who is incapable of bringing forth moral ideas through intuition, will have to receive them from others. Insofar as a man receives his moral principles from outside, he is positively unfree. But monism ascribes equal significance to the idea compared with perception. And the idea can come to manifestation in the human individual. Insofar as man follows the impulses coming from this side, he feels free.
10.6 Free When Obey Self
But monism denies all justification to a metaphysics which merely draws inferences, and consequently also to impulses of action stemming from a so-called “Being-in-itself,” According to the monistic view, man’s action is unfree when he obeys some perceptible external compulsion; it is free when he obeys himself. Monism cannot acknowledge any kind of unconscious compulsion hidden behind perception and concept. When someone maintains that a fellow man was not free when he performed an action, it must be possible to prove the existence within the perceptible world of the thing, the person, or the institution that made the man act; but if an appeal is made to causes for the action lying outside the sphere of physical and spiritual reality, then monism cannot enter the discussion.
10.7 Realization Of The Free Spirit Within
[7] According to monism, in his activity man is partly unfree, partly free. He is unfree in the world of perceptions, but brings the free spirit to realization in himself.
10.8 Moral Laws Conceived By Individuals
[8] The moral commands which the metaphysical realist merely infers and cannot but consider as issuing from a higher power, for the monist are thoughts of men; for the monist the moral world order is neither a copy of a purely mechanical natural order, nor of an extra-human world order, but entirely a free undertaking of man. Man does not have to carry out the will of some Being existing beyond his reach; he carries out his own will; he does not bring to realization the decisions and intentions of another Being, but brings his own to realization. Monism does not see the purpose of a foreign rulership behind man, determining him from outside, but rather that insofar as they bring intuitive ideas to realization, human beings pursue solely their own human purposes. And indeed, each individual pursues his own particular purpose. For the world of ideas expresses itself not in a community of men, but only in the individual man. The common goal of a group of men is nothing but the result of the separate will-activities of the individual persons, and usually of a few outstanding ones whom the rest follow as their authorities. Each one of us is destined to become a free spirit, just as every rose seed is destined to become a rose.
10.9 Freedom Stage Of Development
[9] The monistic view, in the sphere of truly moral conduct, is a philosophy of freedom. And as it is also a philosophy of reality, it rejects metaphysical and unreal restrictions of man’s free spirit just as it acknowledges physical and historical (naively real) restrictions of the naive man. Since monism does not regard man as a finished product, as a being who at every moment of his life unfolds his full nature, it seems futile to discuss whether man, as such, is free or not. Man is seen as a being in the process of self-development, and one may ask whether, in the course of this development the stage of the free spirit can be attained.
10.10 Discover Self
[10] Monism knows that nature does not release man from its care complete and finished as a free spirit, but it leads him up to a certain level from which, still unfree, he continues to develop until he reaches the point where he finds his own self.
10.11 Free Moral World Conception
[11] To monism it is obvious that a being acting under physical or moral compulsion cannot be moral in a real sense. It regards the level of transition through automatic conduct (according to natural urges and instincts) and through obedient conduct (according to moral rules) as necessary preliminary stages of morality, but it also recognizes the possibility for man to overcome both transitory levels through his free spirit. A truly moral world view is released by monism, both from the fetters of naive moral principles in man’s inner world, and from the moral principles of the speculating metaphysicist in the external world. The naive principles of morality can be eliminated from the world as little as can perceptions. The metaphysical view is rejected because monism seeks all the factors for explaining world-phenomena within the world, and none outside it.
10.12 Humanist Morality
Just as monism finds it unnecessary to entertain thoughts of principles of knowledge other than those inherent in man, (p. 140) so it also definitely finds it unnecessary to entertain thoughts of principles of morality other than those inherent in man. Human morality, like human knowledge, is determined through human nature. And just as knowledge would mean something quite different to beings other than man, so other beings would also have a different morality. Morality for the monist is a specifically human quality, and freedom is the form in which human morality finds expression.
First Addition to the Revised Edition (1918)
1. Difficulty in judging what is presented in the two preceding chapters may arise because one believes oneself to be confronted by a contradiction. On the one hand, the experience of thinking is spoken of as having a general significance of equal value for every human consciousness; on the other hand, it is shown that though the ideas realized in moral life are of the same kind as those worked out by thinking, they come to expression in each human consciousness in an individual way. If one cannot overcome seeing a “contradiction,” in this, and cannot recognize that it is just in a living experience of this actually present contrast that a glimpse into man’s true being is revealed, then it is also impossible to see either the idea of knowledge or the idea of freedom in their true light. For those who think of concepts as merely drawn (abstracted) from the sense-world, and who do not give full recognition to intuitions, the thought presented here as the reality must seem a “mere contradiction.” For an insight that recognizes how ideas are intuitively experienced as a self-sustaining reality, it is clear that in the sphere of the world of ideas man penetrates in cognition into something which is universal for all men, but when he derives from that same idea world the intuitions for his acts of will, then he individualizes a member of this idea world by means of the same activity which, as a general human one, he unfolds in the spiritual ideal process of cognition. For this reason what appears as a logical contradiction, namely the universal character of cognitive ideas and the individual character of moral ideas, when experienced in its true reality, becomes a living concept. A characteristic feature of human nature consists in the fact that what can be intuitively grasped oscillates in man like a living pendulum between knowledge which is universally valid, and the individual experience of this universal element. For the man who cannot recognize one swing of the pendulum in its reality, thinking will remain merely a subjective human activity; for the one who cannot recognize the other swing, all individual life appears to cease in man’s activity of thinking. To the first person, cognition is unintelligible, to the second, moral life is unintelligible. Both will call in all sorts of representations in order to explain the one or the other, all of which miss the point, because both persons, fundamentally, either do not recognize that thinking can be experienced, or take it to be an activity which merely abstracts.
Second Addition to the Revised Edition 1918
2. On page 189, materialism was referred to. I am well aware that there are thinkers like the above-mentioned Th. Ziehen, who do not in the least consider themselves materialists, but who must nevertheless be described as such from the point of view expressed in this book. It is not a matter that someone says that for him the world is not restricted to merely material existence and therefore he is not a materialist. It is a matter of whether or not he develops concepts which are applicable only to a material existence. One who says: “Our conduct, like our thinking, is necessitated,” expresses a concept applicable only to material processes, but applicable neither to actions nor to existence; and if he thinks his concepts through, he will have to think materialistically. That he does not do this is only the outcome of that inconsistency which is so often the result of a thinking not carried through. - One often hears it said nowadays that the materialism of the nineteenth century no longer plays a part in science. But in reality this is not so at all. It is only that at present it is often not noticed that no other ideas are available than those which can be applied only to something material. This veils present day materialism, whereas in the second half of the nineteenth century it was plain for all to see. And present day veiled materialism is no less intolerant of a view that grasps the world spiritually than was the openly-admitted materialism of the last century. However, it deceives many who believe they must reject a comprehension of the world which includes spirit, because after all, the natural scientific comprehension of the world “has long ago abandoned materialism.”
11. WORLD PURPOSE AND LIFE PURPOSE (THE DESTINATION OF MAN)
(The Destiny Of Man)
11.0 Concept Of Purpose
[1] Among the many currents of thought pursued in the cultural life of mankind, it is possible to trace one which can be described as the overcoming of the concept of purpose in those spheres to which it does not belong. Purpose belongs to a special sequence of phenomena. In reality one can only speak of purpose when, in contrast to the relation between cause and effect where an earlier event determines a later one, the reverse is the case and the later event influences the earlier. This applies only to human action. Man carries out a deed which he represents to himself first of all, and he lets the representation determine his action. The later, the deed, with the help of the representation influences the earlier, the person who acts. This detour through the act of representing is always necessary for a connection to have purpose.
11.1 Percept Cause Precedes Percept Effect
[2] In a process which can be divided into cause and effect, perception must be distinguished from concept. The perception of the cause precedes the perception of the effect; cause and effect would simply remain side by side in our consciousness if we were not able to connect them with one another through their corresponding concepts.
11.2 Conceptual Factor Of Effect
The perception of an effect can follow only upon the perception of the cause. The effect can have a real influence upon the cause only through the conceptual factor. For the perceptual factor of the effect is simply not present prior to the perceptual factor of the cause. If someone says that the blossom is the purpose of the root, that is, that the blossom influences the root, then he can say this only concerning that factor in the blossom which he confirms in it through his thinking. The perceptual factor of the blossom had as yet no existence at the time the root came into being.
11.3 Real Influence Of Concept (Action)
For a connection of things to have purpose it is necessary to have not merely an ideal connection (the law in it) of the later with the earlier, but also the concept (the law) of the effect must really, i.e. by means of a perceptible process, influence the cause. However, a perceptible influence of a concept upon something else is to be observed only in human actions. This is therefore the only sphere in which the concept of purpose is applicable.
11.4 Imagined Purpose In Nature
Naive consciousness, which regards as real only what is perceptible, attempts - as we said before - to place something perceptible where only ideal factors are to be recognized. In perceptible events it also looks for perceptible connections, or, if it does not find them, imagines them to be there. The concept of purpose, valid for subjective actions, is an element that easily lends itself to such imaginary connections. The naive man knows how he brings about an event, and from this he concludes that nature must do likewise. In the purely ideal connections of nature he sees not only imperceptible forces but also imperceptible real purposes. Man makes his tools to fit a purpose; on the same pattern, the naive realist lets the Creator build up all organisms. Only very gradually does this mistaken concept of purpose disappear from the sciences. In philosophy, even today, it still does a great deal of mischief. The purpose of the world is thought to exist outside the world, and man’s destination (therefore also his purpose) outside man, and so on.
