The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century

by Michael N Forster

  3 Hegel is the locus classicus for this objection; see his Philosophy of Right, Section 135. In the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel puts the point this way: “It would be strange, too, if tautology, the principle of contradiction, which is admitted to be only a formal principle for the cognition of theoretical truth, i.e., something which is quite indifferent to truth and falsehood, were supposed to be more than this for the cognition of practical truth” (Phenomenology, Section 431).

  4 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, Das System der Sittenlehre nach den Principien der Wissenschaftslehre (1798). System of Ethics, trans. Daniel Breazeale and Günter Zöller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 145.

  5 Schelling, F. W. J., Vom Ich als Prinzip der Philosophie oder über das Unbedingte im menschlichen Wissen, 1795. “Of the I as the Principle of Philosophy”, in Fritz Marti (ed. and trans.), The Unconditional in Human Knowledge: Four Early Essays (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1980), 65.

  6 Of necessity, then, the story that I tell here will be highly selective. I will focus on the contributions that the thinkers I mention make to the aforementioned topics. I will thus leave out aspects of their moral thought that do not bear on these topics. I will also leave out discussion of the ways in which these thinkers were influenced by French and British philosophers.

  7 Letter to Körner, 18 February 1793, in Schillers Werke: Nationalausgabe, XXVI, 191.

  8 Schiller claims that the human being’s “purely intellectual nature is accompanied by a sensuous one” (Über Anmut und Würde (1793), Nationalausgabe XX, 284. “On Grace and Dignity,” trans. Jane Curran and Christopher Fricker, in Schiller’s “On Grace and Dignity” in Its Cultural Context (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2005), 149. Further references are given as GD followed by page numbers from both the Nationalausgabe and Curran and Fricker’s translation.

  9 “One can think of three ways altogether in which a human can relate to himself, that is, in which the sensuous part can relate to the rational” (GD, 280/147).

  10 Here I have departed from the translation in Curran and Fricker, which seems to me to obscure Schiller’s point. In the next passage, I have also made some minor modifications to the translation.

  11 Hegel writes, “Within the state, rationality consists concretely—in terms of its content—in the unity of objective freedom (i.e., of universal substantial willing) and subjective freedom (i.e., of the individual human’s knowing and willing, which seeks its particular ends)” (Elements of the Philosophy of Right, trans. H. B. Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), Section 258. Hereafter cited as PR followed by section number. In several passages from this work, Hegel emphasizes that society must enable the freedom of all individuals. For example, he writes that society requires the “well-being of all” (PR, 125, emphasis added), and he argues that it is necessary that “every individual’s livelihood and well-being be treated and actualized as rightful” (PR, 230).

  12 Hegel, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, Part Three: Philosophy of Mind, trans. William Wallace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), Section 503.

  13 Hegel claims that the Philosophy of Right’s central task is to show how “the system of right is the realm of actualized freedom” (PR, 4). He emphasizes this point throughout the book, writing that “ethicality is the idea of freedom as the living good that has its knowing, willing, and, through its acting, its actuality, in self-consciousness…” (PR, 142), and “the ethical is the system of these determinations of the idea; this is what constitutes its rationality. In this way it is freedom…” (PR, 145).

  14 “The laws and powers of ethical substance are not something alien to the subject. Instead, the subject bears witness to them as to its own essence, within which it has its feelings of being a self, within which it lives as in its own element, an element it does not distinguish from itself” (PR, 147; cf. PR, 258).

  15 The full argument for these claims occupies PR, 157–360. See especially PR, 157–8, 181–8, and 257–9.

  16 Some Kantians claim that the Formula of the Kingdom of Ends introduces a social dimension to Kant’s theory. Though I lack the space to address this point, notice that even if this is correct, the individual who assesses maxims is taken as capable of doing so prior to and independently of his involvement in concrete social and historical settings.

  17 Hegel claims that self-determination requires including the “particular” aspects of the self, including “its needs, inclinations, passions, opinions, fancies, etc.” (PR, 123).

  18 Feuerbach, Ludwig, The Essence of Christianity, trans. George Eliot (New York: Prometheus Books, 1989). Hereafter cited as Essence followed by page number.

  19 Feuerbach, Die Naturwissenschaft und die Revolution (1850).

  20 F. A. Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart (1865). The History of Materialism and Criticism of its Present Importance, trans. E. Thomas (New York: The Humanities Press, 1950), 248.

