Part 13 (1/2)
Nevertheless, this judgment of the taste does not arise from conceptions; its universal validity is therefore purely subjective. I do not judge that all the objects of a species are beautiful, but only that a certain specific object will appear beautiful to every beholder. All the judgments of taste are individual judgments. (_c_) In respect of relation, that is beautiful in which we find the form of design, without representing to ourselves any specific design. (_d_) In respect of modality, that is beautiful which is recognized without a conception, as the object of a necessary satisfaction. Of every representation, it is at least possible, that it may awaken pleasure. The representation of the agreeable awakens actual pleasure. The representation of the beautiful, on the other hand, awakens pleasure necessarily. The necessity which is conceived in an aesthetic judgment, is a necessity for determining every thing by a judgment, which can be viewed as an example of a universal rule, though the rule itself cannot be stated. The subjective principle which lies at the basis of the judgment of taste, is therefore a common sense, which determines what is pleasing, and what displeasing, only through feeling, and not through conception.
The _sublime_ is that which is absolutely, or beyond all comparison, great, compared with which every thing else is small. But now in nature there is nothing which has no greater. The absolutely great is only the infinite, and the infinite is only to be met with in ourselves, as idea.
The sublime, therefore, is not properly found in nature, but is only carried over to nature from our own minds. We call that sublime in nature, which awakens within us the idea of the infinite. As in the beautiful there is prominent reference to quality, so, in the sublime, the most important element of all, is quant.i.ty; and this quant.i.ty is either greatness of extension (the mathematically sublime), or greatness of power (the dynamically sublime). In the sublime there is a greater satisfaction in the formless, than in the form. The sublime excites a vigorous movement of the heart, and awakens pleasure only through pain, _i. e._ through the feeling that the energies of life are for the moment restrained. The satisfaction in the sublime is hence not so much a positive pleasure, but rather an amazement and awe, which may be called a negative pleasure. The elements for an aesthetic judgment of the sublime are the same as in the feeling of the beautiful. (_a_) In respect of quant.i.ty, that is sublime which is absolutely great, in comparison with which every thing else is small. The aesthetic estimate of greatness does not lie, however, in numeration, but in the simple intuition of the subject. The greatness of an object of nature, which the imagination attempts in vain to comprehend, leads to a supersensible substratum, which is great beyond all the measures of the sense, and which has reference properly to the feeling of the sublime. It is not the object itself, as the surging sea, which is sublime, but rather the subject's frame of mind, in the estimation of this object. (_b_) In respect of quality, the sublime does not awaken pure pleasure, like the beautiful, but first pain, and through this, pleasure. The feeling of the insufficiency of our imagination, in the aesthetic estimate of greatness, gives rise to pain; but, on the other side, the consciousness of our independent reason, for which the faculty of imagination is inadequate, awakens pleasure. In this respect, therefore, that is sublime which immediately pleases us, through its opposition to the interest of the sense. (_c_) In respect of relation, the sublime suffers nature to appear as a power, indeed, but in reference to which, we have the consciousness of superiority. (_d_) In respect of modality, the judgments concerning the sublime are as necessarily valid, as those for the beautiful; only with this difference, that our judgment of the sublime finds an entrance to some minds, with greater difficulty than our judgment of the beautiful, since to perceive the sublime, culture, and developed moral ideas, are necessary.
(2.) _Dialectic._-A dialectic of the aesthetic faculty of judgment, like every dialectic, is only possible where we can meet with judgments which lay claim to universality apriori. For dialectics consists in the opposition of such judgments. The antinomy of the principles of taste rests upon the two opposite elements of the judgment of taste, that it is purely subjective, and at the same time, lays claim to universal validity. Hence, the two common-place sayings: ”there is no disputing about taste,” and ”there is a contest of taste.” From these, we have the following antinomy. (_a_) Thesis: the judgment of taste cannot be grounded on conception, else might we dispute it. (_b_) Ant.i.thesis: the judgment of taste must be grounded on conception, else, notwithstanding its diversity, there could be no contest respecting it.-This antinomy, says Kant, is, however, only an apparent one, and disappears as soon as the two propositions are more accurately apprehended. The thesis should be: the judgment of taste is not grounded upon a definite conception, and is not strictly demonstrable; the ant.i.thesis should be: this judgment is grounded upon a conception, though an indefinite one, viz., upon the conception of a supersensible substratum for the phenomenal.
Thus apprehended, there is no longer any contradiction between the two propositions.
