The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century
Page 50
13.2 JENA IN THE 1790S
The University of Jena was in the late eighteenth century the most prestigious center of higher learning in German-speaking lands. Part of that reputation was based in the installation at the university of what was essentially a research cluster for Kantian philosophy. There was a chair founded devoted to such fare, and K. L. Reinhold (1757–1823) was its first occupant. Along with Reinhold another professor was appointed in the philosophy faculty, also a Kantian, and there were two junior positions opened as well in “critical philosophy.” Reinhold had made a name for himself as a conduit for the dissemination of Kant’s philosophy; his Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie (1786/7) provided an effective, albeit simplified, exposure to several key doctrines of the first (1781) edition of the first Critique. Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) was also installed at Jena at this time, finishing his Briefe über die ästhetische Erziehung (published in 1795), writing his verse dramas, and teaching history. All of this was more or less orchestrated on high with his usual savoir faire comme va savoir by Goethe, who maintained close personal and official connections to the university and town for much of his literary and scientific career—he completed Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre there, arguably the most important literary product in German of the nineteenth century if judged by its influence, as well as Hermann und Dorothea, Dichtung und Warheit, and the Farbenlehre.2
No matter how formidable and cutting-edge the literary and philosophical environment was in and around the university, access for the brightest students to the treasures was possible and indeed encouraged. Again, Goethe’s hand in things—the quality of the way he handled matters—flowed down to the only slightly less luminous, for example, Schiller, and then to the philosophy faculty, all of which created an inviting atmosphere for collaboration in coming to grips with what was commonly seen as the revolutionary nature of Kant’s thought. Reinhold was an immensely popular lecturer and cultivated a devoted group of the best students at the university. But the students were not slavishly devoted to Reinhold’s own attempts to advance what he took to be Kant’s central insights; in fact, these students were highly critical of those attempts, an attitude that Reinhold seems to have open-mindedly welcomed or even encouraged. After appointment to his chair Reinhold put himself to the task of being more than an expositor of Kant. Reinhold was Austrian and had converted to Protestantism from his birth-religion, Roman Catholicism, after undergoing a spiritual crisis. His account in the Briefe of the central teaching of the Critique of Pure Reason seems today highly selective, if not willful. He pays scant attention to the claimed results of the Transcendental Aesthetic on the ideality of time and space, nor does he pause long over the technicalities of the A-Deduction. His libido is, rather, in the Transcendental Dialectic, and in particular those parts of it that address the question of the relation of faith to reason. The combination of the relatively “psychological” approach of the Deduction in the first edition of the Critique with the filter of the concern with issues in the philosophy of religion, cause Reinhold to take a very specific path in his extension of Kant. Reinhold held that what he saw to be the rift between reason and faith consequent on Kant’s treatment of the topics could be closed by establishing a basis for the derivation of the dualistic structure of the critical philosophy in one, single principle having to do with “representation” (Vorstellung). Basing the critical philosophy in a single principle also would have the desired effects of making it more accessible to the public and increasing the public’s confidence in it as well-grounded. In a flurry of systematic labor that saw three major works to publication in as many years—Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens (1789), Beyträge zur Berichtigung bisheriger Mißverständnisse der Philosophen (1790), and Ueber das Fundament des philosophischen Wissens (1791)—Reinhold promoted a view according to which the form of all representation, and therefore all knowledge, could be derived from its basis in the tripartite structure of the “Principle of Consciousness”: representing subject, medium of representation, and represented object. This structure is that of intentionality itself.
Fichte, who was to be Reinhold’s successor in the Kantian chair in 1794, attempted to improve on Reinhold’s analysis, a project begun in a review of G. E. Schulze’s Aenesidemus, which itself was critical of Reinhold (and of any Kantianism generally) (see Fichte, Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften3 I,2: 41ff.). Fichte agreed with Schulze that Reinhold’s attempt to base intentional consciousness in an ultimately unifying faculty of representation of the sort proposed raises substantial philosophical problems.4 In some of the standard accounts of the development of philosophical thought in Jena at this time, the arrival of Fichte in Jena—to be sure an event of the first order in terms of general intellectual star-power—is decisive. It is a bit ironic though that some in Jena had already rejected Reinhold’s “Elementary Philosophy” on other, more general grounds. These naysayers were a group of Reinhold’s own students, one led by Immanuel Niethammer (1766–1848). Niethammer had come to Jena from his studies at the Protestant seminary in Tübingen and brought with him avidity for Kantian philosophy stripped of philosophical pretension.5
The Reinhold-Kreis, as it might be called if that did not give the impression that its members were supporters of Reinhold’s final pronouncements, dissented over a single issue. Never mind the technical philosophical problems with Reinhold’s principle that Schulze points to, the very idea that the critical philosophy needs to be grounded in a single principle was suspect. Niethammer interpreted Kant as something along the lines of a philosopher of “common sense” (Gemeinsinn), who had taken everyday experience as a “Faktum” and asked after what must be true in order that experience be possible in the first place (granted that it is actual). On this interpretation, which has its present-day adherents, Kant does not respond to skepticism by attempting to refute it by proving that experience is possible.6 To be sure, Kant does not ignore the skeptic altogether on such accounts, and in that sense he is perhaps not just a common-sense philosopher. But the emphasis on common sense does preserve at least the general contour of Reinhold’s initial concern with spreading the Kantian word: if Kant is really “modest” in this way it may well provide an encouragement to steel oneself for the onslaught of Kantian arcana.
