In the philosophy of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling, the revolution to which

in Germany mind has in these latter days advanced, was formally thought

out and expressed; the sequence of these philosophies shows the course

which thought has taken. In this great epoch of the world’s history,

whose inmost essence is laid hold of in the philosophy of history,

two nations only have played a part, the German and the French, and

this in spite of their absolute opposition, or rather because they are

so opposite. The other nations have taken no real inward part in the

same, although politically they have indeed so done, both through their

governments and their people. In Germany this principle has burst forth

as thought, spirit, Notion; in France, in the form of actuality. In

Germany, what there is of actuality comes to us as a force of external

circumstances, and as a reaction against the same. The task of modern

German philosophy is, however, summed up in taking as its object the

unity of thought and Being, which is the fundamental idea of philosophy

generally, and comprehending it, that is, in laying hold of the inmost

significance of necessity, the Notion (_supra_, p. 360). The philosophy

of Kant sets forth, in the first place, the formal aspect of the task,

but it has the abstract absoluteness of reason in self-consciousness

as its sole result, and, in one respect, it carried with it a certain

character of shallowness and want of vigour, in which an attitude of

criticism and negativity is retained, and which, as far as any positive

element is concerned, adheres to the facts of consciousness and to mere

conjecture, while it renounces thought and returns to feeling. On the

other hand, however, there sprang from this the philosophy of Fichte,

which speculatively grasps the essence of self-consciousness as concrete

egoism, but which does not reach beyond this subjective form pertaining

to the absolute. From it again comes the philosophy of Schelling, which

subsequently rejects Fichte’s teaching and sets forth the Idea of the

Absolute, the truth in and for itself.

A. JACOBI.

In connection with Kant we must here begin by speaking of Jacobi, whose

philosophy is contemporaneous with that of Kant; in both of these the

advance beyond the preceding period is very evident. The result in the

two cases is much the same, although both the starting point and the

method of progression are somewhat different. In Jacobi’s case the

stimulus was given mainly by French philosophy, with which he was very

conversant, and also by German metaphysics, while Kant began rather from

the English side, that is, from the scepticism of Hume. Jacobi, in that

negative attitude which he preserved as well as Kant, kept before him the

objective aspect of the method of knowledge, and specially considered it,

for he declared knowledge to be in its content incapable of recognizing

the Absolute: the truth must be concrete, present, but not finite.

Kant does not consider the content, but took the view of knowledge

being subjective; and for this reason he declared it to be incapable of

recognizing absolute existence. To Kant knowledge is thus a knowledge of

phenomena only, not because the categories are merely limited and finite,

but because they are subjective. To Jacobi, on the other hand, the chief

point is that the categories are not merely subjective, but that they

themselves are conditioned. This is an essential difference between the

two points of view, even if they both arrive at the same result.

Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, born at Düsseldorf in 1743, held office first

in the Duchy of Berg, and then in Bavaria. He studied in Geneva and

Paris, associating in the former place with Bonnet and in the latter

with Diderot. Jacobi was a man of the highest character and culture.

He was long occupied with State affairs, and in Düsseldorf he held a

public office which was connected with the administration of the finance

department in the State. At the time of the French Revolution he was

obliged to retire. As a Bavarian official he went to Munich, there became

President of the Academy of Sciences in 1804, which office he, however,

resigned in 1812; for in the Napoleonic period Protestants were decried

as demagogues. He lived at Munich till the end of his life, and died at

the same place on the 10th of March, 1819.[315]

In the year 1785, Jacobi published Letters on Spinoza, which were written

in 1783, on the occasion of the dispute with Mendelssohn above-mentioned

(p. 406); for in none of his writings did Jacobi develop his philosophy

systematically, he set it forth in letters only. When Mendelssohn wished

to write a life of Lessing, Jacobi sent to ask him if he knew that

“Lessing was a Spinozist” (Jacobi’s Werke, Vol. IV. Sec. 1, pp. 39,

40). Mendelssohn was displeased at this, and it was the occasion of the

correspondence. In the course of the dispute it was made evident that

those who held themselves to be professed philosophers and possessed of

a monopoly of Lessing’s friendship, such as Nicolai, Mendelssohn, &c.,

knew nothing about Spinozism; not only was there manifested in them the

superficial character of their philosophic insight, but ignorance as

well; with Mendelssohn, for instance, this was shown respecting even the

outward history of the Spinozistic philosophy, and much more regarding

the inward (Jacobi’s Werke, Vol. IV. Sec. 1, p. 91). That Jacobi asserted

Lessing to be a Spinozist, and gave a high place to the French—this

serious statement came to these good men as a thunderbolt from the blue.

They—the self-satisfied, self-possessed, superior persons—were quite

surprised that he also made pretensions to knowledge, and of such a “dead

dog” as Spinoza (_ibidem_, p. 68). Explanations followed upon this, in

which Jacobi further developed his philosophic views.

Mendelssohn is directly opposed to Jacobi, for Mendelssohn took his

stand on cognition, placed true existence immediately in thought and

conception, and maintained: “What I cannot think as true does not trouble

me as doubt. A question which I do not understand, I cannot answer, it

is for me as good as no question at all.”[316] He continued to argue on

these same lines. His proof of the existence of God thus carries with

it this necessity of thought, viz. that actuality must plainly be in

thought, and a thinker must be presupposed, or the possibility of the

actual is in the thinker. “What no thinking Being conceives as possible

is not possible, and what is thought by no thinking creature as actual

cannot be actual in fact. If we take away from anything whatsoever the

conception formed by a thinking Being that that thing is possible or

actual, the thing itself is done away with.” The Notion of the thing

is thus to man the essence of the same. “No finite Being can think the

actuality of a thing in its perfection as actual, and still less can

he perceive the possibility and actuality of all present things. There

must thus be a thinking Being or an understanding which in the most

perfect way thinks the content of all possibilities as possible, and the

content of all actualities as actual; _i.e._ there must be an infinite

understanding, and this is God.”[317] Here on the one hand we see a

unity of thought and Being, on the other the absolute unity as infinite

understanding—the former is the self-consciousness which is apprehended

as finite merely. Actuality, Being, has its possibility in thought, or

its possibility is thought; it is not a process from possibility to

actuality, for the possibility remains at home in the actuality.

Jacobi maintains against these demands of thought—and this in one

view is the chief thought in his philosophy—that every method of

their demonstration leads to fatalism, atheism, and Spinozism,[318]

and presents God as derived and founded upon something else; for

comprehending Him signifies demonstrating His dependence. Jacobi thus

asserts that mediate knowledge consists in giving a cause of something

which has in its turn a finite effect, and so on; so that a knowledge

such as this can all through relate to the finite only.

Jacobi further states upon this subject, in the first place, that

“Reason”—later on when he distinguished reason and understanding (of

which more hereafter[319]), he altered it to understanding[320]—“can

never bring to light more than the conditions of what is conditioned,

natural laws and mechanism. We comprehend a thing when we can deduce it

from its proximate causes,” and not from the remoter causes; the most

remote and quite universal cause is always God. “Or” we know the thing

if we “perceive its immediate conditions as they come in due succession.

Thus, for instance, we comprehend a circle when we can clearly represent

to ourselves the mechanism of its origination or its physical conditions;

we know the syllogistic formulæ when we have actually come to know

the laws to which the human understanding is subject in judgment and

conclusion, its physical nature and its mechanism. For this reason we

have no conceptions of qualities as such, but only intuitions. Even

of our present existence we have a feeling only, but no conceptions.

Genuine conceptions we have merely of figure, number, position, movement

and the forms of thought; qualities are known and understood, if they

are traced back to these and objectively annulled.” This is undoubtedly

really finite knowledge, which is to give the determinate conditions

of anything determinate, to demonstrate it as resulting from another

cause, in such a way that each condition is again conditioned and finite.

Jacobi continues: “The business of reason is really progressive union

and connection, and its speculative business is union and connection

in accordance with the known laws of necessity, _i.e._ of identity.

Everything that reason can bring forth by means of analysis, combination,

judgment, conclusion, and re-conception, consists in nothing but things

of nature” (_i.e._ finite things), “and reason itself, as a limited

existence, belongs to these things. But the whole of nature, the sum

of all conditioned existence, cannot reveal more to the investigating

understanding than what is contained in it, namely, manifold existence,

changes, a succession of forms” (the conditioned), “and not an actual

beginning” (of the world), “nor a real principle of any objective

existence.”[321]

But Jacobi in the second place here accepts reason in a wider sense and

says: “If we understand by reason the principle of knowledge generally,

it is the mind from which the whole living nature of man is constituted;

through it man arises; he is a form which it has adopted.” With this

Jacobi’s view of the attempt to know the unconditioned is connected. “I

take the whole human being, and find that his consciousness is composed

of two original conceptions, the conceptions of the conditioned and the

unconditioned. Both are inseparably bound up with one another, and yet

in such a way that the conception of the conditioned presupposes the

conception of the unconditioned, and can be given in this alone. We

are just as certain of its existence as we are of our own conditioned

existence, or even more so. Since our conditioned existence rests on

an infinitude of mediations, there is opened up to our investigation a

vast field which, for the sake of our preservation even, we are forced

to work upon.” It would, however, be quite another thing to wish to know

the unconditioned apart from this practical end. However Jacobi here

remarks, “To try to discover the conditions of the unconditioned, to find

a possibility for absolute necessity, and to construct this last in order

to be able to comprehend it, is what we undertake when we endeavour to

make nature an existence comprehensible to us, _i.e._ a merely natural

existence, and to bring the mechanism of the principle of mechanism into

the light of day. For if everything which can be said to arise and be

present in a way comprehensible to us, must arise and be present in a

conditioned way, we remain, so long as we continue to comprehend, in a

chain of conditioned conditions. Where this chain breaks off, we cease

to comprehend, and there the connection which we call nature likewise

ceases. The conception of the possibility of the outward existence of

nature would thus be the conception of an absolute beginning or origin

of nature; it would be the conception of the unconditioned itself in so

far as it is a conditioning of nature not naturally connected, _i.e._

a conditioning of nature unconnected and unconditioned for us. Now

should a conception of what is thus unconditioned and unconnected, and

consequently supernatural, be possible, the unconditioned must cease

to be unconditioned, it must itself receive conditions; and absolute

necessity must commence to be possibility in order that it may allow

itself to be constructed.”[322] This is contradictory.

