SECTION XXXIX.. Transition to the Post-Kantian Philosophy.

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 assent as enthusiastic as it was extended. It aroused among all cultivated classes a wider interest and participation 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, God, 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 antithetic 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 circumscribed 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 Schelling, 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 Schelling.