the hope that, so far as is possible in the case of an entirely new
thought, which cannot be quite free from traces of the individuality in
which it originated, I have succeeded in conveying to the reader the
complete certainty that this world in which we live and have our being is
in its whole nature through and through _will_, and at the same time
through and through _idea_: that this idea, as such, already presupposes a
form, object and subject, is therefore relative; and if we ask what
remains if we take away this form, and all those forms which are
subordinate to it, and which express the principle of sufficient reason,
the answer must be that as something _toto genere_ different from idea,
this can be nothing but _will_, which is thus properly the
_thing-in-itself_. Every one finds that he himself is this will, in which
the real nature of the world consists, and he also finds that he is the
knowing subject, whose idea the whole world is, the world which exists
only in relation to his consciousness, as its necessary supporter. Every
one is thus himself in a double aspect the whole world, the microcosm;
finds both sides whole and complete in himself. And what he thus
recognises as his own real being also exhausts the being of the whole
world—the macrocosm; thus the world, like man, is through and through
_will_, and through and through _idea_, and nothing more than this. So we
see the philosophy of Thales, which concerned the macrocosm, unite at this
point with that of Socrates, which dealt with the microcosm, for the
object of both is found to be the same. But all the knowledge that has
been communicated in the two first books will gain greater completeness,
and consequently greater certainty, from the two following books, in which
I hope that several questions that have more or less distinctly arisen in
the course of our work will also be sufficiently answered.
In the meantime _one_ such question may be more particularly considered,
for it can only properly arise so long as one has not fully penetrated the
meaning of the foregoing exposition, and may so far serve as an
illustration of it. It is this: Every will is a will towards something,
has an object, an end of its willing; what then is the final end, or
towards what is that will striving that is exhibited to us as the
being-in-itself of the world? This question rests, like so many others,
upon the confusion of the thing-in-itself with the manifestation. The
principle of sufficient reason, of which the law of motivation is also a
form, extends only to the latter, not to the former. It is only of
phenomena, of individual things, that a ground can be given, never of the
will itself, nor of the Idea in which it adequately objectifies itself. So
then of every particular movement or change of any kind in nature, a cause
is to be sought, that is, a condition that of necessity produced it, but
never of the natural force itself which is revealed in this and
innumerable similar phenomena; and it is therefore simple
misunderstanding, arising from want of consideration, to ask for a cause
of gravity, electricity, and so on. Only if one had somehow shown that
gravity and electricity were not original special forces of nature, but
only the manifestations of a more general force already known, would it be
allowable to ask for the cause which made this force produce the phenomena
of gravity or of electricity here. All this has been explained at length
above. In the same way every particular act of will of a knowing
individual (which is itself only a manifestation of will as the
thing-in-itself) has necessarily a motive without which that act would
never have occurred; but just as material causes contain merely the
determination that at this time, in this place, and in this matter, a
manifestation of this or that natural force must take place, so the motive
determines only the act of will of a knowing being, at this time, in this
place, and under these circumstances, as a particular act, but by no means
determines that that being wills in general or wills in this manner; this
is the expression of his intelligible character, which, as will itself,
the thing-in-itself, is without ground, for it lies outside the province
of the principle of sufficient reason. Therefore every man has permanent
aims and motives by which he guides his conduct, and he can always give an
account of his particular actions; but if he were asked why he wills at
all, or why in general he wills to exist, he would have no answer, and the
question would indeed seem to him meaningless; and this would be just the
expression of his consciousness that he himself is nothing but will, whose
willing stands by itself and requires more particular determination by
motives only in its individual acts at each point of time.
