Outlines of metaphysic : dictated portions of the lectures of Hermann Lotze ; translated and edited by George T. Ladd

Front matter

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

LOTZE'S

Introduction

§ 1. Our every-day apprehension of the World is pervaded throughout with suppositions concerning an inner coherency of .its phenomena, which is in no wise immediately perceived by us, and yet is regarded as needing no explanation and as necessary. Thus, for example, even the most common apprehension of the world is impossible without articu^ lating the content of our perceptions in such a manner that we assume ' Things ' as the supports and centres of its phenomena and events, and all kinds of ' reciprocal actions ' as being interchanged between them. Neither those things, however, nor these actions, are immediate objects of perception. In the same manner are both a theoretic apprehension and a practical treatment of the world inconceivable without the supposition of a causal connection of that which has actual existence.

All these and other suppositions we have become accustomed to in life with the feeling of their necessity, but without availing ourselves of a clear knowledge of their precise meaning and of the grounds and limits of their validity. There are

OUTLINES OF METAPHYSIC.

therefore never wanting occasions where doubts at once arise in us concerning their validity. Thus in the consideration of human transactions, the new conception of freedom stands opposed to the ' causal nexus ' previously deemed of universal applicability. Thus on consideration of the soul, the conception of ' Thing ' seems to be in general inept to designate the permanent subject of its changeable phenomena.

These contradictions, in which the extra-sci^ntific form of representation is involved, and to which the particular sciences also lead, — in so far as the axioms which some one of them follows in its domain run counter to those which another of them leaves undisputed in its domain, — make us sensible of the necessity for a universal science, which takes as the objects of its investigation those conceptions and propositions that, in ordinary life and in the particular sciences, are employed 2,^ principles of investigation.

This science is Metaphysic.

§ 2. The two questions that lie nearest at hand would accordingly be : How can we get possession of those suppositions completely^ in order to have in collective form that total content of our reason which is necessary to thought.? and, then: How can we demonstrate that these suppositions have any validity, or what validity they have .?

THE CATEGORIES OF KANT.

As to the former question, it is well known that Aristotle first directed attention to those most general conceptions which are expressed concerning everything actual (the ' Categories ') ; but without conducting his search for them according to any principle, or giving any security that his enumeration of their series was complete. In more recent times, Kant attempted to make good this deficiency : Every act of cognition, he held, takes place by combination of ideas, whose form is that of logical judgment. If now it is sought to discover the different suppositions which we make about possible or necessary combinations of * Things,' then there is only need to collect all the essentially different forms of the logical judgment, and it will thereupon be found that a special model of combination has been followed in each, according to which subject and predicate are thought of as cohering. For example : the categorical judgment (''gold is yellow") simply combines subject and predicate as thing and attribute; and this relation between thing and attribute is one of those suppositions which we make concerning the coherency of things. The hypothetical judgment ("if gold is heated, it melts") unites the predicate to the subject, not absolutely but conditionally; and the thought which lies herein, — namely, that of a combination of changeable phenomena according

OUTLINES OF METAPHYSIC.

to a law of conclitionating, is a second of those universal suppositions. Kant expresses them both by the brief titles of the categories of ' substantiality and of causality.' [In reference to this point it is common to remark, that the correct form, in which we are able to express those suppositions concerning the nature of actuality that are necessities of our thought, is without exception that of the proposition, not that of the conception. Only a proposition states a truth from which, by application to particular cases, definite determinations can be deduced. Conceptions are only elements which can form truths by composition ; of themselves alone they are nothing, until we are told what is to be done with them. It was on this account a hindrance to the history of philosophy, and led to inapplicable ways of speaking, that Aristotle reduced those thoughts to the form of fundamental conceptions ; and that Kant also, at least at first, represented the truth which is necessary to thought as a series of conceptions, (' pure notions of the understanding '). In a round-about-way he annulled again this deficiency, when he afterwards sought to deduce a system of fundamental propositions of the understanding from these conceptions of the understanding.]

On the whole, it cannot be admitted that this

THE CATEGORIES OF KANT.

clue, or that the series of forms of judgment to which it conducts, can lead to the complete, correct, and useful discovery of the metaphysical suppositions. Logical thinking is a combination of ideas according to laws of a universal truth ; but these ideas do not relate to what is merely actual, but to all that is thinkable, even to all abstractions which can never of themselves have any actuality. The logical forms are, further, modes of experience, by means of which our human thinking combines and disposes manifold ideas, in such manner that a cognition of what is actual can be gained therefrom ; but these logical forms themselves are not immediate copies of the combinations which take place between the elements of actuality. It is therefore to be expected, that this clue will indeed remind us of many metaphysical conceptions, because, of course, even that which is actual can be thought of only in the aforesaid logical forms ; but that, on the one side, we cannot be led by it to all the fundamental propositions of metaphysic, and that, on the other side, we may by following this clue hit upon conceptions which have merely a logical value, and of which the metaphysical applicability is not clear.

