The term "German Idealism" refers to a phase of intellectual life
that had its origin in the Enlightenment as modified by German
conditions. English and French representatives of the Enlightenment,
giving precedence to sensation, had become empiricists and skeptics.
They viewed the world as a great machine, adopted hedonism as their
ethics, and interpreted history from a subjective-critical point of
view. The situation in Germany was just the reverse. There thought was
given precedence over sensation, and, instead of empiricism, idealism
was dominant. Ethics was based on norms of universal validity, instead
of on individual whim. History was interpreted genetically as a
rational process; and in place of the mechanical conception of the
world, an organic or dynamic view was substituted. Nature was seen to
be spiritual, as well as spatial, and was interpreted teleologically.
In the hands of Jacobi and Kant, Hume's skepticism became the weapon
that destroyed the influence of empiricism and thus paved the way for
idealism. For the Germans, at least, Rousseau's radicalism brought
into question the value of the culture-ideals of the Enlightenment,
and impelled them to seek the basis of culture in the creative power
of the mind. For the philosopher German idealism usually means the
philosophy of Kant and his immediate followers, while for the
historian of literature it may seem little more than the personality
of Goethe; and it is not usual to characterize the literary aspect of
the movement as neo-humanism. However, there is a unity in the
movement that cannot be ignored. All its varied manifestations,
whether in science, philosophy, literature, art, or social life, are
properly treated under the title German Idealism
2. Leibniz and the Pietists
Several factors contributed to the peculiarly independent character of
the Enlightenment in Germany. Most notable was the influence of
Liebniz and that of the Pietists. Leibniz was an essentially religious
personality, and in transplanting the spirit of the Enlightenment into
Germany he gave it that distinctively ethical and religious flavor
which became characteristic of German Idealism. It was he who was
chiefly instrumental in substituting the mechanical view of nature
with a teleological one. He transformed the atoms of the materialists
into monads, or psychical entities, and substituted for natural law
his theory of preestablished harmony. He asserted the absolute worth
of the individual against the destructive monistic pantheism of
Spinoza, and saw in the progress of history a movement of the monads
towards some divine end. On the one hand, he made the development of
materialism and skepticism impossible in Germany, and, on the other
hand, he brought about the teleological explanation of the history of
the universe as a whole. The teleological and idealistic tendencies of
Leibniz were strengthened through Pietism; Klopstock, Herder, Jacobi,
Goethe, and Jean Paul, all betray in their works the Pietistic
influence.
3. Kant's Transcedentalism
The conceptual framework of German Idealism was provided by Immanuel
Kant who was the first to reconcile the conflicting empirical and
rationalistic elements of the prevailing dogmatic philosophy. With one
stroke he secured for mind priority over nature, and yet without
endangering the validity of the principles of scientific
investigation. By giving the primacy to practical reason, he placed
religion and ethics on a sure footing and broke the ban of
rationalism. In the first instance Kant's work was purely
epistemological. He made it particularly his problem to rescue natural
science from the (epistemological) skepticism of Hume, and then to
rescue religion from nationalism. Kant demolished the rationalistic
arguments of Anselm, Descartes, and others, for the existence of God.
Science is valid, but it has to do only with phenomena. This
phenomenal world, however, is produced a priori by the activity of
consciousness, reacting on that external reality whose eternal nature
cannot be known. The constancy of experience is accounted for by the
very fact that the world as we know it is only the sum total of
phenomena. This becomes the basis of the universal validity of certain
principles of explanation. Space and time, and the categories of the
understanding are subjective and thus ideal. Taken together they form
a mold in which we shape the impressions coming from the unknowable,
transcendent reality. Thus, the principles of science and the laws of
nature are universally valid because they are in the subject, not in
the object. Knowledge of ultimate reality comes through the practical
reason, particularly through the a priori moral law in us. Kant's idea
of inner freedom became the inspiration of the creative genius. The
phase of German Idealism manifested in the art and poetry of the
period has been called aesthetic-ethical idealism. The leaders of this
artistic movement, who really popularized idealism and made it a part
of the life of the time, were not intent on solving the old
philosophical problems. For conceptual thought they substituted the
creative imagination.
