A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 2: Modern Philosophy

by Herbert Ernest Cushman

2. The meagre German literature of this early period was also an important factor in the development of the Enlightenment. Poor, indeed, it was. Never was German literary production so low. Before the war the Germans had taken Greek as their model; after the war they copied the language, manners, and methods of the French of Louis XIV. The early literature was ruled in the same spirit of absolutism by Opitz until 1700, and after him by Gottsched, especially in the years from 1730 to 1740. It was for only a small fraction of the people, and was in the interests of the depraved aristocrats of the courts. Such pedantic absolutism was the basis of the reaction in the next period of the literary Enlightenment, which proved the redemption of Germany.

3. The Pietistic movement was the third factor that went to make up the German Enlightenment. It was a positive expression of religious individualism, similar in its position to the Prussian state in its independent growth in politics. It was a religious movement outsidethe church. Its two leaders were Spener (1635–1705) and Francke (1663–1727). The movement entered Germany from the Netherlands; and the members were devout and holy men consecrated to good deeds. The Pietists were not heroic figures like the early Lutherans, but they stood for what Luther had in his early period taught. They opposed ecclesiastical formalism, and they proclaimed the need of personal regeneration and of the universal priesthood. They stood for religious freedom. They made no onslaught upon the church, but they were content with saving individuals. Pietism united at first with Rationalism—of which we shall next speak—against orthodoxy, but when the two had won their victory they quarreled. Although the Pietistic movement later became itself conventional, it furnished the ground for the religious freedom of the Enlightenment. During these hundred years of German religious absolutism, the Pietists represent the moral activity among religious bodies.

4. The chief source of the Enlightenment was the philosophy of Leibnitz. In turning back to the life of this distinguished German the reader will remember that he was the “first scientist in two hundred years,” and that he was the Rationalist who presaged the Enlightenment. Leibnitz was born in 1646, just two years before the war closed, and he died in 1716, one year after the death of Louis XIV. He lived during those unfruitful years after the war and before the Enlightenment; and his philosophy stands out prominently from the low plane of the intellectual activity of that time. In 1686 he completed the construction of his philosophy by introducing the conception of the individual as a dynamic centre.

Many German philosophers, about the time of Leibnitz, had later tried to free philosophy from its technical difficulties and make it readable for the people as the French Encyclopædia was for the French people. Among these were Tschirnhausen (1651–1708), Mendelssohn (1729–1786), and Tetens (1736–1805), but the German Enlightenment for many reasons did not come about like the French in the popularizing of philosophy. The philosophy of Leibnitz did reach the people directly, but the people were stirred through the medium of literature rather than of philosophy. Leibnitz’s philosophy became the dominant thought only in the universities and academic circles, and remained so until the publication of Kant’s Critique in 1781. The Halle professor, Wolff (1679–1754), developed and transformed it, not to its advantage, into an absolutism, and under the name of the Leibnitz-Wolffian philosophy it was the canon for the German schools. Once established in the universities it remained unchanged there even by the invasion of French thought that penetrated other German circles. Even Voltaire’s residence at the court at Berlin (1750) had no influence upon the Leibnitz-Wolffian philosophy of the Berlin Academy. The dogmatic absolutism of this philosophy remained impregnable in academic circles and was the last to be dislodged—and then only by a German. There was little progress among these Rationalists, once their doctrine had been cast, except in incorporating in an eclectic fashion the doctrine of others.

Wolff systematized the unordered and desultory doctrines of Leibnitz for the purpose of teaching them logically. This was in 1706, when by the aid of Leibnitzhe obtained the professorship of mathematics at Halle. He met with instant success. The rationalism of his doctrine is seen from the title of many of his works, which are Reasonable Thoughts on God, Reasonable Thoughts on the Powers of the Human Understanding, etc. He lectured at Halle until 1723, when he was expelled by the theological influence. His return to Halle in 1740 was coincident with the crowning of Frederick the Great and the beginning of the German Enlightenment. We can note a few general aspects of his teaching. He employed the German language in his lectures, following Thomasius, who was the first to do it. Leibnitz had written in letters and treatises for the few, and had used either Latin or French. Wolff expanded Leibnitz’s doctrine, broadly and superficially, for a larger public, in the German tongue. He systematized Leibnitz’s teaching, and thereby could disseminate it. But in doing this he so toned down Leibnitz’s leading ideas that they lost all their peculiar force. For instance, he taught that only the human mind has the power of representation; and again, that preëstablished harmony applies only to the relation of the soul and body of the human monad. In general, he so extended the Leibnitz principle of sufficient reason that it applied to all departments, and was reduced to the principle of identity. The world is a huge mechanism designed for divine ends. Rationality is assumed to be everywhere, and knowledge of its existence is to be obtained only by deduction from evident principles. The result was that the philosophy of Leibnitz was reduced to a commonplace and empty rationalism—a purely deductive affair. Wolff undertook to demonstrate everything, and to make intelligible what is above reason. The Wolffian philosophy was a reversion tomediæval scholasticism, since it solved all problems by proof through the cogency of mathematical and logical processes. Truth is a matter of definition and classification. Thus Wolff produced a philosophy that was pedantic and formal, clear but shallow. It was Leibnitzian with Leibnitz omitted; it was a thorough-going dogmatism, because no problem was difficult to it; it was a rationalism, because to it all truth is the deliverance of the reason and none is derived from experience.

The Wolffian Rationalism became a factor in the German Enlightenment on the one hand by combining with Pietism, and on the other through its translation into the new German literature. In itself the Wolffian Rationalism was a dogmatism that merely supplanted the dogmatic scholasticism of Melanchthon and Luther. It lost its absolutism in its combination with Pietism, and became a personal and individualistic religion. It also lost its absolutism and became more like the philosophy of Leibnitz through its translation into the literary writings of Lessing and Herder; and thus was subordinated to an incident in individual culture.

Summary of the Literary Enlightenment of Germany (1740–1781). The German Enlightenment was thus made possible by the political growth of Prussia, by the development of a meagre literature, by the rise of Pietism, and by the Wolffian interpretation of Leibnitz’s philosophy. All these were important features of the century following the Thirty Years’ War. The year 1740 is the beginning of the German Enlightenment. It marks the crowning of Frederick the Great, the decline of the influence of Gottsched in literature, and Wolff’s return to Halle. The arrival of Voltaire in Berlin (1750) is an important factor in the rise of theGerman Enlightenment. The spirit of the Enlightenment was at its height twenty years later (1760), contemporaneous with the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) and with the publication by Lessing in 1759 of his Letters concerning the most Modern Literature. In these Letters Lessing gave the death-blow to Gottschedism, and established the Enlightenment on a firm basis. This was followed by the Storm and Stress movement (1773–1787), which brought the Enlightenment proper to an end.

1730–1750 Period of Experimentation—Gottsched, the Swiss, the Anacreonticists, etc.

1740 The Enlightenment inaugurated—the crowning of Frederick the Great, the decline of Gottschedism, the return of Wolff to Halle.

1750 The coming of Voltaire to Berlin.