Immanuel Hermann Fichte: Outline of a system of philosophy. First division: knowledge as self-knowledge – Memory

Until now, Fichte has been studying perception, in which consciousness appears to be quite passive and to just receive sensations without any input of its own. Yet, he notes, this is not completely true, since even perceptions are, albeit unconsciously, constructed by the consciousness from parts of the flow of sensations. Even more of such unconscious activity is present in pattern recognition, which would be impossible, if the perceptions vanished at the same time as the original sensations. In such a case, consciousness would be blind in the fullness of its perceptions. Even mere indefinite repetition of the very same perceptions does not induce recognition, if the consciousness has no way to make a comparison that the same perception recurs.

Thus, Fichte concludes, possibility of perception and recognition presupposes not just receptivity, but also a capacity to preserve perceptions. Following Hegel, Fichte takes the opportunity to use the German word Erinnerung, which means simply memory, but where the phrase suggests that we are internalising something external. What is here internalised, he says, is not the sensation or impression as such, but the perception or Anschauung based on sensations: the patterns that we ourselves have unconsciously combined from the small elements of the flow of sensations. In internalisation we just consciously renew this activity, but without the sensuous elements. Thus, Fichte points out, these internalised perceptions are less vivid than perceptions as such, but the pattern – say, general contours of a tree – remains clearly in our mind. Indeed, he concludes, they are not anymore to be called perceptions, but representations (Vorstellung) or images (Bild).

Now, while this internalisation happens still somewhat blindly, we can do this same reproduction of perceptions also expressly and consciously. This, Fichte says, we call reminiscence and also memory (Gedächtnis), although the latter also means the unconscious possession of such preserved perceptions. The strength of memory varies, he notes, and is actually dependent on our own activity, as we can more easily recollect perceptions that we have actively attended to. Indeed, Fichte adds, the best way to memorise a difficult topic is to actively conceptualise, think it through and understand it, while meaningless series of e.g. numbers are very difficult to memorise.

Fichte notes that beyond recollection, the process of pattern recognition, in which current and past perceptions are compared and noted similar to one another, requires still something more. In other words, the two perceptions must be first related to a presupposed unity that works as a background for both, although it is not itself explicitly attended to as an object. This common background, Fichte insists, must then be their common subject or a self-perception or self-intuition of the consciousness. This self-perception is then something that is presupposed even at the level of perception, because through it we can distinguish ourselves from what we sense. Despite being something presupposed by every state of consciousness, it is something that we usually are not even conscious of. In this, Fichte suggests, this original self-perception is like consciousness of divinity, which our own lives presupposes, although we are rarely aware of it.

In addition to this self-perception, Fichte continues, internalisation still requires something more. As such, internalisation seems to require a previous perception that it then copies. Yet, he suggests, this copying is just a modification of a more general activity of producing representations. While internalisation and memory produces just images of previous perceptions, the same activity should be capable also of freely producing completely new representations, Fichte concludes. This new capacity or imagination is the next level in the process of consciousness.

Immanuel Hermann Fichte: Outline of a system of philosophy. First division: knowledge as self-knowledge – Pattern recognition

During the last couple of posts, we have seen Fichte describe the development of perception. He began from the immediate state of consciousness, where a stream of sensations overwhelmed us. Then, the consciousness started little by little to distinguish this stream into individual sensations and collect these individual sensations into perceptions of things. Finally, it also distinguished itself from all these perceived things.

What is still lacking from perception, Fichte says, is perceiving things as something (say, as a tree or a rose). What such “perceiving as” still requires is that we recognise an individual perceived thing as resembling a familiar pattern that we have already perceived (like that of a rose). Of course, such recognition is possible only if we have already perceived several similar things (other things) and formed a general notion of what it is to be such a thing.

This pattern recognition perfects the phase of perception, Fichte says. By perfecting Fichte does not mean just that it is the most intricate mode of perception we have met thus far. Indeed, Fichte wants to say that pattern recognition already points toward mental activities beyond the level of mere perception, if only in an unconscious manner. Thus, pattern recognition already involves something like memory, since it requires preservation of mental images of perceived things. Furthermore, it also presages language, where we can explicitly indicate e.g. that what we have perceived is a tree. Finally, pattern recognition is a precursor of concept formation (one type of thinking), which involves consciousness creating a general representation, under which individual representations can be subsumed.

Immanuel Hermann Fichte: Outline of a system of philosophy. First division: knowledge as self-knowledge – Constitution of perceptions

Last time we saw Fichte define the starting point of philosophy: the assumed barest state of consciousness, in which a flow of sensations is just passively received, without any further development. Fichte presumes that the development starts, when this flow of sensation begins to be distinguished. First, individual senses are separated from one another: we note e.g. that visual sensations differ from auditory sensations. Then, distinctions begin to be made between sensations of one kind of sense. Some of these distinctions are qualitative – for instance, when we differentiate blue from green – while some are qualitative – when we differentiate more intensive shade of blue from less intensive.

In addition to distinctions among sensations, a completely different sort of sensation appears, that is, the flow of sensations stimulates the consciousness to sense itself as separate from all the other sensations. This separation, Fichte states, is a necessary result of making distinctions within sensations in general: while conscious of different sensations, we are also conscious of ourselves as attached to all these different sensations.

