Contemporary philosophy suffers from a morbid belief in Kant. To
help towards our emancipation from this belief is the aim of the
present essay. It would indeed be criminal to try and minimise the
debt which the development of German philosophy owes to Kant's
immortal work. But it is high time to acknowledge that the only
way of laying the foundations for a truly satisfying view of the
world and of human life is to put ourselves in decisive opposition
to the spirit of Kant. What is it that Kant has achieved? He has
shown that the transcendent ground of the world which lies beyond
the data of our senses and the categories of our reason, and which
his predecessors sought to determine by means of empty concepts,
is inaccessible to our knowledge. From this he concluded that all our
scientific thinking must keep within the limits of possible experience,
and is incapable of attaining to knowledge of the transcendent and
ultimate ground of the world, i.e., of the "thing-in-itself." But
what if this "thing-in-itself," this whole transcendent ground of
the world, should be nothing but a fiction? It is easy to see that
this is precisely what it is. An instinct inseparable from human
nature impels us to search for the innermost essence of things,
for their ultimate principles. It is the basis of all scientific
enquiry. But, there is not the least reason to look for this ultimate
ground outside the world of our senses and of our spirit, unless a
thorough and comprehensive examination of this world should reveal
within it elements which point unmistakably to an external cause.
The present essay attempts to prove that all the principles which we
need in order to explain our world and make it intelligible, are within
reach of our thought. Thus, the assumption of explanatory principles
lying outside our world turns out to be the prejudice of an extinct
philosophy which lived on vain dogmatic fancies. This ought to have
been Kant's conclusion, too, if he had really enquired into the powers
of human thought. Instead, he demonstrated in the most complicated way
that the constitution of our cognitive faculties does not permit us
to reach the ultimate principles which lie beyond our experience. But
we have no reason whatever for positing these principles in any such
Beyond. Thus Kant has indeed refuted "dogmatic" philosophy, but he has
put nothing in its place. Hence, all German philosophy which succeeded
Kant has evolved everywhere in opposition to him. Fichte, Schelling,
Hegel simply ignored the limits fixed by Kant for our knowledge and
sought the ultimate principles, not beyond, but within, the world
accessible to human reason. Even Schopenhauer, though he does declare
the conclusions of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason to be eternal and
irrefutable truths, cannot avoid seeking knowledge of the ultimate
grounds of the world along paths widely divergent from those of his
master. But the fatal mistake of all these thinkers was that they
sought knowledge of ultimate truths, without having laid the foundation
for such an enterprise in a preliminary investigation of the nature
of knowledge itself. Hence, the proud intellectual edifices erected by
Fichte, Schelling and Hegel have no foundation to rest on. The lack of
such foundations reacts most unfavourably upon the arguments of these
thinkers. Ignorant of the importance of the world of pure ideas and
of its relation to the realm of sense-perception, they built error
upon error, one-sidedness upon one-sidedness. No wonder that their
over-bold systems proved unable to withstand the storms of an age
which recked nothing of philosophy. No wonder that many good things
in these systems were pitilessly swept away along with the errors.
To remedy the defect which has just been indicated is the purpose of
the following investigations. They will not imitate Kant by explaining
what our minds can not know: their aim is to show what our minds
can know.
The outcome of these investigations is that truth is not, as
the current view has it, an ideal reproduction of a some real
object, but a free product of the human spirit, which would not
exist anywhere at all unless we ourselves produced it. It is not
the task of knowledge to reproduce in conceptual form something
already existing independently. Its task is to create a wholly new
realm which, united with the world of sense-data, ends by yielding
us reality in the full sense. In this way, man's supreme activity,
the creative productivity of his spirit, finds its organic place
in the universal world-process. Without this activity it would be
impossible to conceive the world-process as a totality complete in
itself. Man does not confront the world-process as a passive spectator
who merely copies in his mind the events which occur, without his
participation, in the cosmos without. He is an active co-creator in
the world-process, and his knowledge is the most perfect member of
the organism of the universe.
This view carries with it an important consequence for our conduct,
for our moral ideals. These, too, must be regarded, not as copies of
an external standard, but as rooted within us. Similarly, we refuse
to look upon our moral laws as the behests of any power outside
us. We know no "categorical imperative" which, like a voice from the
Beyond, prescribes to us what to do or to leave undone. Our moral
ideals are our own free creations. All we have to do is to carry out
what we prescribe to ourselves as the norm of our conduct. Thus, the
concept of truth as a free act leads to a theory of morals based on
the concept of a perfectly free personality.
These theses, of course, are valid only for that part of our
conduct the laws of which our thinking penetrates with complete
comprehension. So long as the laws of our conduct are merely natural
motives or remain obscure to our conceptual thinking, it may be
possible from a higher spiritual level to perceive how far they are
founded in our individuality, but we ourselves experience them as
influencing us from without, as compelling us to action. Every time
that we succeed in penetrating such a motive with clear understanding,
we make a fresh conquest in the realm of freedom.
The relation of these views to the theory of Eduard von Hartmann,
who is the most significant figure in contemporary philosophy, will
be made clear to the reader in detail in the course of this essay,
especially as regards the problem of knowledge.
A prelude to a Philosophy of Spiritual Activity--this is what the
present essay offers. That philosophy itself, completely worked out,
will shortly follow.
The ultimate aim of all science is to increase the value of existence
for human personality. Whoever does not devote himself to science
with this aim in view is merely modelling himself in his own work upon
some master. If he "researches," it is merely because that happens to
be what he has been taught to do. But not for him is the title of a
"free thinker."
The sciences are seen in their true value only when philosophy explains
the human significance of their results. To make a contribution to such
an explanation was my aim. But, perhaps, our present-day science scorns
all philosophical vindication! If so, two things are certain. One
is that this essay of mine is superfluous. The other is that modern
thinkers are lost in the wood and do not know what they want.
In concluding this Preface, I cannot omit a personal observation. Up
to now I have expounded all my philosophical views on the basis of
Goethe's world-view, into which I was first introduced by my dear
and revered teacher, Karl Julius Schröer, who to me stands in the
very forefront of Goethe-students, because his gaze is ever focussed
beyond the particular upon the universal Ideas.
But, with this essay I hope to have shown that the edifice of my
thought is a whole which has its foundations in itself and which
does not need to be derived from Goethe's world-view. My theories,
as they are here set forth and as they will presently be amplified
in the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, have grown up in the course
of many years. Nothing but a deep sense of gratitude leads me to
add that the affectionate sympathy of the Specht family in Vienna,
during the period when I was the tutor of its children, provided me
with an environment, than which I could not have wished a better, for
the development of my ideas. In the same spirit, I would add, further,
that I owe to the stimulating conversations with my very dear friend,
Miss Rosa Mayreder, of Vienna, the mood which I needed for putting into
final form many of the thoughts which I have sketched provisionally as
germs of my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. Her own literary efforts,
which express the sensitive and high-minded nature of a true artist,
are likely before long to be presented to the public.
Vienna, December, 1891.