The being which underlies the appearance of the object of perception was called by Kant the “thing of itself.” It is remarkable that Kant never drew from his doctrine that space and time do not belong to the thing of itself, but only to its appearance, the rather obvious conclusion that there cannot be things of themselves, but only thing of itself in the singular, since all plurality only arises through space and time. On the other hand, he himself (Kant, Werke, ii. 288, 289, and 303) made the remark, that the thing of itself and the intelligible underlying the empirical ego could hardly be one and the same existence, since between the two there positively could be no further difference specified. This is one of the touches where the involuntary tendency of great minds towards Monism cannot be denied. That Kant, nevertheless, was so timid in his inferences lay in this, that he formed the commencement of the modern epoch of philosophy, an epoch in which the work formerly concentrated on one or two men of genius had to be distributed over the shoulders of several, because this work became the more difficult the more often the old problems re-emerged in novel and sharper form, and the more the circuit of knowledge and of experience expanded.
What Kant entertained as timid supposition, that the thing of itself and the active subject might be one and the same existence, Schopenhauer declared as catgorical assertion, in that he recognised the will as the positive character of this essence. (Comp. my “Gesammelte philos. Abhandlungen,” No. iii.) It has already been mentioned above (i. 29, 30, and 120), that Schopenhauer’s Will altogether comports itself as if it were united with perception, without Schopenhauer admitting it.
Fichte mistook the truth of the Kantian hint. He denies to the appearance of the thing all existence independent of the perceiving subject, and turns it into a phenomenon entirely posited by the perceiving subject. Thus the thing of itself loses its immediate essential being in the Ego. Only what exists in the form of an ego has with Fichte being, and dead Nature, so far as it does not enter into this form, remains a phenomenon purely subjective, i.e., merely posited by the subject. But Fichte also was compelled to bend in his own fashion to Monism; the Ego is denuded of the accidental character of this or that limited empirical ego, being raised to the Absolute Ego. The Absolute Ego is the existence which alone is all the different, accidental, empirical limited egos, for the Being which is developed in the process of the Absolute Ego is the same which produces this process in its accidental empirical limitation; so that herewith the many egos also again became lowered only to phenomena of the One Absolute.
Schelling tries in his Transcendental Idealism to deduce the wealth of the external world, with its manifold determinations which had shrunk with Fichte into the bald abstraction of the non-ego, from the activity of the ego. But while he explains the agreement of the intuitions of the various limited egos from the equally strongly emphasised unity of the infinite intelligence or of the Absolute Ego in the finite intelligences or limited egos, the standpoint of transcendental idealism necessarily leads him to the Natural Philosophy, where, without reference to the limited ego’s, he undertakes to directly deduce the extra-mundane determinations from the absolute ego or pure subject, and here, among other natural determinations, of course, also lights upon the mind and its products. In both systems he proceeds from the identity of subject and object; only this absolute subject-object makes its appearance at one time more from the subjective, at another time more from the objective side.
The method hereby employed of the pure subject gradually positing itself as object, which withdraws from all objectification into its gradually enhanced subjectivity, led Hegel to his dialectical method.
“The method is only the movement of the concept itself, but with the significance that the concept is all, and its movement the universal absolute activity.”
Hegel perceived that the deduction of Schelling has either no value at all, or a purely logical value as process in the realm of thought, but he claimed that his logic built upon this is at the same time ontology; that the concept is all, i.e., sole substance and sole absolute subject, and that the world-process is pure dialectical self-movement of the concept; that thus there remains no room for the existence of a strictly non-logical, i.e., alogical (not anti-logical); for in his imposing compact system the world was exhausted with the concept raised to the absolute Idea, with the absolute Idea sundered in nature and returned to itself in the spirit. (Comp. my “Ges. phil. Abhandl,” No. ii.)
Schelling in his last system (comp. “Schelling’s Positive Philosophie als Einheit von Hegel und Schopenhauer,” Berlin, O. Löwenstein, 1869, especially the second and third sections) maintained the negativity, i.e., purely logical or purely rational constitution, of the Hegelian philosophy; he thus denied that it can say what and how it is, and only allowed that it can say, If somewhat is, it must be thus. He declared that, in the Hegelian and all the philosophies preceding it there can only be question of an eternal happening. “An eternal event is, however, no event. Consequently, the whole idea of that process and that movement is self-illusory; properly speaking, nothing has happened; everything has only taken place in thoughts, and this whole movement was only a movement of thought” (Werke, i. 10, pp. 124–125).
