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Adventures in Philosophy |
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Select: Georg Christoph Lichtenberg - William Paley - Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi Johann Gottfried Herder - Jean-Baptiste Lamarck - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Joseph Joubert - Francis Xavier von Baader - Maine de Biran - Wilhelm von Humboldt Friedrich von Schlegel - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Charles Lamb - Bernard Bolzano |
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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799) Aphorism is a form of literary art that corresponds to the character of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (picture), the ironic skeptic of German enlightenment. He liked to collect observations of daily life, curiosities, oddities, psychological experiences, and to shape them into short and easy sentences which mirrored his general philosophical outlook. Lichtenberg, a professor of mathematics and natural sciences at the University of Göttingen, had a high idea of spiritual freedom, and he was not afraid to defend it. He particularly liked to ridicule orthodoxy and missionary zeal. Combining commonsense and refinement of feeling, Lichtenberg remained lonely among German writers and thinkers. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
William Paley (picture) was an English theologian and philosopher, born at Peterborough, who wrote a number of apologetic works. He was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge. In 1776, he obtained the vicarage of Dalaton and, within the next nine years, became prebendary, archdeacon, and chancellor of Carlisle. In 1785, he attained high reputation by his Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, In this work he propounds the ethical theory called utilitarianism. In 1790 appeared his most original and valuable work, Horae Paulinae, which was followed by his two most famous works, A View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794) and Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existences and Attributes of the Deity Collected from the Appearances of Nature (1802). He is famous for stating the argument from design for the existence of God. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819) As far as Jacobi's philosophy enjoyed any authority during his lifetime, it seemed to be definitely destroyed by the devastating criticism of Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. Jacobi (picture) died a defeated man. Today, however, he is regarded as a precursor of existentialism. Jacobi called himself an aphoristic thinker. He was aware of his incapability to overcome all the contradictions which prevented him from being consistent. His principal propositions are presented in the form of novels. The first Allwill (1775) was intended as an encomium of Goethe, who was his friend, but it finally became a warning against the man of genius. Jacobi blamed contemporary civilization for its lack of original and immediate feelings, of natural behavior, for the decay of heart and intellect, and he exalted the morals of the man of genius who is independent of traditional ethical standards, whose life is dominated by passion which means confidence in life. Nevertheless, he recognized that surrendering to passion entails individual and social dangers. The second novel Woldemar (1777) is essentially the author's self-criticism. It was Jacobi's principal intention to present "humanity as it is," no matter whether it be conceivable or inconceivable. He was inclined to attribute to life an absolute value but he was also aware of the ambiguity of life. He insisted that feeling, not knowledge, constitutes the contact between the ego and the external world, and that what cannot be proved by reason, can be comprehended by feeling; but he did not question traditional logic which secures experience by creating steadiness. Only when steadiness degenerates into rigidity does it become a danger. According to Jacobi, the only philosophical system that is logically irrefutable is that of Spinoza which, however, he rejected as metaphysically wrong. Jacobi's God, different from the pantheistic deity, is also different from the Christian God. But, personally, Jacobi sympathized with Christian piety, and his conception of man is essentially Christian. Faith is, he said, intellectual evidence of logical principles as well as divination of Truth, imperfect knowledge as well as immediateness of feeling. The faithful disposition is the condition of any knowledge of truth and secures permanent certainty and peace of mind. From this position, Jacobi proceeded to a severe criticism of the German idealists who replied with a roughness unheard of until then in the history of German controversies. