Outlines of Metaphysic

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

FIRST PRINCIPAL DIVISION. ONTOLOGY.

I. | Of the Significance (Conception) of Being

II. | Of the Content of the Existent

Editor's Preface

EDITOR’S PREFACE.

THE name of Rudolph Hermann Lotze, philosopher, has already been made familiar to a large number of readers in this country, and no little interest has been awakened in his opinions upon various philosophical and religious themes. But thus far the number who have attained any trustworthy knowledge as to what those opinions are, has remained exceedingly small. Until very recently all his most important published works have been inaccessible to every one unable to cope with voluminous philosophical German. Within the present year, creditable translations of the two large volumes on Logic and Metaphysic, which constitute all of his System of Philosophy that the author lived to publish, have appeared in England; and a translation of his Mikrokosmus (three volumes in German) is promised soon to appear. These works, however—especially the two former—are not only large but technical and difficult; few are likely to attempt their mastery who are not already trained in the reading of German philosophy. Yet there is scarcely any other recent writer on philosophical subjects whose thoughts are so stimulating for their breadth, penetration and candor; or with whom an acquaintance is so desirable for purposes of general culture through the philosophic way of considering life, with its interests in not merely pure thought, but also in morals, religion, and art.

It affords me, therefore, the pleasure that comes from the hope of being useful to a wide circle of persons, to announce that I have arranged to translate and edit several, if not all, of those little books called ‘Outlines’ which have been given to the public in Germany since the death of their lamented author. These ‘Outlines’ cover the entire ground of Lotze’s mature teaching in the University upon the subjects of Logic, Metaphysic, Philosophy of Nature, Psychology, Æsthetics, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, and History of German Philosophy since Kant. A word of explanation as to the origin of these books will suffice to assure the reader that he is to be put into communication with the thoughts of this philosopher in a way which he can trust both as to substance and form of expression. The German from which the translations are to be made consists of the dictated portions of his latest lectures (at Göttingen, and for a few months at Berlin) as formulated by Lotze himself, recorded in the notes of his hearers, and subjected to the most competent and thorough revision of Professor Rehnisch of Göttingen. The ‘Outlines’ give, therefore, a mature and trustworthy statement, in language selected by this teacher of philosophy himself, of what may be considered as his final opinions upon a wide range of subjects. They have met with no little favor in Germany.

I have used such competence and diligence as I could command in translating this first one of the Lotze series which it is proposed to publish. As far as seemed consistent with a desirable accuracy, technical language has been avoided, and the work presented with an English expression. Some of the terms employed in the original, however, do not admit of exact and elegant representation in our language; nor has it been possible—had it been deemed desirable—wholly to disguise the savor of the class-room.

The Metaphysic was selected as the first one of the series for translation, because the views of the author on this subject were always regarded by himself as being, and in fact are, fundamental and initiatory to his views on all the other subjects to be treated. No one can make any progress whatever in understanding the philosophical system of Lotze, or even in seeing the true bearing of his observations on aesthetic, ethical and religious matters, who has not mastered his metaphysical notions. This little book, then, should be regarded as furnishing the key and door to all the rest.

Two principal objects have been before my mind as motives for undertaking these translations. I wish, in the first place, to further the work of teaching philosophy by their use. Such condensed, orderly, and mature statements of conclusions on a wide range of philosophical questions will be found exceedingly valuable for both teacher and pupil. They furnish a scheme for all the instruction which the teacher is able to give in presenting and answering these questions. When skillfully used, they may be made to introduce the pupil to the widest fields of philosophy under the guidance of a great master, and in an interesting way. They present the applications of Metaphysic to art, religion, nature, and human conduct;—and they thus open regions of reflection into which the instruction of our colleges and universities scarcely takes their students at all,—regions, however, which are precisely the ones where such students both desire and need to go.

