19th century philosophy
The philosophy of the 19th century ranges from romanticism and idealism as one of the high points of German philosophy, through the counter-movement of positivism, which was particularly strong in France and England, the materialism of Marx and Feuerbach and such strong individual thinkers as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard towards neo-Kantianism, pragmatism and the philosophy of life. It breaks down into so many different directions that it can no longer be described and summarized with a summarizing term of periods. After a general overview, the individual basic positions are dealt with separately in roughly their historical order. The classifications and their delimitations are in part arbitrary. The beginnings of analytical philosophy in Gottlob Frege are attributed to the 20th century.
overview
The philosophy of the 19th century is often described as a philosophy of Immanuel Kant called. Hardly any of the philosophers who followed him could avoid dealing with the work of Kant. At least in the first 50 years, attempts were made to improve Kant, to correct him or to go beyond him. From today's perspective, many of these endeavors can be described as a kind of relapse into the pre-Kantian camps, even if Kant's influences are generally noticeable. In the succession of rationalism are the romantics and idealists on the one hand . Hegel in particular tried to overcome the philosophy of reflection and to grasp the dialectic of being and becoming in the idea of the absolute. Idealism found an initial opposition in historicism , which refused to consider history from the perspective of a system and instead called for a scientifically methodical investigation of the unique in each case.
On the other hand, one can regard the positivists and materialists with a very strong scientific orientation as successors of empiricism . In doing so, they relied primarily on the advances in the natural sciences, which were often achieved in an explicit departure from idealistic natural philosophy. What task was left to philosophy? Arthur Schopenhauer , Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche , in particular, are considered independent thinkers, each of whom cannot easily be assigned to a general basic position. Their thinking positions arose from the supposed lack of orientation through philosophy, after all speculation had to fail at the limits of reason from their point of view and considerable upheavals in technology and society became apparent.
In the second half of the century, new positions emerged with psychologism, the humanities philosophy and the philosophy of life, which put more modern social or personality- related aspects in the foreground, but mostly show a great distance from Kant. Only Neo-Kantianism, which also fell into the second half of the century, tried on the one hand to meet the requirements of the (natural) sciences and on the other to take up and popularize Kant's work, but only rarely without updates, reinterpretations and "improvements". It can thus be stated that the reception of Kant at the end of the 20th century was much more involved with the original than it did in the hundred years after Kant.
In the 19th century, the further development of hermeneutics from Schleiermacher to Droysen to Dilthey as well as the newly emerging philosophy of values, which found its own form in Marx and Nietzsche and especially in the southwest German school of Neo-Kantianism, were also thematically significant attained. From today's point of view, apart from Marx, the greatest importance for the subsequent period was certainly the idealists headed by Hegel , as well as Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. Hegel in particular found an echo in the neo-Hegelianism of the late 19th century in England, the USA and Italy. In the 19th century, influenced by Charles S. Peirce and William James , pragmatism was the first independent American philosophical movement. As a counterweight to the positivist scientific orientation, the philosophy of life emerged at the turn of the century, stimulated by Nietzsche , which had its most prominent representative in Henri Bergson and found its points of contact both in the pragmatism of James and in existential philosophy. In summary, the phase of philosophy in the 19th century can be described as the preparation of the modern age .
romance
The romance is as a countermovement to-rational age of enlightenment to understand. With reason and science , feeling, the need for harmony and the longing for an ideal world are neglected. In addition to a keen interest in literature and music , romantics were therefore often strongly religiously oriented. Prominent representatives in poetry are Joseph von Eichendorff , Friedrich Hölderlin or ETA Hoffmann , as the painter Caspar David Friedrich , in music Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert . The nationalism grew; it was the time of the fraternities ; the Wartburg Festival became a symbol .
In philosophy, Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788) was actually a contemporary of Kant and thus of the Enlightenment, but as a declared critic of the philosophy of reason, a forerunner of Romanticism. For him, feeling and mind have an independent creative power, which is reflected in language as an independent source of knowledge and here in particular in poetry. Kierkegaard (see below) is considered a follower of Hamann. Initially an enthusiastic student of Kant, then because of negative criticism bitter opponent and at the same time Hamann's friend was the philosopher and theologian Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), who based his philosophical position very much on Spinoza and Leibniz , but then like Hamann also the language as Stressed basis of reason. The law of progress in history is determined by nature and its ascending hierarchical order. The development of things comes from God as the eternal and infinite root of all being. Even Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819) was in constant correspondence with Herder and had good contacts with Goethe . He became known, among other things, by claiming that Lessing had admitted to being a Spinozist after his death. At that time, however, Spinozism was to be equated with atheism for the public , just as all the philosophy of reason was suitable for the religious romantics to dissuade them from believing . For Jacobi, however, true philosophy began with mind and belief. Among other things, he published writings on Fichte and Schelling .
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) is considered a romantic classic . He divides his philosophical path into the phase of searching, the artistic and philosophical creative urge, the submission of reason to the truths of the (Catholic) Church and finally a mystical life of its own in faith. He too publishes on the philosophy of history and language. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) was a Protestant theologian and philosopher. For him, God was the absolute unity of the ideal and the real. God created the world but is not in the world. Therefore the ideal and the real in the world are opposites. Things depend on God, but God does not intervene in the world. That is why everyone is individually called to realize their own archetype. In ethics Schleiermacher combined the doctrine of goods, virtue and duty . The topmost duty is: Act at every moment with all moral strength and striving for the whole moral task. Schleiermacher is regarded as the forefather of hermeneutics as the philosophy of understanding , which as a separate method is different from the scientific method of explanation .