In the conclusion of the aesthetic faculty of judgment, we can now answer the question, whether the fitness of things to our faculty of judgment (their beauty and sublimity), lies in the things themselves, or in us?
The aesthetic realism claims that the supreme cause of nature designed to produce things which should affect our imagination, as beautiful and sublime, and the organic forms of nature strongly support this view. But on the other band, nature exhibits even in her merely mechanical forms, such a tendency to the beautiful, that we might believe that she could produce also the most beautiful organic forms through mechanism alone; and that thus the design would lie not in nature, but in our soul. This is the standpoint of idealism, upon which it becomes explicable how we can determine any thing apriori concerning beauty and sublimity. But the highest view of the aesthetical, is to use it as a symbol of the moral good. Thus Kant makes the theory of taste, like religion, to be a corollary of morality.
2. CRITICK OF THE TELEOLOGICAL FACULTY OF JUDGMENT.-In the foregoing, we have considered the subjective aesthetical design in the objects of nature. But the objects of nature have also a relation of design to each other. The teleological faculty of judgment has also to consider this faculty of design.
(1.) _a.n.a.lytic of the Teleological Faculty of Judgment._-The a.n.a.lytic has to determine the kinds of objective design. Objective, material design, is of two kinds, external, and internal. The external design is only relative, since it simply indicates a usefulness of one thing for another. Sand, for instance, which borders the sea sh.o.r.e, is of use in bearing pine forests. In order that animals can live upon the earth, the earth must produce nourishment for them, etc. These examples of external design, show that here the design never belongs to the means in itself, but only accidentally. We should never get a conception of the sand by saying that it is a means for pine forests; it is conceivable for itself, without any reference to the conception of design. The earth does not produce nourishment, because it is necessary that men should dwell upon it. In brief, this external or relative design may be conceived from the mechanism of nature alone. Not so the inner design of nature, which shows itself prominently in the organic products of nature. In an organic product of nature, every one of its parts is end, and every one, means or instrument. In the process of generation, the natural product appears as species, in growth it appears as individual, and in the process of complete formation, every part of the individual shows itself. This natural organism cannot be explained from mechanical causes, but only through final causes, or teleologically.
(2.) _Dialectic._-The dialectic of the teleological faculty of judgment, has to adjust this opposition between this mechanism of nature and teleology. On the one side we have the thesis: every production of material things must be judged as possible, according to simple mechanical laws. On the other side we have the ant.i.thesis: certain products of material nature cannot be judged as possible, according to simple mechanical laws, but demand the conception of design for their explanation. If these two maxims are posited as const.i.tutive (objective) principles for the possibility of the objects themselves, then do they contradict each other, but as simply regulative (subjective) principles for the investigation of nature, they are not contradictory. Earlier systems treated the conception of design in nature dogmatically, and either affirmed or denied its essential existence in nature. But we, convinced that teleology is only a regulative principle, have nothing to do with the question whether an inner design belongs essentially to nature or not, but we only affirm that our faculty of judgment must look upon nature as designed. We envisage the conception of design in nature, but leave it wholly undecided whether to another understanding, which does not think discursively like ours, nature may not be understood, without at all needing to bring in this conception of design. Our understanding thinks discursively: it proceeds from the parts, and comprehends the whole as the product of its parts; it cannot, therefore, conceive the organic products of nature, where the whole is the ground and the prius of the parts, except from the point of view of the conception of design. If there were, on the other hand, an intuitive understanding, which could know the particular and the parts as co-determined in the universal and the whole; such an understanding might conceive the whole of nature out of one principle, and would not need the conception of end.
If Kant had thoroughly carried out this conception of an intuitive understanding as well as the conception of an immanent design in nature, he would have overcome, in principle, the standpoint of subjective idealism, which he made numerous attempts, in his critick of the faculty of judgment, to break through; but these ideas he only propounded, and left them to be positively carried out by his successors.
SECTION x.x.xIX.
TRANSITION TO THE POST-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.
The Kantian philosophy soon gained in Germany an almost undisputed rule.