In fact, freedom from all aim, from all limits, belongs to the nature of
the will, which is an endless striving. This was already touched on above
in the reference to centrifugal force. It also discloses itself in its
simplest form in the lowest grade of the objectification of will, in
gravitation, which we see constantly exerting itself, though a final goal
is obviously impossible for it. For if, according to its will, all
existing matter were collected in one mass, yet within this mass gravity,
ever striving towards the centre, would still wage war with
impenetrability as rigidity or elasticity. The tendency of matter can
therefore only be confined, never completed or appeased. But this is
precisely the case with all tendencies of all phenomena of will. Every
attained end is also the beginning of a new course, and so on _ad
infinitum_. The plant raises its manifestation from the seed through the
stem and the leaf to the blossom and the fruit, which again is the
beginning of a new seed, a new individual, that runs through the old
course, and so on through endless time. Such also is the life of the
animal; procreation is its highest point, and after attaining to it, the
life of the first individual quickly or slowly sinks, while a new life
ensures to nature the endurance of the species and repeats the same
phenomena. Indeed, the constant renewal of the matter of every organism is
also to be regarded as merely the manifestation of this continual pressure
and change, and physiologists are now ceasing to hold that it is the
necessary reparation of the matter wasted in motion, for the possible
wearing out of the machine can by no means be equivalent to the support it
is constantly receiving through nourishment. Eternal becoming, endless
flux, characterises the revelation of the inner nature of will. Finally,
the same thing shows itself in human endeavours and desires, which always
delude us by presenting their satisfaction as the final end of will. As
soon as we attain to them they no longer appear the same, and therefore
they soon grow stale, are forgotten, and though not openly disowned, are
yet always thrown aside as vanished illusions. We are fortunate enough if
there still remains something to wish for and to strive after, that the
game may be kept up of constant transition from desire to satisfaction,
and from satisfaction to a new desire, the rapid course of which is called
happiness, and the slow course sorrow, and does not sink into that
stagnation that shows itself in fearful ennui that paralyses life, vain
yearning without a definite object, deadening languor. According to all
this, when the will is enlightened by knowledge, it always knows what it
wills now and here, never what it wills in general; every particular act
of will has its end, the whole will has none; just as every particular
phenomenon of nature is determined by a sufficient cause so far as
concerns its appearance in this place at this time, but the force which
manifests itself in it has no general cause, for it belongs to the
thing-in-itself, to the groundless will. The single example of
self-knowledge of the will as a whole is the idea as a whole, the whole
world of perception. It is the objectification, the revelation, the mirror
of the will. What the will expresses in it will be the subject of our
further consideration.(43)
THIRD BOOK. THE WORLD AS IDEA.
Second Aspect. The Idea Independent Of The Principle Of Sufficient Reason:
The Platonic Idea: The Object Of Art.
Τί τὸ ὄν μὲν ἀεί, γένεσιν δὲ οὐκ ἔχον; καὶ τί τό γιγνόμενον μὲν
καὶ ἀπολλύμενον, ὄντως δε οὐδέποτε ὄν.——ΠΛΑΤΩΝ.
§ 30. In the First Book the world was explained as mere _idea_, object for
a subject. In the Second Book we considered it from its other side, and
found that in this aspect it is _will_, which proved to be simply that
which this world is besides being idea. In accordance with this knowledge
we called the world as idea, both as a whole and in its parts, the
_objectification of will_, which therefore means the will become object,
_i.e._, idea. Further, we remember that this objectification of will was
found to have many definite grades, in which, with gradually increasing
distinctness and completeness, the nature of will appears in the idea,
that is to say, presents itself as object. In these grades we already
recognised the Platonic Ideas, for the grades are just the determined
species, or the original unchanging forms and qualities of all natural
bodies, both organised and unorganised, and also the general forces which
reveal themselves according to natural laws. These Ideas, then, as a whole
express themselves in innumerable individuals and particulars, and are
related to these as archetypes to their copies. The multiplicity of such
individuals is only conceivable through time and space, their appearing
and passing away through causality, and in all these forms we recognise
merely the different modes of the principle of sufficient reason, which is
the ultimate principle of all that is finite, of all individual existence,
and the universal form of the idea as it appears in the knowledge of the
individual as such. The Platonic Idea, on the other hand, does not come
under this principle, and has therefore neither multiplicity nor change.
While the individuals in which it expresses itself are innumerable, and
unceasingly come into being and pass away, it remains unchanged as one and
the same, and the principle of sufficient reason has for it no meaning.
As, however, this is the form under which all knowledge of the subject
comes, so far as the subject knows as an _individual_, the Ideas lie quite
outside the sphere of its knowledge. If, therefore, the Ideas are to
become objects of knowledge, this can only happen by transcending the
individuality of the knowing subject. The more exact and detailed
explanation of this is what will now occupy our attention.
§ 31. First, however, the following very essential remark. I hope that in
the preceding book I have succeeded in producing the conviction that what
is called in the Kantian philosophy the _thing-in-itself_, and appears
there as so significant, and yet so obscure and paradoxical a doctrine,
and especially on account of the manner in which Kant introduced it as an
inference from the caused to the cause, was considered a stumbling-stone,
and, in fact, the weak side of his philosophy,—that this, I say, if it is
reached by the entirely different way by which we have arrived at it, is
nothing but the _will_ when the sphere of that conception is extended and
defined in the way I have shown. I hope, further, that after what has been
said there will be no hesitation in recognising the definite grades of the
objectification of the will, which is the inner reality of the world, to
be what Plato called the _eternal Ideas_ or unchangeable forms (ειδῆ); a
doctrine which is regarded as the principal, but at the same time the most
obscure and paradoxical dogma of his system, and has been the subject of
reflection and controversy of ridicule and of reverence to so many and
such differently endowed minds in the course of many centuries.
