SCHELLING'S CO-WORKERS.
In his period of vigorous creation Schelling was the center of an animated
philosophical activity. Each phase of his philosophy found a circle of
enthusiastic fellow-laborers, whom we must hesitate to term disciples
because of their independence and of their reaction on Schelling himself.
Only G.M. Klein (1776-1820, professor in Würzburg), Stutzmann (died 1816
in Erlangen; _Philosophy of the Universe_, 1806; _Philosophy of History_,
1808), and the historians of philosophy Ast and Rixner can be called
disciples of Schelling. Prominent among his co-workers in the philosophy
of nature were Steffens, Oken, Schubert, and Carus; besides these the
physiologist Burdach, the pathologist Kieser, the plant physiologist Nees
von Esenbeck, and the medical thinker Schelver (_Philosophy of Medicine_,
1809) deserve mention. Besides Hegel, J.J. Wagner and Friedrich Krause
distinguished themselves as independent founders of systems of identity;
Troxler, Suabedissen, and Berger are also to be assigned to this group.
Baader and Schleiermacher were competitors of Schelling in the philosophy
of religion, and Solger in aesthetics. Finally Fr. J. Stahl (died 1861;
_Philosophy of Right_, 1830 _seq_..), was also influenced by Schelling.
There is a wide divergence in Schelling's school, as J.E. Erdmann
accurately remarks, between the naturalistic pantheist Oken and the
mystical theosophist Baader, in whom elements which had been united in
Schelling appear divided.
%1. The Philosophers of Nature.%
Henrik Steffens[1] (a Norwegian, 1773-1845; professor in Halle, Breslau,
and Berlin) makes individual development the goal of nature--which is first
completely attained in man and in his peculiarity or talent--and holds that
the catastrophes of the spirit are reflected in the history of the earth.
Lorenz Oken[2] (1779-1851; professor in Jena 1807-27, then in Munich and
Zurich) identifies God and the universe, which comes to self-consciousness
in man, the most perfect animal; teaches the development of organisms from
an original slime (a mass of organic elements, infusoria, or cells); and
looks on the animal kingdom as man anatomized, in that the animal world
contains in isolated development that which man possesses collected in
minute organs--the worm is the feeling animal, the insect the light animal,
the snail the touch animal, the bird the hearing animal, the fish the
smelling animal, the amphibian the taste animal, the mammal the animal of
all senses.
[Footnote 1: Steffens, _Contributions to the Inner Natural History of the
Earth_, 1801; _Caricatures of the Holiest_, 1819-21; _Anthropology_, 1822.]
[Footnote 2: Oken: _On the Significance of the Bones of the Skull_, 1807;
_Text-book of the Philosophy of Nature_, 1809-11, 2d ed. 1831, 3d ed. 1843;
the journal _Isis_, from 1817. On Oken cf. C. Güttler, 1885.]
While in Steffens geological interests predominate, and in Oken biological
interests, Schubert, Carus, and Ennemoser are the psychologists of the
school. Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert[1] (1780-1860; professor in Erlangen and
Munich) brings the human soul into intimate relation with the world-soul,
whose phantasy gives form to all that is corporeal, and delights to dwell
on the abnormal and mysterious phenomena of the inner life, the border-land
between the physical and the psychical, on the unconscious and the
half-conscious, on presentiments and clairvoyance, as from another
direction also Schelling's philosophy was brought into perilous connection
with somnambulism. A second predominantly contemplative thinker was Karl
Gustav Carus[2] (1789-1869; at his death in Dresden physician to the king;
_Lectures on Psychology_, 1831; _Psyche_, 1846; _Physis_, 1851), greatly
distinguished for his services to comparative anatomy. Carus endows the
cell with unconscious psychical life,--a memory for the past shows itself
in the inheritance of dispositions and talents, just as the formation of
milk in the breasts of the pregnant and the formation of lungs in the
embryo betray a prevision of the future,--and points out that with the
higher development of organic and spiritual life the antitheses constantly
become more articulate: individual differences are greater among men than
among women, among adults than among children, among Europeans than among
negroes.
[Footnote 1: G.H. Schubert: _Views of the Dark Side of Natural Science_,
1808; _The Primeval World and the Fixed Stars_, 1822; _History of the
Soul_, 1830 (in briefer form, _Text-book of the Science of Man and of the
Soul_, 1838).]
[Footnote 2: Not to be confused with Friedrich August Carus (1770-1807;
professor in Leipsic), whose _History of Psychology_, 1808, forms the third
part of his posthumous works.]
