Infinite progress

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Infinite progress ( Latin progressus in infinitum, French progrès à l'infini) is a phrase used in various functions in the history of Western philosophy, which refers to an inconclusive process, usually theoretical or practical reason, history in general or a specific one Cognition or attempted explanation.

middle Ages

In many medieval debates, a distinction between potential and actual infinity is assumed to be conceptually well established . This is used in numerous argumentative contexts, in ontology often in such a way that absolute infinity is only ascribed to the divine. For theories and explanations that are humanly possible, on the other hand, it is usually accepted that these only reach potential infinity, so that in particular the citing of reasons would in principle not be final. Since on the one hand knowledge should be possible, on the other hand an actual infinity in a chain of specifiable or existent reasons is excluded (cf. also Infinite Regress ), a first reason is introduced as rationally inevitable and usually epistemic with God as the first and all cause and the last foundation Efforts identified.

Rationalism and Enlightenment Philosophy

While in empiricism a reality of infinity does not come into view, many rationalist theorists apply the concept of a progressus in infinitum (progress into infinity) to practical philosophy as well. Thomas Hobbes and Christian Wolff , for example, identify the highest good with human progress towards ever further goals or perfection. Something similar with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz .

Transcendental Philosophy and Idealism

Immanuel Kant applies immortality as a postulate of practical reason, since the highest good can only be reached in infinite progress.

Numerous theorists of Romanticism and German idealism speak of an "infinite" or "inconclusive progressus". For example Friedrich Schlegel and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling . Johann Gottlieb Fichte , reason is considered infinite insofar as its “limit can be pushed further and further into the infinite”. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel criticizes the application of the concept of an infinite progress in various contexts.

Sören Kierkegaard criticizes philosophy in general (including that of Hegel) for its inability to arrive at an absolute beginning.

The philosopher and classical philologist Friedrich Nietzsche understood the world as a state of eternal return , so that all events repeat themselves infinitely often. For him, this cyclical understanding of time is the basis of the highest affirmation of life.

20th century

Nicolai Hartmann thinks that “the presentation of the object” becomes “in progress” “an 'idea', a perennial task”.

Max Scheler sees in the "growing solidarity of interests" a release of "what is truly personal and spiritual in people" "in an infinite progressus".

Edmund Husserl speaks of infinite progresses both in the search for knowledge in general and in particular in natural science and mathematics.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hobbes: De homine XI, 5; Wolff: Philosophia practica universalis 1, § 374. According to R. Maurer: Art. Progreß, infinite , in: HWPh , Bd. 7, 1446-9.
  2. ↑ AA 5, 124
  3. ↑ SW 1/4, 358 etc.
  4. ↑ AA I / 2, 394
  5. ↑ See Maurer, HWPh 7, 1449 n.22.
  6. ↑ See Maurer, HWPh 7, 1448.
  7. ↑ Fundamentals of a Metaphysics of Knowledge, Berlin 3rd A. 1941, p. 445ff., Cited above. n. Maurer, HWPh 7, 1448.
  8. ↑ The formalism in ethics and the material ethics of values, Bern 4th A. 1954, 509f., According to Maurer, HWPh 7, 1448.
  9. ↑ See Maurer, HWPh 7, 1448.

literature

  • R. Maurer: The concept of infinite progress , in: Hegel-Jahrbuch 1971/72, pp. 189–196.