J. Borelius of Lund is an Hegelian, but differs from the master in regard to the doctrine of the contradiction. The Hegelian philosophy has adherents in Norway also, as G.V. Lyng (died 1884; System of Fundamental Ideas), M.J. Monrad (Tendencies of Modern Thought, 1874, German translation, 1879), both professors in Christiania, and Monrad's pupil G. Kent (Hegel's Doctrine of the Nature of Experience, 1891).
The Danish philosophy of the nineteenth century has been described by Höffding in the second volume of the Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 1888. He begins with the representatives of the speculative movement: Steffens (see above), Niels Treschow (1751-1833), Hans Christian Oersted (1777-1851; Spirit in Nature, German translation, Munich, 1850-51), and Frederik Christian Sibbern (1785-1872). A change was brought about by the philosophers of religion Sören Kierkegaard (1813-55) and Rasmus Nielsen (1809-84; Philosophy of Religion, 1869), who opposed speculative idealism with a strict dualism of knowledge and faith, and were in turn opposed by Georg Brandes (born 1842) and Hans Bröchner (1820-75). Among younger investigators the Copenhagen professors, Harald Höffding[1] (born 1843) and Kristian Kroman[2] (born 1846) stand in the first rank.
[Footnote 1: Höffding: The Foundations of Human Ethics, 1876, German translation, 1880; Outlines of Psychology, 1882, English translation by Lowndes, 1891, from the German translation, 1887; Ethics, 1887, German translation by Bendixen, 1888.]
[Footnote 2: Kroman: Our Knowledge of Nature, German translation, 1883; A Brief Logic and Psychology, German translation by Bendixen, 1890.]
Land (Mind, vol. iii. 1878) and G. von Antal (1888) have written on philosophy in Holland. Down to the middle of the nineteenth century the field was occupied by an idealism based upon the ancients, in particular upon Plato: Franz Hemsterhuis (1721-90; Works, new ed., 1846-50), and the philologists Wyttenbach and Van Heusde. Then Cornelius Wilhelm Opzoomer[3] (1821-92; professor in Utrecht) brought in a new movement. Opzoomer favors empiricism. He starts from Mill and Comte, but goes beyond them in important points, and assigns faith a field of its own beside knowledge. In opposition to apriorism he seeks to show that experience is capable of yielding universal and necessary truths; that space, time, and causality are received along with the content of thought; that mathematics itself is based upon experience; and that the method of natural science, especially deduction, must be applied to the mental sciences. The philosophy of mind considers man as an individual being, in his connection with others, in relation to a higher being, and in his development; accordingly it divides into psychology (which includes logic, aesthetics, and ethology), sociology, the philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of history. Central to Opzoomer's system is his doctrine of the five sources of knowledge: Sensation, the feeling of pleasure and pain, aesthetic, moral, and religious feeling. If we build on the foundation of the first three alone, we end in materialism; if we leave the last unused, we reach positivism; if we make religious feeling the sole judge of truth, mysticism is the outcome. The criteria of science are utility and progress. These are still wanting in the mental sciences, in which the often answered but never decided questions continually recur, because we have neither derived the principles chosen as the basis of the deduction from an exact knowledge of the phenomena nor tested the results by experience. The causes of this defective condition can only be removed by imitating the study of nature: we must learn that no conclusions can be reached except from facts, and that we are to strive after knowledge of phenomena and their laws alone. We have no right to assume an "essence" of things beside and in addition to phenomena, which reveals itself in them or hides behind them. Pupils of Opzoomer are his successor in his Utrecht chair, Van der Wyck, and Pierson. We may also mention J.P.N. Land, who has done good service in editing the works of Spinoza and of Geulincx, and the philosopher of religion Rauwenhoff (1888).
[Footnote 1: Opzoomer: The Method of Science, a Handbook of Logic, German translation by Schwindt, 1852; Religion, German translation by Mook, 1869.]
On the system of the Hungarian philosopher Cyrill Horváth (died 1884 at
Pesth) see the essay by E. Nemes in the Zeitschrift für Philosophie,
vol. lxxxviii, 1886. Since 1889 a review, Problems of Philosophy and
Psychology, has appeared at Moscow in Russian, under the direction of
Professor N. von Grot.
CHAPTER XVI.
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY SINCE THE DEATH OF HEGEL.
With Hegel the glorious dynasty which, with a strong hand, had guided the fate of German philosophy since the conclusion of the preceding century disappears. From his death (1831) we may date the second period of post-Kantian philosophy,[1] which is markedly and unfavorably distinguished from the first by a decline in the power of speculative creation and by a division of effort. If previous to this the philosophical public, comprising all the cultured, had been eagerly occupied with problems in common, and had followed with unanimous interest the work of those who were laboring at them, during the last fifty years the interest of wider circles in philosophical questions has grown much less active; almost every thinker goes his own way, giving heed only to congenial voices; the inner connection of the schools has been broken down; the touch with thinkers of different views has been lost. The latest decades have been the first to bring a change for the better, in so far as new rallying points of philosophical interest have been created by the neo-Kantian movement, by the systems of Lotze and Von Hartmann, by the impulse toward the philosophy of nature proceeding from Darwinism, by energetic labors in the field of practical philosophy, and by new methods of investigation in psychology.