He declares existence to be the genuinely super-rational, which, as actuality, can now and never be in the reason, but only in experience (Werke, ii. 3, p. 69), and in this respect calls nature and experience that which is foreign to the reason (ibid., p. 70). If the absolute or highest Idea has no real value, if it is no longer anything more than bare Idea, if it is not the actually existing (ii. 3, p. 150), even this Idea could never be Thought if it were not thought of a thinking subject (i. 10, p. 132). One must then in a twofold respect go beyond the Idea as such to a being beyond and independent of thought, to something anticipating all thought (ii. 3, p. 164), to an immemorial existence. As long as we speak of the standpoint of the purely rational or negative philosophy of the existing, we properly speak of the same only according to its essence or its conception; more cannot be obtained a priori; the question, however, with which positive philosophy begins runs according to that: what (grammatical subject) is the existing (grammatical object)? Or, as Schelling also expresses himself, what makes the thing be or “becomes cause of being () to this which is not being (), mere all-potentiality?” “The One is known hereby or herein that it is the Universal Being, the , the being according to content (not efficient being). It is therewith cognised and distinguished from other simple existences, as the single existence which is all” (ii. 3, p. 174).
If the passage from the Transcendental Idealism already cited in the Introduction (i. p. 25) be compared with this, it will be found that Schelling in his first system conceived under the name “eternally unconscious” essentially that which he raised in his third system to be the foundation of his Positive philosophy.
Thus we have seen in all philosophies of the modern epoch this tendency to Monism more or less perfectly realised in one fashion or another. What in the historic evolution is exhibited as the culminating point of the speculative work of modern times, the “individual which is all being” of Schelling, that we have evolved a posteriori by the inductive path, or rather involuntarily gained as it were, but now no longer as a speculative principle accessible only to few, but with the perfectly valid proof of its empirical authorization. By carefully separating the sphere of the Unconscious from that of consciousness, and recognising consciousness as a mere phenomenon of the Unconscious (C. Chap. iii.), the contradictions were resolved in which the natural consciousness was entangled and caught in its endeavour after a monistic view. But not merely consciousness, but also matter had proved to be a mere appearance of the Unconscious, and everything in the world which is not exhausted by the conceptions Matter and Consciousness, as organic formation, the instincts, &c., had been revealed (in Sections A. and B.) as the most immediately and easily cognisable effects of the Unconscious.
Herewith were (1) Matter, (2) Consciousness, and (3) Organic formation, Ins
tinct, &c., comprehended as three modes of action or modes of appearance of the Unconscious, and the latter as the essence of the world. Lastly, after we had penetrated with the understanding the conception of individuality on the one hand, and the proper nature of the Unconscious on the other, so far as requisite, the ultimate reason for the assumption of a plurality of being in the Unconscious disappeared beneath our hands; all plurality henceforth only belonged to the phenomenon, not to the essence which posits the former, but this is the One Absolute Individual, the single existence, which is All, whereas the world with its glory is reduced to the bare phenomenon; but not to a subjectively posited phenomenon, as in Kant, Fichte, and Schopenhauer, but to an objectively (as Schelling, Werke, ii. 3, p. 280, says: “divinely”) posited phenomenon, or, as Hegel expresses it (Werke, vi. p. 97), to the “mere phenomenon, not only for us, but of itself.”1 What appears to us as matter “is the mere expression of an equilibrium of opposite activities” (Schelling’s Werke, i. 3, p. 400), what appears to us as consciousness is likewise a mere expression of a conflict of opposite activities. That piece of matter yonder is a conglomerate of atomic forces, i.e., of fiats of the Unconscious, to attract from this point of space in this intensity, to repel from that point in that intensity. Let the Unconscious intermit these acts of will and annul them, at the same moment this piece of matter has ceased to exist; let the Unconscious will anew, and the matter is there again. Here the prodigy of the creation of the material world is lost in the everyday marvel of its preservation, renewed every moment, which is a continuous creation. The world is only a continuous series of sums of peculiarly combined will-acts of the Unconscious, for it is only so long as it is continuously posited; let the Unconscious cease to will the world, and this play of intersecting activities of the Unconscious ceases to be.
It is an illusion disappearing before thorough reflection, an illusion of the senses in the widest sense, when we think we have in the world, the NON-EGO, something directly real. It is an illusion of the egoistic instinct when we think we have in ourselves, in our ideal ego, something directly real. The WORLD consists only of a sum of activities or will-acts of the Unconscious, and the ego consists of another sum of activities or will-acts of the Unconscious. Only so far as the former activities intersect the latter does the world become sensible to me; only so far as the latter intersect the former do I become sensible to myself. In the sphere of the mental representation or pure Idea, the ideally opposed peacefully exist side by side, and for the most part form logical combinations calmly and without storms. Does, however, a will seize these ideal opposites and make them its content, then the will-acts filled with opposite content enter into opposition; they pass into real conflict (comp. above, p. 228), in which they mutually resist and threaten to destroy one another, when either the one succeeds entirely or both partially, so that they compel one another to a compromise. Only in this conflict, the mutually offered resistance of the individually parted will-acts of the All-One, arises and consists that which we call reality. Not an inactive passive substratum, like the matter criticised in C. Chap. v., is presented, but only an active actual function can claim the predicate of actuality. This table, e.g., testifies its actuality to me through the forces of repulsion which the ether-atoms of its superficial molecules, when opposed to the superficial molecules of my body, exert in quickly increasing progression on approximation beyond a particular limit. This collision of the atomic wills constituting it with the atomic wills constituting my body is a part of the efficiency or actuality of the table, and the totality of its actuality consists in the sum of all the collisions which occur between the atomic wills constituting the table and all the other atoms of the world. If there were nothing in the world but this table, its reality would certainly be a far more limited one, but it would never be quite abolished, because the atomic wills constituting the table, if also no longer externally, yet always still among themselves, would come into active collision. If, however, one imagined all the atoms of the world save one suddenly annihilated, the actuality or reality of this one would be, in fact, thereby annihilated, since, owing to the want of an object of the manifestation of its force, it would be incapable of action, that is, of being actually manifested.