§ 3. In the above-mentioned way Kant had discovered twelve categories, and, on account of the

OUTLINES OF METAPHYSIC.

consciousness of necessary and universal validity which accompanied them, had considered them as not derived from experience, but as an originally inborn possession of our spirit.

Fichte took offence at the view that our spirit, which every one inclines to think of as a unity in the strictest sense, be supposed to possess twelve different, isolated, fundamental conceptions ; and he proposed to deduce these Kantian categories from a single original act or original truth of the spirit, as a series of consequences, every one of which has its definite place beside the others. Such original act he found in this, that the spirit never merely is (namely, as object for another observer), but continuously, and in all forms of its activity, withal is 'for itself ' {fiir sick ist) ; that is, it knows, feels, enjoys, or possesses itself, etc. ("the Ego posits itself "). And now Fichte sought to show how this * self-positing,' in order to accomplish what it wishes or is obliged to accomplish, necessarily leads also to the positing of a ' non-ego,' to the ascription of quality to the non-ego, to the assumption of its divisibility, etc. ; that is to say, how the spirit is necessitated by its original act to represent in general an external world, and to make, with reference to the inner coherence of the component parts of this world, those necessary suppositions which are expressed by the categories of Kant.

THE IDEALISM OF FICHTE.

§ 4. Kant had considered the ' pure notions of the understanding' as only subjective forms of cognition belonging to our spirit, and therefore as valid only for that which has once become * phenomenon ' for us, and not as valid for things themselves. But that such * Things ' in general exist, he had constantly in p7'axi assumed.

Even this the idealism of Fichte had to call in question : even that there are * Things ' appeared to it as an imagination unavoidable by our spirit, the external world as a mere product of a faculty of imagination working unconsciously within us. The necessity of explaining how different spirits construct pictures of the world that fit together so as to make one common world, led to the assumption of a single creative power, which, harmoniously active in all spirits, both images before them the phenomenal world, and also necessitates them to judge of this same world according to certain suppositions.

Henceforward this fundamental conception of an * Absolute ' determined the character of Metaphysic. The attempt was made to translate one's self immediately into the nature of this Absolute, in such a manner as to have a real experience of its developments, and not merely bring them to one's contemplation from without by the quondam means of human cognition, comparison of conceptions, and adduction of proof. In a ' dialectical method ' (concerning which, further on) the means appeared to be given of beholding this self-development of the Absolute within us, in its simplicity and without disturbing it by admixture of subjective investigation. Schelling withal does not separate the two problems of deducing from this Absolute the general laws of all actuality and the definite particular forms of phenomena. Hegel designs at least to make this separation ; and in his Metaphysic (which he calls * Logic ' ) he intends to depict that first inner development of the Absolute, through which it projects within itself those laws of every future possible world that are necessities of thought.

§ 5. Without passing judgment in this place upon the substantial value of the above-mentioned apprehension of the world, we cannot approve of the method it employs. For it takes its departure from an assumption (the conception of the Absolute) which lies very remote from the common representation ; the content of which is very difficult for even the philosophers to define exhaustively ; but the erroneous determinations of which become sources of mistakes in all subsequent investigations, — mistakes that are always the more hazardous, the more decidedly it is proposed to deduce the entire content

HERBART S .VIEW APPROVED. 9

of Metaphysic, in an unbroken series and without anywhere taking a new start, from a single principle.

Such kind of deduction appears to us the natural method of representing a truth with which we are already acquainted. Investigation, on the contrary, whose first business is to discover the truth, must take its departure from the largest possible number of independent, perfectly obvious and well-recognized considerations, with the proviso that the results which the prosecution of one consideration yields, shall be subsequently corrected, so far as is necessary, by the results of the rest.

In this matter, therefore, we esteem Herbart right, who assumes as many independent sections of Metaphysic as there are different distinct questions, problems, or contradictions, that meet us in our common contemplation of the world, and that are the separate causes of our philosophizing in general. For they compel us to attempt the reduction of the problems or contradictions given in perception to one consistent, actual ^way of behavior' on the part of ' the Existent ' ; and, more precisely, to such a way of behavior as will withal furnish an explanation, how the appearance of contradiction cannot fail to originate for our point of view.

lO OUTLINES OF IV^ETAPHYSIC.

