Part 33

(1.) The progressive development of nature proceeds from a conflict of the ground with the understanding. The ground originally sought to produce every thing solely from itself, but its products had no consistence without the understanding, and went again to the ground, a creation which we see exhibited in the extinct classes of animals and plants of the pre-Adamite world. But consecutively and gradually, the ground admitted the work of the understanding, and every such step towards light is indicated by a new class of nature’s beings. In every creature of nature we must, therefore, distinguish two principles: first, the obscure principle through which the creatures of nature are separate from God, and have a particular will; second, the divine principle of the understanding, of the universal will. With irrational creatures of nature, however, these two principles are not yet brought to unity; but the particular will is simple seeking and desire, while the universal will, without the individual will, reigns as an external power of nature, as controlling instinct.

(2.) The two principles, the particular and the universal will, are first united in man as they are in the absolute: but in God they are united inseparably, and in man separably, for otherwise God could not reveal himself in man. It is even this separableness of the universal will, and the particular will, which makes good and evil possible. The good is the subjection of the particular will to the universal will, and the reverse of this right relation is evil. Human freedom consists in this possibility of good and evil. The empirical man, however, is not free, but his whole empirical condition is posited by a previous act of intelligence. The man must act just as he does, but is nevertheless free, because he has from eternity freely made himself that which he now necessarily is. The history of the human race is founded for the most part on the struggle of the individual will with the universal will, as the history of nature is founded on the struggle of the ground with the understanding. The different stages through which evil, as a historical power, takes its way in conflict with love, constitute the periods of the world’s history. Christianity is the centre of history: in Christ, the principle of love came in personal contact with incarnate evil: Christ was the mediator to reconcile on the highest stage the creation with God; for that which is personal can alone redeem the personal. The end of history is the reconciliation of the particular will and love, the prevalence of the universal will, so that God shall be all in all. The original indifference is thus elevated to identity.

Schelling has given a farther justification of this his idea of God, in his controversial pamphlet against Jacobi, (1812). The charge of naturalism which Jacobi made against him, he sought to refute by showing how the true idea of God was a union of naturalism and theism. Naturalism seeks to conceive of God as ground of the world (immanent), while theism would view him as the world’s cause (transcendent): the true course is to unite both determinations. God is at the same time ground and cause. It no way contradicts the conception of God to affirm that, so far as he reveals himself, he developes himself from himself, advancing from the imperfect to the perfect: the imperfect is in fact the perfect itself, only in a state of becoming. It is necessary that this becoming should be by stages, in order that the fulness of the perfect may appear on all sides. If there were no obscure ground, no nature, no negative principle in God, we could not speak of a consciousness of God. So long as the God of modern theism remains the simple essence which ought to be purely essential, but which in fact is without essence, so long as an actual twofoldness is not recognized in God, and a limiting and denying energy (a nature, a negative principle) is not placed in opposition to the extending and affirming energy in God, so long will science be entitled to make its denial of a personal God. It is universally and essentially impossible to conceive of a being with consciousness, which has not been brought into limit by some denying energy within himself—as universally and essentially impossible as to conceive of a circle without a centre.

VI. Since the essay against Jacobi, which in its philosophical content accords mainly with his theory of freedom, Schelling has not made public any thing of importance. He has often announced a work entitled “_Die Weltalter_,” which should contain a complete and elaborate exposition of his philosophy, but has always withdrawn it before its appearance. _Paulus_ has surreptitiously brought his later Berlin lectures before the public in a manner for which he has been greatly blamed: but since this publication is not recognized by Schelling himself, it cannot be used as an authentic source of knowledge of his philosophy. During this long period, Schelling has published only two articles of a philosophical content: “_On the Deities of Samothracos_,” 1815, and a “_Critical Preface_” to _Becker’s_ translation of a preface of _Cousin_, 1834. Both articles are very characteristic of the present standpoint of Schelling’s philosophizing—he himself calls his present philosophy _Positive Philosophy, or the Philosophy of Mythology and Revelation_,—but as they give only intimations of this, and do not reach a complete exposition, they do not admit of being used for our purpose.

SECTION XLIV.

TRANSITION TO HEGEL.

The great want of Schelling’s philosophizing, was its inability to furnish a suitable form for the philosophic content. Schelling went through the list of all methods, and at last abandoned all. But this absence of method into which he ultimately sank, contradicted the very principle of his philosophizing. If thought and being are identical, yet form and content cannot be indifferent in respect to each other. On the standpoint of absolute knowledge, there must be found for the absolute content an absolute form, which shall be identical with the content. This is the position assumed by _Hegel_. Hegel has fused the content of Schelling’s philosophy by means of the _absolute method_. Hegel sprang as truly from Fichte as from Schelling; the origin of his system is found in both. His method is essentially that of Fichte, but his general philosophical standpoint is Schelling’s. He has combined both Fichte and Schelling.