Let the Unconscious change the combination of activities or acts of will which constitute me, and I have become another; let the Unconscious intermit these activities, and I have ceased to be. I am a phenomenon, like the rainbow in the cloud. Like it, I am born of the coincidence of relations, become another in every second because these relations become other in every second, and shall dissolve when these relations are dissolved. What is substance in me is not I. In the same spot another rainbow may at some time or other stand, which perfectly resembles this one, but yet is not the same, for temporal continuity is wanting; so in my stead an ego perfectly resembling me may also at some time or other stand, but that will not be me. The sun alone is always shining, which is transiently reflected from yonder cloud; only the UNCONSCIOUS for ever rules, which is also mirrored in my brain.
The results indicated here in broad outlines will find in Chapters ix. to xi. a varied application and development, which it is hoped will contribute to make them appear less repellent to readers previously confined to the way of thinking of the practical sensuous instinct; but first we will try still further to elucidate the results hitherto reached by comparing the All-one Unconscious with that God-conception, which our educated classes are wont to obtain from the school-Metaphysic of the religions disseminated in Europe.
1 This objectively posited phenomenal world, or this world of the appearance in itself, is the indispensable causal link between the monistic essence on the one hand, and the subjective phenomenal mental-picture worlds of the many different consciousnesses on the other; whilst it is related to the sole Unconscious as the appearance to the substance, it is related to its subjective reflected images in the numerous conscious individuals as the thing of itself to its (subjective) phenomenon. Subjective Idealism commits the error of ignoring the indispensableness of this connecting link, and of trying to recede from the subjective phenomena of consciousness directly to the ultimate being, instead of acknowledging one objectively existing (in Kantian terminology, transcendent) world of things (according to Kant, things of themselves) as archetype of these many subjective worlds of perception, which certainly, referred to the sole existence, appears indeed only as “the living garment of Deity.” As Kant in his old age and his school tried to repair this subjective error of his “Kritik d. r. V.,” so Schelling that of Fichte by setting up his Philosophy of Nature; so, finally, the aged Schopenhauer, and still more his disciples, through the recognition of a reality of the objectifications of the One Will, independent of the regarding conscious subject. (Comp what is said above, B. Chap. viii. vol. i. pp. 328–331.) On the side of the theory of Knowledge and of Metaphysics the stream of tendency is unmistakable towards the conception of the objective phenomenon; in it there is found the permanent kernel of the theistic conception of Creation and Preservation (comp. C. Chap. viii., also above, pp. 228 and 231), of the pantheistic conception of Emanation, the scientific conception of the “System of Dynamids” (comp. C. Chap. v.), of the Schelling-Schopenhauerian conception of the objectification of the Absolute Subject, i.e., Will, of the Herbartian notion of the “Absolute Position,” in contrast to the position merely relative to consciousness, i.e., to the subjective position or phenomenon, in short everything is found in it that has ever been thought with regard to the relation of existence to its metaphysical ground. That the word “phenomenon” is here used in the metaphysical sense cannot be objected to on the score that the theory of Cognition has obtained possession of it since the rise of subjective Idealism; for the metaphysical signification was, till the time of Kant, the prevailing one, although it must be allowed that in the confusion between Metaphysics and theory of Cognition that special to the latter theory was likewise contained therein. After the complete separation of the problem of
Metaphysics and theory of Knowledge, the word “phenomenon” also had to be differentiated (into “objective” and “subjective”), which is the more endurable, as different contrasts (“essence” and “thing of itself”) are available for the two parts. It might be well, therefore, not to get rid of the word phenomenon also for the metaphysical relation, since much of that which Kant erroneously asserted of the subjective appearance actually holds good of the objective. This arises, however, from the circumstance, that with Kant Metaphysics was absorbed just as one-sidedly by the theory of Cognition, as before him for the most part the theory of Cognition was swallowed up by Metaphysics, or in other words, because he entirely carried over into subjectivity all the “what” of existence, and left nothing but the pure “that” for the thing by itself, so that it naturally became barer than the barest metaphysical essence, and a distinction between the two became an impossibility.
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