c. Further comparison between the History of Philosophy and Philosophy itself.
We may appropriate to ourselves the whole of the riches apportioned out in time: it must be shown from the succession in philosophies how that succession is the systematization of the science of Philosophy itself. But a distinction is to be noted here: that which first commences is implicit, immediate, abstract, general—it is what has not yet advanced; the more concrete and richer comes later, and the first is poorer in determinations. This may appear contrary to one’s first impressions, but philosophic ideas are often enough directly opposed to ordinary ideas, and what is generally supposed, is not found to be the case. It may be thought that what comes first must be the concrete. The child, for instance, as still in the original totality of his nature, is thought to be more concrete than the man, hence we imagine the latter to be more limited, no longer forming a totality, but living an abstract life. Certainly the man acts in accordance with definite ends, not bringing his whole soul and mind into a subject, but splitting his life into a number of abstract unities. The child and the youth, on the contrary, act straight from the fulness of the heart. Feeling and sense-perception come first, thought last, and thus feeling appears to us to be more concrete than thought, or the activity of abstraction and of the universal. In reality, it is just the other way. The sensuous consciousness is certainly the more concrete, and if poorer in thought, at least richer in content. We must thus distinguish the naturally concrete from the concrete of thought, which on its side, again, is wanting in sensuous matter. The child is also the most abstract and the poorest in thought: as to what pertains to nature, the man is abstract, but in thought he is more concrete than the child. Man’s ends and objects are undoubtedly abstract in general affairs, such as in maintaining his family or performing his business duties, but he contributes to a great objective organic whole, whose progress he advances and directs. In the acts of a child, on the other hand, only a childish and, indeed, momentary “I,” and in those of the youth the subjective constitution or the random aim, form the principle of action. It is in this way that science is more concrete than sense-perception.
In applying this to the different forms of Philosophy, it follows in the first place, that the earliest philosophies are the poorest and the most abstract. In them the Idea is least determined; they keep merely to generalities not yet realized. This must be known in order that we may not seek behind the old philosophies for more than we are entitled to find; thus we need not require from them determinations proceeding from a deeper consciousness. For instance, it has been asked whether the philosophy of Thales is, properly speaking, Theism or Atheism,[5] whether he asserted a personal God or merely an impersonal, universal existence. The question here regards the attribution of subjectivity to the highest Idea, the conception of the Personality of God. Such subjectivity as we comprehend it, is a much richer, more concentrated, and therefore much later conception, which need not be sought for in distant ages. The Greek gods had, indeed, personality in imagination and idea like the one God of the Jewish religion, but to know what is the mere picture of fancy, and what the insight of pure Thought and Notion, is quite another thing. If we take as basis our own ideas judged by these deeper conceptions, an ancient Philosophy may undoubtedly be spoken of as Atheism. But this expression would at the same time be false, for the thoughts as thoughts in beginning, could not have arrived at the development which we have reached.
From this it follows—since the progress of development is equivalent to further determination, and this means further immersion in and a fuller grasp of the Idea itself—that the latest, most modern and newest philosophy is the most developed, richest and deepest. In that philosophy everything which at first seems to be past and gone must be preserved and retained, and it must itself be a mirror of the whole history. The original philosophy is the most abstract, because it is the original and has not as yet made any movement forward; the last, which proceeds from this forward and impelling influence, is the most concrete. This, as may at once be remarked, is no mere pride in the philosophy of our time, because it is in the nature of the whole process that the more developed philosophy of a later time is really the result of the previous operations of the thinking mind; and that it, pressed forwards and onwards from the earlier standpoints, has not grown up on its own account or in a state of isolation.