Hegel has himself, in his “_Phenomenology_,” the first work in which he appeared as a philosopher on his own hook, having previously been considered as an adherent of Schelling—clearly expressed his difference from Schelling, which he comprehensively affirms in the following three hits (_Schlagworte_):—In Schelling’s philosophy, the absolute is, as it were, shot out of a pistol; it is only the night in which every cow looks black; when it is widened to a system, it is like the course of a painter, who has on his palette but two colors, red and green, and who would cover a surface with the former when a historical piece was demanded, and with the latter when a landscape was required. The first of these charges refers to the mode of attaining the idea of the absolute, viz., immediately, through intellectual intuition; this leap Hegel changes, in his _Phenomenology_, to a regular transit, proceeding step by step. The second charge relates to the way in which the absolute thus gained is conceived and expressed, viz., simply as the absence of all finite distinctions, and not as the immanent positing of a system of distinctions within itself. Hegel declares that every thing depends upon apprehending and expressing the true not as substance (_i. e._ as negation of determinateness), but as subject (as a positing and producing of finite distinction). The third charge has to do with Schelling’s manner of carrying out his principle through the concrete content of the facts given in the natural and intellectual worlds, viz., by the application of a ready-made schema (the opposition of the ideal and the real) to the objects, instead of suffering them to unfold and separate themselves from themselves. The school of Schelling was especially given to this schematizing formalism, and that which Hegel remarks, in the introduction to his _Phenomenology_, may very well be applied to it: “If the formalism of a philosophy of nature should happen to teach that the understanding is electricity, or that the animate is nitrogen, the inexperienced might look upon such instructions with deep amazement, and perhaps revere them as displaying the marks of profound genius. But the trick of such a wisdom is as readily learned as it is easily practised; its repetition is as insufferable as the repetition of a discovered feat of legerdemain. This method of affixing to every thing heavenly and earthly, to all natural and intellectual forms, the two determinations of the universal scheme, makes the universe like a grocer’s shop, in which a row of closed jars stand with their labels pasted on them.”

The point, therefore, of greatest difference between Schelling and Hegel is their philosophical method, and this at the same time forms the bond of close connection which unites Hegel with Fichte. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis—this was the method by which Fichte had sought to deduce all being from the Ego, and in precisely the same way Hegel deduces all being—the intellectual and natural universe—from the thought, only with this difference, that with him that which was idealistically deduced had at the same time an objective reality. While the practical idealism of Fichte stood related to the objective world as a producer, and the ordinary empiricism as a beholder, yet with Hegel the speculative (conceiving) reason is at the same time productive and beholding. I produce (for myself) that which is (in itself) without my producing. The result of philosophy, says Hegel, is the thought which is by itself, and which comprehends in itself the universe, and changes it into an intelligent world. To raise all being to being in the consciousness, to knowledge, is the problem and the goal of philozophizing, and this goal is reached when the mind has become able to beget the whole objective world from itself.

