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Section Three: Recent German Philosophy A.
Jacobi. In connection with Kant we must here
begin by speaking of Jacobi, whose philosophy
is contemporaneous with that of Kant; in
both of these the advance beyond the preceding
period is very evident. The result in the
two cases is much the same, although both
the starting point and the method of progression
are somewhat different. In Jacobi's case
the stimulus was given mainly by French philosophy,
with which he was very conversant, and also
by German metaphysics, while Kant began rather
from the English side, that is, from the
scepticism of Hume. Jacobi, in that negative
attitude which he preserved as well as Kant,
kept before him the objective aspect of the
method of knowledge, and specially considered
it, for he declared knowledge to be in its
content incapable of recognizing the Absolute:
the truth must be concrete, present, but
not finite. Kant does not consider the content,
but took the view of knowledge being subjective;
and for this reason he declared it to be
incapable of recognizing absolute existence.
To Kant knowledge is thus a knowledge of
phenomena only, not because the categories
are merely limited and finite, but because
they are subjective. To Jacobi, on the other
hand, the chief point is that the categories
are not merely subjective, but that they
themselves are conditioned. This is an essential
difference between the two points of view,
even if they both arrive at the same result.
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, born at Düsseldorf
in 1743, held office first in the Duchy of
Berg, and then in Bavaria. He studied in
Geneva and Paris, associating in the former
place with Bonnet and in the latter with
Diderot. Jacobi was a man of the highest
character and culture. He was long occupied
with State affairs, and in Düsseldorf he
held a public office which was connected
with the administration of the finance department
in the State. At the time of the French Revolution
he was obliged to retire. As a Bavarian official
he went to Munich, there became President
of the Academy of Sciences in 1804, which
office he, however, resigned in 1812; for
in the Napoleonic period Protestants were
decried as demagogues. He lived at Munich
till the end of his life, and died at the
same place on the 10th of March, 1819.(1)
In the year 1785, Jacobi published Letters
on Spinoza, which were written in 1783, on
the occasion of the dispute with Mendelssohn
above-mentioned (p. 406); for in none of
his writings did Jacobi develop his philosophy
systematically, he set it forth in letters
only. When Mendelssohn wished to write a
life of Lessing, Jacobi sent to ask him if
he knew that “Lessing was a Spinozist” (Jacobi's
Werke, Vol. IV. Sec. 1, pp. 39, 40). Mendelssohn
was displeased at this, and it was the occasion
of the correspondence. In the course of the
dispute it was made evident that those who
held themselves to be professed philosophers
and possessed of a monopoly of Lessing's
friendship, such as Nicolai, Mendelssohn,
&c., knew nothing about Spinozism; not
only was there manifested in them the superficial
character of their philosophic insight, but
ignorance as well; with Mendelssohn, for
instance, this was shown respecting even
the outward history of the Spinozistic philosophy,
and much more regarding the inward (Jacobi's
Werke, Vol. IV. Sec. 1, p. 91). That Jacobi
asserted Lessing to be a Spinozist, and gave
a high place to the French — this serious
statement came to these good men as a thunderbolt
from the blue. They — the self-satisfied,
self-possessed, superior persons — were quite
surprised that he also made pretensions to
knowledge, and of such a “dead dog” as Spinoza
(ibidem, p. 68). Explanations followed upon
this, in which Jacobi further developed his
philosophic views.
Mendelssohn is directly opposed to Jacobi,
for Mendelssohn took his stand on cognition,
placed true existence immediately in thought
and conception, and maintained: “What I cannot
think as true does not trouble me as doubt.
A question which I do not understand, I cannot
answer, it is for me as good as no question
at all."(2) He continued to argue on
these same lines. His proof of the existence
of God thus carries with it this necessity
of thought, viz. that actuality must plainly
be in thought, and a thinker must be pre-supposed,
or the possibility of the actual is in the
thinker. “What no thinking Being conceives
as possible is not possible, and what is
thought by no thinking creature as actual
cannot be actual in fact. If we take away
from anything whatsoever the conception formed
by a thinking Being that that thing is possible
or actual, the thing itself is done away
with.” The Notion of the thing is thus to
man the essence of the same. “No finite Being
can think the actuality of a thing in its
perfection as actual, and still less can
he perceive the possibility and actuality
of all present things. There must thus be
a thinking Being or an understanding which
in the most perfect way thinks the content
of all possibilities as possible, and the
content of all actualities as actual; i.
e. there must be an infinite understanding,
and this is God."(3) Here on the one
hand we see a unity of thought and Being,
on the other the absolute unity as infinite
understanding — the former is the self-consciousness
which is apprehended as finite merely. Actuality,
Being, has its possibility in thought, or
its possibility is thought; it is not a process
from possibility to actuality, for the possibility
remains at home in the actuality.