German idealism
German idealism is, as it were, an exaggeration of romantic ideas and is often still attributed to the period of romanticism (approx. 1790–1850), with neither Hegel nor Fichte being attributed to romanticism. They are so independent and exposed in their philosophical position that they should expressly have their own section in the history of philosophy . Characteristic for all three philosophers is the speculative system in which the ego, the absolute or the spirit determines the foundations of the world. The thing in itself is not recognizable as it was with Kant; rather, idealism is interested in letting this 'block' created by Kant disappear from absolute knowledge. Knowledge through intuition does not take place. The boundaries between belief and knowledge, between being and ought, clearly distinguished by Kant, are understood as unsolved questions that have to be overcome in a system of the spirit. Mind and nature, finite and infinite, subject and object, reason and revelation are to be thought of as a (rational) unity and founded on an absolute principle. Speculative reason here transcends the boundaries of reason clearly drawn by Kant, which ultimately means for today's consideration of idealism that it has an important place in the history of philosophy, but as an argument, apart from individual aspects, it is hardly considered as an argument, i.e. precisely rejected as a system has been. However, idealism in natural philosophy, in legal and historical philosophy, precisely because of its process-oriented approach, has an effect up to the present day and is an indispensable point of reference for contemporary philosophy.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Fichte (1762–1814) represented a subjective idealism (similar to Descartes and Malebranche ), according to which matter, spirit and ideas emerge as objective reality from the reason of the subject . The world outside of us is exclusively a product of our ideas. For Fichte there is no such thing as nature; it is exclusively the object of our rational consideration. The acting ego is the producer of a non-ego that is the subject of a scientific knowledge of nature. For Fichte, the theory of science is another name for philosophy, which expresses the fact that this is the teaching of knowledge. The ultimate reason for certainty of knowledge is the self-certainty of "I am I". This I is an active I, is will and spirit, which activates the non-I in the world outside of me and finally creates a demarcation from me and the other object. This is how man constructs objects and, at the end of a long line, finally the world as a whole .
This three-step process is already the dialectic as found in Hegel as the basis of historical development. I recognize silver , distinguish it from gold and find the concept of metal as a common being for both . The awareness of my freedom also results from the awareness of the active self . Fichte describes this position as idealism, which is opposed to dogmatism , as Fichte describes realism, which can only lead to an idea of determinism . As with Kant, this conflict cannot be resolved by reason. “Which philosophy you choose,” says Fichte, “depends on what kind of person you are”. By this, Fichte means which stage of human development one has reached, whereby that of rationalism is the more highly developed. The awareness of the ego also results in the recognition of the other person, without which the ego would be inconceivable. “The unity of I and you is the we of the moral world order.” In moral doctrine man must arrange his life according to reason, and this leads to a morally humane world. The task of the doctrine of the two bases of knowledge (intuition and concepts - thing in itself) is already criticized personally by Kant as completely untenable.
Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling
For Schelling (1775–1854), as with Fichte, self-certainty comes from the knowledge base 'I am I'. But the not-I of nature posed by the ego in Fichte becomes in Schelling's work a world that exists outside of man. The I and the existing world are, however, united in our consciousness as subject and object. This identity determines our mind as the absolute. The consciousness of nature therefore does not arise through our senses . The distinction between the self and nature comes only from our thinking . According to Schelling, the spirit comes back to itself in nature. When people look at nature, they fathom their preconsciousness that their idea of nature already contains. Nature is sufficient for itself and gives itself its own laws . Nature is a constant becoming, it always has a certain shape and both statements apply to all components of nature. Nature thus becomes the unconsciously creative spirit. Nature has matter, light and the organism as potencies (active powers). All matter is combined and contains two opposing forces such as attraction and repulsion, subject and object, finitude ( natura naturata ) and infinity ( natura naturans ). The idea of beauty unites all other ideas. The philosopher without an aesthetic sense is a pure letter philosopher. Reason cannot justify itself. In realizing this, she turns away from the question of being and asks about essence. Religion is thus revelation beyond the limits of reason. Schelling's natural philosophy is relatively well compatible with modern conceptions of self-organizing systems in nature, so that his philosophy has recently gained new interest from a scientific point of view.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
While with Kant objects appear and are given their shape through the spontaneity of the ego based on the categories in thinking, with Hegel (1770–1831) thinking determines the truth of objects. As with Schelling, this is an objective idealism that does not know a reality outside of reason. The logic of appearance in Kant becomes the logic of speculative truth in Hegel. The principle of the independence of reason, of its absolute independence in itself, becomes the general principle of philosophy. Nature and spirit are identical and are determined as manifestations of the self-knowing reason through the eternal idea of the absolute spirit, which is in and for itself. This supra-individual absolute spirit is the absolute spirit (which, according to the various parts of the system, presents itself differently - as world spirit in the philosophy of history). For a criticism of this conception of the absolute, see for example natural theology .
The becoming of the absolute takes place in necessary steps of thought. "The truth is the whole. But the whole is only the being that is perfected through its development. It is to be said of the Absolute that it is essentially a result, that only in the end it is what it really is. ”The determinations are idealized, i.e. H. they are brought into the medium of thought and related to one another. With this dialectical or speculative procedure, however, it is important to remember that it is not a matter of a method applied externally to the object, but rather the movement of the thing itself is represented. The contradiction emerges through their movement. For Hegel, speculative thinking consists in not letting the contradiction dominate oneself, but rather in capturing it and the resulting opposites as moments of the whole. In the rational or speculative determination, the opposites are related to each other and 'canceled'. Abolition means several things: negation, preservation and raising to a higher level. According to Hegel, being and nothing are suspended in becoming, birth and death in life. The opposites are identical as different in a third. Individual objects are only moments of a whole that, viewed in isolation, do not represent any truth. As a principle, dialectics pervades all areas of life in matter and in the organic as well as spiritual creations such as law , morality, state , art . Religion and philosophy are thus primarily the basis of history as a principle, in which the awareness of freedom becomes the measure of its progress.
Hegel's system “is divided into logic, natural philosophy and philosophy of spirit. Logic treats the idea in its in-and-for-itself, natural philosophy the idea in its otherness, the philosophy of spirit in its return to itself in its being with itself. ” (Johannes Hirschberger). Logic contains the logic of being, of becoming and of the concept. Nature is divided into mechanics (space, time, movement, gravitation ), physics (body, elements , heat , gravity, chemistry ) and the organic. In the case of the mind, a distinction must be made between the subjective mind (in anthropology : natural environment , corporeality; in phenomenology: perception , feeling, understanding , reason; in psychology: intelligence , will, morality ), the objective spirit (law, morality and morality = Family, civil society and state) and the absolute spirit (art, religion, philosophy).
