of thought itself. So that exact science is not a mere description of empirical data a posteriori, but a determination of them in accordance with certain a priori principles. Critical idealists are divided in their interests in a manner corresponding to that difference between intellectualism and voluntarism which we shall consider below. Members of the so-called "Marburg School" have emphasized the logical presuppositions of mathematics and physics.1 Natorp, for example, asserts that the nature of mathematical and physical truth can be understood only by showing that its special principles, such as 'number,' 'infinity,' 'space,' 'energy,' etc., are related to purely logical principles, such as 'quantity,' 'quality,' 'relation,' and 'modality' ("die logischen Grundfunktionen "), which in turn develop from the principle of synthetic unity, which is the original act of knowledge ("Grundakt der Erkenntnis"). Or, the principles by which the several sciences think their special objects may be traced back to the general principles by which anything assumes the form of object of thought (Gegenstand). The form of the exact sciences is thus linked with the form of thought in general, which is incontrovertible, since any attempt to dispute it must presuppose it. A second school of critical idealists emphasizes the foundations of the moral sciences. The critical philosophy 3 1 The founder of this school is H. Cohen; cf. his Logik der reinen Erkenntniss (1902). The reader will find the doctrines of this school presented somewhat more clearly in Paul Natorp's Die logischen Grundlagen der exakten Wissenschaften, and in Ernst Cassirer's Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff. The writers of this school are by no means exclusively occupied with mathematical and physical science; cf. Cohen: Die Ethik des reinen Willens. 2 Natorp: op. cit., pp. 10-11, 44-52. The Freiburg School (or "die südwestdeutsche Schule") is represented by Wilhelm Windelband's Präludien; Heinrich Rickert's Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis; and H. Münsterberg's Philosophie der Werte, and Eternal Values. The writers of this school deal also with mathematical and physical science (cf. Rickert's Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung. They tend also to be more metaphysical than the Marburg School, and to merge into voluntaristic or ethical idealism. Cf. below, pp. 150-152. of value is to rescue ethics, æsthetics, history, and religion from a merely descriptive empiricism, and establish them upon a logic of the normative or ideal. There is, it is to be observed, a virtual conflict between this and the Marburg School, inasmuch as this regards logic itself as a science of value, and truth as an ideal; whereas the other regards value as in the end a form of intellectual synthesis. The question of the relative priority of the 'is' and the 'ought' (the "Sein" and the "Sollen ") thus divides critical as well as metaphysical idealists into the opposing factions of intellectualism and voluntarism.1 The most interesting aspect of critical idealism is the interplay of its two motives, its criticism and its idealism. Its critical motive is most consistently expressed in its polemic against 'psychologism,' the Humian view which reduces experience to the particular mental states of the individual. 'Criticism' was born in Kant's proof that psychology presupposes physics and that both presuppose logic. Since Kant's time, every revival of Hume has been followed by a revival of this counter-thesis. The naturalistic movement in Germany in the latter half of the nineteenth century stimulated the counter-movement "back to Kant." And similarly the present revival of 'psychologism' among pragmatists and positivists has provided a new occasion for protest. Again we are reminded that logic cannot be dissolved into the stream of human life without self-contradiction, for every definition of life presupposes logic. When in this mood 'criticism' seems far removed from metaphysical idealism. It is simply the assertion of the absolute priority of logic, with no more regard for mind than for matter. "Without logical principles, which lay hold of the contents of every impression,' says Cassirer, "there is for it (critical idealism) no more 2 1 Cf. Natorp: op. cit., p. 51; Cohen: Ethik des reinen Willens, p. 79; and Rickert: op. cit., pp. 165–167. 2 Cf. F. A. Lange, O. Liebmann, and E. Zeller. Contemporary neo-Kantianism is linked with this earlier movement through Cohen. an I-consciousness than there is an object-consciousness. ... The thought of the I is in no way more original and logically simple than the thought of the object." 