4. Lessing, Herder, and Others
Klopstock and Wieland mark the turning-point toward idealsm. However,
their contemporary, Lessing, was the first representative of the
movement to liberate himself completely from conventional theology and
all that was arbitrary and external in German culture and find in the
inner aesthetic and ethical development of the mind the ideal to be
followed. Idealism in the sense in which the word is here used became
even more effective in the work of Herder. His break with the
Enlightenment was complete. In his large application of the idealistic
method to the interpretation of science, art, and history, he
practically reformed all the intellectual sciences. He, too, proceeded
from an analysis of the poetic and artistic impulse, and in the
creative activity of the mind he found the key to ethics, aesthetics,
and religion. From this subjective, or idealistic, view-point he saw
the panorama of history as a spiritualistic development. If Lessing's
great work was to introduce idealism into aesthetics, particularly the
aesthetics of dramatic poetry, Herder's greatest service to the
idealistic cause was his application of idealism, as a method, to the
interpretation of history. What Wieland, Lessing, and others had done
for poetic art, this Winckelmann did for plastic art. He too found in
the conception of the free creative mind the basis of ethics,
aesthetics, and religion.
5. Goethe, Schiller, and Others
The great representatives of the idealistic type mind in German poetry
were Goethe, and Schiller. Against the exclusive claims of the
aesthetic view of nature, and a morality essentially classical, Goethe
emphasizes the moral and religious worth of the individual, thus
approaching the ethical teachings of Kant. Schiller combined the
epistemology of Kant with the pantheism of Goethe. With him aesthetic
values were the chief types of intellectual norms. Thus, his ethics
and religion might be regarded as a phase of aesthetics. However, the
aesthetic harmony that he found in the universe had an impact on his
ethical and religious nature; despite his aesthetic view-point, he
must be classed with Kant and Fichte as one of the great moral
teachers of Germany. Schiller's only consistent follower was Willhelm
von Humboldt, who was instrumental in bringing about the
Neo-Humanistic reform, on the basis of the new aesthetic-ethical
culture. Jean Paul was a representative of the anti-classical type of
idealism.
6. Early Views of Fichte and Schelling
The basis of the aesthetic-ethical movement was Kant transcendental
idealism. But while Kant made the idealistic position secure, he had
not accounted for the reality of the world of nature, with all that it
means to the poet as the expression of some divine purpose. To get at
the bottom of the matter, it was felt that human consciousness as a
starting-point would have to be abandoned and an absolute
consciousness posited. From this reality of absolute consciousness,
then, individual consciousness could be deduced in a manner, analogous
to that employed by Kant. The first to attempt such a comprehensive
solution of the problem was Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Starting from
Kant's idealistic position he tried to overcome the dualism involved
in Kant's doctrine of a (thing in itself) by bringing this mysterious
reality into consciousness. To do this he dropped the Kantian
distinction between practical and theoretical reason, and conceived of
the absolute mind, or ego, as moral reason. In his view all existence
is psychical, and the human mind is only a manifestation of the
absolute ego. Thus, the last trace of an unknowable transcendent
reality is obliterated. The absolute ego has divided itself into a
large number of relative egos, and through these it is moving
progressively toward its own destiny. The core of reality lies in
human personality, in the finite mind, but this is caught up in an
endless process of development; Hence, to transcend his own
consciousness and explain the progress of history, with reference to
the past and future, the philosopher must look at existence from the
point of view of the absolute ego. In this way Fichte developed his
subjective realism, bringing this scheme of idealistic evolution every
phase of human experience. Under his treatment, ethics, sociology,
aesthetics, and religion become a part of the history of the Absolute.
