CHAPTER IV

RELIGIOUS AND PHILOSOPHICAL WORLD-VIEWS

The world-views of the world-religions

IN the world-religions we can see powerful attempts to establish an ethical world-view.

The religious thinkers of China, Lao-tse (born 604 B.C.), Kung-tse (Confucius, 537-479 B.C.), Meng-tse (372-289 B.C.) and Chwang-tse (fourth century B.C.), all try to ground the ethical in a world- and life-affirming nature-philosophy. In so doing they arrive at a world-view which, because it is optimistic-ethical, contains incentives to inward and outward civilization.

The religious thinkers of India also, the Brahmanic philosophers, the Buddha (560-480 B.C.), and the Hindus, start, like the Chinese, from thought about the existing world, _i.e._ from nature-philosophy. They do not, however, take a world- and life-affirming view of it, but a world- and life-denying one. Their world-view is pessimistic-ethical, and contains, therefore, incentives to inward civilization only, not to outward as well.

Chinese religiousness, and Indian, recognize only a single world-principle. They are monistic and pantheistic. Their world-view has to solve the problem of how far we can recognize the original source of the world as ethical, and how far, correspondingly, we become ethical by the surrender to it of our will.

In contrast to these monistic-pantheistic world-views we find dualistic ones in the religion of Zarathustra (sixth century B.C.), in that of the Jewish prophets (from the eighth century B.C. onwards), and in those of Jesus and Mohammed, this last, however, showing itself to be in [pg 028] all points unoriginal and decadent. These religious thinkers do not start from an investigation of the existence which manifests itself in the universe, but from a view of the ethical which is quite independent of it. They put it in opposition to natural happenings. Accordingly they assume the existence of two world-principles, the natural and the ethical. The first is in the world, and has to be overcome; the other is incorporated in an ethical personality which is outside the world and has been given the final authority in this sphere.

If among the Chinese and the Hindus the basic principle of morality was life in harmony with the world-will, so among dualists it is an attempt to be something different from the world in harmony with an ethical divine personality which is outside and above the world.

The weakness of dualistic religions is that their world-view, because it rejects every kind of nature-philosophy, is always naïve. Their strength lies in the fact that they have the ethical within themselves, directly present and with undiminished force. They have no need to strain it and explain it, as monists have to, so as to be able to conceive it as an effluence from the world-will which reveals itself in nature.

The world-views of the dualistic world-religions, taken as a whole, are optimistic. They live in the confident belief that ethical force will prove superior to natural, and so raise the world and mankind to true perfection. Zarathustra and the older Jewish prophets represent this process as a kind of world-reform. The optimistic element in their world-view asserts itself in a quite natural way. They have the will, and the hope of being able to transform human society and to make the races of the world fit for their higher destiny. Progress in any department of life means for them something gained, for they think of inward and outward civilization together.

With Jesus the value of the optimistic element in his world-view is impaired by the fact that he looks forward to the perfected world as a result of a catastrophic end to the natural one, and while with Zarathustra and the older [pg 029] Jewish prophets the Divine intervention is to a certain extent only the completion of the human activities which have been directed to the perfecting of the world, it is with Jesus the only thing which has to be taken into account. The kingdom of God is to appear in a supernatural way; it is in no way prepared for by any effort made by mankind to attain to civilization.

The world-view of Jesus, because it is fundamentally optimistic, accepts the ends aimed at by outward civilization. Being, however, entangled in the expectation of the end of the world, it is indifferent to all attempts made to improve the temporal, natural world by a civilization which organizes itself on lines of outward progress, and it busies itself only with the inward ethical perfecting of individuals.

Just in proportion, however, as the Christian world-view draws the consequences of the world’s not coming to an end, and accepts the idea that the kingdom of God must be established by a process of development which transforms the natural world, it begins to understand and be interested in the completing of social organization, and in all such progress in outward civilization as contributes to it. Then the optimistic element in the world-view can again work unhindered side by side with the ethical. Thus we get an explanation of the fact that Christianity, which in the ancient world showed itself hostile to civilization, seeks in modern times with more or less success to conduct itself as the world-view which is for progress in every sphere of activity.

The world-views of the world-religions and that of Western thought

The questions which press for an answer from the world-religions in their struggle to reach an ethical and an optimistic-ethical world-view, are the same as those which present themselves to Western philosophy also. The great problem is to think out a connexion between the universe and ethics.

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The three types of world-view which show themselves in the world-religions, recur also in Western philosophy. The latter, too, attempts to find an ethical code either in a world- and life-affirming, or in a world- and life-denying, nature-philosophy, or it attempts, rejecting more or less completely all nature-philosophy, to reach a world-view which is in itself ethical. Only, it at the same time does its best to avoid acknowledging, and indeed to conceal, the naïve and dualistic element which is inevitably encountered when this last method of procedure is followed.

The world-views, then, of the world-religions, and that of Western philosophy, do not belong to different worlds, but stand in close inward relations to one another. Further, the distinctions between a religious world-view and a philosophical one is a quite superficial one. The religious world-view which seeks to comprehend itself in thought becomes philosophical, as is the case among the Chinese and the Hindus. On the other hand a philosophical world-view which goes really deep, assumes a religious character.

Although Western thought does, in principle, approach the problem of world-view without any presuppositions, it has not been able to keep itself entirely from being influenced by religious world-views. From Christianity it has received impulses of a decisive character, and the attempt to convert the naïve-ethical world-view of Jesus into a philosophical one has cost it more attention and effort than it admits to itself. With Schopenhauer and his successors the pessimistic monism of India finds expression, and it enriches their reflexion upon the nature of the ethical.

Thus the energies of all the great world-views stream into Western thought, and through the co-operation of these varied forms of thought and energy the latter is enabled to exalt into a universal conviction the optimistic-ethical world-view which hovers before its mind, and that too in a strength which it has never displayed in any previous age or in any other part of the world. And that is why Western thought has advanced farthest both in inward civilization and in outward.

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To give a real foundation to the optimistic-ethical world-view Western thought is indeed as little able as any of the world-religions were, and because the West experiences the problem of world-view in its most universal and most pressing form it is the scene of the greatest advances made by the civilized mind, but also of its greatest catastrophes. It experiences portentous changes in its world-view, and is familiar, too, with terrible periods when it has no world-view at all.

It is because our Western thought is so sensitive in both these directions, that it reveals most clearly the questions and difficulties amid which the search for an optimistic world-view moves.

How far does the history of our thought give to us Westerners the explanation of our fate? What road does it indicate to us as the best for our future search after a world-view in which the individual can find inwardness and strength, and mankind progress and peace?

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