Philosophy of the Unconscious

by Eduard Von Hartmann

  The above-mentioned objection would only acquire a certain tinge of justification if it appealed to this, that according to the teleological conception of the Philosophy of the Unconscious (comp. below, C. Chap. xiv. 3), consciousness does not proceed from the Unconscious as an accidental or causally-necessary, thus, at all events, blind result, but that it is teleologically posited by the Unconscious, i.e., intended for the sake of a higher end, in which certainly the ideal anticipation is contained. It might then be supposed that this ideal anticipation of consciousness or the teleological forethinking of consciousness must itself represent a consciousness, and, moreover, a higher stage of consciousness. Apart, however, from the implicit form in which in the Unconscious the thinking of the end includes the thinking of the means, and conversely, the following is yet to be considered.

  The thinking of consciousness only necessarily presupposes a higher consciousness, if consciousness is thought as consciousness, i.e., in the subjective mode, as the subject of consciousness feels itself affected by its consciousness. But thus it is quite certain the Unconscious does not think its consciousness, since its thinking is altogether absolutely opposed to our subjective thinking, so that it would have to be designated objective thinking if this designation were not just as one-sided and accordingly inappropriate. We have already seen in C. Chap. i. that, with regard to the mode of ideation of the Unconscious, we can only make the assertion that it does not perceive as we perceive. If we then would positively say what exactly the Unconscious thinks when it employs consciousness as an intermediate end of a further final end, since subjectivity is excluded, nothing can remain, but firstly, the objective process hose subjective phenomenon is consciousness; and, secondly, the effect of the emancipation of the Idea from the Will which results from this process (comp. above, C. Chap. iii. 1). Hereby the two fixed points are gained, which alone are concerned in the teleological forethinking of consciousness, namely, means and end, whilst the subjective inner side of consciousness is accidental in a teleological reference, and is therefore not affected by the ideal anticipation of the event.

  One might, however, put the objection in still more general form and say, e.g., To posit ends means to provide for the future: how now can an Unconscious, i.e., unconscious of itself as a present reality, be conscious of itself as future? Now I might of course appeal to this, that all this purposive activity is in respect to the merely negative ultimate end (the universal negation of the will) likewise only a negative one, thus only turns on this pivot, to abolish the present state (of the arisen world-Will), not to introduce a positive future one. However, the purposive activity on the one hand would always perceive the future state of privation as limitation of the present state which was to be annulled, and on the other hand the foregoing of the representation of the future state as goal of the process would little accord with the omniscient clairvoyance of the Unconscious, which we have everywhere found. This appeal, however, is not at all needed, since an error lurks in the inference of the objection.—In the sphere of individuation, namely, for the most part, only individual ends are pursued, individual states aimed at, to the exclusion of the participation of other individuals in the states aimed at; accordingly this exclusiveness of what is purposed naturally renders indispensable the sharp and clear discrimination of the substratum of the purposed state from other individuals. Otherwise is it in the sphere of the All-One Unconscious, where every distinction of different substrata of the purposed state, and likewise every exclusion of one in favour of another, ceases, because the phenomenal manifold does not reach into the sphere of the metaphysical existence (as we have seen in the preceding chapter). Here, one may say, state is absolutely state, i.e., all-embracing state, beyond which at any time there is no state. If, then, in the sphere of the All-One Unconscious a future state is purposed, it is purposed as absolute, i.e., all-embracing state, which has nothing beyond itself, and regarding which therefore the question as to the support of the state, as a perfectly meaningless one so far as the purposive process is concerned, cannot at all be proposed in a rational fashion. It follows from this, that it is absurd to transfer the reflection of consciousness on the substratum of the purposed state to which we are accustomed from the inertia of habit also to the purposive activity of the Unconscious. For we already see in individual instincts that the individual takes care for its own future, without therefore knowing that it is its own future well-being for which it cares, and we see even in the race instincts that the individual exerts itself for general ends, thus for alien subjects, without any idea for whom it torments and sacrifices itself.

  Only thus much then remains tenable in the above objection, that the Unconscious must know the condition to be negated, and which it can only know in that it finds, feels it in itself, since the condition is indeed not spontaneously posited by the unconscious Imagination itself, as all later intuitions; i.e., there in fact results here, from the need of explanation of the purposive activity of the Unconscious, a posteriori the necessity of the assumption of a transcendent extramundane consciousness, which feels its own content as a state to be negated, i.e., as unblessedness or torment,—an assumption the necessity of which we shall subsequently, in C. Chap. xv. 2, a priori perceive to be founded in the nature of the will and the laws of the origination of consciousness. Observe, this single transcendent consciousness of the All-One which we have hitherto found occasion to assume has not for content an idea or representation, but it has for sole content the absolutely indefinite transcendent pain or unblessedness of the void infinite will, which vague metaphysical discomfort forms, as the state to be negated, the necessary starting-point of the unconscious teleological activity, as that which ought not to be the firm foundation of the world-process. The consciousness here allowed, which has arisen only through the mischievous elevation of the quiescent will into volition, and must again cease with the return of the will to its original state of self-enclosed peace (all this will be proved and elucidated in Chap. xv. C.), can obviously give Theism no occasion to triumph at the necessity of a consciousness in the Unconscious. The attempt, however, to deduce from the final purpose of the world-process a consciousness with richer content than that here specified turns out, at all events, a vain endeavour.