Jacobi maintains against these demands of
thought — and this in one view is the chief
thought in his philosophy — that every method
of their demonstration leads to fatalism,
atheism, and Spinozism,(4) and presents God
as derived and founded upon something else;
for comprehending Him signifies demonstrating
His dependence. Jacobi thus asserts that
mediate knowledge consists in giving a cause
of something which has in its turn a finite
effect, and so on; so that a knowledge such
as this can all through relate to the finite
only.
Jacobi further states upon this subject,
in the first place, that "Reason"
— later on when he distinguished reason and
understanding (of which more hereafter(5)),
he altered it to understanding(6) - "can
never bring to light more than the conditions
of what is conditioned, natural laws and
mechanism. We comprehend a thing when we
can deduce it from its proximate causes,”
and not from the remoter causes; the most
remote and quite universal cause is always
God. “Or” we know the thing if we “perceive
its immediate conditions as they come in
due succession. Thus, for instance, we comprehend
a circle when we can clearly represent to
ourselves the mechanism of its origination
or its physical conditions; we know the syllogistic
formulæ when we have actually come to know
the laws to which the human understanding
is subject in judgment and conclusion, its
physical nature and its mechanism. For this
reason we have no conceptions of qualities
as such, but only intuitions. Even of our
present existence we have a feeling only,
but no conceptions. Genuine conceptions we
have merely of figure, number, position,
movement and the forms of thought; qualities
are known and understood, if they are traced
back to these and objectively annulled.”
This is undoubtedly really finite knowledge,
which is to give the determinate conditions
of anything determinate, to demonstrate it
as resulting from another cause, in such
a way that each condition is again conditioned
and finite. Jacobi continues: “The business
of reason is really progressive union and
connection, and its speculative business
is union and connection in accordance with
the known laws of necessity, i. e. of identity.
Everything that reason can bring forth by
means of analysis, combination, judgment,
conclusion, and re-conception, consists in
nothing but things of nature” (i. e. finite
things), “and reason itself, as a limited
existence, belongs to these things. But the
whole of nature, the sum of all conditioned
existence, cannot reveal more to the investigating
understanding than what is contained in it,
namely, manifold existence, changes, a succession
of forms” (the conditioned), “and not an
actual beginning” (of the world), “nor a
real principle of any objective existence."(7)
But Jacobi in the second place here accepts
reason in a wider sense and says: “If we
understand by reason the principle of knowledge
generally, it is the mind from which the
whole living nature of man is constituted;
through it man arises; he is a form which
it has adopted.” With this Jacobi's view
of the attempt to know the unconditioned
is connected. “I take the whole human being
and find that his consciousness is composed
of two original conceptions, the conceptions
of the conditioned and the unconditioned.
Both are inseparably bound up with one another,
and yet in such a way that the conception
of the conditioned presupposes the conception
of the unconditioned, and can be given in
this alone. We are just as certain of its
existence as we are of our own conditioned
existence, or even more so. Since our conditioned
existence rests on an infinitude of mediations,
there is opened up to our investigation a
vast field which, for the sake of our preservation
even, we are forced to work upon.” It would,
however, be quite another thing to wish to
know the unconditioned apart from this practical
end. However Jacobi here remarks, “To try
to discover the conditions of the unconditioned,
to find a possibility for absolute necessity,
and to construct this last in order to be
able to comprehend it, is what we undertake
when we endeavour to make nature an existence
comprehensible to us, i. e. a merely natural
existence, and to bring the mechanism of
the principle of mechanism into the light
of day. For if everything which can be said
to arise and be present in a way comprehensible
to us, must arise and be present in a conditioned
way, we remain, so long as we continue to
comprehend, in a chain of conditioned conditions.
