CHAPTER I.
THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION: FROM NICOLAS OF CUSA TO
DESCARTES
1. Nicolas of Cusa
2. The Revival of Ancient Philosophy and the Opposition to it
3. The Italian Philosophy of Nature
4. Philosophy of the State and of Law 5. Skepticism in France
6. German Mysticism
7. The Foundation of Modern Physics
8. Philosophy in England to the Middle of the Seventeenth Century
(_a_) Bacon's Predecessors
(_b_) Bacon
(_c_) Hobbes
(_d_) Lord Herbert of Cherbury
9. Preliminary Survey
PART I.
%From Descartes to Kant.%
CHAPTER II.
DESCARTES
1. The Principles
2. Nature
3. Man
CHAPTER III.
THE DEVELOPMENT AND TRANSFORMATION OF CARTESIANISM IN
THE NETHERLANDS AND
IN FRANCE
1. Occasionalism: Geulincx
2. Spinoza
_(a)_ Substance, Attributes, and Modes _(b)_ Anthropology; Cognition and the Passions _(c)_ Practical Philosophy
3. Pascal, Malebranche, Bayle
CHAPTER IV.
LOCKE
_(a)_ Theory of Knowledge
_(b)_ Practical Philosophy
CHAPTER V.
ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
1. Natural Philosophy and Psychology
2. Deism
3. Moral Philosophy
4. Theory of Knowledge
_(a)_ Berkeley
_(b)_ Hume
_(c)_ The Scottish School
CHAPTER VI.
THE FRENCH ILLUMINATION
1. The Entrance of English Doctrines
2. Theoretical and Practical Sensationalism 3. Skepticism and Materialism
4. Rousseau's Conflict with the Illumination CHAPTER VII.
LEIBNITZ
1. Metaphysics: the Monads, Representation, the Pre-established Harmony;
the Laws of Thought and of the World
2. The Organic World
3. Man: Cognition and Volition
4. Theology and Theodicy
CHAPTER VIII.
THE GERMAN ILLUMINATION
1. The Contemporaries of Leibnitz
2. Christian Wolff
3. The Illumination as Scientific and as Popular Philosophy
4. The Faith Philosophy
PART II.
%From Kant to the Present Time.%
CHAPTER IX.
KANT
1. Theory of Knowledge
_(a)_ The Pure Intuitions (Transcendental Aesthetic) _(b)_ The Concepts and Principles of the Pure Understanding
(Transcendental Analytic)
_(c)_ The Reason's Ideas of the Unconditioned (Transcendental
Dialectic)
2. Theory of Ethics
3. Theory of the Beautiful and of Ends in Nature _(a)_ Aesthetic Judgment
_(b)_ Teleological Judgment
4. From Kant to Fichte
CHAPTER X.
FICHTE
1. The Science of Knowledge
_(a)_ The Problem
_(b)_ The Three Principles
_(c)_ The Theoretical Ego
_(d)_ The Practical Ego
2. The Science of Ethics and of Right 3. Fichte's Second Period: his View of History and his Theory
of Religion
CHAPTER XI.
SCHELLING
1_a_. Philosophy of Nature
1_b_. Transcendental Philosophy
2. System of Identity
3_a_. Doctrine of Freedom
3_b_. Philosophy of Mythology and Revelation CHAPTER XII.
SCHELLING'S CO-WORKERS
1. The Philosophers of Nature
2. The Philosophers of Identity (F. Krause) 3. The Philosophers of Religion (Baader and Schleiermacher)
CHAPTER XIII.
HEGEL
1. Hegel's View of the World and his Method 2. The System
(_a_) Logic
(_b_) The Philosophy of Nature
(_c_) The Doctrine of Subjective Spirit (_d_) The Doctrine of Objective Spirit (_e_) Absolute Spirit
CHAPTER XIV.
THE OPPOSITION TO CONSTRUCTIVE IDEALISM: FRIES, HERBART, SCHOPENHAUER
1. The Psychologists: Fries and Beneke 2. Realism: Herbart
3. Pessimism: Schopenhauer
CHAPTER XV.
PHILOSOPHY OUT OF GERMANY
1. Italy
2. France
3. Great Britain and America
4. Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Holland CHAPTER XVI.
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY SINCE THE DEATH OF HEGEL
1. From the Division of the Hegelian School to the Materialistic
Controversy
2. New Systems: Trendelenburg, Fechner, Lotze, and Hartmann
3. From the Revival of the Kantian Philosophy to the Present Time
(_a_) Neo-Kantianism, Positivism, and Kindred Phenomena
(_b_) Idealistic Reaction against the Scientific Spirit
(_c_) The Special Philosophical Sciences 4. Retrospect
INDEX
* * * * *
INTRODUCTION.