  If we gather together once more our reflections on the question as to the consciousness of the All-One, there emerges the result that, besides the notionless consciousness of indefinite discomfort at the uplifted and unsatisfied world-will, the All-One only possesses a limited consciousness in conscious individuals, which, however, suffices it for the aims of the world-process, and that the peculiar mode or form of its all-knowing and all-wise intuition (absolute idea) is such of which, for lack of positive statements, we can only say this much, that it is elevated above that form which we know as consciousness, i.e., that negatively defined it is unconscious, vaguely but positively defined superconscious. According to this we must declare the endeavour still to ascribe to the All-One an exclusively divine consciousness, conceived according to the analogy of the human, a not smaller anthropopathic error and degrading limitation of God than that of the biblical writings, when they ascribe to him anger, vengeance, and similar qualities measured by our own experiences. (Even pious Church Fathers like Augustine have been disquieted by such reflections on the consciousness of God.) If this holds good of consciousness in general, so much the more must we maintain it of the endeavour to posit in God as special content of such a consciousness the idea of the All-One itself i.e., to credit him with a self-consciousness. However, we shall have to examine this point a little more closely.—

  The transcendent consciousness allowed by me has for its sole and only content absolutely indefinite pain, but no idea, least of all the idea of the All-One itself. The consciousness which the All-One has in its individuals has, it is true, for thousands of years been elevated by philosophic thinkers to the consciousness of the All-One itself, therefore to the self-consciousness of the All-One, but this is only an intra
-mundane, not extra-mundane self-consciousness of the All-One, such as Theism requires. But we can at least negatively affirm this with confidence of the unconscious representation of the All-One or the Absolute Idea, that it has in the self-satisfaction of its own pure intuition just as little occasion for reflection in general as for a definite reflection on itself or on something else; not on anything else, since there exists nothing else besides itself; not on itself, since reflection on itself presupposes reflection on something else. But in the unity of the Absolute Idea the ground of the separation of subject and object is just that which is wanting, therefore also their appearance to one another, which constitutes consciousness, is also wanting, and in particular there is wanting the bending round of the ideational activity towards its origin, the turning back to the active subject as goal of representation, which retroversion of the activity of thought is precisely what is characteristic of the notion of self-consciousness as we have abstracted it from human self-consciousness. The Absolute Idea embraces all that is, for its ideal determinations become indeed as content of will those phenomena whose sum we call the world. The unconscious thought of substance accordingly exhausts the sum of all its modes, and so far as its whole proper nature is unfolded therein, itself as the sum of its unfolded moments (in its otherness),—but itself only in this sense, not in the proper acceptation of the notion of self-consciousness, as active centre of emanation.1 To grasp the latter retroversion or reflection is required, which takes place in the brains of individuals, whereby the intuitive character of the presentation is lost, but instead thereof the self-consciousness of the All-One in the strict sense is really gained—only of course not as extra-mundane, transcendent—and at the same time as one which, beside the notion of the All-One as active world-centre, embraces only a very small part of its phenomena, not, as the unconscious idea, its whole plenitude. As the light-sphere, consisting of light rays, illuminates the whole space, but not the point from which it issues, unless a reflection of its own beams takes place at reflecting surfaces, and thereby a turning back of the direction of these rays, so the intuitive ideal total activity of the All-One may cognise the All, only not the point whence it issues, the active centre of the All, unless certain bundles of these rays are broken in the brain of an organism into consciousness, which then, however, must of necessity be a one-sided, limited, no all-embracing absolute consciousness.

  The previous considerations, in combination with the argument stated below derived from the evil of the world, seem sufficient to render evident the perfect untenability of a specifically divine consciousness and self-consciousness in the All-One. In this way of thinking we find ourselves in perfect accord with the views of modern German philosophy. Here, too, neither in Fichte’s earlier doctrine, where the Absolute is represented by the unreal unsubstantial abstract moral world-order (Fichte’s Werke, v. 186, 187, 264, 368), nor in his later doctrine, where it stands as the eternally unchangeable veiled Being behind our consciousness which reveals it (Werke, v. 441, 442), nor in Schelling (comp. his Werke, i. 1, p. 180; i. 3, p. 497; i. 4, p. 256; i. 7, p. 53, 54, and 67, 68), nor in Hegel (which, to be sure, is denied by the reactionary part of the Hegelian school), nor in Schopenhauer does the Absolute possess a consciousness outside of the individuals pervaded by it (comp. also vol. i. pp. 23–31; Introductory i. e., the remarks on the philosophers named).—

