The reader's guide to the Encyclopaedia Britannica

by Inc. Encyclopaedia Britannica

Idealism

Schelling’s position (Vol. 24, p. 316), like that of his disciple Hegel (Vol. 13, p. 200), differed from the transcendentalism of Kant and Fichte in regarding all noumena, or things comprehended (Vol. 19, p. 828), as knowable products of universal reason—the Absolute Ego, and, the absolute being God, nature as a product of universal reason, “a direct manifestation not of man but of God.” This was the starting point of noumenal idealism in Germany, and showed a reversion to the wider opinions of Aristotle. Hegelianism in which this idealism is carried to its limit is professedly one of the most difficult of philosophies. Hegel said “One man has understood me and even he has not.” His obscurity lies in the manner in which, as William Wallace shows in his article on the philosopher (Vol. 13, p. 204), he “abruptly hurls us into worlds where old habits of thought fail us.” The influence of Hegel on English thought has been wide and lasting.

Realism

Schopenhauer (Vol. 24, p. 372) was essentially a realist. He led the inevitable reaction against the absorption of everything in reason which is the keynote of the Kantian system. In the very title of his chief work, The World as Will and Idea, he emphasizes his position in giving “will” equal weight with “mind” or “idea” (Vorstellung). His “Will to Live” embodies a wholesome practical idea. Eduard von Hartmann (Vol. 13, p. 36) in his sensational Philosophy of the Unconscious established the thesis: “When the greater part of the Will in existence is so far enlightened by reason as to perceive the inevitable misery of existence, a collective effort to will non-existence will be made, and the world will relapse into nothingness, the Unconscious into quiescence.” He thus goes a step further in pessimism than did Schopenhauer, and the essence of his doctrine is the will to non-existence—not to live, instead of a will to live. German realism is, however, so strongly coloured by the idealistic cast of the national thought that we have to go to France and England for the most thorough-going statement of the realist position. In France the eclecticism of V. Cousin (Vol. 7, p. 330) marked a doctrine of comprehension and toleration, opposed to the arrogance of absolutism and to the dogmatism of sensationalism which were the tendencies of his day. In England a reversion to Baconian ideas produced the natural or intuitive realism of Reid (Vol. 23, p. 51), Dugald Stewart (Vol. 25, p. 913), Sir William Hamilton (Vol. 12, p. 888) and their followers, and led to the synthetic philosophy of Herbert Spencer (Vol. 25, p. 634).

Materialism

The materialists go a step further than the realists. In its modern sense materialism is the view that all we know is body (or matter), of which the mind is an attribute or function. This attitude was induced by the rapid advances of the natural sciences, and by the unifying doctrine of gradual evolution in nature. It was also heralded by a remarkable growth in commerce, manufactures, and industrialism. The leaders of the movement were Büchner (Vol. 4, p. 719) whose Kraft und Stoff became a text book of materialism, and Haeckel (Vol. 12, p. 803) who in his Riddle of the Universe asserts that, sensations being an inherent property of all substance, neither mind nor soul can have an origin.

The 19th Century and Beyond

In the inquiries of Lotze (Vol. 17, p. 23), and Fechner (Vol. 10, p. 231), the latter an experimental psychologist, lies the germ of much of the speculative thought of the present day. Lotze, as the well-known psychologist Henry Sturt says in his article in the Britannica (Vol. 17, p. 25), “brought philosophy out of the lecture room into the market place of life.” He saw that metaphysics must be the foundation of psychology, and that the current idealist theories of the origin of knowledge were unsound; and he concluded that the union of the regions of facts, of laws, and of standards of values, can only become intelligible through the idea of a personal deity. Like a brilliant meteor Nietzsche (Vol. 19, p. 672) flashed across the philosophic sky. His theories of the super-man are known to everyone. His brilliant essays are all in the nature of prolegomena to a philosophy which, embodied in a master work, the “Will to Power,” was to contain a transvaluation of all existing ethical values. Unfortunately he did not live to complete the work, which remains a fragment; but the drift of his thought is clearly indicated. One other system should be mentioned, that of Positivism (Vol. 22, p. 172), which its founder, Auguste Comte (Vol. 6, p. 814) hoped would supersede every other system. Comte’s philosophy confines itself to the data of experience and declines to recognise a priori or metaphysical speculations. The system of morality which he built up on it, and in which God is replaced by Humanity, has largely failed, in spite of the brilliant ideas which animate it, because it is in many of its aspects retrograde. A most interesting review of present day tendencies in the regions of Metaphysics will be found at the end of that article, with special reference to the brilliant work of Wundt (see also Vol. 28, p. 855), who constructing his system on the Kantian order—sense, understanding, reason, exhibits most clearly the necessary consequence from psychological to metaphysical idealism. His philosophy is the best exposition of modern idealism—that we perceive the mental and, therefore, all we know and conceive is mental.

The Historical Clue

This sketch of the course of events in philosophical speculation will at least enable the reader to follow the historical clue to the evolution of ideas. Every student must, in order to attain a true perspective, know the genealogy of the ideas he is studying. It will therefore be best that he first read the general articles referred to in the beginning of this chapter, supplementing them by the accounts given of the separate systems under the headings of their authors.