He overcame the dualism between individual mind and nature by
dissolving both individual nature and mind. Schelling, starting from
the Kant-Fichte point of view, extended the conception of the Absolute
to objective nature. His system may be characterized as a sort of
spiritualized pantheism. The world is a continuous process from
inorganic unconscious nature to organic conscious nature, and then
from organic nature back to inorganic nature. While in humans the
Absolute reaches consciousness, nature remains essentially objective,
but not in a materialistic sense. Nature, for Schelling, is a system
of spiritual forces similar to the monads of Leibniz. Schelling worked
out his so – called Identitatsphilosophie by extending to absolute
consciousness the view that in consciousness subject and object are
identical. The sum total of existence then becomes the Absolute as
perceived by itself. Naturally, all distinctions and qualities, which
are created by a finite relational consciousness, disappear in a
self-contemplation of the Absolute by itself, and existence becomes
neutral. If Fichte had interpreted existence ethically, Schelling
interprets it aesthetically. While with Fichte the Absolute
distributes itself in finite minds in order to work out its own moral
development, with Schelling the Absolute comes to consciousness in
humans in order that we may enjoy the aesthetic contemplation of the
unity of mind and nature, the identity of mind with its sensuous
content.
7. Romanticism
The immediate result of the metaphysical systems of Fichte and
Schelling was a revival of poetic production and criticism known as
Romanticism, which sprang from the school of Goethe and Schiller. The
union of poetry with the metaphysical or religious view of life became
a recognized principle of art; and it was this combination that
secured for idealism the final triumph over the narrow naturalism and
rationalism of the Enlightenment. Romanticism brought to light the
connection of poetry with Christianity. Just as Schiller had taken
Kant's epistemology as a basis for the explanation of the relation of
aesthetics to ethics, so now the Kantian position was used to explain
the relation of religion to aesthetics. Thus, from Kant's idealism
came a new analysis of religion, illuminating with a new light the
problems of culture. Romanticism gave depth to the historical view and
dissolved into thin air those time-worn conceptions of a "law of
nature," "common sense," and innate norms of the reason; this was just
as the Enlightenment had formerly disposed of the idea of a
supernatural, ecclesiastical norm, which rested on these conceptions.
The leading spirits in the romantic movement were the two Schlegels,
though Fichte, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Schelling, Novalis, and many
others took a part in it. Out of Romanticism sprang a new impulse for
systematic thinking; and through the political catastrophes of the
time and the moral earnestness of the intellectual leaders, idealistic
speculation was forced to apply its norms to practical social
problems.
8. Later Views of Fichte and Schelling
The first to feel the pressure of the realistic-historical problems
were the founders of metaphysical idealism, Fichte and Schelling. Both
betray the influence of Schleiermacher. Realizing the inadequacy of
their philosophy to meet practical needs, they now sought an ethical
and religious ideal which should unify the concrete content of
spiritual life and at the same time be a necessary deduction from the
metaphysical background of existence. Fichte retained his idea of the
moral state as the consummation of the historical process. However, he
no longer considered this state merely as a postulate of progressive
freedom, but as a concrete civilized state, in which all members of
society share in the blessings of religion, morality, and art. In this
remodeled view of Fichte, religion is dominant; for he finds that only
religious faith makes possible the realization of the moral idea, and
thus the reality of the external world. The world is ethical. It is
religious faith that gives an ultimate aim to ethical conduct, that
makes possible a union of the empirical ego with its metaphysical
basis, that is, God. His ethics is thus deprived of its formal
character as an endless progress and given a definite aim. This
ethical and religious view necessitates a modification of his
metaphysics. The background of empirical consciousness is no longer an
endless progression of the Absolute, but a fixed and unchanging divine
being. In this being the empirical ego has its origin, and through
ethical conduct it returns to its source. Similarly, in view of moral
and aesthetic needs, Schelling was forced to change his views. In
applying the principle of identity, he destroyed the variety of
existence, and thus its reality. In describing the universe as a
quality-less neutrum he had only caricatured the Absolute. His
philosophy disagreed with every phase of experience. Just as Fichte,
so Schelling sought in religion the key to the origin and destiny of
humans. The phenomenal world takes its rise in the absolute,
self-determined will of God. Because of its origin, the phenomenal
world necessarily works its way back up to God again. This movement
back to God is a religious process, through mythology, or natural
religion, up to Christianity, at which stage the union of man with God
takes place. Thus, Christianity, whose dogmas are interpreted
evolutionistically by Schelling, becomes the end and purpose of
history; and it is upon Christianity that ethics, politics, and
aesthetics are to be based.
