PAUL JANET AND HEGEL.[[65]]
[In the following article the passages quoted are turned into English, and the original French is omitted for the sake of brevity and lucid arrangement. As the work reviewed is accessible to most readers, a reference to the pages from which we quote will answer all purposes.—Editor.]
Since the death of Hegel in 1831, his philosophy has been making a slow but regular progress into the world at large. At home in Germany it is spoken of as having a right wing, a left wing, and a centre; its disciples are very numerous when one counts such widely different philosophers as Rosenkrantz, Michelet, Kuno Fischer, Erdmann, J. H. Fichte, Strauss, Feuerbach, and their numerous followers. Sometimes when one hears who constitute a “wing” of the Hegelian school, he is reminded of the “lucus a non” principle of naming, or rather of misnaming things. But Hegelianism has, as we said, made its way into other countries. In France we have the Æsthetics “partly translated and partly analyzed,” by Professor Bénard; the logic of the small Encyclopædia, translated with copious notes, by Professor Vera, who has gone bravely on, with what seems with him to be a work of love, and given us the “Philosophy of Nature” and the “Philosophy of Spirit,” and promises us the “Philosophy of Religion”—all accompanied with abundant introduction and commentary. We hear of others very much influenced by Hegel: M. Taine, for example, who writes brilliant essays. In English, too, we have a translation of the “Philosophy of History,” (in Bohn’s Library;) a kind of translation and analysis of the first part of the third volume of the Logic, (Sloman & Wallon, London, 1855); and an extensive and elaborate work on “The Secret of Hegel,” by James Hutchison Stirling. We must not forget to mention a translation of Schwegler’s History of Philosophy—a work drawn principally from Hegel’s labors—by our American Professor Seelye: and also (just published) a translation of the same book by the author of the “Secret of Hegel.” Articles treating of Hegel are to be found by the score—seek them in every text-book on philosophy, in every general Cyclopædia, and in numerous works written for or against German Philosophy. Some of these writers tell us in one breath that Hegel was a man of prodigious genius, and in the next they convict him of confounding the plainest of all common sense distinctions. Some of them find him the profoundest of all thinkers, while others cannot “make a word of sense out of him.” There seems to be a general understanding in this country and England on one point: all agree that he was a Pantheist. Theodore Parker, Sir William Hamilton, Mansell, Morell, and even some of the English defenders of Hegelianism admit this. Hegel holds, say some, that God is a becoming; others say that he holds God to be pure being. These men are careful men apparently—but only apparently, for it must be confessed that if Hegel has written any books at all, they are, every one of them, devoted to the task of showing the inadequacy of such abstractions when made the highest principle of things.
The ripest product of the great German movement in philosophy, which took place at the beginning of this century, Hegel’s philosophy is likewise the concretest system of thought the world has seen. This is coming to be the conviction of thinkers more and more every day as they get glimpses into particular provinces of his labor. Bénard thinks the Philosophy of Art the most wonderful product of modern thinking, and speaks of the Logic—which he does not understand—as a futile and perishable production. Another thinks that his Philosophy of History is immortal, and a third values extravagantly his Philosophy of Religion. But the one who values his Logic knows how to value all his labors. The History of Philosophy is the work that impresses us most with the unparalleled wealth of his thought; he is able to descend through all history, and give to each philosopher a splendid thought as the centre of his system, and yet never is obliged to confound different systems, or fail in showing the superior depth of modern thought. While we are admiring the depth and clearness of Pythagoras, we are surprised and delighted to find the great thought of Heraclitus, but Anaxagoras is a new surprise; the Sophists come before us bearing a world-historical significance, and Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle lead us successively to heights such as we had not dreamed attainable by any thinking.
But thought is no immediate function, like the process of breathing or sleeping, or fancy-making: it is the profoundest mediation of spirit, and he who would get an insight into the speculative thinkers of whatever time, must labor as no mere flesh and blood can labor, but only as spirit can labor: with agony and sweat of blood. A philosophy which should explain the great complex of the universe, could hardly be expected to be transparent to uncultured minds at the first glance. Thus it happens that many critics give us such discouraging reports upon their return from a short excursion into the true wonder-land of philosophy. The Eternal Verities are miraculous only to those eyes which have gazed long upon them after shutting out the glaring sunlight of the senses.