Positivism and Science
While the philosophy of German idealism was still largely self-absorbed, the natural sciences and technology made clearer progress and a rapid increase in knowledge. A reflex to this and a counterbalance to idealism is the resurgence of empiricism. It found its specific expression in the 19th century, especially in France and England, in so-called positivism . This is to be understood as a philosophy in which the world is to be explained by the natural sciences without theological foundation and without metaphysics .
Auguste Comte (1798–1857) is considered to be the founder of positivism and the creator of this term. With his program he represents a modern version of Francis Bacon's scientific program based on strict determinism and a mechanistic worldview . The aim of the sciences is a description of the recognizable phenomena with laws and a prognosis for the future. To describe the social development of knowledge, he formulated the so-called three-stage law , according to which the world would first be interpreted theologically, then metaphysically and finally positively. Comte is also considered to be the first representative of sociology as an independent science. He also coined the term for this.
Actually an economist and student of Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) represents the concept of utilitarianism in England , but modifies it with regard to basic values that may be violated by the principle of the highest happiness for all. Politically, he calls for the extension of the right to vote to all adults, if he also grants the educated multiple voting rights. As a strict empiricist, however, he already includes psychological factors in his considerations. In this way he understands the ego as the result of psychological states that have arisen through association. Above all, Mill tried to set up rules for the inductive development of causal laws. Influenced by the materialistic theory of Lamarck turned Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), the theory of evolution Darwin on social conditions and thus is considered as the founder of evolutionism .
In Germany the positivism of as is considered the most prominent representative scientists well-known Ernst Mach (1838-1916). He was strictly against any form of metaphysics and epistemologically advocated consistent empiricism. Everything that can be experienced in the world is a series of sensory impressions. The basic sciences are physics and descriptive psychology. The I is the perception of one's own inner being and can be empirically explained. The relevance of a theory is not determined by its truth, but by its usefulness . Therefore, scientific theories are also subject to the principles of evolution. Truth as a concept is empty. Together with Mach, Richard Avenarius (1843–1896) was the founder of so-called empiric criticism . The conception of Wilhelm Schuppe's immanence school is similar , for whom being is something inherently own (immanent) of consciousness. Language is only clothing for pure thought elements. Logic is the science of objectively valid thinking. It is to be seen as a unity with epistemology because both are based on the criterion of truth. Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848), actually a priest and professor of theological philosophy in Prague, represented a rational interpretation of Catholicism . Because of his demeanor, he was removed from office. Bolzano was in particular also an outstanding mathematician and logician , who, however, gained little importance in his time. It was only through Husserl that posterity became aware of his work, which is still considered the basis today.
The zoologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) stands for the spread of the theory of evolution in Germany. Philosophically he represented a monism in which he equated God with the general law of nature . Rudolf Hermann Lotze (1817–1881) used scientific and physiological arguments to fight vitalism , according to which matter is only animated by an independent life force . For Lotze, external nature can be explained purely mechanically, whereas internal nature can only be grasped emotionally. The ultimate world reason is the personality , the purpose of which is expressed in love . Of importance for the developing philosophy of values is Lotse's distinction between the being of things and the validity of values, which has become an integral part of modern philosophy.
historicism
As historicism is called by Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1776-1831), Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) and Johann Gustav Droysen (1808-1884) founded philological critical alignment of the science of history that emphasized the historicity of all human reality. The proponents of historicism demanded a detailed methodological investigation of the sources and, compared with the idealist system - especially against Hegel - emphasized the individualized consideration of the unique as a necessary characteristic of historical science. For the first time, Droysen also included hermeneutic approaches in the field of historical research. Droysen rejected the objectivity of historical knowledge postulated by Leopold von Ranke.
Above all, the source-critical method of historiography developed by Droysen and Niebuhr for the scientific research of historiography led to the detachment of history from philosophy and the establishment of an independent discipline that produced a number of famous historians in the 19th century. To be mentioned here are Heinrich von Treitschke (1834-1896), who praised Prussia's splendor and glory, but also saw all misfortune in the Jews, and Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903) as his liberal opponent in the anti-Semitism dispute, in France Jules Michelet (1798 –1874), in England Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) and the Swiss cultural historian Jacob Burckhardt (1818–1897), famous by Nietzsche . The Aristotelian Friedrich Ueberweg (1826–1871) should be mentioned as an important historian of philosophy . Successors include historians such as Friedrich Meinecke (1862–1954), who is considered the founder of the “history of ideas”, or the philosopher and social historian Benedetto Croce (1866–1952). Historicism was already criticized as relativism by Nietzsche .
materialism
Materialism is closely related to positivism. All processes in the world are reduced to a basic principle. Spiritual or mystical theories must therefore be converted into scientific knowledge. Also, thoughts and ideas are manifestations of matter . A strict atheism is part of materialism. The well-known materialists are at the same time so-called Left Hegelians, that is, they have developed their position from Hegel's school, but turn away from him at the crucial point of reference to reality. Such was Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) Hegel students, but set early critical of religion. After his first book "Thoughts on Death and Immortality " was banned , he gave up his lectures in Erlangen and worked, among other things, for the liberal Halle yearbooks. For Feuerbach, religion is above all an anthropological phenomenon; it is a mirror of man in himself. With the same argument, he finally turned against Hegel's philosophy. The idea of an I constituting the world and an absolute spirit is nothing more than secularized theology . "The truth does not exist in thinking, not in knowing for oneself. The truth is only the totality of human life and being."
Even Max Stirner (1806-1856) criticized the absolute spirit of Hegel as a ghost , which in reality has no basis. The same goes for general ideas like freedom and truth that prevent real life. The teachings of the Left Hegelians were also hidden Christian for him, because they did not renounce to prescribe how he should be and what he should see as good by conveying values and thus feelings of guilt in education . Only when you acknowledge that everyone is only their own owner can one lead one's real life independently.
With Jakob Moleschott (1822–1893), who describes the principle of the conservation of energy in the sense of a natural cycle, and Ludwig Büchner (1824–1899), according to which the world consists of power and matter in an eternal cycle , there are independent of the left Hegelians a number of representatives who, in view of the scientific discoveries of the time, represent a scientific materialism and thus trigger the materialism dispute. This naive realism, also known as sensualism , but very successful in popular science, cannot last long and has little influence on the philosophical discussion.