Jacobi then passes on from this point to the second of his main

propositions, “The unconditioned is called the supernatural. Now since

everything which lies outside the connection of what is conditioned, of

what is naturally mediated, also lies outside the sphere of our clear

and certain knowledge, and cannot be understood through conceptions,

the supernatural cannot be accepted in any other way by us than that

in which it is given to us—namely as a fact. It is! This supernatural,

this essence of all essence, all tongues join in proclaiming to be

God.”[323] God as the universal, the true, is here taken in the sense

of a spiritual generally, in the sense of power, wisdom, &c. That

God is, however, is to Jacobi not absolutely true; for to knowledge

pertains His objective absolute existence, but He cannot be said to be

known. It is thus merely a fact of my consciousness that God exists

independently apart from my consciousness; this, however, is itself

maintained through my consciousness; the subjective attitude of thought

is thus to Jacobi the element of most importance. The consciousness of

God, which is in our consciousness, is, however, of such a nature that

along with the thought of God we have immediately associated the fact

that He is. The existence of the supernatural and supersensuous, to

which the thought of man regarding the natural and finite passes on, is

just as certain to Jacobi as he is himself. This certainty is identical

with his self-consciousness; as certainly as I am, so certainly is

God (Jacobi’s Werke, Vol. III. p. 35). Since he thus passes back into

self-consciousness, the unconditioned is only for us in an immediate way;

this immediate knowledge Jacobi calls Faith, inward revelation (Werke,

Vol. II. pp. 3, 4); to this appeal can be made in man. God, the absolute,

the unconditioned, cannot, according to Jacobi, be proved. For proof,

comprehension, means to discover conditions for something, to derive it

from conditions; but a derived absolute, God, &c., would thus not be

absolute at all, would not be unconditioned, would not be God (Jacobi’s

Werke, Vol. III. p. 7). This immediate knowledge of God is then the point

which is maintained in the philosophy of Jacobi. The faith of Kant and

of Jacobi are, however, different. To Kant it is a postulate of reason,

it is the demand for the solution of the contradiction between the world

and goodness; to Jacobi it is represented on its own account as immediate

knowledge.

Everything which has been written upon God since Jacobi’s time, by

philosophers such as Fries and by theologians, rests on this conception

of immediate intellectual knowledge, and men even call this revelation,

though in another sense than the revelation of theology. Revelation as

immediate knowledge is in ourselves, while the Church holds revelation

to be something imparted from without.[324] In the theological sense,

faith is faith in something which is given to us through teaching. It

is a sort of deception when faith and revelation are spoken of and

represented as if faith and revelation in the theological sense were

here in question; for the sense in which they are used, and which may be

termed philosophic, is quite a different one, however pious an air may be

assumed in using the terms. This is Jacobi’s standpoint, and whatever is

by philosophers and theologians said against it, this teaching is eagerly

accepted and disseminated. And nowhere is there anything to be found

but reflections originating from Jacobi, whereby immediate knowledge

is opposed to philosophic knowledge and to reason; and people speak

of reason, philosophy, &c., as a blind man speaks of colours. It is,

indeed, allowed that a man cannot make shoes unless he is a shoemaker,

even although he have the measure and foot, and also the hands. But when

Philosophy is concerned, immediate knowledge signifies that every man

as he walks and stands is a philosopher, that he can dogmatize as he

chooses, and that he is completely acquainted with Philosophy.

By reason, however, mediate knowledge merely is on the one hand

understood, and on the other the intellectual perception which speaks of

facts (_supra_, pp. 413-415). In this respect it is true that reason is

the knowledge and revelation of absolute truth, since the understanding

is the revelation of the finite (Jacobi’s Werke, Vol. II. pp. 8-14,

101). “We maintained that two different powers of perception in man have

to be accepted: a power of perception through visible and tangible and

consequently corporeal organs of perception, and another kind of power,

viz. through an invisible organ which in no way represents itself to

the outward senses, and whose existence is made known to us through

feeling alone. This organ, a spiritual eye for spiritual objects, has

been called by men—generally speaking—reason. He whom the pure feelings

of the beautiful and good, of admiration and love, of respect and awe,

do not convince that in and with these feelings he perceives something

to be present which is independent of them, and which is unattainable by

the outward senses or by an understanding directed upon their perceptions

alone—such an one cannot be argued with” (Jacobi’s Werke, Vol. II. pp.

74, 76). But by faith Jacobi likewise understands all that has immediacy

of Being for me: “Through faith we know that we have a body, we become

aware of other actual things, and that indeed with the same certainty

with which we are aware of ourselves. We obtain all conceptions through

the qualities which we receive and accept, and there is no other way

of attaining real knowledge; for reason, when it begets objects, begets

phantoms of the brain. Thus we have a revelation of nature.”[325] Hence

the expression faith, which had a deep significance in religion, is made

use of for different contents of every kind; this in our own time is the

point of view most commonly adopted.

Jacobi here brings faith into opposition with thought. Let us compare the

two, and discover whether they are separated by so great a chasm as those

who thus oppose them think. On the one hand absolute existence is to

faith immediate; believing consciousness feels itself penetrated by this

as by its essence: that existence is its life, believing consciousness

asserts itself to be in direct unity with it. Thought thinks the

absolute existence; such existence is to it absolute thought, absolute

understanding, pure thought; but that signifies that it is likewise

immediate itself. On the other hand to faith the immediacy of absolute

existence has also the significance of a Being: it _is_, and is another

than ‘I.’ And the same is true of the thinker; to him it is absolute

Being, actual in itself, and different from self-consciousness or thought

as finite understanding, to use the common term. Now what is the reason

that faith and thought do not understand one another, and each recognize

itself in the other? In the first place faith has no consciousness of

being a thought, inasmuch as it asserts absolute consciousness to be

identical with it as self-consciousness, and has direct inward knowledge

of the same. But it expresses this simple unity; in its consciousness

it is only immediacy so to speak in the signification of Being, a unity

of its unconscious substance. In the second place Being-for-self is

contained in thought; to this faith opposes the immediacy of Being.

Thought, on the contrary, has the immediate as absolute potentiality,

as absolutely a thing of thought: and the immediacy belonging to this

thing of thought is without the determination of Being, of life. On

the heights of this abstraction the two stand opposed to each other,

as the _Aufklärung_ which asserts absolute existence to be a Beyond of

self-consciousness, and as the materialism which makes it so to speak

present matter (_supra_, pp. 382, 383). In the one case it is in faith

and thought as positive existence or thought, and in the other it is the

negative of self-consciousness, which is thus either only determined as

negative, as a Beyond, or likewise as existent for self-consciousness.

Hence faith and thought are both of them knowledge. We call universal

knowledge thought, particular knowledge we call sensuous perception;

and we term the introduction of external determinations understanding.

The universal element in man is thought, but to it likewise appertains

religious feeling for instance; the animal does not possess it, for it

has no human feeling; and in so far as this feeling is religious, it is

the feeling of a thinker, and what determines this feeling is not the

determination of natural desire, &c., but a universal determination. Thus

God, even though He is only felt and believed in, is yet the universal

taken quite abstractly—even in His personality He is the absolutely

universal personality.

As thought and faith are thus one, the same is true of the antithesis

between mediated and immediate knowledge. We must, it is true, keep

before our eyes the fact that what is revealed in immediate knowledge

is the universal. But abstract immediate knowledge is natural, sensuous

knowledge; the immediate man in his natural condition, in his desires,

does not know this universal. Children, the Esquimaux, &c., know nothing

of God; or what the natural man knows of Him is not a real knowledge

of Him. Thus the intuitive knowledge of the Egyptians told them that

God was an ox or a cat, and the Indians still possess similar sorts of

knowledge. On the other hand when man has come so far as to know God

as merely an object of the mind, _i.e._ as spiritual, it is easy to

perceive that this knowledge which is asserted to be immediate is really

a result mediated through instruction, through a long continued culture.