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) It would not be incorrect to derive the growth, if not the origin, of modern German nationalism from Johann Gottfried Herder's (picture) writings. But it would not do justice to him to ignore his humanitarian cosmopolitanism. In fact, Slavic national feelings have been equally strengthened by Herder who spoke and wrote German but was a descendant from Germanized Lithuanians. More than once, Herder not only expressed his fondness of Slavic literature but protested against German oppression of the Baltic Slavs. He attributed a high value to nationality as a medium of human civilization. But he denied any claim to superiority. To Herder, love of the historical past was a cultural force, a way to psychic renovation. He believed that acquaintance with the poetry of the Bible, with Homer, Shakespeare and medieval folk songs would refresh and enhance the sentiments of modern humanity. But he was an enthusiast of history because he was no less an enthusiast of the future of civilization, and he was firmly convinced that humanitarian ideals were the manifestations of God's will. In his Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Ideas on the Philosophy of History of Humanity, 1784-91), Herder combined biological, ethnological and literary studies with the ideas of Spinoza, Leibniz, Shaftesbury, Montesquieu and Voltaire. His work began with the stars, among which earth is one of many others, and described the influence of climate, geography, customs and individual fates on the history of mankind. Change, growth, and development were of basic importance to Herder's image of the world. Originally a disciple of Kant, Herder, in his later years, opposed his teacher, especially his ideas concerning the "depraved nature" of man, as a consequence of original sin. He also tried to refute Kant's Critiques. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) The modern theory, called Lamarckism, according to which acquired properties of an organism can become hereditary, has little connection with the thoughts of Jean Lamarck (picture) who disregarded the phenomenon of heredity. But he was one of the first scientists to transform the static conception of the universe into an evolutionist one, and was a precursor of modern theories of environment. In doing so, he experienced the truth of Voltaire's saying that it is dangerous to be right while all contemporary authorities are wrong. Cuvier's opposition to and Comte's severe criticism of Lamarck's statements diverted the attention of the scientists from his work for more than one generation. Even Charles Darwin, generally reserved in the expression of his opinion, found in Lamarck's works nothing but "nonsense," "rubbish" or, at best, "uselessness." During his whole life, Lamarck, the descendant of an impoverished noble family, was a poor man, and in his last years he lost the modest sum he had saved for his children. His temper revolted against the ecclesiastical life to which he was dedicated in his boyhood. At the age of seventeen he entered the French Army. Discharged after five years of service, he became a clerk in a banking house, in order to earn the money he needed to study medicine. Having attained this end, he concentrated upon observing insects and worms, and then proceeded to the investigation of the laws which govern organic and inorganic bodies. In 1776, he wrote Recherches sur les Causes des Principaux Faits Physiques, which he could publish only in 1794, and then, as a sincere adherent of the Jacobins, dedicated to the French people while the government of terror was at its height. In 1795, his Système de la Nature appeared and, in 1809, his Philosophie Zoologique. Lamarck remained a republican under Napoleon and the restored Bourbons. Lamarck took great care to distinguish between nature and the Supreme Being, and between nature and the physical universe which he regarded as an inactive and powerless mass of substances. To him, the study of nature is the study of motion, and nature a system of laws which rule over life. The motions which are peculiar to beings endowed with life are clearly distinguished from the physical motions. Life is marked by irritability and the faculty to react to the challenge of influences from without. It is this faculty which develops the nervous system. Changes of circumstances cause changes of both needs and faculties. The lower forms of life are molded by environment. Higher forms, by virtue of their nervous system, tend to modify their environment by active urge or desire. The interaction of urge and environment produces new characters which either become permanent or perish, according to their respective capability of subsisting. Lamarck combined sober observation with vivid imagination, which enabled him to behold ideal structures and the real characteristics of organic life. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) Goethe (picture) often expressed his resentment when he was hailed and exalted as the author of Faust, Werther and so many other dramatic, epic and lyrical poems but ignored as a scientist. In his later years, he constantly declared that no adequate appraisal of his work was possible without taking into account the importance of his contributions to anatomy, mineralogy, meteorology, botany, zoology, optics, and most modern scientists agree with his biographers that Goethe was right. It is true, Goethe's theory of colors is disputed, but in all the other fields, his scientific activities, especially concerning comparative morphology, are acknowledged as of high value. Moreover, there is today an almost general agreement that Goethe's life and personality cannot be comprehensively understood and appreciated without due regard to his studies on natural sciences. It was science to which Goethe devoted most of his time during many years, even decades, and it was his scientific activities that formed a conspicuous strain in his character and mind. To Goethe, science meant exact observation of the phenomena, inquiry into their conditions, effects, coherence and variety. His methods were both analytical and synthetical, study of the characteristics of the individual and of general laws of formation. But, as far as science is concerned with measuring and counting, with mathematical methods, Goethe did not like it. The instrument he regarded as the most sure and precious was the human eye, and he passionately protested confidence in sensory experience. Goethe's science and poetry were founded