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MODERN PHILOSOPHY |
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TRANSITIONS Kant stands at the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth as the most important philosopher of the time. With his Criticism, Kant brought to an end the duel between Rationalism and Empiricism; his work showed that neither was a sufficient solution to the problem of knowledge; it united the findings of both in an absolute phenomenalism, wherein all realities are dependent on a priori forms. Kant's influence spread to two great movements of thought:
I. The Transition From Criticism To Romanticism Kant's three Critiques concentrate our attention on the activity of the ego. The thinking ego is the coordinator of the data of experience; the practical ego is the legislator in the realm of morality; the sentimental ego is the point of convergence of sensible and suprasensible experience. Kant was convinced that there was an irreducible dualism of phenomenon and noumenon, of sensible and suprasensible experience, and he endeavored to respect this distinction. Since, however, by definition the activity of the ego is transcendental, Kant is not justified when he limits its activity to the organization of phenomena, to the legislation of morality, and to reflection on the finality of nature. Unforeseen by Kant himself, the field of action of the ego was to be logically extended by his followers to the very reality of nature, morality and art. Thus the Kantian ego becomes a creative ego, on whose activity the reality of nature, of morality and of art depends. This rising of the Kantian ego from the function of organizing phenomena to the activity of creating reality was promptly seen by Kant's followers, who inaugurated the new philosophical movement called Romanticism. In addition to this creative activity of the spirit, another important characteristic of Romanticism is historicism, a tendency which arose in opposition to Illuminism or the philosophy of the Enlightenment. Illuminism had placed its trust in reason, and in the name of reason had sought to obliterate the religious and social past, with its legends, its traditions and its institutions. In other words, history was denied any value as a factor in human progress and civilization. Illuminism had promised individual and social happiness, but had ended in the violence of the French Revolution; it had opened wide the gates of prisons, raised the guillotine, sown hatred and released war. As a reaction against these cataclysmic effects of the Revolution, there began a concerted return to all that Illuminism had derided and sought to destroy. Individual and social life were given marked respect; history, in its measured progress from darkness to wise institutions, came to be appreciated as a real factor in civilization; a new sentiment for religion was awakened; the past was looked upon as having great value; and the Middle Ages, no longer deprecated as the Dark Ages, were extolled as a model of unity of the human and the divine, of civil and religious laws, of the individual and society. The vague cosmopolitanism of the Enlightenment gave place to a new national consciousness in keeping with the spirit and traditions of different peoples. Thus historicism and creative spiritualism are the predominant characteristics of Romanticism. The new Romantic Movement first took form in Germany between the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, and immediately made its impress upon the field of culture, art and poetry, the area in which the creative power of the human spirit is more readily evidenced. Soon utterly revolutionary principles made their appearance in the field of the fine arts. They can be summarized as follows:
Novalis (the nom de plume of Friedrich von Hardenberg) said: "The world is a dream, and the dream becomes a world." The most outstanding representatives of the Romantic School were the poets Friedrich von Schlegel (1772-1829), Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772-1801), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), and the philosophers Friedrich von Schelling (1775-1854) and Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834). II. The Transition From Criticism To Transcendental Idealism Romanticism distorted the activity of Kant's thinking ego into a complete anarchy of thought. Many thinkers, however, not only abstained from such intemperate conclusions, but even sought to give the nature of the Kantian ego an interpretation more in conformity with the demands of its author's Criticism. The points most vehemently discussed in the ensuing conflict were two:
The Creative Ego Although Kant had divested the ego of all particular determination and in effect had reduced it to "universal reason," he had then broken down this general ego into a multiplicity of personal egos. Furthermore, even the personal ego was divided into the theoretical and the practical. The Idealists believed in the necessity of doing away with this multiplicity of egos and with the resultant theoretical and practical dualism; they wished to ascend to unity, to a unique ego displaying at one and the same time activities both speculative and practical (thought and action). But before attaining this unity of ego, they had to give a consistent metaphysical explanation for the multiplicity of individual egos, as it would be impossible to ignore their existence. The solution to this difficulty was found in the Neo-Platonic concept of the One. The One of Plotinus, while remaining one, becomes multiple in the multiplicity of the phenomena that proceed from it. Thus the individual ego must not be considered as something distinct and separate from the absolute ego, but as its phenomenon or its determinate manifestation. Noumenon Kant had begun with the supposition of the existence of the "thing in itself," considered as the matter upon which the forms of experience and the categories of the intellect unfold themselves. However, even for Kant the "thing in itself" is outside the a priori forms of space and time, and hence it remains unknown. Here the Idealists detect a flagrant contradiction: One cannot say that the "thing in itself" is unknown and at the same time affirm its existence, and call it the matter of thought. If the "thing in itself" is unknown, it must be eliminated; it should have no reality outside thought. Nor is it right to say that the "thing in itself" is required as a stimulus for our experience. Under the concept of stimulus is hidden the concept of causality, which for Kant had only subjective value. Not even the concept of God has any counterpart in reality, independently of the activity of the subject. Kant, in fact, had sought to prove the existence of God through the judgments of finality and aesthetics, But these are judgments of reflection and of sentiment, and they have value only from the viewpoint of the subject. Thus the idea of God, like the idea of the "thing in itself," is only subjective, that is, produced by the subject. In this fashion philosophy arrives at Transcendental Idealism: the one reality is Pure Ego, the Absolute; it is subject and object, thought and being, God and the world. The most outstanding exponents of Transcendental Idealism are Fichte, Schelling, Schleiermacher, and Hegel. Return to The Successors of Kant
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Introduction & Directory |
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