It is only by means of being elevated above nature that man arrives at

a consciousness of what is higher, and at a knowledge of the universal;

there indeed his knowledge is immediate, but he has only arrived at this

through mediation. I think, and thus I know the universal immediately,

but this very thought is just process in itself, movement and life. All

life is process within itself, is mediated, and this is all the more

true of spiritual life; for it is the passing from one to the other,

that is, from the merely natural and sensuous to the spiritual. It thus

indicates a deficiency in the most simple reflection not to know that the

universal is not in immediate knowledge, but is a result of the culture,

the education, and the self-revelation of the human race. If immediate

knowledge is to be allowed, everyone will be responsible merely to

himself: this man knows this, another that, and consequently everything

is justified and approved, however contrary to right and religion. This

opposition between immediacy and mediacy is thus a very barren and quite

empty determination; it is a platitude of the extremest type to consider

anything like this to be a true opposition; it proceeds from a most

wooden understanding, which thinks that an immediacy can be something on

its own account, without a mediation within itself. If Philosophy were

to result in this it would be a poor affair; these determinations are

merely forms, none of which has intrinsic truth. The form into which

Philosophy has in Jacobi’s case finally fallen, which is that immediacy

is grasped as absolute, manifests a lack of all critical faculty, of

all logic. The Kantian philosophy is critical philosophy, but from it

the fact has been omitted that we cannot constitute the infinite with

finite categories—and immediacy is such an one. When we regard this

opposition more closely all knowledge may be termed immediate, but all

immediate knowledge is likewise mediated in itself. This we know within

our consciousness, and we may see it in the most general phenomena. I

know, for example, of America immediately, and yet this knowledge is very

much mediated. If I stand in America and see its soil, I must first of

all have journeyed to it, Columbus must first have discovered it, ships

must have been built, &c.; all these discoveries and inventions pertain

to it. That which we now know immediately is consequently a result of

infinitely many mediations. Likewise when I see a right-angled triangle

I know that the squares of the two sides are equal to the square of the

hypotenuse: I know this immediately, and yet I have merely learned it and

am convinced of it through the mediation of proof. Immediate knowledge

is thus everywhere mediated, and Philosophy does nothing but bring this

to consciousness—demonstrating the mediation which in point of fact is

already present there, _e.g._ in religion, &c.

The philosophy of Jacobi, inasmuch as it says: “Thought cannot proceed

further than to the feeling of God,” has been accepted _utiliter_; it

was more easily arrived at than in the case of Kant. Knowledge, however,

is something very different from what Jacobi calls such; against finite

knowledge his arguments are quite correct. Immediate knowledge is not

knowledge, comprehension, for that implies that the content is determined

in itself, _i.e._ is grasped as concrete. But in immediate knowledge

it is the case that the only fact known of God is that He exists. For

should there be determinations respecting God, they must, according to

Jacobi, be grasped as a finite, and the knowledge of them would again

merely be a progression from finite to finite. There thus remains only

the indeterminate conception of God, an “Above me,” an indeterminate

Beyond. This gives accordingly the same result as does the _Aufklärung_,

viz. that the highest reality is ultimate: we find the same in French

philosophy and in Kant—only here we still have the opinion that this

emptiness is the highest philosophy possible. But if each standpoint has

an aspect wherein it is justified, there always rests in the proposition

that the human mind knows God immediately, the important consideration

that we have here a recognition of the freedom of the human spirit: in

it we have the source of the knowledge of God, and all externality of

authority is thus abrogated in this principle. The principle is hereby

gained, but only the principle of freedom of spirit; and the greatness of

our time rests in the fact that freedom, the peculiar possession of mind

whereby it is at home with itself in itself, is recognized, and that mind

has this consciousness within itself. This however is merely abstract,

for the next step is that the principle of freedom is again purified

and comes to its true objectivity, so that not everything which strikes

me or springs up within me must, because it is manifested in me, hold

good as true. It is only through thought, which casts off the particular

and accidental, that the principle receives this objectivity which is

independent of mere subjectivity and in and for itself—though in such a

way that the freedom of mind still remains respected. One’s own spirit

must bear witness to spirit that God is Spirit; the content must be true.

But this does not give authenticity to itself by its being revealed

with certainty to me. This is the standpoint, and we have thus seen its

deficiency and the greatness of the principle which is involved in it.

B. KANT.

The philosophy of Kant, which we have now more particularly to consider,

made its appearance at the same time as the above. While Descartes

asserted certainty to be the unity of thought and Being, we now have the

consciousness of thought in its subjectivity, _i.e._ in the first place,

as determinateness in contrast with objectivity, and then as finitude

and progression in finite determinations. Abstract thought as personal

conviction is that which is maintained as certain; its contents are

experience, but the methods adopted by experience are once more formal

thought and argument. Kant turns back to the standpoint of Socrates;

we see in him the freedom of the subject as we saw it with the Stoics,

but the task in respect of content is now placed on a higher level. An

endless aiming at the concrete is required for thought, a filling up in

accordance with the rule which completion prescribes, which signifies

that the content is itself the Idea as the unity of the Notion and

reality. With Jacobi thought, demonstration, does not in the first

place reach beyond the finite and conditioned, and in the second place,

even when God is likewise the metaphysical object, the demonstration is

really the making Him conditioned and finite; in the third place the

unconditioned, what is then immediately certain, only exists in faith, a

subjectively fixed point of view but an unknowable one, that is to say

an undetermined, indeterminable, and consequently an unfruitful one. The

standpoint of the philosophy of Kant, on the contrary, is in the first

place to be found in the fact that thought has through its reasoning

got so far as to grasp itself not as contingent but rather as in itself

the absolute ultimate. In the finite, in connection with the finite,

an absolute standpoint is raised which acts as a connecting bond; it

binds together the finite and leads up to the infinite. Thought grasped

itself as all in all, as absolute in judgment; for it nothing external

is authoritative, since all authority can receive validity only through

thought. This thought, determining itself within itself and concrete,

is, however, in the second place, grasped as subjective, and this

aspect of subjectivity is the form which from Jacobi’s point of view is

predominant; the fact that thought is concrete Jacobi has on the other

hand for the most part set aside. Both standpoints remain philosophies

of subjectivity; since thought is subjective, the capacity of knowing the

absolute is denied to it. To Kant God cannot on the one hand be found

in experience; He can neither be found in outward experience—as Lalande

discovered when he swept the whole heavens and found no God—nor can He be

discovered within; though no doubt mystics and enthusiasts can experience

many things in themselves, and amongst these God, _i.e._ the Infinite.

On the other hand Kant argues to prove the existence of God, who is to

him an hypothesis necessary for the explanation of things, a postulate

of practical reason. But in this connection another French astronomer

made the following reply to the Emperor Napoleon: “_Je n’ai pas eu

besoin de cette hypothèse._” According to this the truth underlying

the Kantian philosophy is the recognition of freedom. Even Rousseau

represented the absolute to be found in freedom; Kant has the same

principle, but taken rather from the theoretic side. The French regard

it from the side of will, which is represented in their proverb: “_Il a

la tête près du bonnet._” France possesses the sense of actuality, of

promptitude; because in that country conception passes more immediately

into action, men have there applied themselves more practically to the

affairs of actuality. But however much freedom may be in itself concrete,

it was as undeveloped and in its abstraction that it was there applied

to actuality; and to make abstractions hold good in actuality means to

destroy actuality. The fanaticism which characterized the freedom which

was put into the hands of the people was frightful. In Germany the same

principle asserted the rights of consciousness on its own account, but

it has been worked out in a merely theoretic way. We have commotions of

every kind within us and around us, but through them all the German head

quietly keeps its nightcap on and silently carries on its operations

beneath it.

Immanuel Kant was born at Königsberg in 1724, and there studied theology

to begin with; in the year 1755 he entered upon his work as an academic

teacher; in 1770 he became professor of logic, and in 1804 he died at

Königsberg on the 12th of February, having almost attained his eightieth

year (Tennemann’s Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie by Wendt, §

380, pp. 465, 466), without ever having left his native town.

While to Wolff thought as thought was merely positive self-identity

and grasped itself as such, we saw the negative self-moving thought,

the absolute Notion, appear in all its power in France; and in the

_Aufklärung_ it likewise made its way to Germany in such a manner

that all existence, all action, was called upon to serve a useful

purpose, _i.e._ the implicit was done away with and everything had

to be for another; and that for which everything had to be is man,

self-consciousness, taken, however, as signifying all men generally. The

consciousness of this action in abstract form is the Kantian philosophy.

It is thus the self-thinking absolute Notion that passes into itself

which we see making its appearance in Germany through this philosophy,

in such a way that all reality falls within self-consciousness; it

is the idealism which vindicates all moments of the implicit to

self-consciousness, but which at first itself remains subject to a

contradiction, inasmuch as it still separates this implicit from itself.

In other words the Kantian philosophy no doubt leads reality back to

self-consciousness, but it can supply no reality to this essence of

self-consciousness, or to this pure self-consciousness, nor can it

demonstrate Being in the same. It apprehends simple thought as having

difference in itself, but does not yet apprehend that all reality rests

on this difference; it does not know how to obtain mastery over the

individuality of self-consciousness, and although it describes reason

very well, it does this in an unthinking empiric way which again robs

it of the truth it has. Theoretically the Kantian philosophy is the

“Illumination” or _Aufklärung_ reduced to method; it states that nothing

true can be known, but only the phenomenal; it leads knowledge into

consciousness and self-consciousness, but from this standpoint maintains

it to be a subjective and finite knowledge. Thus although it deals with

the infinite Idea, expressing its formal categories and arriving at

its concrete claims, it yet again denies this to be the truth, making

it a simple subjective, because it has once for all accepted finite

knowledge as the fixed and ultimate standpoint. This philosophy made an

end of the metaphysic of the understanding as an objective dogmatism,

but in fact it merely transformed it into a subjective dogmatism, _i.e._

into a consciousness in which these same finite determinations of the

understanding persist, and the question of what is true in and for itself

has been abandoned. Its study is made difficult by its diffuseness and

prolixity, and by the peculiar terminology found in it. Nevertheless this

diffuseness has one advantage, that inasmuch as the same thing is often

repeated, the main points are kept before us, and these cannot easily be

lost from view.