upon general views of philosophical character, although he remained distrustful of any technical philosophy. The only philosopher he admired without reserve, was Spinoza. He adopted his pantheism but not his determinism. Or, more precisely, he adopted his determinism to a certain extent but did not believe that life and the universe are totally determined. He even did not believe in the general validity of causality. Goethe repeatedly declared that freedom is blended, in a mysterious manner, with necessity, and that law and arbitrary forces rule the universe, working side by side. It was for these reasons that Goethe regarded man as both subject to necessity and capable of free will. In his autobiography Fiction and Truth, in his studies on French literature and on oriental poetry, he tried to penetrate into the realm of necessity, by inquiring into historical factors that condition the existence of the individual, but he felt himself obliged to state that all knowable factors of historical development are not sufficient to explain the peculiarity of the human individual. On the other hand, he repeatedly warned against miscalculation or neglect of historical, social and natural conditions which limit the freedom of the individual. Goethe's philosophy spells serene resignation. But it does not mean easy acquiescence in the fact that human knowledge is limited. He constantly admonished mankind to inquire as far as possible and not to give up too quickly. It is quite another thing, said Goethe, to resign near the boundaries of human thought, than to rest within one's narrow-minded ego. What he regarded as the greatest happiness of thinking man was "to have explored whatever is explorable, and to revere silently what is inexplorable." In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
With regard to psychological refinement and literary skill, Joseph Joubert (picture) belongs to the line of French moralists whose outstanding representatives are Montaigne and La Rochefoucauld. However, Joubert differs from them in that he is more interested in psychological curiosities than in truth and morals and he prefers aesthetical enjoyment to knowledge of the facts. In his youth, Joubert was a lay-brother but he left the cloister because he was fond of worldly life and could not renounce his associations with women. He was always sincere when he professed his predilection for the Catholic Church and his hatred of the philosophy, and even more so of the philosophers, of the Enlightenment. He did not conceal that his judgment relied on taste, not on faith. He disliked Diderot and D'Alembert because he considered them "vulgar," and for the same reason, he was horrified by the French Revolution. Under Napoleon, he was appointed inspector-general of the University. But the Emperor's favor entailed the disgrace of the restored Bourbons, and Joubert had always sympathized with royalism. To Joubert, Plato did not Platonize enough. In fact, Joubert was more akin to Epicureanism, though he felt uneasy while enjoying life. Enjoyment of perfumes, flowers, refined cuisine, precious silk was a vital point to him. But enjoyment could not overcome his feelings of tediousness. Joubert was of very delicate health, but he enjoyed suffering because he believed that sickness made his soul more subtle. As a psychologist of morbidity, Joubert anticipated many psychological discoveries of recent times. In The Radical Academy
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Francis Xavier von Baader (1765-1841) An expert on mints and mining, and consultant in both these fields, von Baader (picture) was also a writer, a Catholic layman whose works were read by both Protestant and Catholic philosophers. The latter found him stimulating if unorthodox, particularly in view of the fact that he once stated that should the devil appear on earth, it would be in the garb of a professor of moral philosophy. During a five-year sojourn in England, Baader acquainted himself with the opposing ideologies of David Hartley, the sensualist, David Hume, the skeptic, and Jacob Boehme, the mystic. His writings, as a result of these influences, contained many unpredictable flashes of insight and startling affirmations. Mysticism influenced him more than did philosophies. Baader never strove for a system, but aimed at the deep and profound; he frequently appeared paradoxical. Rationalism was abhorrent to him; human knowledge required the greater wisdom of God, which he viewed as the real spontaneity in all forms of knowledge. The phrase, con-scientia, symbolized to him man's participation in God's knowledge. He disapproved of some aspects of the papacy, but, nonetheless, elected to stay within the fold, striving, in his lectures, for a philosophic rationale of Catholicism, and making the love of God and neighbor the mainstay of his sociology, which also incorporated his ideas of liberty and equality. In 1826 he was called to assume the chair of professor of speculative dogmatics at the University of Munich, his native city. However, he was compelled in 1838 to exchange this for a chair in anthropology because he was barred from lecturing on the philosophy of religion for the reason that he was a layman. In The Radical Academy
