Of compendiums, three have to be noticed. 1. Frederick Aft’s Grundriss einer Geschichte der Philosophie. (Landshut, 1807, 8; second edition, 1825) is written from a better point of view; the Philosophy is that of Schelling for the most part, but it is somewhat confused. Aft by some formal method has distinguished ideal philosophy from real. 2. Professor Wendt’s Göttingen edition of Tennemann (fifth edition, Leipzig, 1828, 8). It is astonishing to see what is represented as being Philosophy, without any consideration as to whether it has any meaning or not. Such so-called new philosophies grow like mushrooms out of the ground. There is nothing easier than to comprehend in harmony with a principle; but it must not be thought that hence something new and profound has been accomplished. 3. Rirner’s Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, 3 vols., Sulzbach, 1822-1823, 8 (second amended edition, 1829) is most to be commended, and yet I will not assert that it answers all the requirements of a History of Philosophy. There are many points which leave much to desire, but the appendices to each volume in which the principal original authorities are quoted, are particularly excellent for their purpose. Selected extracts, more specially from the ancient philosophers, are needed, and these would not be lengthy, since there are not very many passages to be given from the philosophers before Plato.
[3. Method of Treatment adopted in this History of Philosophy.]
As regards external history I shall only touch upon that which is the concern of universal history, the spirit or the principle of the times, and hence I will treat of conditions of life in reference to the outstanding philosophers. Of philosophies, however, only those are to be made mention of the principles of which have caused some sensation, and through which science has made an advance; hence I shall put aside many names which would be taken up in a learned treatise, but which are of little value in respect to Philosophy. The history of the dissemination of a doctrine, its fate, those who have merely taught a particular doctrine, I pass over, as the deduction of the whole world from one particular principle.
The demand that in Philosophy an historian should have no system, should put into the philosophy nothing of his own, nor assail it with his ideas, seems a plausible one. The history of Philosophy should show just this impartiality, and it seems in so far that to give only summaries of the philosophers proves a success. He who understands nothing of the matter, and has no system, but merely historic knowledge, will certainly be impartial. But political history has to be carefully distinguished from the history of Philosophy. That is to say, though in the former, one is not indeed at liberty to limit oneself to representing the events chronologically only, one can yet keep to what is entirely objective, as is done in the Homeric epic. Thus Herodotus and Thucydides, as free men, let the objective world do freely and independently as it would; they have added nothing of their own, neither have they taken and judged before their tribunal the actions which they represented. Yet even in political history there is also a particular end kept in view. In Livy the main points are the Roman rule, its enlargement, and the perfecting of the constitution; we see Rome arise, defend itself, and exercise its mastery. It is thus that the self-developing reason in the history of Philosophy makes of itself an end, and this end is not foreign or imported, but is the matter itself, which lies at the basis as universal, and with which the individual forms of themselves correspond. Thus when the history of Philosophy has to tell of deeds in history, we first ask, what a deed in Philosophy is; and whether any particular thing is philosophic or not. In external history everything is in action—certainly there is in it what is important and that which is unimportant—but action is the idea immediately placed before us. This is not the case in Philosophy, and on this account the history of Philosophy cannot be treated throughout without the introduction of the historian’s views.
[ORIENTAL PHILOSOPHY]
The first Philosophy in order is the so-called Oriental, which, however, does not enter into the substance or range of our subject as represented here. Its position is preliminary, and we only deal with it at all in order to account for not treating of it at greater length, and to show in what relation it stands to Thought and to true Philosophy. The expression Eastern philosophy is specially employed in reference to the period in which this great universal Oriental conception aroused the East—the land of circumscription and of limitation, where the spirit of subjectivity reigns. More particularly in the first centuries of Christendom—that significant period—did these great Oriental ideas penetrate into Italy; and in the Gnostic philosophy they began to force the idea of the illimitable into the Western mind, until in the Church the latter again succeeded in obtaining the ascendency and hence in firmly establishing the Divine. That which we call Eastern Philosophy is more properly the religious mode of thought and the conception of the world belonging generally to the Orientals and approximates very closely to Philosophy; and to consider the Oriental idea of religion just as if it were religious philosophy, is to give the main reason why it is so like.
We do not similarly maintain that the Roman, Greek and Christian Religions constitute Philosophy. These bear all the less similarity thereto in that the Greek and Roman gods as also Christ and the God of the Jews, on account of the principle of individual freedom which penetrates the Greek and still more the Christian element, make their appearance immediately as the explicit, personal forms, which, being mythological or Christian, must first be themselves interpreted and changed into a philosophic form. In the case of Eastern Religion, on the contrary, we are much more directly reminded of the philosophic conception, for since in the East the element of subjectivity has not come forth, religious ideas are not individualized, and we have predominating a kind of universal ideas, which hence present the appearance of being philosophic ideas and thoughts. The Orientals certainly have also individual forms, such as Brahma, Vishnu and Civa, but because freedom is wanting the individuality is not real, but merely superficial. And so much is this the case, that when we suppose that we have to deal with a human form, the same loses itself again and expands into the illimitable. Just as we hear amongst the Greeks of a Uranus and Chronos—of Time individualized—we find with the Persians, Zeroane Akerene, but it is Time unlimited. We find Ormuzd and Ahriman to be altogether general forms and ideas; they appear to be universal principles which thus seem to bear a relationship to Philosophy or even seem to be themselves philosophic.
Just as the content of the Eastern religions, God, the essentially existent, the eternal, is comprehended somewhat in the light of universal, we find the relative positions of individuals to Him to be the same. In the Eastern religions the first condition is that only the one substance shall, as such, be the true, and that the individual neither can have within himself, nor can he attain to any value in as far as he maintains himself as against the being in and for itself. He can have true value only through an identification with this substance in which he ceases to exist as subject and disappears into unconsciousness. In the Greek and Christian Religion, on the other hand, the subject knows himself to be free and must be maintained as such; and because the individual in this way makes himself independent, it is undoubtedly much more difficult for Thought to free itself from this individuality and to constitute itself in independence. The higher point of view implicitly contained in the Greek individual freedom, this happier, larger life, makes more difficult the work of Thought, which is to give due value to the universal. In the East, on the contrary, the substantial in Religion is certainly on its own view the principal matter, the essential—and with it lawlessness, the absence of individual consciousness is immediately connected—and this substance is undoubtedly a philosophic idea. The negation of the finite is also present, but in such a manner that the individual only reaches to its freedom in this unity with the substantial. In as far as in the Eastern mind, reflection, consciousness come through thought to distinction and to the determination of principles, there exist such categories and such definite ideas not in unity with the substantial. The destruction of all that is particular either is an illimitable, the exaltitude of the East, or, in so far as that which is posited and determined for itself is known, it is a dry, dead understanding, which cannot take up the speculative Notion into itself. To that which is true, this finite can exist only as immersed in substance; if kept apart from this it remains dead and arid. We thus find only dry understanding amongst the Easterns, a mere enumeration of determinations, a logic like the Wolffian of old. It is the same as in their worship, which is complete immersion in devotion and then an endless number of ceremonials and of religious actions; and this on the other side is the exaltitude of that illimitable in which everything disappears.