We shall endeavour to trace the lines which Kant pursued. The philosophy

of Kant has in the first place a direct relation to that of Hume as

stated above (p. 370). That is to say, the significance of the Kantian

philosophy, generally expressed, is from the very beginning to allow

that determinations such as those of universality and necessity are

not to be met with in perception, and this Hume has already shown in

relation to Locke. But while Hume attacks the universality and necessity

of the categories generally, and Jacobi their finitude, Kant merely

argues against their objectivity in so far as they are present in

external things themselves, while maintaining them to be objective in

the sense of holding good as universal and necessary, as they do, for

instance, in mathematics and natural science.[326] The fact that we

crave for universality and necessity as that which first constitutes

the objective, Kant thus undoubtedly allows. But if universality and

necessity do not exist in external things, the question arises “Where are

they to be found?” To this Kant, as against Hume, maintains that they

must be _a priori_, _i.e._ that they must rest on reason itself, and on

thought as self-conscious reason; their source is the subject, “I” in my

self-consciousness.[327] This, simply expressed, is the main point in the

Kantian philosophy.

In the second place the philosophy of Kant is likewise called a critical

philosophy because its aim, says Kant, is first of all to supply a

criticism of our faculties of knowledge; for before obtaining knowledge

we must inquire into the faculties of knowledge. To the healthy human

understanding that is plausible, and to it this has been a great

discovery. Knowledge is thereby represented as an instrument, as a method

and means whereby we endeavour to possess ourselves of the truth. Thus

before men can make their way to the truth itself they must know the

nature and function of their instrument. They must see whether it is

capable of supplying what is demanded of it—of seizing upon the object;

they must know what the alterations it makes in the object are, in order

that these alterations may not be mixed up with the determinations of

the object itself.[328] This would appear as though men could set forth

upon the search for truth with spears and staves. And a further claim is

made when it is said that we must know the faculty of knowledge before

we can know. For to investigate the faculties of knowledge means to know

them; but how we are to know without knowing, how we are to apprehend the

truth before the truth, it is impossible to say. It is the old story of

the σχολαστικός who would not go into the water till he could swim. Thus

since the investigation of the faculties of knowledge is itself knowing,

it cannot in Kant attain to what it aims at because it is that already—it

cannot come to itself because it is already with itself; the same thing

happens as happened with the Jews, the Spirit passes through the midst of

them and they know it not. At the same time the step taken by Kant is a

great and important one—that is, the fact that he has made knowledge the

subject of his consideration.

On the one hand this critique of knowledge applies to the empirical

knowledge of Locke, which asserts itself to be grounded on experience,

and, on the other hand, it also deals with what claims to be on the whole

a more metaphysical kind of philosophy—the Wolffian and German—which

had also taken up the line of proceeding on the more empiric method

which has been depicted. But this last has at the same time kept itself

separate from the merely empiric method, inasmuch as its main efforts

have been directed towards making such categories of thought as those of

potentiality, actuality, God, &c., have as their foundation categories of

the understanding, and then reasoning from them. The Kantian philosophy

is in the first instance directed against both. Kant takes away the

objective significance of the determinations of the Wolffian metaphysics,

and shows how they must be ascribed to subjective thought alone. At the

same time Jacobi likewise declared himself against this metaphysic, but

since he started more especially from the standpoint of the French and

Germans, his point of view was different: he asserts that our finite

thought can set forth finite determinations alone, and thus can only

consider God and Spirit in accordance with finite relationships. On

the practical side there reigned at that time the so-called happiness

theory, since man’s inherent Notion and the way to realize this Notion

was apprehended in morality as a satisfaction of his desires. As against

this Kant has very rightly shown that it involves a heteronomy and not

an autonomy of reason—a determination through nature and consequently

an absence of freedom. But because the rational principle of Kant was

formal, and his successors could not make any further progress with

reason, and yet morality had to receive a content, Fries and others must

still be called Hedonists though they avoid giving themselves the name.

In the third place, as regards the relation of the categories to the

material which is given through experience, there is according to

Kant already inherent in the subjective determinations of thought,

_e.g._ in those of cause and effect, the capacity of themselves to

bind together the differences which are present in that material. Kant

considers thought as in great measure a synthetic activity, and hence

he represents the main question of Philosophy to be this, “How are

synthetic judgments _a priori_ possible?”[329] Judgment signifies the

combination of thought-determinations as subject and predicate. Synthetic

judgments _a priori_ are nothing else than a connection of opposites

through themselves, or the absolute Notion, _i.e._ the relations of

different determinations such as those of cause and effect, given

not through experience but through thought. Space and time likewise

form the connecting element; they are thus _a priori_, _i.e._ in

self-consciousness. Since Kant shows that thought has synthetic judgments

_a priori_ which are not derived from perception, he shows that thought

is so to speak concrete in itself. The idea which is present here is a

great one, but, on the other hand, quite an ordinary signification is

given it, for it is worked out from points of view which are inherently

rude and empirical, and a scientific form is the last thing that

can be claimed for it. In the presentation of it there is a lack of

philosophical abstraction, and it is expressed in the most commonplace

way; to say nothing more of the barbarous terminology, Kant remains

restricted and confined by his psychological point of view and empirical

methods.

To mention one example only of his barbarous expressions, Kant calls

his philosophy (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 19) a Transcendental

philosophy, _i.e._ a system of principles of pure reason which

demonstrate the universal and necessary elements in the self-conscious

understanding, without occupying themselves with objects or inquiring

what universality and necessity are; this last would be transcendent.

Transcendent and transcendental have accordingly to be clearly

distinguished. Transcendent mathematics signifies the mathematics in

which the determination of infinitude is made use of in a pre-eminent

degree: in this sphere of mathematics we say, for instance, that the

circle consists of an infinitude of straight lines; the periphery

is represented as straight, and since the curve is represented as

straight this passes beyond the geometric category and is consequently

transcendent. Kant, on the contrary, defines the transcendental

philosophy as not a philosophy which by means of categories passes beyond

its own sphere, but one which points out in subjective thought, in

consciousness, the sources of what may become transcendent. Thought would

thus be transcendent if the categories of universality, of cause and

effect, were predicated of the object, for in this way men would from the

subjective element ‘transcend’ into another sphere. We are not justified

in so doing as regards the result nor even to begin with, since we

merely contemplate thought within thought itself. Thus we do not desire

to consider the categories in their objective sense, but in so far as

thought is the source of such synthetic relationships; the necessary and

universal thus here receive the significance of resting in our faculties

of knowledge. But from this faculty of knowledge Kant still separates the

implicit, the thing-in-itself, so that the universality and necessity are

all the time a subjective conditionment of knowledge merely, and reason

with its universality and necessity does not attain to a knowledge of

the truth.[330] For it requires perception and experience, a material

empirically given in order, as subjectivity, to attain to knowledge.

As Kant says, these form its “constituent parts”; one part it has in

itself, but the other is empirically given.[331] When reason desires to

be independent, to exist in itself and to derive truth from itself, it

becomes transcendent; it transcends experience because it lacks the other

constituent, and then creates mere hallucinations of the brain. It is

hence not constitutive in knowledge but only regulative; it is the unity

and rule for the sensuous manifold. But this unity on its own account

is the unconditioned, which, transcending experience, merely arrives at

contradictions. In the practical sphere alone is reason constitutive. The

critique of reason is consequently not the knowing of objects, but of

knowledge and its principles, its range and limitations, so that it does

not become transcendent.[332] This is an extremely general account of

what we shall now consider in its separate details.

In dealing with this matter Kant adopts the plan of first considering

theoretic reason, the knowledge which relates to outward objects. In the

second place he investigates the will as self-actualization; and, in the

third place, the faculty of judgment, the special consideration of the

unity of the universal and individual; how far he gets in this matter we

shall likewise see. But the critique of the faculty of knowledge is the

matter of main importance.

1. In the first place, as to the theoretic philosophy, Kant in the

Critique of Pure Reason sets to work in a psychological manner, _i.e._

historically, inasmuch as he describes the main stages in theoretic

consciousness. The first faculty is sensuousness generally, the second

understanding, the third reason. All this he simply narrates; he accepts

it quite empirically, without developing it from the Notion or proceeding

by necessity.

a. The _a priori_ fact of sensuous existence, the forms of sensuous

existence, constitute the beginning of this transcendentalism. Kant

calls the judgment of the same the transcendental æsthetic. Nowadays

æsthetic signifies the knowledge of the beautiful. But here the doctrine

of intuition or perception is taken from the point of view of its

universality, _i.e._ from what in it pertains to the subject as such.