In no other department is a thorough knowledge of history so important as
in philosophy. Like historical science in general, philosophy is, on the
one hand, in touch with exact inquiry, while, on the other, it has a
certain relationship with art. With the former it has in common its
methodical procedure and its cognitive aim; with the latter, its intuitive
character and the endeavor to compass the whole of reality with a glance.
Metaphysical principles are less easily verified from experience than
physical hypotheses, but also less easily refuted.
Systems of philosophy,
therefore, are not so dependent on our progressive knowledge of facts as
the theories of natural science, and change less quickly; notwithstanding
their mutual conflicts, and in spite of the talk about discarded
standpoints, they possess in a measure the permanence of classical works of
art, they retain for all time a certain relative validity. The thought of
Plato, of Aristotle, and of the heroes of modern philosophy is ever proving
anew its fructifying power. Nowhere do we find such instructive errors as
in the sphere of philosophy; nowhere is the new so essentially a completion
and development of the old, even though it deem itself the whole and assume
a hostile attitude toward its predecessors; nowhere is the inquiry so much
more important than the final result; nowhere the categories "true and
false" so inadequate. The spirit of the time and the spirit of the people,
the individuality of the thinker, disposition, will, fancy--all these exert
a far stronger influence on the development of philosophy, both by way of
promotion and by way of hindrance, than in any other department of thought.
If a system gives classical expression to the thought of an epoch, a
nation, or a great personality; if it seeks to attack the world-riddle from
a new direction, or brings us nearer its solution by important original
conceptions, by a subtler or a simpler comprehension of the problem, by a
wider outlook or a deeper insight; it has accomplished more than it could
have done by bringing forward a number of indisputably correct principles.
The variations in philosophy, which, on the assumption of the unity of
truth, are a rock of offense to many minds, may be explained, on the one
hand, by the combination of complex variety and limitation in the motives
which govern philosophical thought,--for it is the whole man that
philosophizes, not his understanding merely,--and, on the other, by the
inexhaustible extent of the field of philosophy. Back of the logical labor
of proof and inference stand, as inciting, guiding, and hindering agents,
psychical and historical forces, which are themselves in large measure
alogical, though stronger than all logic; while just before stretches
away the immeasurable domain of reality, at once inviting and resisting
conquest. The grave contradictions, so numerous in both the subjective
and the objective fields, make unanimity impossible concerning ultimate
problems; in fact, they render it difficult for the individual thinker to
combine his convictions into a self-consistent system.
Each philosopher
sees limited sections of the world only, and these through his own eyes;
every system is one-sided. Yet it is this multiplicity and variety of
systems alone which makes the aim of philosophy practicable as it endeavors
to give a complete picture of the soul and of the universe. The history of
philosophy is the philosophy of humanity, that great individual, which,
with more extended vision than the instruments through which it works,
is able to entertain opposing principles, and which, reconciling old
contradictions as it discovers new ones, approaches by a necessary and
certain growth the knowledge of the one all-embracing truth, which is
rich and varied beyond our conception. In order to energetic labor in the
further progress of philosophy, it is necessary to imagine that the goddess
of truth is about to lift the veil which has for centuries concealed her.
The historian of philosophy, on the contrary, looks on each new system as
a stone, which, when shaped and fitted into its place, will help to raise
higher the pyramid of knowledge. Hegel's doctrine of the necessity
and motive force of contradictories, of the relative justification of
standpoints, and the systematic development of speculation, has great and
permanent value as a general point of view. It needs only to be guarded
from narrow scholastic application to become a safe canon for the
historical treatment of philosophy.
In speaking above of the worth of the philosophical doctrines of the past
as defying time, and as comparable to the standard character of finished
works of art, the special reference was to those elements in speculation
which proceed less from abstract thinking than from the fancy, the heart,
and the character of the individual, and even more directly from the
disposition of the people; and which to a certain degree may be divorced
from logical reasoning and the scientific treatment of particular
questions. These may be summed up under the phrase, views of the world. The
necessity for constant reconsideration of them is from this standpoint at
once evident. The Greek view of the world is as classic as the plastic art
of Phidias and the epic of Homer; the Christian, as eternally valid as the
architecture of the Middle Ages; the modern, as irrefutable as Goethe's
poetry and the music of Beethoven. The views of the world which proceed
from the spirits of different ages, as products of the general development
of culture, are not so much thoughts as rhythms in thinking, not theories
but modes of intuition saturated with feelings of worth.
