SCHILLER; GOETHE; SCHLEIERMACHER
Schiller’s ethical world-view; Goethe’s world-view based on
nature-philosophy
VERY important is the fact that the deepened optimistic-ethical
world-view of Kant and Fichte finds a champion in Friedrich von
Schiller (1759-1805), who brings it to the mass of the people with the
force, added by poetical language. He is himself philosophically
gifted, and undertakes in addition to develop it further. He wishes to
broaden the foundation of the ethical by showing its relation to the
æsthetic.
In his _Letters Concerning the Æsthetic Education of Mankind_ (1795),
he works out the idea that art and ethics belong together as far as
this, that man maintains with the sensible world a relation which is
free and creative. “The transition from the passive condition of
feeling to the active one of thinking and willing comes about in no
other way than through an intermediate condition of æsthetic freedom.
. . . There is no way of making the sentient man rational other than
first making him æsthetic.” In what way the capacity for freedom which
is built up in man by æsthetic practice really disposes him to
morality, Schiller does not work out in further detail. His treatise,
in spite of all the notice it attracted and deserves, is more
rhetorical than substantial. He has not gone to the bottom of the
problem of the relations between the æsthetic and the ethical.
In contrast to Schiller, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832),
stands in almost as cold an attitude to the world-view of the deepened
rationalism as he does to that of ordinary rationalism. To him it is
impossible to share [pg 137] the confidence with which others, looking
around, regard optimistic and ethical convictions as well founded.
What separates him from Kant, and Fichte, and Schiller, is reverence
for the reality of nature. Nature is to him something in herself, not
merely something existing with a view to mankind. He does not require
from her that she shall fit herself completely into our
optimistic-ethical designs. He does no violence to her either through
epistemological and ethical idealism or through presumptuous
speculation, but lives in her as a human being who looks at existence
with wonder and does not know how to bring her relation to the
world-spirit within any formula.
Descartes led modern philosophy astray by cutting the world up into
objects which have extension and objects which think, and by going on,
moreover, to refuse to each of them the possibility of influencing the
other. Following in his steps, thinkers rack their brains over the
problem of these two parallel kinds of existence, and try to embrace
the world in formulas. That the world is life, and that in life lies
the riddle of riddles, never enters their minds. Hence they overlook
in their philosophizing what is most important. Because Descartes
preceded them, the two great spirits who adhere to nature-philosophy,
Spinoza and Leibniz, cannot get further than a nature-philosophy which
is more or less dead. Being in the line of descent from Descartes,
Kant and Fichte renounce all philosophizing over the real world.
Descartes and the ethical belief-in-progress, therefore, agree in a
common neglect of nature. Both alike overlook the fact that she is
living, and that she exists for her own sake, and it is because he
cannot join them in this that Goethe dares to confess that he
understands nothing about philosophy. His greatness is this: that in a
time of abstract and speculative thought he had the courage to remain
elemental.
Overwhelmed by the mysterious individual life in nature, he persists
in maintaining a magnificently imperfect [pg 138] world-view. With the
spirit of an investigator he looks within into everything; in that of
an inquirer he looks around upon everything. He wants to think
optimistically. Shaftesbury’s thoughts exercise their charm upon him
also. But in the chorus of optimism which makes itself heard so loudly
around him, he cannot join. World- and life-affirmation is for him not
such a simple thing as it is for Fichte and Schiller. He strives to
reach an ethical world-view, but admits to himself that he cannot
carry it through, and he therefore does not venture to attribute a
meaning to nature. To life, however, he will attribute one. He seeks
it in serviceable activity. To make the world-view of activity at home
in nature-philosophy is to him an inner necessity. The conviction that
activity provides the only real satisfaction that is to be found in
life and that therein lies the mysterious meaning of existence is
shown by him in _Faust_ as something which he has laboriously gained
during his pilgrimage through existence and to which he will hold
fast, without being able to explain it completely.