In his first great work, the “_Phenomenology of the Mind_,” Hegel sought to establish the standpoint of absolute knowledge or absolute idealism. He furnishes in this work a history of the phenomenal consciousness (whence its title), a development of the formative epochs of the consciousness in its progress to philosophical knowledge. The inner development of consciousness consists in this, viz., that the peculiar condition in which it finds itself becomes objectified (or conscious), and through this knowledge of its own being the consciousness rises ever a new step to a higher condition. The “_Phenomenology_” seeks to show how, and out of what necessity the consciousness advances from step to step, from reality to being _per se_ (_vom Ansich zum Fürsich_), from being to knowledge. The author begins with the immediate consciousness as the lowest step. He entitled this section: “_The Sensuous Certainty, or the This and the Mine_.” At this stage the question is asked the Ego: what is _this_, or what is _here_? and it answers, _e. g._ the tree; and to the question, what is _now_? it answers now is the night. But if we turn ourselves around, _here_ is not a tree but a house; and if we write down the second answer, and look at it again after a little time, we find that _now_ is no longer night but mid-day. The _this_ becomes, therefore, a not-this, _i. e._ a universal. And very naturally; for if I say: this piece of paper, yet each and every paper is a this piece of paper, and I have only said the universal. By such inner dialectics the whole field of the immediate certainty of the sense in perception is gone over. In this way—since every formative step (every form) of the consciousness of the philosophizing subject is involved in contradictions, and is carried by this immanent dialectics to a higher form of consciousness—this process of development goes on till the contradiction is destroyed, _i. e._ till all strangeness between subject and object disappears, and the mind rises to a perfect self-knowledge and self-certainty. To characterize briefly the different steps of this process, we might say that the consciousness is first found as a certainty of the sense, or as the _this_ and the _mine_; next as perception, which apprehends the objective as a thing with its properties; and then as understanding, _i. e._ apprehending the objects as being reflected in itself, or distinguishing between power and expression, being and manifestation, outer and inner. From this point the consciousness, which has only recognized itself, its own pure being in its objects and their determinations, and for which therefore every other thing than itself has, as such, no significance, becomes the self-like Ego, and rises to the truth and certainty of itself to self-consciousness. The self-consciousness become universal, or as reason, now traverses also a series of development-steps, until it manifests itself as spirit, as the reason which, in accord with all rationality, and satisfied with the rational world without, extends itself over the natural and intellectual universe as _its_ kingdom, in which it finds itself at home. Mind now passes through its stages of unconstrained morality, culture and refinement, ethics and the ethical view of the world to religion; and religion itself in its perfection, as revealed religion becomes absolute knowledge. At this last stage being and thought are no more separate, being is no longer an object for the thought, but the thought itself is the object of the thought. Science is nothing other than the true knowledge of the mind concerning itself. In the conclusion of the “_Phenomenology_,” Hegel casts the following retrospect on the course which he has laid down: “The goal which is to be reached, viz., absolute knowledge, or the mind knowing itself as mind, requires us to take notice of minds as they are in themselves, and the organization of their kingdom. These elements are preserved, and furnished to us either by history, where we look at the side of the mind’s free existence as it accidentally appears, or by the science of phenomenal knowledge, where we look at the side of the mind’s ideal organization. These two sources taken together, as the ideal history, give us the real history and the true being of the absolute spirit, the actuality, truth, and certainty of his throne, without which he were lifeless and alone; only ‘from the cup of this kingdom of minds does there stream forth for him his infinity.’”

SECTION XLV.

HEGEL.

_George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel_ was born at Stuttgart, the 27th of August, 1770. In his eighteenth year he entered the university of Tübingen, in order to devote himself to the study of theology. During his course of study here, he attracted no marked attention; Schelling, who was his junior in years, shone far beyond all his contemporaries. After leaving Tübingen, he took a situation as private tutor, first in Switzerland, and afterwards in Frankfort-on-the-Main till 1801, when he settled down at Jena. At first he was regarded as a disciple, and defender of Schelling’s philosophy, and as such he wrote in 1801 his first minor treatise on the “_Difference between Fichte and Schelling_.” Soon afterwards he became associated with Schelling in publishing the “_Critical Journal of Philosophy_,” 1802-3, for which he furnished a number of important articles. His labors as an academical teacher met at first with but little encouragement; he gave his first lecture to only four hearers. Yet in 1806 he became professor in the university, though the political catastrophe in which the country was soon afterwards involved, deprived him again of the place. Amid the cannon’s thunder of the battle of Jena he finished “_the Phenomenology of the Mind_,” his first great and independent work, the crown of his Jena labors. He was subsequently in the habit of calling this book which appeared in 1807, his “voyage of discovery.” From Jena, Hegel for want of the means of subsistence went to Bamberg, where for two years he was editor of a political journal published there. In the fall of 1808, he became rector of the gymnasium at Nuremberg. In this situation he wrote his _Logic_, 1812-16. All his works were produced slowly, and he first properly began his literary activity as Schelling finished his. In 1816, he received a call to a professorship of philosophy at Heidelberg, where in 1817 he published his “_Encyclopædia of the philosophical sciences_,” in which for the first time he showed the whole circuit of his system. But his peculiar fame, and his far-reaching activity, dates first from his call to Berlin in 1818. It was at Berlin that he surrounded himself with an extensive and very actively scientific school, and where through his connection with the Prussian government he gained a political influence and acquired a reputation for his philosophy, as _the_ philosophy of the State, though this neither speaks favorably for its inner purity, nor its moral credit. Yet in his “_Philosophy of Rights_,” which appeared in 1821 (a time, to be sure, when the Prussian State had not yet shown any decidedly anti-constitutional tendency), Hegel does not deny the political demands of the present age; he declares in favor of popular representation, freedom of the press, and publicity of judicial proceedings, trial by jury, and an administrative independence of corporations.