We may dispute
about them, it is true; we may argue against them or in their defense; but
they can neither be established nor overthrown by cogent proofs. It is not
only optimism and pessimism, determinism and indeterminism, that have their
ultimate roots in the affective side of our nature, but pantheism and
individualism, also idealism and materialism, even rationalism and
sensationalism. Even though they operate with the instruments of thought,
they remain in the last analysis matters of faith, of feeling, and of
resolution. The aesthetic view of the world held by the Greeks, the
transcendental-religious view of Christianity, the intellectual view of
Leibnitz and Hegel, the panthelistic views of Fichte I and Schopenhauer are
vital forces, not doctrines, postulates, not results of thought. One view
of the world is forced to yield its pre-eminence to another, which it has
itself helped to produce by its own one-sidedness; only to reconquer its
opponent later, when it has learned from her, when it has been purified,
corrected, and deepened by the struggle. But the elder contestant is no
more confuted by the younger than the drama of Sophocles by the drama of
Shakespeare, than youth by age or spring by autumn.
If it is thus indubitable that the views of the world held in earlier times
deserve to live on in the memory of man, and to live as something better
than mere reminders of the past--the history of philosophy is not a cabinet
of antiquities, but a museum of typical products of the mind--the value
and interest of the historical study of the past in relation to the exact
scientific side of philosophical inquiry is not less evident. In every
science it is useful to trace the origin and growth of problems and
theories, and doubly so in philosophy. With her it is by no means the
universal rule that progress shows itself by the result; the statement of
the question is often more important than the answer.
The problem is more
sharply defined in a given direction; or it becomes more comprehensive,
is analyzed and refined; or if now it threatens to break up into subtle
details, some genius appears to simplify it and force our thoughts back
to the fundamental question. This advance in problems, which happily is
everywhere manifested by unmistakable signs, is, in the case of many of the
questions which irresistibly force themselves upon the human heart, the
only certain gain from centuries of endeavor. The labor here is of more
value than the result.
In treating the history of philosophy, two extremes must be avoided,
lawless individualism and abstract logical formalism.
The history
of philosophy is neither a disconnected succession of arbitrary
individual opinions and clever guesses, nor a mechanically developed series
of typical standpoints and problems, which imply one another in just the
form and order historically assumed. The former supposition does violence
to the regularity of philosophical development, the latter to its vitality.
In the one case, the connection is conceived too loosely, in the other, too
rigidly and simply. One view underestimates the power of the logical Idea,
the other overestimates it. It is not easy to support the principle that
chance rules the destiny of philosophy, but it is more difficult to avoid
the opposite conviction of the one-sidedness of formalistic construction,
and to define the nature and limits of philosophical necessity. The
development of philosophy is, perhaps, one chief aim of the world-process,
but it is certainly not the only one; it is a part of the universal aim,
and it is not surprising that the instruments of its realization do not
work exclusively in its behalf, that their activity brings about results,
which seem unessential for philosophical ends or obstacles in their way.
Philosophical ideas do not think themselves, but are thought by living
spirits, which are something other and better than mere thought
machines--by spirits who live these thoughts, who fill them with personal
warmth and passionately defend them. There is often reason, no doubt, for
the complaint that the personality which has undertaken to develop some
great idea is inadequate to the task, that it carries its subjective
defects into the matter in hand, that it does too much or too little, or
the right thing in the wrong way, so that the spirit of philosophy seems
to have erred in the choice and the preparation of its instrument. But the
reverse side of the picture must also be taken into account. The thinking
spirit is more limited, it is true, than were desirable for the perfect
execution of a definite logical task; but, on the other hand, it is far
too rich as well. A soulless play of concepts would certainly not help
the cause, and there is no disadvantage in the failure of the history of
philosophy to proceed so directly and so scholastically, as, for instance,
in the system of Hegel. A graded series of interconnected general forces
mediate between the logical Idea and the individual thinker--the spirit of
the people, of the age, of the thinker's vocation, of his time of life,
which are felt by the individual as part of himself and whose impulses
he unconsciously obeys. In this way the modifying, furthering, hindering
correlation of higher and lower, of the ruler with his commands and the
servant with his more or less willing obedience, is twice repeated, the
situation being complicated further by the fact that the subject affected
by these historical forces himself helps to make history. The most
important factor in philosophical progress is, of course, the state of
inquiry at the time, the achievements of the thinkers of the immediately
preceding age; and in this relation of a philosopher to his predecessors,
again, a distinction must be made between a logical and a psychological
element. The successor often commences his support, his development, or his
refutation at a point quite unwelcome to the constructive historian. At all
events, if we may judge from the experience of the past, too much caution
cannot be exercised in setting up formal laws for the development of
thought. According to the law of contradiction and reconciliation, a
Schopenhauer must have followed directly after Leibnitz, to oppose his
pessimistic ethelism to the optimistic intellectualism of the latter; when,
in turn, a Schleiermacher, to give an harmonic resolution of the antithesis
into a concrete doctrine of feeling, would have made a fine third. But it
turned out otherwise, and we must be content.
