|
Chapter II. - Transition Period THE decadence
which we find in thought until the philosophy
of Kant is reached, is manifested in what
was at this time advocated in opposition
to the metaphysic of the understanding, and
which may be called a general popular philosophy,
a reflecting empiricism, which to a greater
or less extent becomes itself a metaphysic;
just as, on the other hand, that metaphysic,
in as far as it extended to particular sciences,
becomes empiricism. As against these metaphysical
contradictions, as against the artificialities
of the metaphysical synthesis, as against
the assistance of God, the preestablished
harmony, the best possible world, &c.,
as against this merely artificial understanding,
we now find that fixed principles, immanent
in mind, have been asserted or maintained
respecting what is felt, intuitively perceived
and honoured in the cultured human breast.
And in distinction to the assertion that
we only find the solution in the principles
of a fixed and permanent content form a reconciliation
here and now, they adopt a position of independence,
and assume an intellectual standing-ground
which they find in what has generally been
termed the healthy human understanding.
Such determinations may indeed be found to
be perfectly good and valid if the feelings,
intuitions, heart and understanding of man
be morally and intellectually fashioned;
for in that case better and more noble feelings
and desires may rule in men and a more universal
content, may be expressed in these principles.
But when men make what we call sound reason
- that which is by nature implanted in man's
breast - into the content and the principle,
the healthy human understanding discovers
itself to be identical with a feeling and
knowledge belonging to nature. The Indians
who worship a cow, and who expose or slay
newborn children, and commit all sorts of
barbarous deeds, the Egyptians who pray to
a bird, the apis, &c., and the Turks
as well, all possess a healthy human understanding
similar in nature. But the healthy human
understanding and the natural feeling of
rude and barbarous Turks, when taken as a
standard, result in shocking principles.
When we speak of healthy human understanding,
however, of natural feelings, we always have
before our eyes a cultured mind; and those
who make the healthy human reason, the natural
knowledge, the immediate feelings and inspirations
found in themselves, into a rule and standard,
do not know that when religion, morality,
and rectitude are discovered to be present
in the human breast, this is due to culture
and education, which are the first to make
such principles into natural feelings.
Here natural feelings and the healthy human
understanding are thus made the principle;
and much may be recognized as coming under
these heads. This then is the form taken
by Philosophy in the eighteenth century.
Taken as a whole, three points of view have
to be considered; in the first place, Hume
must be regarded on his own account, then
the Scottish, and, thirdly, the French philosophy.
Hume is a sceptic; the Scottish philosophy
opposes the scepticism of Hume, the French
philosophy has in the "enlightenment"
of Germany (by which expression is indicated
that form of German philosophy which is not
Wolffian metaphysics) an appendage of a feebler
form. Since from the metaphysical God we
can make no further progress in the concrete,
Locke grounds his content on experience.
But that empiricism leads thought to no fixed
standpoint, Hume demonstrates by denying
every universal; the Scottish philosophers,
on the contrary, undoubtedly maintain universal
propositions and truths, but not through
thought. Hence in empiricism itself the fixed
standpoint has now to be adopted; thus the
French find the universal in the actuality
which they call réalité. They do not, however,
find its content in and from thought, but
as living substance, as nature and matter.
All this is a further working out of reflecting
empiricism, and some more details respecting
it must still be given.
A. Idealism and Scepticism
Thought generally is simple, universal
self-identity,
but in the form of negative movement,
whereby
the determinate abrogates itself. This
movement
of Being-for-self is now an essential
moment
of thought, while hitherto it was outside
it; and thus grasping itself as movement
in itself, thought is self-consciousness
- at first indeed formal, as individual
self-consciousness.
Such a form it has in scepticism, but
this
distinction marks it off from the older
scepticism,
that now the certainty of reality is
made
the starting point. With the ancients,
on
the contrary, scepticism is the return
into
individual consciousness in such a
way that
to it this consciousness is not the
truth,
in other words that scepticism does
not give
expression to the results arrived at,
and
attains no positive significance. But
since
in the modern world this absolute substantiality,
this unity of implicitude and self-consciousness
is fundamental - that is, this faith
in reality
generally - scepticism has here the
form
of idealism, i. e., of expressing self-consciousness
or certainty of self as all reality
and truth.
The crudest form of this idealism is
when
self-consciousness, as individual or
formal,
does not proceed further than to say:
All
objects are our conceptions. We find
this
subjective idealism in Berkeley, (1)
and
another form of the same in Hume.
1. Berkeley
2. Hume
B. Scottish Philosophy
In Scotland quite another school of thought
developed, and the Scotch are the foremost
of Hume's opponents; in German philosophy,
on the other hand, we have to recognize in
Kant another opposing force to that of Hume.
To the Scottish school many philosophers
belong; English philosophy is now restricted
to Edinburgh and Glasgow, in which places
a number of professors belonging to this
school succeeded one another. To the scepticism
of Hume they oppose an inward independent
source of truth for all that pertains to
religion and morality. This coincides with
Kant, who also maintains an inward source
or spring as against external perception;
but in the case of Kant this has quite another
form than that which it possesses with the
Scottish philosophers. To them this inward
independent source is not thought or reason
as such, for the content which comes to pass
from this inwardness is concrete in its nature,
and likewise demands for itself the external
matter of experience. It consists of popular
principles, which on the one hand are opposed
to the externality of the sources of knowledge,
and, on the other, to metaphysics as such,
to abstract thought or reasoning on its own
account.
This sort of reasoning understanding applied
itself to ethics and to politics - sciences
which have been much developed by German,
French, and above all by Scottish philosophers
(supra, p. 320); they regarded morality as
cultured men would, and sought to bring moral
duties under a principle. Many of their works
are translated into German; several of these
on ethics or morality are translated by Garve,
for instance, who also translated Cicero
De Officiis, and they are written in a manner
similar to that of Cicero when he uses the
expression Insitum est a natura (Vol. I.
p. 93). This moral sentiment and the ordinary
human understanding hereafter formed the
common principle to a whole succession of
Scots, such as Thomas Reid, Beattie, Oswald,
and others; in this way they frequently made
sagacious observations, but with them speculative
philosophy quite disappears. One special
characteristic of these Scottish philosophers
is that they have sought accurately to define
the principle of knowledge; but on the whole
they start from the same point as that which
was in Germany likewise accepted as the principle.
That is to say they represented the so-called
healthy reason, or common-sense (sensus communis),
as the ground of truth. The following are
the principal members of this school, each
of whom has some special feature distinguishing
him from the rest.
CLICK HEGEL
ICON BELOW TO GO TO NEXT PAGE
|
Evans Experientialism 