Perception, says Kant, is the knowledge of an object given to us through

the senses; sensuousness, however, is the capacity of being affected by

conceptions as external. Now, according to Kant, in perception there

are to be found all manner of contents, and in dealing with this he

first of all distinguishes feeling as external, such as redness, colour,

hardness, &c., and then as internal, such as justice, wrath, love, fear,

pleasurable and religious feelings, &c. He says content such as this

forms the one constituent and pertains to feeling; all this is subjective

and merely subjective. In this sensuous element there is, however, a

universal sensuous element likewise contained, which as such does not

belong to feeling in so far as it is immediately determined; in such a

content this ‘other’ consists in the categories of space and time, which

of themselves are void and empty. The filling in is performed by the

content, by colour, softness, hardness, &c., as regards space; while as

regards time, the same content, so soon as it is something transient,

or again some other content, and in particular inward feelings are what

causes the determination. Space and time are consequently pure, _i.e._

abstract perceptions in which we place outside of us the content of

individual sensations, either in time as succeeding one another, or in

space as separate from one another. Here we thus meet with the division

between subjectivity and objectivity, for if we isolate the ‘alongside

of’ and ‘after’ we have space and time. It is the act of _a priori_

sensuousness to project the content; the forms of intuition or perception

constitute this pure perception.[333] Now everything indeed is termed

perception, even thought and consciousness; God, who certainly pertains

to thought alone, is said to be comprehended by perception or intuition,

the so-called immediate consciousness.

Kant further remarks in this regard, (1) “Space is no empirical Notion

which has been derived from outward experiences.” But the Notion is

never really anything empiric: it is in barbarous forms like this that

Kant, however, always expresses himself: “For in order that I may relate

my sensations to something outside of me, I must presuppose space.” Of

time Kant speaks in similar terms: “In order that something outside of

me may be represented in separate space or time, the conception of space

and time must come first, or it cannot be derived from experience, for

experience first becomes possible through this antecedent conception.”

That is to say, time and space which may appear as objective, since their

particular filling in certainly belongs to subjective feeling, are not

empirical; for consciousness has time and space first of all in itself.

(2) “Space is a necessary conception which lies at the basis of all

external perceptions. Space and time are conceptions _a priori_, because

we cannot represent things without space and time. Time is a necessary

basis for all phenomena.” As _a priori_, space and time are universal

and necessary, that is to say we find this to be the case; but it does

not follow that they must be previously present as conceptions. They

are fundamental indeed, but they are likewise an external universal.

Kant however places the matter somewhat in this fashion: there are

things-in-themselves outside, but devoid of time and space; consciousness

now comes, and it has time and space beforehand present in it as the

possibility of experience, just as in order to eat it has mouth and

teeth, &c., as conditions necessary for eating. The things which are

eaten have not the mouth and teeth, and as eating is brought to bear

on things, so space and time are also brought to bear on them; just as

things are placed in the mouth and between the teeth, so is it with space

and time. (3) “Space and time are not general Notions of the relations

of things, but pure intuitive perceptions. For we can only represent

to ourselves one space; there are not different component parts of

space.” The same is the case with time. The abstract conception tree,

for example, is in its actuality a number of individual and separate

trees, but spaces are not such particulars, nor are they parts; for

one immediate continuity remains, and hence a simple unity. Ordinary

perception has always something individual before it; space or time are

always however one only, and therefore _a priori_. It might however be

replied to Kant: The nature of space and time undoubtedly involves their

being an abstract universal; but there is in like manner only one blue.

(4) “Each Notion or conception certainly comprises an infinite number

of conceptions under itself, but not within itself; nevertheless this

last is the case in space and time, and they are therefore intuitive

perceptions and not Notions or conceptions.”[334] Space and time, then,

are certainly not thought-determinations, if no thoughts are there

present, but a Notion, so soon as we have a Notion of them.

From the transcendental point of view it is likewise maintained that

this conception of space and time contains synthetic propositions _a

priori_, connected with the consciousness of its necessity. Examples of

these synthetic propositions are sought in statements such as that of

space having three dimensions, or in the definition of a straight line,

that it is the shortest distance between two points, and likewise in

the statement that 5 + 7 = 12.[335] All these propositions are however

very analytic. Kant nevertheless in the first place holds that such

propositions do not take their rise from experience, or, as we might

better express it, are not an individual contingent perception; this

is very true, the perception is universal and necessary. In the second

place he states that we acquire them from pure sensuous perception, and

not through the understanding or Notion. But Kant does not grasp the

two together, and yet this comprehension of them is involved in such

propositions being immediately certain even in ordinary perception.

When Kant then expresses himself (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 49)

to the effect that we have many sensations which constitute “the real

matter,” with which we externally and inwardly “occupy our minds,” and

that the mind has in itself in space and time “formal conditions of the

mode in which we place them” (those manifold feelings) “in our mind,”

the question of how mind arrives at having just these special forms now

forces itself upon us. But what the nature of time and space is, it does

not occur to the Kantian philosophy to inquire. To it what space and time

are in themselves does not signify ‘What is their Notion,’ but ‘Are they

external things or something in the mind?’

b. The second faculty, the understanding, is something very different

from sensuousness; the latter is Receptivity, while Kant calls thought

in general Spontaneity—an expression which belongs to the philosophy

of Leibnitz. The understanding is active thought, I myself; it “is the

faculty of thinking the object of sensuous perception.” Yet it has

thoughts merely without real content: “Thoughts without content are

void and empty, sensuous perceptions without Notions are blind.” The

understanding thus obtains from the sensuous its matter, both empirical

and _a priori_, time and space; and it thinks this matter, but its

thoughts are very different from this matter. Or it is a faculty of

a particular kind, and it is only when both occur, when the sensuous

faculty has supplied material and the understanding has united to

this its thoughts, that knowledge results.[336] The thoughts of the

understanding as such are thus limited thoughts, thoughts of the finite

only.

Now logic, as transcendental logic, likewise sets forth the conceptions

which the understanding has _a priori_ in itself and “whereby it thinks

objects completely _a priori_.” Thoughts have a form which signifies

their being the synthetic function which brings the manifold into a

unity. _I_ am this unity, the transcendental apperception, the pure

apperception of self-consciousness. I = I; _I_ must ‘accompany’ all

our conceptions.[337] This is a barbarous exposition of the matter.

As self-consciousness I am the completely void, general I, completely

indeterminate and abstract; apperception is determination generally,

the activity whereby I transplant an empirical content into my simple

consciousness, while perception rather signifies feeling or conceiving.

In order that a content may enter this One, it must be infected by its

simplicity; it is thus that the content first becomes my content. The

comprehending medium is ‘I’; whatever I have to do with must allow

itself to be forced into these forms of unity. This is a great fact, an

important item of knowledge; what thought produces is unity; thus it

produces itself, for it is the One. Yet the fact that I am the one and,

as thinking, the simplifier, is not by Kant satisfactorily set forth. The

unity may likewise be called relation; for in so far as a manifold is

presupposed, and as this on the one side remains a manifold while on the

other side it is set forth as one, so far may it be said to be related.

Now as ‘I’ is the universal transcendental unity of self-consciousness

which binds together the empirical matter of conception generally,

there are various modes in this relationship, and here we

have the transcendental nature of the categories or universal

thought-determinations. But Kant (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 70,

77) approaches these modes of simplicity by accepting them as they

are classified in ordinary logic. For he says that in common logic

particular kinds of judgment are brought forward; and since judgment is

a special kind of relationship of the manifold, the various functions

of thought which ‘I’ has in it are shown therein. But the following

kinds of judgment have been noticed, viz. Universal, Particular and

Singular; Affirmative, Negative, Infinite; Categorical, Hypothetical,

Disjunctive; Assertoric, Problematic and Apodictic judgments. These

particular modes of relationship now brought forward are the pure forms

of the understanding. There are thus, according to Kant (Kritik der

reinen Vernunft, pp. 75, 76, 78-82), twelve fundamental categories,

which fall into four classes; and it is noteworthy, and deserves to be

recognized, that each species of judgment again constitutes a triad.

(1) The first kind of categories are those of Quantity, viz. Unity,

Plurality and Totality. Plurality is negation of the one, the assertion

of difference; and the third, the bringing of the other two into one,

plurality circumscribed, the indeterminate plurality comprehended as

one, is the Totality. (2) In the second series are the categories of

Quality: Reality, Negation, Limitation. Limitation is as real or positive

as negation. (3) The third series comprises the categories of relation,

of connection; and first of all, indeed, the relation of Substantiality,

Substance and Accident: then the relation of Causality, the relation

of Cause and Effect, and finally Reciprocity. (4) The categories of

Modality, of the relation of the objective to our thought, come fourth,

viz. Possibility, Existence (actuality) and Necessity. Possibility should

come second; in abstract thought, however, the empty conception comes

first. It betrays a great instinct for the Notion when Kant says that the

first category is positive, the second the negative of the first, the

third the synthesis of the two. The triplicity, this ancient form of the

Pythagoreans, Neo-Platonists and of the Christian religion, although it

here reappears as a quite external _schema_ only, conceals within itself

the absolute form, the Notion. But since Kant says that a conception can

determine itself in me as accidental, as cause, effect, unity, plurality,

&c., we thereby have the whole of the metaphysics of the understanding.

Kant does not follow up further the derivation of these categories,

and he finds them imperfect, but he says that the others are derived

from them. Kant thus accepts the categories in an empiric way, without

thinking of developing of necessity these differences from unity. Just

as little did Kant attempt to deduce time and space, for he accepted

them likewise from experience—a quite unphilosophic and unjustifiable

procedure.