§ 6. That we are right in following Herbart in this matter is shown by the fact that the most different schools, however wide the other differences of their fundamental views and their methods, have, nevertheless, composed an articulated system of Metaphysic in quite analogous manner.

All these different schools experienced the necessity of discussing in the first place, in a section on

* Ontology, ' (so the old Metaphysic and Herbart; called ' Doctrine of Being ' in Hegel) those most general suppositions which we cannot avoid making concerning the nature of all things and the possibility of their coherence. * Being,' * Becoming,' 'efficient causation,' and such questions form the chief problems of all this section. They experienced

(2) The necessity of examining the forms in which the particular elements of actuality are united in one orderly totality. The intuitions of ' Space,' * Time,'

* Motion,' and the most abstract of the cognate conceptions of 'the Natural,' form the chief points of this section, called ' Cosmology,' (' Synechology in Herbart ' ; ' Doctrine of Essence and Phenomenon in Hegel). Finally,

(3) They all arrive at the inquiry concerning the relation in which the objective world stands to that world of spirits by which it is apprehended. Within wider or narrower limits, the ' Rational Psychology '

HOW IT IS CERTIFIED. I I

of the old school, the ' Eidolology ' of Herbart (doctrine of the forms of cognition), and Hegel's * Doctrine of the Idea,' treat of the same subjects.

§ 7. The second of the questions adduced above (§ 2), — namely, How we can certify ourselves of the truth and validity of our metaphysical suppositions, cannot be decided previous to, but only in and by Metaphysic itself. For the bare question is without meaning so long as it concerns merely the validity in general of these suppositions ; it interests us only so far as it touches upon the validity of metaphysical cognition in reference to an actual world, which we think of as an object standing over opposite to us. But the question whether such a world may be thought of, and how it may be thought of, is a metaphysical one. And as a rule it will always be found that those who, previous to the application of our cognition to actuality, are pleased first to decide the point whether it is thus applicable at all or not, judge this point in such a way as to assume ready-made a crowd of propositions concerning the nature of objective actuality, concerning the nature of the cognitive spirit, and concerning a possible relation of interaction between the two ; while, nevertheless, it is only Metaphysic that can in the first instance demonstrate these propositions. The question which is disposed of unconsciously in such cases, we are going to undertake consciously ; and we relegate it to the third principal division of Metaphysic.

First Principal Division.

ONTOLOGY.

iRST Principal Division.

ONTOLOGY.

(Of the Coherency of Things.)

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

§ 8. Metaphysic is the science of that which is actual, not of that which is merely thinkable. By actuality we distinguish a thing that is from one that is not, an event that happens from one that does not happen, a relation that exists from one that does not exist.

It is improper to apply the term 'Being' to this distinction ; for this term, according to the customary usage of speech, designates only one kind of actuality, — namely, the motionless existence of things, in opposition, for example, to the happening of events.

Yet more hazardous are the designations of ' Position ' and 'Putting.' For, since the very form of the word in this case indicates a transaction, these designations easily mislead us into the wrong course l6 OUTLINES OF METAPHYSIC.

of wishing to understand or describe this transaction of ' putting ' or ' positing ' ; or rather (as we choose to express the thought) of raising the inquiry, how ' actuahty in general ' is made. But no one can tell precisely how it is brought about that, in general, something is, instead of there not being anything at all ; or how it is made possible that something enters existence through coming to pass, instead of everything remaining as it was of old.

This problem is not merely hopeless, but also contradictory. For every attempt to show how actuality originates, assumes the antecedent actuality of some conditions or other, out of which, or according to which, it originates. We can therefore never deduce all actuality, but always merely one form of actuality from another. And the problem of metaphysic is actually this : To discover the laws of the connection which unites the particular (simultaneous or successive) elements of actuality.

§ 9. If we summarize the most universal factors of the ordinary view of the world, it will be found to include the following suppositions : There are ' Things ' in indefinite number ; every thing supports certain 'properties,' and can, in so far as it has a previous existence, enter into all manner of * relations ' with other things ; and these relations

THE COMMON VIEW OBSCURE. 1/

are the reason on account of which 'changes' originate in the things.

How much that is not lucid these suppositions contain, will be shown only little by little. At present, it is enough to remark that the two simplest of the conceptions here employed, that of a ' Thing ' and that of its * Being,' however lucid they appear at first, on closer consideration grow always more and more obscure.

While we require that the * Thing ' shall be thinkable before its properties, we, for all that, never achieve the actual thought of it otherwise than by means of its properties. While we further require that it must first ' be,' in order afterward to experience somewhat or to enter into relations with other things, we, for all that, never in experience find a ' Being ' whose apparent rest does not itself rest upon uninterrupted motions and actions ; nor are we able even in our thoughts to discover a perspicuous conception of what we mean by such ' Being ' as this.