Marxist philosophy
For Karl Marx (1818–1883), practice and theory could only be understood as a unit. For him, Hegel had "turned the world upside down"; H. made the idea the starting point. Instead, he wanted to apply the dialectic to material reality. Associated with Feuerbach's materialism, he developed this thought on historical materialism:
- "It is not the consciousness of people that determines their being, but their social being that determines their consciousness."
Social being, real life, is bound to its production and reproduction. The interrelationships and the development of the economic basis of a society therefore also decisively determined its social superstructure. The economic movement of the grassroots, in turn, could be changed by the social superstructure, i.e. the specifically active individuals. With the division of labor , classes and different forms of class societies developed through the division and the subsequent dialectics of productive forces and production relations , which are necessarily characterized by the economic exploitation of one or more classes by one or more ruling classes. The history of all previous society is therefore a history of class struggles. Marx sees the last stage of this development in the capitalist development of Western Europe, there the expropriation of the workers from their means of production is perfected , these are more and more centralized in fewer hands, while the situation of the workers deteriorates relatively, until a small class of surviving expropriators themselves from the working mass would be expropriated. Hegel, too, had already worked out the discrepancies that had arisen in industrial society between the rich citizens and the impoverished masses. In contrast to Hegel, Marx now drew the conclusion that social conditions must be changed; this is what his philosophical, theoretical and political work is aimed at. Marx declared the conquest of political power to be the duty of the proletariat ( dictatorship of the proletariat ), which amounts to the abolition of private property and an economy planned by the producers .
Marx has regularly been criticized for lacking an epistemological basis for his teaching. However, this is not the case, as the theses on Feuerbach show , for example . For Marx it was necessary to measure theoretical reflections against the yardstick of practice (e.g. concrete social conditions) because consciousness is always an expression of a practical being. The theses on Feuerbach also contain what is probably the best-known quote from Marx, which does not come from the communist manifesto and contains a criticism of classical philosophy:
- “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways ; it depends on changing it . "
In addition to Marx, it was above all the close friend and work partner Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) who contributed to the development of Marxism. In addition to his own and jointly written writings with Marx, Engels published many works by Marx posthumously and thus contributed decisively to the popularization of Marx's thought. In addition to his popular introductions such as Anti-Dühring or the short version obtained from it, The Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science , which Marx described as the introduction to scientific socialism , Engels expanded the subject of her materialistic-dialectical theory, as he also worked it out systematically sought, and thus contributed to a comprehensive “communist worldview”. (Writings (selection): Dialectics of Nature , Ludwig Feuerbach and the outcome of classical German philosophy )
Independent thinker
This section addresses philosophers whose views do not fit into a drawer, i.e. cannot be assigned to one of the other categories. Above all, it is the philosophers who were powerful with new thoughts and concepts and who received much more attention than the “direction philosophers” in the 20th century.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) - the founder of the concept of the German University as a combination of independent research and teaching - stands with his brother Alexander, the famous natural scientist and cosmologist , for the concept of humanistic education . Following on from the Romantics and only slightly influenced by idealism, he focused on people as individuals and their education according to the ideal of humanism . The realization of this ideal is the goal of history. In order to bring the diversity of individuals into a common whole, language is required that develops as a process. Each language community has its own characteristics and perspectives, which shape the worldview and the people who grow into it. The self-image of the individual is not only his / her self, but also the you of the togetherness in the language community. In political terms, Humboldt advocated a liberal concept of the state. The statesman is the representative of the people and not the educator of the people. Here he came into conflict with the Prussian government because of the Karlovy Vary resolutions , had to give up his political offices and had been a private scholar since 1819, who devoted himself in particular to extensive linguistic research .
Arthur Schopenhauer
The unconventional writer and philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) described himself as the best student of Kant, but often combined idealistic thoughts with mystical elements from Indian philosophy. The basic idea of his philosophy is directly addressed in the title of his major work The World as Will and Idea . In the realm of human knowledge, Schopenhauer followed Kant insofar as he did not consider the world outside of us, things in themselves, to be known. The outside world is only an appearance; we only have ideas about it. There is no object without a subject. But then the step to an idealistic metaphysics follows. Through the I we are also part of the outside world. Even if our body confronts us only as an appearance, we can still experience reality through introspection . This is immediately revealed to us as the will to live. Not reason, but a blind will to live (drive) is what is essential in man. In the emphasis on the will over reason lies the radical difference to classic German idealism, which Schopenhauer fought viciously and with all his might. He drew the motif of the all-determining will from Indian philosophy, which he was one of the first European philosophers to study. The will is the thing in itself, the real origin of our ideas. The ideas are generated as diverse appearances in space and time by the all-determining will. They are objectivations of the world will.
In nature the will prevails as an instinct to survive just as in history as an instinct for power. The world has no end, above all there is no historical progress. To assume this would be a hopeless illusion . The main driving force of man is egoism . It is determined by the will, so has no freedom, but always acts according to a motive in which the will is expressed. The image of man Schopenhauer was pessimistic. Schopenhauer used the image of a freezing porcupine for characterization . To avoid the cold you have to move closer together. But if you get too close, you hurt yourself. What remains is courtesy . The will involves a constant striving. Bliss is the satisfaction of desired desires. But people have many wishes that remain unfulfilled. This creates suffering and displeasure. Schopenhauer saw a way out only in asceticism , with which he can counter the pressure of the will. Otherwise man can only reach a state of pure intuition in art and music and then cancel the will into a state of non-being ( nirvana ). Reason is a quality of man that is given to him in the course of evolution in order to ensure his survival. Behind this, however, is the all-determining will in the motifs. Compassion is a way of overcoming the will, because man can understand the bond with the will of others. Hence, real moral acts are compassionate. Schopenhauer explains the attachment to a responsibility with the fact that the feeling of responsibility is a fact of consciousness. In terms of determinacy, responsibility is therefore only a cultural phenomenon. Compassion is also the source of justice , as man recognizes that life is also equal to others.
