They have a certain rigidity, appalling to those who have not learned to
identify stiffness with force. Empirical matters are subject to
revision. The strongest belief that claims the support of experience is
subject to modification when experience testifies against it. But an _a
priori_ conception is not open to adverse evidence. There is no court
having jurisdiction. If, then, an unfortunate mortal should happen to
be imposed upon so that he was led to regard a prejudice or predilection
as an _a priori_ truth, contrary experience would have a tendency to
make him the more obstinate in his belief. History proves what a
dangerous thing it has been for men, when they try to impose their will
upon other men, to think of themselves as special instruments and organs
of Deity. The danger is equally great when an _a priori_ Reason is
substituted for a Divine Providence. Empirically grounded truths do not
have a wide scope; they do not inspire such violent loyalty to
themselves as ideas supposed to proceed directly from reason itself. But
they are discussable; they have a humane and social quality, while
truths of pure reason have a paradoxical way, in the end, of escaping
from the arbitrament of reasoning. They evade the logic of experience,
only to become, in the phrase of a recent writer, the spoil of a "logic
of fanaticism." Weapons forged in the smithy of the Absolute become
brutal and cruel when confronted by merely human resistance.
The stiffly constrained character of an _a priori_ Reason manifests
itself in another way. A category of pure reason is suspiciously like a
pigeonhole. An American writer, speaking before the present war,
remarked with witty exaggeration that "Germany is a monstrous set of
pigeonholes, and every mother's son of a German is pigeoned in his
respective hole--tagged, labeled and ticketed. Germany is a huge human
check-room, and the government carries the checks in its pocket." John
Locke's deepest objection to the older form of the _a priori_
philosophy, the doctrine of innate ideas, was the readiness with which
such ideas become strongholds behind which authority shelters itself
from questioning. And John Morley pointed out long ago the undoubted
historic fact that the whole modern liberal social and political
movement has allied itself with philosophic empiricism. It is hard here,
as everywhere, to disentangle cause and effect. But one can at least say
with considerable assurance that a hierarchically ordered and subordered
State will feel an affinity for a philosophy of fixed categories, while
a flexible democratic society will, in its crude empiricism, exhibit
loose ends.
There is a story to the effect that the good townspeople of Koenigsberg
were accustomed to their watches by the time at which Kant passed upon
his walks--so uniform was he. Yielding to the Teutonic temptation to
find an inner meaning in the outer event, one may wonder whether German
thought has not since Kant's time set its intellectual and spiritual
clocks by the Kantian standard: the separation of the inner and the
outer, with its lesson of freedom and idealism in one realm, and of
mechanism, efficiency and organization in the other. A German professor
of philosophy has said that while the Latins live in the present moment,
the Germans live in the infinite and ineffable. His accusation (though I
am not sure he meant it as such) is not completely justified. But it
does seem to be true that the Germans, more readily than other peoples,
can withdraw themselves from the exigencies and contingencies of life
into a region of _Innerlichkeit_ which at least _seems_ boundless; and
which can rarely be successfully uttered save through music, and a frail
and tender poetry, sometimes domestic, sometimes lyric, but always full
of mysterious charm. But technical ideas, ideas about means and
instruments, can readily be externalized because the outer world is in
truth their abiding home.
II
GERMAN MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
It is difficult to select sentences from Kant which are intelligible to
those not trained in his vocabulary, unless the selection is accompanied
by an almost word-by-word commentary. His writings have proved an
admirable _terrain_ for the display of German _Gruendlichkeit_. But I
venture upon the quotation of one sentence which may serve the purpose
of at once recalling the main lesson of the previous lecture and
furnishing a transition to the theme of the present hour.
"Even if an immeasurable gulf is fixed between the sensible
realm of the concept of nature and the supersensible realm of
the concept of freedom, so that it is not possible to go from
the first to the second (at least by means of the theoretical
use of reason) any more than if they were two separate worlds
of which the first could have no influence upon the
second,--yet the second is _meant_ to have an influence upon
the first. The concept of freedom is meant to actualize in the
world of sense the purpose proposed by its laws." . . .
