History of Knowledge Kant Ethics

KANT; ETHICS, HISTORY OF; KNOWLEDGE, THEORY OF; TRAN SCENDENTALISM; RATIONALISM.) Fichte (1762-1814) agreed with Kant in ascribing to mind, or "consciousness in general" (or "absolute self" as he preferred to call it) the forms of intuition and categories of thought which characterize objects of knowledge. But he held that Kant had not gone far enough. Kant had recognized "things-in-themselves" or "noumena" independent of consciousness, and furnishing the sense-materials for experience. These "noumena" could only be vaguely thought about, not perceived, except as moulded in the forms of knowledge, supplied by consciousness. Fichte, how ever, held that even the "thing-in-itself" is also the product of consciousness. The "absolute self" (in which individual minds participate) is the source of the whole of experience, not of its forms only. It divides itself in experience into a knowing self and a known object, because the development of the moral life needs objects as obstacles to be overcome by moral effort prompted by a sense of duty. Moreover, there must be many minds or selves, if there are to be mutual duties. But they are all the expressions of one moral order, which is the "absolute self" or God. (See FICHTE; IDEALISM.) A philosophy essentially like that of Fichte was taught subsequently by R. Eucken (1846 19a6).

Schelling (1775-1854)

reverted more or less to the funda mental conception of Spinoza, and tried to vindicate the reality of the material against the efforts of so many modern philosophers to reduce it to mere appearances or ideas. He contended that the beauty of the material world (or Nature, in the narrower sense of the term) gave it a sufficient claim to have a reality of its own. So he conceived of Nature as an expression or manifesta tion of the Absolute in the same way as consciousness or mind is. Nature and mind are thus conceived to be related to the Absolute in the same kind of way as the two attributes, extension and thought, were conceived by Spinoza to be related to substance. The Absolute, however, came to be conceived as being in itself neither material nor mental, but something common to both or identical in both. Hence the name "identity philosophy" by which Schelling's system is commonly known. (See SCHELLING; IDEALISM.) Hegel (1770-1831) is the founder of logical Idealism or Panlogism. He rejected the unknown "thing-in-itself" of Kant

and the equally unknown "identity" or Absolute which, accord ing to Schelling, manifests itself in Nature and mind. He denied the opaqueness of ultimate reality and insisted that the entire universe "can be penetrated by thought." Mind and Nature are not merely manifestations or expressions of an otherwise unknown Absolute ; they are the Absolute itself. Moreover, mind and Nature, according to Hegel, are not two distinct or parallel real ities but integral components of one process of self-revelation. Mind needs for its own development an objective world, or Nature, on which to exercise itself ; but this objective world is itself mental, something that is at once appearance and reality— "the real is rational, and the rational is real." The development of this rational reality is a kind of dialectic proceeding by the method of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, or position, negation and reconciliation. Some thought occurs; it is opposed by an other thought, which also turns out to be inadequate; but what is true in each, the thesis and the antithesis, is harmonized and made mutually supplementary in another thought which syn thesizes them; e.g., "becoming" is such a synthesis of "being" and "not-being." The whole world, according to Hegel, is made up of such op posites which are reconciled. The general scheme of the cosmic dialectic is this. First comes "mind in itself," or the system of categories, which are conceived by Hegel, not as mere forms of thought by which unknown things-in-themselves are apprehended, but as ultimate realities; next comes "mind for itself," that is Nature as the self-externalization of "mind in itself"; lastly, comes "mind in and for itself," that is, mind or consciousness coming or returning to itself. This last phase, the mind's coming to itself, has a number of grades or stages. These are: individual mind or subjective consciousness; objective mind or social con sciousness as expressed in law, morality, the State ; and absolute mind or consciousness active intuitively in art, imaginatively in religion and intellectually in philosophy. Hegel's conception of the cosmic process as a rational dialectic stimulated new views of history and, consequently, a new interest in it. (See HEGEL; KNOWLEDGE, THEORY OF; IDEALISM.)