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) is considered a religious thinker and one of the essential forerunners of existentialism . Kierkegaard criticized the institutional church for preventing individuals from becoming themselves through a true Christian life. He also accused Hegel of an anemic philosophy in which the concrete human being has no place. Man is incapable of transcendence , that is, he cannot judge the absolute. Only God can do this. Kierkegaard's work is not a systematic philosophy, but a literary work with philosophical content, often designed as a dialogue based on the Socratic model. He represented a radical individualism in which no system has room. The decisive question is not how to act correctly, but how do I act correctly as an individual in each specific situation. His answers revolve around the concepts of existence and fear , freedom and decision . Kierkegaard understands existence to be a being in time, a process of becoming, a synthesis of the finite and the infinite. Existence takes place on three levels, the first of which is the aesthetic, in which man passively experiences the happiness of youth and eroticism , but also unhappiness , melancholy and despair . In the second level of ethics , humans become active agents by choosing themselves and thus their freedom. But there is also a decision in action and here people are confronted with the fear of the limits of their freedom. Man emerges from despair over the loss of the eternal only through deep faith in the third level of religion.
Friedrich Nietzsche
It is hardly possible to give a brief overview of Nietzsche's (1844–1900) philosophy. On the one hand, this is due to the fact that there is no systematic, closed work. On the other hand, his writings are largely independent from one another. With the exception of the first, relatively smaller works and a few later writings, Nietzsche also formulated his thoughts primarily as aphorisms and took a position on a variety of topics. But there are thoughts and aspects that run through his entire work. Even as a schoolboy he wrote a thesis on Theognis , which equates the good with the noble and the bad with the plebeian. Nietzsche occupied this position throughout his work. As a classical philologist, at the age of 24 he became a professor in Basel , he had in-depth knowledge of ancient Greek scriptures. He was enthusiastic about art ( Hölderlin , Wagner ), coming from a Protestant family of theologians, he distanced himself from Christianity very early on (David Strauss, Feuerbach) and had a formative discovery during his studies when he more accidentally came across Schopenhauer's Die Welt than Will and imagination met with enthusiasm and with whose philosophy he initially identified.
Even if there is no consensus, his work is often divided into three phases. Initially, Wagner and Schopenhauer were the dominant reference points in his work. The first publication in Basel is already a provocation for the specialist philologists. The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (1872) turned against the traditional idealizing aesthetic image that is usually drawn from ancient Greece . Nietzsche formed the pair of terms "Apollonian and Dionysian". The Apollonian is the rational, the moderate but superficial, the dream of perfection and harmony, the beautiful appearance. The Dionysian, on the other hand, is the intuitive, the shapeless primal will, the artistic , the mystically super-individual, the intoxicating. There is a struggle between the two sides of the human being, who also find each other in society. Only the Dionysian is creative and advances human development. The rational, the manner such as B. Socrates tries to explain the world with causality , but is a sign of decadence and leads to downfall.
Nietzsche also turned against the Enlightenment . The new philosophy is not for knowledge, but for life. It's like poetry . Art is the highest task and the actual metaphysics of this life, because man is an artistically creative subject. The representation of the world with images and sounds corresponds to the primal faculties of human imagination , which existed before language. In the (unpublished during his lifetime) work On Truth and Lies in the Extra-Moral Sense (1873) he denied the possibility of objective truth and thus turned against belief in science and optimism for progress. How we perceive the world depends on the subject's interpretations, which are determined by his instincts. Truth is based on social myths that have often become metaphors with no content. Above all, our language and terms are anthropomorphic and thus a prison that does not allow any insight into the real world. Here Nietzsche followed Kant without, however, accepting the categories as such.
In his second creative phase Nietzsche had largely broken away from his role models and drew an independent picture. In the Dawn (1881) morality, feelings, knowledge, Christianity, value judgments, the unconscious and pity are his themes. These topics are expanded and reinforced in the writings Human, All Too Human (1878–1880) and The Joyful Science (1882).
Reality is always perceived from one perspective. There are different ways to explain the world and to find access to it, be it through science, morality or art.
- “We have prepared a world in which we can live - with the assumption of bodies, lines, surfaces, causes and effects, movement and rest, shape and content: without these articles of faith nobody would be able to stand to live now! But they are not yet proven. Life is not an argument; under the conditions of life it could be wrong ” (FW 121) - “ What are the truths of man in the end? - They are the irrefutable errors of man. " (FW 265) - " Matter is just as much an error as the God of the Eleates . " (FW 109) - " It is we who alone the causes, one after the other, the for - having invented one another, relativity, compulsion, number, law, freedom, reason, purpose; and if we mix this world of signs as 'in itself' into things, then we do it again as we have always done, namely mythologically. ” (JGB 21) - “ The total character of the world is on the other hand, chaos in all eternity, not in the sense of a lack of necessity, but of a lack of order, structure, form, beauty, wisdom. " (FW 109)
Nietzsche described himself as an immoralist, for him the values of traditional morality were an expression of weakness and decadence. It is no longer the hierarchy between aristocratic master people and slave people that is decisive in the current world, but the increasingly spreading socialism based on Christian-Jewish ideas that stand behind the distinction between good and bad. For Nietzsche, on the other hand, the good was the strong and the bad the weak. Life and the “ will to power ” were the highest values for him. He wanted to return to these in a “ revaluation of all values ”. For Nietzsche, the Christian religion in particular was a mechanism by which norms sought to prevent free self-development.
Only in his later writings, of which Also Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1885), Beyond Good and Evil (1886) and On the Genealogy of Morals (1887) are considered the highlights of his literary work, did the topics of nihilism that were already mentioned , of the superman , the will to power and finally the eternal return especially in the foreground. At the same time connected with this was a beginning and increasing self-exaggeration, which in the last works of his last creative year in 1888 then left the ground of a rational argument. The same motives are to be found, but polemics and abuse are extremely exaggerated. Life is a constant becoming. People have a need for a firm hold, for constancy and duration. From the concept of the I, he therefore creates concepts such as being, unity or truth. For orientation, he creates values for himself as well as the good and the bad (not the bad), which are at least expressed in pleasure or displeasure.