  After these conclusions concerning the consciousness and self-consciousness of God, we shall hardly expect a more favourable result in regard to the notion of personality, to which Theism is wont to attach so much importance as predicate of its God, that it is precisely in order to save it that it still insists so urgently on the untenable predicates of consciousness and self-consciousness, even after former scruples (comp. above, p. 245 ff.) against setting aside these anthropopathic predicates of God have been removed by the recognition of the unconscious-superconscious reflectionless-intuitive intelligence in the All-One. Nothing would stand in the way of the application of the notion personality, if its definition were limited to an individuality combined with will and intelligence,1 and it was certain that no inadequate anthropopathic accessory notions were interpolated. But unfortunately the guarantee of this is so small, that, on the contrary, the predicate of personality has almost always been employed only with the intention of thereby smuggling in unsuitable ideas, which, however, are perhaps consoling to the heart. In a jural sense, the notion of personality rests on the criteria of civil independence; this conception has, of course, no sense in reference to God. Ethically the notion of personality implies the capacity of judging one’s own actions and the moral responsibility conditioned by the same, but this transference of a relation, which is highly important between separate and opposed individuals, to the absolute all-embracing Individual appears inadmissible, because there are no individuals beside itself, but only in itself, and because even these latter are only manifestations of itself, phenomena, not substances, therefore cannot be co-ordinated with the substance, through which alone they are, as the notion of the ethical relation would require.1

  Ideologically the concept of personality consists in the existence of a consciousness with respect to the identity of the conscious subjects underlying all the temporally distinct acts of self-consciousness in the same consciousness (comp. p. 79), is thus the result of a tolerably complex reflection on a number of reflective acts of self-apprehension comprehended by memory. Since God in his absolute intuition is raised far above all reflection (even above that of simple self-consciousness, to say nothing of the reflection of the identity of the subjects of those acts of reflection), and as, moreover, such a reflection, in the absence of any existence from which he could distinguish himself, would be for him perfectly superfluous and tautological, the ideological concept of personality also can have no application to God, any more than the jural or ethical. The attempt, from religious considerations, to save the ideological personality of God at any price, necessarily leads by its consequences to the fantastic assumption of an eternal nature in God elevated above material temporal Nature and different from it (Jacob Böhme and Franz von Baader), in order to render possible an eternal process in God with self-discrimination and reintegration as his actual temporal nature makes possibly the temporal world-process, with the resulting separation of subject and object in the finite consciousnesses, which are indeed collectively consciousnesses of the All-One Existence. One sees from this how weak an hypothesis must be when its most important advocates confess themselves compelled, in order to maintain it, to have recourse to such artificial, fantastic, and wholly imaginary auxiliary hypotheses.

  According to these considerations, it seems most suitable not to give to the notion of personality so wide a sense as is given in the above definition, in order thereby to make it applicable to God. There are many individuals endowed with will and intelligence, which do not on that account admit of the concept of personality (animals, low savages, idiots, &c.), and to which we therefore refuse this designation. Why should we not exercise the same restraint with regard to an individual which no longer answers to that conception, because it is elevated above all the limitations which form the marks of the conception on its different sides? Here, too, the degradation of the Supreme Being does not lie on the side of those who refuse the predicate of personality, but on the part of those who ascribe it. Nay, looked at more closely, the lowering of God turns out to be the secret purpose of the affair, i.e., one seeks in God a person (according to the human standard), in order by this kind of co-ordination of God with the ego seeking consolation from him to bring it about, that one may place oneself on intimate footing, as it were, with God, as with a revered equal, in order, on pouring out the heart before him, to make more sure of a humanly sympathising understanding of one’s own emotion. Even the Christian apostles, with the growing purification of the God-idea, began to have an inkling of the unsuitableness of this childish behaviour, at which the naïve anthropopathic imagination of the older Judaism had t
aken no offence; and the more sublimely the God-concept shaped itself with the progressive development of Christian Theism through the contact with Hellenic philosophy, the more the religious soul in its intellectual confusion saw itself impelled to take refuge in a mediating human personality (Christ, subsequently the Virgin Mary and the saints). As the Reformation found itself compelled, after the abolition of prayer to the saints, to lay more stress upon the human personality of Christ than in Catholicism, so in consequence of the now disappearing Christ-belief, Theism is trying again to bring God himself nearer to man from his abstract remoteness by imparting more human features, and this is the most important reason for the emphasising of the personality of God, although incompatible with the idea of the same. But when one considers that, from the philosophical point of view, the practical nerve of prayer is already paralysed by a purely subjective signification and activity being ascribed to it according to the modern view of the world, the value of the emotional postulate, contradicted by thought, appears also from this side more than doubtful. For when I have once perceived the illusory nature of belief in an objective meaning and efficacy of prayer, the nature of the object to which the prayer is conceived or addressed has become perfectly indifferent, since in truth we are here only dealing with a monologue, to which the possible jugglery of a conscious self-deception in respect of a feigned auditor can give no value. With this now-a-days unavoidable admission that the meaning of prayer is reduced to the value of a soliloquising soul-expectoration on self-rectitude (Schleiermacher,) disappears, even within the pale of Theism, every practical motive of religion, for hankering after the clothing of God with the predicate of personality in the proper sense of the term at the expense of good logic.