11.5 Laws Of Nature
[3] Monism rejects the concept of purpose in every sphere, with the sole exception of human action. It looks for laws of nature, but not for purposes of nature. Purposes of nature are arbitrary assumptions, just like the imperceptible forces (p. 138).
11.6 Purposes Of Life
And from the standpoint of monism, life purposes that man does not set himself are unjustifiable assumptions. Only that is purposeful which man has first made so, for only through the realization of an idea does a purpose arise. And ideas are effective in a realistic sense in man alone.
11.7 Human Destiny
Therefore human life has only the purpose and the destination that the human being gives it. To the question: What is man’s task in life? monism can only answer: The task he sets himself. My mission in the world is not predetermined, but at every moment is the one I choose. I do not begin life along a fixed route.
11.8 Only Doers Realize Purposeful Ideas
[4] Only by human beings are ideas realized according to purpose. It is therefore inadmissible to speak of the embodiment of ideas through history. All such phrases as: “History is the development of mankind toward freedom,” or the realization of the moral world order, and so on, are untenable from the monistic point of view.
11.9 Formative Principle
[5] The adherents of the concept of purpose believe that by abandoning it they would also have to abandon all order and uniformity in the world. Listen, for example, to Robert Hamerling:
[6] “As long as there are instincts in nature, it is foolish to deny purposes in it. Just as the structure of a limb of the human body is not determined and conditioned by an idea of this limb, floating in the air, but by the connection with the greater totality, the body, to which the limb belongs, so the structure of every being in nature, be it plant, animal, or man, is not determined and conditioned by an idea of it floating in the air, but by the formative principle of the great totality of nature which expresses and organizes itself according to a purpose.”
11.10 Teleology
And on page 191 of the same volume:
“The theory of purpose maintains only that in spite of the thousand discomforts and miseries of the life of creatures, lofty purpose and plan are unmistakably present in the formations and in the development of nature. - A purpose and a plan, however, that come to realization only within the bounds of natural laws, and cannot aim at a Utopia in which life is not confronted by death, growth by decay, with all the more or less unpleasant, but quite unavoidable intermediary stages between them.
[7] When the opponents of the concept of purpose bring a laboriously-collected rubbish-heap of partial or complete, imaginary or real examples showing lack of purpose, against a world full of wonders of purpose such as nature shows in all its realms, then I find it just as droll.”
11.11 Coherence Within Whole
[8] What is it that here is called purpose? A concordance of perceptions that form a totality. But since all perceptions are based on laws (ideas) which we discover by means of our thinking, it follows that the planned concord between single parts of a perceptual totality is just the ideal concord between the single parts of the idea totality contained in the perceptual totality. When it is said that an animal or a man is not determined by an idea floating in the air, then this is a misleading way of putting it, and the condemned view ceases to be absurd when rightly formulated. Certainly an animal is not determined by an idea floating in the air, but indeed is determined by an idea inborn in it and constituting the law of its nature. It is just because the idea is not outside of the object, but is effective in it as its nature, that one cannot speak of purpose. Just those who deny that the beings of nature are determined from outside (whether by an idea floating in the air or existing outside the creature in the mind of a world Creator, is immaterial in this context) should admit that these beings are not determined by purpose and plan from outside, but by cause and law from within.
I construct a machine according to a purpose when I bring its parts in connection with one another in a way that they did not acquire from nature. The purpose contained in the arrangement consists in the fact that I have placed the idea of the working of the machine into its foundation. The machine thereby becomes a perceptual object with a corresponding idea. The beings of nature are also entities of this kind. One who says that something contains purpose because it is built according to laws can use the same description for the beings of nature, if he likes. However, the laws at work in nature must not be confused with the purposes in subjective human action. For a purpose to be present, it is always necessary that the effective cause is a concept, and indeed it must be the concept of the effect. But nowhere in nature are concepts in evidence as causes; concepts always appear only as the ideal connection between cause and effect. Causes are present in nature only in the form of perceptions.
11.12 Purposes Of Absolute Cosmic Being
[9] Dualism speaks of world purpose and nature purpose. Where, for perception, a link can be seen between cause and effect according to law, there the dualist assumes that one sees only the copy of a connection in which the absolute Being has realized its purposes. For monism, along with the absolute Being that cannot be experienced and is only inferred, the reason for assuming any world purpose also falls away.
Addition to the Revised Version 1918
[1] No one who thinks through without prejudice what is presented here, could come to the conclusion that the author rejects the concept of purpose for all facts not produced by man, because his view is similar to that of those thinkers who, by rejecting this concept, create the possibility of presenting, first, everything except human action - and then human action too - as being only a natural process. The fact that thinking is presented here as a purely spiritual process should be a protection against such misunderstanding. The reason for here rejecting the concept of purpose for the spiritual world also, insofar as it lies outside human action, is because in that world something higher is revealed than purpose realized in human life. And when the purpose of mankind’s destination, thought of on the pattern of human purpose, is referred to here as a mistaken concept, it is meant that the individual human beings set themselves purposes, and the result of these is the total activity of mankind. This result is then something higher than its parts, the single human purposes.
12. MORAL IMAGINATION (Darwinism and Ethics)
12.0 Selection Of Idea To Realize In Action
[1] A free spirit acts according to his impulses; these are intuitions chosen by means of thinking from the totality of his world of ideas. The reason an unfree spirit singles out a particular intuition from his idea world in order to use it as a basis for a deed, lies in the world of perception given to him, i.e., in his past experience. Before making a decision he recalls what someone else has done or recommended as suitable in a similar instance, or what God has commanded to be done in such a case and so on, and he acts accordingly. For a free spirit these preconditions are not the only impulses to action. He makes an absolutely original decision. In doing so he worries neither about what others have done in such an instance, nor what commands they have laid down. He has purely ideal reasons which move him to single out from the sum of his concepts a particular one and to transform it into action. But his action will belong to perceptible reality. What he brings about will therefore be identical with a quite definite perceptual content. The concept will be realized in a particular concrete event. As concept, it will not contain this particular event. It would be related to the event only in the same way as a concept in general is related to a perception, for example, as the concept, lion is related to a particular lion.
The link between concept and perception is the representation (cp. p. 124, f.). For the unfree spirit this intermediate link is given from the outset. At the outset the motives are present in his consciousness as representations. When he wants to do something he does it as he has seen it done or as he is told to do it in the particular instance. Here authority is most effective by way of examples, that is, by conveying quite definite particular actions to the consciousness of the unfree spirit. The Christian, as unfree spirit, acts less on the teaching than on the example of the Redeemer. Rules have less value when they refer to positive deeds than when they refer to what should not be done. Laws appear in the form of general concepts only when they forbid something, not when they bid things to be done. Laws concerning what he should do must be given to the unfree spirit in a quite concrete form: Clean the walk in front of your door! Pay your taxes in such and such an amount to the Treasury Department, etc. Laws which are meant to prevent deeds take on conceptual form: Thou shalt not steal! Thou shalt not commit adultery! But these laws also influence the unfree spirit only through reference to a concrete representation such as that of the corresponding earthly punishment, the pangs of conscience, eternal damnation, and so on.
12.1 Concrete Mental Picture
[2] As soon as the impulse to action is present in general conceptual form (for example: Thou shalt do good to thy fellow men! Thou shalt live in a way that best furthers thy welfare!), then in each case must be found first of all the concrete representation of the deed (the relation of the concept to a perceptual content). For the free spirit, who is driven neither by any example nor by fear of punishment, etc., it is always necessary to transform the concept into a representation.
12.2 Moral Imagination
[3] By means of imagination representations are produced by man out of his world of ideas. Therefore what the free spirit needs in order to carry out his ideas, in order to bring them to fruition, is moral imagination. Moral imagination is the source from which the free spirit acts. Hence, only people with moral imagination are also morally productive in the real sense of the word. Those who merely preach morality, that is, people who devise moral rules without being able to condense them into concrete representations, are morally unproductive. They are like those critics who know how to explain rationally what a work of art should be like, but are incapable of any artistic creation themselves.
12.3 Moral Technique
[4] In order to produce a representation, man’s moral imagination must set to work in a definite sphere of perception. Men’s deeds do not create perceptions, but transform already existing perceptions, that is, impart a new form to them. In order to be able to transform a definite perceptual object, or a sum of such objects, in accordance with a moral representation, one must have grasped the laws at work in the perceptual picture (the way it has worked hitherto, to which one now wants to give a new form or a new direction). Further, one must find a way by which these laws can be transformed into new ones. This part of moral activity depends on a knowledge of the sphere of phenomena with which one has to do. It must therefore be sought in a branch of general scientific knowledge. Hence moral deeds presuppose not only the faculty of moral ideation as well as moral imagination, but also the ability to transform the sphere of perceptions without breaking the laws of their natural connection. [footnote: Only superficiality could find in the use of the word “faculty” in this and other passages, a reversion to the teachings of older psychology concerning soul faculties. The exact meaning of this word, as used here, will be seen when compared with what is said on pp. 113-114.]
This ability is moral technique. It can be learned in the sense in which science in general can be learned. Because people usually are better able to find the concepts for the already created world than productively out of imagination to decide future deeds, not yet in existence, it very well may be possible that persons without moral imagination receive moral representations from others, and skillfully imprint these into actual reality. The opposite may also occur: that persons with moral imagination are without the technical skill, and therefore must make use of others for carrying out their representations.
[5] Insofar as knowledge of the objects in the sphere of our activity is necessary, our action will depend upon this knowledge. What must be considered here are laws of nature. Here we have to do with natural science, not with ethics.
