An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy

by W. Tudor Jones

What is the secret of Eucken's influence? It is due greatly, it is true, to his writings and their original contents, for it is not possible for a man to hide his inner being when he writes on the deepest questions concerning life and death. A great deal of Eucken's personality may be discovered in his writings. Opening any page of his books, one sees something unique, passionate, and somehow always deeper than what may be confined within the limits of the understanding, and something which has to be lived in order to be understood. And to know the man is to realise this in a fuller measure than his writings can ever show. He has to be seen and heard before the real significance of his message becomes clear. His personality attracts men and women of all schools of thought, from all parts of the world, and they all feel that his message of a reality which is beyond knowledge—though knowledge forms an integral part of it—is a new revelation of the meaning of life and existence. Professor Windelband, in his History of Philosophy and elsewhere, describes Eucken as the creator of a new Metaphysic—a metaphysic not of the Schools but of Life. This aspect will be discussed at fuller length in later pages, so that it may be passed over for the present.

Eucken believes in the reality and necessity of his message. He is aware that that message is contrary to the current terminology and meaning of the philosophy of our day. Some of his great constructive books were written as far back as 1888, and have remained, almost until our own day, in a large measure unnoticed. The Einheit des Geisteslebens in Bewusstsein und Tat der Menschheit is a case in point. It is one of his greatest books, and its value was not seen until the last few years. But the philosophy of the present day in Germany is tending more and more in the direction of Eucken's. Writers such as the late Class and Dilthey, Siebeck, Windelband, Münsterberg, Rickert, Volkelt, Troeltsch—naming but a small number of the idealistic thinkers of the present—are tending in the direction of the new Metaphysic presented by Eucken in the book already referred to as well as in the Kampf um einen geistigen Lebensinhalt.

The philosophy of Germany at the present day is making several attempts at a metaphysic of the universe. Much critical and constructive work has been done during the past quarter of a century and is being done to-day. The attempts to construct systems of metaphysics may be witnessed on the sides of natural science and of philosophy. Haeckel, Ostwald, and Mach have each given the world a constructive system of thought. But these three systems have not, except in a secondary way, attempted a metaphysic of human life. Haeckel's system is mainly poetico-mythical, chiefly on the lines of some of the pre-Socratic philosophers. Ostwald's attempt is to show the unity of nature and life through his principle of Energetics; and Mach's may be described as an inverted kind of Kantianism in regard to the problem of subject and object.

None of these has attempted a reconstruction of philosophy from the side of the content of consciousness; in fact, they all find their explanation of consciousness in connection with physical and organic phenomena observed on planes below those of the mental and ideal life of man. Such work is necessary; but if it comes forward as a complete explanation of man, it is, as Eucken points out again and again, a wretched caricature of life. To know the connection of consciousness with the organic and inorganic world is not to know consciousness in anything more than its history. It may have been similar to, or even identical with, physical manifestations of life, but it is not so now. Eucken admits entirely this fact of the history of mind; but the meaning of mind is to be discovered not so much in its Whence as in its present potency and its Whither.[1] A philosophy of science is bound to recognise this difference, or else all its constructions can represent no more than a torso. Physical impressions enter into consciousness, and doubtless in important ways condition it, but they are not physical once man becomes conscious of them. A union of subject and object has now taken place, and consequently a new beginning—a beginning which cannot be interpreted in terms of the things of sense—starts on its course. This is Eucken's standpoint, and it is no other than the carrying farther of some of the important results Kant arrived at.

This difference between the natural and the mental sciences has been emphasised, at various times, since the time of Plato. But the difference tended to become obliterated through the discoveries of natural science and its great influence during the latter half of the nineteenth century. The key of evolution had come at last into the hands of men, and it fitted so many closed doors; it provided an entrance to a new kind of world, and gave new methods for knowing that world. But, as already stated, evolution is capable of dealing with what is in the light of what was, and the Is and the Was are the physical characteristics of things. In all this, mind and morals, as they are in their own intrinsic nature operating in the world, are left out of account. A striking example of this is found in the late Professor Huxley's Romanes Lecture—Evolution and Ethics. In this remarkable lecture it is shown that the cosmic order does not answer all our questions, and is indifferent and even antagonistic to our ethical needs and ideals. Huxley's conclusion may be justly designated as a failure of science to interpret the greatest things of life. Before culture, civilisation, and morality become possible, a new point of departure has to take place within human consciousness, and the attempt to move in an ethical direction is as much hindered as helped by the natural course of the physical universe. This lecture of Huxley's runs parallel in many ways with Eucken's differentiation of Nature and Spirit, and Huxley's "ethical life" has practically the same meaning as Eucken's "spiritual life" on its lower levels.

Numerous instances are to be found in the present-day philosophy of Germany of the need of a Metaphysic of Life, and of the impossibility of constructing such from the standpoint of the results of the natural sciences either singly or combined.

Professor Rickert's investigations are having important effects in this respect. In his works he has made abundantly clear the difference between the methods and results of the sciences of Nature and the sciences of Mind. And even amongst the mental sciences themselves, all-important aspects of different subject-matters present themselves, and render themselves as of different values.

Professor Münsterberg has worked on a similar path, and has insisted once more on the nature of reality as this expresses itself in a meaning which is over-individual. Professor Windelband's writings (cf. Präludien, Die Philosophie im XX. Jahrhundert, etc.) have emphasised very clearly the need of the presence and acknowledgment of norms in life, and of the meaning of life realising itself in the fulfilment of these norms.[2]

When we turn to the great neo-Kantian movement, we find alongside of discussions concerning psychological questions important ethical aspects presenting themselves. The works of the late Professor Otto Liebmann of Jena (cf the last part of his Analysis der Wirklichkeit) and of the late Professor Dilthey and Dr. G. Simmel point in the same direction. Professors Husserl, Lipps, and Vaihinger, as their most recent important books show, work on lines which insist on bringing life as it is and as it ought to be into their systems. The same may be said of Professor Wundt's works in so far as they present a constructive system.

But the ground was fallow twenty-five years ago when some of Eucken's important works made their appearance. Even as late as 1896 he complains of this in the preface of his Kampf um einen geistigen Lebensinhalt:"I am aware that the explanations offered in this volume will prove themselves to be in direct antagonism to the mental currents which prevail to-day."[3] He states that his standpoint is different from that of the conventional and official idealism then in vogue. By this he means, on the one hand, the "absolute idealism" which constructed systems entirely unconnected with science or experience—systems whose Absolute had no direct relationship with man, or which made no appeal to anything of a similar nature to itself in the deeper experience of the soul; and, on the other hand, the degeneration of the neo-Kantian movement to a mere description of the relations of bodily and mental processes.