9. Hegel's System
If Fichte and Schelling tried to find the purpose of existence in some
concrete content (such as the moral state or the Christian religion,
deducing this concept from the conception of God), Hegel solved the
problem by a systematic exploitation of the conception of evolution,
which with him was both a constituent and a teleological principle.
The conception had been variously and obscurely employed by Leibniz,
Lessing, Kant, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, and F. Schlegel. Then, on the
basis of Kant's transcendental deduction, Fichte and Schelling
interpreted the process of development in a purely idealistic manner
as the unconscious opposition of the Absolute to itself; this further
entailed the conscious and gradual removal of this opposition by
self-absorption, the double process following necessarily from the
very nature of mind. Hegel makes the impulse of the absolute mind a
gradual and self-determined process, by which the Absolute lifts
itself from mere possibility and actuality to conscious, free, and
necessary possession. Viewed sub specie aeternitatis the whole process
is timeless, and only to a finite mind does it appear as an endless
procession in time and space. However, it is just in this finite view
that the ethical, aesthetic and religious character of Hegel's
philosophy manifests itself. In the finite consciousness there is a
separation of the natural, the actual, and the empirical from the
spiritual, the free, and the necessary. In the unity reached by
overcoming this divorce of the finite from the infinite lies religious
blessedness, perfect beauty, and moral freedom. Every phase and stage
of this inner teleological development is necessary to the life of the
Absolute, and all variety in finite experience is preserved in the
higher unity. Nothing is lost. Instead of being an undifferentiated
substance, or a qualityless neutrum, the Absolute is the living, vital
reality that manifests itself in human experience. This reality is
spiritual , and the guiding principle of its upward movement is the
fulfillment of its own divine purpose, which is religious, ethical,
aesthetic. Religion and ethics are thus a necessary product of the
self-explication of the Absolute, or God.
10. Schleiermacher
The religious turn that idealistic metaphysics had taken was due to
the influence of Schleiermacher, the most specifically religious of
all the great philosophers. In his own system he made use of the
religious consciousness in an original and striking manner to solve
the practical and theoretical problems growing out of Kant's critical
philosophy. In the field of ethics he was the most conspicuous
exponent of German idealism. What Hegel had deduced from the Absolute
by his application of the conception of development, Schleiermacher,
following the critical method of Kant, sought to attain by an analysis
of empirical consciousness. In its theoretical attitude toward being,
consciousness is receptive and seeks to combine the data of sense into
the highest possible conceptual unity; in its practical attitude
consciousness is active and transfers the aim of reason from the world
of sense to the world of conscious freedom. However, in both cases
thought and being always remain separate for the finite understanding.
On the other hand, that essential unity of reality which makes
possible any relation of thought to being, such as volition to being,
is present in religious feeling. While Hegel had employed a deductive,
dialectical method to show that all being is in God, Schleiermacher
reached this unity by an inductive process, which was guided by
feeling, instead of by pure reason. Instead of starting with a
timeless and spaceless Absolute, he started with the phenomenal world.
His task was to analyze the reason that dominates the actual world of
history, to bring to light its various purposes, combine them into a
totality representing the absolute divine purpose of the universe, the
summum bonum, and to show that the power to realize this ideal lies in
religious consciousness. Schleiermacher's practical religious
interests now took him into the field of theology.
