Rudolph Eucken : a philosophy of life

by Abel J. Jones

Eucken's conception of the negative movement is very much akin to the Christian idea of conversion. The first stage is merely a movement away from the world, but after a time, in the continuous process of negation, the negative movement attains a positive significance; when this stage is arrived at Eucken would apply the term conversion. He would not limit the negative movement to one act or to one point in time; the movement towards a higher world must be maintained—the sustaining of the negative movement being a test of the reality of conversion. The process of conversion is not a process to be passively undergone, or to originate from without, but is a movement starting in the depths of one's own being.

As already pointed out, Eucken believes in redemption. The past is capable of reinterpretation and transformation, because we can view our past actions in a new light and so change the whole, since the past is not a closed thing, definite in itself, but a part of an incomplete whole. He considers, however, that the Christian doctrine of redemption makes it too much a matter of God's mercy, instead of placing stress upon the part that man himself must play. The possibility of redemption in his view follows from the presence and movement of the spiritual life in man, not merely from an act of the founder of Christianity, and he avers that while traditional Christianity emphasises the need for redemption from evil, it does not emphasise sufficiently the necessary elevation to the good life that must result.

Closely bound up with the Christian doctrine of redemption is that of mediation. Eucken believes that the Christian conception of mediation resulted from the feeling of worthlessness and impotence of man, and the aspirations which yet burned within him after union with the Divine. The idea of mediation bridges the gulf, "a mid-link is forged between the Divine and the human, and half of it belongs to each side; both sides are brought into a definite connection which could be found in no other way." Eucken acknowledges that such a mediation seems to make access to the Divine easier, gives intimacy to the idea of redemption, and offers support for human frailty. But he points out that there is an intolerable anthropomorphism involved in the idea, that it removes the Divine farther away from man, and that the union of Divine and human is held to obtain in one special case only—that of Christ. He urges that in a religion of mediation, one or other, God or Christ, must be chosen as the centre. "Concerning the decision there cannot be the least doubt; the fact is clear in the soul-struggles of the great religious personalities, that in a decisive act of the soul the doctrinal idea of mediation recedes into the background, and a direct relationship with God becomes a fact of immediacy and intimacy."

So Eucken will have nothing to do with the idea of mediation in its doctrinal significance—pointing out that "the idea of mediation glides easily into a further mediation." "Has not the figure of Christ receded in Catholicism, and does not the figure of Mary constitute the centre of the religious emotional life?"

He does, however, lay great store by the help that a man may be to other men in their upward path: "The human, personality who first and foremost brought eternal truth to the plane of time, and through this inaugurated a new epoch, remains permanently present in the picture of the spiritual world, and is able permanently to exercise a mighty power upon the soul ... but all this is far removed from any idea of mediation."

Eucken believes in revelation, but through action, and not through contemplation. To the personality struggling upward, with its aims set towards the highest in life, the spiritual life reveals itself. He does not confine revelation to certain periods in time, and believes that such revelation comes to all spiritual personalities.

He holds, too, that the spiritual personalities are themselves revelations of the Universal Spiritual Life, and that the Spiritual Life does reveal itself most clearly in personalities.

How the revelation comes he does not discuss in any detail, but he is very certain that it comes through action and fight for the highest.

It is perhaps largely due to his activistic standpoint that Eucken does not deal with prayer. In the Truth of Religion, which deals very fully with most aspects of religion, and purports to be a complete discussion of religion, no treatment of prayer is given. He speaks of the developing personality as drawing upon the resources of the Universal Spiritual Life, but this appears to be in action, and not in prayer or communion.

He is ever suspicious of intellectual contemplation, and this leads him to attribute less importance than perhaps he should to mysticism, to prayer, adoration, and worship. He admits that mysticism contains a truth that is vital to religion, but complains that it becomes for many the whole of religion. Its proper function is to liberate the human mind from the narrowly human, and to emphasise a total-life, the great Whole. It fails, however, "because it turns this necessary portion of religion into the sole content. To it, religion is nothing other than an absorption into the infinite and eternal Being—an extinguishing of all particularity, and the gaining of a complete calm through the suspension of all the wear and tear of life."