In any event, the Niethammer circle’s criticism of Reinhold would seem to veer from the path Fichte takes. The inherent anti-foundationalism of that reception of Reinhold short-circuits Fichte’s concern to discover a competitor principle to ground the diversity of apparently conflicting elements in Kant’s philosophy. For this reason Fichte might have seemed old hat to the more pragmatically-minded of the Reinhold-Kreis. But the Niethammer group was somewhat insular; moreover, Fichte’s personal and philosophical charisma was not to be discounted. He too was critical of certain brands of foundationalism, had gone to print with the criticism, and pledged fealty to the “spirit” if not the letter of Kant. And, even if the “common sense” view of Kant had won the day as an antidote to Reinhold, it was not yet clear how that response would shore up the faith–reason relationship that had motivated Reinhold.
Fichte cut his teeth on just this stuff—his first significant publication, Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation (1792) deals in it—and, so, his new presence in Jena not only brought another sort of student there, one with an appetite for issues concerning foundationalism or critiques that do not skirt the question of foundationalism, but also muted for a time the more pragmatic bent.
13.3 THE “ROMANTIC SCHOOL”: NOVALIS AND SCHLEGEL
Two of these new students were the most important philosophical thinkers of what came to be known as the Jena Circle, Friedrich von Hardenberg, who wrote under the pseudonym “Novalis” (1772–1801), and Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829).
At the epicenter of the “Romantic School,” as Heine called it, were the brothers Schlegel. August Wilhelm, the elder by five years, was a gifted literary critic whose verse translation
s of the plays of Shakespeare (edited and sometimes altered by Ludwig Tieck) are landmarks of German literature. He began as a Hellenist, but came into his own in the early to mid-1790s as a contributor to Schiller’s journal Die Horen. This activity coincided with the decision of the younger Friedrich to leave his legal studies and devote himself instead to the study of literature, also with a heavy emphasis on classics. An intensive autodidactic study of Greek literature and rhetoric occupied Friedrich Schlegel for three years until 1796. During this period of his career, Friedrich launched a brilliant literary career with several precocious essays in the periodical Deutschland, edited by the influential Johann Friedrich Reichardt. His success continued in Reichardt’s successor journal, the Lyceum. August meanwhile relocated to the Netherlands to take a position as a private tutor. Schiller arranged for his 1796 resettlement in Jena. With Friedrich’s literary star still on the rise, this time tethered to an explicitly Jacobin journal set up to challenge Schiller’s own more measured responses to the Revolution, the elder Schlegel cast his lot with his brother.7
Friedrich Schlegel’s years as a law student in Leipzig were not entirely wasted, for it was then that he first met Novalis, who was also pursuing legal studies.8 Novalis had spent some time prior to Leipzig at the university in Jena in the period when Reinhold came to hold the chair of philosophy. In 1793 Novalis moved on to Wittenberg at the insistence of his Pietist father, completing his degree in 1794 and relocated after to Tennstedt to take up duties in the family business of administrating mines. During this time Novalis and Friedrich Schlegel carried on an important philosophical correspondence in which both describe their investigations into Fichte’s philosophy. Novalis had planned to come to Jena with Schlegel to continue his studies with Fichte, but broke it off, remaining in Thuringia. Schlegel moved to Jena in summer of 1796, but quickly departed for Berlin, opening up to him the best literary circles in the German-speaking lands outside Weimar. It was there that he met Tieck, the theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, and Tieck’s friend the writer and music theoretician W. H. Wackenroder. Like Schlegel, Schleiermacher was steeped in Greek literature and philosophy, particularly in Plato. Although Schleiermacher was never to travel to Jena, he helped Schlegel in numerous intellectual projects, including the editing of what was to become, in its short life, the house organ for Jena romanticism, the Athenaeum. Schlegel returned to Jena only in autumn of 1799. There he lived in a group house with his wife Dorothea, his brother’s wife Caroline, A. W. Schlegel, and Novalis. In 1799 he brought out the novel Lucinde, which was denounced by many as pornographic. Tieck, closely associated with the literary goals of the Schlegels, was also in residence at Jena at the time, as was Schelling. In the interim Fichte had been forced from the university under the cloud of the so-called “atheism controversy.” All told, the main protagonists of the Jena school were only all in Jena for approximately one year. Athenaeum, which had first appeared in May of 1798, ceased publication in 1801. For all intent and purposes, Jena romanticism was finished.9
It is difficult to establish a univocal connection between Schlegel and the systematic concerns of German idealism. His philosophical writing is often aphoristic and deeply formed by his literary concerns. The same complexity affected the case of Novalis as well until the discovery in the early twentieth century of papers containing his criticism of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre.10 These notes are still far from a rigorous, systematic consideration of Fichte’s position, but they are focused directly at a single philosophical target of great importance, not only in Jena but, increasingly, in all of the German-speaking lands. These Fichte-Studien,11 as the papers have come to be known, have taken pride of place in setting out the philosophical doctrines of the Jena circle in the minds of many scholars. The notes are quite important and do open up serious study of Jena romanticism in ways that were not possible before. But it is mistaken, I believe, to allow them to obscure the importance of Schlegel.