Where this chain breaks off, we cease to
comprehend, and there the connection which
we call nature likewise ceases. The conception
of the possibility of the outward existence
of nature would thus be the conception of
an absolute beginning or origin of nature;
it would be the conception of the unconditioned
itself in so far as it is a conditioning
of nature not naturally connected, i. e.
a conditioning of nature unconnected and
unconditioned for us. Now should a conception
of what is thus unconditioned and unconnected,
and consequently supernatural, be possible,
the unconditioned must cease to be unconditioned,
it must itself receive conditions; and absolute
necessity must commence to be possibility
in order that it may allow itself to be constructed."(8)
This is contradictory.
Jacobi then passes on from this point to
the second of his main propositions, “The
unconditioned is called the supernatural.
Now since everything which lies outside the
connection of what is conditioned, of what
is naturally mediated, also lies outside
the sphere of our clear and certain knowledge,
and cannot be understood through conceptions,
the supernatural cannot be accepted in any
other way by us than that in which it is
given to us — namely as a fact. It is! This
supernatural, this essence of all essence,
all tongues join in proclaiming to be God."(9)
God as the universal, the true, is here taken
in the sense of a spiritual generally, in
the sense of power, wisdom, &c. That
God is, however, is to Jacobi not absolutely
true; for to knowledge pertains His objective
absolute existence, but He cannot be said
to be known. It is thus merely a fact of
my consciousness that God exists independently
apart from my consciousness; this, however,
is itself maintained through my consciousness;
the subjective attitude of thought is thus
to Jacobi the element of most importance.
The consciousness of God, which is in our
consciousness, is, however, of such a nature
that along with the thought of God we have
immediately associated the fact that He is.
The existence of the supernatural and super-sensuous,
to which the thought of man regarding the
natural and finite passes on, is just as
certain to Jacobi as he is himself. This
certainty is identical with his self-consciousness;
as certainly as I am, so certainly is God
(Jacobi's Werke, Vol. III. p. 35). Since
he thus passes back into self-consciousness,
the unconditioned is only for us in an immediate
way; this immediate knowledge Jacobi calls
Faith, inward revelation (Werke, Vol. II.
pp. 3, 4); to this appeal can be made in
man. God, the absolute, the unconditioned,
cannot, according, to Jacobi, be proved.
For proof, comprehension, means to discover
conditions for something, to derive it from
conditions; but a derived absolute, God,
&c., would thus not be absolute at all,
would not be unconditioned, would not be
God (Jacobi's Werke, Vol. III. p. 7). This
immediate knowledge of God is then the point
which is maintained in the philosophy of
Jacobi. The faith of Kant and of Jacobi are,
however, different. To Kant it is a postulate
of reason, it is the demand for the solution
of the contradiction between the world and
goodness; to Jacobi it is represented on
its immediate knowledge.
Everything which has been written upon God
since Jacobi's time, by philosophers such
as Fries and by theologians, rests on this
conception of immediate intellectual knowledge,
and men even call this revelation, though
in another sense than the revelation of theology.
Revelation as immediate knowledge is in ourselves,
while the Church holds revelation to be something
imparted from without.(10) In the theological
sense, faith is faith in something which
is given to us through teaching. It is a
sort of deception when faith and revelation
are spoken of and represented as if faith
and revelation in the theological sense were
here in question; for the sense in which
they are used, and which may be termed philosophic,
is quite a different one, however pious an
air may be assumed in using the terms. This
is Jacobi's standpoint, and whatever is by
philosophers and theologians said against
it, this teaching is eagerly accepted and
disseminated. And nowhere is there anything
to be found but reflections originating from
Jacobi, whereby immediate knowledge is opposed
to philosophic knowledge and to reason; and
people speak of reason, philosophy, &c.,
as a blind man speaks of colours. It is,
indeed, allowed that a man cannot make shoes
unless he is a shoemaker, even although he
have the measure and foot, and also the hands.
But when Philosophy is concerned, immediate
knowledge signifies that every man as he
walks and stand is a philosopher, that he
can dogmatize as he chooses, and that he
is completely acquainted with Philosophy.
