RISE OF GERMAN IDEALISM
AN UNSTEMMED TIDE.--In spite of those important reactions of thought
which we have associated with the name of Spinoza, Leibniz, and Pascal,
the mechanical view had not ceased, as the last chapter has shown us, to
extend itself during the eighteenth century, when it became highly
fashionable in progressive circles.
COMMON-SENSE PHILOSOPHY.--The strength of this mechanical view lies in
the fact that it stands on the shoulders of a natural science which
itself has its feet firmly planted on the irrefragible rock of
sense-experience. The mechanical view thus rests, in the last resort,
upon the belief (which is held everywhere with confidence by plain men)
that sense-experience is a sound foundation for knowledge.
The importance of this belief had been recognised by the English
philosopher, Locke (1632-1704), who in his _Essay concerning Human
Understanding_ (1690), lays it down that all human knowledge is based,
ultimately, upon sense-experience. This highly important work had an
immense influence, and, under Locke's tutelage, many thinkers regarded
with suspicion any knowledge which might seem not to be derivable, in
one way or another, from that source.
As the strength of Samson lay in his unshorn hair, so the strength of
the mechanical theory lay, and still lies, in the acceptance of Locke's
theory of human knowledge, i.e. that it is all derived from the senses.
And the Delilah who can shear away Locke's conclusions, leaves Samson
helpless; mechanical materialism becomes a discredited theory. Hence the
truth of the saying that the problem of knowledge is the preliminary
question for philosophy.
WEAKNESS OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY.--Spinoza and Leibniz may be said to
have dispensed with this foundation. Taking the scientific knowledge of
their time for granted, they drew certain conclusions therefrom; but
their results, however imposing, were felt to be the result rather of
speculation than of reason. Such was the more or less unexpressed
estimate of their work. It was undervalued, for both Spinoza and Leibniz
were thinkers of the first calibre; and yet there was some justice in
the charge. By the end of the eighteenth century the days of merely
speculative philosophy were past.
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY.--The time was ripe for a new metaphysic--for a
fresh step forward in philosophic method. That step was taken by the
celebrated Immanuel Kant, who is the originator of what is known, in the
history of thought, as the Critical Philosophy.
The word _critical_ signifies a particular method of approaching the
problem of existence, a method which must be contrasted with that of the
_speculative_ philosophy, of which Spinoza and Leibniz are examples.
The critical philosophy, before attempting (as Spinoza had done) to
tackle the problem of _existence_, first attacked the problem of
_knowledge_. Before asking _What is the truth?_ it put the preliminary
question, _What are the means at man's disposal for reaching the
truth?_ It prefaced all philosophical enquiry by an examination into the
nature and scope of human thought. Such was the preparatory
investigation which was to place metaphysics upon a secure and
scientific foundation. For the new philosophy, the gateway to all sound
knowledge is the reflection of the human mind upon itself. "Know
thyself," is its advice to the inquiring spirit of man. Here, if
anywhere, is to be found the philosopher's stone.
IMMANUEL KANT.--The celebrated Immanuel Kant was born at Koenigsberg in
1724, and died in his native town in 1804. Between those dates he lived
the industrious and uneventful life of a university professor. The Seven
Years' War and the French Revolution left him undisturbed, though not
unmoved. He was a man of quiet, regular habits, and his fellow-townsmen
would set their clocks by his daily promenade.[23] But the adventurous
originality of his thought serves as a contrast to this peaceful
picture.
Kant, indeed, laid the foundations of philosophy afresh. With
characteristic insight, he went to the very root problem of all, and
challenged human thought itself. Before we can know anything, we must
first of all demand the credentials of the instrument by which knowledge
is gained. Before asking, _What_ do I know? the preliminary question
should be, _How_ do I know? Otherwise we cannot say whether we are in a
position to give any answer to those ultimate problems, the answers to
which constitute philosophy.
It is far from easy to present Kant's criticism of knowledge at once
simply and accurately. This philosopher has a not undeserved reputation
for obscurity, and had he written in any other language than German, he
would perhaps have found no readers.
THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE.--It had already been realised by the
predecessors of Kant that what is called "sense-experience" is a less
simple process than it seems, and that our senses cannot be said to
reveal to us any object as it actually _is_. John Locke himself was not
the first to point out that the so-called "secondary qualities" of any
material object (i.e. colour, taste, etc.) are produced just as much by
the person who perceives, as by the object which is perceived. Galileo,
Descartes, and Hobbes, besides others, had been aware of this fact,
which indeed becomes evident to the most superficial analysis of
sense-experience.