In Berlin, Hegel gave lectures upon almost every branch of philosophy, and these have been published by his disciples and friends after his death. His manner as a lecturer was stammering, clumsy, and unadorned, but was still not without a peculiar attraction as the immediate expression of profound thoughtfulness. His social intercourse was more with the uncultivated than with the learned; he was not fond of shining as a genius in social circles. In 1829 he became rector of the university, an office which he administered in a more practical manner than Fichte had done. Hegel died with the cholera, Nov. 14th, 1831, the day also of Leibnitz’s death. He rests in the same churchyard with Solger and Fichte, near by the latter, and not far from the former. His writings and lectures form seventeen volumes which have appeared since 1882: Vol. I. Minor Articles; II. Phenomenology; III-V. Logic; VI.-VII. Encyclopædia; VIII. Philosophy of Rights; IX. Philosophy of History; X. Æsthetics; XI.-XII. Philosophy of Religion; XIII.-XV. History of Philosophy; XVI.-XVII. Miscellanies. His life has been written by Rosenkranz.

Hegel’s system may be divided in a number of ways. The best mode is by connecting it with Schelling. Schellings’s absolute was the identity or the indifference point of the ideal and the real. From this Hegel’s threefold division immediately follows. (1) The exposition of the indifference point, the development of the pure conceptions or determinations in thought, which lie at the basis of all natural and intellectual life; in other words, the logical unfolding of the absolute,—_the science of logic_. (2) The development of the real world or of nature—_natural philosophy_. (3) The development of the ideal world, or of mind as it shows itself concretely in right, morals, the state, art, religion, and science.—_Philosophy of Mind_. These three parts of the system represent the three elements of the absolute method, thesis, antithesis, synthesis. The absolute is at first pure, and immaterial thought; secondly, it is differentiation (_Andersseyn_) of the pure thought or its diremption (_Verzerrung_) in space and time—nature; thirdly, it returns from this self-estrangement to itself, destroys the differentiation of nature, and thus becomes actual self-knowing thought or mind.

I. SCIENCE OF LOGIC.—The Hegelian logic is the scientific exposition and development of the pure conceptions of reason, those conceptions or categories which lie at the basis of all thought and being, and which determine the subjective knowledge as truly as they form the indwelling soul of the objective reality; in a word, those ideas in which the ideal and the real have their point of coincidence. The domain of logic, says Hegel, is the truth, as it is _per se_ in its native character. It is as Hegel himself figuratively expresses it, the representation of God as he is in his eternal being, before the creation of the world or a finite mind. In this respect it is, to be sure, a domain of shadows; but these shadows are, on the other hand, those simple essences freed from all sensuous matters, in whose diamond net the whole universe is constructed.

Different philosophers had already made a thankworthy beginning towards collecting and examining the pure conceptions of the reason, as Aristotle in his categories, Wolff in his ontology, and Kant in his transcendental analytics. But they had neither completely collected, nor critically sifted, nor (Kant excepted) derived them from one principle, but had only taken them up empirically, and treated them lexicologically. But in opposition to this course, Hegel attempted, (1) to completely collect the pure art-conceptions; (2) to critically sift them (_i. e._ to exclude every thing but pure thought); and (3)—which is the most characteristic peculiarity of the Hegelian logic—to derive these dialectically from one another, and carry them out to an internally connected system of pure reason. Hegel starts with the view, that in every conception of the reason, every other is contained _implicite_, and may be dialectically developed from it. Fichte had already claimed that the reason must deduce the whole system of knowledge purely from itself, without any thing taken for granted; that some principle must be sought which should be of itself certain, and need no farther proof, and from which every thing else could be derived. Hegel holds fast to this thought. Starting from the simplest conception of reason, that of pure being, which needs no farther establishing, he seeks from this, by advancing from one conception ever to another and a richer one, to deduce the whole system of the pure knowledge of reason. The lever of this development is the dialectical method.

Hegel’s dialectical method is partly taken from Plato, and partly from Fichte. The conception of negation is Platonic. All negation, says Hegel, is position, affirmation. If a conception is negated, the result is not the pure nothing—a pure negative, but a concrete positive; there results a new conception which extends around the negation of the preceding one. The negation of the one _e. g._ is the conception of the many. In this way Hegel makes negation a vehicle for dialectical progress. Every presupposed conception is denied, and from its negation a higher and richer conception is gained. This is connected with the method of Fichte, which posits a fundamental synthesis; and by analyzing this, seeks its antitheses, and then unites again these antitheses through a second synthesis,—_e. g._ being, nothing, becoming, quality, quantity, measure, &c. This method, which is at the same time analytical and synthetical, Hegel has carried through the whole system of science.

We now proceed to a brief survey of the Hegelian Logic. It is divided into three parts; the doctrine of _being_, the doctrine of _essence_, and the doctrine of _conception_.