12.4 History Of Moral Ideas
[6] Moral imagination and the faculty of moral ideation can become objects of knowledge only after they have been produced by the individual. By then they no longer regulate life, but have already regulated it. They must be explained in the same way as all other effective causes (they are purposes only for the subject). We therefore deal with them as with a natural philosophy of moral representations.
[7] In addition to the above, one cannot have ethics in the form of a science of standards.
12.5 Normative Moral Laws
[8] The standardized character of moral laws has been retained at least insofar as to enable one to explain ethics in the same sense as dietetics, which deduce general rules from the life-condition of the organism in order that on this basis they can influence the body in a particular way. This comparison is mistaken, because our moral life is not comparable with the life of the organism. The function of the organism takes place without our doing anything about it; we find its laws present, ready-made, and therefore can investigate them and then apply what we discover. But moral laws are first created by us. We cannot apply them until they have been created. The mistake arises through the fact that moral laws, insofar as their content is concerned, are not newly created at every moment, but are handed over. Those that we take over from our ancestors appear as given, like the natural laws of the organism. But they can never be applied by a later generation with the same rights as can dietetic rules. For they apply to individuals and not, like natural laws, to examples of a species. As an organism I am such an example of a species, and I shall live in accordance with nature if I apply the natural laws of the species to my particular case. As a moral being I am an individual and have laws which are wholly my own.
12.6 Traditional Moral Doctrines
[9] This view seems to contradict the fundamental teaching of modern natural science described as the theory of evolution. But it only seems to do so. By evolution is meant the real development of the later out of the earlier in accordance with natural law. By evolution in the organic world is meant that the later (more perfect) organic forms are real descendants of the earlier (imperfect) forms, and have developed from them in accordance with natural laws. According to his view, the adherent of the theory of organic evolution would have to represent to himself that there was once a time on earth when it would have been possible to watch the gradual development of reptiles out of proto-amniotes, if one could have been present there as observer and had been endowed with a sufficiently long span of life. He also would have to represent to himself that it would have been possible to observe the development of the solar system out of the Kant-Laplace primordial nebula if, during that infinitely long time, one could have occupied a suitable spot out in the world-ether. The fact that in such a representation, both the nature of proto-amniotes and that of the Kant-Laplace primordial nebula would have to be thought of in a way other than that of the materialistic thinker, will not be considered here.
But it should not occur to any evolutionist to maintain that he can extract from his concept of the proto-amniote the concept of the reptile with all its characteristics, if he had never seen a reptile. And just as little could one extract the solar system from the Kant-Laplace primordial nebula, if this concept is thought of as being determined only from the direct perception of the primordial nebula. In other words, this means: if the evolutionist thinks consistently, then he is able to maintain only that out of earlier phases of evolution later ones come about as real facts, that if we are given the concept of the imperfect and the concept of the perfect, we can recognize the connection; but never should he say that the concept derived from what was earlier suffices to develop from it what came later. In the sphere of ethics this means that one can recognize the connection of later moral concepts with earlier ones, but not that as much as a single new moral idea could be extracted from earlier ones. As a moral being, the individual produces his own content. This content which he produces is for ethics something given, just as reptiles are something given for natural science. Reptiles have evolved out of proto-amniotes, but from the concept of the proto-amniote the natural scientist cannot extract the concept of the reptile. Later moral ideas develop out of earlier ones, but from the moral concepts of an earlier cultural epoch ethics cannot extract those for a later one.
The confusion arises because when we investigate nature the facts are there before we gain knowledge of them, whereas in the case of moral action we ourselves first produce the facts which we afterwards cognize. In the evolutionary process of the moral world order we do what nature does at a lower level: we alter something perceptible. As we have seen, an ethical rule cannot be cognized straight away like a law of nature; it must first be created. Only when it is present can it become the object of cognition.
[10] But can we not make the old the standard for the new? Is it not necessary for man to measure by the standard of earlier moral rules what he produces through his moral imagination? For something that is to reveal itself as morally productive, this would be as impossible as it would be to measure a new species in nature by an old one and say, Because reptiles do not harmonize with the proto-amniotes, their form is unjustified (diseased).
12.7 Outcome Of Evolution Is An Ethical Individualist
[11] Ethical individualism then, is not in opposition to an evolutionary theory if rightly understood, but is a direct continuation of it. It must be possible to continue Haeckel’s genealogical tree, from protozoa to man as organic being, without interruption of the natural sequence, and without a breach in the uniform development, right up to the individual as a moral being in a definite sense. But never will it be possible to deduce the nature of a later species from the nature of an ancestral species. True as it is that the moral ideas of the individual have perceptibly evolved out of those of his ancestors, it is also true that an individual is morally barren if he himself has no moral ideas.
[12] The same ethical individualism that I have built up on the foundation of the preceding consideration, could also be derived from an evolutionary theory. The final result would be the same, only the path by which it was reached would be different.
12.8 Rejection Of Supernatural Influence
[13] The appearance of completely new moral ideas through moral imagination is, in relation to an evolutionary theory, no more of a marvel than is the appearance of a new kind of animal from previous ones. Only such a theory must, as monistic world view, reject in moral life and also in science, every influence from a Beyond (metaphysical) which is merely inferred and cannot be experienced by means of ideas. This approach would then be following the same principle which urges man on when he seeks to discover the causes for new organic forms and in doing so does not call upon any interference by some Being from outside the world, who is to call forth every new kind according to a thought of a new creation, by means of supernatural influence. Just as monism has no need of supernatural thoughts of creation for explaining living organisms, neither does it derive the morality of the world from causes which do not lie within the world we can experience. The monist does not find that the nature of a will impulse, as a moral one, is exhausted by being traced back to a continuous supernatural influence upon moral life (divine world rulership from outside), to a particular revelation at a particular moment in time (giving of the Ten Commandments), or to the appearance of God on the earth (Christ). Everything that happens to and in man through all this becomes a moral element only if within human experience it becomes an individual’s own. For monism, moral processes are products of the world like everything else in existence, and their causes must be sought in the world, i.e., in man, since man is the bearer of morality.
[14] Ethical individualism, therefore, is the crowning of that edifice to which Darwin and Haeckel aspired for natural science. It is spiritualized science of evolution carried over into moral life.
12.9 Characterization Of Action
[15] Whoever from the outset restricts the concept natural within an arbitrary boundary, in a narrow-minded manner, may easily fail to find any room in it for the free individual deed. The consistent evolutionist is in no danger of remaining at such a narrow-minded view. He cannot let natural development come to an end with the ape, while granting to man a “supernatural” origin; in his search for man’s ancestors he must seek spirit already in nature; also, he cannot remain at the organic functions of man and consider only these to be natural; he cannot but consider the free, moral life of man to be the spiritual continuation of organic life.
[16] In accordance with his fundamental principles the evolutionist can maintain only that a new moral deed comes about through a kind of process other than a new species in nature; the characteristic feature of the deed, that is, its definition as a free deed, he must leave to direct observation of the deed. So, too, he only maintains that men have developed out of not yet human ancestors. How men are constituted must be determined by observation of men themselves. The results of this observation cannot possibly contradict a true history of evolution. Only if it were asserted that the results exclude a natural development would it contradict recent tendencies in natural science. [footnote: We are entitled to speak of thoughts (ethical ideas) as objects of observation. For, although the products of thinking do not enter the field of observation, so long as thinking goes on, they may well become objects of observation subsequently, and in this way we can come to know the characteristic feature of the deed.]
12.10 Action Is Image Of Ideal Intuition
[17] Ethical individualism, then, cannot be opposed by natural science when the latter is properly understood; observation shows freedom to be characteristic of the perfect form of human conduct. This freedom must be attributed to the human will, insofar as this will brings purely ideal intuitions to realization. For these do not come about through external necessity, but exist through themselves. When we recognize an action to be an image of such an ideal intuition, we feel it to be free. In this characteristic feature of a deed lies its freedom.
12.11 Freedom To Determine Own Motives
[18] From this point of view, how do matters stand with regard to the distinction, mentioned earlier (p. 41 f.) between the two statements: “To be free means to be able to do what one wants,” and the other: “To be able, to desire or not to desire, as one pleases, is the real meaning of the dogma of free will”? Hamerling bases his view of free will on just this distinction and declares the first statement to be correct, the second to be an absurd tautology. He says: “I can do what I want. But to say, I can will what I want, is an empty tautology.” Now whether I can do, that is, transform into reality what I want, what I have set before me as the idea of my doing, depends on external circumstances and on my technical skill (cp. p. 208). To be free means to be able to determine for oneself by moral imagination the representations (impulses) on which the action is based. Freedom is impossible if something external to me (mechanical processes or a merely inferred God whose existence cannot be experienced) determines my moral representations. In other words, I am free only if I produce these representations myself, not when I am only able to carry out the impulse which someone else has induced in me. A free being is someone who is able to will what he considers right. One who does something other than what he wills, must be driven to it by motives which do not lie within himself. Such a man is unfree in his action. Therefore, to be able to will what one considers right or not right, as one pleases, means to be free or unfree, as one pleases. This, of course, is just as absurd as it is to see freedom in the ability to be able to do what one is forced to will. But the latter is what Hamerling maintains when he says:
“It is perfectly true that the will is always determined by motives, but it is absurd to say that it is therefore unfree; for a greater freedom one can neither wish for nor imagine than the freedom to let one’s will realize itself in accordance with its strength and determination.”
Indeed, a greater freedom can be wished for, and only this greater is true freedom. Namely: to decide for oneself the motive (foundation) of one’s will.
