Life's Basis and Life's Ideal: The Fundamentals of a New Philosophy of Life - Rudolf Eucken

(b) MAN AND THE WORLD

Through our whole investigation we have expressed the conviction that man acquires a secure relation to the world only through his belonging to a spiritual life acknowledged as independent; otherwise, all entrance to the world is shut off. The growing independence of the inner life has broken down the immediate connection which dominates the naïve way of thinking: if, however, man once finds himself set in a position of independence of the world, he can hardly draw it back to himself simply of his own capacity. All appeal to subtlety and reflection seems only to widen the gulf still more. Only the acknowledgment of an independent spiritual life offers a way out of such a desperate situation: if in the spiritual life the world attains to a self-consciousness, and if, on the other hand, the spiritual life is present and active within man, there is a possibility that man and the world are united; and that, at the same time, human life also becomes cosmic. But it is a question how far the possibility comes to be realised; how far the union that exists in the innermost basis can be developed and transformed within us in the work of life. Only the actual experience of life can answer this question. We must ascertain whether there are any particular developments of life which are not productions of the human, but which manifest the operation of a transcendent world; and, further, whether these developments are able to find a more detailed formation in their contact with the world around us, and to adapt themselves to the multiplicity of this world. Such a turning to the individual thing would be impossible if a complete life-form ruled within us and impressed itself on things only from the outside. For in this case this form must inevitably be uniformly effective in its whole extent; in appropriating the multiplicity it could not itself advance to greater concreteness. If such an advance is effected, there is a contact within life between the one and the other; and so the world acquires an inner connection with our activity, and the spiritual movement can take possession of the breadth of our life and with its differentiation gain a greater intuitiveness.

An immediate union of man and world is indeed opposed to the fact that the spiritual life which should unite them always exists, for us, in its particular form in human existence and that this form cannot be projected beyond man into the whole. The form of human existence constitutes an insuperable boundary; if it governed our life as a whole, then man could never overstep his narrow, particular sphere. But it is a conviction that is fundamental to our investigation that our whole life does not come under this form, but that there are tendencies in life which are operative beyond this form of existence, and attain to an independence of it. So far as these life-tendencies may be detached and developed, man may confidently take up the problem of the world, and feel related to the world around him; he can try to transform its life into his own. The particularity of his manner of presentation and perception then simply sets the limitation, that that which may be admitted to be certain and true in its fundamental content can be presented only through the medium of human peculiarity; the more detailed amplification of the representation is always only of a symbolic character. We see from this fact that there is a contradiction ever present within our life that prevents it from ever gaining an ultimate conclusion; however, it does not take from us the possibility of an inner union and a community with the whole. Indeed, the contradiction itself, and the powerful movement that it calls forth, are to the train of thought here indicated a witness to a fundamental expansion of our life.

An attempt to unite our life with the whole appears in the first place in thought, in its work of obtaining knowledge. This emergence of thought involves a transformation of life that could never be occasioned by mere man, but can be understood only as the revelation of a new stage of universal life. In thought, the intellect, otherwise bound to the mechanism of the sequence of presentations, attains an independence. It places itself in a position independent of the world, and seeks to comprehend it as a whole, to appropriate it as a whole. The primary connection with things is dissolved, to become established anew upon a higher level and with an important transformation of its nature; through the deviation a real appropriation is achieved. All this is incomparably more than a merely becoming conscious of a given world, which is an experience that could arise in some way at isolated points; thought contains a development of the world which ultimately can proceed only from the power of the world itself. How can the individual matter be elucidated if the whole remain obscure? How can the desire for enlightenment obtain such a power over man, and assert itself in him in opposition to the interests of his physical self-preservation, if a universal movement were not operative in him? Man does not elucidate the world, but the world elucidates itself within him. What is thus reached is valid not for him alone, but universally; the development of this universal movement of thought enables him to win a closer relation to the world, a life embracing the world.

Our thought cannot advance in the definite work of building up science without producing and employing a definite logical structure with fixed principles: these principles are immanent in the work of thought; they are above all the caprice and all the differences of the individuals. This logical structure cannot be carried over and applied to the world around us, as all scientific research carries it over and applies it, without implicitly presupposing an objective logic of things, a conceivability of experience: in this, man does not simply project externally and apply mechanically forms already existing in a complete and final state within him. For the multiplicity of things not only gives to those principles a particular form, in the production of which they must themselves participate, but through the relation to the world the fundamental forms are also further developed in their nature as a whole; it is only with the co-operation of both sides that the thought-structure achieves what is ultimately reached. The chief thing is that thought actually transcends the state of contemplative reflection, and advances to fully active work; that out of the movement of our thought proceed further developments, which extend to the object also; that, moreover, we come under the compulsion of inner necessities, and, possessing the highest freedom, are raised securely above all caprice. This creative thought in us, which is at the same time our own thought, constitutes a witness to a meeting of our thought with a thought that has its basis in things and in the whole. Inability to imagine such a thought should never lead to the denial of an absolute logic, with which all scientific research stands or falls. The disclosure of this relation, however, gives to our thought, in the midst of all doubt, a firm foundation, a joyful certainty, an infinite task.