Those who criticise a philosophy must imply a philosophical method of their own, and thus measure themselves while they measure others. A literary man who criticises Goethe, or Shakespeare, or Homer, is very apt to lay himself bare to the shaft of the adversary. There are, however, in our time, a legion of writers who pass judgment as flippantly upon a system of the most comprehensive scope—and which they confess openly their inability to understand—as upon a mere opinion uttered in a “table-talk.” Even some men of great reputation give currency to great errors. Sir William Hamilton, in his notes to Reid’s Philosophy of “Touch,” once quoted the passage from the second part of Fichte’s Bestimmung des Menschen, (wherein onesided idealism is pushed to its downfall,) in order to show that Fichte’s Philosophy ended in Nihilism. The Bestimmung des Menschen was a mere popular writing in which Fichte adopted the Kantian style of exhibiting the self-refutation of sense and reflection, in order to rest all ultimate truth in the postulates of the Practical Reason. Accordingly he shows the practical results of his own system in the third part of the work in question, and enforces the soundest ethical views of life. He never thought of presenting his theoretical philosophy in that work. Thus, too, in Hamilton’s refutation of Cousin and Schelling: he polemicises against all “Doctrines of the Absolute,” saying that to think is to limit; hence to think God would be to determine or limit Him; and hence is inferred the impossibility of thinking God as he truly is. This, of course, is not pushed to its results by his followers, for then its skeptical tendency would become obvious. Religion demands that we shall do the Will of God; this Will must, therefore, be known. But, again, Will is the realization or self-determination of one’s nature—from it the character proceeds. Thus in knowing God’s will we know his character or nature. If we cannot do this at all, no religion is possible; and in proportion as Religion is possible, the Knowledge of God is possible.
If it be said that the Absolute is unthinkable, in this assertion it is affirmed that all predicates or categories of thought are inapplicable to the Absolute, for to think is to predicate of some object, the categories of thought; and in so far as these categories apply, to that extent is the Absolute thinkable. Since Existence is a category of thought, it follows from this position that to predicate existence of the Absolute is impossible; “a questionable predicament” truly for the Absolute. According to this doctrine—that all thought is limitation—God is made Pure Being, or Pure Thought. This is also the result of Indian Pantheism, and of all Pantheism; this doctrine concerning the mere negative character of thought, in fact, underlies the Oriental tenet that consciousness is finitude. To be consistent, all Hamiltonians should become Brahmins, or, at least, join some sect of modern Spiritualists, and thus embrace a religion that corresponds to their dogma. However, let us not be so unreasonable as to insist upon the removal of inconsistency—it is all the good they have.
After all this preliminary let us proceed at once to examine the work of Professor Paul Janet, which we have named at the head of our article: “Essai sur la dialectique dans Platon et dans Hegel.”
After considering the Dialectic of Plato in its various aspects, and finding that it rests on the principle of contradiction, M. Janet grapples Hegel, and makes, in order, the following points:
I. Terminology.—He tells us that the great difficulty that lies in the way of comprehending German Philosophy is the abstract terminology employed, which is, in fact, mere scholasticism preserved and applied to modern problems. No nation of modern times, except the Germans, have preserved the scholastic form. He traces the obscurity of modern German philosophy to “Aristotle subtilized by the schools.” This he contrasts with the “simple and natural philosophy of the Scotch.” [This “simplicity” arises from the fact that the Scotch system holds that immediate sensuous knowing is valid. Of course this implies that they hold that the immediate existence of objects is a true existence—that whatever is, exists thus and so without any further grounds. This is the denial of all philosophy, for it utterly ignores any occasion whatever for it. But it is no less antagonistic to the “natural science” of the physicist: he, the physicist, finds the immediate object of the senses to be no permanent or true phase, but only a transitory one; the object is involved with other beings—even the remotest star—and changes when they change. It is force and matter (two very abstract categories) that are to him the permanent and true existence. But force and matter cannot be seen by the senses; they can only be thought.] Our author proceeds to trace the resemblance between Hegel and Wolff: both consider and analyze the pure concepts, beginning with Being. To M. Janet this resemblance goes for much, but he admits that “Hegel has modified this order (that of Wolff) and rendered it more systematic.” If one asks “How more systematic?” he will not find the answer. “The scholastic form is retained, but not the thought,” we are told. That such statements are put forward, even in a book designed for mere surface-readers may well surprise us. That the mathematical method of Wolff or Spinoza—a method which proceeds by definitions and external comparison, holding meanwhile to the principle of contradiction—that such a method should be confounded with that of Hegel which proceeds dialectically, i. e. through the internal movement of the categories to their contradiction or limit, shows the student of philosophy at once that we are dealing with a littérateur, and not with a philosopher. So far from retaining the form of Wolff it is the great object of Hegel (see his long prefaces to the “Logik” and the “Phänomenologie des Geistes”) to supplant that form by what he considers the true method—that of the objective itself. The objective method is to be distinguished from the arbitrary method of external reflection which selects its point of view somewhere outside of the object considered, and proceeds to draw relations and comparisons which, however edifying, do not give us any exhaustive knowledge. It is also to be distinguished from the method of mere empirical observation which collects without discrimination a mass of characteristics, accidental and necessary, and never arrives at a vivifying soul that unites and subordinates the multiplicity. The objective method seizes somewhat in its definition and traces it through all the phases which necessarily unfold when the object is placed in the form of relation to itself. An object which cannot survive the process of self-relation, perishes, i. e. it leads to a more concrete object which is better able to endure. This method, as we shall presently see, is attributed to Plato by M. Janet.