Philosophy of the Unconscious

by Eduard Von Hartmann

  1. Retrospect of Earlier Philosophers. —Of the great philosophers, those most in accordance with our principles are Plato and Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer, and indeed the two latter represent one-sided extremes (Hegel the logical element, Schopenhauer the Will), whilst Plato and Schelling so far occupy a connecting and intermediate position, that in neither does there exist a complete equilibrium of the two sides, but in Plato the Idea, in Schelling’s last system the Will has chief importance.

  Plato’s best-known and most important principle (cp. the masterly presentation of the Platonic principles in Zeller, Philos, der Griechen, 2 Aufi., ii. 1, pp. 441–471) is the Platonic IDEA, the world of Ideas, or the nature of the many ideas included in the One (the ) highest Idea or the Idea absolutely, which he more precisely defines as the Idea of the good, i.e., the absolute end, and which is to him identical with the Divine Reason. Plato conceives the Idea as in the eternal repose of unchangeable independent Being, and only exceptionally, and with manifest inconsistency, does he here and there (especially, in mythical representations) ascribe to it also efficient operation, an activity.

  Since the self-enclosed IDEA would never have reason for going out of itself, it needs a second, equally important principle, the ground of the Heraclitean flow of all things, the moving spring of the world-process.

  This second is, accordingly, as opposed to the eternal repose of the Idea, the principle of absolute change, the ever coming and going, and never genuinely being; wherefore he also calls it the relatively non-being ; but yet it is that which receives the ideas as its content, and ushers them into the whirl of procession. Whilst the Idea is the measured, self-enclosed, that is the measureless, in itself unlimited (); whilst the IDEA (even number) is in itself only qualitatively determined, that brings the element of quantity into the phenomenon. There belongs to it “all that is capable of more or less, of stronger or weaker, and of excess;” wherefore Plato calls it also the “great and little.”

  Whilst the Idea is the Good, and all the good in the world springs from it, the is the Bad, and the cause of all the bad and evil in the world (Aristot., Metaph. i. 6, end), is that blind Necessity found pre-existent by the world-forming Intelligence, that senseless Cause, which could not be perfectly overcome by Reason, that irrational residue that we always get over when we abstract from things all that is image of the IDEA.

  From the marriage of the two opposed principles arises the World, which we know through sense-perception. Both principles have this in common, that they are not affected by the change of the phenomenon, but stand above it as transcendent (χωρισται) essences.

  The agreement of the Platonic results with our own is obvious; we only need to translate the realm of the per se existing IDEAS into that of the unconscious Presentation (that is indeed also conceived by us as intuitive and non-temporal, i.e., eternal) and the intensive principle of absolute change into the Will.

  It is also remarkable that Plato asserts that this ἄπειρον is in no way cognisable, neither by thought nor by perception, which entirely agrees with our view, that the Will as such is a something for ever inaccessible to Consciousness. [When Plato sometimes characterises the πειρον also as τóποç, this is certainly just as figurative as the expression (reservoir) and (soft substance, in which a form, here the Idea, is imprinted), and means, as the expressions and , testify, nothing more than that wherein the ideas find their stand, place, locality, or room for reception and unfolding, just as he sometimes assigns to the ideal world an intelligible supramundane place (τóποç νοητóç). Less strict still is the expression (matter), substituted, not by Plato himself, but by Aristotle and later writers for the .]

  Schopenhauer’s philosophy is contained in the proposition: Will alone is Thing proper, the Being of the world. Hence it follows that the presented object is only a—manifestly accidental—product of brain, and that there is only so much reason to be found in the whole world as the fortuitously arisen brain chooses to put into it. For what can proceed from an absolutely irrational, senseless, and blind principle but an irrational and senseless world? If there is a trace of sense in it, it can only have crept in by chance! As little as a blind Will can propose to itself ends, so little can it choose and realise fit means to its ends; and thus the conscious intellect can with Schopenhauer in truth appear only as a parasite of the Will, that, far removed from being willed by this latter, has rather settled upon it in some incomprehensible fashion, God only knows whence, like the mildew on the plant. It is obvious that the absolutely irrational, taken as principle, must be very much poorer and infertile than the absolutely rational, the Idea and Thought. There is also needed a remarkable restraint to put up with the absolutely irrational and its poverty as principle. Hence the dilettante colouring, which, with all its intellectual wealth, the philosophising of Schopenhauer possesses, hence the sigh of relief when, in the third book of “The World as Will and Idea,” one approaches the great inconsequence of the system, the IDEA.

  On the other hand, one cannot sufficiently admire and praise the wisdom of the Unconscious, that it created so confined a genius, to show posterity what can and what cannot be achieved with that principle in its isolation. The one-sided elaboration of this principle was in the genetic course of development of philosophy just as necessary as the pointing of the opposite extreme in Hegel.

  How closely the two philosophers are connected is rendered evident by the undesigned coincidence that the principal works of both philosophers appeared in the year 1818, when one at the same time recalls the utterance of Hegel (xv. p. 619), “Where several philosophers synchronously appear, they will represent different aspects of a single whole.”