Now, Fichte suggests, with this first sensation of ourselves we also start to act on sensations. In other words, we do not just distinguish sensations from one another, but we also combine these sensations into further unities, which Fichte calls by the word Anschauung – a difficult word to translate, and while in the tradition of Kant scholarship intuition has often been used, we might as well speak of perceptions in this context. Fichte notes that this unifying activity resembles judgements, in which we combine concepts to one another. The difference is that this unifying activity is unconscious.

What Fichte is describing here is the process by which we, for instance, first separate our field of vision into individual visual sensations and then perceive certain combinations of these sensations as unified things. Similar processes occur e.g. with auditory sensations, when we first distinguish individual sounds in an auditory stream and then perceive a certain series of sounds as melody. Indeed, a process of this kind might even involve different senses, such as when we perceive a certain collection of visual, olfactory and tactual sensations as a rose.

Immanuel Hermann Fichte: Outline of a system of philosophy. First division: knowledge as self-knowledge (1833)

If in the last post we saw Fichte trying to determine the basic characteristic of a new philosophical system from the historical context and its requirements, in his Grundzüge zum Systeme der Philosophie. Erste Abtheilung: Das Erkennen als Selbsterkennen Fichte tries to determine what philosophy should be like from its very concept. Or, to be more precise, he begins by trying to define what the very concept of philosophy should be. Indeed, he adds, philosophy should begin from itself, which means just that philosophy should begin by determining what it means to do philosophy.

Fichte does not completely ignore the history of philosophy, and his outlook is that of many other German philosophers of the time: all the different philosophies are just moments of one whole, developing through periods of division into different systems and contraction of them into one whole. Still, he admits, this context is something we can just anticipate at the very beginning of philosophy and nothing we can assume. Remembering this, he says, we could still preliminarily note that different philosophical standpoints are its different self-definitions, and while further standpoints become more and more clear about the meaning of philosophy, in the very beginning we can have only the most universal and simplest definition of philosophy.

Beginning of philosophy is an indefinite notion, Fichte continues. It can mean a subjective drive to do philosophy. This drive can take many forms, depending on the individual, but it still is something we can find immediately in ourselves. Beyond these subjective drives, there is an objective beginning of a system. There can be only one objective beginning, Fichte emphasises, but finding it is not an easy task. Yet, what he wants to especially guard us against is confusing the objective beginning of philosophy with subjective beginnings. In fact, he adds, many philosophers have begun subjectively from historical conditions that have driven them to choose some concrete beginning. Such a beginning based on our subjective drive is arbitrary, because it works only for this particular individual, Fichte argues. He mentions several such subjective beginnings, which all happen to be ways other recent German philosophers began their philosophies: I of the older Fichte, identity of subjective and objective from Schelling and Hegelian being that equals nothing.

Although Fichte insists on not confusing objective and subjective beginning of philosophy, he suggests that the objective beginning could be found through the subjective beginning – that is, although we should not take any particular subjective beginning as the objective beginning, we could determine objective beginning from the very fact that we do have subjective drives toward making philosophy. This means, he explains, returning to the absolute beginning of our thinking: what made us do philosophy? This is the only way to discover a foundation for philosophy, he adds. Naturally, the beginning cannot be justified through any arguments, since it is supposed to predate anything else in our thinking. Still, we should be able to discover it as a beginning for all our cognitive abilities.

What then is this subjective drive to philosophy? Fichte describes it as a decision to think. In other words, it is a decision to move from the immediate state of consciousness and its given content through cognitive labour to knowledge of truth. This drive is still just an indefinite craving for a higher cognition and it can be further determined only within philosophy. Since we already know many things in our immediate state of consciousness, the question arises why is this not enough. Fichte explains, quite in the manner of the first chapter of Hegel’s Phenomenology of spirit, that the content of our immediate state of consciousness is variable and with the destruction of this content the supposedly true knowledge becomes untrue. Thus, in striving to do philosophy we search for proper stable knowledge, because consciousness can rest only with such knowledge.

Fichte has thus discovered the opposition between knowledge of variable and contingent matters and knowledge of non-variable, eternal, necessary and lawlike matters. Furthermore, he adds, this latter type of knowledge can be achieved only through a certain activity, which he preliminarily calls thinking. This knowledge of eternal matters Fichte names science. Problem is that there are many particular sciences and we thus have to distinguish philosophy in particular from the other sciences. Fichte notes that the other individual sciences have particular topics, while philosophy does not. Indeed, such an individualisation of topics is even against the notion of philosophy, because philosophy should be the universal science. Fichte then defines philosophy as the science of sciences, that is, as knowledge of the highest and most universal laws of all being and cognition.

The next obvious question is what is this activity of thinking that is supposed to be required for realising philosophy. Fichte notes that to understand what thinking is we must ourselves think, because only the activity of thinking makes us internalise our concepts. In other words, to become thinkers we must see how to progress from the immediate state of non-thinking to thinking. Indeed, this is for Fichte the only universally valid objective beginning of philosophy. At the same time, since this progression is the development of our consciousness, the beginning or the first part of philosophy must be a theory of consciousness or the study of the faculty of cognition.