If now the will is for us the _thing-in-itself_, and the Idea is the
immediate objectivity of that will at a definite grade, we find that
Kant’s thing-in-itself, and Plato’s Idea, which to him is the only οντως
ον, these two great obscure paradoxes of the two greatest philosophers of
the West are not indeed identical, but yet very closely related, and only
distinguished by a single circumstance. The purport of these two great
paradoxes, with all inner harmony and relationship, is yet so very
different on account of the remarkable diversity of the individuality of
their authors, that they are the best commentary on each other, for they
are like two entirely different roads that conduct us to the same goal.
This is easily made clear. What Kant says is in substance this:—“Time,
space, and causality are not determinations of the thing-in-itself, but
belong only to its phenomenal existence, for they are nothing but the
forms of our knowledge. Since, however, all multiplicity, and all coming
into being and passing away, are only possible through time, space, and
causality, it follows that they also belong only to the phenomenon, not to
the thing-in-itself. But as our knowledge is conditioned by these forms,
the whole of experience is only knowledge of the phenomenon, not of the
thing-in-itself; therefore its laws cannot be made valid for the
thing-in-itself. This extends even to our own _ego_, and we know it only
as phenomenon, and not according to what it may be in itself.” This is the
meaning and content of the doctrine of Kant in the important respect we
are considering. What Plato says is this:—“The things of this world which
our senses perceive have no true being; _they always become, they never
are:_ they have only a relative being; they all exist merely in and
through their relations to each other; their whole being may, therefore,
quite as well be called a non-being. They are consequently not objects of
a true knowledge (επιστημη), for such a knowledge can only be of what
exists for itself, and always in the same way; they, on the contrary, are
only the objects of an opinion based on sensation (δοξα μετ᾽ αισθησεως
αλογου). So long as we are confined to the perception of these, we are
like men who sit in a dark cave, bound so fast that they cannot turn their
heads, and who see nothing but the shadows of real things which pass
between them and a fire burning behind them, the light of which casts the
shadows on the wall opposite them; and even of themselves and of each
other they see only the shadows on the wall. Their wisdom would thus
consist in predicting the order of the shadows learned from experience.
The real archetypes, on the other hand, to which these shadows correspond,
the eternal Ideas, the original forms of all things, can alone be said to
have true being (οντως ον), because they _always are, but never become nor
pass away_. To them belongs _no multiplicity_; for each of them is
according to its nature only one, for it is the archetype itself, of which
all particular transitory things of the same kind which are named after it
are copies or shadows. They have also _no coming into being nor passing
away_, for they are truly being, never becoming nor vanishing, like their
fleeting shadows. (It is necessarily presupposed, however, in these two
negative definitions, that time, space, and causality have no significance
or validity for these Ideas, and that they do not exist in them.) Of these
only can there be true knowledge, for the object of such knowledge can
only be that which always and in every respect (thus in-itself) is; not
that which is and again is not, according as we look at it.” This is
Plato’s doctrine. It is clear, and requires no further proof that the
inner meaning of both doctrines is entirely the same; that both explain
the visible world as a manifestation, which in itself is nothing, and
which only has meaning and a borrowed reality through that which expresses
itself in it (in the one case the thing-in-itself, in the other the Idea).
To this last, which has true being, all the forms of that phenomenal
existence, even the most universal and essential, are, according to both
doctrines, entirely foreign. In order to disown these forms Kant has
directly expressed them even in abstract terms, and distinctly refused
time, space, and causality as mere forms of the phenomenon to the
thing-in-itself. Plato, on the other hand, did not attain to the fullest
expression, and has only distinctly refused these forms to his Ideas in
that he denies of the Ideas what is only possible through these forms,
multiplicity of similar things, coming into being and passing away. Though
it is perhaps superfluous, I should like to illustrate this remarkable and
important agreement by an example. There stands before us, let us suppose,
an animal in the full activity of life. Plato would say, “This animal has
no true existence, but merely an apparent existence, a constant becoming,
a relative existence which may just as well be called non-being as being.