%2. The Philosophers of Identity.%
It has been said of the Dane Johann Erich von Berger (1772-1833; from
1814 professor in Kiel; _Universal Outlines of Science_, 1817-27) that
he adopted a middle course between Fichte and Schelling. The same may be
asserted of Karl Ferdinand Solger (1780-1819; at his death professor in
Berlin; _Erwin, Four Dialogues on Beauty and Art_, 1815; _Lectures on
Aesthetics_, edited by Heyse, 1829), who points out the womb of the
beautiful in the fancy, and introduces into aesthetics the concept of
irony, that spirit of sadness at the vanity of the finite, though this is
needed by the Idea in order to its manifestation.
In Johann Jacob Wagner[1] (1775-1841; professor in Würzburg) and in J.P.V.
Troxler[2] (1780-1866) we find, as in Steffens, a fourfold division instead
of Schelling's triads. Both Wagner and Troxler find an exact correspondence
between the laws of the universe and those of the human mind. Wagner
(in conformity to the categories essence and form, opposition and
reconciliation) makes all becoming and cognition advance from unity to
quadruplicity, and finds the four stages of knowledge in representation,
perception, judgment, and Idea. Troxler shares with Fries the
anthropological standpoint, (philosophy is anthropology, knowledge of the
world is self-knowledge), and distinguishes, besides the emotional nature
or the unity of human nature, four constituents thereof, spirit,
higher soul, lower soul (body, _Leib_), and body _(Körper)_, and four
corresponding kinds of knowledge, in reverse order, sensuous perception,
experience, reason, and spiritual intuition, of which the middle two are
mediate or reflective in character, while the first and last are intuitive.
For D. Th. A. Suabedissen also (1773-1835; professor in Marburg;
_Examination of Man_, 1815-18) philosophy is the science of man, and
self-knowledge its starting point.
[Footnote 1: J.J. Wagner: _Ideal Philosophy_, 1804; _Mathematical
Philosophy_, 1811; _Organon of Human Knowledge_, 1830, in three parts,
System of the World, of Knowledge, and of Language. On Wagner cf. L. Rabus,
1862.]
[Footnote 2: Troxler: _Glances into the Nature of Man_, 1812;
_Metaphysics_, 1828; _Logic_, 1830.]
The relatively limited reputation enjoyed in his own time and to-day by
Friedrich Krause[1] (born in Eisenberg 1781; habilitated in Jena 1802;
lived privately in Dresden; became a _Privatdocent_ in Göttingen from 1824;
and died at Munich 1832; _Prototype of Humanity_, 1812, and numerous other
works) has been due, on the one hand, to the appearance of his more gifted
contemporary Hegel, and, on the other, to his peculiar terminology. He not
only Germanized all foreign words in a spirit of exaggerated purism, but
also coined new verbal roots, _(Mäl, Ant, Or, Om)_ and from these formed
the most extraordinary combinations (_Vereinselbganzweseninnesein,
Oromlebselbstschauen_). His most important pupil, Ahrens (professor in
Leipsic, died 1874; _Course of Philosophy_, 1836-38; _Natural Right_,
1852), helped Krause's doctrine to gain recognition in France and Belgium
by his fine translations into French; while it was introduced into Spain by
J.S. del Rio of Madrid (died 1869).--Since the finite is a negative, the
infinite a positive concept, and hence the knowledge of the infinite
primal, the principle of philosophy is the absolute, and philosophy itself
knowledge of God or the theory of essence. The Subjective Analytic Course
leads from the self-viewing of the ego up to the vision of God; the
Synthetic Course starts from the fundamental Idea, God, and deduces from
this the partial Ideas, or presents the world as the revelation of God. For
his attempted reconciliation of theism and pantheism Krause invented the
name panentheism, meaning thereby that God neither is the world nor stands
outside the world, but has the world in himself and extends beyond it. He
is absolute identity, nature and reason are relative identity, viz., the
identity of the real and ideal, the former with the character of reality,
the latter with the character of ideality. Or, the absolute considered from
the side of its wholeness (infinity) is nature, considered from the side of
its selfhood (unconditionality) is reason; God is the common root of both.