At the beginning of this study, we know very little about consciousness. Indeed, the only thing we should know is what our beginning from the subjective drive determined: we know immediately only contingent and variable matters, but we should strive to know what is necessary and stable. If the object of our striving Fichte named thinking, he calls its beginning perceiving. What other states possibly lie between these two extremes is yet unknown. Still, we do know we have to begin from the immediate state of consciousness, because nothing else is given to us. Indeed, Fichte adds, we can never really escape the standpoint of our consciousness, and other things come into our attention only when they are revealed to our consciousness.

Fichte notes that the transition from perception to thinking is not possible, unless there’s something common that stays the same between these two states. The simple solution is that this common element is our being conscious of these states or our self. This consciousness, Fichte explains, is then a stable unity in comparison with a variable manifold of states, which are then like images representing some content that exists independently of the consciousness and toward which it just points without making it. Fichte describes this content as being (Sein) in relation to non-objective image (Bild), both of which are concepts mutually determining one another: image has the content of being as reflected, while being has the same content as not reflected. Consciousness then consists of placing being and image in opposition and of connecting them as inseparable.

Consciousness can relate being and image, Fichte continues, only through a higher image, where consciousness ponders its own activity of opposing and relating being and image. In other words, he explains further, consciousness must be an image that conceives itself to be an image in opposition to being. This more complex state of consciousness Fichte calls self-consciousness. In this complex state, consciousness is thus aware of being in some determined state of consciousness, but also of its own self as a resting unity behind these particular states. The self Fichte describes as purely self-transparent and self-knowing unity in multiplicity. Because it thus has an essential link to these multiple states, it can exist only in connection with determinate consciousness. Consciousness must thus always be determined or in particular conditions, while the self is a formal unity for the variable content.

The first state the self or consciousness finds itself in Fichte calls Empfindung, which we might translate in this context as sensation: consciousness has given, determined affections, content of which it cannot change. These on-going sensations form the external world, and the self becomes gradually aware of being distinct from this external world. The receptivity to this necessary effect of the external world on the self Fichte calls Sinn, which somewhat confusingly we should also translate as sense or sensation. Still, this passive receptivity is the original root of our consciousness.

Now, we do not have just one, but many sensations, which are differentiated from one another spatially and temporally. In a Kantian fashion, Fichte notes that our faculty of sensation is based on an intuition of space and time, which enable the differentiation of sensations. Yet, he immediately adds, this intuition is actually just an abstraction or indicates a mere possibility of differentiating sensations, since we always intuit space and time only as filled by sensations. Following the lead of his father, Fichte notes that we also intuit ourselves as in space and time, which means that we have an immediate spatio-temporal presence or a body. Compared to abstractions of pure space and time, the body is our actualised receptivity. It is also our immediate individuality and we exist only as embodied.

Fichte notes in passing that receptivity of our body is divided into individual senses, but adds immediately that a more detailed study of these senses is the task of, on the one hand, psychology (when it comes to sensations as conscious states, and on the other hand, physiology (when the sensations are taken as preconscious state of our bodily presence). What is important for the theory of consciousness is that these various sensations received by different senses (cold, warm, sweet, sour, etc.) are the material elements of our consciousness. Furthermore, they act as stimuli that make the soul first sense itself as separate from what is sensed, then to consciousness proper and finally to self-consciousness. Fichte explains that, in a sense, self-consciousness is present even in the first sensations, since only self-conscious entities can sense, but it is still, as it were, sleeping and awakened only by the external stimuli. One could thus say that the sensations as the first state of consciousness already drive the consciousness to proceed to further states of its development.

Although consciousness has been thus far described as mere passive receptivity, Fichte explains that its feeling of being restricted by sensations brings immediately forth an opposed tendency to appropriate what is external to it. This opposite tendency is will, and as it also needs the stimulus of sensations, it must be embodied. Indeed, Fichte says, the first act of will is its mastery over its own body, which is then an absolute tool of the will. The embodied will or drive develops different goals, which it tries to achieve through an ordered series of actions.

Creation of this ordering, Fichte concludes, is performed by a third faculty besides sensation and will, which remains neutral and mediates between passive sensation and active will. In effect, this third faculty is the free representation of ideas in our consciousness. This faculty of representation is the true centre of consciousness, which both conserves sensations and makes them the property of consciousness by renewing them, but also creates new ones, through which it leads the will. Thus, the representative activity has as its parts both memory and imagination. Awakened by the first strike of sensation, consciousness changes sensation into an inner representation and thus makes it into its own property. When new sensations constantly arise, the internal flow of these representations becomes self-imagination, which both conserves sensed representations and forms new ones. This flow of representations works then as a material for further development of the whole cognition and for the actions of the will. The three faculties of sensation, representation and will are thus entwined to one another, Fichte insists, and indeed, just aspects of one faculty of representation.

The main conclusion of Fichte’s study has been that the representative consciousness is determined by spatio-temporal sensations. This, he explains, is the essence of perception, which was the supposed starting point of the development of consciousness to thinking. Yet, he says, even the perception has its own development, and in its first state it is just an undeveloped sensation, where the consciousness just passively observes what it senses. In this specific state, confused sense impressions flow in the consciousness that still cannot separate anything determinate from this flow and that cannot even separate itself from these external representations. In a sense then, while plenty is observed, nothing is yet known, since there are yet no distinctions or comparisons.

