CHAPTER X
KANT[53]
The Convergence of Philosophical Influences in Germany. The intellectual thoroughfare from the past into our modern times does not pass in the eighteenth century through England, nor yet through France, but by way of Germany. Traditional France ended with the French political revolution, while the English empirical movement proved its own inconsistency in the phenomenalism of Hume. In Germany alone, at the close of the eighteenth century, there was a renewed and brilliant intellectual life. In its creative productions it has been compared by the Germans to the Systematic Period of Greek thought (from the death of Socrates to that of Aristotle). Both periods appeared when the political fortunes of the respective countries were at their lowest ebb.
There were six large influences that converged upon this epoch, some of which we have already noted as beginning even as far back as the period introductory to the Enlightenment (1648–1740) (see pp. [217] ff.). Some are later in their origin or come from a foreign source. Let us merely enumerate them here.
(1) Pietism, the religious influence that began with Spener (1635) and swept Germany in the eighteenth century; (2) The sentimentalism of Rousseau; (3) The empirical psychology of Locke among the youngerGermans; (4) The Rationalism of the Leibnitz-Wolffian philosophy, which was most powerful in academic circles; (5) The mathematical rigorism of the nature-philosophy of Newton; (6) The new literary writers in their insistence upon subjectivity and intuition.
The Three Characteristics of German Philosophy. German philosophy will be seen to have three characteristics. (1) It is scholastic or academic. It is the philosophy of the professors of universities. At the same time it must be said to be the expression of the social genius of the German people. Napoleon testified to this when he said, “The English inhabit the sea, the French the land, the Germans the air.” (2) This German philosophy is mystical. It is profound rather than external. It is not founded upon external experience, but upon a questioning of the inner and spiritual life. It is inward, religious, and spiritual, like the philosophy of Plato. One of the most accurate interpreters of Kant has pointed out the many similarities between Kant and Plato (see Paulsen, Immanuel Kant). (3) German philosophy was nevertheless cosmic, or a description of the world. These men whom we are now to study were not ignorant of the world or of science. Political life offered them no attractions. The soul of man was regarded by them as too noble to be engrossed in external things. As Madame De Staël said of the time, “There was nothing to do save for him whose concern was with the universe.” Men, however, took the inner point of view, and regarded all things with reference to it. The Germans tried to humanize the universe. They looked upon nature as working out unconsciously those processes which consciously took place in man. The contemplation of beauty is not thatof an external world, but of the inmost nature of reality. Thus individuality and cosmic reality are one and the same. Life has a joyful outlook, not because our tasks are easy, but because our strength is equal to them; for is not God in us?
The Two Periods of German Philosophy. German philosophy is divided into two epochs: (1) the period of the formation of the critical theory of knowledge by Kant; (2) the period of the metaphysical development of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Herbart, and Schopenhauer. Kant belongs both to the Enlightenment and to German idealism. He is the point of convergence of the intellectual forces that preceded him and the point of departure of the idealists who followed him. For this reason historians differ as to the period in which he is to be placed. In one sense he is the transition from the Enlightenment, in another sense he is the introduction of German idealism. But in reality he forms an epoch between the two. Although the dualism, which was always the background of the philosophy of the Enlightenment, formed too the background of his thought, although he on the other hand looked upon his Critique of Pure Reason as only an introduction to a metaphysics, which he never wrote, nevertheless he occupies a unique place in drawing up for his time and for the future a new conceptual standard by which the new problems might be criticised. The problem that Kant set before himself was epistemological and not one of metaphysics.
After Kant there appeared a growth of metaphysics. The great German idealistic systems appeared. At first the Kantian theory was misunderstood, but at Jena, then the chief intellectual centre in Germany,there was formed a little group of Kantians under the leadership of Rheinhold. Jena is near Weimar (see map p. [280]), which was the main literary city of Germany, and the residence of Goethe. The poetry of Weimar and the philosophy of Jena stimulated each other. Schiller is a notable example of the influence of Kant upon the literature of the time. In philosophy Kant was followed by the various systems of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Herbart, and Schopenhauer, which built a metaphysical superstructure upon the Kantian foundation.
The Influences upon Kant. The development of Kant’s thought was modified by influences from at least five different sources.
1. Pietism. This was the earliest influence upon his life, and was due to his parents and to F. A. Schultze, the teacher of the high school of Königsberg. It will be remembered that this ethical Puritanism was a moral reaction against the formalism of the churches in the period after the Thirty Years’ War. Kant never lost his attachment for the Pietists; and his later rigoristic ethical theory, as well as his own personal life, sprang from his early Pietistic training. Schiller wrote to Goethe, “There is always something about Kant, as about Luther, which reminds one of the monk, who has indeed quitted his cloister, but who can never quite rid himself of its traces.”