11. Herbart
Herbart stuck even more closely to the Kantian view-point, but, like
other followers of Kant, he sought to eliminate the conception of an
unknowable reality, and press forward to the ultimate nature of
things. He adopted Kant's analysis of consciousness, but in a
psychological sense, and found that the transcendental reality
consists of a plurality of simple substances. These he called "reals."
They are psychical in nature and analogous to the monads of Leibniz.
Through their relations to one another and to human consciousness the
phenomenal world is brought into existence; and from their
teleological cooperation Herbart deduces a divine, creative
intelligence, analogous to the monad-monadum of Leibniz, thus opposing
sharply current poetic naturalism and Spinozism. Herbart's practical
and social philosophy, which is based on the judgments of the soul as
to the relations of the "reals" to each other, particularly on
judgments expressing like or dislike, also tends toward rationalism.
On account of the method employed here, Herbart calls the result
aesthetics, to which he subordinates ethics. In his view the ideal
society would be one based on the insight and activity of the
educated, and on the rational education of youth, and realizing in its
organization the natural and fundamental ethical ideas. Herbart thus
became not only a reformer of psychology, but of pedagogy as well.
12. Schopenhauer
The last great representative of German Idealism in systematic
philosophy was Schopenhauer. While with him the phenomenal world is
idea (that is, existing only as a subject idea) its objective basis is
not a "thing in itself" as Kant taught, but a universal will. This
Schopenhauer interprets as a blind, illogical, aimless impulse,
without any original ethical tendency whatsoever. Through the blind
impulse of this world-will arises human intelligence and the
phenomenal world. History loses all teleological significance and
becomes an irrational and endless progression. Ethics, therefore, as
the philosophy of the ultimate purpose of the world can only proclaim
the aimlessness of the cosmic process and seek to put an end to it by
stilling the will. This quietizing of the will is effected by
recognizing the aimlessness of the process and resigning oneself to it
completely. For these teachings, Schopenhauer found a support in
Buddhism, which was then just becoming known in the West. He was
bitter in his hatred of the theism of Judaism, which for him exhibited
selfishness and sensuality, and was the root of all deceptive theism.
The pure Christianity of Christ he regarded as a sort of mystical
quietism. Though his metaphysical work, De Welt als Wille und
Vorstellung, appeared as early as 1819, his teachings found no popular
reception till after the wane of Hegel's influence in Germany.
13. Idealism in the Positive Sciences
The effects of this idealistic development are apparent in the
positive sciences no less than in metaphysics. In accord with the idea
of the oneness of the world, the natural sciences have been given a
subordinate position, or else reduced to natural philosophy. The new
spirit is manifested even more clearly in the historical sciences,
where the genetic method is everywhere employed and individual facts
are treated in relation to the whole development. For instance, the
historian of literature or art now seeks to bring the facts with which
he is dealing into relation with other phases of life and thus grasp
the life and ideals of a nation as a whole. Similarly, the philologist
is no longer satisfied with the study of one language, but seeks to
correlate it with kindred tongues and reconstruct the inner life of
the people. Even in the field of jurisprudence the genetic method has
been adopted and particular stress laid on the development of common
law. The effect of this idealistic movement may also be observed in
theology. Here deistic efforts to base Christianity on a general
theory of religion have been replaced by a more penetrating
psychological analysis, together with a genetic view of religious
history. It should be added, though, that repeated and earnest
attempts have been made to rescue the core of Christianity from the
general flux of history and give to it a fixed character. Since it is
in the universities, chiefly, that the sciences are cultivated,
naturally the universities were reorganized in conformity to the
changed ideals. It was in the University of Jena that German Idealism
got its first foothold. From here the new educational ideal went to
the newly established universities of Berlin, Heidelberg, Bonn,
Breslau, and Munich, and into the secondary schools.
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