An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy

by W. Tudor Jones

CONCLUSION

It will probably prove helpful at the conclusion to indicate the main contents of Eucken's greatest works in order that the reader who turns to them for the first time may be able somewhat to find his bearings. The whole of Eucken's works turn around the conception of the spiritual life. This fact must be constantly borne in mind. The term has been repeated so often in all the previous chapters that the reader may be inclined to think that some other expression might well have been exchanged for it. But no other term serves Eucken's meaning, and the recurrence of the term has to be endured in order that it may yield of its rich content.

It has been shown how Eucken establishes a new world with its own laws and values within the spiritual life. The spiritual life possesses grades of reality: it reveals itself from the level of connection of body and mind and of ordinary life right up to Infinite Love in the Godhead. Such a reality is created within the total activity of the soul; but it is not mere subjectivism by virtue of the fact that its material comes to it from without.[86] And Eucken shows that it is thus a life partly given to man, and partly created by him. The "given" elements have to enter into man's soul. This they cannot do without much opposition. With the persistent energy of the total potency of the soul a world of independent inwardness is reached—a world which will have an existence of its own within the soul, and which will become the standard by which to measure the values of all the things which present themselves.

It is this superiority of the spiritual life which constitutes the essential factor in the evolution of the individual's personality as well as in civilisation, culture, morality, and all the rich inheritance of the race. Such an inheritance can be developed farther by the full consciousness of the spiritual life and by the exercising of it from its very foundation.

In The Problem of Human Life Eucken sees in the message of every one of the great thinkers of the ages, however much he may differ from them, the vindication of a life higher than that of sense or even of in-intellectualism. In one form or another, they all present some world of values which is born and nurtured within the mind and soul. All these thinkers stand for something which is great and good. Eucken attempts to discover this core in their teaching; and in the midst of all the differences some spiritual truth and value make their appearance. This volume has undergone many changes, and is now in its ninth edition.

In The Main Currents of Modern Thought Eucken deals, in the first part of the book, with the fundamental concept of spiritual life as this reveals itself in the meanings of Subjective—Objective, Theoretical—Practical, Idealism—Realism. The middle portion of the book deals with the Problem of Knowledge as this is shown in Thought and Experience (Metaphysics), Mechanical—Organic (Teleology), and Law. The third portion of the volume deals with the Problems of Human Life as these are presented in Civilisation and Culture, History, Society and the Individual, Morality and Art, Personality and Character, and the Freedom of the Will. The final portion deals with Ultimate Problems; and the two chapters on the Value of Life and the Religious Problem bring out the deeper meaning of spiritual life.

This volume has undergone many changes. When it appeared in 1878 it was little more than a history of the concepts we have already referred to.[87] But at the present time it deals with the history of the concepts, a criticism of these, and finally the presentation of the author's own thesis regarding the reality of an independent spiritual life.

In Life's Basis and Life's Ideal he analyses the various systems of thought which have been presented to the world. He finds many of these deficient; but although something that is contained in them has to pass away, they possess some spiritual element which requires preservation, and which is valid for all time. None of these systems is final; they have to preserve what is spiritual within them, and also merge it in some newer revelation gained for mankind. Every system of the universe and of life has to move; it has perpetually to drop something of its accidentals, and continually strengthen and increase its essentials. Everywhere emphasis is laid on the fact that the spiritual element must be preserved and increased at whatever cost, for it is an element of the highest value for the world, and constitutes the energy of the world's upward march.

In the Einheit des Geisteslebens, as well as in the Prolegomena to this, the necessity of a spiritual conception of knowledge comes to the foreground. All systems of Naturalism lack enough spiritual life within themselves to meet the deepest needs of the race. Man is more than all such systems. Even on the grounds of the Theory of Knowledge itself man can be proved to be more. Eucken deals in these two books with the content of consciousness: that content reveals what is a Whole or Totality, what is beyond sense, what includes within itself the isolated impressions of the senses or of the understanding, and what is therefore spiritual in its nature.

In the Kampf um einen geistigen Lebensinhalt—a book of the greatest value—we find Eucken at his best. His attempt here is to deal with the struggle for the spiritual life and the certainty of its possession. He shows how man has emerged out of Nature, and how he has moved in the direction of gaining an inner world during the long course of civilisation, culture, morality, and religion. Through titanic struggles this inner world becomes man's possession, and constitutes the true value and significance of his life. Man now realises that it is this world of spirit and values which constitutes the only really true world. Issuing out of this possession of the ever richer contents of this inward, spiritual world, the personality constantly becomes something quite other than it was, and its possession adds to the inheritance of the spiritual ideals of the world. At this source man is in possession of a power of a new kind of creativeness in any field of knowledge or life he may be obliged to work. Nothing blossoms or bears fruit without the presence and the power of spiritual life in the deepest inwardness of the soul.