  21 A few examples: “in religion man contemplates his own latent nature. Hence it must be shown that this antithesis, this differencing of God and man, with which religion begins, is a differencing of man with his own nature” (Essence, 33). “Our task consists precisely in showing that the antithesis of the divine and human is illusory; that is, that it is nothing other than the antithesis between the essential being of man and his individual being, and that consequently the object and the content of the Christian religion are altogether human” (Essence, 14). “In order to enrich God, man must become poor; that God may be all, man must be nothing. But he also does not need to be anything for himself, because everything for himself, everything he takes from himself, is not lost, but preserved in God” (Essence, 25).

  22 Feuerbach, Über Spiritualismus und Materialismus (1866), in Ludwig Feuerbachs Sämmtliche Werke, 10 Bände herausgegeben von Wilhelm Bolin und Friedrich Jodl (Stuttgart: 1903–10), Volume X, 62.

  23 Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der klassischen deutschen Philosophie (1886). Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, trans. Progress Publishers, available at .

  24 Ludwig Büchner, Kraft und Stoff. Empirisch-naturphilosophische Studien; in allgemein-verständlicher Darstellung, 1864. Force and Matter: Empirico-Philosophical Studies, Intelligibly Rendered (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Hereafter cited as FM followed by page number.

  25 Interestingly, Büchner follows these remarks by repeatedly claiming that truth is the highest value: even if these truths about morality “should damage society at large, science and empirical philosophy can only say: truth is above things divine and human; there exist no reasons strong enough to cause us to abandon it” (FM, 250). Thus, Büchner’s view suffers from the problem that Nietzsche diagnoses in the Genealogy: it rests on an uncritical faith in the overriding value of truth.

  26 The most obvious problem with this reading of Hegel is that it relies on an assumption that Hegel would reject, namely that we can draw a clean distinction between philosophical thought and material conditions.

  27 McLellan, David (ed.), Karl Marx: Selected Writings (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 154. Hereafter cited as M followed by page number.

  28 There are many controversies over how continuous Marx’s thought is over the course of his career. His notion of the “economic” may have shifted over time. Here, I have focused on the view articulated in Die Deutsche Ideologie (The German Ideology, 1845).

  29 The term “species life” plays a key role in Marx’s early writings, but disappears by the time of Kapital.

  30 Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Representation, 2 volumes, trans. E. F. J. Payne (New York: Dover Publications, 1969). Hereafter cited as WWR followed by volume and page number.

  31 Given that the will is primary, Schopenhauer rejects Kant’s focus on maxims: “Now if, on the other hand, as all philosophers imagine, the intellect constituted our true inner natu
re, and the decisions of the will were a mere result of knowledge, then precisely that motive alone, from which we imagined we acted, would necessarily be decisive for our moral worth…But then the distinction between imagined and actual motive would really be impossible” (WWR II, 210).

  32 Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga und Paralipomena (1851), Volume II, Section 184. Hereafter cited as P followed by volume and page number.

  33 Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism, trans. Thomas Bailey Saunders (New York: MacMillan, 1908). The following quotation also employs the translation from this volume.

  34 The will to live cannot “have its ground in its own object, for life…is really constant suffering, or at any rate…a business that does not cover the cost. Hence that attachment can be founded only in the subject. But it is not founded in the intellect, it is no result of reflection, and generally is not a matter of choice; on the contrary, this willing of life is something we take for granted…We ourselves are the will-to-live…” (WWR II, 239–40).

  35 If the will “lacks objects of willing, because it is at once deprived of them by too easy a satisfaction, a fearful emptiness and boredom come over it; in other words, its being and its existence itself become an intolerable burden for it” (WWR I, 312).

  36 Nietzsche read each of the thinkers mentioned above, with one exception: he seems to have missed Marx.

  37 Friedrich Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral, 1887. On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Random House, 1967). Hereafter cited as GM followed by part and section number.

  38 Friedrich Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, 1886, Section 12. Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1967). Hereafter cited as BGE followed by section number.

  39 Friedrich Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 1882/1887. The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1974). Hereafter cited as GS followed by section number.

  40 These ideas are implicit in earlier works, but come to the fore in the later works.

  41 Friedrich Nietzsche: Sämtliche Werke, Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden, ed. G. Colli and M. Montinari (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1980). Hereafter cited as KSA followed by volume, notebook, and entry number.