Above nature and reason is humanity, which combines in itself the highest
products of both, the most perfect animal body and self-consciousness. The
humanity of earth, the humanity known to us, is but a very small portion of
the humanity of the universe, which in the multitude of its members, which
cannot be increased, constitutes the divine state. Krause's most important
work is his philosophy of right and of history, with its marks of a highly
keyed idealism. He treats human right as an effluence of divine right;
besides the state or legal union, he recognizes many other
associations--the science and the art union, the religious society, the
league of virtue or ethical union. His philosophy of history
(_General Theory of Life_, edited by Von Leonhardi, 1843) follows the
Fichteo-Hegelian rhythm, unity, division, and reunion, and correlates the
several ages with these. The first stage is germinal life; the second,
youth; the third, maturity. The culmination is followed by a
reverse movement from counter-maturity, through counter-youth, to
counter-childhood, whereupon the development recommences--without
cessation. It is to be regretted that this noble-minded man joined to his
warm-hearted disposition, broad outlook, and rigorous method a heated
fancy, which, crippling the operation of these advantageous qualities,
led his thought quite too far away from reality. Ahrens, Von Leonhardi,
Lindemann, and Roeder may be mentioned as followers of Krause.
[Footnote 1: On Krause cf. P. Hohlfeld, _Die Krausesche Philosophic_, 1879;
B. Martin, 1881; R. Eucken, _Zur Erinnerung an Krause, Festrede_, 1881.
From his posthumous works Hohlfeld and Wünsche have published the _Lectures
on Aesthetics_, the _System of Aesthetics_ (both 1882), and numerous other
treatises.]
%3. The Philosophers of Religion.%
Franz (von) Baader, the son of a physician, was born in Munich in 1765,
resided there as superintendent of mines, and, from 1826, as professor
of speculative dogmatics, and died there also in 1841. His works, which
consisted only of a series of brief treatises, were collected (16 vols.,
1851-60) by his most important adherent, Franz Hoffman[1] (at his death in
1881 professor in Würzburg). Baader may be characterized as a mediaeval
thinker who has worked through the critical philosophy, and who, a
believing, yet liberal Catholic, endeavors to solve with the instruments
of modern speculation the old Scholastic problem of the reconciliation of
faith and knowledge. His themes are, on the one hand, the development
of God, and, on the other, the fall and redemption, which mean for him,
however, not merely inner phenomena, but world-events. He is in sympathy
with the Neoplatonists, with Augustine, with Thomas Aquinas, with Eckhart,
with Paracelsus, above all, with Jacob Böhme, and Böhme's follower Louis
Claude St. Martin (1743-1804), but does not overlook the value of the
modern German philosophy. With Kant he begins the inquiry with the problem
of knowledge; with Fichte he finds in self-consciousness the essence,
and not merely a property, of spirit; with Hegel he looks on God or
the absolute spirit not only as the object, but also as the subject
of knowledge. He rejects, however, the autonomy of the will and the
spontaneity of thought; and though he criticises the Cartesian separation
between the thought of the creator and that of the creature, he as little
approves the pantheistic identification of the two--human cognition
participates in the divine, without constituting a part of it.
[Footnote 1: Besides Hoffman, Lutterbeck and Hamberger have described and
expounded Baader's system. See also Baumann's paper in the _Philosophische
Monatshefte_, vol. xiv., 1878, p. 321 _seq_.]
In accordance with its three principal objects, "God, Nature, and Man,"
philosophy divides into fundamental science (logic or the theory of
knowledge and theology), the philosophy of nature (cosmology or the
theory of creation and physics), and the philosophy of spirit (ethics and
sociology). In all its parts it must receive religious treatment. Without
God we cannot know God. In our cognition of God he is at once knower
and known; our being and all being is a being known by him; our
self-consciousness is a consciousness of being known by God: _cogitor, ergo
cogito et sum_; my being and thinking are based on my being thought by
God. Conscience is a joint knowing with God's knowing (_conscientia_).
The relation between the known and the knower is threefold. Cognition is
incomplete and lacks the free co-operation of the knower when God merely
pervades (_durchwohnt_) the creature, as is the case with the devil's
timorous and reluctant knowledge of God. A higher stage is reached when the
known is present to the knower and dwells with him (_beiwohnt_). Cognition
becomes really free and perfect when God dwells in (_inwohnt_) the
creature, in which case the finite reason yields itself freely and in
admiration to the divine reason, lets the latter speak in itself, and
feels its rule, not as foreign, but as its own. (Baader maintains a like
threefoldness in the practical sphere: the creature is either the object
or, rather, the passive recipient, or the organ, or the representative of
the divine action, i.e., in the first case, God alone works; in the second,
he co-operates with the creature; in the third, the creature works with the
forces and in the name of God. Joyful obedience, conscious of its grounds,
is the highest freedom). Knowing and loving, thought and volition,
knowledge and faith, philosophy and dogma are as little to be abstractly
divided as thing and self, being and thought, object and subject. True
freedom and genuine speculation are neither blind traditional belief nor
doubting, God-estranged thinking, but the free recognition of authority,
and self-attained conviction of the truth of the Church doctrine.