1 And yet the fact remains that there is a marked difference between critical idealists and certain other contemporary writers who also maintain the priority of logic, but who have no Kantian affiliations.2 The difference lies in the fact that while Kantians regard logic as the science of thought or knowledge ("Denken" or "Erkenntnis"), these writers regard it as a science of 'relations,' 'classes,' 'manifolds,' 'propositions,' 'propositional functions,' or other special entities, no more related to thought than are the numbers of the mathematician or the elements of the chemist. The peculiarity of these entities lies in their being so highly abstract as to be contained or implied in all other entities. They are necessary for thought only in that they are so ubiquitous that thought can deal with nothing without dealing with them. Now whether this practice among neo-Kantians of calling logical principles the 'acts' of synthetic unity, or the 'functions' of thought, or the 'presuppositions of knowledge,' or the 'conditions of objectivity,' is no more than an accident of emphasis and hereditary verbal usage, I shall not seek to determine. But of several conclusions we may be reasonably certain. In the first place, if the principles of logic are essentially inherent in thought or knowledge, and we are to accept the priority of logic over all other sciences, then an idealistic metaphysics is the only possible conclusion, if there is to be any metaphysics at all. The mind that owns the logical structure of reality must own reality outright. That the thought or knowl 1 Op. cit., p. 392. I refer to the "lay" logicians, beginning with Schroeder and Boole and represented most prominently today by Peano, Couturat, and Bertrand Russell. The reader will find Russell's Principles of Mathematics and Principia Mathematica the best source for this movement. • The best discussion of the matter from the idealistic side is to be found in Cassirer, op. cit., Chap. VII. edge in question is not the mental process of the finite individual does not affect this general conclusion in the least. It simply introduces a new conception of mind. The central idealistic thesis, that reality is dependent on some mind, is simply reaffirmed in a new sense. If, on the other hand, the principles of logic are not in any sense mental, then it is confusing and misleading to allude to them as the principles of thought or knowledge. And in either case, critical idealism is in unstable equilibrium. In so far as its logical motive is emphasized, it tends to become a special science like mathematics. In so far as its idealistic motive is emphasized, it tends, as it did in the systems of Kant's immediate successors, Fichte, Hegel, and the Romanticists, to assume the form of a metaphysics and philosophy of religion. The English school of idealists, beginning with Coleridge, and comprising T. H. Green, Edward Caird, F. H. Bradley and Josiah Royce among its more recent exponents, has from the outset offered a religious philosophy based on the supremacy of consciousness. And the latter-day German movement flows steadily from neo-Kantianism to a neo-Fichteanism, neo-Hegelianism, or neo-Romanticism, in which the critique of 'psychologism' is only a subordinate motive in the construction of a spiritualistic Weltanschauung. Metaphysical § 6. Objective Idealism in its metaphysical form has fluctuated between the two poles of intellectualism and voluntarism. Its central thesis, as we have seen, is the dependence of being on a knowing mind that transcends and envelops both the physical and the psychical orders. But this subject may be held to consist either in a process of thought governed by logical motives; or in a primary activity, expressing itself in thought, but governed primarily by ethical motives. For Hegel, the classic representative of intellectualistic idealism, mind, or spirit ("Geist") is a primordial dialectic or train of ideas; an "Absolute Idea," "externalizing" itself in nature and reaching self-consciousness through the historical development of culture. There have been two internal forces affecting the development of this version of idealism. In the first place, the categories themselves, the several ideas with their own relations of logical necessity, tend to replace and render unnecessary the unifying conception of mind. The Absolute Idea tends to assume the form of a self-sufficient system, like logic or mathematics. As a contemporary idealist complains, "the 'Absolute Idea' is, in its self-evolution, of all things most inane, because it figures as thought 'the impersonal life of thought,' as it has been termed - without a live Thinker."2 Thus intellectualistic idealism tends to develop into a bare rationalism or necessitarianism, that is really closer to mechanism, than to spiritualism in the ordinary moral and religious sense. So that in the so-called "left wing" of the Hegelian school, idealism passed very easily and naturally over into its opposite.3 In the second place, Hegel's account of the process of mind, his enumeration and arrangement of the categories, was soon shown to be inadequate. Science in its independent development refused to comply. The special categories of nature, and even of history, had to be accepted from the several sciences operating in these fields. As a result the history of intellectualistic idealism has been marked by the steady reduction of the strictly spiritual categories- the a priori principles of pure thought-to the scantiest and most formal terms. Indeed it is not far from the truth to say that it now recognizes only one such category, that of unity. This obtains diverse formulations, such as the Caird's "self-consistent and intelligible whole"; Green's "unalterable order of relations"; Bradley's "Indi 1 Cf. Hegel's Encyklopädie (1816-1818), §§ 236-244, 381-382; trans. by W. Wallace, in his Logic of Hegel, and Hegel's Philosophy of Mind. 2 James Lindsay: Studies in European Philosophy, pp. 223-224. This movement was represented by A. L. Feuerbach, David Strauss, Karl Marx, and others. |