That is, the relation between the world of space and time where physical
causality reigns and the moral world of freedom and duty is not a
symmetrical one. The former cannot intrude into the latter. But it is
the very nature of moral legislation that it is meant to influence the
world of sense; its object is to realize the purposes of free rational
action within the sense world. This fact fixes the chief features of
Kant's philosophy of Morals and of the State.
It is a claim of the admirers of Kant that he first brought to
recognition the true and infinite nature of the principle of
Personality. On one side, the individual is _homo phenomenon_--a part of
the scheme of nature, governed by its laws as much as any stone or
plant. But in virtue of his citizenship in the kingdom of supersensible
Laws and Ends, he is elevated to true universality. He is no longer a
mere occurrence. He is a Person--one in whom the purpose of Humanity is
incarnate. In English and American writings the terms subjective and
subjectivism usually carry with them a disparaging color. Quite
otherwise is it in German literature. This sets the age of subjectivism,
whose commencement, roughly speaking, coincides with the influence of
Kantian thought, in sharp opposition to the age of individualism, as
well as to a prior period of subordination to external authority.
Individualism means isolation; it means external relations of human
beings with one another and with the world; it looks at things
quantitatively, in terms of wholes and parts. Subjectivism means
recognition of the principle of free personality: the self as creative,
occupied not with an external world which limits it from without, but,
through its own self-consciousness, finding a world within itself; and
having found the universal within itself, setting to work to recreate
itself in what had been the external world, and by its own creative
expansion in industry, art and politics to transform what had been mere
limiting material into a work of its own. Free as was Kant from the
sentimental, the mystic and the romantic phases of this Subjectivism, we
shall do well to bear it in mind in thinking of his ethical theory.
Personality means that man as a rational being does not receive the end
which forms the law of his action from without, whether from Nature, the
State or from God, but from his own self. Morality is autonomous; man,
humanity, is an end in itself. Obedience to the self-imposed law will
transform the sensible world (within which falls all social ties so far
as they spring from natural instinct desire) into a form appropriate to
universal reason. Thus we may paraphrase the sentence quoted from Kant.
The gospel of duty has an invigorating ring. It is easy to present it as
the most noble and sublime of all moral doctrines. What is more worthy
of humanity, what better marks the separation of man from brute, than
the will to subordinate selfish desire and individual inclination to the
commands of stern and lofty duty? And if the idea of command (which
inevitably goes with the notion of duty) carries a sinister suggestion
of legal authority, pains and penalties and of subservience to an
external authority who issues the commands, Kant seems to have provided
a final corrective in insisting that duty is self-imposed. Moral
commands are imposed by the higher, supranatural self upon the lower
empirical self, by the rational self upon the self of passions and
inclinations. German philosophy is attached to antitheses and their
reconciliation in a higher synthesis. The Kantian principle of Duty is a
striking case of the reconciliation of the seemingly conflicting ideas
of freedom and authority.
Unfortunately, however, the balance cannot be maintained in practice.
Kant's faithful logic compels him to insist that the concept of duty is
empty and formal. It tells men that to do their duty is their supreme
law of action, but is silent as to what men's duties specifically are.
Kant, moreover, insists, as he is in logic bound to do, that the motive
which measures duty is wholly inner; it is purely a matter of inner
consciousness. To admit that consequences can be taken into account in
deciding what duty is in a particular case would be to make concessions
to the empirical and sensible world which are fatal to the scheme. The
combination of these two features of pure internality and pure formalism
leads, in a world where men's _acts_ take place wholly in the external
and empirical region, to serious consequences.
The dangerous character of these consequences may perhaps be best
gathered indirectly by means of a quotation.
