[Footnote 1: Eucken: The Unity of Spiritual Life in the Consciousness and Deeds of Humanity, 1888; Prolegomena to this, 1885. A detailed analysis of the latter by Falckenberg is given in the Zeitschrift für Philosophie, vol. xc, 1887; cf. above, pp. 17 and 610.]
We have elsewhere discussed the more recent attempts to establish a metaphysic which shall be empirically well grounded and shall cautiously rise from facts.[1] In regard to the possibility of metaphysics three parties are to be distinguished: On the left, the positivists, the neo-Kantians, and the monists of consciousness, who deny it out of hand. On the right, a series of philosophers—e.g., adherents of Hegel, Herbart, and Schopenhauer—who, without making any concessions to the modern theory of knowledge, hold fast to the possibility of a speculative metaphysics of the old type. In the center, a group of thinkers who are willing to renounce neither a solid noëtical foundation nor the attainment of metaphysical conclusions—so Eduard von Hartmann, Wundt,[2] Eucken, Volkelt (pp. 590, 617). Otto Liebmann (born 1840; On the Analysis of Reality, 1876, 2d ed., 1880; Thoughts and Facts, Heft i. 1882) demands a sharp separation between the certain and the uncertain and an exact estimation of the degree of probability which theories possess; puts the principles of metaphysics under the rubric of logical hypothesis; and, in his Climax of the Theories, 1884, calls attention to the fact that experiential science, in addition to axioms necessarily or apodictically certain and empeiremes possessing actual or assertory certainty, needs, further, a number of "interpolation maxims," which form an attribute of our type of intellectual organization (i.e., principles, according to the standard of which we supplement the fragmentary and discrete series of single perceptions and isolated observations by the interpolation of the needed intermediate links, so that they form a connected experience). The most important of these maxims are the principles of real identity, of the continuity of existence, of causality, and of the continuity of becoming. Experience is a gift of the understanding; the premises, as a rule, latent in ordinary consciousness, on whose anticipatory application our experience is based throughout, assert something absolutely incapable of being experienced. If, in order to the production of a "pure experience," we eliminate all subjective additions of the understanding contained in experiential thought (all that cannot be present at the moment or locally at hand, in short, all that cannot be the direct object and content of actual observation), this breaks up into an unordered, unconnected aggregate of discontinuous perceptual fragments; in order that a complete and articulated condition of experience may result, these fragments (the purely factual content of observation, the incoherent matter of perception) must be supplemented and connected by very much that is not observed.
[Footnote 1: R. Falckenberg, Ueber die gegenwärtige Lage der deutschen
Philosophie, inaugural address at Erlangen, Leipsic, 1890.]
[Footnote 2: Wundt: Essays, 1885, including "Philosophy and Science"; System of Philosophy, 1889. On the latter cf. Volkelt's paper in the Philosophische Monatshefte, vol. xxvii. 1891; and on the Essays a notice by the same author in the same review, vol. xxiii. 1887.]
Further, a reaction against crude naturalism is observable in the practical field, though political economists (Roscher) and jurists take a more active part in it than the philosophers. Personally R. von Jhering (1818-92; Purpose in Law, 2 vols., 1877-83, 2d ed., 1884-86) stands on idealistic ground, although, rejecting the nativistic and formalistic theory, he is in principle an adherent of "realism," of the principle of interest and social utility (the moral is that Which is permanently useful to society).
Finally, similar motives underlie the growing interest in the history of philosophy. The idealistic impulse seeks the nourishment which the un-metaphysical present denies to it from the great works of the past, and hopes, by keeping alive the classical achievements of previous times, to enhance the consciousness of the urgency and irrepressibleness of the highest questions, and to awaken courage for renewed attempts at their solution. Thus the study of history enters the service of systematic philosophy.
%(c) The Special Philosophical Sciences.%—The more the courage to attack the central problems of philosophy has been paralyzed by the neo-Kantian theory of knowledge and the coming-in of the positivistic spirit, the more lively has been the work of the last decades in the special departments: the transfer of the center of gravity from metaphysics to the particular sciences is the most prominent characteristic of the philosophy of the time. Logic sees century-old convictions shattered and new foundations arising. Psychology has entered into competition with physiology in regard to the discovery of the laws of the psychical functions which depend on bodily processes, while metaphysical questions are forced into the background and there is a growing distrust of the reliability of inner observation. The philosophy of religion is favored with undiminished interest and aesthetics, after long neglect, with a renewal of attention; the philosophy of history is about to reconquer its former rights. There is, moreover, an especially lively interest in ethics; and the investigation of the history of philosophy is more widely extended than ever before. We will close our sketch with a short survey of the particular disciplines.
In the department of logic the following should be mentioned as classical achievements: the works of Christoph Sigwart of Tübingen (vol. i. 1873, 2d ed., 1889; vol. ii. 1878), of Lotze (p. 605), and of Wundt (vol. i. Erkenntnisslehre, 1880; vol. ii. Methodenlehre, 1883). Besides these, Bergmann (p. 620), Schuppe (p. 619), and Benno Erdmann (Logik, vol. i. 1892) deserve notice.
In psychology the following writers have made themselves prominent: Wilhelm Wundt at Leipsic (born 1832), Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie, 1874, 3d ed., 1887; A. Horwicz, Psychologische Analysen auf physiologischer Grundlage, 1872 seq.; Franz Brentano in Vienna (born 1838), Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte, vol. i. 1874; Carl Stumpf of Munich (born 1848), Ueber den psychologischen Ursprung der Raumvorstellung, 1873, Tonpsychologie, vol. i. 1883, vol. ii. 1890; Theodor Lipps of Breslau (born 1851), Grundthatsachen des Seelenlebens, 1883. The following may be mentioned in the same connection: J.H. Witte, Das Wesen der Seele, 1888; H. Münsterberg, Die Willenshandlung, 1888, Beiträge zur experimentellen Psychologie, 1889 seq,; Goswin K. Uphues at Halle, Wahrnehmung und Empfindung, 1888, Ueber die Erinnerung, 1889; H. Schmidkunz, Psychologie der Suggestion, 1892; H. Ebbinghaus, the co-editor of the Zeitschrift für Psychologie una Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, 1890 seq.; H. Spitta; Max Dessoir, Der Hautsinn, in the Archiv für Anatomie una Physiologie, 1892. The following works are psychological contributions to the theory of knowledge: E.L. Fischer, Theorie der Gesichtswahrnehmung, 1891; Hermann Schwarz, Das Wahrnehmungsproblem, 1892. Finally we may add A. Dorner in Königsberg, Das menschliche Erkennen, 1887; and E.L. Fischer, Die Grundfragen der Erkenntnisstheorie, 1887.
The literature of moral philosophy has been substantially enriched by Wundt, Ethik, 1886, 2d ed., 1892; and Friedrich Paulsen, System der Ethik, 1889, 2d ed., 1891. We may mention, further, Baumann (p. 601); Schuppe, Grundzüge der Ethik und Rechtsphilosophie, 1882; Witte, Freiheit des Willens, 1882; G. Class in Erlangen, Ideale und Güter, 1886; Richard Wallaschek, Ideen zur praktischen Philosophic, 1886; F. Tönnies in Kiel, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, 1887; A. Döring, Philosophische Güterlehre, 1888; Th. Ziegler, Sittliches Sein und Werden, 2d ed., 1890; G. Simmel, Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft, vol. i. 1892.