The Monist, Vol. 1, 1890-1891 - Various

Johannes Volkelt criticises in a long article Wundt's System der Philosophie. We do not have the work under discussion at hand, but judging simply from the quotations made in the present article, we can confidently say that Volkelt has misunderstood Wundt's position. We shall here confine ourselves to one point only which is of paramount importance, and Johannes Volkelt fully appreciates its importance. This point is the problem, "Can we have any objective knowledge at all?" This is the way we should formulate the question. Volkelt, however, asks whether the trans-subjective can successfully be made object of our cognition. It is maintained that there is a trace of naïve Realism left in Wundt, because his trans-subjectivism remains unproven, and subject and object are treated as inseparably connected. Wundt says: "As soon as we make the erroneous proposition that the object of our perception is only a perception, we shall in vain try to get somehow out from our subjective perception and to regain in some way the lost object." This idea is objected to. Also the following passages are quoted from Wundt: "Reality once destroyed cannot be restored merely through pure thought," and "the theory of cognition has not to create reality from elements that do not as yet contain it." We agree perfectly with Wundt and have expressed similar ideas in the article "The Origin of Mind," No. 1 of The Monist. Perception is a relation between object and subject. It is an error of idealism to consider the subject alone as given. The data of experience are states of subject-object-ness. The idea of mere subjectivity is as much an abstraction as the idea of things in themselves. Accordingly the term "trans-subjective" is a misnomer. All perceptions being impressions of objects and serving as symbols for their correspondent objects contain an objective element. As soon as we disregard this truth, we shut ourselves up in the hollow globe of pure ideality; objectivity becomes an unwarrantable assumption and there is no way out of our own subjectivism.

Knud Ipsen sketches the history of the Danish philosophy during the last ten years. He mentions five philosophers, Höffding, Kroman, Wilkens, Lehmann, and Starcke, among whom Höffding is by far the most prominent. All the Danish philosophers have one feature in common. Kroman made a distinction between philosophy and world-conception; philosophy should make such propositions only as can be logically proven, not otherwise than theories have to be proven in the sciences. Yet a world-conception is the work mainly of our emotion and imagination. Accordingly philosophy and world-conception are two distinct things which have nothing in common. This position seems to be generally accepted by the Danish philosophers, and as a natural consequence Ipsen says, we can speak no more of "philosophy," but only of philosophical disciplines. The unity of philosophy, its ideal of system is lost. Metaphysics is dead in Denmark and the search for the universal laws of existence is also given up. Philosophy has ceased to be the science of the sciences and has become an aggregate of scientific disciplines. On this point there is a tacit agreement so that there is no "useless struggle about great and insolvable problems," and since Höffding wrote on the relation between faith and science, our Danish philosophers also shun all theological interference. A division of labor has taken place so that psychology has been treated by Höffding, Kroman, and Lehmann, Ethics by Höffding and Starcke, Logic by Höffding and Kroman, Sociology by Wilkens and Starcke, and Æsthetics by Wilkens.

Professor Höffding and Kroman in spite of their consensus in rejecting the unity of philosophy represent a very strong contrast, which is best characterised by their method of treating the law of causation. Kroman rejects all the former evidences employed to prove the law of cause and effect. Empiricism is wrong because it can at best show the temporal succession of two phenomena, and apriorism is wrong because a priori knowledge lies in the subject alone and not in the object. In causation, however, the objects play an important part, and we can never know whether the objects will always conform to the subjective and a priori laws. Kroman's view of the subject is that the causal law is the sole condition by which we can acquire any knowledge at all, accordingly for the sake of self-preservation we hope that this condition will be fulfilled. The causal law accordingly is not only the condition of all knowledge, it is also the postulate with which we have to start.

Höffding attacks the problem in a different way. He asks first: "How do we come at all to a reality supposed to be independent of the subject?" and "What is the import of this reality?" Reality according to Höffding is not yet given in sense-perception, we arrive at the idea of reality not until our sense-perceptions are arranged in a coherent system. If I see a picture at the wall, this may be an hallucination, but if my sense of touch corroborates the perception of sight, I consider it as a reality. Thus the idea of reality originates and this reality is not distinguishable from a coherent and self-consistent dream. To the dreamer his dream is reality. Now the question of causality is not legitimate, whether things conform to the law of causation, for indeed we know things only by their being causes or effects. The main function of our consciousness is to recognise similarities and dissimilarities, it searches for unity and this search is performed through the application of the causal law. Höffding accordingly considers both ideas, the causal nexus and reality, as being of the same value. His causal law is more than a postulate, it is in part a result. Our organ of cognition would die of atrophy if it were not constantly nourished, and we should share the fate of Tantalus were we condemned to investigate and always unable to discover.

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