"While the French people in savage revolt against spiritual
and secular despotism had broken their chains and proclaimed
their _rights_, another quite different revolution was working
in Prussia--the revolution of _duty_. The assertion of the
rights of the individual leads ultimately to individual
irresponsibility and to a repudiation of the State. Immanuel
Kant, the founder of the critical philosophy, taught, in
opposition to this view, the gospel of moral duty, and
Scharnhorst grasped the idea of universal military service. By
calling upon which individual to sacrifice property and life
for the good of the community, he gave the clearest expression
to the idea of the State, and created a sound basis on which
the claims to individual rights might rest."[52:A]
[52:A] Bernhardi, "Germany and the Next War," pp.
63-64.
The sudden jump, by means of only a comma, from the gospel of moral duty
to universal military service is much more logical than the shock which
it gives to an American reader would indicate. I do not mean, of course,
that Kant's teaching was the cause of Prussia's adoption of universal
military service and of the thoroughgoing subordination of individual
happiness and liberty of action to that capitalized entity, the State.
But I do mean that when the practical political situation called for
universal military service in order to support and expand the existing
state, the gospel of a Duty devoid of content naturally lent itself to
the consecration and idealization of such specific duties as the
existing national order might prescribe. The sense of duty must get its
subject-matter somewhere, and unless subjectivism was to revert to
anarchic or romantic individualism (which is hardly in the spirit of
obedience to authoritative law) its appropriate subject-matter lies in
the commands of a superior. Concretely what the State commands is the
congenial outer filling of a purely inner sense of duty. That the
despotism of Frederick the Great and of the Hohenzollerns who remained
true to his policy was at least that hitherto unknown thing, an
enlightened despotism, made the identification easier. Individuals have
at all times, in epochs of stress, offered their supreme sacrifice to
their country's good. In Germany this sacrifice in times of peace as
well as of war has been systematically reinforced by an inner mystic
sense of a Duty elevating men to the plane of the universal and
eternal.
In short, the sublime gospel of duty has its defects. Outside of the
theological and the Kantian moral traditions, men have generally agreed
that duties are relative to ends. Not the obligation, but some purpose,
some good, which the fulfillment of duty realizes, is the principle of
morals. The business of reason is to see that the end, the good, for
which one acts is a reasonable one--that is to say, as wide and as
equitable in its working out as the situation permits. Morals which are
based upon consideration of good and evil consequences not only allow,
but imperiously demand the exercise of a discriminating intelligence. A
gospel of duty separated from empirical purposes and results tends to
gag intelligence. It substitutes for the work of reason displayed in a
wide and distributed survey of consequences in order to determine where
duty lies an inner consciousness, empty of content, which clothes with
the form of rationality the demands of existing social authorities. A
consciousness which is not based upon and checked by consideration of
actual results upon human welfare is none the less socially
irresponsible because labeled Reason.
Professor Eucken represents a type of idealistic philosophy which is
hardly acceptable to strict Kantians. Yet only where the fundamental
Kantian ideas were current would such ethical ideas as the following
flourish:
"When justice is considered as a mere means of securing man's
welfare, and is treated accordingly--whether it be the welfare
of individuals or of society as a whole makes no essential
difference--it loses all its characteristic features. No
longer can it compel us to see life from its own standpoint;
no longer can it change the existing condition of things; no
longer can it sway our hearts with the force of a primitive
passion, and oppose to all consideration of consequences an
irresistible spiritual compulsion. It degenerates rather into
the complaisant servant of utility; it adopts herself to her
demands, and in so doing suffers inward annihilation. It can
maintain itself only when it comes as a unique revelation of
the Spiritual Life within our human world, as a lofty Presence
transcending all considerations of expediency."[55:A]
[55:A] Eucken, "The Meaning and Value of Life,"
translated by Gibson, p. 104.
