The Approach to Philosophy

by Ralph Barton Perry

With Kant there can be no morality except conduct be attended by the consciousness of this duty imposed by the higher nature upon the lower. It is this very recognition of a deeper self, of a personality that belongs to the sources and not to the consequences of nature, that constitutes man as a moral being, and only such action as is inspired with a reverence for it can be morally good. Kant does little more than to establish the uncompromising dignity of the moral will. In moral action man submits to a law that issues from himself in virtue of his rational nature. Here he yields nothing, as he owes nothing, to that appetency which binds him to the natural world. As a rational being he himself affirms the very principles which determine the organization of nature. This is his freedom, at once the ground and the implication of his duty. Man is free from nature to serve the higher law of his personality.

Kantian Ethics Supplemented through the Conceptions of Universal and Objective Spirit.

§ [192]. There are two respects in which Kant's ethics has been regarded as inadequate by those who draw from it their fundamental principles. It is said that Kant is too rigoristic, that he makes too stern a business of morality, in speaking so much of law and so little of love and spontaneity. There are good reasons for this. Kant seeks to isolate the moral consciousness, and dwell upon it in its purity, in order that he may demonstrate its incommensurability with the values of inclination and sensibility. Furthermore, Kant may speak of the principle of the absolute, and recognize the deeper eternal order as a law, but he may not, if he is to be consistent with his own critical principles, affirm the metaphysical being of such an order. With his idealistic followers it is possible to define the spiritual setting of the moral life, but with Kant it is only possible to define the antagonism of principles. Hence the greater optimism of the post-Kantians. They know that the higher law is the reality, and that he who obeys it thus unites himself with the absolute self. That which for Kant is only a resolute obedience to more valid principles, to rationally superior rules for action, is for idealism man's appropriation of his spiritual birthright. Since the law is the deeper nature, man may respect and obey it as valid, and at the same time act upon it gladly in the sure knowledge that it will enhance his eternal welfare. Indeed, the knowledge that the very universe is founded upon this law will make him less suspicious of nature and less exclusive in his adherence to any single law. He will be more confident of the essential goodness of all manifestations of a universe which he knows to be fundamentally spiritual.

But it has been urged, secondly, that the Kantian ethics is too formal, too little pertinent to the issues of life. Kant's moral law imposes only obedience to the law, or conduct conceived as suitable to a universal moral community. But what is the nature of such conduct in particular? It may be answered that to maintain the moral self-consciousness, to act dutifully and dutifully only, to be self-reliant and unswerving in the doing of what one ought to do, is to obtain a very specific character. But does this not leave the individual's conduct to his own interpretation of his duty? It was just this element of individualism which Hegel sought to eliminate through the application of his larger philosophical conception. If that which expresses itself within the individual consciousness as the moral law be indeed the law of that self in which the universe is grounded, it will appear as objective spirit in the evolution of society. For Hegel, then, the most valid standard of goodness is to be found in that customary morality which bespeaks the moral leadings of the general humanity, and in those institutions, such as the family and the state, which are the moral acts of the absolute idea itself. Finally, in the realm of absolute spirit, in art, in revealed religion, and in philosophy, the individual may approach to the self-consciousness which is the perfect truth and goodness in and for itself.

The Peculiar Pantheism and Mysticism of Absolute Idealism.

§ [193]. Where the law of life is the implication in the finite self-consciousness of the eternal and divine self-consciousness, there can be no division between morality and religion, as there can be none between thought and will. Whatever man seeks is in the end God. As the perfect fulfilment of the thinking self, God is the truth; as the perfect fulfilment of the willing self, God is the good. The finite self-consciousness finds facts that are not understood, and so seeks to resolve itself into the perfect self wherein all that is given has meaning. On the other hand, the finite self-consciousness finds ideals that are not realized, and so seeks to resolve itself into that perfect self wherein all that is significant is given. All interests thus converge toward

"some state of conscious spirit in which the opposition of cognition and volition is overcome—in which we neither judge our ideas by the world, nor the world by our ideas, but are aware that inner and outer are in such close and necessary harmony that even the thought of possible discord has become impossible. In its unity not only cognition and volition, but feeling also, must be blended and united. In some way or another it must have overcome the rift in discursive knowledge, and the immediate must for it be no longer the alien. It must be as direct as art, as certain and universal as philosophy."[391:13]

The religious consciousness proper to absolute idealism is both pantheistic and mystical, but with distinction. Platonism is pantheistic in that nature is resolved into God. All that is not perfect is esteemed only for its promise of perfection. And Platonism is mystical in that the purification and universalization of the affections brings one in the end to a perfection that exceeds all modes of thought and speech. With Spinoza, on the other hand, God may be said to be resolved into nature. Nature is made divine, but is none the less nature, for its divinity consists in its absolute necessity. Spinoza's pantheism passes over into mysticism because the absolute necessity exceeds in both unity and richness the laws known to the human understanding. In absolute idealism, finally, both God and nature are resolved into the self. For that which is divine in experience is self-consciousness, and this is at the same time the ground of nature. Thus in the highest knowledge the self is expanded and enriched without being left behind. The mystical experience proper to this philosophy is the consciousness of identity, together with the sense of universal immanence. The individual self may be directly sensible of the absolute self, for these are one spiritual life. Thus Emerson says:

"It is a secret which every intellectual man quickly learns, that beyond the energy of his possessed and conscious intellect he is capable of a new energy (as of an intellect doubled on itself), by abandonment to the nature of things; that beside his privacy of power as an individual man, there is a great public power upon which he can draw, by unlocking, at all risks, his human doors, and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him; then he is caught up into the life of the Universe, his speech is thunder, his thought is law, and his words are universally intelligible as the plants and animals. The poet knows that he speaks adequately then only when he speaks somewhat wildly, or 'with the flower of the mind'; not with the intellect used as an organ, but with the intellect released from all service and suffered to take its direction from its celestial life."[393:14]

The Religion of Exuberant Spirituality.