The imposing boldness of its standpoint, the novelty of its results, the applicability of its principles, the moral severity of its view of the world, and above all, the spirit of freedom and moral autonomy which appeared in it, and which was so directly counter to the efforts of that age, gained for it an a.s.sent as enthusiastic as it was extended. It aroused among all cultivated cla.s.ses a wider interest and partic.i.p.ation in philosophic pursuits, than had ever appeared in an equal degree among any people. In a short time it had drawn to itself a very numerous school: there were soon few German universities in which it had not had its talented representatives, while in every department of science and literature, especially in theology (it is the parent of theological rationalism), and in natural rights, as also in belles-lettres (_Schiller_), it began to exert its influence. Yet most of the writers who appeared in the Kantian school, confined themselves to an exposition or popular application of the doctrine as Kant had given it, and even the most talented and independent among the defenders and improvers of the critical philosophy (_e. g. Reinhold_, 1758-1823; _Bardili_, 1761-1808; _Schulze_, _Beck_, _Fries_, _Krug_, _Bouterweck_), only attempted to give a firmer basis to the Kantian philosophy as they had received it, to obviate some of its wants and deficiencies, and to carry out the standpoint of transcendental idealism more purely and consistently. Among those who carried out the Kantian philosophy, only two men, _Fichte_ and _Herbart_, can be named, who made by their actual advance an epoch in philosophy; and among its opposers (_e. g. Hamann_, _Herder_), only one, _Jacobi_, is of philosophic importance. These three philosophers are hence the first objects for us to consider. In order to a more accurate development of their principles, we preface a brief and general characteristic of their relation to the Kantian philosophy.
1. Dogmatism had been critically annihilated by Kant; his Critick of pure Reason had for its result the theoretical indemonstrableness of the three ideas of the reason, G.o.d, freedom, and immortality. True, these ideas which, from the standpoint of theoretical knowledge, had been thrust out, Kant had introduced again as postulates of the practical reason; but as postulates, as only practical premises, they possess no theoretic certainty, and remain exposed to doubt. In order to do away with this uncertainty, and this despairing of knowledge which had seemed to be the end of the Kantian philosophy, _Jacobi_, a younger cotemporary of Kant, placed himself upon the standpoint of the faith philosophy in opposition to the standpoint of criticism. Though these highest ideas of the reason, the eternal and the divine, cannot be reached and proved by means of demonstration, yet is it the very essence of the divine that it is indemonstrable and unattainable for the understanding. In order to be certain of the highest, of that which lies beyond the understanding, there is only one organ, viz., feeling. In feeling, therefore, in immediate knowledge, in faith, Jacobi thought he had found that certainty which Kant had sought in vain on the basis of discursive thinking.
2. While Jacobi stood in an ant.i.thetic relation to the Kantian philosophy, _Fichte_ appears as its immediate consequence. Fichte carried out to its consequence the Kantian dualism, according to which the Ego, as theoretic, is subjected to the external world, while as practical, it is its master, or, in other words, according to which the Ego stands related to the objective world, now receptively and again spontaneously. He allowed the reason to be exclusively practical, as will alone, and spontaneity alone, and apprehended its theoretical and receptive relation to the objective world as only a circ.u.mscribed activity, as a limitation prescribed to itself by the reason. But for the reason, so far as it is practical, there is nothing objective except as it is produced. The will knows no being but only an ought. Hence the objective being of truth is universally denied, and the thing which is essentially unknown must fall away of itself as an empty shadow. ”Every thing which is, is the Ego,” is the principle of the Fichtian system, and represents at the same time the subjective idealism in its consequence and completion.
3. While the subjective idealism of Fichte was carried out in the objective idealism of Sch.e.l.ling, and the absolute idealism of Hegel, there arose cotemporaneously with these systems a third offshoot of the Kantian criticism, viz., the philosophy of _Herbart_. It had its subjective origin in the Kantian philosophy, but its objective and historic connection with Kant is slight. It breaks up all historic continuity, and holds an isolated position in the history of philosophy.
Its general basis is Kantian, in so far as it makes for its problem a critical investigation of the subjective experience. We place it between Fichte and Sch.e.l.ling.
SECTION XL.
JACOBI.