The “will to power” is a term for striving to assert oneself and to overcome. From this will to power, structures such as the state, science or religion emerge . These are the centers of the will to power. One arrives at the conception of nihilism because one has to recognize that there is neither a supreme being nor an objective morality. Nihilism is the radical rejection of value, meaning, or desirability. “God is dead” means that you cannot find an absolute or a spirit (as with Hegel) to hold onto. Overcoming nihilism requires a revaluation of values. Instead of sticking to a fundamental pessimism like Schopenhauer , Nietzsche found the concept of the superman. This affirms life by acknowledging its existence and impermanence in becoming and also that his will to live is expressed in a constant will to power. One perspective for the life-affirming person is the idea of the eternal return. Space is finite, and with it that which is in space, so is man. But time is infinite. Since the world is an infinite process of becoming, each of the finite constellations in space will one day repeat itself. With this world model, described by Nietzsche himself as a very daring hypothesis, the anti-metaphysicist Nietzsche finally moves into the realm of metaphysics.
The importance of Nietzsche, which with a great deal of weight extends into contemporary philosophy, lies in provocation. The break with all traditions up to the absurd shows clearly the limits of reason. It is a departure from any system, not rational reasoning, but the question of the existential experience of life, of the subjective perspective, of the interpretation of knowledge and thinking. With his repeatedly broken, unrelated fragments of thought on the one hand, with the poetic language, which was repeatedly exaggerated to the extreme in his late work, on the other hand, and finally with the anthropologically questionable emphasis on the aristocratic genius , Nietzsche was and will be used for fascist purposes. and abused. Even today there are ardent admirers and profound opponents and despisers among the recipients of his work.
Neo-Kantianism
With his work “Kant and the Epigones ” Otto Liebmann (1840–1912) examined the philosophy of Kant and divided it into the four directions of idealism (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel), realism ( Herbart ), empiricism ( Fries ) and transcendental philosophy (Schopenhauer ). He also became known because he concluded every chapter of his work with the sentence “We must go back to Kant.” This motto is often described as a fanfare to revive Kantianism . Eduard Zeller (1814–1908) also gave a significant impetus with his famous lecture "On the meaning and task of epistemology". Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894), physician and professor of physics in Berlin , was a versatile natural scientist who, among other things, formulated the sentence about the conservation of force. He referred to Kant early on and is often named as one of the stimulators of Neo-Kantianism , but rejected the existence of fixed forms of perception due to his optical and acoustic research on perception. In his “History of Materialism”, Professor Friedrich Albert Lange (1828–1875) from Marburg critically examined this line of thought and gave another important impetus for Neo-Kantianism.
Nevertheless, Hermann Cohen (1842–1918) is mostly considered to be the founder of the Marburg School, which was strongly oriented towards mathematics and science. He criticized psychologism from the Kantian point of view. The fact that there is knowledge that is independent of the psyche can already be explained by the fact that mathematics in textbooks exists independently of the subject. Accordingly, knowledge cannot be tied to one subject alone. In relation to Kant, after an initially philological account, Cohen developed an independent position over the course of time, which tended to adopt the idealistic point of view and in particular based not on concepts but on judgments as the basis of human thought. Even Paul Natorp (1854-1924) dealt primarily with the logical foundations of the exact sciences. However, he also rejected the existence of a thing in and of itself and from intellectually independent views. The Marburg School also included Karl Vorländer , who focused on the philosophy of history in connection with Marxism, and Rudolf Stammler , who dealt primarily with questions of social and legal philosophy.
In contrast, the Southwest German or Baden School of Neo-Kantianism stands for a philosophy based on values. The main representatives were Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915) and Heinrich Rickert (1863–1936). Windelband saw in philosophy above all the doctrine of the generally valid values, namely truth in thinking, goodness in wanting and acting and beauty in feeling. He made a fundamental distinction between history and natural science. For diaper tape, Kant means understanding to go beyond him. Rickert emphasized the difference between cultural studies and natural science and developed his own value philosophy . Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945), on the one hand, is close to the tradition of the Marburg School; in terms of age and with the inclusion of linguistic-philosophical topics such as the question of meaning and the philosophy of symbolic forms, on the other hand, he can be fully assigned to the 20th century. For him, the categories were historically determined and could express themselves not only in linguistic, but also religious or aesthetic forms.
In addition to the permanent schools, the other representatives of criticism included u. a. Robert Reininger (1869–1955), who published works on the psychophysical problem and the philosophy of values, Alois Riehl (1844–1924), for whom philosophy was not a doctrine of worldview, but primarily a critique of knowledge. For him, Kant was to be updated insofar as more recent findings in natural science and mathematics (e.g. non-Euclidean geometry ) are to be included, which he basically considered possible. Later representatives of criticism, like Cassirer, are actually to be assigned to the 20th century, but come from the neo-Kantian movement. Hans Vaihinger (1852–1933) is known as a commentator on the Critique of Pure Reason and as the founder of the Kant studies. His philosophy of "as if" can be attributed to pragmatism due to the concept of truth used. Knowledge comes about on the basis of hypothetical fictions . Their truthfulness depends on the practical value of life. An objective truth, however, is not possible. At the center of the philosophy of Richard Hönigswald (1875–1947), a student of Alois Riehl, are the two basic problems of the 'given' and a 'general methodology ' of human knowledge. In contrast to the Marburg School, his investigations on the thing itself are based on psychological considerations in which he describes a connection between consciousness and object. Language is necessary for consciousness and only through language is the objectivity of an object established.
Neo-hegelianism
After the death of Hegel, idealism found only a few representatives in Germany, such as Hermann Glockner , Karl Larenz or Karl Rosenkranz . The Young Hegelians , who were critical of society and religion , turned to materialism and mostly referred only to Hegel's dialectic and philosophy of history. Abroad, due to the translation problem, Hegel only gradually came into the consciousness of broad circles. The eclectic Victor Cousin , who made Hegel's philosophy public in France, made merit here and thus became the starting point of a long tradition that extends through Alexandre Kojève, particularly in existentialism and political philosophy, to the present day.