Baader distinguishes a twofold creation of the world and a double process
of development (an esoteric and an exoteric revelation) of God himself.
The creation of the ideal world, as a free act of love, is a non-deducible
fact; the theogonic process, on the contrary, is a necessary event by which
God becomes a unity returning from division to itself, and so a living God.
The eternal self-generation of God is a twofold birth: in the immanent
or logical process the unsearchable will (Father) gives birth to the
comprehensible will (Son) to unite with it as Spirit; the place of this
self-revelation is wisdom or the Idea. In the emanent or real process,
since desire or nature is added to the Idea and is overcome by it, these
three moments become actual persons. In the creation of the--at first
immaterial--world, in which God unites, not with his essence, but with
his image only, the same two powers, desire and wisdom, operate as the
principles of matter and form. The materialization of the world is a
consequence of the fall. Evil consists in the elevation of selfhood, which
springs from desire, into self-seeking. Lucifer fell because of pride, and
man, yielding to Lucifer's temptation, from baseness, by falling in love
with nature beneath him. By the creation of matter God has out of pity
preserved the world, which was corrupted by the fall, from the descent into
hell, and at the same time has given man occasion for moral endeavor.
The appearance of Christ, the personification of the moral law, is the
beginning of reconciliation, which man appropriates through the sacrament.
Nature participates in the redemption, as in the corruption.
Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher was born in 1768 at Breslau, and died
in 1834 in Berlin, where he had become preacher at Trinity church in 1809,
professor of theology in 1810, member of the philosophical section of the
Academy in 1811, and its secretary in 1814. Reared in the Moravian schools
at Niesky and Barby, he studied at Halle; and, between 1794 and 1804, was a
preacher in Landsberg on the Warthe, in Berlin (at the Charité Hospital),
and in Stolpe, then professor in Halle. He first attracted attention by the
often republished _Discourses on Religion addressed to the Educated among
those who despise it_, 1799 (critical edition by Pünjer, 1879), which was
followed in the succeeding year by the _Monologues_, and the anonymous
_Confidential Letters on Lucinde (Lucinde_ was the work of his friend Fr.
Schlegel). Besides several collections of sermons, mention must further
be made of his _Outlines of a Critique of Previous Ethics_, 1803; _The
Celebration of Christmas_, 1806; and his chief theological work, _The
Christian Faith_, 1822, new edition 1830. In the third (the philosophical)
division of his _Collected Works_ (1835-64) the second and third volumes
contain the essays on the history of philosophy, on ethical, and on
academic subjects; vols. vi. to ix., the Lectures on Psychology, Esthetics,
the Theory of the State, and Education, edited by George, Lommatsch,
Brandis, and Platz; and the first part of vol. iv., the _History of
Philosophy_ (to Spinoza), edited by Ritter. The _Monologues_ and _The
Celebration of Christmas_ have appeared in _Reclam's Bibliothek_.
Schleiermacher's philosophy is a rendezvous for the most diverse systems.
Side by side with ideas from Kant, Fichte, and Schelling we meet Platonic,
Spinozistic, and Leibnitzian elements; even Jacobi and the Romanticists
have contributed their mite. Schleiermacher is an eclectic, but one who,
amid the fusion of the most diverse ideas, knows how to make his own
individuality felt. In spite of manifold echoes of the philosophemes of
earlier and of contemporary thinkers, his system is not a conglomeration
of unrelated lines of thought, but resembles a plant, which in its own way
works over and assimilates the nutritive elements taken up from the
soil. Schleiermacher is attractive rather than impressive; he is less a
discoverer than a critic and systematizer. His fine critical sense works in
the service of a positive aim, subserves a harmonizing tendency; he
takes no pleasure in breaking to pieces, but in adjusting, limiting, and
combining. There is no one of the given views which entirely satisfies him,
none which simply repels him; each contains elements which seem to him
worthy of transformation and adoption. When he finds himself confronted by
a sharp conflict of opinion, he seeks by careful mediation to construct
a whole out of the two "half truths," though this, it is true, does not
always give a result more satisfactory than the partial views which he
wishes to reconcile. A single example may be given of this conciliatory
tendency: space, time, and the categories are not only subjective forms of
knowledge, but at the same time objective forms of reality. "Not only"
is the watchword of his philosophy, which became the prototype of the
numberless "ideal realisms" with which Germany was flooded after Hegel's
death. If the skeptical and eclectic movements, which constantly make their
appearance together, are elsewhere divided among different thinkers, they
here come together in one mind in the form of a mediating criticism, which,
although it argues logically, is yet in the end always guided by the
invisible cords of a _feeling_ of justice in matters scientific. In its
weaker portions Schleiermacher's philosophy is marked by lack of grasp,
pettiness, and sportiveness. It lacks courage and force, and the rare
delicacy of the thought is not entirely able to compensate for this defect.