Thinking understanding is thus indeed the source of the individual

categories, but because on their own account they are void and empty,

they only have significance through their union with the given, manifold

material of perception, feeling, &c. Such connection of sensuous material

with categories now constitutes the facts of experience, _i.e._ the

matter of sensation after it is brought under the categories; and this

is knowledge generally.[338] The matter of perception which pertains to

the feelings or sensuous perception is not left in the determination of

individuality and immediacy, but I am active in relation to it, inasmuch

as I bring it into connection through the categories and elevate it into

universal species, natural laws, &c. The question of whether a completed

sensuousness or the Notion is the higher may accordingly be easily

decided. For the laws of the heavens are not immediately perceived, but

merely the change in position on the part of the stars. It is only when

this object of immediate perception is laid hold of and brought under

universal thought-determinations that experience arises therefrom, which

has a claim to validity for all time. The category which brings the unity

of thought into the content of feeling is thus the objective element in

experience, which receives thereby universality and necessity, while that

which is perceived is rather the subjective and contingent. Our finding

both these elements in experience demonstrates indeed that a correct

analysis has been made. Kant (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 119, 120)

however connects with this the statement that experience grasps phenomena

only, and that by means of the knowledge which we obtain through,

experience we do not know things as they are in themselves, but only as

they are in the form of laws of perception and sensuousness. For the

first component part of experience, sensation, is doubtless subjective,

since it is connected with our organs. The matter of perception is only

what it is in my sensation. I know of this sensation only and not of the

thing. But, in the second place, the objective, which ought to constitute

the opposite to this subjective side, is itself subjective likewise: it

does not indeed pertain to my feeling, but it remains shut up in the

region of my self-consciousness; the categories are only determinations

of our thinking understanding. Neither the one nor the other is

consequently anything in itself, nor are both together, knowledge,

anything in itself, for it only knows phenomena—a strange contradiction.

The transition of the category to the empiric is made in the following

way: “Pure conceptions of the understanding are quite of a different

nature from empiric, indeed from any sensuous perceptions;” we have

thus “to show how pure conceptions of the understanding can be applied

to phenomena.” This is dealt with by the transcendental faculty of

judgment. For Kant says that in the mind, in self-consciousness, there

are pure conceptions of the understanding and pure sensuous perceptions;

now it is the schematism of the pure understanding, the transcendental

faculty of the imagination, which determines the pure sensuous perception

in conformity with the category and thus constitutes the transition to

experience.[339] The connection of these two is again one of the most

attractive sides of the Kantian philosophy, whereby pure sensuousness and

pure understanding, which were formerly expressed as absolute opposites,

are now united. There is thus here present a perceptive understanding

or an understanding perception; but Kant does not see this, he does not

bring these thoughts together: he does not grasp the fact that he has

here brought both sides of knowledge into one, and has thereby expressed

their implicitude. Knowledge itself is in fact the unity and truth of

both moments; but with Kant the thinking understanding and sensuousness

are both something particular, and they are only united in an external,

superficial way, just as a piece of wood and a leg might be bound

together by a cord. Thus, for example, the conception of substance in the

_schema_ becomes permanent in time,[340] _i.e._ the pure conception of

the understanding, the pure category, is brought into unity with the form

of pure sensuous perception.

In as far as we have to deal with our own determinations only and as we

do not reach the implicit, the true objective, the Kantian philosophy

called itself Idealism. But in this connection Kant (Kritik der reinen

Vernunft, pp. 200, 201) brings forward a refutation of empirical or

material idealism, thus: “I am conscious of my existence as determined

in time. But all time-determination presupposes something permanent in

perception. This permanence cannot be” a sensuous perception “in me.”

For all the determining grounds of my existence which are met with in

me are conceptions, and as such themselves require a constant element

different from them, and in relation to which the change taking place

in them—consequently “my existence in time,” in which they change, “may

be determined.” Or I am conscious of my existence as of an empirical

consciousness which is only capable of being determined in relation to

something which is outside of me; _i.e._ I am conscious of something

external to me. Conversely it may be said: I am conscious of external

things as determined in time and as changing; these hence presuppose

something constant which is not in them but outside of them. And this is

‘I,’ the transcendental ground of their universality and necessity, of

their implicitude, the unity of self-consciousness. On another occasion

Kant regards it thus (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 101): These moments

confuse themselves, because the constant element is itself a category.

Idealism, when we regard it as signifying that nothing exists outside of

my individual self-consciousness as individual, as also the refutation of

this, the assertion that things exist outside of my self-consciousness

as individual, are the one as bad as the other. The former is the

idealism of Berkeley, in which self-consciousness as individual is alone

in question, or the world of self-consciousness appears as a number of

limited, sensuous, individual conceptions, which are as completely devoid

of truth as though they were called things. The truth or untruth does not

rest in their being things or conceptions, but in their limitation and

contingency, whether as conceptions or things. The refutation of this

idealism is nothing more than calling attention to the fact that this

empirical consciousness does not exist in itself—just as those empiric

things do not exist in themselves. But the knowing subject does not

with Kant really arrive at reason, for it remains still the individual

self-consciousness as such, which is opposed to the universal. As a

matter of fact there is described in what we have seen only the empirical

finite self-consciousness which requires a material from outside, or

which is limited. We do not ask whether these facts of knowledge are

in and for themselves true or untrue; the whole of knowledge remains

within subjectivity, and on the other side there is the thing-in-itself

as an external. This subjectivity is however concrete in itself; even

the determinate categories of the thinking understanding are concrete,

and much more is experience so—the synthesis of the sensation and the

category.[341]

c. The third faculty Kant finds in reason, to which he advances from

the understanding after the same psychological method; that is to say,

he hunts through the soul’s sack to see what faculties are still to be

found there; and thus by merest chance he lights on Reason. It would

make no difference if there had been no Reason there, just as with

physicists it is a matter of perfect indifference whether, for instance,

there is such a thing as magnetism or not. “All our knowledge begins

from the senses, thence proceeds to the understanding, and finishes

up with reason; nothing higher than this is to be found in us, for

it signifies the working up of the material of perception, and the

reducing of it to the highest unity of thought.” Reason is therefore,

according to Kant, the power of obtaining knowledge from principles,

that is, the power of knowing the particular in the universal by means

of Notions; the understanding, on the contrary, reaches its particular

by means of perception. But the categories are themselves particular.

The principle of reason, according to Kant, is really the universal,

inasmuch as it finds the unconditioned involved in the conditioned

knowledge of the understanding. Understanding is hence for him thought

in finite relations; reason, on the contrary, is thought which makes

the unconditioned its object. Since Kant’s time it has become customary

in the language of philosophy to distinguish understanding and reason,

while by earlier philosophers this distinction was not drawn. The product

of reason is, according to Kant, the Idea—a Platonic expression—and he

understands by it the unconditioned, the infinite.[342] It is a great

step forward to say that reason brings forth Ideas; with Kant, however,

the Idea is merely the abstract universal, the indeterminate.

This, the unconditioned, must now be grasped as concrete, and therein

lies the main difficulty. For to know the unconditioned means to

determine it and to deduce its determinations. Much has been written and

said on the subject of knowledge, without a definition of it ever having

been offered. But it is the business of Philosophy to see that what is

taken for granted as known is really known. Now on this point Kant says

that reason has certainly the desire to know the infinite, but has not

the power. And the reason which Kant gives for this (Kritik der reinen

Vernunft, pp. 277, 278), is on the one hand that no psychologically

sensuous intuition or perception corresponds with the infinite, that it

is not given in outward or inward experience; to the Idea “no congruent

or corresponding object can be discovered in the sensuous world.” It

depends, however, on how the world is looked at; but experience and

observation of the world mean nothing else for Kant than a candlestick

standing here, and a snuff-box standing there. It is certainly

correct to say that the infinite is not given in the world of sensuous

perception; and supposing that what we know is experience, a synthesis

of what is thought and what is felt, the infinite can certainly not be

known in the sense that we have a sensuous perception of it. But no one

wishes to demand a sensuous proof in verification of the infinite; spirit

is for spirit alone. The second reason for considering that the infinite

cannot be known, lies in this, that Reason has no part in it except

as supplying the forms of thought which we call categories; and these

doubtless afford what Kant calls objective determinations, but in such

a way that in themselves they are still only subjective. If therefore

for the determination of the infinite we employ these categories which

are applicable only to phenomena, we entangle ourselves in false

arguments (paralogisms) and in contradictions (antinomies); and it is an

important point in the Kantian philosophy that the infinite, so far as

it is defined by means of categories, loses itself in contradictions.

Although reason, says Kant, becomes transcendent by the exhibition of

these contradictions, it still retains its claim to trace perception,

experience, and knowledge pertaining to the understanding, back to the

infinite. This union of the infinite, the unconditioned, with the finite

and conditioned as existing in the knowledge given by the understanding,

or even in perception, would signify that the acme of concreteness had

been reached.

Of this Unconditioned there are several kinds, objects having special

features of their own and proceeding from reason, transcendental Ideas;

they are thus themselves particular in their nature. The manner in which

Kant arrives at these Ideas is again derived from experience, from formal

logic, according to which there are various forms of the syllogism.