  As certainly as Schopenhauer was incapable of comprehending Hegel, so certainly must Hegel, if he had known him, have shrugged his shoulders over Schopenhauer; both stood so far from one another, that every point of contact was wanting for mutual recognition.

  If Kant’s Criticism was compelled to decline every attempt at a theoretical metaphysic, and Fichte begins the positive metaphysical evolution of the most recent philosophy with the dialectic treatment of self-consciousness, Hegel sums up this development till the close of the first third of the century, in that he receives from Schelling the principle which till then had been its more or less unconscious moment: the IDEA alone is the Being of the world; logic is consequently ontology; the dialectic self-movement of the concept is the world-process. This principle is, as compared with the complete poverty of the Schopenhauerian, the absolutely rich; for all that the world is, it is indeed through the IDEA; something may be done with it, therefore, and it is not to be wondered at that it produced four systems when its antipode exhausted itself in one.

  Hegel in his logic measured the Platonic realm of the per se existing IDEA: he tried to surprise the Idea in the process of its eternal self-deliverance from barest being, and thus far his principle was within its right. But when the realm of the per se existing Idea had been traversed in all directions, the principle reached its limits; for though the Idea was omnipotent in its own sphere, one thing remained unattainable by it, the res, reality; “for real is just that which cannot be created by mere thought” (Schelling, i. 3, p. 364).

  The principle, however, though one-sided, was regarded as all-inclusive, and had to be worked out in this one-sidedness, in order to show here, too, distinctly how far it extends and how far not. On the other hand, however, it lay pre-indicated in the dialectic movement, that the logical IDEA, after it had exhausted itself on its own ground, must, with dialectical necessity, demand the other of itself, or the negative of itself, and this could only be—the alogical.

  With this plain acknowledgment, however, the Logical would have had to renounce its absolute sovereignty, would have had to acknowledge and admit an equally authorised principle, that the truth is found in and reality depends once on the conflict and time union of these last and highest contrasts. Then, however, logic would also have had to declare that t
hat Alogical is only accidentally, namely, looked at only from its own point of view, the negative, but in truth, from a higher point of view, the positive, which first of all realises the Logical, whereas without this positive it is, with its whole stock of ideas, equal to nothing.

  This demand upon absolute Idealism all at once to declare its own principle negative was for man—at least for that man who had carried it to its height—too much. Certainly Hegel allows here and there the feeling to break through that the negative of the logical element deserves notice and makes possible the passage of the Idea into actuality, but he suppresses the stirrings of this feeling in their origin, only not to approach too near his dear IDEA. He tries to comply with the imperative compulsion to do justice to the alogical element, everywhere thrusting itself on the observer in the world, by preposterously drawing the alogical self-contradiction into the logical, in that he gives to his dialectical method (intended to be at once ideal- and real-dialectical) inner contradiction as an integral element of its process; whereas in truth the contradiction of the logical can always only be kindled by the existing logical not posited by it. But now even Hegel himself observes that, on the one hand, he does not thereby exhaust the demands of the actual as regards their alogical character, and that, on the other hand, he therewith burdens his logical IDEA with the responsibility for things which it cannot bear without losing its character of the logical. Accordingly, he takes refuge in his category of the Contingent, which must always bear the brunt when the details of a phenomenon withdraw themselves, or even only appear to withdraw, from explanation through the principle of the logical IDEA. But the contingent as little as self-contradiction has a place within the logical principle and within the “What” of the world determined by it; for the logical principle is only determined logically, i.e., necessarily; and therewith the contingent is simply excluded from it (and relegated to the sphere of the alogical). But just this compulsion, in addition to the self-contradiction already drawn into the logical, to have recourse to the category of the contingent ought to have shown Hegel that, after abstracting all that is logically posited in phenomena, there is really only an alogical residue, and that there must therefore be an alogical beside the logical, not merely in the same. With this recognition Hegel would, however, at once have got quit of the motive which had urged him to credit the inconsistency of an alogical in the logical, i.e., he would have been able to refine his inherently contradictory dialectical process into a consistent logical process, which the alogical only underlies as impelling moment of the process.

  Thus much is universally recognised, the relation of logic to the Philosophy of Nature is in Hegel himself obscure and obliterated. From consistently carrying out his principle, and (with Michelet) maintaining that Nature can only be called externalised logic, or logic in its alterity, so far as the moments of the dialectic process united in logic have fallen asunder, Hegel is protected by a certain instinctive timidity which teaches him that with the consistent carrying out of his principle he sins against his own method, which unconditionally demands the alogical as the equally authorised negation of the logical idea; but he is again deterred from satisfying this demand by the consequences of that step, which manifestly destroy his own principle, that the IDEA is the sole substance.

  This contradiction explains why the transition from the Idea to Nature, on all occasions when Hegel mentions it (e.g., “Phänomenologie,” p. 610; “Logik,” Bd. ii. p. 399–400; “Encyclopädie,” Bd. i. § 43 and § 244), is dealt with in an unusually aphoristic manner, frequently changed in new editions, and, moreover, dressed up in unsuitable and figurative expressions (sacrifice, unfolding, alienation, dismission, reflection of the Idea, &c.) The difference on this point has first clearly revealed itself in the divisions of the Hegelian school.