Such writing is capable of arousing emotional reverberations in the
breasts of many persons. But they are emotions which, if given headway,
smother intelligence, and undermine its responsibility for promoting the
actual goods of life. If justice loses all its characteristic features
when regarded as a means (the word "mere" inserted before "means" speaks
volumes) of the welfare of society as a whole, then there is no
objective and responsible criterion for justice at all. A justice which,
irrespective of the determination of social well-being, proclaims itself
as an irresistible spiritual impulsion possessed of the force of a
primitive passion, is nothing but a primitive passion clothed with a
spiritual title so that it is protected from having to render an account
of itself. During an ordinary course of things, it passes for but an
emotional indulgence; in a time of stress and strain, it exhibits itself
as surrender of intelligence to passion.
The passage (from Bernhardi) quoted earlier puts the German principle of
duty in opposition to the French principle of rights--a favorite
contrast in German thought. Men like Jeremy Bentham also found the
Revolutionary Rights of Man doctrinaire and conducing to tyranny rather
than to freedom. These Rights were _a priori_, like Duty, being derived
from the supposed nature or essence of man, instead of being adopted as
empirical expedients to further progress and happiness. But the
conception of duty is one-sided, expressing command on one side and
obedience on the other, while rights are at least reciprocal. Rights are
social and sociable in accord with the spirit of French philosophy. Put
in a less abstract form than the revolutionary theory stated them, they
are things to be discussed and measured. They admit of more and less, of
compromise and adjustment. So also does the characteristic moral
contribution of English thought--intelligent self-interest. This is
hardly an ultimate idea. But at least it evokes a picture of merchants
bargaining, while the categorical imperative calls up the drill
sergeant. Trafficking ethics, in which each gives up something which he
wants to get something which he wants more, is not the noblest kind of
morals, but at least it is socially responsible as far as it goes. "Give
so that it may be given to you in return" has at least some tendency to
bring men together; it promotes agreement. It requires deliberation and
discussion. This is just what the authoritative voice of a superior will
not tolerate; it is the one unforgiveable sin.
The morals of bargaining, exchange, the mutual satisfaction of wants may
be outlived in some remote future, but up to the present they play an
important part in life. To me there is something uncanny in the scorn
which German ethics, in behalf of an unsullied moral idealism, pours
upon a theory which takes cognizance of practical motives. In a highly
esthetic people one might understand the display of contempt. But when
an aggressive and commercial nation carries on commerce and war simply
from the motive of obedience to duty, there is awakened an unpleasant
suspicion of a suppressed "psychic complex." When Nietzsche says, "Man
does not desire happiness; only the Englishman does that," we laugh at
the fair hit. But persons who profess no regard for happiness as a test
of action have an unfortunate way of living up to their principle by
making others _un_happy. I should entertain some suspicion of the
complete sincerity of those who profess disregard for their own
happiness, but I should be quite certain of their sincerity when it
comes to a question of _my_ happiness.
Within the Kantian philosophy of morals there is an idea which conducts
necessarily to a philosophy of society and the State. Leibniz was the
great German source of the philosophy of the enlightenment. Harmony was
the dominant thought of this philosophy; the harmony of nature with
itself and with intelligence; the harmony of nature with the moral ends
of humanity. Although Kant was a true son of the enlightenment, his
doctrine of the radically dual nature of the legislation of Reason put
an end to its complacent optimism. According to Kant, morality is in no
way a work of nature. It is the achievement of the self-conscious reason
of man through conquest of nature. The ideal of a final harmony remains,
but it is an ideal to be won through a battle with the natural forces of
man. His breach with the enlightenment is nowhere as marked as in his
denial that man is by nature good. On the contrary, man is by nature
evil--that is, his philosophical rendering of the doctrine of original
sin. Not that the passions, appetites and senses are of themselves evil,
but they tend to usurp the sovereignty of duty as the _motivating_
force of human action. Hence morality is a ceaseless battle to transform
all the natural desires of man into willing servants of the law and
purpose of reason.