In its fear of one-sidedness it takes refuge in the arms of an often
faint-hearted policy of reconciliation.
We shall not discuss the specifically theological achievements of this
many-sided man, nor his great services in behalf of the philological
knowledge of the history of philosophy--through his translation of Plato,
1804-28, and a series of valuable essays on Greek thinkers--but shall
confine our attention to the leading principles of his theory of knowledge,
of religion, and of ethics.
The _Dialectic_[1] (edited by Jonas, 1839), treats in a transcendental part
and a technical or formal part of the concept and the forms of knowledge.
_Knowledge_ is thought. What distinguishes that thought which we call
knowledge from that other thought which does not deserve this honorable
title, from mere opinion? Two criteria: its agreement with the thought of
other thinkers (its universality and necessity), and its agreement with
the being which is thought in it. That thought alone is knowledge which is
represented as necessarily valid for all who are capable of thought, and
as corresponding to a being or reproducing it. These two agreements (among
thinkers, and of thought with the being which is thought) are the criteria
of knowledge--let us turn now to its factors. These are essentially the
two brought forward by Kant, sensibility and understanding; Schleiermacher
calls them the organic function and the intellectual function. The organic
activity of the senses furnishes us, in sensations, the unordered, manifold
material of knowledge, which is formed and unified by the activity of
reason. If we except two concepts which limit our knowledge, chaos and
God--absolute formlessness or chaos is an idea just as incapable of
realization as absolute unity or deity--every actual cognition is a product
of both factors, of the sensuous organization and of reason. But these two
do not play equal parts in every cognitive act. When the organic function
is predominant we have perception; when the intellectual function
predominates we have thought in the strict sense. A perfect balance of the
two would be intuition, which, however, constitutes the goal of knowledge,
never fully to be realized. These two kinds of knowledge, therefore, are
not specifically, but only relatively, different: in all perception reason
is also active, and in all thought sensibility, only to a less degree than
the opposite function. Moreover, perception and thought, or sensibility and
reason, are by no means to relate to different objects. They have the same
object, only that the organic activity represents it as an indefinite,
chaotic manifold, while the activity of reason (whose work consists
in discrimination and combination), represents it as a well-ordered
multiplicity and unity. It is the same being which is represented by
perception in the form of an "image," and by thought in the form of a
"concept." In the former case we have the world as chaos; in the latter, we
have it as cosmos. Inasmuch as the two factors in knowledge represent the
same object in relatively different ways, it may be said of them that they
are opposed to each other, and yet identical. The same is true of the two
modes of being which Schleiermacher posits as real and ideal over against
the two factors in thought. The real is that which corresponds to the
organic function, the ideal that which corresponds to the activity of
reason. These forms of being also are opposed, and yet identical. Our
self-consciousness gives clear proof of the fact that _thought and being_
can be _identical_; in it, as thinking being, we have the identity of the
real and the ideal, of being and thought immediately given. As the ego,
in which the subject of thought and the object of thought are one, is the
undivided ground of its several activities, so God is the primal unity,
which lies at the basis of the totality of the world. As in Schelling, the
absolute is described as self-identical, absolute unity, exalted above
the antithesis of real and ideal, nay, above all antitheses. God is the
negation of opposites, the world the totality of them. If there were
an adequate knowledge of the absolute identity it would be an absolute
knowledge. This is denied, however, to us men, who are never able to rise
above the opposition of sensuous and intellectual cognition. The unity of
thought and being is presupposed in all thinking, but can never actually
be thought. As an Idea this identity is indispensable, but to think it
definitely, either by conception or judgment, is impossible. The concepts
supreme power (God or creative nature) and supreme cause (fate or
providence) do not attain to that which we seek to think in them: that
which has in it no opposition is an idea incapable of realization by man,
but, nevertheless, a necessary ideal, the presupposition of all cognition
(and volition), and the ground of all certitude. All knowledge must be
related to the absolute unity and be accompanied by it. Since, then, the
absolute identity cannot be presented, but ever sought for only, and
absolute knowledge exists only as an ideal, dialectic is not so much a
science as a technique of thought and proof, an introduction to philosophic
thinking or (since knowledge is thought in common) to discussion in
conformity with the rules of the art. With this the name dialectic returns
to its original Platonic meaning.
