TRANSITION TO THE POST-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.
The Kantian philosophy soon gained in Germany an almost undisputed rule.
The imposing boldness of its standpoint, the novelty of its results, the
applicability of its principles, the moral severity of its view of the
world, and above all, the spirit of freedom and moral autonomy which
appeared in it, and which was so directly counter to the efforts of that
age, gained for it an assent as enthusiastic as it was extended. It
aroused among all cultivated classes a wider interest and participation
in philosophic pursuits, than had ever appeared in an equal degree among
any people. In a short time it had drawn to itself a very numerous
school: there were soon few German universities in which it had not had
its talented representatives, while in every department of science and
literature, especially in theology (it is the parent of theological
rationalism), and in natural rights, as also in belles-lettres
(_Schiller_), it began to exert its influence. Yet most of the writers
who appeared in the Kantian school, confined themselves to an exposition
or popular application of the doctrine as Kant had given it, and even
the most talented and independent among the defenders and improvers of
the critical philosophy (_e. g. Reinhold_, 1758-1823; _Bardili_,
1761-1808; _Schulze_, _Beck_, _Fries_, _Krug_, _Bouterweck_), only
attempted to give a firmer basis to the Kantian philosophy as they had
received it, to obviate some of its wants and deficiencies, and to carry
out the standpoint of transcendental idealism more purely and
consistently. Among those who carried out the Kantian philosophy, only
two men, _Fichte_ and _Herbart_, can be named, who made by their actual
advance an epoch in philosophy; and among its opposers (_e. g. Hamann_,
_Herder_), only one, _Jacobi_, is of philosophic importance. These three
philosophers are hence the first objects for us to consider. In order to
a more accurate development of their principles, we preface a brief and
general characteristic of their relation to the Kantian philosophy.
1. Dogmatism had been critically annihilated by Kant; his Critick of
pure Reason had for its result the theoretical indemonstrableness of the
three ideas of the reason, God, freedom, and immortality. True, these
ideas which, from the standpoint of theoretical knowledge, had been
thrust out, Kant had introduced again as postulates of the practical
reason; but as postulates, as only practical premises, they possess no
theoretic certainty, and remain exposed to doubt. In order to do away
with this uncertainty, and this despairing of knowledge which had seemed
to be the end of the Kantian philosophy, _Jacobi_, a younger cotemporary
of Kant, placed himself upon the standpoint of the faith philosophy in
opposition to the standpoint of criticism. Though these highest ideas of
the reason, the eternal and the divine, cannot be reached and proved by
means of demonstration, yet is it the very essence of the divine that it
is indemonstrable and unattainable for the understanding. In order to be
certain of the highest, of that which lies beyond the understanding,
there is only one organ, viz., feeling. In feeling, therefore, in
immediate knowledge, in faith, Jacobi thought he had found that
certainty which Kant had sought in vain on the basis of discursive
thinking.
2. While Jacobi stood in an antithetic relation to the Kantian
philosophy, _Fichte_ appears as its immediate consequence. Fichte
carried out to its consequence the Kantian dualism, according to which
the Ego, as theoretic, is subjected to the external world, while as
practical, it is its master, or, in other words, according to which the
Ego stands related to the objective world, now receptively and again
spontaneously. He allowed the reason to be exclusively practical, as
will alone, and spontaneity alone, and apprehended its theoretical and
receptive relation to the objective world as only a circumscribed
activity, as a limitation prescribed to itself by the reason. But for
the reason, so far as it is practical, there is nothing objective except
as it is produced. The will knows no being but only an ought. Hence the
objective being of truth is universally denied, and the thing which is
essentially unknown must fall away of itself as an empty shadow. “Every
thing which is, is the Ego,” is the principle of the Fichtian system,
and represents at the same time the subjective idealism in its
consequence and completion.
3. While the subjective idealism of Fichte was carried out in the
objective idealism of Schelling, and the absolute idealism of Hegel,
there arose cotemporaneously with these systems a third offshoot of the
Kantian criticism, viz., the philosophy of _Herbart_. It had its
subjective origin in the Kantian philosophy, but its objective and
historic connection with Kant is slight. It breaks up all historic
continuity, and holds an isolated position in the history of philosophy.
Its general basis is Kantian, in so far as it makes for its problem a
critical investigation of the subjective experience. We place it between
Fichte and Schelling.