  42 Friedrich Nietzsche, Der Antichrist, 1895. The Antichrist, trans. Walter Kaufmann, in The Portable Nietzsche (New York: Viking, 1968). Hereafter cited as A followed by section number.

  43 Friedrich Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung, 1889. Twilight of the Idols, trans. Walter Kaufmann, in The Portable Nietzsche (New York: Viking, 1968). Hereafter cited as TI followed by part and section number.

  44 Friedrich Nietzsche, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, 1895. Nietzsche Contra Wagner, trans. Walter Kaufmann, in The Portable Nietzsche (New York: Viking, 1968).

  45 Bernard Reginster, The Affirmation of Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 127.

  46 See especially GS, 349; GM, III; KSA, 13.14[121]; KSA, 13.14[81]; and KSA 13.14[174]; KSA, 13.11[96]; KSA, 12.2[88].

  47 I reconstruct this argument in Paul Katsafanas, “Deriving Ethics from Action: A Nietzschean Version of Constitutivism,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 83 (2011), 620–60.

  48 Friedrich Nietzsche, Morgenröthe, 1881, Section 195. Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

  49 Thus Nietzsche speaks of a “will to self-determination [Selbstbestimmung], to evaluating on one’s own account [Selbstschätzung], this will to free will” (Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, Preface 3). Human, All too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

  50 Many thanks to Aaron Garrett and Sanem Soyarslan for their extremely helpful comments.

  CHAPTER 25

  AESTHETICS

  PAUL GUYER

  25.1 KANT’S TWOFOLD SYNTHESIS

  AS in every other branch of nineteenth-century German philosophy, the story of its aesthetics begins with Immanuel Kant (1724–1804).1 But Kant’s philosophy was not a Big Bang from which subsequent philosophy unfolded as if there had been nothing before. Rather, for all of Kant’s critique of preceding philosophy and for all of its own innovations, in many ways the supernova of German Idealism with which nineteenth-century philosophy began represented a return to pre-Kantian ways of thought. This is certainly true in aesthetics. Although the field—restricted by Hegel to philosophy of art although previously (and recently) concerning some of our responses to nature as well—had only been baptized by Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten in 1735,2 reflection on what would become central issues in the field, such as the nature of beauty and imitation and the moral value of art, had been part of philosophy since its beginning. Indeed, Plato’s Symposium and Republic had guaranteed the development of such a branch of philosophy by presenting contradictory views about beauty and art, the character of Socrates arguing in the former that acquaintance with earthly beauty is the stepping-stone toward a higher form of knowledge, that of the form of beauty itself, and in the latter that mimetic art is cognitively worthless, at a “third remove” from truth, and for the most part morally deleterious as well. But in the Poetics, as if taking the side of the Socrates of the Symposium rather than that of the Republic, Aristotle had maintained that poetry is “more philosophical and of graver import” than, for example, history because it deals with universals rather than particulars.3 Following Aristotle, aesthetics had taken a cognitive approach for most of its history, interpreting aesthetic experience and its artistic vehicles as a special form of cognition, perhaps cognition of higher things or more moving cognition than other forms of cognition, but still as in some fashion cognition. In the eighteenth century, however, two alternative approaches had come on to the scene, one, featured in the influential Critical Reflections on Poetry, Painting, and Music by Jean-Baptiste Du Bos (1719), emphasizing the emotional impact of art (as a cure for boredom), the other, perhaps already hinted at in Joseph Addison’s influential essays “On the Pleasures of the Imagination” in The Spectator in 1712 but more fully developed in Alexander Gerard’s Essay on Taste of 1759, interpreting aesthetic experience as a form of free play of our mental powers that is pleasurable in its own right even though it may also have cognitive and practical benefits. Several writers in the third quarter of the century, such as Henry Home, Lord Kames, in Scotland and Moses Mendelssohn in Germany, had then found ways to synthesize all three of these approaches in their comprehensive and almost simultaneous accounts of aesthetic experience.4 But Kant notoriously held that “emotion…does not belong to beauty at all” (CPJ, §14, 5: 227) and “Taste is always still barbaric when it needs the addition of charms and emotions for satisfaction” (CPJ, §13, 5: 223), and offered a theory of fine art and its source in genius that combined the new idea of free play with the traditional conception of aesthetic experience as a form of cognition while largely excluding the emotional impact of art. A natural response of his successors might then have been to add the emotional impact of aesthetic experience back into the mix. That is not what the next generation of philosophers did, however; rather, in this regard reverting to the tradition of German rationalism even without Baroque wigs, the German Idealists, above all Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Hegel, developed different but all thoroughly cognitivist accounts of aesthetic experience.5 It then took the rest of the century for the grip of such cognitivism to be broken and for room to be found again for the elements of emotion and sheer play in a pluralistic conception of aesthetic experience.