Without really any evidence, Fichte speculates that children live in such a state at the first moments of their lives. In such a state, the sensations are felt more intensively and strongly and thus awaken the consciousness forcefully. He also assumes, again without much evidence, that we might return to such a state during severe depression, especially if it proceeds to a level of complete stupor. In the posts to come, we shall see how Fichte thinks consciousness will develop from this supposed starting point to its final phase, where it should be capable of doing philosophy.

Immanuel Hermann Fichte: Of the opposition, turningpoint and goal of current philosophy (1832)

(1796–1879)

In a rarely seen manner, the son of the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Immanuel Hermann, followed the line of work of his father and became also a philosopher. Unlike his illustrious relative, the younger Fichte was content to see himself not as a revolutioner in philosophy, but as a link in the steady progress of the currents of philosophy – a sign of times, when the Hegelian idea of a rational plan underlying the history of philosophy was in vogue.

Fichte’s attempt in his work, Über Gegensatz, Wendepunkt und Ziel heutiger Philosophie, was to recognise the next necessary step the philosophy had to mae,k by studying the internal development of the current systems of philosophy. Fichte’s starting point is, naturally enough, what he calls constructive philosophy, meaning the school of Schelling and Hegel, whom Fichte considers continuing the work of Spinoza. He especially concentrates his efforts on Hegel’s system of philosophy, as the most complete and systematic form of that philosophical trend.

Fichte takes Hegel’s system as having two important results. First was the development of the dialectical method, which Fichte sees as a further development of the method of his own father. He takes as a kernel of this method the process of finding in some forms of knowledge (e.g. concepts) inherent problems that organically lead to a development of further, more complete forms – indeed, this is what he is himself purporting to do in his investigation of the current systems of philosophy. Yet, he adds, Hegel misunderstood his own method, when suggesting that this same method would mirror processes of the real world, especially because Fichte sees Hegel as not properly justifying this assumption.

The second important result, according to Fichte, was the development of Spinozan substance or God into subject. In other words, Fichte explains, while the Spinozan substance was just a dead unity in which different individual entities had just disappeared, Hegel understood it as a living process that created and eventually also destroyed different individuals. Yet, Fichte adds, Hegel failed in thinking that God was nothing more than this abstract process, while the true result should have been that God is also an individual person separate from other individuals. Instead, Fichte says, for Hegel,God had a self-conscious personality only through philosophers explaining what God is.

Indeed, Fichte regards Hegel’s philosophy in a rather dreary manner: although it appeared to be ingrained in deep truths, it finally just emptied itself of all deepness. Thus, the desire to be united with God became in Hegelianism the cold theorem that God exists only through consciousness, while the mystical idea of God knowing themselves through creation became the dullness of philosophy being the self-awareness of God. In other words, Fichte continues, Hegelian God turned to humans not because of caring about these individuals, but for reaching self-awareness. The final end of Hegel’s system Fichte takes to be political quietism: the current world is divine and so highest wisdom and virtue, no matter how bad the individual’s lot is.

The basic flaw Fichte identifies as leading Hegel into what he considers a pantheistic nightmare is the latter’s supposed tendency to identify thinking with being and both ultimately with God. What is more, Fichte insists, this identification is wholly unjustified and it should be justified before Hegel could even begin his philosophy: indeed, a different beginning would lead to a different philosophy. But Hegel thought, Fichte suggests, that his train of thought was just what God was thinking, trying to make objective what is ultimately subjective.

A counterpoint to Hegelian pantheism Fichte sees in mystical philosophies of Franz Baader and Anthon Günther. Such thinkers, Fichte thinks, based their philosophy on a temporal and individual revelation, and while this method clearly was unscientific, mysticism could at least give a stimulus to good philosophy. For these mystical thinkers, Fichte continues, the world was a free creation of personal divinity and conscious creatures were originally good images of this God. The mystic considered humanity to have fallen from this high position and with it also turning nature into a realm of death. The history of the natural and the human world after fall would otherwise be further estrangement from God, unless grace hadn’t intervened .

Fichte admires mystical philosophers, but does not think mysticism is wholly sustainable. Mysticism, he argues, is based on the idea of the free fall of evil from God. This assumption means that the perfection of humanity has already been reached at the beginning of their existence. Yet, Fichte insists, what is conceptually first or perfect cannot be temporally first, because then God could not reveal themselves through the development of creatures: indeed, the originally perfect creature would not even be distinct from God. Furthermore, Fichte adds, the notion of fall is eventually just a symbolic expression that merely hides holes in speculation.

What is required, Fichte suggests, is a mediating viewpoint between the Hegelian and the mystic standpoints. This mediating standpoint would take the dialectical method of Hegel and use it to justify a more mystical notion of a personal God. But what the dialectical method is to be applied to is a further philosophical standpoint. This third standpoint differs from both Hegelianism and mysticism in that while the two were occupied, Fichte says, with God, this new standpoint was occupied with human consciousness. Thus, Fichte calls it the standpoint of reflection.

The two founding fathers of the reflective philosophy Fichte identifies as Kant and Jacobi, while later representatives of this philosophy, like Fries and Echenmayer, merely chose to follow one of the two or tried to produce an uneasy reconciliation between them. The Kantian route, Fichte says, ended ultimately with a bare scepticism, where the consciousness was revealed to know nothing else than its own representations and really just reflected itself. This result is a complete contradiction, Fichte argues, because consciousness should be consciousness of something beyond itself.