By reason, however, mediate knowledge merely
is on the one hand understood, and on the
other the intellectual perception which speaks
of facts (supra, pp. 413-415). In this respect
it is true that reason is the knowledge and
revelation of absolute truth, since the understanding
is the revelation of the finite (Jacobi's
Werke, Vol. II. pp. 8-14,
101). “We maintained that two different powers
of perception in man have to be accepted:
a power of perception through visible and
tangible and consequently corporeal organs
of perception, and another kind of power,
viz. through an invisible organ which in
no way represents itself to the outward senses,
and whose existence is made known to us through
feeling alone. This organ, a spiritual eye
for spiritual objects, has been called by
men — generally speaking — reason. He whom
the pure feelings of the beautiful and good,
of admiration and love, of respect and awe,
do not convince that in and with these feelings
he perceives something to be present which
is independent of them, and which is unattainable
by the outward senses or by an understanding
directed upon their perceptions alone — such
an one cannot be argued with” (Jacobi's Werke,
Vol. II. pp. 74, 76). But by faith Jacobi
likewise understands all that has immediacy
of Being for me: “Through faith we know that
we have a body, we become aware of other
actual things, and that indeed with the same
certainty with which we are aware of ourselves.
We obtain all conceptions through the qualities
which we receive and accept, and there is
no other way of attaining real knowledge;
for reason, when it begets objects, begets
phantoms of the brain. Thus we have a revelation
of nature."(11) Hence the expression
faith, which had a deep significance in religion,
is made use of for different contents of
every kind; this in our own time is the point
of view most commonly adopted.
Jacobi here brings faith into opposition
with thought. Let us compare the two, and
discover whether they are separated by so
great a chasm as those who thus oppose them
think. On the one hand absolute existence
is to faith immediate; believing consciousness
feels itself penetrated by this as by its
essence: that existence is its life, believing
consciousness asserts itself to be in direct
unity with it. Thought thinks the absolute
existence; such existence is to it absolute
thought, absolute understanding, pure thought;
but that signifies that it is likewise immediate
itself. On the other hand to faith the immediacy
of absolute existence has also the significance
of a Being: it is, and is another than 'I.'
And the same is true of the thinker; to him
it is absolute Being, actual in itself, and
different from self-consciousness or thought
as finite understanding, to use the common
term. Now what is the reason that faith and
thought do not understand one another, and
each recognize itself in the other? In the
first place faith has no consciousness of
being a thought, inasmuch as it asserts absolute
consciousness to be identical with it as
self-consciousness, and has direct inward
knowledge of the same. But it expresses this
simple unity; in its consciousness it is
only immediacy so to speak in the signification
of Being, a unity of its unconscious substance.
In the second place Being-for-self is contained
in thought; to this faith opposes the immediacy
of Being. Thought, on the contrary, has the
immediate as absolute potentiality, as absolutely
a thing of thought: and the immediacy belonging
to this thing of thought is without the determination
of Being, of life. On the heights of this
abstraction the two stand opposed to each
other, as the Aufklärung which asserts absolute
existence to be a Beyond of self-consciousness,
and as the materialism which makes it so
to speak present matter (supra, pp. 382,
383). In the one case it is in faith and
thought as positive existence or thought,
and in the other it is the negative of self-consciousness,
which is thus either only determined as negative,
as a Beyond, or likewise as existent for
self-consciousness. Hence faith and thought
are both of them knowledge. We call universal
knowledge thought, particular knowledge we
call sensuous perception; and we term the
introduction of external determinations understanding.
The universal element in man is thought,
but to it likewise appertains religious feeling
for instance; the animal does not possess
it, for it has no human feeling; and in so
far as this feeling is religious, it is the
feeling of a thinker, and what determines
this feeling is not the determination of
natural desire, &c., but a universal
determination. Thus God, even though He is
only felt and believed in, is yet the universal
taken quite abstractly — even in His personality
He is the absolutely universal personality.
As thought and faith are thus one, the same
is true of the antithesis between mediated
and immediate knowledge. We must, it is true,
keep before our eyes the fact that what is
revealed in immediate knowledge is the universal.
But abstract immediate knowledge is natural,
sensuous knowledge; the immediate man in
his natural condition, in his desires, does
not know this universal. Children, the Esquimaux,
&c., know nothing of God; or what the
natural man knows of Him is not a real knowledge
of Him. Thus the intuitive knowledge of the
Egyptians told them that God was an ox or
a cat, and the Indians still possess similar
sorts of knowledge. On the other hand when
man has come so far as to know God as merely
an object of the mind, i. e. as spiritual,
it is easy to perceive that this knowledge
which is asserted to be immediate is really
a result mediated through instruction, through
a long continued culture. It is only by means
of being elevated above nature that man arrives
at a consciousness of what is higher, and
at a knowledge of the universal; there indeed
his knowledge is immediate, but he has only
arrived at this through mediation. I think,
and thus I know the universal immediately,
but this very thought is just process in
itself, movement and life. All life is process
within itself, is mediated, and this is all
the more true of spiritual life; for it is
the passing from one to the other, that is,
from the merely natural and sensuous to the
spiritual. It thus indicates a deficiency
in the most simple reflection not to know
that the universal is not in immediate knowledge,
but is a result of the culture, the education,
and the self-revelation of the human race.