I wish, in the second place, to have these thoughts of Lotze do their legitimate work in liberalizing, expanding and elevating the culture of those persons who are wont to be styled the ‘educated class.’ Perhaps, since what is here offered to them is presented in so compact and manageable form, not a few will be glad to look on life,—in its widest extent, human and divine,—with quickened powers of reflection under the stimulating words of this teacher from another nation. With such an object in view, it may be regretted that the first number of the series should be the most abstract, and seemingly foreign to practical interests, of them all. But, then, as I have already said, it is introductory and fundamental.

It is not my purpose to attempt to defend, refute, or even characterize the opinions which these books will, for themselves, sufficiently set forth. Two or three remarks, however, will help to guard the uninstructed reader against certain misapprehensions of the author which might otherwise easily arise. The philosophy of Lotze is a remarkable combination of elements from the school and from real life. The elements which come from the school are both directly philosophical, and also only indirectly so through the physical and natural sciences. In the same year of his life, at the age of twenty-one, he gained both the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and that of Doctor of Medicine. Although his earliest published works were on Metaphysic (1841) and Logic (1843), the first to be much noticed were those upon the science which deals with the relations of physical and psychical phenomena: on the Physiology of Life (1851) and of the Soul (1852). The thorough-going attempt made by the latter works to apply the conception of mechanism to the phenomena of mind led many to misunderstand Lotze, and even to class him among so-called scientific materialists. The freest allowance is given to the scientific conception of mechanism in this series of philosophical ‘Outlines.’ But the reader should never forget that in the view of Lotze, ‘Mechanism’—or the coherency of the phenomena according to fixed laws of action—is only the means or ‘way of behavior’ which the highest Idea, the Idea of the Good, has chosen to realize itself. And the whole drift and aim of the philosophical system set forth in these little books, is away from materialism. The disciples of Lotze—should he make any among us—would become uncommonly at their ease concerning the ultimate result upon our fundamental faiths and aspirations, of materialistic science and destructive criticism.

Some readers of the ‘Outlines of Metaphysic’ may be betrayed into the hasty conclusion that their author was pantheistically inclined. Such should remember that it is not the business of Metaphysic to go far in the personification of that Absolute Being whom it discovers as the ‘Ground’ of all reality, or in defining the true personality of the finite spirits which thus apprehend this Absolute Being. On such subjects, the ‘Philosophy of Religion’ and the ‘Philosophy of Ethics’ (Practical Philosophy) will give the elaboration and application of the author’s metaphysical conceptions. It is my plan to have these two additional numbers of the series follow the one on Metaphysic, within a few months. In the meantime, if this philosopher also must be classed with others, let us affirm our hope and belief that his conclusions will be in the main acceptable to the many who are feeling strongly a certain most interesting and promising drift in modern philosophy. Among such are those who have learned much from Hegel, although they have been obliged to modify many of his views. The method of Hegel was, indeed, always opposed by Lotze; and he endeavored to make good what he considered the deficiencies of Hegel by substituting for a movement of Absolute Thought, a movement of Absolute Life, as the centre and sum of all reality. But, with all the differences in both method and conclusions of the two thinkers, Lotze teaches something like the same spiritual Monism as that into which many who have learned in the school of Hegel are leading the way. And for such as do not feel that they have learned, even indirectly, from Hegel the secret of reconciling science with aesthetics and religious impulse, Spirit with so-called Matter, and Mechanism with Idea, these works will be found useful in pointing out how a candid and well-furnished mind considered such problem of reconciliation, as well as in throwing light on many of the subordinate problems the solution of which is involved in the larger one.

It should be mentioned with gratitude that these translations have been undertaken with the kind permission of the German publisher, Herr S. Hirzel, of Leipsic.

GEORGE T. LADD.

New Haven, October, 1884.

Introduction

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 articulating 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 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-scientific 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 as 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?

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 to a law of conditionating, 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 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 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’ (für sich 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.

§ 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 praxi 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 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.

§ 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’ 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 readymade 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

FIRST 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 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 ‘actuality 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 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 ‘is,’ 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,’ 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.’