TRANSITION TO THE MODERN PHILOSOPHY.
The emancipation of modern philosophy from the bondage of Scholasticism
was a gradual process. It first showed itself in a series of preparative
movements during the fifteenth century, and became perfected,
negatively, in the course of the sixteenth, and positively in the first
half of the seventeenth century.
1. FALL OF SCHOLASTICISM.—The immediate ground of this changed direction
of the time, we have already seen in the inner decay of Scholasticism
itself. Just so soon as the fundamental premise on which the Scholastic
theology and method rested, the rationality of the dogma, was abandoned,
the whole structure, as already remarked, fell to inevitable ruin. The
conviction, directly opposed to the principle of Scholasticism, that
what might be true dogmatically, might be false, or, at least, incapable
of proof in the eye of the reason—a point of view from which _e. g._ the
Aristotelian _Pomponatius_ (1462-1530) treated the doctrines of the
future state, and in whose light _Vanini_ subsequently went over the
chief problems of philosophy—kept gaining ground, notwithstanding the
opposition of the Church, and even associated with itself the opinion
that reason and revelation could not be harmonized. The feeling became
prevalent that philosophy must be freed from its previous condition of
minority and servitude; a struggle after a greater independence of
philosophic investigation was awakened, and though no one yet ventured
to attack directly the doctrine of the Church, the effort was made to
shatter the confidence in the chief bulwark of Scholasticism, the
Aristotelian philosophy, or what at that period was regarded as such;
(especially in this connection _Peter Ramus_, (1515-1572) should be
mentioned, who fell in the massacre of St. Bartholomew). The authority
of the Church became more and more weakened in the faith of the people,
and the great principles of Scholasticism came to an end.
2. THE RESULTS OF SCHOLASTICISM.—Notwithstanding all, Scholasticism was
not without its positively good results. Though standing wholly in the
service of the Church, it had, nevertheless, grown out of a scientific
impulse, and so naturally awakened a free spirit of inquiry and a sense
for knowledge. It made the objects of faith the objects of thought, it
raised men from the sphere of unconditional faith to the sphere of
doubt, of investigation and of knowledge, and by its very effort to
demonstrate the principles of theology it established, though against
its knowledge and design, the authority of reason. It thus introduced to
the world another principle than that of the old Church, the principle
of the thinking spirit, the self-consciousness of the reason, or at
least prepared the way for the victory of this principle. Even the
deformities and unfavorable side of Scholasticism, the many absurd
questions upon which the Scholastics divided, even their thousandfold
unnecessary and accidental distinctions, their inquisitiveness and
subtleties, all sprang from a rational principle, and grew out of a
spirit of investigation, which could only utter itself in this way under
the all powerful ecclesiastical spirit of the time. Only when it was
surpassed by the advancing spirit of the age, did Scholasticism,
falsifying its original meaning, make common cause and interest with the
old ecclesiasticism, and turned itself as the most violent opposer
against the improvements of the new period.
3. THE REVIVAL OF LETTERS.—The revival of classic literature contributed
prominently to that change in the spirit of the age which marks the
beginning of the new epoch of philosophy. The study of the ancients,
especially of the Greeks, had almost wholly ceased in the course of the
Middle Ages; even the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle was known, for
the most part, only through Latin translations or secondary sources; no
one realized the spirit of classic life, and all sense for beauty of
form and elegant composition had passed away. The change was chiefly
brought about by means of the Greek scholars who fled from
Constantinople to Italy; the study of the ancients in the original
sources came up again; the newly discovered art of printing allowed the
classics to be widely circulated; the Medicis drew classic scholars to
their court; all this working for a far better understanding of the
ancient philosophy. _Besarion_ (died 1472) and _Ficinus_ (died 1499)
were prominent in this movement. The result was presently seen. The new
scholars contended against the stiff and uncouth manner in which the
sciences had hitherto been treated, new ideas began to circulate, and
there arose again the free, universal, thinking spirit of antiquity. In
Germany, also, classic studies found a fruitful soil. _Reuchlin_ (born
1454), _Melancthon_ and _Erasmus_, labored in this sense, and the
classic movement, hostile as it was to the Scholastic impulse, favored
most decidedly the growing tendencies to the Reformation.