[Footnote 1: Cf. Quaebicker, _Ueber Schleiermachers erkeuntnisstheoretische
Grundansicht_, 1871, and the _Inquiries_ by Bruno Weiss in the _Zeitschrift
für Philosophie_, vols. lxxiii.-lxxv., 1878-79.]
The popular ideas of God ill stand examination by the standard furnished
by the principle of identity. The plurality of attributes which we are
accustomed to ascribe to God agree but poorly with his unity free from all
contrariety. In reality God does not possess these manifold attributes;
they first arise in the religious consciousness, in which his unconditioned
and undivided working is variously reflected and, as it were, divided. They
are only the various reflections of his undivided nature in the mind of
the observer. In God ability and performance, intelligence and will, his
thought of self and his thought of the world coincide in one. Even
the concept of personality must not be ascribed to God, since it is a
limitation of the infinite and belongs to mythology; while the idea of
life, on the contrary, is allowable as a protection against atheism and
fatalism. When Schleiermacher, further, equates the activity of God and the
causality of nature he ranges himself on the pantheistic side in regard
to the question of the "immanence or transcendence of God," without being
willing to acknowledge it. It sounds Spinozistic enough when he says: God
never was without the world, he exists neither before nor outside it, we
know him only _in_ us and in things. Besides that which he actually brings
forth, God could not produce anything further, and just as little does he
miraculously interfere in the course of the world as regulated by natural
law. Everything takes place necessarily, and man is distinguished above
other beings neither by freedom (if by freedom we understand anything more
than inner necessitation) nor by eternal existence. Like all individual
beings, so we are but changing states in the life of the universe, which,
as they have arisen, will disappear again. The common representations of
immortality, with their hope of future compensation, are far from pious.
The true immortality of religion is this--amid finitude to become one with
the infinite, and in one moment to be eternal.
Schleiermacher's optimism well harmonizes with this view of the relation
between God and the world. If the universe is the phenomenon of the
divine activity, then considered as a whole it is perfect; whatever of
imperfection we find in it, is merely the inevitable result of finitude.
The bad is merely the less perfect; everything is as good as it can be;
the world is the best possible; everything is in its right place; even the
meanest thing is indispensable; even the mistakes of men are to be treated
with consideration. All is good and divine. In this way Schleiermacher
weds ideas from Spinoza to Leibnitzian conceptions. From the former he
appropriates pantheism, from the latter optimism and the concept of
individuality; he shares determinism with both: all events, even the
decisions of the will, are subject to the law of necessity.
In the _philosophy of religion_ Schleiermacher created a new epoch by his
separation between religion and related departments with which it had often
been identified before his time, as it has been since. In its origin and
essence religion is not a matter of knowing, further, not a matter of
willing, but a matter of the heart. It lies quite outside the sphere of
speculation and of practice, coincides neither with metaphysics nor with
ethics, is not knowledge and not volition, but an intermediate third: it
has its own province in the emotional nature, where it reigns without
limitation; its essence is intuition and feeling in undivided unity. In
_feeling_ is revealed the presence of the infinite; in feeling we become
immediately aware of the Deity. The absolute, which in cognition and
volition we only presuppose and demand, but never attain, is actually
given in feeling alone as the relative identity and the common ground
of cognition and volition. Religion is _piety_, an affective, not an
objective, consciousness. And if certain religious ideas and actions
ally themselves with the pious state of mind, these are not essential
constituents of religion, but derivative elements, which possess a
religious significance only in so far as they immediately develop from
piety and exert an influence upon it. That which makes an act religious
is always feeling as a point of indifference between knowing and doing,
between receptive and forthgoing activity, as the center and junction
of all the powers of the soul, as the very focus of personality. And as
feeling in general is the middle point in the life of the soul, so, again,
the religious feeling is the root of all genuine feeling. What sort of a
feeling, then, is piety? Schleiermacher answers: A feeling of _absolute
dependence_. Dependence on what? On the universe, on God. Religion grows
out of the longing after the infinite, it is the sense and taste for the
All, the direction toward the eternal, the impulse toward the absolute
unity, immediate experience of the world harmony; like art, religion is the
immediate apprehension of a whole. In and before God all that is individual
disappears, the religious man sees one and the same thing in all that is
particular. To represent all events in the world as actions of a God,
to see God in all and all in God, to feel one's self one with the
eternal,--this is religion. As we look on all being within us and without
as proceeding from the world-ground, as determined by an ultimate cause, we
feel ourselves dependent on the divine causality. Like all that is finite,
we also are the effect of the absolute Power. While we stand in a relation
of interaction with the individual parts of the world, and feel ourselves
partially free in relation to them, we can only receive effects from God
without answering them; even our self-activity we have from him.