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi was born at Dusseldorf in 1743. His father destined him for a merchant. After he had studied in Geneva and become interested in philosophy, he entered his father's mercantile establishment, but afterwards abandoned this business, having been made chancellor of the exchequer and customs commissioner for Cleves and Berg, and also privy councillor at Dusseldorf. In this city, or at his neighboring estate of Pempelfort, he spent a great part of his life devoted to philosophy and his friends. In the year 1804 he was called to the newly-formed Academy of Sciences in Munich. In 1807 he was chosen president of this inst.i.tution, a post which he filled till his death in 1819. Jacobi had a rich intellect and an amiable character. Besides being a philosopher, he was also a poet and citizen of the world; and hence we find in his philosophizing an absence of strict logical arrangement and precise expression of thought. His writings are no systematic whole, but are occasional treatises written ”rhapsodically and in gra.s.shopper gait,” for the most part in the form of letters, dialogues, and romances. ”It was never my purpose,” he says himself, ”to set up a system for the schools. My writings have sprung from my innermost life, and were the result of that which had taken place within me. In a certain sense I did not make them voluntarily, but they were drawn out of me by a higher power irresistible to myself.” This want of an inner principle of cla.s.sification and of a systematic arrangement, renders a development of Jacobi's philosophy not easy. It may best be represented under the following three points of view:-1. Jacobi's polemic against mediate knowledge. 2. His principle of immediate knowledge. 3. His relation to the cotemporaneous philosophy, especially to the Kantian criticism.
1. Spinoza was the negative starting point of Jacobi's philosophizing.
In his work ”_On the Doctrine of Spinoza, in letters to Moses Mendelssohn_” (1785), he directed public attention again to the almost wholly forgotten philosophy of Spinoza. The correspondence originated thus: Jacobi made the discovery that Lessing was a Spinozist, and announces this to Mendelssohn. The latter will not believe it, and thence grew the farther historical and philosophical examination. The positive philosophic views which Jacobi exhibits in this treatise can be reduced to the following three principles: (1) Spinozism is fatalism and atheism. (2) Every path of philosophic demonstration leads to fatalism and atheism. (3) In order that we may not fall into these, we must set a limit to demonstrating, and recognize faith as the element of all metaphysic knowledge.
(1.) Spinozism is atheism, because, according to it, the cause of the world is no person-is no being working for an end, and endowed with reason and will-and hence is no G.o.d. It is fatalism, for, according to it, the human will regards itself only falsely as free.
(2.) This atheism and fatalism is, however, only the necessary consequence of all strictly demonstrative philosophizing. To conceive a thing, says Jacobi, is to refer a thing to its nearest cause; it is to find a possible for an actual, the condition for a conditioned, the mediation for an immediate. We conceive only that which we can explain out of another. Hence our conceiving moves in a chain of conditioned conditions, and this connection forms a mechanism of nature, in whose investigation our understanding has its immeasurable field. However far we may carry conception and demonstration, we must hold, in reference to every object, to a still higher one which conditions it; where this chain of the conditioned ceases, there do conception and demonstration also cease; till we give up demonstrating we can reach no infinite. If philosophy determines to apprehend the infinite with the finite understanding, then must it bring down the divine to the finite; and here is where every preceding philosophy has been entangled, while it is obviously an absurd undertaking to attempt to discover the conditions of the unconditioned, and make the absolutely necessary a possible, in order that we may be able to construct it. A G.o.d who could be proved is no G.o.d, for the ground of proof is ever above that which is to be proved; the latter has its whole reality from the former. If the existence of G.o.d should be proved, then G.o.d would be derived from a ground which were before and above him. Hence the paradox of Jacobi; it is for the interest of science that there be no G.o.d, no supernatural and no extra or supramundane being. Only upon the condition that nature alone is, and is therefore independent and all in all, can science hope to gain its goal of perfection, and become, like its object itself, all in all. Hence the result which Jacobi derives from the ”Drama of the history of philosophy” is this:-”There is no other philosophy than that of Spinoza. He who considers all the works and acts of men to be the effect of natural mechanism, and who believes that intelligence is but an accompanying consciousness, which has only to act the part of a looker-on, cannot be contended with and cannot be helped till we set him free from his philosophy. No philosophical conclusion can reach him, for what he denies cannot be philosophically proved, and what he proves cannot be philosophically denied.” Whence then is help to come? ”The understanding, taken by itself, is materialistic and irrational; it denies spirit and G.o.d. The reason taken by itself is idealistic, and has nothing to do with the understanding; it denies nature and makes itself G.o.d.”
(3.) Hence we must seek another way of knowing the supersensible, which is faith. Jacobi calls this flight from cognition through conception to faith, the _salto mortale_ of the human reason. Every certainty through a conception demands another certainty, but in faith we are led to an immediate certainty which needs no ground nor proof, and which is in fact absolutely exclusive of all proof. Such a confidence which does not arise from arguments, is called faith. We know the sensible as well as the supersensible only through faith. All human knowledge springs from revelation and faith.