These dilemmas afford us the first materials for our investigation ; more precisely, we treat first of the true significance of ' Being,' and afterward of the nature of that to which this particular species called actuality can appertain.

CHAPTER I. OF THE SIGNIFICANCE (tHE CONCEPTION) OF 'BEING.'

§ 10. If the ordinary understanding is questioned as to what it means when it mentions something as ' Being,' in opposition to not being, it will without doubt appeal to immediate perception, and assert : That *2i-,' which may, in some manner or other, be the subject of experience by the senses.

If, however, we choose to formulate this expression exactly as follows, — ' To be ' signifies ' to be the subject of experience,' — then this definition of

* Being ' would by no means completely express what we actually mean by the word. For we ascribe

* Being ' to what has been previously perceived, even when it is no longer perceived ; and we consider its being perceived as only something which may possibly appertain to the thing in consequence of its unobserved, separate existence, but which is not identical with this.

In what now this unobserved ' Being ' consists, the ordinary understanding explains very easily. While the things, that is to say, disappear from our perception, they still continue to stand in all kinds of relations with one another ; and it is these ' relations,'

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF BEING. 1 9

in which, while they are not being observed, the * Being ' of things consists, and by which it is distinguished from 'not being.'

In more general terms : * To be ' means ' to stand in relations,' and being perceived is itself only one such relation beside other relations.

§ 11. In opposition to the foregoing mode of apprehending the subject, philosophy is wont with great vivacity to explain : ' Standing in relations ' can be asserted only of that which exists previous to such relations. Accordingly, the ' Being ' of things can consist neither in their relation to us, nor in their relation to one another ; it must rather be thought of as a perfectly pure and simple 'position,' 'affirmation,' or 'putting,' which excludes all relations, but forms the ground of the possibility of becoming related at all.

If we attempt to think of this pure 'Being,' and to give to ourselves an account of precisely what we mean by it, then we meet with the difficulty of being unable to specify anything by which such a ' pure Being ' may be distinguished from non-being. For if we actually exclude all relations, then the 'pure Being' would consist in a mere 'position ' ; by virtue of which, however, that which is thus existent cannot be discovered at any place in the world, or at any point of time in the succession of events, and does not assert itself in actuality by any effect upon anything whatever, and cannot be affected at all by any element of actuality. But it is precisely by these same features that we recognize, as we believe, the non-existent.

Consequently, the definition, which represents * Being' as * Position without relation,' is so imperfect that it comprehends precisely the opposite of that which is to be defined ; it therefore needs correction.

Remark. The purport of this conclusion is exactly the same as that which forms the beginning of the Hegelian logic, in the proposition : ' Being = Nothing.' But the succession of mental operations which we have in this case accomplished (namely, an attempt at definition ; a comparison of the definition arrived at with what we really meant, and the discovery of a contradiction between the two ; and, finally, a discernment of the necessity of revising our definition), appears to Hegel as an inner development, which was gone through, therefore, not by our thoughts, but by their object : the Absolute, first thought of as pure Being, is obliged to discover itself as such to be actually identical with Nothing, and then, out of this unseemly identity, to posit itself again by a new act of development in the new form of ' determinate existence.'

§ 12. It will be objected that, none the less, an existence, previously thought of in relations, cannot by abstraction of these relations, pass over into a

UNRELATED 'POSITION IMPOSSIBLE. 21

non-existence ; and that, therefore, the pure Being of the existence, which remains after this abstraction is made, is even still the contrary of non-being.

This objection is just only in so far as we doubtless mean by the term ' Being ' that which is the opposite to non-being : we design to affirm and posit, not to deny and annul. But we are mistaken in holding that it is sufficient to consider this positing or affirming, intended by us, as valid in actuality, without concerning ourselves about the conditions under which these two conceptions have any applicability to actuality.

These conceptions really belong to the large class of abstractions which we correctly produce to aid the process of thinking, and which, in the process of thinking, we are also able, by combination with other conceptions, to convert into useful results : they are not, however, applicable at all per se ; but they first become applicable to what is actual, when we attach to them again the abstracted correlates through which their meaning is completed.

Thus the conception of ' positing ' is not applicable at all, if it is designed, without media, to posit merely something, and yet not posit it anywhere whatever. Thus, moreover, we cannot 'affirm' a Thing, but only a predicate of a thing.

'Pure Being,' thus apprehended, would therefore be only the conception of an affirmation, to which must be supplied both the subject of which the affirmation is supposed to hold good, and the predicate which is supposed to attach itself to the subject.