Nevertheless the feeling of dependence is not to be depressing, not
humbling merely, but the joyous sense of an exaltation and broadening of
life. In our devotion to the universe we participate in the life of the
universe; by leaning on the infinite we supplement our finitude--religion
makes up for the needy condition of man by bringing him into relation with
the absolute, and teaching him to know and to feel himself a part of the
whole.
From this elevating influence of religion, which Schleiermacher eloquently
depicts, it is at once evident that his definition of it as a feeling of
absolute dependence is only half correct. It needs to be supplemented by
the feeling of freedom, which exalts us by the consciousness of the oneness
of the human reason and the divine. It is only to this side of religion,
neglected by Schleiermacher, that we can ascribe its inspiring influence,
which he in vain endeavors to derive from the feeling of dependence. Power
can never spring from humility as such. This defect, however, does not
detract from Schleiermacher's merit in assigning to religion a special
field of spiritual activity. While Kant treats religion as an appendix to
ethics, and Hegel, with a one-sidedness which is still worse, reduces it to
an undeveloped form of knowledge, Schleiermacher recognizes that it is
not a mere concomitant phenomenon--whether an incidental result or a
preliminary stage--of morality or cognition, but something independent,
co-ordinate with volition and cognition, and of equal legitimacy. The proof
that religion has its habitation in feeling is the more deserving of thanks
since it by no means induced Schleiermacher to overlook the connection of
the God-consciousness with self-consciousness and the consciousness of
the world. Schleiermacher's theory, moreover, may be held correct without
ignoring the relatively legitimate elements in the views of religion which
he attacked. With the view that religion has its seat in feeling, it is
quite possible to combine a recognition of the fact that it has its origin
in the will, and its basis in morals, and that, further, it has the
significance of being (to use Schopenhauer's words) the "metaphysics of the
people."
Although religion and piety be made synonymous, it must still be admitted
that in a being capable of knowing and willing as well as of feeling, this
devout frame will have results in the spheres of cognition and action. In
regard to _cultus_ Schleiermacher maintains that a religious observance
which does not spring from one's own feeling and find an echo therein is
superstitious, and demands that religious feeling, like a sacred melody,
accompany all human action, that everything be done with religion, nothing
from religion. Instead of expressing itself in single specifically
religious actions, the religious feeling should uniformly pervade the whole
life. Let a private room be the temple where the voice of the priest is
raised. Dogmas, again, are descriptions of pious excitation, and take their
origin in man's reflection on his religious feelings, in his endeavor to
explain them, in his expression of them in ideas and words. The concepts
and principles of theology are valid only as descriptions and presentations
of feelings, not as cognitions; by their unavoidable anthropomorphic
character alone they are completely unfitted for science. The dogmatic
system is an envelopment which religion accepts with a smile. He who treats
religious doctrines as science falls into empty mythology. Principles of
faith and principles of knowledge are in no way related to one another,
neither by way of opposition nor by way of agreement; they never come into
contact. A theology in the sense of an actual science of God is impossible.
Further, out of its dogmas the Church constructs prescriptive symbols, a
step which must be deplored. It is to be hoped that some time religion will
no longer have need of the Church. In view of the present condition of
affairs it must be said that the more religious a man is the more secular
he must become, and that the cultured man opposes the Church in order to
promote religion.
So-called natural religion is nothing more than an abstraction of thought;
in reality positive religions alone exist. Because of the infinity of God
and the finitude of man, the one, universal, eternal religion can only
manifest itself in the form of particular historical religions, which
are termed revealed because founded by religious heroes, creative
personalities, in whom an especially lively religious feeling is aroused by
a new view of the universe, and determines (not, like artistic inspiration,
single moments, but) their whole existence. Three stages are to be
distinguished in the development of religion, according as the world is
represented as an unordered unity (chaos), or as an indeterminate manifold
of forces and elements (plurality without unity), or, finally, as an
organized plurality dominated by unity (system)--fetichism with fatalism,
polytheism, mono- (including pan-) theism. Among the religions of the third
stadium Islam is physical or aesthetic in spirit; Judaism and Christianity,
on the other hand, ethical or teleological. The Christian religion is
the most perfect, because it gives the central place to the concept
of redemption and reconciliation (hence to that which is essential to
religion) instead of to the Jewish idea of retribution.