4. THE GERMAN REFORMATION.—All the elements of the new age, the struggle
against Scholasticism, the revival of letters and the more enlarged
culture thus secured, the striving after national independence, the
attempts of the state to free itself from the Church and the hierarchy,
and above all, the desire of the thinking self-consciousness for
autonomy, for freedom from the fetters of authority—all these elements
found their focus and point of union in the German Reformation. Though
having its root at first in practical, and religious, and national
interests, and expending itself mainly upon the Christian doctrine and
Church, yet was the Reformation in principle and in its true
consequences a rupture of the thinking spirit with authority, a
protesting against the fetters of the positive, a return of the mind
from its self-estrangement to itself. From that which was without, the
mind now came back to that which is within, and the purely human as
such, the individual heart and conscience, the subjective conviction, in
a word, the rights of the subject now began to be of worth. While
marriage had formerly been regarded, though not immoral, as yet inferior
to continence and celibacy, it appeared now as a divine institution, a
natural law ordained of God. While poverty had formerly been esteemed
higher than wealth, and the contemplative life of the monk was superior
to the manual labor of the layman supporting himself by his own toil,
yet now poverty ceased to be desirable in itself, and labor was no
longer despised. Ecclesiastical freedom took the place of spiritual
bondage; monasticism and the priesthood lost their power. In the same
way, on the side of knowledge the individual man came back to himself,
and threw off the restraints of authority. He was impressed with the
conviction that the whole process of redemption must be experienced
within himself, that his reconciliation to God and salvation was his own
concern, for which he needed no mediation of priests, and that he stood
in an immediate relation to God. He found his whole being in his faith,
in the depth of his feelings and convictions.
Since thus Protestantism sprang from the essence of the same spirit in
which modern philosophy had its birth, the two have the closest relation
to each other, though of course there is a specific difference between
the religious and the scientific principle. Yet in their origin, both
kinds of Protestantism, that of religion and that of thought, are one
and the same, and in their progress they have also gone hand in hand
together. For religion, reduced to its simple elements, will be found to
have its source, like philosophy, in the self-knowledge of the reason.
5. THE ADVANCEMENT OF THE NATURAL SCIENCES.—To all these phenomena,
which should be regarded both as causes and as symptoms of the
intellectual revolution of this period, we must add yet another, which
essentially facilitated and gave a positive assistance to the freedom of
the mind from the fetters of authority—the starting up of the natural
sciences and the inductive method of examining nature. This epoch was a
period of the most fruitful and influential discoveries in nature. The
discovery of America and the passage to the East Indies had already
widened the circle of view, but still greater revolutions are connected
with the name of a _Copernicus_ (died 1543), _Kepler_ (died 1630), and
_Galileo_ (died 1642), revolutions which could not remain, without an
influence upon the whole mode of thinking of that age, and which
contributed prominently to break the faith in the prevailing
ecclesiastical authority. Scholasticism had turned away from nature and
the phenomenal world, and, blind towards that which lay before the very
eyes, had spent itself in a dreamy intellectuality; but now nature rose
again in honor; her glory and exaltation, her infinite diversity and
fulness of life became again the immediate objects of observation; to
investigate nature became an essential object of philosophy, and
scientific empiricism was thus regarded as a universal and essential
concern of the thinking man. From this time the natural sciences date
their historical importance, for only from this time have they had an
uninterrupted history. The results of this new intellectual movement can
be readily estimated. Such a scientific investigation of nature not only
destroyed a series of traditional errors and prejudices, but, what was
of greater importance, it directed the intellectual interest towards
that which is real and actual, it nourished and protected the
self-thinking and feeling of self-dependence, the spirit of inquiry and
proof. The standpoint of observation and experiment presupposes an
independent self-consciousness of the individual, a breaking loose from
authority—in a word, scepticism, with which, in fact, the founders of
modern philosophy, _Bacon_ and _Descartes_, began; the former by
conditioning the knowledge of nature upon the removal of all prejudice
and every preconceived opinion, and the latter by demanding that
philosophy should be begun with universal doubt. No wonder that a bitter
struggle should soon break out between the natural sciences and
ecclesiastical orthodoxy, which could only result in breaking the power
of the latter.
6. BACON OF VERULAM.—Francis of Verulam was born in 1561, and was Lord
High Chancellor of England and keeper of the king’s seal under James I.
From these offices he was subsequently expelled, and died in 1626, with
a character which has not been without reproach. He took as his
principle the inductive method, which he directed expressly against
Scholasticism and the ruling scientific method. On this account he is
frequently placed at the head of modern philosophy.
The sciences, says Bacon, have hitherto been in a most sad condition.
Philosophy, wasted in empty and fruitless logomachies, has failed during
so many centuries to bring out a single work or experiment of actual
benefit to human life. Logic hitherto has served more to the
establishment of error than to the investigation of truth. Whence all
this? Why this penury of the sciences? Simply because they have broken
away from their root in nature and experience. The blame of this is
chargeable to many sources; first, the old and rooted prejudice that the
human mind loses somewhat of its dignity when it busies itself much and
continuously with experiments and material things; next, superstition
and a blind religious zeal, which has been the most irreconcilable
opposer to natural philosophy; again, the exclusive attention paid to
morals and politics by the Romans, and since the Christian era to
theology by every acute mind; still farther, the great authority which
certain philosophers have professed, and the great reverence given, to
antiquity; and in fine, a want of courage and a despair of overcoming
the many and great difficulties which lie in the way of the
investigation of nature. All these causes have contributed to keep down
the sciences. Hence they must now be renewed, and regenerated, and
reformed in their most fundamental principles; there must now be found a
new basis of knowledge and new principles of science. This radical
reformation of the sciences depends upon two conditions, objectively
upon the referring of science to experience and the philosophy of
nature, and subjectively upon the purifying of the sense and the
intellect from all abstract theories and traditional prejudices. Both
conditions furnish the correct method of natural science, which is
nothing other than the method of induction. Upon a true induction
depends all the soundness of the sciences.