Because, says Kant, there are three forms of the syllogism, categorical,

hypothetical, and disjunctive, the Unconditioned is also three-fold in

its nature: “Firstly, an Unconditioned of the categorical synthesis in a

subject.” Synthesis is the concrete; but the expression is ambiguous,

since it indicates an external association of independent elements. “In

the second place, an Unconditioned of the hypothetical synthesis of

the members of a series will have to be looked for; and in the third

place, an Unconditioned of the disjunctive synthesis of the parts in a

system.” We make the first connection, expressed as object of Reason or

transcendental Idea, when we conceive “the thinking subject;” the second

“is the sum total of all phenomena, the world;” and the third is “the

thing which contains the supreme condition of the possibility of all that

can be thought, the Being of all Beings,” _i.e._ God. When brought to an

ultimate point, the question which meets us is whether Reason can bring

these objects to reality, or whether they remain confined to subjective

thought. Now, according to Kant, Reason is not capable of procuring

reality for its Ideas—otherwise it would be transcendent, its limits

would be overstepped; it produces only paralogisms, antinomies, and an

ideal without reality.[343]

α. “A. paralogism is a syllogism false in its form.” Since Reason

credits with reality that mode of the Unconditioned which constitutes

the categorical synthesis in a subject, and therefore the thinking

subject, it is termed substance. Now is the thinking ego a substance,

a soul, a soul-thing? Further questions are whether it is permanent,

immaterial, incorruptible, personal and immortal, and such as to have

a real community with the body. The falsity of the syllogism consists

in this, that the idea of the unity of the transcendental subject

essential to Reason is expressed as a thing; for it is only in this way

that the permanency of the same becomes substance. Otherwise I find

myself permanent in my thought, of course, but only within perceiving

consciousness, not outside of that. The ego is therefore the empty,

transcendental subject of our thoughts, that moreover becomes known only

through its thoughts; but of what it is in itself we cannot gather the

least idea. (A horrible distinction! For thought is nothing more or less

than the “in-itself” or implicit.) We cannot assert of it any present

Being, because thought is an empty form, we have a conception of what

thinking Beings are through no outward experience, but only by means of

self-consciousness,—_i.e._ because we cannot take the “I” in our hands,

nor see it, nor smell it. We therefore know very well that the ego is a

subject, but if we pass beyond self-consciousness, and say that it is

substance, we go farther than we are entitled to do. I cannot therefore

assign any reality to the subject.[344]

We here see Kant fall into contradiction, what with the barbarity of the

conceptions which he refutes, and the barbarity of his own conceptions

which remain behind when the others are refuted. In the first place, he

is perfectly correct when he maintains that the ego is not a soul-thing,

a dead permanency which has a sensuous present existence; indeed, were

it to be an ordinary thing, it would be necessary that it should be

capable of being experienced. But, in the second place, Kant does not

assert the contrary of this, namely that the ego, as this universal or

as self-thinking, has in itself the true reality which he requires as an

objective mode. For he does not get clear of the conception of reality in

which reality consists in the possession of a sensuous present existence;

accordingly, because the ego is given in no outward experience, it is

not real. For self-consciousness, the ego as such, is not, according to

Kant, reality; it is only _our_ thought, or in other words he regards

self-consciousness as being itself simply and entirely sensuous. The form

which Kant accordingly bestows on Being, thing, substance, would seem

to indicate that these categories of the understanding were too high for

the subject, too high to be capable of being predicated of it. But really

such determinations are too poor and too mean, for what possesses life is

not a thing, nor can the soul, the spirit, the ego, be called a thing.

Being is the least or lowest quality that one can assign to spirit, its

abstract, immediate identity with itself; Being thus no doubt pertains

to spirit, but it must be considered as a determination scarcely worth

applying to it.

β. In the second place we have the antinomy, _i.e._ the contradiction in

Reason’s Idea of the Unconditioned, an Idea applied to the world in order

to represent it as a complete summing-up of conditions. That is to say,

in the given phenomena Reason demands the absolute completeness of the

conditions of their possibility, so far as these constitute a series, so

that the unconditioned is contained in the world, _i.e._ the totality

of the series. If now this completeness is expressed as existing, an

antinomy is alone presented, and Reason is presented only as dialectic:

_i.e._ in this object there is on every side a perfect contradiction

found.[345] For phenomena are a finite content, and the world is a

conjunction of the limited; if this content is now thought by Reason, and

therefore subsumed under the unconditioned and the unlimited, we have two

determinations, finite and infinite, which contradict each other. Reason

demands a perfectly complete synthesis, an absolute beginning; but in

phenomena we have, on the contrary, a succession of causes and effects,

which never come to an end. Kant here points out four contradictions

(Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 320), which, however, is not enough; for

in each Notion there are antinomies, since it is not simple but concrete,

and therefore contains different determinations, which are direct

opposites.

αα. These antinomies in the first place involve our making the one

determination, limitation, just as valid as non-limitation. “Thesis: The

world has a beginning and an end in time, and it is limited in regard to

space. Antithesis: It has no beginning and no end in time, and also no

limits in space.” The one, says Kant, can be proved just as easily as

the other; and indeed he does prove each indirectly, though his are not

“advocate’s proofs.”[346] The world, as the universe, is the whole; it

is thus a universal idea, and therefore unlimited. The completion of the

synthesis in progression as regards time and space is, however, a first

beginning of time and space. If therefore the categories of limited and

unlimited are applied to the world in order to attain to a knowledge

of it, we fall into contradictions, because the categories are not

applicable to things-in-themselves.

ββ. The second antinomy is that atoms, from which substance is composed,

must necessarily be admitted to exist, therefore simplicity can be

proved; but just as easy is it to prove incompleteness, the endless

process of division. The thesis is accordingly stated thus: “Every

compound substance consists of simple parts,” and the antithesis is as

follows: “There exists nothing simple.”[347] The one is here the limit,

a material self-existence, the point which is likewise the enclosing

surface; the other is divisibility _ad infinitum_.

γγ. The third antinomy is the opposition between freedom and necessity.

The first is the self-determining, the point of view pertaining to

infinity: causality according to the laws of freedom is the only

causality. The other is: Determinism alone is to be found: everything is

determined by means of an external ground or reason.[348]

δδ. The fourth antinomy rests on what follows: On the one hand totality

completes itself in freedom as a first beginning of action, or in

an absolutely necessary Being, as the cause of the world, so that

the process is interrupted: but there is opposed to that freedom the

necessity of a process according to conditions of causes and effects,

and to the necessity of a Being is opposed the consideration that

everything is contingent. The absolute necessity of the conditioned world

is therefore on the one hand maintained thus: “To the world belongs an

absolutely necessary Being.” The opposite to this is, “There exists no

absolutely necessary Being, either as part of the world or outside of the

world.”[349]

One of these opposites is just as necessary as the other, and it

is superfluous to carry this further here. The necessity of these

contradictions is the interesting fact which Kant (Kritik der reinen

Vernunft, p. 324) has brought to consciousness; in ordinary metaphysics,

however, it is imagined that one of these contradictions must hold good,

and the other be disproved. The most important point involved in this

assertion of Kant’s is, however, unintentional on his part. For he indeed

solves these antinomies (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 385, 386), but

only in the particular sense of transcendental idealism, which does not

doubt or deny the existence of external things (_supra_, p. 442), but

“allows that things are perceived in space and time” (which is the case,

whether it allows it or not): for transcendental idealism, however,

“space and time in themselves are not things at all,” and therefore “do

not exist apart from our mind;” _i.e._ all these determinations of a

beginning in time, and so on, do not really belong to things, to the

implicitude of the phenomenal world, which has independent existence

outside of our subjective thought. If such determinations belonged

to the world, to God, to free agents, there would be an objective

contradiction; but this contradiction is not found as absolute, it

pertains only to us. Or, in other words, this transcendental idealism

lets the contradiction remain, only it is not Being in itself that

is thus contradictory, for the contradiction has its source in our

thought alone. Thus the same antinomy remains in our mind; and as it was

formerly God who had to take upon Himself all contradictions, so now

it is self-consciousness. But the Kantian philosophy does not go on to

grapple with the fact that it is not things that are contradictory, but

self-consciousness itself. Experience teaches that the ego does not melt

away by reason of these contradictions, but continues to exist; we need

not therefore trouble ourselves about its contradictions, for it can

bear them. Nevertheless Kant shows here too much tenderness for things:

it would be a pity, he thinks, if they contradicted themselves. But that

mind, which is far higher, should be a contradiction—that is not a pity

at all. The contradiction is therefore by no means solved by Kant; and

since mind takes it upon itself, and contradiction is self-destructive,

mind is in itself all derangement and disorder. The true solution

would be found in the statement that the categories have no truth in

themselves, and the Unconditioned of Reason just as little, but that it

lies in the unity of both as concrete, and in that alone.

γ. Kant now goes on to the Idea of God; this third idea is the Being of

Beings, which the other ideas presupposed. Kant says (Kritik der reinen

Vernunft, pp. 441-452), that according to the definition of Wolff, God is

the most real of all Beings; the object then comes to be to prove that

God is not only Thought, but that He is, that He has reality, Being.

This Kant calls the Ideal of Reason, to distinguish it from the Idea,

which is only the sum of all possibility. The Ideal is thus the Idea as

existent; just as in art we give the name of ideal to the Idea realized

in a sensuous manner. Here Kant takes into consideration the proof of

the existence of God, as he asks whether reality can be assigned to this

Ideal.

The ontological proof proceeds from the absolute Notion, in order from it

to argue up to Being. With Anselm, Descartes, and Spinoza the transition

to Being is thus made; and all of them assume in so doing the unity

of Being and thought. But Kant says (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp.