12.12 Submission To Others
[19] There can be circumstances under which a man may be induced to refrain from doing what he wants to do. But to let others prescribe to him what he ought to do, that is, to do what another, and not what he himself considers right, this he will accept only insofar as he does not feel free.
[20] External powers may prevent my doing what I want; they then simply force me to be inactive or to be unfree. It is only when they enslave my spirit, drive my motives out of my head and want to put theirs in the place of mine, that they intentionally aim at making me unfree. This is why the Church is not only against the mere doing, but more particularly against impure thoughts, that is, against the impulses of my action. The Church makes me unfree if it considers impure all impulses it has not itself indicated. A Church or other community causes unfreedom when its priests or teachers take on the role of keepers of conscience, that is, when the believers must receive from them (at the Confessional) the impulses for their actions.
Addition to Revised Edition 1918
[1] In this interpretation of the human will is presented what man can experience in his actions and, through this, come to the conscious experience: My will is free. It is of particular significance that the right to characterize the will as free is attained through the experience: In my will an ideal intuition comes to realization. This experience can only come about as a result of observation, but it is observation in the sense that the human will is observed within a stream of evolution, the aim of which is to attain for the will the possibility of being carried by pure ideal intuition. This can be attained because in ideal intuition nothing is active but its own self-sustaining essence. If such an intuition is present in human consciousness, then it is not developed out of the processes of the organism (cp. p. 161 ff.), but the organic activity has withdrawn to make room for the ideal activity. If I observe will when it is an image of intuition, then from this will the necessary organic activity has withdrawn. The will is free. This freedom of will no one can observe who is unable to observe how free will consists in the fact that, first, through the intuitive element the necessary activity of the human organism is lamed, pressed back, and in its place is set the spiritual activity of idea-filled will. Only one who is unable to make this observation of the two-fold aspect of will that is free, will believe that every will-impulse is unfree. One who can make the observations will attain the insight that man is unfree insofar as he is unable to carry through completely the process of repressing the organic activity, but that this unfreedom strives to attain freedom, and that this freedom is by no means an abstract ideal, but is a directive force inherent in human nature. Man is free to the degree that he is able to realize in his will the same mood of soul he also experiences when he is conscious of elaborating pure ideal (spiritual) intuitions.
13. The Value Of Life (Pessimism and Optimism)
13.0 Good World Of Miserable Life
[1] The question concerning life’s value is a counterpart to the question concerning its purpose or destination (cp. pp. 198 ff.). In this connection we meet with two contrasting views, and between them all imaginable attempts at compromise. One view says: The world is the best possible, and to live and be active in it is a blessing of untold value. Everything exists harmoniously and is full of purpose; it is worthy of admiration. Even what is apparently bad and evil may be seen to be good from a higher point of view, for it represents a beneficial contrast to the good; we are more able to appreciate the good when it is contrasted with evil. Moreover, evil is not genuinely real: it is only that we see as evil a lesser degree of good. Evil is the absence of good; it has no significance in itself.
[2] The other view maintains: Life is full of misery and want, everywhere displeasure outweighs pleasure, pain outweighs joy. Existence is a burden, and under all circumstances non-existence would be preferable to existence.
[3] The main representatives of the former view, i.e., optimism, are Shaftesbury and Leibnitz; those of the latter, i.e., pessimism, are Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann.
13.1 Best Possible World (cooperative participation)
[4] Leibnitz says the world is the best of all possible worlds. A better one is impossible. For God is good and wise. A good God would want to create the best possible world; a wise God would know which is the best possible; He is able to distinguish it from all other possible inferior ones. Only a bad or unwise God could create a world inferior to the best possible.
[5] Starting from this viewpoint, one will easily be able to indicate the direction human conduct should take in order to contribute its share to the best of all worlds. All that man has to do is to find out God’s decisions and to act in accordance with them. When he knows what God’s intentions are with regard to the world and mankind, then he will also do what is right. And he will feel happy to add his share to the rest of the good in the world. Therefore, from the optimistic standpoint life is worth living. This view cannot but stimulate us to cooperative participation.
13.2 Pain Of Striving (universal idleness)
[6] Schopenhauer presents matters differently. He thinks of the world’s foundation not as an all-wise and all-kind Being, but as blind urge or will. Eternal striving, ceaseless craving for satisfaction which yet can never be attained, in his view is the fundamental essence of all will. For if an aim one has striven for is attained, then immediately another need arises, and so on. Satisfaction can always be only for an infinitely short time. All the rest of the content of our life is unsatisfied urge, that is, dissatisfaction and suffering. If at last the blind urge is dulled, then all content is gone from our lives; an infinite boredom pervades our existence. Therefore, the relative best one can do is to stifle all wishes and needs within one, and exterminate one’s will. Schopenhauer’s pessimism leads to complete inactivity; his moral aim is universal laziness.
13.3 Pain Outweighs Pleasure (unselfish service)
[7] By a very different argument Hartmann attempts to establish pessimism and use it as a foundation for ethics. In keeping with a favorite trend of our time, he tries to base his world view on experience. By observation of life he wishes to find out whether pleasure
or displeasure is the more plentiful in the world. He passes in review before the tribunal of reason whatever appears to men to be worth while in life, in order to show that on closer inspection all so-called satisfaction turns out to be nothing but illusion. It is illusion when we believe that in health, youth, freedom, sufficient income, love (sexual enjoyment), pity, friendship and family life, honor, reputation, glory, power, religious edification, pursuit of science and of art, hope of a life hereafter, participation in the furtherance of culture, - we have sources of happiness and satisfaction. Soberly considered, every enjoyment brings much more evil and misery than pleasure into the world. The displeasure of a hangover is always greater than the pleasure of intoxication. Displeasure far outweighs pleasure in the world. No person, even the relatively happiest, if asked, would want to live through the misery of life a second time. Since Hartmann does not deny the presence of an ideal factor (wisdom) in the world, but even grants it equal significance with blind urge (will), he can attribute the creation of the world to his primordial Being only if he lets the pain in the world serve a wise world purpose. He sees the pain in the world as nothing but God’s pain, for the life of the world as a whole is identical with the life of God. The aim of an all-wise Being, however, could only be release from suffering, and since all existence is suffering, release from existence. The purpose of the world’s creation is to transform existence into nonexistence, which is so much better. The world process is nothing but a continual battle against God’s pain, which at last will end with the annihilation of all existence. The moral life of men must therefore be participation in the annihilation of existence. God has created the world in order to rid Himself of His infinite pain through it. The world “in a certain sense is to be regarded as an itching eruption on the absolute,” through which the unconscious healing power of the absolute rids itself of an inward disease, “or even as a painful drawing-plaster which the alone Being applies to Himself in order first to divert an inner pain outward, and then to remove it altogether.” Human beings are parts of the world. In them God suffers. He has created them in order to split up His infinite pain. The pain each one of us suffers is but a drop in the infinite ocean of God’s pain.
[8] Man must recognize to the full that to pursue individual satisfaction (egoism) is folly, that he ought to follow solely his task and through selfless devotion dedicate himself to the world-process of redeeming God. In contrast to Schopenhauer’s pessimism, that of von Hartmann leads us to devoted activity for a lofty task.
[9] But is the above really based on experience?
13.4 Pleasure Of Striving (future goal)
[10] To strive after satisfaction means that the life activities go beyond the life content of the being in question. A being is hungry, that is, it strives for satiety when for their continuation, its organic functions demand to be supplied with new life content in the form of nourishment. The striving for honor consists in the person not regarding what he does as worth while unless he receives appreciation from others. Striving for knowledge arises when a person finds that something is missing in the world that he sees, hears, etc., as long as he has not understood it. The fulfillment of striving produces pleasure in the striving individual; non-fulfillment produces displeasure. Here it is important to observe that pleasure or displeasure depend only upon the fulfillment or non-fulfillment of striving. The striving itself can by no means be regarded as displeasure. Therefore, if it so happens that in the moment a striving is fulfilled, immediately a new one arises, I should not say that the pleasure has produced displeasure in me, because in all circumstances an enjoyment produces desire for its repetition, or for a new pleasure. Here I can speak of displeasure only when this desire runs up against the impossibility of its fulfillment. Even when an experienced enjoyment produces in me the demand for the experience of a greater or more refined pleasure, I can speak of a displeasure being produced by the previous pleasure only at the moment when the means of experiencing the greater or more refined pleasure fail me. Only when displeasure follows enjoyment as a natural law, for example when woman’s sexual enjoyment is followed by the suffering of childbirth and the nursing of children, is it possible to regard the enjoyment as the source of pain. If striving as such called forth displeasure, then the removal of striving would be accompanied by pleasure. But the opposite is the case. When the content of our life lacks striving, boredom is the result, and this is connected with displeasure. And as the striving naturally may last a long time before it attains drawing-plaster, and as it is satisfied with the hope of fulfillment meanwhile, it must be acknowledged that displeasure has nothing to do with striving as such, but depends solely on its non-fulfillment. Schopenhauer, then, is wrong in any case in regarding desire or striving (the will) as such, to be a source of pain.
[11] In reality, even the opposite is correct. Striving (desire), as such, gives pleasure. Who does not know the enjoyment caused by the hope of a remote but intensely desired aim? This joy is the companion of all labor, the fruits of which will be ours only in the future. This pleasure is quite independent of the attainment of the aim. Then when the aim is attained, to the pleasure of striving is added that of the fulfillment as something new. Should someone now say: To the displeasure of a non-fulfilled aim is added that of disappointed hope, and in the end this makes the displeasure of non-fulfillment greater than the awaited pleasure of fulfillment, then the answer would be: Even the opposite could be the case; the recollection of past enjoyment, at the time when the desire was still not satisfied, will just as often act as consolation for the displeasure of non-fulfillment. In the moment of shattered hopes, one who exclaims, I have done what I could! proves this assertion. The blessed feeling of having tried one’s best is overlooked by those who say of every unsatisfied desire that not only has the pleasure of fulfillment not arisen, but also the enjoyment of desiring has been destroyed.