Goethe struggles to arrive at a conception of ethical activity, but
cannot reach one because nature-philosophy is unable to provide him
with any criterion of what is ethical. What that philosophy had to
refuse to the Chinese monists and to Spinoza, she cannot give to him
either.
The range of this world-view of Goethe’s which deals thus with reality
remains hidden from his contemporaries. Its incompleteness alienates
their sympathies and irritates them. For knowledge of the world and of
life which cannot be reduced to a system, but sticks fast in facts,
they have no understanding. They hold to their optimism and their
ethic.
Schleiermacher’s attempt at a nature-philosophy
Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768-1834), stands apart both from the
ordinary and from the deepened rationalism because he cannot free
himself from the influence of [pg 139] Spinoza._(_46_)_ His life-work
is directed to preaching the Spinozan nature-philosophy as being, as
far as he can make it so, both an ethic and the Christian religion.
Hence he always dresses it up as one or the other of these.
The accepted ethical code, in Schleiermacher’s opinion, makes man
merely run about the earth as an ethical individual bent on improving
the world. Living in this way, in a constant state of enthusiasm, he
becomes in danger of losing himself and becoming unpersonal. He
forgets that his primary duty is, first of all to be alone with
himself, to look within himself, and, instead of being a mere human
creature, to make himself into a personality.
This renunciation of rationalism’s enthusiasm for activity is to be
found in the _Monologues_, those splendid introspective meditations
meant for the first New Year’s Day of the nineteenth century. One
seems to hear in them Lao-tse and Chwang-tse criticising the moralism
and the fanaticism for progress of Confucius.
Man’s first task is, according to Schleiermacher, to realize his
oneness with the Infinite and in the Infinite to see the world. Only
that which results from this as action is really significant, and has
importance for morality.
Spinoza’s ethic consisted in keeping oneself at the highest level and
living one’s life more after the fashion of a life of thought than
after that of a life of corporeal existence. Schleiermacher’s ethic
has the same objective except that he seeks to combine with it a more
comprehensive interest in the world than is to be found in Spinoza. He
is helped in this direction by his belief that progress is something
immanent.
We have, he says, no other perfecting to bring about in things than
that which is inherent in them. Ethics, therefore, are not a setting
up of laws, but the recognition and the description of the tendencies
working for perfection which appear in the world itself, together with
behaviour [pg 140] in accord with their spirits. The moral law is not
distinct from the law of nature and pursues no other aims than the
latter does. It is only the law of nature arriving in man at the
consciousness of itself.
Schleiermacher, therefore, feels that his task is not, as Fichte
conceived his to be, the bringing of the universe under the
sovereignty of reason; it consists solely in supporting the oneness of
nature and reason in the sphere of human action, which is ever
striving to realize itself within that universe. “All ethical
knowledge is the expression of the ever-beginning but never completed
efforts of reason to become nature.” Ethics are a contemplative
“science.” They revolve around the two poles of natural science and
human history.
The ethic which results from this fundamental conception is, like
those of Lao-tse and Chwang-tse, so toned down that there is no longer
any real power in it. However completely Schleiermacher may try to
conceal this fact by his wonderful powers of description, it plays
only a subordinate _rôle_. What gives a meaning to human existence is
something which is independent of deeds; it is the oneness with the
Infinite which is experienced in feeling.
With its clever dialectic, but not in reality, Schleiermacher’s ethic
shows itself finally to be superior to that of Spinoza. His world-view
is that of Spinoza, only enriched by his belief in the immanence of
the power of progress. Hence his ethic is iridescent with somewhat
more brilliant colours.
Thus do a living nature-philosophy in Goethe and a Spinozan one in
Schleiermacher undermine the ground on which stand the men of the now
beginning nineteenth century, whose thinking is so enthusiastically
optimistic-ethical. The crowd pays no attention to their dangerous
proceedings. It gazes at the fireworks which Kant and Fichte let off,
while Schiller recites his poetry. And now there begin to rise bursts
of rockets which throw a peculiarly brilliant light. The past-master
in the art of firework display, Hegel, has come into action!
[pg 141]