It follows, accordingly, that, as was shown above, the 'Being' of things can consist only in certain relations on which the act of positing affirmatively falls, and not in a pure act of positing without any definite condition in which the 'Thing' was posited by the act.

§ 13. A further exception can be taken (so Herbart) : If any existence, in order to be, must be related to some other, and accordingly pre-supposes this other, then a constant, durable positing of actuality can never come to pass.

This objection, however, confounds the useless question, how a world would get itself made, with the metaphysical question, in what forms of coherence can the existing world consist. And even if we should make a world, it would remain incomprehensible why the creating force, which we must then in every case assume and can in no case further explain, would have to be subject absolutely to the limitation of positing only one element at a time. But if we suppose that this force posited the entire manifoldness of the elements of the world, as related

UNRELATED 'POSITION IMPOSSIBLE. 23

to each other, at one time, then the whole difficulty would disappear, and all the elements would remain constant ; although each, — or rather, in this case, because each, — is related to the other.

Just as lacking in cogency is the other thought of an antecedent unrelated position, which is needed to make possible subsequent relations. An element which were out of all relation to all other elements, to the world in general, could not even subsequently enter into such relation. For, since it is obliged to enter, and is able to enter, not into ' relations in general,' but into certain perfectly definite ones, to the exclusion of others, the reason for this selection and this exclusion could be discovered afresh only in other * relations ' that would be already existing between the above-said element and the world. There is therefore no transition for ' Things ' out of unrelated 'Being' into the condition of being related, but only an interchange of different relations.

§ 14. For the sake of explaining the world, even the view which seeks for true ' Being ' in ' Position ' without relation, is still compelled to assume that things do, as a matter of fact, everywhere stand in reciprocal relations ; only — this Realism goes on to say — they are not so necessarily, but could likewise *be,' devoid of all relation.

But the above statement means nothing else than this : There ' is ' actually nothing which does not stand in relations ; or, all ' that is ' does stand in relations. To speak, indeed, of 'pure, unrelated Being,' and at the same time admit that there is none such, means the same as to speak, not of the existent (which it is still necessary somehow to make good as ^ existing '), but of the non-existent, — something which this view considers possible, but which we consider a mere abstraction that has absolutely no direct significance with reference to actuality.

CHAPTER 11.

OF THE CONTENT OF THE EXISTENT.

§ 15. If *to be' means the same as *to stand in relations/ then further inquiry arises : partly, What are the relations ^ to stand in which constitutes for things their ' being ' } partly also, What are the Things, which as subjects enter into the relations .-*

The second question, to which from reasons of convenience we give the precedence, does not mean that the characteristic and concrete content of things is to be specified, — whether of every individual, in so far as they might happen to be distinct from one another, or of all collectively, in so far as they might happen to be of one essence. We have rather in this case to do only with the discovery of the universal formal predicates which must appertain to all that (whatever else it may be) which is to be called ' Thing,' or which is to appear in actuality as the 'Subject of relations.' In other words : we seek a definition of * Thingness' {Dingheit).

§ 16. The belief of ordinary intuition, that it has an immediate perception of the nature of things, can be only very short-lived. On closer consideration, it very soon learns : —

(i) That all perceptible 'Things,' although they first appear to intuition as undivided wholes, are composed of many elements, and that all their sensible properties depend upon the form of this composition, and change with it ;

(2) That the simple elements, in which we must now seek for the genuine * Things,' not merely remain imperceptible, but that it would also be in vain to want to define their essence by means of other sensible qualities, since all such properties are dependent upon conditions, and, accordingly, cannot indicate the necessarily unchanging essence of the things, but only their way of behavior varying according to circumstances ; finally —

(3) That sensible properties also are not attached once for all, as changing phenomena to a single subject, nor do they proceed from it alone, but that they are always only events which are attached to the concurrence of different things.

For this reason, therefore, sensible properties are neither directly the content of 'the Existent,' nor are they phenomena which, although in an indirect manner, do, nevertheless, express the true nature of this Existent ; they are rather events which indicate indeed the fact and the manner of the affection or action of things, but never specify what the things are.

CONTENT OF THE EXISTENT. 2/

§ 17. After it is obvious that no kind of sensible properties form the content of Things, we still do not need to resort to the desperate expedient of speaking of an existence that were absolutely devoid of content, and the entire nature of which consisted in indeterminate ' Being,' without any definite Somewhat to which this * Being ' appertains. The very name, ' the Existent,' by its participial form (in German, das Seiende) requires somewhat conceivable in itself vjhich may as it were participate in 'Being.'