Fichte’s account of intentional consciousness is intended to provide a theoretical foundation in the form of a principle. In this he does not differ with Reinhold; the difference lies in the content of the principle. The standard criticism of Reinhold, and one the correctness of which he came quickly to acknowledge, is that “representation” could not be the content of the principle because it was not a properly basic concept. Fichte substitutes for the concept of representation that of positing (see GA I,2: 255–82). Positing has something like the tripartite structure of Reinhold’s representation, with the innovation that it is a pre-intentional (namely an unconscious) activity. For several reasons, both concerning his views on the nature of the activity and due to its unconscious status, Fichte takes it that his formulation of the foundational principle circumvents the difficulties with Reinhold’s Principle. In a way Novalis grants the truth of this claim on Fichte’s part; Fichte’s Tathandlung, as he later calls it, is not subject to precisely the objections directed against Reinhold. But Fichte’s account fails another test. Since Schiller, one of the primary desiderata confronting a systematic rendering of the relation of mind to world was that such an account would show that the basic components of subjectivity are in harmony with one another. There are many conceptions of harmony of course; in this case the conception was rather strict. Basic components of subjectivity were only in harmony to the extent that they all emerged from the same source, that is, to the extent that they were unified by something in which they were initially identical. Fichte violates this precept because the Tathandlung is, in its basic form, internally articulated in terms of a subject–object distinction, no matter how much Fichte attempts to tighten the necessary reciprocity of the elements they are still elements in relation, and being in a relation defeats identity. This is so because such identity is not “absolute.” Relational identity—identity of the kind expressed in identity statements like “Cicero is Tully” or even “I am me”—is the way philosophers try to model absolute identity in a judgment of subject-predicate form. But try though one may to model the simplicity and unification of subjectivity on first-person identity statements, they are really results of discursive overlay on absolute identity. They are the way that one must think of such identity, but that does not mean that such statements accurate chart such identity (FS I: 3, 5, 17–25, 38–50; NS II: 106–7, 114–22, 129–39). They are artifacts of a discursive structuring of identity. Absolute identity is selfsameness, completely non-relational and internally simple. It follows, Novalis holds, that absolute identity cannot be experienced, because experience is ineluctably discursive.
Subjectivity requires duplicity (i.e. the minimal distinction between thought and object), and any principle of subjectivity, that is, which principle would be within the scope of subjectivity such that it could be known to be foundational (which is after all what is required from a purported foundation), would require the same. The conclusion is similar to Niethammer’s but is based in an analysis of what Novalis takes to be Fichte’s foundationalism that is considerably more charitable to the very idea of seeking principles as grounds. Novalis’ conclusion is that there is no principle of subjectivity that could be experienced to be its ground. But, because the impetus to orient oneself some way toward the ground for subjectivity is constitutive of subjectivity, according to the Jena romantics, reflection does not, so to speak, wait mildly at the threshold of “the absolute.” To seek a principle in the ground may be, to put it in a Kantian vein, parallogistic, but affirming the ground in the form of a principle does not exhaust possibilities. For the romantics two main alternatives remain: one involving the category of feeling and another that involves the category of inversion.
Novalis is often taken to be the avatar of feeling (Gefühl) (FS I: 15–17, 32, 47; NS II: 113–15, 126–7, 136). It is important at the outset of discussing the role of feeling in Jena romanticism to remark that, whatever feeling affords the subject relative to her ground, it will not be “experience” or anything else on the basis of which a deductive, systematic accoun
t of subjectivity and its connection to the world could be based. “Feeling” does not confer the status of principle on a ground that is not subject to discursive capture. Jena romanticism then is not, as it is often taken to be, a veiled form of Platonism. Quite to the contrary, Novalis’ use of the concept of feeling is a piece of transcendental philosophy, in which he reasons that the ground of subjectivity cannot find expression in what it grounds in such a way that the grounded controls the ground “spontaneously.” What Novalis claims here is that reflective thought is grounded in a basic form of subjectivity and cannot be conceived of as active with regard to what grounds it. He is concerned to make this point because of a standing prejudice about the spontaneous sovereignty of thought present especially in the wake of Kant’s philosophy. Relative to what it conditions, that is, “possible experience,” reflection is the active, formal principle; Novalis is a good Kantian in that regard. But reflective thought is not itself unconditioned nor does it have an unconditioned principle given to it as such. Thought is with regard to its ground passive—at least it must be thought of as passive with regard to its relation to its ground. This is the role of feeling; the concept does not so much register for Novalis sentiment or inwardness (although it does take on such a character in his thought at times), rather it tokens the way the contiguity of the domains of the non-conceptual and the conceptual must be marked from the conceptual side. The ground is what is active in producing what is grounded by it; what is grounded is patient to what grounds it.