13.5 Quantity Of Pleasure (rational estimation of feeling)
[12] The fulfillment of a desire calls forth pleasure and its non-fulfillment, displeasure. From this must not be concluded that pleasure means satisfaction of a desire, displeasure means its non-satisfaction. Both pleasure and displeasure may also appear in a being where they are not the result of desire. Illness is displeasure for which there has been no desire. One who maintains that illness is an unsatisfied desire for health, makes the mistake of regarding the obvious but unconscious wish, not to be ill, as a positive desire. When someone receives a legacy from a rich relative of whose existence he had no notion, this event gives him pleasure without any preceding desire.
[13] Therefore, one who sets out to investigate whether the balance is on the side of pleasure or of displeasure, must bring into the account the pleasure of desiring, the pleasure of the fulfilment of desire, and those pleasures which come to us without any striving on our part. On the debit side of our account-sheet would have to be entered the displeasure of boredom, the displeasure of unfulfilled striving, and, lastly, displeasures that come without being preceded by any desire. To the last kind belongs also the displeasure caused by work which is not self-chosen but is forced upon us.
[14] Now the question arises: What is the right means of estimating the balance between debit and credit? Eduard von Hartmann is of the opinion that reason is able to establish this. However he also says: “Pain and pleasure exist only insofar as they are felt.” From this statement it would follow that there is no other yardstick for pleasure than the subjective one of feeling. I must feel whether the sum of my feelings of displeasure, compared with my feelings of pleasure, leaves me with a balance of joy or of pain. But disregarding this, Hartmann maintains that:
“Even if the life-value of every being can be estimated only according to its own subjective measure, this is not to say that every being is able to calculate, from all that influences its life, the correct algebraic sum or, in other words, that its final judgment of its own life, in regard to its subjective experiences, is correct.”
This, however, only means that rational judgment is still made to estimate the value of feeling. [footnote: One who wants to calculate whether the sum total of pleasure or of displeasure is the greater, overlooks that he is calculating something which is never experienced. Feeling does not calculate, and what matters for a real estimation of life is true experience, not the result of an imagined calculation.]
13.6 Quality Of Pleasure (critical examination of feeling)
[15] One whose view more or less inclines in the direction of thinkers like Eduard von Hartmann may believe that in order to arrive at a correct valuation of life he must clear out of the way those factors which falsify our judgment about the balance of pleasure or displeasure. There are two ways in which he can do this.
One way is by showing that our desires (urges, will) act disturbingly in our sober judgment of our feeling-values. While, for example, we should tell ourselves that sexual enjoyment is a source of evil, the fact that the sexual instinct is very strong in us misleads us into anticipating a pleasure far greater than in fact occurs. We want to enjoy, and therefore will not admit to ourselves that we suffer through the enjoyment.
Another way is to subject feelings to criticism, and attempt to prove that the objects to which feelings attach themselves are revealed as illusions by the insight of reason, then are destroyed the moment our continually growing intelligence recognizes the illusion.
[16] He can reason out the situation in the following way. If an ambitious person wants to make clear to himself whether, up to the moment of making this calculation, pleasure or displeasure has occupied the greater part of his life, he must free himself from two sources of error before passing judgment. As he is ambitious, this fundamental feature of his character will make him see the pleasures of recognition of his achievements as larger, and the hurts suffered through being slighted as smaller than they are. At the time he suffered from being slighted he felt it just because he was ambitious, but in recollection this appears in a milder light, whereas the pleasures of recognition to which he is so very susceptible leave a deeper impression. Now it is of real benefit for an ambitious person that this is so. The deception diminishes his feeling of displeasure in the moment of self-observation. Nevertheless, his judgment will be misled. The sufferings, over which a veil is drawn, he really did experience in all their intensity, and therefore he really gives them a wrong valuation on his balance-sheet of life. In order to come to a correct judgment, an ambitious person would have to get rid of his ambition during the time he is making his calculation. He would have to consider his life up to that point without placing distorting glasses before his mind’s eye. Otherwise he is like a merchant who, in making up his books, also enters his own business zeal on the income side.
[17] He could go even further. He could say: The ambitious man must also make clear to himself that the recognition he pursues is something valueless. Through his own effort, or with the help of others, he must come to see that for a sensible person recognition by others counts little, since one can always be sure that
“In all matters which are not vital questions of evolution or are already finally settled by science, the majority is wrong and the minority right.” “Whoever makes ambition his lodestar, puts the happiness of his life at the mercy of an unreliable judgment.”
If the ambitious person admits all this to himself, he will have to recognize as illusion, not only everything his ambition caused him to regard as reality, but also the feelings attached to the illusions. For this reason it could then be said: From the balance sheet of life-values must also be erased those feelings of pleasure that have been produced by illusions; what then remains represents, free of all illusions, the totality of pleasure in life, and this, in contrast to the totality of displeasure, is so small that life is no joy and nonexistence is preferable to existence.
[18] While it is quite obvious that the deception caused by the interference of ambition leads to a false result when making up the account of pleasure, what is said about the recognition of the illusory character of the objects of not only everything pleasure must nonetheless be challenged. To eliminate from the balance-sheet all pleasurable feelings connected with actual or supposed illusions would positively falsify it. For the ambitious person did genuinely enjoy being appreciated by the multitude, quite irrespective of whether later he or someone else recognizes this appreciation as illusion. The pleasure already enjoyed is not diminished in the least by such recognition. The elimination of all such “illusory” feelings from life’s balance-sheet, far from making our judgment about feelings more correct, actually eliminates from life feelings which were genuinely present.
[19] And why should these feelings be eliminated? One possessing them derives pleasure from them; one who has overcome them, gains through the experiences of self-conquest (not through the vain emotion, What a noble fellow I am! but through the objective sources of pleasure which lie in the self-conquest) a pleasure which is indeed spiritualized, but no less significant for that. If feelings are erased from the balance-sheet because they attached themselves to objects which later are revealed as illusions, then life’s value is made dependent not on the quantity, but on the quality of pleasure, and this, in turn, on the value of the objects which cause the pleasure. If I set out to determine the value of life by the quantity of pleasure or displeasure it brings, then I have no right to presuppose something else by which to determine first the qualitative value of pleasure. If I say I will compare the amount of pleasure with the amount of displeasure and see which is greater, then I must also bring into the account all pleasure and displeasure in their actual quantities, regardless whether they are based on illusions or not. To ascribe to a pleasure which rests on illusion a lesser value for life than to one which can be justified by reason, is to make the value of life dependent on factors other than pleasure.
[20] Someone estimating pleasure as less valuable when it is attached to a worthless object, is like a merchant who enters in his accounts the considerable profit of a toy-factory at a quarter of the actual amount because the factory produces playthings for children.
[21] When it is only a matter of weighing pleasure against displeasure, the illusory character of the objects of some pleasures must be left out of the picture altogether.
13.7 Pursuit Of Pleasure (hopelessness of egotism)
[22] The rational consideration of the quantities of pleasure and displeasure produced by life, which Hartmann recommends, has led us as far as knowing how to set up the account, that is, to knowing what we have to put down on each side of our balance sheet. But how are we to make the actual calculations? Is reason also capable of determining the balance?
[23] The merchant has made a mistake in his account if the calculated balance does not agree with the profit which has demonstrably been enjoyed from the business or which can still be expected. The philosopher, too, will undoubtedly have made a mistake in his judgment if the calculated surplus of pleasure or, as the case may be, of displeasure, cannot be proved by actual sentiments.
[24] For the moment I shall not go into the account of those pessimists who base their world view on rational estimation; but a person who is to decide whether or not to carry on the business of life will first demand proof that the calculated surplus of displeasure exists.
[25] Here we touch the point where reason is not in a position to determine on its own the surplus of pleasure or of displeasure, but where it must point to this surplus in life in the form of perception. For reality is attainable for man not through concept alone, but through the inter-penetration, mediated by thinking, of concept and perception (and a feeling is a perception) (cp. pp. 153 ff.). A merchant, too, will give up his business only when the loss of income, calculated by his accountant, is confirmed by the facts. If this is not the case, he will let the accountant go through the books once more. And in regard to life, man will do exactly the same. If the philosopher wants to show him that displeasure is far greater than pleasure, and if he has not felt it to be so, he will reply: You have gone astray in your brooding; think things through once more. But if there comes a time in a business when such losses are really present that no credit any longer suffices to meet the claims, then the result will be bankruptcy, even though the merchant may have avoided keeping himself informed about his affairs by means of accounts. Similarly, if there comes a time when the quantity of displeasure a man suffers is so great that no hope (credit) of future pleasure could carry him through the pain, then this would lead to bankruptcy of life’s business.
[26] However, the number of suicides is relatively small in proportion to the number of those who bravely live on. Very few people give up the business of life because of the displeasure involved. What follows from this? Either that it is not correct to say that the amount of displeasure is greater than the amount of pleasure, or that we do not make our continuation of life at all dependent upon the amount of pleasure or displeasure we feel.