The second, Jacobian route admitted that Kantian denial of true knowledge is partially correct, when it comes to ordinary, reflective knowledge. Yet, it insisted, we also have another capacity immediately reaching the ultimate reality or God – capacity that is often called faith. Fichte applauds the Jacobian point that we have a basic connection to reality, which underlies the rest of our consciousness. Still, he finds in this standpoint the basic fault that in a sense agrees with fault of the both Hegelian and mystical philosophies: the basic principle of the Jacobians or the faith is never argued for in a proper fashion, but just assumed.

The new route Fichte says the philosophy should take is to reconcile these disparate current trends into a coherent whole. He admits that he is not completely original and mentions a few minor figures of the time as his predecessors. A more complete account of this new system of philosophy Fichte leaves for his further works, but he does indicate some basic characteristics of it. This new philosophy should begin with a study of consciousness and take us to the Kantian problem of complete scepticism. The very absurdity of this position should then lead us to the faith of Jacobi, which is now justified through dialectical method. The result of this approach would then be the acceptance of a personal God as underlying our consciousness.

Carl Friedrich Göschel: Hegel and his time: with regard to Goethe (1832)

The last time we met Göschel, he was busy defending Hegelian philosophy against the reinterpretation of a single philosopher, but now we see him arguing for Hegel against all his contemporaries in the work Hegel und seine Zeit, mit Rücksicht auf Goethe. The look toward Goethe mentioned in the title refers to Göschel’s belief that Goethe and Hegel were essentially on the same side in this battle, Indeed, at various points of the work, Göschel quotes Goethe’s poems, to indicate correspondences with Hegelian and Goethean ideas. Even more, Göschel begins with a description of Goethe’s take on Leibnizian monadology – we are a collection of monads, soul being a central monad, ruling over a body made out of other monads, and after our death, the monads disperse, only to come together during resurrection, only with more heightened awareness – just to make the fancy remark that the two recently deceased philosophers must now be conversing in a heaven of monads, waiting for their return to the world of living.

The main text of the work is dedicated to describing the relations between Hegelian philosophy – or as Göschel prefers to call it most of the time, speculative philosophy – and the contemporary culture of the times. He begins with what he calls Umsicht – literally, a look from outside. In other words, he is interested in what the contemporaries who are not Hegelians think of Hegelian philosophy.

Göschel begins from the end of Hegel’s philosophical system or religion (one could point out that Hegel continues with philosophy after religion, but Göschel may be betraying his interests here somewhat). He notes that Hegelianism sits squarely in the middle between two major factions in the philosophy of religion: rationalism, which emphasises the role of reason in deciding what to believe, and supernaturalism, which endorses divine revelation as the foundation of religious certainty. Just like rationalism, Göschel says, Hegelian philosophy thinks that reason should be used as the “form” or method for studying religion by the subject, while the content or object of this method Hegel takes to agree in its essentials with Lutheranism, just like supernaturalists state.

Göschel thinks the position he describes as Hegelian is reasonable, if we just assume that the two sides – the investigating subject or individual human reason and the investigated object or divine revelation – are in a sense identical or connected to one another, even when they are seen as different. More particularly, Göschel adds, we should, firstly, assume that both these opposites have their worth, secondly, admit that this coexistence involves some contradiction or tension between the two poles, and finally, solve this tension by noting that opposites share something in common – human reason agrees with divine revelation, since the latter is also caused by reason, just that of divinity. Göschel at once points out that this mediating stance doesn’t still satisfy the extremes, which question the justifiability of the other extreme, but not of themselves: for rationalists, Hegelian philosophy of religion appears irrational in accepting orthodox dogmas, while for supernaturalists, it seems blasphemous in subjugating Bible to standards of human reason.

Göshcel considers similarly contemporary evaluations of other parts of Hegelian system (more particularly, he goes through it in reverse, continuing from philosophy of religion to philosophy of state, then to philosophy of religion, philosophy of nature, particularly medicine, and mathematics, ending finally with what philologists, historians and other philosophers have to say about Hegelianism), but his main point is clear from the first example. Hegelian philosophy often takes a mediating position between two extreme positions, of which one usually corresponds to subjective, human reason ready for revolution, while the other extreme then corresponds to objective, divine reason upholding traditions. Hegelianism solves the seeming contradiction of these two positions by noting their interconnectedness and essential unity, leading it to endorse moderation between radicalism and conservatism, which just makes the extreme positions reject this middle stance.

From different standpoints, Göschel concludes, Hegel’s system could be taken as too eclectic – in combining all systems – or too exclusive – as taking itself as the final truth; too poetic and mystic – as upholding contradictions as truth – or as too pedantic and scholastic – as using hierarchic classifications; as too realistic – as dealing only with the world around us – or as too idealistic – as seeing material world as a mere appearance of reason; as too pantheistic – as seeing God everywhere – or as too atheistic – as seeing God nowhere.