If immediate knowledge is to be allowed,
everyone will be responsible merely to himself:
this man knows this, another that, and consequently
everything is justified and approved, however
contrary to right and religion. This opposition
between immediacy and mediacy is thus a very
barren and quite empty determination; it
is a platitude of the extremest type to consider
anything like this to be a true opposition;
it proceeds from a most wooden understanding,
which thinks that an immediacy can be something
on its own account, without a mediation within
itself. If Philosophy were to result in this
it would be a poor affair; these determinations
are merely forms, none of which has intrinsic
truth. The form into which Philosophy has
in Jacobi's case finally fallen, which is
that immediacy is grasped as absolute, manifests
a lack of all critical faculty, of all logic.
The Kantian philosophy is critical philosophy,
but from it the fact has been omitted that
we cannot constitute the infinite with finite
categories — and immediacy is such an one.
When we regard this opposition more closely
all knowledge may be termed immediate, but
all immediate knowledge is likewise mediated
in itself. This we know within our consciousness,
and we may see it in the most general phenomena.
I know, for example, of America immediately,
and yet this knowledge is very much mediated.
If I stand in America and see its soil, I
must first of all have journeyed to it, Columbus
must first have discovered it, ships must
have been built, &c.; all these discoveries
and inventions pertain to it. That which
we now know immediately is consequently a
result of infinitely many mediations. Likewise
when I see a right-angled triangle I know
that the squares of the two sides are equal
to the square of the hypotenuse: I know this
immediately, and yet I have merely learned
it and am convinced of it through the mediation
of proof. Immediate knowledge is thus everywhere
mediated, and Philosophy does nothing but
bring this to consciousness — demonstrating
the mediation which in point of fact is already
present there, e. g. in religion, &c.
The philosophy of Jacobi, inasmuch
as it
says: “Thought cannot proceed further
than
to the feeling of God,” has been accepted
utiliter; it was more easily arrived
at than
in the case of Kant. Knowledge, however,
is something very different from what
Jacobi
calls such; against finite knowledge
his
arguments are quite correct. Immediate
knowledge
is not knowledge, comprehension, for
that
implies that the content is determined
in
itself, i. e. is grasped as concrete.
But
in immediate knowledge it is the case
that
the only fact known of God is that
He exists.
For should there be determinations
respecting
God, they must, according to Jacobi,
be grasped
as a finite, and the knowledge of them
would
again merely be a progression from
finite
to finite. There thus remains only
the indeterminate
conception of God, an “Above me,” an
indeterminate
Beyond. This gives accordingly the
same result
as does the Aufklärung, viz. that the
highest
reality is ultimate: we find the same
in
French philosophy and in Kant — only
here
we still have the opinion that this
emptiness
is the highest philosophy possible.
But if
each standpoint has an aspect wherein
it
is justified, there always rests in
the proposition
that the human mind knows God immediately,
the important consideration that we
have
here a recognition of the freedom of
the
human spirit: in it we have the source
of
the knowledge of God, and all externality
of authority is thus abrogated in this
principle.
The principle is hereby gained, but
only
the principle of freedom of spirit;
and the
greatness of our time rests in the
fact that
freedom, the peculiar possession of
mind
whereby it is at home with itself in
itself,
is recognized, and that mind has this
consciousness
within itself. This however is merely
abstract,
for the next step is that the principle
of
freedom is again purified and comes
to its
true objectivity, so that not everything
which strikes me or springs up within
me
must, because it is manifested in me,
hold
good its true. It is only through thought,
which casts off the particular and
accidental,
that the principle receives this objectivity
which is independent of mere subjectivity
and in and for itself — though in such
a
way that the freedom of mind still
remains
respected. One's own spirit must bear
witness
to spirit that God is Spirit; the content
must be true. But this does not give
authenticity
to itself by its being revealed with
certainty
to me. This is the standpoint, and
we have
thus seen its deficiency and the greatness
of the principle which is involved
in it.
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