  Kant synthesized the cognitivist and free play approaches to aesthetics in his conception of “aesthetic ideas,” and it was precisely from this notion that the subsequent generation of idealists removed the element of free play rather than adding the element of emotional impact to it; so before we can start the narrative of nineteenth-century German aesthetic proper a few words about Kant’s notion are necessary. After presenting much of his approach to aesthetics for many years in his lectures on logic, metaphysics, and anthropology,6 Kant finall
y published his aesthetic theory as the first half of the last of his three critiques, the Critique of the Power of Judgment of 1790. Beginning with simple cases of natural beauty such as that of flowers and birds, Kant first identified the free play of imagination and understanding as the source of our pleasure in beauty, which pleasure, because the imagination and understanding can be supposed to work in much the same way in every normal human being, could be both the subject-matter of and the evidence for aesthetic judgment or the judgment of taste, the singular yet exemplary judgment that a particular object is beautiful (CPJ, Introduction, section VII; §§1–9, 18–22, and 30–8). But Kant then quickly multiplied his categories for aesthetic qualities and judgments in a way that suggests that while some element of free play may be a necessary condition in any properly aesthetic experience, free play is hardly the whole story of all aesthetic experiences. Of course Kant recognized the case of the sublime, which he analyzed as a complex relation between imagination and reason, although he also held the sublime to be properly a quality of nature rather than of art (CPJ, §26, 5: 252–3). He also introduced a conception of the “ideal of beauty” as the free expression of “the moral” in the “human figure,” but this is an account of the nature of human beauty itself rather than of its artistic representation (CPJ, §17, 5: 235). However, in his concept of “adherent beauty” Kant allowed that in certain “mixed arts” such as architecture our pleasure in an object may result from free play within the confines established by a concept of the intended function of the object (CPJ, §16, 5: 230). In the case of fine art proper he argued that our pleasure comes from the free play of our imagination with the content of the work of art, thereby finally synthesizing the new free play approach to aesthetic experience with the traditionally cognitivist approach to aesthetics.7 Kant maintains that aesthetic ideas are what give fine art its “spirit” and that they are created by geniuses. He describes an aesthetic idea as a “representation of the imagination that occasions much thinking thought without it being possible for any determinate thought, i.e., concept, to be adequate to it,” or one that “by itself stimulates so much thinking that it can never be grasped in a determinate concept.” These remarks emphasize the element of free play in our response to an aesthetic idea. But Kant also says that aesthetic ideas “at least strive toward something lying beyond the bounds of experience, and thus seek to approximate a presentation of concepts of reasons (of intellectual ideas),” for example “The poet ventures to make sensible rational ideas of invisible beings, the kingdom of the blessed, the kingdom of hell, eternity, creation, etc., as well as…death, envy, and all sorts of vices, as well as love, fame, etc.” (CPJ, §49, 5: 314–15). In other words, works of art have intellectual, paradigmatically moral content, but what makes them aesthetic, or beautiful, is the rich, inexhaustible way in which such content is presented and communicated by the work, which cannot be derived from the content as a concept or from any other determinate rule—only from genius.8 Yet in spite of the fact that works of art on this account concern the most important ideas that we can have, and therefore, one would think, the most moving ideas we can have, Kant says nothing about the potential emotional impact of such works. Only in the case of music does he remark that the “unutterable fullness of thought, corresponding to a certain theme,…constitutes the dominant affect in the piece” (CPJ, §53, 5: 329). This might suggest that in the case of music, the work stimulates an emotion instead of intimating an idea—but that is precisely why Kant ranks music beneath poetry in importance. Actually, what he says is that “After poetry, I would, if what is at issue is charm and movement of the mind, place…the art of tone” (CPJ, §53, 5: 328)—but in light of his earlier denigration of charm and emotion, that would seem to mean that the emotional impact of poetry is part of its appeal only to a “barbaric” taste, and that the appeal of music is pretty much exclusively to barbaric taste.