* * * * *
The estimate of the value of the history of philosophy in general, given at
the start, is the more true of the history of modern philosophy, since the
movement introduced by the latter still goes on unfinished. We are still at
work on the problems which were brought forward by Descartes, Locke, and
Leibnitz, and which Kant gathered up into the critical or transcendental
question. The present continues to be governed by the ideal of culture
which Bacon proposed and Fichte exalted to a higher level; we all live
under the unweakened spell of that view of the world which was developed in
hostile opposition to Scholasticism, and through the enduring influence of
those mighty geographical and scientific discoveries and religious reforms
which marked the entrance of the modern period. It is true, indeed, that
the transition brought about by Kant's noëtical and ethical revolution was
of great significance,--more significant even than the Socratic period,
with which we are fond of comparing it; much that was new was woven on,
much of the old, weakened, broken, destroyed. And yet, if we take into
account the historical after-influence of Cartesianism, we shall find that
the thread was only knotted and twisted by Kantianism, not cut through. The
continued power of the pre-Kantian modes of thought is shown by the fact
that Spinoza has been revived in Fichte and Schelling, Leibnitz in Herbart
and Hegel, the sensationalism of the French Illuminati in Feuerbach; and
that even materialism, which had been struck down by the criticism of the
reason (one would have thought forever), has again raised its head. Even
that most narrow tendency of the early philosophy of the modern period, the
apotheosis of cognition is,--in spite of the moralistic counter-movement
of Kant and Fichte,--the controlling motive in the last of the great
idealistic systems, while it also continues to exercise a marvelously
powerful influence on the convictions of our Hegel-weary age, alike within
the sphere of philosophy and (still more) without it. In view of the
intimate relations between contemporary inquiry and the progress of thought
since the beginning of the modern period, acquaintance with the latter,
which it is the aim of this _History_ to facilitate, becomes a pressing
duty. To study the history of philosophy since Descartes is to study the
pre-conditions of contemporary philosophy.
We begin with an outline sketch of the general characteristics of modern
philosophy. These may be most conveniently described by comparing them with
the characteristics of ancient and of mediaeval philosophy. The character
of ancient philosophy or Greek philosophy,--for they are practically the
same,--is predominantly aesthetic. The Greek holds beauty and truth closely
akin and inseparable; "cosmos" is his common expression for the world and
for ornament. The universe is for him a harmony, an organism, a work of
art, before which he stands in admiration and reverential awe. In quiet
contemplation, as with the eye of a connoisseur, he looks upon the world or
the individual object as a well-ordered whole, more disposed to enjoy the
congruity of its parts than to study out its ultimate elements. He prefers
contemplation to analysis, his thought is plastic, not anatomical. He finds
the nature of the object in its form; and ends give him the key to the
comprehension of events. Discovering human elements everywhere, he is
always ready with judgments of worth--the stars move in circles because
circular motion is the most perfect; the right is better than left, upper
finer than lower, that which precedes more beautiful than that which
follows. Thinkers in whom this aesthetic reverence is weaker than the
analytic impulse--especially Democritus--seem half modern rather than
Greek. By the side of the Greek philosophy, in its sacred festal garb,
stands the modern in secular workday dress, in the laborer's blouse, with
the merciless chisel of analysis in its hand. This does not seek beauty,
but only the naked truth, no matter what it be. It holds it impossible to
satisfy at once the understanding and taste; nay, nakedness, ugliness,
and offensiveness seem to it to testify for, rather than against, the
genuineness of truth. In its anxiety not to read human elements into
nature, it goes so far as completely to read spirit out of nature. The
world is not a living whole, but a machine; not a work of art which is to
be viewed in its totality and enjoyed with reverence, but a clock-movement
to be taken apart in order to be understood. Nowhere are there ends in the
world, but everywhere mechanical causes. The character of modern thought
would appear to a Greek returned to earth very sober, unsplendid, undevout,
and intrusive. And, in fact, modern philosophy has a considerable amount
of prose about it, is not easily impressed, accepts no limitations from
feeling, and holds nothing too sacred to be attacked with the weapon of
analytic thought. And yet it combines penetration with intrusiveness;
acuteness, coolness, and logical courage with its soberness. Never before
has the demand for unprejudiced thought and certain knowledge been made
with equal earnestness. This interest in knowledge for