The concept of individuality became of the highest importance for
Schleiermacher's ethics, as well as for his philosophy of religion; and
by his high appreciation of it he ranges himself with Leibnitz, Herder,
Goethe, and Novalis. Now two sides may be distinguished both in regard to
that which the individual is and to that which he ought to accomplish. Like
every particular being, man is an abbreviated, concentrated presentation of
the universe; he contains everything in himself, contains all, that is, in
a not yet unfolded, germinal manner, awaiting development in life in time,
but yet in a form peculiar to him, which is never repeated elsewhere. This
yields a twofold moral task. The individual ought to rouse into actuality
the infinite fullness of content which he possesses as possibility, as
slumbering germs, should harmoniously develop his capacities; yet in this
he must not look upon the unique form which has been bestowed upon him
as worthless. He is not to feel himself a mere specimen, an unimportant
repetition of the type, but as a particular, and in this particularity a
significant, expression of the absolute, whose omission would cause a gap
in the world. It is surprising that the majority of the thinkers who
have defended the value of individuality lay far less stress upon the
micro-cosmical nature of the individual and the development of his
capacities in all directions than on care for his peculiar qualities.
So also Schleiermacher. Yet he gradually returned from the extreme
individualism--the _Monologues_ affect one almost repellently by the
impulse which they give to vain self-reflection--which he at first
defended.
In the _Ethics_ (edited by Kirchmann, 1870; earlier editions by Schweizer,
1835, and Twesten, 1841) Schleiermacher brings the well-nigh forgotten
concept of goods again into honor. The three points of view from which
ethics is to be discussed, and each of which presents the whole ethical
field in its own peculiar way--the good, virtue, duty--are related as
resultant, force, and law of motion. Every union of reason and nature
produced by the action of the former on the latter is called a _good_; the
sum of these unities, the highest good. According as reason uses nature
as an instrument in formation or as a symbol in cognition her action is
formative or indicative; it is, further, either common or peculiar. On the
crossing of these (fluctuating) distinctions of identical and individual
organization and symbolization is based the division of the theory of
goods:
SPHERES. RELATIONS. GOODS.
_Ident. Organ.:_ Intercourse. Right. The State.
_Individ. Organ.:_ Property. Free Sociability. Class, House,
Friendship.
_Ident. Symbol.:_ Knowledge. Faith. School and
University.
_Individ. Symbol.:_ Feeling. Revelation. The Church
(Art).
The four ethical communities, each of which represents the organic union
of opposites--rulers and subjects, host and guests, teachers and pupils
or scholars and the public, the clergy and the laity--have for their
foundation the family and the unity of the nation. Virtue (the personal
unification of reason and sensibility) is either disposition or skill, and
in each case either cognitive or presentative; this yields the cardinal
virtues wisdom, love, discretion, and perseverance. The division of duties
into duties of right, duties of love, duties of vocation, and duties of
conscience rests on the distinction between community in production and
appropriation, each of which may be universal or individual. The most
general laws of duty (duty is the Idea of the good in an imperative form)
run: Act at every instant with all thy moral power, and aiming at thy whole
moral problem; act with all virtues and in view of all goods, further,
Always do that action which is most advantageous for the whole sphere of
morality, in which two different factors are included: Always do that
toward which thou findest thyself inwardly moved, and that to which thou
findest thyself required from without. Instead of following further the
wearisome schematism of Schleiermacher's ethics, we may notice, finally,
a fundamental thought which our philosopher also discussed by itself:
The sharp contraposition of natural and moral law, advocated by Kant, is
unjustifiable; the moral law is itself a law of nature, viz., of rational
will. It is true neither that the moral law is a mere "ought" nor that the
law of nature is a mere "being," a universally followed "must." For, on the
one hand, ethics has to do with the law which human action really follows,
and, on the other, there are violations of rule in nature also. Immorality,
the imperfect mastery of the sensuous impulses by rational will, has an
analogue in the abnormalities--deformities and diseases--in nature, which
show that here also the higher (organic) principles are not completely
successful in controlling the lower processes. The higher law everywhere
suffers disturbances, from the resistance of the lower forces, which cannot
be entirely conquered. It is Schleiermacher's determinism which leads him,
in view of the parallelism of the two legislations, to overlook their
essential distinction.
Adherents of Schleiermacher are Vorländer (died 1867), George (died 1874),
the theologian, Richard Rothe (died 1867; cf. Nippold, 1873 _seq_.), and
the historians of philosophy, Brandis (died 1867) and H. Ritter (died
1869).[1]
[Footnote 1: W. Dilthey (born 1834), the successor of Lotze in Berlin, is
publishing a life of Schleiermacher (vol. i. 1867-70). Cf. also Dilthey's
briefer account in the _Allgemeine deutsche Biographie_, and Haym's
_Romantische Schule_, 1870. Further, _Aus Schleiermachers Leben, in
Briefen_, 4 vols., 1858-63.]