In these propositions the Baconian philosophy is contained. The
historical significance of its founder is, therefore, in general
this,—that he directed the attention and reflection of his
contemporaries again upon the given actuality, upon nature; that he
affirmed the necessity of experience, which had been formerly only a
matter of accident, and made it as in and for itself an object of
thought. His merit consists in having brought up the principle of
scientific empiricism, and only in this. Strictly speaking, we can allow
no _content_ to the Baconian philosophy, although (in his treatise _de
augmentis scientiarum_) he has attempted a systematic encyclopedia of
the sciences according to a new principle of classification, through
which he has scattered an abundance of fine and fruitful observations,
which are still used as apothegms.
7. THE ITALIAN PHILOSOPHERS OF THE TRANSITION EPOCH.—Besides Bacon,
other phenomena must be noticed which have prepared and introduced the
new age of philosophy. First among these is a list of Italian
philosophers, from the second half of the sixteenth and the first half
of the seventeenth century. These philosophers are connected in a
twofold manner with the movements already sketched of this transition
period, first by an enthusiasm for nature which among them all partook
in a greater or less degree of pantheism (Vanini _e. g._ gave to one of
his writings the title “concerning the wonderful secrets of nature, the
queen and goddess of mortals”), and second, by their connection with the
systems of ancient philosophy. The best known of these philosophers are
the following: _Cardanus_ (1501-1575), _Campanella_ (1568-1639),
_Giordano Bruno_ (—1600), _Vanini_ (1586-1619.) They were all men of a
passionate, enthusiastic and impetuous nature, unsteady and wild in
character, restless and adventurous in life, men who were inspired by an
eager impulse towards knowledge, but who were carried away by great
fantasy, wildness of imagination, and a seeking after secret
astrological and geomantic knowledge. For these reasons they also passed
away, leaving no fruitful result behind. They were all persecuted by the
hierarchy, and two of them (Bruno and Vanini) ended their lives at the
stake. In their whole historical appearance they are like the eruption
of a volcano, and are to be regarded more as forerunners and announcers
than as beginners and founders of the new age of philosophy. The most
important among them is _Giordano Bruno_. He reviewed the old idea of
the Stoics, that the world is a living being, and that a world-soul
penetrates it all. The content of his general thought is the profoundest
enthusiasm for nature, and the plastic reason which is present in it.
The reason is, according to him, the inner artist who shapes the matter
and manifests himself in the forms of the universe. From the heart of
the root or the germ he sends out the lobes, and from these again he
evolves the shoots, and from the shoots the branches, until bud, and
leaf, and blossom are brought forth. Every thing is arranged, adjusted,
and perfected within. Thus the universal reason calls back from within
the sap out of the fruits and flowers to the branches again, &c. The
universe thus is an infinite living thing, in which every thing lives
and moves after the most manifold way.
The relation of the reason to matter, Bruno determines wholly in the
Aristotelian manner; both stand related to each other as form and
matter, as actuality and potentiality, neither is without the other; the
form is the inner impelling might of matter, and matter, as the
unlimited possibility, as the capability for an infinite diversity of
form, is the mother of all forms. The other side of Bruno’s
philosophizing, his elaboration of the topics of Lullus, which occupies
the greater part of his writings, has little philosophic interest, and
we therefore pass it by.
8. JACOB BOEHME.—As Bacon among the English and Bruno among the
Italians, so _Jacob Boehme_ is the index among the Germans of this
transition period. Each one of these three indicates it in a way
peculiar to his own nationality; Bacon as the herald of empiricism,
Bruno as the representative of a poetic pantheism, and Boehme as the
father of the theosophic mysticism. If we regarded alone the
profoundness of his principle, Boehme should hold a much later place in
the history of philosophy, but if we looked chiefly at the imperfect
form of his philosophizing, his rank would be assigned to the mystics of
the Middle Ages, while chronologically we must associate him with the
German Reformation and the protestant elements that were nourished at
that time. His true position is among the forerunners and prophets of
the new age.