[27] The pessimist, Eduard von Hartmann, in a quite extraordinary manner reaches the conclusion that life is valueless because it contains more pain than pleasure, and yet he maintains the necessity of carrying it through. This necessity lies in the fact that the world purpose mentioned above (p. 222) can be achieved only through the ceaseless, devoted labor of human beings. So long as men still pursue their egoistic desires they are useless for such selfless labor. Not until they have convinced themselves through experience and reason that the enjoyments of life pursued out of egoism are unattainable, do they devote themselves to their real task. In this way the pessimistic conviction is supposed to be a source of selflessness. An education based on pessimism is meant to exterminate egoism by convincing men of its hopelessness.
[28] This means that this view considers striving for pleasure to be fundamentally inherent in human nature. Only through insight into the impossibility of its fulfillment does this striving abdicate in favor of higher tasks of humanity.
[29] Of such a moral world view, which, from recognition of pessimism, hopes to achieve devotion to non-egoistical aims in life, it cannot be said that it really overcomes egoism in the true sense of the word. Moral ideas are supposed to be strong enough to take hold of the will only when man has recognized that selfish striving after pleasure cannot lead to any satisfaction. Man, whose selfishness desires the grapes of pleasure, finds them sour because he cannot reach them; he turns his back on them and devotes himself to an unselfish life. According to the opinion of pessimists, moral ideals are not strong enough to overcome egoism, but they establish their rulership on the ground which recognition of the hopelessness of egoism has first cleared for them.
[30] If in accordance with their natural disposition human beings strove after pleasure which they could not possibly attain, then annihilation of existence and redemption through non-existence would be the only rational goal. And if one accepts the view that the real bearer of the pain of the world is God, it follows that the task of men consists in helping to bring about the salvation of God. To commit suicide does not advance, but hinders, the accomplishment of this aim. God must have created men wisely for the sole purpose of bringing about His salvation through their action. Otherwise creation would be purposeless. And such a view of the world envisages extra-human purposes. Every one of us has to perform his own definite task in the general work of salvation. If he withdraws from the task by suicide, another has to do the work which was intended for him. Someone else must bear the agony of existence in his place. And since in every being it is, fundamentally, God who is the ultimate bearer of all pain, it follows that the suicide does not in the least diminish the quantity of God’s pain, but rather imposes upon God the additional difficulty of creating a substitute to take over the task.
13.8 Value Of Pleasure (satisfaction of needs)
[31] All this presupposes that pleasure is the standard of life’s value. Now life manifests itself through a number of craving (needs). If the value of life depended on whether it brought more pleasure than displeasure, a craving which brought a surplus of displeasure to its owner, would have to be called valueless. Let us examine craving and pleasure, in order to see whether or not craving can be measured by pleasure. And lest we give rise to the suspicion that life does not begin for us below the level of the “aristocratic intellect,” we shall begin our examination with a “purely animal” need: hunger.
[32] Hunger arises when our organs are unable to continue their proper function without a fresh supply of substance. What a hungry man aims at, in the first place, is to have his hunger stilled. As soon as the supply of nourishment has reached the point where hunger ceases, everything that the food-instinct craves has been attained. The enjoyment connected with satiety consists, to begin with, in the removal of the pain which is caused by hunger. Also to the mere food-instinct a further need is added. Man does not merely desire to overcome the disturbance in the functioning of his organs by the consumption of food, or to get rid of the pain of hunger: he seeks to accompany this with pleasurable sensations of taste. When he feels hungry and is within half an hour of an enjoyable meal, he may even avoid spoiling his enjoyment of the better food by refusing inferior food which might satisfy his hunger sooner. He needs hunger in order to obtain the full enjoyment from his meal. In this way hunger becomes a cause of pleasure for him at the same time. If all the hunger in the world could be satisfied, then the total amount of enjoyment due to the need for nourishment would come about. To this would have to be added the special pleasure which gourmets attain by cultivating the sensitiveness of their taste-nerves beyond the usual measure.
[33] This amount of enjoyment would have the greatest value possible if no aspect of this kind of enjoyment remained unsatisfied, and if with the enjoyment a certain amount of displeasure did not have to be accepted into the bargain.
[34] The view of modern natural science is that nature produces more life than it can sustain, that is, nature produces more hunger than it is able to satisfy. The surplus of life produced must perish in pain in the struggle for existence. It is granted that at every moment of the world process, the needs of life are greater than the corresponding available means of satisfaction, and the enjoyment of life is thereby impaired. But the individual enjoyments actually present are not in the least reduced thereby. Wherever a desire is satisfied, there the corresponding amount of pleasure is also present, even though in the creature itself which desires, or in its fellow-creatures, a large number of unsatisfied cravings exist. What is thereby diminished is not the quantity, but the value of the enjoyment of life. If only a part of the needs of a living creature find satisfaction, the creature experiences enjoyment accordingly. This has a lesser value the smaller it is in proportion to the total demands of life in the sphere of the desire in question. We might represent this value as a fraction, of which the numerator is the enjoyment actually experienced and the denominator is the sum total of needs. This fraction has the value 1 when the numerator and the denominator are equal, i.e., when all needs are fully satisfied. The fraction becomes greater than 1 when a creature experiences more pleasure than its desires demand. It becomes smaller than 1 when the amount of enjoyment falls short of the sum total of desires. But the fraction can never be nought so long as the numerator has any value at all, however small. If a man were to make up a final account before his death, and thought of the amount of enjoyment connected with a particular craving (e.g. hunger) as being distributed over the whole of his life with all the demands made by this craving, then the value of the pleasure experienced might perhaps be very small, but it could never be nil. If the quantity of enjoyment remains constant, then with every increase in the needs of the living being the value of the pleasure diminishes. The same is true for the totality of life in nature. The greater the number of living beings in proportion to those able to fully satisfy their cravings, the smaller is the average pleasure-value of life. The shares in life enjoyment, made out to us in the form of instincts, become less valuable in proportion as we cannot expect to cash them at their full face value. If I get enough to eat for three days and then have to go hungry for three days, the enjoyment during the three days when I do eat is not thereby diminished. But I have to think of it as distributed over six days, and this reduces its value for my food instinct by half. The same applies to the quantity of pleasure in relation to the degree of my need. If I am hungry enough for two sandwiches and can have only one, the enjoyment gained from it has only half the value it would have had if after I had eaten it my hunger had been stilled. This is how the value of a pleasure is determined in life. It is measured by the needs of life. Our desire is the yardstick; pleasure is what is measured. The enjoyment of eating has a value only because hunger is present, and it attains a value of a specific degree through the proportion it bears to the degree of the hunger present.
[35] Unfulfilled demands of our life throw their shadow even upon desires which have been satisfied, and impair the value of enjoyable hours. But one can also speak of the present value of a feeling of pleasure. This value is the more insignificant, the less the pleasure is in proportion to the duration and intensity of our desire.
[36] An amount of pleasure reaches its full value for us when its duration and degree exactly coincide with our desire. An amount of pleasure which is smaller than our desire diminishes the value of pleasure; a greater amount produces a surplus which has not been demanded and which is felt as pleasure only so long as we are able to increase our desire during the enjoyment. If we are not able to increase our demand in order to keep pace with the increasing pleasure, then the pleasure turns into displeasure. The thing that otherwise would satisfy us now assails us without our wanting it, and we suffer under it. This is proof that pleasure has value for us only so long as we can measure it by our desires. An excess of pleasurable feeling turns into pain. This may be observed especially in people whose desire for a particular kind of pleasure is very small. In people whose desire for food is dulled, eating readily produces nausea. This too shows that the desire is the yardstick for measuring the value of pleasure.
[37] Here pessimism could say: The unsatisfied craving for food brings not only the displeasure of lost enjoyment, but also positive pain, torment and misery into the world. In this he can point to the untold misery of people who starve, and to the amount of displeasure such people suffer indirectly through lack of food. And if he wants to extend the assertion to the rest of nature, he can point to the torment of animals that starve to death at certain times of the year. The pessimist maintains that these evils far outweigh the amount of enjoyment which the food-instinct brings into the world.
[38] There is no doubt that one can compare pleasure and displeasure, and can determine the surplus of the one or the other, as is done in the case of profit and loss. But when the pessimist believes that there is a surplus on the side of displeasure and that from this one can conclude that life is valueless, he already makes a mistake, insofar as he makes a calculation that is not made in actual life.
13.9 Will For Pleasure (intensity of desire)
[39] Our desire, in each instance, is directed to a definite object. The value of the pleasure of satisfaction will, as we have seen, be the greater, the greater the amount of pleasure, in relation to the degree of our desire. [footnote: We disregard here the instance where excessive increase in pleasure turns it into displeasure.]
But upon the degree of our desire also depends how great is the amount of displeasure we are willing to accept in order to achieve the pleasure. We compare the quantity of displeasure not with the quantity of pleasure, but with the intensity of our desire. If someone finds great pleasure in eating, by reason of his enjoyment in better times he will find it easier to bear a period of hunger than will someone for whom eating is no enjoyment. A woman who desires a child compares the joy of possessing the child, not with the amount of displeasure due to pregnancy, childbirth, cares of nursing, etc., but with her desire to have the child.