Only the Idea which expresses itself in that animal is truly ‘being,’ or
the animal in-itself (αυτο το θηριον), which is dependent upon nothing,
but is in and for itself (καθ᾽ ἑαυτο, αει ὡς αυτως); it has not become, it
will not end, but always is in the same way (αει ον, και μηδεποτε ουτε
γυγνομενον ουτε απολλυμενον). If now we recognise its Idea in this animal,
it is all one and of no importance whether we have this animal now before
us or its progenitor of a thousand years ago, whether it is here or in a
distant land, whether it presents itself in this or that manner, position,
or action; whether, lastly, it is this or any other individual of the same
species; all this is nothing, and only concerns the phenomenon; the Idea
of the animal alone has true being, and is the object of real knowledge.”
So Plato; Kant would say something of this kind, “This animal is a
phenomenon in time, space, and causality, which are collectively the
conditions _a priori_ of the possibility of experience, lying in our
faculty of knowledge, not determinations of the thing-in-itself. Therefore
this animal as we perceive it at this definite point of time, in this
particular place, as an individual in the connection of experience
(_i.e._, in the chain of causes and effects), which has come into being,
and will just as necessarily pass away, is not a thing-in-itself, but a
phenomenon which only exists in relation to our knowledge. To know it as
what it may be in itself, that is to say, independent of all the
determinations which lie in time, space, and causality, would demand
another kind of knowledge than that which is possible for us through the
senses and the understanding.”
In order to bring Kant’s mode of expression nearer the Platonic, we might
say: Time, space, and causality are that arrangement of our intellect by
virtue of which the _one_ being of each kind which alone really is,
manifests itself to us as a multiplicity of similar beings, constantly
appearing and disappearing in endless succession. The apprehension of
things by means of and in accordance with this arrangement is _immanent_
knowledge; that, on the other hand, which is conscious of the true state
of the case, is _transcendental_ knowledge. The latter is obtained _in
abstracto_ through the criticism of pure reason, but in exceptional cases
it may also appear intuitively. This last is an addition of my own, which
I am endeavouring in this Third Book to explain.
If the doctrine of Kant had ever been properly understood and grasped, and
since Kant’s time that of Plato, if men had truly and earnestly reflected
on the inner meaning and content of the teaching of these two great
masters, instead of involving themselves in the technicalities of the one
and writing parodies of the style of the other, they could not have failed
to discern long ago to what an extent these two great philosophers agree,
and that the true meaning, the aim of both systems, is the same. Not only
would they have refrained from constantly comparing Plato to Leibnitz, on
whom his spirit certainly did not rest, or indeed to a well-known
gentleman who is still alive,(44) as if they wanted to mock the manes of
the great thinker of the past; but they would have advanced much farther
in general, or rather they would not have fallen so disgracefully far
behind as they have in the last forty years. They would not have let
themselves be led by the nose, to-day by one vain boaster and to-morrow by
another, nor would they have opened the nineteenth century, which promised
so much in Germany, with the philosophical farces that were performed over
the grave of Kant (as the ancients sometimes did at the funeral obsequies
of their dead), and which deservedly called forth the derision of other
nations, for such things least become the earnest and strait-laced German.
But so small is the chosen public of true philosophers, that even students
who understand are but scantily brought them by the centuries—Εισι δη
ναρθηκοφοροι μεν πολλοι, βακχοι δε γε παυροι (_Thyrsigeri quidem multi,
Baachi vero pauci_). Ἡ ατιμια φιλοσοφιᾳ δια ταυτα προσπεπτωκεν, ὁτι ου κατ
αξιαν αυτης ἁπτονται; ου γαρ νοθους εδει ἁπτεσθαι, αλλα γνησιους (_Eam ob
rem philosophia in infamiam incidit, quad non pro dignitate ipsam
attingunt: neque enim a spuriis, sad a legitimis erat
attrectanda_).—Plato.
Men followed the words,—such words as “_a priori_ ideas,” “forms of
perception and thought existing in consciousness independently of
experience,” “fundamental conceptions of the pure understanding,” &c.,
&c.,—and asked whether Plato’s Ideas, which were also original
conceptions, and besides this were supposed to be reminiscences of a
perception before life of the truly real things, were in some way the same
as Kant’s forms of perception and thought, which lie _a priori_ in our
consciousness. On account of some slight resemblance in the expression of
these two entirely different doctrines, the Kantian doctrine of the forms
which limit the knowledge of the individual to the phenomenon, and the
Platonic doctrine of Ideas, the knowledge of which these very forms
expressly deny, these so far diametrically opposed doctrines were
carefully compared, and men deliberated and disputed as to whether they
were identical, found at last that they were not the same, and concluded
that Plato’s doctrine of Ideas and Kant’s “Critique of Reason” had nothing
in common. But enough of this.(45)