It must also be recollected that we must not hesitate to say, what is naturally implied, that the Idea, as comprehended and shown forth in the latest and newest philosophy, is the most developed, the richest and deepest. I call this to remembrance because the designation, new or newest of all in reference to Philosophy, has become a very common by-word. Those who think they express anything by using such terms might quite easily render thanks respecting any number of philosophies just as fast as their inclination directs, regarding either every shooting-star and even every candle-gleam in the light of a sun, or else calling every popular cry a philosophy, and adducing as proof that at any rate there are so many philosophies that every day one displaces another. Thus they have the category in which they can place any apparently significant philosophy, and through which they may at the same time set it aside; this they call a fashion-philosophy.
“Scoffer, thou call’st this but a fleeting phase
When the Spirit of Man once again and anew,
Strives earnestly on, towards forms that are higher.”
A second consequence has regard to the treatment of the older philosophies. Such insight also prevents us from ascribing any blame to the philosophies when we miss determinations in them which were not yet present to their culture, and similarly it prevents our burdening them with deductions and assertions which were neither made nor thought of by them, though they might correctly enough allow themselves to be derived from the thought of such a philosophy. It is necessary to set to work on an historical basis, and to ascribe to Philosophy what is immediately given to us, and that alone. Errors crop up here in most histories of Philosophy, since we may see in them a number of metaphysical propositions ascribed to a philosopher and given out as an historical statement of the views which he has propounded, of which he neither thought nor knew a word, and of which there is not the slightest trace found in history. Thus in Brucker’s great History of Philosophy (Pt. I. pp. 465-478 seq.) a list of thirty, forty, or a hundred theorems are quoted from Thales and others, no idea of which can be traced in history as having been present to these philosophers. There are also propositions in support of them and citations taken from discussions of a similar kind with which we may occupy ourselves long enough. Brucker’s method is to endow the single theorem of an ancient philosopher with all the consequences and premises which must, according to the idea of the Wolffian Metaphysics, be the premises and conclusions of that theorem, and thus easily to produce a simple, naked fiction as if it were an actual historical fact. Thus, according to Brucker, Thales said, Ex nihilo fit nihil, since he said that water was eternal. Thus, too, he was to be counted amongst the philosophers who deny creation out of nothing; and of this, historically at least, Thales was ignorant. Professor Ritter, too, whose history of Ionic Philosophy is carefully written, and who on the whole is cautious not to introduce foreign matter, has very possibly ascribed to Thales more than is found in history. He says (pp. 12, 13), “Hence we must regard the view of nature which we find in Thales as dynamic in principle. He regarded the world as the all-embracing, living animal which has developed from a germ like every other animal, and this germ, like that of all other animals, is either damp or water. Thus the fundamental idea of Thales is that the world is a living whole which has developed from a germ and carries on its life as does an animal, by means of nourishment suitable to its nature” (cf. p. 16). This is quite a different account from that of Aristotle, and none of it is communicated by the ancients regarding Thales. The sequence of thought is evident, but historically it is not justified. We ought not by such deductions to make an ancient philosophy into something quite different from what it originally was.
We are too apt to mould the ancient philosophers into our own forms of thought, but this is just to constitute the progress of development; the difference in times, in culture and in philosophies, depends on whether certain reflections, certain thought determinations, and certain stages in the Notion have come to consciousness, whether a consciousness has been developed to a particular point or not. The history of Philosophy has simply to deal with this development and bringing forth of thought. The determinations involved certainly follow from a proposition, but whether they are put forth as yet or not is quite another thing, and the bringing forth of the inner content is the only matter of importance. We must therefore only make use of the words which are actually literal, for to use further thought determinations which do not yet belong to the consciousness of the philosopher in question, is to carry on development. Thus Aristotle states that Thales has defined the principle (ἀρχή) of every thing to be water. But Anaximander first made use of ἀρχή, and Thales thus did not possess this determination of thought at all; he recognized ἀρχή as commencement in time, but not as the fundamental principle. Thales did not once introduce the determination of cause into his philosophy, and first cause is a further determination still. There are whole nations which have not this conception at all; indeed it involves a great step forward in development. And seeing that difference in culture on the whole depends on difference in the thought determinations which are manifested, this must be so still more with respect to philosophies.