In England, idealism became the dominant current at the end of the 19th century, particularly through Francis Herbert Bradley . Above all, he turned against the positivistic understanding of reality with a reality determined by many independent objects, which can only be grasped through experience. Rather, he saw in reality a unified idea of experience. Bradley was also known for his contributions to moral philosophy and logic and as a teacher of Bertrand Russell , who soon turned away from idealism and became a co-founder of analytical philosophy. Other representatives of idealism in England were the political philosopher and social reformer Bernard Bosanquet and JE McTaggart , who is best known for his subjectivist concept of time. Then there was Josiah Royce , who represented an idealistic personalism, and the writer Ralph Waldo Emerson as a leading figure of idealism-influenced transcendentalism .
In Italy, idealism, and especially Hegel , was made famous by Bertrando Spavénta . It had its most prominent representatives, especially in the first half of the 20th century, in the Marxist-based historical philosopher Benedetto Croce , who taught a gradual structure of the spirit, as well as in the fascist Giovanni Gentile , for whom all appearances and ideas were elements of a pure act, is the expression of the highest morality.
The work of Wilhelm Dilthey and the neo-Kantian Kuno Fischer and Windelband contributed to a historical resumption of the confrontation with Hegel shortly after the turn of the century. Theodor Litt , the Marxists Georg Lukács and Ernst Bloch should be mentioned in the reception , as well as the representatives of the Frankfurt School and Adorno's philosophy of art in their understanding of history. Representatives of Hegelian idealism in the present include Vittorio Hösle and Dieter Wandschneider .
Psychologism
The thinkers summarized in this group do not belong to a uniform school and, in aspects of their philosophy, can also be assigned to other directions. What they have in common is that thinking is understood as a psychological function and this aspect plays an essential role in their philosophy. In psychologism in the narrower sense, which was important at the end of the 19th century , thoughts are always an expression of motivation . As a result, they can never be true or false. This consideration leads to a conflict with logic. Already Gottlob Frege had critically examined the psychologism and the difference of the subjective process of thinking on the one hand, and on the other hand, pointed to the objective content of a thought. The end of this line of thought is the Frege-based refutation of psychologism by Edmund Husserl , who initially accepted it as justifiable, but then had shown in his “Logical Investigations” that the principle of contradiction applies regardless of the psyche of the individual. Nevertheless, it can be stated that the intensive, in particular empirical, study of psychology has brought about advances in knowledge for philosophy as well.
Jakob Friedrich Fries (1773–1843) leaned very close to Kant when developing his position, but combined it with questions of psychology and anthropology. Fries distinguished the transcendental concept of truth, which is possible in correspondence theory, from the empirical concept, which can only be held to be true. His analysis essentially corresponds to the falsification principle later developed by Popper . From this differentiation emerges the difference between error and unreason. On the other hand, with the truth concept of immediate knowledge, Fries became the forerunner of the evidence-based conception of Brentano and Husserl. Transcendental judgments indicate a priori knowledge as necessary components of reason, e.g. B. the idea of causality. Based on Kant, Fries developed a mathematical natural philosophy in which he postulated that all physical phenomena must be traced back to mathematical principles. He strictly rejected Schelling's natural philosophy and all of idealism. Leonard Nelson took up his philosophy again , who, due to its circularity, did not consider an epistemology to be possible.
Heavily on Leibniz was referring Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841), the u. a. from 1809 to 1830 taught philosophy in Königsberg and saw in philosophy above all the processing of the terms, whereby he wanted to clear up all contradictions and ambiguities. Herbart is considered to be an opponent of Hegel and the founder of psychologism. Inspired by the fundamental scientific developments of his time, he wanted to understand mental processes as a kind of mechanics that can also be measured quantitatively. Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–1887) specified this program by including only physically measurable processes in his psychological research. Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), the founder of the first institute for experimental psychology (1875 in Leipzig ), represented a psychophysical parallelism. Philosophically, he dealt with the subjects of logic and induction. Friedrich Eduard Beneke (1798-1854) had to leave the University of Berlin under pressure from Hegel because he turned against idealism based on Fries and Herbart and instead called for an anti-speculative philosophy based on inductive psychology.
Theodor Lipps (1851–1914) saw the laws of logic as the natural laws of our thinking. He combined an aesthetic of the will to create art with a theory of empathy. He saw analytical psychology as a basic science for logic, ethics and aesthetics . Eduard von Hartmann (1842–1906) made the unconscious his subject. Reason is only measuring, comparative and critical. The creative, however, comes from the unconscious. His epistemology is commonly referred to as critical realism. In ethics he joined Schopenhauer's pessimism.
Franz Brentano (1838–1917) was originally a priest, psychologist and taught philosophy in Würzburg and Vienna. Philosophy deals with ideas, judgments and conclusions. These acts are explored in descriptive psychology as a basic science. He is considered the founder of nude psychology . All psychic acts are intentional, that is, they relate to something. Judgments by external perception are never insightful. By analogy, truth cannot be proven logically either. The last reason is what cannot be described by a definition . For this he coined the term evidence. The principle that values are only subjective cannot be applied to values. Brentano provided essential elements for Edmund Husserl's philosophy. The most important student of Brentano was Alexius Meinong (1853–1920), who also tried to intentionally grasp feelings and desires, that is, to assign them objectivity.
pragmatism
For pragmatism, theories must be judged from the point of view of their usefulness and applicability in practice. The origins of this philosophical direction arose in the USA in the 19th century. They were only noticed much later in Europe and with only limited attention . The pragmatic basic position can also be found in contemporary philosophy in Richard Rorty , Hilary Putnam or Robert Brandom .
The natural scientist Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) is considered the founder of pragmatism. He did not publish his philosophical views in a closed work, so that he was only noticed very late. Nevertheless, his basic ideas are often directly effective in today's discussion. Starting with the question of how we can clarify our terms, Peirce interpreted the cognitive process as a constant change between conviction and doubt. Beliefs contain instructions for action. Beliefs are never stable, but are questioned by doubts over time. These have the positive function of preventing dogmatism (often prematurely referred to as such). Peirce already represented a fallibilism , according to which there could be no absolutely correct convictions. The meaning of a term lies in what consequences it has for action. Peirce was of the opinion that there is no knowledge without signs and thus without language. Accordingly, the doctrine of signs, semiotics , is a basic science for philosophy. The philosophy of language of the 20th century was linked to this.