Artistic creation and appreciation brings another characteristic unfolding of life; and this also demonstrates an inner relation of man to the world, and can be developed only when this relation is acknowledged. In the first place, for this creation and appreciation a deliverance of life from the turmoil of ends and interests, which at first sway our existence, is essential; artistic creation and appreciation involves a resting and a tarrying in itself. If the world were no more than this turmoil, if it did not in some way attain to self-consciousness, how could such a deliverance be brought about? If a self-conscious life were not present in man, how could a longing for an artistic moulding of life arise in him? But an arousing of an inner life in things, the revelation of a soul, is accomplished not through imparting something from without, but through a meeting together of things and human endeavour. On the other hand, the spiritual expresses itself in a visible form and in doing so moulds itself. The chief thing in this connection is not mere beauty, a preparation for idle enjoyment, but a truth, a revelation of contents, a further development of life through and above the antithesis. How could something invisible and something visible, to express the matter briefly, find a common ground and combine together in a common action if nature were not more than the mere web of relations into which the mechanistic conception of it transforms it; if spiritual life were not more than the subjective form of life that it is supposed to be, according to general opinion; if from that form of life an inner life did not arise, and beyond all subjectivity attain to a full activity, and thus to the building up of a reality within its own province? That we do not simply become aware of a movement within ourselves, and then read it into nature, but only take up and lead to its own truth that which strives upward in nature, is again testified by the inner advance of this striving through its contact with the world, and by the infinite abundance of particular contents which are revealed to us in the world and which continually aid in our development. Again, our life experiences the most important elevation in that it takes up and carries further a movement of the whole, and is liberated from the narrowness of the particular sphere, without merging into a vague infinity. To realise clearly that we belong to the world, and energetically to amplify this relation, is of the greatest significance for artistic creation and appreciation. For it is only by becoming firmly established in these relations that artistic endeavour is able to resist the tendency to degenerate into play and pleasure—a tendency which threatens it with inner destruction; as in a similar manner the work of thought must guard itself from degenerating into mere reflection. In the realms of thought and art there remains much that is alien, ever surmise and symbol; but even symbol is not to be disdained, if it serves an important truth.

A universal character is shown most clearly by the movements that co-operate towards the ethical moulding of life. Without freedom there is no such moulding; but we saw above that freedom requires a world of spontaneous life and its presence within man. However, when freedom is thought of in these relations, it is elevated above the usual conception of it and also above the usual criticism. All moral life is pretence and delusion without the arousing and fundamental idea of duty. But where is the truth more clearly expressed than in duty, that what man does by no means concerns himself alone; and that nothing can constrain him but what he acknowledges as his own will, his own being? As duty is concerned ultimately not with something isolated but with a whole, not with a performance within the old order but with the creation of a new order, so in the moral life a whole new world appears to be taken up into man’s own will and being. Duty exhibits the new world particularly in relation and in opposition to the old; the new world appears in itself to be pre-eminently a kingdom of love. Love is primarily not a subjective emotion, but an expansion and a deepening of life, through life setting itself in the other, taking the other up into itself; and in this movement life itself becomes greater, more comprehensive and noble. Love is not a mere relation of given individuals, but a development and a growing in communion, an elevation and an animation of the original condition. And this movement of love has no limits; it has all infinity for its development; it extends beyond the relation to persons to the relation to things; for things also reveal their innermost being only to a disposition of love. Again, the striving after truth in science and art cannot succeed without love and an animation that proceeds from it, without inwardly becoming one with the object. How could this unity and activity in the whole be possible, how could it even become an object of desire, if the whole itself did not strive? And how could such a wealth of cultures proceed out of this movement if that which was striven towards at one time was not taken up and carried further by other times; how could the single movements tend together without the unifying and elevating power of a universal life? As a phenomenon to the individual, the movement involves a definite contradiction: wherever it has been further and more freely developed it has been directed to a kingdom of love; and this has necessarily been thought of as the soul of reality, and a severe conflict has been taken up against the world of self-assertion. Thus in the realm of morality also we find ourselves in world-movements, we create out of the whole, work towards the whole, and are borne on the flood of infinite life.

Accordingly, life-developments of various and related kinds arise: with their manifold experiences they strive to attain to a harmony and a union with one another. They can seek these only on the basis of a self-consciousness of reality; find them only through their unification in a universal life, to which each individual tendency leads. Representations of the whole are attempted at the highest points of creative activity by philosophy, religion, and art; these representations accompany, indeed govern, the work in these spheres of life through history. But the limitations of our capacity, through which we are unable to give a suitable form to necessary contents, and through which we attribute and must attribute human traits to that which should lead us beyond the human, are of particular force in this matter of forming a representation of the whole; and, indeed, this is the more so the further we remove ourselves from that which may be immediately transformed in work. These representations of the whole are, therefore, inadequate; their content of truth is clothed in a wrapping of myth, and humanity lies under the danger of taking the myth for the chief thing and thus of obscuring the truth, and this must produce an incalculable amount of error and strife. Still, it is impossible to give up all claim to these representations of the whole; for they alone make the fact of our belonging to the whole and of the presence of the whole in our life quite clear and enable it to exert a far-reaching influence. Only with their help can the degeneration of life to the intolerable insignificance of the narrowly human be resisted; only with their help can a movement from whole to whole begin.

Thus it is a matter not so much of abandoning these representations of the whole as of referring them continually to their essence; to those unfoldings of life which are experienced by us; to test them by these and to renew them from these. It was the error of the earlier position—much too indulgent to Intellectualism-that it did not sufficiently maintain the relation with these living sources, and so fell into the danger of having no definite tendency, or even of failing to recognise the relativity of the myth. If a more energetic direction of life upon its own content and experiences teaches us to preserve these connections better and to develop them more forcefully, a new type of representation of the whole is yielded in contrast to the old, and far more different from it than may appear at the first glance. We may hope that with its development the truth will be seen more clearly through the myth, and that the striving, which we cannot give up, to win a universal life may not lead us astray into a world of dreams.