[40] We never want a certain quantity of pleasure in the abstract, but a concrete satisfaction in a quite definite way. When we want a pleasure which must be satisfied by a particular object or a particular sensation, it will not satisfy us if we are offered some other object or some other sensation, even though they give the same amount of pleasure. One desirous of food cannot substitute the pleasure this would give him by a pleasure equally great but produced by a walk. Only if our desire were, quite generally, for a certain quantity of pleasure, would it have to die away at once if this pleasure were unattainable except at the price of an even greater quantity of displeasure. But because we aim toward a particular kind of satisfaction, we experience the pleasure of realization even when we have to bear a much greater displeasure along with it. The instincts of living creatures tend in definite directions and aim at definite goals, and for this reason we cannot set down as an equivalent factor in our calculations the amount of displeasure that must be endured on the way to the goal. Provided the desire is sufficiently intense to still be present in some degree after having overcome the displeasure - however great that may be - then the pleasure of satisfaction can still be tasted to the full. The desire, therefore, does not measure the pain directly against the pleasure achieved, but indirectly by relating its own intensity to that of the displeasure. The question is not whether the pleasure to be gained is greater than the displeasure, but whether the desire for the goal is greater than the opposition of the displeasure involved. If the opposition is greater than the desire, then the desire yields to the inevitable, weakens, and strives no further. Since our demand is always for some quite specific kind of satisfaction, the pleasure connected with it acquires significance for us in such a way that once we have achieved satisfaction, we need take the quantity of displeasure into account only insofar as it has reduced the intensity of our desire. If I am passionately fond of beautiful views, I never calculate the amount of pleasure the view from the mountain-top gives me as compared directly with the displeasure of the toilsome ascent and descent, but I reflect whether, after having overcome all difficulties, my desire for the view will still be sufficiently intense. Consideration of pleasure and pain can lead to a result only indirectly in relation to the intensity of the desire. Therefore the question is not at all whether there is a surplus of pleasure or of displeasure, but whether the desire for the pleasure is strong enough to overcome the displeasure.
[41] A proof of the correctness of this view is the fact that we put a higher value on pleasure when it must be purchased at the price of great displeasure, than when it simply falls into our lap like a gift from heaven. When sufferings and misery have toned down our desire and yet our aim is attained, then the pleasure, in proportion to the remaining quantity of desire, is all the greater. And as I have shown (p. 235), this proportion represents the value of the pleasure. A further proof is given in the fact that all living beings (including man) seek satisfaction for their cravings as long as they are able to bear the opposing pain and agony. The struggle for existence is but a consequence of this fact. All existing life strives for fulfillment, and only that part gives up the fight in which the desire has been suffocated by the power of the assailing difficulties. Each living being seeks food until lack of food destroys its life. Man, too, lays hands on himself only when he believes (rightly or wrongly) that he is not able to attain the aims in life which to him are worth while. As long as he still believes in the possibility of attaining what in his view is worth striving for, he will fight against all suffering and pain. Philosophy would first have to convince man that the element of will has sense only when the pleasure is greater than the displeasure, for it is man’s nature to strive to attain the objects of his desire if he is able to bear the necessary displeasure involved, be it ever so great. The above mentioned philosophy would be mistaken, because it would make the human will dependent on a factor (surplus of pleasure over displeasure) which is fundamentally foreign to man’s nature. The actual yardstick for measuring will is desire, and the latter persists as long as it can.
One can compare the calculation that is made in actual life, - not the one an abstract philosophy makes concerning the question of pleasure and pain connected with the satisfaction of a desire - with the following. If when buying a certain quantity of apples, I am forced to take twice as many bad ones as good ones because the seller wants to clear his stock, then I shall not hesitate for one moment to accept the bad apples as well if the few good ones are worth so much to me that, in addition to their purchase price, I am also prepared to bear the expense of disposing of the bad ones. This example illustrates the relation between the amounts of pleasure and displeasure that arise through an instinct. I determine the value of the good apples not by subtracting the sum of the good ones from that of the bad ones, but by whether the good ones retain any value for me despite the presence of the bad ones.
[42] Just as I leave the bad apples out of account in my enjoyment of the good ones, so I give myself up to the satisfaction of a desire after having shaken off the unavoidable pain.
[43] Even if pessimism were correct in its assertion that there is more displeasure than pleasure in the world, this would have no influence on the will, since living beings would still strive after what pleasure remains. The empirical proof that pain outweighs joy, if such proof could be given, would certainly be effective for showing the futility of the school of philosophy that sees the value of life in a surplus of pleasure (Eudaemonism). It would not, however, be suitable for showing that will in general is irrational, for will does not seek a surplus of pleasure, but seeks the amount of pleasure that remains after removing the displeasure. And this always appears as a goal worth striving for.
13.10 Magnitude Of Pleasure (amusement)
[44] Attempts have been made to refute pessimism by asserting that it is impossible by calculation to determine the surplus of pleasure or of displeasure in the world. The possibility of any calculation depends on the comparability of the things to be calculated in respect to their quantity. Every displeasure and every pleasure has a definite quantity (intensity and duration). Further, we can compare pleasurable feelings of different kinds with one another, at least approximately, with regard to their quantity. We know whether we derive more pleasure from a good cigar or from a good joke. No objection can be raised against the comparability of different kinds of pleasures and displeasures in respect to their quantity. The investigator who sets himself the task of determining the surplus of pleasure or displeasure in the world, starts from presuppositions which are undeniably legitimate. One may declare the conclusions of pessimism to be mistaken, but one cannot doubt that quantities of pleasure and displeasure can be scientifically estimated, and the balance of pleasure determined thereby. But it is incorrect to maintain that the result of this calculation has any consequence for the human will. The cases in which we really make the value of our activity dependent on whether pleasure or displeasure shows a surplus, are those in which the objects toward which our activity is directed are indifferent to us. When it is only a question of whether after my work I am to amuse myself by a game or by light conversation, and if I am completely indifferent what I do for this purpose, I then ask myself: What gives me the greatest surplus of pleasure? And I definitely refrain from an activity if the scales incline toward the side of displeasure. When buying a toy for a child we would consider what will give him the greatest pleasure. In all other cases we are not determined exclusively by considerations of the balance of pleasure.
13.11 Highest Pleasure (realization of moral ideals)
[45] Therefore, when pessimistic philosophers of ethics believe that by showing displeasure to be present in greater quantity than pleasure, they are preparing the way for selfless devotion toward cultural work, they do not realize that by its very nature the human will is not influenced by this knowledge. Human striving directs itself to the measure of possible satisfaction after all difficulties have been overcome. Hope of this satisfaction is the very foundation of human activity. The work of each individual and of the totality of cultural work springs from this hope. Pessimistic ethics believes that it must present the pursuit of happiness as an impossibility for man, in order that he may devote himself to his proper moral tasks. But these moral tasks are nothing but the concrete natural and spiritual cravings, and their satisfaction is striven for, despite the displeasure involved. The pursuit of happiness, which the pessimist wants to exterminate, does not exist at all. Rather, the tasks which man has to fulfill he fulfills because from the depth of his being he wills to fulfill them when he has truly recognized their nature.
Pessimistic ethics maintains that man can devote himself to what he recognizes as his life’s task, only when he has given up the pursuit of pleasure. But there are no ethics that can invent life-tasks other than the realization of the satisfactions demanded by man’s desires, and the fulfillment of his moral ideals. No ethics can take from him the pleasure he has in the fulfillment of what he desires. When the pessimist says: Do not strive after pleasure, for you can never attain it, strive for what you recognize to be your task, then the answer is: It is inherent in human nature to do just this, and it is the invention of a philosophy gone astray when it is maintained that man strives only for happiness. He strives for the satisfaction of what his being demands, and its fulfillment is his pleasure; he has in mind the concrete objects of this striving, not some abstract “happiness.” When pessimistic ethics demands: Strive not after pleasure, but after the attainment of what you recognize to be your life’s task, it lays its finger on the very thing that, through his own nature, man wants. He does not need to be turned inside out by philosophy, he does not need to discard his human nature before he can be moral. Morality lies in striving for an aim that has been recognized as justified; it lies in human nature to pursue it so long as the displeasure connected with it does not extinguish the desire for it altogether. And this is the nature of all real will. Ethics does not depend on the extermination of all striving after pleasure in order that bloodless abstract ideas can set up their control where they are not opposed by a strong longing for enjoyment of life; ethics depends rather on that strength will has when it is carried by ideal intuitions; it achieves its aim even though the path be full of thorns.
[46] Moral ideals spring from the moral imagination of man. Their attainment depends upon whether his desire for them is strong enough to overcome pain and suffering. They are his intuitions, the driving forces spanned by his spirit; he wills them, because their attainment is his highest pleasure. He needs no ethics first to forbid him to strive for pleasure and then to prescribe to him what he ought to strive for. Of himself, he will strive for moral ideals when his moral imagination is active enough to impart to him intuitions that give strength to his will and enable him to carry them through, despite the obstacles present in his own organization, to which necessary displeasure also belongs.
[47] If a man strives for sublimely great ideals, it is because they are the content of his own nature and their realization will bring him a joy compared with which the pleasure, derived from the satisfaction of their ordinary cravings by those who lack ideals, is of little significance. Idealists revel spiritually in translating their ideals into reality.
[48] Anyone who wants to exterminate the pleasure in the fulfillment of human desires will first have to make man a slave who acts, not because he wants to, but only because he ought to. For the attainment of what has been willed gives pleasure. What we call goodness is not what a man ought but what he wills to do when he unfolds the fullness of his true human nature. Anyone who does not acknowledge this must first drive out of man all that man himself wills, and then prescribe to him from outside what content he is to give his will.
[49] Man values the fulfillment of a desire because the desire springs from his own nature. Achievement has its value because it has been willed. If one denies value to the aims of man’s own will, then worth while aims must be taken from something that man does not will.