458-466): To this Ideal of Reason just as little reality can be assigned:

there is no transition from the Notion to Being. “Being is not a real

predicate,” like any other, “a Notion of something which might be added

to the Notion of a thing. A hundred real dollars do not contain in the

very least more than a hundred possible dollars,” they are the same

content, _i.e._ the same Notion; they are also a hundred exactly. The one

is the Notion, or rather the conception, the other is the object; Being

is no new determination of the Notion, otherwise my Notion of a hundred

real dollars would contain something different from a hundred real

dollars. But “the object, as real, is not contained in my Notion alone;

or to my Notion the real hundred dollars are synthetically added.” Being

cannot therefore be derived from the Notion, because it is not contained

therein, but must be added to it. “We must go out of the Notion in order

to arrive at existence. With regard to objects of pure thought, there are

no means of coming to know of their existence, because it had to be known

_a priori_; but our consciousness of all existence belongs entirely to

experience.” That is to say, Kant does not attain to the comprehension of

that very synthesis of Notion and Being, or in other words, he does not

comprehend existence, _i.e._ he does not attain to the establishment of

it as Notion; existence remains for him something absolutely different

from a Notion. The content is no doubt the same for him in what exists

and in the Notion: but since Being is not involved in the Notion, the

attempt to derive the one from the other is unavailing.

Of course the determination of Being is not found as positive and

ready-made in the Notion; the Notion is something different from reality

and objectivity. If we therefore abide by the Notion, we abide by Being

as something different from the Notion, and adhere to the separation of

the two; we then have conception, and not Being at all. That a hundred

possible dollars are something different from a hundred actual ones is

a reflection of a very popular nature, so much so that no proposition

has been so well received as the assertion that no transition can be

made from the Notion to Being; for though I imagine to myself a hundred

dollars, I do not possess them for all that. But in a like popular

fashion it might be said that one must leave off imagining, for that is

mere conception: _i.e._ what is merely imaginary is untrue, the hundred

imaginary dollars are and remain imaginary. Therefore to believe in them

is a proof of an unsound understanding, and is of no manner of use;

and he is a foolish fellow who indulges in such fancies and wishes.

One possesses a hundred dollars, when they are real only; if a man has

therefore so great a desire to possess a hundred dollars, he must put

his hand to work in order to obtain them: _i.e._ he must not come to

a standstill at the imagination of them, but pass out beyond it. This

subjective side is not the ultimate or the absolute; the true is that

which is not merely subjective. If I possess a hundred dollars, I have

them actually, and at the same time I form a conception of them to

myself. But according to Kant’s representation we come to a deadlock

at the difference; dualism is ultimate, and each side has independent

validity as an absolute. Against this false idea of what is to be

absolute and ultimate, the healthy human understanding is directed; every

ordinary consciousness rises above it, every action aims at setting aside

a subjective conception and making it into something objective. There

is no man so foolish as that philosophy; when a man feels hungry, he

does not call up the imagination of food, but sets about satisfying his

hunger. All activity is a conception which does not yet exist, but whose

subjectivity is abrogated. Moreover the imaginary hundred dollars become

real, and the real ones imaginary: this is a frequent experience, this

is their fate; it depends on circumstances entirely outward whether a

hundred dollars become my property or not. Of course the mere conception

is of no good, if I obstinately hold by it: for I can imagine what I

will, but that does not make it exist. The only important point is what I

conceive to myself, and then whether I think or comprehend the subjective

and Being; by means of this each passes into the other. Thought, the

Notion, of necessity implies that the Notion does not remain subjective;

this subjective is on the contrary abrogated and reveals itself as

objective. Now that unity is expressly affirmed by Descartes solely in

reference to the Notion of God, for it is just that which is God; he

speaks of no hundred dollars, as these are not an existence which has

a Notion in itself. That opposition does away with itself absolutely

and entirely, _i.e._ the finite passes away; it holds good only in the

philosophy of finitude. If, therefore, there is not a Notion of existence

formed, we have in it a notionless, sensuous object of perception; and

what is notionless is certainly not a Notion,—therefore sensation,

handling, are not Notions. Such existence has of course no Absolute, no

real essence: or such existence has no truth, it is only a vanishing

moment. This useless thrashing of the empty grainless straw of the common

logic is termed philosophizing: it is like Issachar the strong ass, which

could not be made to move from the spot where it was (Gen. xlix. 14).

People of this kind say: We are good for nothing, and because we are good

for nothing, we are good for nothing, and wish to be good for nothing.

But it is a very false idea of Christian humility and modesty to desire

through one’s abjectness to attain to excellence; this confession of

one’s own nothingness is really inward pride and great self-conceit. But

for the honour of true humility we must not remain in our misery, but

raise ourselves above it by laying hold of the Divine.

The fact to which Kant clings most strongly (Kritik der reinen Vernunft,

p. 467) is this, that Being cannot be extracted from the Notion. The

result of this is the proposition that to have the thought of the

Infinite is certainly Reason; but that from the Idea of Reason is

separated determination in general, and especially the determination

which is known as Being. The Ideas of Reason cannot be proved from

experience, or obtain from it their verification: if they are defined

by means of categories, contradictions arise. If the Idea in general

is to be defined as existent only, it is nothing more or less than the

Notion; and the Being of the existent is still distinguished from it.

This result, however, so highly important with reference to knowledge of

the understanding, Kant does not, with reference to Reason, carry further

than to say that Reason has on its own account nothing but formal unity

for the methodical systematization of the knowledge of the understanding.

Abstract thinking is adhered to; it is said that the understanding

can only bring about order in things; but order is nothing in and for

itself, it is only subjective. There therefore remains nothing for Reason

except the form of its pure identity with itself, and this extends no

further than to the arranging of the manifold laws and relations of the

understanding, the classes, kinds and species which the understanding

discovers.[350] I, as Reason or conception, and the things external to

me, are both absolutely different from one another; and that, according

to Kant, is the ultimate standpoint. The animal does not stop at this

standpoint, but practically brings about unity. This is the critique

of theoretical Reason which Kant gives, and in which he states the _a

priori_ and determinate character of Reason in itself, without bringing

it to the determinateness of individuality.[351]

Mention should still be made of the positive philosophy or metaphysics,

which Kant sets _a priori_ above objective existence, the content of the

object of experience, nature; we have here his natural philosophy, which

is a demonstration of the universal conceptions of Nature. But this is

on the one hand very scanty and restricted in content, containing as

it does sundry general qualities and conceptions of matter and motion,

and with regard to the scientific side or the _a priori_, as Kant calls

it, it is likewise altogether unsatisfactory. For Kant assumes all such

conceptions as that matter has motion and also a power of attraction and

repulsion,[352] instead of demonstrating their necessity. The “Principles

of Natural Philosophy” have nevertheless been of great service, inasmuch

as at the commencement of a philosophy of nature, attention was called

to the fact that physical science employs thought-determinations without

further investigation; and these determinations constitute the real

foundations of its objects. Density, for instance, is looked on by

physical science as a variable quantity, as a mere _quantum_ in space:

instead of this Kant asserted it to be a certain degree of occupation

of space, _i.e._ energy, intensity of action. He demands accordingly

(Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft, pp. 65-68) a

construction of matter from powers and activities, not from atoms; and

Schelling still holds to this without getting further. Kant’s work is an

attempt to think, _i.e._ to demonstrate the determinations of thought,

whose product consists of such conceptions as matter; he has attempted

to determine the fundamental Notions and principles of this science, and

has given the first impulse to a so-called dynamic theory of Nature.

“Religion within pure Reason” is also a demonstration of dogmas as

aspects of Reason, just as in Nature. Thus in the positive dogmas of

religion, which the Aufklärung (the clearing-up)—or the Ausklärung (the

clearing-out)—made short work of, Kant called to remembrance Ideas of

Reason, asking what rational and, first of all, what moral meaning lies

in that which men call dogmas of religion, _e.g._ original sin.[353] He

is much more reasonable than the _Ausklärung_, which thinks it beneath

its dignity to speak of such matters. These are the principal points in

respect to the theoretical part of Kant’s philosophy.

2. The second subject of review in Kant’s philosophy is the practical

sphere, the nature and principle of the will; this subject is dealt with

in the Critique of Practical Reason, in which Kant accepted Rousseau’s

conclusion that the will is absolutely free. Kant’s idea of theoretic

Reason is that when Reason relates itself to an object, this object must

be given to it; but when the object is given by Reason to itself, it

has no truth; and Reason in knowledge of this kind does not arrive at

independence. As practical, on the contrary, Reason is independent in

itself; as a moral Being man is free, raised above all natural law and

above all phenomena. As the theoretic Reason had in itself categories,

_a priori_ distinctions, so practical Reason has in turn the moral law

in general, the further determinations of which are constituted by the

notions of duty and right, lawful and unlawful; and here Reason disdains

all the given material which was necessary to it on the theoretic side.

The will determines itself within itself; all that is right and moral

rests on freedom; in this man has his absolute self-consciousness.[354]

On this side self-consciousness finds essential reality in itself, as

theoretical Reason found it in an “other”; and in the first place,

indeed, the ego in its individuality is immediate reality, universality,

objectivity; in the second place subjectivity strives after reality, but

not after sensuous reality such as we had before, for here Reason holds

itself to be the real. Here we have the Notion which is sensible of its

own deficiency; this theoretic Reason could not be, as in it the Notion

had to remain the Notion. Thus we have the standpoint of absoluteness

revealed, since there is an infinite disclosed within the human breast.

The satisfying part in Kant’s philosophy is that the truth is at least

set within the heart; and hence I acknowledge that, and that alone, which

is in conformity with my determined nature.