After this look from outside, Göschel moves to Einsicht or a look inside the Hegelian system. As we noted in the previous post about him, Göschel knows his Hegelian liturgy. He also shares some basic faults common to many so-called Hegelians. Thus, after quite correctly insisting that Hegel wants to develop the basic structures of his philosophy from a standpoint where we abstract from everything given – indeed, he wants to begin from nothing definite at all – but then when the truly interesting question how this development occurs at crucial points of the system is presented, Göschel merely answers with the general consideration that it happens “by immanent negation”, which in Hegelese really says nothing more than “by finding out how the matter at hand shows how to arrive at the next step”.

Göschel even makes the comparison – even if not outright identification – of the supposed steps of Hegelian method with the trivison of thesis, antithesis and synthesis at the beginning of the first version of Fichtean Wissenschaftslehre. In this often criticised comparison that loses the distinctness of Hegelian philosophy, Göschel also errs in not noting that this Fichtean trivision is rather different in holding the thesis (positing of an existing I) as higher than the two others, because in its pure form it describes what an absolute or divine I would be like, while the antithesis (positing I against not-I) describes the standpoint of human I and the resulting synthesis (I and not-I being divisible and thus able to share the consciousness of I) just tries to explain how the human standpoint could be possible from the standpoint of divine consciousness.

Moving back to his take on Hegelianism, Göschel makes the very common error of immediately assuming that the supposed three steps in Hegel’s method (abstraction of pure starting point, “negation” or development of new structures out of the first and “second negation” or consideration of this string of structures as forming a unified system) agree literally with the various trivisions of Hegel’s system. This assumption makes then possible to just ignore the question how the individual transitions in Hegel’s system work, although Göschel does at one place admit that the trivisions might sometimes appear arbitrary (no wonder, as Hegel himself reworked them from time to time and suggested they were more to help the reader than anything else).

We need not thus go in any detail to Göschel’s reconstruction of Hegelian logic, which is really just a summary of its table of contents. We can therefore skip at once to his peculiar understanding of its end, where Göschel outright assumes that the absolute idea concluding the book simply is God, not in any metaphorical sense, but as the same personality as described by orthodox Lutheranism. The development of pure thinking in Hegelian philosophy should then end with faith in the certainty of a personal God, who unites e.g. subject and object or infinite and finite by showing that the former has the power to “overreach” into the latter – in other words, to be the controlling and even creating principle in their organic fusion.

Göschel then continues to summarise the Hegelian philosophy of the concrete, or as Göschel emphasises, created nature and created spirit (we could say, humanity), which we for the just mentioned reason can also skip and jump into his take on absolute spirit. The final point of Göschel’s interpretation is that nature and humanity are not independent, but exist merely in relation to absolute spirit, which is then again God, but as related to their creations. The structures of logic were supposedly just developments of divine thought, which then in the concrete world appear as distinct and seemingly independent entities. World is thus, in a sense, fuller than logic, but it also mirrors the latter’s structure, showing analogies between different levels of the natural and the human world.

Another major point in the latter part of Hegel’s philosophy, according to Göschel, is that it shows the divine to be present in the here and now of the world we are living: just like theology said, God is omnipresent. Furthermore, Göschel adds, it also shows that these individual heres and nows form a larger continuity, where individuals unite into an organic whole.

Finally, Göschel presents as mediating between the Umsicht and the Einsicht the Aussicht – literally, a look toward the outside. In other words, he wants to deal with various problems that hinder the contemporary reader from understanding Hegelian philosophy, as he understands it. The central obstacle, he thinks, is our natural thinking, which as natural is still moored in some immediate presuppositions, which the absolute thinking has learned to put aside. Göschel admits this change of standpoint is difficult, since it involves us resisting the stubborn independence of concrete individuals in order that we can recognise that the light of reason is able to penetrate the essence of all things.

A particularly interesting shape of this stubborn attitude is found in the objection that what is actual seems not always reasonable, especially when this actual is evil and sinful. Göschel can quite correctly point out that this objection involves just a misunderstanding of Hegelian terminology. Actual does not mean for Hegel just anything that exists, but only the lawlike structures upholding what exists. Evil and sin, on the other hand, are mere existences, which may or may not appear – they are contingent. Then again, Göschel adds with conviction, such non-actual or contingent existences are then bound to be destroyed by the divine necessity and thus evil and sin are fated to find their retribution.

Quite characteristic is also Göschel’s answer to the question whether the absolute idea and the absolute spirit are just symbolic names for what is human. Göschel affirms this, but with a twist: it is not just any individual human Hegel is talking about, but the universal humanity embodied in Christ. Thus, he continues, while Father of the Christian Trinity is the exemplary infinite, Christ is the exemplary finite, in whose image the individual humans are then created. With this move Göschel reveals his cards: the Hegelian system is just a cover for quite a literal understanding of Christianity.

Ludwig Feuerbach: Pierre Bayle. Article on history of philosophy and humanity (1839)

While Leibniz was a natural continuation of Feuerbach’s work on the history of philosophy, Pierre Bayle seems an odd choice. Indeed, Feuerbach himself finally concludes his Pierre Bayle. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Menschheit by noting that Bayle never really brought anything positive to philosophy, and indeed, failed to understand the worth of thinkers like Spinoza, confusing in his criticism of latter the level of sense individuals with the level of one substance behind these individuals.