Jacob Boehme was born in 1575, in old Seidenburg, a village of upper
Lusace, not far from Goerlitz. His parents were poor peasants. In his
boyhood be took care of the cattle, and in his youth, after he had
acquired the rudiments of reading and writing in a village school, he
was sent to Goerlitz to learn the shoe-maker’s art. He finished his
apprenticeship and settled down at Goerlitz in 1594 as master of his
trade. Even in his youth he had received illuminations or mysterious
revealings, which were subsequently repeated when his soul, striving for
the truth, had become profoundly agitated by the religious conflicts of
the age. Besides the Bible, the only books which Boehme read were some
mystical writings of a theosophic and alchymistic content, _e. g._ those
of Paracelsus. His entire want of culture is seen as soon as he
undertakes to write down his thoughts, or, as he calls them, his
illuminations. Hence the imperious struggle of the thought with the
expression, which, however, not unfrequently rises to a dialectical
acuteness and a poetic beauty. His first treatise, Aurora, composed in
the year 1612, brought Boehme into trouble with the chief pastor in
Goerlitz, Gregorious Richter, who publicly condemned the book from the
pulpit, and even ridiculed the person of its author. The writing of
books was prohibited him by a magistrate, a prohibition which Boehme
observed for many years, till at length the command of the spirit was
too mighty within him, and he took up again his literary labors. Boehme
was a plain, quiet, modest and gentle man. He died in 1624.
To give an exhibition of his theosophy in a few words is very difficult,
since Boehme, instead of clothing his thoughts in a logical form,
dressed them only in pictures of the sense and obscure analogies, and
often availed himself of the most arbitrary and singular modes of
expression. A twilight reigns in his writings, as in a Gothic cathedral
where the light falls through variegated windows. Hence the magic effect
which he has made upon many hearts. The chief thought of his
philosophizing is this, viz., that the distinguishing of the self from
the not-self is the essential determination of spirit, and hence of God
so far as God is to be apprehended as spirit. God, according to Boehme,
is living spirit only at the time and in the degree in which he
conceives the distinction within himself from himself, and is in this
distinction object and consciousness. The distinction of God in himself
is the only source of his and of all actuosity and spontaneity, the
spring and fountain of that self-active life which produces
consciousness out of itself. Boehme is inexhaustible in images by which
this negativity in God, his self-distinguishing and self-renunciation to
the world, may be made conceivable. The great expansion without end, he
says, needs limitation and a compass in which it may manifest itself,
for in expansion without limit there could be no manifestation, there
must be a contraction and an enclosing, in order that a manifestation
may arise. See, he says in another place, if the will were only of one
kind, then would the soul have only one quality, and were an immovable
thing, which would always lie still and never do any thing farther than
one thing; in this there could be no joy, as also no art nor science of
other things, and no wisdom; every thing would be a nothing, and there
would be neither heart nor will for any thing, for there would be only
the single. Hence it cannot be said that the whole God is in one will
and essence, there is a distinction. Nothing can ever become manifest to
itself without resistance, for if it has nothing resisting, it expends
itself and never comes to itself again; but if it does not come to
itself again except in that from which it has originally sprung, it thus
knows nothing of its original condition. The above thought Boehme
expresses when he says in his _Questionibus Theosophicis_; the reader
should know that in yea and nay all things consist, whether divine,
devilish, earthly, or whatever may be named. The one as the yea, is
simple energy and love, and is the truth of God and God himself. But
this were inconceivable, and there were neither delight, nor importance,
nor sensibility, without the nay. The nay is thrown in the way of the
yea, or of truth, in order that the truth may be manifest and something,
in which there may be a contrarium, where eternal love may work and
become sensitive and willing. There is nothing in the one which is an
occasion for willing until the one becomes duplicated, and so there can
be no sensation in unity, but only in duality. In brief, according to
Boehme, neither knowledge nor consciousness is possible, without
distinction, without opposition, without duplication; a thing becomes
clear and an object of consciousness only through something else,
through its own opposition identical with its own being. It was very
natural to connect this thought of a unity distinguishing itself in
itself, with the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, as Boehme has, in
fact, repeatedly done when treating of the Divine life and its process
of duplication. Schelling afterwards took up these ideas of Boehme and
philosophically elaborated them.
If we should assign to the theosophy of Boehme a position in the
development of later philosophy corresponding to the inner content of
its principle, it would most properly be placed as a complement to the
system of _Spinoza_. If Spinoza taught the flowing back of all the
finite into the eternal one, Boehme, on the other hand, shows the
procession of the finite from the eternal one, and the inner necessity
of this procession, since the being of this one would be rather a
not-being without such a self-duplication. Compared with Descartes,
Boehme has at least more profoundly apprehended the conception of
self-consciousness and the relation of the finite to God. But his
historical position in other respects is far too isolated and
exceptional, and his mode of statement far too impure, to warrant us in
incorporating him anywhere in a series of systems developed continuously
and in a genetic connection.