The "primary qualities," i.e. density, extension, etc., continued to be
regarded as subsisting _in_ the objects themselves, and independently of
any perceiving consciousness. But even this view did not prove
permanent, and it was the episcopal philosopher, George Berkeley
(1685-1753) who demonstrated in his _New Theory of Vision_ that not even
_these_ qualities could rightly be regarded as subsisting independently.
Thus it had already been realised, long before Kant wrote his _Critique
of Pure Reason_ (published, 1781), that our senses are far from
revealing to us things as they _are_; it is only the _appearances_ of
things and not the _things themselves_ that the senses present to us.
Indeed, as is well known, the Scotch philosopher David Hume (1711-1776),
who was a master in the art of raising problems, extended this line of
criticism until it reached to pure scepticism. He put the question, If
all our knowledge is derived from sense-experience, and _if_
sense-experience only supplies us with appearance and not reality, what
degree of trustworthiness can there be in human knowledge? And he was
not afraid to give the logical answer--None. Hume may thus be said to
have brought things to an impasse. As a matter of fact, what he had done
was to refute Locke's theory of knowledge (i.e. that it is derived
entirely from sense-experience) by means of a _reductio ad absurdum_.
THE KANTIAN CRITICISM.--Kant says that it was Hume who "awoke him from
his dogmatic slumbers." By this he meant that Hume made him realise that
it was no use indulging in philosophic speculation generally, or
listening to the speculations of others, until "the Problem of
Knowledge" was satisfactorily solved. To this problem Kant applied
himself. And recognising Locke to be the _fons et origo malorum_, he
subjected his theory of human knowledge to a close analysis, and exposed
it as being fallacious.
Far from sense-experience being responsible for all our knowledge, Kant
proved that important elements of knowledge are quite independent of
sense-experience; especially was this so in the case of certain
mathematical propositions. (Hence the question, How is pure mathematics
possible? was put by Kant at the beginning of his philosophy.)
But it is neither necessary nor desirable to enter into the arguments by
means of which Kant proved his thesis, which was that the human mind
contains in itself certain principles of knowledge (e.g. the idea of
cause and effect, the ideas of mathematics, and so on) which it does not
owe to sense-experience.
KANT'S COPERNICAN HYPOTHESIS.--Kant called these principles of
knowledge, _forms of thought_ or _categories_. The name, perhaps, is
irrelevant to our purpose; all that we need to understand is that Kant
turned the tables upon Locke. Locke said that the mind was a _tabula
rasa_ which passively received impressions from outside. Kant said that
the mind is nothing of the kind; it is not passive, but active; it does
not "receive" whatever is offered, it "selects" what it wants; and _it
imposes its own "forms of thought" upon the outside world_.
Photography had not been invented at the time of this controversy, but
Kant might have said: The mind is not a photographic plate receiving
impressions from without, it rather resembles the lens which impressions
must pass through, and be transformed by, before they can create a
picture.
Kant had, in fact, by this theory, instituted a revolution. His new
dogma was: _The mind is the mould into which all our knowledge must be
cast; and the constitution of our mind predetermines the shape that our
knowledge takes._
Thus Kant had discovered that not only sensuous perception, but rational
understanding also, has its forms and presuppositions. Just as we become
aware of objects only by means of senses which perhaps hide or distort
as much as they reveal; so also our rational knowledge is conditioned by
the nature of our understanding, which dictates to reality the "forms"
under which it can be understood and known.
MECHANISM UNDERMINED.--How did this affect the mechanical theory? The
connection is obvious. Mechanism is nothing but one of the forms of
thought that the mind imposes on phenomena. Just as Copernicus had
discovered that it is due to our position on the earth that the heavenly
bodies _appear_ to move round us, so Kant had discovered that it is due
to the nature of our senses and understanding that we perceive things in
space and time, and understand them as being mechanically determined.
The space and time, and the mechanical determinism are not in the
things, _but in our minds_. The fact is that we can only grasp things
under these forms. Space, time, mechanical causation are forms and laws,
_not_ of nature, _but of the human intellect_, which is so constituted
as to see things in this way.
Thus those axioms of science and of mathematics which lie at the base of
all exact knowledge, and which had hitherto been regarded as
_objective_, i.e. as inherent in the nature of things, were shewn by
Kant to be, as a matter of fact, _subjective_, that is (in Kant's own
phrase) "they express the conditions under which alone we are able to
apprehend or understand the object." Thus all knowledge is conditioned
by our nature, by the framework, so to speak, not only of our senses but
of our minds.