Yet, what was of worth in Bayle’s writings, Feuerbach says, is the contradiction of faith and reason – a question which appears to haunt Feuerbach himself more and more in his writings. Feuerbach begins again from the consideration of Christianity, which he sees as characterised by dualism. True, Feuerbach admits, the pre-Christian culture did also speak of oppositions, but only of natural oppositions, while Christianity added to these certain metaphysical dualisms, like that of God and world, of heaven and earth, of spirit and flesh and of faith and reason, all of which were externally expressed in the battle between the Church and the state.

Characteristic dualism in Catholicism, Feuerbach notes, was the opposition between sensuous flesh and supersensous spirit, where the latter was placed above the former. Thus, the highest virtue for the Catholic Church was not natural love, but unnatural chastity, and although the Church seemingly allowed marriage, the practice of the saints showed the true preference. Catholic artists, like Dante and Petrarca, appeared to value natural love as the highest shape in which heavenly can appear on earth, but, Feuerbach says, these artists were for Church mere adopted children in comparison to real children or saints. Even a Christian artist must do beautiful works that appeal also to non-Christians, because a true work of art belongs to no specific religion, but unites the whole humanity, and therefore religion is just an external covering to an artist. Thus, beautiful Catholic works of art are contrary to the very idea of Catholicism, and seeing sensual Madonnas pictured in cloisters just shows that monks were never truly able to leave their earthly lusts behind.

Just as the Catholic Church related to art, similarly it related to science, Feuerbach insists. True, Catholic monks did develop science, but this was opposed to the original spirit of Catholicism, which appreciated only devotional books. Scientific spirit contradicts Catholicism, Feuerbach thinks, and therefore it will either turn against Catholicism or be suppressed as mere means for spreading faith.

Protestantism rebelled against the practical contradiction of flesh and spirit, Feuerbach continues, but retained the theoretical opposition between faith and reason. Feuerbach thinks that the battle of the reformers against celibacy was not just based on the Bible, but the true reason justifying this turn was human understanding. Thus, Feuerbach finds it even more puzzling why Protestantism then turned against reason. A Catholic saint can at least cut away tempting organs – Feuerbach is probably referring to the famous rumour of Origen castrating himself – but a Protestant cannot cut away their reason.

It is this opposition of reason and faith that Feuerbach thinks is the most interesting aspect of Bayle. Feuerbach thinks it particularly poignant that Bayle was no professional theologian, since that showed him to start his criticism from a standpoint of freedom. Theology, Feuerbach states, thinks it has a monopoly over other sciences. The interest of theology is not to study anything scientifically, but to interpret and comment on the truth of faith. Doubts, on the other hand, are a sin for it and science is a mere means for the goal of faith. In other words, Feuerbach concludes, the spirit of theology is not the spirit of science, since science is universal for both Christians and non-Christians, while theology limits itself to the former.

When theology reigned, Feuerbach continues, other sciences were considered only as means for theology and subservient to it. Nature was studied for the sake of finding signs of God in nature and was thus regarded in a mechanical fashion as a mere external means for a goal. Thus, humans were forcefully turned toward heaven by theologians arguing teleologically from various phenomena of nature, and only Giordano Bruno and Spinoza understood that nature has its own reason. Theology, Feuerbach thinks, opposes science, because the main principle of theology is miracle and arbitrary will, which is opposed to reason as the principle of science. Thus, philosophy regards moral principles as laws of reason, while theology sees them as commands of God. More generally, theology derives everything from the will of God, while philosophy tries to explain it.

Feuerbach regards Bayle as an antitheologian and thus a person of reason. For instance, Bayle saw comets as natural phenomena and not as divine signs and argued for this by noting that by using comets as signs God would have just increased superstition, which Bayle regarded as worse than atheism. Indeed, Bayle went even so far as to note that atheists often lived better lives than Christians.

Bayle’s criticism, Feuerbach says, concerned religion as differing from morality and philosophy, in other words, positive religion like Catholicism that had solidified into a church and was limited by certain articles of faith. In such a positive religion the believer does not need to do anything else, but what its dogmas say to be sanctified (the official sacraments). Although Protestantism was a sort of liberation from Catholicism, it also became a positive religion. Thus, even Protestantism makes God into an object of devotion that demands service, while duties toward humans become subservient to this and filled only because so God is also served. Protestantism, Feuerbach concludes, binds itself to a specific time and place – church Sundays, when the priest is preaching – and religion becomes a mere custom one has to regularly follow.

Feuerbach thus agrees with Bayle that it is not the positive religion that has combined barbarians into society, but that humans have done it themselves, because of their conscience. Christians do not do good because they are Christians, but because they are humans. On the other hand, a bad person remains a bad person, even if Christianity would frighten him not to do bad things. Furthermore, paradoxically the belief in the dogma of the original evil in human nature just shows that the believer of this dogma does not believe themselves to be good.

Feuerbach notes that Bayle endorsed the independency of ethics from religion and criticised the habit of explaining away the immoralities of Biblical figures. Feuerbach regards Bayle’s endeavour to separate ethics from religion as noble. According to Feuerbach, it is foolish to try to ground ethics on the notion of God. True, one could try to base ethics on the idea of God as the epitome of goodness, but actually, it is not the goodness as the goodness of God that is here important, but merely goodness as such. Furthermore, Feuerbach continues, although the goodness of God might be in line with ethics, the notion of divine omnipotence contradicts the idea of goodness, since it is just a notion of a magical demon capable of anything. Indeed, he adds, even the devil seems capable of miracles, which then are just an unethical and immoral concept.