[50] Ethics based on pessimism arises from a disregard for moral imagination. Only someone who considers the individual human ego incapable of giving a content to its striving would see the totality of will as a longing for pleasure. A man without imagination creates no moral ideas. They must be given to him. Physical nature sees to it that he strives to satisfy his lower desires. But to the development of the whole man belong also desires that arise from the spirit. Only if one takes the view that man has no such spiritual desires can one maintain that he should receive them from outside. And then it would also be justifiable to say that it is man’s duty to do what he does not will. All ethics which demand of man that he should suppress his will in order to fulfill tasks that he does not will, reckon not with the whole man, but with one in whom the faculty of spiritual desire is lacking. For a man who is harmoniously developed, the so-called ideas of what is “right” are not outside but within the sphere of his own nature. Moral action does not consist in extermination of one-sided self-will, but in the full development of human nature. One considering moral ideals to be attainable only if man exterminates his own will, does not know that these ideals are willed by man just as much as the satisfaction of so-called animal instincts.
13.12 Joy Of Achievement (measure achievement against aims)
[51] It cannot be denied that the views outlined here can easily be misunderstood. Immature persons without moral imagination like to look upon the instincts of their undeveloped natures as the full content of humanity, and to reject all moral ideas which they have not produced, in order that they may “live themselves out” without restriction. But it is obvious that what holds good for a fully developed human being does not apply to one who is only half-developed. One who still has to be brought by education to the point where his moral nature breaks through the shell of his lower passions, cannot lay claim to what applies to a man who is mature. Here there is no intention to outline what an undeveloped man requires to be taught, but rather to show what human nature includes when it has come to full maturity. For this is also to prove the possibility of freedom, which manifests itself, not in actions done under constraint of body or soul, but in actions sustained by spiritual intuitions.
[52] The fully mature man gives himself his value. He neither strives for pleasure, which is given to him as a gift of grace either from nature or from the Creator, nor does he merely fulfill what he recognizes as abstract duty after he has divested himself of the desire for pleasure. He does what he wants to do, that is, he acts in accordance with his ethical intuitions, and in the attainment of what he wants he feels the true enjoyment of life. He determines life’s value by the ratio between what he attains and what he attempts. Ethics which puts “you ought” in the place of “I will,” mere duty in the place of inclination, determines man’s value by the ratio between what duty demands of him and what he fulfills. It applies a standard to man that is not applicable to his nature.
The view developed here refers man back to himself. It recognizes as the true value of life only what each individual himself regards as such according to what he desires. This view accepts neither a value of life not recognized by the individual, nor a purpose of life which has not sprung from the individual. In the individual who is capable of true self knowledge it recognizes someone who is his own master and the assessor of his own value.
Addition to the Revised Edition 1918
[1] What is presented in this chapter can be misunderstood if one clings to the apparent objection that the will is simply the irrational factor in man and that this must be proved to him because then he will realize that his ethical striving must consist in working toward ultimate emancipation from the will. An apparent objection of this kind was brought against me by a competent critic who stated that it is the business of the philosopher to make good what the thoughtlessness of animals and most men fail to do, namely, to strike a proper balance in life’s account. But in making this objection he does not recognize the real issue: If freedom is to be attained, then the will in human nature must be carried by intuitive thinking; at the same time it is true that an impulse of will may also be determined by factors other than intuition, but morality and its worth can be found only in the free realization of intuitions flowing from the nature of true manhood. Ethical individualism is well able to present morality in its full dignity, for it is not of the opinion that the truly moral is brought about by conforming to an external rule, but is only what comes about through man when he develops his moral will as a member of his total being, so that to do what is immoral appears to him as a stunting and crippling of his nature.
14. INDIVIDUALITY AND SPECIES
14.0 Group Member
[1] The view that it is inherent in man to develop into an independent, free individuality seems to be contradicted by two facts: that he exists as a member within a natural totality (race, tribe, nation, family, male or female sex) and that he is active within a totality (state, church, etc.). He shows the general characteristics of the community to which he belongs, and he gives his deeds a content that is determined by the place he occupies within a plurality.
[2] Is individuality possible nevertheless? Can we regard man as a totality in himself when he grows out of a totality and integrates himself into a totality?
14.1 Group Characteristics
[3] The characteristic features and functions of the individual parts belonging to a whole are determined by the whole. A tribe is such a whole, and all the human beings comprising it have characteristic features which are conditioned by the nature of the tribe itself. How the individual member is constituted and his actions will be determined by the character of the tribe. This is why the physiognomy and activity of the individual will express something generic. If we ask why some particular thing about him is like this or that, we are referred beyond the nature of the individual to the species. The species explains why something about the individual appears as it does.
14.2 Generic Medium For Individual Expression
[4] But man makes himself free from what is generic. For the generic qualities of the human race, when rightly experienced by the individual do not restrict his freedom, and ought not to be made to restrict it by artificial means. Man develops qualities and activities, the sources of which we can seek only in himself. In this, the generic element serves him only as a medium through which to express his own particular being. The characteristic features that nature has given him he uses as a foundation, giving them the form that corresponds to his own being. We shall look in vain among the laws of the species for the reason for an expression of this being. Here we have to do with something individual which can be explained only through itself. If a person has advanced so far as to loosen himself from the generic, and we still attempt to explain everything about him from the character of the species, then we have no sense for what is individual.
14.3 Individual Capacities And Inclinations
[5] It is impossible to understand a human being completely if one’s judgment is based on a concept of the species. The tendency to judge according to species is most persistent where the differences of sex are concerned. Man sees in woman, and woman in man, nearly always too much of the general character of the other sex, and too little of the individual. In practical life this harms men less than women. The social position of women is often so unworthy because in many respects it is not determined, as it should be, by the individual qualities of the particular woman herself, but by general representations of what is considered the natural task and needs of woman. Man’s activity in life comes about through the individual’s capacities and inclinations, whereas woman’s tends to be determined exclusively by the fact that she is a woman. Woman is supposed to be the slave of her species, of womanhood in general.
14.4 Individual Social Decision
As long as men continue to debate whether according to her “natural disposition” woman is suited to this or that profession, the so-called woman’s question cannot advance beyond the most elementary stage. What woman is capable of in terms of her own nature, woman must be left to judge for herself. If it is true that women are useful only in those occupations they occupy at present, then they will hardly have it in themselves to attain anything else. But they must be allowed to decide for themselves what is in accordance with their nature. The reply to him who fears an upheaval of our social conditions as a result of accepting woman, not as an example of her species but as an individual, would be that social conditions, in which the status of one-half of humanity is below the dignity of man, are indeed in great need of improvement.
[footnote: Immediately upon the publication of this book (1894) I met with the objections to the above arguments that, already now, within the character of her sex, a woman is able to shape her life as individually as she likes, and far more freely than a man who is already de-individualized, first by school, and later by war and profession. I am aware that this objection will be urged today, perhaps even more strongly. Nonetheless, I feel bound to let my sentences stand, and must hope that there are readers who also recognize how utterly such an objection goes against the concept of freedom developed in this book and will judge my sentences above by another standard than that of man’s loss of individuality through school and profession.]
14.5 Unique Characteristics
[6] One judging human beings according to their generic qualities stops short just at the very frontier beyond which they begin to be beings whose activity depends on free self-assessment. What lies below this frontier can naturally be the object of scientific study. Thus the characteristics of race, tribe, nation and sex are subjects of special sciences. Only men who wanted to live simply as examples of the species could possibly fit the general picture of man these scientific studies produce. All these sciences are unable to reach the particular content of the individual. Where the sphere of freedom (in thinking and doing) begins, there the possibility of determining the individual according to the laws of the species ceases.
14.6 Intuitive Conceptual Content
The conceptual content which man, through thinking, must bring into connection with perception in order to take hold of full reality (cp. p. 105 ff.), no one can fix once for all and hand over to mankind ready-made. The individual must gain his concepts through his own intuition. How the individual has to think, cannot be deduced from any concept of a species; this depends singly and solely on the individual himself.
14.7 Individual Concrete Aims
Just as little is it possible from general human qualities to decide what concrete aims an individual will set himself. One wishing to understand a particular individual must broaden his understanding to encompass the essential nature of the other, and not stop short at those qualities which are typical. In this sense every single human being is a problem.
14.8 Individual View And Action
And every science which deals with abstract thoughts and concepts of species is only a preparation for that insight which becomes ours when a human individuality shares with us his way of looking at the world, and that other insight which we obtain from the content of his will.
14.9 Emancipation Of Knowing
Whenever we feel: here we have to do with that in a man which is free from the typical way of thinking and free from a will based on the species, there we must cease to make use of any concepts that apply to our own I if we want to understand him. Cognition consists in combining the concept with the perception by means of thinking. In the case of all other objects the observer must gain his concepts through his own intuition; when it is a case of understanding a free individuality, the essential thing is to receive into our own I those concepts by which the free individuality determines himself, in their pure form (without mixing them with our own conceptual content). People who immediately mingle their own concepts with every judgment of another, can never reach an understanding of an individuality. Just as a free individuality frees himself from the characteristics of the species, so our cognition must become free from the means by which all that belongs to species is understood.
14.10 Emancipation Of Being
[7] Only to the degree that a man has made himself free from the characteristics of the species in the way indicated, can he be considered to be a free spirit within a human community. No man is all species, none is all individuality. But every human being gradually frees a greater or lesser part of his being from the animal-like life of the species, as well as from the commands of human authorities ruling him.
14.11 Intuitive Conduct
[8] With that part of his being for which a man is unable to achieve such freedom, he is a member of the natural and spiritual organism of the world in general. In this respect he does what he sees others do, or as they command. Only that part of his activity which springs from his intuitions has ethical value in the true sense.
14.12 Moral Life Of Humanity
And those moral instincts that he has in him through the inheritance of social instincts become something ethical through his taking them over into his intuitions. All moral activity of mankind has its source in individual ethical intuitions and their acceptance by human communities. One could also say: The moral life of mankind is the sum-total of the products of the moral imagination of free human individuals. This is the conclusion of monism.