Even the kindly and sociable instincts of man, in which so many have
sought the basis of both morality and organized society, fall under
Kant's condemnation. As natural desires, they aspire to an illegitimate
control in man's motives. They are parts of human self-love: the
unlawful tendency to make happiness the controlling purpose of action.
The natural relations of man to man are those of an unsocial
sociableness. On the one hand, men are forced together by natural ties.
Only in social relations can individuals develop their capacities. But
no sooner do they come together than disintegrating tendencies set in.
Union with his fellows give a stimulus to vanity, avarice and gaining
power over others--traits which cannot show in themselves in individuals
when they are isolated. This mutual antagonism is, however, more of a
force in evolving man from savagery to civilization than are the kindly
and sociable instincts.
"Without these unlovely qualities which set man over against
man in strife, individuals would have lived on in perfect
harmony, contentment and mutual love, with all their
distinctive abilities latent and undeveloped."
In short, they would have remained in Rousseau's paradise of a state of
nature, and
"perhaps Rousseau was right when he preferred the savage state
to the state of civilization provided we leave out of account
the last stage to which our species is yet destined to rise."
But since the condition of civilization is but an intermediary between
the natural state and the truly or rational moral condition to which man
is to rise, Rousseau was wrong.
"Thanks then be to nature for the unsociableness, the spiteful
competition of vanity, the insatiate desires for power and
gain."
These quotations, selected from Kant's little essay on an "Idea for a
Universal History," are precious for understanding two of the most
characteristic traits of subsequent German thought, the distinctions
made between Society and the State and between Civilization and
Culture. Much of the trouble which has been experienced in respect to
the recent use of _Kultur_ might have been allayed by a knowledge that
_Kultur_ has little in common with the English word "culture" save a
likeness in sound. _Kultur_ is sharply antithetical to civilization in
its meaning. Civilization is a natural and largely unconscious or
involuntary growth. It is, so to speak, a by-product of the needs
engendered when people live close together. It is external, in short.
Culture, on the other, is deliberate and conscious. It is a fruit not of
men's natural motives, but of natural motives which have been
transformed by the inner spirit. Kant made the distinction when he said
that Rousseau was not so far wrong in preferring savagery to
civilization, since civilization meant simply social decencies and
elegancies and outward proprieties, while morality, that is, the rule of
the end of Reason, is necessary to culture. And the real significance of
the term "culture" becomes more obvious when he adds that it involves
the slow toil of education of the Inner Life, and that the attainment of
culture on the part of an individual depends upon long effort by the
community to which he belongs. It is not primarily an individual trait
or possession, but a conquest of the community won through devotion to
"duty."
In recent German literature, Culture has been given even a more sharply
technical distinction from Civilization and one which emphasizes even
more its collective and nationalistic character. Civilization as
external and uncontrolled by self-conscious purpose includes such things
as language in its more spontaneous colloquial expression, trade,
conventional manners or etiquette, and the police activities of
government. _Kultur_ comprises language used for purposes of higher
literature; commerce pursued not as means of enriching individuals but
as a condition of the development of national life; art, philosophy
(especially in that untranslatable thing, the "Welt-Anschauung");
science, religion, and the activities of the state in the nurture and
expansion of the other forms of national genius, that is, its activities
in education and the army. The legislation of Bismarck with reference to
certain Roman Catholic orders is nicknamed _Kultur-kampf_, for it was
conceived as embodying a struggle between two radically different
philosophies of life, the Roman, or Italian, and the true Germanic, not
simply as a measure of political expediency. Thus it is that a trading
and military post like Kiao-Chou is officially spoken of as a "monument
of Teutonic _Kultur_." The war now raging is conceived of as an outer
manifestation of a great spiritual struggle, in which what is really at
stake is the supreme value of the Germanic attitude in philosophy,
science and social questions generally, the "specifically German habits
of feeling and thinking."