Scholastic theology could not do proper ethics, Feuerbach explains, since it founded everything on the will of God. Truly independent ethics didn’t appear, Feuerbach thinks, before the Kantian categorical imperative, which gave ethics a sacred and independent position. Feuerbach praises Fichte for raising ethics even further to an ideal that an empirical human being could never fully achieve, but still has to strive to for its own sake, while in comparison, a theologian does good only for the sake of God and paradise. If one does not do good for its own sake, one is merely seeking for one’s own interest and making good serve as a means for one’s pious goal, Feuerbach insists and adds that only ethics is the true religion and true love of God is the love of humanity.

According to Feuerbach, separation of ethics from theology shows most strikingly that spirit has broken away from theology. He thinks that Bayle expounded this contradiction especially in discussion with rationalists theologians, who thought that dogmas could not contradict reason. Against them, Bayle argued that especially original sin was an unreasonable dogma: the Biblical story of the fall of humankind makes God into a literal instigator of sin. Leibniz had argued against Bayle that God had other ends beyond human virtue (perhaps the preservation of certain plants, as the Bible story suggests), but Feuerbach thinks this justification is not available to the theological standpoint, which sees God working only for humanity. Leibniz and rational theologians objected also that divine goodness and justice meant no ordinary human goodness and justice, but Bayle could answer that they must still be recognisable as goodness and justice. Indeed, Bayle was only holding on to a philosophical ideal of good and just God, while the theologian’s God was very passionate and deceived humans into sin, although this God also wanted to retain the appearance of not doing so.

Bayle found dogmas of religion problematic, Feuerbach continues, not because they contradicted lower passions, but because they contradicted natural reason. While for an orthodox theologian reason was just a concubine, for Bayle it was a life companion. Feuerbach sees Bayle’s relation to faith as exhibiting a more general sign of his time: faith was not anymore natural, but felt as contradictory to reason or as a mere object, first of reflection, then of doubt and criticism and finally of denial.

Feuerbach notes that Descartes had particularly shared a similar idea of faith: both Descartes and Bayle knew objectively the contradiction of positive faith with reason, while their own faith was subjectively contradicting their reason. Descartes did not doubt his own faith, but just with this lack of doubt he showed that it contradicted the universal reason. Philosophy cannot exist, when assertions have to be just assumed as true, which Feuerbach thinks is true of Church dogmas. Thus, if Descartes had been a good Catholic, he would have just accepted dogmas and not thought of anything. Yet, as an instigator of modern philosophy he could not accept any determined fundament or limitation for thinking, but had to follow its own necessity.

Descartes, Feuerbach thinks, had based his philosophy on self-certainty, which is something completely antidogmatic. Positive effects of any philosophy, Feuerbach says, are not visible to the senses and do not limit to mere formal consequences, but to change of spirit. Cartesian philosophy especially taught us to think, Feuerbach insists, and to distinguish material from spiritual and to reduce study of nature to mechanism.

A particular point where Feuerbach sees Descartes contradicting the dogmas of Catholicism was his idea of body as characterised by extension. Feuerbach thinks that this notion of extension cannot be reconciled with the idea of transsubstantiation, where the same extension of bread supposedly changes its very substance into the flesh of Christ. By ignoring such dogmas, Feurbach notes, Cartesian thinking showed its lack of interest in matters of faith. Faith was thus not anymore based on self-consciousness, but was only an external addition or historical faith. Historical matters can be believed only historically, that is without any further justification, since while present facts we are forced to believe, historical facts of past lack this feeling of necessity and are something we must always doubt. Similarly, Feuerbach suggests, true faith in dogmatic facts could occur only when these facts were felt as a living part of human self-consciousness, while from Descartes onward such living faith was more and more just a thing of the past.

Feuerbach admits that there was still something making faith very much a living force at the time of Descartes, namely, the community of believers or the Church representing faith in the actual world. Because of the Church, faith was a universal opinion, while reason was in comparison a mere subjective opinion. Feuerbarch notes that Bayle also was a part of such a community, although in his case it was not Catholic, but Reformed church. Still, Feuerbach insists, Bayle’s faith was an act of self-denial: Bayle rejected reason in favour of historically grounded faith, or after placing doubts on dogmas he still leaped to faith.

Feuerbach sees Bayle as an intellectual ascetic, abstaining from the use of reason, but at the same time contradicting himself. For Feuerbach, Bayle was a sophist in defending faith. Feuerbach considers earthly satisfaction to be truly more divine than mere blind faith, which is just human invention. Indeed, Feuerbach says, even the believers understand this, because they think God is the most blessed and happiest of all beings, who does not require any faith at all, but knows everything with full clarity.

Although Feuerbach thus is ultimately let down by Bayle’s choice of faith over reason, he congratulates Bayle for his otherwise impartial polemics against all positive forms of religion. He is especially fond of Bayle’s criticism against all religious authority and particularly the Catholic reliance on the power of tradition. Bayle was correct, Feuerbach says, in rejecting the idea that the Church could force the conscience of individual people into believing something. Instead, Bayle demanded unlimited tolerance of all creeds, which Feuerbarch wholeheartedly agrees with: truth is tolerant, because it is always sure of itself.