The concept of truth discussed in connection with pragmatism was not coined by William James (1842–1910) in agreement with Peirce. As a strict empiricist, James was more of a skeptic, for whom the focus was not on first principles, but on the practical consequences of action. Truths are subjective and not final. Therefore there is no definite knowledge. From the subjective point of view, the true is that which is conducive to the path of thought. Theories are true when they are useful instruments of explanation. Accordingly, statements are also not true as isolated sentences, but only in their context . This view corresponds to the correspondence theory of truth. John Dewey (1859–1952) tried to apply the pragmatic approach to pedagogy and sociology. Other well-known representatives of pragmatism are George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) and, in Europe, FCS Schiller (1864–1937).
Philosophy of life
Natural science is not everything, this is how one can describe the basic understanding of the thinkers who are decisive for the philosophy of life. The becoming of life, the wholeness cannot be described with concepts and logic alone . It also includes the irrational, creative and dynamic of the encompassing life. Many philosophers of life are followers of a vitalism, that is, life does not arise from dead matter, but there is an independent life force ( élan vital , entéléchie ). The philosophy of life can thus be called a metaphysics that explains the phenomenon of life. This form of criticism of rationalism can already be found fundamentally in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, who are therefore often regarded as the founders of the philosophy of life. Today the philosophy of life is only addressed historically. It found its continuation primarily in the existential philosophy, but also lives on in holistic views of life, as can be found in the modern ecological movement.
Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) turned against the deterministic scientific variant of Mill, Spencer et al. a. Experience is an experience of connections that cannot simply be broken down into individual elements. Dilthey's main interest was historical considerations. To this end, he introduced the distinction still common today between the natural sciences and the humanities . While the scientific principle of the former is that of explaining, in the humanities the principle of understanding must be taken as a basis. The natural sciences try to find a general rule from individual phenomena. In the humanities, on the other hand, one deals with the individual phenomenon such as a historical event or a biography . A cornerstone of Dilthey's philosophy is the life context of experience, expression and understanding. The principle of understanding (hermeneutics) is not only applicable to texts, but also to works of art , religious ideas or legal principles. In understanding, not only the cognitive mind works, but also the emotive will and feeling of the viewer. It requires a holistic approach that z. B. is not achieved by an analytical psychology that focuses on individual aspects. Gestalt psychology , which is above all descriptive, developed on the basis of Dilthey's thoughts .
Henri Bergson (1859–1941) sees a difference between the experienced time as a state of mind and the analytical dissection of natural science, which is based on an idea oriented towards space. People directly perceive structural relationships that cannot be shared. Accordingly, scientifically analytical psychology, which seeks to grasp individual psychological elements, is not suitable for capturing an overall picture of a mental state. Consciousness can only be grasped qualitatively. Physically recorded time is determined and causal. Experienced time as duration is the prerequisite for freedom. Perception originally takes place in images and also always includes memory and need at the same time, i.e. past and future. To recognize the holistic nature of things, additional intuition is required .
Hans Driesch (1867–1941) determined on the basis of his biological research that germs that are split up develop again into fully fledged new germs. From this he concluded that there is a non-causally determined natural force in nature, which he called entelechy based on Aristotle . Due to his views, Driesch is considered a representative of neovitalism .
Ludwig Klages (1872–1956) emphasized the contrast between body and soul on the one hand and the spirit on the other. “The beat repeats, the rhythm renews.” In the mind's thinking we detach the object from its phenomenal reality for a finite moment, from a constant spatiotemporal continuum . A chemist by training , Klages was a philosopher and poet who was critical of the natural sciences. For him, epistemology was a science of consciousness. What he valued about Nietzsche was the uncovering of self-deceptions, falsifications and compensatory ideals, but fundamentally rejected his epistemology. Through his holistic life with constant commitment to nature conservation , he is considered to be one of the forefathers of the modern ecological movement.
For Georg Simmel (1858–1918), cognition contains categories a priori, which, however, undergo development in the course of evolution and the person . The chaos of experiences is ordered in cognition . But our individual thinking cannot fully grasp the unity of totality. Ideal contents such as truth form a realm that is independent of the psyche. The conception of the truth induces man into useful behavior according to the demands of life. What is true is what has proven itself in selection and what was appropriate. The ought is an original category, even if the content changes in practice. The will of the species is expressed in it. Altruism is egoism of the species. In addition to his philosophical activity, Simmel was also an important representative of sociology .
literature
- Ferdinand Fellmann (ed.): History of philosophy in the 19th century. Positivism, left Hegelianism, existential philosophy, neo-Kantianism, philosophy of life. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1996, ISBN 3-499-55540-9 (Rowohlt's Encyclopedia Vol. 540)
- Wolfram Hogrebe : German philosophy in the 19th century, criticism of idealistic reason: Schelling, Schleiermacher, Schopenhauer, Stirner, Kierkegaard, Engels, Marx, Dilthey, Nietzsche. Fink, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-7705-2411-X (UTB 1432)
- Manfred Hahn, Hans Jörg Sandkühler (Ed.): The division of reason. Philosophy and empirical knowledge in the 18th and 19th centuries. Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1982, ISBN 3-7609-0743-1 (Studies on the History of Science of Socialism, Vol. 4)
- Manfred Buhr : Encyclopedia on bourgeois philosophy in the 19th and 20th centuries. VEB Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig 1988, ISBN 3-323-00166-4 (the dialectical-materialistic perspective)
- Herbert Schnädelbach : Philosophy in Germany 1831-1933. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 3-518-28001-5 (stw 401)
- Otto Willmann : History of Idealism. Volume I (1973), Volume II (1975) and Volume III (1979), Aalen 1973-79, ISBN 3-511-03709-3
- Jan Urbich (ed.): Philosophy 19th century. Kindler compact. Metzler, Stuttgart 2016, ISBN 978-3-476-05536-1
Individual evidence
- ↑ Johann Gottlieb Fichte: first introduction to the science of science, III, 18