  Let us bestow one more glance upon the question how much Hegel felt in silence the necessity of the alogical as counterpoise of the logical. At the close of the larger “Logic” he says of the absolute Idea, that, enclosed in the sphere of pure thought, it is still logical; whence it is to be concluded that its emergence from this into another sphere must be the passage into the no longer logical, i.e., into the alogical.

  In the “Phänomenologie,” p. 610, he says, “Knowledge knows not only itself, but also the negative of itself or its limit.” Here, indeed, we might be inclined to suppose that the non-logical must be intended by this negative; but he again entirely weakens the effect by declaring this “knowing its own limit” to be sufficient for sacrifice or alienation. In the “Logic,” vol. ii. p. 400, he further says, “Because the pure idea of knowing is so far enclosed in subjectivity, it is impulse to abolish this.” Here he feels even that the going beyond the Idea can only be an affair of the Will. Altogether impossible, however, is the thought that this “willing of the Idea to emerge from the Idea” can come from itself, from the eternal repose of its being-for-self, which must rather be considered equivalent to the absolutely self-sufficient peace, the untroubled self-enclosed contentment.

  Not only would it be incomprehensible how the Idea could of its own accord come to precipitate its eternal purity into the vortex of the real process, but it would be the height of absurdity if it, that encloses all knowledge in itself, willed to sacrifice its blessed peace of non-temporal eternal calm without external compulsion, in order to fall a prey to the torment of the process, the unblessedness of volition, the misery of real existence. No, not absolute Reason itself can all at once become irrational, but the irrational must be a second or other lying outside Reason.

  If it lay in the nature of the logical to pass out of itself into the alogical, this occurrence would be necessary and eternal, and one could never speak of a conclusion of the process, of a redemption.

  It is also indeed only the negative relative determination (relative, namely, to the logical Idea) of that opposite of the Idea to be the alogical; its positive determination, however, is this, to be principle of change, origin of reality, will; and when Hegel in the above passage suddenly throws in this determination to be impulse, it is quite clear indeed that he has procured it purely from the empirical need of explaining the reality of Nature.

  But this is also, in fact, the only possible way to come to the knowledge of the Will. A priori one could at the most only know the Idea and all that follows from the Idea; the existence of the Will, however, is, at all events, only to be concluded a posteriori. For every a priori purely logical or purely rational philosophy can only assert ideal relations, but not real existences; it can at most say, “If something is, it must be thus,” but it can never show that something is; this only experience can do, i.e., the conflict with the extant will (existence) in the perception of consciousness. This answers quite to the circumstance that the Idea only determines the “What” of things, but the Will their “That;” thus the Idea can also only so far comprehend things as it determines them, therefore never their real existence.

  This necessary step in philosophy, which Hegel had been unable to take, Schelling accomplished1 in his last system, when, as indicated in Chap. vii. C., he perceived the purely logical character of previous philosophy, declared it to be negative, and in opposition to it raised the demand for a positive philosophy beginning with the immemorial being only to be known through experience. (Cp. Schelling’s “Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy,” in i. 10, pp. 126 to 164, especially pp. 146 and 151–157; further, ii. 3, fourth and fifth lectures.)

  So far as Schelling’s deductions are critical and preparatory they are excellent, but as soon as he begins to deliver his positive philosophy itself he becomes weak. wavers between an explanatory argumentative procedure a dialectic method and the sudden and unmotived introduction of new leading concepts, to lose himself soon in the shoals of a mystical theogony and the details of Christian theology. This is simply due to the circumstance that, to preserve consistency with his own past, he becomes unfaithful to his better knowledge, that the principle of positive philosophy is only to be gain
ed a posteriori from experience, accordingly by the inductive path.

  [Because Schopenhauer in the main (e.g., W. as W. and 1., 2d Book, and “On the Will in Nature”) proceeds inductively, he accomplishes so much more as regards this problem, although he is not particularly clear about his method, and why it is the only correct one.]

  Nevertheless Schelling’s last system (unity of positive and negative philosophy) has a high value, in that it embraces the principle of Hegel (the IDEA) and that of Schopenhauer (the Will) as co-ordinate, equally authorised and equally indispensable sides of the one principle (cp. i. 10, 242–243; i. 8, 328). Schelling very decidedly sees in that “extralogical nature of existence” (ii. 3, 95), in that “incomprehensible basis of reality” (i. 7, 360), the Will. That something is is only perceived by the resistance which it opposes; the only thing capable of resistance, however, is the Will (ii. 3, 206). It is therefore the Will that accords its That to the whole world and to every single thing; the Idea can only determine the What. In his “Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom,” that appeared in 1809 (thus long before the writings of Schopenhauer), he said (Werke, i. 7, p. 350), “There is in the highest and last resort no other being at all than volition. Volition is original being, and to this alone are adapted all its predicates—groundlessness, eternity, independence of time, self-aflirmatiou. All philosophy only aims at finding this highest term.” And in his “anthropological scheme” (i. 10, p. 289) one finds, “1. Will is the proper spiritual substance of man, the ground of everything, the originally matter-producing, the only thing in man, the cause of being.”