Maine de Biran [Pierre Francois Gonthier de Biran] (1766-1824) Maine de Biran (picture) was a man of strong moral and metaphysical feelings, but his psychological curiosity was always stronger and sometimes diverted his thoughts from their initial aims. For years his military and political activities prevented him from concentrating upon philosophy. He was strictly opposed to Condillac and Cabanis whom he regarded as the representatives of the spirit of the eighteenth century and whom he accused of evaporating human feelings by their analysis; but, in fact, as a psychologist, Maine de Biran was closer to them than he supposed himself to be. Nevertheless, many of his ideas seem to be anticipations of those of Whitehead, Santayana, Hocking, Bergson, Scheler and recent existentialism/ Serving in King Louis XVI's bodyguard, Maine de Biran was wounded in the fight against the people of Paris during the early revolutionary days of July 1789. After his regiment had been disbanded, he turned to mathematics and philosophy. Despite his ardent royalism and hatred of the Revolution, he served under the Directory from 1795 on, and was elected a member of the Council of the Five Hundred in 1797. The coup d'état of Fructidor induced him to retire into private life until Napoleon, in 1805, appointed him sub-prefect and member of the Corps Législatif. In 1811, Maine de Biran abandoned the Emperor in favor of the Bourbons whose return to power he openly demanded. King Louis XVIII awarded him many honors but the ultra-reactionary faction accused him of being too moderate. From the time of his childhood, Maine de Biran was, as he said, "astonished while feeling that I exist," and he was led by an instinct to analyze his consciousness in order "to know how I can live and be myself." Contrary to Descartes, he conceived man as a willing creature. Volo, ergo sum is his device. Will signifies the constant tension in man that urges him to act. Will is the primary fact of consciousness that gives man the feeling of being united with a body and brings him into contact with the outer world and its resistance to his actions. The knowledge of substance is derived from observation of the will. In his New Essays on Anthropology which were not finished when he died, Maine de Biran describes three stages of life. The first is that of animal life which is dominated by blind passions which are independent of the will. The second experience is will, intelligence, the meaning of ideas and words, and the conflict of wills. The third stage is that of spirit in which man identifies himself with the eternal source of power and insight. At its height, man is happy to lose his ego. At any stage, man needs the support of God. Maine de Biran claimed to have overcome all difficulties which are the result of an erroneous tendency to comprehend in abstract or separate terms what is given in relatives or to divide into sections what really is a running stream. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) As a contemporary observer remarked, Humboldt (picture) was not young at the age of sixteen and not old at the age of sixty. Although Humboldt did not disagree with that statement, he claimed that his independence from change was the result of his self-education and striving and of the organization and economy of his living energies. Even if this assumption was incorrect, it is true that Humboldt endeavored, from his early years till his death, to construct his character in accordance with his ideals of human perfection and, although he persisted in wearing such a mask, his behavior was considered natural by men like Goethe and Schiller, his friends. This mask helped him, sensitive and sensual as he actually was, to appear serene and imperturbable, But he was by no means a hypocrite. He was deeply convinced that character was not a natural human quality but the result of will. Humboldt was a man of highest culture and wide interests. He was a great linguist, a pioneer in studying the languages of American aborigines, of Sanskrit and Basque; in philosophy, an independent disciple of Kant and Schelling, not abandoning, however, the ideas of enlightenment; a historian; and a statesman who was an excellent minister of public education in Prussia, but was defeated when he struggled against routine and reaction and for a moderate liberalism. In his early writings, Humboldt was an extreme individualist. Later he was interested in investigating the relations between the individual and the great movements of history, but he maintained, in opposition to Hegel, that the individual and the so-called spirit of the epoch or nation are incommensurable. He became convinced of the coherence of the spiritual life of all times and nations but his principal interest remained devoted to the individual. To him the diversity of men, times and nations constituted no objection to the establishment of a universal ideal of human education and perfection, and he constantly endeavored to give this ideal a telling, characteristic, concrete content. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Friedrich von Schlegel (1772-1829) Friedrich von Schlegel (picture) is one of the most characteristic representatives of German romanticism whose principal trait is the longing for a reality different from that which is determined by natural laws and historical circumstances. Dissatisfied with the civilization of his own time, Schlegel at first exalted the French Revolution, then the Middle Ages, and finally, considering the Roman Catholic Church as the keeper of the medieval mind, he was converted to it, and became a champion of political and cultural reaction. He began as an admirer and pupil of Kant, Fichte and Goethe, and later turned to Metternich and Joseph de Maistre who asserted the superiority of tradition over reason, and proclaimed papacy as the one legitimate ruler over humanity. With his elder brother, August Wilhelm von Schlegel, he founded the journal Athenaum, in which he published his philosophical and literary aphorisms and his Dialogue on Poetry (1800), a critical work stressing the subjective aspects of literature and developing in