In this way the mechanical view was outflanked; that view certainly
seems to us inevitable and certain, but this is due to the constitution
of our minds; the world seems to us to be determined, just as it seems
blue to a person wearing blue spectacles. But there is no sufficient
reason for supposing that it _is_ either determined or blue. The law of
mechanical causation is an axiom, but it is a subjective axiom.
APPEARANCE AND REALITY.--This may not seem much of an advance on Hume's
position. Human knowledge still seems precarious, if we assume the mind
to be a kind of dictator which imposes its own laws upon nature. And
Kant indeed frankly admitted that neither our senses nor our reason were
able to reveal to us things as they _are_, but only things as they
_seem_; we grasp _appearance_, not _reality_, and (to use Kant's
phraseology) _phenomena_ not _noumena_. Thus Kant cut away the ground
from under all rationalistic _dogmatism_; he shewed its presumptuous
futility.
THE PATHWAY TO REALITY.--Kant, however, did not remain satisfied with
the negative results of his critical philosophy, valuable as these were.
Reality, it is true, lies out of range of the human reason, but it is
not entirely inaccessible to us, and scepticism about the ultimate
nature of things is not the necessary corollary of Kant's, as it was of
Hume's, philosophy.
Kant drew a distinction between the "Theoretical Reason," which his
_Critique of Pure Reason_ had dealt with, and the "Practical Reason,"
which he discusses in his _Critique of Practical Reason_ (1788).
THE "PRACTICAL REASON."--By the "practical reason" Kant meant the moral
consciousness, and the law of the "practical reason" is the moral law,
the fulfilment of which constitutes duty. This law springs neither from
outside authority nor from experience; it is autonomous. And it is upon
the existence of this autonomous moral consciousness that Kant plants
his foothold in his endeavour to find a refuge from the philosophic
agnosticism to which his analysis of the "theoretical reason" had led;
and upon this rock he founded his belief in "God, Freedom, and
Immortality."
By means of his "practical reason," man gets into touch with that real
world, which his "theoretical reason" is unable to reach. In fact, the
"practical reason" itself (or moral consciousness) is an element in
man's nature which belongs to the _real_, as opposed to the _phenomenal_
world. For man himself is a citizen of both worlds, and has (so to
speak) a dual nature, a foot on either shore. He is an inhabitant both
of the world of mechanical phenomena, and of the "timeless world of
freedom," which lies altogether outside of all mechanical conceptions.
KANT AND RELIGION.--"Religion we must seek in ourselves, not outside
ourselves," is a saying of Kant's that gives the clue to his general
attitude.
It is only in that world which cannot be interpreted mechanically (i.e.
the inner world of freedom of which we never cease to be conscious) that
we may seek, or can hope to find the source of religion. It is not the
spectacle of the mechanically determined world of nature, but the
demands of the moral consciousness that create religion.
For instance, it is the gulf that yawns between the ideal commands of
the moral law, and the actual possibilities (so poor and meagre) of
fulfilling and satisfying them, that creates, in the view of Kant, the
need of God and immortality. These alone can guarantee the realisation
of the ideal claims of the moral consciousness.
RELIGIOUS FAITH.--Thus the "practical reason" leads on to convictions
concerning what lies beyond the limits defined by the "theoretical
reason." The nature of the demands of the moral consciousness give us an
insight into the nature of the super-phenomenal (transcendental,
noumenal) world. That world must be of such a kind as to sanction and
guarantee our moral ideals; it must be friendly and not hostile or
indifferent to those ideals which man cherishes, but which his
"phenomenal" experience seems to contradict. Thus we see the truth of
the saying that "The universe as a moral system is the last word of the
Kantian philosophy."[24]
KANT'S INFLUENCE.--Kant was one of those thinkers who are responsible
for turning the stream of thought into fresh channels. Through his
researches into the nature of human knowledge, he discovered the
conditions upon which it rests, and defined the limits beyond which it
cannot pass. Thus, once for all, he put an end to dogmatism.
And to Kant also belongs the credit of having established the reality
and validity of _inner_ experience. The rock upon which his philosophy
is built is no external fact or event--nothing in time or space--but the
moral consciousness itself. And thus he restores, as the central
interest of philosophy, the human individual, with all his experiences
of need, of hope, and of insight. Personality is the principle of his
philosophy. In this he is the true successor of the Reformation.