full his romantic thought. Schlegel was a poor poet. His novel Lucinde (1799), notorious at the time for its championship of free love and scandalizing middle-class morals, is now seen as an early forerunner of the experimental novel, but it proved to be unreadable. His tragedy Alarcos, produced by Goethe in Weimar, fell flat. But in his early aphorisms and essays, Schlegel refined the understanding of poetry and evoked the sense of personality in every kind of spiritual activity, be it poetic, scientific, philosophical or religious. In his later works, Schlegel stiffened his opposition to Enlightenment, natural law, democracy and liberalism, but, despite his turn to traditionalism, he preserved a revolutionary strain of which he was conscious. He defined it as his faculty to perceive historical changes without sympathizing with them, and to combat the revolution with what he called "revolutionary spirit in a valid sense but different from the common conception." He therefore was as distrusted by Catholics as he was blamed by Protestants. For many years, Schlegel led a destitute life for he was rather indolent. He would have perished without the help of his wife Dorothea, Moses Mendelssohn's daughter with whom he had eloped from the house of her husband Simon Veit. Dorothea, the "child of enlightenment," nine years older than Schlegel, followed him from folly to folly and, at the same time, provided him with money by writing novels and articles with untiring energy. Schlegel's primary importance lies in the originality of his aesthetic theories. Often complex and at times paradoxical, his thought is crucial to the evolution of modern aesthetics. He extolled the work of art -- free expression of the creative imagination -- as the summit of human achievement, and his lively mind ranged from classical antiquity to Oriental studies and the philosophy of history and religion. His major works include Geschichte der Poesie der Griechen und Romer (History of the Poetry of the Greeks and Romans, 1798), Uber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians, 1808), Lectures on History and Literature (1815), and The Philosophy of History (1829). In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) A gifted poet and leader of the English romantic movement, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (picture) found life a continuous struggle against passion and physical suffering. His unhappy marriage and his love for another married woman caused him grave psychological disturbance and his addiction to opium undermined his physical health. Coleridge did not do justice to his philosophical expositions and often said that he found no comfort "except in the driest speculations." His psychological observations of the activities of the mind under abnormal and morbid conditions are invaluable. The results of his keen self-examination anticipate many of the researches of modern psychopathology. From 1816 to 1834 Coleridge lived in the house of a physician who finally succeeded in curing him, and the last years of the poet were spent in relative psychological security. Coleridge's philosophy was largely the result of his changing political sentiments. At first an ardent supporter of the French Revolution, he turned to fanatical conservatism and traditionalism. He staunchly opposed almost all of the eighteenth century British philosophers -- particularly Locke, Hartley, Hume, and Bentham -- and subsequently was converted to German idealism. His Biographia Literaria, which developed a theory of literary criticism, influenced British and American aesthetics and philosophy. In The Radical Academy
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The Essays of Elia (1823), one of the most popular books in English literature, is a kind of autobiography of its author, Charles Lamb (picture), who was a clerk in the East India House, a very sociable man, loved by his friends, and a master of conversation. According to Hazlitt, Lamb "always made the best pun and the best remark in the course of the evening." He was capable of imparting the charm of his conversation to written words. But he never mentioned the misfortune of his life. Lamb never married because he had been insane for six weeks, and, until his death, he guarded with loving care his sister Mary who, in a fit of insanity, had killed her own mother. In The Radical Academy
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The personal fate of Bolzano (picture) affords a dramatic insight into the dangers to which really independent thinkers are exposed when the internal revolutions of a reactionary period are manifest. Bolzano was born shortly prior to the outbreak of the French Revolution and died during the year of multiple European revolutions. Although he was not burned at the stake, he was compelled to live in complete retirement for the last thirty years of his life. Bolzano, whose writings were forbidden publication, was a Catholic priest and professor of philosophy at the University of Prague. However, he continued to work ceaselessly, and some of his friends arranged to have his books published anonymously outside his own country. Half a century after his death, his works were discovered and read eagerly by leading modern philosophers. His consistent distinction between logic and psychology was of great importance to Husserl and his disciples. In a sense, Bolzano anticipated the modern theory of transfinite numbers. He was firmly convinced that human knowledge can be enlarged infinitely and insisted on methodical research, cautioning against wishful thinking. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
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